Blood Debt
The first sign that we’d truly woken the beast came before the sun could even clear the eastern ridges. We were barely thirty miles south of the dairy farm, navigating a high, unlit plateau, when the mist behind us went completely violet. It wasn't the erratic flashing of local municipal police. These were heavy, low-slung, matte-black turbodiesels with reinforced steel brush-guards and no registry plates. Syndicate enforcers. They had picked up our scent three hours faster than our most conservative calculations had allowed, moving with the terrifying, synchronized speed of a predator that had finally located its target in the open. "Kai—" My voice didn't just crack; it dried up in my throat as I twisted around in the passenger seat, my palms flat against the cold glass of the rear wind
- Writer
