Rejected now unstoppable

chapter 6

The quarry felt smaller after the vampire attack, as if the walls had drawn closer in the night. The air tasted of ash and iron for days, no matter how many times Mira scrubbed the stone with controlled green fire that left everything clean but somehow wrong. The children moved through their routines like ghosts haunting their own lives—cleaning weapons that were already clean, checking wards that hadn't been disturbed, eating strips of dried meat in silence so complete it pressed against their ears.

The obsidian dagger stayed strapped to Mira's belt, the blade cold against her hip even through cloth. The thorned-rose pendant hung around Luka's neck, warm against his sternum, pulsing faint in rhythm with his heartbeat. The vial of Triune Blood remained wrapped in oilcloth, untouched and somehow heavier than it should be, tucked deep in Cassian's pocket where he could feel its weight with every step.

They knew they could not stay.

The knowledge sat between them like a fourth presence, patient and inevitable. Ronan's pack would return with reinforcements—more wolves, better prepared, less merciful. Darius's court would send more than three scouts next time. And the Elders—watching from their obsidian tower in the heart of the Blackwood—would eventually decide the children were too dangerous to ignore, too powerful to allow to grow unchecked.

"We go south," Cassian said one morning, voice flat and final as a door closing. "Into the city. The tunnels beneath Lagos are vast—old vampire warrens from before the Covenant, before Darius even. Human crowds everywhere. Harder to track three children among millions."

Luka frowned, one hand absently touching the pendant at his throat. "City means more eyes watching. More potential hunters. Nowhere to run if we're cornered."

Mira nodded slowly, thinking it through. "But also more places to hide. More food we don't have to hunt ourselves. More… people who aren't actively trying to kill us." She paused. "Maybe that's worth something."

They packed light, taking only what they could carry and run with: the bundled artifacts that hummed with old power, a few strips of dried venison wrapped in leaves, Mira's herb pouch with its dwindling supplies, Cassian's sharpened branch-spears that weren't much but were better than nothing, Luka's torn shirt-bandages still stained with old blood.

They left the quarry at dusk, moving down the cracked access road in single file—Luka leading by scent, nose twitching at every shift in the wind; Mira weaving faint confusion charms behind them, green threads that made their tracks seem to lead nowhere and everywhere at once; Cassian watching the rear with red eyes that caught every movement in the growing dark.

The Blackwood Range thinned as they descended, the ancient forest giving way gradually to younger trees. Pine surrendered to scrub oak and tangled grassland, then to dirt tracks worn deep by truck tires and the first real signs of human reach: rusted barbed wire strung between leaning posts, abandoned farm machinery slowly being reclaimed by vines, the distant hum of a generator fighting the silence.

By midnight they reached the outskirts of a small town—lights flickering yellow in windows, dogs barking warnings behind chain-link fences, the smell of cooking fires and diesel exhaust. They skirted it in a wide arc, keeping to drainage ditches and the shadows between streetlights, becoming part of the landscape.

Dawn found them hiding in an abandoned petrol station on the old highway south. The roof had caved in one corner, letting in a shaft of gray morning light, but three walls still stood solid enough. They slept in shifts, pressed against cool concrete that smelled of old oil and rust, listening to the occasional truck rumble past on the road, each one a reminder of the world they were moving toward.

The journey took five nights.

Each day they learned the road's rhythm and rules. Luka hunted rabbits in the scrub brush, his kills clean and quick. Mira called small rains from passing clouds to fill empty plastic bottles they found in ditches. Cassian taught them how to walk among humans when they had to—eyes down, movements ordinary and unremarkable, no sudden speed or inhuman grace that would make people look twice and remember.

They avoided main roads when they could, following power lines and drainage canals instead, paths that existed in the margins where no one paid attention.

On the third night, they crossed paths with their first other outcast.

He was an old werewolf—gray-muzzled and scarred, limping from some old injury that had never healed right, coat patchy from mange or worse. He sat on a fallen log beside a dry riverbed, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette that smelled of cheap tobacco and something herbal. When the children approached, he didn't rise or shift or show threat. Just exhaled smoke through his nose and said in a voice like gravel, "You three smell like trouble wrapped in prophecy."

Luka stiffened, claws sliding out instinctively. "We're just passing through."

The old wolf chuckled—a dry rattle deep in his chest. "No one just passes through here anymore, pup. Packs patrol the north roads now, hunting for marked runaways. Vampires own all the tunnels under the city—every last one. And the witches… well, the covens have gone quiet these days. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that comes before screaming."

Mira stepped forward, studying his face. "You're exiled too?"

"Banished. Same thing, different word." He tapped ash from his cigarette with a yellow-nailed finger. "Name's Gideon. Used to run with Thorne's pack, back when I still believed the Covenant meant something. Until I asked too many questions about the Triad prophecy."

Cassian's eyes narrowed, red gleaming in the dark. "What kind of questions?"

Gideon looked at them—really looked this time, not just glancing. At the marks on their wrists that they couldn't quite hide. At the way they stood together, not touching but positioned so that if one moved, the others would know instantly and adjust. At the weapons they carried and the old power that clung to them like perfume.

He smiled, teeth yellowed by decades of smoking. "The kind that get you cast out into the wild to die. Questions like: why did the Elders hide the full prophecy instead of just destroying it? Why did they never actively search for the marked ones if they were so dangerous? Why does Thorne keep a sealed vault in the deepest level of the Spire, full of scrolls no one's allowed to read or even ask about?"

Luka's growl was barely audible. "You know where we're going."

"South. Into Lagos. Smart choice, actually. The city swallows secrets whole—too much noise, too many people, too much life." Gideon stood slowly, joints popping like dry wood. "But the city has teeth of its own. Darius runs the deep tunnels now—all of them. He's old. Patient as stone. And he remembers every child he ever turned and lost, remembers them like humans remember their first love."

Cassian's hand went unconsciously to the vial in his pocket. "Darius is my sire. He turned me when I was six."

Gideon's smile faded completely. "Then you're walking straight into his house, boy. Into his territory. You understand that?"

They were silent, the weight of it settling over them.

Gideon sighed through his nose. "Take this." He pulled a small, tarnished silver coin from his pocket—stamped with an image of a three-headed serpent eating its own tails. "Show it to the tunnel keepers if you reach the old colonial drainage lines. They'll let you pass. Once. Maybe twice if you're lucky and they're feeling generous."

Mira accepted the coin carefully, feeling the age in the metal. "Why help us? You don't know us."

"Because someone has to." Gideon flicked his cigarette butt into the dirt where it smoldered and died. "And because if the prophecy is actually true… then maybe the Covenant was always just a cage. Maybe it's time for the bars to break."

He limped away into the darkness without another word, and they didn't call after him.

They kept moving south.

On the fifth night, the city lights appeared on the horizon—a glowing smear against the black sky, orange and white and flickering neon. The air changed completely: diesel exhaust and sewage, fried plantain and grilled fish, salt from the lagoon mixing with car fumes, and underneath it all the thousand thousand heartbeats of Lagos pulsing like a single living organism.

They crossed the final stretch of bush at dawn, slipping into the city's ragged edge through a drainage canal that emptied into a narrow, garbage-choked creek. The water was foul—thick with plastic bottles and worse things—but it hid their scent completely.

They emerged in a crowded market district already awake and roaring with life. Bodies pressed on all sides. Voices shouted in Yoruba, Pidgin English, Igbo, Hausa, languages they didn't know. Hawkers sold everything: roasted corn on sticks, phone recharge cards, second-hand clothes in enormous piles, live chickens in wire cages. Motorcycles—okadas—wove through the press of humanity with inches to spare. A radio blared highlife music from a nearby electronics stall, competing with gospel from across the street.

For the first time in months, the children felt genuinely small. Invisible. Almost safe.

They found shelter in an unfinished building site—three stories of bare concrete and exposed rebar, abandoned mid-construction when money or permits ran out. They claimed the top floor, a roofless room open to the sky where rain would come but sunlight wouldn't trap Cassian. Mira warded the stairwell with subtle green threads that would alert but not harm. Luka marked the corners with his scent—territorial but not aggressive. Cassian listened to the night sounds of the city: distant sirens, generators coughing and sputtering, laughter from rooftop parties, arguments in apartments, the city breathing.

They slept that first day curled together on a pile of empty cement bags, exhausted beyond measure.

When night fell, they explored their new territory.

Cassian led them down into the storm drains—old colonial-era tunnels that ran beneath the modern streets like forgotten veins. The air was thick and damp, echoing with constant drips. Rats scattered at their approach, red eyes gleaming. The walls were covered in old graffiti and newer warnings in languages both human and not.

They found the first tunnel keeper near a rusted iron grate that led deeper: a thin vampire woman with elaborately braided hair and a jagged scar across her left cheek. She eyed them with deep suspicion until Cassian produced Gideon's coin.

She examined it, nodded once, sharp and final. "Darius's court is deeper. Past the flooded sections, through the old slave tunnels. Don't go there unless you want to die slowly."

They didn't answer. They simply moved on, deeper into the maze.

In the market above, rumors were already spreading like oil on water.

A street preacher in a stained white robe shouted about demons rising from the earth, about children with eyes like fire. A group of young men smoking by a corner shop whispered about strange kids seen near the creek at dawn—moving too fast, eyes glowing, wrong somehow. A witch selling protection charms from a corner stall paused mid-sale, lifted her head, sniffed the air like an animal, and frowned deeply.

Something new had entered the city.

Something that didn't belong to any of the usual powers.

Far north, in the Blackwood Range, Ronan received word from a scout who'd been tracking the children's path.

"They've reached Lagos. Lost them in the market district."

Ronan smiled—slow and cold as winter dawn. "Then we hunt in the dark. In their new home. Where they think they're safe."

He began gathering his best hunters.

In the Hollow Spire, Elder Thorne stood alone before the sealed vault in the tower's deepest chamber. His fingers traced the black wax seal, feeling the old magic that held it closed. Inside: the complete prophecy. The parts the Council had hidden. The truth about what the Triad could become.

He did not break the seal.

Not yet.

But soon.

In the unfinished building, three children sat on the edge of the roofless top floor, legs dangling over empty air, watching the city lights glitter like a carpet of stars below them.

Mira spoke softly, voice nearly lost in the city's constant noise. "This place… it's alive. Really alive. But it's hungry too. I can feel it."

Luka nodded, pendant warm against his chest. "Like us."

Cassian stared at the horizon where the ocean met the sky in darkness. "We're not running anymore. We're choosing where to stand. Choosing where to make them come to us."

They linked wrists—marked skin touching marked skin. The crescent moon, the thorn, the drop of black blood glowed faintly for just a moment, then faded back to ink.

The city swallowed them whole, pulled them into its vast and beating heart.

And somewhere in its depths—in tunnels older than the Covenant, in chambers where the first vampires had hidden from the sun—something ancient stirred in answer to their arrival.

The Triad had come to Lagos.

And Lagos would never be the same.