There was a crack of noise — a tinny sound like a dropped tin can — and two men in aprons stepped out from the shadow of the loading bay. Their faces were set to the expression of men who did things at midnight and regretted the necessity. One of them seems like an Hyena anthro while other one is a young human. One of them carried a coil of rope like someone who owned rope as if it were a talisman. He went to somewhere else after instructing the younger one something. The human, the scarred one, saw the hooded woman while looking around after the Hyena anthro left the place, his hand did a small, nervous rise.
"Hey," he said thickly. "You two can't be here."
Brendon's hand moved without thought. He took two steps, small and efficient, until the criers and the meat were in a neat triangle. He did not draw his gun. Guns were for people who did not respect knives. Besides, a gun at the wrong time raised questions he did not want on his shoulders. He moved instead to the crate, his fingers following the grain as if it could tell him the history of the wood.
The scarred man shifted, fidgety. "Are you a cop or something?"
"Depends on who is asking." Brendon said. He let the words hang like bait. The man glanced toward the street, toward the van that had already driven off. The city outside the alley breathed on its own, indifferent, relentless.
The hooded woman — Ninja Fox — watched with a cool, small interest. There was a glint in her eye that was almost compassionate.
"You're asking a dangerous question," she murmured to Brendon. "Some answers may burn the listener."
He felt the truth of it settle in his bones like weather. But curiosity was a flame that burned his fingertips and would not be doused. He lifted his hand, tentative, and brushed the brand on the crate. The wood had been scorched with a hot iron; the mark was shallow and the ash had been brushed away. The pattern was clear: a circle like an eye, a trio of short lines beneath like claws. It was not a municipal mark. It was not a trade insignia. It was a note left deliberately obscured.
When his skin met the scorched wood a small thing happened that he could not explain: the air around him tightened as if he was being watched. There was a sound on the edge of the world — a tiny, sea-glass chime — and for an instant his mind lit up with a hundred remembered things that had no place to be remembered. He saw a face in the dark, not his face but something like the curve of lips carved in a language he had never read. He smelled damp earth and something like humming.
Sofie's voice sharpened in his ear. "Brendon? You there? Your heart rate spiked on the feed. Are you okay?"
He blinked, as if waking from a dream. The alley was the alley again. The men in aprons were watching him with the cautious rage of those who both feared the law and despised interference. The hooded woman's head tilted slightly, a question.
He eased his hand away from the crate as if something had burned him. His palm tingled. "Yeah," he said to Sofie. His voice sounded small. "Yeah, I'm fine."
He was not fine. He had touched a thing wired to his bones. The brand was not simply a mark on wood. It was a language. It knew him before he knew it. That made his chest cold in a way not even the night could justify.
"Tell me what you know," he said to the hooded woman. "Then tell me why you're here. And tell me how come you know about this sh!t?"
She smiled, but it was a thin thing. "I didn't come here because someone sent me. I came because I smelled the same smoke on two different chimneys. I follow the smoke, wolf. Just like you do."
He had the sense then that the city had more to give than he had time to take. He slid his gaze to the scarred man, to the rope he did not want him to have, to the way the younger man's hat was pushed back to reveal a forehead freckled with sweat.
"Open it," he said finally. "Open the crate, or I will..."
The younger man's face tightened. He looked at the hooded woman with the pleading of a child who had been taught to hope for a miracle and not to trust it afterward. "You can't just—"
Brendon's hand closed on the latch. The metal was cold, but his heart thudded loud enough to cover the sound. The crate creaked, the wood complaining like an old man, and the smell that came up was not wholly meat. It was sweet and metallic, an awful perfume that made him want to lean forward and vomit at once. The men both recoiled.
"What the hell—?" the scarred man breathed.
There, stacked in the crate, wrapped in stained burlap, were not the bloody sacks of offal he expected but small packages of a different kind. Each package was bound with thin wire and at the center of each was a small, bleached bone. The bones were not human or animal in any simple way; they had the shape of something that could have been a finger or a fang, and they were etched with miniature marks that made his skin crawl. Stitched into one of the wrappings, like a talisman pressed into skin, was the same three-line brand from the crate.
Silence fell like a curtain.
Sofie's voice in his ear was a thread drawn taut. "Brendon. Those are not normal substances. I can't get a clean read on them. What are these?" Her tone dissolved into a complicated mix of fear and fascination.
He almost didn't want to hear more.
"Where did you get those?" Brendon asked the scarred man.
The man's lips moved. "We... I mean boss — boss says they're for the export. He said they're souvenir bits. Said they're charm bits. Told us not to ask. I... it pay's good. So we didn't ask so."
Brendon looked to the hooded woman. "Charm bits," he repeated. The words tasted like old rumor and fresh blood. He had been hunting a story. He had been looking for footprints. He had not wanted to find a thing that looked like the old tales his grandmother muttered about on the coldest nights.
The hooded woman's face was the map of someone who had seen too much. "They're making charms," she said. "They're making them from things that were not meant to be made. They're selling power made from others pain. That's why I'm here. And that's why you are here too."