The city throbbed around him like a living wound, cold, indifferent, and hungry. Caleb moved through slick alleyways, boots echoing against wet asphalt, neon lights shivering in puddles. The blood on his gloves from Jamal's death hadn't yet dried, but it was only a taste of what needed to come. One snake dead didn't stop the nest. One death hadn't purged the rot.
His mind buzzed with fragments—visions from the Raven, Isaac's presence bleeding into every corner of his consciousness. The premonitions hadn't stopped with the little girl in the park or the early victims; they were reaching deeper, showing him the city's veins being poisoned. He'd seen precincts collapse in fire and gun shots, officers ambushed in coordinated strikes, streets crawling with thugs exploiting chaos. Every premonition flashed with chilling clarity: the Vultures weren't just killing for blood—they were plotting a police purge, a violent takeover, exploiting fear and confusion to seize control of Toronto.
Caleb crouched in the shadows of a burned-out warehouse, pulling photographs and scraps of information from Crowe's files he desired from her cruiser laptop, Faces, names, and addresses blurred together, but the premonitions added a terrifying precision: he knew where, when, and how the next strike would unfold. Each remaining general of the Vultures wasn't just a killer—they were a moving piece in a larger, more sinister game.
Outside, the city whispered around him: distant sirens, the clatter of garbage cans, wind threading through broken glass. A group of Vultures gathered near a derelict lot, muttering plans over a flickering streetlamp. Caleb had seen this exact scenario before—every detail from the premonitions matched reality. The cops being manipulated, the precincts marked for attack, the Vultures' confidence—it all aligned. The purge was coming, and if he didn't act, countless innocents would die.
He flexed his fingers around his knife, still slick with Jamal's blood. The same Raven that had haunted his visions perched on a broken sign, white streak glowing faintly, as though affirming the path laid before him. Each strike he planned now wasn't just vengeance—it was intervention. The premonitions guided him: this blow here, that chokehold there, each action calculated to stop the cascade of carnage he'd already witnessed in his dreams.
Hours passed as he stalked the city's underbelly. Each target fell. A snap of a neck, a slash through tendon and muscle, the screams echoing off brick and steel, mingling with Caleb's ragged breathing. The Vultures' network splintered, yet the shadows hinted that Crowe remained alive somewhere, and the remaining generals fell, one by one, finally only one snake remained.
The Raven's gaze met his from atop a broken street sign, white streak faintly glowing in the darkness. Caleb whispered to the void, to Isaac, to the darkness inside him, "I'll stop them. All of them. This ends with no mercy."
Toronto waited, unaware of the storm rising in its veins. Caleb was ready to deliver it.
End of chapter 13.