The kitchen was too quiet.
The overhead light was on—Becca had turned it on an hour ago, the reflexive action of a woman who needed to see clearly, to assess wounds and count ammunition—but the brightness only made the silence feel deeper. It washed out the room, turning familiar things strange: the fruit bowl on the counter, the calendar pinned to the corkboard, the small ceramic salt pig by the stove. Ordinary objects. They looked like props now. Stage dressing for a life that had, an hour ago, been violently interrupted.
No one had touched the coffee.
The pot was full, brewed in those first frantic minutes after Garath had herded everyone inside. Someone—Cedric, probably—had set out mugs. Five of them, lined up in a neat row beside the pot. All empty. All cold now.
Axl sat at the kitchen table. His chair was positioned at the head, the one Becca usually claimed, but no one had commented on it. His elbow rested on the worn laminate surface, his forehead pressed hard against the heel of his palm. His fingers were spread across his temple, pressing, as if he could physically contain the throbbing behind his eyes. He hadn't moved in four minutes.
His coffee sat in front of him. Full. Unsipped. A thin, oily film had formed on the surface, catching the overhead light.
Garath stood at the kitchen entrance. Not sitting. Not leaning. His back was against the doorframe, positioned at an angle that allowed him to see both the hallway leading to Chloe's room and the backyard window. His shotgun was propped against the wall beside him, stock on the floor, barrel pointing at the ceiling. His hand rested on the grip. Not holding. Just... close.
His face was neutral, but his eyes tracked every shadow, every shift of light through the curtains.
Becca sat in her wheelchair at the opposite end of the table. Her hands were flat on her thighs, palms down, fingers spread. She wasn't gripping. She wasn't fidgeting. She was perfectly, unnaturally still. Her gaze was fixed on a small imperfection in the laminate—a chip, old and discolored, from some long-forgotten accident. Years of family meals, and no one had ever bothered to repair it.
Her pistol was on the counter behind her. Magazine out. Slide locked back. She'd cleaned it in the immediate aftermath, muscle memory taking over while her mind struggled to catch up. The cloth she'd used was still draped over the edge of the sink.
No one spoke.
The refrigerator hummed. The clock above the stove ticked. Somewhere, deep in the house's bones, a pipe groaned.
Footsteps in the hallway. Slow. Heavy.
Everyone's attention shifted. No one turned their head. No one moved. But the silence changed, became something held, waiting.
Cedric appeared in the kitchen doorway. His movements were careful, deliberate—the walk of someone who'd exhausted his adrenaline reserves and was now running on fumes. His right arm hung at his side, the fingers slightly curled. Not paralyzed. Just... cold. Still recovering.
He looked at his mother. At Axl. At Garath. No one asked. They just waited.
Garath broke the silence. His voice was low, stripped of its usual neutral efficiency. There was something softer underneath it now. "How is she?"
Cedric's shoulders rose and fell in a shallow breath. "Exhausted." A pause. His jaw tightened. "She won't talk. Won't look at the window. I got her to drink some water, but..." He didn't finish. He didn't need to.
"She's alive," Garath said. It wasn't a question. It was a statement, the only metric that mattered tonight.
Cedric nodded. A small, jerky motion.
Axl slowly lowered his hand from his forehead. He didn't lift his head immediately. He stared at the surface of the table, at his own blurred reflection in the cold, untouched coffee. His voice, when it finally came, was rough. Scraped clean of inflection.
"What happened?"
Becca answered before Cedric could. Her voice was quiet, controlled, but there was a tremor beneath it—the faint, residual vibration of a bell that had been struck and was still settling.
"I asked Chloe to check on Layla. Before bed. Routine." She paused. Her gaze was still fixed on the chip in the table. "I smelled it. That dust smell. I knew what it was before I even looked out the window."
Her hands shifted on her thighs. Just slightly. A reflexive movement, repressed almost instantly.
"She was on the ground. It had her by the throat. Lifting her." Another pause, longer this time. "I broke the glass. I didn't think. I just..."
She stopped. Didn't finish. Didn't need to.
Axl let out a slow, audible breath. His eyes were half-lidded, focused on some middle distance. "A poltergeist." Not a question. He was turning the word over, testing its weight. "Here."
"It was hanging around the storage cabin," Cedric said. His voice was steadier now, slipping into the clinical detachment of debrief. "Chloe said it was just... floating there. Circling. Like it was waiting for something."
"Waiting for an opening," Axl murmured. His thumb pressed against his temple again, a slow, circular motion. "The wards on the basement door. They couldn't enter. So it waited."
"Waited for one of us to open it," Garath said. "Or for someone to come out."
The implication hung in the air, unspoken but fully present. Waited for Chloe. And she came.
Becca's hands finally moved. They curled, slowly, into loose fists against her thighs. She didn't speak. Her face remained composed, the careful mask of a woman who had spent decades learning not to break. But her knuckles were white.
Axl straightened in his chair. The motion seemed to cost him—a visible effort, as if his body were filled with sand. He looked at Cedric, his gaze tracking slowly from the younger hunter's face down to his hanging arm.
"You okay?"
Cedric flexed his fingers. The movement was stiff, but the joints responded. "It'll pass."
Axl nodded. He didn't push. There would be time later for a full assessment, for cataloging injuries and calculating recovery. Right now, the only metric that mattered was the one Garath had already used.
Alive.
Becca drew a breath. It was audible, deliberate—the breath of someone about to say something difficult. Her grip on her thighs tightened.
"Axl."
He looked at her. Waited.
"I know you're a good kid." Her voice was quieter now, stripped of command. It was the voice of a mother, exhausted and afraid. "I know you didn't ask for any of this. That girl downstairs, she's not your fault. She's not your responsibility."
She paused. Her gaze drifted from the chip in the table to her own hands, resting white-knuckled on her lap.
"But I can't—" She stopped. Started again. "I can't keep her here. Not after tonight. Not with Chloe, and Cedric, and—" Her voice caught, just slightly, on her children's names. "This is my home. It's the only safe place they have left. And tonight, it wasn't safe. Because of what I agreed to keep in my basement."
The silence that followed was not empty. It was dense, heavy with everything Becca hadn't said: I trusted you. I helped you. I opened my home to your case, your witness, your war. And my daughter almost died for it.
Axl didn't flinch. He didn't look away. His face was pale, the shadows under his eyes deeper than they'd been an hour ago. But his voice, when he spoke, was steady.
"Of course, Mrs. Becca."
No argument. No explanation. No defense.
Just acceptance.
Becca's grip on her thighs loosened, fractionally. She nodded. A small motion, barely a dip of her chin. Her eyes were bright, but no tears fell. She had spent them all, years ago, in a different life.
"Thank you," she whispered. The words barely carried.
Axl pushed back from the table. The chair legs scraped against the linoleum, a harsh, abrupt sound in the quiet. He didn't look at anyone. He didn't say goodbye.
He just walked toward the back door, toward the night that was waiting for him.
Garath followed.
***
The walk to the storage cabin was short. The gravel path was the same one Chloe had walked an hour ago, the same one she'd been carried back across, gasping and shaking, in her brother's arms.
The night hadn't changed. The moon was lower now, its light angled differently, casting longer shadows. But the stillness was the same—that profound, watchful quiet that seemed to hold its breath. No wind. No distant traffic. Just the crunch of their boots on stone, each step too loud in the aftermath.
Axl stopped at the metal door. He didn't reach for the handle immediately. His hand hovered, inches from the cold steel.
His eyes traced the doorframe. The carvings were subtle, almost invisible in the dim light—a geometric pattern of interlocking lines, worn smooth by decades of weather and neglect. To anyone else, they were scratches. Accidental damage. The random scars of an old building.
But Axl could feel them.
A low, constant hum, barely perceptible. The vibration of a tuning fork struck long ago, still singing its silent, patient note. The wards were active. They had held.
He placed his palm flat against the door. The metal was cold. Beneath it, the hum responded to his presence, a faint pulse of recognition. He hadn't carved these wards. He didn't know who had. But they recognized what he was.
Priest.
He pulled the door open. The creak of the hinges was a familiar protest, but tonight it sounded different. Louder. More vulnerable.
The air inside was colder, denser. It smelled of concrete and old dust and the faint, sweet residue of the medicinal herbs Becca kept on the high shelf. The single bulb was off. Axl didn't turn it on. The moonlight through the open door was enough.
Layla hadn't moved.
She was on her side, facing the wall, the blanket pulled up to her shoulder. Her dark hair spilled across the thin pillow, tangled and limp. Her breathing was slow, even—the deep, unnatural sleep of sedation.
She looked small. Smaller than her file suggested. Twenty-four years old, with a mortgage and a job and a speeding ticket from two years ago. A normal life, interrupted by a nightmare she hadn't earned.
Garath moved past Axl without a word. His footsteps were quiet, deliberate. He approached the bed and paused, looking down at the sleeping woman.
Then he bent, sliding one arm beneath her shoulders, the other beneath her knees. He lifted her with a care that seemed almost unnatural—those large, capable hands, trained to grip shotguns and break bones, now cradling a stranger like she was made of glass.
Her head lolled against his shoulder. In the dim light, her face was slack, peaceful. No nightmares. Not yet. Those would come later, when the sedative faded and the memories returned.
Axl looked at the empty bed. At the impression her body had left in the thin mattress. At the single strand of dark hair on the pillow.
He reached out and, very gently, smoothed the blanket flat.
Then he turned and walked out, into the cold night air, and didn't look back.
***
The street was quiet.
Not the watchful stillness of the backyard. This was the ordinary quiet of a residential neighborhood at 11:47 AM. Houses huddled in the dark, their windows blind and dark. Cars lined the curb, sleeping. A single streetlight at the corner cast a weak orange glow on the empty asphalt.
Axl walked ahead. Garath followed a few paces behind, Layla's weight settled against his chest, her breathing soft and even against his shoulder.
They passed under the streetlight. The orange glow illuminated her face for a brief moment—the pale skin, the dark lashes, the slack, trusting expression of someone who had no idea where she was or who carried her.
A car approached. Slow, neighborly. Its headlights swept across them, paused, moved on. The driver didn't stop. Didn't roll down a window. Didn't ask questions.
Two men walking at night, one carrying a bundled figure. In this neighborhood, at this hour, it was probably a drunk friend being helped home. Nothing to report.
Axl watched the taillights disappear around the corner. The Veil was efficient. The driver would sleep fine tonight. If he remembered this moment at all, it would be as a vague impression, a fleeting curiosity dismissed before breakfast.
He wondered, sometimes, if that was mercy or cruelty.
"So."
Garath's voice was low, careful not to wake Layla. But beneath the caution, there was something else. An edge. Not fear—Garath didn't fear. But uncertainty. The recognition of unfamiliar ground.
"We're dealing with something that can control poltergeists."
Axl didn't answer immediately. He kept walking, his footsteps steady on the sidewalk. The RV was visible now, parked under the dim glow of a distant security light. Its white exterior looked grey in this light, the bold red stripe across its length faded to the color of dried blood.
"And apparently," Axl said quietly, "it knows where we live."
They walked another block in silence. The RV grew closer. Its familiar shape was a small comfort—Axl's territory, his refuge. The only space left that was his alone.
Garath stopped walking.
Axl felt it before he heard it. The absence of footsteps behind him. He paused, didn't turn around. Waited.
"This one was weaker than the one Ace and Cedric fought."
It wasn't a question. Garath had felt it too. The difference between the thing that had nearly killed Cedric in Layla's house and the thing that had tried to kill his mother tonight. Less density. Less rage. Less of whatever dark fuel powered those grinning voids.
"Yeah," Axl said. His voice was flat. "This one has less 'energy' than the previous one."
"Then why send it?" Garath's confusion was genuine, almost childlike in its directness. "If you can control poltergeists then why send a weak one? When you can send a strong one to finish the job."
"Unless you don't have anything stronger than the previous one."
Garath processed this. His arms shifted slightly, adjusting Layla's weight. "Ace and Cedric killed it."
"They did." Axl finally turned to face him. The security light caught his face, illuminating the hollows beneath his cheekbones, the dark circles under his eyes. "So whoever sent them is down their best attack dog. And they still sent the second one tonight."
He didn't say the implication aloud. He didn't need to.
They're desperate. They're rushing. They're afraid of losing whatever they've been building.
And desperate people make mistakes.
But desperate people were also dangerous. Cornered animals bit deepest.
Garath looked down at Layla's sleeping face. Her expression was peaceful, untouched by the conversation happening inches from her ear. She was the guard post. The poltergeist had been the guard dog. And now the dog was dead and the post was empty.
"What if it's not human?" Garath asked.
The question hung in the cold air. Axl's expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes. A door opening onto a room he'd been trying not to enter.
He'd considered it. Of course he had. A non-human controller. A demon. An ancient spirit. Something that had never needed to learn how to command poltergeists because it was born knowing.
But no. The pattern was wrong. The murders were too precise, the ritual sites too carefully chosen. Monsters didn't plan; they hunted. They followed instinct, hunger, the simple imperative to consume and destroy.
This wasn't hunger. This was construction. Building something, piece by bloody piece.
"It's most likely a cult."
The word landed with audible weight. Axl said it quietly, almost to himself. Not a conclusion. A confession.
Garath's stillness deepened. "A cult?"
"I didn't want to say it." Axl's voice was tired, but beneath the exhaustion was something rawer. Guilt, maybe. Or shame. "Cults are supposed to be rare. They aren't supposed to exist anymore but this—this controlling of poltergeists, murdering in a specific pattern. It just makes sense for a cult to be involve in" He gestured vaguely at the sleeping street behind them. "...here."
He paused. His gaze drifted to the warm, yellow windows of the nearest house. Behind those curtains, someone was sleeping. Someone who would wake up in a few hours, make coffee, read the paper, and never know that a monster had walked past their front door.
"And everything that is happening is just proving this theory right.The murders. The precision. The controlled poltergeists." He shook his head slowly. "This isn't one sick person. This is a group of a bunch of sickos."
He paused.
"And they're trying to summon something."
Garath didn't ask Summon what? immediately. He was still looking at Layla, at her peaceful, unknowing face. She was the guard post. The poltergeist was the guard dog. And the dog had been placed there to protect something—or someone—that the cult didn't want found.
Her.
What made a twenty-four-year-old receptionist worth killing for? What secret was she carrying, unknowing, in her sleep?
"Summon what?" Garath's voice was steady, but quieter than before.
Axl shook his head. A small, helpless motion. "I don't know. But it's not going to be good." A pause. The ghost of a grim, hollow smile flickered across his lips. "It's probably some big bad evil demon or shit."
The joke fell flat. Neither of them laughed. The night absorbed the words without echo.
Garath shifted Layla's weight again, adjusting his grip. "We need to find them. Before they finish."
Axl didn't respond. He just turned and started walking again, toward the RV, his shoulders curved forward under a weight that had nothing to do with physical exhaustion.
The door creaked.
It was a familiar sound, worn into Axl's memory by years of use. Every RV has its own voice, its own vocabulary of groans and clicks and rattles. This one had been his for six years. He knew every complaint it made.
He didn't turn on the main light. The interior was a landscape of shadows, familiar shapes rendered unfamiliar by darkness. He navigated by memory—three steps to the kitchenette, hand out to brace against the counter, fingers finding the small switch beneath the overhead cabinet.
The amber glow of the under-cabinet light pushed back the darkness, revealing the space in soft, forgiving illumination.
The sofa. The fabric was neutral, somewhere between beige and light brown, softened by years of use. He'd slept on it more times than he could count. The dining table, compact and sturdy, its surface currently bare. He'd cleared his maps and notes hours ago, before the call came. Before everything went wrong. It felt like a different day.
The fridge hummed its low, constant song. The microwave clock blinked 11:47 AM.
Garath moved through the space with surprising care. He was too large for this RV—his shoulders barely cleared the cabinets, his head inclined slightly to avoid the ceiling fixtures. But he moved with deliberate gentleness, cradling Layla against his chest like she was something precious.
He paused at the narrow door to the bedroom. Looked at Axl.
Axl nodded once.
Garath ducked through the doorway. The bedroom was small, dominated by the two single beds positioned along opposite walls. His bed—Axl's bed—was on the left. The sheets were rumpled from the previous night, the pillow still bearing the indentation of his head.
Garath laid Layla down on it. His movements were slow, careful, as if placing a sleeping child. Her head settled against the pillow. Her dark hair spread across the white fabric. She didn't stir.
He straightened, looked down at her for a moment, then turned and walked out.
Axl hadn't moved from the kitchenette. His hand was still on the counter, fingers spread against the cold laminate. He was staring at nothing.
Garath paused at the RV door. His hand rested on the frame. He didn't look back.
"Get some rest."
It wasn't a suggestion. It was an order, delivered quietly, without emphasis. The kind of order a man gives when he's run out of other ways to say I'm worried about you.
Axl didn't promise. He just nodded, a small motion Garath probably didn't see.
The door opened. Cold air rushed in, sharp and clean, carrying the scent of night and distant rain. It swirled through the RV, disturbing the stillness, then settled.
The door closed. The creak, the click of the latch, the soft sigh of the seals engaging.
Silence.
Axl was alone.
He didn't move to the sofa. He didn't sit. He stood in his small, organized kitchen, in his too-quiet RV, and listened.
The fridge hummed. The clock blinked. Somewhere, deep in the bedroom, a woman he barely knew breathed slow and steady in his bed.
He should sleep. He wouldn't.
He reached out and, very gently, turned off the under-cabinet light.
The darkness was complete, then slowly resolved into familiar shapes—the outline of the sofa, the gleam of the microwave display, the pale rectangle of the windshield framing the sleeping street.
Axl stood in the dark, in his home, and waited for the weight to lift.
It didn't.