The gym was a graveyard of rusted iron and shadows. I didn't wait for them to find me. My vision had already sharpened to a painful, needle-point clarity, stripping the room down to its bones. I saw the exits, the heavy weights, and the five silhouettes detaching themselves from the darkness.
Five. Marcus wasn't taking chances tonight.
The air felt thick, vibrating with a frequency only I could hear. I didn't "decide" to move; my body simply reacted, a foreign calm descending over my mind like a shroud. I lunged, catching the first man's lead shoulder before he could level his rifle. My forehead met his nose with a satisfying, sickening crunch of cartilage.
"Ghost? What the hell is—" Silas's voice cut through the silence from the back office.
"Stay down, Silas!" I roared.
The man I'd hit stumbled, but the other four closed the distance with a synchronized, predatory grace. They weren't soldiers; they were hunters who knew how to blend into a crowd, their rubber-soled shoes squeaking softly on the mats.
One swung a weighted baton. I felt the thermal ghost of his intent a split second before the strike landed. I stepped inside his guard, my fingers seizing his arm with a strength that felt like liquid nitrogen threading through my veins. I twisted. The wet splinter of a radius bone snapping echoed through the gym, a sound so sharp it made my own teeth ache.
A gnawing void in my marrow suddenly went still. As the man collapsed, my vision stabilized. The frantic hammer of my heart slowed into a deep, rhythmic pulse of dominance.
A rush of heat flooded my chest—a surge of arrogance I didn't recognize. I felt faster. Untouchable. I moved toward the third man, a smirk pulling at my lips that didn't feel like mine. I was tracking his pulse, the shallow rattle of his breath, the copper scent of his fear.
I was so focused on the high of the hunt that I missed the shadow to my left. I felt him before I saw him—a distortion in the dark, like pressure behind my eyes.
A flash of steel caught the dim light. I twisted, but I was a microsecond too slow. A tactical blade bit deep into my abdomen, slicing through the silk of my tuxedo and the muscle beneath.
The pain hit me like a physical wall, shattering the calm. I gasped, my hand flying to my stomach as a hot, wet warmth began to soak through my fingers.
My internal reasoning fractured. A second, colder chain of logic began screaming at me to cut my losses, to kill or be killed. The man who stabbed me stepped back to reset, but an intrusive instinct took over. It wasn't a choice; it was a reflex.
I surged forward, ignoring the fire in my gut. As he raised the knife again, I didn't just block; I seized his hand and drove his own blade through his palm, pinning his hand to the wooden equipment locker behind him. The steel buried itself an inch into the wood. The void eased when he screamed.
The man shrieked, his hand pinned and ruined, a permanent souvenir of the night he tried to gut a Cole.
The smell of blood filled the air, thick and metallic. To my horror, my mouth began to water. A dark, primal hunger stirred in the back of my throat, demanding more. That terrified me more than the knife.
The fifth man raised a suppressed pistol, but Silas's shotgun roared from the office doorway, shredding the wall beside the hunter.
"Go, kid!" Silas screamed.
I didn't stay to argue. I shoved the man with the broken arm into the path of the gunman and dove through the side window. Glass shredded what was left of my jacket as I tumbled into the rain-slicked alleyway.
I ran, my hand clamped over the wound in my belly. Every step was an agony of tearing muscle, but a predatory focus wouldn't let me stop. It mapped a path through the city's industrial guts, leading me toward the docks where the salt spray mixed with the copper tang of my own blood.
I reached the payphone, leaning my weight against the freezing metal booth to keep from collapsing. I could feel something inside me stitching at the wound, a needle-like pressure that was almost as painful as the cut itself.
I dialed the number. The only person cold enough to deal with what I was becoming.
"Speak," Aunt Elena's voice commanded.
"It's me," I whispered, my breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches. "The wolves are at the door, Elena. And I think... I think I'm turning into one of them."
The silence on the other end was heavy, filled only by the crackle of the line and the sound of my blood dripping onto the pavement.
"Forty-fourth and Lexington," she said finally, her voice like a blade. "There's a gray town car in the alley. If there's a single drop of blood on my leather, Evan, I'll hand you to the wolves myself."
The line went dead. I slumped against the glass, the phantom taste of ozone thick on my tongue. I had survived, but as I watched the black car pull up to the curb minutes later, I realized the price.
I wasn't a god. I was just a broken man with a monster stitched into his nerves.
I pulled myself into the back seat, the gray leather cold against my shredded suit, and prayed I could stop the bleeding before Elena saw the mess I'd made.