The shadow of the brick annex offered no shelter as the humanoid beast reared back, its gargantuan, fur-draped chest expanding with a wet, rattle-like snarl. Caleb was entirely gone inside the monstrosity; his conscious mind was buried deep under the surging tide of Bill's dark serum.
Damon didn't wait for the creature to lung. Shedding all pretenses of human restraint, he dropped into a low stance, his pupils expanding until his eyes were solid, lightless pools of jet-black ink.
*SWOOSH.*
Damon vanished. A fraction of a second later, the air behind Caleb cracked with a sonic pop as Damon materialized in mid-air, his right leg whipping forward in a fluid arc. The heavy kick connected flush with the beast's altered jaw, the blunt force sending a spray of black saliva into the fog.
Caleb barely flinched. The hybrid beast spun on its heel with terrifying, predator speed, its massive right arm—swollen with thick, corded sinew and capped with five-inch bone claws—sweeping sideways to bisect Damon's torso.
"Damon, low!" Lira shouted.
She hit the concrete hard, sliding beneath the arc of the lethal strike. As she passed underneath the beast, Lira extended her hands, her fangs fully elongated as her vampire speed kicked into overdrive.
She slammed both palms directly into the back of Caleb's knees, breaking his center of gravity. The beast let out a guttural roar as its heavy joints buckled.
Damon landed silently on the wet asphalt, spun on his heel, and blurred forward again. Using his sheer vampiric acceleration, he threw a rapid sequence of strikes—three lightning-fast palm thrusts straight into the monster's sternum, each hit ringing out like a sledgehammer striking solid oak.
*THUD. THUD. THUD.*
The impacts forced the chimera backward three steps, its claws tearing deep, ragged trenches into the damp earth of the quad. But the bloodlust in the mutated boy was unyielding. Caleb grabbed Damon by the throat with his half-human left hand, his grip crushing like an iron vice, while his right claw pulled back to puncture Damon's chest.
Lira launched herself off the brick wall behind them, pushing off the masonry with enough force to crack the mortar.
She hit Caleb's massive shoulders from behind, wrapping her arm tightly around his neck in a rear sleeper hold while driving her boots hard into his lower back to leverage him away from Damon.
"Hold his arm!" Lira snarled through her bared teeth, her small frame straining against the brute, monstrous strength of the creature as it thrashed wildly, trying to slam her body into the concrete pillar.
Damon tore himself free from the choking grip, his throat skin instantly knitting back together. He seized Caleb's right wrist with both hands, channeling his full power to pin the thrashing, bone-tipped arm against the wall, locking the beast in a frantic, high-stakes dead heat of pure strength.
A hundred meters down the tree-lined avenue, Detective Quive Stephenson froze in the shadow of his department cruiser. Through his night-vision tactical scope, he caught a blindingly fast blur of movement—two figures in grey hoodies moving at speeds no human physique could ever hit, trading bone-shattering strikes with a towering, half-canine monstrosity.
His heart hammered against his ribs. Reaching frantically for his shoulder-mounted comms unit, he slammed the emergency channel.
"Janvis! Janvis, do you copy?!" Quive yelled into the mic, his voice tight with an unprecedented spike of panic. "Deploy Sector 4 immediately! Bring in the heavy containment unit—bring the Special Weapon! We have an anomaly and multiple high-speed supernaturals on the North Quad grid!"
Unholstering his standard-issue sidearm, Quive racked the slide, stepped out from behind the vehicle, and leveled the barrel into the air.
*BANG! BANG!*
The sharp gunshots tore through the damp night, the muzzle flashes briefly illuminating the mist.
"POLICE! FREEZE AND STEP AWAY FROM EACH OTHER NOW!" Quive roared, charging down the grass incline to break up the combat.
Neither Damon, Lira, nor the roaring monster even turned a head. To beings moving in such inhuman speed, his shots were nothing more than background noise.
Driven by instinct and duty, Quive closed the distance, surging right into the perimeter of the brawl. "I said drop to the—"
He didn't get to finish the sentence.
Caleb, violently thrashing to shake Lira off his back, backhanded his massive, fur-covered left arm blind into the air. The strike caught Quive full in the chest before the detective could even register the movement. The sheer physical output hit him like a runaway freight train.
Quive's vest caved inward with a sickening crunch. The impact lifted his entire body off his feet, sending him flying backward fifteen yards through the air like a ragdoll until he crashed violently through a wooden bench and hit the wet turf, gasping for air as his gun skidded into the dark.
He lay there, coughing up blood, realizing with terrifying clarity just how catastrophically wrong he had been to think a regular precinct officer could even register as a minor inconvenience to the three monsters fighting in front of him.
Meanwhile, inside the quiet dark of the dorm room, the audio feed on the intercepted police radio hummed with heavy static before Quive's frantic transmission cut through the speaker.
*—Deploy Sector 4 immediately! Bring in the heavy containment unit—bring the Special Weapon!—*
Claire's fingers instantly flew across her laptop keyboard, her eyes wide as she monitored the live signal waves. Beside her, Ryan stood with his head turned toward the window, his hand hovering over a complex signal receiver on the desk, his metal manipulation subtly tweaking the internal copper coils to prevent the precinct from scrambling the patch.
"He called in Janvis," Claire stared at her screen flashing with a wave of fluctuating red frequencies. "Quive just requested a heavy ordinance drop on the quad. Ryan, hold the receiver steady—I'm locking onto his broadcast origin!"
"Got it," Ryan murmured, his brow furrowing as he forced the signal to remain open. The copper wires inside the box glowed faintly as he pushed his power, keeping the line clean.
A high-pitched chime echoed from the laptop as the digital map rendered a precise set of glowing blue GPS coordinates right over the North Quad maintenance block.
Claire grabbed her phone, opening an encrypted, high-level satellite channel. With three quick taps, she uploaded the live signal trace and sent the marked coordinates directly to Athalia's central command system, ensuring their elite link was tracking every single move the local police were about to make.