Marcus ran through streets he'd known since he could walk, but tonight they felt like a whole different city. The corner store where he bought Now & Laters looked sinister in the red moonlight. The basketball court where he'd learned to ball seemed to stretch and warp as he passed. Even the familiar gang tags on the walls looked like warnings written in an alien language.
"Left on Metropolitan," the woman's voice came through the phone, calm as a GPS. "Then straight for three blocks."
"Lady, who are you?" Marcus panted, though he wasn't really winded. That should have been impossible after running two miles, but tonight impossible was starting to feel normal.
"Someone who wants to keep you alive. Keep moving. The Hunter is faster than you think."
Marcus glanced back and immediately wished he hadn't. The thing in the black coat was following, not running but sort of gliding from rooftop to rooftop. Each leap covered impossible distance. Its red eyes never left him, like targeting lasers locked on.
"What is that thing?"
"Vampire. Old one, by the look of him. They hate our kind."
"Our kind?" Marcus vaulted over a shopping cart some crackhead had left in the middle of the sidewalk. "Lady, I don't even know what I am."
"You're Moonborn. I'll explain everything, but first you need to survive. Right on University. The old MARTA station."
The West End station had been closed for three years. Budget cuts, they said, though everyone knew it was really because too many people got robbed there. The entrance was boarded up, covered in layers of graffiti so thick you couldn't see the original color.
"Through the fence," the woman instructed. "There's a gap on the left side."
Marcus found it a place where someone had peeled back the chain-link, probably kids looking for a place to smoke. He squeezed through, the metal scraping his back. The phone's screen cracked more as he fumbled it through.
Inside was darker than dark. The emergency lights still worked somehow, casting everything in that horror-movie green glow. The platform stretched out empty, puddles of water reflecting the sick light. It smelled like mold and piss and something else—something that made his new instincts scream danger.
"Where are you?" Marcus whispered.
"Turn around."
He spun, and there she was. How she'd gotten behind him without making a sound, he had no idea. She stepped out of the shadows like she'd been part of them, moving with the kind of grace that came from money and training. Everything about her screamed expensive the suit that probably cost more than his mom's car, the silver streaking through locs that fell past her shoulders, the way she held herself like she owned the air around her.
But it was her eyes that caught him. Dark brown with gold flecks that seemed to shift in the light. Old eyes in a face that could have been thirty or three hundred.
"Marcus Johnson," she said, like his name was a fact she'd always known. "I'm Amara Blackwood."
"How you know my name?"
"I know everything about you." She pulled out a phone sleek, expensive, the kind drug dealers flashed but could never afford legally. "Sixteen as of today. Honor roll when you bother to show up, which is about seventy percent of the time. Starting point guard on JV, good enough for varsity if you could stay out of trouble. Your mother works doubles at Grady Hospital trying to keep you in shoes and your sister in voice lessons."
"Don't talk about my family." The words came out harder than he meant, but she'd touched a nerve. Nobody talked about his people.
"Peace, young brother." She held up a manicured hand. "I mention them only to show I've been watching. Protecting, in my way. Your great-grandmother asked me to, before she passed."
"You knew Grandma Marie?"
"I knew Marie-Claire Toussaint before she became Mary Johnson. Before she traded her heritage for the American dream and married a factory worker who gave her six children and a broken heart." Amara stepped closer, and Marcus caught her scent expensive perfume mixed with something earthier, like rain on hot stone. "She never forgot what she was, though. What you are."
"Stop talking in riddles!" Marcus's voice echoed off the tunnel walls. "What am I?"
"Look at your left shoulder."
"What?"
"The scar. Shaped like a crescent moon. Your mother told you it was from broken glass when you were a baby."
Marcus's hand went automatically to his shoulder. Through his shirt, he could feel the raised tissue. He'd always had it, long as he could remember. Mom said he'd fallen on some glass when he was learning to walk.
"It wasn't an accident," Amara continued. "Marie-Claire marked you when you were three days old. Recognized the potential in your blood. The gift skipped your grandmother, skipped your mother, but she saw it in you. So she marked you, ensuring that when the blood moon rose on your sixteenth birthday, you would awaken."
"This is crazy." Marcus backed up until he hit a pillar, the concrete cold through his shirt. "Vampires? Moonborn? Lady, what kind of drugs"
"The man who jumped thirty feet between buildings wasn't human," Amara interrupted. "The one following you isn't human. And neither, my dear Marcus, are you. Not entirely."
She pulled out a knife from somewhere not a weapon but something ceremonial, with symbols carved in the handle that seemed to move in the green light. Before Marcus could react, she'd drawn it across her palm. Blood welled up, darker than it should be.
"Watch," she commanded.
The blood didn't drip. Instead, it rose from her palm in perfect spheres, defying gravity like someone had turned the world upside down. The droplets danced in the air, forming shapes a moon, a wolf, a tree with roots that spread like veins. The blood hung there for maybe ten seconds before she closed her fist and it vanished.
"We are the bridge," she said, wrapping her hand with a silk handkerchief that probably cost more than his whole outfit. "Not human, not monster. Something in between. Guardians, warriors, keepers of the balance. Your great-grandmother was one. I am one. And now, so are you."
Marcus slid down the pillar until he was sitting on the nasty platform floor. Everything he thought he knew about the world had just been flipped, shaken, and thrown in a blender. "Why should I believe any of this?"
"Because in about thirty seconds, that Hunter is going to find us. And when it does, you'll have to choose trust me, or die."
Right on cue, a screech echoed through the station. Not human, not animal, but something that made Marcus's teeth ache. He looked up to see the Hunter dropping through a hole in the ceiling, coat spreading like wings. It landed on the tracks with a splash, water spraying up around its feet.
"Blackwood," it hissed, and hearing it speak was somehow worse than the screech. The voice sounded like someone gargling gravel. "This is not your territory."
"Neither is it yours, Matthias." Amara stepped forward, putting herself between Marcus and the vampire. The casual way she moved, like this was a minor inconvenience instead of a monster showdown, made Marcus's head spin. "The boy is under my protection."
"The boy is an abomination." Matthias took a step closer, and Marcus could see him better in the emergency lights. The vampire's face was all wrong too pale, too sharp, like someone had stretched human skin over a skull that wasn't quite the right shape. "Untrained, uncontrolled. The Covenant decreed"
"The Covenant decreed that untrained Moonborn who pose a threat should be eliminated." Amara's voice could have cut glass. "This one is neither a threat nor untrained. Not anymore."
"You can't protect them all, Blackwood. Sooner or later, one will slip through." Matthias drew a finger across his throat, the gesture somehow more threatening than any weapon. "And when they do..."
"Is that a threat?"
"A promise." The vampire backed toward the tunnel, never taking those red eyes off Marcus. "You have one week to register him with the Covenant. One week to prove he can be controlled. After that..." Another throat-cutting gesture. "He's fair game."
Matthias melted back into the shadows. One second he was there, the next gone, leaving only the echo of his laughter and the smell of old death.
Amara turned to Marcus, extending her hand. "So. You have a choice. Come with me, learn what you are, gain control over your power. Or stay here, keep running, and hope the next Hunter that finds you is in a talking mood."
Marcus looked at her hand. Manicured nails with clear polish, gold rings that looked old as time, skin that seemed to glow faintly in the dim light. Then he thought about Keisha, about his mom working herself to death, about what would happen if monsters started hunting his family.
"If I come with you," he said slowly, "my family stays safe?"
"I'll personally guarantee their protection."
"And you'll teach me? How to control... whatever this is?"
"Everything I know."
Marcus took her hand.
The world exploded. Through the physical contact, he could feel her power vast and controlled, like an ocean held back by a dam. But more than that, he could feel her intentions. No lies, no hidden agenda. Just genuine desire to help, mixed with something else. Loneliness? Regret? The emotions were complex, layered like expensive perfume.
"Good choice," she said, pulling him to his feet like he weighed nothing. "Now, let's get you somewhere safe. We have a lot of work to do and not much time to do it."
She led him back up to the street where a black Bentley waited, engine purring. The car was so clean it looked like it had rolled off the showroom floor five minutes ago. The driver didn't turn around, but Marcus caught a glimpse of pointed ears and skin that had a greenish tint.
"Don't stare," Amara said quietly as she opened the back door. "Tobias is sensitive about his appearance."
Marcus slid into leather seats softer than clouds. The car smelled like money and power and something else that same earthy scent Amara carried. She settled beside him, pulling out a phone that made her previous one look cheap.
"Cancel my meetings for the next week," she said to whoever answered. "Yes, all of them. Something's come up. Family matter."
Family. The word sat strange in Marcus's chest.
"Where we going?" he asked as the Bentley pulled away from the curb, smooth as silk.
"First, to get you cleaned up. You smell like a dumpster." She said it matter-of-fact, no judgment. "Then to my home. We'll start your training immediately."
"What about my mom? Keisha? I can't just disappear."
"You won't." She handed him a different phone, this one already dialing. "Tell your mother you got a job. Internship with a prestigious company. Tell her..." She smiled, and for the first time looked almost human. "Tell her you're going to be working with me to secure your future. It's not even a lie."
The phone rang twice before his mom answered. "Marcus? Baby, where are you? I've been worried sick!"
"I'm okay, Ma." He watched the city roll by outside the tinted windows. They were already in a part of Atlanta he'd never seen big houses set back from the road, lawns that looked painted on. "Listen, something came up. Something good."
"What kind of something?"
Marcus looked at Amara, who nodded encouragingly. "I got offered a job. Like an internship. With this company, Blackwood Industries. They want to train me, maybe help with college."
Silence on the other end. Then: "Marcus, baby, that sounds too good to be true. You sure this is legit?"
"Let me talk to her," Amara said, holding out her hand.
Marcus hesitated, then passed the phone over.
"Mrs. Johnson? This is Amara Blackwood. I apologize for the late hour, but I wanted to assure you personally that this opportunity is quite real." Her voice changed, becoming warmer, more maternal. "Your son impressed me greatly today. With your permission, I'd like to mentor him. The position comes with a substantial salary, full benefits, and a college scholarship upon completion."
Marcus couldn't hear his mom's response, but he saw Amara smile.
"Of course you should be cautious. I'll have my assistant send over all the paperwork tonight. And Mrs. Johnson? The signing bonus should help with those medical bills. I know Grady's insurance doesn't cover everything."
How did she know about the medical bills? Marcus's mom had been hiding them, but he'd seen the envelopes marked "Final Notice."
"Wonderful. Marcus will be home tomorrow to discuss everything in detail. Have a blessed evening."
She handed the phone back. His mom was crying.
"Baby, is this real?"
"Yeah, Ma. It's real."
"Oh, thank Jesus. Thank you, Jesus." She was full-on sobbing now. "You be good, you hear me? You mind your manners and work hard and"
"I will, Ma. I promise."
"I love you, baby."
"Love you too."
He hung up, throat tight. Amara was watching him with those old-young eyes.
"The signing bonus?" he asked.
"Fifty thousand dollars. It'll be in her account by morning." She said it casual, like fifty grand was pocket change. "Marcus, I need you to understand something. Your old life? It's over. You can't go back to being just another kid from Zone 6. But your new life..." She gestured at the car, the neighborhood, the power humming under his skin. "Your new life can change everything. For you. For your family. For people you haven't even met yet."
The Bentley turned into a driveway that seemed to go on forever, lined with trees that looked older than the city. At the end sat a house that wasn't really a house more like something out of a movie. All glass and stone and angles that shouldn't work but did.
"Welcome to your new home," Amara said as the car stopped. "At least for the next week. By the time you leave here, you'll be ready for whatever comes next."
Marcus stepped out, looking up at the mansion that probably cost more than his whole neighborhood. "And if I'm not ready?"
"Then Matthias wins, and you become another cautionary tale." She headed for the front door, not looking back. "But that won't happen. You're Marie-Claire's great-grandson. You have her blood, her strength. And now you have me."
The door opened before she touched it. Inside, Marcus glimpsed marble and gold and art that belonged in museums. But more than that, he felt power. It pressed against his skin like humidity, making the hair on his arms stand up.
"What is this place?"
"A sanctuary. A school. A fortress." Amara turned, silhouetted in the doorway. "This is where you learn to be more than human, Marcus. This is where you become what you were born to be."
Marcus took a deep breath, tasting that power on his tongue. Behind him, the normal world waited school and basketball and girls who didn't glow with inner fire. Ahead lay the unknown, dangerous and electric with possibility.
He thought about Keisha, about his mom's tears, about Dante's fear when he saw those glowing eyes. Thought about the Hunter's promise and Amara's protection. Thought about the blood moon still hanging overhead, watching it all.
Then he stepped through the doorway, leaving Marcus Johnson the kid behind.
Time to see what Marcus Johnson the Moonborn could become.