The city's pulse was louder on nights like this—basslines, bad decisions, and the soft throb of immortal hunger. I followed it to a door painted the color of dried cherries and false promises, three stories down from street level, beneath a rusted fire escape that hadn't saved anyone in years.
The Gilded Nocturne.
One of my licensed houses. Vampire-run. Blood on tap—measured, logged, civilized. A club, a den, a covenant dressed in velvet and good lighting.
I didn't bother with the line.
The doorman—a thick-shouldered vamp with eyes like chipped ice—opened his mouth to protest. I let my glamour slip just enough for him to feel me. The air between us tightened, a slow constriction, like a vein pinched shut.
"Mr… Graveblood," he said, swallowing the rest. "Of course. Please."
The bass swallowed me whole as I stepped inside—low, predatory, almost affectionate. The club was all dim golds and claret reds. Tables of the living and the dead, sipping politely from crystal and vein. I cataloged scents without trying: O-negative with iron deficiency; AB- rich with summer fruit and late-night coffee; vampire musk; fae glamour. Too many comforts for a city pretending it didn't know what fed it.
I found the manager in a private alcove behind a beaded curtain. Tall, olive coat, copper buttons. Not the one I'd tailed last night, but the type. The posture. The old-school discipline that said he took orders from someone who still remembered palaces made of bone.
"Marek," I said, and took a seat without waiting to be invited.
He didn't flinch—points for that. "Blood Keeper."
"Good. We're skipping the part where you pretend you don't know who regulates your business."
He offered a tight smile. "We respect our agreements."
"Mm." I let my gaze drift toward the ledger open on the table, its pages neat and hand-inked. Too neat. "Then tell me why four bodies showed up on my slab this week with nothing left to power a candle, much less a ward."
"Four?" He blinked. "We only heard of two."
"Then your network's deaf," I said. "And I don't tolerate disabilities I didn't cause."
He stiffened. "If someone is hunting out of bounds, it isn't under this roof."
I leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands folded like we were discussing art.
"Let me be very, very clear, Marek. I don't care if it's under this roof. I care if it's under my sky. And it is."
He hesitated. Then made the mistake of glancing at the ledger.
I plucked it from the table before he could think to protest.
Hours scrolled by in neat columns—dates, volumes, signatures. On the second pass, I noticed it. A second ink—so faint a mortal wouldn't see it. A sigil hidden in the spine's stitching. Three strokes, a crescent, and a point.
Not vampiric. Not witch sigilcraft either. The geometry was… off. The math in it felt wrong.
"Who doctored this?" I asked, eyes never leaving the page.
Marek's silence was admirable. Stupid. But admirable.
I let a single drop of my blood bead at my thumbnail. It hovered there—perfect, dark, reflective. I held it over the ledger and whispered a word only the dead still pronounced correctly.
The drop fell, sizzled, and spread—finding every hidden mark, every altered notation. Lines flared red across the paper like veins illuminating in an x-ray. The page bled secrets.
Marek hissed. "That isn't necessary."
"It's efficient," I corrected, and followed the thread to a recurring set of initials:
S. L.
I closed the book softly. "Who's S. L.?"
He said nothing.
I exhaled, stood, and let my thumb brush the table's edge. My blood seeped into the wood grain. The entire booth shivered.
The shadows under the table stirred—fingers, bone-white and eager, reaching up through the floorboards to wrap around Marek's ankles.
He froze.
"Before you lie," I said evenly, "keep in mind I can tell what your blood does when you panic. And yours? It's screaming."
His jaw clenched. He looked down. Looked back up.
"A courier," he admitted. "Independent. Name's Syl in the log. She services four houses, moves product between them. Sometimes extra. I thought she was Kaustherion's."
"She isn't," I said. "She's her own."
"Then she's dangerous."
I smiled. "We agree on something."
He swallowed. "There's more. She—she paid off a few of the younger ones. Said there was a new market being built. One with fewer rules. Claimed you wouldn't be able to keep up with demand when it came. That the modern ways were… ending."
My smile sharpened. "And did you believe her?"
"I'm still here, aren't I?" he snapped, then immediately regretted it.
I let him stew for a heartbeat. Then snapped my fingers. The bone-hands withdrew back into the dark. The table exhaled.
"What's the symbol?" I asked.
He frowned. "What symbol?"
I tapped the ledger's spine. "Three strokes. Crescent. Point."
Something like fear flickered. "You saw that?"
"I see everything," I said pleasantly. "Indulge me."
"A choir mark," he said, voice lower now. "New movement. Whispers only. They call themselves the Red Choir."
Red. Choir. Singing. Woman.
Of course.
"And if I wanted to find a throat worth cutting," I asked, "where would the Choir gather to pray?"
Marek hesitated. Warred with himself. Then gave up.
"The Hollow," he said. "Beneath the canal. There's a door carved into the old masonry. No handle. Just a mouth."
I stared at him a heartbeat too long.
"Open it," I said.
He paled. "I'm not—"
"Not you," I said. "I have my own ways."
I left the ledger on the table. Clean now. Honest again. I prefer it that way.
As I turned to go, Marek spoke, something fearful and resentful working its way through his throat. "Blood Keeper—Veylen—if Kaustherion hears I spoke—"
"He won't," I said, already moving. "Because he won't need to. He'll smell the war before I finish starting it."
I stepped back into the club's low velvet light. The bassline throbbed under my boots, hungry and patient.
At the door, I let the glamour fall fully. The doorman caught my eyes and looked away, as if staring too long at the sun.
Outside, the night air kissed like a blade cooling in oil.
The Red Choir.
S. L.
A mouth in stone.
And somewhere in the city, a woman with a smile like a promise was building a market meant to drown mine in chaos.
Predators with hymns.
Cute.
I licked the last trace of blood from my thumb and tasted the city in it—smoke, sin, the slow turn of something ancient waking up.
"All right," I murmured to the dark. "Let's see how loud your choir can sing."
I headed for the canal.
The stones would remember me.
And if the mouth didn't open when I knocked?
I'd teach it new manners.