I should have seen it coming.
The parking garage under my apartment building was usually empty at nine PM. Just rows of concrete pillars and the occasional tenant's car. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting everything in sickly yellow shadows.
I was thinking about Marcus as I walked to my car. About the way his hands had shaken when he'd read Thomas Reid's notes. About the moment between us at the crime scene, when I'd wanted to kiss him and tell him everything.
About Future Aria's warning not to trust him.
That's when I heard the footsteps behind me.
I spun around, hand going to my gun. The garage was empty. Nothing but shadows and the hum of the ventilation system.
But something felt wrong. The air was too still. Too quiet.
I kept walking, keys ready. My car was twenty feet away. Close enough to make a run for it if I had to.
Fifteen feet.
Ten.
The dart hit me in the neck just as I reached for the door handle.
"Son of a bitch," I muttered, yanking out the small metal projectile. The same kind of tranquilizer dart Shadow had used at the textile factory.
My vision started to blur immediately. Whatever was in the dart was stronger this time.
"Hello again, past me."
Future Aria stepped out from behind a concrete pillar, tactical mask already off. She looked tired. More tired than last time, with new lines around her eyes and a fresh cut on her left cheek.
"You..." I tried to raise my gun, but my arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
"Save your strength. You're going to need it." She walked over and caught me as my legs gave out. "We have a lot to talk about."
The world went dark.
I woke up in a place that shouldn't exist.
The room was maybe thirty feet square, with walls made of some kind of metal I didn't recognize. Blue light pulsed along the edges, like veins carrying electricity. The air hummed with energy, and my skin felt tingly, like standing too close to a power line.
I was lying on a narrow bed, my hands free but my head still fuzzy from the tranquilizer. My gun was gone, along with my phone and backup knife.
"You're awake." Future Aria's voice came from somewhere behind me. "Good. I was starting to worry I'd given you too much again."
I sat up slowly, fighting off a wave of dizziness. The room was clearly underground—no windows, just artificial light that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Equipment lined the walls. Computers, monitors, and machines I couldn't even begin to identify.
"Where are we?"
"Safe house. Built it myself about a year ago." She was sitting at a workstation, typing commands into what looked like a holographic interface. "Welcome to 2025 technology, courtesy of 2035 engineering."
I stood up on unsteady legs. "That's impossible."
"Time travel was impossible too. Until it wasn't." She gestured to the chair across from her. "Sit. Please. We have thirty-five days left, and there's a lot you need to understand."
I didn't sit. Instead, I walked around the room, taking in the details. The technology was beyond anything I'd ever seen. Screens that floated in mid-air. Keyboards made of light. And in the corner, something that looked like a cross between a medical scanner and a weapon.
"How?" I asked.
"How what?"
"How is any of this possible?"
Future Aria saved whatever she was working on and turned to face me. "The Blood Moon ritual isn't just about enhancing werewolf abilities. It's about accessing power that's been locked away for centuries. Ancient power. The kind that can bend the laws of physics."
"You're talking about magic."
"I'm talking about science we don't understand yet." She stood and walked to one of the machines. It was cylindrical, about the size of a coffin, with cables running from it to the ceiling. "The Council has been preparing for this ritual for decades. They've been collecting artifacts, studying bloodlines, mapping ley lines across the entire continent."
"And you learned all this in the future?"
"I learned it the hard way." Her voice went hard. "After the war started. After millions of people died. After it was too late to stop any of it."
She pressed a button on the machine, and it hummed to life. The cylinder split open like a flower, revealing an interior lined with the same blue-glowing material as the walls.
"This is how I got here," she said. "Temporal displacement device. Took me three years to build it, using technology salvaged from Council research facilities."
I stared at the machine. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Impossible. Unreal.
"Prove it," I said.
"Excuse me?"
"Prove you're from the future. Show me something that hasn't happened yet."
Future Aria smiled. Not a happy smile—more like she was expecting this request and dreading it.
"Tomorrow morning at 8:47 AM, Marcus is going to get a call from his sister in Sacramento. She's pregnant with her second child. He's going to be so happy that he'll buy coffee for everyone in the office."
That was specific enough to be either true or a really good guess.
"At 2:15 PM, Vincent is going to summon you to his office. He's going to tell you that the Council has decided to move the Blood Moon ritual up by a week. When you ask why, he'll say it's because of increased rogue activity in the area."
My blood went cold. "Is that true?"
"It's what he's going to tell you. The real reason is that they've been monitoring your behavior. They know something's changed. They're scared you're getting too close to the truth."
"And what is the truth?"
Future Aria walked back to her workstation and pulled up a three-dimensional map of Los Angeles. The city was marked with dozens of red dots, connected by lines that pulsed with the same blue light as the walls.
"The Blood Moon ritual requires a specific type of werewolf," she said. "Someone from an ancient bloodline. Someone with dormant abilities that can be awakened under the right conditions."
"A pure-blood."
"Not just any pure-blood. The pure-blood. The last descendant of the original pack leaders." She looked at me directly. "You, Aria. You're not just a random Council hunter. You're the key to everything they've been planning."
I stared at the map, trying to process what she was saying. "That's insane."
"Is it? Think about it. Vincent took you in when you were ten years old. He could have placed you with any Council family, but he kept you close. Trained you personally. Made you into the perfect weapon."
"He raised me. He cared about me."
"He groomed you." Her voice was bitter. "Like a prize cow being fattened for slaughter."
I wanted to argue, but something about her words rang true. Vincent's overprotectiveness. The way he watched me during missions. The complex look in his eyes when he called me by my real name.
"Even if that's true," I said, "why kill innocent hunters? Why murder people who were just doing their jobs?"
Future Aria's expression went cold. "Because they weren't innocent."
She pulled up files on her computer. Photos, documents, recordings. All of it stamped with Council classifications I'd never seen before.
"Thomas Reid wasn't investigating the Blood Moon ritual out of curiosity," she said. "He was part of a secret task force. Their job was to eliminate anyone who might interfere with the ceremony."
The first document showed a kill order. Thomas Reid's name at the top, along with a list of targets. Rogue werewolf researchers. Human archaeologists. Anyone who'd gotten too close to the truth about werewolf history.
"Jennifer Walsh was recruiting human mercenaries," Future Aria continued. "Ex-military, special operations, the kind of people who ask questions later. They were supposed to provide 'security' during the ritual."
Another document. Payment records, equipment manifests, deployment schedules. It looked like the Council was preparing for a war.
"Sarah Coleman was mapping potential resistance cells. Werewolf families who might oppose the Council's plans."
"You're lying."
"Am I?" She turned the screen toward me. "Look at the authorization codes. Look at the signatures."
Vincent Blackwood's name was on every document.
I sank into the chair, my legs suddenly unable to support me. "This can't be real."
"I know it's hard to believe. I didn't want to believe it either." Future Aria sat across from me, her voice gentler now. "But Vincent isn't the man who raised us. He's a fanatic who thinks werewolves are meant to rule over humans. The Blood Moon ritual is his way of making that happen."
"By doing what exactly?"
"By sacrificing you to awaken something that should have stayed buried." She pulled up another file. This one was full of symbols and diagrams that hurt my eyes to look at. "There's an entity sleeping beneath Los Angeles. Something old and hungry. The ritual is designed to wake it up and bind it to the Council's will."
I stared at the screen, trying to make sense of the symbols. They seemed to shift and move when I wasn't looking directly at them.
"What kind of entity?"
"The kind that can rewrite reality. Change the fundamental laws of nature. Make humans into cattle and werewolves into gods."
"That's..." I started to say impossible, but stopped. Nothing seemed impossible anymore.
"The entity feeds on pure werewolf blood," Future Aria continued. "Specifically, the blood of someone from the original royal bloodline. Once it's awakened and fed, it becomes a weapon the Council can point at anyone they want to destroy."
I thought about the ruins she'd shown me. The blood-red sky, the mass graves, Marcus's execution.
"In your timeline, the ritual succeeded?"
"For about six months. The Council got everything they wanted. Enhanced abilities, extended lifespans, total dominion over the human population." Her voice went quiet. "But the entity had its own agenda. It didn't want to be controlled. It wanted to consume everything. Human, werewolf, it didn't matter."
"So what stopped it?"
"Nothing stopped it. We barely escaped it." She gestured to the machines around us. "This technology, the time travel device—it's all powered by fragments of the entity's energy. I stole them from the ruins of the Council headquarters."
Future Aria walked to another machine and activated it. A holographic display showed what looked like security footage from an empty city street.
"This is Los Angeles, December 15th, 2035," she said.
The street was cracked and broken, overgrown with some kind of black vegetation that moved like it was alive. The sky was the same blood-red color I'd seen in her earlier videos.
And walking down the middle of the street was something that used to be human.
It was tall, maybe seven feet, with too-long limbs and skin that looked like charred leather. Where its face should have been, there was just a smooth expanse of flesh with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.
"The entity's servants," Future Aria said. "What's left of the human population after six months of feeding."
I watched in horror as more creatures emerged from the buildings. Dozens of them, all moving with the same purposeful stride.
"How many people survived?"
"Maybe a few thousand. Scattered across the continent, hiding in bunkers and caves. The werewolves lasted a little longer, but..." She turned off the display. "You've seen the mass graves."
I sat in silence for a long moment, trying to process everything I'd learned. An ancient entity sleeping beneath LA. Vincent planning to sacrifice me to wake it up. A future where both species were nearly extinct.
"Why didn't you tell me all this before?" I asked.
"Because I needed you to see it for yourself. To start asking the right questions." She looked at me with tired eyes. "If I'd shown up and told you everything at once, you would have thought I was insane."
"I still think you might be insane."
"Fair enough." She stood and walked to a cabinet, pulling out a small device about the size of a smartphone. "But you're starting to believe me. And that's all I need."
She handed me the device. It was warm to the touch, with a screen that showed a countdown timer: 34 days, 16 hours, 23 minutes.
"What is this?"
"Insurance. It's connected to all my equipment here. If something happens to me, if the Council figures out who I am and eliminates me, everything I've learned gets transmitted to a secure server. The whole truth about the Blood Moon ritual, Vincent's plans, the entity beneath the city—all of it."
"What am I supposed to do with it?"
"Whatever it takes to stop the ritual." Her voice was deadly serious. "But first, you need to get back to your normal life. Act like nothing has changed. Vincent is already suspicious—if he realizes we've made contact, he'll move up the timeline even more."
She led me to the temporal displacement device and pressed a series of buttons. The machine hummed to life, filling the air with the scent of ozone and something else I couldn't identify.
"This will take you back to your apartment building," she said. "You'll have been unconscious for about four hours. Tell anyone who asks that you fell asleep in your car."
I pocketed the device she'd given me. "What are you going to do?"
"What I've been doing. Buying us time." Her expression hardened. "There are still Council operatives out there who need to be eliminated. People who would help Vincent complete the ritual even if something happened to him."
"You mean you're going to keep killing them."
"I mean I'm going to save both our species from extinction." She stepped back as the temporal device powered up. "Sometimes that requires making hard choices."
The machine began to glow with that familiar blue light. I could feel the energy building, making my hair stand on end.
"Wait," I said. "How do I contact you if I need help?"
"You don't. I contact you." She smiled sadly. "But if things go really wrong, if Vincent moves the ritual up more than I expected, look for the symbol."
"What symbol?"
"The one carved into the pallet at the Reid crime scene. It's not just decoration—it's a map. Follow it, and you'll find me."
The light from the machine was getting brighter. I could feel something pulling at me, like gravity in reverse.
"Future Aria," I called over the growing noise. "What's your real name?"
She looked surprised by the question. "What do you mean?"
"I'm Aria Blackwood. But you're from a different timeline, a different life. What do they call you there?"
For a moment, her guard dropped. I could see the pain behind her eyes, the weight of everything she'd lost.
"They called me the Last Hunter," she said quietly. "The woman who failed to save anyone."
The world dissolved into blue light.
I woke up slumped over my steering wheel in the parking garage. My neck was stiff, my mouth tasted like copper, and I had the worst headache of my life.
But clutched in my right hand was a device that proved everything I'd just experienced was real.
I checked the time on my phone: 1:23 AM. Four hours, just like she'd said.
Thirty-four days left.
As I rode the elevator up to my apartment, I thought about everything Future Aria had shown me. The entity beneath Los Angeles. Vincent's plan to sacrifice me. The future where both species went extinct.
And most importantly, the revelation that the hunters Shadow had been killing weren't innocent at all.
My phone buzzed as I unlocked my door. A text from Marcus: "Hope you're getting some rest. Big day tomorrow."
I stared at the message for a long time. Tomorrow, according to Future Aria, Marcus would get a call about his sister's pregnancy. Vincent would move up the ritual timeline. Everything would start accelerating toward the moment when I'd have to choose between my own life and the fate of two species.
I typed back: "See you in the morning."
But as I got ready for bed, I kept the device Future Aria had given me close by. Whatever was coming, I wanted to be ready.
Outside my window, Los Angeles spread out like a galaxy of lights. Millions of people going about their lives, completely unaware that something ancient and hungry was sleeping beneath their feet.
Something that would wake up in thirty-four days unless I found a way to stop it.
I closed my eyes and tried not to think about blood-red skies and cities full of monsters.
But sleep didn't come easy.
End of Chapter 5