Chapter 30 The Ashes of the Past

Chapter 30 The Ashes of the Past


Boss John Black Fang’s roar shook the secret tunnel down to its bones. Concrete dust rained from the ceiling. But for Eric, it was just noise. Background static.

His entire world had narrowed to the three figures gliding across the floor of B3, right at the tunnel’s mouth. Enforcers.

His Blood Perception screamed at him, then choked. There was nothing to read. No heartbeat. No heat. No pulse. Just voids in the shape of men. The system in his head stuttered, trying to categorize them and failing.

_\[SYSTEM: TARGET ACQUIRED. Creature Type: Council Enforcer (Rank Unknown). Maximum Danger Alert.\]_

The text in his vision was red. Flashing. Like his own blood was warning him.

“They’re here,” Eric whispered. His voice didn’t sound like his. It was lower. Rough. The Diabolus Rage from earlier hadn’t left—it was coiled in his chest, waiting.

Gilbert straightened, though it cost him. He pulled a silver flask from inside his vest. His hands shook, but his grip was sure. The metal was etched with the same runes as the artifact from the elevator.

“I know,” Gilbert said. His voice was thin as paper. “I felt them before they touched the roof. Elijah Draven doesn’t waste time.”

He uncapped the flask. The smell that hit Eric wasn’t alcohol. It was sharper. Cleaner. Like ozone after a lightning strike. Holy water? No. Something older. Something that made the Enforcers pause mid-glide, their porcelain masks tilting in unison.

At B3, Boss John Black Fang and his six Black Fang elites had frozen. They’d heard the stories. Every werewolf pup grew up on them. The Council’s clean-up crew. The ones you didn’t fight. You ran, or you died.

But there was nowhere to run. The parking garage was a box. And the Enforcers had just sealed the only exit.

John’s radio crackled at his hip. He ripped it free.

“Naya… run!” His voice broke on her name. Desperation cracked the Alpha arrogance he always wore like armor. “They’re here. Enforcers. The Council sent Enforcers for the Anomaly!”

He dropped the radio. It clattered, useless. His golden eyes found his wolves. Young. Loyal. Terrified. They were going to die here. He knew it. They knew it.

But Black Fang didn’t run.

“For the Black Fang!” John roared, and the sound was pure defiance. “For Clifford Lane’s glory!”

He shifted mid-leap. Bones broke and reformed, fur exploded across his skin, and where a man had stood a second before, a monster landed. Nine feet tall, black as a starless night, jaws wide enough to bite a car in half.

His pack followed. Six wolves, howling, launching themselves at death incarnate.

It was courage. It was suicide.

The lead Enforcer didn’t even flinch. It raised a hand. No claw. No weapon. Just a finger, long and jointed wrong.

John hit it like a truck.

And passed through.

There was no impact. No resistance. John’s massive form went straight through the Enforcer like it was mist, and crashed into the concrete wall behind it. The wall cratered. Rebar screamed.

The Enforcer turned its head. Slowly. The porcelain mask reflected John’s shocked, bleeding face.

Then it moved.

Not fast. Fast was something living things did. This was instant. One moment it was five feet away. The next, its hand was through Xavier’s chest.

No blood. No sound. Xavier—a wolf who’d survived three pack wars—just looked down at the hole where his heart should be. His mouth opened. Nothing came out.

He collapsed. Not like a body. Like a puppet with its strings cut.

The other Enforcers moved. No snarls. No battle cries. Just efficient, silent slaughter.

John scrambled up, roaring, lunging again. This time the second Enforcer met him. It didn’t block. It didn’t dodge. It let John’s claws rake across its robe. The fabric didn’t tear. The claws didn’t catch. It was like trying to cut smoke.

The Enforcer’s hand shot out and caught John by the throat. Lifted him. John was three hundred pounds of muscle and fury. The Enforcer held him one-handed, like he weighed nothing.

The mask tilted, studying him. Then the Enforcer’s other hand opened. An obsidian blade slid from its sleeve. Not forged. Grown. Like a talon. It didn’t reflect light. It ate it.

It pressed the blade to John’s sternum.

John spat in its face. “Do it.”

The Enforcer obliged.

Tunnel – Old Noctaria

Eric didn’t see it happen. He felt it.

A wave of wrongness rolled down the tunnel and hit him in the chest. His Blood Perception went wild, then flatlined. Something massive, something Alpha, had just been snuffed out. Not killed. Snuffed. Like a candle.

He stumbled. Gilbert caught him, and the touch burned. Gilbert was burning up from the inside.

“Keep moving,” Gilbert gasped. “Don’t look back.”

The tunnel spat them out into Old Noctaria.

It wasn’t a city. It was a corpse.

Ruined buildings leaned against each other like drunks. Neon signs buzzed and spat, half their letters dead, casting the streets in sick, flickering colors. Red. Green. The color of infections. The air stank of rot, of stagnant water, of old blood soaked into stone. Under it all was a sweetness. Decay.

Eric’s Perception activated without prompting. He didn’t want it. But it showed him anyway.

_\[SYSTEM: Blood Perception (Rank D) activated.\]_

Zone Analysis: Old Noctaria

\- Blood Sources: Multiple. Type: Vampire – feral, diseased, starving. Type: Werewolf – feral, diseased, rabid. Type: Human – dead, dying, wishing they were dead.
\- Threat Level: B (Alert for Eric)

The signatures were everywhere. In the alleys. On the rooftops. Under the grates. Hundreds of them. And they were all wrong. Sick. Twisted. This wasn’t a community. It was a plague pit.

“Where are we going?” Eric’s voice echoed in the dead streets. It sounded small.

“Somewhere Clifford and I built,” Gilbert said. Each word was a struggle. He leaned heavier on Eric. “Twenty years ago. After the Purge. No one’s walked it since. It leads to the heart of the old Báthory clan.”

Eric stopped dead. “Báthory?”

“Your mother’s line.” Gilbert’s laugh was all blood. “Your maternal heritage.”

The name meant nothing to Eric. And everything. Eva never spoke it. Not once. She’d talk about her childhood, about the parks, about human things. But whenever Eric asked about her family, she’d go quiet. Change the subject. Now he knew why.

“It’s a cursed legacy,” Gilbert said, reading his face. “The Báthory were… powerful. Cruel. The Council wiped them out for a reason. Eva ran. She changed her name. She thought she could bury it.”

“And you helped her,” Eric said. It wasn’t a question.

“I helped her,” Gilbert agreed. “Because I loved her. And because Clifford asked me to.”

Clifford again. Always Clifford. The ghost that shaped his life without ever being there.

Eric clenched his fists. His claws had never fully retracted from B3. “You lied to me. My whole life.”

“I protected you,” Gilbert snapped, and for a second the old Alpha was back in his voice. “The Council would have killed you as a child if they knew what you were. Báthory and Lane? That’s not a hybrid, Eric. That’s an abomination to them. That’s the Anomaly they’re hunting.”

Before Eric could answer, the shadows in front of them moved.

Not an Enforcer. Not feral. This was bigger. Heavier.

A massive silhouette peeled itself from the alley, gliding into the sick neon light. Silver eyes. Black fur, matted and torn. It moved with a limp, dragging one leg.

John Black Fang.

But not the John from the lobby. That John was arrogance and power. This John was ruin.

His pelage was ripped open in places, showing muscle and bone. Gashes crisscrossed his chest, too clean to be from claws. Obsidian blade wounds. They weren’t bleeding right. The blood was black, thick as tar, and it smoked where it hit the wet cobblestones. Diabolus blood.

“Gilbert…” John’s voice was broken glass. “Eric…”

He took one more step and his leg gave out. He crashed to his knees, then fell forward, catching himself on clawed hands that shook. The impact splashed black blood across Eric’s boots.

“They’re here,” John wheezed. “Enforcers. Cut through my pack like we were paper. Xavier… Rook… all of them.” A wet cough. More black blood. “They took Naya.”

Naya. His second. His mate. The word “took” landed like a stone in Eric’s gut. Enforcers didn’t take prisoners.

John’s silver eyes found Eric. There was no arrogance left. Only grief. And something else. Recognition.

“You’ve got his eyes,” John whispered. “Clifford’s eyes.”

Then the light went out of them.

John Black Fang, Alpha of the Black Fang Clan, collapsed fully. His massive body hit the stones with a sound like a building falling. His Diabolus blood pooled, spreading across the Old Noctaria cobbles, hissing where it touched the filth.

Eric stared. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He’d hated John. Feared him. But no one deserved this. No one deserved to be unmade like that.

The rage came back. Not the hot, stupid rage from before. This was cold. This was deep. This was Lane blood and Báthory blood mixing in his veins and agreeing on one thing.

The Council hadn’t sent Enforcers to capture the Anomaly.

They’d sent them to erase Clifford Lane’s lineage from the earth. To burn it out, root and stem. Eva. Gilbert. Eric. Anyone who carried the blood.

And they’d start by killing everyone Eric had ever known.

The neon above them buzzed. Fizzed. Died.

In the sudden darkness, Eric’s eyes burned red. Not wolf red. Not vampire red. Something older. Something that had been buried with the Báthory twenty years ago.

Gilbert saw it. He grabbed Eric’s arm, his grip weak but desperate. “Eric. No. You can’t fight them. Not like this. Not yet.”

Eric looked down at him. At the man who’d lied. Who’d betrayed. Who’d also bled and burned to keep him alive.

Then he looked back at the tunnel they’d come from. Somewhere in that dark, three voids were gliding toward them. Silent. Patient. Inevitable.

“Then we get stronger,” Eric said. His voice was gravel and promise. “And we make them bleed.”

He hauled Gilbert up, ignoring the wet heat of the blood soaking through his shirt.

Old Noctaria stretched before them. A maze of death and secrets. And at its heart, the ashes of his mother’s clan.

The hunt had begun.