AI Blood pooled in the perfect circle of a London Underground roundel. Detective Harlow Quinn stepped over the yellow tape, her boots crunching on shattered glass that glittered like crushed diamonds under the emergency lights. The air tasted of ozone and burnt hair, a metallic tang that coated the back of her throat. She did not flinch. Eighteen years on the Met had burned away the instinct to gag at the scent of fresh death.
"DS Morris would have hated this," she muttered, the name slipping out before she could clamp her jaw shut.
"Morris isn't here, Guv." PC Davies stood by the tunnel entrance, his face pale under the flickering fluorescent strip. "And neither is the victim's upper half."
Quinn crouched beside the remains. The body lay severed at the waist, dressed in expensive Italian wool that smelled of lavender and expensive dry cleaning. No blood spatter on the tunnel walls. No drag marks on the grimy tiles. Just a clean cut and a pool of blood that refused to spread beyond the red circle of the station logo.
"Cleanest dissection I've ever seen," Davies said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "Surgical precision. Maybe a professional hit?"
"Professionals leave bodies whole to send a message," Quinn said. "Or they dump them in the Thames. They don't perform magic tricks in Camden Town station."
She pulled a latex glove from her pocket and snapped it onto her wrist. The sound echoed down the empty platform. She reached out, hovering her hand inches above the blood. It didn't smell right. Beneath the copper scent lay something else. Ancient dust. Myrrh. The specific, cloying smell of old paper left in a damp cellar.
"Look at the edges of the wound," Quinn ordered.
Davies leaned in, his torch beam trembling slightly . "Smooth. Laser smooth."
"No burn marks. No cauterization." Quinn traced the air above the torso. "Something sliced through flesh and bone without generating heat. Without friction."
"Impossible."
"Not impossible. Just outside your pay grade."
Quinn stood up and scanned the platform. The station sat abandoned, a hollowed-out ghost beneath the bustling streets of Camden. Graffiti covered the peeling advertisements for West End musicals. Rats scurried in the shadows, but they kept their distance from the body. Animals knew better than to approach a predator 's kill.
Her eyes landed on the far end of the platform, near the old ticket booth. The shadows there seemed deeper than the rest, swallowing the light from the emergency strips . Something glinted against the grime.
She walked toward it, her stride eating up the distance with military efficiency. Davies scrambled to keep up.
"Guv, we need to wait for SOCO. Chain of evidence—"
"Chain of evidence is already broken if the killer vanished into thin air," Quinn snapped. "Stay put."
She reached the ticket booth. A small brass object rested on the ledge, half-buried in decades of accumulated dirt. She picked it up. Cold metal bit into her palm. The casing bore a patina of verdigris, green and flaky, yet the needle inside spun wildly, ignoring magnetic north. Sigils etched into the face glowed with a faint, sickly purple light before fading back to dull brass.
A Veil Compass.
The leather of her worn watch strap creaked as she tightened her grip. She had seen drawings of these in Morris's case files three years ago. Files marked *Closed * by order of the Commissioner. Files that smelled of cover-ups and fear.
"This doesn't belong here," she whispered.
"Doesn't belong where?" Davies called out from the body. "It's an antique shop drop? Camden's full of that junk."
"Antiques don't point to rifts in reality, Davies."
Quinn turned the compass over. The needle stopped spinning and locked onto the tunnel wall behind the ticket booth. A section of peeling paint and cracked tile. Nothing special. Except the air around it shimmered like heat haze on a summer road, distorting the graffiti behind it.
She stepped closer. The smell of myrrh intensified, choking her. Her skin prickled, every hair on her arms standing at attention. This was the same energy signature from the Morris file. The same wrongness that had swallowed her partner whole.
"Guv?" Davies's voice sounded distant, muffled as if coming through water . "You're bleeding."
Quinn looked down. A thin line of red trickled from her nose onto her chin. She wiped it away with the back of her gloved hand. The blood looked black in the dim light.
"The compass," she said, her voice steady despite the sudden hammering of her heart. "It's not pointing at a location. It's pointing at a door."
"A door?" Davies moved closer, his torch beam cutting through the shimmering air. "There's no door there. Just the maintenance shaft. Sealed since the nineties."
"Sealed for humans."
Quinn holstered the compass in her jacket pocket. The metal burned against her hip. She pulled her service weapon, the weight of it familiar and grounding. The safety clicked off with a sharp snap.
"Step back, Davies."
"What are you doing?"
"Opening the door."
"You can't shoot a wall, Guv. That's protocol violation number one."
"Watch me."
Quinn raised the gun. She didn't aim at the bricks. She aimed at the shimmer in the air, the spot where the compass needle pointed with unwavering certainty. The air hummed, a low frequency vibration that rattled her teeth. The shadows behind the ticket booth began to writhe, detaching themselves from the wall.
Something moved in the distortion. Not a person. Too tall. Too many limbs. It unfolded from the darkness like a spider emerging from a crack in the pavement.
Davies gasped, stumbling backward. "Holy hell. What is that?"
"Trouble."
The creature stepped fully into the light. Its skin resembled wet slate, shifting and rippling as if made of liquid stone. Eyes, too many of them, opened across its torso, each one a different shade of violet. It held no weapon. It didn't need one. The air around it warped, bending the light from Davies's torch into strange, impossible angles.
"That's not possible," Davies breathed, his face draining of all color . "That's not... we don't have monsters in London."
"We do now."
The creature tilted its head. A sound erupted from it, not a roar, but a chorus of whispers speaking in a language that hurt Quinn's ears. Ancient. Guttural. Familiar.
Morris had scribbled those same symbols in his final notebook before he disappeared.
"Davies, get to the exit," Quinn ordered, her finger tightening on the trigger . "Call it in. Tell them we have a code black. Tell them the Veil is breached."
"I'm not leaving you!"
"That's an order, Constable. Run."
Davies hesitated, his eyes wide with terror, before turning and sprinting toward the tunnel entrance. His footsteps echoed frantically against the tiles.
The creature took a step forward. The floor tiles cracked under its weight , spiderwebbing out in perfect geometric patterns. It raised a hand, fingers elongating into razor-sharp talons.
Quinn fired.
The bullet struck the creature in the chest. Instead of penetrating, the round flattened against the slate skin, dropping to the floor with a dull ping. The creature didn't even flinch. It laughed, a sound like grinding stones.
"Bullets won't work," Quinn realized, the cold dread settling in her stomach . "Morris found that out the hard way."
The creature lunged.
Quinn dove to the left, rolling behind the rotting wooden counter of the ticket booth. Splinters flew as the talons sliced through the wood where her head had been a second before. Dust choked her lungs. She scrambled to her feet, clutching the compass in one hand and her gun in the other.
The needle glowed brighter, pulsing in time with the creature's movements. It wasn't just pointing at the rift. It was reacting to the beast.
An idea sparked. Dangerous. Stupid. The kind of plan Morris would have loved.
Quinn stepped out from behind the counter. She held the compass up, aiming the face directly at the creature.
"Hey! Ugly!"
The beast paused, its multiple eyes fixing on the brass disk. A low growl vibrated through the station, shaking loose more debris from the ceiling.
"You want this?" Quinn shouted, her voice echoing off the curved tunnel walls . "Come and get it!"
She threw the compass.
It arced through the air, spinning end over end, the sigils blazing with sudden, brilliant light. The creature shrieked, a sound of pure agony, and lunged for the falling object. It caught the compass in mid-air, clutching it to its chest.
The reaction was instantaneous.
A shockwave of purple energy erupted from the compass. The creature howled as the light consumed it, burning through the slate skin. The rift behind it widened, swirling into a vortex of chaotic colors. The suction pulled at Quinn's clothes, dragging her toward the ticket booth. She dug her boots into the cracked tiles, grabbing hold of a rusted metal railing to anchor herself.
The creature stumbled, its form destabilizing. It looked at Quinn, its eyes filled with a hatred that transcended species, before the vortex swallowed it whole. The compass flew from its grip, tumbling through the air toward Quinn.
She snatched it out of the air just as the rift began to collapse. The walls groaned, tiles popping loose and raining down like hail. The station shook violently, threatening to bring the entire tunnel down on top of them.
"Quinn!" Davies screamed from the tunnel entrance. "The whole place is coming down!"
Quinn sprinted toward him, the compass clutched tight in her fist. The ground beneath her feet rippled like water. Cracks opened in the platform, revealing nothing but swirling darkness below. She leaped over a widening chasm, landing hard on the other side, her ankle twisting with a sickening pop. Pain shot up her leg, but she ignored it, limping forward with renewed urgency.
Davies grabbed her arm, hauling her toward the exit stairs. "Move, Guv, move!"
They scrambled up the steps, the roar of the collapsing tunnel chasing them like a freight train. Dust billowed behind them, thick and choking. The emergency lights flickered and died, plunging the lower platform into absolute darkness, save for the fading purple glow of the dying rift.
They burst out onto the street level, gasping for air, just as the ground beneath the abandoned station gave a final, thunderous heave. A sinkhole opened up in the middle of the road, swallowing the entrance to the Tube station whole. Cars parked nearby tilted dangerously toward the new abyss. Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder by the second.
Quinn leaned against a brick wall, clutching her side. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She looked down at her hand. The compass sat there, warm and humming, the needle still spinning wildly.
Davies stared at the hole in the road, his face ashen. "What... what just happened?"
Quinn pocketed the compass, her eyes hardening. She touched the spot on her uniform where Morris's badge used to sit before they retired it.
"That," she said, pushing off the wall and straightening her jacket despite the pain in her ankle, "was just the appetizer."
She turned toward the approaching police cars, her hand resting on the grip of her weapon. "And I know exactly who served it."