"Detective Harlow Quinn’s boots squelch through puddles as she sprints, her breath ragged but her stride military—shoulders back, gun hand low but ready."
1
"Where her partner, Morris, died three years ago—found in a back room with his throat slit, the walls scrawled with symbols no forensics could read."
2
"Silas Voss’s bar, where the clique meets to drink and plot—Quinn’s been staking out for weeks, waiting for them to slip up."
3
"He turns, eyes wide, and for a moment, she sees it—the same look Morris had, just before the lights went out."
4
"Quinn lunges, but the suspect is already halfway down a staircase—wet stone steps, narrow, spiraling downward."
5
"The air grows colder as she descends, the sound of rain fading, replaced by a low hum—voices, indistinct, like a hive of angry bees."
6
"She’d studied the files—rumors of a black market beneath Camden, a place where bone tokens got you in and blood got you killed."
7
"But here, the market bustles—vendors with cloaks and hoods, some with faces like cracked pottery, others with eyes that glint like polished stones."
8
"A woman squats by a barrel, sorting bones—human, she realizes, her stomach lurching, but not the fresh kind."
9
"The man steps aside, revealing a metal door set into the wall—same as the one above, but reinforced, with a small window."
10
"A boy—a child, really—with a scar across his cheek gathers coins into a leather pouch."
11
"She sees the glint of metal—*a gun*."
12
"“You came,” he says, his voice a mockery of his former self—whiner, informant, rat."
13
"The beam cuts through the dark, landing on the suspect—the thing—twisting in the air, its body dissolving into black smoke."
14
"The market is in chaos—vendors screaming, people running, the scarred boy from before pointing up at the ceiling, his mouth wide."
15
"Beyond it, a fire—intentional, small, but growing."
16
"Silas Voss stands behind the bar, his face a mask of surprise, but his eyes—*his eyes*—are cold."
17
"Morris had found a clue there—a scrap of paper, covered in symbols, before he died."