The crypt had a back door.
Nyra found it by following the cold. A tunnel ran north from the carved room, low enough that she had to crouch and narrow enough that her shoulders scraped stone on both sides. Roots hung from the ceiling like hair. Twice she put her hand in something she decided not to identify.
She didn’t look at the walls again.
She couldn’t.
Every time her phone light caught one of those carved circles, her palm throbbed like it was answering.
After ten minutes, maybe twenty, the tunnel tilted up. She pushed through a rusted iron grate choked with ivy and spilled out into the rain.
She knew this place. The base of the old walls, behind the Lutheran cemetery, where kids from Saint Veil High came to drink and lose their virginity and swear they’d seen the ghost of a Dutch soldier.
Nobody had ever mentioned a tunnel.
Below her, the town was dark. The storm had killed the power hours ago. But the bells were still going. The church. The town hall tower. Even the little brass one outside the firehouse. A wall of noise rolling up and down the valley.
Flashlights bobbed. Somebody’s dog was losing its mind.
Nyra started down the hill at a jog.
She made it three blocks.
On Kingsbridge Street, something landed on the roof of the hardware store. No thud. Just the soft clink of a gutter flexing under weight.
She looked up.
The pale vampire with the shaved head crouched on the edge of the roof like a gargoyle. Ansel. There was a fresh gash across his cheek, already closing.
He smiled at her.
Nyra ran.
Left on Hollow Lane. Right through the alley behind the bakery. She could hear him above her, pacing her over the rooftops, unhurried, like this was a game he was enjoying.
There was one light on in all of Saint Veil.
Generator hum. Neon beer sign. A chalkboard by the door that read: POWER’S OUT, BEER’S COLD, JADE’S MEAN.
The Lantern Tap.
She couldn’t go home. Home was Mara’s.
Nyra hit the door with her shoulder and fell inside.
Jade Okafor looked up from behind the bar, where she was pouring a shot for exactly nobody. The bar was empty. Candles on every table. Her braids were piled on top of her head and she was wearing the Lantern Tap T-shirt she’d cut into a crop top in defiance of management.
“Oh, good,” Jade said. “You’re alive. The whole town thinks the church is on fire. Mr. Pruitt called me to ask if it’s the Rapture. I told him if it was, he wouldn’t be the one finding out.”
“Jade.”
“You look like hell, by the way. Is that mud? Is that in your hair? Is that—”
“Jade. I need you to hide me. Right now. Don’t ask.”
Jade’s face changed.
Twelve years of friendship. Two broken-up boyfriends, one dead dog, one terrible night on the Taconic. Jade could read her faster than a menu.
“Walk-in,” Jade said. “Go.”
Nyra went.
The cooler was freezing and smelled like limes and spilled IPA. She crouched behind a stack of kegs and pulled the door almost shut, leaving a crack the width of a finger.
The front door opened. The bells outside got louder, then muffled again.
“Sorry, we’re closed,” Jade said. “Act of God. Or Central Hudson. One of the big guys.”
“I’m looking for a girl.” Ansel’s voice was soft and pleasant, the voice of a man asking for directions. “Dark curls. Brown skin. Probably frightened.”
“So, every girl in here on a Friday.”
“She came in that door.”
“Lots of people come in that door. That’s sort of the business model.”
A pause.
“You smell like her.”
“Babe, I smell like Jameson and regret. Do you want a drink or not?”
Through the crack, Nyra watched Ansel lean across the bar. The candlelight hit his eyes and they flashed red.
Jade saw it.
Nyra saw Jade see it.
Her best friend didn’t scream. Didn’t run. She just went very still and said, in a very calm voice, “Okay. Sure. Let me get you something top shelf.”
She reached up.
Took down the Jameson.
And broke it over his head.
Glass and whiskey exploded across the bar. Ansel staggered. Jade grabbed the wooden club she kept under the register, the one with WHISKEY BUSINESS burned into the handle, and swung it into his temple like she was trying out for the Yankees.
Ansel went down.
He didn’t stay down long. But long enough.
“Nyra!” Jade screamed. “Back door! Now!”
Nyra burst out of the walk-in. Ansel was already pushing up onto his hands, hissing, his fangs out. Fangs. Real ones.
Jade grabbed Nyra’s wrist and they ran through the kitchen, through the swinging door, into the narrow back hallway.
And straight into someone coming the other way.
Nyra almost swung at him.
“Whoa. Whoa. Easy.”
Dr. Elias Wren held up both hands. He had a medical bag in one and a flashlight in the other, rain dripping off his tweed cap. Gray beard. Kind eyes behind wire glasses. He’d been the town doctor since before Nyra was born, and he was the reason she’d finally signed up for the EMT course instead of drifting.
“I saw the light,” he said. “The clinic’s dark and the bells have half the town panicking. I’m checking on everyone.”He frowned past them. “What on earth was that noise?”
Nyra looked back.
The bar was empty. The front door swung in the wind. Ansel was gone.
“Bar fight,” Jade said. “I won.”
“You’re bleeding.”
Jade looked down. A long cut ran across her palm where the bottle had broken. Blood dripped steadily onto the tiles.
“Huh,” she said. “Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.”
Dr. Wren had her sitting on a keg in thirty seconds. He cleaned the cut by flashlight and stitched it with quick, neat movements. He hummed while he worked, the way he always had, some old tune with a slow, rocking rhythm.
Something about it snagged in Nyra’s chest. A lullaby, maybe. From somewhere far back.
“Your hands are freezing,” Jade complained.
“Poor circulation. Occupational hazard of being old.” He tied off the last stitch and looked at Nyra over his glasses.“And you’re running a fever, young lady. I can see it from here.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re flushed and shaking.” He pressed the back of his cold hand to her forehead and clicked his tongue. “Fluids. Rest. Whatever’s going on tonight, stay out of it.”
He snapped his bag shut.
“The bells haven’t rung like that in a very long time,” he said quietly. “Be careful out there, Nyra.”
Then he was gone into the rain.
Nyra’s phone buzzed in her pocket.
One bar of signal. One text.
MARA: Get out of Saint Veil before sunrise. Don’t look for me.
Nyra read it three times.
Don’t look for me.
Mara had clearly never met her.
Then Jade grabbed her arm, staring at the front window.
The street outside was full of eyes.
Amber ones.