Blood Oath of the Shadow

Chapter 12

"Target: Rank A Hunter Axel. Status: Fully infected and traitorous. Execute on sight."

That flat cold voice blared from the smartphone of a passing pedestrian as if the whole world had just passed sentence on him. Axel and Rena ducked low at once slipping into the deep shadow beneath a rusted bus stop. Fine rain soaked their shoulders mixing with exhaust fumes and wet asphalt but nothing stung sharper than those words ringing in his ears.

"Fully infected?" Axel hissed his gaze snapping to the giant billboard across the road. His own face stared back stamped in glaring red letters: TERRORIST. The photo had been taken at his induction ceremony back when he still believed every promise the Order made back when he truly thought he was protecting people. "They do not even bother hiding how shameless their lies are."

"That is how they destroy you Axel" Rena said quietly her voice shaking with bone deep pain. Blood seeped slow through her cloak at the shoulder though she pressed hard to hide the wound. "They do not need to send an assassin first. They only need to rewrite your story and paint you as evil. If everyone believes you are a monster then you become one in every eye that sees you."

Axel fumbled for his own phone. The screen stayed dead black locked out entirely by the Order’s central system. "My accounts are frozen. All my records erased. They want to wipe every trace of me from existence." He tapped the glass over and over but the same red message kept appearing: ^Access denied. Contact administrator.^

"Look around you" Rena whispered nodding toward the crowd just stepping off the bus. People walked laughing glancing at their screens completely unaware that every device in their hands was now a linked spy. "Traffic cameras GPS facial recognition all of it belongs to them now. There is nowhere in this city that is truly hidden."

A tight suffocating ache clamped around his chest. Eight hundred completed missions. Hundreds of dangerous creatures struck down. Thousands of lives kept safe. And now he was public enemy number one. His grip on his silver spear tightened until his knuckles turned white. He wanted to scream. He wanted to make them hear the truth. But he knew no one would listen to a man already branded a traitor.

"Your wound" Axel said softly his eyes catching the unnatural change spreading across her shoulder. "The blood has turned black. It smells like sulfur." The stench was sharp and acrid exactly the trace he always found when a demon was destroyed. But this time it rose from the person he swore to protect.

"The Order’s silver bullet is no ordinary metal" Rena groaned her legs suddenly buckling. Her skin went pale as ash and cold sweat slicked her temples. "It carries poison woven only for witches. It does not just tear flesh. It eats away at your core your magic everything that makes you you. If it is not stopped soon I will change."

"Change into what?" Axel asked his voice hard with fear.

"Into something you will never recognize again" Rena said simply her eyes holding a terror deeper than any wound. "We need somewhere to hide. Now."

"I know an emergency outpost the Order built" Axel offered quickly. "It was never linked to the main satellite network. Full medical supplies and antidote stockpiles meant for hunters who fall in battle."

"Are you mad?" Rena cut in sharply her gaze sharp with suspicion. "That is the first trap they set. They know exactly where you would run. Step through that door and we will never leave."

"Then where?" Axel growled in frustration. "A narrow alley with no supplies? A cramped boarding house? That poison spreads every second Rena. You will not last long enough to find another way."

"I would rather die in filth than on their operating table" Rena shot back her tone firm even as her strength faded. "You have never seen what they do to the ones they label aberrations. I will not let them take me alive."

Axel let out a long ragged breath and stared up at Jakarta’s smog choked sky. Only hours ago he had been respected feared trusted. Now he ran like a thief beside the very creature he had once sworn to kill. The irony tasted bitter on his tongue.

There was no other choice. With the last folded cash tucked inside his boot he supported Rena’s growing weight and turned away from the streetlights slipping into the narrow shadow filled lanes of the crowded slums. The stench of salt fish rotting rubbish and smoke no longer mattered. As long as they stayed unseen.

After half an hour of stumbling through the dark they reached a crumbling apartment block tucked behind the main market. Its brick walls were cracked its tin roof rusted looking ready to collapse at any moment. He had found this place as a trainee and it had never been listed in any Order file.

The third floor room was small and damp. A thin foam mattress sat in one corner a warped wooden table stood beside it and newspaper covered every inch of the window. The flickering neon light overhead blinked slow as if holding its breath.

"The concrete walls are thick" Axel said as he shot three heavy iron bolts home each clank loud and final in the quiet. "We sit too close to the market for their energy scanners to pick us up. For now we are invisible."

He had barely turned to set down his pack when he heard the heavy thud. Rena had collapsed to the floor. Her whole body convulsed violently her jaw working as if she could not pull enough air into her lungs. Her eyes went wide and a long inhuman hiss tore from her throat.

"Rena!"

Axel dropped to his knees hard enough to make the floorboards creak. When he rolled her shoulder toward him cold dread coiled tight in his gut.

Thick black veins crawled out from the bullet wound snaking fast up her neck along her jaw and over her temples like poisonous roots. The skin around the injury hardened and darkened into faint glinting scales and thin wispy purple smoke curled slow from the cracks.

"Dammit" Axel breathed his hands trembling as he hovered over her. The flesh burned hot to the touch far hotter than any natural fever. "This is not just poison. This is leftover energy from the Order’s experiments designed to consume its host from the inside out." He remembered the hushed conversations he had overheard once. Altering serums. Black blood that turned anything into a weapon that could not be controlled. Had they planted this in her all along?

Rena’s fingers curled tight around his arm her nails piercing his coat and sinking into his skin. Her once clear eyes were almost entirely black only a thin rim of white remaining. Her voice came like an echo from the bottom of a well.

"Axel if I lose control do not hesitate. End it now. I will not become their weapon."

Beneath the darkening haze Axel saw the purest fear of all. Not fear of dying. Fear of ceasing to be herself. Fear of becoming exactly the kind of horror she had spent her life fighting.

"You will not change" Axel said steady even as his own heart hammered wild. He held her gaze determined to make her believe him. "I will not let them take you. I will not let them win."

Rena gave a faint sad smile that felt like a final goodbye. "You cannot fight this. It has been there too deep too long."

Axel bit his lip until he tasted salt. No medicine. No tools. No one to call for help. Then his fingers brushed something hard inside his coat pocket. Vane’s badge. And etched into its cold metal the message he had found once: 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧.

Maybe just maybe those words were never meant for only one person.

"Hold on" he whispered pulling the badge out until it glowed with a faint soft light. "There is one thing I have not tried yet. Please. Just hold on a little longer."

Rena still shivered violently but her eyes never left his. In that cramped damp room surrounded by enemies on every side one tiny spark of hope refused to go out.

Far off sirens blared louder drawing closer by the minute. Axel paid them no mind. He stared at the black veins spreading faster and faster then down at the badge in his hand which now beat in time with his own pulse as if answering the poison as if holding a secret he had never dared imagine.

What really lay hidden inside this small metal token? And could words written long ago truly stop something that had taken root years before?

To be continued.