The asphalt uncoiled under our wheels, long and cracked like the spine of a sleeping leviathan. Lucien manned the wheel of my trailer-bus with a Cajun's casual confidence, one hand on the stick, the other gripping a can of warm beer he’d opened somewhere outside Baton Rouge. The engine growled like a caged dog, and the smell of swamp water and hot rubber seeped through the seals around the windows, growing thicker with every mile south.

  In the back of the trailer, lit only by a flickering red overhead and the soft pulse of the control panel, I was busy assembling the tools of my trade. Tools of death, precision-made and blood-tested.

  Knives first—three of them. Standard bowie, wide and thick in the blade, both full-tang carbon steel. The third was a stiletto spike, handle-wrapped in old electrical tape, because the old designs still worked best when you needed to put something down quietly. They slid into their sheathes sewn into the inner lining of my military jacket—standard NATO fatigue, scavenged from surplus, dyed darker, reinforced at the seams. Cost me a pretty penny still.

  Then came the combat hatchet. Short-handled, weight-forward, matte finish. Custom-cut for vampire strength, meaning you could cleave a grown man in two if you swung it right. Edge sharp as broken glass. That rode on the right hip, just under the belt-line. Balanced to draw fast.

  Next, the vest. Load-bearing, armored, buckled down tight across my broad chest. Pouches filled with salt rounds, silvered buckshot, magnesium flares. My rig didn’t just look military—it was. Eastern European surplus, re-stitched and adapted to post-mortem use, with extra ballistic plating I'd personally sown both in the front and back of my heart. I didn’t bleed like I used to, pain only slowed me down, but a pierced heart or pierced brain would paralyze me for a good few hours.

  I dropped a cargo hunting cap on my scalp, bill down low to keep glare off my undead eyes. Having extra-sensitive sight that would rival a cat's was good, but it sure made it easy to get flash banged. Even by a flashlight.

  I reached for my guns.

  First came the old workhorse—a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. No name. No frills. Just cold steel and ugly reliability. Cut down to street-sweeper length, the kind of iron you kept under your pillow if your nightmares walked on two legs. A cooler man might’ve called her Big Bertha, or Sweet Bess. I never saw the point in naming something built to end things. Bought it from the Lodge for two hundred bucks when I was still green, barely out of the cradle. Never failed me.

  But the crown jewel? That was the KS-23 Carbine.

  Only the Soviets would take a 23mm aircraft cannon barrel, find a flaw in it, and go, "Eh. Give it to some poor bastard. Call it a shotgun." And that’s exactly what it was. A monster wrapped in wood and metal. Officially named Karabin Spetsialniy—Special Carbine. Nothing special about it except the way it made walls stop being walls. And the fact that I'd gotten it for a steal. Five hundred dollars, on account of the Lodge Quartermaster being old enough to remember the Cold War, "and hate those damned Ruskies along with everything they touched".

  My belt sagged with the weight of what it ate—Shrapnel-25 buckshot, Cheremukha-7 tear gas, and Barrikada slugs fat enough to punch holes through engine blocks. Ammo pouches bulged, stitched onto a wide belt that groaned under the load.

  Overkill? Maybe. But I’d ever been risk-adverse in life, no point in changing what works in undeath.

  Colette sat cross-legged near the kitchenette, surrounded by lines of crushed sage, bone dust, and little red poppy seeds. Her fingers moved with the speed and precision of old ritual, flicking a sprig of mugwort through a flame and tracing runes into the ash with the tip of her nail.

  She was murmuring something in Creole French, a tongue older than even the Bayou it came from. Each word tasted of copper and salt.

  The air thickened with spice and tension.

  “Warding the trailer,” she said, without looking up. “Us too. Asking Papa Legba to keep us from ugly deaths.”

  “We're up against mermen. Everything they do is ugly. Especially the way they kill. Better ask that he keep death at bay, period.” Lucien remarked dryly from the wheel of my trailer-bus, tone grim but casual.

  “True,” she muttered. “But let's start with small steps, ouais?”

  A silence followed that. Lucien didn’t fill it. Neither did I.

  The swamp rolled in around us like a rising fog. Cypress trees stood like drowned sentinels on either side of the broken two-lane road, moss hanging like nooses from their branches. The water glimmered like oil, black and slick, swallowing sound.

  Then the rig slowed.

  Up ahead, yellow lights blinked lazily through the mist, and a single work-truck blocked the road—a rust-chewed barricade of barrels, flashing cones, and a man in a reflective jacket and hard-hat waving a faded red flag.

  Lucien slowed to a crawl and leaned out the window. “Worksite?”

  “Afraid so,” the man answered, voice nasal and bored. “Chemical spill up ahead. Gotta turn around.”

  He stepped forward—and I saw it then. Just a flicker. A glint of steel beneath his collar. Not a badge. A pendant. The Lodge insignia.

  Without a word, I held my ID card out the side window. Colette did the same, leaning across Lucien. The man leaned in, his eyes scanning the IDs in turn. Then he smiled. The kind of smile that didn’t touch the eyes.

  “Y’all’re clear,” he said, voice suddenly crisp and professional. “North approach is compromised. Take the old ferry trail, loops around the east branch. You’ll see the mark.”

  He stepped back, tapped his hardhat twice, and waved us through.

  As we passed, I glanced back and saw him already folding up the sign, his body shimmering ever-so-slightly like a heat mirage. The “barricade” was a mirage. An illusion. An illusion they didn’t want anyone to cross.

  Lucien didn’t speak. None of us did.

  Just the road again.

  Just the bayou.

  And ahead, the Drowned Choir was already singing.

  The van rumbled to a halt on a patch of gravel the size of a living room, headlights sweeping across an eerie staging zone. There, set beside a splintered ranger's station, a black canopy tent stood like a funeral shroud. Two Lodge-marked trucks were parked nearby, their tires buried ankle-deep in mud. No sign of other Hunters yet.

  Only one person waited for us. She stood just outside the canopy, arms crossed, posture stiff and professional in the tailored lines of a black tuxedo. Blonde hair wound into a razor-sharp bun, black-gloved fingers drumming against her opposite forearm with the bored precision of someone who’d been there too long already.

  Her eyes locked on us the moment I stepped out of the rig, boots sinking into the muck with a wet sigh.

  “Team Seventeen-A, Louisiana Branch?” she asked, voice crisp and cold. "The... Bayou Saints?"

  “That’s us,” I nodded.

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  The woman produced a tablet from under her jacket and swiped it to life. “Agent 079-Z8. Situational Director for Contract 9543-18- Drowned Choir.” She gestured behind her. “Welcome."

  Lucien gave a low whistle. “Well, ain’t this place got charm. Smells like home.”

  Colette stepped out beside me, sniffing the air, the sage still clinging to her like smoke. She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. The rot in the air told us all enough.

  Agent Vega lifted the tablet and flicked it, showing us the contents. Satellite images. Thermal scans. One showed the decayed sprawl of a town almost totally overtaken by swamp water. Wood-frame homes with roofs caved in, power lines dangling like vines. And in the heart of it—pools.

  Large, black-green pools, bubbling like they were boiling.

  “Town used to be called Atherbee. Population two hundred and thirty-six. Disappeared off the census three weeks ago. No missing persons filed. No alerts. No flags.”

  She tapped again, brought up a scan of something that looked like a pit full of writhing bodies—only the bodies weren’t moving on their own.

  “They’ve been turned into egg-cradles. You understand me? Hosts. Growing their young inside the still-living human body. That means...”

  Colette muttered a string of profanity in French. I just stared. The image looked like a nightmare painted in rotting oils.

  "Means there's definitely a Mermaid." I muttered, the myriad of weapons I was loaded with and the cornucopia of so many other knick-knacks jiggling in my rucksack feeling suddenly, woefully inadequate.

  She swiped once more, revealing an audio spectrogram. “Last drone sent in picked up vocalizations. Subharmonics. Choir tones. A Drowned Song. There’s a Mermaid in the pit.”

  Lucien went pale and Colette closed her eyes.

  A Mermaid meant more than violence. It meant madness. It meant songs that made you forget who you were. Made you want to drown.

  I exhaled through my nose. “That all?”

  Vega's lip twitched upward, a humorless almost-smile. “You’re not alone. A second squad's accepted the contract, despite not winning the bid. They’ll follow in once your three hours are up.”

  As if summoned by her words, a heavy rumble of engine brakes came through the tree line. Another truck—a repurposed troop carrier—rolled up slow, tires snarling through the muck, headlights off. Bearing the all too recognizable blazon of a team we'd already had encounters with before. A team that did not like us. Mutual sentiment, really.

  The doors clanked open, and out stepped them. Squad name : The Red Syndicate.

  Pretentious pricks.

  Leading was a man in a black coat that shimmered like raven feathers. Tall. Impossibly still. Ancient in the way a crumbling cathedral is ancient. His face was carved of cold marble, high-cheekboned, sharp-nosed, eyes the color of tarnished steel. His presence alone felt like winter. Count Arnar. Five centuries old, reluctantly serving an 800 year sentence as a Hunter for the Lodge, for too many crimes to count. Most of which involved murder and young women.

  He looked me over once, his gaze lingering on my jacket and the "modern" weapons slung all about me. He let a hand slither languidly along the handle of the rapier cinched to his red waist-wrap. Man was dressed like a Victorian nobleman. He was also one of the heavy-hitters of the Lodge.

  Count Arnar's upper lip curled.

  “Ah, the Steregoi fledgling,” he said, disdain thick as molasses. “I did not expect you'd survive for so long, boy”

  I didn’t answer right away.

  Instead, I flipped open my notebook—to the page marked Estimations. Not much in there that would make sense to anyone else. Except numbers. My precious quantifiers.

  All vampire clans shared the same core—domination of the mortal mind, inhuman regeneration, and a complete disregard for aging, poison, or disease. We all started from the same rough cut: strength, speed, and resilience—give or take a few points depending on whether you were built like a brawler or a bookworm.

  But what made us feared wasn’t the start. It was the climb. Vampires didn’t stop getting stronger. Every year of undeath added another edge to the blade. Increments of one percent.

  Fledgling Vampire – Year 1 (Estimated): Strength 10. Speed 10. Resilience 10.

  Count Arnar – 500 years (Estimated): Strength 50. Speed 50. Resilience 50.

  The numbers were mine. Arbitrary, sure. Pulled from how I’d felt when I first turned—flesh still warm, strength still new. By that logic, my own “stats” sat at 11. Not much. But enough to survive.

  I closed the notebook with a snap and looked up at Arnar, still looming.

  “Evening. And thank you for the compliment,” I said, voice dry enough to sand wood.

  He didn’t bother replying. But the sneer on his lips and that sour gleam in his eyes said plenty. He didn’t like that I wasn’t rising to the bait. The old ones hated that—vampires as ancient as he were like starving wolves: all dominance and teeth.

  Unfortunately for him, I was fierce too.

  Fiercely interested in making money and not comparing metaphorical sword-lengths with a dusty old relic.

  Behind him came two mountains of men, bare-armed and scarred to hell. Their scent hit me before their names were announced—werewolves. Alphas. Twins.

  “Lookit that, brother Fang. Looks like we got competition” said the one with a braided beard, guffawing at the last word.

  “Claw thinks they look like meat” growled the other, running a hand over his shaven scalp and squeezing at his nose the way a crackhead does. Which considering how red his eyes were, didn't seem that farfetched.

  They looked at Lucien like they smelled weakness. He gave them a tight smile and leaned against the van, too casual. I knew that look. He was coiling up.

  And last… her.

  Frau Mitternacht. Sorceress. German accent like broken glass under silk. Wrapped in a black dress that clung like a shadow, hair pinned with bone charms, rings on every finger, some of them humming with eldritch power. She stepped out daintily, like she owned the moonlight, wrapping a black-gloved hand around the crook of Ainar's arm.

  “Well, well,” she purred, eyes locking on Colette with immediate venom. “The bayou sends us swamp-whores now.”

  Colette didn’t even blink. “Make-up? At your age?”

  Frau Mitternacht's eye twitched, but said nothing, turning to Lucien and then me, smile widening. “You two, however… are very interesting.”

  Her eyes lingered in ways I didn’t appreciate.

  “I’m not,” I said flatly.

  Lucien barked a laugh. “Trust me, darlin’. You don’t want none of that. He’s all numbers and deadpan. Boring as batshit.”

  Frau Mitternacht’s smile thinned. “Oh? Still can be fun though? What about you, my fine genteel?”

  Lucien barked another guffaw. "Appreciate the offer, chere, but I'd rather stick it in a fire ant hill"

  "Ach-hem" the agent cleared her throat, looking woefully uninterested in the growing tension. "Gentlemen and women, there's a schedule to keep, if you'd be so kind. Please follow".

  The ground squelched underfoot as we pushed deeper toward the treeline, making our way towards a hastily improvised sandbag barricade, manned by soldiers in tac-gear. Behind me, boots crunched and clothes rustled—Lucien’s ragged denim and boots from some backwater pawn shop, Colette’s usual patchwork of tank top, cutoffs, and the soft jingle of charms and bone beads. Even the second team had that… look.

  The Look.

  That effortless edge. Arnar’s coat was cut like a duelist’s, all flowing velvet and blood-soaked history. The werewolves wore jeans and sleeveless shirts like they’d just walked off a barfight, covered in old scars and new ink. And Mitternacht, well… she didn’t need to wear armor. She was armor—ego, power, and black silk.

  Me?

  I looked like I was late for a military-larp.

  Cargo pants, mil-spec top in drab grey, elbow pads, reinforced boots, the works. Belt weighed down with gear like I was afraid I’d forget something. Knives. A hatchet. My ID-tag on a lanyard. Hell, I even had a cargo cap pulled low over my scalp, like it’d somehow make me less noticeable.

  I looked like a tourist who got dropped into a warzone and thought dressing the part might stop the bullets. I wasn’t a swaggering gun-for-hire. I wasn’t a half-feral legend from Cajun folklore, or a seventh-generation swamp-witch who could hex a man’s bones to salt.

  I was just a guy with good aim and a shotgun the size of a fence post. Well. That and a Vampire.

  The KS-23 thudded heavy, latched to the side of my rucksack. It wasn’t sleek or elegant like Arnar’s rapier or Lucien’s silver-inlaid revolver. No finesse in this monster. Just brutal simplicity—a four-gauge, pump-fed street-cannon made to punch through bone, stone, or hull. Everyone else held weapons that were either classy, customized or otherwise "cool" in some manner or another.

  Even after a year of doing this, I still felt like the odd man out. A vampire who didn’t dress like one. A killer who didn’t look like one. No tattoos. No sigils. No smug smile or war-worn swagger.

  Just the gear. Just the prep. Just the numbers.

  The others? They wore the job like a second skin. Me? I still had to put mine on.

  But hey—maybe that’s why I’m still breathing. No illusions. No posturing. Just math, muscle memory, and enough grit to chew through the job, one trigger pull at a time.

  Still.

  Sometimes, when I caught my reflection in the glass or chrome, I didn’t see a Hunter.

  I saw a salaryman playing dress-up.

  And hoping the monsters didn’t notice.

  "As per regulation, the Bayou Saints squad will be getting a three hour head start" the agent muttered as we reached the barricade, pulling out a stopwatch, and glancing at both squads with undisguised hostility.

  "I trust you intend to follow protocol and keep any uncivilized behavior to a minimum".

  Count Arnar sneered. "Madame, I am the very definition of civility"

  He shifted, letting his eyes rest on me and tapping a finger against his rapier. "But alas, the swamp is so treacherous. Accidents tend to happen at the most inopportune of ti..."

  "Are we clear to start?" I cut his spiel off, not even bothering to look at the poncy prick.

  The agent clicked her watch and nodded. "Bayou Saints. Beginning contract at 22:04. Clear for go".

  I would've been lying if I said that I didn't get at least some satisfaction out of hearing Arnar's growl as we left.