The Brass Wolf

It was a solid brass token, about the size of an old pocket watch.

I picked it up before Milan could see it. The metal was cold, heavy, and stamped with an intricate relief: two crossed mash paddles encircled by the snarling head of a wolf. Around the rim, deep-cut letters spelled out a single word: BLAZSEK.

The name meant nothing to me, but the moment my skin touched the metal, a tremor ran up my spine, distinct and electric.

Before I could examine it, the glare of high-beam headlights flooded the pier.

Two black SUVs roared through the gate, tires throwing up roostertails of river water as they skidded to a halt ten feet from our ambulance. Four men stepped out into the rain. They didn't wear police uniforms or paramedic turnout gear. They wore tailored wool overcoats, dark leather gloves, and heavy work boots.

The man in the lead was broad-shouldered, with cropped steel-gray hair and a scar that ran from his left temple down into his beard. He moved with a heavy, deliberate grace that made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.

"That's far enough, EMS," the scarred man said. His voice was a low, gravelly baritone that cut clean through the storm.

Milan stood up, putting his hands on his hips in his standard municipal defiance. "This is an active trauma scene. We're transporting to St. Jude's."

"You're not transporting anyone," the man replied. He didn't pull a badge. He didn't pull a weapon. He simply took three steps forward, and the air around him suddenly tasted heavy, thick with the scent of pine pitch and old leather.

The pressure in my skull doubled. My teeth ached, an intense throbbing at the roots of my canines that made me want to grind my jaw until the enamel cracked.

"Who the hell are you?" Milan demanded, though I could hear the slight tremor in his voice.

"Zemanek Security," the scarred man said smoothly. "The gentleman is an employee of our brewing facility. He slipped from the maltings catwalk during the surge. We have our own medical staff waiting at the private infirmary."

"He had an open chest wound!" Milan shouted. "He needs a surgical suite, not a company nurse!"

The scarred man glanced down at the victim on the backboard. His amber eyes flicked over the sealed flesh, the dry blood, and then snapped directly to me.

He didn't look at my face. He looked at my bare left hand—the hand that had just healed in thirty seconds.

The man's nostrils flared slightly. A strange, calculating stillness settled over his features.

"He looks quite stable to me," the man said softly. "Pack your gear and clear the pier."

"We can't just abandon a patient—" Milan began.

"Milan," I interrupted, grabbing my partner's arm. My fingers clamped onto his jacket with enough force to bunch the thick nylon. "We're leaving."

"Lenka, are you crazy? We have protocols—"

"Pack the gear," I said, meeting the scarred man's gaze.

There was no negotiation here. Every nerve ending in my body was screaming at me that if we stayed on this dock for another sixty seconds, we wouldn't be driving Medic 4 back to the station. We would be floating in the Ostrov with the rest of the debris.

The scarred man gave a slow, deliberate nod. "Smart girl."

Two of his men moved forward, lifting the backboard with effortless strength—two men lifting a two-hundred-pound patient with one hand each, as if he were an empty cardboard box. They loaded him into the back of the lead SUV, slammed the hatch, and vanished into the rain without another word.

·  ·  ·

We drove back to the station in absolute silence.

Milan didn't touch his remaining doughnut. He kept his hands locked at ten and two on the steering wheel, his knuckles white, his eyes darting repeatedly to the rearview mirror.

"What happened back there, Lenka?" he asked finally, as we pulled into the bay of Station 12.

"You saw what I saw," I said quietly, keeping my left hand buried deep in my jacket pocket, my fingers curled tightly around the brass token.

"I saw a guy with his chest ripped open heal in three seconds," Milan whispered, killing the engine. "And I saw you stop bleeding like you put on a magic trick. That wasn't normal. That wasn't... human."

"It was adrenaline and dark lighting," I lied, the words tasting like dry chalk in my mouth. "The rain washed the blood away. He had superficial lacerations."

Milan looked at me for a long time. The skeptical, weary look in his eyes told me he didn't believe a single syllable, but he was too tired, too close to retirement, to push the issue. In this city, people who asked too many questions about the brewery district tended to find their cars in the river.

"Just go home, Lenka," he said softly. "Get some sleep. We have forty-eight hours off."

"Yeah," I said. "Sleep."

I clocked out, dumped my blood-soaked uniform into the biohazard hamper, and changed into my civilian jeans and an oversized grey hoodie. In the locker room mirror, I stared at my reflection.

My skin was pale, washed out under the flickering fluorescent tubes, but my eyes... my eyes were wrong. My normal slate-gray irises had a distinct ring of gold around the pupils, glowing faintly in the dim light. When I blinked hard, the gold faded, retreating like an ember buried under ash.

I touched my left palm. Smooth. Intact.

The brass token in my pocket felt warm, radiating a steady heat against my thigh.

I left the station through the side door and walked into the grey mist of dawn.

I lived four blocks from the rail yards in the Old District, in a dilapidated three-story brick walkup where the rent was cheap and the landlord didn't ask questions about shift workers coming and going at dawn. The rain had slowed to a greasy drizzle, coating the cobblestones in a slick sheen of oil and coal soot.

As I climbed the exterior fire escape to my third-floor landing, the strange sensory sharpness returned.

I could hear the water dripping from the roof gutters fifty yards away. I could hear the rhythmic clacking of a freight train idling on the distant tracks. And then, as I stepped onto the wooden deck outside my apartment door, a scent hit me that stopped me dead in my tracks.

It wasn't the smell of city soot or wet wood.

It was the smell of wild pine, copper, and hot, wet animal fur.

My stomach dropped.

The heavy oak door to my apartment was cracked open three inches.

I took a slow, silent step forward. In the pale morning light, the door didn't look like it had been kicked in with a crowbar or a boot.

The solid two-inch oak was gouged from top to bottom by four massive, parallel furrows. The wood around the deadbolt had been shredded into matchsticks, splintered by claws thick as railroad spikes.

Deep, muddy tracks—wide as dinner plates, with four heavy pad marks and long talon impressions—led from the shattered threshold across my cheap hallway rug straight toward my living room.

My heart hammered against my ribs, but the panic didn't paralyze me. Instead, that strange, electric heat surged through my blood once more, sharpening my vision and tightening my muscles until every instinct screamed with predatory clarity.

I slipped my hand into my hoodie pocket, fingers locking around the cold brass of the Blazsek token.

Whoever had ripped that man apart on the river hadn't just finished their business at the docks.

They had followed the scent of the blood. And they were inside my home.