The lo mein had definitely seen better days. Marcus could tell because it was currently pressed against his face, cold and slimy through the garbage bag. Three-week-old Chinese food had its own special kind of funk—sweet and rotten at the same time, like fruit that had given up on life. His Air Force Ones were done for. Two months of saving up, washing dishes at his uncle's restaurant, just to hide in a dumpster while they soaked up mystery juice.
"Yo, Marcus! I know you out here, boy!"
Dante's voice hit different when he was hunting. Not the smooth talk he used with the girls, or the lazy drawl when he was posted up outside the corner store. This was his business voice. The one that meant somebody was about to bleed.
Marcus tried to breathe shallow, but the stench kept hitting him in waves. Rotting vegetables. Spoiled meat. Something that might have been fish but smelled like death's armpit. His stomach turned over, empty except for the Honey Bun he'd eaten for lunch. Sixteen years old, hiding in trash on his birthday. This wasn't how he'd pictured today going.
The metal clicked slides racking back on pistols. Three guns at least. Marcus knew the sound from too many nights lying awake in his bedroom, listening to the streets talk their violent language.
"Check behind them crates," Dante ordered. "Slim, watch that fence."
Marcus pressed himself smaller, knees to chest like when he was little and thought making himself tiny could make his dad's shouting stop. Through a rust hole the size of a quarter, he could see the alley. Yellow streetlight made everything look sick, like the whole world had jaundice. Shadows moved between Chen's delivery truck and the stack of Heineken boxes.
Then his eyes did something impossible.
The shadows weren't shadows anymore. Marcus blinked hard, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. But the vision stayed. He could see through the dumpster's metal walls not like Superman X-ray vision from the comics, but different. Three human shapes glowed orange-red, their body heat painting them like walking fire against the cooler brick walls.
What the fuck?
He could see everything. Dante in the middle, gold chains around his neck glowing warmer than his skin. The Glock in his right hand showed cooler, metal blue against his orange palm. His finger rested outside the trigger guard Dante was always careful about that. Professional. Said accidental discharges were for amateurs and dead men.
Rico swept left, his stocky frame moving in that side-to-side pattern they'd all learned from too many Call of Duty sessions. Slim went right, tall and skinny, his heat signature flickering nervous. Marcus could actually see their hearts beating Dante's slow and steady like he was taking a walk, Slim's rabbiting in his chest.
"Come on, Marcus. Let's talk about this." Dante was maybe ten feet away now. "Look, I get it. Tyrell probably deserved that ass-whooping. Boy can't keep his hands to himself, especially around the young girls. But you broke his arm, homie. Threw him into a wall like he was nothing. That ain't normal."
Marcus wanted to scream. Wanted to tell Dante exactly what his piece of shit brother had been doing. Keisha pressed against the gym wall, crying, Tyrell's hands up her shirt while she begged him to stop. Fourteen years old. Still slept with her teddy bear. Still believed people were mostly good.
But explaining wouldn't change nothing. The Eastside Vipers had their own law, older than cops, older than courts. You touch one of theirs, they touch you back twice as hard. And Tyrell Williams, rapist or not, was Dante's blood.
The crazy part was, Marcus didn't understand what had happened either. He'd been across the parking lot, fifty yards away at least. Then suddenly he was there, hand around Tyrell's throat, lifting him off the ground like he was made of air. Tyrell was a linebacker, two hundred pounds of muscle. Marcus was maybe one-forty after his mom's Sunday dinner.
Physics didn't work like that. Bodies didn't move like that. But Marcus had thrown Tyrell into the brick wall hard enough to leave cracks in the mortar. The strength had vanished as quick as it came, leaving him shaking and staring at his hands like they belonged to somebody else.
"Rico, check that dumpster."
Shit. Shit shit shit.
Marcus watched Rico's heat signature move closer, gun raised. His heart hammered so hard it hurt. Sweat ran down his back, mixing with the garbage juice. Think. Can't stay here. Can't run they had the exits covered. Can't fight three guns with whatever weirdness had happened earlier.
Above, the moon hung fat and red, like God had dipped it in blood. The news had been going on about it all week supermoon, lunar eclipse, biggest in twenty years. His grandmother would have been burning candles and mumbling prayers. "Moun lan gen yon koulè," she used to say. The moon has a color. Bad things walked when the moon bled.
But Grandma Marie had been dead since Marcus was five, and her island superstitions had died with her. At least that's what his mom always said.
The dumpster lid flew open like a coffin. Dante stood there, streetlight making a halo behind his head, gold teeth catching the glow. The Glock pointed down at Marcus, barrel looking big as a tunnel.
"There you are, you little freak."
Time broke.
Marcus had felt it before in basketball games when everything clicked, the court opening up like a map, every player moving in slow motion. But this was different. This was like God hit pause on everything except Marcus's mind.
He could see Dante's finger starting its squeeze. Could count the sweat drops on his forehead seven, no eight. Could hear his heartbeat, steady at 74 beats per minute. The gun's serial number was clear as day: G27 US USA, followed by numbers that meant nothing except proof that his eyes were doing impossible things.
The moon pulsed. Marcus felt it in his bones, in his blood, like someone had replaced his veins with electric wire. Every muscle coiled tight. Energy crackled under his skin, wild and hot and ready.
Dante's finger touched the trigger.
Marcus moved.
His left hand slapped the gun sideways, faster than thought. The bullet sparked off the alley wall, leaving a copper streak on the brick. His right hand caught the dumpster's edge and he vaulted out not scrambling like a scared kid, but flowing like water. Like something that had always known how to move but just remembered.
He landed in a crouch ten feet away, balanced perfect on the balls of his feet.
"What the fuck?" Dante spun, trying to track him with the gun, but Marcus was already gone.
His body knew things his brain didn't. Zigzag between cover. Use the shadows where streetlight don't reach. Move at angles that make you hard to target. He flowed between trash cans and pallets like smoke, using everything as a shield.
"Get that motherfucker!" Dante's roar brought Rico and Slim running.
More guns. More bullets. But they moved so slow, cutting through air like lazy bees. Marcus grabbed the chain-link fence and went up it in two bounds. The metal should have cut his hands to ribbons. Instead, his fingers found every hold perfect, like the fence was made for climbing.
At the top, he paused. Looked back.
Dante stood in the alley, gun raised, face twisted with rage and something Marcus had never seen before. Fear. In all the stories, all the legends about Dante Williams, nobody ever said he was scared of anything.
Their eyes met. Marcus knew he should run, but something made him wait. The moon pulsed again, and he felt his eyes change. The alley got brighter, colors shifting into spectrums that didn't have names. In a broken bottle's reflection, he caught a glimpse of himself.
His eyes glowed amber. Not reflecting light glowing from inside, like a wolf's eyes in the nature documentaries Keisha loved to watch.
"What are you?" Dante whispered, and his gun hand shook.
Marcus didn't have an answer. He turned and dropped down the fence's other side, landing soft as a cat. Then he ran.
But this wasn't running like he knew it. His feet barely touched ground, each stride eating up impossible distance. He vaulted over a parked Camry, using the hood as a springboard. A six-foot privacy fence became nothing, cleared in a single bound. Wind whipped past his face but his breathing stayed easy, like he was sitting on the couch.
Three blocks. Five blocks. Ten blocks, and he wasn't even winded.
He finally stopped on the roof of the old Kessler's warehouse, the one that had been empty since the recession. Climbed up the fire escape like it was a ladder, even though half the rungs were rusted through. The impossibility of everything crashed down on him at once.
He'd just outrun three armed killers. Jumped fences that needed ladders. Covered two miles in what, five minutes? Six?
Marcus looked at his hands in the moonlight. Same hands that had trouble opening pickle jars. Same hands that fumbled easy layups when Aisha was watching from the bleachers. But as he stared, they shimmered like heat waves coming off asphalt in July. The shimmer spread up his arms, across his chest, under his skin but somehow visible.
Then it faded, leaving regular flesh behind. But he could feel it there, waiting. Power. Change. Something that had been sleeping inside him since birth and picked tonight to wake up.
His phone buzzed. The screen was cracked when had that happened? but still worked. Three missed calls from Mom. Five from Keisha. Text from Jerome: "Where u at??? We at your cousin house eating all the cake!"
Birthday. Right. August 13th, the day he'd been waiting for all year. Sixteen. He was supposed to be at Cousin Trina's, pretending to be embarrassed while they sang happy birthday off-key. Maybe finally talking to Aisha, who said she might come through.
Instead, he sat on a warehouse roof, reeking of garbage, trying to figure out why his eyes glowed and his body moved like Black Panther.
The moon watched him, red and swollen and somehow personal now. Like it knew him. Like they were connected. His grandmother's voice floated up from memory, speaking Creole when she didn't want the kids to understand: "Li gen san nan moun lan. Li pral reveye."
He'd been five, sitting on her lap while she braided Keisha's hair. Asked what it meant, but she'd just smiled and given him a peppermint from her purse. Two months later, she was gone.
His phone rang. Unknown number. After tonight, unknown numbers meant danger. But something made him answer.
"Hello?"
"Marcus Johnson." Woman's voice, smooth like expensive liquor, with an accent he couldn't place. "Don't hang up. I know what happened tonight. I know what you're becoming. And if you want to survive the next twenty-four hours, you need to listen."
"Who is this?"
"Someone who's been waiting for you to wake up. The blood moon called, and you answered. But the Vipers are the least of your problems now. Others felt your awakening. Others who won't be scared off by sirens."
"Lady, I don't know what"
"Look to your left. Slowly."
Every instinct screamed trap, but Marcus turned his head. On the next rooftop, maybe thirty feet away, stood a figure in a long black coat. Even from here, Marcus could see its eyes glowing red like hot coals. Not reflecting. Glowing from inside.
"That's a Hunter," the woman said, calm as if she was giving directions. "They track newly awakened Moonborn. Kill them before they can learn control. It's been following you since the alley."
"Moonborn?" The word felt weird in his mouth but familiar in his chest. Like something he'd always known but never had a name for.
The Hunter moved. One second it was across the gap, the next it was airborne, coat spreading like bat wings. Marcus rolled backward as it landed where he'd been sitting, concrete cracking under its feet like dropped plates.
Up close, it looked almost human. Pale skin stretched over sharp bones, dressed like an undertaker. But the way it moved was all wrong too smooth, too quick. And when it smiled, Marcus saw fangs.
"New blood," it hissed. "So much power. So little control. You'll make a fine meal."
Marcus scrambled back, electricity surging through him again. But it was wild now, like trying to hold water in his fists.
"Jump," the woman commanded through the phone. "Trust your instincts. Jump now!"
The Hunter lunged. Marcus spun and ran for the roof's edge, claws whistling through air where his head had been. The edge rushed up forty feet to the parking lot below. His brain screamed stop.
But the wild thing inside him whispered: jump.
Marcus jumped.
Wind roared. Ground rushed up promising broken everything. But power flooded his legs, and when he hit, it was perfect three-point landing like superheros did in movies. The asphalt cracked in a spiderweb, but his knees felt fine. Better than fine.
He looked up. The Hunter perched on the roof's edge, coat fluttering.
"Run, little moon child," it called down, voice like grinding stone. "Run fast and far. But you can't run forever. The blood always calls us home."
Marcus didn't need telling twice. He ran into the night, phone still in his hand, the woman's voice guiding him through streets he'd known all his life but that suddenly felt like enemy territory.
Behind him, the Hunter's laugh echoed off buildings. Above, the blood moon watched everything, silent witness to the end of Marcus Johnson's normal life.
He was Moonborn, whatever that meant. He had power he didn't understand and enemies he'd never known existed. But as he ran through Atlanta's shadows, one thought burned bright:
He would learn. He would get stronger. And he would protect his family from whatever came next.
Even if it meant becoming something that wasn't quite human anymore.