The apartment reeked of blood and bleach. It soaked into the grout, into the wood, into the fibers of Caleb's skin.
The body had stopped twitching over an hour ago, exhausted thud in his ears. Everything felt distant—like he was looking through a cracked mirror smeared with heat and adrenaline.
Then, finally, he moved. He didn't think. Thinking would shatter the thin layer of ice holding him together. He just did what had to be done.
The man was heavy. Dead weight always is.
Caleb wrapped him in trash bags and duct tape—layer upon layer until the smell was trapped, the limbs bound, the shape less human. He used rope to cinch the neck and ankles tight, then rolled the bundle onto a sheet and dragged it across the floor.
Each movement sent white pain flaring through his ribs. The fresh wound tore open even more, his stiches began to tear at the seams. Blood trickled again. He gritted his teeth and kept going. There was no other choice.
The neighbourhood had no working cameras, no night shift police patrols, no nosey neighbours. Just the scent of desperation and hum of silence. Caleb used the back door—bare concrete slick with winter rot—and slipped into the alley like a phantom.
The cold air bit into his sweat-soaked skin. He welcomed it. Pain kept him focused. Alive.
The body went into a construction pit off Eastern Avenue. A condemned parking garage that had been abandoned mid-repair. Caleb dragged the corpse over cracked rebar, wedged it between rusted scaffolding, doused it in paint thinner and turpentine, and struck a match.
He didn't flinch as the flame caught, he didn't turn away when the plastic blackened and the flesh popped, didn't gag at the stench. He just watched, watched until there was nothing left but smoke.
He got back home at 3:48 a.m.
He stripped outside in the alley and burned the clothes behind the dumpster, one piece at a time. Inside, he scrubbed himself raw. Water scalded his skin. Blood and ash circled the drain. He still didn't feel clean.
Sleep was now an utter illusion; he wouldn't dare close his eyes lest he wished to bare his soul to another night of death filled with the screams and cries of strangers he couldn't save. Instead trying to pretend he could drift away, he instead opened his laptop and began to search, desperately looking for the pieces of shit that ripped apart his family.
For the next ten hours, Caleb dug into everything he could find. Articles, forums, archived local crime reports. No official documentation ever called them by name—but in the undercurrent of the city, they had one:
"The Iron Vultures"
They operated under no colors. But claimed all of Toronto as their territory. They sold drugs. Pimped young girls out. Extorted anyone and everyone they could and killed those they couldn't.
They hunted.
Initiation required blood. Innocent blood. Families. Children. Each kill meant loyalty. Each act meant permanence. Like carving your name into the devil's spine.
Rachel, Isaac, all the poor souls Caleb is being forced to see, and watch die over and over.
They weren't the first. They wouldn't be the last.
A few more strained hours of tedious web searches, internet forums, unlikely post threads, and everything began to blur together, That's when he found the name.
Jonah Caulder.
Fifty-one. Retired JTF2.
Black operations. Honorably discharged after sustaining career ending injuries while off duty.
Jonah was involved the kind of work buried under classified ink and denial.
Seven years ago, Jonah was attacked in front of his Scarborough home. Five men. Baseball bats. Knives. Smiles. His wife, raped, stabbed, beaten and left to bleed out on the lawn. He was in a coma for nine days.
When he woke, he refused interviews. Moved out of sight.
Caleb found an address tied to a veteran's disability fund. A low-income complex in Etobicoke.
He sat back, the Raven perched silently on the windowsill behind him, watching.
Caleb didn't speak to it. He didn't need to.
He just got dressed, pulled on his boots, packed a blade in his jacket, and headed out.
The bus ride was slow and silent.
The city outside blurred into gray, the way it always did when death lingered nearby. His bandages leaked. He ignored them. Pain made sense. It was the one thing that still did.
He arrived just past noon.
The building was dead concrete — old, hollow, indifferent to the world around it. Caleb rang the intercom. It buzzed like a dying wasp.
A voice crackled back, low. Hoarse. Unimpressed.
"Who is it."
Caleb answered the stranger with no hesitation.
"Caleb Strickland. I lost my wife and son. A couple of months ago. They were murdered. I think it was the same people who killed your wife."
Silence.
"I don't want your sympathy. I'm not here for comfort."
Another pause.
"Then what do you want?"
"I want to make sure no one else has to feel what I feel. I want revenge, I want penance, I want retribution, I want to learn how to end these mother fuckers once and for all! And I need your help to do it."
The line went dead, cold and silent but Caleb didn't leave.
He sat on the front steps, breathing steam in the winter air.
Ten minutes passed. Then thirty. Then an hour.
At 1:27 p.m., the front door creaked open.
The man who stepped out looked like violence had been welded into his bones.
He was massive. Shoulders broad, frame built like a freight engine left in the cold too long. Scars traced his face like reminders. His eyes were steel.
"Go home," he said. "You don't want this."
"I don't want this? I already have it!" Caleb replied.
"You look like hell." Jonah hoarsely directed to Caleb.
"I feel worse."
Jonah looked at Caleb as if catching something, a hint of familiarity, "You kill someone?"
Caleb didn't blink. "Yes."
Jonah stared at him for a long time.
"Why'd you come to me?"
"Because you survived. And you know what they are, and you are a man that was made into a literal weapon, I need to be made into the same animal as you."
"They're the real animals," Jonah said. "But killing them doesn't bring back what you lost."
"I'm not trying to bring anything back," Caleb said, voice low. "I'm trying to bury it all, bury them all."
Another silence.
"I don't want to learn how to defend myself," Caleb added. "I want to learn how to end them. Quickly. Completely."
Jonah looked him up and down.
"You think revenge makes it better?"
"I think revenge is the only thing left."
Jonah hesitated. His jaw tightened. Then he stepped aside.
"Get in."
End of chapter 4.