The heavy metal door groaned on its hinges, a sound of protest in the quiet. Axl pushed it open and stepped into the basement room, the chill of the space hitting him immediately. It was always ten degrees colder down here. Garath followed, a silent, solid presence. The door clicked shut behind them, sealing them in.
The room was a practical, grim place. Walls of unpainted concrete. A single bulb hung from a wire, casting a sickly yellow light that fought a losing battle with the shadows in the corners. The air smelled of concrete dust, sharp antiseptic, and the underlying, sweet-dry scent of the medicinal herbs Becca kept in jars on a high shelf. The only furniture in the room was the medical beds, a few cabinets, and Becca's wheelchair parked beside it.
On the bed, Layla sat curled into herself. Her back was against the cold wall, her knees drawn up to her chest. She wore a clean, grey sweatshirt that was too big for her. Her dark hair was a tangled curtain hiding her face, but the shake in her shoulders was unmistakable. Silent, body-wracking sobs. The blanket over her legs was rumpled and dark in patches where her tears had fallen.
Becca was a statue of calm beside the storm. She sat in her wheelchair, a cup of untouched water in her hand. Her eyes were fixed on Layla, watching every tremor. When the men entered, she turned her head. Her face, usually warm, was lined with a deep, professional fatigue. She set the cup down on a small side table and rolled towards them, the soft shush-shush of her wheels the only sound.
She met them in the middle of the room, creating a buffer of space between them and the bed.
"How is she?" Axl asked. He kept his voice low, a rough whisper. It felt wrong to speak at full volume here, like shouting in a tomb.
Becca didn't look back. She kept her eyes on Axl, her voice equally hushed. "As good as anyone can be after their reality gets torn in two. Physically, she's intact. No fever, no wounds I can find. But mentally?" Becca's lips pressed into a thin line. "She's shattered. The memories are all there, but they're like broken glass. Every time she touches one, it cuts her. She can't put them in order. Can't understand them."
Axl nodded slowly. He knew that feeling—the cold, dizzy nausea of seeing something that shouldn't exist. The Veil might thin for victims, but it didn't break cleanly. It took time to work. And they had to interrogate her before their time ran out.
"We have to talk to her," he said, his eyes drifting back to the huddled form on the bed. "She's the owner of the house. The only lead we have."
"I know," Becca replied, her voice firm but not unkind. "And you will. But right now, she's a raw nerve. Touch her with the wrong question, and she'll short out. Be gentle. Think of her like a spooked animal."
Axl took a slow, steadying breath. He wasn't good with gentle. He was good with sharp commands, with sarcasm, with the cold clarity of a plan. Comfort was a language he'd never quite learned. He glanced at Garath. The younger hunter met his gaze, gave a single, slight nod. Ready.
They moved forward. Axl approached the side of the bed. He stopped a few feet away, leaving her space. He didn't lean over her. He just stood there, letting her feel his presence until her crying hitched.
"Hey," he said. He tried to smooth the gravel from his voice, to make it something soft. It came out strained, but quieter. "You there?"
Slowly, as if moving through deep water, Layla lifted her head. The hair fell away from her face. She was older than Axl had guessed—maybe mid twenties. Her face was pale and blotchy from crying. Her eyes, a light, watery brown, were swollen almost shut. They weren't just scared. They were empty. A hollow, shocked kind of empty, like someone had reached in and scooped out the person she used to be. She stared through Axl, not at him.
"Look," Axl continued, keeping his hands loose at his sides. Non-threatening. "I know you're confused. I know you're scared. You have every right to be. But… we need your help. Can you help us?"
He waited. The buzzing of the light bulb filled the silence. Layla's breath hitched again, a wet, ragged sound.
Axl glanced at Garath. The hunter stood with his arms crossed, his posture relaxed but his eyes missing nothing. He gave another barely-there nod. Continue.
"We need your help," Axl repeated, turning his full attention back to Layla.
Another long moment passed. Then her chapped lips parted. Her voice was a dry, broken thing, scraping out of her throat. "Help… with what?"
It was a thread. Thin and fragile, but a connection. Axl focused on it.
"We need to understand what happened to you," he said, each word deliberate. "In your house. Do you remember being in your house?"
At the word 'house,' a change came over her. The emptiness in her eyes was suddenly flooded with a terror so vivid it was like a physical blow. Her breath caught. Her hands, which had been lying limp on her knees, clenched into white-knuckled fists. The fabric of the sweatshirt twisted in her grip.
"I… I don't…" she stammered. A fresh tear broke free and traced a clean path through the salt stains on her cheek. "I don't know."
"Try," Axl urged, his voice still low. "Anything at all. A sound you heard first. A smell. A feeling."
Layla's eyes darted around the room, seeing nothing, seeing everything. "It was… quiet," she whispered. "The kind of quiet that… presses on your ears. And then… the cold." She hugged herself, her arms wrapping tight. "Not a normal cold. It got inside. Into your bones. Made your teeth ache." She began to shake again, a fine tremor that started in her hands and spread up her arms. "And then… that thing. That monster."
She spat the word 'monster' like it was something foul she needed to get out of her mouth.
"What did it look like?" Axl pressed, leaning forward just an inch.
"I don't know!" The words burst from her, loud and sharp in the quiet room. Her voice cracked with the force of it. Panic was rising, a tide he could see swelling behind her eyes. "It was… it was a shadow on the wall! It was the wind in the pipes! It was every bad noise you ever heard in the dark! It came out of nowhere and it… it…"
She was losing it. Her breathing became fast and shallow, little panicked gasps. Her knuckles were white where she gripped her own arms.
"It attacked me," she sobbed, the story tumbling out in a rush now, unstoppable. "Everything… everything in my house! The chairs! The books! My grandmother's plates! All of it… flying! Smashing! And I ran… I hid in the toilets upstairs… I could hear it out there… scratching at the door… and then… and then…"
She choked, a horrible, guttural sound. The memory was a wall she couldn't climb over.
"And then what, Layla?" Axl asked, his voice a steady anchor in her rising storm. He needed to hear it. He needed the shape of the horror.
Layla looked at him, and the look in her eyes was one of pure, uncomprehending loss. A child's look. "My cat," she whispered, the sound almost disappearing. "Mittens. She was orange. She was hiding too. I heard her cry… this little, scared sound… and then I heard a… a crunch."
She broke.
It wasn't a gradual thing. It was a dam shattering. A violent, full-body shudder racked her frame, so hard her head snapped back. The quiet sobs exploded into raw, gasping wails that tore at her throat. Her body began to jerk, muscles seizing and twitching with no rhythm. Her legs kicked out. Her arms flailed. It was a hysterical fit, a physical revolt against a memory the mind could not hold.
"That's enough!" Becca's voice cut through, sharp and commanding. She rolled forward swiftly, putting herself between Axl and the bed for a moment. She placed a firm hand on Layla's forehead, then grabbed her wrist, fingers searching for a pulse. "You're pushing her over the edge. You're not getting anything else now except trauma."
Axl let out a sharp, frustrated sigh. He dragged a hand down his face, his fingers pressing into the tense muscles of his jaw. The low-grade headache that was his constant companion these days flared into a dull throb behind his eyes. "Damn it," he muttered, more to himself than anyone. "Just when we had a thread."
On the bed, Layla's condition deteriorated. The jerking became more violent, uncontrolled. Her head thrashed side to side, her hair whipping across her face. A continuous, low moan of animal fear hummed in her chest. Her heels drummed a frantic, chaotic beat against the mattress, making the whole bed frame squeak and rattle.
Becca tried to hold her shoulders, to apply calming pressure, but from her seated position, she couldn't get the leverage. Layla's arm shot out in a wild arc, nearly knocking the cup off the side table.
"Don't just stand there watching!" Becca barked, her calm professionalism cracking for a second as she looked from Axl to Garath. "I need hands! Now!"
Garath moved. He was a blur of efficient motion. In two long, silent strides he was at the foot of the bed. Without a word, he planted his hands on Layla's ankles, his grip firm and immovable. He pressed her legs down flat against the mattress, stopping their frantic kicking. His expression was unchanged—a stoic mask—but his focus was absolute.
Axl moved to the head of the bed, opposite Becca. He grabbed for Layla's flailing wrists. Her skin was ice-cold and clammy with sweat. She fought his grip with a desperate, panicked strength he wouldn't have thought her capable of. Her hand twisted, and her nails—short, bitten things—raked four stinging lines across the back of his hand.
"Hold her still!" Becca ordered as she spun her chair and rolled with surprising speed to a set of grey metal cabinets bolted to the wall.
The bed was protesting now, a rhythmic bang and creak of metal joints under the strain. Garath's hold was solid, an anchor. But Axl was struggling. He was trying to restrain her without hurting her, and the caution was making him clumsy. Layla's small, brittle bones felt terrifyingly fragile under his palms.
"Axl, I need one arm completely still for five seconds!" Becca called. She had pulled a small, sealed syringe and a glass vial from a drawer. Her hands worked with practiced, unhurried speed, drawing a measured amount of clear liquid into the syringe. She flicked the needle with her thumbnail, a tiny, precise motion.
"I'm trying!" Axl grunted, shifting his weight to get a better angle. He pinned Layla's forearm to the mattress with both hands, his body leaning over her. She was all sharp elbows and frantic energy. "If I press any harder, I'm going to snap her arm like a twig!"
"Just give me a clear target!" Becca said, rolling back toward the chaos, the syringe held ready like a dart.
She tried to find a patch of calm on the storm of Layla's jerking arm. It was impossible. The limb was a blur of pale skin and flailing motion. Becca's hand hovered, the needle poised, waiting for an opening that never came. A dangerous game.
Axl let out a sharp, frustrated breath that was almost a growl. This was a waste. Every second this continued, Layla was risking injury, and they were burning time they didn't have. The lead was slipping away, drowned in tears and terror.
He made a choice. A bad one, but the only one he had.
He released Layla's arms and straightened up abruptly.
"What are you doing?!" Becca exclaimed, as Layla's newly freed arms flew up, one hand smacking against the wall with a sickening thud.
Axl didn't answer. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, centering himself. The air in the room felt suddenly thinner. He stretched his hands out over Layla's convulsing form, palms down. He took a deep, deliberate breath in, filling his lungs. When he exhaled, a faint, shimmering red light misted from his lips, like he was breathing out glowing dust on a winter's day.
He muttered a string of syllables under his breath. They were ugly words. Old words. They carried a grating, unnatural weight that made the hair on Garath's arms stand up. They were the sounds of breaking rules.
The red glow around his mouth flowed down like liquid smoke, coiling around his wrists and gathering in his cupped palms. Then it leapt. It arced from his fingertips and settled over Layla's body, not like a blanket, but like a net of faint, pulsating crimson light.
The effect was instant and unnerving.
Layla's body went board-stiff. The violent thrashing ceased entirely. She was still seizing—her eyes were rolled back, showing the whites, every muscle in her neck and jaw stood out in cords—but she was frozen in that agonized pose, held in a stasis field of unnatural force. It was sorcery. A violation of physics and flesh. The room felt colder.
Becca didn't hesitate. She didn't question it. She leaned in, found the prominent vein in Layla's now-perfectly-still forearm, and slid the needle in with a clean, professional push of her thumb. She depressed the plunger.
They all watched, suspended in the eerie red light, as the drug took effect. The terrible tension in Layla's body began to leak away. The clenched fists unfurled, fingers relaxing. The harsh, ragged gasps of her breathing smoothed out, deepened, slowed. Her eyelids, which had been stretched wide, fluttered and finally closed. Within thirty seconds, she was utterly still, peaceful in her unnatural sleep. Just a young woman in a too-big sweatshirt, exhausted.
Axl dropped his hands. The red glow winked out of existence, snuffed like a candle. The moment the connection broke, the cost hammered into him.
It wasn't a wave; it was a truck. A blinding, white-hot pain exploded behind his eyes, so intense his vision swam with black and silver spots. A wave of nausea, sour and immediate, churned in his gut. His knees buckled. He stumbled back a step, a choked sound escaping him. He bent double, pressing the heels of his hands hard against his closed eyelids, as if he could physically hold his skull together. The familiar, deep ache settled into his bones, a weariness that felt a hundred years old.
"Axl."
Garath was there. He had released Layla's legs and crossed the space in an instant. His hand came down on Axl's shoulder, not a pat, but a firm, steadying grip. An anchor in the vertigo. His voice was its usual neutral, low baritone, but it was closer than usual. "You okay?"
Axl managed a stiff, jerky nod, though the motion sent fresh spikes of agony through his head. He gritted his teeth, breath hissing between them. "Yeah," he grunted, the word tight and strained. "I'll live." The automatic, meaningless reply of a hunter who was anything but fine.
Becca rolled back from the bedside, capping the used syringe with a definitive click. She placed it on a metal tray. Her gaze moved from the peacefully sleeping woman to the ashen, pain-wracked priest. Her expression was a complex map—professional satisfaction at a crisis stabilized, deep concern for the cost, and a flicker of something harder. Disapproval.
"Well," she said, her voice cutting through the heavy silence. She smoothed the blanket over Layla's still form. "I guess the interrogation can wait."
Garath's hand remained on Axl's shoulder. He looked at Becca. "What did you give her?" His question was practical, cutting to the next step.
"A mild sedative. A calming agent," Becca replied, her eyes still on Axl. "She'll sleep for four, maybe five hours. When she wakes, the hysterical edge should be gone. The memories will still be nightmares, but she might be able to speak around them instead of drowning in them." She wheeled a little closer, her voice dropping. "We can try again then. With patience. With tea. Not with… this." She didn't gesture, but they all knew what 'this' meant.
Axl finally forced himself to straighten up, though the world tilted nauseatingly for a second. He kept one hand pressed to his throbbing temple. He looked at Layla's serene, sleeping face, then let his gaze travel over the cold, concrete room—the cabinets of supplies, the single bare bulb, the heavy door that led back to a world full of hidden teeth.
They had stopped her pain. For a few hours.
They had quieted the storm.
But they were no closer to the eye of it. The clock on the summoning ritual was still ticking, loud in the silence. And all they had to show for this effort was a broken witness, a used syringe, and a priest with a skull full of broken glass.
The lead, so fragile to begin with, now felt like a ghost in his hands.