Chapter 2: Into the Night

Mara’s boots struck the jagged gravel outside the garage with a brittle crunch, each step reverberating through the taut stillness of the desert night. The air bit at her exposed skin, sharp and arid, carrying the faint tang of rust and decay—a cruel contrast to the sticky warmth of blood trickling down her arm. Behind her, the crumpled bodies of the cultists lay sprawled across the oil-slicked concrete, their black robes pooling like spilled ink, lifeless husks swallowed by shadow. The silence that followed their deaths was suffocating, an oppressive weight that pressed against her chest, unnatural and foreboding, as if the vast, unyielding desert itself held its breath, waiting for the next strike.

Silas moved ahead, his stride resolute and predatory despite the dark, glistening stain seeping through his torn shirt where her silver blade had bitten deep. The wound should’ve slowed him—would’ve dropped a man—but he carried it with a grim indifference, a testament to the centuries etched into his frame. Mara kept her distance, her fingers white-knuckled around the hilt of her knife, it’s cold steel a lifeline amid the chaos swirling in her mind. Vampire or not, he’d saved her back there, his fangs tearing through her attackers when he could’ve left her to bleed out. That gnawed at her, a splinter of doubt lodged beneath her iron resolve. Trust wasn’t an option—not for a creature like him—but survival demanded she keep him close, at least until the dust settled.

“Move,” he snapped, his voice a harsh whip-crack that sliced through the quiet. He gestured toward her Chevy, a battered relic parked fifty yards away, its chipped blue paint glinting faintly under the moon’s jaundiced glow. “They’ll have backup.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” she demanded, her boots pounding the gravel as she jogged to match his pace. Pain flared in her arm, a searing pulse where the cultist’s dagger had carved a ragged gash, the makeshift bandage—a scrap of Silas’s shirt—already sodden and clinging to her skin like a leech. Her breath hitched, but she swallowed it down, her soldier’s discipline clamping over the ache.

“Later.” His reply was curt, clipped, his storm-gray eyes flicking across the horizon, scanning the endless sea of dunes and skeletal scrub with a predator’s vigilance. “Keys?”

She dug into her pocket, the metal jangling faintly as she fished out the ring, her blood-smeared fingers trembling—not from fear, but from the adrenaline still sizzling through her veins. She tossed them toward him, a sharp arc through the dark. “You’re not driving my car.”

He snatched them midair with a fluid grace that made her stomach twist, his smirk flashing like a blade in the moonlight—cocky, infuriating. “You’re bleeding out. I’m faster.”

“Bullshit—” she started, her voice rising, but a low, guttural rumble swallowed her protest. Headlights blazed to life in the distance, twin sets piercing the velvet black, slicing through the night with relentless intent. Her gut plummeted, a cold fist of dread tightening around her ribs. They were too close, too fast. “Fine. Go.”

Silas slid into the driver’s seat with a proprietary ease that rankled her, as if the Chevy’s worn leather and dented frame belonged to him by right. The engine roared awake, a throaty growl that vibrated through the chassis, and Mara vaulted into the passenger side, her boots scraping the floorboard as she yanked the door shut. The car lurched forward with a savage jolt, tires spitting gravel in a furious spray, and she braced herself against the cracked dashboard, her good hand clawing at the door’s rusted handle. Silas drove like a man possessed, his hands deft and unyielding on the wheel, weaving the Chevy through the graveyard of abandoned cars that ringed his garage—rusted hulks of Fords and Chevelles, their hollow shells glinting like forgotten tombstones under the headlights’ glare.

The pursuing lights swelled behind them, merciless and blinding, their beams clawing through the dust-choked air. Mara twisted in her seat, her spine protesting, and peered back through the cracked rear window. Two black SUVs loomed, sleek and predatory, no plates to mark them—just anonymous machines of death, gaining ground with every heartbeat. Her pulse thudded in her ears, a war drum drowning out the engine’s snarl.

“Friends of yours?” she asked, her voice edged with a brittle sarcasm she couldn’t suppress, though her eyes stayed glued to the rearview mirror, tracking the relentless advance.

“Hardly.” Silas downshifted with a harsh grind, the Chevy shuddering as he wrenched it into a hard left onto the highway. “They’re after my blood. Literally.”

“Cultists, huh?” She snorted, a sharp, derisive sound, but her gaze didn’t waver from the mirror. The lead SUV slammed an old pickup aside with a bone-rattling crash, the truck’s frame crumpling like tinfoil under the assault. Her stomach tightened. Whatever they were, they weren’t playing. “What’s their deal?”

“Old grudges. Older gods.” His jaw clenched, a muscle ticking beneath the stubble, his hands steady as stone on the wheel despite the chaos unfolding behind them. “Hold on.”

The highway unfurled ahead, a desolate ribbon of cracked asphalt swallowed by the inky void, flanked by dunes that loomed like silent sentinels and scrub that clawed at the edges like desperate fingers. Silas floored it, the speedometer’s needle trembling past ninety, the engine screaming its defiance into the night. But the SUVs matched them, their engines snarling with a guttural fury that seemed to shake the earth itself, closing the gap with a predator’s unerring

precision. Mara yanked her backup pistol—a snub-nosed .38, scratched and battered from years at her ankle—from its holster, her fingers slick with sweat and blood as she fumbled the grip. She rolled down the window, and the wind blasted her face, a frigid howl that tore at her dark hair and stung her eyes with grit.