Chapter 1: Chapter 1: The Last Quiet Meal

The holy trinity of a cop’s morning: burnt coffee, sizzling bacon, and the faint, sticky smell of syrup. This diner is my sanctuary, a twenty-minute ceasefire in a long, cold war against paperwork and human stupidity. I took a slow sip of coffee, the bitter heat a familiar comfort. Tom Cochrane was singing about life being a highway on the corner jukebox. I tapped my foot against the booth's support post in time with the familiar beat, a small, ironic smirk touching my lips. For a cop, life wasn’t a highway. It was a ten car pile-up in a shit storm and you forgot an umbrella.

Across from me, Kira Ashwood, my partner and the department's resident optimist, was performing delicate surgery on a BLT. Two years out of the academy and she still had that fire, that unwavering belief that she could actually make a difference. I both admired it and dreaded the day the job would finally extinguish it. It always did.

My personal cell phone buzzed, vibrating against the table with an abrasive rattle. The screen lit up with a name that made my stomach clench. Captain Howard. Of course. The patron saint of ruined lunches and pointless assignments. A man who hadn't walked a beat in fifteen years but was an expert at making life hell for those of us who did. The exasperated sigh that escaped me was a seasoned response to Captain Howard’s call. I let it buzz a second too long out of pure spite.

“You going to get that?” Kira asked, her brow arched, a hint of amusement in her voice. She knew exactly who it was.

“It’s Howard,” I grunted, the name tasting like chalk. I swiped to answer, my voice already flat, a professional mask snapping into place. “Stormson.”

“Finally,” his voice crackled, thin and impatient. “Stop stuffing your face and earn your paycheck. I’ve got a call for you.”

“We’re on our break, Captain,” I said, my eyes drifting to my half-eaten sandwich, another small sacrifice laid upon the altar of his ego.

“Dispatch is busy with actual police work,” he snapped, ignoring my comment. “This is a low-priority welfare check, but the complainant is tying up the lines. I want it handled. 2296 Royal Avenue. Some nutjob screaming about monsters eating his farm animals. Go deal with it.” The line went dead.

Monsters. Right. In Valen, "monsters" was just another word for someone high on a new flavor of bath salts, seeing things that weren't there. A tragedy, but a depressingly familiar one.

Kira had already packed her sandwich away with an efficiency that never failed to impress me. “Monsters?” she asked, a flicker of rookie curiosity in her green eyes. “Was it a full moon last night?”.

“Might as well have been,” I replied, pushing my plate away. The comforting smell of the diner now felt like a taunt. I tossed some cash on the table and slid out of the booth.

On the way to the door, I passed the rotating glass display case by the register. My eyes lingered on the pies inside. Slices of cherry pie with glistening, ruby-red filling sat next to a mountain-berry crumble with a golden, oat-crusted top. I’d promised myself a slice of that crumble. In the reflection on the glass, a tired-looking man stared back. There were dark smudges under his eyes that had become permanent fixtures, and I caught the glint of a new silver hair at my temple. I could probably name the overnight shift that earned me that one. At twenty-six, the job was already leaving its receipts on me. Another pleasure denied, courtesy of Captain Micromanager.

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I glanced over at Kira, who was already holding the door open, her expression patient. A few stubborn strands of her auburn hair had already escaped the tight bun she wrestled it into every morning, framing a face still free of the cynicism that had taken root in mine. The spark in her green eyes was unwavering. I hope, for her sake, it stays that way.

The midday sun hit us like a physical blow as we stepped outside, the heat shimmering in waves off the asphalt. Stepping outside was like flipping a switch. My eyes immediately started their work, a habit burned in so deep I barely noticed it anymore. Left to right. Gas station across the street: two teenagers loitering, no threat. Highway beyond: trucks rattling by, normal. Families piling into SUVs, normal. My eyes snagged on the corner of the lot. A rusted-out Honda parked crookedly. That wasn't normal. A young couple stood beside it, and my cop-brain started ticking through a silent checklist. Worn clothes, gaunt faces, the guy’s limbs twitching with an erratic energy that screamed meth or desperation. The woman’s eyes darted around nervously, a cornered animal looking for an escape route. It was a familiar, grimy scene.

Kira’s quiet voice appeared at my shoulder. “Drug deal?”.

“Or the aftermath,” I murmured. The woman’s gaze met mine, and she flinched as if struck. She muttered something to her partner, and they scrambled into the car, peeling out of the lot with a squeal of worn tires. Just another piece of the city’s mundane misery.

The cruiser felt like an oven as we climbed in. Kira pulled up the address on her phone. “So, adult son, possibly intoxicated,” she read, her voice practical. “Complainant is a Martha Kent.” She looked up from the screen. “I’ll check if Mental Health has a unit available to meet us.”.

“Good luck with that,” I muttered, pulling out onto the street.

The farther we drove from the city, the more the world seemed to change. The drone of traffic faded, replaced by the whisper of wind through the tall pines lining the road. The air itself felt different, clearer, but also heavier. An unnatural stillness began to creep in, the kind of quiet that makes the hair on my arms stand up.

The gravel of the driveway at 2296 Royal crunched under our tires, the sound sharp and alien in the profound silence. The property was a portrait of wrongness. The fences were intact, but the fields were empty. A fresh scattering of feed lay untouched in the troughs, a silent, unsettling testament that no animal had been here for some time. There were no birds. No insects. Nothing.

I killed the engine, and the silence became a physical pressure against my eardrums. I could feel my heart thumping a slow, heavy rhythm against my ribs. This wasn't a crank call.

“This isn’t right,” Kira whispered, her hand already on her holstered weapon.

I nodded, my own hand gripping mine. The air smelled of hay and manure, but underneath it was something else, something sharp and coppery, like a slaughterhouse. We stepped out of the cruiser, our boots grinding on the gravel, the sound an intrusion on the dead quiet.

A noise came from the large barn just ahead of the house.

It was a wet, violent CRUNCH, followed by a low, guttural tearing that belonged to no animal I had ever heard. It was the sound of something large being torn apart. Before the echo faded, my pistol was in my hand, held tight against my chest in a low ready. Beside me, Kira’s was too.