Illusion
Rain drummed relentlessly on the roof. Its muffled, insistent rhythm sounded like an alarm bell, sending shivers down the spine. Night no longer wrapped the house in a gentle blanket — it lurked in every corner, a wild beast coiling before the leap. Every random rustle made you freeze, grasping at fragments of silence between the beating of the drops.
Anabeth Mous, barely ten years old, listened to the menacing hum, and within it there was no longer the warmth of her mother’s fairy tales or the familiar comfort of home. Through the downpour slipped strange snatches of alien voices. The girl felt as though someone whispered right above her ear, barely grazing her skin with an icy breath. But Beth was not the kind who hid — she always walked toward the darkness to tear its secrets from its grasp by force.
Slipping quietly from the bed, she headed for the stairs. Every movement was a struggle. The old floorboards creaked treacherously beneath her feet, as if trying to keep her in the room or warn her of the danger waiting below. Despite her fear, Beth descended slowly into the gloom. Reaching the foot of the staircase, she peered into the darkness of the hallway and noticed the front door stood ajar.
Beth approached it carefully and looked through the crack — what she saw turned her entire world upside down. Her mother lay on the wet ground, her body motionless, her face calm, yet there was not a trace of peace in that terrifying pose, only a final silence that chilled the blood.
A stranger leaned over the body. He knelt, and in the light of the streetlamp his features blurred so that no matter how she tried, she couldn’t make out his face. But the true horror was his skin, across which thin lines curved, flickering with a bluish glow, as if cold streams from a distant world flowed beneath. He froze, then turned — so slowly that Beth’s breath caught, her own heart pounding too loud. The man raised his head, and his gaze swept over the girl. Sapphire-blue, alien, and sharp as a blade barely grazing the skin. But Beth didn’t step back — she gripped the doorframe, forcing herself to hold his stare. The girl noticed something else in his eyes, something like a deep sorrow: she thought he hadn’t wanted this to happen either.
Then Beth squeezed her eyes shut for a second, and when she opened them, her mother and the stranger were gone. Before her lay only the empty courtyard, where the echo of something irrevocable still lingered.
She woke in a cold sweat and sat bolt upright. She ran trembling hands across her face, trying to wipe away not just moisture but the bitter aftertaste of the nightmare. This memory had haunted her for twenty years. It was as if someone invisible kept replaying the same grim image before her eyes, searing itself into her memory like acid, leaving ever deeper scars. Sometimes she thought that if she just looked closer at the details, the mosaic would assemble itself — but the truth slipped away every time, leaving only the heavy residue of a mystery she could not solve.
“Did you have that dream again?” Adam asked quietly, propping himself up on his elbow. In the dim moonlight his face looked tired, but his eyes held a silent concern.
He knew that for Beth this nightmare was not just a trick of the imagination — it was the only thread that could lead her to the truth.
“I think it will keep coming until I find the answers,” she whispered, staring into the dark, hoping to make out even a hint there.
She threw back the edge of the blanket and rose. Bare feet touched the cool floor.
“Where are you going?” he mumbled, half-asleep.
“Going to work on the case. Can’t sleep anyway,” Beth answered quietly.
She picked up her phone. The screen blinked 3:47 — and several missed calls from her friend. Beth snorted in surprise:
“That’s weird. Kitty called me five times. And I didn’t hear a thing...”
Adam giggled:
“No wonder you didn’t hear, considering what we were up to...”
Beth smiled, remembering the heated evening. The man, seizing on the fact that they were both awake, began persuading her there was no point in reviewing old forensic reports about her mother’s death for the thousandth time. He pulled her back toward him, drawing her into a lovers’ game. Yielding to his argument, Beth returned to bed. Climbing on top of him, she began slowly stripping off Adam’s clothes.
Time dissolved in hot kisses and passionate embraces, and outside the window the sky imperceptibly lightened. They were interrupted only by the insistent buzz of the alarm, pulling them back to the real world. With a sigh, Beth pulled away from her ex-husband’s gentle lips, took a hot shower, drank a cup of coffee, and quickly dressed and stepped outside. Time to head to work, where mysteries more serious than household ghosts and night terrors awaited.
After the prolonged downpour, the summer day turned out damp and raw. On the way to the office, Beth passed Central Square as usual, where the Monument to the Victims of the First Breach rose at its center. A huge stele of black granite, split in two by a jagged strip of frosted glass, served as a reminder of the day the fabric of existence tore at the seams. It had happened just over twenty years ago, in New York. That was when creatures from other dimensions began seeping onto Earth — creatures the public quickly dubbed Arrivals. At the foot of the monument, on slabs bearing the names of the dead, burned an eternal blue flame — a symbol of alien, terrifying energy.
Beth served in the International Bureau of Anomaly Regulation — an autonomous agency created in the wake of those events. IBAR worked in close coordination with international intelligence services but held a special status: field teams deployed to any point on the globe at the first signal, bypassing standard bureaucracy. Her division took only cases where the trail led to aliens — cases in which the usual rules no longer applied.
And there were many cases. Over the years, so many beings had crossed into the human world that their integration had become routine: some differed little from humans, others resembled figures from the most terrifying or beautiful fantasies. Upon an Arrival’s appearance, the Bureau placed it in quarantine, assessed its safety for society, and then gradually introduced it into life on Earth.
Most had accepted their fate and adapted well. Beth saw it every morning: the guy at the coffee kiosk by the subway, the woman at the bakery — short, with pinkish skin and large eyes. Aliens lived and worked side by side with ordinary people, walked the same streets and stood in the same lines.
Among them was Kitty, Beth’s closest friend. At first glance she differed little from an ordinary human: the same proportions, the same lively sparkle in her emerald-green eyes. And yet there was something elusively feline in her movements — as if nature itself had added a few fine strokes to her human form, a reminder that you were looking at not quite an ordinary girl. Kitty’s features were slightly sharp, as if traced with a fine brush, and above her forehead poked neat little ears — sensitive, capable of catching even the whisper of the wind.
Beth arrived at work and took the elevator down to the heart of IBAR. The bureau’s office was housed in an underground bunker — a multi-level complex going deep below the surface, with holding cells for offending Arrivals, sterile medical wards, and cutting-edge laboratories. Business as usual.
The moment she stepped off the elevator on her floor, Beth spotted the chief waiting for her by the doors. Beside him stood a tall, dark-haired man with light stubble. His eyes struck with a piercing blue, and his posture radiated a rigid military discipline.
“Anabeth, meet your new partner,” the chief nodded toward the stranger as she approached. “David Strant. Introduce him to the team and bring him up to speed on current cases.”
The fifth in a few months. After Anthony’s death — the man with whom she had shared this obsession for five long years, from her very first day at the Bureau — Beth seemed to have lost control. Hunting terrifying creatures that looked like they’d crawled out of horror films was work for fanatics, and Beth threw herself into it with blind passion. Her new pace had become unbearable for newcomers: they bailed before lunch. She barreled forward stubbornly, even though she knew full well that in their line of work a reliable partner was not just insurance against death but a strong shoulder that could hold you back from the brink of madness when chaos reigned.
Beth turned to welcome her new colleague, but the words caught in her throat. The gaze of those piercing blue eyes made her freeze. Something in that color stirred at the very bottom of her memory — familiar but elusive, like a fragment of a dream you can’t grasp after waking. Beth felt herself sinking into that blue, as if into a mysterious, bottomless ocean. She reached out her hand — and only then realized she’d been staring too long. She smiled:
“Hello, David. Welcome to the division.”
David returned a firm handshake, and from that fleeting touch warmth spread through her body — strange, familiar, as if she’d held this hand before. His gaze remained steady — he didn’t seem to have noticed her momentary lapse.
“Hello, Anabeth.”
She corrected gently:
“Just Beth. Almost no one calls me by my full name.”
“All right, Beth. I’ve been briefed a bit on the specifics of your work, so I’m ready to hit the ground running.”
They walked into the office. The room was fairly large: one part was taken up by workstations and advanced equipment, another was allocated to Joseph and Kevin for their inventing activities, and in the back nestled a break area with a soft couch, a fridge, and a coffee machine.
Beth set about introducing the newcomer to the team. She nodded toward a desk piled with sensors, half-disassembled devices, and spare parts:
“This is Kevin, our field medic, sort of. Though really, he’s our jack-of-all-trades. He and Joseph are always coming up with new tools and modifying gear so we can at least put up a fight against creatures from the other world when we’re out in the field. Oh, and he firmly believes he’s the funniest guy in the division. Truth is, the only one laughing at his jokes is himself.”
From behind the nearest monitor popped a young Asian man. He gave the newcomer a quick once-over and winked cheerfully:
“Hey. Welcome to the madhouse. Hope you last longer than Beth’s last few partners. They bailed before lunch.”
Beth shot her colleague a murderous look, but David didn’t ignore the challenge. He walked over to the guy’s desk and extended his hand:
“I’m afraid I’ll be in your madhouse for a long time. So get used to it,” he replied calmly, meeting the guy’s gaze head-on.
Kevin froze for a second, clearly not expecting such cool confidence, then let out a short laugh, accepting the volley:
“Nice! Beth, I already like this one.”
Beth gave an ironic nod and led David to the workstation across the room, where Joseph, the senior analyst, sat before a huge wall map covered in markers.
The older Black man studied them with a gaze that held years of weariness and a rare, almost predatory sharpness. Each mark behind him represented a Breach. In twenty years, exactly forty had appeared across the entire planet — forty bleeding cracks in the fabric of earthly existence, monitored continuously by intelligence agencies of various countries.
David stepped closer. Joseph shook his hand firmly:
“Welcome, David.”
He narrowed his eyes slightly, shifting his gaze from the newcomer to Beth, and added:
“Brace yourself. This girl is hard to keep up with.”
David smiled restrainedly and glanced at his new partner with interest. From the outside, she looked nothing like a terror of monsters. A small, slender, blue-eyed blonde, she could have passed for a young intern rather than a veteran of clashes with Arrivals.
They’d barely finished welcoming the new guy when Emily glided into the office — the chief’s young and striking secretary. She moved with a coquettish languor, knowing full well that every gaze in the room would immediately fix on her.
The only hint of seriousness about her appearance was the folder clutched in her manicured hands — a quiet herald of yet another investigation.
Emily set the documents on the desk a little louder than necessary and, without taking her eyes off the handsome new guy, tilted her head slightly. She was assessing whether he could survive the whirlwind of this place — and at the same time making it clear that David had caught her eye. Then she slipped out just as smoothly.
For a split second, a faint trail of her perfume hung in the air. It briefly overpowered the usual office smells of archival paper, strong coffee, and medical antiseptic — like a false note in a long-familiar melody.
Silence settled over the room. The folder lay on the desk — unremarkable, concealing inside it yet another mystery. David glanced at it as if expecting it to open on its own and release its terrible secrets.
Beth stepped forward and picked up the documents.
“What’ve we got?” she asked curtly, addressing the plastic cover rather than anyone present.
There was no impatience in her voice — only readiness to take on a new task. Her slender fingers slid across the rough surface, and the moment she opened the file, Beth was paralyzed. It was as if an icy vortex had swept through the room, locking every muscle and every nerve. On the very first page lay a photo of her best friend, Kitty. She had been found as a child among alien sidewalks after another Breach — tiny, shivering with cold. A couple of scientists who worked with Beth’s grandfather had been sent to the site, and instead of taking her to a lab, they took the girl home with them, giving her a home and love. From then on, Beth and Kitty were inseparable. Their friendship was built on a deep understanding that being “different” was not a sentence but simply a different road — and that walking it was far easier when you had a true friend beside you.
And now, on the forensic photograph, lay that same little girl, grown up and become closer to Beth than a sister. Beth clung to the details, hoping to find a flaw, an absurd mistake, a different face beneath the familiar mask. But no — in those slightly sharp features, her friend was unmistakably recognizable. The same girl who laughed until she cried when something was funny, or hid her trembling hands when she was scared, but still stepped forward, because you don’t abandon the people you love.
Her heart stopped, then began beating heavily and dully, pounding in her ears with an uneven rhythm. The ground dropped from under her feet, and she nearly fell, but David reacted instantly — catching her firmly by the elbow. Beth glanced at her partner, pulled herself together, and began reading the dry lines of the operational report.
Local police had cordoned off the area, conducted a preliminary sweep of the scene, and forwarded the case to IBAR. The records stated that the victim had been found behind the Gray Fox club, where Kitty worked as a waitress. The description of the crime scene resembled a slaughterhouse and would have made even seasoned investigators shudder. The body was discovered in a blind alley right behind the establishment — the entire dead end had turned into hell: brick walls were splattered with blood all the way to the top, and beneath the crumpled corpse the asphalt was coated with a thick, gruesome crust.
After examining the site, no one was thinking about human cruelty or animal rage — there was no doubt: this was the work of a dangerous Arrival. Deep claw marks marred the girl’s skin, and tooth impressions were visible in the wounds. The victim was missing only the liver and the heart — they had been gnawed straight out of the body. Around the perimeter of the cordoned-off alley lay scraps of a dress, torn to shreds and mixed with mud and fragments of flesh.
As Beth read through the lines, images of Kitty kept flashing before her eyes. All those little things that had made their friendship so strong.
A cold emptiness was spreading through her chest — like a shard of ice you can’t pull out without cutting yourself even deeper. But alongside that pain, another feeling was growing: fierce and uncompromising. Beth raised her head and addressed her colleagues:
“This isn’t a routine investigation. This is personal. And none of us is going home until we find whoever did this.”
Beth pulled up the forensic photographs on the big screen, and Kevin, who had been absently fiddling with some sensor, jerked forward. His playful grin vanished instantly, and his face went pale as his eyes swept across the screen.
“Oh God... Beth...” His voice lost all its former lightness. “That’s Kitty. We all got together just last week, she said she’d found a new job. She was so happy about the tips...”
Joseph rose from his chair and stepped closer to the screen, studying the gruesome photographs. He clenched his fists and muttered through his teeth:
“What a horror... What kind of monster could do this...”
Then he looked at Beth, gently put his arm around her shoulders, and said quietly:
“Hold on, girl. I know how close you two were, and I’m so sorry for your loss.
Don’t worry — we’ll turn everything upside down, but we’ll find this thing.”
Beth thanked her colleagues for their support, then briefly brought everyone up to speed. There were no notes of hysteria in her voice — she kept acting with complete professionalism to see this case through to the end without letting emotions get in the way.
Once she’d relayed all the details, Beth turned to David and all but commanded:
“All right, we’re going to the Gray Fox. We’ll examine the crime scene. Maybe the police missed something.”
They left the office and headed to the parking lot. Twenty minutes later, Beth pulled into the back lot behind the Gray Fox. As they approached the alley behind the club, a heavy stench hit her nose — the smell of last night’s downpour mixed with the metallic tang of dried blood that settled on the tongue and seeped into clothing. Even in the half-light, the brick walls were visibly covered in ugly streaks all the way to the top. The rain had washed away some of the evidence, but the asphalt beneath their feet still gleamed with a crimson sheen. In the puddles floated dirty scraps of fabric — what was left of Kitty’s dress after the enraged creature had gotten to her flesh.
David hung back a little, scanning the surroundings: neighboring rooftops, fire escapes, dark alcoves. His gaze swept across the shadows as if searching for something that might leap from above or creep up from behind, appearing where it was least expected. Beth, meanwhile, examined the wet asphalt, missing not a crack, not a speck, not the faintest impression. Her movements were precise, almost mechanical. Not far from where the body had been found, something glinted beneath a rusted storm drain grate — a thin, stubborn glint that clung to the meager rays of sun, refusing to dissolve in the gloom.
The officers who had responded to the call had barely glanced at this corner and walked right past — dismissed it as ordinary trash, just another silent casualty of the city. But Beth trusted her intuition, because in her world there was no such thing as coincidence, and every tiny detail could be the key.
She dropped to one knee and pulled the find from where it was wedged between the bars. The thick paper was cold to the touch — as if it had absorbed the night’s chill and the fear of whoever had dropped it. On its surface was a cunning, almost hypnotic pattern — an interlacing of silver lightning. And in the center of the card, a single word embossed in foil: “Illusion.”
It shimmered in the uneven light, carrying a hidden message that beckoned you to look deeper. Beth stared at it, and a chill crept slowly up her spine, drawing her shoulder blades into a tight knot. Her instincts told her this word was somehow connected to her friend’s death. All that remained was to understand how. Beth carefully tucked the card away and moved on to other evidence.
After examining the crime scene and conducting a preliminary interview of the staff, Beth and David went inside the establishment and settled in to review the security camera footage. For about an hour they scrutinized the dim frames. The moment of the attack itself was nowhere on the tape — as if the night had deliberately erased that moment, hiding it in the cameras’ blind spot.
But suddenly David squinted and jabbed a finger at the glowing screen:
“Look. There he is. Again.”
Beth gripped the edge of the desk and peered intently at the display: in every recording, the same figure had been following Kitty. He glided along the boundary of light and shadow, a walking nightmare — relentless, unnoticed by those around him. His gaze was obsessive — it clung to the victim even through the screen, locking onto her with a death grip. Men had always been drawn to Kitty’s wild grace, like moths to a flame. But this one wasn’t driven by lust — his eyes held the focus of a predator, and his smile looked like a wax cast. Beth felt everything inside her go cold with revulsion.
She clicked the mouse and printed a freeze-frame. The shot came out blurry, but the general outlines were still recognizable. Beth went around the Gray Fox staff again, showing the printout. Bartenders and waitresses shook their heads — no one remembered this man.
After that, Beth drove to the morgue to pick up the autopsy report and see her friend one last time. David wanted to go with her and had already reached for the car door handle, but she shook her head:
“Stay here. I need a minute alone with her. Just a minute.”
David hesitated, looking at her, then nodded in understanding and withdrew his hand:
“I’ll be waiting by the entrance. If you need me — I’m right here.”
The morgue greeted Beth with sterile cold and the quiet hum of ventilation. Behind the desk sat the duty pathologist — a middle-aged man with tired eyes and a neat graying beard. His badge read: “Henry.” He looked up at her.
“You’re here about Kitty Rice?” he asked.
Beth nodded, clenching her fists in her jacket pockets. Her fingers cramped from tension, and her body desperately fought to hold back the emotions threatening to tear free.
“Yes. I need the autopsy results. And... I want to see her.”
The man paused a moment, assessing her condition, and said quietly:
“I understand. Hang in there, agent.”
He led Beth into a small room. On a steel gurney lay a body covered with a white sheet. The girl closed her eyes, fighting the lump rising in her throat that threatened to rob her of her voice, her composure, and her very right to be here and see this through to the end. Then she resolutely pulled back the edge of the sheet.
Kitty’s lifeless features were surprisingly calm — as if death had finally lifted the eternal vigilance of an alien. Beth gently stroked her cold hair and quietly promised:
“I’ll find whoever did this.”
Back in the corridor, she forced herself to switch to working mode, putting on her familiar mask of cool composure. Her gaze sharpened. She looked at the pathologist:
“Tell me everything. Even what seems strange.”
Henry opened the folder and spoke in an even, dispassionate tone:
“The claw marks on the body are superficial — it seems the victim was merely restrained, kept from escaping. The heart and liver are missing. The nature of the wounds clearly indicates the work of some large predatory animal... or a dangerous Arrival. The organs were literally ripped out with monstrous force.”
Beth listened, and when the doctor finished, she said quietly:
“Thank you. You’ve been very helpful. Please transfer the materials to me.”
Stepping outside, Beth spotted David immediately — he was standing by the doors, leaning against a brick wall. He hadn’t left. Hadn’t come in. Just waited.
Noticing his partner, the man straightened and asked quietly:
“Well?”
She just exhaled, pulling her jacket tighter:
“Just confirmed the preliminary findings. A typical aggressive Arrival. So we’re heading back to headquarters.”
In the car, they were silent. Beth stared straight ahead, David asked no questions. Wet facades flashed past the windows, and the silence between them was not awkward but working — two people who already understood each other without words.
They returned to the division and plunged back into the materials. Beth reread the report lines several more times, and with each minute a strange feeling grew in her chest — that she had seen these details before. After a few minutes, the girl abruptly rose from her desk and headed for the archive.
Among the endless shelves and faded folders reeking of dust and other people’s secrets, Beth searched for a lead. Finally, her hands landed on an old case file fifteen years old, transferred at some point from the French branch of the Bureau. The yellowed pages rustled under her fingers.
The reports described how a quiet French town had been rocked by a series of three brutal murders. All victims had been torn apart exactly like Kitty, with an interval of just three to four days between attacks. The creature was named “Dankor” — for its round mouth lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth. Fifteen years ago, the specimen had been captured and studied with great difficulty. It turned out that outside its hunting cycle, Dankors were perfect mimics. Their internal structure was so close to human that even advanced medical scanners couldn’t tell the difference. The monster could dissolve into a crowd for years, posing as a friendly neighbor or colleague, and no one around suspected what alien logic governed that body.
But once every fifteen years, a gruesome biological timer triggered inside it: the Dankor’s flesh began to rapidly rot from within. The price of survival was cruel — it needed to consume three hearts and three livers. Ordinary humans or anatomically similar Arrivals would both do. Only this payment could slow the decay that was devouring it.
Leaving the archive, Beth stepped off the elevator, rubbing her tired eyes, and suddenly noticed David fussing around Emily’s desk while Emily beamed and orbited him. The girl walked over and snapped more sharply than necessary:
“Strant, don’t you have work to do?”
David looked flustered and began explaining that Emily had asked him to help with the printer — it had suddenly stopped working. Beth silently leaned down, picked up the cable lying under the desk, and plugged it into the computer. The printer came to life.
“I fixed the problem.”
She turned and walked toward the office. David quickly followed.
The door closed behind them. Beth spread the documents she’d found across the desk and told David in detail everything she’d managed to learn. Now they both understood clearly: the predator had to be stopped before its next strike. But how to pick up its trail? Kitty had been killed two days ago — there wasn’t much time before the next kill, and solid leads were still nowhere to be found.
With stubbornness bordering on obsession, the partners kept searching for any thread they could pull, before the monster could strike again and dissolve into the city’s flow for another fifteen years.
Beth’s gaze drifted to the card found at the Gray Fox. She picked it up and turned it thoughtfully in her hands. The silver lightning pattern glimmered even in the dim light of the desk lamp. Typing the name into a search, Beth quickly found the establishment’s address and looked up at David:
“We need to go there after all.”
Illusion turned out to be a place where alien fantasies took on flesh. There was no familiar darkness here — soft washes of light drifted along the walls, and a quiet hum of anticipation hung in the air. Patrons didn’t come for drinks or dancing. They came for what they couldn’t get in reality: any role, any scenario, any night — all of it made tangible, down to the last detail. The setting itself blurred the line between the permitted and the forbidden, between dream and waking.
Illusion was run by an Arrival named Krais — a short, dark-haired man with brown eyes that held an ancient weariness and a sharp, keen mind. The only thing that set him apart from ordinary people was his skin — very pale, almost translucent, through which thin bluish veins were visible. His clothes seemed weightless, as if they didn’t cover his figure but were an extension of it. Krais’s gaze showed neither alarm nor hostility — only the habitual wariness of someone who balanced on the edge every day.
Working alongside Krais were five girls from the same dimension. All unnaturally fair-skinned, with long hair the color of first snow that continuously drifted around their faces, moved by a current of air invisible to the eye but felt on the skin. Their faces were locked in perfect symmetry, their lips beckoning with a crimson fullness, but the main thing was their eyes — irises the color of liquid silver, without familiar human emotions, but with a power that dissolved the will without a trace. Sirens — that’s what they were called.
Their specialty was deep hypnosis. The moment one of them touched a guest’s head, her thin fingers would extend unnaturally, penetrating through the skull directly into the mind. A faint cold glow would flare around the palm — and the person would slip into oblivion. In this state, the mind created images indistinguishable from reality. Physical limitations ceased to exist. Most often, visitors came to live out exactly what they couldn’t say aloud.
David and Beth briefly stated the reason for their visit. Krais hesitated — weighing how much the questioning would shake the fragile peace of his salon. Finally, he gave a barely perceptible nod and called the girls over.
The Sirens obediently, one by one, joined the conversation. As guides, they merely immersed guests in a trance and shared their visions, observing their thoughts from within. Their voices were even, almost indifferent: no, there was nothing openly cruel in the guests’ fantasies.
But Beth’s instinct, sharpened by years of the hunt, immediately caught the falseness. She held her gaze on one of the white-haired girls — the girl was barely containing an inner tremor and kept stubbornly looking away. In that fleeting movement lay more than in any words: she knew something and was desperately afraid to say it aloud.
Beth pulled out the printed freeze-frame and held it out to the witness. The girl barely glanced at it — and tears spilled from her eyes. Her fragile body shook with violent trembling. Through her sobs, the girl confessed: one of the guests she had guided into a trance had, in his fantasies, consumed human organs.
The partners exchanged a glance — the creature’s signature was unmistakable. Fortunately, this guest had paid for his fantasies with a bank card. Reading the transaction data straight from the terminal, the partners left the club. Already in the car, Beth dialed Joseph:
“Joe, we’ve got an account number. Run it.”
It took the analyst a few minutes, and the speaker crackled:
“We have a match. In the human world, the Dankor goes by the name Alex Bloom. Sending the address now.”
Bloom worked as an ordinary schoolteacher — good-natured, smiling, the kind kids adored and parents considered flawless. A loving wife, a cozy home, exemplary domestic tranquility. The perfect facade, behind which hid a monster.
Beth stared at the address on her phone screen. Street, building, apartment — ordinary coordinates of an ordinary life. But behind that door waited a creature that needed to kill one more person. And then — fifteen years of silence.
She started the engine.
