Most of the city had already turned on her by the time the sun rose. The cool night air carried the faint stench of garbage and fear as Nyoka huddled in the shadows, her heart pounding in her ears like a distant drum.

She wasn't even in Uptown when the murder happened. The taste of iron still lingered in her mouth from her earlier fight, her shoulder throbbing where a feral had claws into her flesh. She'd knocked down Dex's apartment door and helped with the repairs to prove her alibi. But none of that ever mattered.

Blackwell lost one of their own: Lydia. Some young pretty socialite the media was spinning as having a bright future ahead of her. Nyoka scoffed quietly, the sound lost in the wind. The streets whispered about how Lydia had a habit of drinking blood from the drug addicts downtown for a blood-high. Who killed her was anyone's guess.

The blood trail Nyoka tried to investigate herself was clean. Too clean. Even her Aunties—who usually heard everything before the city did—couldn't pin down a name. Yet that never stopped the hunger of the affluent on both sides to pass the blame.

Nyoka didn't run the second the news reached her. But she sure as hell laid low. For the first time in months, she didn't patrol or top-up her blood bags from the free clinic. All she could do was keep to the hollow of the basement unit she called home, flipping through her burner phone contacts for a solution. Everyone would be hunting her soon enough, and there was only one expert in Philly who understood blood: the hemomancer.

Never in her life did she believe she'd reach out to one. Yet here she was.

Nyoka picked the meeting place at a collapsed rec center tucked between the backs of three row houses off Cecil B. Moore. She used to hide there as a kid to avoid overtly concerned adults whenever her mom's friends worked longer nights. The broken windows and scorched door frames reminded her fondly of her first encounters with ferals as a fledgling hunter.

Placing the plastic neck of her squeezable apple sauce pouch to her lips, she sucked on it quietly as she leaned against the graffitied wall with her shoulders hunched. The jacket swallowed up her frame, hiding the shorts and athletic top worn underneath. Her brown eyes peeked at the doors from under her hood every so often. Every time headlights swept too close, her hand twitched toward her blade.

At the first crunch of gravel, Nyoka jumped then freed her blade. The katana blade glinted underneath the moonlight streaming through a crack in the ceiling, casting silver patterns across the floor.

As her eyes focused on the approaching figure, Nyoka's adrenaline tapered off. Relief replaced the blood pumping in her ears as the tell-tale signs of blood magic filled her lungs—a coppery tang with hints of power that made her vampire blood sing in recognition.

“Thanks,” she tested the word on her tongue before sliding her blade awkwardly in its sheath underneath the heavy coat. The expression of gratitude left her voice dry. “I thought you'd skip. Can't imagine this was high on your to-do list...” Nyoka trailed off with a sweeping gesture of one of her gloved hands, indicating the dilapidated surroundings.