Morning clawed its way through the blinds, dragging the smell of rain and smoke with it.
Max hadn’t slept. She sat cross-legged on the floor, laptop balanced on her knees, half-empty mug of coffee beside her. The cursor blinked at the top of the screen:
> Subject: Detective Lucian Michaels
She rubbed her eyes and started typing, fingers stiff from too many hours of digging through public records and police databases that weren’t meant to be open at three in the morning.
Nothing.
No birth certificate.
No service record before eight years ago.
No paper trail leading to a family, an address, a goddamn anything.
Lucian Michaels didn’t exist.
She exhaled, long and shaky. “What the hell are you, Lucian?”
A knock rattled the apartment door. Three sharp, deliberate taps.
Her stomach dropped. Nobody knocked here.
She crept to the peephole.
Empty hallway.
When she opened the door, a single envelope waited on the floor—black, edges damp from the rain. No name. No stamp. Just a smear of crimson sealing wax pressed with a symbol that looked like two fangs crossed through a circle.
Her pulse spiked. She brought it inside, tearing the seal carefully.
Inside was a photo.
Lucian.
Standing in that same alley last night, blood on his hands, eyes glowing silver. The image was grainy, but the expression—cold, vicious—was unmistakable.
A note was scrawled across the back in neat, precise ink:
> He isn’t what you think.
He’s what we made.
Max dropped the photo. Her hands shook as she picked up her phone, scrolling to the number she’d saved the night before.
> You need to talk to me. Now.
She sent it. Waited.
Nothing.
Then, after a full minute:
> Don’t text me again. You’re already being watched.
Her chest tightened. She typed fast.
> By who?
> Everyone.
That was it. No follow-up, no explanation.
Max stood, pacing. The words what we made burned in her mind. She’d spent years digging into corruption, into disappearances, into stories that cost people their lives—but this felt different. This felt personal.
She opened her notebook, flipping to the page labeled South Sector – Missing Persons.
Every name had a pattern: small-time dealers, trafficking witnesses, unregistered citizens. All gone within the last six months. All cases closed under Detective Lucian Michaels.
Her breath caught.
Either he was covering something up—
or he was cleaning up after something worse.
Lightning flashed through the window, and for a heartbeat she thought she saw movement on the rooftop across the street—just a flicker, a shape too still to be human.
She grabbed her camera, zoomed in—nothing. Just rain and concrete.
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the moment she’d opened that envelope, the rules had changed.
Whatever Lucian was hiding, the city wanted it buried.
And she was already digging the grave open.
YOU ARE READING
Code Red
VampireThey call me Detective Michaels. The city's boogeyman with a badge. Every bastard dealing flesh or poison knows my name, and they damn well should - because when I come knocking, I don't leave survivors. But here's the thing nobody knows - I'm not h...
