CHAPTER 1: The Midnight Knock
The jukebox was mid-chorus on a Haggard track when the heavy oak doors of the Steel Haven swung wide, letting in a swirl of November sleet and a ghost. We were fifteen men deep at the bar, a sea of black leather and graying whiskers, but the room went stone-quiet before the door even clicked shut. It wasn’t the cold that chilled us; it was the sight of the small, trembling boy clutching a frayed nylon leash like it was a lifeline to the world of the living.
Beside the boy stood a creature that looked like he’d been through a war and lost every battle but the last one. He was a Pitbull mix, his coat the color of wet pavement, mapped with the white lines of old scars. His paws were raw, leaving dark, blooming stains on our floorboards with every heavy step. He didn’t cower; he planted himself in front of the kid, his chest broad and shaking, and let out a low, vibrating growl that hummed in the floorboards beneath my boots.
I didn’t move fast—you don’t move fast around a dog that’s decided he’s the only thing standing between a child and the dark. I slowly lowered my six-foot frame until I was eye-level with the boy’s soaked sneakers, keeping my palms open and visible. I didn’t look at the dog’s eyes; I looked at his tattered ears, listening to the way his breath came in ragged, exhausted hitches.
“You’re okay, big guy,” I said, my voice barely a whisper against the sudden silence of the room. “You done your job. You got him here. We’ll take the watch from here.”
The shift was subtle, but I felt it. The dog’s ears flicked, and the hard tension in his shoulders seemed to evaporate all at once. He let out a sigh so heavy it sounded like a sob, his legs giving way as he collapsed onto the wood. As he went down, he leaned his entire weight against the boy’s shins, and the kid followed him down, burying his small, blue-tinged face into the dog’s scarred neck.
That was when I saw it—the plastic-wrapped note pinned to the boy’s backpack, fluttering like a white flag in the drafty room. I reached out, my fingers trembling more than I’d like to admit, and unpinned the message that would pull us all into a fight we never saw coming.
Next up in Chapter 2: The sound of tires screaming in the parking lot signals that the “monsters” in leather aren’t the ones Leo needs to fear as his uncle arrives with a catchpole and a grudge.
