Chapter Two: The Night They Found Me

Evangeline bolted upright, her breath caught in her throat, sweat slicking her skin despite the chilled air, the dream clinging to her like smoke.

Her hand went instinctively to her wrist, the place where, in the dream, teeth had broken flesh. The scar was still there, faint and crescent-shaped, hiding beneath layers of time and denial.

It's been five years, but it still felt like yesterday.

She blinked away the haze and took in her surroundings. In the dim, sterile lighting, all that surrounded her in her cluttered office, smelling of disinfectant and old paper, were papers and filling cabinets. She leaned back on her stiff leather chair as she recovered her equilibrium. She must have fallen asleep at her desk again, surgical charts spread out around her like a paper nest.

Her hair, a long, dark cascade of waves now, fell into her face, and she brushed it back, groaning softly. It had grown unruly since she stopped trying to control it, a silky storm of ink that tumbled down past her shoulders. She looked different than she had back then. Sharper, in every sense, as her cheekbones were more defined, her curves more filled in, her presence more commanding. Some said it was confidence, others said she had become intimidating, but she really didn’t mind either opinion.

Suddenly, her phone buzzed sharply, the notification bringing her back to earth.

            'EMERGENCY: OR 2 – Subdural hematoma.

                         ETA: 3 min.'

The message blinked on the screen like a siren, and she didn’t hesitate as she sprang out of the office after composing herself.

---

The operating room came alive under her touch.

Flooded with cold light and the soft whirl of machines, the space bent to her presence like the world itself had learned to follow her lead. Dressed in navy scrubs and latex gloves, Evangeline hovered over the table with scalpel in hand, her every motion clean, practiced, and mercilessly precise.

The man on the table was in his thirties, trauma victim from a construction site. He was found unconscious with a skull fracture and was bleeding fast.

“Scalpel,” she said, her voice low, calm, cutting through the sterile air.

Nurse Calder handed her the instrument. He was one of the few who never flinched under her gaze, and her very helpful assistant. Though he was three years older, he really didn't mind her tone as he had testified her prowess.

Her gray eyes then flicked to the screen, narrowing slightly on discovering that the pressure inside the skull was rising.

She moved with brutal efficiency, making the incision along the side of the scalp, pulling back layers of tissue like she was opening a locked door. Bone drill next, then the Dura was sliced, revealing the brain which had been pulsed beneath it.

“You’re going to make it,” she whispered under her breath - not to the team, not to the room. To the unconscious man beneath her. “You don’t get to quit today.”

And he didn’t.

The bleeding was soon stopped as she managed the swelling. She then closed the wound, fingers moving in a rhythm she’d honed over a thousand sleepless nights.

Fifteen minutes later, she stripped off her gloves and mask, exhaling only when she was alone.

---

Outside the OR, the hospital felt like it always did in the middle of the night - a bit hunted but humming.

Monitors beeped softly behind closed curtains, and carts rattled as nurses moved between rooms. Somewhere down the hall, someone wept into a paper cup of vending machine coffee.

Evangeline walked slowly, her wavy hair damp with perspiration at the temples, loose strands clinging to her neck. She was no longer the wide-eyed prodigy she’d once been. She had grown into something far more formidable - a woman of intellect, elegance, and unapologetic authority.

Her figure was now wrapped in a fitted black jacket now, sleeves rolled to the elbows, the flash of her scar peeking beneath her left wrist like a secret that refused to be forgotten.

She headed toward the elevator, only to be intercepted by a familiar figure leaning against the wall like he was posing for a magazine cover.

It was Dr. Gavin Thorne... One of her several suitors.

“Your legend grows,” he said with a lopsided grin. “Fifteen-minute brain surgery. You’re going to make the rest of us look bad.”

“Only if you’re slow,” she replied, brushing past him."

Come on, Evangeline." He followed, as always. “Just one drink. I swear I won’t talk about myself for more than thirty percent of it.”

She pressed the elevator button without glancing at him.

“I’ve just spent the last hour covered in someone’s blood. Can this wait?”

“Fair enough." He held up his hands, mock-wounded. "But I’m holding out hope. You know where to find me.”

And with that, he peeled off toward the nurses’ station, still wearing that confident smirk.

She stepped into the elevator and hit the button for P2.

---

The underground parking garage welcomed her like a mausoleum. It stank of rust, oil, and the kind of silence that wasn’t silence at all... more like something watching from the dark, and holding its breath.

Only a few cars remained, scattered like carcasses across the concrete expanse. Fluorescent lights overhead buzzed and blinked in unnatural rhythm, casting flickering, skeletal shadows between the support columns. Her Lexus sat in the far corner, ghost-gray beneath the dim lighting, its polished frame oddly funereal.

Evangeline moved toward it, heels echoing with unnatural clarity

Click… Click… Click…

Suddenly, the air changed, pressing in around her like a closing fist, heavy and cold, thick with something wrong. The oxygen felt… old, like it had been tainted.

Her skin then prickled in alarm, her breath caught, as there came the whisper of movement.

Not footsteps, just the slither of something slick moving too fast, too quietly, and she turned.

Far down the aisle, past the last row of cars, one of the overhead lights flickered once, then again, and then it died.

The darkness there grew dense, as if light itself was afraid to touch it.

And from that black - they came.

Three figures stepped forward, slow and deliberate.

They didn’t walk, they drifted, towards her.

Their forms were stretched and warped, as if someone had taken human bodies and pulled them like taffy, underneath black hooded robes. Thier limbs were too long, and shoulders were too narrow, laced with spines that arched with unnatural elegance. Their skin was the color of grave mold - shiny, tight, and waxen - barely clinging to the bones beneath.

Their faces were worse.

Sunken sockets burned with ember-red light. Eyes too deep, too small. Their jaws hung slack, long as a snake’s, lined with rows of jagged black fangs.

Evangeline then froze, the blood draining from her face, as she beheld the demons not brave enough to move.

The tallest one craned its head at a nauseating angle, like a bird dissecting prey, as it sized her up. Its voice, not spoken, crawled into her ears.

“We've finally found you, Chosen One.”

Evangeline’s throat closed on hearing this. “W–what are you?”

The thing’s mouth curled back, revealing its fangs in a grotesque parody of a grin.

"Forgive me for my mannerlessness, Chosen One. I'm Commander Malik, and with me are my associates, Skarra and Nyra. We are Servants of the Veil.”

It then lifted a hand, with a slow, theatrical flourish. The fingers were long and jointless, ending in claws that shimmered wetly in the dim light - glinting like the edge of rusted bone.

“Our king sent us,” Malik rasped, voice dripping malice, “to drag you screaming into the eternal darkness… after we rip out your heart.”

Behind him, the other two hissed in unison—low and layered, like wind howling through a forest of bones. The sound echoed through the garage, vibrating through the concrete and gnawing at her spine.

Evangeline stepped back, breath trembling, shaking her head in disbelief. Her back brushed cold metal - the side of a parked vehicle - and still her mind refused to comprehend what she was seeing.

“You shouldn’t exist,” she whispered. “Vampires shouldn’t exist.”

At that word - vampires - everything stopped.

The tallest demon froze mid-step, its head jerking up like it’d been struck. The second hissed sharply and snarled. But it was the third - the smaller, sinewy one with long, matted tendrils of black hair and skeletal features that barely clung to femininity - who visibly recoiled as if slapped.

The pause stretched… and then exploded.

“Vampires?!” the female demon shrieked, voice distorted with fury. “You dare speak that name in our presence?!”

The tallest one’s jaw clenched, its molten-red eyes glowing hotter, as it took a step forward.

“Those parasitic hybrids of Cain? Those soft-skinned blood-drinkers who weep in moonlight? Do not insult us with such comparisons, mortal.”

The second demon spat on the ground, the black slime sizzling against the floor, before continuing.

“We are demons. Born of ash and flame, forged in the original night. They are shadows. We are the abyss. Even in Hell, we are feared.”

Evangeline squared her jaw despite the tremble in her limbs.

“Doesn’t matter. Vampire or demon… you all crawl out of the same pit.” Her voice was raw but steady.

For a moment, there was silence.

Then the demoness let out an enraged, animalistic screech that reverberated through the garage like shattering glass. Her body twitched, her claws extending with a sickening snap, and her legs bent backward like a spider preparing to pounce.

“You filthy little breathbag! I will tear out your tongue for that!”

And with a shriek of vengeance, she lunged at Evangeline.