Page 117 of Property of Scar

This is fucking hell!

Chapter Twenty-Six

CALYPSO

The door gives under my shoulder, and I’m already moving before it’s fully open, momentum carrying me through like stopping isn’t an option anymore.

Scar stumbles in my peripheral.

Not like a man losing a fight.

Like something ancient and dangerous has had the power drained from him.

All at once, he drops to the ground.

Like something holding him upright has been cut clean through.

I don’t slow down. I can’t. My body is already sprinting, boots slamming against concrete as I close the distance, my mind scrambling to catch up to what I just saw and failing hard enough it feels like something inside me is starting to come apart.

Vampires don’t go down like that.

They don’t just lose everything in a single second. They don’t go still without a fight, without even a flicker of resistance. Not from a blade. Not from anything that isn’t built specifically to end them—and even then, it doesn’t look like that. It doesn’t look like someone is reaching in and pulling the power out of them entirely.

“Scar!” His name tears out of me as I drop to my knees beside him, the impact jarring through my legs, my hands already on him before I’ve even settled, gripping his shoulders, his chest, anything that feels solid enough to anchor him back to me.

Nothing answers.

No tension.

No reflex.

No sign that he’s even aware I’m here.

My hand slides up to his face, fingers pressing hard along his jaw as I try to force some reaction out of him, like I can drag him back into this just by refusing to let him stay where he is.

“Hey, h-hey!” The words come fast, uneven, tripping over each other as I shake him once, not hard enough to hurt him, just enough to demand something back.

But there is nothing.

My focus snaps to his side, to the place where Mordain’s blade went in, and for a second, everything else drops away as the memory of it hits again—the angle, the precision, the way it slid in too clean to be anything simple.

Alchemist.

Of course, he is.

Of course, this isn’t just a wound.

“What the fuck did you do to him?” I don’t even realize I’ve said it out loud until the words are already gone, my hand pressing harder against his side as I try to feel for something that makes sense, something that tells me what the fuck I’m dealing with.

He isn’t bleeding the way he should be.

He isn’t reacting the way he should be.

He isn’t anything the way he should be.

My pulse spikes harder, panic pushing up under everything else, as it starts filling in the blanks my brain can’t.

This isn’t damage.