Signs of Portents - Greystone Book One: Greystone, #1

​Prologue One

Eighteen Years Ago

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Freshly fallen leaves lay under her feet. The chill of autumn entered the city quickly, giving no time for transition from the beach lovers to the nature lovers. Not that this was unusual by any means. It was the sound of the leaves that seemed uneasy to her ears. They did not crunch heavily or slide out from under her heel with the slickness of the mid-morning dew. They broke and cracked under her miniscule weight and the additional mass of the doll she carried by the hair in her left hand.

She had named her Lady of all names. Not terribly creative, but it was cute for a four-year-old. The doll had been her companion through many seasons, taking the prerequisite beating any toddler placed on their possessions. A missing eye, patchwork blonde hair, and three busted seams made the doll unique, special, and no less important in the eyes of the child. The girl and her doll looked at each other, listening to the cracking of the leaves.

A strong wind rushed through the air. Brisk October weather paved the way for the snowy November to come. The autumn leaves took to the skies, propelled by the gale above the young girl. They formed a wave of colors which surrounded her and made her smile. It would be a long time before she smiled again.

As the colors continued to brighten before her, as the leaves carried along by the wind swept around her, she realized the bright oranges and nuanced reds were not natural. They were not the autumn leaves that made up piles along the roads to jump in before the city workers could take them away. These leaves were not meant to see the end of the season or be admired for their beauty and color.

These leaves were charred.

The crackling sound overhead emanating from the leaves was the sound of small flames still burning through each one. Lady realized this first, and the girl saw it through the glass eye that hung limply to the doll’s sewn face. If horror could have been written on her patchwork face, it would have, but still she smiled at her owner the same as she always had.

Behind the girl, a van continued to burn. Flames engulfed the tree the vehicle was wrapped around on the side of the large curve at the city limits of a place called Portents. A wall of fire and heavy smoke enveloped the front half of the van. The tree suffered greatly; half of the thick trunk vanished in an instant, a giant matchstick helping spread the destruction.

The young girl stood twenty feet away, unsure of the ordeal and unaware of her role in it. The emergency workers surrounding the scene felt the same. They had roped off the area and attempted to clean up the accident.

Fire crews arrived late because of traffic, but worked to put out the growing flames before they spread to the rest of the woods. Medics found their role to be minimal, another set of witnesses and nothing more. Their only living patient was the young girl standing in the middle of the road with her doll and not a scratch on her.

Attempts had been made to pull her away from the scene. After checking her vitals, everyone had taken a turn to offer her quiet words of comfort and a hand to hold. No words were heard, and no hands were taken. The girl simply stood in place, Lady by her side, while the van quietly burned behind her.

Words continued to be spoken between officers and EMTs who then mingled with the Fire and Rescue teams that arrived on the scene once traffic permitted. Most barely noticed the girl among the wreckage.

She hasn’t said a word. Doesn’t even look at it like it’s there, one of the EMTs said to his compatriot, a balding man with thin-rimmed glasses.

You said her folks were in there? his colleague replied, fixing his glasses to the bridge of his nose.

Looks that way, said the first man. His voice was low, and he turned away from the young girl. Pulled two bodies out. They’ll be lucky to identify them, though.

Road isn’t even slick. Another voice entered the fray, more distant than the others. How fast were they going to do this?

What were they running from?

The first man’s response caught her ear. She doesn’t know yet.

Poor girl.

Their words faded behind the sounds of the sirens and the hoses and the chaos of the bend outside the city limits. They did not matter to the girl. She was lost in the glowing air that sang sweetly along the breeze. Leaves danced before her with a radiance she would never see again in her lifetime. One caught on a crosswind and raced back in the direction it came from.

Following the runaway leaf, she viewed the accident for the first time. The van was unrecognizable from the midsection to the front, a charred memory that would never stick. The leaf fell before her along the street, and her foot stopped its movement when something caught her eye under the singed shell of the van.

Slipping under the caution tape, through the overworked men and women on the scene, the girl moved like a wraith toward the wreck. No one saw her. No one tried to see her. The object was small, curled up tightly near the rear tire of the van. Something pulled her forward. She had to have the object. In that instant, nothing else existed in her universe.

Lady slipped from her grasp in the excitement and found her final resting place among the charred leaves on the road—a third victim of the accident.

The young girl raced faster toward the vehicle, crouching beneath the flaming frame. Her small hand grabbed the object and held it up so she could get a better look. It was cold to the touch, even among the flames of the wreck.

She had never seen the item before in her life. It was small and round, with smooth surfaces on all sides. As she turned it over in her hands with wide eyes of wonderment, she thought something was written on its face. She blinked deeply, passing it off to imagination, and held the object before her once more.

A simple stone of grey.

​​Prologue Two

Four Years Ago

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Greg Loren felt every dip and crack in the pavement through the worn-out soles of his Nikes when he stepped out of the grocery store. The evening traffic coasted off the expressway onto King’s Lane, home to the second-floor apartment he rented. The names of streets, exits, and businesses flashed on signs, billboards, and taxicabs. The signs were the only way he could survive in the city. Even after living in Portents for the last six years, he still found himself turned around through the maze of downtown.

It was designed that way, Beth always said with a smile at seeing his scruffy face round the corner, pouting at running late once again after taking the East End stop of the D line train instead of the East End stop of the A line. The city funneled into downtown like a garden maze, a myriad of dead-end turns and paths. All flowed directly to the shining black tower at the center of the city, never to Loren’s destination of choice.

Let’s move there then. We’d never get lost.

Beth never answered his jests. She tucked another set of maps into his bag or a handwritten note in the pack of smokes he swore would be his last. 

He reached into the grocery bag when he passed the King’s Lane sign at the top of the Knoll and pulled out the latest of the last packs of cigarettes. It fit nicely with the salad ingredients he stopped for earlier to surprise Beth with a healthy meal. He beat the unopened pack squarely against his palm three times, then tore into the wrapper for a break from reality.

It had been another double shift at the precinct. The fourth in a row since the Kindly Killings struck the city. The case landed square at his feet though he imagined it had been inserted somewhere completely inappropriate, because after four days of witness testimony and chasing his tail, Loren swore he walked with a waddle.

That was how it went in Portents. Murder and mayhem reigned supreme. Normality was cracking skulls and pounding pavement to stop it all from spinning out of control when everything around you said differently.

Thankfully, he had Beth.

Beth, whose smile rose with the sun and never faded even in the dead of night. This was her city, and she saw it in a way he never understood—hopeful and proud. Where he viewed madness and dreamed of running away, she saw people, places, and history. That was her gift to him and it brought him hope.

He had to marry her. There was never any question in his mind. From that first moment, she made him smile, wearing a milkshake mustache and a sundress. Though every instinct told him to escape the city, he stayed for her. Shadows seemed to lighten when she was around and he needed that every night he found himself walking the streets alone, searching for another indescribable beast to throw behind bars. She made it safer just by being with him. That was enough to keep him going.

Rubbing out the butt of his cigarette with his shoe, Loren felt a change in the air. As he bent down to lift the butt from the ground to toss it in the nearest corner receptacle, traffic stalled down his street. Not a Breaking News Update by any means, but he thought it odd some had been vacated of passengers. Pedestrians had slowed to a crawl in their travels down the lane, their eyes looking toward a four-story brick apartment building sandwiched between a deli and a laundromat.

Loren’s apartment building.

He rushed over to the mounting crowd of people as fast as his feet would carry him. Somehow, he knew, no matter how light the shadows had become since meeting her, that something had happened to Beth.

Excuse me. Loren shuffled through the crowd. He clutched firmly to the two bags of groceries to keep them from getting lost in the melee. He needed them to make dinner for Beth. Please let me through. Police officer.

No one questioned this fact. They simply took a step to the right or left of him. Their eyes never left the center of the crowd. Murmurs passed between them, whispers and rumors Loren was afraid to hear.

She... she just fell, one woman said, pointing up toward the roof of the building.

Loren noticed the window to their apartment was open. Beth loved having it open to hear the sounds of the city in the evening. Portents never comes to life before sunset, she’d say.

Ambulance is on the way, a man said from Loren’s right. He held tight to a young boy. I heard someone call but—

Not going to matter, I think, an older gentleman said, finishing his sentence.

A lone woman lay upon the sidewalk in the open circle, surrounded by onlookers. She stared up into the growing darkness of the Portents sky. Blood curled by her thin, pink lips and ran down to meet her blonde hair that spread wide against the pavement. She wore a red sundress with rose print trim.

Beth. The name escaped his lips. His groceries slipped from his hands, forgotten in an instant.

Loren fell to his knees beside her. He tried to lift her head, to hold her close, but felt nothing solid to grab onto under her stained hair. He could feel the tears stinging his cheeks. Sirens blared in the distance, but they were too far away. 

Beth was too far gone.

Her hand grazed his cheek to pull him back to her. Her dark blue eyes were oceans of calm, staring up at him. She smiled through the blood. Her chest heaved under shattered bones. Lungs struggled to hold in air—her breaths too shallow and labored.

His mouth opened once, then twice, all to ask the dozen questions that he would bring to the table at any other crime scene he investigated—but nothing came out. There were no words... only tears.

Her lips moved to speak, and he bent closer. Beth continued to smile, her words lost behind the noise of the approaching sirens and the murmurs of the crowd. The beating of his own heart in his ears drowned out her final plea.

All that remained was her smile when Beth’s eyes closed for the last time.

​Chapter One

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Rain poured against the city, threatening to wash it clean. It beat against the tallest skyscrapers and the smallest row of houses along the East Side. Every drop flowed down and settled in a series of deep puddles.

The warehouse district took the brunt of the storm, with a band of clouds hovering overhead for hours after sunset. Where bright lights from the nearby club scene stemmed the tide against the torrent of raindrops, in the warehouse district of Portents where darkness was constant, rain meant clouds, which equaled more shadows. 

Vladimir Luchik hated the rain. It chilled his bones, it slammed the top of his head like a jackhammer, and it never, ever missed the opportunity to knock him further down when he could not possibly need the help. Precipitation soaked through his sneakers and weighed down his ripped jeans. He always hated the rain.

Tonight, however, he hated the shadows more.

Every corner he passed, every alleyway, offered a fresh threat. Shadows surrounded him. Water splashed under his heels, soaking him further. His movements were slow, his feet sluggish and heavy, yet each step betrayed his need for stealth. Sweat mixed with the raindrops. How far had he come since it started? Fear kept Vlad from looking at the path he had traveled, afraid of the darkness that seemed to grow with each passing second.

It was still coming for him. Vlad could hear its eerie laughter over the sound of his heart pounding in his chest. He needed help and was in the worst place to find it.

The warehouse district was not known for being a hotspot of activity during the daylight hours. Most of the structures surrounding the small residential complexes near the rail yards had long since been shut down or abandoned. Some were reconditioned for office space, but none operated at night. Few people did in Portents; it was an unspoken instinctual rule of the city.

Dammit, he cursed under his breath, then again for the pain that cut right through his abdomen. He reached into his pocket and found his cell phone. The damn phone was the reason he had been out in the first place. She was waiting for his call. Anything for a girl, he always said. He had planned to help her with a case, but found something else waiting for him instead. Now he needed the help. Glaring down at the cracked screen as the rain pelted against it, he realized help was not coming.

Something shattered the silence behind him and his heart stopped. He ducked into a nearby alley, then whirled back toward the empty street. Was it him? Could it even be called a him?

A metal garbage can rolled along the sidewalk across the street. Its displaced lid flopped along the pavement. The sound echoed down the street, but no one was near.

Rats, he muttered. Giant damn rats. Has to be. His left hand slipped from his abdomen for the first time since he started running. Instinctively, he reached out to the nearby brick wall to brace his weatherworn body. His head fell low, spit mixing with the rain running down the length of his chin. The stream flowed into the puddles beneath him. The puddles ran dark in swirls and spread outward.

Blood.

His eyes shot to his left hand to see the same dark red substance dripping from his fingertips and down the brick wall.

His blood.

A streak of lightning cut the sky above. The sudden light from the heavens allowed Vlad to see the damage sustained. His attacker had been quick but effective. The surprise assault left five thick gashes across his chest and abdomen. Each gash was covered in thick red blood that trailed along the ground, and down the city streets for anyone to follow.

He hoped anyone meant a Good Samaritan who would rescue him from his plight and take him somewhere safe and warm. Vlad, of course, knew better. His version of anyone following meant the monster who had started their chase.

The garbage can clatter finally faded, yet something still did not feel right to Vlad. Shadows shifted across the street. As another bolt cut the sky, he swore he saw something swing back farther to go unseen. The bleeding man fled deeper down the alley, leaving behind the block letters that painted a single name along the side of the building—Evans.

A fire escape occupied the far end of the alley. Vlad clutched tight to his wounds, hoping the rainwater would help keep them somewhat clean long enough for him to find cover for the night. What hope he found was minimal, but it kept him from falling off the steep ladder of the fire escape while he climbed.

At the first landing was a window, shattered like so many others that lined the streets. Shards of glass lay within the thick frame, and Vlad gingerly stepped in to prevent any additional harm to his wounded body. He felt weightless for a moment; Vlad’s body hovered in the open air before he slammed against the wood flooring.

A cavernous room stretched hundreds of feet before him. He had no idea what was once present in the room and the shattered glass had removed any foul odors that were once trapped within the building. Spiders were the prime residents of the warehouse, from what Vlad noted, trying to find his footing once more.

Across the room, a single staircase led to a row of second floor offices. Vlad’s eyes flitted toward the broken window every time the lightning split the darkness. He waited for a chance to see his attacker, though prayed it would never come.

Nothing, not man nor monster, presented through the darkness.

An uneasy feeling remained, however, even as he climbed the metal staircase. The first step creaked and moaned so loudly Vlad thought the entire structure might collapse. The second step was the same.

Taking a deep breath, the young man calmed his shaking body. He lifted his foot and let it slide along the metal. He ran his free hand along the rail and, using his upper body, lifted his tired frame until his left foot joined his right. No loud crashes boomed through the warehouse this time. Vlad let out a long breath, stared up at the dozen steps ahead, and pushed onward.

The only open office appeared to be the one farthest from the stairs—the perfect place to find cover for the night. Dust-covered filing cabinets lined the right wall with a desk pushed in front of them and out of the way. Across the room from the door, a row of shattered windows and broken shades stretched along the office. Vlad closed the door behind him and entered the space. The tension melted from his weary frame.

He slipped out of his soaked shirt and wrung out the blood and rain on the wooden floorboards beneath him. The movement was agony for him, but needed to be done. He then took the shirt and wrapped it tightly around his abdomen. Tying the sleeves into a knot, Vlad screamed. The pain caused his knees to give way and his body fell. The pain continued for a long moment. A small smear of fresh blood filled the shirt, then slowed. Even through the intense pain, Vlad found the will to chuckle at having made it to safety.

The sentiment was fleeting.

The smell of ashes came along the cool, early summer wind. It was the smell of something old. Vlad’s eyes shot open to scan the room while still tracking the scent. He found himself encircled by a sea of shadows. Near the corner of the office, two specks of light came into focus. The pair of eyes were small and round, one of deep crimson and the other of sky blue.

The end had come for Vlad.

It’s you, isn’t it? he called to the two mismatched lights. I can feel you. I can smell the death on you.

His knees shook as he struggled to rise once more. Defiantly, he shouted into the darkness. You’re there, aren’t you?

Lightning crashed outside. The thin light revealed a form in the shadows, and the figure answered Vlad softly. Yes.

The bleeding man rubbed his temple. He tried to push through the pain in his gut. Vision sharpened as Vlad looked around the room, and everything became clear. Fresh scuff marks ran along the floor from where the desk had been originally positioned. The marks were smeared, however, by something else. A blood red image spread beneath him.

You led me here, Vlad said to the darkness. The merry chase he had been part of had simply led to this moment. You wanted this place.

Yes.

Silence fell between them. There was no more running for Vlad. There was only the chance to act. As Vlad shored up the last dregs of strength in his body, he thought of his phone and the call he never had the chance to make. He thought of the woman at the other end of that call and of the strange stone she carried with her at all times, and how he would never see her again. Missed opportunities floated through his mind.

With a scream filled with regret and rage, Vlad charged at his attacker with every ounce of strength left in his tired, battered frame. His cry carried the only question he wanted answered before the end.

Who are you?

Vlad entered the shadows, his hands reaching into the dark for his attacker. They clawed at nothing but empty air. Hidden within the thick darkness, two eyes glowed deep with excitement. With a single swipe and a bloodcurdling cry that echoed through the empty streets of the warehouse district, Vlad said no more and fell.

I am the end, answered the shadow looming over Vlad’s dying body. And the beginning.

​​Chapter Two

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The apartment had been packed up months ago. The furniture had been sold, and the mattress tossed. Books, dishes, and utensils were all neatly boxed and labeled. Life had vacated the second-floor apartment on King’s Lane years earlier, the remnants of which waited until the lease finally inched toward expiration.

Loren stood among the wreckage of the life he once lived. Floorboards creaked under his shifting weight. He stared obsessively into the mirror above the fireplace in the living room.

Who are you? It was a question he asked daily to the unshaven face. He used to clean up every day. It was ritual, for his life, for his job, and for Beth. With her death, the rituals slipped away. Through the dark hair covering his chin and cheeks, Loren saw lines he had never seen previously. They belonged to an older man, not one shy of thirty-seven.

Dirty blond hair hung low over his ears. Thin, brown eyes continued to stare blankly in the mirror, waiting for the answers to appear magically. Loren leaned heavily on the mantel of the fireplace; his shoulders slumped from the weight. Even through the dust covering the mirror, he saw he needed to clean up and change. The riddled-with-holes Superman shirt hung well below his neckline, his jeans wrinkled and stained. It all added up to one thing in his mind.

It was time to leave.

Boxes surrounded him. Most were better left forgotten and were labeled for the garbage. Others—the dishes and utensils they had used for meals on the couch and Monk marathons when they’d found time away from their jobs—were all headed to Goodwill for a loving family.

Some were set to make the trip with