Matthew Irons, the most recent employee of Mount Rainier Storage Security Solutions, woke up and groaned. Grey light filtered in through the curtains, forcing him to acknowledge the start of another day.

It wasn’t like he didn’t enjoy the sunshine. He just didn’t seem to be able to find any of it lately. Ever since they had moved him to the swing shift, he’d had late night after late night, cruising the roads in his car and looking for something going wrong at one of the many storage facilities the company was supposed to keep safe. The facilities were usually quiet—thank goodness—but that didn’t exactly help him stay awake when the sun went down and the streetlights came on.

Washington state’s usual cheerful weather didn’t exactly help him either. It was fall now, and the clouds had quickly taken over most of the skyline. He’d known about the rain before he’d moved out west, but a big part of him missed the wide open skies and the usual sunsets in Wyoming. Even after six months, he was still having trouble adjusting. Of course, even grey weather and a bad work schedule were better than what he’d left behind.

He grunted sourly and levered himself out of bed. The small apartment he’d found was not exactly everything he had dreamed about before he’d left the ranch. Basically, a converted motel room, it consisted of a bed, a table, and an old, overstuffed chair. The door opened straight out into the parking lot, where his old, beat-up Toyota was waiting for him. The Camry was a reliable vehicle, but it wouldn’t inspire envy in most people. Still, as long as it had an engine, he had no real cause to complain.

Matt shook the sleep out of his eyes and stretched. He yawned a little despite himself, and then rolled his arms a little. The soreness from sleeping on his arm wrong slowly faded, and he grudgingly took a brief look at the alarm clock on the stand beside his bed. He’d somehow snoozed it enough to ignore the six o’clock alarm; he’d made it nearly to eight thirty.

He heaved a sigh and stepped out of bed. With a minimum of grumbling, he pulled on his workout clothes and started rummaging for his running shoes. Grey or not, he wasn’t planning on going the route of some of his more desk-bound coworkers. At least half of them were well on their way to their first heart attack at forty, and he figured it would be better to cut that off while he was still young.

A gust of cold air greeted him as he opened the door, and Matt looked around the parking lot. It was mostly empty, of course. The ‘apartment complex’ where he rented was full of people who either commuted to Seattle, or teachers at the local schools. Most of them were gone by the time he woke up, even when he respected his alarm clock.

Matt looked around and saw that the vehicles belonging to the other two night owls in the place were still there. One of them was an old Ford truck that belonged to a construction worker of some kind. He’d occasionally nodded to the other man as they passed each other on their way to work. The other was a battered red Hyundai sedan that belonged to a nice lady who worked the night shift at the nearby hotel. The space reserved for the would-be landlord was empty. Mr. Delorno didn’t spend his time in the rental office very much, not when he had five other properties to supervise.

He took a deep breath, relishing the feel of the moist fall air. It was a pleasant difference from the drier, windswept place he’d grown up in. Wyoming wasn’t known for its humidity, after all. Then he turned along the road and started running. There was another swing shift waiting for him that night, and if he was going to get anything done, he needed to get started.

About forty minutes later, Matt coasted to a stop outside his room, still breathing hard. He forced himself to stretch, hoping to relieve the aches creeping up his shins. It wasn’t a good sign that his shoes were holding up, but he wanted to get just a little bit more mileage out of them before he bought his next pair.

He was partway through his stretching routine when he heard his phone go off inside. Matt grunted, pulling the door open and making a beeline for the phone. He reached it on the third ring. “Irons here.”

“Morning!” The voice on the other end of the line was distractingly cheerful. “This is Mary Crowley from the Federal Gazette. I was hoping to take a few minutes of your time…”

A journalist. Dread settled into his stomach. “I’d be happy to help, but I don’t know what you would need to talk to me for. I’m new in town.”

“Oh, I know that already.” The false cheerfulness was beginning to grate already. “You were a student at Washington State University, correct?”

Matt felt his breath catch. He forced his voice to stay even. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

“I’m doing a story on the continued educational crisis. You graduated in civil engineering, correct?”

“A double major, actually. Civil engineering and history.” The conversation was quickly growing tiresome. “I would have thought that you would be able to look all of this up on your own, or at least call the college directly. Why do you need to talk with me?”

“I did, actually. From what I was able to tell, you scored extremely well on all your exams.” She paused. “As I understand it, you are currently working as a security guard?”

Matt felt a stab of anger and resentment. He let a little steel leak into his voice. “Is there something wrong with that, Ms. Crowley?”

There was a long pause. He could picture her on the other end of the line, gathering her words for the next push. “Mr. Irons, I feel like your story is important. If a graduate who has worked so hard has no options after his education, then people need to know—”

“Everyone already knows, Ms. Crowley.” Matt felt an oppressive wave of weariness wash over him, followed just as quickly by memories of the desperate job search, the helpless anger. He shook it off and continued. “I don’t think there’s anyone out there who doesn’t realize that our society is broken. Our dreams aren’t going to be coming true, Ms. Crowley, and they know. They know. They are just too busy trying to scrabble over each other for the scraps instead of trying to fix something so fundamentally broken.”

Crowley was silent for another long moment. When she spoke again, her cheerfulness was gone. Irritation was showing under the cracks. “You can’t just say that, Mr. Irons. If you give up, then the chance to change things is gone.”

“I don’t think that another doomsaying listicle for the Gazette is going to change anything, Ms. Crowley.” Matt let that statement burn her a bit longer and then continued in an even voice. “I am happy to make a fresh start here. Thank you for your interest, but I’m done talking about this.”

There was a long pause from the other end of the phone, and he wondered if he should finish his message by simply hanging up on the woman. He heard her mutter something under her breath, and then she responded, her voice tight with anger. “Well, Mr. Irons, when you change your mind, you have my number. You can reach me at any time.”

“I’m sure I can.” Matt glanced at the alarm clock and nearly swore. If he was going to get the extra practice in at the range, he’d have to move fast. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go. Goodbye.”

She said something approaching a farewell before he hung up, and Matt spent a few precious moments glaring at the cell phone before he tossed it back on the bed. He headed for the shower, trying not to snarl at himself over things that were long in the past. He had no hope of changing what had happened and had no intention of trying. Things were always better when you just accepted what was in front of you and moved forward with it.

It wasn’t like he had a choice, anyway.

The grey ceiling overhead was constant in the Pacific Northwest, even as the sun went down.

Matt always found that the hardest to accept. He felt like after a whole day of staring up at a sky that threatened rain, he should at least get some spectacular sunsets, or maybe some beautiful night skies full of stars. Instead, he got the chance to welcome another evening rainstorm. The drops pattered off his windshield as he drove slowly along the roads to the west of the town, cruising along at a snail’s pace. His windshield wipers were doing a fine job keeping his vision clear; the rain wasn’t heavy, like the sky didn’t really have the heart to go all out yet. Maybe it would work up the motivation later.

He didn’t expect to see much of anything as he drove around town. His route included five different storage facilities; all he had to do was check in at each one to make sure that no one was getting up to anything. They were all old or outdated places, owned or rented by shipping companies too small to have the chance to lease a spot at a larger facility, so most of the time the only problems were caused by local teenagers getting up to some kind of mischief. Given the rain, he didn’t expect many to be out tonight.

Mostly, the drive just gave him time to think about life, which was why he hated the swing shift more than anything. Too much time in his own head, trying not to think about the past, and mostly failing. If he could have done it all again…

The radio squawked at him, and Matt blinked in surprise. He reached over and grabbed it. “This is Matt, on patrol. You got something?”

“Matt, we have a disturbance of some kind going on at the Puget Falls Storage facility. Go over and check it out. Over.”

“Gotcha, on my way.” Matt made a U turn and headed back up the road. The facility wasn’t too far from him at the moment; with luck, he’d be there in the next five to ten minutes, even with the rain. Most likely, it was just some high schoolers who had thought that playing hide and seek or smoking in the middle of a bunch of cargo containers sounded cool. He couldn’t think of any other reason for anyone to be out there at this time of night. Most of the containers there would be empty, after all. It wasn’t like some petty thief was going to sell them on the black market.

He smiled a bit at the thought and caught sight of the turnoff for the facility through the trees. There was a sign too, though it looked like the pines had half overgrown it. The facility wasn’t exactly a popular spot. Various shipping companies used it to store containers that were too old to be trustworthy on cargo ships or tractor trailers. Some truckers used it as an impromptu gathering spot, but other than that, there weren’t many people who needed to use the old gravel road.

His tires crunched along the gravel as he made his way through the woods. The headlights picked up the silhouettes of the trees and cast odd shadows. He instinctively slowed down, some part of him suddenly wary. Maybe it was just the continuing patter of the rain, or the way the road slewed back and forth through the trees, but something felt… off.

He let the car grind to a halt in front of the gates of the storage facility. They weren’t anything particularly fancy, just the usual chain-link fence with a padlock and chain for the gate. There wasn’t even any barbed wire at the top. Matt could see the hulking shapes of the unused cargo containers squatting out in the dark, the nearest of them highlighted by his headlights. There were lights further in attached to crude lampposts, illuminating small sections of rain and empty containers further in.

For a moment, he stared at them, hoping to see some panicked teenagers sprinting for the woods. Then he grunted and checked his pistol. “This is Matt, I’m on site at the storage facility. I don’t see—”

There was a sudden wash of flame from behind a container. An unearthly howling rose along with it, and Matt ducked down behind his dashboard. The fire faded, but there were yelps and yips. A second burst of fire followed, and he gritted his teeth.

“Cancel that, I think somebody is playing with fireworks or something. I’m going to investigate.”

He barely listened to the response over the radio as he kicked the door open and started for the fence. The average teenager could barely be trusted with a learner’s permit and their own feelings, so adding small explosions into the mix rarely ended well. Rain or no rain, he wasn’t going to risk the forest lighting up.

The howls and other noises lent him some extra urgency. It didn’t sound like anyone had been hit or hurt, but that just made it all that much worse. Heaven help the morons if some of them had gotten the bright idea to use dogs or cats as target practice. He was already picturing himself slapping cuffs on a bunch of sullen would-be psychopaths.

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He didn’t bother with unlocking the gate; it didn’t take him long to pull himself over the fence. Matt dropped down on the far side of it, the ground giving slightly beneath his boots. The rain hadn’t made things slippery enough to land him flat on his back, thankfully. All the same, he moved forward carefully. He left his flashlight off, hoping to stalk forward and take the group of idiots by surprise.

A third wash of flame shot up through the night, close enough that he swore he could smell the burnt powder from it. The scent fizzed in his nostrils, and he snorted a little to clear them. He sped up, realizing that if he took too long, someone might really get hurt.

He was still moving forward at speed when a shape swept past him, passing between two crates up ahead. It was moving fast, too fast to get a clear look at with the rain, especially since it didn’t cross through one of the patches lit by the overhead lights. All the same, something about the speed and the shape raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

He paused, hearing another flame whoosh to life further in. There was another pained howl, and Matt drew his pistol from his holster. The image of a bunch of scared teenagers no longer fit in his mind anymore. When he moved forward now, it was in a half-feral crouch, his eyes searching in the gloom.

When he reached the spot where the shape had passed by, he saw a figure lying in the mud. Their clothes were odd; he could see the outline of some kind of robe. Matt was at their side without remembering the time it took to cross the space between. He reached out to shake them, hoping against hope that they were just too drunk to feel the chill of the rain and mud that soaked their clothes.

His fingers touched something warm and slick at the body’s neck. He brought his fingers to his nose and shuddered at the scent of blood.

Careful to keep his voice low, he keyed his radio. “This is Matthew Irons at the storage facility. I need backup. At least one person down. Over.”

“Wait, what? Are you serious?”

There was another flame, and then another, and another. Each came in quick succession, and a chorus of howls erupted. Matt ignored the voice from the radio and lurched back into motion, leaving the body in the mud behind him.

It took only a handful of long strides to bring him to the edge of a shipping container. He peeked around it and saw another figure stumbling into a patch of light, just two containers away.

They were wearing some kind of wizard’s robe, like they had stumbled out of a convention, or a Harry Potter meetup. He didn’t recognize the cosplay, but the panicked, stunned look on the kid’s face was instantly identifiable, even if it seemed like something was…off about him. The boy looked like he was maybe a freshman in high school, at the oldest. There were tears in the robe, and at least one scorched spot. Matt’s grip on his pistol tightened as the kid slipped on the mud and fell. He watched them scramble a bit further, and then flip over onto their back as a second figure stepped into the light.

This one was older, a woman in her mid forties. She was wearing a similar outfit, only stained blood red. There were no tears in her robe, and the look on her face was both chilling and confident. There was something off about her as well, something odd about her eyes. As the boy stared up at her, panting and afraid, she smiled.

The boy swallowed and looked around as if to search for a way to escape. Then he looked back at her and scrambled back up against the nearest container as she stepped closer.

The woman’s smile grew wider. She stepped forward again, drawing a long, curved dagger at her waist. Another step, and she was holding it low and relaxed, as if she was getting ready to cut a pig’s throat.

Matt stepped out from behind the shipping container, his gun at the ready position. He was careful to not quite point it at her; lessons drilled into him since childhood would keep him from doing that until it was time to pull the trigger. “Ma’am, drop the knife and put your hands on your head.”

The woman and the boy both froze. They turned to look at him in utter surprise, and Matt felt a chill in his blood. Their eyes were wrong. He couldn’t see any whites at the edges; the pupils were too large, almost like a dog’s. What the hell was he dealing with?

He shook it off. She had to be wearing some kind of contacts. Whatever they had put in their eyes, she still had a knife.

He could see the boy’s jaw drop open out of his peripheral vision, but he kept focused on the woman. She regarded him with a kind of cool disdain that most people tended to reserve for bugs they intended to squish. “Ma’am, I am a security officer. Put down the knife, or I will be forced to shoot you.”

She smiled, now. It did not make her look any more pleasant. When she spoke, it was a meaningless gibberish that made Matt’s ears hurt. When he didn’t answer, she laughed, a high, harsh sound, and then turned back to the boy.

Matt raised his voice as she started to step forward. “Ma’am, this is your final warning. Drop. The. Knife.”

She turned back to look at him, and any humor or disdain had vanished from her face. Instead, there was anger, cold and lethal. Her strange, uncanny eyes fixed on him, and she slowly raised one hand. He could hear her muttering something under her breath, words he still didn’t recognize. The pieces he did hear over the rain twisted in his guts.

The woman turned her hand upward, and a ball of pale flame suddenly appeared. It danced above her fingers, and she met his eyes. She smiled.

Nope! He snapped the pistol into position. He pulled the trigger one, two, three, four times. Gun shots echoed through the rain. The flame went out.

When it was over, he was looking at her over the fading muzzle flash of his pistol. Her eyes were wide from shock and disbelief, and she patted at one of the growing bloodstains on the front of her dress. She took an unsteady step backwards, coughed a little, and then fell face down into the mud. The dagger splashed into a puddle beside her. Gunsmoke rose and vanished into the rain overhead.

The noise of the rain slowly faded back into his hearing, replacing both the hammering sound of the pistol and the beating of his own heart. He stepped forward, his pistol still pointed at the woman. It wasn’t likely that she was going to get back up, but he had no intention of being surprised. “Hey kid, you okay?”

When the boy didn’t answer, Matt glanced over at him. He saw the kid still sitting in the mud, his back pressed against an old container. He didn’t look like he was bleeding or anything, but he was obviously in shock. “Hey, are you hurt? Did she hurt you?”

The boy shook his head, still too stunned to speak. Matt took another couple of steps forward, enough to kick the knife further away from the woman. She didn’t move. He glanced around, trying to make sure that nobody else was coming out of the night. Those shots would have echoed. If there were any more weirdos with knives out there, they’d come running.

He saw the first of them throw themselves into the light a heartbeat later.

Part of him immediately started screaming that it was just another costume. It had to be. They were hunched over, with a snarling wolf’s head and fur matted down by the rain. Something red was dripping from their claws and chops, and Matt’s mind flashed back to the body he’d already found.

The rest of him immediately brought up his pistol and started pulling the trigger again.

Four quick shots knocked the thing on its back, just as a second one came bounding in over it. Matt switched targets, punching another four bullets into its broad chest. He could feel a snarl working its way across his own face as the third one leapt for him, shoving aside the other two as they slumped and staggered.

He fired three more times, each shot hitting dead center in the thing’s chest. Then he pulled the trigger a fourth time and heard the hammer click on an empty chamber.

“The hell!” Matt backpedaled as the thing kept coming for him. He sidestepped it as it swiped at him, its movements already slowed from blood loss and shock. Then he swung wildly at its skull, pistol whipping it as hard as he could. It yowled a bit, and he stepped back and away, ejecting the empty magazine as his fingers grabbed the next one from his belt.

It slid home with practiced speed, and he brought it level with the still-staggering monster. He fired three times before it could turn around. A moment later, it lost its footing and fell into the mud.

Before it had even hit the ground, Matt was already turning back to the other two. He caught one of them rising back up and put two more shots into it. As it went down again, he put another two into the other one for good measure. It twitched twice, and its jaws snapped at the air. Then it slowed and began to relax into death. He very nearly put another couple of shots into the dead woman as well, but the memory of the pistol clicking empty convinced him to conserve his ammo.

His ears still rang from the shots, and his heart was pounding harder than any drumbeat that he’d heard in his life, but he could still hear the kid whimpering slightly in the mud. Matt risked a quick glance at him, hoping that none of the things had managed to claw at him while he wasn’t looking. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you. You’re safe.” He put his back to the kid and tried to look in every direction at once. “Are there any more of those things out there? Anyone else I should worry about?”

The boy didn’t answer, but as the ringing faded a bit more from his ears, Matt thought he could hear footsteps running alongside a nearby container. He tried to keep his hands from shaking, and was startled to find them completely fine. It was like he’d just finished gunning down a target on the range. Wasn’t he supposed to be worse off after a shooting? Was he some kind of psychopath?

He didn’t have the time to think it over. The footsteps rounded a container, and he saw another robed figure stop just outside of the circle of light. Matt glared at them, watching for any sign of fire or fangs. “Whoever you are, come into the light. Slowly.”

The figure stepped forward, and Matt relaxed slightly. It was an old man, wearing robes that seemed to match what the boy was wearing. They were the same color and style at least, though the old man didn’t seem to have any blood on him. A bit more charring, maybe, but no obvious scratches or tears.

Then his breath caught. The old man had the same too-large pupils and whiteless eyes. They looked too real to be a contact. What the hell had he stumbled into?

The newcomer’s eyes were moving over the bodies in the mud, as if counting. They stopped when they landed on the woman, and Matt heard him suck in a shocked breath.

Matt risked a glance back at the boy. “Hey, is he with you?”

The boy managed a quick nod, and Matt looked back at the old man. He found the guy staring at him, those uncanny eyes wide with shock. “You killed her. You killed the Red Sorceress.”

“Whoever she was, she was going to hurt this kid, so I put her down.” He made his voice firm, though on the inside it was starting to feel like he might not have been as okay as he thought. Maybe the adrenaline rush had carried him through it. “Who are you people, and why are you here?”

“I am Alerios the Mage, of the Order of Echoes.” The old man glanced over the other bodies, as if seeing them again for the first time. “And three Grim Hounds as well.” His attention returned to Matt, and those dark eyes seemed to drill down into Matt. “Do you know what you have done?”

“I’m the one asking the questions.” Matt kept scanning the surroundings, looking for any others to show up. “You said your name is Alerios? Why are you here?”

The old man nodded slowly, his eyes still locked on Matt’s face. “We fled here to attempt to avoid the Red Sorceress and her minions. We failed.” He looked away, his gaze falling on the boy. “We are the last of our companions left. Carlen and I are the only ones who still live.”

Matt heard the boy groan slightly, and he glanced back at him. Carlen, if that was actually his name, now had his eyes closed in obvious pain. He looked back at Alerios. “How many did you start with?”

“There were six of us. Now there are two.”

He pictured even more of those bodies out there in the dark. Then he shook the image away. “How many are there left chasing you?”

“I accounted for four Grim Hounds. Carlen and his friends felled two.” Alerios paused. “You killed the last of them—and the Sorceress herself.”

The admiration in Alerios’ voice twisted in Matt’s gut. He shook his head. “She was after the kid. I wasn’t going to just stand by and let her stab him.”

“You say that as if there weren’t legions of people in Nognatir who wouldn’t have done just that.” Alerios shook his head. “The number of mages that would even consider killing her a possibility can be counted on one hand. We have witnessed history this night.”

Matt couldn’t help but snort. The words were pretty grand for someone standing in wet clothing with his boots in the mud.

Then his eyes drifted back to the dead werewolves and the woman’s corpse, and his good humor drained away. “Okay, if you two are the only ones left, I’m going to call the police. They’ll take you back to the station and put you both in protective custody until we can figure out what is going on.”

Alerios frowned. “This…station, it will have many mages? Your royalty will stand with us?”

Matt laughed. “That’s not something we do here. At least, not for a very, very long time.” Whatever was going on, he didn’t think that Alerios or Carlen were going to hold up very well if he kept them out in the rain. At the very least, he wanted to get out of the storm himself, if only to give himself the chance to get his head screwed back on straight.

“How strange.” Alerios’ frown deepened a little, and then he shrugged. “Well, in any case, I’m afraid we cannot accept your offer of hospitality, good sir. Our kingdom will be waiting for our return—as will yours.”

He’d opened his mouth to cut the man off, but the tail end of the sentence cut him off before he could. Matt goggled at the stranger. “As will—what? I just told you, we don’t have kingdoms here. And the protective custody thing was not optional. People are dead.”

“Your neighbors may not have royalty here before, but rest assured, they do now.” Alerios circled around Matt, as if trying to get past him to where the boy was still curled on the ground, quietly sobbing into his hands. “As the slayer of the Red Sorceress, you are now the master of the lands that were once hers. The people of the Crimson Peaks, and all their domain, are now yours to shape and command.”

“The what?” Matt pivoted to keep the old man in his sight, his gun still ready to aim the moment he saw so much as a single hostile twitch. “What are you talking about? I shot her, sure, but there’s no way that I’m the king of anything.”

“I beg to disagree.” Alerios’ lips twitched in something approaching a smile. “Your ways are quite interesting in this place! Is it possible that you have never heard of Divine Right?”

Matt blinked. “Well, yeah. The old kings and queens used to say they ruled because they were meant to.”

“Well of course they did!” The old man actually chuckled. “That’s the way of things. And those who overthrow the old gain the right to rule in themselves. Therefore, you are now the ruler of the lands she once ruled.” He stepped to the side again, peering past him at the boy on the ground. “Now, if you would permit me, I would like to see if the Carlen is safe.”

He nodded slowly, still careful to keep his distance. The old man watched him with an equal amount of caution, at least until he reached the spot where Carlen was sitting. As Matt watched, Alerios went to one knee, peering at the tears in Carlen’s robes and murmuring to him. Then he looked back at Matt and smiled.

“Thank you. You have our gratitude and our congratulations for your ascension to the throne. We hope to send envoys to you in the near future. Until then.”

Matt blinked. “Wait, what are you—”

Before he could complete the question, there was a sudden flash of light, and both Alerios and Carlen were gone. In their place, there was a smoldering circle of charred mud steaming away in the rain. Matt stared at it, his mind still whirling with all the impossible things he’d seen.

His frame of mind didn’t improve a moment later when roaring fire exploded from the fallen bodies around him.