Chapter 182: The Seventh Floor

Chapter 182: Chapter 182: The Seventh Floor

The knock came just after midnight, frantic, uneven, more like someone slamming both fists against the gate than a deliberate request for entry.

"Please! Please, someone, help me!"

Erik was moving before the second strike finished, Killian a half-step behind him, both reaching the reinforced gate to find a woman on the other side, soaked through, shaking so badly she could barely stand upright.

Recognition hit before the woman even finished speaking — the pale, striking features, the dark hair plastered flat against her face, a beauty that had lodged itself somewhere in Erik’s memory weeks ago despite only a handful of minutes spent in her company that first night.

"Grace," Erik said, something old and instinctive stirring in his chest at the sight of her so visibly distressed. He didn’t examine the feeling too closely. "What happened?"

"You remember me." Something flickered across her face — relief, maybe, or something closer to satisfaction — before dissolving back into visible panic. "Please, there’s something happening down on my floor, I don’t know what to do—"

"What kind of something," Erik asked, not opening the gate.

"People are dying." Grace’s voice broke, tears mixing freely with the rain already soaking her face. "I heard screaming, three floors down, and then it just — stopped. And I went to check because I thought maybe someone needed help, and there was so much blood, and nobody knows who did it, and I just ran, I didn’t know where else to go—"

Penelope arrived a moment later, drawn by the commotion, taking in the scene through the gate’s narrow gap with quick, assessing eyes.

"What’s happening?"

"She says there’s been a murder," Erik said grimly. "Third one this week, if the rumors from the lower floors are accurate."

From somewhere at the edge of Erik’s mind, a low, steady growl rumbled to life — Hrimnir, back in the space, alert and unsettled despite the physical distance between them.

Wrong, the wolf said, the same word he’d used weeks ago in this exact stairwell, sharper now, more insistent. That one. Still wrong.

Erik’s expression didn’t change outwardly, though something in him sharpened instantly, old suspicion resurfacing with fresh urgency. He studied Grace more closely now — not with the instinctive protectiveness her fragile appearance seemed designed to invite, but with the deliberate, careful attention he gave any unresolved threat.

I hear you, he thought back. Stay close.

"You’re not staying here," Erik said aloud, voice careful but firm. "This gate stays closed. But we can walk you back down safely, and we’re going to look into what’s happening regardless."

Grace’s face crumpled slightly, though she nodded through the disappointment, wrapping both arms around herself. "I understand. I just — I didn’t know where else was safe enough to even ask."

Penelope felt an odd, conflicting tug in her chest, watching the woman tremble in the doorway — genuine sympathy rising instinctively at the sight of someone so clearly frightened, tangled uncomfortably with a faint, prickling unease she couldn’t immediately account for. She’d never met this woman before tonight. There was no reason for anything about her to feel wrong. And yet something did, quiet and persistent, refusing to resolve into anything simpler than the sympathy sitting right alongside it.

"You did the right thing coming to us," Penelope said anyway, gentler than the wariness underneath might have suggested. "Let us get some gear together. We’ll walk you home."

They moved quickly, gathering weapons and a dry jacket for Grace, and within minutes the group had split — Erik and Killian heading down toward the lower floors to investigate the reported murders directly, while Penelope and Kai flanked Grace on either side for the walk back to eighteen.

Kai, too, had recognized her instantly — the same ethereal, hard-to-forget quality that had struck him weeks ago in this same building — and something protective rose in his chest as well, watching her shiver through the stairwell’s dim light. He didn’t act on it beyond simple kindness, though the pull was there regardless, quiet and instinctive.

"Thank you," Grace murmured, still shivering despite the borrowed jacket. "I know it’s a lot to ask, showing up like this in the middle of the night."

"It’s not a lot to ask," Kai said, glancing at her with easy, genuine sympathy. "Anyone would’ve done the same, hearing what you heard."

"I keep thinking, what if I’d left my apartment a few minutes earlier," Grace said quietly, voice still fragile. "What if it had been me instead."

"Don’t think like that," Penelope said. "You’re safe. That’s what matters right now."

They reached the eighteenth floor without incident, the hallway quiet and dim, doors locked tight up and down its length in the particular defensive silence that had settled over the whole building since the killings began.

"This is me," Grace said, pausing at her door, some of the earlier trembling finally beginning to ease now that she stood on familiar ground. "Thank you both. Really. I don’t know what I would have done if nobody answered."

"Lock everything behind you," Kai said. "And if you hear anything else, don’t hesitate to come find us again."

"I will." Grace offered a small, grateful smile, fragile and trembling, before ducking inside and closing the door.

Penelope stood in the hallway a moment longer, some old, unnamed instinct prickling faintly at the back of her neck before she shook it off. "You okay?" Kai asked.

"Fine," Penelope said. "Just tired of this building finding new ways to fall apart."

They made their way back down toward the fifteenth floor, and the scene that greeted them was exactly as grim as Grace’s account had promised — Erik and Killian crouched near a body sprawled in the hallway, a young man, no older than twenty, throat opened in a single, clean, brutal stroke. No struggle marks. No sign of forced entry into the nearby apartments. Just a body, and silence, and a small crowd of frightened neighbors keeping their distance.

"Whoever did this knew what they were doing," Killian said quietly, studying the wound with clinical, practiced attention. "One motion. No hesitation."

"Same as the others?" Penelope asked one of the nearby residents, a middle-aged man clutching a kitchen knife like it might do more than tremble uselessly in his grip.

"Same," the man confirmed, voice tight with fear. "Three now, this week. Nobody’s seen who’s doing it."

"Any pattern?" Killian asked.

The man shook his head. "No pattern anyone’s found. Different floors, different times."

Erik said little, his mind still circling back to Hrimnir’s warning, the wolf’s unease sitting uncomfortably alongside the very real, very present crime scene in front of him. Two separate threats, possibly, or perhaps the same one wearing a face nobody would think to suspect.

Are you certain, he asked privately, studying the body without fully seeing it. About her.

Certain, Hrimnir confirmed, no hesitation at all. Wrong. Has always been wrong. You should not trust her softness.

Erik didn’t answer immediately, weighing the wolf’s certainty against everything his own eyes had just witnessed — a trembling, terrified woman, soaked through, genuinely frightened by all appearances. Hrimnir had never once been wrong about a threat before. That fact alone was enough to keep the suspicion alive, however little sense it made standing here, three floors away from Grace’s locked apartment door.

I’ll watch her, he thought back, finally. Carefully. Not tonight. But I won’t ignore this again.

Behind her own locked door, Grace pressed her back against the wood and let out a slow, satisfied breath, the fear she’d worn so carefully all night finally, fully falling away.

It had worked exactly as she’d hoped. She’d seen it in his eyes at the gate — the way Erik’s attention had sharpened the moment he recognized her, the careful, deliberate focus he’d given her the entire walk down, nothing at all like the distracted courtesy he probably extended to strangers.

He remembers me, she thought, warmth spreading through her chest at the certainty of it. He noticed.

She had no way of knowing what that particular sharpness in his gaze had actually meant — no way of knowing about the wolf growling steadily in the back of his mind, no way of knowing that the attention she’d mistaken for interest was, in fact, the exact opposite.

She only knew he’d looked at her like she mattered, and for Grace, tonight, that was more than enough to build on.