"Enough! You either cooperate with me," I ground out without opening my eyes, "or I’ll bag your entire Pack right now!"

  The Charmchain radiance pouring from Sage momentarily faltered.

  "Excuse me?" Marya's voice carried a deadly edge.

  “Bag us?! You and what…” Fennel asked sharply.

  I snapped my fingers, giving the signal to Kawthy.

  A Corpse Seeker appeared in front of the cafe from thin air, crystalline edges gleaming. Glowing eyes of the Omnid tank flared from within its slanted head, lighting up the cafe interiors with blinding beams of light.

  The Skinwalkers froze.

  “Drop the Charmchain. NOW!” I barked. “Or she’s going to open fire!”

  "Sorry! Sorry sorry sorry!" Sage cried out, jumping out of her seat. "I didn't—I wasn't trying to—it just happens when I get excited!"

  The overwhelming seductive pull evaporated. My pants situation became marginally less embarrassing.

  I slowly opened my eyes. The thing now standing in front of us definitely wasn’t human.

  A wet, white animal skull with glowing blue eyes stared at the Corpse Seeker behind the window. Large fox ears stuck out from the edges of the skull. The rest of her also looked distinctively vulpine, like someone left a dead fox rotting next to an ant hill that had halfway stripped its flesh off. She smelled like rot too, the far too pleasant flavor of fresh bread gone from the air.

  The freckles on her skull rearranged themselves into "HOLY FUCK!"

  Marya's hands were up too. So were Fennel's. Both stared at the Corpse Seeker looming outside the window, the crystalline armor refracting sunlight into rainbow death-promises.

  "Whoa, whoa, WHOA!" Fennel shouted. "Nobody needs to bag anybody!"

  "Ash, please!" Marya's voice lost its edge, replaced with genuine alarm. "We… we’re not your enemies!"

  "Then stop fucking with my head!" I snapped, "I came here for coffee and books to get to know my dragon fiancée better. That's it. I didn't ask for vampire theater. I didn't ask to be magically roofied by your sister."

  "I said I'm sorry!" Sage whined. Her voice sounded slightly like nails scraping against a blackboard now, unnervingly uncanny. "My Phase-Shift has a side effect. It cranks up the Charmchain automatically. I… I can't always control it unless I push it down forcefully!”

  Galateya blinked, scales darkening. “Ah, damn it. She got me too. Could barely think of what to say, staring at that blasted alluring face so hard.”

  “First time interacting with Skinwalkers?” I asked her.

  “Yeah,” she said, levelling Keiy at Sage. “Stay bony or I’ll take your head off. Got it?”

  Sage nodded rapidly, her entire body trembling. She was as tall as Galateya now, skin replaced with animal, rotting muscles and white, glistening, exposed bones.

  “Right then,” I said sharply. “Do Skinwalkers eat human souls? Be honest. Teya, you can tell if they lie to me, yes?”

  Galateya nodded. “The first person to lie gets shot.” She stated.

  The three Skinwalkers stared at the massive crystalline centipede looming outside the cafe window and at her gun, nodding in cooperation.

  Marya swallowed. "Yes. We can eat human souls. But we don't. Not here."

  "Why not?" I pressed.

  "Because we're not monsters," Fennel said quietly. "We have rules. Our… Pack has rules…"

  “Rules set by Mom!” Sage added. “She lived in Omnithornia, a super civilized place! We're not wild beasts!”

  "Your sister's belt buckle says 'SOUL-NOM-U,'" Galateya pointed out.

  Sage's ears drooped. "It's... it's ironic. I thought it was funny. I've never actually—I… I honestly don’t get to get out that much. Every human who sees me automatically, gradually… falls in love with me if I, like, spend more than ten minutes with them."

  “What do you eat then?” I asked.

  Galateya's scales had gone pure obsidian, mane now made of blue frost. Ready for violence. Her claws squeezed Keiy.

  "We don't hunt local humans, Ash,” Marya affirmed. “There are plenty of animals to snack on in the woods.”

  Sage nodded.

  “Are you immortal?” I continued my interrogation. “How old are you?”

  “We are immortal, yes. As long as we eat souls we can’t die from old age. I’m seventy six,” Marya answered, not looking a day over twenty.

  “Forty nine.” Fin said.

  “Nineteen,” Sage let out.

  “And the rest of your family?”

  “Just mom,” Sage let out. “She’s… uhh…”

  “One hundred and six years old,” Marya said with a sigh.

  “Are they being honest?” I asked Galateya.

  “I… think so,” she let out. “Almost honest.”

  “Almost honest, hum?” I tapped my gigachad chin with an armored glove. “What are you hiding?”

  “We… ate three people.” Sage trembled under the harsh glare of the Corpse Seeker lights. “Our… humanoid forms… They were teens who were… dying. Three years ago, I… ate a girl in Seattle who was in a coma from Covid. Marya’s human form was a girl dying from tuberculosis in 1960. Fin ate a boy who got terribly injured in a motorcycle accident in 1992.”

  “Sage!” Marya hissed. Their brother sighed deeply.

  “What, sis?” Sanguine asked. “He’s got us checkered with a tank! What do you want me to do? Tell a funny joke? Bake some cookies? Pretend we don't have a Corpse Seeker breathing down our necks?”

  Marya rubbed her temples. "Mom's going to kill us for revealing Pack secrets."

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "Mom's not going to kill anyone," Sanguine waved dismissively. "We're adults and she's too busy running her bakery.”

  “How did you get here?” I resumed my Corpse Seeker backed interrogation.

  “Mom came here in the 50s,” Marya said. “A Wendigo sold her a gate to Cascade. It was marketed to her as a paradise world with like a bazillion defenseless souls to snack on. No dungeons. Harmless no-mag human population that’s hell-a-easy to blend in.”

  "Which bakery does your mom run?”

  "Vale's Baking Heaven," Fennel said. "On Main Street. Been there since she bought the place in the fifties."

  I blinked. "I've been to that bakery. Multiple times. Your mom made my grandfather's funeral cake."

  "Yep," Marya said flatly. "You ate Mom's baked goods. Congratulations."

  "They're just regular cakes!" Sage stated, seeing my frown. “Nothing magical. No compulsion in the dough! Mom's a pro Culimancer!”

  I processed this revelation. Vale's Baking Heaven. The cheerful woman who'd hugged me at Grandpa's funeral. Who'd known me since I was a kid. Who'd made birthday cakes and Christmas cookies and...

  "Your mother came here in the fifties," I said slowly. "The vampires showed up in 1922. Did she know about them when she arrived?"

  The three Skinwalkers exchanged glances.

  “Mom ran into them accidentally,” Marya said. “They made a deal to be chill and not to muscle in on each other’s business.”

  "And your father?" I asked. "Where's he?"

  “Dead,” Marya said simply.

  “Was he some kind of Omnid or…?

  “We had different dads,” Sage revealed. “All human. Mom doesn’t do long term relationships…”

  "Did she kill them or something?" I asked.

  "No!" Sage looked genuinely horrified. "She just... Broke up with them. When things got too intense."

  "Too intense, how?"

  Marya sighed. "Skinwalkers can't maintain long-term romantic relationships with humans. The intimacy makes the soul-hunger worse. The closer you get to someone, the more their soul calls to you. Eventually, you either break up or..."

  "Or you eat them," I finished.

  "Yeah." Fennel looked uncomfortable. "That's why Mom always kept her relationships... Brief. Had us. Raised us. Taught us to control the urges. To keep our own relationships with humans short and open. No long term dating.”

  “She didn't stay with our fathers long enough to risk it." Sage sighed.

  "How many souls does your Pack eat per year?" Galateya demanded, not lowering Keiy.

  "We hunt animals once every few days in the Olympic National Forest. Deer, elk, squirrels, boars, cougars, foxes, bears. Animal souls sustain us fine." Marya said.

  "You still ate three people," Galateya growled.

  "Would you prefer we look like rotting animals forever?" Fennel snapped. "We need human forms to blend in! To live here! We found people who were already ninety nine percent dead and gave their bodies and souls a new purpose!"

  "Repurposed as skin suits," I commented flatly.

  Sage flinched. "When you say it like that, it do sound pretty bad."

  "It IS bad," Galateya hissed.

  "Bad compared to what?" Fennel asked, bristling. "Compared to the Frontenachii Empire genociding entire planets who refuse to integrate? Compared to vampires draining people dry? We took three dying teens who would've been buried and forgotten in a week, and we made something out of them. We live. We work. We contribute to this town."

  "You run a café," I said. "Your mom runs a bakery. That's… unexpectedly normal."

  "What did you expect?" Marya crossed her arms. "Some kind of soul-harvesting death cult? We're not comic book villains, Ash. We're just trying to live quiet lives."

  "Why?"

  Marya blinked. "Why what?"

  "Why live quiet lives?" I pressed. "You're immortal soul-eating shapeshifters. You could be doing... I don't know, literally anything else. Why run a book café and bakery in Cascade, Washington?"

  "Because Mom wanted us to be normal," Sage said. "She had some beef back in Omnithornia with her fam and had to get away from her Clan and Elders. Cascade has a slightly softer… Aether. Keeping a human face on forever is easier here than anywhere else."

  "What kind of beef?" I asked.

  "The bad kind," Marya sighed. "She didn't tell us the details. Just that she doesn't ever want to go back home."

  "How many other Omnids are in Cascade?" Galateya demanded. "Besides your Pack and the vampires?"

  The Skinwalkers exchanged glances again.

  "As far as we know… Just us four and the vamps," Marya said. "Though after the Frontenachii nuked the vamps, who knows what'll crawl out of the woodwork or arrive from the Wendigo-run worlds via gates."

  “Mom said that tourists, refugees and immigrants are gonna be coming soon from doomed worlds,” Sage added.

  Keiy's eyes suddenly blazed with purple light.

  "Incoming transmission," the gun unit announced. "Legate Ixthia!"

  A holographic projection erupted from Keiy's central eye, filling the café.

  This time, Legate Ixthia wasn’t inhabiting the black-fluid bath. She sat on a dark floor in some kind of a dim corridor lit by flickering blue runes. The Wendigo was completely naked, her body covered in fresh blood. Her diamond-studded antlers caught the eerie light as she bit into something.

  It was a… pradavarian cheetah soaked in blood. Sliced cleanly in half at the torso.

  The prad was still alive. Barely. His golden-violet eyes stared at nothing, shock keeping him quietly weeping as the Legate consumed his innards.

  Behind her, a group of about ten male prad kobolds of various species stood wearing decorative silver and gold jewelry that left little to the imagination. Their faces showed pure terror. One was crying silently, trembling at the sight of the feast.

  "Ah, my darling spawnling!" Ixthia's voice rang cheerfully through the café, her mouth full of cheetah organs. She swallowed and smiled, blood dripping from her teeth. “Good to see that you and your new lovely consort are doing well.”

  The Skinwalkers stared in shock at the holographic feast.

  Galateya's scales went pure white, mane turning to long icicles. "Great-grandmother, is that—"

  “Just having a light snack.” She took another bite. The cheetah whimpered.

  Galateya blanched.

  "Poor Archer Silvertail here got himself cut in half by a metal sentinel," Ixthia explained conversationally. "That's how the game is played on the Entertainment Deck. Everyone levels up through shared kill-experience. Someone’s gotta die from time to time to keep things fair and realistic. Isn't that right, boys?"

  The kobolds rapidly nodded in response.

  "I want to see my sister," Archer whisper-wept. "Please. My sister… Addie… I have to tell her not to sign the—"

  "Shhhh," Ixthia stroked his face. "Your sister hasn't signed her contract yet. But she will. They all do eventually. You must be patient, darling."

  The dying cheetah bubbled blood.

  "Now then," Ixthia returned her attention to us. "I couldn't help but notice you've found and interrogated some interesting locals. Skinwalkers! How marvelously unexpected!"

  "Great-grandmother," Galateya said carefully, her voice tight, "we're in the middle of—"

  "Of making new friends! Yes, Keiy outlined as much for me." Ixthia took another leisurely bite, blood running down her chin in red rivets.

  Sage, Marya, and Fennel had gone completely still, not even daring to breathe.

  "Tell me," Ixthia continued, silver eyes gleaming through the projection, "which Omnicorp do you belong to? Moonfeast? Fleshweave? Oh, don't tell me you're with the Nightshears. I simply adored their delegation at the treaty negotiations. Such exquisite negotiators. Very... flexible in their terms. Easy to work with."

  "We're... independent," Marya managed. Her human face had gone pale. "No Omnicorp affiliation."

  "Independent!" Ixthia laughed, "That’s what I thought. How delightfully rebellious. Your Elders must be furious. Do they know where you are?"

  "No," Fennel uttered quickly.

  "Ah." The Legate's smile widened. "Runaways! Even better. That means no diplomatic complications if I decide to claim you as colonial assets. Which is what you’re now. My assets. More specifically, my little rainbow’s new assets.”

  “What?” Galateya blinked.

  I already guessed where this was going.

  "One of you will submit to my granddaughter as a blood-bound Knight." She smiled sweetly.

  "One?" Marya choked.

  "Just one," Ixthia confirmed. "Galateya is far too low-level to dominate multiple Omnids properly. She needs to start small. Build up. One… devoted, fully bound Knight-Maid to begin her ascension as my lovely Baroness of Earth." She paused. "The rest of you can function as Galateya’s assets on general blood contracts. As her Sixies. I’ll have someone from Division 881 come by and handle that business. Probably… Commandant Nexxali Everrim and Commander Sillicia, once they finish with their other work today. You have thirty seconds to decide among yourselves. Pick one Knight."

  A red [00:30] flashed on the front of Keiy’s head.

  I knew exactly what Nexxali was doing now, was watching her through my other eyes.