Coming Soon - Dead in Big D - By Brian Thomson

---

CHAPTER 1: THE CONFESSIONAL

The interior of the heavy-duty SUV was an unyielding island of crisp, clinical silence, completely isolated from the damp, freezing fog rolling heavily off the black, sluggish waters of the Trinity River. Outside, the premium LED headlights cut through the swirling grey mist like twin lances of cold white fire, illuminating the oil-slicked asphalt of the empty city streets. On the digital dashboard, the instrument cluster glowed a precise, cool blue: 2:14 AM. The vehicle's high-end satellite stereo was dialed down to a bare whisper, casting the opening, clean-plucked acoustic notes of Metallica’s "Fade to Black" into the cabin—just enough harmonic frequency to keep the dark, premium leather-scented space from feeling entirely hollow.

Corvin Blackwood sat with absolute, rock-solid stillness behind the thick, leather-wrapped steering wheel, his massive 6'2", 259-pound frame easily dominating the driver's seat. Tonight, he was operating on the standard Regular tier of the Shift network, deliberately seeking the unvarnished, gritty rhythm of the late-night Fort Worth pavement. Beneath the soft fabric of his dark cotton shirt, the ancient, cold golden weight of the Budapest Medallion rested flat and reassuring against his stone-dense sternum, anchoring his human glamour firmly on paper. Zoe’s advanced five-thousand-dollar-an-hour day cosmetics were flawlessly blended across his chiseled jawline and heavy knuckles, ensuring that to any mortal eye under the sulfur-yellow streetlamps, he looked like nothing more than a rugged, exceptionally handsome Texas rancher.

The dashboard interface pinged smoothly—a sharp, clean electronic chime that illuminated his stark profile with the geographic coordinates of a priority pickup. The target was outside a historic, dark-red brick-walled office building on the edge of the Downtown district. Corvin glided the massive vehicle to the curb, its custom-engineered, heavy-duty reinforced suspension absorbing the transition from asphalt to old streetcar tracks without a single vibration or interior rattle.

The rear passenger door swung open with a heavy, pressurized click, letting in a sudden, sharp draft of freezing winter air. The gust was laced with the distinct, depressing smells of burnt office coffee, stale ozone from old copier machines, and the dry dust of ancient paper files. A young woman scrambled inside, her breath pluming white in the cabin light before she pulled the door shut behind her with a frantic, desperate velocity.

"Good evening," Corvin said. His deep, gravelly baritone filled the car like a steadying anchor—smooth, resonant, and beautifully controlled. He looked up at the digital rearview mirror, his unblinking winter-blue eyes locking directly onto her reflection through the glass. "Welcome to Shift. How are you doing tonight?"

"Fine," she said quickly.

The response was instantaneous, defensive, and entirely automatic. But to Corvin’s hyper-acute vampire senses, the lie was completely transparent. Her vocal cords were incredibly tight, constricted by a throat that was actively choking back a sob. Up front, Corvin’s ears tracked the frantic internal machinery of her panic; her heart was hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, its rapid, electric rhythm vibrating at an astonishing 140 beats per minute. Her body was radiating a cold, chemical cloud of pure anxiety into the premium leather-lined space, the scent of her adrenaline sharp and metallic.

He wanted to ask her what was wrong right then, but his centuries of hunting had taught him the value of patience. He shifted the heavy SUV into drive, pulling smoothly away from the curb. The wide, low-profile performance tires bit hard into the rain-slicked asphalt of the entrance ramp, the faint, reassuring whine of the twin-scroll turbochargers engaging behind the firewall as the massive vehicle countered the sway with a slight lateral G-force. Corvin merged effortlessly onto the dark, empty highway. The glowing navigation screen mapped out a twenty-two-minute ride to her destination. If she wanted to confess, there would be plenty of time on the pavement.

He adjusted the rearview mirror slightly as the tires hummed against the road, keeping his tone warm and steady.

"Well," Denise murmured, staring straight down at her lap. Her trembling fingers violently twisted the leather fabric of her purse into tight, strained knots until her knuckles went stark white. "I used to be married. I'm originally from Kenya, and my ex-husband is... he has a terrible, violent way of looking at things. He thinks I'm his property. He's just a mean, awful person."

She poised, swallowing hard against the suffocating tightness in her throat. The heavy SUV rolled with an ominous, mechanical smoothness past the towering, weather-stained concrete pillars of the I-35 overpass, the rhythmic, high-frequency click-click-click of the massive tires on the expansion joints echoing through the cabin like a clock ticking down to zero.

"The whole time we were married, he was cheating on me with another woman and another man," she continued, her voice dropping an octave into a flat, shell-shocked monotone that carried the chilling emptiness of someone who had looked too deep into the dark. "He would sabotage everything. He’d contaminate my makeup with chemical household cleaners so I couldn't wear it and look pretty in public. He’d tear my favorite dresses out of the closet, drag them to the garage, and pour raw bleach all over them until the fabrics dissolved. He... he choked me, driver. He put his hands around my throat and squeezed until the room went completely black and I slipped into unconsciousness. And when my eyes opened and I finally came to, he did it again. Multiple times. Those are just the highlights."

She took a ragged, shuddering breath, a single tear escaping her dark lashes and tracing a hot, glittering path down her cheek under the precise, icy-blue glow of the dashboard interface.

"After the divorce, I went to the state magistrates and put out three separate restraining orders on him," she whispered, her fingers locking so hard into her leather purse that the stitching threatened to snap. "He violated all three. He didn't get in trouble the first two times—the local precinct just filed the paperwork and let him slide—but the third time, they finally put the cuffs on him and locked him in a cell. Now he has to go to court. If he gets convicted, the penal code states he goes to jail for a full year. He called my personal cell before the trial. He didn't even hide his number. He said, 'If I go to jail for a year, when I get out, I'm going to come find you and kill you.' Driver... I am terrified of what is going to happen."

Denise shook her head quickly, a sudden wave of defensive vulnerability overtaking her as she pulled her small frame deeper back into the shadows of the rear leather seat. "Oh... you don't have to do anything. I shouldn't have said all that. I'm sorry."

"What's his full name?" Corvin repeated, his deep voice carrying a firm, unyielding weight.

"No, it's... you don't have to do that," Denise stammered, her breathing quickening as she waved her hands defensively. "It's not your business. You don't have to."

Corvin didn't push her physically. Instead, he locked his dark eyes directly onto her reflection in the rearview mirror. He let a subtle, hypnotic focus anchor her mind through the glass, a quiet weight settling over the cabin air. The cool blue of the dashboard instruments seemed to pool deeply in his pupils.

"Let me have the name, Denise," Corvin rumbled softly, his gravelly baritone smoothing out into a thick, hypnotic rhythm that completely filled the quiet space of the heavy SUV.

The subtle, telepathic weight of his ancient mind slid effortlessly through the cabin, wrapping around her panicked thoughts like a warm velvet blanket. Under his unblinking dark gaze, the frantic trembling in her hands began to slow, her defensive posture softening as the unyielding gravity of a true apex protector took total control of her mind. The illusion of her isolation completely shattered, replaced by an absolute, drug-like feeling of total safety.

"His... his name is Marcus Jones," Denise whispered, the words slipping past her lips with a flat, trancelike obedience as she stared blankly at his reflection in the glass. "Marcus Jones."

"Thank you, Denise," Corvin smiled politely, his eyes instantly returning to their normal, dark composure as he broke the hypnotic hold. "You did the right thing."

Corvin immediately tapped his hidden wireless earpiece, signaling the Denton safe house.

While his six-foot-two, two-hundred-and-fifty-nine-pound stone-dense frame remained perfectly relaxed inside the humming cabin, the true, multi-billion-dollar nervous system of his empire fired at supersonic speed forty miles to the north. The modern pavement did not merely require an apex predator's fangs; it demanded absolute, flawless digital camouflage and an unyielding command of signals intelligence.

Deep within the reinforced, soundproofed subterranean vaults of the fifty-acre Argyle estate, the air was a crisp, climate-controlled sixty-two degrees, carrying the subtle, sharp scent of warm copper circuits and high-velocity cooling fans. Ruthless KK sat anchored in a heavy, steel-framed ergonomic command chair, her face bathed in the intense, multi-colored neon glare of five curved, wrap-around forty-nine-inch monitors. The high-refresh-rate monitors cast a flickering, emerald matrix across her face. Her custom mechanical keyboard—fitted with specialized linear silent switches—clattered at a ruthless, supersonic speed, the specific acoustic thud of her spacebar hitting its aluminum housing sounding like a barrage of small-caliber gunfire.

The moment Corvin’s voice rumbled through the encrypted, Zurich-routed satellite frequency pronouncing the name Marcus Jones, Ruth’s fingers didn't just type; they executed a localized digital invasion.

"Launching the Shift Skimmer algorithm now, Boss," Ruthless KK muttered into her lightweight headset boom mic, her jaw tight with a cocky hacker confidence.

On her primary screen, a proprietary scraping script hardcoded directly into the backend architecture of the Shift network split into a multi-threaded data harvester. The skimmer bypassed standard regional database queries completely. It initiated a read-only query on the Texas Department of Public Safety’s central data repository, leveraging a high-tier zero-day exploit that Ruth had bought off the dark web a year prior.

Within four seconds, the terminal breached the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) index. A waterfall of encrypted text lines cascaded down the monitors in vibrant neon green. The skimmer systematically pulled up every document tied to the string Marcus L. Jones: three inactive protective orders filed out of Tarrant County, two sealed domestic disturbance incident reports from the Fort Worth Police Department's East Precinct, and a pending misdemeanor assault case set for trial.

"I have the baseline file," Ruthless KK said, her fingers blurring across the keys as she tapped into a high-frequency enterprise API link. "Mirroring the LexisNexis and TLOxp commercial credit matrices. Let's see where he sleeps."

The terminal cross-referenced the target's active financial footprint, scraping real-time data from localized ATM transactions, digital wallet logs, and utility deed filings. In less than twenty seconds, a high-definition geographic coordinate pinged on her map matrix, locking down a residential home on a secluded side street just outside the downtown Fort Worth district grid.

Eighteen miles away, inside a non-descript, heavily fortified safe house nestled quietly into a tree-lined neighborhood in Keller, the daytime tactical oversight terminal was silently drawing its shift to a close. The soft, localized hum of the liquid-cooled, dual-redundant server towers hidden behind the drywall vibrated through the quiet space.

McKenna—known across the secure channels strictly as Big Mac—sat back slightly in her command console, her sharp, calculating amber eyes reflecting the cold blue light of her dedicated network displays. While Ruthless KK managed the raw, volatile data ingestion from the active hunts, McKenna’s role was the silent, architectural preservation of the syndicate's operational security.

Her primary dashboard was hardcoded directly into the estate's Active Camouflage Telemetry (ACT) network. On her display, the real-time movement of Corvin's heavy-duty SUV was represented by a pulsing, dark-blue node gliding smoothly along the virtual rendering of Interstate 35. The vehicle was entirely invisible to public GPS tracking infrastructure; a standalone, custom-engineered inertial guidance matrix Tony had hardwired into the engine's firewall was processing dead-reckoning navigation based entirely on tire rotations and multi-axis G-force calculations.

McKenna reached for a sleek, glass touchpad, split her screen, and initiated the Argyle Proxy Loop protocol. This protocol ensured that all tactical voice communications coming off the asphalt were routed out of a shell corporation server array hidden deep within the mountain vaults of Zurich, Switzerland. The voice packets were heavily scrambled using AES-256 military-grade encryption, mathematically compressed, and layered directly into standard, high-volume commercial streaming traffic. To any federal signals intelligence (SIGINT) sweep or local telecommunications sniffer, the data looked exactly like an ordinary civilian family watching a movie in the backseat of a luxury commuter vehicle.

"The signal loop is pristine, Denton," McKenna reported, her tone calm, flat, and dripping with professional technical precision. "The federal arrays are showing zero anomalies. Corvin is a ghost on the state wire."

"Acknowledged, Keller," Ruthless KK’s voice crackled back over the scrambled channel. "Coordinates are pushed to the Master's dashboard interface. Locking down the perimeter cameras."

The remaining fourteen minutes of the drive passed in a profound, heavy quiet. In the backseat, Denise leaned back against the rich leather, her breathing entirely regular now, her heart rate settling into a peaceful, steady rhythm. The telepathic weight of Corvin’s calming glamour had completely dissolved her panic, replacing a lifetime of traumatic isolation with the absolute certainty that she was no longer alone in the dark.

Corvin navigated the heavy SUV through the flashing neon perimeter of the Fort Worth grid, his unblinking dark eyes locked on the asphalt. The digital clock on the console ticked down with meticulous precision. When he pulled up to the curb of her modest apartment complex, he shifted into park and looked back in the mirror.

"You are safe now, Denise," Corvin rumbled softly, his gravelly baritone smooth and anchoring. "Go inside, lock your door, and rest. The monster in your past is finished."

Denise offered a fragile, deeply grateful smile, stepped out into the cool night air, and walked safely inside.

CHAPTER 2: THE RECKONING ON THE PAVEMENT

The next night, the Fort Worth air was dead silent, locked in the grip of a biting, sub-zero front that slicked the powerlines with a skin of micro-crystalline frost. Armed with the precise coordinates pulled from the secure network at the Denton safe house, Corvin walked up the concrete steps of a secluded home. Beneath his long, dark wool coat, his broad, 6'2", 259-pound frame was as dense and solid as an iron blast wall.

He didn't ring the bell. He reared back his heavy fist and threw three thunderous, authoritative knocks against the front door, the vibration rattling the cheap faux-wood paneling in its framing.

The lock clicked back, the door swung open, and a man stepped directly into the threshold. He stood the exact same height as Corvin, but he possessed none of the broad, crushing presence of the figure towering before him.

Marcus Jones looked at Corvin, his expression instantly twisting into a practiced, arrogant sneer meant to intimidate. "Who the hell are you?"

"Are you Marcus Jones?" Corvin asked. His dark, winter-cold eyes remained unblinking, his gravelly voice dropping into a dead, flat calm that carried the terrifying weight of an absolute decree.

Marcus leaned heavily against the painted doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest in a desperate display of casual dominance. "Yeah. What about it?"

"You know Denise?"

Marcus scoffed, a nasty, dismissive smirk cutting across his mouth. "Yeah, I know her. What’s she doing, sending an SHIFT driver to my house?"

Corvin stepped straight forward, completely invading the man's physical space, crossing the threshold of the entryway without invitation. The physical mass of his 259-pound build was so sudden and aggressive that the air pressure inside the doorway seemed to drop instantly, the draft turning freezing cold. "Well, if you ever contact her again, or come near her again, you will answer me. And you will not like the result."

Marcus let out a sharp, mocking chuckle, his beer-fueled machismo trying to fight through the sudden chill. "Yeah? You think you can just march into my house and—"

Before Marcus could finish the sentence, Corvin moved with supernatural, blinding velocity.

He closed the remaining distance in a localized blur, his ancient presence exploding into the narrow hallway as he drove his massive palm into Marcus's chest, slamming him backward into the interior entryway. The arrogance instantly vanished from Marcus’s face, completely replaced by a deep, primal, and instinctual terror. He found himself pinned flat against the hallway drywall, his heels dangling inches off the floor, paralyzed by the sheer, crushing mass of the ancient power before him. He began to shake violently, his breathing reduced to a shallow, ragged wheeze as his bravado was shattered in a single fraction of a second.

Corvin looked down at him, his face a bloodless, unyielding mask of winter stone. "Yeah," he whispered.

As the syllable left Corvin’s lips, the shadows throwing across his face from the overhead hallway lamp seemed to sharpen into razor-edged lines. With a subtle, anatomical click of his heavy jaw, his upper canines slowly slid down against his bloodless gums, the razor-sharp white vampire fangs gleaming starkly in the dim light. His dark eyes flared with a dangerous, luminescent predatory flame, his wide black pupils fully dilating to lock onto his prey.

Marcus Jones stared directly into the unmasked maw of the transformation, a high-pitched, choked rattling sound escaping his throat as the impossible reality completely broke his spirit. His eyes grew wide as saucers, his breath cutting out completely in his chest as he quivered uncontrollably, pinned flat against the wall by the staggering, suffocating intensity of the vampire's unyielding gaze.

The raw, predatory terror running through Marcus's veins completely bypassed his conscious mind, triggering a total systemic collapse. Under the absolute weight of Corvin’s ancient presence, his bladder instantly failed. A dark, warm stain spread rapidly across the fabric of his jeans, pooling heavily onto the hardwood floorboards of his own entryway as his physical dignity completely shattered alongside his bravado. He began to weep pathetically, a trembling, broken wreck paralyzed by an old-world fear he couldn't comprehend.

Corvin leaned his massive frame down further into the space, his bloodless winter-marble face stopping a mere inch away from Marcus's trembling ear. The air radiating off the vampire was below freezing, turning Marcus's panicked breath into tiny, ghostly plumes of white vapor. When Corvin spoke, his low baritone dropped into a jagged, animalistic register—a sound stripped entirely of its smooth human glamour, vibrating with the ancient rage of a protective executioner.

"If you so much as utter her name again," Corvin whispered, the syllables cutting through the dark entryway like cold steel, "if your shadow ever crosses a single street lamp within a mile of her door, I will not call the police. I will not wait for a court warrant. I will reach into your chest, rip out your throat, and tear your pathetic body into pieces right on the concrete. Do you understand me, little man?"

Marcus couldn't even form a word. His throat was completely paralyzed, clicking dryly as he frantically nodded his head, his tears spilling onto his soiled clothes in a desperate, pleading prayer for mercy. He was staring straight into the mouth of a monster, and he knew with absolute certainty that every syllable of the vow was a promise signed in blood.

"Yeah. That's what I thought," Corvin growled, his gravelly baritone physically vibrating the narrow studs of the small entryway.

With a final, imposing glare that burned straight through Marcus's fractured consciousness, Corvin stepped back, completely releasing the suffocating psychological pressure. Left without physical or mental support, Marcus Jones slid weakly down the stained drywall and collapsed directly into his own mess on the floor, curling into a tight, pathetic fetal ball, quivering uncontrollably and completely broken.

Corvin turned his back on the pathetic sight, his long black wool coat swinging like a shroud as he stepped back out onto the concrete porch. He raised his right hand toward the open Texas sky, the midnight wind whipping through his dark hair.

"Nevermore," Corvin said softly.

He snapped his heavy fingers.

In a seamless, silent flash of localized shadow, Corvin’s massive 259-pound frame collapsed inward, completely defying human physics. A sleek, midnight-black bat burst from the vortex of vanishing darkness, the sharp, rhythmic snap of leathery wings cutting through the quiet porch air as it launched itself high into the night sky, disappearing over the tree lines.

Below, Marcus Jones sat alone in the dark—shaking, crying, and permanently discouraged from ever approaching Denise again.

The next morning, the bright Texas sun beat down over the fifty-acre ranch in Argyle, baking the frost off the post oaks. Down in the garage wing, the air remained cool, silent, and climate-controlled as Tony and his son, Dylan, quietly detailed the vehicle fleet, the scent of fresh wax and premium oil filling the bays. Up in the estate's main security suite, Morgan stood before a towering wall of monitors, his military posture straight as a razor as his eyes systematically reviewed the night's operational logs.

Suddenly, an encrypted audio link chimed on his primary console. The caller ID flashed from an untraceable proxy routed out of the secure daytime network at the Keller safe house.

Morgan tapped the receiver, activating his lightweight headset. "Go ahead, Big Mac."

Miles away in her quiet, heavily fortified Keller safe house, McKenna sat back in her ergonomic command chair, her independent daytime cyber shift drawing to a close. Her eyes, sharp, amber, and calculating, blinked in sheer amusement at the public medical records and police CAD logs filling her high-refresh-rate monitors.

"Morgan, the night logs are officially verified," McKenna reported, her tone dripping with flat, professional technical precision. "The mental hospital was the only logical place left for Marcus Jones. When he tried to tell the intake officers and the local police that a broad-shouldered rideshare driver grew razor-sharp fangs and physically turned into a bat on his front porch, they threatened to add filing a false report to his existing domestic charges. Shaking, paranoid, and utterly shattered, he checked himself into a maximum-security lockdown psychiatric facility downtown to escape the monsters in his own mind. He won't be making any more court dates."

"Excellent work, McKenna," Morgan murmured, his hand moving to lock his terminal interface. "Then Marcus Jones is truly done. No matter what."

"Copy that. Keller out," she replied, cutting the encrypted link with a single tap.

Down in the soundproofed basement sanctuary of the estate, Ruthless KK watched the digital intake logs from her Denton terminal confirm the hospital self-admission, updating the syndicate's master files. She tapped her microphone to patch directly into the darkened resting quarters. "He's officially off the grid, Corvin. Denise is safe."

Resting in the deep shadows of the East Wing, Corvin listened to a soft, rich classical Strauss melody floating analog through his stereo tubes. He nodded slowly, the dark, predatory edge of the night melting back into his gentle farmer's soul. He reached for his smartphone, opened a private, high-end concierge application reserved for old-money trusts, and placed a custom order.

The next afternoon, the bright Texas sun beat down on Fort Worth, but inside Denise’s apartment, the heavy curtains remained drawn completely against the light. She sat huddled on her sofa, her eyes exhausted and bloodshot from another sleepless night, still dreading the looming court date and the terrifying, violent threats echoing continuously in her mind.

A sudden, rhythmic knock at her front door broke the heavy silence.

Denise opened it hesitantly to find a uniformed courier holding a massive, stunning arrangement of fresh Kenyan roses alongside a premium, all-inclusive luxury spa voucher. Tucked deep inside the satin ribbon was a small, elegant note written in heavy black fountain ink:

Thank you for letting me know about your situation. It has all been taken care of. Enjoy this, and enjoy your life.

But the roses were only the vanguard of Corvin's true replenishment.

Ten minutes after the floral delivery, a specialized, unmarked corporate cargo van from an elite high-end concierge service pulled smoothly up to her concrete curb. Two professional style consultants stepped out onto the sidewalk, wheeling in massive, heavy rolling racks encased in pristine, heavy protective garment bags.

Corvin had completely bypassed standard retail parameters, utilizing his vast Standard Oil succession trusts to deploy a swift, overwhelming restoration of the identity and dignity her ex-husband had spent years trying to dismantle. On the racks hung a complete, meticulously curated luxury wardrobe tailored exactly to her measurements—elegant silk blouses, perfectly tailored blazers, and stunning evening dresses sourced directly from the finest designers in the Dallas Arts District.

Following the wardrobe racks came a heavy, custom-engraved mahogany lockbox. Inside rested a complete, flawless vault of premium cosmetics, including custom-blended foundations, luxury skin-care lines, and vibrant lipsticks sourced directly from Paris—completely overriding the memory of the contaminated makeup Marcus Jones had used as a weapon of psychological torture. Every single piece of ruined clothing and poisoned cosmetics her abuser had destroyed with raw bleach was systematically replaced by a king's ransom of pure elegance.

Denise read the note a third time, her trembling fingers running over the incredibly smooth fabric of a designer silk dress. Tears of pure, unadulterated relief finally spilled down her cheeks. For the first time in years, she didn't feel hunted on the pavement; she felt valued, protected, and completely safe. The invisible cage of her past had evaporated under the weight of an untraceable fortune.

Later that evening, as the long shadows reclaimed the highways of Fort Worth, Corvin adjusted his rearview mirror and toggled his rideshare application back to active. There were more souls waiting on the curb.

⚠️ EDITOR’S NOTE: CRISIS & ADVOCACY RESOURCES

Domestic violence and coercive control can leave deep, lasting emotional and physical scars. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, intimate partner violence, or stalking, please know that you are not alone and that confidential assistance is available 24/7.

• The National Domestic Violence Hotline: Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text "START" to 88788.
• Texas Council on Family Violence: For local Texas resources, legal advocacy, and regional shelter directories, visit tcfv.org.