Ash spent his first few nights in the new apartment thinking about what to do before college started. It was only early July, and Hunter College would not begin classes until August, leaving him with several weeks of freedom. Wasting that time felt unacceptable, especially when every supernatural creature he killed had the potential to make him stronger.
New York was enormous, crowded, old, and filled with millions of people. After everything Ash had already encountered, he refused to believe a city like this could be completely free of ghosts, monsters, demons, or killers. The real problem was not whether supernatural threats existed, but how to find them before they found someone else.
With no better intelligence source available, Ash turned to the internet. He pulled his chair toward the desk, started the computer, and began searching every urban-legend forum, paranormal discussion board, and obscure local message site he could find.
Over the following days, Gwen began thinking her younger brother had become addicted to the internet. Ash could spend an entire afternoon staring at the monitor, opening one discussion after another and writing notes whenever something sounded remotely believable. At night, he occasionally disappeared for several hours and returned looking disappointed.
Unfortunately, most of what he found online was complete nonsense.
One poster claimed to have photographed a glowing mermaid in the lake at Central Park, though the attached image was so blurry that it could have been a plastic bag reflecting streetlights. Another insisted that talking crows beneath the Brooklyn Bridge forced pedestrians to recite Shakespeare before allowing them to pass. Someone else wrote several thousand words about fighting an alligator-man in the Manhattan sewer system and somehow surviving a battle that supposedly lasted half the night.
Those stories usually attracted enthusiastic replies, but Ash quickly learned to check the authors before taking anything seriously. The same people who reported sewer monsters were often discussing alien abductions the previous week or selling homemade crystals guaranteed to protect buyers from evil spirits.
A few posts felt different.
One anonymous message described strange sounds coming from a narrow alley in Queens for several nights in a row. The writer claimed it sounded like an animal chewing through bones, yet police officers who later checked the area reported finding nothing suspicious. Another person briefly asked whether anyone had seen a gray shape hovering above the Hoboken docks, then never posted again.
Ash paid more attention to those kinds of reports because they lacked dramatic storytelling and did not seem designed to attract attention. He kept a notebook beside the computer and recorded specific locations, dates, times, and descriptions whenever something seemed worth investigating.
He deliberately ignored two categories of information. The first involved people openly asking strangers to join paranormal investigations, since Ash had no interest in explaining his weapons or abilities to amateur ghost hunters. The second consisted of famous haunted locations and vague legends that attracted too much public attention to investigate quietly.
What Ash wanted were small, precise anomalies that could be checked alone.
After a week, his notebook contained seven or eight decent possibilities.
Almost every one turned out to be useless.
Ash spent three nights watching the Queens alley before discovering that the supposed bone-chewing noises came from stray cats tearing apart garbage bags. He visited the Hoboken waterfront during a rainy evening and found nothing except reflections from neon signs moving across wet fog. A supposedly haunted basement in an abandoned Bronx apartment building contained graffiti, rusted pipes, and enough loose metal to explain every whispering sound reported by nearby residents.
The more false leads Ash eliminated, the more frustrated he became.
What he really needed was an information network capable of filtering ordinary crime, unexplained disappearances, strange injuries, and supernatural rumors before they reached him. Having some government agency or private organization collecting that kind of intelligence would make hunting monsters far easier than spending hours scrolling through anonymous forum posts.
By the middle of July, New York had become brutally hot. One evening, Ash shut down the computer and rubbed his tired eyes while the city lights continued glowing beyond his window. He decided to investigate one final lead from the notebook before abandoning this inefficient method for a while.
Several possibilities remained. There were reports of something resembling a werewolf near subway tunnels, gargoyle-like shapes around an old church, and a suspected demonic presence inside an abandoned warehouse. Ash crossed them off one after another because the locations were either too inconvenient or too exposed for a quiet nighttime search.
One entry finally caught his attention.
A night-shift security guard had posted on an obscure local-history forum about rhythmic metallic knocking near the industrial piers on Manhattan's West Side. According to the message, the sound appeared late at night and was occasionally accompanied by short, extremely sharp screeches that did not resemble any ordinary animal.
The description was surprisingly restrained. There were no blurry photographs, no claims about demons, and no invitation for strangers to investigate. The writer simply documented something unusual and included the range of warehouse numbers where it could be heard.
That made it worth checking.
Ash closed the notebook and pulled a large duffel bag from beneath the bed. He packed the Remington 870 and his father's silver greatsword inside before securing the bag and leaving his room.
Heather was in the other bedroom working through job listings and applications for New York law firms. She had already finished settling matters with Gavin and Arlene Miller, giving them the one-time payment she promised before formally cutting ties and returning to Manhattan.
"I'm heading out for a while," Ash called.
Heather looked up from her laptop. "Another mysterious nighttime walk?"
"Something like that."
"Try not to bring home anything possessed."
"No promises."
Gwen had already started working at the newspaper. Her publication was not an early-morning daily, so her schedule was less brutal than it could have been, but being the newest employee still meant late assignments and frequent overtime. Ash therefore did not need to explain his movements to her every time he left after dark.
The doorman downstairs barely glanced at the duffel bag. Ash had developed a habit of taking long nighttime walks since moving in, and his harmless expression gave no reason to suspect that he was carrying weapons beneath the canvas.
New York's firearm restrictions made discretion essential. Ash was only eighteen, and moving around the city armed could create serious legal trouble regardless of why he carried the weapons. That was another reason he preferred investigating after midnight, when crowds were thinner and he had fewer chances of attracting attention.
By the time Ash reached the aging industrial section of the West Side waterfront, the area had become almost deserted. Warehouses stretched along the dark water while distant city lights reflected across the Hudson in broken lines.
He followed the forum description and waited near the specified warehouse numbers.
A few minutes later, Ash heard it.
Metal struck metal at steady intervals somewhere beyond the buildings.
Clang.
Pause.
Clang.
The noise repeated with almost mechanical precision. Every so often, an unpleasant high-pitched screech cut through the night, distorted by echoes from the warehouses and open water until it sounded disturbingly inhuman.
For several minutes, Ash believed he might finally have found something.
He moved closer using the shadows between buildings and watched the source from a distance.
His excitement disappeared almost immediately.
A small marine repair crew was working late on a tugboat. Several workers were replacing part of the propeller-shaft assembly, and the rhythmic banging came from a mechanic using a heavy sledgehammer to align stubborn components.
The strange screech had an equally ordinary explanation.
A rusted bearing assembly was being forced loose with hydraulic equipment. Metal scraped violently against metal each time the machinery pulled, producing a piercing vibration that traveled across the water and bounced between the warehouse walls. From several blocks away, the distorted echo could easily sound like some unknown creature screaming in the darkness.
Ash watched for another minute before sighing.
The repair crew was nearly finished. If he had arrived half an hour later, they would have packed up and left, and the mystery might have remained in his notebook forever.
That settled it.
Random internet rumors were too unreliable. Ash needed a better way to locate real supernatural activity before he wasted another week chasing cats, plumbing noises, and shipyard equipment.
He turned to leave.
Then something nearby caught his attention.