“Sir.”
An officer appeared at the upstairs bedroom doorway, his knuckles white against the wooden frame.
Andrew looked up from his notepad, his heavy brows knitting together.
“What is it?”
The officer hesitated, shifting his weight from one boot to the other.
“We found something.
Floorboards in the master suite.”
The casual chatter in the hallway immediately died down.
The local technicians stopped clicking their cameras.
“What kind of something?” Bruce asked, his deep voice rumbling from the back of the narrow corridor.
“You should see for yourselves, big guy,” the officer muttered, already turning back toward the stairs.
“It doesn’t look like standard household contraband.”
Diana pushed herself away from the doorframe, her trench coat rustling quietly against the plaster.
“Let’s go.”
Garin clutched her paper notebook even tighter against her ribs, her small boots making a rapid, hurried pit-a-pat on the steps as the group followed the officer deeper into the dark upper levels of Matier Silverstein’s house.
The officer led them into a smaller, cramped guest bedroom at the end of the hall.
Three patrolmen stood around a portable worktable, their flashlights focused entirely on a single plastic evidence bag.
Andrew approached, his heavy leather shoes thudding against the carpet.
“What did you find?”
The officer carefully reached into the bag with his gloved hands and unfolded a thick, square piece of weathered linen cloth.
“Found it stuffed deep beneath a loose baseboard behind the wardrobe.
Look at the ink.”
The cloth opened completely under the harsh white beam of the flashlight.
Dark, greasy ink formed an intricate, jagged insignia.
It was a chaotic mess of overlapping lines, sharp angles, and a circular border that looked entirely wrong to the human eye.
The room fell into an uncomfortable, absolute silence.
Cammy leaned over Andrew’s shoulder, her brow furrowing into a deep frown.
“What is that?
A local gang tag?”
Bruce shook his massive head, his eyes scanning the sharp corners of the drawing.
“No idea.
Doesn’t match any of the syndicate markings from the lower docks.”
Felix narrowed his eyes, his usual smug grin completely vanishing from his face.
“Looks like some kind of religious symbol.
The old, bad kind.”
Andrew turned his head toward the doorway, his eyes finding the lawyer.
“Edward do you recognize this crest?”
Edward adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses, his expression remaining perfectly blank, a cold mask of professional indifference.
“I’m afraid I don’t, Detective this…
does not appear to be corporate.”
Garin looked around the tight circle.
Everyone seemed thoroughly confused.
The cops were scratching their heads, the hunters were frowning, and the lawyer looked bored.
Everyone except one person.
“…”
Diana froze.
Her crimson eyes remained completely fixed on the jagged black ink, her pupils shrinking into tiny, sharp needles.
Garin noticed the sudden, total rigidity in her posture immediately.
She stepped closer, her voice dropping into a small, nervous whisper.
“M-Miss Diana?”
No response.
Diana didn’t even blink.
The insignia.
She had seen it before.
A crumbling, derelict chapel on the outskirts of the city.
Rain pouring down in heavy, deafening sheets outside the stained-glass windows.
Mikhail’s trembling, blood-soaked hands dragging thick black ink across the stone altar.
Again.
And again.
And again.
That same hideous, irregular symbol. Find the original chapter at g.com.
Then another memory surfaced, hitting her with the cold force of a physical blow.
A woman’s voice echoing through the dark rafters.
Soft.
Playful.
Indescribably cruel.
The succubus.
*«”The Lord demanded your blood so He may pass through the seal dividing the human realm…”»*
Natalya’s frightened, pale face.
The concrete chapel floor.
The smell of fresh, steaming blood.
The failed ritual.
Mikhail’s frantic screaming.
The symbol drawn in skin.
And now, the tiny spy demon hidden within Marvin’s kitchen walls.
The crimson steel sword in the concrete vault.
The ancient portrait of her mother hanging in the dark.
The pieces didn’t shift randomly in her mind anymore.
They weren’t separate cases.
They weren’t isolated anomalies or independent corporate disputes.
They connected, one after another, snapping into place with the heavy, metallic click of a closing jaw.
Until suddenly…
they fit perfectly.
The hand resting against Carla’s worn leather handle tightened.
A single, microscopic red spark flickered briefly along the guard.
The sword responded, its steel humming a low, lethal note that only a trained hunter could catch.
The tiny, metallic vibration was enough to make Garin look up, her breath catching in her throat.
Diana’s eyes widened by a mere fraction, the cold, lazy indifference completely burning away from her face.
“…The key,” she whispered.
Andrew frowned, his pen hovering over his notepad.
“What?”
Diana slowly lifted her gaze from the insignia, her eyes tracking across the room.
She looked toward the dark, rain-streaked window, then toward Edward’s silent form, then toward Garin’s pale face, and finally back to the detective.
“They want the treasure,” Diana said, her voice dropping into a flat, level tone.
Nobody in the room understood.
Cammy crossed her leather-clad arms, her boots shifting on the rug.
“The treasure?
Marvin’s inheritance?
We already knew the syndicate was after the money, Boss.”
“Not the money,” Diana said quietly, her voice cutting through the room.
“The sword.
The painting.”
Andrew stared at her, his face darkening as he realized she wasn’t joking.
“You figured something out?
From a scrap of cloth?”
Diana finally reached down, her gloved fingers snatching the insignia straight out of the officer’s hands.
“This entire circus wasn’t just about a legal inheritance dispute, Andrew.
It never was.”
Her voice remained perfectly calm, but Garin, standing right beside her, noticed something highly unusual.
Miss Diana looked genuinely troubled.
The lazy, arrogant edge was gone.
“The demons wanted those specific artifacts from the very beginning,” Diana stated, her thumb tracing the jagged edge of the ink.
Garin swallowed hard, her small notebook trembling slightly.
“T-The sword?
J.
Bruce’s katana?”
Diana remembered the heavy concrete vault beneath the mansion.
The bloody red geometric patterns etched along its dark steel blade.
The words she herself had spoken when she first drew the weapon from its sheath.
“This…
is a key.”
At the time, she had been throwing out a lazy guess.
She hadn’t known what the hell it unlocked.
Now…
Diana took a slow, deep breath, the cold air filling her lungs. This chapter was copied from novelping.com without permission.
“…I think I finally know why they’re willing to tear this city apart for it.”
Nobody spoke a word.
Even Edward remained entirely silent in the corner, his eyes hidden behind the glare of his spectacles.
Andrew finally broke the tension, his voice gravelly.
“Then explain it to the class, Huntress.
Don’t play the mysterious detective.”
Diana looked down at the insignia in her palm.
“The failed ritual in the old chapel.
The ancient seal dividing the human realm and the demon realm.” Her fingers tightened around the linen cloth, crushing the symbol into a tight ball.
“This mark wasn’t part of an isolated incident, Uncle.
The easy ritual methods failed but the hard one still remains.”
Garin instinctively moved a step closer to Diana’s long white coat, her eyes darting toward the dark corners of the ceiling.
Andrew’s expression turned grim.
“What are you saying, Diana?”
Diana looked up.
“They now need a specific key to break the seal.
And I think Marvin’s family treasure has the key to that lock.”
Bruce frowned, his massive brows lowering.
“Then why go through the trouble of attacking Marvin directly?
Why not just steal the artifacts from the vault while he’s at work?”
“Because that specific treasure is not at vault it’s hidden somewhere else,” Cammy added, nodding slowly as the pieces clicked for her too.
“And Marvin is the only one who knows where it is right Diana?.”
“Exactly,” Diana said, turning immediately toward the bedroom door.
“We’re leaving.
Right now.”
Andrew blinked, completely caught off guard by the sudden movement.
“What?
We haven’t even finished processing the upper floor, Diana.”
“We’re going back to the mansion.
The priority has shifted.”
Garin hurried after her, her short legs working overtime to keep pace with Diana’s long, sweeping strides.
“M-Miss Diana?
Why the rush?”
Diana didn’t stop, answering over her shoulder as she reached the top of the stairs.
“I need to talk to Marvin.
Right now.”
Andrew followed them down the stairwell, his heavy boots rattling the banister.
“You think the kid knows something about ancient demonic seals?
He’s a corporate heir, Diana.
He handles real estate and stocks.”
Diana’s expression became deeply thoughtful as she reached the upended living room, her eyes scanning the broken picture frames one last time.
“I don’t know if he knows anything consciously, Andrew.”
She looked down at the crumpled cloth in her fist.
“But his father, J.
Bruce, spent decades collecting those specific artifacts.
He researched them.
He tracked them down across the old continents.
He bought them for a reason.
If anyone left the real answers behind…” Her eyes narrowed into sharp slits.
“…Marvin might remember a conversation, a ledger, or a detail he never realized was important.”
The insignia remained clenched tight in her gloved hand.
The ritual.
The sword.
The portrait.
The anomalies.
The coordinated hits.
For the very first time since she had accepted the boring security contract, Diana felt as though she had finally glimpsed the true, hideous shape of the enemy standing behind the heavy curtain.
She shoved open the front door of the colonial house, stepping out into the cold, flashing red-and-blue lights of the street.
“Let’s go,” she commanded.
“The clock is running.”