The sun had just started to bleed out behind the Texas horizon when Seth Gecko lit his last cigarette.

He didn’t flinch when the flame hit his thumb—pain didn’t register the same way anymore. Not since Richie. Not since the goddamn vampires tore their way out of myth and into his life like a shotgun blast to the chest.

Carlos had been waiting just off the old highway near a stretch of dead cotton fields, his voice low and his face unreadable. He didn’t ask about Richie. He didn’t ask about the blood dried on Seth’s shirt.

“You want to disappear?” Carlos said, chewing the words like tobacco. “I got a place. Not many know it. They call it Eldersbluff.”

Seth didn’t care what they called it. He just needed somewhere else. Somewhere no one would look.

But Eldersbluff wasn’t just off the grid. It felt off the planet.

By the time he arrived, the night had settled like a velvet curtain over a stage. Gas lamps lined the streets, flickering weakly in the wind. The air smelled like old books and iron, and every man and woman on the street walked with stiff-backed poise, dressed like they’d stepped out of a daguerreotype. No cars. No neon. No noise—just the slow, hollow toll of a clocktower that didn’t seem to keep the right time.

He passed a barefoot boy in a velvet vest who tipped his top hat and said, “Good eve, stranger,” like it was 1885 and the world hadn’t moved on.

Something about the place crawled beneath Seth’s skin. He was a killer, a thief, and a bastard, sure—but he wasn’t blind. These people weren’t just playing dress-up. They were stuck in something. Something deep. Something cold.

And for the first time since the Titty Twister, Seth had the feeling he wasn’t the most dangerous thing in town.