Moonlight bled through the boarded-up church windows, casting prison-bar shadows across the confessionals. Leo crouched behind the rotting altar, fingertips tracing the bullet holes in the Bible – .45 caliber, three shots grouped tight enough to punch through Kevlar. The bracelet's runes squirmed like maggots under his skin.
"They'll smell the guilt on you, cub."
Samuel Bloodclaw emerged from the sacristy shadows, gnawing on a pigeon carcass. His beard writhed with silver lice that fell sizzling into the holy water font. "Should've died that night in the alley. Would've saved us all trouble."
Leo pressed his back against the cold marble. Eleven hours since the precinct explosion, thirty-seven minutes since he'd started bleeding from his tear ducts. The coordinates on the stolen keycard pointed here, to this crumbling Episcopalian ruin where his mother's wedding photo lay shattered underfoot.
"Take it off." Samuel spat a feather. "Before it rewrites your cerebellum."
The bracelet pulsed. Leo's vision fractured – suddenly he saw the church as it once was. Pews polished to mirrors, stained glass depicting not saints but wolf-headed knights. A young Samuel in vestments chanting over an altar stone carved with the same runes as his scars.
"Fuck your prophecies." Leo's voice echoed wrong, layered with a growl not his own. "You put this thing on me."
Samuel laughed, a sound like gravel in a meat grinder. "You begged for it. Screamed for power when those frat boys pissed on your father's grave." His clawed finger jabbed at Leo's chest. "I just answered."
The memory hit like a sucker punch – Mom's funeral, six tequila shots deep, stumbling into that alley with a broken bottle. The vagrant's eyes glowing sulfur-yellow as he pressed the bracelet into Leo's palm. "Better predator eats the wolf," he'd slurred.
A rat skittered across the altar. Leo's hand shot out on its own, crushing the rodent with a wet pop. He stared at the twitching corpse, hunger coiling in his gut.
"See?" Samuel scooped up the rat remains, sucking marrow from its spine. "It's writing new instincts over your pathetic human firmware."
Moonlight shifted. The crucifix above the altar swung inverted, revealing a hidden compartment. Inside glinted surgical tools and vials labeled X-07 Serum. Leo's breath hitched – Mom's fingerprints smudged one tube.
"Her final project before the accident." Samuel's grin showed too many teeth. "Funny how suburban moms always crack first under the moonlight."
The bracelet convulsed. Leo's claws tore grooves in the altar as memories detonated – Mom screaming at mirrors, Dad injecting her with glowing fluid, the way her eyes reflected like a wolf's when she tucked him in.
"Liar." Leo lunged.
Samuel dissolved into smoke and maggots. His voice echoed from the rafters where pigeons rustled. "Check the basement, cub. Your inheritance awaits."
The hidden staircase reeked of formaldehyde and wet earth. Leo's phone light revealed stainless steel tanks lining the catacombs – six, twelve, twenty-four clones floating in amniotic fluid. All his face. All wearing bracelets crusted with black moss.
The youngest specimen opened its eyes.
Its pupils split vertically as the tank's fluid drained with a hiss. The clone's hands pressed against glass, mouthing words that bypassed Leo's ears to drill directly into his skull:
"We remember the knife. We remember the fire. We remember you begging them to stop."
The bracelet burned white-hot. Leo smashed the tank, his claws shredding rubber seals. The clone collapsed, aging rapidly – ten years in ten seconds, skin sloughing off to reveal the vagrant's rune scars beneath.
"Homecoming's at midnight." Samuel's voice whispered from the dying clone's lips. "The pack always eats its weakest."
Sirens wailed above ground. Red laser dots danced across the clone's corpse. Leo fled through a sewage tunnel, the bracelet's pulse now a constant scream. In his pocket, the clone had shoved a waterlogged Polaroid – Mom strapped to an examination table, pregnant belly glowing with Norse runes.
Behind him, the church exploded in a pillar of blue flame. Through the smoke, a chorus of howls rose – not wolves. Something with too many joints in their legs, too many teeth in their smiles.
The last sane part of Leo's mind counted the howls.
Twelve.
Exactly the number of his cloned siblings.