CREED'S GRAVE (12 Chapters) - A Creed-Hart Crime thriller #1
- Chase Austin
- Aug 29
- 34 min read
Updated: Oct 3
About Creed's Grave (Creed-Hart Crime Thriller Book 1)
Detective Lila Hart's only witness just crawled out of his grave.
When Detective Lila Hart responds to a ritualistic murder in New Orleans' most feared cemetery, she expects forensic evidence—not a witness emerging from a tomb in an expensive suit.
Talon Creed lives beneath the graveyard, speaks like he's from another century, and treats police authority as a suggestion. He's witnessed identical murders spanning decades across different cities, and he has surveillance footage to prove it. But his help comes with conditions that will force Hart to betray everything she's sworn to uphold.
With 72 hours before political pressure destroys her career, Hart faces an impossible choice: trust a man who commands attack dogs and sleeps among the dead, or let a killer perfect his ancient art while her city burns.
In New Orleans, some partnerships follow you straight to the grave. And Detective Lila Hart is about to discover that working with the dead means joining them in the shadows—where survival depends on embracing the darkness.
CREED's GRAVE is the explosive first novel in the Creed-Hart Crime Thriller Series, where every case leads deeper into the supernatural underworld of New Orleans.
If you like Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series, Deborah Harkness's All Souls trilogy, or Neil Gaiman's urban fantasy, then Creed's Grave will keep you reading past midnight.
Chapter 1
Danny's lungs burned as he sprinted down Royal Street, his work boots slipping on the wet cobblestones. The envelope in his sweaty palm was coming apart at the edges, but he couldn't let it go. Not after what he'd seen. Not after what they'd offered him to keep quiet.
Behind him, footsteps echoed off the narrow walls of the French Quarter, but every time he glanced back, the gaslit alley stretched empty. Just shadows dancing between the wrought-iron balconies and the whisper of fog rolling in from the river.
Danny's heart hammered against his ribs as he cut left into a side street, then right again, weaving through the maze of historic buildings. He kept his mouth shut, knowing his accent would mark him if they were close enough to hear. The fake Social Security card in his wallet felt like it was burning a hole through the leather.
The footsteps behind him never faltered. Never hurried. Just that steady, patient rhythm, but Danny was smart—he knew these streets from months of delivery work. Left at the antique shop, right past the jazz club, through the narrow passage between the Creole cottages. He was gaining ground.
The air carried the metallic tang of fog mixed with the cloying sweetness of magnolia and something else—decay, like flowers left too long in stagnant water. In the distance, a ship's horn moaned across the river.
He reached the end of Dauphine Street and saw salvation: the rusted iron gates of Saint Sébastien Cemetery stood slightly ajar, the broken lock hanging useless on its chain. A hiding place. Sanctuary among the dead where his pursuer would never think to look.
Danny squeezed through the gap and stumbled into what felt like another world.
Weeping angels loomed from the mist, their marble faces streaked with decades of rain and moss. The cemetery stretched before him in uneven rows of crypts and monuments, but something felt wrong. The fog was thicker here, almost solid, and it carried whispers—or maybe that was just the wind through the ironwork.
He moved deeper into the maze of tombs, his boots crunching on wet gravel. The footsteps behind him had stopped. Finally. He'd lost them.
But as Danny tried to navigate the twisting paths, his confidence began to crack. Every turn seemed to lead him deeper into the cemetery's heart instead of toward another exit. The paths curved back on themselves in ways that made no sense. He felt the ground slope beneath his feet, realizing with growing unease that this place was built into a ridge, its vaults disappearing into darkness below.
Where was the back gate? There had to be another way out.
The silence pressed against his eardrums. No footsteps. No voices. Just his own ragged breathing and the distant creak of iron settling in the damp air.
That's when it hit him—the footsteps had stopped the moment he entered the cemetery.
Not because he'd lost his pursuer.
Because his pursuer knew he was trapped.
Danny's mouth went dry. He spun around, trying to retrace his steps, but every path looked the same in the fog. Marble angels with blind eyes. Crypts draped in Spanish moss like funeral shrouds. The sweet, sick smell of rotting flowers growing stronger with each step.
He'd been herded. Like a animal driven toward slaughter.
His foot caught on something hidden in the overgrown grass—an iron grave marker, its rusted edges sharp enough to slice through leather. Danny went down hard, the envelope flying from his grip. He scrambled on hands and knees, fingers searching desperately in the wet earth until they closed around the torn paper.
When he looked up, a figure stood between the crypts.
Tall. Draped in dark fabric from head to toe. The hood cast the face in complete shadow—no features visible, just an empty void where a human being should be.
"Please," Danny whispered, backing against the ornate mausoleum behind him. The bronze nameplate read "Lucien Creed," tarnished with age—one of the old families that had owned this ground since late 1800s. "I won't tell anyone. I'll destroy everything. Please, I just want to go home."
The figure stepped closer, and the hood fell back.
Danny's blood turned to ice. The face looking down at him wasn't a stranger's. Wasn't some random killer hunting illegals in the night.
"You," he breathed, recognition hitting him like a punch to the gut. "But why—"
The steel slid between his ribs before he could finish the question. Danny's words died in a wet gasp, replaced by the taste of copper and the terrible understanding that this had never been about his papers or his accent or where he'd come from.
This was about what he'd seen. What he knew.
And now he'd never live to tell anyone.
He collapsed against the mausoleum, his vision already dimming. Through the fog, he watched the hooded figure work with methodical precision—crossing his arms over his chest, placing something cold and metallic over his mouth, tracing patterns in the ash and dirt around his body.
Danny died staring up at the face of a stone angel, its marble tears the last thing he would ever see.
The killer melted back into the fog as silently as they had come, leaving only the dead and the watching stone.
High above, nestled in the weathered folds of a cherub's wings, a hidden camera lens glinted in the gaslight. The device whirred softly as it adjusted its focus, recording everything with perfect digital clarity.
And somewhere closer to the cemetery, screens flickered to life. And in the darkness and fog, something ancient and patient began to stir.
Chapter 2
The call came in at 6:47 AM, just as Detective Lila Hart was finishing her third cup of coffee in the 24-hour diner on Magazine Street. She'd been there since five, unable to sleep again—the same dream that had been haunting her for weeks, a shadow standing in her childhood doorway. Those two eyes still haunted her. She pushed the thought away and watched the sunrise paint the empty streets in shades of gold and shadow.
"Detective Hart?" The voice on her radio crackled with static. "We got a body in Saint Sébastien Cemetery. You're closest to the scene."
Lila dropped a ten on the table and was moving before dispatch finished talking. "On my way. Send Riley when he checks in."
Saint Sébastien Cemetery. Even the name made veteran cops uncomfortable. Word around the precinct was that the place was cursed—too many stories that ended with officers requesting transfers after night shifts there.
Pet Sematary bullshit, Lila told herself. But even she avoided this place and the streets beside it, after dark.
And now she had to enter the same place for a dead man.
Twenty minutes later, she stood at the rusted iron gates, surveying what looked like half the NOPD had descended on the forgotten corner of Marigny Vale. Yellow tape fluttered in the morning breeze. Uniformed officers clustered near their squad cars, smoking cigarettes and avoiding eye contact with the cemetery's interior.
The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and rotting magnolias, cut through with something sharper—a metallic tang that even the morning dew couldn't wash away.
Lila paused for a second longer before she ducked under the tape, her combat boots crunching on wet gravel.
Crime scene photographer Jenny Mouton was already working, her camera flash strobing against the grey morning like lightning.
At twenty-eight, Lila had learned the delicate balance—look too put-together and some cops dismissed her as decoration. Too casual and others questioned her competence.
Leather jacket over dark jeans, hair in a ponytail, and an attitude that said she belonged here.
"Hart!" Officer Tommy Boudreaux waved her over from beside a moss-covered mausoleum. "Body's over here. Maintenance guy found him around six this morning."
Lila nodded, already scanning the scene with practiced eyes. "Where's the witness?"
"Sitting in my car. Guy's pretty shook up. Name's Claude Thibodaux—been cleaning these old cemeteries for the city for thirty years. Says he's never seen anything like this."
As Lila approached the body, she understood why.
This wasn't just murder. This was ceremony.
The victim lay positioned against an ornate mausoleum with unusual precision. Arms crossed over his chest like a medieval knight prepared for eternal rest. A tarnished coin—old, maybe nineteenth century—placed carefully over his mouth like payment for passage to another realm. The faint smell of ash and something else, something that reminded her of old incense, hung in the air.
But it was the markings that made her stomach tighten.
Concentric circles traced in ash rippled outward from the body like stones dropped in dark water. Between the rings, symbols were etched with careful precision—not letters or numbers, but something far older. Something that whispered of candlelit ceremonies and forgotten gods.
"Jesus," Lila breathed, crouching beside the corpse.
This wasn't the work of a accidental killer. This was something else entirely.
Something that belonged to shadows and superstition, not criminal psychology textbooks.
The victim himself looked ordinary enough—mid-twenties, olive skin, callused hands that spoke of manual labor. Work boots, cheap jeans, the kind of guy who stayed invisible in a city full of tourists and transplants.
"Victim?" she asked Tommy Boudreaux.
"No ID. No wallet. Nothing in his pockets except this." He held up an evidence bag containing fragments of cream-colored paper. Through the plastic, Lila could see the edge of a black-and-white photograph curled under a torn flap. "Looks like fragments of an envelope and a black and while photo. Torn up pretty bad."
Lila studied the young man's face, committing it to memory. Someone had gone to elaborate lengths to arrange his death like a ritual offering. The question wasn't just why.
It was who in New Orleans still remembered ceremonies this old.
Chapter 3
Heavy footsteps approached through the fog, and Detective Marcus 'Brick' Riley emerged like a bear in an old peacoat. At thirty-four, Brick carried himself with the careful economy of movement that marked every veteran Lila had ever known. Two tours in Afghanistan had taught him to read violence like a language, and the grim expression on his weathered face said he was already translating what he saw.
"Morning, sunshine," Lila said without looking up from the body. "Sleep well?"
Brick grunted and pulled a silver flask from his coat pocket, unscrewing the cap with practiced efficiency. "About as well as you did, I'm guessing." He took a sip and offered it to her. "Coffee's shit at the station."
Lila accepted the flask gratefully. She hadn't touched the hard stuff since the Causeway incident, but Brick's flask was different. It was a ritual of its own, a silent acknowledgment of the abyss they stared into together. The whiskey burned, but it cut through the morning chill and the growing unease that came with staring at ritual murder.
They'd been partnered by accident eighteen months ago—a scheduling mix-up that had somehow become permanent when they realized they worked better together than apart.
"Talk to me," Brick said, studying the ash circles with pale blue eyes that missed nothing.
"Victim's positioned. Ritualistic elements. Whoever did this wanted the body found exactly like this." Lila gestured to the symbols. "But I'm thinking this goes deeper than occult theater."
"How so?"
"Look at the precision. The coin's placement, the ash patterns—this isn't some wannabe witch playing with symbols they found online. Someone knows what they're doing."
Brick crouched beside the body, careful not to disturb the markings. "Could be. Or could be a psycho with a flair for the dramatic and access to Google." He studied the victim's face. "Either way, this isn't about the killing. This is about what comes after."
"You think it's a message?"
"Everything's a message when you arrange it like art." Brick's voice carried the weight of someone who'd seen too many bodies arranged too many ways. "Question is, who's it for?"
Lila considered this, studying the tarnished coin again. "Brick, look at this coin. It's not modern. This is old—maybe Civil War era, maybe older."
"So?"
"So someone brought this specifically for the ceremony. Which means this wasn't spur of the moment. Someone planned this, gathered materials, chose this location." She stood, brushing dirt from her knees. "This is organized."
A uniform approached—young and eager in the way that made veteran cops either protective or dismissive. "Detectives? The witness is asking when he can go home. Says he's got three other cemeteries to clean."
Lila glanced at Brick, who shrugged. They'd worked together long enough to communicate without words.
"I'll take the scene," he said. "You talk to the old man."
As Lila walked toward the patrol car where Claude Thibodaux waited, she couldn't shake the feeling that they were missing something important.
The killer had gone to elaborate lengths to arrange this tableau, but for what purpose?
Chapter 4
Claude Thibodaux sat in the back of Boudreaux's patrol car, his dark hands wrapped around a Styrofoam cup of coffee that had long since gone cold. Sixty-something with silver hair and the kind of deep lines that came from decades of outdoor work, he looked like he'd seen his share of death but nothing quite like this.
"Mr. Thibodaux?" Lila slid into the front seat and turned to face him. "I'm Detective Hart. I know this has been difficult, but I need to ask you a few questions."
He nodded, his voice carrying the musical cadence of old New Orleans. "Been cleaning these cemeteries since I was a boy, detective. This one's always been different, but I do my job."
"Tell me about this morning. What time did you arrive?"
"Little before six. I come early, before the heat sets in proper. Started at the front gates, working my way back toward the old section." His hands were steady now, no trembling. "Found him by the Creed tomb. Soon as I saw him, I knew this wasn't no natural death."
Lila leaned forward. "What made you think that?"
"Way he was laid out. Like someone took care with it. Positioned him just so." Claude's eyes met hers, and she saw something there—not fear, but caution. "I called it in right away. Didn't touch nothing."
"Did you see anyone else? Any cars parked nearby? Anything unusual?"
"Just the fog. Thick as soup this morning." He paused, seeming to consider his words carefully. "But when I found the body, I had the feeling I wasn't alone."
"What do you mean?"
"Just a feeling, detective. Sometimes you know when you're being watched, even when you can't see who's doing the watching."
Lila studied his face. There was more he wasn't saying, but Claude Thibodaux struck her as a man who chose his words carefully. Pushing wouldn't get her anywhere.
"How long have you been working at Saint Sébastien specifically?"
"On and off for maybe fifteen years, could be more. It's not a regular route—city only sends someone when there's complaints about overgrowth or vandalism. No one want to come here anyway. This one is the creepiest in the whole city. So its always me who gets the call."
"Any problems before? Strange incidents?"
Claude shook his head. "Place keeps to itself. Most folks stay away anyway." He looked out the window toward the cemetery's interior. "Some places got a feel to them, detective. This one... it's got a long memory."
Before Lila could ask what he meant by that, Claude set down his coffee cup and straightened.
"I told you what I saw. Found the body, called it in, stayed put till your people arrived. That's all I can help you with."
The finality in his voice was clear. Whatever else Claude Thibodaux knew about Saint Sébastien Cemetery, he wasn't sharing it with the police.
"Alright, Mr. Thibodaux. We'll need you to come to the station later to give a formal statement, but you can go for now."
As Claude climbed out of the patrol car, Lila watched him walk toward his city maintenance truck. He moved with the unhurried pace of a man who'd seen enough to know when to keep his mouth shut.
But as he reached his truck, he paused.
Unlike every other person at the crime scene, Claude Thibodaux wasn't looking over his shoulder at the cemetery.
He wasn't leaving just yet.
Chapter 5
"Learn anything useful?" Brick asked as Lila rejoined him at the crime scene.
"Maintenance guy's professional, but he's holding back. Says he felt watched when he found the body, but won't elaborate." She studied the mausoleum nameplate again—Lucien Creed, tarnished bronze, old money from an older time. "There's something about this place that's got him spooked, but he's not talking."
"Smart man," Brick said. "Some secrets are better left buried."
Before Lila could ask what he meant, a shout erupted from across the cemetery. One of the crime scene techs was waving frantically from beside a weathered stone cherub, his face pale with excitement or fear.
"Detectives! You need to see this!"
They approached the angel statue, and the tech pointed upward with a trembling finger. Nestled in the carved folds of the cherub's wings, almost invisible unless you knew exactly where to look, was a small camera lens. The modern technology looked alien against the nineteenth-century stonework, like someone had surgically implanted the future into the past.
"How long has that been there?" Lila asked.
"No way to tell without taking it down. But it's definitely not city property," the tech replied, his voice tight. "This is professional grade. Expensive. Motion-activated, weatherproof housing, probably streams to a remote location."
Brick stepped closer, studying the device with the careful attention he'd once reserved for IEDs. In the distance, beyond the police chatter, the city was waking up—the distant moan of a streetcar, the cry of seagulls circling the river. But here among the crypts, everything felt watched. Recorded. "Someone's been keeping serious watch on this place."
"But who the hell puts surveillance on a cemetery?" Lila asked, though she suspected the answer would be disturbing.
"Someone with secrets to protect," the tech said. "Or someone hunting."
As the words hung in the morning air, Lila felt the pieces of a larger puzzle beginning to take shape. A ritual murder in a cemetery with rumored supernatural occurences. Professional surveillance equipment hidden in plain sight. A victim positioned like an offering to something ancient and hungry.
"Check every statue, every crypt, every monument," she ordered. "If there's one camera, there might be more."
The crime scene team spread out across Saint Sébastien with new purpose. Within minutes, another shout echoed from the far side of the cemetery.
"Got another one!" A tech waved from beside a crumbling angel. "Camera in the wing joint!"
Then another call, this one from near the entrance: "Third camera! Hidden in a gargoyle's mouth!"
By the time they'd finished their sweep, they'd found five cameras total. All professional grade. All positioned to provide overlapping coverage of the cemetery's interior. All watching.
Lila felt an itch between her shoulder blades, that crawling sensation of being observed. She found herself scanning the moss-covered angels and weathered crypts, wondering which lens was recording her right now.
"Someone's got this place locked down tighter than a bank," Brick observed, his voice tight.
"The question is why." Lila stared at the Lucien Creed nameplate, and that nagging sense of familiarity grew stronger. "What's so important about a nineteenth-century cemetery that someone needs round-the-clock surveillance?"
"Maybe," Brick said quietly, "they're not watching the cemetery."
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe they're watching who comes to visit."
The implications settled over them like the fog that still clung to the older sections of Saint Sébastien. If someone was monitoring visitors to the cemetery, then every person who'd set foot inside these gates was being tracked. Recorded. Catalogued.
Including whoever had killed and arranged their victim like an offering to forgotten gods.
And including them.
"Brick," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, "I think we're being watched right now."
Her partner's hand moved instinctively toward his service weapon. "Then let's give them something worth watching."
That's when they heard it.
A grinding sound like stone against stone, deep and resonant, echoing through the morning air. The kind of sound that made your teeth ache and your spine crawl with primal recognition—something heavy moving that was never meant to move.
SCRAAAAAPE.
Chapter 6
Every head in the cemetery turned toward the source. Near the back of Saint Sébastien, maybe fifty yards away, the massive stone lid of an ancient tomb was sliding sideways. Slow. Deliberate. Impossible.
"What the fuck?" Officer Boudreaux whispered, and his coffee cup slipped from nerveless fingers to shatter on the gravel.
Jenny Mouton's camera hung forgotten around her neck as she stared at the opening crypt. One of the crime scene techs actually crossed himself, muttering what sounded like a prayer in rapid-fire Spanish.
Fog began pouring from the breach in the tomb like something alive, rolling across the ground in thick, unnatural waves that moved against the morning breeze. And through that grey curtain, a silhouette appeared.
"Jesus Christ," Brick muttered, his hand moving to his service weapon but not yet drawing it. "Tell me you're seeing this too."
Lila couldn't find her voice. Every rational part of her mind insisted this was impossible—tombs didn't open by themselves, fog didn't behave like theater smoke, and the dead definitely didn't climb out of their graves wearing expensive suits.
But she was watching it happen.
The figure stepped fully from the tomb, fog swirling around him like he'd brought winter with him. Even from a distance, she could see he was very much alive—and very much not what any of them had expected to find in a cemetery at dawn.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Wearing a tailored dark suit that was immaculate, like he'd just stepped out of a board meeting rather than a grave.
"NOPD!" Lila finally managed, her voice carrying across the suddenly silent graveyard. "Stop where you are and identify yourself!"
The man in the suit looked around the cemetery with what seemed like mild annoyance, as if a dozen armed police officers were an everyday inconvenience. Then he began walking toward them with slow, measured steps that suggested he had all the time in the world.
"Stop!" Brick called out, his weapon now drawn but pointed downward. "Don't take another step!"
The man paused, tilted his head slightly as if considering the request, and continued walking.
That's when Officer Martinez decided he'd seen enough Stephen King movies for one lifetime and bolted for his patrol car, shouting something in Spanish about dead things walking and Pet Cemetary shit.
The sight of a uniformed officer fleeing in terror broke whatever spell had held the others frozen. Two more uniforms started backing toward their vehicles, hands on their weapons, eyes wide with the kind of fear that transcended professional training.
"Hold the line!" Lila snapped, but she couldn't blame them.
Nothing in the academy had prepared any of them for this.
The man continued his approach, close enough now that Lila could make out details. Pale skin, sharp features, and something in his bearing that spoke of absolute confidence. He moved without sound, his expensive shoes making soft impressions on the wet gravel.
"What kind of day is this gonna be?" Brick asked, and despite everything, Lila almost smiled.
Because whatever was walking toward them through the morning fog, it wasn't dead.
Which somehow made it infinitely more terrifying.
But across the cemetery, near his maintenance truck, Claude Thibodaux stood perfectly still. Unlike everyone else, he wasn't leaving in his truck... not right now.
He was watching. Maybe waiting.
And he didn't look surprised at all.
Chapter 7
The man was tall, maybe six-two, with the kind of lean build that suggested both strength and restraint. The dark suit was immaculate—charcoal wool that probably cost more than most cops made in a month. His boots clicked against the wet stone with the precision of a metronome, each step deliberate and unhurried.
But it was his face that made Lila's breath catch.
Sharp cheekbones carved from marble, pale skin that looked like it had never seen a day of honest sunlight, and eyes the color of winter steel. Not blue, not gray, but something in between that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. He moved with the fluid grace of a predator, but one that had never needed to hunt because prey simply came to him.
And he looked utterly, completely bored.
A dozen weapons remained trained on him since he had emerged fully from the tomb, but Creed's expression didn't change. No fear. No surprise. No acknowledgment that armed police officers were anything more than a minor inconvenience, like finding the elevator out of service.
"You're stomping all over my house roof," he said, his voice carrying a neutral accent that could have been from anywhere or nowhere. The words were crisp, articulate, with an odd formality that belonged to another era. "Keep the noise down. You're scaring the dead."
His gaze swept across the assembled officers with the same interest he might show a flock of pigeons.
"And boring the living."
Officer Boudreaux's gun wavered slightly in his grip, sweat beading on his forehead despite the morning chill. "What the hell—"
"Language, Officer," Creed interrupted mildly, not even looking in his direction. "There are ladies present... Both living and dead."
Lila felt a current run down her spine. Not fear, but the jarring recognition of an apex predator. This man—if he was a man—didn't just ignore the rules; he operated from a playbook she'd never even seen.
"NOPD," she said again, stepping forward with her weapon drawn but not directly aimed. Her voice remained steady, professional. "I need you to identify yourself and explain what you're doing here."
Creed's steel-colored eyes settled on her for the first time, and Lila felt the full weight of his attention. It was like standing in front of an x-ray machine—the uncomfortable sensation that he was seeing more than she wanted to reveal.
"Talon Creed," he said simply. "And I wasn't doing anything until you lot decided to conduct a parade on the roof of my property."
"Your property?" Brick stepped up beside Lila, his service weapon steady, though his knuckles were white against the grip. Military training warred with something primal in his expression. "This is a city cemetery."
"Indeed it is." Creed's tone suggested he was explaining something obvious to a particularly slow child. "And I reside here. Your boisterous investigation has disturbed my morning routine most egregiously."
Jenny Mouton, who had been frozen with her camera halfway to her face, finally found her voice. It came out as barely a whisper. "Did he just come out of a tomb?"
"Astute observation," Creed replied without looking at Jenny. "Your detective instincts are quite formidable."
Behind them, Lila could hear the crunch of gravel as some of the officers who had fled earlier began creeping back, drawn by the sound of normal conversation but more due to curiosity about Creed. Officer Martinez appeared at the edge of the yellow tape, his face a mixture of embarrassment and fascination, one hand unconsciously moving to the cross around his neck.
"Nobody else thinks this is completely insane?" he whispered to no one in particular, his voice shaking.
Creed's head tilted slightly, like a cat hearing an interesting sound. "Sanity is a matter of perspective, Officer Martinez. From where I stand, your entire profession appears to be an exercise in collective delusion."
The fact that he knew Martinez's name without introduction sent another ripple of unease through the assembled cops. Several officers exchanged nervous glances, hands tightening on their weapons.
"How do you know his name?" Lila demanded, her professional composure intact despite the impossibility of the situation.
"Name tags," Creed replied with exaggerated patience. "Remarkable innovation. Saves considerable time in social situations."
But Lila had noticed something else. Martinez's nameplate was too far away to read clearly from Creed's position. And it was partially obscured by his equipment vest.
The man was lying with the casual ease of someone for whom truth was merely a starting point for negotiation.
"Sir," one of the crime scene techs ventured, his voice shaky, hands trembling as he clutched his evidence kit, "are you... are you okay? Do you need medical attention?"
Creed's attention shifted to the tech with what might have been amusement. "Your concern is touching, though misplaced. I am in excellent health, thank you."
"But you just came out of a—"
"Tomb, yes. I heard it the first time when Miss Mouton said it." Creed brushed an invisible speck of dust from his sleeve. "Your powers of observation continue to astound. The city seems to be in excellent hands."
Lila felt the situation sliding away from her control, but maintained her professional demeanor. Every question seemed to produce more questions, and Creed answered each one with the maddening precision of someone who was technically cooperating while revealing absolutely nothing.
"You said we are stomping on your property's roof," Lila said, trying to regain control of the conversation. "This is a cemetery. There's no roof."
Creed regarded her with the patience of a professor addressing a particularly dense student. "Detective Lila Hart. I like your tenacity but apparently not your capacity for spatial reasoning."
The fact that he knew her name sent another chill down her spine, but she pressed on with determined professionalism. "How do you know who I am?"
"Your colleagues have been broadcasting your name across their radios for the past hour. Elementary deduction." He gestured vaguely at the cemetery around them. "As for the roof, you are currently standing atop my residence. These crypts, this hallowed ground—merely the upper floor of a considerably more extensive domicile."
Brick stepped forward, his face flushed with frustration and barely concealed fear. "You're telling us you live under a cemetery?"
"I am telling you that you have spent the morning trampling about my ceiling, Detective Riley." Creed's steel eyes found Brick's name tag with unsettling precision. "The acoustics are quite remarkable. I could hear every footstep, every whispered conversation, every dramatic gasp of horror."
Behind them, Officer Martinez crossed himself and muttered something in rapid Spanish about la Virgen protecting him from evil, his voice barely audible but filled with genuine terror.
Creed's head turned toward Martinez with sudden interest. "La Virgen no viene a esta parte de la ciudad, Oficial Martinez. Aquà solo quedan los olvidados."
The color drained from Martinez's face.
Officer Boudreaux, who understood enough Spanish to catch the gist, exchanged a wide-eyed, horrified look with Martinez. Several other officers looked around nervously, not understanding the words but recognizing the fluent delivery and the fear it had generated.
"What did you just say?" Lila demanded, maintaining her authoritative tone.
"I merely informed Officer Martinez that the Virgin doesn't visit this part of the city. Only the forgotten remain here." Creed's tone was conversational, as if discussing the weather. "His invocation, while touching, is geographically misplaced."
Jenny Mouton lowered her camera with shaking hands, her face pale. "You know Spanish? How many other languages do you speak?"
"Enough," Creed replied. "Language is merely another tool, Miss Mouton. Like your camera. Though significantly more versatile."
The casual way he used their names was becoming genuinely unnerving. Lila made a mental note to have someone check if their radios had been broadcasting more than she'd realized.
"Look," she said, fighting to maintain some semblance of official authority while her team struggled with their fear, "this is government land. City property. You can't just... live underneath it."
"Can't I?" Creed reached into his suit jacket with a movement so smooth it was almost supernatural. Several officers tensed, hands moving toward weapons, but he produced his phone. On it, he opened an image of what appeared to be an aged legal document, kept with meticulous care.
"Land deed," he said, offering the phone to Lila with a slight bow that seemed more mocking than respectful. "Dated 1878. The Creed family retains in perpetuity all rights to any structure, natural or artificial, existing twelve feet or more below the surface of this particular tract. The city owns the cemetery up to twelve feet. I own everything beneath it."
Lila looked at the document, squinting at the faded ink and elaborate script. It looked authentic, though she was no expert in nineteenth-century legal documents.
"This could be fake," she said.
"Indeed it could," Creed agreed pleasantly. "Should you wish to contest its validity, my attorney would be delighted to discuss the matter. Though I should warn you, he is considerably less pleasant than I am."
"And considerably more expensive, I imagine," Brick muttered, his voice tight with stress.
"Exponentially so." Creed's smile was sharp as winter. "But then, quality legal representation has always commanded a premium."
One of the crime scene techs who had been silent until now finally found his voice, though it came out higher pitched than usual. "Sir, what you're describing... living under a cemetery... that's not normal."
Creed turned his attention to the tech with what might have been genuine curiosity. "Define normal, if you would. Is it normal to spend one's days photographing the recently deceased? Is it normal to collect trace evidence from scenes of violence? Is it normal to make one's living from human misery?"
The tech opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking around desperately at his colleagues for support.
"Quite," Creed continued. "Normalcy is a relative concept, particularly in your chosen profession."
Lila studied the man before her, trying to process everything she was seeing and hearing while maintaining her professional composure. He spoke like someone from another era, moved with an otherworldly grace, and seemed to know things he shouldn't know. But underneath all the strangeness, she sensed something else.
Purpose.
Whatever Talon Creed was, wherever he'd come from, he wasn't here by accident.
"The cameras," she said suddenly. "The surveillance equipment we found. That's yours."
It wasn't a question.
Creed's expression didn't change, but something shifted in his posture. The bored indifference was still there, but now it seemed more deliberate. More performed.
"Security is a reasonable precaution," he said carefully, "when one values one's privacy."
"Privacy?" Brick's voice rose, stress making him more aggressive. "You've got this place wired like Fort Knox. What are you watching for?"
"The same thing you are, Detective Riley." Creed's gaze moved past them to the crime scene, to the positioned body and the ash circles. For the first time since emerging from the tomb, his expression showed something other than bored superiority.
Interest. Cold, calculating interest.
The first genuine emotion he'd shown since emerging from what should have been his grave.
"The difference," he continued, "is that I was watching when it happened."
Chapter 8
The silence that followed Creed's words was absolute. Even the distant sounds of the city seemed to fade as every person in the cemetery processed what he'd just said.
"You watched it happen?" Lila's voice was deadly quiet, though perfectly controlled. "You watched someone get murdered and didn't call the police?"
"I watched someone get executed," Creed corrected her in a calm tone. "There is a distinction, though I doubt it would console the deceased."
Chapter 9
He began walking toward the crime scene with that same unhurried pace, his expensive shoes clicking against the wet stone. The assembled officers parted before him like water, though whether from fear or fascination, Lila couldn't tell. Several stepped back instinctively, weapons still trained on Creed but nowhere ready to be used.
Creed stopped beside the positioned body, his steel-colored eyes taking in every detail with the methodical attention of a forensic expert. The ash circles, the tarnished coin, the precise placement of the victim's arms—he studied it all with an expression of mild professional interest.
"Meticulous work," he observed, as if commenting on a particularly well-executed painting. "Though somewhat derivative. The symbolism lacks originality. Just a poor attempt at copying an absolutely stunning work from earlier."
"You recognize this?" Brick demanded, his hand still resting on his service weapon, knuckles white with tension.
"I recognize the methodology." Creed's gaze never left the body. "Ritual positioning, payment for passage, consecration of the ground. Classic elements of a ceremonial execution."
Jenny Mouton raised her camera instinctively, finger hovering over the shutter button. This was it—the shot of a lifetime. A mysterious man emerging from a tomb, examining a ritualistic murder scene like he owned the place. Her instincts screamed at her to capture everything.
But something held her back. The way he moved, the way he spoke—there was an authority in his presence that made her hesitate. What if he didn't want to be photographed? What if—
"Should I be—" she started, her hands shaking.
"Document away, Miss Mouton," Creed said without looking up from the body. "Though I suspect your photographs will raise more questions than they answer." He paused, then turned those steel-gray eyes directly toward her camera lens. "However, please exclude me from your photographs. I do not like to be photographed. I'm sure you will understand."
Jenny's finger froze on the button. The shot was right there—him standing beside the body, fog still swirling around the opened tomb behind him. It would be an image for a lifetime.
But something in his tone, polite as it was, carried an undertone that made her blood run cold. This wasn't a request. And she wasn't foolish enough to anger someone who had just emerged from a grave—someone whose true nature she couldn't even begin to guess at. Was he human? Something else? She had no idea, and that uncertainty terrified her more than any direct threat.
Jenny slowly lowered her camera, nodding mutely. She might be ambitious, but she wasn't stupid. Some boundaries weren't worth crossing, especially when you didn't know what you were dealing with.
"Thank you," Creed said simply, returning his attention to the crime scene as if the matter had never been in question.
Chapter 10
Lila felt her patience wearing thin, but kept her voice level. "Mr. Creed, if you witnessed a murder, you're legally obligated to—"
"Am I?" Creed's eyebrows raised slightly. "According to which statute, Detective Hart? Local, state, or federal? I do hope you're not conflating moral obligation with legal requirement."
"Don't play word games with me," Lila snapped. "Someone is dead. You watched it happen. That makes you a material witness."
"Does it?" Creed examined his fingernails with theatrical interest. "I observed an event. Whether that event constitutes 'witnessing' in the legal sense depends entirely on jurisdiction, circumstances, and a rather tedious list of precedents I doubt you'd find enlightening."
Brick stepped forward, his face red with frustration. "Cut the bullshit. What did you see?"
"Language, Detective Riley. Though I appreciate your directness." Creed's smile was razor-thin. "What I saw was a conclusion to events set in motion long before last evening."
"That's not an answer," Lila said.
"It's the only answer you'll receive without proper... incentive."
"What kind of incentive?"
"Assurance that my cooperation won't result in further disruption to my domestic tranquility. This investigation has already proven remarkably intrusive."
Lila felt the situation slipping away from her again. "Mr. Creed, I can have you brought in for obstruction—"
"Can you?" Creed tilted his head like a curious cat. "Based on what evidence? What crime? I've answered your questions with remarkable patience, considering you're trespassing on my property."
"This is a crime scene!"
"Indeed. On my property. Which raises fascinating questions about jurisdiction, doesn't it?"
Chapter 11
Brick's hand moved to his cuffs. "Enough of this—"
"Detective Riley." Creed's voice carried a warning that made even the veteran cop pause. "I would reconsider that course of action."
The standoff stretched for several heartbeats. Brick's jaw clenched, his hand still hovering over the cuffs. Every instinct from his military training told him to assert control, to not let a civilian—any civilian—dictate terms to law enforcement. This was exactly the kind of situation that could spiral out of control if you showed weakness.
But this wasn't just any civilian. This was someone who had emerged from a tomb, knew things he shouldn't know, and spoke with the casual authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed. Brick had faced down insurgents in Fallujah, had stared death in the face more times than he cared to count, but something about Creed's calm certainty made his combat instincts scream warnings.
"You don't get to tell us what to do," Brick said finally, his voice tight with controlled anger. "I don't care who you are or where you came from. This is a police investigation."
"Indeed it is," Creed replied mildly, as if Brick had just stated the weather. "And I'm cooperating fully within the bounds of what's legally required of me."
Brick's free hand clenched into a fist. The man's arrogance was infuriating, but there was something else—a complete lack of fear that suggested either supreme confidence or something far more dangerous. Brick had learned to read people in war zones, and Creed read like someone who had never encountered a threat he couldn't handle.
The smart play was to back down. The professional play. But it galled him to be outmaneuvered by someone who should be in the back of a patrol car by now.
"This isn't over," Brick muttered, letting his hand fall away from the cuffs.
Then Creed reached into his suit's inner pocket and produced a small black flash drive.
"However," he continued, holding it between two fingers like a magician displaying a card trick, "I am not entirely unreasonable. Perhaps this will suffice."
Chapter 12
Every eye in the cemetery fixed on the tiny device. Several officers exchanged nervous glances, and one of the crime scene techs took an unconscious step backward.
"What is that?" Lila asked, though part of her already suspected.
"Footage," Creed replied simply. "High-definition video of your killer and victim from the moment they entered the cemetery until the moment the deed was done. Audio included, though I should warn you—the conversation is brief and largely uninformative."
He tossed the drive to Lila with casual indifference. She caught it reflexively, staring at the small piece of plastic that might contain the solution to their case.
"Why didn't you give this to us earlier?" she demanded.
"You didn't ask." Creed's tone suggested this was perfectly reasonable. "Moreover, I was under no obligation to involve myself in your investigation until you quite literally began dancing on my roof."
Brick's face was red with anger and fear. "Someone died, you son of a—"
"Someone dies every day, Detective Riley. Multiple someones, in fact. If I concerned myself with every act of violence in this city, I would have precious little time for anything else."
"This is different and you know it," Lila said, clutching the flash drive while maintaining her professional demeanor. "This was ritualistic. Planned. The killer chose your cemetery specifically."
"My cemetery?" Creed repeated, and for the first time, there was something dangerous in his voice. "No, Detective Hart. They did choose this cemetery which is City's property. But this is over my home. My sanctuary." His eyes moved from the body to the assembled officers. "Which brings us to the rather inconvenient matter of jurisdiction."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," Creed said, straightening his already perfect tie, "that this murder occurred on my property. Which makes it, technically speaking, my problem."
Officer Martinez, who had been silent since Creed's Spanish commentary, finally found his voice, though it came out as barely a whisper. "You can't just claim a crime scene."
"Can't I?" Creed's smile was sharp enough to cut glass. "I own the land. I have documentation proving legal residence. I possess evidence of the crime in question." He gestured at the flash drive in Lila's hand. "By what authority do you claim precedence?"
Lila felt the ground shifting beneath her feet—metaphorically speaking. "Because we're the police. This is what we do."
"Indeed it is." Creed nodded gravely. "And you do it with admirable dedication, if questionable efficiency. Which is why I'm prepared to offer a compromise."
"What kind of compromise?" Brick asked suspiciously, his military training keeping him alert despite his obvious unease.
"I will accompany you to your headquarters for questioning," Creed said. "I will provide additional information about the crime as I deem appropriate. In exchange, you will conduct your investigation with a modicum of discretion and remove your people from my property at the earliest opportunity."
The offer hung in the air like fog. Lila could feel the weight of expectation from every officer present. They needed answers, and Creed seemed to have them.
But she also sensed this was not a man who made offers without getting something in return.
"Mr. Creed," Lila said, maintaining her authoritative stance, "Even if I don't agree to your offer, you still have to come with us to the station for further questioning," she said, and immediately hated how the words sounded. It was supposed to be a demand, but it felt like a weak request. Around her, she could feel the tension shift. Cops who had been terrified a moment ago now looked at her like she was insane. Who in their right mind invites a man who just climbed out of a grave into a police station?
"Do I?" Creed's head tilted slightly, and for the first time, Lila saw something flicker across his features. Not concern, but genuine curiosity, as if she'd just said something unexpectedly interesting.
Then the moment passed, and his bored mask returned.
For the first time since emerging from the tomb, Talon Creed smiled.
It was not a pleasant expression.
"Detective Hart, your honesty is refreshing, if professionally inadvisable. But since I want this case to be closed quickly, I accept your gracious invitation."
"Follow me to my car."
"I can't do that," he continued, holding up one finger. "I travel in my own vehicle. Police cars are cramped, dusty, and redolent of despair. Hardly suitable for civilized transportation."
"We don't know that you won't run," Brick protested, his voice tight with stress.
Creed turned his full attention to Brick, and Lila saw her partner actually take a step backward. "Detective Riley, where exactly would I run to? This is my home. My sanctuary. My very expensive and carefully curated place of residence." His smile was predatory. "Even if I run, you will find me here. In that tomb. Just be sure to knock politely."
Someone finally asked the question everyone had in their mind but no one had asked it directly. "Are you dead?"
The question hung in the air like a physical presence. Several officers held their breath, and Martinez clutched his cross tighter.
"What makes you think so?"
"You live in a grave."
"I live beneath this. That grave is just one of the ways to my home."
"Do you know the address of the police station?" Lila asked, ignoring the other questions her officers might have wanted to pursue about Creed.
Creed's expression suggested she had just asked if he knew his own name. "Detective Hart, I'll find out. My phone, please." He extended his hand expectantly.
Lila handed his phone back.
And with that, he turned and began walking back toward the open tomb with the same unhurried pace he'd used to approach them.
"Wait," Lila called. "What about—"
But Creed was already disappearing into the fog-shrouded opening. The last thing she saw was his hand making a small, dismissive gesture that might have been a wave goodbye.
Or might have been something else entirely.
The stone slab began grinding back to its original state with the same hydraulic hiss that had announced Creed's arrival. Fog continued to seep from the narrowing gap like the cemetery was slowly exhaling its last breath.
The tomb sealed with a final, definitive click.
The fog began to dissipate in the morning breeze, leaving only the scent of damp earth and something else—something that reminded Lila of expensive cologne and old libraries.
"What the hell just happened? He went back in his grave? Is this real?" Officer Boudreaux asked no one in particular, his voice shaking as he finally lowered his weapon.
Brick ran a trembling hand through his hair, his military composure cracking. "I've seen a ton of shit in life, but nothing like that."
Lila stared at the closing tomb, the flash drive clutched so tightly in her fist that the edges were cutting into her palm. Every instinct she'd developed over eight years of police work was screaming that she'd just made a catastrophic mistake, but she maintained her professional composure.
"Did we just let a potential suspect walk away?" Jenny Mouton lowered her camera, her face pale as paper. "Or did we just agree to let a witness drive himself to the station?"
"I vote for potential suspect," Brick muttered, his hand still resting on his service weapon despite the obvious tremor in his fingers. "Nobody normal lives under a cemetery. Nobody normal talks like that. And nobody normal has surveillance equipment worth more than my house hidden in angel statues."
"He knew things," one of the crime scene techs said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. "Things he shouldn't have known. Our names, the crime scene details, how long we'd been here..."
"Name tags," Officer Martinez said, though his voice lacked conviction and his hand still rested on his cross. "He said it was the name tags."
"My name tag was turned backward," the tech continued, fear making his voice higher. "Has been all morning. There's no way he could have read it."
A chill ran through the assembled officers. They'd all been so focused on the impossibility of a man emerging from a tomb that they'd missed the smaller impossibilities along the way.
"The Spanish," Martinez added, crossing himself again. "He spoke it like a native. Better than a native. Like someone who learned it centuries ago and never forgot."
Lila found her voice, keeping it steady despite everything. "Centuries ago?"
"That's how my grandmother and her mother used to speak. Old Spanish. Formal. Like they used in the colonial days." Martinez's face was troubled, fear evident in his expression. "Nobody talks like that anymore. Not unless they're very old or very educated in history."
"Or," Brick said grimly, his voice hoarse, "very old."
An uncomfortable silence settled over the crime scene. The morning sun was burning off the last of the fog, revealing Saint Sébastien Cemetery in harsh, unforgiving daylight. The Gothic crypts looked less mysterious and more run-down. The angel statues seemed more weathered than otherworldly.
But the tomb where Creed had vanished looked exactly the same as every other burial vault in the cemetery. There was no sign it had ever opened, no hint of the hydraulic mechanism that had moved several tons of stone with effortless precision.
"Should we..." Jenny gestured toward the sealed crypt with a shaking hand. "Should we try to open it?"
"With what?" Brick asked, his voice strained. "A crowbar? Seems like that thing weighs more than a truck."
Lila walked to the tomb and pressed her hand against the stone surface, maintaining her professional demeanor despite her inner turmoil. It was cold, solid, and utterly immobile. There was nothing on the tombstone.
Where the dates should have been, the stone was smooth, featureless. It hadn't been worn away by weather; it looked as if it had never been carved at all—a space left deliberately, unnervingly blank.
"Guys," she called softly. "Look at this."
The others gathered around the tomb, several keeping their distance. Brick peered at the nameplate and let out a low whistle.
"There are no dates," Riley said, his voice tight with stress. "He just put it here..."
"to make it look like a normal tomb stone." Lila finished.
"Is he Satan," Officer Martinez said quietly, his voice filled with genuine terror, "or Devil?"
The implications of that statement hung in the air like morning mist. Lila clutched the flash drive tighter, wondering what kind of footage awaited them. What kind of truth they were about to uncover.
"Detective Hart?" One of the crime scene techs approached hesitantly, his hands shaking as he clutched his equipment. "What do we do now? Do we wait for him? Do we go back to the station? Do we call for backup?"
Lila looked around at the faces watching her—cops who had started the morning expecting a routine murder investigation and were now questioning everything they thought they knew about life, death, and the spaces in between. Fear was evident in every face, but they were looking to her for leadership.
"We go back to the station," she decided, her voice calm and authoritative. "We watch this footage. We run background checks on Talon Creed and the property records for this cemetery. And we figure out what the hell we're dealing with."
"And if he doesn't show up?" Brick asked, his military training reasserting itself despite his obvious fear.
Lila stared at the sealed tomb, at the impossible monument to an impossible man who had just vanished into stone and shadow.
"Then we come back here," she said. "And we get some answers."
But first, she needed to find out what was on the flash drive that felt like it was burning a hole in her palm.
And she needed to figure out whether Talon Creed was a witness, a suspect, or something else entirely.
Something that didn't fit into any category her police training had prepared her for.
Behind them, Claude Thibodaux, standing beside his city truck, who was watching the entire encounter with Creed, as if nothing unusual was happening. As if men emerging from tombs was just another Tuesday morning in Saint Sébastien Cemetery.
Now he climbed into his truck, started the engine, and drove away without looking back.
Without saying goodbye.
And without seeming the least bit surprised by anything he'd witnessed.