“I almost feel sorry for him,” Simon said as the two mensat in a modern waiting room and gazed out at the Hamburg harbor. It was busy as always—giant cargo transports were unloaded by fully automated machines running the harbor. Brockmann gave one of his grunts and looked at Simon.

“Why? He lived for a century, maybe longer. What did he do with it? Nothing, really. Death might be a blessing for him. And he has still years to prepare for it,” Brockmann said.

Simon looked at his partner. The many words he used told Simon he wasn’t without regrets himself, though he would never show them.

“Any idea what Fornby wants?” Simon asked.

Alfred Fornby was the third member of what remained of the Nocturne Society. He was much less a man of action than Simon and Brockmann, who were the field agents. The British gentleman was more of an organizer, and he considered himself to be their superior. Both Simon and Brockmann often ignored this fact, especially in Berlin, where they hadn’t exactly followed orders. Simon felt a shiver run down his spine when he thought about Berlin. What he’d done still woke him up every night.

“I got an idea,” Brockmann said and leaned back.

Before Simon could ask, Nina Paulsen appeared. Tall and athletic, beautiful black hair tied back, and in one of her tight business outfits, Simon had to smile as she entered. Fornby’s secretary smiled back and gestured to them.

“He is ready to see you now,” she said and turned on her high heels to lead the way. Both men got up and followed her through the corridor lined with offices behind glass doors where young men in suits typed into their computers and talked on the phone.

“What does he do, actually? Fornby?”

“Mr. Fornby is in the important-export business,” Nina said.

“Among other things.” Brockmann grunted.

They arrived at the end of the corridor, and two large wooden doors slid into the walls, giving them a view of Fornby’s large office. A giant mahogany desk in the center of the room had a massive glass front overlooking the harbor. Everything else was modern, and from the most exquisite designers money could buy.

Inside stood Fornby, stroking his oversized moustache as he turned to the two men in his tailor-made three-part suit. He was skinny, about Brockmann’s age, and had blue eyes hidden behind his glasses that seemed to pierce right into people’s souls. With him was a young woman—maybe in her early thirties—who had short black hair, blue eyes, and wore a white blouse and black trousers. Simon was surprised she was wearing black sneakers, a rebellious streak.

The outfit didn’t seem to fit her highly trained body; she was obviously not used to such official clothing. She turned to the arriving men and put a mild smile on her face.

“Brockmann and Simon Bleicher,” Fornby introduced them. “This is Anna Thalmann. I wanted you to meet her,” he said and nodded to Nina, who left without another word.

“Hello,” Simon said and smiled at her, looking at Brockmann, who only gave an acknowledging nod.

“Pleased to meet you. Fornby has told me a lot about you two and what you do,” Anna replied, stepped forward and offered her hand to Brockmann.

He looked at it for a moment before taking it. Simon raised his brows, surprised that Fornby had mentioned them at all. secret society and all that. But he waited his turn and then shook her hand; her grip was firm and almost hurt.

“Pleasure is on our side,” Simon said.

“Let us sit.” Fornby gestured to the large couch in the corner with two other seats. Brockmann looked at it and then took a seat. Simon sat in the spot next to Anna on the couch, and Fornby sat last in the remaining seat.

“Maybe you should introduce yourself, Anna. Tell them who you are and what you have done,” he said.

Anna nodded and looked at Brockmann, who still hadn’t said a word. “I am 32 and have served in the German army for 12 years.”

“Which part?” Brockmann finally spoke, and Anna smiled at him.

“I was in the navy, the first woman to undergo training for combat diver, and after my four-year term with them, I joined—”

“Did you see any action?” Brockmann asked.

Anna seemed irritated that he cut her short as she was going through her CV.

“Yes, I did. I took part in over 19 operations,” she said.

“What kind of operations?” Brockmann again cut her short.

“Classified ones.”

“Anna, please. We are all good at keeping secrets here,” Fornby said, smiling.

Anna nodded. “Okay, anti-piracy in Somalia, Cyprus, Libya,” she said and sighed.

Brockmann nodded, and Simon wondered what he was thinking. To him, with his limited knowledge of military operations, it sounded as if she was in most of the German missions involved. When Brockmann didn’t continue his cross-examination, she picked back up where she’d left off.

“After that, I joined the MAD and served as both an agent and analyst in my six-year term. Mostly in Afghanistan.”

“MAD like the magazine?” Simon asked and laughed. Nobody else seemed to find it funny; they just all turned to him as if he said something stupid.

“MAD stands for Militärischer Abwehr Dienst,” Fornby explained. “The counter-intelligence unit of the German army.”

Simon nodded. She seemed to have participated in some serious stuff, but he couldn’t really imagine what it had been. Everybody else here seemed to have a good idea, though, so Simon decided to keep his mouth shut.

“Exactly,” Anna confirmed. “I left after my twelve-year term and studied medicine here at the Hamburg University. After two years, I quit and went to the private sector. Security advisory for African and South American countries. Large corporations.”

“A bodyguard,” Brockmann said.

“No, I coordinated the security. I was on the ground when necessary, though.” She shrugged. “I also maintain my old network within the intelligence community and helped out when a private player was needed.”

“It was she who found Dr. Boyka for me in Berlin,” Fornby said to Brockmann, who lifted an eyebrow. A sign Simon knew too well—basically, his version of “well done.”

“Very impressive,” Simon said just to say something, and he was happy no one gave him the look again.

“Thanks,” Anna said.

They all stayed silent, and Simon’s eyes darted from one to the other for a minute before he finally broke the silence.

“So to what do we owe the pleasure of meeting you then?”

“Anna wants to join the Nocturne Society,” Fornby said.

Simon felt his jaw drop, but before he could say anything, the door opened, and Nina came in to serve them coffee. They all remained quiet until they had their cups in front of them and Nina had gone.

“Wow,” Simon said and looked at Brockmann. His partner was as unreadable as always, but he obviously wasn’t surprised though.

“How did you learn about us?” Brockmann finally asked, his voice raspier than usual.

“The existence of a group of private players called the Nocturne Society isn’t exactly a secret to the intelligence community, though nobody seemed to really know what you guys do. Most considered you long gone, but I learned that was wrong from my former handler in the MAD last year. He told me about the thing in Hamburg and asked me to look into it. That is how I met Mr. Fornby here.” Anna nodded to Fornby.

“Guess you two must get along really well,” Brockmann said flatly.

“He had answers to a lot of open questions I had, actually. Cases in my career that weren’t so easily explained,” Anna said. Brockmann nodded.

“What kind of cases?” Simon asked.

“I think she would be an excellent addition to our ranks.” Fornby cut the question short before Anna could answer.

“Have you ever killed someone?” Brockmann asked.

Simon gave him a look. He hadn’t killed anybody when he had joined . . . not before Berlin. There was that shiver again.

“I have seven affirmative kills on my record,” Anna said, and Brockmann stared at her. She smirked. “It was more than that, actually. War makes it hard to keep your hands clean. Afghanistan was especially dirty.”

“What did Fornby tell you we do?” Simon asked now. Brockmann looked at him and said nothing. His way of approval for the question—no grunting.

“You search, contain, and if necessary, neutralize threats of a very . . . special nature,” Anna said. “Supernatural threats.”

“Monsters, basically.” Simon smiled.

“Yes,” she said, glancing between Simon and Brockmann.

“You believe in monsters?” Brockmann asked.

“I have seen them,” Anna said. “I have seen things not explained by any science, and I fought them.” She straightened herself. “So, it isn’t a matter of believing. I know they exist. I wanna know more.”

“Where did you see them?” he continued.

“Afghanistan. The caves near Mazar-i-Sharif.”

“Tell us about it, please,” Simon asked, and he saw Fornby smile. He had the feeling every question they asked had been predicted by the guy.

Anna took a sip of her coffee then sighed.

“I accompanied a troop of British soldiers into the caves after they were declared to be cleared. Clearance of those places was a messy thing. The Taliban might have abandoned them, but that didn’t mean there weren’t mines, booby-traps, or left-behind insurgents there waiting for us. Anyway, I believed valuable info might be left behind by the Taliban, so I volunteered to go there with the troops and do a check on the material on site.”

She folded her hands, and Simon could see going back there was hard for her. Anna looked at Brockmann, who just gave her that merciless stare of his.

“We were there for hours in the darkness of the caves. Found their operation’s center—papers, GPS trackers, even a few encrypted computers. I knew immediately we had hit gold. There were bodies everywhere. The Americans had done a thorough job there before chasing after the fleeing Taliban. They’d killed the guys responsible for evacuating all this stuff. I began securing as much as I could. Then I found something strange—an evac order predating our attack.

“I realized we hadn’t conquered the caves, but our attack had kept them in there for longer than they’d anticipated. There was no indication they knew of our attack, but this wasn’t a temporary hideout. This was clearly a stronghold. I realized the reason why we had overrun it so swiftly was because they had been in the process of giving it up. So, I asked the soldiers with me if they had found anything unusual and they said they found nothing—only 27 graves in the large cavern in the center.

“We’d already been down there for hours, and the men wanted to leave while there was still sunlight. I had to pull rank on them to make them reconsider. Then, I ordered the dead to be excavated. The soldiers reluctantly complied. We found 27 bodies, all so mutilated they were hard to identify as humans. Some of them showed signs of . . . they were missing parts. As if something had eaten them. Bitemarks—big—like a wolf or bear had feasted upon them. It was a mystery.

“Devout Muslims would never mutilate bodies like this, so clearly something had killed those men, and it looked like it had been a large animal. I went back to the orders, and I found a specific word mentioned in them. Qutrub.”

“Dammit,” Brockmann hissed, and Simon gave him a look. Anna only nodded.

“Soon afterwards, two soldiers reported contact, then went silent. We found their bodies in one of the deeper tunnels.”

“What is a Qutrub?” Simon asked.

“A ghoul,” Brockmann said. “An especially nasty one.”

“Indeed. We planned to evacuate immediately, but it was too late. Before we could gather our troops, another five of our men were attacked. They all died within seconds. The fire from their assault rifles echoed through the tunnels. Their screams, too.” Anna cleared her throat.

“We retreated to the central cavern, and that cost us another two. The colonel leading the squad ordered his remaining men to set charges, and then we made a run to the surface. We were almost out when I saw it. It came from the dark and grabbed the soldier right in front of me—a pale creature, tall and skinny, yet fast and powerful. Naked. And it had no face. There were only teeth,” Anna said. “I saw it bite off my comrade’s face before it turned to me.”

“What did you do?” Brockmann asked.

“I drew my 9mm and fired a magazine into its body. It shook from the impacts, screamed . . . the scream was inhuman. I reloaded and fired another couple of rounds into its head. The other soldiers appeared and opened fire, too. Assault rifles, even when silenced, make you deaf. But even through the ringing in my ears, I heard this thing scream.

“Then it turned and vanished into the dark. We must have hit it with a hundred rounds. 5.56 and 9mm. It would have been enough to kill anything on this planet, yet this thing was still fast enough to escape us. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Anna said, and she grew a little pale.

Simon sighed. “My God, what is this thing?” he asked Brockmann.

“You had the wrong ammo,” Brockmann simply replied. Anna nodded.

“We escaped and blew up the entire cave,” Anna said. “But I wonder if it still roams the tunnels down there, waiting for someone to find a way in to be feasted upon.”

Again, there was silence in the room. Brockmann broke it this time.

“Quite likely it is,” he said. “Yet, how convenient that it showed up in these caves, wasn’t it? If you hadn’t attacked, it would probably have done the job for you.”

Anna looked at him. “You think someone put it there?”

“Weaponizing these things has a certain tradition in those countries,” Brockmann replied.

“You were in Afghanistan?” Anna asked.

“1983, yes,” he answered. Simon realized that had been before Brockmann joined the Nocturne Society, back when he worked for the other side of the cold war.

“As you see, Anna is no stranger to the dangers we deal with.” Fornby now entered the conversation again. “Also, her skillset will certainly prove to be useful.” He looked at Brockmann, who returned the stare.

Simon felt the unspoken discussion between the two. Fornby won the silent contest as Brockmann finally gave him a nod.

“You must have faced many of those,” Anna said to Simon.

“I’m the new guy, but yeah. I have seen some strange things,” he answered.

“So, if you have seen this thing, why do you want to join us?” Brockmann asked finally.

Anna didn’t hesitate. “Because someone needs to take care of these things. The world doesn’t know about them—nobody believes in them. That makes us defenseless against them. It makes humans easy prey, so someone needs to hunt them. I have tried to convince the MAD to do so, but nobody believed me there. Nobody but my handler. Now that I’ve found someone who does believe in them, someone who actually does something about them, I want in.”

Brockmann gave her a rare smirk. He nodded and stood up. “Simon will explain to you how we work.”

Without a further word, he left the room, walking out through the doors as they slid open.

“Is he always so friendly?” Anna asked, and Fornby sighed.

“That was one of his brighter days,” Simon finally said, smiling. “Welcome to the Nocturne Society.”

Anna smiled back. “Thank you. There is something else.”

Simon turned to Fornby. “What else?”

“I think I might have a case for us.”

From the look on her face, Simon knew he probably wouldn’t like it.