Sneak Peek – Preview Chapter: Specters of the Past
Welcome to a special preview of The Dhampyr Murders, Book Two of the Duvane & Calder Files — a paranormal noir mystery series featuring ghosts, danger, and queer romantic tension. In this early chapter, Sable and Tess investigate a haunted estate with a history that won’t stay buried.
Chapter 6: Specters of the Past
Once-grand stonework sagged beneath moss and rot. Shutters dangled half-hinged, roofline pitted with gaps. The windows were blind, dead openings reflecting only their headlights. What little lawn remained had gone to seed, a waist-high snarl of grass and thorns.
The place looked deserted—abandoned for decades. But Tess watched it rise through the rain and couldn’t shake the sensation of being expected.
The wipers dragged across the windshield, the house looming at the end of the drive like a dormant entity waiting to be acknowledged.
They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the heavy patter of rain on the roof. Tess let her hands rest on the wheel, fingers flexing once, twice, as if testing the weight of the silence. Elbows on knees, Sable shifted forward, eyes narrowed at the manor’s shadowed bulk.
“Well,” Sable muttered, voice dry, “hell of a fixer-upper.”
Tess almost smiled. Almost. “Place like this doesn’t rot on its own.”
Pye’s tail twitched, but the familiar said nothing.
Twisting in her seat, Tess drew her pack from the back seat. She pulled out a custom, dual shoulder-holster rig—black and close-fitting—shrugging it on with efficient, practiced movements. The matched pistols gave off a dull gleam as she checked the clips, then slid them home with a final, decisive click. Finally, Tess put Mike and Ike to bed in their waiting cradles.
Sable raised a brow in admiration, but didn’t comment. Instead, her gaze moved back to the mansion, her lips a grim line. Something in her gut whispered wrong, but she tamped it down, refusing to name it yet.
“Ready?” Tess asked.
“No, but when did that ever stop me?” A grin only half meant flirted with Sable’s lips. Her right hand unconsciously brushed Dirge at her side.
The drive ended in a half-circle of gravel and weeds, the car tires crunching to a stop beneath the sagging remains of a once-grand porch. Rain battered the roof, cascading through gaps in the shingles and pooling across the warped planks.
They made a dash for it, boots splashing through the mud. The overhang offered little relief—the water still dripped through in slow, steady rivulets, tapping the brim of Sable’s fedora and running off Tess’s dark coat.
The front doors loomed—a behemoth’s waiting maw. The oak was swollen with moisture and scarred with age. Tess reached for the heavy iron handle, half-expecting resistance. Instead, the latch gave with a soft click.
The door creaked inward on its own weight.
Side by side, they froze, listening to the groan of the old hinges, the hollow exhale of stale air spilling out.
“Unlocked,” Sable said flatly, her voice almost lost under the rain.
“Or left that way,” Tess murmured, ruby-rimmed gaze narrowing.
Leaping down from Sable’s shoulder, Pye’s tail flicked, her paws silent even on the warped, soaked wood. “Convenient,” she said, with that sharp edge of sarcasm she never bothered to blunt.
Neither woman moved for a long moment. It felt too neat, too inviting.
Finally, Tess slid one of her pistols free, letting its weight steady her. She nodded once, curt.
“After you, Doc.” Sable’s hand hovered near her own weapon, knuckles pale.
Tess stepped across the threshold first.
The air inside hit like a wall—damp, suffocating, and thick with the presence of long-dead souls.
Sable followed… and the wave engulfed her. A rush of anguish—keening voices with no mouths, a dozen silent deaths— pressed in on her from all sides. Her knees buckled, almost falling. For a breathless second, she wasn’t standing in the foyer at all—she was drowning in echoes.
She gripped the doorframe hard enough to splinter wood, teeth bared, fighting to steady herself.
Immediately Tess turned, crimson eyes sharp against her pale skin, a hand half-reaching. “Sable—?”
Shoving herself upright, Sable brushed damp strands of black hair—the white streak gleaming stark against it—back from her face. Her storm-grey eyes darted to the staircase, the halls, the shadowed corners. The house felt… awakened.
Tess didn’t move closer, but her empty hand settled lightly near her coat, the faint ripple of sangromancy roving across her crimson glove. Her voice was calm, deliberate.
“What the hell was that? Talk to me.”
Forcing a grim smile, Sable shook her head,.
“Just a welcome mat, Doc. House wants me to know it’s got history.”
Brushing against Sable’s ankles, Pye’s tail lashed.
“History? More like graveyard. You nearly folded like a cheap suit.”
“Pye,” Sable muttered, teeth clenching as she steadied her breath, the banshee’s song still burning faint in her bones.
Shifting slightly, Tess’s coat parted just enough for Sable to glimpse the twin contoured holsters at her ribs—Mike already in her hand, Ike waiting patiently. Sable didn’t say a word. Just a flicker of her eyes, a breath that wasn’t quite a sigh. Silent approval. Tess was ready.
Dirge pressed reassuringly at her side, as She rolled her shoulders.
“I’m fine.” She managed. “Just remember, if the walls start singing, that’s my department.”
Tess’s mouth curved faintly, garnet eyes catching the dim light.
“Then let’s see what kind of choir Gutman kept.”
And together they pushed deeper into the manor, the echoes already listening.
The gallery was colder than the foyer, though no draft stirred the drapes. Paintings lined the paneled walls—men in waistcoats, women in lace, children clutching wide-eyed dolls. All bore the round cheeks and lantern jaws of the Gutman line.
Tess slowed halfway down, eyes snagging on a newer addition. A tall man in a dark coat, set apart in style and tone from the older, cracked canvases. His features… familiar. Too familiar.
On the sideboard beneath the painting sat a framed photograph, its glass cracked into a web across the faces it kept prisoner. Sable plucked it up, shaking a few motes of dust free.
“Family gathering,” she muttered, angling it toward the weak light. The Gutmans were assembled in formal rows. And at the far end—just outside the cluster—stood the same man from the portrait.
“No nameplate.” Sable frowned. She flipped the frame over, tugged at the backing. Old cardboard gave way with a soft tear. The photograph slid free—names scrawled, handwritten, in faded ink on the back.
“Let’s see… Jasper Gutman. Lydia Gutman. Elias Gutman…” Her finger moved down the list, voice carrying in the still air. “And—” she stopped, brow knitting, then read slower. “…Sebastian Corvin.”
The name struck Tess like a blow. Her breath caught—her shoulders tightening.
“You know the name.” It wasn’t a question. Sable looked up immediately, eyes narrowing.
“Everyone in the para medical field knows that name.” Tess’s voice was thin, too controlled. “Corvin was… an infamous sangromancer—blood mage. One of the worst. A maniac, not a man.” She tried for clinical detachment, but her gaze never left the painted face.
Her own cheekbones. Her own eyes.
With a flick of her tail Pye leapt onto the sideboard. Her golden gaze moved from the photograph to Tess, then back again. “Well,” she said softly, “that explains the resemblance, doesn’t it?”
“No. It explains nothing.” spat Tess as her body stiffened.
But the denial rang hollow, even to her own ears.
Behind them, Pye’s tail lashed once, her golden eyes narrowing. She said nothing aloud, but Sable could feel the weight of that silence pressing on them both.
Sable’s eyes lingered on the list of names, then on Tess. She opened her mouth—then caught the tension in Tess’s shoulders, the pale fury in her jaw. Not anger at her, but something deeper.
She shut her mouth, cutting off anything she might have said and slipped the photo back into its frame with care.
The silence thickened. The rain outside pressed against the windows like a second heartbeat.
Then—
A soft skritch along the gallery wall.
Not the house settling. Not rats. The sound was too deliberate, too close, running just behind the row of portraits as if invisible fingernails were dragging across plaster from the inside.
“Ah. Here we go.” Pye’s ears flattened as tried to pinpoint the origin of the sound.
The overhead chandelier swayed though no draft stirred. Dust sifted from its arms like falling ash.
Tess finally tore her eyes from the portrait. Crimson irises rimmed dark, gleaming in the gloom. “Not residual,” she murmured, voice low. “Intelligent.”
The skritch came again—closer, ending in a brittle tap against the frame of Sebastian Corvin’s portrait.
The glass cracked down the center with a sudden snap.
Dirge appeared in Sable’s hand. Tess flinched instinctively, her fingers tightening their grip on Mike.
The crack down Corvin’s portrait had echoed like a shot.
But it wasn’t the painting that had her heart in her throat.
It was the voices.
Soft, whispering, layered over one another—so faint she almost thought it was her own pulse thrumming in her ears. But the words carried. Not language, exactly—just intent.
Envy. Resentment. Hunger.
Her.
Her blood.
Her survival.
Breath stilled in Tess’s chest. They knew her—not her name, not her face, but what she was. The only vessel that endured. Their stolen chance.
The air prickled sharp with cold. She could feel their eyes—lifeless, broken—boring into her.
“Christ…” Sable muttered, under her breath, Dirge half-raised, scanning the shadows.
“They’re not after us,” Tess said, voice too tight.
“Then who?” Sable flicked a look her way.
Throat dry, Tess tried to swallow. Her gaze slid back to the cracked portrait. The line down the glass split Corvin’s smile in two.
“…Me.”
The air thickened. A bleak sensation ran across Tess’s nape—not just cold, but absence, as if the warmth had been swallowed whole. Her breath misted in the dim corridor.
Something tugged. Not hard, but deliberate. Her hair—lifted by invisible fingers—testing the texture of her.
Her spine went rigid.
Then the fabric of her coat jerked, just a whisper, as though unseen hands were claiming her.
Gun up, Sable swore low, sweeping the gallery with her gaze. “Who’s there?”
Forcing her breath even, Tess pressed a hand to her chest. “They’re not strong—too few,” she murmured, though her own pulse betrayed her. “Not enough to hurt us. Just enough… to remind me.”
Her reflection mirrored in the cracked glass of Corvin’s portrait, her features merging with his.
Sable was at her side in two strides, Dirge still in her right hand, but her left finding Tess’s forearm at the elbow. The grip was steady, grounding. “Hey,” she said low, meeting Tess’s crimson-tinged eyes. “You’re not alone. We’ve got this. Whatever it is—it’s not just you carrying it.”
Her shoulders taut beneath Sable’s touch, Tess swallowed. The corridor seemed to breathe around them, heavy with unrealized grief.
On Sable’s shoulder, Pye bristled, tail lashing, her yellow eyes locked on the air around Tess. “They know her,” she whispered across the bond, her voice threading sharp into Sable’s thoughts. “They remember. And they’re jealous.”
Sable’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t flinch. She squeezed Tess’s arm once more, an anchor in the oppressive quiet.
“Then let ’em remember,” she muttered under her breath, for herself and Pye alone. “We’re not backing down.”
The chill lingered, clutching like phantom fingers, but Tess held her ground, crimson eyes steady. “These ghosts?” she said, breath calm now. “They’re trying to scare us. That’s all they’ve got. The ones here—they’re not strong enough to hurt me.”
A tight smile curved her lips, defiance sparking there. She gave Sable a quick wink as if to underline it. “Still thinking about that collar, by the way.”
Caught between tension and disbelief, Sable blinked, and Pye gave a mental hiss of laughter in the back of her mind. The air was still heavy, but Tess had shifted it—made the haunting feel just a little less like a chokehold, and more like background noise they could walk through.
Sable exhaled a laugh through her nose, sharp but brief, the corner of her mouth ticking upward. Not approval, not denial—just a smirk that said not yet… maybe later… if you find one that fits.
Tess caught it, one brow lifting—a quick, subtle arch. She didn’t press. She didn’t need to. She was herself again, reset, anchored, ready to keep moving.
The ghosts might haunt. The house might whisper. But Tess Calder was back in command of herself.
For more on the Duavne & Calder universe check out the books and for general information The World
This preview chapter may be subject to final editing before publication.
Last updated 10/23/2025