Carrion Lullaby

A storm unlike any in living memory tears through Detroit, and when the waters recede, they leave something behind on the riverbank. Detective Eli Vargas is first on scene, and the body he finds is only the opening note of a song the city should never have heard. As more bodies surface, each marked with the same strange sigil carved into the earth beside them, Vargas turns to forensic psychologist Dr. Yael Markham, whose expertise in ritual killings runs deeper than her case files suggest. Journalist Nina Solis is already digging into a decades-old disappearance, while her old friend Marcus Harrow returns to Detroit with blood on his past and silence on his tongue. With Detective Roy Okafor chasing the official leads and the enigmatic Beatrice Crane watching from the margins, the investigation spirals into forgotten churches, drowned neighborhoods, and a lullaby that surfaces in the dreams of children who should not know it. Aaden Cole, Saanvi Cole, and the haunted Father Idris Vey hold the last threads of a truth the river has tried to swallow. The longer the hunt goes, the clearer it becomes: something in Detroit is waking, it is hungry, and it has been singing the city to sleep for a very long time. To stop it, Vargas and the others will have to choose between the truth they can survive and the lie that might keep them breathing until morning.