Bloodlines

Some legends are just Florida. The rest are worse.

The Van Helsing crew rolls into Florida with a dead air conditioner, a stack of strange headlines, and a feeling that something under the state is waking up. Hikers lose days and remember only a smell. Tourists vanish from a spring and leave their towels folded on the dock. Animals line the riverbanks every night, all facing south, waiting.

Tori, Bram, Aiyana, Siku, Lagoo, Todd, and Morgana have never worked a case with this much humidity. The cryptids are running, and a hidden Court of Shadows is draining the state's springs to open a door that has been shut for ten thousand years. Their only guide is Jimmy, a bait-shop owner and the estranged little brother of their old friend Norm. He has spent twenty years documenting a man in a tank top who wrestles alligators and shows up whenever something is about to go wrong.

Then the Fountain of Youth turns out not to be a fountain. A hurricane spins up out of nothing. Malthazar is already waiting at the springs, and his master has been speaking to two sisters in the dark. The new moon is coming, and the crew has a pool noodle, a chum bucket, and a Skunk Ape who isn't sure it likes them.

It's swamp-soaked, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking, and it ends with a whistle that gets answered. Some doors are worth holding shut. Some people are worth going back for.