Bayou Mounds has survived a lot. Werewolves. A hive that tried to swallow the city whole. A moccasin monster with a grudge older than most of its victims. But the ninth chapter of Derek and Sheryl Brown’s story doesn’t start with a monster at all. It starts with something far more ordinary, and far more dangerous: a man who decided containment was cheaper than the truth.
Somewhere south of the city, in the wetlands most people only see from a highway bridge, something has gotten loose in the water. It doesn’t howl. It doesn’t leave survivors who agree on what they saw. And by the time Derek and Sheryl realize what they’re actually hunting, it’s already bigger than anyone told them it was.
Beasts of the River is a different kind of Bayou Blood book. The threat isn’t supernatural in the way readers have come to expect. It’s engineered, and worse, it’s been growing quietly for months under the watch of a man who had every chance to stop it and chose not to. What follows is a race against a cover-up as much as a hunt through dark water, with the body count rising in both directions.
THE RETURNING CAST
Derek Brown (Savage) returns as the series’ tactical backbone. Former Army infantry, now the one drawing maps, scouting chokepoints, and turning years of deployment instinct toward a threat that doesn’t think the way anything human, or anything supernatural, has thought before.
Dr. Sheryl Brown (Death Claw) brings her clinical mind to a fight that’s as much about reading evidence as fighting through it. Her ER background and her years of hard-won field experience are what turn scattered attacks into a pattern the team can actually act on.
Detective Olivia Hale carries the weight of keeping a city calm while its waterways quietly become a crime scene. Managing the official story is its own kind of battle this book, and Hale is the one standing between Bayou Mounds and full-blown panic.
Dr. Carlos Marsh returns as the team’s scientific anchor, working from behind the scenes to help Derek and Sheryl understand exactly what they’re up against, and just how far past “under control” it already is.
Karen Stewart and Howard Rawls also appear, each carrying threads that longtime readers will want to keep an eye on as the series moves toward what’s coming next.
THE STORYLINE CAST
Beasts of the River introduces a new set of faces tied directly to this book’s central threat:
Dr. Charles Monroe, director of a facility on the edge of Bayou Mounds most residents don’t know exists, is a man who has spent his career building something extraordinary and is now spending everything else he has trying to keep the world from finding out what that something has become.
Around him, a cast of employees, victims, and everyday people who cross paths with the water at exactly the wrong moment give this book its ground-level stakes. Not everyone who steps onto that water this book is walking away from it, and the story doesn’t let you forget that from the very first chapter.
WHAT’S AT STAKE
No spoilers here, only a promise: this is one of the most physically demanding books Derek and Sheryl have ever fought through. The threat in Beasts of the River doesn’t negotiate, doesn’t tire, and doesn’t stop learning. Every chapter closes the gap between what the team knows and what they need to know before the next body turns up.
And when the water finally goes still again, it won’t stay that way for long.
GET IT FIRST
Beasts of the River Chapter 1 goes live on Patreon this Wednesday, September 23, exclusively for Strike 7 Network Tier 1 members before it ever reaches Royal Road or Scribble Hub.
Tier 1 is the only paid option on the Strike 7 Network Patreon, and it’s simple: early access to every Strike 7 Network web serial, chapters in your hands before anyone reading for free even knows they’ve dropped.
If you want to be first into Bayou Mounds this time, not weeks behind it, join Tier 1 on Patreon now and be reading Chapter 1 the moment it’s live.
