by May Dawson
Desperately. My heart was pounding in my chest as the beast raced back toward me.
But I was going to be a Hunter, like Liam, like my parents before me. I had to fight my own battles. I was ready.
Even when those battles were with nightmare-beasts that had another girl’s flesh still caked between their teeth.
“Back off, old man,” I said.
This time, I sank my sword into the creature’s side as I ducked out of its way. Its force knocked me off balance, and my fingers slid off the hilt as the thing tumbled to its knees and slid across the pavement. I caught myself heavily on one knee and launched myself up to my feet.
The hilt of my sword gleamed out of its bloodied leathery skin. I headed for it, determined to drag my sword out of its heaving side and finish it off.
The thing whirled on me, snapping and growling. Spittle flew from its mouth full of sharp, broken teeth. Yellow eyes fixed on me.
“Deidra!” Liam called. He had his sword by the blade now, and I knew what he was going to do even before he launched it through the air to me. I reached out and caught the hilt.
As soon as the hilt slammed into my palm and my fingers wrapped around it, I reared back and slammed the blade down with all my power.
The force of the blow reverberated through the hilt and stung my hands. I looked down to see the beast was still, but the blade hadn’t gone all the way through. The blade was stuck in the broken shreds of vertebrae, and I tried to yank it out. The rank scent of the beast washed over me so powerfully that I could taste it in the back of my mouth, and I almost choked. No one told me Hunting would be so disgusting.
“You’ve got it,” Liam said.
I looked up at him, some smart-ass quip already forming on my lips, and saw the third monster, low to the ground right behind him.
“Look out!” I shouted. I yanked the sword free in one quick, desperate motion and threw it to him.
He caught it as he was turning, and he buried the blade in the side of the monster.
But it already had him by the throat.
The two of them collapsed.
“No!” I shouted. That couldn’t have just happened. Liam’s eyes were wide, his lips parted. Beneath his jaw, there was a vast bloody emptiness where his throat used to be, and the white bone shone through.
The sword was buried deep in the monster. The beast groaned, then stopped moving as its own eyes went glassy.
“No!” I screamed again. Pressure was building inside my chest, so intense that it felt like I was going to explode. My head was suddenly hot and aching, and I pushed my fists against the sides of my head like I could hold myself together.
What the hell was going on? Had one of those things bitten me? Was this some kind of poison injected by those ugly teeth? I tried to catalog any potential wound, but my vision was blurry. As I squinted, I still couldn’t focus on the black dress I wore. When I blinked, my vision only faded more. I couldn’t even see my bare feet with black polish, somewhere down below. The world felt like it spun around me.
Pain crackled through my limbs, tingling and hot. I raised my hands in front of me, perplexed.
Lightning arced between my fingers.
Then the world exploded in flames around me.
Chapter Five
My ears were ringing. I couldn’t hear anything beside a constant high-pitched sound, but I must have been screaming, because my throat was suddenly ragged.
Fire beat against my face from the flames smoldering across the cement parking lot. Half of the nearest building was gone now, exposing metal beams and caved-in brick. I looked down at my hands again, but there was no more lightning.
I turned in a slow circle, cataloguing the damage. The enormous revolving statue of Duffy had slammed into the parking lot, and the roof of the diner was cracked open. God, there hadn’t been anyone around me, had there?
Did I do that? I couldn’t have. But I couldn’t explain what just happened, either.
My uncle stared up at the sky. His gaze seemed so intense that I couldn’t help but look up too, knowing it was stupid. There was nothing up there but the bright pinpricks of stars, so far distant and untouchable.
I looked back down at his still, slack face. I couldn’t look at his throat. My fingers trembled as I pressed my fingers over his eyelashes, closing his eye. The other eye still stared up at nothing. Panic expanded in my chest, suffocating me, and I hurried to close the other eye. Then at least it looked like he was sleeping.
In the distance, police sirens were screaming. I had to get out of here. I could never explain this.
But I couldn’t just leave him here with the monsters, to be devoured by the flames that were lapping at my feet. I wrestled him up onto my shoulders and stumbled, my knees buckling, to the car.
The passenger side of the car was still open. I heaved him up onto the passenger seat. I knelt to grab the torn hems of his jeans or the black steel-toed boots he wore—I’d made fun of him for wearing his jeans until they disintegrated—and heaved his feet up into the car.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said, but the sound of my voice—low and unsteady and speaking to no one—made me sound too young, too unprepared to deal with this mess. Pressing my lips together, I made my way to the driver’s side of the car.
The keys were still in the ignition, and Liam’s stupid fake rabbit’s foot swayed from the keyring. I’d been in this car just ten minutes before. Before everything changed.
Don’t think about anything but what you need to do next. Eventually, I’d be somewhere safe I could fall apart, but for now, I had to keep moving. I twisted the key in the ignition and the engine roared to life.
My legs were shaking as I put the truck into gear and drove it away, just as the flames overtook the bodies of the beasts. I looked in the rearview mirror at the nightmare scene I was leaving behind, as flames raged across the parking lot.
Just like you’d expect of something straight out of Hell, the monsters’ evil bodies combusted. Sparks drifted up into the sky.
It was surreal to be driving in the truck with my uncle’s dead body in the passenger seat, still trying to use turn signals and obey traffic lights as I drove the dark, deserted streets. I kept looking over at him. God, just let me go back in time an hour. This shouldn’t be happening.
I made it three miles toward home before my stomach seized so badly that I had to pull over. I checked in my rearview mirror that I was not stumbling into oncoming traffic before I threw open my door and puked, leaning forward against the seatbelt I hadn’t had time to release. Brown splattered across the pavement. When I straightened up, my head spun dizzily. I shouldn’t be driving.
At least the sight of a girl in a prom dress puking in the small hours of the morning probably wouldn’t attract much attention.
I closed the door. My throat burned. Just a few miles to home and then I could… what? I had my uncle’s body in the passenger seat. One of his hands lolled on the center console next to me. There was blood all over the car. I couldn’t just park the truck in front of the dojo, go up to our apartment above, and take a shower. I had to deal with this.
I should’ve left his body to the flames. That would’ve been the smart thing. But I was not up for the smart thing yet.
I couldn’t just walk away from the body of the man who raised me for the last fourteen years. I never got to say goodbye to my parents either. I was being stupid, I knew that, but I wanted to give him a Hunter’s funeral. I wanted to pray over his body and say goodbye. I wanted some kind of closure.
Less than an hour ago, we were teasing each other in a diner booth. Was it thirty minutes ago? Twenty?
I turned onto the commercial side street where my uncle and I lived. Parked across from our house was a black sedan I’d never seen before. I could’ve sworn I caught a glimpse of a pale moon of a face inside when I first turned, but the car looked empty now.
My foot was against the brake, but I hadn’t started to stop yet. I shifted
back over to the accelerator and rolled past the sedan, trying to look like I never intended to stop. It wasn’t until I’d taken a right on the next street that I slammed my foot down on the accelerator. The truck jumped forward.
“Where are you going to go, Deidra?” I asked myself. “Come on. Think.”
Gretchen. My uncle said to go to Gretchen.
I cast a worried glance at his slack face. Liam would want me to be considerate of Gretchen, and showing up to his ex-girlfriend’s bar with his dead body in the passenger seat was far from thoughtful. The two of them had a long on-again, off-again. I always figured they’d end up together when they finally stopped fighting it.
I’d have to keep her from seeing the body. I’d cover him with something. But my hands were shaking worse and worse on the wheel, my stomach was cramping again, and there was someone waiting for me back at the house.
I had to get somewhere. I had to get some kind of help.
I gunned it for Gretchen’s bar.
I made it to the highway before sirens start up behind me. My heart pounded in my chest as I moved into the right lane. If the police caught me, they would probably not assume great things from my current Road-Trip-With-A-Corpse situation. But there was no reason anyone should have connected me, or my uncle’s car, with the current bombed-out buildings I had left behind.
Was it me? Did I do that? The question kept pounding in my head, even though I knew it was impossible. I was a normal girl. I didn’t start fires with my brain.
The police car’s lights were right behind me, glaring into my rearview mirror. The sirens were still going off relentlessly.
This one was definitely for me. Even though I didn’t understand how.
I pulled the car over. My uncle’s license, registration and insurance cards were all tucked into the visor—my uncle almost always carried a gun, so he kept his license and registration accessible without reaching for anything—but I didn’t have my license. Where’s my license? Did I leave my purse behind?
I leaned over and searched across the well of the passenger seat, where I would’ve dropped my purse. I tried not to touch my uncle’s slack legs in his jeans when I reached past him. It was too dark to see clearly, but my shaking fingers didn’t find anything.
The purse wasn’t here.
Shit. Shit. I had left my purse behind in the diner.
The window was still cranked down. Just an hour or two ago, Liam leaned out with that exasperated smile on his face to tell me he was taking me out for ice cream. I put my hands on the window sill as the cop’s flashlight bobs toward me.
“Good evening,” the cop started to say. Then he shone the flashlight further into the car and said, “Holy shit.”
This was not going to be a good night.
As he took a step back, there was the glint of his weapon under the moonlight before he shone the flashlight directly into my face, blinding me.
“Get out of the car,” he told me. “Nice and slow.”
“I didn’t hurt him,” I said. “I didn’t do it. I just couldn’t leave him behind.”
“We’ll get it all sorted out,” the cop promised me. His voice was low and calm now, almost re-assuring. “Just face the truck and put your hands up on the roof for me, all right?”
No matter how calm his tone, he pulled my arms behind my back and snapped on the cuffs with hurried, almost frantic movements.
“We’ll sort this out at the station,” he started to say.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a black sedan driving down the road toward us. This time, I glimpsed the face inside; a pale face, brown hair, a long stare. The cop’s voice faded for me as my pulse beat rapidly in my ears.
“I think we’re in trouble,” I said.
“If you didn’t do anything to hurt anyone, you’re not in any trouble,” he promised me, putting his hand on my head to guide me into the back of the cop car.
He left me in there while more cop cars arrived, while they searched my uncle’s truck and set up a crime scene around it. I half-watched it all.
But I was waiting for that sedan to come back.
That was no coincidence.
I knew I’d see it again.
Chapter Six
Cade
It was pouring rain as I ran up the slick stone steps of the academy’s main building. I expected to have to head upstairs to the dean’s office, but to my surprise, he was waiting for me just inside the heavy wooden doors. His eyes were troubled as he rubbed his hand across his weathered face, and he didn’t try to smile.
“I need your help, Cade,” Malcolm said calmly. “She’s in danger.”
“She?” There were dozens of female cadets at the academy. Malcolm cared about them all. He was like the grandfather I’d never had.
“Her name is Deidra.” His voice seemed to linger over the name.
“You can tell me on the way,” I said.
“Change first,” he said. “FBI. She’s been picked up by the police, and we’ve got to get her out of there before Truby tries to take her again.”
Truby. Shit. Her odds of getting out of there alive once he walked into the police station were not good.
“All right.” Like all Hunters, I was quick with a lie and always ready to dress the part.
I headed down the hall to my office, where I quickly pulled a black suit and white shirt out of the metal locker in the corner.
As I checked the clip on my 9mm pistol and slid it into the holster, I eyed my sword-and-harness, hanging on the back of my desk chair. I was most comfortable when I was carrying the sword. Things in the supernatural world can be hard to kill, but almost everything dies when you separate its head from its body.
A few minutes later, I set my sword carefully in the trunk and twitched a blanket over to cover it, before I slid into the driver’s side of the black Range Rover.
“We’re at sixteen. More if we don’t get there in time,” he said.
Cold twisted through my stomach. Sixteen dead Hunters.
“Who was it?” Dixon was out there Hunting now, I knew. Teresa. Aaron. Too many friends in a world that had become even darker these past few months.
“Elizabeth,” he said.
Something in my chest lifted. Not one of my friends, not this time. The second after, shame curdled any sense of relief. I shouldn’t think like that. I hadn’t known Elizabeth, a white witch turned Hunter who had infiltrated Jonathan Truby’s coven. But she’d been a good person.
And she’d been a powerful asset to what felt at times like a desperate cause.
“What’s the address?” I asked as the wheels crunched over the gravel and we headed toward the long, rain-slick road that stretched away under the moonlight. I opened the GPS on the screen in the dashboard before I looked to him for directions.
“Take us down the highway to the state line,” he said. “I know the way.”
As soon as we turned onto the smooth street, I pushed down on the accelerator, and the Rover leaped forward.
“She reached out to me as she was dying.” His voice was calm, but his hands knotted into fists. The old scars against his knuckles turned white, a strange contrast with his sleek black dress pants. “She said that Truby found Deidra.”
“Who’s Deidra?”
He answered by saying, “Truby is looking for her because she’s got powerful magic, although she doesn’t know it yet. He made a deal with the demons for the Book of Darkness, but she is what they want.”
“She’s a witch,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. Nix was a witch; I didn’t have anything against witches. But most Hunters did.
“Yes.” Malcolm said.
From the corner of my vision, I thought I saw his chin tremble, but when I looked over, he looked as cool as ever.
“Is she dangerous?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said. He glanced at me, then away. As if he’d made a decision, he sighed. “She’s my granddaughter.”
That was the first
I’d heard of Malcolm’s living kin. Sometimes I thought he collected orphans, like Nix and me, because he’d lost his own sons.
“All right,” I said. “Well, we’ll get to her before Truby.”
I had so many questions about this Deidra, and why we’d never heard that Malcolm had a granddaughter, but for now, I just pushed down harder on the accelerator, watching the dial climb until the engine whined.
Whoever she was, if she needed us, I was coming.
Chapter Seven
Deidra
“So you and you uncle were attacked?” The police officer across from me frowned. “Why did you leave the diner to begin with?”
“We heard a scream.” The closer I stayed to the truth, the better. “My uncle owns the mixed martial arts dojo on King Street? You might’ve driven past it before. We thought we could help.”
I was stringing together words coherently. That realization made me feel strangely proud. My stomach was still roiling, my head was dull and aching. It felt like I should be curled up in a ball somewhere, weak and helpless. Maybe that’s what I was doing on the inside. But here I was, lying my way through a police interrogation like a Hunter.
“Who screamed?”
“I don’t know. When we got out there, three…men…attacked us.”
He nodded. “Could you describe their faces for a sketch artist?”
“I’ll try.” The memory of the beasts rose sharply to my mind. Their yellow eyes had snapped to stare at us when he started the car. I’d never forget their pig-like faces, their mouths full of broken teeth, their bodies bigger than any human body. But I couldn’t describe any of that to the sketch artist.
There was a tap on the door. “Hey. The Feds want the girl.”
“The Feds?” The cop’s gaze snapped to my face. “What do the Feds want with her?”
“They’ve got a warrant for her.”
“Not her first bombing, huh?” The cop’s face was suddenly cold.
“Is that what you think happened?” Cold anxiety twisted through my stomach at the thought of having to let them believe such an awful lie. That I was responsible for that scene of destruction might seem like the only logical explanation to them.