by Julie Hall
She was also something of a novelty being one of the few female hunters. There were all types of hunters, but the vast majority of them looked like professional body builders.
Looks could be deceiving though. I’d learned that the hard way by underestimating a fellow hunter, a girl named Romona, during a sparring session Stephen had arranged. The dark-haired beauty might have appeared fragile, but she moved like the wind and packed a mean punch.
I’d learned about more than just fighting techniques the last several weeks. I’d made some interesting discoveries about my new home as well. I lived on the outskirts of a sparkling city nestled against a magnificent mountain range and giant forests. But the area I now considered home wasn’t the only part of this realm.
The topography where Kaitlin resided differed from my slice of heaven. She was in a part of the realm more suited to the California girl I believed she would always be at heart. Her training center was steps from a beach, with warm light-filled days, ocean breezes, and laid-back evenings. Everything she said about it reminded me of where we’d grown up.
She tried to convince me to transfer to her part of the realm—something I’d learned was possible—but this was where I needed to be. Maybe I didn’t want to be there because it was too much like my old life. Maybe it was for some other reason. I couldn’t quite nail down my own hesitation.
Perhaps someday I’d go back to what I’d always known, but for now I listened to my gut and stayed put. There was a reason I’d been assigned to this part of the realm and I was curious to see what it was.
“Yo, Logan, stop showing the rest of us up,” a voice boomed from the entrance of my training gym. My mentor had long since left, and I recognized the deep timbre of Alrik’s voice, the mountain of a man who never seemed to take anything seriously.
“Is it my fault you can’t keep up with this awesomeness?” I taunted back still striking the punching bag in front of me.
“Oh, young Skywalker, you have much to learn.”
I grabbed the bag to stop it from swinging and shot Alrik a look. “How in the world do you know lines from Star Wars, old man?”
“Old man? Old man? That, my young friend, is a wounding blow. We both know I don’t look a day over 600.”
In reality, Alrik appeared to be in his late twenties. But here, where people rarely aged, it was impossible to guess anyone’s true age. He claimed to be a Viking, but something about the chuckle he couldn’t contain every time he mentioned it had me wondering if it was true—either way, he did play the part to perfection. With his large stature, blond hair and beard, he also happened to resemble Thor a bit too much.
“Come on, call it quits for the day. We’re hitting the town tonight. Go get your smelly self cleaned up. I don’t want you scaring off any of the ladies with your foul stench.”
I gave myself a sniff. He wasn’t wrong about my needing a shower.
“Hitting the town, huh?”
“Yes. You know. Go out with a group of your friends and do normal people things together. You did used to have a life, right?”
“Funny.”
His grin widened. “Why yes, that I am.”
“Humble, too,” I added with mirth.
“Whoa, there. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That’s something I’ve never claimed to be.”
I pointed a wrapped hand in his direction. “And I’ll bet it’s something you’ve never been accused of before, either.”
“That is also true.” He puffed out his chest as if extremely proud of that fact. I laughed off his antics.
“Where are we meeting?”
“Well, I’d say your place, but you live like a hermit out there in that cottage.”
“Hey, now. It’s a manly cabin and we both know it,” I answered him.
He lifted his brows and hands. “If you say so. But in light of your hermit-like abode, we’re gonna meet up at Kevin’s place.”
“The big glass building that looks like an open book, right?”
“Yep, that’s the one,” he backed out of the room, “We’re leaving in an hour with or without you. So, you’d better get moving if you want to have time to perfectly style that head of yours.”
He let the door bang shut behind him before I could defend my grooming habits. Alrik was always giving me a hard time about my hair. He was convinced I spent hours in front of a mirror styling it, when in reality I just showered, towel-dried it, and let it fall where it wanted.
Unwrapping my hands, I threw everything in my gym bag and spent a few minutes tidying up the gym before leaving the training center.
I skipped the locker rooms in favor of showering in my cabin instead. Maybe Alrik was right. I did kind of live like a hermit out by the edge of the forest. There wasn’t a path that led to my house, so I’d made a crude one with a borrowed sword from the training center. I had to hike through part of the giant redwood forest to get home. Most people lived in the populated, bustling city, but this place fit me better.
I cleared the tree line and made my way to the front of my rustic and incredibly manly cabin. It sat just within the shadows of the giant trees overlooking fields of flowers. The same one, in fact, I’d first woken up in when I’d arrived in this realm.
From the outside, it didn’t appear to be anything other than a small hunting cabin, but the inside . . . well that was a different story altogether. I guess every detail hadn’t simply been downloaded during orientation . . . just the highlights. Because what we could do with our living spaces was almost beyond my imagination.
I opened the front door and stepped into my beach bungalow. What one could do with a simple thought in this realm was also beyond belief. When I’d first arrived and was assigned this home to live in, I’d been less than impressed with its Spartan appearance. It had been a couple of days before I’d remembered I could change my living space into anything I desired.
Decorating wasn’t really my thing, but at one point I had wanted to go to school to be an architect, and at the end of all my experimenting the inside of the cabin looked a lot like a two-story beach-themed bungalow. Smaller than the house I’d grown up in or those of my friends, but more fit to my personality.
No extra frills, mostly just the necessities, except for the sweet master bathroom I’d thought up. The shower alone was worth waiting the extra fifteen-minute walk to clean up.
If Alrik wanted to tease me about something, it should have been the exorbitant amount of time I spent in there.
My body relaxed as the spray from multiple showerheads pounded out the knots in my sore muscles.
Ah, now this is heaven.
Author Commentary: Chapter 5
JulieHallAuthor.com/logan-5
Chapter 6
Sweat dripped down my brow, and it wasn’t because of the heat. My first trip back to Earth was also my first assignment. I was more nervous than I was willing to admit, but my body’s response to the unknown was giving me away.
I accompanied a small group of hunters tasked with clearing an intersection of a few demons. They were messing with the streetlights and had caused a few head-on collisions, but no deaths.
We’d been sent down to take care of the problem. Which meant killing the creatures responsible. They were lower-level demons, so it wasn’t a high-risk mission, but it was still my first.
Romona was team lead on this one, and that surprised me. Not because she was a girl, but because Alrik was with us as well and I’d thought for sure he would pull seniority over her. From what I’d gathered, she’d been a hunter for a relatively short amount of time—meaning less than a decade—compared to some of the others with us.
But the team leads for each mission were chosen for more than just the number of years they’d been a hunter. They were chosen based on their individual skills and talents, and the amount of focus they put into their missions.
I respected and appreciated that.
I glanced at my giant friend, Alrik. He’d never complained about it, but I
did wonder what he thought of that way of doing things. If he truly was as old as he claimed to be, he’d be the senior ranking officer on this mission. From what I could see of his helmet-covered head, he was the picture of concentration. Exactly what I should be doing at the moment.
Snap out of it idiot!
The six of us moved forward together as a unit. I’d practiced enough times in the form-fitting body armor to be used to the weight and feel of it. Formless until we put it on, the tactical wear for hunters had hardened plates protecting our vital parts and was almost impossible to penetrate. An absolute must when fighting demons because their appendages were often sharp or serrated, not to mention their teeth which had evolved to bite into a hunter’s flesh.
I’d been warned against ever letting my guard down against a demon. Demons gained their strength by feeding on negative human emotions. It was vital to their existence and part of what drove them to do the things they did. Hunters were somewhat of an addictive drug to them. We weren’t necessary for their survival, but from what I’d been told we were a favorite tasty treat of theirs. If feeding off of human’s negative emotions was their sustenance, then hunters were the dessert they would forgo their main course to consume.
Of course, generally speaking, they hated humans regardless. Thinking themselves the more superior beings, every demon had once been an angel who’d fought against the Creator, and had ultimately been cast out of His perfect realm. They’d been condemned to live out their existence on Earth, or worse, the realm beneath. So, their manipulations against the human race went deeper than mere survival; they enjoyed the pain, chaos and destruction they caused.
I shook my head to get it back in the game. The helmet I wore weighed my head down and restricted some of my view. It was the one part of the armor that took a little getting used to. I wished we didn’t need them, but since we could still be knocked out, it was a necessary evil.
It felt very strange to be creeping around at night in the suburban areas knowing that no one except other hunters or demons could actually see us. After being in another realm for the last several months, being back on Earth was odd. Like discovering I’d spent a lifetime colorblind, but never realized until I was healed. Earth now seemed dull in comparison to the brilliance of my new home.
The streets we walked down looked nothing like where I’d grown up, which I appreciated. We were in the middle of America, far away from the ocean. That helped me concentrate so memories of my home, family, and friends wouldn’t cloud my judgment.
Romona held up a fist signaling we should all stop. Being toward the rear of the line of hunters, I wasn’t sure what lay ahead. She motioned for us to draw our weapons, which meant that she’d spotted the demons we’d come to slaughter.
I drew in a steadying breath. This was it; this was the moment I’d been incessantly training and waiting for.
I stayed light on the balls of my feet. Romona turned to the group and held up two fingers, indicating there were two demons. With a few more hand gestures she let us know we were splitting into two groups and attacking all at once. Romona, Alrik and I in a group, and Jason, Kevin and my mentor, Stephen in the other.
Stephen was being reassigned to another part of the realm on request, so this would be our first and last mission together. He gave me a wide grin before slipping away with the other hunters to attack from a different angle.
“You sure you’re ready for this?” ribbed Alrik. I pressed my lips together and nodded once. Now wasn’t the time for a chat.
“Okay then, you just yell if you need some saving. Damsels in distress are my specialty.”
Romona glanced back and rolled her eyes at us before shaking her head.
“They’re in position,” she whispered. She was peering around the side of a building, so she alone knew what was going on. “We’re going in three . . . two . . . one.” And she took off sprinting into the street.
Dang, the girl could run fast!
Alrik and I caught up to her just as she reached the intersection and jumped straight into the air. I wasn’t expecting that move. And where were the demons?
The shriek that rent the air could only be described as ungodly.
I gritted my teeth and almost dropped my sword to cover my ears.
It wasn’t just the volume of the noise that was awful, but the pitch was high enough to make you drop to your knees. Stephen had warned me about it, but even his explanations didn’t come close to the real thing.
Something fell from the sky with a thud that shook the ground.
Romona stood on the creature’s chest, breathing hard with her sword positioned at its unprotected . . . ah, stomach . . . I think.
So that’s where she’d been.
I checked my surroundings and sure enough another demon was up on a pole across the intersection and the second group of hunters was fighting to bring it down.
Man, demons were ugly.
Blackened scale-like skin stretched unnaturally over its flesh. Formerly angels, the demons’ bodies had transformed to mirror the evil that lurked in their hearts. Since all their goodness had been twisted and warped into something evil, their bodies were twisted and warped as well.
This fella must have been extra evil because it looked like he’d fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down . . . and then some.
One of his limbs stuck out of his midsection and he used it to swat at Romona, who was trying to hack it off with her sword.
Most of their skin was extremely hard, like armor, which was unfortunate when trying to figure out where to stab to pack the most punch. Demons had a few vulnerable parts, usually around the joints, but they were difficult to locate and even harder to reach.
The thing didn’t have a neck, but rather a head that attached directly to its upper body. We were trained to go for the neck first—if it had one—because that’s one of their most vulnerable places.
Decapitation was a very successful way to vanquish a creature of any kind.
This monster reeked of sulfur, and the scent burned my nostrils.
This demon-fighting business was going to take some getting used to.
“Anytime now, guys!” Romona roared.
Right.
I’d been gawking at my first view of a demon rather than helping her fight.
Rookie mistake.
I don’t know what Alrik’s excuse was.
I jumped into action. Plunging my blade forward, I expected the tip to sink into the being’s side.
I’d put a lot of force behind my attack, but was thrown off balance when it skidded across the side of the demon’s armor-like hide, giving off a piercing metal-on-metal sound.
My training finally kicked in and I scanned the demon for weak points. Spots on its body where the flesh was slightly different meant we could pierce it with our weapons.
There, just under the appendage protruding from its midsection the blackened scales were missing and there was a section of penetrable flesh.
The creature threw Romona from its body and struggled to its . . . er . . . feet? Less like feet, more like stumps with jagged looking claws.
Alrik took the opportunity to attack from behind, swiping with his massive sword. The demon let out another ear-splitting cry, and swung around to its new threat. Alrik had cleaved a nice chunk of flesh from its back, but it wasn’t enough to slay the creature.
Time to get back in the fight.
I aimed for the spot Alrik had already opened and my blade sunk a few inches into the unprotected flesh. One second, I was getting ready to push my weapon fully into the demon, and the next I was flying through the air.
My face throbbed and the sky above spun. I blinked until my vision cleared and was forced to sit up as my mouth filled with blood.
I spat on the ground and along with the unsavory bloody mix was a chunk of something familiar.
I ran my tongue along the top row of my teeth and sure enough, I was missing one of the front ones. I looked
down to see it lying on the asphalt beside me.
Just great. I’m never going to live this one down.
“Logan! Break time is over, man. Time to help us finish Big Ugly off.”
I sprang to my feet. I’d worry about the tooth later.
“Keep it distracted,” I yelled to Romona and Alrik, “I see one of its weak points and I’m going to try to reach it.”
Without questioning me, my fellow hunters obeyed my command and both moved in to attack together, purposefully keeping its attention on them, even though none of their blows would leave more than a scratch on the creature.
They trusted I had a plan. And I did.
While Romona and Alrik played a game of swing-and-duck with the demon, I moved around its side, and just as it lifted that weird arm-like thing coming out of its stomach, I used all my strength to thrust my sword into the base of where the limb met its body, and forced the blade into its innards.
The guttural cries of the dying demon were loud enough to make me wish I’d figured out a way to lop its head off instead.
It flailed and tried in vain to pull out the sword that I’d left in its gut. But the thrashing proved futile. My weapon was lodged at just the right spot that it couldn’t be reached.
Without my sword, I backpedaled a safe distance from the raging creature. Romona and Alrik used that as an opportunity to hack off its middle appendage and sink their own weapons into its guts.
Black blood shot out of the wound and sprayed Alrik, who wiped his face with the back of his arm. Since that was also covered in the demon’s goo he only managed to smear it around more.
I may have lost a tooth, but at least I wasn’t covered in that foul-smelling liquid.
Romona delivered the killing blow to the demon by sinking a dagger into one of its slitted eye-sockets.
The creature crashed to the ground, and after a few moments dissolved into ash and shadow.
Our weapons, although still covered in black ichor, lay unharmed. I bent over and retrieved my sword, wiped it on a nearby bush and slid it back into the scabbard.