Dark Hunt

by Kim Richardson

  “No one’s robbing a bank,” I growled, though I was tempted, just for half a second. But with my grandmother’s strong moral fiber, she would never agree to it.

  Jaw clenched against a New York-sized headache, I glanced at my grandmother, my heart breaking at the pain I saw. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Twenty grand meant she hadn’t been paying her mortgage payments for more than a year, plus interest.

  My grandmother wiped her eyes, and I strained to keep my own waterworks at bay. “You had so much on your plate already, with you moving back here and then that Greater demon Degamon on a killing spree and that insufferable council meddling in our affairs again. I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “Too late. I’m worried.” Although I’d been open and honest about the encounter with Degamon and why it was after me, the memory still sent my heart pounding.

  I shifted to the edge of my chair, wondering how I could have missed this. “Grandma, I thought you and grandpa had some money put away?” I said. “A pension and some lucky savings?”

  “Lucky savings?” My grandmother gave me a tight smile. “I needed a new roof. Water was leaking through cracks in the foundation, so that needed to be fixed. Don’t get me started on the plumbing.” She sighed heavily. “It’s an old house. Old houses always need repairs, just like this old body. If it’s not a hip replacement, it’s a window replacement. I’ve stretched that small pension as far as it will go. It just wasn’t enough.”

  A knot of worry tightened around my middle. I couldn’t let my grandmother lose her house. I had to do something.

  “I’m so sorry, Cecil,” said Father Thomas as he leaned back in his chair. “I’ll make inquiries about a possible loan from the church. There has to be something we can do to help.”

  “No.” My grandmother’s expression was hard and she straightened. I recognized that stubborn pride. Guess I got it from Granny. “Stop fussing about me.” She set her coffee mug on the counter. “It’s just a house. It’s got a roof and walls. That is all. If that goddamned bank wants it so badly, they can take it. I just don’t care anymore.”

  Father Thomas startled at the foul word coming from such an innocent-looking old lady, and I smiled at the hint of the badass angel-born she’d been in her younger years.

  Of course she cared. I cared. “It’s not just a house, grandma. You poured your life into this place. It’s the house you bought with Grandpa. It’s the house Mom grew up in. It’s the place where I can transport myself into memories of her and Dad and Grandpa. Memories are all I have left of her… of all of them.” I gritted my teeth until my jaw hurt. “The bank’s not getting those memories,” I added and blinked the moisture from my eyes.

  “So, what’s your master plan, then?” Tyrius cajoled as he shifted atop the table.

  “I’ll get a job,” I announced, surprising myself. “A real, human job.” God, that sounded lame to say it out loud. The thought of a human job was foreign, disturbing and even a little creepy. Could I even pull it off?

  Tyrius’s bark of laughter caught me off guard, and I frowned as he cleared his throat and said, “You? A real job? That’s as hilarious as rainbows shooting out of my ass.”

  I stiffened in my seat. “What? You don’t think I can?” Heat rushed to my face and part of me wanted to knock him off the table.

  “Never said you couldn’t.” The cat’s smile was brief but sincere. “It’s just… well… what skills do you have? Apart from killing demons and that one, lame-ass archangel… what else can you do?”

  My eyes flicked to my grandmother as she stared at the table without blinking, her expression far away and distant, and I nearly lost it.

  “I can get a regular job,” I protested, nearly shouting. “My people skills are a little rusty. But how hard can it be? I’m loyal. Dependable. Kind.”

  “That’s great,” commented Tyrius. “Now, all you have to do is learn how to catch a Frisbee and you can work as a Golden Retriever.”

  Father Thomas laughed and I scowled at the cat. “You’ve got a better idea?”

  Tyrius grinned in a way that made me want to pull out his whiskers. “We could borrow money from the bank. They wouldn’t even notice. Easy-peasy.”

  “No.”

  “It would be so-o-o-o easy, so ridiculously easy.”

  “Tyrius, we are still not robbing a bank,” I said, watching Father Thomas smile at the cat because he thought he was joking. He wasn’t. I knew if I said yes, Tyrius would probably transfer small amounts of cash from several different accounts so as not to draw any attention and then stash it into my grandmother’s. But she wouldn’t go for that. And neither would I.

  The cat made a face. “Fine. Have it your way then. But the idea of you behind a desk is as unnatural to me as a swimming cat. It’s just plain wrong. You wouldn’t last a day.”

  I rubbed my temples. “I would.” I didn’t even know where to start. “I will get a regular job if it means I can save this house. I’ll do it.”

  “Do you have a résumé?” Father Thomas’s mouth quirked, and he touched his clean-shaven chin with the back of his hand.

  If he wasn’t so pretty, I would have slapped him. “No.” My face warmed. Hunters didn’t have résumés. We got our jobs by reputation. Not that it mattered now.

  “Rowyn, be reasonable.” My grandmother tilted her head, and a brief look of pain passed over her features. “Tyrius is right. You’re angel-born, a Hunter. The human workplace is no place for my granddaughter. You won’t fit in.”

  I don’t fit in anywhere, I thought sourly. No big surprise there.

  With a troubled look, my grandmother exhaled. “I’m sorry you’re losing this place, Rowyn, but there’s nothing else we can do.”

  Now I felt guilty. “Yes, there is.” I pushed my chair back and stood. “I’m not giving up. I won’t.” I glanced at my grandmother and I swear I saw hope flitting behind her eyes. “I’ll figure something out,” I said, my throat closing. “Just don’t do anything rash until you hear from me. Okay?”

  “Where are you going?” my grandmother called as I walked out of the kitchen and rushed down the hallway.

  “To get the money,” I whispered to myself. My head throbbed as I pulled open the front door and stepped out into the morning rain onto Maple Drive.

  Yes, my life was a bag of disasters, but it needn’t be for my grandma. She was all the family I had left, if you didn’t count Tyrius. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to sit back and do nothing.

  I would get the money. Even if I had to hurt a few people to do it.

  2

  I picked my way through the crowded West 42nd Street in New York City, cursing at the human elbows that kept slamming into me as I followed the shifter demon. Even on a Monday night, the street was alive and noisy with tourists posing to take photos and New Yorkers hurrying back and forth from work and restaurants. The giant screens and billboards glittered like starlight. Cars and cabs honked, their exhaust fumes making me dizzy, but my keen angel-born senses could follow the stench of demon anywhere, even amidst the throng of humanity.

  I smiled, remembering my first experience as a Hunter. On a cool night like this I killed my first demon. I was fifteen at the time, totally unaware of the demon that had followed me home from a night at the movies. I’ll never forget the surprise on its face when I slashed its neck with a swipe of my blade and killed it. That night was the first time I felt alive, normal, with a sense of purpose. And I was damn good at it.

  But as it turns out, my ability to hunt and track demons so easily also came from my demon heritage. My senses were turbocharged because I had demon essence flowing in my veins.

  I’d always known I was different from the other angel-born. Without an archangel sigil, which all Sensitives were born with, I stood out like a zebra among mustangs. I was a different breed.

  Okay, so I had angel and demon essence flowing in my veins. Whoop-de-freaking-do. It didn’t make me bad… or did it?

  It all made sense now
, when I thought about it. It was why I could heal from a vampire bite and why I could handle a death blade when just the touch of the black metal could kill an angel and angel-born—because I was part demon. It was the darkness Tyrius had been curious about when we’d first crossed paths and the reason why he’d followed me home when I was a kid. He’d sensed it too.

  Ever since the archangel Vedriel had made the declaration of my true heritage, Tyrius was like a cat on catnip—bouncing off the walls and rolling around in papers on the floor. He was a vigorous, frenzied furball, and he was ecstatic. Go figure. Maybe because he felt we were even more alike than before. Although admittedly I couldn’t Hulk-out into a giant black panther when danger arose, I still had skills, demonic skills.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if my parents had figured it out. Vedriel had them killed because they were getting too close to discovering to the truth. But what if they had already found it? What if they had known their only daughter was a freak?

  I was both angel and demon-born—a gift from the Legion of angels, or a curse. According to the archangel Vedriel and his cronies, the other Unmarked and I were an experiment, a new race of Horizon soldiers. And for whatever reason, they wanted us terminated.

  They had almost succeeded, but I was still alive.

  However, my survival came at a steep price—the death of the archangel Vedriel.

  Yes. We killed an archangel. I cringed whenever I thought about it. The feeling of helplessness, of being trapped and forced to kill or be killed, swept through me. I hated that he’d made me into an angel killer.

  The blessed, sacred, perfect archangels were supposed to be righteous and protect us mere mortals from evil. But it was like Tyrius had said; not all archangels and angels were good. Turns out Vedriel was very, very bad. And his bad-ass self had ultimately been his demise.

  No one else knew we’d killed the archangel Vedriel. Only me, Tyrius, Jax, Danto and the Greater demon Degamon were there. We’d made a pact that early morning not to tell a soul about what we’d done. We needed to keep this quiet. The angel-born council would never understand, and it would just complicate matters.

  I doubted Degamon would tell the council, but we still didn’t know all the details of Vedriel’s plans to eliminate the Unmarked. Who else was involved? He had said other archangels were part of this scheme. Maybe Vedriel was just the errand boy and the real architect was still out there.

  Sooner or later, the Legion would figure out what happened to their archangel and then they would come after us… after me.

  In the few months since, I’d slept poorly. I’d been on edge, thinking a legion of angels was about to pound me. And yet, I was still here, back at my old job, hunting demon scum.

  Father Thomas gave me this new mark after a series of unexplainable deaths at a New York City law firm. The eyewitness reports of strange slops of skin-like substances at the crime scenes had caught the priest’s attention—demon goo. A shifter always shed its skin after it killed its victim and took its shape.

  To a Hunter, it was an easy red flag and stupid, but hey, most demons were stupid.

  I sighed through my nose and pivoted around a smiling Asian couple. I couldn’t refuse any work. I had five more days to come up with my grandmother’s debt or the bank would take her house. I’d been working nonstop—day and night—for two days since I found out about the bank’s threat. Since then, I’d taken every job the priest threw at me and a few jobs from my own personal website—two closet demons cases (yes, closet monsters were real) and a gremlin that had been terrorizing an elderly couple by smashing the pipes in their basement and causing it to flood. I’d even drafted a résumé with Tyrius’s help and applied to fifty different human jobs online, from data entry clerk to housecleaning.

  But I’d heard nothing yet. Without experience or the education to back me up, the humans weren’t interested. Hell, I didn’t blame them. Even I wouldn’t hire me.

  Hunting was my only option. And I would take every goddamn job that came my way, and then some. Whatever it took.

  Still, it wasn’t enough.

  I’d barely made seven hundred dollars. And with my five hundred in the bank, I was still over eighteen thousand dollars short.

  Damn. At the rate the priest was paying me, I needed to hunt fifty more shifter demons. Double damn.

  The shifter demon took a sharp left on 8th Avenue. After sliding my hand on the hilt of my soul blade, I headed across the street after it. Show time.

  The shifter demon had taken on the shape of a beautiful young black woman, Claire Beaumont to be exact. The body of the lawyer had been found yesterday morning in her apartment, next to the slop of skin. The shifter demon would keep the shape of the young lawyer until it began to tire and needed to replenish its demon energy with its next victim.

  Demon-Claire sashayed her way towards a pizza joint. Men turned at her approach, their eyes on the pretty woman. My skin pricked as the demon flicked its black eyes across the mass of men still staring at it. Crap.

  The demon smiled seductively as it approached a tall, handsome dark man in a suit that barely contained his muscles. He smiled back and stood, breaking apart from the others, too close to the dark alleyway behind the restaurant.

  My heart pounded in my ears. I walked faster.

  The demon stroked the dark man’s arm and leaned over to whisper something in his ear. I didn’t need to hear the exchange. I saw the desire flicker in the man’s face and knew exactly what the demon had said. The shifter smiled as it pushed the mortal man back playfully towards the alley, back into darkness—

  “Claire! There you are!” I grabbed its left arm while pressing my soul blade against its side. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” I said, pushing my blade a little harder. Seeing the ire in the man’s face, I added, “Sorry, my friend’s had a little too much to drink. Bye now.”

  I hurled the demon with me into the alley. I’d barely made five steps before it feigned a trip, taking me by surprise.

  “Angel bitch!” The demon elbowed me in the ribs and leaped away, sprinting like an Olympian.

  “Oh, hell no.” My boots scraped the pavement as I shot after it into the dark alley. “Come back here!” I yelled, stunned that the shifter could run that fast in six-inch heels. That took some serious skill.

  It pulled right and disappeared behind a metal garbage bin. Adrenaline spiked through me as I pushed my legs faster. There was no way I was letting my mark get away. Especially now that it had seen my face. It might take on my shape just to piss me off. I wouldn’t take that chance.

  The stench of spoiled meat and rotten fruit hit me like a slap in the face as I dashed past the bin—

  A leg darted from under the container. It caught me on my shin and I pitched forward onto the hard pavement, scraping my knees and the side of my face. Ouch.

  Demon-Claire was on me before I hit the ground. A sudden blow slammed my back as human teeth sank into my neck. Before I could catch my breath, the demon grabbed a fistful of my hair and smacked my head against the ground. Black spots exploded behind my eyes as I cried out in pain. This was not going well at all.

  In one smooth, mighty movement, I bucked wildly and felt it release my hair. Without stopping, I rolled over and kicked out hard, my boot connecting with the demon’s chest, and it stumbled back.

  I shot to my feet and felt my forehead. “Great. Now that’s going to bruise. Do you know how hard it is to hide a bruise with makeup without making it look caked on? VERY HARD.”

  The shifter demon spat, its black eyes wild and consumed with hatred. “I’m not going back. I’d rather die than go back to the Netherworld.”

  “That’s the point.” I pushed my jacket back, showing off my additional blades. “You know, the part of you dying. It’s why I’m here, demon.” I grinned when I saw the shifter’s eyes locking with the death blade on my weapons belt.

  What can I say? I got the feels whenever a demon spotted the death blade at my hip. It made me
all warm and tingly inside to see the confusion cross their marred features. It was almost as exhilarating as the thrill of the hunt. Almost.

  I gave the demon my best pageant smile. “Yes. That’s a death blade. And before you ask, no, I’m not a demon. I’m something else. But I’m feeling super generous tonight. I’ll give you the choice.” I cocked my hip. “Soul blade or death blade? Which one do you want me to use to kill you? Hmmm? What will it be, demon?”

  The shifter snarled, twisting its human guise to look more and more animal than human. It stood with its fists at its sides, glaring at me. “I’m never going back. Never!”

  “Then you should have thought about that before you started killing the innocent. You did this to yourself, shifter. I am going to send you back.”

  The shifter hissed, its black eyes wild, and lunged.

  It came at me in a whirl of limbs, spit, and hair. But I was ready.

  With my muscles locked tightly, the night air whistled as I gave a mighty swing of my blade. Without pause, the demon spun, evading the killing thrust of my blade. But as it came around, closing the distance to deliver its own strike, I drew my weapon back, slicing across its neck.

  With a howl, the demon stumbled back, black blood spilling down its neck and over its chest.

  I smiled at the fear in its eyes. “See? Told you I was going to kill you. Stop fussing and let me just do it. It’ll be quick. I promise.”

  “Help!” screamed the demon in a perfect imitation of a human female in fear. It looked at me and smiled before yelling again. “Help me! Please! Someone help me!”

  “Shut up.” I looked over my shoulder to the street and my stomach churned. A silhouette of a man had stopped at the sound of the shifter’s screams and turned his attention to us.

  Shit. Was it the same man the shifter had spoken to before? Was he looking for it? There was no way I could kill the demon now, not with the human staring. There were rules about this sort of thing. Not that I cared for rules, but I knew I couldn’t kill the shifter with a human watching. If he called the cops, I was in for it. I’d have to leave—without my mark or my money.