A large, scruffy cat meowed plaintively at her from the level above where she’d been sitting. Emily laughed at herself, exhaled her pent up breath, and lowered her weapons. “I’m way too paranoid tonight,” she said with another shaky chuckle.
Two massive, clawed hands clamped down like iron vises on her shoulders.
Emily jumped, fear taking hold of her completely, utterly. But luck was with her, as well as her training. She ducked, bringing her pistols up above her head with incredible speed. She fired point blank into the chin of the hulking monster behind her. The creature’s head exploded as the bullet exited the back of its skull, and it wobbled on its feet like a drunkard.
But it did not fall.
Before she even knew what she intended, she emptied both pistols into the creature. The chest and belly of the headless monstrosity was ravaged by the force of the bombardment and at last the creature faltered, lost its footing, and fell back onto the ground.
It was pure instinct that had her immediately reloading her weapons.
“I should have brought a damned shotgun,” she muttered. “Or two.” The mundane words calmed her a bit, helped her to find her scattered wits.
The body on the ground twitched, as if it were still animated by the unnamed hellish force that drove it. But how could it still be alive, after all the damage it had taken? It was impossible. Wasn’t it?
There came the sound of a low-pitched and vicious growl behind her. She whirled, raising her weapon, and fired immediately upon the new threat. Two of the creatures came for her, slow and clumsy when she knew firsthand that they could move swiftly and dangerously. Mere seconds ticked by and her guns were once more emptied of ammunition.
Would knives destroy them more quickly, more completely than guns? The man in the black coat had used those strange blades to destroy the creatures…perhaps steel was the answer. She pulled two wicked hunting knives out of her boots—one for each hand. No way did she want to get close enough to the things to use them…but she had to find out how best to defeat them.
At least she had the advantage now, as these brutal things were riddled with ragged holes from her hail of bullets.
Bracing her hands tightly around the hilt of the blades, she advanced upon the creatures. The smell of carrion grew thicker as she drew closer. It took all of her courage, her strength, to meet them. But she did. She had to. Or else she could never face herself in the mirror again.
Using every ounce of strength she possessed, she brought one of the knives up and buried into the belly of the closest monster. Ripping it from belly to neck, she laid it open with a brutality she had no inkling she’d possessed. The creature screamed, a hellish cry, and fell back.
The remaining monster seemed to rally its wits in an effort to face her with more success. Its eyes, so horrible to behold, held a glimmer of human intelligence that sent a shaft of icy dread and fear into Emily’s heart. It backed away from Emily with much caution. Slowly, it began to circle her, and she was careful to keep her eyes locked to it while it moved.
Fighting a monster was not the same as fighting a human foe, though the creature did possess humanoid qualities. While in combat with a human, Emily could judge through body language and involuntary muscle contraction, just how or when a person may attack. But with this creature it was nearly impossible to judge, beneath all the muck and slime of its flesh, just how its muscles reacted during motion. And its body language was so alien, so freakishly monstrous, that she had no idea what it intended beyond the moment at hand.
It seemed cautious, crouching as it moved as if it might pounce…or flee. It was impossible to tell. Emily felt its evil, its rotten core. And yet it seemed to possess nothing but the most basic of intents and purposes. Like an infant trapped in the body of a murdering adult. It was unsettling. Disturbing. And Emily couldn’t fathom it.
Where in many instances she could understand, perhaps pity, human criminals, she couldn’t connect at all with this hellish being. It had no business in her world—this much she knew for certain. And so she would dispatch it to whatever pit of hell it had crawled out of. But she would feel no remorse in doing so.
There was no way she was going to let it escape, to bedevil or endanger someone else in her fair city.
“Emily,” the monster gurgled.
She started and almost vomited on herself, so great was her fear and revulsion of that vile voice speaking her name. How could it possibly know her name? Oh God.
“What the fuck are you?” She spoke first in a whisper, then repeated her words in a shout full of rage and fear, shaking uncontrollably with the force of her emotions. “What the fuck are you?”
“Emily,” it spoke again. “Come.”
“No way, you sick shit, no way.” Out of fear—fear for herself and for the faceless people of her city—she darted towards it, knife at the ready to mete out death.
The creature’s arms came around her, tried to hold her. But she took it to the ground, plunging the blade deep into its chest. At the same moment, the monster whose intestines she’d ripped asunder, came and joined the fray. Emily shrieked in disbelief. “Why won’t you die?” She yelled as the second monster came and grabbed her arm in a brutal grip, trying no doubt to drag her off its comrade.
She struck out wildly with her blades, slicing flesh to ribbons until she and her foes were covered in the thick wet heat of their black blood. It took much wrestling but she broke free of their cloying embrace as they sought to hold her to them…for what purpose she couldn’t say.
But she knew that they were holding back from injuring her. Many times over they could have sank their claws deep into her, ending the fight. But they didn’t. For some reason—no doubt nefarious—they held back, even under pain and threat of their own demise. Emily knew it—could sense their refusal to fully meet her blow for blow. This knowledge struck an endless terror into her heart.
What did they want with her?
Emily retreated, adrenaline flooding her body. The monsters were clumsier now, proving that they were weakened by their wounds, if only a little. It proved they weren’t impervious to her weapons…only very resistant. She knew they could die, she’d seen the man kill them with effortless ease.
What had she missed? What had he done that she had failed to do?
Fire. She needed fire with which to burn them. Only in the heat of the flames had they failed to rise again. And the website—which she hadn’t taken seriously enough by half it now seemed—had also said to kill them with fire.
With a clumsy hand she dropped one of her knives and searched her pockets for a lighter. She was no smoker, but a good officer never entered the field unprepared for everything that might occur. Or, at least, she didn’t. An old, silver lighter rested in her back pocket, coming into her hands when she reached for it, as if it had been waiting for her the whole time.
A knife clutched in one hand, the lighter in the other, she advanced upon the creatures once more. The flame of her lighter, however small, flickered and reflected off the yellow of their eyes. They cried out and retreated, at last giving her the advantage.
“You’re scared of the fire, aren’t you?” she murmured, gathering her courage as she realized the truth of her own words. “You know what it will do to you.”
The monsters almost tripped over themselves in an effort to get away. Even the headless one on the ground twitched, though it was too brutally injured to get up and flee with the others. As Emily stepped over it, she bent down and set the small lick of flame to the creature’s flesh.
And almost singed her eyebrows off in the doing. The thing caught fire so fast! Seconds only—that’s all it took before the body was completely engulfed in flame.
“Burn, baby, burn,” she whispered, stepping past it in pursuit of the still slowly retreating monsters.
“What are you? Where have you come from?” she asked them as she backed them into a corner. “I know you can speak. You spoke my name. How did you know my name? Tell me,
damn it, or you’ll burn like your friend.” Her words were a torrent, fast and breathless, from both fear and the adrenaline rushing unchecked through her veins.
But the creatures only growled their response, the sound inching its way into her soul like the stain of blackest hate.
“Fine. Go back to the hell you came from, then.” Keeping her eyes on them, she reached down to retrieve a piece of trash that littered the ground at their feet. Setting fire to the torn piece of newspaper, she advanced, brandishing the makeshift torch at them…
And gasped to see them disappear completely before the fire could even touch them.
“What the…?” She looked about her frantically, fearing a sudden reappearance and attack at her back. But the alley was empty. Empty but for the smoldering corpse of the first monster as it burned to ash.
What had happened? How had they disappeared like that?
Whatever the answers to her endless—and growing—list of questions, Emily vowed to find them out. Even if it killed her.
Chapter Three
Five nights later
Emily grunted as she dragged the last corpse onto the pyre. Her muscles were beyond weary. Beyond fatigued. With a grimy hand, she wiped away the sweat that poured from her brow. Her gaze swept the carnage that surrounded her. A pile of the monsters’ hearts burned almost cheerily in a corner of the abandoned building—a decrepit factory that had been old long before she was born.
It had been on the third night that she’d discovered for herself that what the voyeurs website claimed had been truth. The monsters’ true weakness lay in their hearts. It was their beating heart that kept their bodies animated. So long as the heart survived, the body would go on fighting—no matter how many pieces it may be in at the time. In every fight before then, when she was fast enough to incapacitate them before they disappeared, she’d just burned them as she could. Whether they stood or crawled or still fought, she torched them as quickly as possible.
But on that third night she’d ravaged a monster, practically pulverized its body into a pile of goo with blasts from her shotgun. But its heart had somehow survived, and it had beat a terrible tattoo in the cage of crushed ribs that uselessly strove to protect it. Emily had studied it, watching its terrible rhythm with horror and curiosity…and the wreck that was the body had moved! It was then that she remembered the website’s instruction; it was then that she had known.
To kill the beast one must take its heart.
So now, instead of pummeling the creatures with an endless arsenal of ammunition, she took their hearts as quickly as she could. Their chests were soft, spongy and weak. It was almost too easy to take their hearts from them, now that she knew to strike there first.
It also helped that they still refused to actually hurt her.
Emily used this against them every chance she got. She still had no idea why they refrained from causing her a debilitating injury. It certainly wasn’t out of any goodness or charity on their parts. They were evil beasts, of that there could be no doubt.
She’d seen them feed.
Seen them eating a body. Seen and heard them as they’d crunched down to the last bone of their hellish meal. Emily had been far too late to save the victim, but she’d vowed to never allow such an atrocity to happen on her watch again. Those monsters had died most horribly and she’d reveled in the torture she’d inflicted on them, taking them apart one piece at a time. But their black deed had proven one thing, at least. That she was on the side of right. Of good.
The world was in danger. And she was more than ready to help fight against that danger, to help keep people safe.
Taking a deep breath, knowing that the air around her was about to be poisoned with the pungent scent of the monsters’ burning flesh, she threw a match onto the pile of bodies and watched as it burned. Several minutes later, after the evidence of her fight had been reduced to harmless ash, she gathered her weapons to her and went in search of yet another battle.
Thunder rolled in the heavens as a storm approached, but Emily was too tired to notice or care.
* * * * *
It was raining so heavily that his coat dragged about him like a dead weight. Thankfully the liquid polymer paint Steffy and Agate had designed for his battles was completely waterproof, serving as a rain slicker as well as armor. With his speed and precision he could walk between the raindrops, but that would have taken more concentration than he had to spare at the moment. For at this moment he was hunting Daemons.
He was no member of the Hunter Caste—Shikars gifted with the uncanny ability to sense and track Daemons over great distances—but he was close enough to his quarry now to sense their location. He felt the dread that seemed to permeate the air whenever they were close by. Felt the stain they left behind when they Traveled from their world to this. And these feelings, these Shikar perceptions, drove him to increase his pace down the seemingly endless secret back streets of the city.
They were uncomfortably close. What could they want so desperately here, to keep coming back for it in such a hostile land as this? Did the monsters no longer fear discovery and human mob panic? Were there so many psychics to be found in this great human city? It must be so, to lure them back night after night, when they could have hunted less developed, less populated lands as this with much greater ease.
Edge turned one last corner and it was then that he came upon them. But it was the other—the woman—whose presence surprised him most. And he was a man intolerant of surprises.
It was the policewoman, though now she did not wear the uniform of her station. Emily Lansing, of the glorious shiny curls, and rose red child’s mouth. Emily of the cobalt blue eyes, eyes so deep and so purely blue as to shine like precious jewels in her peaches-and-cream face. And though Edge’s libido immediately awoke in response to her presence, his cock growing heavy and thick and hard just at the sight of her, he was not in the least otherwise happy to see her.
The human had no business being here. And what was she doing, anyway?
She was fighting the Daemons.
Emily brought up a large black handgun and blew a hole into the chest of the nearest Daemon and Edge watched, amazed, as she immediately reached in with a gloved hand and ripped out the heart of the beast. Her movements were like those of the most seasoned warrior, striking out in the deadliest and most dangerous of ways as each of the four monsters moved to advance upon her.
She was hopelessly outnumbered. Any moment now a Daemon would surely reach out and tear her life from her.
The thought pushed Edge to immediate and swift action. Releasing a row of seven deadly, poison-tipped Foils down his forearm—ripping wide holes in his painted-on sleeves as he did so—he leapt into the fray. Swinging wide, he tore into the torso of one of his foes with his bladed arm, leaving a gory maw behind. Reaching out he grabbed the creature’s heart in his fist, before kicking the monster back with the flat of one boot. The force of his blow sent the Daemon flying and Edge moved on to the next enemy, crushing the heart in his fist as he did so.
The rain was a torrent, flooding the ground around them. The storm’s violence matched theirs, but was no help because of it. The rain made a dense curtain, difficult to see through. There were now two Daemons left standing and as they turned to run from the warriors, the rain served as a shield to hide them while they fled. Edge pursued, his Shikar eyes able to see through the rain far better than Emily could have hoped to.
But the Daemons were strong in their fear, and they managed to Travel their way out of Edge’s path, disappearing into thin air so that Edge had no hope of following.
“Damn it.” He growled the words impotently, looking about him in what he knew was a vain hope of spotting them. They were gone. And no doubt they wouldn’t be back until they had some reinforcements.
When Edge retraced his steps it was to find Emily crouched over a pile of Daemon bodies, trying with unsteady fingers to light a soaking wet match. She’d removed her gloves so that the smallness o
f her fingers looked like those of a child, and certainly no stronger. She looked up at him, and until that moment he’d been unsure if she’d even noticed him during the battle.
“I can’t set a blaze in all this rain.” She said it flatly, as if it were perfectly natural for her to be crouched over the corpses of her Daemon kills, attempting to set fire to their remains.
Edge’s temper got the better of him, he who had never been one to fall victim to emotion—be they his or someone else’s. He reached into the folds of his coat, grabbed some vials of fl’shan and then threw them on the corpses. Flames engulfed the pyre and the woman scrambled backwards on all fours, eyes wide.
“Just what in the name of the Horde are you doing, human?” he roared down into her face.
Emily’s eyes narrowed to dangerous blue slits and she rose slowly to face him. She was small, perhaps no bigger than five-two, and slender besides. The rain made thick locks of her blue-black hair, streaming it down into her face, lending her a truly vulnerable look despite her proud stance. Her size, her coloring—everything about her pleased the eye. But she seemed too angry to realize how appealing a picture she presented to him now.
“I could ask you the same thing. But I know for a fact you’re not human. Which leaves the question—whose side are you on? Mine? Theirs? Yours?”
“What about you? Are you on the side of good or evil?” he countered.
Emily raised the barrel of a shotgun. “Good. Bad. I’m the one with the gun. I’ll be asking the questions, if you don’t mind.”
Edge reached out with a hand that suddenly sported wicked razor Foils at the fingertips. Moving far faster than she could see, he sliced through the barrel of the gun, sending it falling to pieces on the wet ground at their feet. Emily rolled her eyes, her exasperated response surprising him, and twisted her small tender mouth into a sneer.
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