*Chapter 1*
I curled my hand into a fist, cracking my bruised knuckles and savoring the feel of blood pouring down my fingertips. Warm and sticky. That last punch would have more than likely dislocated that creature’s jaw—if he had actually been human, that is. But honestly, I liked it better this way. These sly, little tricksters had a tendency to heal themselves, which just meant that I got to do it all over again. A few bruised and sprained fingers here and there were more than worth the satisfaction I got at rearranging the facial structure of these black-eyed monsters.
I grabbed a towel off of the table and wiped the blood from my hands as, behind me, I heard the sounds of a choked laugh ring out. Turning my head slightly, I caught a glimpse of the unfortunate soul spitting more blood into the ever-growing puddle at his feet. The amount of blood he had lost in the last hour would have been enough to kill a man. But then again, he wasn’t a man.
He smirked up at me—his crimson, Cheshire-like smile making him appear more demented than anything else. Who would have guessed that just two days ago, he’d been a mere bag boy at the local grocer?
Yeah, demons didn’t tend to be too choosy.
“That all you got, Dani,” he asked, his voice not faltering in the slightest. “Because honestly, I’m getting a little bored over here.”
“Oh, honey, we’re just getting started,” I replied, going back to my table of goodies. “I have a whole bunch of new tricks to try out.” I picked up a syringe and a vial of holy water.
“Oh, this ought to be fun,” the demon mused. His pupils expanded for a brief moment, making his eyes appear completely black. He smiled widely and blinked, bringing them back to the bag boy’s normal brown. “You think you’ve got something new up your sleeve?”
“You’d be surprised,” I said, filling the syringe and heading back over to the being tied to a chair in the middle of the room. He laughed once more as his eyes fell on the needle in my hands.
“Something to dull the pain? You shouldn’t have.”
“Not exactly,” I said with a smirk of my own. “You know, I’ve exorcised a lot of demons in my time. And, in doing so, I’ve learned things.”
“What kinds of things?” the demon asked, though I finally detected a faint waver in his voice.
“Well, for one,” I began, stepping forward and grabbing one of his bound arms. “I’ve been experimenting. We all know what holy water does to your skin.” Several drops squirted out of the syringe and landed on the demon’s forearm, causing the skin underneath to sizzle and burn. A stifled moan escaped my captive’s lips.
“Just imagine,” I continued as I jabbed the syringe into his arm, “what it could do in your bloodstream.”
The demon tried to resist it, but, as was usual, screams of agony suddenly rang through the air. Oh, their pain was music to my ears. As the demon squirmed and howled, I placed my hands on either side of the chair and brought my face mere inches from his.
“Where is the nest?” I snarled.
The demon’s screams of pain quickly turned into sounds of choked laughter. “Do you think I’m joking right now?” I shouted. “Do I look like I’m laughing?”
“Oh, Dani, you know how I love it when you get angry,” he sneered.
“And you know that I can do this all day,” I replied. “Where is the nest?”
“Ooh, so serious,” the demon scoffed. “I’m feeling a little turned on right now.”
“And I’m feeling like you need another shot.” I turned around and headed back to the table, ready to fill the syringe again.
“Blake says hi, by the way.”
I immediately halted in my tracks, my entire body going numb. A golf ball-sized lump started to form in my throat, and my shaking hands were no longer able to hold the syringe. As it clattered to the ground, I felt my trembling fingers curl into fists (which didn’t really help with the shaking), and I fought to keep myself calm and controlled as I turned around.
“What did you just say?”
“Blake, you remember Blake, right?” the demon said with a smile—the blood and bruises on his face made it look even more grotesque. “Oh, he talks about you all the time. That is, when he’s not busy screaming and howling in agony as the very flesh from his bones is ripped off bit by bit.”
“Shut your mouth,” I said through clenched teeth.
“We were buddies, you know. On the rack. In Hell. Where you sent him.”
“I said, shut up!”
“Every night he screams and begs for it to stop. He cries out for you to save him. Does he even remember, Dani? Does he even know that you were the one who put him there in the f—”
“Regna Terrae, cantate deo
Psallite domino
Qui vehitur per calus
Caelos antiquos!”
The demon screamed as I continued to chant my basic exorcism spell. He strained against the ropes until I reached the final line. The boy convulsed for a moment more until, finally, a dark shadowy figure poured out of his mouth before disappearing through the pentagram I’d drawn on the floor—hopefully on its way back to Hell. The bag boy slumped in the chair, back to being a normal, non-possessed human once again.
I stared for a moment at the poor soul sitting half-dead in front of me. Even though protocol said that I should get him to the hospital and try to save what was left of his pathetic little life, I found myself unable to pick up the phone and call an ambulance. Instead, before I knew it, I grabbed my gun off the table, turned around, and fired every bullet into his chest until the empty chamber clicked. The kid was beyond dead now.
With the now-empty gun in my hand, I slowly sank to the floor, running a hand through my tangled hair, feeling the adrenaline pulse through my veins. Tears cropped up in my eyes, and I tossed the gun aside, furiously wiping them away. Now was not the time for tears. Tears meant weakness. It had been six years. Six damn years.
It was time to grow a pair and get over it.
* * * *
Though the list of things that I truly loved in this world shrank considerably on a daily basis, showers would most likely be on the top of that list until the day I died. I loved nothing more than heading back to my room after a particularly vicious struggle with some supernatural being and just allowing the water and steam to wash it all away. It was almost like I could act as though it never happened. Almost like I was a truly normal human being.
But I wasn’t a normal human being. I hadn’t been for the last six years. Actually, I hadn’t really been normal before then either. I acted normal. I went to school and made friends and read books like kids do. But even that wasn’t normal. I never went to the same school for more than a year. Any friends I made were forgotten about in a few short weeks. And while most girls my age were reading Nancy Drew or Babysitter’s Club, I found myself fascinated with books on mythology and supernatural folklore. We had dozens and dozens of books on the material.
The reason I grew up so differently from the other kids didn’t become clear to me until I was thirteen, when both of my parents died unexpectedly in a horrific plane crash. After that, the truth came out. They had hidden it from me for one sole purpose: they didn’t want this life for me. And after they died, I realized that I didn’t want it either.
But life doesn’t always work out the way you plan it.
As vain as this may sound, I also enjoyed showers because it gave me the chance to explore my body. To an average person, it would appear as though I lived a terribly abusive childhood, what with all the burns and bruises and scars that covered various inches of my figure. In all honesty, my parents almost never laid a hand on me my entire life. They had their words and, in most cases, those were enough to make me realize that what I had done was wrong. In fact, if I recall correctly, they, too, bore many of the same marks on their own bodies.
It was almost guaranteed in the life of a demon hunter.
But other than look at them as disgusting and painful, I looked at them as memories from my past. Not all were good memories, but not all were necessarily bad either. A crescent-shaped burn on my right forearm made me think of a particularly violent poltergeist I tackled about two years ago. Apparently, this spirit had burned to death in that very house and, as a result, felt that the only way to truly extract revenge was to burn everything it could—which included the family of five that currently lived there. And even though they lost a good portion of their house before we could get the fire department down there, both parents and all three children made it out safely. Additionally, the poltergeist left for good.
Across my left hip were two healed, yet still rather deep scratches, compliments of a nasty creature known as a wendigo. They lived in the woods and took pride in ripping campers to pieces. Two summers ago, one town had reported nearly half a dozen missing persons cases in less than a week, all of these people disappearing on camping or hiking trips in a particular patch of woods. I tracked the creature to its lair, where I was met with the mangled remains of at least two dozen corpses. Wendigos are known to be quick, but then again, so am I. He may have gotten his claws in me briefly, but I got the better of him in the end.
A pink mass of scar tissue on my left shoulder showed where I had been shot with my own silver bullet about three years ago. It was my first werewolf hunt, and I was still new to their tactics and hunting strategies. Like the fact that they actually do hunt in packs like actual wolves. While I was busy tracking one of them, his pack mate snuck up behind me and pinned me down, causing my gun to go off in the struggle right into my shoulder. Honestly, I think they under-exaggerate in the movies how much it hurts to get shot. Fortunately, it was a through and through, missing any major arteries or blood vessels, and I was able to shoot the wolf dead before I passed out from blood loss.
And, of course, the new bruises on my knuckles were compliments of the demonic scum I encountered today. I’d been in this town for about three days, sniffing around for any clues to lead me to the location of Eli and his nest. Jack said he’d heard rumors those blood suckers had been camping out around here. Though I didn’t find any information about them, I did learn of a particularly interesting tale taking place at a nearby grocery store.
I had popped in there to grab some supplies—food, water, caffeine, salt (lots and lots of salt)—and got into a discussion with the manager of the store. After asking him if he’d noticed anything strange going on lately (to which I expected the usual “of course not” that typically came from ordinary people), I was shocked to hear that he had been feeling uneasy about one of his bag boys.
The kid had worked there for about two years. Never really said much. Kept mostly to himself. Never had a problem or caused any trouble. And then, a few days before I showed up, his behavior suddenly took a whole 180. He was rude and disrespectful to customers, managers, and fellow employees. He went out of his way to cause trouble and create all sorts of mayhem. Basically, he went from being the poster child of bag boys to being a complete and utter jerk in less than 24 hours.
Sure enough, a vicious, little spawn of Hell had slithered up inside of him and taken residence. I took this as a sign that perhaps this trip could mean something after all. Supernatural beings seemed to have their own little network, keeping up-to-date with the actions of other beings across the country. Give me an hour or two with my various methods of torture and I could get almost any demon to instantly start singing. Fortunately for me, Bag Boy proved to be an easy enough demon to apprehend.
But, sure enough, it proved to be nothing more than a useless bust. And now what’s-his-name was dead, too.
What was perhaps my most discernible feature was not a direct result of hunting (more a result of post-hunting). Covering a good portion of my upper back was a tattooed pair of angel wings—black, feathery, and (in many ways) an absolutely ridiculous idea. Moral of the story is this: no matter how depressed you are, DO NOT drag yourself out to a bar in hopes of relieving the pain. Because you’ll immediately fall for the first cute boy who offers to buy you tequila shots and, next thing you know, you’re waking up alone and naked in a sleazy motel room with no money and an itchy, throbbing backside. However, over the years, I’d grown to tolerate them and even started to like them a little bit. And besides, tattoo removal surgery is supposed to hurt like hell.
I turned the water off and exited the shower, wiping the steam off of the mirror, staring at my reflection for a moment. Yes, my body told many stories. Unfortunately for me, most of them were stories that I would have liked to forget.
Damn. I need a drink. There was nothing like a stiff drink after a hunt. My scars may not let me forget the past, but perhaps alcohol could.
* * * *
The clack of pool balls barely resonated in my mind as I traced my finger around the still-full glass of whiskey. Most of the time, I bought a drink for the mere reason that it would prevent me from being accused of loitering, yet I very rarely touched it. Who knew what absurd, inked monstrosity I would find on my body when I woke up the next morning? (Yes, I did like my wings, but they were still absolutely ridiculous.)
Despite how much I wanted to drink in hopes that I would stop seeing that poor, dead kid’s face, I suddenly found myself unable. I’d been in enough bars and encountered enough drunken idiots to see what copious amounts of alcohol did to the average pervert.
“Well, well, well! Must be my lucky night!”
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Exhibit A.
Tonight’s idiot was a greasy, scummy, thirty-something-year-old who had clearly made the tequila bottle his best friend in the last few hours. He was smiling at me, and his red-rimmed eyes seemed to be having quite a hard time focusing on me—though they had absolutely no trouble in finding their way down my shirt. I rolled my eyes and turned back to my drink, hoping he would go away. But, as was usual, my luck was never that good.
“Looks like I found me an angel,” he said, subtly gesturing to my back tattoos with his thumb so as to keep his eyes on my chest. “So, what do they call you, Sexy?”
“They call me Not Interested,” I replied, not even giving him the benefit of maintaining eye contact. Ten bucks he tries the “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven” trick.
“Ooh. You sound like hard to get. Daddy likes hard to get,” he said, his hand inching towards me. I quickly swatted at it.
“You touch me and I swear I will snap your wrist like a twig,” I sneered.
“Ooh. Feisty,” he said, giving no indication that he was going to listen to a word I said. “I like ‘em fei—”
It was over in about two and a half seconds. Drunken Idiot tried to put his hands on my goods and, before anyone could even blink, I twisted his arm until I heard the satisfying snap of a fracture. He was on the floor instantly, crying like a little baby. The babble inside the place came to an instant halt as every eye turned to the pair of us.
The bartender was on me in a heartbeat. “You’ve got three seconds—” But I cut him off.
“Yeah, yeah. I know the drill. I’m leaving.” I hopped down off my stool and headed for the door, ignoring all the shocked and disgusted looks that were being thrown my way. I was used to it by now, honestly. Jerks, all of them. They’ll pretend to ignore the fact that the pervy little freak tried to put his pervy little hands all over me, and instead focus on the fact that I wasn’t having any of it.
Whatever. Who needs them anyway?
* * * *
Dear Journal,
They’re starting again. And they’re getting worse. Sometimes, I can’t even wake myself up in time before—before it happens. I haven’t slept more than two or three hours the last few nights. I’m too vulnerable when I sleep. At least when I’m awake, the nightmares can’t get me. Or so I’d like to think.
Went to another potential nest sight the other day. Turned out to be another pointless bust. Honestly, you torture these demons to within an inch of their pathetic, undead lives and they can’t even provide you with the correct information. It’s not even fun anymore. Is it sad that it used to be fun for me?
Speaking of which, I killed a man today. A kid, maybe 18 or 19 years old. I can’t even remember his name. I want to believe that he’s in a better place now, but who really knows?
2 AM. I should probably get some sleep. Got a six to eight hour drive back home tomorrow. Falling asleep at the wheel would not work out well for me. Or anyone else on the road for that matter. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky tonight and actually snag a couple of hours. Doubt it, but we’ll see.
Here’s to hoping I’m not dead tomorrow.
I closed my beloved journal with a snap and set it on the nightstand before lying back on the ratty, moth-eaten motel bed. It was the standard sleeping quarters for a hunter. We didn’t have a permanent home. We didn’t have friends. We didn’t have…family. Nope, we lived on the road. Alone. Protecting the world from things they don’t even know existed. And why did we do all of this?
Because it was our damn job. That’s why.
I exhaled a large amount of air and sank into the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. Who the hell was I kidding? I wasn’t getting any sleep tonight. Not after what that black-eyed Hell spawn said. Not with the image of that poor dead kid still etched into my brain. Thank God I left the scene before the cops could show up. Or, God forbid, his parents.
Not after that dream last night. The worst one in years.
The demon’s words continued to echo in my head. He wasn’t telling the truth. He wasn’t. Demons lie all the time just to mess with you. They’ll say anything if they knew it was going to screw with your head. He knew how guilty I felt about Blake, and he must have known how badly it would have affected me. Well, maybe not completely or he would have known that my first instinct would be to send him straight back to Hell.
I shouldn’t listen to a word that came out of that Hell spawn’s mouth. And I probably should sleep. My lead had run dry so I had to find a new one. A case in Iowa had sounded promising, but I needed more information about it. Plus, my supplies were starting to run low. And yeah, I hadn’t seen Jack in a few weeks now. He had this thing about me checking in from time to time so he could make sure I was eating well and had enough supplies to last me for a while and that I wasn’t, you know, dead and stuff. So tomorrow, it was back home to Raleigh for a quick stay.
I blinked and was surprised to find that my eyelids were actually growing heavier. Was sleep really going to come easy for me tonight? That would be a first in…well, six years, I guess. Yeah, I don’t think I’d gotten a decent night’s sleep since it all happened. Nightmares were to thank for that. Once this was all over, I’m fairly certain I’d be spending about two days straight just sleeping. That would be so nice.
I heard a creak of bedsprings, and my senses instantly became alert as I noticed a second figure lying in the bed next to me. I sat up and turned on the bedside lamp, simultaneously pulling out my favorite hunting knife from under the pillow.
“Who the hell are you?” I shouted at the intruder, still hidden in the shadows.
“What? You don’t recognize me anymore?” he replied in a voice that sounded way too much like—
“No,” I said, my grip on the knife tightening. “No, that’s impossible. You’re—”
“Dead?” he finished. “Yeah, I am. You should know, Dani. You’re the one who killed me in the first place.”
He turned his head into the light and smiled. My hands began to tremble uncontrollably as I stared back at him.
“Blake…” I began, too shocked to say much of anything else.
“Well, looks like you’re going to have to do it again,” he sneered as I saw his teeth transform into a set of sharp, pointed fangs. I had barely enough time to register what was going on before he lunged at me. I raised my knife and slashed out—
My eyes suddenly sprang open, and I was sitting upright so fast that I started to doubt that I’d actually been lying down at all. My hunting knife was already in my hand, and I quickly switched on the bedside lamp. No one else was in the room. Thankfully, there was no sign of Blake anywhere.
The clock on the nightstand read 4:37 AM, and I realized that all had been yet another nightmare. Blake hadn’t actually been here. No one had. It had been just a dream. Just a vivid (and extremely unsettling) dream. But then again, that was just the norm for the past six years. I really shouldn’t have expected anything else.
What the hell were you thinking, Dani? You should have just gotten in your car and left while you had the chance.
But I never really learned now did I?
Well, sleep obviously wasn’t happening for me tonight. Figured I should probably get up and get out on the road. The earlier I stopped at home to replenish, the earlier I could be on the road to Iowa and get a head start on the situation before the cops showed up and ruined everything. They had this really annoying tendency of doing that from time to time. Seriously. Who’s the hunter here? That’s right, me.
If only I knew how to hunt the things that haunted me at night.