Her Dark Destiny (Hunters of the Dark #1) Read online

The bear’s roar seemed to set everything in motion. People screamed and ran toward the exits as one. Other creatures appeared: a huge black bird with feathers that reflected the red light, a bloated gray warthog the size of a hippo, and a greenish-blue lizard with six snake-like heads. And they all had those cold blue eyes.

  A wave of people slammed into the front door at once and shook the door levers. The chain merely rattled in irritation.

  A sleek, black panther jumped out of the shadows of the coat check booth and pounced on several people at the door. All but one scrambled out from beneath the creature. The blue eyes of the panther stared into its victim’s face, as if savoring the moment, before darting in to clamp down on his neck, tearing out the soft tissue with one fluid swipe.

  “Kelly?” Shanna asked into the chaos around her, dazed and overwhelmed by the spectacle. Then she shook her head to slough off her disorientation and looked around frantically. “Kelly?!”

  Everything was happening so quickly, bathed in such low lights that Shanna didn’t know what to do right away. But something had to be done. She couldn’t wait around for Kelly to show up to begin fighting. She had to move now. She assessed the creatures around her, quickly deciding to attack the black bird first. She took a deep breath and tried to focus on the creature, tuning out the resounding screams of the room. She began to stalk toward it determinedly when a large creature suddenly jumped out through the glass of the deejay booth and landed in her path.

  Shanna covered her head as shards of glass rained down around her, before squinting at the figure before her. It was a large Doberman, but had three heads on its body, resting grotesquely on short, fat necks. “Well, if it isn’t the doorman,” she mumbled as the Doberman glowered at her, its shiny coat shimmering beneath the light, saliva dripping onto the dance floor from its middle mouth, which foamed like it were rabid. It looked hungry, obviously expecting an easy meal out of her. She would have to disappoint it.

  Pulling up her dress, she had to rip her silver cross-dagger from its sheath, otherwise it would have taken her a good half minute to unfasten it. She wasn’t used to fighting in front of an audience, preferring stealth and anonymity when battling monsters, but most of the people around her were hardly paying attention to what she was doing, they were so wrapped up in their own survival amid the madness. As before, she pushed thoughts of others from her mind and concentrated on the monster before her. She held her cross-dagger out in front of her, taking a defensive stance.

  The dagger was basically a silver cross with a sharp point at the bottom. A wooden tip was embedded at the point, so she could use the weapon against both werewolves and vampires at once, should she come across one or the other.

  Shanna gauged the beast before her, wondering if it could be a distant relative of the werewolf. If it wasn’t, she was probably screwed. Although decapitation seemed to kill most things, if it came to that. It was, however, a really hard thing to pull off. Literally. And three heads…well, that was three times as difficult. Or three times the fun, depending on how you looked at it.

  The Cerberus creature leapt at her, its three heads set back and ready to snap forward when they reached her.

  Jumping back and to the side, Shanna sliced out with her dagger as the monster sailed past, aiming for one of its necks. As it came to a stop a couple feet behind her, she saw that she’d sliced it just above the collarbone, but the head hadn’t come clear off. The head dangled from the creature by a flap of skin, letting loose a river of blood that matched its blue eyes.

  Cerberus howled in pain as its third head flopped against its side uselessly. However, the eyes on that head still stared out menacingly.

  Shanna braced herself for another charge. Pissing it off probably wasn’t a great plan.

  Cerberus jumped at her again and snapped at her arm with its sharp teeth as it reached her. Shanna lashed out with her dagger, catching it in the teeth, where it glanced off harmlessly. Then she backed up a bit and stepped into another lunge at the creature, where she managed to stab into its shoulder, sending more teal blood oozing down its forelegs.

  Silver doesn’t seem to bother you much, huh? Shanna observed. Swiping at Cerberus again, she slashed the center head’s jaw. I’ll just keep stabbing then. Something’s bound to give.

  Before Shanna could get another hit in, the creature faked moving to the left, but charged her instead, taking her by surprise and knocking her to the floor. Two huge paws pinned her shoulders to the ground as her cross-dagger slid across the floor, out of reach.

  Shanna stared up into the eyes of Cerberus as she struggled uselessly, the realization that she was pretty much dead settling into her mind as blood dripped from the creature onto her cheek. She winced and did her best to avoid its pooling into her eyes.

  The two heads that were still functional upon the creature drew back, gearing up to finish Shanna off, when someone rammed into its side, knocking it off and onto the floor beside her.

  Shanna moved slowly, recovering her senses, before looking up to see the girl she had rescued from the two boys earlier slashing the creature’s side with Shanna’s cross-dagger, opening another gushing wound. While it was a surreal environment in general, especially with the fog machines obscuring things as they continued to release hazy clouds that made everything appear very dreamlike, seeing another human being fight with a monster was amazing to behold, as Shanna had never seen it done from outside her own perspective. Plus, this particular girl had seemed so…helpless before. But now she was fluid in her movements, confident and quick, as if she’d done this sort of death dance often. Shanna blinked to make sure she wasn’t seeing things, but decided that she had played a role herself when she’d come to the girl’s rescue. She played a role in her daily life, in fact, so why was she surprised to see that this girl was more than she’d at first appeared to be? Shanna nodded to herself, as if coming to terms with this new development, and recalled the mischievous glint in the girl’s eyes that had hinted at the ruse.

  Cerberus settled itself onto its feet after a bout of harmless exchanges with the girl that had had them both leaping out of the other’s way, and snarled at the girl.

  “Jesus Christ,” Shanna swore, getting back onto her own feet, quickly adapting and rolling with the turn of events the night was throwing at her. “What does it take to kill that thing?”

  As if taking that as her cue, the girl stabbed the dagger into the center head’s left eye and shoved it in with her open palm.

  Cerberus howled while the girl yanked the dagger back out and blood flooded from its wounded eye, its entire body beginning to collapse in upon itself, as if it were suddenly made of Jell-O.

  “It takes that,” the girl said, handing the dagger back to Shanna.

  Shanna stared in amazement at the dwindling puddle of teal muck as skin, blood and bone slowly retreated and disappeared altogether. She blinked at the spot where it had vanished and glanced down at her dagger, suddenly scowling. “Oh, sure,” she protested, noting the thick layer of blood covering her dagger. “The rest of the thing disappears, but it has to leave a bunch of gunk on my blade.” She looked around and shrugged down at her ruined dress, further destroying it by ripping off a strip to wipe her weapon clean with loving strokes. It was still a bit slimy when she’d finished, but it would have to do.

  “You’re a hunter,” the girl stated, watching her.

  Shanna hesitated, spying a belt with knives beneath her open purple suede jacket. “Yeah. I am. And you’re not a defenseless damsel in distress. Are - are you a hunter too? You must be.”

  “Yes. I hunt shape-shifters.”

  Shanna grinned. “I figured they were some sort of shape-shifter. Go for the eyes. Got it.”

  “Not just the eyes,” the girl corrected. “Only the eyes when it’s in its natural form. Sometimes you have to beat a guy up to get him to morph into a…a spider with razor-sharp teeth and a dozen legs before you can kill him.”

  “Uh
…neat.”

  “It gives me something to focus pent-up frustration on, so it works.”

  The girls smiled at each other.

  “I’m Shanna. Shanna Hunt.”

  “Felicia Wales,” the other girl greeted, shaking her hand.

  A guy with long jet black hair suddenly ran by them, shoving Felicia a little on the way towards the door by the deejay booth. Right on his heels was the panther, who followed the guy’s example of running beside the two hunters. As the panther slipped past them, Shanna slit its side open with her dagger, almost casually. The cat fell in mid-stride, blue blood and intestines seeping out of the wound.

  Felicia walked with Shanna up to the panther and nodded at her to finish it off. Shanna obliged with a quick stroke into its right eye.

  “Alright,” Shanna said with satisfaction as it melted. “What next?”

  “Whoa,” Felicia stopped her with a touch of her arm. “There are too many.”

  “Too many? What do you mean? If we don’t stop them…” She looked around, the screams of the room suddenly amplifying.

  “We won’t stop them. If we don’t get out of here, we’re going to die too. I counted at least thirteen shape-shifters aside from the ones we’ve killed, not to mention the five vamps.”

  “Vamps?” Shanna blinked with surprise. “Vampires?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never seen a vampire before.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. I - I mean not that I know of.”

  Felicia rolled her eyes. “Well, what the hell do you fight?”

  Shanna shrugged. “Demons.”

  “Well, no demons here. Just focus on living, okay?”

  Shanna nodded.

  “Okay. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Hesitating, Shanna looked behind her as a girl’s head was crushed beneath the foot of the red bear. “But we can’t…just leave them.”

  Felicia sighed. “Shanna. We’ll die. What part of that don’t you understand? If we kill a few before we die, then so what? The other shifters just don’t have to share so much.”

  “No way, my friend...my friend is in here somewhere. I have to...God, I have to find her. She could be anywhere.”

  Felicia shook her head in frustration. “Shanna, we don’t have time for this. Your friend might be in the basement or she might have gone outside before the place was locked up. There are just too many variables here. We don’t have time to investigate them all.”

  Shanna nodded slowly, realizing that she would have to do just that - check everywhere. She wasn’t leaving her best friend behind. She looked around at the panic and mayhem and felt herself choke up a little. Kelly was probably so scared...

  She suddenly paused as her eye caught something twinkling in the corner, near the stage, beside a pile of bags. Squinting into the dark, Shanna approached the glistening as if in a daze, suddenly forgetting Felicia and the chaos around them. It seemed familiar somehow, whispering to the recesses of her mind as a horrible feeling settling over her, although she couldn’t imagine why. And then she realized what she was looking at. Glitter.

  No, no, no… Moving quickly, Shanna closed the space between herself and the sparkling as anxiety tightened her chest, disbelief clouded her judgment. It can’t be, she told herself. It’s not her… She put a hand to her face as she made out the red hair framing her best friend’s beautiful face. The recognition was like a physical blow, a kick to the stomach that sent her to her knees. Her friend’s face was so pale. And she was staring up at the ceiling, her eyes unfocused, her throat ripped out.

  Shanna’s stomach lurched and her heart sank slowly in her chest as she stood frozen, letting a wave of conflicting emotions surge through her. She watched the unflinching face for a moment, as if waiting for it to change, to not be her friend. But it remained as it was. It remained one of the most horrible sights she’d ever had to behold. And it chilled her to the bone. How could this have happened? How could her real life have gotten mixed up with her life as a hunter? What did it mean?

  I couldn’t protect her, she realized. I was here with her, and she still died. I let her down and...that was it. She was gone. I was selfish, wanting this night off. Look what came of it.

  “Oh, Kelly,” Shanna breathed. She reached down and hesitantly ran her hand down her friend’s cheek. It felt like cooled wax.

  She wasn’t sure if she was in shock or what, but she found no tears to shed for her friend, just an emptiness that resounded within her. Just like with her parents. She leaned forward and closed her friend’s eyes with a whispered “I’m sorry.” She felt ashamed, like a failure. She’d let the one person down who was closer to her than anyone.

  “Come on,” Felicia prodded gently. “We have to keep moving.”

  Nodding, Shanna took a shuddering breath. “There’s not much blood…a vampire…” She paused to keep her voice in check. “Do we…do we have to…stake her?” She looked up at Felicia with a look of confused pain.

  Felicia sighed. “No. Her throat was ripped…slashed open. For a vampire to be made, there has to be a…a swap of fluids. She would have been preserved better.”

  Shanna glanced at her friend’s lifeless form one last time before standing up and averting her eyes. She looked at Felicia, who turned away, uncomfortable.

  Seeing her friend dead like that had made Shanna’s mind one hundred percent certain about what she had to do. Whether she stuck around here or joined Valor’s group, she would hunt these monsters until she died at the hands of one of them.

  “We need to move,” Felicia said softly. “These people are all going to be...gone soon. We can’t fight for all of them.”

  “But we have to try.”

  “No,” Felicia shook her head sadly. “These people are dead already. We don’t have to be. I screwed up coming here without back-up, not thinking they would act on their first night. I thought I would just be gathering intelligence. I was wrong. I’m sorry, but there are just too many. Live to hunt another day.”

  “Live to…” Shanna watched the black bird tear a man in half, his blood spraying a group of girls, who screamed in terror. Shanna turned away. With all of the fighting she’d done, all of the corpses she’d seen, she’d never really seen anyone besides her parents die. It was shocking to see it again. It made her want more than anything to help these people. Felicia was watching her.

  “Look, you can stay if you want,” Felicia told her. “You seem like a nice girl, but you wouldn’t be the first girl I’ve met who got herself killed. I’m leaving with or without you.”

  Shanna nodded slowly. “Live to hunt another day,” she murmured. “Okay. Let’s get out of here.”

  Felicia smiled. “Good, good.” She grabbed Shanna’s hand and led her to the back door, next to the deejay booth. “We’re walking into a trap here, so be prepared.”

  “I’m not stupid,” Shanna scowled.

  “Never said you were,” Felicia said. “You’re just new.”

  “New? I’m not new at this. I mean…well, I’m new at this - shape-shifters and vampires. But not new to hunting.”

  Felicia opened the door and peered into the room. She darted inside, leaving Shanna to follow.

  With a deep breath, Shanna ducked through the door. It was quite dark in the space they found themselves in. It was like a closet really, with stacked chairs and cleaning supplies to either side of them in nooks in the walls. Ahead stood an open doorway and a dark stairwell beyond that led downward, the single bulb overhead dark and useless.

  “Demons are pretty tough,” Felicia said. “It takes skill to kill them. You’re doing good for yourself if that’s what you hunt.” She peered around the corners of the doorway, and down at the concrete floor the stairs led to. “The whole basement looks pretty dark.”

  “Makes their prey that much easier to take down,” Shanna told her, poking her head out of the doorway as well. “But let’s ju
st get it over with, huh?” She took a tentative step out of the door, holding her breath, as if waiting for something to attack with the movement. She shook her head silently at herself and walked down the steps slowly, hearing Felicia take a step behind her, barely audible over her own breathing.

  “So, are there a lot of hunters?” Shanna asked.

  Felicia put a finger up to her lips, advising caution, before whispering. “Not enough. And there are fewer every week. We’re getting picked off.”

  Shanna bit her lip. “Yeah, that’s what I heard. This woman’s been calling me. She kind of tracked me down and has been telling me about…the hunters dying. Is it really that bad?”

  “It’s pretty bad,” Felicia sighed. “There are about two hundred hunters out there across the world, maybe more, maybe less. It’s hard to tell. But if the monsters keep killing them off, the monster population is going to get overwhelming soon, with no one to keep them in check.”

  “This Valor lady’s trying to recruit me for The Agency,” Shanna said, stepping off of the final step onto the floor and watching Felicia follow her example.

  “Valor?” Felicia said, perking up. “Ah, so you’re the demon hunter she’s trying to recruit. That’s cool. You should join. The Agency is going to put an end to this threat.”

  “So you know about it? She’s credible?”

  Felicia chuckled. “There’s no one more credible than Valor. And she’s damn smart. This group was all her idea. It’s going to bring together different people from different hunting backgrounds to cover all of our bases. There are so many different monsters out there that a hunter focused in each area would even any playing field. A hunter of vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, demons…” She sent Shanna a meaningful look. “We can all learn from a team like this.”

  “We? So you’re part of it?”

  Felicia paused as she examined the furnace and other electronic equipment that lined the short hallway ahead, leading up to another open doorway. “Yeah. I work for them, but I’m more of a resource to them. A scout, a teacher. The Agency is a great thing to work for. You’ll be hunting, and getting paid to do it.”

  “And live comfortably,” Shanna recalled. “And they’ll pay for secondary education, yadda, yadda, yadda. It sounds like a great package.”

  “It is,” Felicia concurred.

  Shanna cocked her head. “Tell me. Does The Agency stand for something?”

  “Stand for…? Are we talking principles here or like, an acronym?”

  “An acronym.”

  Felicia smirked. “Naw. It’s just The Agency. It’s a name that’s intended to blend in. Be invisible. As generic as it gets.”

  “I suppose it raises less eyebrows than a name like The-evil-blood-sucking-destroyer-gang.”

  Raising an eyebrow herself, Felicia scoffed lightly. “I would certainly hope so.”

  “But…” Shanna smiled. “You have to admit that ‘The Agency’ doesn’t exactly strike fear into anyone who hears it. It’s pretty anti-climactic.”

  “It does leave a tad to be desired,” Felicia admitted, peeking through the next doorway. “What is this now?”

  Shanna walked through the door and gazed around with a frown. Conveyer belts, dark and unmoving, were spread out in every direction, merging into one another and branching out into numerous smaller lines, with various mechanical instruments poised overhead to perform menial tasks in some part of a mass production process.

  There was a clear walkway that led ahead, but with so much equipment in the room, anything could be hiding anywhere along the way in the huge, dark room, just waiting for them to come along.

  Felicia shrugged and slowly began to walk ahead, her eyes studying their surroundings carefully as they went along. “So, are you gonna join?”

  Shanna felt her hand dig into the hilt of her dagger painfully. Her nerves were on edge, her senses stretched to capacity. This was not a good situation, she thought darkly as she glared at shadows. “Join? Oh, The Agency? I don’t…maybe. After tonight, I’m thinking it sounds better and better every time I think about it.”

  “I think you should. They’d train you, teach you…it would really help you out. If I hadn’t come along tonight, I’m sure you’d be dead by now.”

  Shanna turned to glare at her. “Oh, really?”

  Felicia nodded, a grin on her face. “Damn right. I recall a three-headed dog hunched over your scrawny butt when I showed up.”

  Shanna laughed. “Yeah, I…I guess.”

  Shanna considered their surroundings. Styx must have been built in place of a factory that had gone out of business. They hadn’t bothered converting more than the main floor to a club since they’d only planned on using it for one night anyway. Just one night to indulge in this mayhem, a blood bath, in the middle of nowhere so they could have free reign and no witnesses. God, why hadn’t she seen it before? It was the perfect set-up!

  “Why did you save me?” Shanna asked as a distraction, getting the uneasy feeling that they were being herded along like cattle in a corral. “I mean, if you were just going to leave anyway.”

  Felicia glanced over at her. “You came to my rescue. I was just returning the favor.”

  Shanna smiled. “Have you ever met Valor before?”

  “Yeah. She can be a bitch, but she’s usually cool.”

  “Hmmm. The thing is, I really like my life here. I mean, New York? It just seems so far away, so foreign. I’m comfortable where I am and…I’m not sure I would fit in where I’d be going. I just - I just don’t know. There are so many variables.”

  Felicia nodded. “I know what you mean. It’s a hard decision. There are pros and cons for both sides. But just remember - you’d be making a big difference in The Agency. Not just locally, but globally. Unfortunately, your life would kind of end here. You’d be leaving your friends, family, job…but I personally think if it’s for the greater good, it’s worth it.”

  Shanna wasn’t sure what to say. Even though she wasn’t close to her aunt in the least, her face came to mind. Then her apartment, then Brian, then her parents. Suddenly Kelly came to mind and she felt a flutter of pain race through her chest. She looked back the way they’d come and paused as they came to a corner in their path. Felicia peaked around some sort of control station and looked back at Shanna solemnly, oblivious to the renewed blow she’d suffered at remembering her friend’s death. “Okay. This is it. There are bodies on the floor and I’m positive that I saw something move in the shadows ahead.”

  “Okay,” Shanna got her cross-dagger out in front of her. “I’m ready.”

  Sending her an encouraging smile, Felicia skirted around the corner, sticking close to the conveyer belts. Shanna mimicked her and looked ahead at the piles of bodies strewn about the floor ahead on either side of their path. Blood from the dozens of bodies pooled out from beneath the discarded humans, converging into streams of crimson that flowed down a gradual slope in the floor to a drain in the center, where it drizzled lazily through the grate.

  As they neared the bodies, Shanna watched the shadows around them intently, hardly daring to breathe as her eyes searched bulky equipment that could hide any potential threat. She paused as she noted a shape that could have been a person crouched in the darkness, but on closer inspection, made out trash bags overflowing with decrepit computer equipment.

  Felicia suddenly gasped and Shanna’s head snapped in her direction, making out a blur of a figure retreating from her stumbling form.

  “I told you vise-versa,” the figure said as it came to a halt in front of her.

  Shanna’s eyes widened as she took in Grant, his blonde hair tousled, face bright and excited. He no longer seemed like he would fit in with the college-aged crowd of the club, instead looking savage with blood smeared over his lips, his eyes somehow sharper and more cunning than she remembered. “What are…you’re a…”

  “Vampire,” the bartender said in a hushed voice. He laughed an
d grinned, showing off sharp canine teeth that were somehow hypnotic to see in his mouth. They made him seem less human and more like he belonged in a dense jungle like a wild cat, a dangerous predator with little restraint. She was so shocked by the transformation that she stood dumb as he looked her over, like a diner considering a menu at his favorite restaurant.

  “You look mighty delicious,” Grant confessed as he prepared to lunge at her. He gave pause, however, when Shanna had enough sense to lift her cross-dagger before her.

  “Well, this is just fucking great,” he muttered, dropping his arms to his hips in irritation. “You a hunter or something? Guess I’ll have to keep-”

  Something poked through his shirt, splattering Shanna’s face lightly.

  “We’re both hunters,” Felicia corrected as he fell forward.

  At Shanna’s feet, his skin turned to ash in seconds, as if he’d been at Pompeii for centuries.

  Shanna wiped the blood from her face and gingerly touched Grant’s shoulder, jumping back as the husk he’d left behind crumbled before her eyes. “Eew,” she muttered, rubbing greasy ash between her fingers until most of it had dispersed and fallen away.

  “He was new,” Felicia said, rubbing her neck with a grunt. “And remember, even a new one surprised me, and I’ve been hunting the things for years.”

  Shanna stared down at the pile of ash, amazed that she’d just encountered her first vampire, and mesmerized by the transformation it had made. She had to resist the urge to look over the ashen remains, instead turning to Felicia expectantly. “Well?”

  Felicia nodded ahead and Shanna fell into line behind her as they continued along the pathway, still wary of their surroundings. Grant...his face hadn’t been flushed from lying to her. It had been warm with blood. Kelly’s blood. Shanna closed her eyes and swallowed hard as her stomach rumbled threateningly.

  “End of the line,” Felicia announced suddenly, gesturing to a metal block in the wall where the path ended.

  Focus, Shanna ordered herself, trying to push any ill thoughts to the back of her mind. You need to focus. You can mourn for Kelly later.

  Shanna blinked at the stainless steel square until she realized that it was a little door, like a laundry shoot would have. She glanced over at Felicia nervously before she pulled on the handle and gazed through to the other side, where she could see only darkness beyond.

  “Well,” Felicia said, “If this is the way out, I guess I’ll see you on the other side.”

  “But, are you sure about this?” Shanna asked. “We don’t know how far it goes and…it feels wrong, somehow.”

  Felicia smiled weakly. “I don’t have to tell you what this is. But it’s the only hope we’ve got. If we stay in here, we’re dead no matter how you look at it.”

  Biting her lip, Shanna nodded. “See you on the other side.”

  Felicia went first, pulling herself awkwardly into the hole, where she was quickly swallowed by the shadows.

  Shanna stared after her for a moment and listened, as if she might get a clue as to what lay in wait for her. But she didn’t hear a thing, save for the warbling noises the metal made as Felicia traveled along.

  Taking a deep breath, Shanna lifted herself into the opening, tentatively feeling the shaft that she was in with her fingers, reminding her of an air duct. She crawled forward a few feet before it turned to the left sharply. When she looked around the corner, she could see a dark head blotting out a dim light ahead. Felicia.

  After a short crawl, Shanna was suddenly being helped out by the other hunter.

  “Not as bad as I thought it would be,” Felicia surmised, looking Shanna over.

  Shanna nodded absently as she searched their surroundings. She was disoriented at first as she took in the cement walls reaching high up toward the dark sky overhead, but realized where they were before long. They were in the pit around the club. She looked up the walls nearly twenty feet and saw the black iron spikes and the rickety bridge, the stars just bright enough overhead to allow their forms to take shape.

  “Damn,” Shanna cursed. “We’re…we’re so screwed.”

  Then a scream erupted from the other side of the pit. A chorus of hysterical sobs poured down around them that were abruptly ceased, leaving behind a silence that made them wonder if they’d imagined it.

  The two girls looked at each other for a moment, anticipating more shrieks, but none rang out. A thick silence hung over them, interrupted intermittently by a nearby cricket.

  Shanna swallowed with some difficulty. “Well, that certainly didn’t sound good.” She shifted her eyes from one corner of the wall to the other, expecting something hideous to appear at any moment.

  Felicia put a hand to her arm. “Just…try to listen,” she commanded.

  Forcing herself to calm down and not to think about the source of the screams, Shanna concentrated on listening for any other sound from around the pit. She could hear her own heartbeat, Felicia’s breathing…and nothing else. But it was quite evident that the pit hadn’t been created with water in mind, but to keep something monstrous within its walls, something that could also partake in the feast of the unlucky club goers, at least any unlucky to escape the hands of the shape shifters and vampires within.

  She looked down at her cross-dagger and drew in a breath. Usually, it made her feel powerful, but she got the feeling that it wasn’t going to help her much now.

  Felicia pulled two small knives from her belt. “I have an idea,” she announced.

  “What was that?” Shanna asked, her ears picking up a soft rustling sound. She looked around wildly, squinting into the darkness. Her eyes had adjusted by now, but she still imagined that something could use the shadows advantageously and be on top of them before they knew it.

  “There,” Felicia said, head raised slightly, as if letting the stars bathe her face. She titled her chin. “Do you hear it? The soft hissing?”

  Shanna frowned, perking her ears, annoyed that the cricket had begun to chirp again. At first, she didn’t hear anything over the noise the bug made, but a soft hissing sound suddenly became distinct from the normal night noises, like air escaping a tire. And every so often the hissing was interrupted by two short clicks before resuming again.

  Nodding to herself as if in confirmation, Felicia turned to Shanna. “That’s the noise made by a powerful snake creature called a naga.”

  “Naga,” Shanna repeated, as if knowing what to call the thing she fought would somehow make it easier to defeat.

  “Don’t let it bite you, scratch you or entangle you, or you’re dead. Got it?”

  Shanna nodded, holding her breath as the hissing abruptly stopped altogether.

  Felicia cocked her head and looked over at Shanna. “Hey, are you okay? You’re not going to freak out on me here, are you? ‘Cause I need you calm.”

  “No. No. No freaking. I’m good.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m…” Shanna let her voice trail off as she realized that a head was watching them from right behind Felicia. A bald, wrinkled head with eyes bathed in shadow. She froze, staring at the eyes, and realized suddenly that they weren’t just bathed in shadow, but were missing altogether. Where its eye sockets should have been, there was nothing but skin, skin stretching loosely from its scalp of thin white hair, over its nose and down over its sharp, jutting chin. As she watched it, a black forked tongue escaped its thin lips, tasting the air, and breaking the spell it held over Shanna.

  Shoving Felicia out of the way abruptly, Shanna bravely swiped at the head with her dagger, but the creature drew back and swung the rest of its body around to face her.

  The naga was at least twenty feet long with an old man’s upper body fading into a large green scaly snake bottom.

  It hissed at Shanna and struck out with one of its arms, which Shanna noted had long, black fingernails with blood and skin caked underneath.

  Shanna jumped out of the way and, out of the corn
er of her eye, saw Felicia sneak around the creature’s back.

  In an attempt to keep the naga’s attention, Shanna danced closer to the creature and struck out at it with her dagger again, nearly clipping its shoulder. The naga almost shredded Shanna with its nails as she retreated to a safe distance again.

  Suddenly, the naga’s jaw went slack and it went into convulsions.

  Shanna stared at the creature as it began to smoke, the smell of burnt flesh wafting off of it. Then it fell to the ground.

  Holding up a taser for Shanna to see, Felicia smiled. “The Agency makes tasers to barbecue with. Another perk that makes the job a lot easier.”

  “I guess so,” Shanna said, impressed.

  Felicia looked around. “Well, I guess that takes care of that. Shall we be off then?”

  Shanna raised an eyebrow. “You have wings on that belt too?”

  Felicia smirked. “Not exactly.” She pulled out the two small knives she’d had earlier and aimed toward the top of the pit. She threw one of the knives and it cut cleanly through one side of ropes that had kept the wooden bridge suspended above the pit. It made a snapping sound and creaked wildly as it swung to and fro before coming to a stop, hanging crooked overhead. Felicia drew up her other arm and threw the next knife. She missed.

  Shanna snorted as Felicia pulled another knife out of her belt. Felicia kissed it and aimed once again, missing once again. “Damn it!”

  Shanna looked around, then weighed her dagger in her hand, wondering if she should risk sacrificing it. If they missed, they would have to go back through the club, and she would be defenseless without the weapon. Unless Felicia had something she could spare. Thankfully, she was saved from having to make such a decision.

  “In need of an assist?” a guy stared down at them from the top of the pit, next to the bridge.

  Felicia grinned. “Damn right we do!” she called out.

  Shanna squinted up toward the figure. “Who’s that?”

  “Yet another hunter, and our ticket out of here.”

 

  Chapter Three