Random Jo’s Request
Random Jo’s Request
You know those classic action-horror montages from movies like Blade and Underworld?
Well, if I was asked to describe the play-by-play of our epic coven takedown, those movies would probably be the closest to what went down.
Except, we had a magic-wielding motherfucker who bound and paralyzed several vampires using distinct symbols underfoot, cleverly striking enemies all over the room.
But what killed me on first glance was that the dude preened his nails with another river rock levitating above his other hand, standing in front of a row of hissing vampires, totally bored and ready to leave.
I think I even caught the bastard yawning, but he was still wearing those ridiculous goggles, so it could’ve been to shift them back into place.
Either case was believable for the Dark Fae apparently ready to call it quits and get back to whatever it was pretty boys did in their spare time.
Go to the spa and get massages?
Watching the Dark Fae was entertaining all on its own.
It absently made me wonder if Cash put on some kind of elaborate show with everyone else, when really this allegedly spineless asshole fought like a goddamn demon.
It didn’t make sense at first. Cash was supposed to be the squealing, screeching damsel of the group.
I had money on him being in a corner somewhere, shooing vampires away and demanding that I come save his Dark Fae ass.
Instead, I got this weird, badass version of him.
I didn’t think the dude knew how to fight, or was really any good at it, but he dodged, ducked, dipped, and dived with the best of us.
Ugh, I used a Phillip line because I’m clearly running out of my own material.
Granted, I’d been around the always-showing-off Phillip for far too long, so it seemed weird when someone wasn’t bragging about their abilities. But the Austrian made it sound like Cash wasn’t powerful—or at least that was the impression I’d been given of the Dark Fae.
Okay, so it didn’t make sense that Cassius would be totally useless if Eros made him his personal lap-boy.
He wouldn’t have survived long enough going toe-to-toe with Phillip either.
So, what was the truth here with the Fae?
Why did it feel like the dude was a mystery, wrapped in a paradox, coated in an enigma?
I sank my stake into another vampire, side-eyeing Cash as his pretty magic swirled and burned in his palm around a different river rock this time.
How many rocks does this guy have?
The night-vision goggles made the Dark Fae look like he was a steampunk actor playing a warlock. His near-white hair thrashed violently around his head, and his glittering power spindled around his hand in a multicolored dance of light.
With a brutal swipe of my sword, I decapitated the vampire I staked, barely avoiding the explosion of ash. I landed a kick on another one running at me from the other side, and then quickly took a knee to stake that one, too.
Feels good. V is back.
Blowing red hair out of my eyes that’d come loose from my ponytail, I scoped out the area and ticked off the number of vampires left, which was easily thirty by my count.
In here, anyway.
Talk about a town overrun with vampires, you just didn’t see coven sizes this large anymore. Hunters sniffed them out before it got this out of control.
Back in the “hay day” as Grams affectionately called it, air quoting it every time—I blamed her for the fact that sarcasm was my first language—vampires were craftier and knew how to evade the technology the Organization used.
Their sizes grew in secret, and this present size we fought was commonplace back then.
Grams would throw her arms into the air, expressing the sheer size of the covens she fought on a normal basis.
Sitting back in her favorite armchair, she always got a happy twinkle in her eyes saying, “You kids have it so easy now. All this technology and algorithm-bullshit doing half the work the other Hunters and I were forced to do. You’ll never really understand the danger of underestimating what you walked into... ”
Sometimes Grams would give away her heartache and pain.
Just a little. Just enough to catch my attention.
It always felt like an illusion. Like if I blinked, I’d miss it.
But it was a look so entrenched in sadness and loss it made my throat seize and eyes burn.
Then it was gone, and she’d clear her throat, acting as if she’d lost her train of thought for a second rather than being sucked into a painful memory.
“It was dangerous to underestimate some of these covens—the large ones with fifty or more. Bastards, all of them. Their leaders knew how to swarm a group of Hunters, thin the numbers, separate them from each other. Claimed the lives of some of the best Hunters I ever worked with, underestimating a fight.”
Over the last decade, we used algorithms and local source reports to find commonalities that suggested a coven was in the area.
Thanks to those algorithms, many were only starting to build their numbers.
Their inability to hide mass disappearances and limit “freak accidents” were the bread crumbs we, the Hansel and Gretel Hunters, picked up to keep their numbers and covens from taking root in any one area.
Or so I thought.
Clearly, whatever this coven did hid their presence from the algorithms the Organization used. Or maybe something was here that needed more looking into.
A backdoor deal, perhaps?
If I still worked for the Organization, it’d be my job to follow up on how it happened and how it got out of hand. But we weren’t under the thumb of those bastards, and we also had other world-ending issues to worry about. Wiping them out would be the best we could do here.
Lucky for us, covens rarely shared their secrets. Wouldn’t want someone to take the recruitment methods that set your coven apart and made it more appealing than other covens, now would you?
We hadn’t gotten the leaders yet—likely they were hiding away to save themselves and rebuild—but we’d taken out nearly twenty vampires already.
Phillip and Sloan worked together, trading moments and lines between them to overcome the odds. It was weird to watch the two men I was caught emotionally between work together like they hadn’t been about to throw down a few minutes ago. Like they were still best buds.
Sloan took out each vampire with a stake-ejecting crossbow, while the Austrian swung Blood Slayer across their necks.
In seconds, the two defeated ten more, and I was left in momentary awe of how easy they made it look.
Cash coughed and shooed away all the ash fleeing his direction from Phillip and Sloan’s efforts, grumbling about his clothes and how they were expensive and irreplaceable.
There’s the Cash we all know and love.
But as I honed in on the next vamp nearby, a familiar throb took hold of my stomach.
I hadn’t called on it, or really expected it to show its face.
Honestly, I was starting to think we’d go through an entire coven without my power showing up because that just seemed to be my goddamn luck these days.
The air was shattered with an electric explosion, tickling the senses.
Another pulse, and my companions slowed to peer around them until their eyes connected with mine.
A moment passed, but nothing.
I moistened my lips, unsure, before I spun to my right and landed a silver-coated, brass-knuckle-toting fist on a deserving vampire bastard mad-dashing at me in slow motion.
As with the ones before him, I staked and cut his head clean off, straddling his body in a crouch before he burst into a billow of ash.
None of the vampires in this room were any older than a few decades, at most. They weren’t powerful or quick. A simple staking would suffice, but I lived by the double-tap rule. After Eros, I’d never trust the first killing blow.
Another throb hit, and the floor beneath our feet quaked forebodingly. Cassius locked his curious goggle-covered gaze on me, and my other two Hunters took out several vampires crowding them before jerking their confused eyes over to me as well.
Okay, so it’s not just me feeling this. Good to know.
A feeling unlike any before slithered over my body and then it pulsed again in warning.
The sensation in the air around me was the moment before the shock.
It was energized and dangerous. Ominous and unpredictable.
It’d been maybe thirty degrees in this underground death cave before, but now the air scintillated and climbed to the sixties.
Then higher and higher until our skin was drenched in sweat as if we’d walked straight into the sweltering heat of summer after a trek through nothing but winter.
Something was different. It wasn’t clear at first what, but then a spark caught my eye before fast-growing flames consumed the space.
A line of angry fire circled us with overbearing heat, and we were surrounded—my group as much its victims as the vampires who screamed out in pain and horror around us.
While I’d survive the flames, from what I knew about the other three, they wouldn’t.
My heart came into my throat. I waved my arms around like an asshole, turning into my own version of a bumbling idiot to shoo the flames out of existence.
Sloan, Cash, and Phillip came over to me, fleeing the fire circle as it closed in on them.
It rushed my crew to the middle with me, furious flames licking their heels as they went.
“You have an enchanted item in that bottomless bag of yours, Fae?” I asked, peering over at violet-purple cat eyes as Cassius remove the night-vision goggles and stared wide-eyed at the flames.
“Please tell me you do. I can’t call them off,” I said in a rush, words spilling from my mouth like I was new to talking.
My eyes darted from one corner to the next, surrounded.