The Monster Hunters' Dark Obsession

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

“Do you think the French version of this song is s’il vous pla?t monsieur, s’il vous pla?t?”

Demetrius turned away from studying the small, dark house across the street from where they parked. “What?”

“This song.” Cody gestured toward the radio where Olivia Newton-John was singing “Please Mr. Please” in a breathy vibrato.

“Do you think the French version goes s’il vous pla?t monsieur, s’il vous pla?t?

” He whisper-sang the lyric in a high register, then scrunched up his nose and shook his head. “Doesn’t fit.”

“Yeah, I don’t…I never really thought about it.” Demetrius frowned. “Why are we listening to 70s pop songs?”

“Because I’m bored.” He propped his back against the driver’s door and bent one leg to rest his knee on the center console. “And don’t diss 70s pop songs. Some great music came out of that era.”

“And terrible fashion.” Demetrius returned his attention to the house.

In the moonlight, shadows clung to the faded siding, and every window was dark.

A line of overgrown brown and dry shrubs stood along the side.

By the curb was a rusted mailbox with the door open like something old and evil awaiting a meal.

He tipped his head side to side, stretching the muscles in his neck.

Something popped and something else crackled, standard noises for him these days.

“Neck hurt?” Cody asked.

“Just stiff.” Demetrius glanced at him. “Like usual.”

Cody was quiet for a beat. “It wasn’t all terrible. The 70s.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Leisure suits?”

“How do you know about leisure suits? We were born in 1987.”

“My parents are almost ninety.”

“What about crop top jerseys and short shorts for guys?”

A corner of Demetrius’s mouth curled up. “I know you liked those for girls.”

Even in the dark truck, Demetrius could see Cody’s cheeks redden. “Well, yeah, but…”

“But I would have liked to have seen you in them.”

Cody snapped back to the usual smarmy grin Demetrius loved.

Turning away, Demetrius checked out the house again.

Still nothing unusual. Wind pressed against the truck, jostling it.

A plastic grocery bag whipped past his window and became tangled in the branches of a shrub at the house’s far corner, near the cracked and weed-choked driveway.

If he were forced to pick a place in all of Parson’s Hollow that was most likely to be haunted, this one would be at the top of the list.

“What’d that lady say when she called about this house?” Cody asked.

“Something has been raiding garbage cans, and some pets have gone missing. She lives a couple of houses away and keeps hearing sounds around this abandoned house.”

“No sightings?”

“Not that she told me about.”

“Are we charging her for this?” Cody asked.

Demetrius nodded. “Yeah. But she’s the first monster-related call we’ve received, so I charged her our typical fee for critter removal.”

“We should probably up that price,” Cody said.

“Yeah, but it’s early yet. People are still skeptical.”

“Even after everything that’s happened.” Cody shook his head.

After another stretch of silence, Cody said, “That chipmunk today was really quick. Like, superhero fast.”

“Yeah, or we’re slowing down.”

“Bite your tongue. I’m just leveling up.”

Demetrius laughed quietly. “I think we may be hitting plateaus.”

“Maybe you are, but I’m not.”

Demetrius glanced at him, then did a double take.

Cody had pulled off his shirt and was flexing.

His skin glowed in the moonlight, his biceps round and firm, and the hollows of his pits dark and furry.

Tight pale lines ran across his chest, scratches Cody had received protecting Oliver from the mummy that had crashed Oliver and Dave’s wedding six weeks ago.

Demetrius was glad to see more of the hair reclaiming the space in the center.

The chipmunk job that afternoon had been in a young couple’s detached garage, and the heady smell of Cody’s work sweat mixed with his deodorant and their detergent sent blood rushing to Demetrius’s cock.

He hoped he never lost that surge of lust for Cody’s scent.

“See? Total beefcake, baby.”

“Why are you so determined to distract me?”

Cody lowered his arms and sagged back against the door, one hand dropping to the bulge in his cargo shorts.

The moonlight washed out colors: the blue of Cody’s shirt tossed over the top of the steering wheel; the scuffed and stained work boots; his sun-bronzed arms and legs from a summer spent working outdoors.

The night left his eyes more of a suggestion than a detail, but Demetrius had been looking into those warm, brown depths since he was five, and he knew their expression without needing to see.

Heavy-lidded and filled with want—no, need.

“We’re out parking on a Tuesday night in a dimly lit spot on a quiet side street.” He pressed against his bulge. “I’m just going with my natural instincts.”

“We’re supposed to be out here watching for a monster.”

“I’ve got a monster you can watch.”

Something shifted down the street. Demetrius caught the movement from the corner of his eye and snapped his head around. Cody turned in his seat, facing forward, gripping the steering wheel through his discarded shirt.

“Did you see that?” Demetrius asked.

“Barely. What was it?”

“Not sure. Could have been a cat or something.”

“Right. But it’s the ‘or something’ that worries me.”

Cody pulled his shirt over his head. Demetrius caught the wince that flashed across his face, and a familiar tug of worry nagged at him. Were either of them in any shape to do this?

A cloud slid in front of the moon, and the night extended its reach, devouring even more of the house they’d been watching as well as the other, better maintained houses along the block. The streetlight at the other corner was doing its job, but the one by them was out.

“What do you think?” Cody stared intently out the windshield, all business, the flirting and sexy talk evaporated. For now.

“We should check it out.”

“I knew you were going to say that.” He gently popped his door open. “Let’s get the stuff.”

They stepped out of the truck and eased the doors shut with quick clicks.

Demetrius backed up a few steps, shifting his attention between the street and the house.

He heard Cody lift the heavy plastic lid of the toolbox in the bed of the truck followed by the rattle of wood on wood.

He told himself it sounded nothing like bones knocking together.

Cody approached and handed him a wooden stake, one end sharpened to a wicked point, as well as a plastic spray bottle and a small LED flashlight. The smell of garlic surrounded them, and Demetrius’s mouth watered as he slipped the flashlight into a pocket.

“This garlic water is making me want pasta and meat sauce at Antonio’s,” Cody said.

“I was just thinking about that.”

“We should go there this week.”

“Deal.” Demetrius glanced at him. “Ready?”

“No, but let’s do this.”

They didn’t need to discuss a plan of approach.

They’d known each other nearly all their lives—hell, they’d swapped bodies for a while in the spring—and they’d been through enough monster cases to instinctively know the plan.

Cody followed the curb on the opposite side of the street from the house, and Demetrius walked beside him.

The wind picked up again, singing in the power lines overhead and shaking the leafy canopies of scrub trees huddled in the overgrown backyard.

The bare limbs of a dead tree at the far back corner of the place clicked and groaned.

“This place is giving off some damn good Halloween vibes,” Cody muttered. “Only eighty times more humid than usual.”

At a spot directly across, they stopped and took stock.

The front storm door, completely barren of glass or screen, hung open.

It swung in the wind without much force.

Paint curled and flaked off the wooden front door behind it, whatever color it had once been long ago lost to neglect.

The cracked and crumbling concrete driveway stopped halfway up the left side of the house, just past a side door, as if it finally just gave up.

Everything beyond the driveway was lost in shadows.

“Busted to shit driveway or scary overgrown bushes?” Cody asked.

The coppery taste of adrenaline sat in the back of Demetrius’s throat, and his heart pounded. “Driveway.”

“Had a feeling that would be your choice. Let’s go, but keep an eye on that side door. Anything could be waiting to jump out at us.”

Wind rushed down the street as they crossed, riffling their clothing and scattering dead leaves around their boots. The house’s shadow stretched across the ruins of the driveway into the line of scrub trees that separated the property from its better-maintained neighbor.

They didn’t use the flashlights as they moved into the shadows, not wanting to give away their positions just yet.

Another cloud moved in front of the moon, and the night around them deepened.

Blood roared in Demetrius’s ears, and his breathing was shallow and fast. Fragments of concrete crackled and crunched beneath their boots, like walking on thousands of teeth.

Sudden memories flashed through his mind as he contemplated what unnatural thing haunted this street.

He and Amelia and Eileen driving around to the back of the Hollow Leg and finding a vampire feeding off a cook, blood running down his neck.

The possessed tree chasing them through the Parson’s Pines independent living neighborhood.

The nix that had shape-shifted to look just like Cody in order to lure him into the pond, holding him under as his lungs screamed for air.

He blinked, and the memories receded. Demetrius drew in a slow, quiet breath. They were better prepared for anything now, more focused. More connected as a couple.

A new breath of wind shook the branches of the trees and tossed around more leaves. But underneath all of that, Demetrius heard…something.