Unfortunately, my thoughts kept snapping back to Xander and how he had decided to abandon our only credible direction. And to what end? Because he had a feeling? Because he heard a voice?
Bullshit. That sounded more like the ravings of a madman than a Guardian Angel. Yeah, that’s the dumbass name given to the few people selected to take a pact from an Archangel.
The more I thought about Xander’s decision to abandon Gladas, and the more I ran the dispute back through my mind, the angrier I became. At one point during my aimless shuffling around Sacramento, getting sunburnt in the middle of winter, I couldn’t keep the rage inside me any longer. I stopped and punched a brick wall with all my strength. My anger wasn’t even enough to disguise that sudden, shattering pain.
I stumbled across the street to a small park and sat against a tree, staring at the clear winter sky. I had no idea how long I sat and stared and thought about nothing and everything at once. My head still ached from the kick in the face the Automaton had gifted me with earlier, and my hangover had subsided into a constant hum that I’d learned to accept. I probably should have taken a nap, but I couldn’t settle my thoughts about Xander and Gladas and curses and Mel and Hecate and Empousa and Callie and Hephaestus and Automatons and Derek and Marie and Dakota and the cops and my burned house and—
“Joseph Hunter,” said a voice.
I pieced reality back around me and found myself in the park, still sitting under the shade of a tree. The ground was moist—you’re welcome for using that fun word—smelling like fresh-cut grass. A cool wind rustled through the branches and across my face, allowing a small amount of reprieve from the agonizing split in my skull.
A silhouetted woman loomed over me. Her hair stood emboldened black against the darkness of the tree’s shadow. Her eyes glowed a preternatural white, like two moons shining in the night.
I cradled my right hand—the one I’d smashed into the wall—against my chest. Without thought, I scooted away from the figure before me.
“You’re an abomination,” she said.
I opened my mouth to speak, but I had no breath to form words.
“You’ll be hunted all of your days,” she said. “The hunter turned prey.”
My body, which had slowly crept backward, stood of its own accord and carried me toward her. I stared at my feet, willing them to turn me around and hightail it out of the park. Something about that woman was familiar—the blackness of her hair, the brightness of her eyes, the way she smelled… the rank odor of death. That fermenting stench of decay that emanated from her.
She dragged me toward her, somehow stringing me up and reeling me in with her mind. She grinned, exposing dagger-sharp teeth that glimmered like her eyes.
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice bursting through my lips like my fist through a brick wall, kind of but not really. “Who are you?”
“I can see your heart—your soul. And it’s as black as the depths of the ocean. It’s as corrupted as a rotted corpse.”
As I neared her, I could make out more distinct features. She had gray, bloated skin. Her dark hair wasn’t hair at all, but black seaweed that floated around her head. I realized why I had no air in my lungs to breathe or form words. We were underwater. I looked up, but I couldn’t see the surface through the darkness. My lungs meant to explode from my body—they caught fire with pain and desperation. I glanced at my feet again, and I noticed chains shackled around my ankles. An anchor was attached to the chains, dragging behind me as the woman reeled me closer still.
“You will die,” she said.
We were no further than two feet from each other now, allowing me to see the familiar scar on her chin and the unmistakable blue of Callie’s bright eyes.
I opened my mouth to scream, but the darkness drowned me.
I sprang from my slumber and crawled to my knees, coughing and heaving onto the grass. My heart jackhammered inside my chest so fast and hard, I thought it might break through bone and fall onto the ground with a dull thunk. After a minute, I caught my breath, the fresh air filling me with relief. I fell back against the tree trunk and sat there, staring at the downtown streets. I planted my right hand on the ground to adjust my position, and a wave of heat and nausea crashed over me.
I felt it full force now—the injury from punching the brick wall. The pain pulsed through my entire hand and up my forearm. I didn’t know if I’d broken my wrist or not, but it hurt. That was fine with me, at least for the moment. The pain cleared my mind from the many emotions clouding it, anchoring me to the present.
I needed to find an Empousa and interrogate it for information about Mel’s whereabouts. The problem was that like all vampires, they appeared as human. Without any magic to identify an Empousa from a Sheep, I had no way to locate one. The longer they went without blood, though, the more vampiric they became. Their skin turned leathery, their fingers extended into talons, their ears pointed, their teeth grew into fangs, and wings sprouted from their back—Xander and I called them Ravens in their hungry state. Unless
