This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Text Copyright © 2018 Invictus Media Group, LLC
All rights reserved.
Cover Design by:
Crimson Phoenix Creations
Edited by:
China DeSpain
Formatted by:
Gina Wynn
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, or locales or persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental.
Contents
Story Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
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Books by Elle Cross
About the Author
With the fate of humanity at stake, one girl won't stop fighting to find her missing family…
Monsters.
Before the world went dark, ‘monster’ was the label we used for the shifters. They weren’t really dangerous, just beings who could change into animals now and then. As long as they did no harm, no one raised a fuss.
Well, aside from my dad, a third-generation preacher and monster hunter. He spoke against true monsters, though, ones who wore human skin and plotted the end of the human race. Yet, no one listened to him. I bet they wished they had, especially when hellfire rained down from the sky and destroyed the world we once knew.
Now in this new world of darkness, the monsters who once hid under human flesh are out in the open, free to reign and conquer what is left.
As the only child in my family, my parents raised me for this very day. My name is Soleil Bishop, preacher’s daughter and fourth-generation monster hunter.
It's time for me to accept my calling and protect the last outpost from the monsters beyond our walls.
Monsters lived in everyone. That was what my dad, the local preacher and now self-appointed monster hunter, had always said.
There were, of course, the obvious kinds of monsters. The ones they had talked about on them news shows Before—as in before the world went dark. They even had some on what had been "Reality TV" for the few moments there had been reality to broadcast.
I vaguely remembered watching some of those shows and wondering what kind of reality had such fine clothes and houses, because it hadn’t been my reality, that was for damn sure.
At any rate, those kinds of monsters—the obvious kinds—had kept to themselves anyway, even after the media had gone crazy for them, and so I never had to be afraid of them.
See, Dad had always preached that the monsters we could see, they were the ones who were really humans, but just wore monster skin from time to time. Like a comfortable pair of jeans.
He used to say, “Soli? You don’t mind them folk, y’hear? They’re our kin, they just dress different once a month, is all. Like some of your trendy fashion shows. You’re more alike to them than t’other kinds of monsters.”
He’d preach like that to me and ended it with a little boop of his index finger right in the middle of my forehead. As if what he’d said would be rooted in my mind more that way or something. He had always been silly like that.
He’d been right, though, the same as he’d been right about everything. It had been the other kind of monsters that we had to be afraid of. The ones that everyone seemed to invite into the world—and into their homes—with open arms when they had arrived.
Reapers. The monsters that wore human skin. Pretty skin.
They might have looked like us, a better version of us, but they were decidedly not us. And they had proved it when they’d culled the best of us away. As for the rest of us? The Reapers unleashed the Hellfire that destroyed the cities of the world and created the After.
As in after the world went dark.
Dad’s been gone a week.
I shouldn’t be worried. Heck, I shouldn’t be a lot of things, but the words that others said about those missing and gone stuck in my mind. I knew I shouldn’t have paid attention to gossip and rumors.
My only comfort was that I didn’t have to live in town so I didn’t have to deal with the negative words on my skin or have it root inside my head and bloom like a stubborn weed. The benefits of living on a blessed farm hidden from normal sight that my parents carved into the mountainside before I was born.
I told myself I wasn’t worried, and yet here I was, out on my rooftop scoping out the edges of our property. The open fields rolled down to a gradual slope, bordered by the path Dad and I used to walk down to the town, which was barely visible in the distance. A semi-circle of trees dotted the other side of our property line before it thickened into a dense tree line that went up the mountain.
I shivered a little despite the warm day. Maybe I needed the sun to kiss my skin a little bit. I was named for it, after all. The Sun. Soleil. I loved that. Once upon a time I used to joke that I was solar powered. Funny how that was truer now than ever before.
Now we did everything during the day. Anything that needed to be done outside needed to happen when the sun was out, no matter how hot it was. I never once heard a complaint, and Lord knows that I never regretted being out in the sunshine, no matter how it blazed down on
