Midnight Hunter

That seemed to have become his motto: I’ll handle it. Even though he was both the youngest and least experienced among his team members, who were all his senior by at least five years, he acted as the oil for the sometimes squeaky Rochester division cog in the massive machine of the Execution Underground. A covert international organization of elite hunters, the Execution Underground protected humanity from the paranormal creatures who, unbeknownst to the general populace, lurked around every corner. When his fellow hunters, his division team members, needed his aid, he obliged. Always.

Earlier that morning he had read an article in the Democrat and Chronicle about the murder of Mr. Ted Foley. Reportedly, the deceased had been telling his close friends for several days before his death how his dead wife, Jennifer, the now-missing dead woman, was haunting him, threatening him. That detail had been enough for Shane, and he’d brought the article to the attention of the team. They’d all agreed it was best to take every precaution and ensure that the wife really went to her eternal rest. Aside from all the digging, it should have been an easy job for Ash, their resident ghost hunter, especially with Shane’s help with the hard labor. A very straightforward murderous poltergeist case. Easy to fix, if you had a corpse to burn. The case should have been dealt with tonight. Except...

Shane called Damon Brock, their division leader, to break the news. While he waited for Damon to pick up, Shane let out a tired sigh. Damn it. The night had gone from shit to supershit to megasupershit.

Missing bodies always complicated things.

* * *

VERA SANDERS SLIPPED out the heavy steel back door of Soft-Tails and into the damp alleyway. She wrapped her near-floor-length jacket around her, shielding her almost-bare legs. Despite her plaid miniskirt, fishnet stockings and stilettos, she might as well have been in the buff, given how the night air chilled her to the bone. She was used to it, though. Rochester had long winters and springs that often didn’t feel any different, and on nights like tonight, when she was slinging liquor behind the bar and working her ass off to fill her tip jar, she often found herself walking home in costume. And by costume she meant some barely there getup sanctioned by the strip club’s owner, her wannabe gangster sleazebag of an uncle. Thank goodness she was off work the next several nights.

Home.

The word skittered through her mind again.

Home was where she should have been going. Instead, she was holding a one-way ticket for the trouble train, and she knew it. Nothing good could come from what she was about to do, but damn, deciding to just let go had been such a relief. The familiar itch niggled beneath her skin. She longed for this like a druggie needed a fix.

Druggie?

Who was she kidding? She was a druggie. A black-magic druggie. She’d had one too many tastes, and now she was hooked. Just the thought of the familiar feeling of power racing through her body, supercharging her soul, sent a powerful shiver through her. She hurried down the alleyway out into the strip club’s parking lot and then to her car. Some part of her felt that if she slowed down for even one moment, the better half of her would win out again and she would end up going home, like she should. Back to the constant cravings. Back to the monotony of everyday life.

No. She couldn’t resign herself to that.

She quickly unlocked the door to her ancient Volkswagen Beetle and slid inside. She started the engine of the once-great piece of machinery, whose only flaw was having been driven for one too many decades more than it should have been, and peeled out of the parking lot. Damn, this was a dumb move. She wasn’t even really sure where she was going. Regular practitioners of black magic loved to be ridiculously cryptic. All her contact had given her was a general location. She would need to figure it out from there.

She drove across the city, singing so loudly that people waiting to cross the street could probably hear her—anything to drown out the “this is not a good idea” chatter in her head.

When she finally reached her destination in the heart of the city, she parked her car, and headed down the nearest empty alley. She stopped behind an overstuffed-and-smelling-of-rot Dumpster and removed her hands from the warm den of her jacket pockets. She held her hands out in front of her, closing her eyes with the certainty she was alone and allowing her white-magic power, the power she possessed within, to flow from the pit of her stomach, through her chest, down her arms and to the tips of her fingers.

A vibrant violet light pulsated from her hands, and she urged that light to lead her in the right direction. Glancing over her shoulder to ensure she was still alone and not being watched, she followed her instincts, slowly navigating the city’s back alleys until she reached a metal door with no handle. She allowed her magic to fold back in on itself before she balled her left hand into a fist and pounded on the metal door.

A young African-American woman with an afro poked her head out the door several moments later. She gave Vera the once-over, scanning her up and down with her shiny glossed lips pinched together, as if assessing Vera’s entire worth in a glance, before pushing the door fully open and gesturing her in.

Once Vera stepped inside, the woman closed the door behind her. The metal echoed, a loud, thunderous clang, like the door of a jail cell slamming shut, and Vera wondered if that perception was her conscience’s way of screaming, What the fuck do you think you’re doing? once again, as if the dingy haven’t-been-renovated-or-lived-in-since-the-sixties look of the place wasn’t enough to give her that vibe already. She couldn’t quite tell from the interior whether this was a gutted-out old business or apartment building, but she would venture a guess that there had been more than one waterbed in this establishment back in its day. The way the wooden floor creaked beneath her feet, as if it hadn’t been stepped on in ages, sent a slight chill down her spine. The creaking echoed courtesy of the equally wooden walls and wood coffered ceiling. How had termites not destroyed this building already?

“I’m Trista,” the woman said. The silver of her large hoop earrings glittered in the dim accent light of the hallway, along with the star-shaped diamond stud in her nose. She was beautiful in an exotic, high-sculpted-cheekbones and eyes-so-fierce-they-could-cut-you sort of way. “You’re here for the circle.” It was a statement, not a question.

Vera nodded. “Yeah.”

Trista scanned Vera up and down again. Her nose scrunched and her nostrils flared, as if she’d just put something distasteful in her mouth. “You have the look of a black-magic witch.”

The look? Vera frowned. Whatever the hell that meant. Whether insult or compliment when coming from the gatekeeper of a black magic coven, she wasn’t sure. She contemplated a weak Uh, thanks, but opted instead for silence. One thing held certain with black-magic witches: no matter what, any advertisement of your own weakness meant exactly that, you were weak. Taking a half insult to heart, or expressing an opinion of it in any way, fell straight into the category of things that might make her appear weak. She couldn’t allow that. She held Trista’s gaze. The woman might have had eyes that could cut, but Vera was no spring chicken in the world of black magic. She wouldn’t be easily intimidated. She was a powerful witch, more powerful than she looked.

Trista raised an eyebrow at Vera’s obvious lack of intimidation. Vera stood just the slightest bit straighter, eye to eye with the woman. She almost expected Trista to make a halfhearted threat, but the woman surprised her when she took a step back, gesturing for Vera to follow her down the dark wooden hall. As they approached the last door on the left, the sound of chanting filled Vera’s ears, and the familiar buzz crept into her veins. This was it. This was what she needed. Trista waved her forward, and Vera pushed open the door.

Black-magic paraphernalia—from Santeria-like candles to nightshade herbs to animal blood and bone-filled pestles—lined the walls of the dim candlelit room. In the center, eleven people sat in a circle, hands clasped together as they chanted in a tongue Vera didn’t recognize. As she and Trista entered, a pair of cold blue eyes snapped open. The leader of the circle broke his trance and fixed his gaze on Vera.

“Who are you?” he asked quietly. His voice cut through the ongoing chanting. The lit candles around the room flickered, as if a swift breeze had rushed through.

A chill shivered down Vera’s spine, though the room was comfortably warm. Aside from her own father, who had once been thought of as the most powerful warlock of the past century, this man, this warlock, was powerful beyond anything she had ever encountered before. That thought sent icy adrenaline through her veins like a well-placed IV.

“My name is Vera Sanders.”

“Sanders?” He rolled her name around on his tongue as if it was a sweet candy that could melt in his mouth. “You bear a striking resemblance to Johnathan Summers. Are you sure Sanders is your last name?”

The chill racing down Vera’s spine hardened to numbing ice. She froze. In all the time she’d been practicing black magic, no one had ever recognized her as her father’s daughter before. She had tried very hard over the years to keep that association buried. Her father had been a powerful warlock with plenty of friends and supporters, as well as enemies. She wasn’t sure she wanted to cross paths with either side.

“No relation,” she said, lying worse than Nixon during Watergate. She held his gaze. Though she was generally a fantastic liar, he’d caught her off guard, and if he didn’t recognize that, he wasn’t nearly as powerful as she’d originally believed.

“My mistake.” He gave her a crooked grin, and she knew, despite his words, that he didn’t believe her for a second. From the spark behind his eyes when her father’s name passed his lips, she knew he must have been either friend or foe, and there was a very, very thin line between love and hate. She wasn’t prepared to walk that tightrope. “My name is Nathanial.”

He held her gaze, and the tension escalated. Several long seconds passed. Finally, she forced herself to look away, even though it grated against every feminist fiber of her being.

His eyes...they were so predatory and unforgiving.

“Well, Ms. Sanders...” Her last name sounded like a hiss and made his disbelief clear. “What are you here for?”

“I’m just here for the magic, that’s all.”

He grinned again. Something about his stare and his crooked smile made her feel as if she were a small animal cornered by a gun-wielding hunter. “So would you care to know what spells we’re executing today?” The sounds of the chanting had become less than background noise to her, a humming against the quiet threat of his voice. He didn’t have to speak loudly for his words to be powerful and all-consuming. Her father’s voice had been that way.

An internal war waged deep in her chest. The little voice inside her head screamed she should care to know exactly what she was getting herself into and what spell her power would be assisting, but another voice reminded her that she was already in too deep, that it was too late to back out now. Was ignorance bliss? The third and most dangerous voice, the voice of her addiction, reared its ugly head, making her skin crawl. God, she wanted it. She knew it was wrong, but she did. She’d been too weak to stop herself from coming here, and now, with it dangling right in front of her as if she were a starving person staring at her first bite of food in days, she found herself incapable of resisting.

When she’d refused to don the mantle of her father’s black magic legacy, he’d called her weak for her addiction, for caring more about the high than about the power she could wield. She certainly felt weak now.

You’re stronger than this. You’re worth more than this, Vera. You deserve better. She repeated the mantra over and over again in her head. But as she looked into Nathanial’s eyes, all she saw was the scared little junkie girl her parents had accused her of being all those years ago. The same scared little girl who would never amount to anything more than a trashily dressed bartender at a sleazy strip club, whose mind was always clouded by wondering when—or if—she would be able to get her next fix.

She sat down at the edge of the circle and joined hands. The voice inside her head fell silent, and as Nathanial smiled at her, she knew her father had been right.

* * *

IF ONE THING truly scared Shane out of his ever-loving mind—and rightfully so—it was the thought of being on the receiving end of his division leader’s wrath. He watched Damon, silently waiting for a response to the story he and Ash had recounted. Nothing incurred the wrath of Damon Brock, their leader and resident vampire hunter, more than two things: 1) having Execution Underground headquarters breathing down his neck, and 2) allowing civilians, particularly the Rochester PD, to get any inkling of their operations.

Someone in the division was usually on the receiving end of Damon’s anger, since it was his task to keep the ragtag group of alpha-male hunters in line. Shane just wasn’t accustomed to that person being him.

Damon’s voice remained eerily calm, easily filling the Rochester division’s small underground control room as he spoke. “You mean to tell me that the two of you allowed yourselves to be cornered by the Rochester PD, leading to the possibility of your faces being identified, just to dig up a grave with no body?” He examined them with blue eyes so cold they could make a man’s balls shrivel just by staring into them for too long. The tension in his stance indicated to Shane that the man would transform into a ballistic missile in about ten seconds if they didn’t manage to explain themselves first.

“Yep. That’s ’bout how it went down.” Ash crossed his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles as he leaned against a desk.

Clearly, Shane thought, Ash’s balls were not quite as shriveled as his own at the moment. He couldn’t decide whether that was courageous or stupid. He was erring more on the side of stupid. Pissing Damon off was never a good idea, and part of being a good hunter was choosing your battles wisely. This battle was not wise.

“I think what Ash is trying to say is that there was no avoiding it. We took every precaution, and it was simply bad luck that the police showed up in the middle of us digging up the grave site. Since we were already so close to uncovering the body, once the officers were subdued it made sense to continue digging so we could complete the task. Nobody could have anticipated the missing corpse.”

The stiffness in Damon’s spine slackened ever so slightly, as if Shane had managed to placate his anger for the moment. Shane was thankful for small favors.

“So when you say no body, do you mean no casket, or there was a casket without a dead woman?” Trent Garrison, the division’s resident hunter of shape-shifters, asked from above the massive pile of papers on his desk and beneath the brim of his Red Sox cap. The Jersey native was purportedly an ardent fan, but Shane often thought his constant sporting of the cap had more to do with hiding his very obvious facial scar than his love of baseball.

“The casket was intact,” Shane said. “There was just no corpse.”