Huntress and The Alpha

Irina As if it were waiting, the Spanish night felt stagnant. I stood unmoving, shrouded in darkness. The alley looked abandoned and run down at first glance, but to me, the smell of death and fear hung in the air like a blanket of misery. This was the kill zone of a vampire that laid claim to these streets. I waited in his den for him to return with his latest prey. The human revelers were only a few streets away in the Gothic Quarter. They were oblivious to the work we did to keep them safe. It really was a bold place to kill repeatedly. The streets close by buzzed with life that spilled from the boutique hotels and late-night café bars. Humans with everyday lives, families, and loved ones. Something I understood nothing of and deserved even less. “Any signs?” Alec’s voice came through my earpiece. “Negative.” I adjusted my stance. Boredom set in after a few hours of standing here. No one tells you about the waiting when you sign up to be an assassin. I scoffed at the thought. I never signed up, period. “We should have gone with the ‘posing as hooker’ plan,” I whispered, knowing Alec would hear me. “I’d have loved to see you in that outfit, but it would have wasted time. We don’t know where he picks them up from, but we know where he takes them,” Alec said. “Took them. We’ve been here five nights in a row and zilch.” “You’re just pissy that you can’t go sightseeing.” I grunted. It was best I kept off the communication device. I gripped the gun at my side, straining to hear anything unusual. It’d been seven days since our vampire, ‘Jack,’ killed his last human. Maybe he’d lost his nerve or changed his killing spot. Alec named him after the 19th-century human killer. Like that deplorable human, our ‘Jack’ had a penchant for prostitutes. Similarly, his victims ended up raped and mutilated but also drained of their blood. Soon enough, humans would be full-scale searching for a serial killer, which would risk turning attention to the supernatural community. That was our mission, everything we’d uncovered pointed towards a newly sired vampire, one already deranged as a human or worse, one that had been another species of supernatural before being turned. Turning another supernatural into a vampire was difficult and rarely successful, as it left them with zero ability to control their actions. This vampire seemed too careful. I’d have expected blood bathing the Barcelona streets if he was a vampire-hybrid. “Maybe it’s a thrill for him to kill in a bold place?” said my siren inside my mind. “Possibly,” I replied. They say it takes a killer to catch a killer, and there were worse things than a vampire out tonight. Me. “We rid the world of scum,” said my wolf. She hated doubts about our role as she saw us as protectors. “Yes, we make the unworthy bleed!” said my dragon. My mind felt crowded. Sometimes it seemed like feeding time at the zoo. No one knew why I had three beasts to keep in check. Pureblood hunters usually only had two. I descended directly from the original pureblood hunter line. My body was human, and I scarred like a motherfucker, but my abilities were supernatural. Pureblood was a misnomer, too, as hunters could come from fated pairings between a hunter and another shifter, but our line had, albeit died out. Legends say the goddess crafted pureblood hunters herself. She took a broken-hearted human who lost his lover to a vampire attack and gifted him with the strength and consciousness of two supernatural beasts. She replaced his pain with a purpose; to keep the supernatural world balanced. The goddess gave him to the elder council to protect humans and our secrets. Nowadays, we work for the Hunter Council and answer to the supernatural elders. The council hunted supernatural beings that stepped out of line. They trained me from birth to be a weapon. In modern times, the loss of life did not bother them; only exposure to humans worried them. They were judge and jury, and hunters were the long arm of justice. There weren’t any police or government agencies that could keep supernaturals in line, and death awaited most convicted by the Hunter Council. They only held trials for high-ranking supernaturals. There was a council prison, but criminals in our world didn’t languish there. Once the council had evidence, they sent in someone like me, and after I’d been, only a clean-up crew was needed. “Do you think Erik’s sitting on a beach somewhere sipping cocktails?” Alec said through the comms. He was bored like me. I snorted at the unlikely image. Erik’s nearly seven-foot frame crammed into a deck chair. He was our third team member, but we didn’t always hunt together. “More like he’s sitting on his gemstone hoard,” I said under my breath. Alec and Erik were the surrogate family I was lucky to have, the only reason I kept a shred of humanity. Most supernaturals raised by the Hunter Council were stone-cold killers. Alec was my handler; he was a tech genius and an incredible strategist with a wicked sense of humor. He was my own personal sunshine. Erik was a surly dragon shifter. Once the council knew I had a dragon, they drafted him in to train and guide me. Having a dragon made me prone to being unpredictable. Erik’s past was a mystery to me. He was a private guy. Erik taught me to control my beasts and their chatter in my mind. He trained me in every fighting style out there. He was uniquely calm for a dragon. Dragons were vicious. Usually, only their leaders kept some control, to be able to control the rest. Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching. This was it. I shrank farther into the shadows, and my core muscles tightened. “A dònde me llevas?” slurred a female voice. Where are you taking me? They rounded the mouth of the alley. A tall, slender man half-dragged a drunken woman dressed in a red tube top, short black skirt, and towering high heels. As soon as they were clear of the street, he darted forward too quickly for human eyes and pinned her to the opposite wall. Discarded building materials were the only things hiding them from the view of anyone standing at the entrance to the alley. Ballsy. In a flash, he plunged his fangs into her neck. Her gasp and cry was muffled into his hand. Shit, he moved fast. Eliminating the distance between us, I seized a chunk of his greasy hair and propelled his head upwards, wrenching his fangs out of her neck. Blood covered his mouth and chin, and his eyes looked deranged. He thrashed and snarled, then flung himself at me with his claws and fangs out. Using his momentum, I maneuvered away and pressed my gun to his chest before I unloaded two wooden bullets into his dead, un-beating heart. “b***h!” he said, as shock filled his face. Almost immediately, his face and body slackened. I shoved him forward, and dust kicked up around his body as it splayed out on the ground. Dead for real this time. “Target is down. I need a clean-up crew,” I told Alec. The woman sat propped up by a cement block. She had a glazed look as a thin trail of blood pulsed down her neck. Unfortunately, the act of removing him from her neck had not saved her. Her carotid artery had emptied her blood volume onto the surrounding ground. Her heart was beating frantically like a bird’s wings, with nothing left in the chambers to push out. I dropped to my haunches and gripped her chin. I watched as life seeped from her eyes. “Otpuskayu tvoyu dushu s myrom.” I closed her eyes and turned to the vampire as I repeated the words. I release your soul to peace. I used the words in my native Russian for all my kills, regardless of their depravity. I had to believe their next life would be a better one. Erik suggested it to lessen my guilt over the lives I took and the ones I couldn’t save. I came close to losing my humanity in the past, and it was always he and Alec who hauled me back. I knew my actions damned my soul, but I also knew others were worse as they used their darkness to kill and hurt innocents, whereas I used mine to reset the balance. “Roger that,” said Alec. He’d waited for me to say my parting words. We always worked seamlessly together. “Tell the clean-up crew, one human, one vampire.” Jack hadn’t been a vampire-hybrid, just a turned human given the chance to act out his twisted fantasies as a vampire. Well, not anymore. “I’m coming in,” I said. I dragged myself to my feet. The crew would be here any minute. “Roger, but we can’t linger at the safe house. The jet is ready for us to return to Moscow. Demetri has called us back to headquarters straight away.” No Spanish sightseeing for me. I wiped the blood from my hands onto my black leggings, which was a pointless task as it was half-dried already. I used the shadows to cover myself as I strode back to the safe house. This was why I wore black; it suited me and hid the blood stains. The blood on my hands, though, never truly washed away. Instead, it is absorbed into the fabric of my very soul. And that soul was dark, like the shadows I hunted from.