More than that, the air itself is a vile cocktail of cooling blood and the ozone burn of spent magic. A predator has been here. And a hunter.
A metal door in the old brick building stands ajar. I ease it open, expecting a creak of rusted metal, but the hinges move in perfect silence. This decay is a costume. The welcome is a lie.
Interesting.
As soon as it’s wide enough I speed through the large room, but it’s empty. Furniture strewn about like a large salon, but all cold from not being used for several hours at least.
Where did that fucker go?
The stench of dead bodies reaches me from the right. I follow it to a hallway, and the sight that greets me makes me stop short.
Bodies are strewn in grotesque arrangements, limbs twisted at impossible angles or severed entirely, marooned in their own cooling blood.
Human bodies, but marked. As I draw closer, the sulphur-like smell of Guild magic intensifies, clinging to the intricate ink carved into their cooling skin. Hunters.
I bend down to get a closer look, noticing all the wounds inflicted are claw marks, blades, but no punctures.
No bites.
What happened here?
Why in the hell are seven Guild hunters dead?
Doesn’t appear to be vampire inflicted, not with Angelo’s ferals biting everything they can sink their teeth into.
So why are they here in one of Angelo’s known hideouts?
I move to the next body, checking wounds and confirming the same as the first. They fought with Guild precision, every movement economical. But their enemy was faster, stronger. They were dismantled, not defeated.
But by whom? Or by what?
The air goes thin, tasting of sulphur and iron—Guild magic. A hunter’s ambush.
“You!” Zach lets out an angry growl and swipes at me with a dagger.
I sidestep it easily. We don’t have time for this.
“It appears something is targeting your kind, Hunter. These petty differences are a folly we can no longer afford.”
“Right. And you just happened to be here right after another attack on a Guild Faction.” He feints high with the dagger, a move designed to draw my eye, and when I shift to block, he drives a sharpened iron stake from his other sleeve into my side.
He digs it in between my ribs, right where a lung would be damaged, if I needed them to breathe. Too bad for him I don’t.
Still. It burns like a brand.
And it destroys yet another of my suits.
Fucker.
I sidestep him again, this time my voice carrying no pleasantries.
“They were already dead when I showed up. I was looking for someone else.”
He straightens up at that, going from offensive to alert.
“Who were you looking for? The Night Reaper?”
The name he uses stops something deep in my chest, a stillness that even my dead heart doesn’t usually manage, and for a moment I don’t bother calculating my next words.
