CHAPTER 1
AVA
Ava Morales stomped in a puddle with her foot as she sprinted along the dark empty rail line. The slick water absorbed her other ankle, but she never noticed and kept going. Her target's footsteps echoed inside the tunnel before her, tremendous booming thuds due to his size.
He was more than a foot taller than she was, but she wasn't bothered. She weighted down almost every monster that she pursued, and their inner beast gave them supernatural endurance and strength. Not that she wasn't no slouch or anything. She trained almost every day, and she had learned how to fight smark rather than depending on brute force.
She carried the forty-five-caliber pistol chambered in silver core hollow points in one hand and the silver dagger in the other. A good hunter never came face to face with her prey without a weapon, and she was better than average. The tunnel shuddered, and the lights along its flank pulsed. She leaped from the tracks, her back scraping the cement wall a few seconds before a speeding train barreled by. Typically abandoned at this time of night, none of the few riders on board noticed her a foot or so in front of the train.
Hopefully, it'd brush against her target. A wounded wolf wouldn't escape that quickly. Or else, animals went berserk when wounded. That was what a shifter was—a monster and a beast. All of them.
Once the last car of the train passed, she ran to keep pace. Half of her hair was pulled out of its loose ponytail by the train's wind, but she ignored it like she ignored her wet foot. The hunt was more important, as always. Adrenaline dispelled the haze of her mind, pushed it to worry only about the mission. Everything else died as she ran along the tunnel.
It opened up to a larger room, with a second set of rails combining and running alongside. She skidded to a stop and scanned about for her quarry. Her heart thudded at the bottom of her neck as her breathing came in ragged gasps. How long had she chased the bastard? Since they were below ground level, she couldn't measure it. But she wasn't going to give up. She never gave up.
Unbidden, she was struck back to That Night and when she had lost her parents to one of the creatures. Narrowing her eyes, she scanned around for any sign of her present target. Anger mounted as visions crossed her mind.
To her, each shifter she tracked down was the rabid dog that destroyed her world a decade prior. The images of That Night once filled her head with every hunt, but it had been a couple of years since they hit so hard. She knew why but pushed them all away. The hunt was always first.
She accepted the pictures, however, and used them to fuel her rage. They had been out camping when it occurred. They had camped every summer. Her parents called it a grand adventure, but even at fourteen, she knew it was not your ordinary family trip.
She returned from a hike through the forest to find that her parents' tent had been torn to pieces, half-ripped. Blood seeped from its ruined side. She approached it and threw open the battered door. Her father was there on his own blood. His eyes remained wide open, his face twisted into an angry sneer. Down below, the beast tore his entire throat out in one bite.
Behind him, half-hidden by the wreckage of the tent, was her mother. The creature had devoured her. She fell to her knees beside her body when she shoved the bloodstained nylon tent wall away from her abdomen—at least, what was left of it. And then the creature returned.
And after that, all of it was a blur of pain and anger. She didn't wonder then, why the police handed her over to the nuns and Father Augustine as soon as possible. They didn't even take her to the hospital to treat the bite on her rib.
Like almost everyone else, she had never believed in monsters before one of them murdered her parents and bit a big piece out of her. Because monsters existed, so did the hunters like Father Augustine and Sister Sophia. Hell, the church drove monsters and the supernatural since the dawn of time. When she failed to become a monster that night on her first full moon after being mauled, she joined that tradition that was thousands of years old. Her immunity to their cursed bite made her better than any other hunter, and it made her deadlier to their game.
Her senses screamed at her, breaking through her thoughts from That Night and its consequences. She sank to the ground just as an earsplitting boom resounded in the tunnel. Shifters fought back with passion, they tended to, but a gun?
She rolled against the wall as a second shot was taken and crept up over the top of a pillar. Muzzle flash gave away his location, but he was too far down the tunnel to waste a bullet on.
"A gun! Come on!" She shouted as the reverberations of the second round faded away. "You're either a wolf or a pussy?"
He responded with a second bullet. It kicked up a small cloud of cement dust. He growled and shot again. His inner beast was in charge of the reins, but for all the strength and sensory benefits it gave the werewolf, it made them reckless, twice as much so when angry.
"Too scared to fight a little girl with your own guns?" She taunted. "Am I that scary?"
"You're loaded. Why shouldn't I level the playing field?" he screamed and fired again.
"Level the playing field?" Perhaps he'd exhaust the entire magazine if she provoked him enough. "On little old me? What vet spayed you? They did a wonderful job."
The gun fired again but clicked. Her victim cursed, and the rusty gun stopped next to it, its trigger bent at the rear. He'd gripped it too tightly in anger. Given how twisted it was, she was surprised he was able to fire even a few times.
She'd expect a rifle from a bear, maybe. They were lazy opportunists, much like their natural counterparts. Cats were too proud of their proficiency in using anything but their natural weapons. Wolves let their inner animal drive. They were sometimes too far gone, too beast. Most of them.
She leapt out from concealment to keep her head in the game and not where it liked to reside. Her prey was a hundred feet along the tunnel. He snarled at her, but his big eyes gave away his fear. Rather than meet her, he fled down a smaller side tunnel. Pitiful.
Thank God she hadn't become one of them. Father Augustine and Sister Sophia kept saying her immunity was the Almighty's blessing, but at the expense of her parents and whatever shred of childhood innocence was left. Not worth the cost to her, but He had given her a purpose.
She'd been shocked when Sister Sophia had brought her to the convent. The backhanded stares and whispers she shared with Father Augustine had not broken through her shock. When she felt less numb, she thought the understanding looks she and the other nuns share with her were for the parents she lost. Little did she know.