CHAPTER 2
Her feet slipped on the cement as she turned off into the smaller side tunnel. A waist-high barrier sporting a No Entry, Closed Track sign stopped her in her tracks. She jumped over it without breaking pace—thank you, high school track.
The tunnel curved sharply in front of her, and she lost sight of her quarry. It was idiotic of him to have run from the platform to begin with. Nevertheless, she had no notion how he managed to get the better of her. Did he smell the silver? Who cared? This tunnel did not branch off of this one, so he could only proceed in one direction now.
Her pumping legs, she remembered the first full moon. She realized by then the nuns' frowns and sidelong glances were not just about the death of her parents. Sister Sophia escorted her from the dining hall prior to dinner to the temporary cell that she had been allocated, alongside hers.
The smell of pizza put to rest any question that she might have had. The other nuns ate the most bland meals. Every meal was rice and beans with vegetables from their own garden as the sole spice. Sister Sophia agreed with her complaint, but out of earshot of the other nuns.
They devoured the pizza she'd ordered for the evening, lamenting the miserable meal at the convent. Then, added to this, she produced an enormous piece of cheesecake, floating in cherries and wet with a thin red glaze. Stuffed-up herself, she didn't even realize the unshed tears standing in her eyes as she took her to bed and the turn of the lock on the heavy door.
She woke up at midnight. Sister Sophia and Father Augustine were standing near the door. They chatted back and forth in low tones that were inaudible to her, but she recognized that it was an argument by the frown on the dark face of the nun.
Their eyes met and became wide. She folded her arms around her back. At night, she never noticed what she was holding, but it sparkled in the moonlight from the tiny window. Father Augustine hid his hands and smiled in her direction.
"How are you doing, Ava?" His voice shook. Was he scared?
"A little puffy from all that pizza." She sat up in the tiny bed. "Other than that, okay."
Father Augustine called on her several times a week and asked how she was doing and whether she needed anything. He never came at night. The nuns woke her up early, but no one ever came to her cell at night.
"That's good to know." He smiled more widely. "We'll let you sleep."
That evening, Sister Sophia told her the truth. She tore the blinders from her eyes. They had tracked the monsters that murdered her parents and had expected her to shift into one because of the bite. She'd fed her one last meal of pizza and cheesecake before she'd shift with the moon. Following that, they'd finish their task and kill the monster. They hid their weapons that night when she did not shift.
"Father Augustine will not be pleased with me saying so, dear," Sister Sophia said after their distasteful breakfast, "but the church hunts them, those cursed people who prey on other people. Such as the man who killed your father and mother. They don't often take girls on off-duty secondary assignments like mine, but your skill is the making of it. You could do so much good and save so many."
"Like my parents?" Her fingernails sank into her palm so deep she cut the skin.
"Yes, but if we are going to convince Father Augustine you can trim it, you'll have to try hard." Her face pinched. "I won't coddle you."
They relocated to St. Francis Catholic Academy thereafter, and she fulfilled her promise. She never gave her a break until she graduated. Father Augustine reluctantly assigned her to his team of hunters. Of course, he knew she would've done it on her own if he hadn't.
The tunnel was short and ended at an Old City Hall Station. The room turned sharply with the track. Despite the dust and rubble thrown around on the floor, chandelier lights twinkled brightly alongside the arched ceiling.
The station's architecture surprised her, and her feet stumbled. Hunters avoided witches and warlocks. They'd shared an uneasy peace with them for centuries. Still, for a moment, she considered whether she pursued the wolf through a portal to the past. The station appeared stuck in Old New York of the early twentieth century.
She had been in the city almost a decade, stalking shifters in the darkest alleys of all five boroughs and the nearby states. An abandoned subway station, even one with gold-trimmed brick and wrought iron skylights, wasn't out of the ordinary in the city. The city harbored more secrets than people knew.
Her quarry had disappeared.
No. Ava, think wolf. He wouldn't run, not in his state. Wolves were opportunistic like bears, but sometimes they were like cats. A station this isolated was full of possibility, ambush among them.
"Do I turn you on, bitch?" the monster's gravelly voice echoed through the room, but she couldn't find him. "You smell excited, and not just for the hunt.".
"Not for you." Damn shifters and their noses. "But I would lie if I said I won't have fun killing you. There's nothing like a good hunt to take my mind off things."
His sniff echoed. How much did you sniff to make it echo?
“I love your scent,” he growled. She spun, and her eyes scanned the space as he continued. “By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll forget all about him.”
Okay, she'd had enough. Her lids closed, and she inhaled through her nostrils. Not to find him. She didn't have a shifter's sense of smell, but she didn't need one. Her heartbeat pounded in the quiet, the only sound besides her own breathing.
A few of the other hunters, usually the old, seasoned priests who were in Father Augustine's order, were better at situational awareness. It was part of the vocation. Like her immunity, He gave her another gift. Either it came from the bite or she was born with it, she could sense shifters, especially when they meant her ill.
Her hair was on the back of her neck as the chill ran down her spine. He was near. Tucking in a deep breath, she spun to the side. The gun jerked in her hand as the shot reached the station. She came awake to watch the shifter fall to his knees.
His arms were wrapped around the greasy shirt pulled over his belly. Dark blood ran through his fingers and fell onto the dusty rails. He snarled at her, his eyes full of hatred, before the pain hit him. His breath stopped, and he fell over to his side.
"Not quick enough," she patted her pistol, a grin as wild as that of a shifter. "Silver core hollow point.".
His jaws snapped, but another wave of agony had him writhing. His eyes flared with the killing fury once more when she spit in his face. The silver poisoning bled underneath him, turning the blood darker.
He rolled onto his back and his hand whipped out at her.
"Little too late," she didn't budge, though his hand swept past her.
"Fucking Huntress!" he swore, but his own head fell back against the rails, and he shut his eyes tightly as the poison coursed through his system.
You're the second to call me that." She scowled at the man who was dying. "Do you lot hold gatherings where you sit around and regale each other with ghost stories about us? The last bloke didn't get the opportunity to answer back. My fault, incidentally. I did shoot him in the chest. You still have time to let your secrets out."
The bastard's eyelids shuddered as they opened, and he sneered.
"I'd sooner watch the poison take effect slowly." Her cackle was closer to a laugh, "You'll die anyway and more than you should have to suffer. If you tell me where you heard that name, I'll make it quick."
His blood-stained hand slipped into his bruised jean jacket. She raised her pistol, and he didn't move. The hand slipped out slowly, fingers wrapped around a playing card. He threw the card away from him while he looked into hers.
"That's it. Do it." His face contorted in pain. Veins pulsed on his neck with the poisoned black blood.
She slowly raised her gun. It was centered directly at his chest. After a dramatic pause for air, she turned her wrist and shot. The bullet ripped through the coat sleeve. He writhed and cried out. The arm waved uselessly at an awful angle. She had intended to strike bone but not fracture it.
"Oh, yeah, I must practice more at the range." Phony sincerity dripped from her tone.
He cursed and thrashed about, cursing her with every curse word in the lexicon and a few she didn't know as she stood waiting for death to take hold of him. As his head fell against the pavement, his chest no longer rising and falling, she drove her silver dagger into his neck. She could never be sure enough.
Then, after cleaning her knife, she took up the card. Swords along the edges with blazing red tens at every corner framed a headshot of her own face. In large letters at the bottom, "The Huntress."
"Great, just on time," she grumbled before scanning the Old City Hall Station. "Now, how the blazes do I get out of here?