I can see from her sad smile that Gina knows what I mean. “So…” she says as she turns onto the highway. “Are you looking forward to your first hunt?”
I shrug. “I am tired, and I honestly just want to sleep.” This makes Georgina laugh. “Yeah I get that. We should be there in 15 minutes, it’s an easy job. You’ll be home and sleeping before midnight!”
“I’ll keep you to that!” I smile before I turn up the music again.
The navigation on Gina’s phone directs us to an abandoned dry dock near the port. I can feel my nerves having a boxing match with my stomach. I try to breath out gently. My hands are shaking on my lap.
My very first hunt. I do not want to mess this up.
“Okay, Hun.” Gina says as she pulls the key out of the ignition and turns to me. “This will be a very standard, very easy hunt.” She grabs my hands when she sees them shaking on my lap. “It will be okay. This is standard procedure. I would even say that this bugger will be easier to catch than a two-legged dog. All right?” She beams me another one of her magnificent smiles. “You can do this in your sleep, lovely.”
I try to swallow my fear and throw her one last pleading look.
She giggles and grabs her dark purple lipstick from her bag. “I made sure I picked an easy one. Some Low-Born, bottom of the barrel, won’t make anything out of his eternal life kind of demon. That’s what the telex said. He shouldn’t cause you any problems especially since I’ll be there with you every step of the way. But I totally understand if you still have questions about the hunt. Ask, and I’ll answer them. Just shoot” She said just before she coated her lips in a luscious purple. Georgina is a blabbermouth, and her blabbering makes me feel at ease.
I bite my lip and close my eyes, trying to get a grip on the shaking of my hands.
“Okay… um, what was it like for you?” I pause with a hint of unease. “Hunting, that is. What was it like going on your first hunt at my age?”
The jovial and spunk that lit up her eyes was gone, replaced with something that immediately causes me to apologize. “I’m sorry…” Of course, … I am such an idiot. “I am so sorry Gina.”
Gina shakes her head in response to the apology, sighing as she flicks the cap onto the lipstick and throws it in her bag. “No… no, don’t be. It’s a valid question with an answer I’ve never really given you.” She responds, meeting my gaze with a deadly serious look in her eyes.
Tapping on her steering wheel, she leans back into the leather chair and begins to speak. “When I turned 18, I was paired up with my mentor, Maximillian, through an exchange program. Max was sent to hunt down this motherfucker in Thailand who had recently killed and usurped his master’s criminal organization and was now bleeding the citizens of a small village dry through his racket. We were sent to put an end to this monster and save those people….” She sighs once again, looking at her hands and painted fingernails. “…At least that’s what we were supposed to do.”
“Feeling confident in my skills as a hunter, I got cocky and charged into the demon’s lair half-cocked, ignoring my mentor’s plan. Next thing I knew, I was on the ground, bleeding from my forehead and my mentor’s body lying next to me… dead and the demon nowhere to be seen.”
I feel a balloon explode in my chest. I cover my mouth as my hands start to shake again. “Gina… I am so sorry… I am so stupid.” I grasp. I knew about the unspoken ‘don’t ask Gina about her first hunt’ rule, but I had no clue how bad it was. A small part of me – knowing how absolutely kick-ass she is, thought it was just another embarrassing story. One that she might be a bit sensitive to. “I really had no idea.” I cursed my stupid brains and retarded curiosity when I looked at the lonely tear making its way down her chin.
“I shouldn’t have asked you this.” I began as I grabbed her hand.
Gina threw me a weak smile. “It’s okay cous. I never told you this because it’s my burden to carry. I just wanted you to know that you are going to be okay. I won’t allow… that creature to lay even a single finger on you – or me for that matter. After I buried Max, I made a promise that I would never act reckless again, that I would use everything he taught me to uphold his legacy and pass on his knowledge to those that need it.” That sounded uncharacteristically serious for Gina.
She reaches out and grabs my hand again. The shaking had stopped in both our hands and I could feel the love and the warmth she felt for me. She had always been my favourite cousin, not only because she is cool and edgy, but also because under all the punk and piercings, she has the biggest heart out of anyone I know. “I swear that I will be the partner I wasn’t back then. Just follow my instructions, and I’ll lead you through your first hunt, okay?”
Gina’s right. “Of course. Just tell me what to do.”
“Aye, that’s the spirit.” She says wiping away her tears. She takes a deep breath and opens the door of her little black cab.
The grounds were mostly been abandon by their previous owners.
The warehouses have been stripped clean of anything of value by both the company and urban explorers, leaving the rest to rot away with the rest of the dock. Cthulhu could rise up out of the sea any minute. Or that’s how this felt.
The dry dock contains piles upon piles of garbage. Whether it’s left-over waste from the previous owners who just couldn’t be bothered, or it was brought in and left by the squatters and beer drinking, weed smoking teenager that now call this place their home, it matters very little as the stench is excruciating.
I kick a can over some grass growing through the cracks in the concrete. I have always loved these kinds of desolate places. Places humans abandoned, places where time and nature and… human nature, ran its course.
I step over a dank puddle and grab my bag from the back of the car. My heart is still racing in my chest. It’s going to be okay. Gina said it would be a routine run. In and out. Home and in bed by midnight.
“Is it normal to be nervous?” I ask Gina who lights up a pre-hunt cigarette. She smiles as she exhales the smoke.
“Honey, if you weren’t nervous, I would have probably sent you home.” She looks at me up and down before speaking again. “Nerves are healthy. They make sure that you are cautious, that you think things through. When you get cocky like I did, that’s when things start going wrong.” She ruffles my hair and hoists her backpack onto her back. “Come on! We’ve got work to do!” She says as she opens the boot of the bar.
The view to the water is blocked by an ungodly massive luxury cruise ship that has been abandoned by god knows who, leaving it here to rot and decompose until the city or the government gets tired of looking at the eyesore and decommissions it wholly.
The ship itself is still mostly intact, save for the holes and gaps within the hull, along with the fact that most of it is lower half is submerged under water, leaving a massive section of the ship unexplorable due to possible flooding.
I clench my fists at the sight of the trunk’s contents. Holy water, guns, Divine Crossbows and knives, books on the arcana along with supplies and rations, including a set of gas masks with two filters next to them.
This is not the first time I am seeing a hunting kit. But it is the first time I will have to use it. I try to force a weak smile as I feel my heart beating in my throat. Why am I so scared? What was happening with me? Put on your big girl pants Isabelle! “What do you want me to take?” I ask as I look up to my cousin.
Gina bites her lip in thought and looks at me for a long few seconds. She clicks her fingers as she comes to a decision and hands me one of the gas masks. “The ship has been abandoned for literally ages.” She says as she screws a filter onto the gas mask. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s mold and asbestos. So, we will definitely need one of these.” She says as she now grabs her own mask.
“We won’t spend too much time inside so we will probably be okay, but it is still better to be safe than sorry.” She winks at me. I smile back. My heart and my nerves lifted at her casual tone.
; I raise my head and smile at Gina as she puts on her signature leather gloves. “I am sure you know how to send a demon back downstairs?” She means hell. Obviously, I do!
“Yeah. Duh” I joke. I try to recall my training. “The only way to really harm them and send them back to hell is by killing them with blessed weapons. We hunters prefer swords and daggers as they only need to be blessed once while bullets and arrows need to be blessed separately. Unless you know someone who can craft you a Devine Instrument – but those are hard to come by, I’ve heard” I kind of remember most from the weapons classes I took in high school. The fact that I remember it calms my nerves. I know my stuff. I know how to kill a demon. I can do this.
Gina snorts as she pulls out a massive crossbow from her trunk. “Hard to come by? That, cous, is a massive understatement. For starters, there are only a few hundred people in the world even capable of making them; thus, they charge a small fortune for these weapons. These crossbows alone cost me six-months of rent – each! And they are not even that good.” She chuckles and hands me a bow too. The wood is heavy and lies cold against my arm. “Anyway, I know you got the gist of it. Trust on what you know and on your instincts. If you do that, you will already be better than me on my first run.” She stops for a second, thinking over what she just said. Gina often masks tragedy with humour. You could say she is the Chandler Bing of our family. A little sad smile plays around her lips for a split second before she nudges me and nods at the ship. “Just follow my lead, and we’ll both be out in an hour or so.”
Gina slips the white mask over her head and signals me to do the same. The mask smells like new rubber tires and it takes me a few minutes to get used to the odour. She hands me a quiver of bolts and swings one over her own shoulder.
I have often trained with crossbows. They are by far my favourite kind of bow. But standing here, my heart still beating in my throat and adrenaline soaring through my body, the wood and the bow feels heavy in my hand. I look at the quiver in my hand and ultimately swing it over my own shoulder as Gina closes the trunk with a massive thump.
“You ready?” she asks. The mask distorts her voice. I would have made an ‘Are you my mommy’ Doctor Who joke if I wasn’t shitting my pants about entering the big old kraken rusting away in the water.
Chapter 4
I swallow hard as Gina starts walking towards the ship. A little drizzle of rain started to fall and rusty puddles form where the tiles are broken up. A lonely streetlamp shines down onto a rusty supermarket trolley, abandoned and wheels up next to a pile of trash bins.
The interior of the ship has been left mostly unchanged save for the burnt-out lights and the many, many stains that tarnish these once lavish halls of luxury. I am happy Gina was smart enough to think of bringing the masks as the floor is littered with rotting leaves, mouldy wet carpet and what I hope were rat corpses. Wait… was that a fox?
I try not to look at the fluffy orange pelt my flashlight caught in the corner of one of the rooms.
We explore every room we pass. The electric card locks burnt out and leave the doors unlocked. I look at the graffiti on the walls of the rooms. Evidence of squatters and partying teenagers is littered all over the mushy, stale carpeted floor. Most of the beds had been stripped down to the dark, dirty stained mattresses.
Some of the rooms were completely destroyed. Lamps were torn off the wall, mirrors were smashed, and curtains were torn off their hooks.
“This place is huge,” I mutter as we turn through a corner in the hallway. “Can you imagine the scrap value of this thing? Why didn’t they just sell it?”
Gina pushes a door open and scans the room. “Clear.” She says. “Looks can be deceiving, Izzy.” Her flashlight scans the corners of the room. “The company that built this place was drowning in debt. Seeing this project as a potential Hail Mary, they used all the shortcuts they could find to make this place.” She adds as she proceeds to kick through the wall, revealing a small bathroom.
I sigh and shake my head. “Such a shame.” I say absent minded, following a fleeing rat with my torch.
“Yep. And that’s when this ship became the biggest underground party spot in the nineties.” She chuckles as she points to the door on their right. “That is where I first kissed James Turner. Horrible kisser. Great hair though.”
I shake my head laughing and move past Gina. “Come on; we should finish exploring the rooms before moving further in.”
I hear Gina’s laugh through her mask. “And here I thought I was the leader.” She pats me on my bum and for the first time this evening my heart lifts. So far, the mission had been easy but exciting. I take a deep breath and man up with the knowledge that I can do this, that I am doing find and that I have been training for missions like this my whole life.
After making one final sweep around the area to make sure they we did not missed anything or anyone, we start to make our way to a new section of the ship.
“You are doing well for your first hunt, Isabelle.” Gina says as we get to the big marble staircase that once adorned the main hall. I break a weak smile as I feel the cold grip of anxiety curl around my heart again at the mention of ‘first hunt’.
“Thank you.” I say with a quivering voice. I had been looking forward to my first hunt for so long. As a little girl I would beg my dad to take me with him. I am not scared of the monsters in the shadows, I am scared that I will ruin the mission. That something I do, that one sudden or wrong movement will jeopardize the whole operation. Or worse… I swallow and look at Gina who just opened another door. Much worse.
“It’s just” I say, stopping in my tracks and shining the light through the room. “Both of my parents wanted me to be ready when I turned eighteen, however…” I pause as I gently grab onto the gemstone of the necklace around my neck. “…I sometimes wonder if I will ever live up to the expectations that have been set for me.”
A low rumbling rises up from underneath my feet. What was that? I look at Gina, but she doesn’t seem to fussed about the noise. It might just be the ship setting. Yes. That must be it. I bite my tongue as I try to wave the smoke of fear from my head.
“Isabelle…” Gina responds in a gentle and sweet voice, gently placing her hand on my shoulder as we take a few steps towards another door.
“It’s nothing. We should keep going, Gina. I look up at my cousin. She checks the time on her phone, and I see the bright reflection of the screen in the plastic mask covering her eyes. “We only have another twenty-or-so minutes before we need to change our filters.”
The floor underneath us rumbles again. The grunts are louder this time. I try to shift my weight as my heart rate jumps up. This does not feel right. As I put my foot down the floor creaks and groans again. Did the floor just move?
“Isabelle?” Gina asks, turning towards me.
“I’m fine. Seriously.” I say with a quivering voice. “We got-”
The floor gives out and plummets me into the darkness below.
“ISABELLE!” Gina screams in terror; her eyes widen in shock as she sees me disappear through the gaping whole.
Chapter 5
I am enveloped in coldness before I realise, I am surrounded by water. Pieces of torn metal fall in after me. I rip the destroyed mask off my face and breathe in the pungent smell of rotting carpet, stale water and whatever else unsavoury this ship harbours.
“Gina!” I yell up at my cousin. I can see the outline of her head by the hole as she sines her flashlight down into the water. She lets out an audible sigh of relieve when the beam of light finally focusses on me. “Thank God… are you alright, Isabelle?!” She calls out after removing the gas mask from her face.
I raise my head and finally realise how far I dropped. “Ye-yeah!”
“Is anything broken? Can you still move?” My cousin yells down.
“I… I think so.” I say. I continue to thread water, trying to keep my head up. “Gina… I’m so very sorry, but I lost your bow and quiver.”
Sh
e shakes her head. “I don’t give a damn about those things, Isabelle. I can replace those with time and money, you are a lot harder to replace. Where else would I find such a pain in the ass.” She says jokingly, trying to laugh away the shock of what just happened. “Just get out of the water and wait there, I’ll find a way down, and then I’m pulling us out. We’ll come back another night.”
I raise up my head. “No! We came here to do a job, Gina!” I might have been scared about ruining this operation, but now I fell through the ceiling I have found the courage I was looking for. The moment I hit the water my training kicked in, my instinct to survive. I now understand that I can do this, that I have been trained to do this. I will not fail. Quitting is failing. Nobody wants to not succeed on his or her first hunt. I am not a quitter. “Let’s just take it from here Gina.” I say out of breath as my legs fight against the cold water.
“That was before you fell several stories into a pit of water, Isabelle. We need to group up, retreat and formulate a new plan! That’s an order, cousin!”
“A plan?” I babble under my breath before immediately turning back to Gina. “Most plans require a certain level of improvising, Gina. As hunters, we have to be willing to adapt and change when the situation calls for it! No plan, no matter how concrete they may be, will ever be bullet-proof!” I quoted my dad.
I can see Gina’s head shake in defeat. “Dammit, John…” She murmur’s angrily before giving in. “Alright, here, Isabelle.” She pries the flashlight off her crossbow and ties it on a rope before lowering it for me. “Take this and see if you can’t find a way out of there, I’m going back the way we came and get another flashlight and mask from the car. If for some reason you can’t find a way out, I’m going to pull rank and call in the cavalry. Understand?”
“I do…, Gina.”
Gina nods her head and vanishes.
“Gina!”
“Yeah?” She pops her head back over the edge.
The Aberrant Sword Page 2
