by D. N. Hoxa
“What? What? What?”
I sat up, completely disoriented, expecting to find myself anywhere in the world except in my bedroom for some reason. Kit fell on my lap and grabbed the oversized shirt I’d worn to sleep in with more urgency than ever before. He definitely wanted to show me something.
“What is it?” I asked again, wiping a bit of drool from the corner of my lips. My heartbeat hammered in my chest and I was already breathing heavily. Kit jumped off the bed and shot to the door so fast I almost didn’t see him. His short arms kept moving from me to the door—a clear indication that whatever he wanted was outside the bedroom. Maybe he thought I’d taken his chocolates again and was pissed? It had happened a month ago. He’d come home to find me covered in the wrappers and he’d lost his fucking mind.
But I hadn’t stolen his chocolates this time, so what the hell was up with him? I pushed the cover aside and stood up, feeling a bit dizzy. I followed him to the door, but he was already out in the living room, now pointing at the entrance door. Shit. He wanted me outside? I checked the time in the small clock I’d only gotten recently and left on the stand next to the TV. It was just a few minutes past midnight.
“What the hell, Kit? I’m not going out right now. What’s going on?”
All he could do was squeak and point his claws toward the door.
I already knew that I had no choice. If I refused to follow him, he wouldn’t stop squeaking until I lost my damned mind. And he did look kind of scared. Really scared, now that I thought about it. Even his fur looked like it was standing at attention. He looked a hell of lot fluffier than usual.
Yes, something was definitely up with him.
A couple of minutes later, I followed him out of the apartment. November was cold in Manhattan, and even though I zipped my jacket all the way, my teeth still chattered when I walked out of the building. Kit had already disappeared down the street, and I had to run just to keep up with him.
I ran for almost five minutes.
By the time I saw Kit had stopped, sweat lined my forehead and I was racing to catch my breath. The fucker was fast. And he’d stopped in front of a three-story apartment building in a relatively quiet street. I hadn’t even looked at where I was going as I followed so I wasn’t sure exactly where we were. But Kit was even more panicked now. He waited for me to approach him before he slipped through the bars of the gate in the fence and disappeared somewhere under the set of stairs that led to the front door of the building.
“What are you doing?!” I whispered to him, but he didn’t come back. I waited a whole minute. Why was he here? Why was he making me break into this place?
Cursing under my breath, I opened the gate and walked through it.
I’d only taken one step when I felt the magic. Heavy magic in the air—a ward around the entire building, it seemed. It made the air thicker as I breathed in and continued to the four stairs that led to the entrance door. I looked up at the windows. All the lights were off. It looked like nobody was in there, or if there were people here, they were already asleep. I followed Kit’s squeak and squatted down to see better. He was looking at what seemed to be a barred opening in the building, right below the stairway.
“What?” I asked and had to get down on all fours to get closer. The space was really tight. “What is it?”
He kept squeaking and pointing at the bars with both his hands. It was too dark to see inside, but I recognized the smell of sewage water—it was heavy. My eyes instantly teared up as I reached for the bar, and the tips of my fingers caught fire. I pulled back my hand with a hiss. “What the fuck?”
The ward. Of course. The ward of the building extended down to the bars below the staircase.
“What’s in there, Kit?” I asked, but that’s when I realized that he wasn’t squeaking. I could see his mouth closed as he looked at me with wide eyes.
So where the hell was that sound coming from?
Somewhere behind the bars. And it didn’t sound like only one someone. It sounded like a whole damn army in there.
Somebody was trapped behind those bars, in the sewage water, and Kit wanted them out.
“I’d have to break the ward,” I reminded him. The bars were big enough to fit squirrels just fine, and that’s what I was guessing was in there. Kit’s friends, maybe? And if they couldn’t get out, it meant the ward was stopping them.
Kit squeaked again, climbing up my arm and to my shoulder. It sounded like he was begging me. I didn’t give it another thought. Closing my eyes, I took in a deep breath and began to chant a spell to break the stupid ward. It didn’t even have to be the strong one— like the one I’d learned from my Aunt Marie and used a few times in the past. I could feel the magic, and though it was strong, it wasn’t a Prime ward. It was a Level Three at best. A Guild issued spell would do just fine.
The tips of my fingers lit up bright purple a second before I finished chanting. My magic came to life inside me, rushing down my arms and into my hand, eager to be let out into the world. It almost felt like a living being sometimes—especially when I used breaking spells like this. Like my magic couldn’t wait to get a taste of the magic it was up against, just to see which was stronger. A challenge—that’s what it felt like.
Or maybe I was losing my damn mind and I was hearing things now. Perfectly possible.
The ward broke upon contact. It was like my magic was invisible fire, and it spread onto the ward, consuming it rapidly. I never heard the sound—like paper catching fire—because of the squeaks of both Kit and his friends from the other side. They were really loud.
I moved away from under the stairway to make room for them. Kit jumped off me and now that the ward was gone, he had no trouble slipping between the bars and disappearing from my view.
“Need help?” I called, but I got no answer.
What I got was something worse. Something far, far worse.
The first little creature that came out into the light made me fall back on the ground on my ass. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of it. It was a small thing, less than half of Kit’s size, and judging by the way its three eyes glowed red, I was ready to make a bet on its species.
Hellbeast. That little creature was a hellbeast. Only hellbeast eyes glowed red like that.
And he wasn’t alone.
Another two came after him and the three of them stopped in front of my feet, looking up at me curiously from their three red eyes. They were wet and they stank badly, but their bodies were covered in dark fur. They all stood on four skinny legs, and their round heads and torsos held four arms each, too.
Another came after them.
Then another.
And they kind of looked like Kit in his hellbeast form, except not quite. Kit didn’t have three eyes.
I was paralyzed by the time Kit made it out into the light. He’d shifted into his true form—a spider-like creature with eight legs, a round head, and razor-sharp teeth in his small mouth. That wasn’t even the end of it. It was like this whole situation was designed to test my limits, to see how much I could take before I passed out.
There was another hellbeast with him—I could tell by the red eyes. He was about an inch taller than Kit and he stood on four skinny legs, each tipped with two shiny claws. He had three eyes, too. The fur that coated his long body was a light grey, and a red streak ran down his back as he shook to get the water out of his fur.
Kit squeaked a screeching sound—his hellbeast cry. My mouth opened, but I had no idea what the hell to say.
That’s when it occurred to me that this was all just a dream. A very strange dream, where Kit, another hellbeast, and five little ones were standing in front of me, looking at me with their wide red eyes burning with curiosity. Yes, a dream. The most sensible explanation.
My magic vibrated in my chest—a reminder that there was actually a very easy way to find out what the hell was going on here, even if this was all just a dream. I didn’t let myself think about it; I just let it out.
Replicating Kit’s magic was easy. He didn’t have a lot of it. Hellbeasts weren’t measured by magical levels by the Sacri Guild—they weren’t supposed to exist on Earth at all—but I could make an educated guess now and say Kit’s Level would be a Two. And the second my magic wrapped around the copy of his in my chest, the change was instant. Even though I still felt like myself, I was no longer a sorceress. Kit’s screams were no longer screams. They were words.
“What’cha looking at? What? What?” he was saying, his tiny fists shaking in the air. His voice was high-pitched, like a scream even though I could make out the words perfectly now.
It was such a shock that for a second, I just stared at him. The weirdest night I’d ever had in my life. I put my hands in front of my face and rubbed my eyes raw, just in case this really was a dream or I was hallucinating the whole thing. But when I opened my eyes again, Kit and the other six hellbeasts were still right where I’d left them, looking at me.
He kept yelling. What, what, what?! My mouth opened, but I couldn’t make a single sound.
Then I cleared my throat. This was ridiculous. I had to talk to him, find out what the hell was happening. Get it together!
The words sort of burst out of me, and I was screaming before I knew it.
“What the hell is going on, Kit? What the hell is this? Because I swear to God I’m going to flip the fuck out right about now.” I’d run out of breath as I slowly dragged myself backward, away from them, as far away as I could get, just in case. I was still in shock, so I didn’t even notice at the time that my voice had completely transformed to high-pitched sounds, exactly like the ones Kit made.
For a second, Kit looked just as shocked as I felt, but he recovered much faster than me.
“Oh, you took my magic. Real great, Sin. Way to go,” Kit said with a sigh, and he walked with all of his eight legs toward me, his stick-like hands at the base of his body, where his legs began.
“I’m going to freak out.” It was a fair warning. My heart was all up in my head. It wanted out of me, now.
He slapped himself on the side of his head—a hellbeast version of a face-palm, I guess. “Don’t freak out. What the hell is wrong with you people? You see a hellbeast and you freak out?!” His tiny mouth moved incredibly fast. His teeth looked really strange, too.
I was losing it again.
“What the hell is going on, damn it?!” I shouted. Or at least I thought I shouted.
“Relax. Breathe. Remember to breathe. This is not a big deal,” Kit said, raising his thin arms my way. Then he looked behind him, at the other hellbeasts. “This is my family. They were trapped inside by the ward these people put up today, and a pipe must have broken in the room where they were staying, and it would have killed them if they hadn’t gotten out.” He moved his spider legs backward without even looking until he was right next to the tallest hellbeast of the six. “Honey, this is Sin. Remember Sin? She’s the girl I told you about—my best friend.”
My eyes closed. That was it—this was a dream. Family? Honey? The funniest, most terrifying dream in the history of all dreams.
I felt Kit walking up my leg until he reached my chest, his claws pressing on my cheeks. I tried to push him away.
“Nope. This is a dream. I’m going to wake up soon. Just let me be.”
“It’s not a dream, Sin. Don’t make a big deal out of it. Come on,” he said, his voice still high-pitched. I couldn’t understand how it wasn’t hurting my ears.
My eyes popped open. “Don’t make a big deal? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Not kidding.” He leaned closer to my face until his red eyes were all I could see. “Stop embarrassing me in front of my family, Sinea.”
Oh, God. It wasn’t a dream.
“I just…I can’t…I don’t…” I had no idea what the hell to even say to that.
“You’re not having a heart attack, are you? Because you’re heavy. I can’t carry ya, Sin.”
“What the fuck, Kit? You have a family?” I didn’t even dare look at them, but two of the little ones were by my sneaker, and I think they were sniffing it. Don’t look, I reminded myself.
“Of course I do. Where do you think I go at night?” He had the decency to sound offended.
“And you didn’t tell me?!” What the hell was wrong with him?
“I would have if I could speak human. You haven’t been able to understand me since you were a girl,” Kit said, and two of his front legs reached up to the sides of his head, moving in a circular motion. Like he was massaging his temples.
“But…but how? When? Just…how?” There were probably a lot more questions I wanted to ask but my brain wasn’t functioning properly for obvious reasons.
“Three years ago, I met Dalia—my mate. We had the beasties just four months ago.” He grinned, the little fucker, and it looked like an image straight from someone’s nightmares with all his sharp teeth and red eyes. He would have scared me if I didn’t want to kick his ass so badly right now.
Beasties. “Beasties.” I tasted the word on my tongue.
“Yes, beasties. My offspring.”
Offspring? I shook my head, hoping it would clear my mind. I just needed to focus, that was all. Just focus. “So…you just kept them here and came to visit them?”
“When I wasn’t running after you, yeah. But it’s time they came home now.” His thin hands folded in front of his furry torso.
“Home? What do you mean, home?” I asked, squinting my eyes at him. Because I had a feeling he meant…
“The apartment. Our home.” Yes, exactly that.
“They are not coming to the apartment.” Fuck no. No way in hell. Just…no. Hellbeasts didn’t belong on Earth at all in the first place!
“Of course they are. They’re my family. You took your brother with you when you came here, didn’t you?” Kit said, and he was damn serious, too.
“That’s Sonny! He’s my brother! What’s—”
“And they are my family. I’ve been giving you time, but it’s gone far enough. I can’t protect them out here—see what happened while I was away to bring them food?” He turned to the three-story building and actually shook his head at it. “They warded it. Fucking dickheads.”
Oh, man. Kit just said dickheads. This was surreal. I couldn’t even begin to understand any of it, but I did know one thing, and I told him so. “They are not coming to the apartment, Kit. Forget it.”
“Sure they are.” His words sounded slurred together—I barely understood him. Or maybe it was just me? How much time had passed since I took his power?
Shit, I’d forgotten to time it.
“No, they’re not.”
“We’ll compromise, Sin. But right now, we need to go. They smell bad. They need to be washed.” He smiled, the fucker, and again, the image wanted to scare me. It just couldn’t get through the shock.
“No compromise.” I pushed myself up to my feet and my knees still shook.
“Thank you, Sin,” Kit said, moving backward to his…family.
“I said no compromise.” Maybe he couldn’t understand me, either?
“Yes, thank you. You’re a rock star.”
Ugh. “Whatever. They’re not coming and that’s final.”
I turned around, trying to ignore the others with every fiber in me, and I walked out of the gate. Whoever this apartment building belonged to, I didn’t want them to come find me here with a broken
ward. The Sacri Guild at my door was the last thing I needed right now.
“Let’s go. Stay close,” Kit was saying, his words almost completely a scream now.
“They’re not coming to the apartment!” I reminded him for one last time when I closed the gate behind me.
Two minutes later, I made my way back home with seven hellbeasts running behind me.
I was still not entirely convinced that it wasn’t a dream. Every few seconds, I’d turn my head back just to make sure that I hadn’t imagined the whole thing, but every time I did, I’d see all of them running after me. Kit had shifted into a squirrel again, but the others—his family—still looked exactly like before with the red eyes and everything. At least humans couldn’t see them. Mal and Jamie, my best friends, were going to freak out worse than me when they heard about this.
We were two blocks from my apartment when I noticed something across the street. It was just a man—I could see his silhouette, but the way he stood, so perfectly still, made me stop in my tracks. My mind cleared in an instant, all my instincts coming to life. I might not have seen his face, but I knew one thing for a fact: only vampires could stand as perfectly still as he was standing.
And vampires were never good news for me, unfortunately.
My first thought was Damian Reed, even though he wasn’t as tall as the guy I was looking at, just a dark silhouette against the maroon bricks of the building behind him. I hadn’t seen Damian in almost a month, and to be honest, I didn’t expect to see him again. At least I hoped I wouldn’t see him again for a really long time.
But it wasn’t Damian, and as much as I hated my own body for it, my stomach turned with disappointment.
Right until the vampire took half a step forward and the light of the lamppost fell on his face.
I recognized him instantly.
His dark eyes gleamed, even in the distance. He was big, at least six foot three, with very wide shoulders, and freakishly long arms. His blond hair was cut close to his head, his muscles almost bursting out of his black leather jacket.
