The creatures took a step toward her and she looked up, finding herself unable to move. Her mind screamed at her to run, to get out of there, only her body would not obey. Her gaze slipped back down to the faces of her parents, their eyes wide open and staring at something far off that she couldn't see.
Suddenly, the front door crashed inward. It slammed against the wall behind it with a sound like a cannon firing and Ella was vaguely aware of a man rushing by, her eyes remained fixed on the bodies of her parents.
One of the creatures hissed and then let out a sound that could only be described as a squeal, and then abruptly, it fell silent. She heard the man grunt, which was followed by another of the strange squealing noises. Ella finally looked up to see the man, who was holding a curved, wicked looking sword covered in a viscous green fluid, standing with his back to her.
On the floor at his feet were the headless corpses of the two lizard-men that had been eating her parents. A puddle of something dark and green – which she assumed was blood – spreading out from their necks and mixing with the crimson of her parents' blood.
Slowly, the man turned to her and Ella wet herself, and then immediately kicked herself inwardly, hating that she'd shown weakness. But she was terrified about what was going on, about who this man was, and she was distraught about her parents.
The man wore a dark cloak with the hood pulled up over his head. A mask covered the bottom half of his face, leaving just his eyes exposed. The eyes were cold. Emotionless. The eyes of a killer. Ella felt herself trembling and backing up until she ran into the wall with nowhere else to go.
“Its okay,” the man said. “I'm not going to hurt you. Are you okay? Were you hurt?”
Ella shook her head, her heart thundering in her chest, her eyes still wide. She couldn't move. Couldn't speak. She could barely form a coherent thought as she looked at the man and the cutting edge of the dangerous looking sword in his hand.
The overhead lights in the kitchen gleamed coldly off the edge of the steel and glistened wetly on the green liquid splashed across the surface. Terror stole through her and she couldn't pry her eyes off of the blade. Ella's mind told her to turn and run. To get out of there. Still, her body failed to act.
“It's okay,” the man said. “What's your name?”
She finally managed to tear her eyes away from the sword and looked up at the man. He pushed back his hood and pulled down the mask, revealing a gruff looking face. His eyes were as dark as the thick beard that covered his face and he had long, dark hair shot through with gray. Ella just stood there and stared, her body trembling and tears flowing down her cheeks.
“I – I wet myself,” she said softly.
A gentle smile touched his face. “That's okay, little one,” he said. “What's your name?”
“E – Ella,” she said.
“Well, Ella,” the man replied. “My name is Jacob. And it's really important that we get out of here.”
“B – but, my parents,” she said.
He let out a soft sigh, an expression of sadness upon his face. “They're gone,” he said. “There's nothing you can do for them, Ella.”
She let out a choked sob as the reality of the situation hit her like a baseball bat to the stomach. Warm, fresh tears streamed down her cheeks and the trembling in her body grew even more pronounced. Jacob looked at her, an incredulous expression on his face. It was as if he were having some sort of internal dialogue or debate with himself. After a moment, he nodded and his face grew grim.
“One thing I can tell you,” Jacob said, “is that your parents would not want you to suffer the same fate they did.”
Ella looked up at him, not understanding what he was saying. He gestured to the dead lizard-men on the ground.
“There are more of those things coming,” he said. “A lot more. It would be in our best interest to not be here when they show up.”
Ella looked back at the lifeless forms of her parents. She shook her head, still trying to deny what she was seeing. What she was feeling. Ella was wishing desperately to wake up in her bed to discover that this had been all part of some incredibly vivid nightmare.
But when she felt the man's hand on her tiny shoulder, the truth and reality of the situation came crashing down on her all over again.
“Ella, I can protect you,” he said. “But we need to go. And we need to go now.”
She looked up at him, her fear so great, it felt like her every nerve ending was on fire. She shook her head, not wanting to leave her parents. Her home. Though a quick look back at the carnage in the kitchen told her that she no longer had parents. No longer had a home.
“Ella,” Jacob said, urgency in his voice. “I don't want to leave you here. But there are too many out there for me to fight. You either come with me now or...”
His voice trailed off, but Ella followed his eyes, seeing that he was looking at the bodies of her parents. She looked back up at him, giving him a small nod of her head. A gentle smile touched his lips again and a look of determination flashed through his eyes.
Ella cast one last look back at her parents as Jacob took her by the hand and led her out of the house. She felt her heart breaking a little more with each step she took, but deep down, she knew that Jacob was right, her parents would have wanted her to live.
And to avenge them.
Chapter One
Ella
Present Day...
“Do you have eyes on the target?”
Jacob's voice came through the Bluetooth earpiece I was wearing and I looked around, searching for our target. The moon was high in the nighttime sky, but a heavy cloud cover cast the world around me in dim, murky light. Visibility was a problem and when you were dealing with creatures like these, you needed to be able to see clearly.
“We should have brought the night vision,” I hissed. “I don't see a damn thing.”
“Too late to worry about it now,” he said. “Just keep your head up and your eyes peeled. It's out here.”
I crept down the alleyway between the two darkened buildings. The stench was horrible with trash piled up on either side of me. I passed a homeless man who sat propped up against the wall, newspapers covering his legs, and a bottle of something in his hand. His eyes fell on the two curved blades in my hands, his eyes growing wide.
“Don't worry about it, old man,” I said. “I'm not here for you. And you didn't see a thing.”
He shook his head and said nothing, but took a healthy swig of his bottle. I walked on silent feet, padding down the alley, my every sense heightened and alert. The Scales were out there, lurking in the darkness, hunting their next victim.
And it was our job to hunt them, to stop them.
After Jacob rescued me the night my parents were killed by the things we called Scales, he took me under his wing. He trained me. Taught me how to fight. How to survive. He'd molded and shaped me, turning me into a Hunter. Like him.
Night after night, we prowled the streets, hunting the Scales – and whatever other creatures we came across. It was our mission. Our duty as members of the Order of Midnight to protect the people of this city. It was a charge we held sacred and a duty we performed without question, without hesitation, and without fear.
The people of Los Angeles lived in a blissful ignorance. For them, the things that went bump in the night were things they laughed at. Made light of. Oh, sure, the people had to deal with random violence from gun-wielding thugs and the occasional serial killer, but if they knew what else lurked in the darkness, hunting them, preying upon them, people would lose their minds. They'd stay boarded up in their homes, never daring to set foot outside, lest they be swallowed up by the monsters that actually roamed the world.
For the people of LA, monsters were things of a child's imagination. Fairy tale creatures who never touched the real world. But people like Jacob and me knew better. We saw them, fought them and killed them every single night. They were absolutely real and they could absolutely kill you.
As honored as I was to be a member of the Order and to have this sacred duty entrusted to me –I'd be lying if I said there weren't days I didn't long to go back to that blissful ignorance.
“Jacob,” I said. “Are you sure they're even out here?”
“Ella, haven't you learned by now that they're always out here?” he replied. “It's just a matter of finding them.”
Ordinarily, the Scales stuck to more remote locations to hunt and kill. Or at least, locations they weren't going to be easily spotted at. Like neighborhoods. Like my childhood home. They traveled through the sewers in the dead of night and popped up like a Jack in the Box from hell to steal away somebody's child. Somebody's parent.
Though lately, they'd been getting bolder. There had been a number of attacks within the city proper. Enough that it was beginning to draw attention – as half eaten bodies left in the middle of the city were apt to do. It was catching the eye of the media and the police, neither of whom, were our friends. Our little war was quiet and invisible. Not meant for public consumption.
And we sure as hell couldn't afford to be questioned or detained by the cops. Something that was highly likely given the number of weapons we typically toted around. I didn't think explaining to them that we were battling monsters and protecting humanity was exactly going to fly.
The Scales had been acting out of character. Where they would normally take their victims below the city, dragging them through the sewers to their lair, they had suddenly started killing and leaving the carcasses of their victims in alleys. In parking lots. Basically, where ever they felt like leaving the bodies, I supposed.
It was unusual. And it was unsettling.
“Yeah, but why are we here? In this location?” I asked.
“I got a tip that the Scales have been running around in this part of the city,” he said.
“You got a tip?”
“From a very reliable source,” he said. “Somebody I trust.”
Trust was something Jacob didn't hand out easily. I could probably count the number of people he actually trusted on one hand and still have fingers leftover. Still, I trusted Jacob and knew that his intel was always good. If he said there were Scales out here, there were. And we had to stop them before they hurt anybody.
The sound of a scream echoed through the night. It was blood curdling and filled with terror; which I figured meant one thing.
“You hear that, Jacob?”
“Two steps ahead of you,” he said. “As always.”
I ran down the alley, heading in the direction I thought the scream had come from. I had to run down a street that was typically busy, but at that time of night, it was fairly deserted. Thankfully. Besides this was LA, so the sound of somebody's screams didn't typically draw a lot of attention. Seemingly, even less in the middle of the night.
Which was a sad commentary on humanity and sometimes made me question why we were even trying to save people who could be so cold and callous to one another. Nevertheless, the answer that I always recalled was the same – it was my duty. And at the end of the day, it was a duty I was proud to fulfill.
Jacob was already in the vacant lot behind a run down, cheap hotel when I got there. He was prowling around through the tall grass, weeds, and trash strewn about the lot. Even in the dim light of the night, I could see that he was troubled. Angry.
“Here,” he said flatly.
I walked over to where he was and pulled the mask that covered the lower part of my face down. Tossed amongst the other trash in the lot was the body of a man. Or at least, most of the body of a man. Like all the other victims, it had been hollowed out. And like all the others, the look of pure horror mixed with agony had been frozen onto his face. His sightless eyes stared up at the overcast sky, all spark of life in them gone. Snuffed out.
“Dammit,” I snarled, kicking a rock at my feet where it bounded away into the darkness of the lot.
Jacob sighed. “We did our best –”
“And it wasn't good enough.”
Jacob looked up at me, his expression grim. “Ella, what's the first thing I taught you all those years ago?”
“I know, I know,” I said.
“No, you apparently don't know,” he replied. “What is it?”
I sighed. “That we aren't going to be able to save everybody.”
He nodded. “That's right. So, we must do as much good as we can in the time we have,” he said. “Put down as many of those bastards as we can and save as many as possible.”
Jacob was right and I knew it. There was no way we could save all of the people. But as I looked down at the man on the ground at our feet, I couldn't help but wonder if he had a child at home; and what that child would be told when his body was discovered. I wondered how many nights that child would sit up, wondering when her father was going to come home. Wondering if maybe she'd done something to make him go away.
“I can see what you're doing,” Jacob said. “It's written all over your face.”
“What?”
“You're making this personal again,” he said. “You can't do that. You've got to be dispassionate about this, Ella.”
I shook my head. “I can't do that,” I said. “And I think that's what makes me a good hunter, Jacob. I take this personally.”
“You keep burning that hot though,” he said, “eventually, you're going to burn out. Just be careful, Ella. Emotions can get messy. They can make you take risks you wouldn't normally take. Make you miss something that can get you killed.”
“I'm always careful, Jacob,” I said.
“Keep it that way.”
He pulled something out of his pocket – a small bottle.
“What's that?” I asked.
“A little something to help us out,” he said. “Hopefully.”
I watched as he poured some of the liquid out of the bottle and onto the body. Almost instantly, the body began to – well – melt. I felt my eyes widen as what was left of the man's body disintegrated. Everything just vanished. Clothes, hair, bones, it all melted away, turning into a large puddle of unidentifiable goo.”
“What in the hell is that, Jacob?” I asked. “Acid?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Order leadership is passing this around to help us dispose of the bodies we come across. They want to avoid police interference, or detection, so, it's best if we get rid of the bodies.”
“How does it work?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “All I do know is that it's not going to get rid of everything – DNA and stuff like that. And you can see that there's still a bunch of blood and stuff on the ground. If somebody gets the idea to test this, they're going to know it was a human body. But at least, the actual body is gone. They'd have to know what they were looking for.”
I nodded. “Good,” I said. “That's good news.”
If we could keep the cops from finding half eaten bodies, it would keep them from looking into things too deeply. Which definitely was good news because it meant we could continue to operate freely. We wouldn't have to patrol at night with one eye open for Scales and the other for cops.
“It's getting late,” Jacob said. “We should head back.”
“I want to take one more pass around the area,” I said. “I'll meet you back home.”
He shook his head. “No, you won't,” he said. “You're not running around out here on your own. It's too dangerous.”
I looked at him, my mood growing darker. The subject of my readiness for solo hunting was something we'd discussed, or rather, argued about, for some time now. I was ready. Well trained. Jacob, like an overprotective parent, thought I needed a little more time in the field. A little more time under his supervision.
“Jacob –”
He held up his hand and shook his head. “End of discussion,” he said. “We're packing it in for the night.”
I looked at him a moment longer, feeling the anger boiling up inside of me. I wasn't a child anymore. I didn't need to be coddled. Wha
t I needed was to be out in the streets, hunting and killing the monsters that were stealing the lives of people in the city.
The monsters who'd stolen my life.
“Fine,” I said, my voice cold.
Without another word, I turned and stalked away, the cloud of anger settling down over me as dark as it was thick. Nonetheless, I knew that as of that moment, there was nothing I could do. I was subordinate to Jacob. But I was going to change that. He didn't know it yet, but I was going to petition the area leadership of the Order. I was going to demand to be cleared for solo duty.
It's not that I didn't love Jacob like a father, and didn't appreciate everything he'd done for me since he'd taken me in all those years ago. It was that I was ready. I knew I could do a lot more good for a lot more people if he took the training wheels off and let me cut loose.
I was ready to hunt. To kill.
Chapter Two
Zarik
I stood at the window, staring out at the nighttime lights of Los Angeles spread out below me. It had been about a year since I'd been in LA and I had to admit that I'd missed it a bit. There was just something about the frenetic energy of the city that hyped me up. There was always something happening in the city. Always something to do.
And of course, there was always something to kill.
I was a Dragonborn Ranger, part of the force sent to the land of men from Chondelai. We were there to protect humanity from the creatures that preyed on them – many of which, came to their world because of the carelessness of our ancestors.
Of course, as we've been learning over the years, the world of man had plenty of monsters of their own.
We fought them all. Our charge was to protect humanity, and so we did. Whether the creature was born in Chondelai or the world of man, we protected humanity from them all. It was our duty and one that was a high honor among the Dragonborn.
No Such Thing as Dragons : Complete Series Box Set (Books 1 - 5) Page 14
