Damn it. Sometimes she didn’t know which part was worse—the demon half or the human one. But she’d be far away soon enough, somewhere that didn’t remind her of Philadelphia. Or Toronto, for that matter. She had no time for the luxury of those memories, no matter how their ghostly fingers prodded the deepest recesses of her brain. She must be on guard at all times.
Tristan leaned forward and kissed the frigid metal marker. A few dead flowers speckled the grave. Did Momma come often, or was she still afraid to acknowledge the dead after what happened with Daddy? Tradition, dictating she push Mami out of her mind, undoubtedly made her remorse easier to tolerate.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Mami. But I know what I am, and what Beebee Zsofika was. I know why you couldn’t tell me.”
The sun sank lower behind the trees, casting long, cold shadows over the cemetery, and the icy scent of impending snow hovered in the air. Tristan stood up and rubbed her chilled fingers together. “I love you, Mami. I didn’t know how much you gave me until it was too late.”
The caretaker waited at the front gate, raising his watch to his eyes as she approached. She thanked him and passed through the iron door beneath an imposing stone archway, just as dusk fell and the first snowflakes began to swirl in the inevitable darkness.
~
Mira Tesler. White letters etching themselves onto the scratchboard of her brain; memories awakening within each nerve. Mira’s soft, anemic skin, bruised with unintentional ease in the passion of their too few nights together. Her lips. Her voice’s cigarette-stained pitch.
Gone.
Tristan guzzled the last of a tar-like cup of coffee and looked out the diner’s large picture window at fat flakes of snow drifting from the sky. She fished into her jacket pocket for a crumpled strip of paper. Pictures from a photo booth at the movie theatre. A sepia-toned Mira mugging for the camera and Tristan beside her, beaming in her life’s one moment of unconditional happiness. There had never been a future for them, but the promise of it had been lovely indeed.
She folded the photo strip and set it in the ashtray. Touched the glowing tip of her cigarette to it. The glossy paper melted and burned, a brown cancer eating through them, through the artifice that was their relationship. Mira had made her choice, and Tristan performed her duty. Regret was an inexcusable intrusion; if she felt sympathy for one, it weakened her against all others. Humans were so corruptible, though they believed themselves invincible. It was why they needed her. To protect them from themselves.
She must find the others, young women with nothing to lose. The rest of the Hunters. The world needed survivors in the months and years to come, people who did not simply give up when life stole all that mattered to them. And it would.
She wished she could spit out the bitterness burning inside her. She must learn how to harness it instead, to hold onto her fury but hold out for the light. She must be everywhere and nowhere at once, like the monsters she hunted.
A halottak utazási gyors, she thought in the language of her homeland.
For the dead travel fast.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to William H. Horner, Tim Waggoner, Kristina Elyse Butke, Lesley L. Smith, Ryan DeMoss, Michelle R. Lane, Sheldon Higdon, Maria V. Snyder, Dr. Michael A. Arnzen, Scott A. Johnson, Anne Harris, Barbara Miller, Dr. Nicole Peeler, Joe Borelli, John Dixon, and Chris Shearer; Dr. Heidi K. Hosey, Helen Pilinovsky, Robin McKinley, The International Thriller Writers, and Jonathan Maberry.
About the Author
Jennifer Loring’s short fiction has been published in numerous magazines, webzines, and anthologies. In 2013, she won Crystal Lake Publishing’s first Tales from the Lake horror competition, and in 2014, DarkFuse published her novella Conduits to critical acclaim. Jenn is a member of the International Thriller Writers and the Horror Writers Association and holds an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She lives in Philadelphia, PA, with her husband and a turtle named—what else?—Ninja.
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