Shadow Realms

by Kelly Carrero

  This wasn’t going to be so bad.

  Finn gestured for me to enter.

  I’ve got this. Squaring my shoulders, I entered the room, with Finn following closely.

  Hushed whispers then deathly silence filled the air as curious eyes fell on me. I could almost hear their thoughts damning me like Max had done. It was like high school, only these were a bunch of late teens and so-called adults who should’ve known better.

  “Ignore them,” Finn said, standing beside me.

  For once, I wanted him to grab hold of me and wrap his arm around my shoulders, showing them I was his sister and nobody should dare try to touch me. But, like I’d asked of him, Finn didn’t lay a single finger on me.

  Freaking bastard.

  That was his problem. Overbearing one second then cool as ice the next.

  Almost as soon as I had that thought, Finn shoved me back into someone behind me. Then he stormed through the room, dodging the tables and chairs, heading straight toward Max.

  Barely familiar hands grasped my shoulders, his warm breath blowing against my ear as he leaned down and said, “Let him do what he needs to do.”

  Guess Kade was taking this whole babysitting gig seriously, and after what Max had done to me, I was all too happy to go along with it as well. “Finn can kill the bastard for all I care.”

  11

  Holding my breath as Finn smashed his fist into Max’s jaw, I watched on with satisfaction that my brother had my back. As much as I hated Finn getting all up in my shit, I missed this part of his overprotectiveness. And considering I didn’t stand a chance of making Max pay for what he’d done to me without the help of some random’s blood, I was all for brotherly instincts.

  But that would have to change. If I was to live in this new world and have any chance of holding my own, I would have to learn to fight.

  Max took the hit, falling onto the ground, not bothering to try to fight back.

  Finn stood over him, said something so low I couldn’t hear it, and headed to an empty table and cocked his head toward us.

  We made our way through the group of hunters, their eyes never wavering from us as we sat on the chairs, Kade in front of me and Finn at the head of the table, back to the wall, facing the room, both ready to defend me if needed.

  “Well, that was fun,” I said, raising a brow at Finn.

  His gaze snapped to mine. “There was nothing fun about hitting one of my best friends.”

  I spread my hands out on the table. “Well, looks like you need some better friends.” I glanced at Kade. “He doesn’t want to kill me.”

  “That’s because he hasn’t been through the same thing as Max, and if he had, I would think Kade would want to kill you as well.”

  I gulped as I remembered the scars covering Max’s neck. “What happened to him?”

  “That’s not my story to tell.”

  I arched a brow. “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly,” Finn replied with conviction. “Now, what do you want to eat? There’s chicken, steak, pasta, and a couple of salads.”

  I sighed. “Why can’t I just go up there and pick for myself?”

  Finn stood. “Because you can’t.”

  And there went my appreciation for his brotherly love. “Fine. Get me whatever.” I waved my hand at him in a dismissive way, which made him smirk.

  Finn headed toward the front, leaving me alone with Kade. “Aren’t you going, too?”

  “After what happened last time I left you alone? I think not.”

  “So, you’re just going to let my brother boss you around. Is that the way it is around here?”

  He folded his arms on the table. “Who says he’s making me do anything I don’t want to do?”

  I squashed the butterflies that tried to take flight in my stomach and reminded myself Kade only saw me for what I was to Finn—the little sister who couldn’t take care of herself. “You know, there’s no way you can both be there to protect me every second of the day.”

  “Make a bet.”

  I breathed out harshly. “Let me rephrase that. I don’t want to have to live with either one of you following my ass every second of the day, so someone needs to either teach me to defend myself, or more appropriately, give me a weapon so I won’t need either of you.”

  The corner of his lips tipped up into a smirk. “Way to crush a guy’s ego.” And there he went with his flirtatious comments. I grinned. The guy was hot, and I couldn’t help myself around him. “As much as I’ve enjoyed our time together, it just won’t last if things continue the way they have.”

  I dropped my smile. “I’m serious. I can’t always rely on the two of you to protect me. I want to learn to protect myself.”

  Kade scratched the side of his head. “See, that’s the thing. You can learn to fight, but it won’t do any good if you’re talking about going up against Max.”

  “Are you saying a professionally trained girl can’t possibly beat a guy?”

  “An average guy, yeah. But not one of us.” I was about to open my mouth when Kade continued. “And before you say anything about me being a chauvinist prick for thinking a woman couldn’t take down a man, that’s not what I’m saying.”

  He gestured to the other people in the room. “Look around. Hunters aren’t gender-specific. We all come in various shapes and forms, but there is one thing that each and every hunter has that sets us above the rest.”

  “Which is what?” I asked, trying to contain my frustration.

  “Something that Kade shouldn’t be telling you about.” Finn set a plate filled with gravy-covered steak and chicken pesto pasta in front of me and then returned to his seat with a plate of his own piled with everything on the menu.

  The guy was a pig.

  I was about to call him out on it when I noticed half the other people in the room had plates that were piled high as well.

  Kade stood. “I’ll leave you guys to discuss the reasons why Kali won’t hear anything more about us. Which by the way, I think is totally hypocritical.” He smirked at me as Finn gave him the dirty eye. Then Kade headed down toward the front of the room, avoiding what was bound to be a very heated discussion.

  I stared at Finn, waiting for whatever verbal garbage was going to come out of his mouth, informing me of the reasons he wanted to keep me in the dark after everything I’d been through and all the promises he’d made about telling me everything once I’d been deemed safe. But as the seconds ticked by, it became obvious he wasn’t saying shit. “You owe me.”

  He picked up his knife and fork. “I don’t owe you anything but keeping you safe.”

  “Hiding the truth won’t keep me safe. Information is what I need, not some overprotective macho shit you’ve worked out in your head to keep my safe.” I glared at him. “You failed then, and you’re failing now.”

  Finn pointed his knife at me. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. The things we hunters do would haunt your waking hours. You do not want to become one of us.”

  “Unbelievable!” I shook my head in dismay as I looked at him, trying to get him to understand how stupid he was being. “I’m not afraid of demons or other things that go bump in the night. What scares me is not knowing and, more importantly, feeling defenseless. I thought you of all people would understand that.” I glanced toward Max, who was sitting at a table down in the front with a group of others, who laughed as they ate their meals. But not Max. He made the motions of joining the conversation, but the way he glanced in my direction confirmed his head was with me.

  Finn peered over his shoulder, then brought his gaze back to mine. “He won’t cause you anymore trouble.”

  “Why? Because you hit him?” I scoffed. “Yeah, I feel really safe now.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” he said, pointing the knife at me again.

  “So, I’m supposed to believe he won’t do anything to me after this talk you had with him, when I’m pretty sure you would’ve said the exact same thing when he was loo
king for me down in the dungeon?”

  “It’s not a dungeon.”

  I glared at him.

  He averted his gaze to his meal. “It won’t be a problem because you won’t be a problem.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ll be leaving in the morning.”

  Rage burned inside of me, begging to be freed in the form of a punch in the face to my brother. Taking a few deep breaths, I tried to calm myself. Leaving didn’t necessarily mean I was going home. Leaving could be what they did to new recruits. For all I knew, there was an academy for hunters in training, and he was going against everything that was ingrained in his egotistical brain and letting me become the thing I desired the most. Sure, I’d only aimed for this career path for less than twenty-four hours, but that was beside the point. I knew what I wanted, and I could feel the disappointment that Finn was surely to bring.

  Once I had my shit together, and I no longer wanted to crawl over the table and sock him one, I asked, “Leaving for where?”

  “You’re going home.”

  Trying to control my anger, I took another few deep breaths and spread my hands over the table, pressing hard into the wood as if that would control my rage. “Please tell me you aren’t trying to get me to go back home as in where I lived before last night, go to school, and pretend these last few hours never happened. Pretend my big brother is the same vampire junkie who was one of the first to choose that way of life, and pretend I don’t give a shit that my baby brother is missing. Because I already told you that is so not going to happen.” I stood and glared at him, my chest heaving as everything inside of me urged me to strangle the bastard who pretended to care.

  His mouth formed a smug grin. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  And that was it. I dove over the table and tackled him to the floor, getting in a punch to his jaw before he had me on my back, pinning me with his weight.

  “See,” he said. “This is why. You’re unstable, impulsive, and hotheaded. The only thing you’ve ever stuck with is your running, and that’s because it gets you leniency in all your subjects so you can do the things you’re really committed to, drugs and partying.”

  I pushed back, but it was useless. He had me where he wanted, and I was powerless against him. Everything he said was true, but there were reasons for my behavior that he never wanted to acknowledge. “I’m like this because of you.”

  “See that’s the thing. It’s not because of me. You can’t blame me for the way you reacted to a situation. If you did it then, you’re going to do it again. Only this time, it will be a matter of life and death—and it may not be yours. We rely on each other and have to make critical decisions that others don’t want to make.”

  He climbed off me and stood. “You’ll never last because of your defiance.”

  Forcing myself not to rub my aching wrists, I stood. “It’s because of my defiance that I would make this work. I will do things others are too afraid to do. I will do anything to become one of you and, more importantly, protect those who can’t.” When Finn didn’t say anything, I added, “If you send me back, I’m just going to find my own way to Mason, and you know how that turned out last time.”

  He stared at me for a few seconds then swore. “You’re a little brat, you know that?”

  I grinned. “And you’re still the power-tripping asshole I remember.”

  Smiling, he shook his head.

  “Does this mean you’ll let me stay?”

  An alarm on Finn’s watch beeped at the exact time as half a dozen other alarms went off. His smile dropped as he scanned the room, locking eyes with various people before returning to me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, feeling the tension in the room skyrocket the moment the alarms sounded.

  “There’s been another attack.”

  12

  A mixture of exhilaration, excitement, hope, and fear spread through my veins the moment I heard the words spill from Finn’s mouth.

  This could be it.

  The moment I’d been waiting for.

  I darted toward him, hope filling my eyes, our argument a forgotten memory. “Is it Mason?”

  He shook his head. “I highly doubt it. They don’t bring the possibilities into the general population. They’re to be kept safe and guarded from the likes of us.”

  My hope deflated the slightest but not entirely, because how could Finn be sure? Okay, so he had been doing this for a few years, and me? Well, all I had was hope, and I wasn’t giving up on it anytime soon.

  This was my little brother we were talking about. Every situation that brought me a little bit closer to him was a good thing. And if we were able to protect the innocents while we searched, even better.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, electricity buzzing under the surface of my skin, ready to take on the monsters that destroyed every life they touched.

  Finn grabbed my elbow. “You are not going anywhere.” He dragged me toward the entrance to the room. “You will stay here where you won’t get into any trouble.”

  I tried to fight free of his grasp, but it was useless. He was too strong for me, almost… inhuman. “What happened to the yes you gave me two seconds ago? Or does your word still mean nothing even though you expect others to keep theirs?”

  He dragged me through the doors and into the hallway. “Max will be coming with me, so he won’t be any trouble for you.”

  “That’s beside the point,” I said, still trying to pull my elbow free. “You said I could be one of you.”

  “I said no such thing.”

  “Uh, yeah you did.”

  He swung me in front of him and glared at me. “Only the elite can become one of the hunters. You’d need to prove yourself on the inside before they’d let you become one of us. So, yes, I did say you can stay. But stay here, as in the compound.”

  “Then teach me.”

  Anger boiled inside of him, making his nostrils flare as he did that thing with his jaw again. “I don’t have time for this conversation.” When I went to open my mouth to refute his statement, he added, “While you’re arguing to become a killer, there are innocent people out there—people you say you want to protect—who could be dying.”

  I snapped my mouth shut.

  Point taken.

  “Good,” he said. “Now I want you to go back up to my room and stay there until I get back. Do you hear me?”

  I glanced over his shoulder and shriveled internally as I realized we had an audience of not only Kade but Max as well. And the smug look on his face was infuriating.

  Leaning in closer to Finn, I whispered, “I don’t know where your room is.”

  “Fine. Then go back to Kade’s.” He swiveled his head to the left. “Is that okay with you, Kade?”

  “Of course,” he replied, his eyes locking with mine, giving me a compassionate smile.

  “Thanks, but I don’t exactly remember where your room is either.”

  Max barked out a laugh. “You want to be a hunter, yet you can’t even retrace your own steps?”

  Kade snapped his head in Max’s direction. “You’re a real ass, you know that?”

  Max shrugged. “Just stating the obvious.” He turned around and broke into a jog, disappearing around the corner.

  “We better go,” Kade said. “Do you want to sit this one out?”

  Finn shook his head. “Not a chance.” He took a few hurried steps back. “You want to be a hunter? Prove you can retrace your steps.” He did a one-eighty and raced down the hall.

  Kade still wore that sympathetic look on his face. “Two flights up then right, left, and then fifth door on the right.”

  I smiled. “Thanks.”

  “You’ve got this.” He gave me one more smile and followed the others, leaving me standing alone in the hall, trying to remember Kade’s directions.

  Where the hell was my phone when I needed it?

  This place should come with a map.

  With Kade�
��s directions on a repeat in my mind, I made my way down the hall and turned the corner where I came to the stairs. I proceeded up two flights of stairs then headed down the halls that seemed to go on forever now that I was paying such close attention to my surroundings. Eventually, I came to the hall where Max had shown me how much love he had for me.

  A shiver ran down my spine as I remembered how easily he’d gotten the upper hand. I laughed internally. Hell, who was I kidding? There was no upper hand. He’d flat out dominated me in every way possible.

  I didn’t stand a chance against him.

  But that would change.

  It had to.

  Taking a deep breath, I forced my gaze away from the wall that held a little too much of my dignity than I wanted to admit and made my way down the hall until I reached the fifth door on the right.

  A smile spread across my face as I opened the door and entered Kade’s room.

  Take that, Max.

  I had the makings of a hunter after all.

  With hope in my heart and a spring in my step, I looked out the window into the moonless sky. As much as I knew I could never again take human blood, I couldn’t help but wish for the extra abilities it inflicted on me. Being able to see in the dark was something I’d dreamed of when I was a child, when I’d been afraid of things that went bump in the night. That only worsened when I learned there weren’t just things that went bump in the night; there were things that had the ability to rip you limb from limb and drain the ever-loving life out of you to satiate their demonic desires.

  My face slumped as I thought about how easily I’d succumbed to them. Sure, I still felt as if I had control. But did I really?

  I sat on the window ledge, pulled my feet up in front of me, and rested my back against the frame as I stared aimlessly at the night sky, wondering what the hunters were all doing. Had they found Mason? Was one of the hunters injured—Max hopefully? That would’ve made my life so much easier. Then again, did he have to pay for despising my decisions? Scratch that, my decisions were mine, not his, and I clearly didn’t have any vampiric tendencies now, yet he still treated me as if I were one of the monsters they hunted.