Night Hunter (The Devil of Harrowgate Book 1)

by Katerina Martinez

  This one, however; this one was different. Her skin wasn’t grey and covered in red scars, her teeth—though sharp—weren’t the monstrous tusks I had been expecting to encounter. She was… sublime. Strong, swift, and strangely sensual, with a body I couldn’t keep my eyes off.

  I shut my eyes and drew in a deep breath through my nose, plucking her scent out of the air. Though she was covered in the blood of a man I once knew, I could push past it to uncover the sweet aroma of her flesh lingering beneath it. I was drawn to it, inexplicably, inexorably.

  And that was why she was dangerous.

  I had spent years hammering my discipline into shape with the sheer strength of my own willpower. Why? Because among the masses of the world I was one of the few who understood, in order to succeed, emotions had to be suppressed and locked away. Emotions were a weakness, a vulnerability; and those who allowed themselves to be vulnerable opened the door to ruin.

  Some might call me hollow, and maybe that was true. And maybe it was also true that in that vast hollowness, her amber eyes burned like distant stars freshly winked into existence.

  Maybe.

  Maybe that was true.

  But it didn’t matter. As intriguing as she may have been, the danger she posed could not be overstated. I could not risk succumbing to ruin. There was too much at stake. She would prove useful in the coming weeks, yes, but when she had outgrown that usefulness, I would have to snuff her starry eyes out like candles in the night.

  Because she was one of them.

  She was an Outsider.

  She was the enemy.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The guard marched me down the corridor and through three gated checkpoints before shoving me into a big holding cell. There was nobody else in there but me, but the stench of sweat and fear lingered in the musky air all the same. A large mirror spanned the entire length of one wall, but the others were bare.

  There, I saw myself for what felt like the first time in my entire life.

  The giant wings pinned against my back were the first thing I noticed. They were black, leathery, with sharp spines jutting out of the joints and scales covering some of the harder, more rigid parts. I hadn’t seen them properly in the interrogation room, but I saw them now, and damn if they didn’t make me look tiny in comparison.

  But I wasn’t tiny. Sure, the guards I’d come across probably thought I was weak as shit compared to them, but my muscles were toned, and my reflexes were sharp. Long, black hair fell around my face and down my back, streaks of red running through it like huge claw-marks—or blood. Real blood? No, too bright. Definitely highlights.

  It was my eyes that drew me closer to the mirror. They burned with amber light, glowing from the inside out as if little fires lived in them. The light from my eyes touched my high cheekbones, my nose, even the tips of my full lips. The harder I looked, the more I realized the light really was shifting and swirling, doing a mesmerizing dance.

  A loud buzzer split the silence in half, making me jump. The door opened with a loud clunk, but it wasn’t the same man who had come back for me. This time it was a woman. She wore the same black uniform all the others did and kept her hair in a neat, tight ponytail… and just like all the others, she scowled when she saw me.

  It was as if the very sight of me set something off in her; something like disgust. That was fine. I felt the same thing. It bubbled up inside of me like bile, only it stuck to the back of my chest instead of my throat.

  “Let’s go,” she barked, her voice stern and sharp.

  I walked toward her, then moved through the door out of the holding cell and into the corridor, where she shoved me and told me to keep going. The nametag on her uniform read Sanchez. I burned it into my mind, just like Jensen, just like Howes, just like Brickmore.

  “What’s the hole?” I asked. “That’s where you’re taking me, right?”

  “Shut up, inmate,” Sanchez snapped. “If I want you to talk, I’ll say so. Until then, assume I don’t.”

  The guard led me into another large room, only this one was pastel yellow, with a slightly dipped floor, a lot of pipes running along the walls, and a small, square drain in the middle. Sanchez turned me around and stared at me intently.

  “You listen to me very carefully,” she said, “I’m a mage. That means I could stun your ass and do everything I need to do to you without your permission… but I’d rather not do that, so you’re going to cooperate. Do you understand me?”

  I lowered my chin but kept eye contact with her. “Yes,” I said.

  “Good. Here.” She handed me kind of collar—a big, heavy thing made of iron that felt strangely cold in my hand. Strange runes were etched along the inside, they shimmered as the light touched them. “I want you to put this around your neck. I’d do it myself, but I don’t like the idea of being that close to your face.”

  “What is it?”

  “Put it on and don’t ask questions. Things work a lot more smoothly around here that way.”

  I took a deep breath, and then I wrapped the open collar around my neck. It was easy to do even with my bound hands. I was expecting Sanchez to have to snap it shut, but she didn’t have to. It closed on its own, as if it was magnetic—and then it shrunk, tightening around my throat just enough that it wasn’t too loose, or too constricting.

  A wave of something washed through me. I wasn’t sure what. Magic? Maybe. Whatever it was, it made me feel cold inside, different, exposed, and a little numb. Something behind me fell to the floor with a loud clang. More shackles. The ones that had been binding my wings together at my back were on the floor… and my wings were gone.

  “What the hell did you do?” I asked, raising my voice.

  “You need to cool it right now,” Sanchez said, stepping back and raising her hand toward me. “Don’t make me have to stun you.”

  “You took my wings away!”

  “They aren’t gone, they’re suppressed. There’s a difference.”

  “What does that mean? Suppressed?”

  “It means you can’t use them. You’re in prison. Your right to magic and any other powers you have are gone, fiend.”

  There’s that fucking word again. I winced, as if hearing it caused me actual, physical pain. And maybe it did. I didn’t know what the word meant, or why it affected me the way it did, but it made me want to scream at her—and worse.

  “Why do you call me that?” I asked between my teeth.

  “Because that’s what you are, isn’t it? A fiend?” Sanchez slapped on a pair of white gloves. “That’s what they tell me, anyway. I’m surprised you don’t know.”

  “I don’t even know my own name or how I got here.”

  Her eyebrow arched. “I’m guessing you killed someone, by the look of you. Bad life choice, killing a mage in Devil Falls. I hope it was worth it.” She stared at me. “I’m gonna remove the shackles around your arms, then you’re gonna take off your clothes.”

  “My what?”

  “Those rags. You’re gonna take them off, and you aren’t gonna try and hurt me. That won’t work very well for you.”

  “I’m not taking my clothes off.”

  My clothes were all I had left. The only things tying me to a life that existed outside of these walls. Even though I couldn’t remember it, I knew it was there. It had to have been, and it was probably better than this. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being thrown into a prison for the rest of my life for something I didn’t do.

  Sanchez stared at me, one of her hands raised, still trained on me. “I’m only going to ask again,” she said, “Because unlike a lot of the other people in here, I have at least a little sympathy for you. But I’m warning you now. Don’t test my patience, and take off your clothes.”

  I returned her stare, giving her my eyes, my full attention, and a curt nod.

  With a flick of her hand, the shackles around my wrists unlocked and fell to the floor with a crash. My hands were free again, and even though I had a collar around m
y neck that had made my wings disappear, I didn’t feel any weaker than I had in the interrogation room.

  I could’ve made a move on the guard. I could’ve taken my shirt off and tossed it at her, then bashed her face into the wall and made a run for it. It would’ve been easy, too. Sanchez didn’t exactly trust me, but I could hear her elevated heartrate, I could see the way her pupils had dilated. She was on high alert, ready to strike out at me if I tried anything, but even she couldn’t hide the pinch of fear she felt.

  That fear would make her just slow enough that I could take her.

  But then what?

  Where would I go? I’d been ushered through three checkpoints just to get down here, each manned by guards and an electronically sealed gate. I needed to get out of this prison, but this wasn’t the way.

  I stripped down, removing my shirt and what was left of my pants and tossing them into a ball on the side of the room. Sanchez was a strict professional, her eyes never wandered, but I felt like someone was watching all the same. Cameras? Another two-way mirror? There weren’t any, not in here.

  But that didn’t mean no one was watching, and it did nothing to stop the hairs on the nape of my neck from standing on their ends.

  She asked me to head into the center of the room, and I did. By the time I turned around to face her again, she had a hose in her hands and she’d unleashed it on me. A torrent of water roared from the spout. I put my hands up, shielding my body to keep the water from hitting me head on, but I wouldn’t squeal—I wouldn’t shriek.

  This place was clearly trying to break my mind, but I wouldn’t let it.

  The water sloshing off me in red and pink rivulets that spiraled as they reached the center drain before disappearing entirely. When there was no more blood to hose off, Sanchez tossed me a towel and pointed at a burgundy prison jumpsuit she’d left for me on a small table by the door to the room.

  I dried myself off, slid into the jumpsuit and the black canvas shoes waiting for me, and then we were moving again. More checkpoints, more guards, only this time I could hear life coming from the other side of the cellblock doors we were passing.

  Prisoners.

  Inmates.

  I realized, then, that this really was a prison, not that I’d had much of a reason to doubt the word of the people who’d put me in here. Until now, though, I’d only had contact with people wearing uniforms, and their word that I was entering the building I would rot and die in. Those voices floating through the doors may as well have been a death knell.

  “There’s been a mistake,” I said to Sanchez. I had my hands pinned behind my back, and they were cuffed. She walked behind me, gripping the chain between the manacles to keep me from trying anything stupid.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” she said. “This place is pretty harsh, but everyone in here is in here for a reason.”

  “I don’t even know who I am. They say I killed a man, but they won’t tell me who I killed.”

  “You really don’t know what happened?”

  “No.”

  “I guess that doesn’t surprise me. You Outsiders are supposed to be amnesiacs, aren’t you?”

  “Amnesiacs? I don’t understand… and why are you calling me an Outsider?”

  “Because fiends aren’t from Earth. You fell through a rift in the sky. Far as I’ve been told, the fall scrambles your brains, messes with your memories.”

  Anger surged into my chest, but I bit my tongue to hold it back. I tasted copper in my mouth, but at least I’d stopped myself from doing something stupid.

  I swallowed the blood. “None of that makes any sense. I’m not supposed to be here!”

  We turned a corner and walked through a large, vault-like door that led into another, final corridor. More doors lined the walls, each of them huge, heavy, metal things meant to keep equally huge, dangerous people locked away inside. Each of them hiding a small prison within themselves.

  Sanchez used her ring of keys to open one of the doors. It swung open with a metallic, grinding sound, revealing a poor excuse for a room. It was small, and tight, and dark. I opened my mouth to speak, but she shoved me through it. I lost my footing as I went stumbling into the shadows, but eventually my hands pressed against the wall at the back.

  I hugged it to keep myself upright and glared at the guard from within the depths of the hole she’d tossed me into.

  “Sleep tight, fiend,” she said, and then she slammed the door shut and locked me inside.

  The sound of the locking mechanism sealing itself hung in the air. I was alone, in complete darkness, with no hope of getting out.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The room—the box—was empty, and dark, and dank, the stink of it almost unbearable. I turned around, pressing my back against the wall and trying to control my breathing. Strangely, the darkness was starting to clear up. There was no light in the room, none at all, but as the seconds passed, I realized I could clearly see the door across from me, the rivets, the bolts—the wet patch in the far corner.

  Somehow, the fact that someone had clearly used the corner of the room as a toilet wasn’t as important as the fact that I had… darkvision?

  I ran my fingers through my wet hair and took a deep breath to try and center myself. “Alright,” I said to no one, “Don’t panic. We can figure this out.”

  “Who’s we?”

  My heart surged into my throat. There was someone else in here with me; a woman… clinging to the ceiling above the door. What?

  She stared at me, her long, dark hair drooping, her wide eyes shining brightly like they had reflective surfaces. I had no idea how she was holding herself up there, but it looked like she was using her bare hands and feet, like some kind of weird spider-person. In an instant I realized that I couldn’t sense her, I couldn’t hear her pulse, her breathing.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” I said, my words bouncing off the walls like gunshots.

  She blinked at me and cocked her head to the side in a childlike manner. “You really should learn to look up,” she said. “Nobody looks up, that’s why it’s so easy to get the drop on them. You have a very strong magical aura. Strange, considering what you are.”

  “My… what?” I asked, still stunned.

  “Your magic aura. Why is it so strong?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I’m saying that a lot lately.”

  “Hit your head?”

  “Something like that…”

  As I looked up at this strange woman hanging from the ceiling, I realized something. She didn’t make me feel the same way the other people I’d met tonight made me feel. I wasn’t overcome with the urge to leap across to where she was and dig her spleen out of her body with my fingernails.

  That’s new.

  “Who are you,” I asked, my eyes narrowed, “And what are you doing… up there?”

  She shrugged. “I’m up here because the floor is gross,” she said, “I’m not sure mother would be happy with my answering your other question, though. I’ll have to ask her.”

  “Mother?”

  The stranger shut her eyes, breathed deeply, and then started… swaying. Left, right, left, right. I watched her, partly curious, partly dumbfounded. What the hell was she doing?

  Her eyes sprang open. “Mother says I can talk to you.”

  “Wait, whose mother? There’s no one else in here.”

  “Mother is mother, and she’s everywhere.”

  “Is mother… this place?”

  The girl smiled a wide smile. “No. This place tries to block me from speaking to mother, but she’s more powerful than it is.” She paused. “My name is Azlu,” she said, seeming a little more encouraged to talk now, “What’s yours?”

  “I don’t know,” I said through my teeth, “And that’s the last time I’m saying those words today.”

  “Have you said them often?”

  “Ever since I woke up in this place.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Woke
up?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t wake up here… I guess I just don’t remember how I got here, or where I was before I got here.”

  That wasn’t true. A flash of memory had hit me like a metal spike to the side of the head, but I wasn’t about to tell this stranger how I saw myself standing in a bloody room, or how much blood they’d had to wash off me moments ago.

  “Well, if you don’t know who you are, you don’t remember how you got here, or why you’re here, it’s safe to assume you’re guilty of the crime of being one of us.”

  “One of us?”

  “Outsiders… from the other side of the rift.”

  Another sharp stab of memory came racing toward me like a bullet. More blood, the squelching of claws tearing through flesh, a flash of white light. I turned my head to the side and shut my eyes, trying at the same time to fight the pain off and concentrate on making the vision clearer. But it was like juggling knives without handles, and the memory faded, leaving me with an aching head.

  “Is your brain broken?” Azlu asked.

  “You could say that,” I said, frustration building inside of me.

  “I would help if I could, but our brains are very different. I don’t know how to fix yours.”

  “I don’t need fixing. I need to get out of here.”

  Azlu shut her eyes, tilted her chin up, then nodded at… no one. “Mother wants me to tell you something.”

  I didn’t understand. Was mother invisible, or was this woman insane? Both were possible, I guessed. “What does she want to tell me?”

  “She wants you to remember who you are.”

  “It’s not like I haven’t tried.”

  Azlu’s reflective eyes opened. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Go deeper than that, further than that. She wants you to know who you were before you came here. She says this place will try to break you. It will use the things that hurt you to attack your soul until you lose all will to escape. You can’t let it. You have to remember, it’s the only way you’ll find the strength.”