Page 15 of Seph

“Maybe not. But what about killing others before they kill again, Huntress? The police in the late 1800s probably caught one out of every ten killers. Too easy to make it look like an accident back then, or too easy for some just to go missing. A murderer is nothing but a bully who takes more than your confidence or your good name. He takes your life. A rapist takes away dignity and safety. The ones who prey on children take away innocence and more. Maybe killing them wasn’t the answer, but... It seemed like a bloody good one at the time. And isn’t that what you do, Van Helsing? Kill them before they can hurt another innocent soul?”

She had to swallow three times before she could make her mouth work. The weight of his challenge was too heavy. “I’ll go to the game with you.”

Crow’s eyes widened, and his face changed from a dark leer to joy. “You will? All right, then! I’ll pick you up at six? Dinner on the way?”

“This is not a date. I hate you, you hate me, and I’m going because a hockey stadium is full of people for you to snack on. Not on my watch, buster.”

She returned to her fridge and ignored the soft murmur behind her.

“Don’t hate you, Huntress. Quite fond of you, really...”

Chapter Six

New York, June, 2024

Empty. Empty. Empty.

You work at a grocery store, how can you be so bad at shopping for yourself?

Being semi-broke might have something to do with it.

Emily shut the cupboard door and put her head in her hands. She worked five days a week at the big supermarket by the high school. It felt like the school, the big chain grocery store, and the area of town where office buildings mingled with institutions like the hospital and fire department formed the “normal” safety zone. That area was the buffer between her mindset of “must kill monster” duty and “but this is the quietest, most peaceful town I’ve ever been in.” Even there, though, she saw shoppers that made her do a double take. All around her, the human citizens of this small town seemed oblivious to the terrors walking among them. There must be a few thousand people in the town, and she’d seen at least ten monsters over her weeks at the store.

That day, as she’d done her normal job of stocking shelves, she had seen a big, burly Orc with clothes made of leather and fur lumbering through the dairy section, smiling and nodding, stopping to talk to a stooped, elderly man about fishing. As she set up rows of cottage cheese and sour cream, she could hear him talking on his cell phone, telling his wife that he’d just had to stop to pick up milk before coming home.

How can he be harmless, she’d thought to herself, body tensing as he reached past her for two gallons of whole milk?

And yet, what gave her the right to think he wasn’t, except for everything her father and his family had instilled in her?

Emily stood at her door, breathing unevenly, trying to bring her mind back to the present, back to calm, back to the new normal.

She avoided going out at night. She wouldn’t run into Simeon that way, except for his semi-regular visits to her apartment to “check on” her.

But I need food. Veggies and eggs would do it. An omelet is one of the five things I can cook without fail.

The Night Market, a lot filled with all sorts of vendors and their stands and carts, was closer to her criminally cheap one-bedroom apartment on Pinecrest Avenue than the supermarket, which was two miles away on foot.

She was always on foot, since her job barely paid for the apartment and utilities, and she was still dipping into her savings every month. A new car was out of the question right now.

The Night Market had a stall from the local farm, Onyx Farms, and she could probably get eggs, onions, tomatoes, and even a zucchini for the crumpled ten-dollar bill she had in her jeans.

Emily put her hand on the door, but then her lifelong training kicked in, and she turned and went back to her bedroom.

Stake. Holy water. Knife. Cross. Emily patted her chest where the silver chain lay under her shirt. Shealwayswore her cross.

There. Ready to hunt.

But I don’t want...

Her mind shut down the phrase, switching tracks like someone had pulled the pins on a railway line.

Skip a meal. Remember all the times Dad made you skip meals to get used to fighting while you were weakened and woozy?

She swallowed a curse and the anger that flooded with it. If her mom had stayed—or lived—would she have allowed that?

Go, get food. Even if it means going out at night. You can go grab eggs and veggies and be back in ten minutes. You probably won't even see any monsters tonight.

Except it seems that the Night Market was the workplace of several monsters—the gargoyle who had saved her life for one, the minotaur who made weapons for the other, and a banshee who had phenomenal deals on used clothes and bric-a-brac.

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