Share
Chapter 27
At dusk, Zane pulled the Jeep to a stop near the spot in the winding overgrown road where Jo had spoken to Ryker the evening before. They couldn’t see the tavern from here, but she imagined the lower the sun sank in the sky, the more scurrying figures could be seen rushing to their homes from the gathering place, their heads down but shifting so that they could check their backs with the corners of their eyes. What a miserable way to exist.
“Do you think he’ll show?” Leo asked from the back seat, the skepticism obvious in his tone.
“Yes.” One word was all Jo could bother with. After a day of wandering around the frozen Siberian tundra, visiting a few other villages, and getting nowhere. She wasn’t in the mood to explain herself. Checking with the other teams hadn’t given her anything to grow excited about either, though Cass had finally reached the town where Eliza and Lucas lived, not tha
Related chapters
Night Slayer Chapter 28
Sitting on what appeared to be a handmade quilt at least a few decades older than her, draped across a mattress that may have been in the old lodge two villages over, the first one that had had an empty room, since Jo’s father was born, she listened to the rest of her team discussing their options, keeping her mouth shut. Ryker had spent the entire drive cussing them out over how much trouble they’d gotten him into, and even when Jo had handed over twice the cash she’d originally promised him, the man hadn’t shut up. He was downstairs in the bar now, likely spending a chunk of the money he’d just earned trying to forget their predicament, a luxury Jo couldn’t afford. He’d insisted on keeping his bags with him, too, saying he didn’t trust them not to go through them.“I say we leave him here,” Leo was saying, sitting in an old recliner near a fire they’d lit for their human companion when t
Night Slayer Chapter 29
Voices awoke her well before Jo was ready to open her eyes. The sounds of men’s voices discussing something in hushed whispers across the room mingled with another voice, another male, a familiar one, emanating from her own mind, and she realized she’d fallen asleep with her IAC on. That didn’t happen often. By the time she realized it was her Uncle Elliott trying to get her attention, Jo’s eyes were open, and Leo and Zane were looking at her, wearing matching worried expressions.Rather than attempting to explain to them that she hadn’t heard a damn word they’d said, she pulled the blankets over her face and focused on her uncle. “What’s up?” she asked, certain the grogginess in her voice wouldn’t be his only clue that he’d woken her. He’d likely figured that out when calling her name eighty-two times had gotten him nowhere.“Well, if it ain&rsqu
Night Slayer Chapter 30
The location Ryker had given her was farther away than Jo realized. It took a few hours to get there, especially since the roads were terrible, full of potholes and covered with fallen branches. The inches of ice and snow they had to pick their way through didn’t help any either. If the vehicle they had was the high-end sort the team had instant access to in the past, they might’ve made it in half the time, but dreams of what used to be were nothing but a distraction, and Jo didn’t need any distractions at the moment.Zane brought the Jeep to a halt on the side of the road in a wooded area. The wind whipped between evergreen branches, blowing the snow off of the needles and sending it spraying up off of the ground so that it appeared to be snowing, even though it wasn’t at the moment. “This is it,” Zane said. “As close as I can get us by road.”“Where’s the actual location?&rdq
Night Slayer Chapter 31
Getting the team together was one thing; having a plan was something else. Assembling everyone from the cabin less the team that had gone with her Aunt Cassidy hadn’t taken long, but all of them wanted to know what Jo had in mind as far as the attack was concerned, and she didn’t have too many answers.She’d spent as much time as she could discussing the obstacles in front of them with Cassidy and Branden as well as Elliott. Those were the people she trusted most that she could easily access at the moment. Now would’ve been a great time for her dad to come barreling through a nearby portal opening, but that likely wasn’t going to happen, especially since she hadn’t sent him a text and Elliott had. No, if Aaron was able to make it back to help anyone, it would be the Africa team. Jo was basically on her own. And these veterans wanted answers.Mikali and Mila had volunteered to take point, with Sergio a
Night Slayer Chapter 32
Screams and shrieks echoed off of the cave walls in a deafening roar that filled her soul with the same gusto the crescendo of a grand opera might stir in order to bring the crowd to their feet, their hearts and hands banging together as they spurred the musicians on. Jo pulled the trigger again and again, firing into the near darkness at anything that moved in front of her.Zane held his fire. “Careful not to take out all of them,” he reminded her.Jo nodded, remembering the entire raid would do them no good if they couldn’t catch a squealer or two. The Vampires continued to pour around the corner, exploding in ash one after another. Whatever powers it had been increasing the strength of many of the monsters she’d encountered over the years, these seemed weak in comparison. Many of them went down from a single bullet, maybe two. It was unusual and made her question everything she knew about Vampires.
Night Slayer Chapter 33
The two bloodsuckers Mikali was holding at gunpoint in a dark cavern looked exactly like what Jo had been imagining when she’d picked out two potential snitches in her mind. Both of them were groveling on the ground, sweat pouring from their undead foreheads as they pleaded with the Guardian to let them go. Mikali was glaring at them, standing at his full height, which had to be at least six three since he towered over Jo, alternating the target at the end of his Beretta from one sniveling bastard to the other.She left Ping out in the hall to “guard the door” and then went inside. “Nice job, man,” Jo said, coming up behind him but hesitating to actually touch the large man on the back the way she might pat a teammate on the back if they were playing a team sport, rather than hunting monsters. “Have you figured out which one of them gets to live yet?”“Not yet,” Mikali growled in his
Night Slayer Chapter 34
In the hallway, on her way to the vault, Jo ran into Zane. Literally. It was dark, and she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going. He’d stopped, seeing her coming, likely hoping she’d look up and sidestep, but when she didn’t, her head collided with what felt like a wall of muscle.His arms entangled her, keeping her from falling backward. “Oh, God, Zane. Sorry,” she muttered, rubbing her forehead. It smarted for a second but otherwise she was fine. She knew exactly how muscular he was but had no idea running into him would feel like an encounter with one of those WWE fighters Uncle Elliott used to be so fond of, back in the day when sports were still a thing. “You okay?”“I’m fine,” he said, flashing that crooked smile that might’ve been enough to make her swoon under other conditions. “Are you?”“Yeah, I’m hard hea
Night Slayer Chapter 35
The sound of laughter cut through the clank of glasses and the crush of peanut shells under foot, mingling with the crooning sound of music sung in a Slovak language she didn’t speak as Jo tried not to breathe in the smoky air. Crossing the bar wasn’t as difficult this time since this establishment wasn’t as crowded as the one she’d first met Ryker in, and the lights were up, perhaps in an attempt to allow patrons to spot pointy teeth before they became a problem. Or maybe it was the fact that this tavern was attached to a hotel, unlike the seedy back alley haunt Ryker normally played cards in. Either way, she wasn’t impressed with his ability to pick watering holes and would’ve just as soon left him behind when her team pulled out of town. But she’d more or less made a promise she would look after him, and even though he’d been the one to take off without telling them where he was going, she still felt the pull of obligatio
Latest chapter
