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SJ SANDERS AS DAEMONICA DRACO
The Collided Realms
Monster-hunter extraordinaire Abby Sinclaire knows she can become exactly that if given the opportunity. Denied the opportunity to hunt at every corner, despite having her training, the opportunity to prove herself and the coin offered is too great to resist when she is offered a job to slay a manticore. Her boss is sleazy, but the job seems like easy coin.
But no one warned her that a manticore wasn’t just any monster. When she becomes the hunted and captured, it is her heart that she risks losing. And perhaps her own humanity.
Who is the monster and who is the man? And is the greatest of monsters within her after all?
Abby B. Sinclair,monster hunter extraordinaire, defender of humanity and slayer of all things unimaginable and imagined. Abby rested the end of her pen against her bottom lip and chewed on the wooden casing, and considered striking out the last word. She couldn’t. It just felt incomplete without it. She didn’t want to limit any of the possibilities of landing a paying job. Stress on the paying part. That she didn’t precisely have experience in said monster slaying was immaterial. She came from a lauded family of hunters and was trained accordingly… and that had to count for something while her parents and elder siblings were away making their names and fortunes. For her, she just needed to get her foot in the door, and a little exaggeration was exactly what she needed to get the job done.
It wasn’t like there wasn’t a call for her particular training. She just needed to capitalize on it. Especially since, with the long absence of her family, there was no one around to refill the rapidly depleting coffers. She was going against her parents’ explicit directions, but she was getting desperate. The simple dinner that sat at her elbow, in fact, was a sad testament to what little coin she possessed. Surely, if they knew how dire her situation was becoming, they would have agreed to let her go out for her first solo hunt. Sure, she had passed out during the bloody gormin hunt, and had been practically useless, motion sickness aside from the long trip by wagon, when the entire family had been employed to travel to a far-off kingdom to root out drake from the hillside.
They were merely minor setbacks to learn from, her parents had assured her. After all, her technical ability with her weapons exceeded that of her brothers. She was also faster and a superior marksman. She just needed a little more time to get over some of her unnatural squeamishness.
Abby snorted softly to herself as she sprinkled ash over the ink to dry it. Whoever heard of a squeamish monster hunter with a weak stomach? Her brothers certainly had been quick to remind her at every opportunity. They had taunted her mercilessly about it before they’d all been called away. The only reason it had abated at all was that this time she was left behind to mind their headquarters and to take messages and keep potential clients apprised of the whereabouts of the Sinclair hunters. Unfortunately, it had been two months since her last missive from them and three weeks since anyone had stopped by with a job offer, which certainly didn’t help her position now that she was trying to drum up her own work. She still got a little motion sick, but overall, she was certain her constitution was far stronger now to deal with whatever creature was thrown at her.
Why, she could even watch a goat being butchered now with barely more than a wince and slight turn of her stomach. A depraved creature ravaging the countryside should be easy.
Unfortunately, there was one small hang up. Simple word of mouth over the last few weeks wasn’t working the way it had for her brothers. In fact, those that she told had given her skeptical looks, and those that did not verge on condescending, as they made it obvious that they were only humoring her by hearing her out. It pissed her off because she knew that if she was a man, she would have been hired on for work almost immediately by desperate town leaders with fat pockets to deal with the burrowing bowthie, the horned rockworms, that infested the area. Surely someone needed help to deal with those with her brothers gone. The pests were a bane of their region that not only damaged the roots of the orchards under which they tunneled, but preyed on livestock and anyone that fell into their pits. There were always at least a half dozen annually that had to be cleared out since their nesting sights were nearly impossible to find and they reproduced rapidly.
Perhaps they were giving the work to one of the local guilds. She grimaced at the thought. Not only was the adventurer’s guild not one that specialized in monster extermination, but they were certain to do a hack job of it. No doubt next year they would have double the number of bowthie to deal with after the hatching season following the spring rains. She could have hired on with them, of course, but she knew they snubbed the women among their numbers, giving them the least profitable and least desirable jobs while still taking sixty percent of their earned fees.
No thanks.
She sighed heavily and shook the ash from the advertisement, giving it one last critical look. It was fine. Once she got her advertisement circulating, her situation was bound to improve, and she would prove to her family that she had what it took to be a Sinclair Hunter. Then it would be her name on their lips. After all, with all manner of creatures running about since the human and those worlds of the fae and monstrous merged two centuries ago, there was never a lack of some sort of woe-begone occurrence happening. Mostly this was due to said innumerable monstrous creatures that they now shared their world with, but also partly because of the collapse of human civilization which took fun things like electricity and most tech humanity possessed with it. They would eventually come, happy to have her aid.
Giving the advertisement one last shake, she rolled it up to deliver to the magistrate’s office where it would be copied and distributed. She slid it into a leather tube as the bell above the door chimed, drawing her attention to the stranger who stepped with a burst of hot air. Her eyes widened as she stared at him, the advertisement in her hands forgotten. He was wrapped entirely in a heavy cloak with a deep hood that obscured most of his face and most his upper body, revealing just a hint of a long, knee-length tunic over leathers. His pale green eyes scanned the room, landed on her, and narrowed while somehow looking past her at the same time as if she were something completely inconsequential. He stepped toward her, and she could hear the faint clatter of something metallic hidden beneath his cloak. She had little doubt that he was well-armed, but what was someone who was obviously quite capable and menacing doing there?
“I’m looking for Tomas and Beatrice Sinclair. It’s quite urgent that I speak with them—Immediately.” His voice was pitched low, but had a whip of authority to it that made her frown.
While she would normally go straight into her well-practiced apology on part of her parents, something about this guy rubbed her the wrong way. For one, it was clear from his dismissive and yet demanding demeanor that he expected her to jump to her feet and rush off to fetch them like a good little dog. But there was something else about him she couldn’t quite define that made her want to escort him quickly from the building. Like his presence alone was tainting the atmosphere that always felt comfortably like home to her. As desperate as she was to acquire her first client, something just felt wrong about this one.
Pasting a polite smile on her face, she slowly set the scroll aside and folded her hands on the table in front of her.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. At least not right now,” she amended as his gaze sharpened on her. She spread her hands wide in a mock apology. “As it happens, they are out of town.”
“And when do you expect them back?” he replied, each word clipped angrily from between his teeth.
She shrugged without demonstrating even a modicum of concern. “I couldn’t quite say. It’s been a few months, so the optimist in me says that they could arrive tomorrow, whereas the pessimist in me says that it’s just as likely that I go another few months without a word at all from them.”
“That could be too long,” he growled petulantly, and she felt her lips curl with satisfaction as her smile grew.
“It’s indeed a gamble, I would say,” she replied as she inwardly asked forgiveness of the gods of prosperity and abundance. She would be sure to be extra cordial to the next customers who stepped inside. She worked hard to smother her smile as he took a frustrated step back from her table. “But you know how these things are, and as it’s been weeks since I’ve heard from my parents,” she added. “You could be in for a lengthy wait.”
“Parents?” He paused and then whirled toward her, his eyes focusing on her with something more than a bored disinterest by her mere presence. “Ah, I see it now. You have Tomas’s dark hair and eyes, but Beatrice’s face and complexion. An interesting pairing… and may I assume that you have your parents’ skills?”
“They trained me,” she confirmed reluctantly. As much as she wanted to hurry him out, she didn’t want rumor to get around that the Sinclair daughter was useless. “I excel in marksmanship, tracking, and some minor magic.”
“Naturally,” he murmured, his eyes gleaming with far more interest than she was comfortable with. “With Beatrice’s sorcery, there is no doubt she would’ve taught any child born by her a few useful tricks. But you are your father’s daughter, it seems if your skills are as you say. I never met any other male who could hunt with such agility and silence to catch his prey entirely by surprise. Nor any other who could strike so quickly and unerringly. You can do this?”
She frowned at the note of challenge in his voice. “Of course. My father trained me himself since I was small and claims that I may even surpass him now in every technique he drilled into me.”
“Excellent,” he murmured. “If that is the case, then I believe you may suit my needs.”
Abby blinked. That hadn’t gone exactly as she had planned in her head. She’d assumed that he would scoff at her forthright claims and take himself out to look for other options rather than a far too-bold girl with too much attitude. That’s what she’d often heard boys complain about when she’d become old enough to notice them and why they summarily dismissed her as a difficult female not worth their time. She had assumed the same given the bearing of the man in front of her, and yet his words had completely taken her by surprise.
“Pardon me?”
