Page 12 of Slayer

He screeched like an animal and dropped Asher. I rolled out of the way as my muscular captor spun, sword in hand, and sliced it right across the man’s neck.

Plop. His head just fell off like it was made of putty.

It couldn’t really be that easy to cut someone’s head off, right?

Why is there no blood?

Eww. Scratch that. What was that? It looked like black Jell-O in the place that blood should be.

I found myself staring at a black congealed mess and wondering if in fact I was the one losing it. There was nothing wrong with having delusions, and admitting you had them was half the battle, right?

The thing on the motel floor no longer resembled a man. It was collapsing inward on itself, edges unraveling like burned paper, shadows folding and refolding as if reality was quietly erasing a mistake. My stomach rolled. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth and breathed through my nose, trying not to gag.

As I watched the man’s body decompose into a swirl of shadows, Asher picked up the stake that had fallen from the man’s thigh and stuck it back in my boot. The weight was grounding, solid, reassuring in a way nothing else felt right then. Then he looked right at me, and I noticed a wild shock in his eyes.

“Thank you,” he croaked, voice hoarse. “You… I think you just saved my life,” he admitted.

Something inside my chest loosened, just a little.

At least my delusion included my captor turning nice.

I nodded, and he helped me up. “You’re welcome.”

He chucked the plastic trash bag with our clothes in it on the bed and threw open the door, grasping me by the elbow, “We gotta go. More will come, and I’m not equipped for that, I am still training. I haven’t received my hunter marks. I don’t have a fighting unit. Today was supposed to be my admissions exam,” he mumbled as he dragged me out into the parking lot in front of the motel.

Cool night air slapped my face. Bright lights buzzed overhead, the asphalt slick with old oil stains and rain residue. My feet struggled to keep up as my brain snagged on his words.

Hunter marks. Fighting unit?

“Admission into what?” I asked as we began to jog down Washington Street.

“Nightguard Academy. It’s like a hunter school. The best hunter school in the world. My parents went, and now I’ll never get in.” He cursed under his breath as we walked under an overpass and he sidestepped a drunken couple walking home.

I glanced at the concrete pillars, graffiti etched into the cement, illegible.

“Why not?” I asked. This was a fascinating, well-built delusion.

He looked at me like he didn’t want to explain anymore. The red finger marks on his neck were growing purple, and I knew he was probably in pain.

We dipped into Riverfront Park, and Asher beelined for the SkyRide gondola. Trees loomed overhead, branches whispering in the breeze and making me paranoid as I peered over my shoulder at every noise.

“Because the only way to pass and get my hunter runes was to stay in the club and then get back through the portal with the rest of the class.” A twig snapped to our right, and Asher spun, pulling his sword.

My pulse spiked.

A squirrel bolted for the nearest tree and climbed up.

I exhaled shakily. “Portal?” I snort laughed. “I can maybe get behind vampires given what I’ve seen over the past few hours, but portals? Come on. Next you’ll tell me your hunter academy is in another dimension.”

He pinned me with a glare.

The humor died in my throat.

I felt my eyes widen. “Is it?”

“Of course!” he snapped. “No hunter is gonna live in the same dimension as the bloodsuckers. We’d never sleep a wink.”

When we reached the SkyRide entrance with the giant closed sign that hung from the wall, I peered around. “I don’t think we should be here.”