Page 8 of Slayer

“Listen,” I said calmly. “I think we all just need to⁠—”

The sword-wielding hottie lunged forward and swung his blade in a clean arc, removing the woman’s head cleanly. It fell to the ground with a sickening thud, and bile rose in my throat. I screamed, realizing this dude Asher was definitely a mass murderer, and I couldn’t be one of his next victims.

I ran out from behind him and ducked under one of the men he was fighting, who turned around and took off after me.

What the hell? Why were they chasing me? I didn’t kill his friend!

“Help!” I screamed into the alley, hoping that my voice would carry to the windows on the upper floors and someone would hear me. There was grunting, and then the sound of metal hitting the ground ricocheted all around me. Asher’s sword? But before I could think more about it, someone grabbed me by the hair and yanked me to a stop.

The person holding me forced me to spin around, and then I was face-to-face with one of the blood-tinged-mouth monsters. He was practically panting as he looked at me, his teeth freakily sharp and pale red. I blinked, and by the time I opened my eyes, he was on my neck. There was a sharp slice of pain, and then almost immediately, he tore himself off me, hissing. It all happened so quickly I could barely register it.

He leaned his head over and spat a mouthful of my blood onto the ground with a gagging noise, like he’d just ingested expired cat food. Then he looked up at me with a mixture of disgust and wonder.

I processed many things at once then.

He was taking this weird vampire cosplay way too seriously.

My blood was disgusting. (Wasn’t all blood?)

Asher was standing behind him with an honest-to-God stake in his hands.

The guy in front of me opened his blood-tinged lips to say something, but before he could let out a sound, Asher drove the stake into his chest from behind, and when the point emerged through the front, I was splattered with blood.

A hair-raising animalistic scream tore from my lips then, and I burst for the open alley.

Fight-or-flight urges flooded my system, and I decided on flight. I wanted to get as far away from these maniacs as possible. This wasn’t me being drugged. Something was very wrong.

Footsteps sounded behind me, and then Asher grasped my upper arms and yanked me backward. I slammed my back against his chest as he held me tightly against him. I hated myself for even acknowledging the way his hard muscles pressed against me in that moment. Stockholm syndrome was in full effect. Ten minutes with my captor and I was already admiring his muscles.

“You’re going to be a pain in my ass, aren’t you?” he grumbled into my ear.

Something in my peripheral vision caught my attention, and I turned to see the bodies on the ground in the alleyway, either headless or with a stake in their chest, begin to be eaten by…shadows? Black shadows wound around the bodies as if they were living snakes consuming their prey. I whimpered in fear as the shadows fully engulfed the bodies and then, poof, they were gone. No heads, no bodies, no bones, just a little bit of blood on my shirt.

“No.” I sagged against Asher, my knees going weak.

He turned me around to face him, keeping his hands firmly on my upper arms.

When we were inches from each other, I stared into his green eyes, my heart beating frantically in my chest.

Black, dead-body-eating shadows meant this was a nightmare. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. Or maybe I was losing my mind. Did mental health issues run in my family? I had no idea. The thought terrified me.

“You’re a vampire hunter,” he told me. “I don’t know how you survived this long without knowing that, but I need to take you in so that we can figure out what to do with you. If we don’t make our portal back to the academy, we are screwed, so you need to chill out and come with me.”

Figure out what to do with me? Like cut off my head or feed me to the shadows?

Hell nah.

I rammed my knee up into his groin, and he let out a wail five octaves higher than his regular voice. Then I booked it out of there as fast as my legs would carry me.

The police station was two blocks over. I’d get there faster than stopping to call. I crossed the street and burst into the park when I heard Asher stomping behind me.

Bastard was fast, and now I was going to die on my birthday.

Super not awesome.

“Just remember I tried to do this the nice way,” he growled before something cracked into the side of my head and everything went black.

Worst. Birthday. Ever.