Page 66 of Hollow

Dimitri snarled instinctively, then settled once he realized Jack was the one who’d reached out.

“How did you…” Dimitri blinked, his glowing green eyes shifting to better see in the absolute darkness around them.

“Told you, I got a lot of tricks.” Jack winked.

Then he turned his attention back onto the approaching hunters, opening shadows beneath their feet. Screams filled the foyer, echoing loudly as the hunters vanished one by one.

After he’d removed the hunters from the first floor, Jack pulled the shadows inward, studying the light towers and the positions of the remaining hunters above.

Jack stepped out of the shadows he used to hide his and Dimitri’s position.

“Your mistake, Gordy old pal, was assuming I require darkness to attack,” Jack said with a few tsks as he shook his head disapprovingly. “I don’t require darkness. I am the darkness.”

With that, Jack unleashed shadowed tendrils, stabbing the hunters perched in position on the second floor. He coiled darkness around the light towers, lifting the massive machines off the ground and hurling them across the room. Hunters shouted. Gunfire blasted. Metal crashed. Everything and everyone was destroyed in a matter of minutes, all while Jack stood in place, directing the darkness of his powers to overwhelm and eliminate the threats.

All but one threat. Gordon Hearst had run away in the commotion, abandoning his hunters who fought for their lives, no longer able to secure the situation. Some attempted to flee, while others feebly fought back. In the end, it didn’t matter to Jack. He slaughtered them all the same.

“Jesus Christ,” Ted said through chattering teeth.

“Well, if it isn’t the little weasel from the woods.” Jack cocked his head, turning his shadowy expression into one of utter contempt and chilling cruelty. “Can’t cry your way out of anything this time.”

Shadows sprang forward, impaling Theodore from every direction. He wailed and sobbed. Blood gushed from his wounds; his body twitched, and eventually, he settled into a cold, silent death.

“Prick,” Jack scoffed.

Shadows opened from the ceiling, spitting out the first batch of hunters he’d captured. The room rained with their panicked screams. One by one, they splattered onto the marble floor, some dying after the immediate crunch, others wailing in agony as they lay in a pile of their own blood and broken bones.

It didn’t take long for Jack to slaughter every single hunter in this manor. He cast shadows across the room, rounding up the corpses and hacking off the heads of each hunter. Part of him wanted to put them on display, remind the world why the Horseless Headsman wasn’t to be trifled with, but another part of him realized that would draw more attention than he cared to deal with. Plus, Jack had cultivated a popular image online. Yes, he brought the scares from time to time, but always in a charming, endearing sort of way.

If he painted the town of Sleepy Hollow with the blood of his enemies and decorated the streetlamps with severed heads, it might ruin his image.

“Fuck it.” Jack chucked the heads into the shadowy abyss along with the rest of the corpses. “I’ll dump you somewhere else, make you someone else’s problem.”

“You will not escape, Gordon!” Dimitri shouted.

He leapt from the shadows Jack had cloaked around him and jumped up to the second-floor railing.

Jack quickly surveyed their surroundings, finding no hunters remained, and then hopped through a shadowy portal to reappear upstairs beside Dimitri.

Jack trailed behind Dimitri, following his furious boyfriend who stomped through the manor in pursuit of Gordon.

Dimitri took deep sniffs, tracking Gordon’s fear. Jack could practically taste the terror oozing off the old man, so much so that he dulled his shadow senses some.

“You waste your time running, Gordon,” Dimitri shouted, dragging his claws along the walls.

He slashed through the walls, tearing in deep and ripping out chunks. When Dimitri reached a decorative painting, he snatched it by the frame and smashed it onto the floor.

“Aww,” Jack said, musing over the lovely artwork destroyed in Dimitri’s fit.

This process repeated itself a few times until Dimitri turned the corner. Jack mourned the poor paintings until he passed a few portraits he didn’t like.

“Pretentious.” Jack stepped on one, cracking the broken glass beneath his heel.

Dimitri’s ears twitched as he seemed to listen to where Gordon had gone.

Jack sent his shadows slithering down the hall searching on Dimitri’s behalf.

The old man’s heartbeat patted faster, his body trembled, and his bones creaked with an unsteady stance. Jack smirked, using his shadows to open a nearby door.