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I can’t let her reach Asha. I simply can’t. Swallowing bile, I empty my magazine into her as I charge. She twitches and shrieks with each hit, ripping her mangled arm out of the sharp-edged hole. She stumbles back as I round her, gun blazing, until I’m between her and the door, not waiting for her to come to a halt until I’m absolutely sure she’s down.

But she doesn’t die. She just twitches and howls, staggering as clumps of—god, I don’t want to look—something fall off her body. A whining snarl follows when my gun clicks empty, and she comes to a swaying stop. Blood seeps from the bullet holes I bestowed on her, and still she doesn’t go down.

No matter how long we live, no matter how many creatures we kill, there’s always that one creature that is simply stronger than the Hunter. It’s why my kind dies off so frequently, nothing surprising. I did expect to live through my first job though. Clenching my jaw, I shuffle backwards, reloading my gun with quick, shaky moves. The vampire turns with me, stumbling and slow. She seems confused, eyes glazed over as she looks around, drool dripping from her indecently long fangs. She doesn’t charge though. She should, I’m right here. But she doesn’t. Maybe I did actually damage something important?

I take a chance when my back hits the damaged door and knock with my heel. “It’s me, let me in!”

Nothing. I knock again, pointing the gun at the vampire as she totters and sways, frowning at me. “Fucking open the door, Asha,” I yell and shuffle to the side so I can try the handle. Locked.

The vampire moves, one hesitant step towards me, still frowning as if she doesn’t quite believe her eyes. I put a bullet through her head and she falls back, hitting the floor with a wet, gurgling grunt. I could empty another magazine into her, but if one salvo didn’t kill her, the next one won’t do much either. Some vampires, especially the old ones, are so good at rapid healing, simple weapons don’t do more than temporary harm, slowing them down but doing fuck-all besides that.

She’ll need another good heap of silver bullets or a nice bonfire to finally get the message, but the extra bullets and the flamethrower are in the car, outside, where they’re safe and cozy. It’s a long, long way to the car.

I should have expected trouble and brought at least the flamethrower, but I’m the newbie here. Asha should have thought of that, not me. Why didn’t she? And now I’ll need to get out of here first before I can finish the job, but I’m not going near that twitching heap of vampire rot. My other exit options are limited, and besides, two Hunters are better than one. I need to follow Asha, make sure she’s not lying on the other side of that door, unconscious. She’ll know what to do, how to bring the zombie-vampire down before she can skitter away into the district—or worse, one of the magically veiled blocks—to find another rathole. Next to Asha, I’m nothing. I’m so far out of my depth it’s not even funny anymore. I need her.

Heart pounding, I worm my hand through the gap the vampire lady punched into the massive wooden door and fumble for the latch, keeping the gun pointed at her. She’s still twitching in a growing pool of blood and something milkier, but she grows more coordinated with each heartbeat. Wooden splinters cut into my arm, but I still can’t reach the latch.

Whimpering, I give up pointing at the vampire and turn around. I push harder, gritting my teeth against the searing pain of skin being cut open as I bury my arm in the hole. I can just about reach the handle, my fingertips fumbling against the cool, rough metal, my gasps hot and wet against the wood.

The vampire gets up, cackling madly. One of her eyes is so bloodshot it looks black, but she sees me now, and she grins at me as she spits out a bullet. I scream, angle my arm harder and flip the latch. The vampire staggers forward as I rip the door open, her skeletal claws tangling in my jacket. I give it to her, let her tug it off me and jump through the door. Only when I slam and lock the door, I realize that my last magazine is in the jacket pocket. Outside with the vampiress. Only nine bullets left.

My arm bleeds like a motherfucker, but I don’t have time to tend to the gashes. I stumble back from the door, eyes fixed on the hole. If I managed to open it, she can, too. I have a minute, at most. The urge to cry pushes on my eyes like a leaden weight. The fucking room is fucking empty, except for a giant, rectangular box. It’s made of what looks like silver and shaped like a table, or an altar maybe, embossed with runes and lines, but that doesn’t help me. Further into the room and at the back wall, there is a chute that’s pointing up, but a massive, grated metal shutter covers it. And since Asha is nowhere to be seen, she must have dragged it over the hole, once she was outside. Locking me in. Leaving me to die.

A sharp, hard impact behind me rattles the door, cracking the wood around the latch. Two, maybe three more of those hits, and the door will give. I scramble over to the silver box and touch it. Feels real enough, and thank you lord, it has a seam around the top, and another latch, well oiled by the looks of it. I don’t wonder why a horde of thralls and two vampires are guarding a silver box, considering that the vampires won’t be able to touch it without their hands melting off.

It’s not important. What’s important is that I can hide in it easily, if I just get it open in time. There are situations in life where you don’t look a gift horse into the mouth, you just get on and ride it like you stole it. I flip the latch.

Another crash behind me as the door goes off the upper hinge, a shower of wood splinters raining into the confined space. The vampire screeches as she tries to crawl through the gap, undulating in snake-like movements. The room fills with unbearable stink as she claws at both the wooden door and the stone beside it. Time’s up. I flip the giant lid, grunting with the effort.

Out of the box comes a monster.

A SHADOW SURGES out of the depths of the box. It rams into me, riding me down to the floor too fast for my senses to react, my head hitting the stone floor with a resounding crack. Flashes of white and black dance through my vision, followed by spiking pain in my back. The creature lands on my chest, forcing what little air I had left out of my lungs with a breathless cough. A soft tinkling sound accompanies the impact as some kind of amulet around its neck spills out of its tattered shirt. His tattered shirt.

It’s a man, caked in an almost black crust of unidentifiable grime, clothes torn beyond recognition. Patches of unblemished, somewhat tanned skin shine out of the mess like beacons, but they are few. Most of him is dirt, or dried blood, and it flakes off like snakeskin whenever he moves. His semi-long hair is wild, as is the scraggly beard, but there is no way I could ever guess what color his hair is supposed to be. Most of it is tangled and as dirt-caked as the rest of him. And his eyes are black. I don’t mean his pupils, but all of it. Solid black orbs stare down at me, neutral and utterly cold.

I suck in a shaky breath as my vision blurs and wavers. The beast grabs my throat and squeezes, lips curling into a manic grin that makes his fangs peek out.

Vampire.

His fingers casually dig into my neck as if he were squeezing a tomato, breaking my skin. So much for surviving my god-damned first mission. I close my eyes and try to remember in which hand is holding the gun so I can attempt to shoot him, retching as the pressure on my throat tickles my gag reflex. I lift the gun halfway up before he casually slaps it away, almost breaking my wrist. It slides along the stone floor, hitting the wall with a sharp clang. My vision spins and flickers.

But then the beast-man hesitates and sniffs the air above my face. His fangs are elongated, poking out of his parted lips as he huffs. The grin falls off his face and leaves a grimace behind, almost as if he’s put out that he touched me. He snarls, and his fingernails slide out of my skin with a soft, ripping noise.

That’s when the vampiress finally squeezes through the broken door, falling into the room like a newborn calf.

The wild man’s eyes snap up and home in on her. The manic grin returns, as if nothing could make him happier than seeing that abomination. He growls, then his weight is gone from my chest. He’s on her before I finish blinking. They don’t fight, though. Asha said her attacker was fast, but whatever I let out of that box is faster. He grabs her, one hand on her neck, the other at her hips, and… rips her apart with a single tug. No strain, no fight for dominance, just a brief impression of bulging muscles, followed by a spray of blood and body parts. And more of that god-damned stink.

I suck in a rattling breath, rolling around and crab-walking backward until my back hits the wall next to my gun. I instinctively grasp it, like a lifeline. It may not help me, but it makes me feel better to die armed, and right now, my mind is very much working on basic settings. Murderous vampire bad, weapon good. And all the while, my mind doesn’t want to believe what I’ve just seen, but my straining gag reflex is pretty sure about what happened. If I could somehow unlock my panic-frozen muscles, I would hurl.

The beast stands there for a moment, sucking in a single, deep breath as if he’s never had air before, then glances over his shoulder. He throws me an appraising once-over out of his black-on-black eyes, like a bear would eye a wolf encroaching on its territory, and I raise my gun to point it at his chest. His blank expression tells me all I need to know. Either he doesn’t know what a gun is, or he doesn’t give a shit about bullets. If he doesn’t know guns, he’s way, way too old to fuck with for no reason. If he doesn’t care about bullets, my shooting him unprovoked would do nothing but piss him off.

I throw a short, sideways glance at the remains of the last person who was stupid enough to go there, then flick my eyes back to his neutral face. Gulping, I lower my gun.

The beast-man growls again, low and restless, and rolls his shoulders, flexing muscles I could only dream of having. Then he stalks off, smashing the broken door right out of its frame as if it is nothing but a slight nuisance.

I stare after him, wide-eyed and hyperventilating. Holy shit, I just let an antediluvian vampire out of a silver coffin. Not just that, but I watched him march right out of his prison while I’m just sitting here and wondering if the wetness on my pants is blood from the corpse or something more embarrassing. What the heck am I supposed to do now?

CHAPTER FOUR