The raw light of day rubbed at her red eyes a moment before Chelsea realized she was awake. She promptly fell off the couch. As she stumbled to her feet, the strangeness of her surroundings hit her.
This was not the brick and concrete apartment she shared with Amber. The dark faux-wood paneling should have tipped her off much sooner. She took a step and nearly fell again. Leaning against a recliner, Chelsea realized that she was drunk.
Chelsea breathed in the heady fumes of the oil paints. She had finally finished her reference outline. It had taken months. Much longer than she had spent with Jackson Hawk in real life
Music pulsed throughout the warehouse apartment, rattling the high windows. Chelsea barely heard it. All her concentration was focused on Amber. The other demon hunter stood taller, weighed more, and had no idea what fighting fair might possibly mean.
Sister Mary Clarence pounded on the dorm door once more. “Chelsea Childling, open your door!”
Chelsea stared at the cheap, pressed particle board, wondering if the nun had the strength to knock it down. When Mary Clarence started pounding again, Chelsea sighed. She’d known this confrontation was inevitable. She’d just planned on the inevitable being much later. And maybe over the phone, long after she’s moved out of the dorm and quit school.
Hot, damp air blew across her face, and Chelsea rolled over. Her heart pounded in her temples and the light hurt her eyes.
Amber’s raspy voice reverberated in Chelsea’s skull. “Hair of the dog, hun.”
Chelsea reluctantly sat up, rubbing gingerly at her eyes. She accepted the mason jar of booze in silence. The bright sunshine felt wrong to her. Today should have been as dark and rainy as last night.
Her heart sped up and she couldn’t catch her breath. Alex. He was sweet and kind.
Everybody loved Alex. She loved Alex.
And Alex was dead.
Chelsea and the rest of the hunters try to save Alex and Tiggy from the nightlings. The hunt is on!
A light rain pattered on the gravel of the parking lot, but the whistling wind promised a storm. Chelsea leaned back in the seat of her car, studying the boarded windows of Boney’s haunt.
She’d been inside a handful of times before she’d decided not to hunt monsters. Dark, dirty, and usually full of surly hunters, it was the natural place to meet and discuss the reaver hunt.
With Amber back and in town and a hunt on the horizon, Chelsea has to make a decision. Is she a hunter or not?
. “How long do you think you’ll be in town?”
Amber shrugged. “Boney’s place comes with a reaver hunt attached. So at least until that’s done. Two, maybe three days, and then a week at the apartment.”
“Reavers?” Chelsea winced even as she said it. She’d sworn off monster hunting.
Amber, bless her, didn’t even flash a knowing look as she answered. “A type of vampire. Like the exact opposite of a nightling: animalistic, solitary, and ugly as sin.”
Words That Burn Like Fire 