Blood Hunt Read Free Page A

of darkness to hover about the building like an aura of decay.
    A heavy thud and a screech of wrenching metal rose up from behind the structure.
    There was definitely someone back there. Or some thing .
    Images of those dark creatures flickered in her mind. Her muscles locked up in fear, and for a moment, she stood frozen to the pavement.
    The real danger out here tonight was the cold, not monsters, and the longer people were left to suffer in it, the more dangerous it became.
    Hope forced her legs to move. Her first steps were slow and shuffling, as if her own body was working against her. Then slowly, she picked up speed, shoving all thoughts of monsters from her mind.
    As she crept down the alley that led to the back of the building, she heard more noises she couldn’t quite identify. There was a grunt of pain and the rattle of wood tumbling about. Once, she almost thought she heard a woman’s voice, but she couldn’t be sure. The only woman she knew who was too stubborn to come in out of the cold was her friend Rory.
    Hope cleared the corner, and the first thing she saw was the gaping hole where the overhead door had been ripped open and partially off its track. The metal looked like it had been punched in with a giant fist, leaving jagged shards behind.
    From inside the opening, Hope saw a brief flash of color—the sickly yellow of suffering.
    Rory.
    Desperate fear washed over her, making her lurch forward through the ragged opening. It was too dark inside to see, so she fished inside her satchel for the flashlight she always carried.
    A feral growl of rage rose up from her left. It wasn’t a human sound. Not even close.
    Primal fear surged through her, and she had to fight the need to curl into the smallest space possible so she could hide.
    Her search for the flashlight became frantic, her gloves hindering her as she fished around in her bag.
    She located the hard, heavy cylinder, only to have it slip from her grasp.
    Heavy, pounding steps shook the floor. A woman cried out in fear somewhere to Hope’s right.
    She grasped onto the flashlight and powered it on as she ripped it from the bag. The beam of light bobbed around, catching motes of dust as it passed.
    Hope aimed it toward the sound of torment. The light bounced off something huge and shiny. Something pulsing with muscle, and moving so fast she couldn’t keep the light trained on it.
    Its aura was black nothingness.
    Panic gripped her tight. She needed more light to ward off the thing. Something as hideous as that would hate the light. She felt it on an instinctive level, as if she’d been taught how to protect herself from the monster.
    Hope swung the light around to the employee entrance next to the pulverized overhead door, hoping there would be a switch nearby. Surely, whoever came in through that door would need to have access to lights, right?
    The beam of light shook in her grasp, vibrating with the trembling of her hands as she searched. It seemed to take forever, but as she neared the door, she saw a series of switches.
    She sprinted over the dusty floor, praying that the power here was still on—that whoever was trying to sell this place had left the lights on for potential buyers.
    Hope shoved all four switches up at once. There was a muted thunk, then an electric buzz. Light poured down over the room, and while many of the bulbs were burned out, it seemed as bright as the surface of the sun compared to a moment ago.
    She blinked her eyes and turned, forcing herself to look at what her flashlight had touched.
    The room was large and open. Lines that had been painted on the floor to outline separate areas were now covered in dust. A stack of wooden pallets had toppled, and the dust from their fall had not yet settled.
    Across the room was a giant, hulking creature poised over someone she couldn’t quite see. All she could tell was that they were surrounded by that yellow aura of hunger and suffering she’d come to know so well on the