Hunter's Curse Read Free Page A

the door open. The woman pulls the trigger on her tranquilizer gun again, but I duck, expecting it. I charge at her and she unsheathes her knife. I grab her wrist and dig my fingers into her skin.
    The world fogs around me and the woman’s life flashes through my mind.
    “Come on, Becca!” A boy with golden blond hair grabs Becca’s hand and pulls her down a cement corridor.
    The two children stop at the first metal door on the right and peer through a glass window. They watch as two men and a woman in white lab coats stick a long needle into the neck of a man.
    “Get him, Daddy!” Becca says.
    A shiver rolls down my back at the excitement the girl feels watching these doctors torture the poor pixie. Becca and the boy laugh when the man explodes into a cloud of glittering dust and they high-five each other.
    The vision shifts and I see Becca just a few years younger than she is now. Her red hair is braided into a bun and she wipes blood off her knife on her black pants.
    “Awesome job on your first kill,” a man says, patting her shoulder. He pushes his dark blond hair from his forehead. “How do you feel?”
    “Like I want to kill ‘em all.”
    My head spins as the scene changes and Becca looks like what she does now. She pants and looks at the same man from the last vision. He tenses next to her and a low, guttural noise echoes through my mind. Becca’s gaze darts from her partner to the noise and I see a shifter standing ten feet away. The shifter pounds his fists together and stomps closer.
    He swings his thick, muscular arm at Becca and she jumps back, dropping her knife. Fear, anger, and guilt rush through me as Becca draws her tranquilizer and shoots the shifter, but he doesn’t go down.
    Her partner swipes his knife at the shifter and blood sprays from a wound on his shoulder. Her partner jumps back, but the shifter follows the movement and rips the knife from her partner’s grip. He yells at Becca, but she just stands there.
    “If you let me go, I won’t hurt him,” the shifter says.
    Becca shakes her head. “Never.”
    The shifter lifts the man by his head and twists, snapping her partner’s neck. Becca shoots another dart into the shifter and he slows down, dropping to his knees, and then he passes out.
    The pain and disbelief Becca’s partner felt moments before he died washes through me. She could’ve saved him, but didn’t, and she didn’t even think twice about it. Becca’s soul swirls inside of me and I absorb all her wrong-doings, taking in the torment and evil that tarnishes her essence, and then I release my breath and her soul dissipates, free from everything that sullied it.
    I open my eyes.
    Becca collapses to the ground and I breathe deep in and out of my mouth. My vision clears and I turn to look at Dominic in the Mustang, but his door is wide open.
    “Keep your hands up where I can see them,” a masculine voice says.
    The deep sound pierces through my chest and I draw my gaze to a man dressed in the same uniform as Becca. He stands over Dominic, who moans and blinks on the ground, but waves a knife at me. The evil radiating from the agent is the darkest I’ve ever felt on a human.
    “Let him go,” I say.
    “And if I don’t?” he asks.
    I dash the distance between us and open my arms. Just as fast, the man runs his knife along my brother’s throat and blood pools on the dirty pavement.
    “No!” I scream. Rage consumes me and I lock my fingers around the agent’s neck and rip his soul free. Hot tears brand my cheeks as my vision darkens and I’m left to endure the pain, fear, and disappointment my brother felt as the agent took his life.
     

4. SURVIVING IS THE ONLY OPTION
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    HUNTER
     
    “Wait in the car,” my mom says.
    I sit forward in my seat and peer through the windshield. An agent redirect traffics while a tow truck idles across the road to collect the van while hiding the two sheet-covered bodies lying on the concrete.
    My stomach