Sam
“JUST, GREAT, SHADE.” The New York
Museum of Natural History? I stared up into the violet eyes of my vampire
handler, tapped the seven-inch raised scar on my left forearm, and drew out my
blue-crystal trident, Atlantis. He had to be freaking kidding me. “And you want
me to do what?”
Shade Vermillion had said something
about a wizard and a giant rat, but after that, I hadn’t really heard anything
else because a booming hammered in my ears. I hated rats.
He pointed at the front entrance door
off Central Park West and 79th Street. The hours of operation were clearly
posted. The museum had closed half an hour ago, so human casualties wouldn’t be
an issue.
Shade showed me and my boyfriend Max a
tablet with the details of the mission he was offering us. We’d just celebrated
Max’s graduation from basic training for the Hunters’ Watch Brigade. We had a
full two weeks of R&R planned in the city, and I wanted to show him
everything I loved about Manhattan.
Our vacation had officially started an
hour ago, but Shade had called us in to help out with one last mission. So much
for time off. We should have gone to the British Virgin Islands, instead.
“Someone opened a portal around back of
the campus near the planetarium. My team and I will head over there to make
sure nothing gets in or out of that thing while you two check out the inside of
the museum.”
I stared up at my boss who’d dressed in
jeans, boots, and a black sweater. He didn’t need it to keep the crisp
late-December weather at bay. I figured he styled himself like that so he
fitted in with the rest of the humans. “You’re the best damn monster-hunter in
the HWB. You can do this, Samantha.”
Shade always used my full name. The
formality kept us at a professional distance, and I liked it that way. To
everyone else, I was Sam. I didn’t need him blowing smoke up my ass. Besides, I
loved to hunt monsters. No cause for the urging.
“Sure, she can do this,” Max said. He
stood up to his full six-foot-seven height, ran one hand through his dark-brown
hair, and stared Shade in the eye.
I glared up at my sexy
guardian/boyfriend/cat shifter, whose native form was a thirty-five-pound Maine
Coon housecat. While they were both right—I could do this—the real
question was, did I want to?
The last rays of sunshine streaked pink
and orange across the New York City sky. Sunlight didn’t bother Shade the way
it did other vampires. My dad, the Greek god Poseidon, had given him a free
pass to Daywalk for a year to follow up on some critical HWB business with some
nasty vamps. I wondered how that was going for him, but now was not the time to
ask.
“Rat Patrol. My favorite job.” Max
smiled and cracked his knuckles with a loud resounding pop. Then he extended
his three-inch-long, razor-sharp claws. “You ready, Sam? Piece of cake, right?”
I think I nodded my head.
I stared up at the stone building and
swallowed hard. I’d been on field trips to this museum as a child but had never
set foot in the place on a mission. I mean, what kind of lunatic hits the most
famous institution of learning in New York City?
“You got a tip from Chad?” I asked.
“About the rat?”
Chad was one of our junior operatives.
He was a seventeen-year-old wizard who also worked for the museum while he
finished high school and transitioned to college. He was kinda like me—one of
Shade’s kids—but I was nine years older than he was.
Shade tapped his index finger on the
tablet’s screen. “Chad recognized a rogue HWB wizard, Dusty McLane, snooping
around earlier. He’d asked to review some ancient manuscripts from Greece—he
always did have a passion for all things Greek. But he’d hung around, long
after he seemed to have been finished. Then, this afternoon, Chad noticed that
one of the journals kept in the modern book collection in the research library
had gone missing. He called us in on it.”
“And that’s when surveillance captured
video footage of this wizard using his magic to revive one of the taxidermist’s
mounts of a giant sewer rat?” Max asked, with a little too much glee in his
voice.
Shade nodded. “It’s not unusual to catch
wizards stealing. They take what they want when it suits them. Talismans.
Treasure. Books with secrets.”
I grimaced. “I freaking hate rats. Any
self-respecting New Yorker hates rats. They’re filthy, and they grow to the
size of raccoons around here.”
Shade grasped my arm and stared at me
with searching violet eyes. “I should pull someone else in on this one. Your
vacation started an hour ago. I just thought, with your Greek heritage and all,
you might have an edge.”
My trident Atlantis, a gift from my dad,
generated a soft pulsing buzz in my hands, like a cellphone vibrating a new
call. Whenever paranormal shit was about to hit the fan, I got advanced
warnings from my weapon. “We’ve got this,” I said and searched Max’s handsome
face. “You distract the rat, and I’ll find the wizard.”
Max honed his claws together until they
sang a high-keening metal sound, like a warrior sharpening a sword. “Let’s do
this.”
Shade motioned for Chad to unlock the
doors, and we strode inside. “I think they’re upstairs, Sam.” The young wizard
gestured to the marble stairs, an expression of terror etched across his face.
“You think you can catch them?”
I grinned at Chad, who wore his straight
blond hair short, and a little soul patch of a beard on his chin. “Yeah, I do.
But you should go outside and help Shade with that portal. He might need you to
use your magic to shut it down. Don’t let the wizard escape.”
Relief washed away his fear, and with a
final, “Be careful,” he rushed out the door.
That’s what we do. We’re agents of the
Hunters’ Watch Brigade, and when supernatural evil threatens people, we go in
and stop it.
I turned and grinned up at Max. “Shall
we?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” he replied.
We hit the stairs running and raced up to the third floor. Once we got to the
Hall of New York Mammals, the stench of sewers assaulted my nose. Glass
displays lay in ruins. Taxidermist mounts of the museum’s collection were
askew, and the one mount that was missing was the common brown rat. Great.
I headed upstairs for the fourth level.
“I’m going up to the library.”
“Not without me, you’re not.” Max came
up beside me, racing his way in front.
A chittering noise sounded off at the
top of the stairs. As if Manhattan didn’t have enough of these bastards, now we
had a mutant magic rat the size of a damn Great Dane running loose in the
museum. I skidded to a stop when I saw the filthy creature, with dusty brown
clumps of mangy fur hanging from its body. Plumes of dust puffed up into the
air around it, and when it sneezed, long threads of gooey slime hung from its
jowls. Holy shit.Make that the size of a damn grizzly bear. “Max! Watch
out!”
He raced ahead of me, never hesitating.
The rat leapt at him, baring wooden-colored teeth and whipping its scaly pink
tail around. The tail tripped Max, and he went flying into a spin across the
polished marble floors.
I aimed Atlantis, but I couldn’t find a
clear shot because Max reared up and faced off with the rat. The vermin leapt
at him, but he slashed at its hide, and buried his claws elbow deep in the
mutant rodent. Something multicolored spilled out of the rat’s belly and spread
out all around them.
To my horror, a pack of at least a
hundred smaller rats emerged, scampering throughout the room.
I focused my trident’s tines toward them
and blasted a surge of power into the mass of rodents. The smell of singed fur
hit my nose, and I gagged.
The grizzly-bear-sized mama rat scurried
away toward the stairs, its herd of offspring racing after her. They bounded
down the stairwell, Max hot on their trail. “Go find the wizard. I’ve got
this,” he yelled.
I hesitated for a second, wondering if I
should follow them. Would Max be okay by himself? Yes, he was now a
full-fledged HWB agent, but I still felt that he was my responsibility. But so
was capturing Dusty McLane.
I turned and raced to the research
library. It was quiet and empty. Of course, he wouldn’t be hiding in here.
I reversed my direction and ran back
down one flight of stairs, to where we’d seen all the destruction.
I found the wizard in one of the
dioramas of Native American Peoples. His fiery-red hair stood out like beacon,
and he was covered in freckles. Dressed in jeans and an NYU hoodie, he held the
stolen journal, a little red book, in his left hand close to his heart. I aimed
Atlantis at his head. “You know I can’t let you take that book out of here,
Dusty.”
He stepped behind the display of
Indians, counting on my desire to not destroy the museum’s precious artifacts.
“What, this? It’s no big deal—just a compilation of notes put together by some
old history professor. Nothing important.”
What was he hiding? I moved, trying to
find a clear path, an open shot. He countered, and we entered into a dance. “If
it’s in the museum, it’s important. Hand it over.”
“That rat’s gonna kill your partner.” He
taunted me with the information about the spell he’d used to bring the rat to
life. “I gave it venom. He’ll die if he gets bitten. And when those younglings
get out of the building, the whole city will be in jeopardy.”
I narrowed my eyes. Was Max at risk?
What would happen if the little monsters escaped from the museum? Could he stop
them all?
What a creep. This was exactly why I
enjoyed monster-hunting so much. Stopping someone like Dusty from hurting
people really did it for me. “So, what? If I let you take the little red book,
you’ll call it off? Put the rat back up on the wall where it’s supposed to be?”
He smiled, and it made him look like a
naughty little boy. “Maybe.”
Why the heck was he hanging around? He’d
obviously opened the portal outside so he could escape. Why hadn’t he
hightailed it out of there once he got his hands on the book?
The problem with rogue wizards was that
you never could trust them. “You’re former HWB, I understand. Come in with me
now, and I’ll see if Shade will take it easy on you.”
He snorted. “Not likely. We have plans
for this little book.”
“We? Who’s we, Dusty?” He didn’t
answer me. Definitely a bad sign. I moved closer when he leaned down, taking
his attention off me.
“Take this to Alex,” he said in a voice
so low, I almost didn’t hear him. He handed the journal to a knee-high-sized
creature with a pointed face who chittered at him, grasped it in its back
claws, then flapped wide, leathery, bat-like wings. Rising above us, it had the
damn nerve to hiss at me while it took flight.
I jabbed at it with my trident, hoping
to skewer it before it got away, but I missed. It squawked, then spat at me,
and I had to dodge right to avoid acidy venom. It flew so close to me on its
way out of the diorama, I felt the breeze on my face.
“What the hell . . .?” So
much for recovering the little book of secrets. I wheeled around on Dusty,
ready for anything. “You’re coming with me,” I said. “We’ll go retrieve the
damn thing together.”
“I don’t think so. A friend of mine
warned me the HWB might intervene. Taking a couple of you assholes out is my
initiation fee into the game. Recovering that journal means bonus points for
me.”
Dusty twirled three square rune stones
between his fingers while he whispered a few choice words and got them glowing
red-hot. The bastard reared his hand back in a pitcher’s stance, ready to hurl
his magic rocks my way.
Game? What kind of messed up game was he talking about? I
shrugged. “Works either way for me, buddy.”
He threw the rocks at me. I blasted a
bolt of pure electrical energy from Atlantis to deflect them. The rune stones
disintegrated into sparking flecks of ash. Dusty lunged at me, wielding a
curved silver blade. I had no choice, so I skewered him with the business end
of my trident.
His last words were a warning. “You’re
never gonna win the game.” Then he fell and crumbled into a pile of ash. I
reared back. My weapon transmitted a surge of magic through me, cataloging
images from Dusty’s mind. I shook my head, stunned for a moment. Whoever had
hired Dusty must be a very powerful wizard.
“Son of a bitch!” The diorama burst into
flames. I doused the display with water from my trident, snuffing out the fire.
There was no sense in causing any more damage in the museum than necessary.
I turned around and ran to the stairs,
looking for Dusty’s familiar and his prize.
Maybe Shade and the guys had already
caught the little rat-dragon and recovered the book. I had to find Max and help
him with those damn rats. Furious that I’d let the wizard’s familiar escape, I
raced down the stairs.
If this little leather-bound diary was
important enough to summon a mage with dark magic, maybe I’d go after it later,
see what all the fuss was about.
Right now I had to help Max round up all
those poisonous rats. What a disaster. If even one of them got out, the city
would be at significant risk.
Shade was gonna be pissed I’d killed the
wizard before he could interrogate him. Yeah, it was sort of a sticking point
with us.
There was nothing worse than a furious
vampire.
Enter the Giveaway:
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The Game by Paula Millhouse
