Page 1 of Shadow Hunter

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Damon Brock clutched the neck of the guard and twisted. The crack of bone pierced the silence in the alleyway as his victim’s spine snapped beneath his fingers. The wind whistled in a freezing gush, so cold that his breath swirled in front of his face. The guard’s pulse beat several feeble times against his hands before fading. Not a single scream.

Damon released the guard, the body crumpling to the cold winter ground before he nudged the corpse with the steel toe of his boot. No movement. Only dead weight. A quick kill. Not even 9 p.m. and already he’d taken out one bloodsucker.

Rochester seemed promising.

Stepping over the corpse, he slipped through the back entrance of the club. A silver dagger under the sleeve of his leather trench coat, a Desert Eagle .44 caliber semi-automatic tucked into the back of his jeans, one silver throwing knife in each boot and a smooth, lacquered wooden stake inside his coat—you could never be too prepared when it came to vamps. The leeches were damn near impossible to kill. While bullets and silver gave them pause, only a severed spine, decapitation or a stake through the heart truly destroyed the undead.

Like a neon sign in a red-light district, the establishment’s name flashed over the interior service door: Club Fantasy.

He scoffed. Club Fantasy? More like Club Hell. If only the patrons knew the truth about the monster vampire who owned it. The man sitting at the top of Damon’s hit list.

He pushed through a second service door, and into the main level of the club. If the night went well, he would gladly up the body count to at least four. Maybe more.

The thick smell of liquor and sweat from one too many dancing bodies assaulted his nose as he scanned the crowd. Bright red lighting flashed over the floor, and the bass of the heavy dance music pounded in his ears. The most difficult thing about hunting vamps: they were damn near indistinguishable from humans. After nightfall, the pulses of the undead beat with the same intensity as any human civilian, but their craving for blood, their inhuman strength, and their drive to drain life from unsuspecting victims lingered.

If only humanity knew what the hell they were up against.

Damon strode across the dance floor, navigating between writhing bodies before he slid onto the black leather bench of one of the club’s booths. His hands ran across the smooth, newly lacquered tabletop. Despite the underlying seediness, the atmosphere of Club Fantasy came out on top compared to most of Rochester’s dive bars. With western New York prices and Manhattan quality, Club Fantasy had young twenty-somethings flocking to it like drunken sheep led to a bloodlust-fueled slaughter. High quality aside, it was twice as dangerous as any New York City club. At least, the City offered ample backup.

He'd admit one disadvantage to himself: navigating the supernatural scene of a city with no hunting division would be hard. Damn hard. But he was up for the challenge. He’d tracked his target here to Mark’s hometown, Rochester, and he wouldn’t stop until he avenged his friend. He’d requested assignment toRochester for that sole purpose—even if it meant a chance of running intoher. But he couldn’t allow himself to think about that. Not now.

His gaze jumped from face to face, searching for his target: blond hair, blue eyes, medium build, a strong, slightly crooked nose, and a small but noticeable scar beneath his left eye. He dreamed of that face every night.

An ancient piece of Roman shit, Caius Argyros Dermokaites ruled over the Rochester vamp coven with an iron fist, more because he was old as dirt, rather than because of some great attribute of his own. The older the vampire, the more deadly he—or she—became, and Caius was currently sitting at the top of Damon’s hit list.

Damon was going to kill him. He’d make sure of it this time.

His eyes locked on to the vampire. Though the swaying limbs of the dancing patrons skewed his view, he could see Caius sitting on the other side of the club. His hands clenched into fists. It was his fault. His fault that Caius sat there laughing while Mark’s ashes had gone unburied. His fault the only woman he’d ever opened his heart to wished him dead. He’d failed Mark—his closest friend—and he’d failedher, too.

A grin crossed Caius’s face as he wrapped his arm around the skimpy-leather-and-silver-chain-clad woman next to him. Caius was surrounded by women. Not surprising. Few things were larger than a male vampire’s ego, and Caius overcompensated like a pair of tricked-out rims on an already overpriced car. But if there was one thing Damon had learned during his field training, it was how to be a quick judge of character. Vanity was no doubt Caius’s number-one weakness and striking that vein would make him bleed.

A sexed-up, raspy voice purred right next to Damon’s ear. “You gonna order a drink, hot stuff, or just stare into the crowd all night?”

A cheap pair of too-tight latex pants blocked his view.

The bottle-blond waitress smacked her lips together as she chewed on a piece of gum. She leaned down, resting her elbows on the table in front of him, and treating him to a prime-time view of her tits. Her breasts were squeezed into a top smaller than some women’s panties, and her breath reeked of over-chewed bubble gum and the sharp smell of cheap gin.

She licked her lips. “You look like a vodka-on-the-rocks kind of man to me—strong, bold, served on ice but easily warmed.”

Damon barely glanced at the woman. He leaned back in his seat, aligning his vision with Caius again. “I don’t drink.”

The waitress sighed and peeled herself off the table. “Well, if you’re not gonna order anything, you can’t take up an entire booth.”

A slender redhead ran her fingers through Caius’s hair, pushing closer to his body. The human women surrounding Caius literally threw themselves at him, but Caius’s stare was fixed on something out of Damon’s line of sight. If he could just see where...

The waitress huffed again. “Uh, hello? Did you hear me?”

Fuck this. Moving about the club for a different vantage point was better than staying put. Without another word, Damon stood, brushing past the now pissed-off waitress. Nothing was going to distract him tonight. With six human women missing from Caius’s inner circle and a growing number of gruesome, fatal attacks, neglect wasn’t an option.

When he’d joined the inaugural hires of the Execution Underground, he’d sworn an oath to protect innocent humans from the dangerous creatures lurking out of their unsuspecting sight. But what had once been him and only a rag-tag group of his closest friends was now a government-sponsored network. An international elite group of men, the newly formed ExecutionUnderground trained its hunters to annihilate everything from vampires to werewolves, demons, shifters and more.

But even with extensive combat training and packing loads of hard-earned muscle, no ordinary man could fight the supernatural alone. Upon swearing in, each hunter received a serum injection, and while the resulting longer lifespan, increased strength to battle the supernatural and extra healing capabilities were perks, putting their lives on the line every day was one hell of a sacrifice. Even with the serum, they still couldn’t match a supernatural’s strength. Not completely. That was where the training came in, to ensure they weren’t easily annihilated. They swore to protect their fellow humans no matter the personal cost, swore to keep the supernatural world hidden from view and away from the vulnerable.

They promised to give everything, even their lives, if needed.

Mark had given his life for the safety of others, and Damon wasn’t about to dishonor his friend’s memory by doing any less. He’d meant every word of that promise he’d made.

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