Page 42 of Nexus
I didn’t dignify him with a response and rode the lift to the fourth floor, fuming in silence.
Showering for a good half an hour, I managed to get rid of the smells that clung to my skin and hair. It was still early for a night owl like me. I heated some leftover pizza in the microwave, then sat down to game.
Gaming was my form of therapy. I went into a Zenlike state when I was mauling and killing my electronic enemies. They never threw poo in my eyes, or licked blood off my boobs. In a perfect world, I could spend all of my time playing videogames. Unfortunately, I needed money in order to survive and hunting monsters was what I did best. Receiving my payment in person from the hottest shifter in Nexus was a welcome bonus.
I played one of my favorite games where I got to drive a variety of cars around doing various tasks. The best part was killing zombies by opening the car door as I drove past them. It never failed to bring me joy when I splattered their bodies all over the road. Eventually growing tired enough to go to bed, I hoped I wasn’t going to have another weird dream.
Bright daylight speared through my dingy window and woke me up a few hours later. “I should clean that window one day,” I muttered as I rolled out of bed. That would just make the sun brighter, so I immediately abandoned the idea. My curtain was thin and too small, hence the gap the sunlight filtered through. Shopping for a new one would require too much effort, so I was stuck with it.
Mom was busy with friends today, so I had the day to myself. We only gamed three times a week, sometimes four if her plans changed. It was pathetic, but my mother had a far more active social life than I did. Unlike me, she wasn’t a total loner.
After breakfast, curiosity had me picking up the journal my ancestor had written and the translated copy of it. I’d left them sitting on my coffee table, but hadn’t bothered to look at them yet. Sinking onto my couch, I opened the red leatherbound book and flicked through the pages. I couldn’t read the words that had been written in black ink, so I examined the drawings instead.
“She was a pretty good artist,” I said, slightly jealous of my ancestor. A monster hunter like all of the women in our line, she’d sketched the creatures she’d killed. Most were rogue vampires, shifters and demons. Others came from various realms of the underworld, but appeared to be normal humans most of the time. We had to be careful when we were tracking our quarry. Humans wouldn’t understand that we were saving them from supernatural creatures unless they witnessed our targets transforming into monsters.
A drawing towards the end of the book caught my attention. An extremely pregnant woman was in the throes of giving birth. She was sitting in a clearing in the woods, with a ring of trees around her. The full moon was high overhead, brightly illuminating the scene. I spied an owl sitting on a low branch of a nearby tree. Then I saw a wolf lurking in the shadows. Its head was back, howling at the moon as it witnessed the birth of the baby.
“Ew, I can see its head coming out!” I complained when I saw a bulge between the woman’s thighs.
It was surreal to think the baby that disgusted me so much might actually be me. For a second or two, my mind spun dizzily. The dream I’d had about Fate and Crowmon returned in vivid detail. If it had been real, then Fate had set all this into motion two thousand years ago. She’d guided my ancestors to find supernatural sperm doners time and time again. Her actions had led to me being born at the right time to save our world from destruction.
My gaze went to my gaming console that was waiting for me to resume mowing down zombies. I was tempted to toss the journals aside and do what I loved best, but a niggling sense of unease kept me flicking through the book. That sketch was the only picture that related to either my mother or myself as far as I could tell.
Getting up long enough to make coffee, I sat back down and started reading the translation of the journal. It took me a couple of hours to skim through it. Once I finally reached the dream she’d had about the birth in the woods, I slowed down to read it thoroughly.
According to her dream, one of her distant descendants would be born beneath the omens she’d drawn. The child would grow up to be a highly skilled hunter, with unusually strong talents. She would be chosen by a strange entity to save our world from an epic disaster that would result in the loss of all life.
“Could she have been vaguer?” I said in annoyance. “What if the disaster is a gigantic meteor? Am I supposed to reach up and smack it out of the sky with my bare hands?”
As far as prophecies went, it was pretty lame. I had to concede that my birth was eerily similar to the drawing, minus being born in the woods surrounded by trees. Mom had said the bird that had flown past the window had been an owl. There were always werewolves howling at the moon when it was full. A pack lived just a couple of blocks from her house.
“I guess I could be the one she dreamed about,” I mused. “I am an awesome hunter with unusually strong skills.” I’d also dreamed I’d been chosen to be Fate’s champion for our world.
Even if the prophecy was true and I was the heroine that had been predicted, it wasn’t like I could just stroll up to a gate to the underworld and pass through it. They were heavily guarded by magic and Lord Gilden’s lackeys. Hardly anyone ever passed from our world to the underworld. The few who did rarely made it back. Special envoys from the overlords were the only ones who came and went without dying horribly. I’d heard they had dozens of guards with them, although they had to pass through the gates alone.
“I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” I said and got up to put the journals back on the coffee table. “Maybe I’ll see a sign that will tell me what I have to do.” Chuckling at that unlikelihood, I switched my console and TV on and got stuck into annihilating zombies.
Chapter Thirty-Three
RUEN WAS GOING TO PICK me up to take me to our boss to get my payment tonight. I made sure to be ready when the sun went down. Sensing a vampire outside shortly after nightfall, I crossed to my bedroom window that overlooked the parking lot. Ruen flashed his headlights at me and I waved to indicate I’d seen him.
“That dinosaur really needs to start using his cell phone more often,” I said with an eyeroll at my assistant’s method of communication.
Grabbing my kill-bag, I trotted over to the door. I was dressed in a short black skirt and a sexy see-through red top. It was sleeveless and low-cut to show off my tatts. My bra was purple to match my hair, but looked black beneath the shirt.
Ruen was waiting with the patience of the dead when I climbed into his car. “You smell like reheated pizza,” he said without turning his head.
“A girl’s gotta eat,” I said with a shrug, slamming the door shut and buckling myself in. “Sorry I don’t have any blood splatters on me for you to lick off this time,” I added with a smirk.
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?” he asked with a grimace as he drove out of the lot.
“Nope. I’m going to bring it up as often as possible,” I said smugly. “You clung to my back like a tick, licking the shifters’ blood off me like I was a tasty popsicle.”
Ruen shuddered, either from the enticing mention of blood, or from the horror of his tongue becoming more familiar with my body than most of the men I’d slept with had. “How much will it take to bribe you into never mentioning this again?” he asked.
“Hmm,” I pondered, rubbing my chin thoughtfully. “A thousand bucks should do it.”
“Open the glovebox,” he ordered. “You’ll find the money in an envelope.”
