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StormBreaker:Took down a vamp two nights ago in Albuquerque.

Scar:Nice! Fucking leeches. Has anyone else noticed an unusually high attack rate lately? I’m seeing reports from all over.

GrimCreeper:Yeah. Monsters are poppin’ up like we’re playin’ goddamn whack-a-mole. Maybe it’s the apocalypse. Better stock up on ammo. Zombies are comin’.

Scar:God, I hope not.

StormBreaker:Anyone heard from Hawk lately? He was after some smokers a few days ago and hasn’t checked in.

“Smokers” was what we called a type of demon we’d come across. They looked like shadows and only came out at night, smelling like char and rot. They weren’t too hard to kill unless they were traveling in packs—which they usually were.

I took a drink of coffee, forcing down the sludge of cheap brew. Definitely not the best I’d ever had. I brought my laptop closer and clicked on the box to respond.

Me:All’s good. Sorry for not checking in sooner. I’ve been following a trail of attacks across the state. All on young couples and men.

Scar:I’ve seen them too. Any idea what could be doing it? Werewolf, maybe?

Me:I don’t think so. The stomach and liver were reported as missing on all the vics. The deaths are too clean, not messy like a wolf. Coroner didn’t label them as animal attacks either. The bodies had small puncture wounds.

I took another drink of the black sludge, making a mental note to find a decent coffee place once I checked out of the motel.

StormBreaker:Puncture wounds?

Me:Yeah, like precise cuts. Surgical almost. But some of the male bodies were gnawed on. Now those were listed as animal attacks.

GrimCreeper:What makes you think they’re related then? Could be two different baddies.

Me:The male vics, though torn apart, also had puncture wounds. Identical to the ones found on the women. Their stomachs and livers were gone too. Eaten probably.

StormBreaker:Fucking bastards.

Scar:I’ll do some research and call if I find anything useful.

Me:Thx.

Scarlett was great at identifying the monsters, so hopefully she got back to me soon. In the meantime, I’d do my own research and try to figure this shit out.

Kinkaid’s face flashed through my head—blood splattered across his cheek and pooling from a wound in his neck. I’d held my hand over it and screamed for him not to leave me. He was my best friend. My…No, stop.

Those fucking things—that I now knew were called ghouls—had swarmed us in that house. One had ripped off Kinkaid’s helmet and dug its sharp claws into the back of his head, dragging him down. I had shot the ghoul… but not before it tore a chunk from his throat.

I’d held him as he died.

Shaking off the memory, I shoved clothes into my bag. Throwing myself into hunting helped distract me from the dark shit in my head. Until I went to sleep anyway.

A part of me had died that night too.

***

“A what?” I asked into the phone as I popped open the trunk and grabbed my duffel bag, slinging it over my shoulder.

I had just checked into a motor inn in Echo Bay, a seaside town in Washington State. Salt water lingered in the air, as did smells from the small diner beside the motel. It was lunchtime, and the parking lot was full. Hopefully that meant the food was good. It’d been a while since I’d eaten anything that didn’t come out of a takeout bag.

“A manananggal,” Scarlett repeated. I used the message boards to chat with hunters from all over the globe, but a few of us had exchanged numbers to keep in touch easier. They were the only friends I had. “I found it in Filipino folklore. It’s a female demon that preys on couples. In the day, she looks like a beautiful woman, and at night, she detaches her torso from the lower half of her body and grows batlike wings to hunt.”

“She doeswhat?” I unlocked the door to my room and walked inside. Despite it being cold outside, I opened a window to clear some of the stale air.

“Detaches her body. It’s how she flies.” Clicking sounded on her end of the phone, like nails on a keyboard. “It says right here that she has a long hollow tongue that she inserts into her victims to suck out their liver and other organs. So like a tube, I guess.”