Page 2 of Soulmarked (Hellbound and Hollow #1)

1

THE HUNT

“ S ean, this is stupid even for you,” Skye's voice crackled through the earpiece, frustration clear despite the static. “The last three hunters who went after this one never came back.”

I adjusted my shoulder holster, confirming my silver-tipped knife was within easy reach. “That's because they weren't me.”

A heavy sigh filtered through the comm. “Your ego will get you killed one of these days.”

“Hasn't yet.” I scanned the abandoned industrial complex, noting the fresh claw marks on the rusted chain-link fence. “Besides, you're the one who tracked it here.”

“I tracked it so we could call for backup,” Skye countered. “Not so you could play lone wolf hunter against an actual wolf.”

I couldn't help but smirk at the irony. “He's killed three people this month. We wait, that number doubles.”

“At least take Lex with you. He's only twenty minutes out.”

“In twenty minutes, our target could be gone.” I moved closer to the warehouse, spotting broken glass and what looked suspiciously like blood on the concrete. “I've got this, Skye. Just keep the exit route clear.”

“Fine. But Sean? If you're not responding in thirty minutes, I'm calling in everyone. And I mean everyone.”

“Understood.” I cut the connection before they could argue further.

The warehouse stank like month-old roadkill marinated in copper. Blood, fur, and fear made a cocktail that only hunters would recognize. I slipped through the broken loading dock door, breathing through my mouth to avoid the worst of it.

I moved like a ghost between the towering metal shelves, my boots silent on the concrete floor. Years of hunting had taught me how to distribute my weight, how to place each foot so even the scattered debris wouldn't betray my presence. I'd learned the hard way that monsters hear better than they should.

The silver-tipped knife felt right in my hand, comfortable as a favorite song. This wasn't just some ordinary werewolf, the kind you could put down with standard ammunition and a cocky smile. This was an alpha, old and clever, with a taste for making art out of his victims.

I'd spent enough time in this business to know my monsters. Werewolves ain't just werewolves—they're complicated bastards with their own pecking order. My old man drilled it into me from day one: “Know what you're hunting, or it'll be hunting you.”

Alphas were the top of the food chain. Bigger, stronger, meaner than the rest. Some were born that way, others clawed their way up—literally. They could change whenever they damn well pleased, not just during the full moon. Silver hurt them, sure, but you had to make it count—heart shot or decapitation. Anything else just pissed them off. They healed faster too, which was just peachy.

Betas were your standard-issue nightmare. Pack animals, loyal to their alpha. They were the muscle, the soldiers. They had some control, but the full moon still pulled their strings. Silver worked, but they weren’t slouches in the healing department either. Most werewolf attacks you heard about? Betas doing the dirty work.

Then there were the omegas. Lone wolves, no pack. Sometimes they were rejects, sometimes they just preferred the solo act. They were unpredictable—often weaker without a pack’s strength behind them, but that only made them desperate. And desperate monsters made stupid, dangerous choices. They were still bound by the moon, though, which gave you a tactical advantage if you were smart about it.

One thing about all of them, though—they could smell fear like cheap cologne. They could hear your heartbeat from fifty paces. And they all had a taste for human hearts. Folklore got that part right, at least.

“Three bodies. All found within the last month. Local cops are calling it ritual killings,” Lex had said, sliding the photos across his polished desk.

The photos had turned my stomach, and that took some doing these days. The victims had been opened up like bloody butterflies, their insides arranged with a sick attention to detail. This wasn't just killing for food or territory. This was something worse.

I crouched behind an overturned shipping crate, scanning the warehouse's second level. A shattered skylight let in shafts of moonlight, cutting through the dusty air like silver blades. The light played tricks with the shadows, making them shift and dance, but I'd been doing this too long to be fooled by mere darkness.

There. A movement above. The scrape of claws against metal grating, too deliberate to be accidental.

Found you, you bastard.

I started to move, already plotting my route up to the catwalk, when a sound froze me in place. A voice, deep and guttural, barely more than a growl but forming words that cut through the warehouse's hollow silence.

“Hunter.”

I went still, every muscle coiled tight. The voice had come from above, but it echoed strangely, making it hard to pin down the exact location. Smart bugger, using the warehouse's acoustics against me.

“You smell like him.”

My grip tightened on the knife's handle. I didn't need to ask who “him” was. Though I had to admit, it was unusual for one of them to talk. Most werewolves, even alphas, were more animal than human when transformed. This one was different.

“Jaysus,” I muttered under my breath, “can't you just be a normal bloodthirsty monster? The chatty ones always make it complicated.”

More movement above, the metal walkway creaking under significant weight. The alpha was big, probably closer to three hundred pounds of muscle and fury. The standard tactics wouldn't work here. In close quarters, with that much raw power, I'd need to be perfect.

Good thing perfect was what I did best.

I reached into my coat with my free hand, fingers finding the familiar shape of the UV grenade. Werewolves might not have a vampire's fatal reaction to ultraviolet light, but the flash would disorient it long enough for me to close the distance.

“You're new to the city,” the creature continued, its voice taking on an almost conversational tone that made my skin crawl. “We heard about Dublin. About what you did to the pack there.”

That made me pause. Dublin was supposed to be buried, literally and figuratively. I'd made damn sure of that before leaving Ireland. The fact that word had crossed the Atlantic meant either my reputation was growing, or someone was talking who shouldn't be.

“If you've heard about Dublin,” I called out, letting my accent thicken deliberately, “then you know how this ends. Make it easy on yourself.”

A laugh rumbled through the warehouse, a sound like rocks in a garbage disposal. “The famous Sean Cullen. The hunter who never misses, never fails, never shows mercy.” A pause, then: “Never forgives himself, either, does he?”

Images flashed through my mind, Eli's face, the London rain, the moment everything went wrong. I shoved them back down where they belonged, into that dark box in my mind labeled 'never again.'

“Right then,” I said, palming the grenade with practiced ease. “Talking time's over.”

I exploded upward in one fluid motion, my body a weapon honed through years of blood and survival. My arm whipped forward, already tracking the alpha's position before my eyes confirmed it, crouched on the catwalk, its massive form silhouetted against the cold moonlight. But something was wrong. The beast wasn't tensing to attack, wasn't showing any sign of the aggression I'd come to expect.

It was smiling.

“The thing about hunters,” it said, voice like broken glass, “is they're so focused on being the predator, they forget what it's like to be prey.”

The air pressure changed behind me. Imperceptible to most, but to me, it screamed danger. I was already pivoting, muscles coiling to counter, when something slammed into my back with the force of a wrecking ball. The grenade sailed from my grip as I tucked into the impact, converting the devastating blow into controlled momentum. I hit the ground in a roll that would have shattered a normal man's bones, my body distributing the force through trained pathways of muscle and sinew.

Pain lanced through my shoulder, hot and sharp, but pain was just another language I'd learned to speak fluently.

Rookie mistake. I'd been so focused on the alpha, I'd missed the tactical play. It hadn't been hunting at all, but baiting me, keeping me distracted while its partner executed a textbook flanking maneuver.

I rolled to my feet in a single, economical movement, dropping into a fighting stance that felt as natural as breathing. Blood traced rivulets down my arm, mapping the contours of muscle beneath my torn jacket, but the wound was shallow.

The second wolf circled to my left, yellowed fangs bared in what could almost pass for a smile if it wasn't promising death.

“Two on one?” I spat a mouthful of copper-tasting blood onto the concrete, my lips curling into something that wasn't quite a smile. “And here I thought you lot were supposed to be all about honor and fair fights. What happened, get tired of killing teenagers on camping trips?”

The alpha dropped from the catwalk, a thousand pounds of predator landing with impossible grace. The concrete cracked beneath its massive paws.

“Honor?” it growled, the word rumbling like distant thunder. “Is that what you call what happened in Dublin? What you did to our brothers and sisters?”

I didn't waste breath responding. Words were just noise now. Time for the only language monsters truly respected, violence.

The silver knife materialized in my hand as if conjured, moonlight cascading along its blessed edge. The smaller wolf lunged, jaws gaping wide enough to take my head clean off, but I was already gone. The blade carved through fur and flesh in a perfect arc, opening a smoking wound across its flank that made the creature howl in surprised agony. Silver and werewolf flesh mixed like fire and gasoline.

“That's right,” I growled, spinning the knife with practiced ease. “Stings a bit, doesn't it? Silver's a bitch like that.”

The fight erupted into a brutal symphony I'd conducted a hundred times before. Every step deliberate, every strike a killing blow redirected only by the monsters' desperate defenses. The wolves were strong, but strength meant nothing against speed, precision, and the cold calculation of a predator who'd turned hunting into an art form.

I moved like water between their attacks, never where they expected, never following the same pattern twice. The knife found flesh again and again, leaving smoking furrows in its wake, each cut strategically placed to hamper movement, to sever tendons, to bleed them out drop by precious drop.

But they were smart, coordinated in the way only pack hunters could be. They kept me between them, cutting off escape routes, working in tandem to close any gap I tried to create. Each time I wounded one, drawing a howl of pain that echoed through the warehouse, the other would press forward, forcing me to split my focus.

Blood flowed freely down my arm now, and my ribs screamed from a glancing blow I'd converted from lethal to merely painful with a last-second twist. Pain was just information, and I filtered it like background noise, letting it sharpen my senses rather than dull them.

“You can't keep this up forever, hunter,” the alpha growled, circling wider. “We can smell your blood. Your fatigue. Your fear.”

I barked out a laugh, the sound like a blade against stone. “Fear? Mate, I haven't been afraid since London. And after what I've seen, what I've done?” I spun the knife between my fingers, the movement so fast the silver edge became a liquid circle of light. “You mangy bastards don't even make the top ten. Hell, I fought a wendigo last month that made you look like a chihuahua with an attitude problem.”

The wolves answered with movement, not words.

They came at me with preternatural speed, but I was already calculating trajectories, mapping their attack patterns before they'd fully committed. The alpha slammed toward me like a freight train, but I was no longer there, pivoting on my back foot, I redirected its momentum with a shoulder check that would have pulverized a normal man's collarbone. The impact sent the beast crashing into a stack of crates, wood splintering like gunshots in the cavernous space.

Pure instinct had me dropping flat as claws whistled through the air where my throat had been a heartbeat before. I rolled beneath the second wolf's underbelly, my knife finding the soft flesh there opening it from sternum to hip. The beast howled, black blood raining down, but I was already clear.

Getting a proper look at the alpha now, the bastard was a true monster even by werewolf standards. Nine feet at the shoulder, with muscles that rippled like steel cables beneath fur that resembled medieval armor more than anything natural. Its breath carried the stench of a slaughterhouse at high summer, hot and rank with the evidence of previous kills.

It grinned at me, too many teeth gleaming like yellowed daggers in the dim light. Those amber eyes burned with an intelligence that elevated it from beast to worthy adversary. This was calculated hatred.

“Too slow, hunter,” it growled, voice like concrete being pulverized.

I didn't waste oxygen on a response. My free hand was already at my belt, fingers finding and deploying a flash-bang with practiced efficiency. The pin came free with a flick of my thumb.

“Here's a trick I learned in Belfast,” I muttered, arm snapping forward with the precision of a striking snake. “Though it works pretty well in Cleveland too.”

The flash-bang hit the ground at the alpha's feet and detonated with a concussive force that rattled the warehouse windows. But this wasn't standard military issue, I'd modified this one myself, packed it with enough concentrated UV to make a vampire combust on contact. The wolf's howl transcended pain, becoming something primal and terrified as its hypersensitive eyes were seared by artificial sunlight.

I moved the instant the flash went off, my hand already drawing the modified Sig Sauer from its shoulder holster. The weapon felt like an extension of my arm, custom-weighted and loaded with hand-crafted rounds, silver bullets blessed in holy water and etched with runes older than Christianity itself. Two shots cracked through the air in rapid succession, the rounds punching into the alpha's shoulder.

But the fucking thing barely flinched.

The wounds smoked where silver met corrupted flesh, but the alpha shook off impacts that would have dropped a normal werewolf. It lunged forward with that uncanny speed, jaws gaping wide enough to swallow my head whole.

This time I wasn't quite fast enough to clear completely. Claws raked across my torso, shredding through my reinforced leather jacket as if it were tissue paper and finding flesh beneath.

“That was my favorite jacket, you manky bastard,” I snarled, converting pain into focused rage. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find decent leather in my size?”

I stepped into the attack instead of away and drove my silver blade up under its ribs with enough force to scrape bone. The beast's momentum carried it forward, impaling it further on my knife, its hot breath washing over my face as it howled in surprised agony.

I twisted the blade viciously and wrenched it free in a spray of black blood. “That's just the appetizer, mate. Main course is coming right up.”

The fight descended into something elemental and precise, a deadly exchange where milliseconds and millimeters marked the difference between victory and evisceration. I kept moving, using the warehouse's architecture as both weapon and shield. The towering shelves became impromptu barriers, the narrow aisles natural choke points that neutralized the wolves' advantages in size and strength.

But these weren't mindless beasts. With each exchange, I could see them adapting, learning my patterns. The alpha's attacks evolved, each move serving a purpose beyond simple bloodlust. It wasn't just trying to kill me anymore, it was playing a deeper game.

It was still herding me.

The realization crystallized as I found myself being systematically forced backward, each dodge and counter bringing me closer to the warehouse's shattered windows. Moonlight spilled through broken glass like liquid silver, illuminating my tactical error with brutal clarity.

The alpha's grin widened, exposing even more of those yellowed fangs. Its eyes gleamed with something disturbingly close to human triumph.

“Ah, shite,” I muttered, already mapping the coming attack in my mind. “Should've seen this coming.”

The second wolf crashed through the window behind me in an explosion of glass and twisted metal, its trajectory perfectly calculated to cut off my escape. I pivoted, but the space had already collapsed.

Sometimes being lethal wasn't enough. Sometimes the monsters just had better position.

The glass hadn't even finished falling before both wolves were converging from opposite directions, moving with the coordinated precision of predators who'd hunted together for years. In that heartbeat before impact, a stray thought crossed my mind: Eli would have laughed his arse off seeing me backed into a corner by the same tactics we'd once perfected together.

“Right then,” I said, adjusting my grip on both knife and gun with deadly purpose. “Let's make this interesting. I've got places to be, people to see, beers to drink.”

I was bleeding from a dozen wounds, each one carefully cataloged in my mind. My jacket clung to my side, saturated where the wolf's claws had found purchase. The cuts were shallow but something deeper than my patience was beginning to fray.

Time to end this dance.

“Getting tired, hunter?” The alpha's voice dripped with false concern. “You're slowing down.”

I let exhaustion show in my posture. Every predator instinctively recognizes weakness, and every hunter knows exactly how to manufacture it.

“Maybe,” I muttered, staggering back a step. “Maybe you're right.”

The wolf's eyes ignited with savage anticipation. This was the moment it had been waiting for. Its massive body tensed, muscles coiling beneath that thick fur, preparing for what it believed would be the killing blow.

I counted the heartbeats. One. Two.

It launched forward, a mountain of fur and fury blotting out the moonlight, casting a shadow that swallowed me whole. In that suspended moment between life and death, time crystallized into perfect clarity. I could see every detail, the individual yellowed fangs, saliva trailing in viscous strings from its open maw, the cold intelligence burning behind those inhuman eyes.

My hand found the remote trigger in my pocket, thumb pressing down with calm certainty.

“Gotcha.” My lips curled into a smirk. “Always carry a Plan B, fuzzball.”

The warehouse floor erupted in a mechanical symphony of my design.

Steel cables, meticulously concealed beneath scattered debris. Each strand had been hand-treated with silver nitrate, woven through the braided metal with the care of a master craftsman. The trap caught the wolf mid-leap, wrapping around its limbs and torso.

The howl that tore from its throat wasn't anything close to animal. The silver began its alchemical work immediately, burning through fur and flesh with a sound like meat on a hot griddle. The stench filled the warehouse, scorched hair and cooking flesh with a chemical undertone that spoke of corruption being purified.

I didn't pause to admire my handiwork. The second wolf was still in play, and a trapped predator was the most dangerous kind. I moved, silver knife held in a reverse grip that would deliver maximum penetrating force.

The wolf's eyes locked onto mine as I approached. Even through the agony, even with death breathing down its neck, that terrible intelligence remained undimmed. It knew what was coming.

“Do it,” it growled through clenched teeth, defiant even in defeat. “Finish it.”

I obliged.

The knife slid between the alpha's ribs, finding the heart with the accuracy that came from killing monsters before most men learned to shave. The wolf's body bucked against the restraints, every muscle and sinew fighting against the inevitable. Black blood spread across the concrete floor in a slow, pulsing pool.

It should have been over. Another monster down, another night's work completed, another entry in the ledger of hunts that defined my existence.

Then the body began to change.

The transformation wasn't like the usual shift from wolf to human. This was wrong, jerky, unnatural. The fur receded like it was being burned away, revealing pale flesh beneath. But it was what I saw on its chest that made my blood run cold.

A mark. No, not a mark, a sigil. The lines seemed to writhe and twist, even as the flesh around them grew pale with death. Complex geometries that hurt to look at directly, symbols that violated the natural laws of our reality.

“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph,” I breathed, taking an involuntary step back.

I knew that sigil. I'd seen it in books older than Christianity, in texts that Skye kept locked away in her most secure vaults. The kind of books that whispered back when you read them.

A demon mark. But not just any demon, this was old magic, the kind that predated the wars between Heaven and Hell.

The wolf, human now, just a broken body on a warehouse floor, coughed wetly. Its lips curled in something too pained to be a smile, too knowing to be a grimace. Blood stained its teeth black as it forced out two final words:

“He's coming.”

I leaned closer, despite every instinct screaming at me to run. “Who's coming?”

A pause. The dying man's eyes focused on something far beyond the warehouse walls, beyond this world entirely.

“The prince...” he whispered, the words barely more than an exhale. “He rises.”

Then the light went out of those eyes, leaving nothing but an empty shell with my knife still buried in its chest.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered, running a hand through my sweat-soaked hair. “Just once, couldn't it be something simple? Vengeful spirit, maybe? Hell, I'd even take a vampire nest over this crap.”

A marked werewolf was bad enough. The demons usually kept to their own kind, preferring to corrupt humans rather than mess about with the furry crowd. But this... this was different. A demon prince? That was the kind of thing that made even veteran hunters check their retirement plans.

I pulled out my phone, grimacing at the cracked screen. Three missed calls from Lex. He never called more than once unless something was seriously wrong.

The second wolf was still out there somewhere, probably running back to whatever hole these things had crawled out of. I should track it, finish the job properly. But this mark changed everything. We needed information more than we needed another dead wolf.

I took a few photos of the sigil, then started dialing. First Skye, she'd want to see this personally, and her knowledge of demonic lore was unmatched. Then Lex, because if a demon prince was really rising, we'd need every resource and contact in his considerable network.

As I waited for the call to connect, I found myself staring at the body again. The sigil seemed to pulse in the moonlight, like a heart still beating long after death.

“What the hell are you planning?” I murmured to the empty air. “And why show your hand now?”

The warehouse offered no answers, just the steady drip of blood on concrete and the distant wail of sirens. Another night in New York City, where the monsters wore human skin and ancient evils stirred in the shadows.

Just another bloody Tuesday, really.