Kait Ballenger: Twilight Hunter

He slammed the door and walked toward the warehouse. Never in his life had he wanted to attend a council meeting so badly.

JACE STRODE INTO the rusted, run-down warehouse as he pulled yet another Marlboro from his trench coat and stuck it between his lips. Looking up from his lighter, he glanced at the three other hunters. Damon was sitting at the far end of the table, his hands folded together on his lap as he shot daggers at Jace with his ice-blue eyes. The usual warm fuzzy welcome.

The massive building was empty save for the single table, several overhead drop lights and the mounds upon mounds of old crates they’d put in to make the place seem more like an actual warehouse. Someone would be hard-pressed to find the switch that opened the door to the hidden room that held the Rochester division’s headquarters, unless they moved a hell of a lot of wooden crates. Even if they located the keypad, they would still be faced with the code and the body scanner.

Damon spoke. “You’re la—”

“No.” Jace held up one finger, cutting Damon off. He took a long pull on his cigarette, exhaled, then glanced down at his watch with a smug grin on his face. “ Now I’m late.”

Damon’s face hardened into a frozen mask, but Jace knew the overwhelming anger that lay beneath that cold, impassive stare. Jace felt rage—it was in his blood—but Damon took angst and made it into a lifestyle. Head of the council and the fiercest vampire slayer Jace had ever seen, Damon Brock never smiled, and he sure as hell couldn’t take a joke.

“Sit down,” Damon ordered.

Jace flopped into one of the hard, metal chairs and propped his dirt-covered boots on the table. David sat at Damon’s right side with his large hand covering his black goatee as he snickered.

Jace nodded in his direction. “How’s it going, Big Daddy?”

“Not too bad, sugarplum.” A smirk crept across David’s face, reaching all the way to his black eyes.

Jace had never seen a woman who didn’t give David the “look” as soon as she met him, taking in that dark hair shaved close to his head, near-black irises, golden skin and chiseled features, scanning up and down his tall, massively built body, lingering on his massive shoulders and irresistible grin. But the entire time Jace had known him, David had had only two things on his mind: toasting demons and banishing their sorry asses back into hell, and Allsún, a girl he would never have again.

Jace and David exchanged smirks. David may have kept Jace in check and coming to meetings, but he wasn’t beyond goofing off a bit to grate on Damon’s nerves. Damon always responded as if they were undermining the entire division, making it almost impossible to resist fulfilling his paranoid expectations at least occasionally.

A grim look crossed Damon’s face. “What have you two been doing in your spare time?”

Jace fought not to roll his eyes at the predictable question. Damon was always suspecting him and David of conspiring over something. “Getting more action than you, that’s for sure,” he said. As a matter of fact, he could think of a very naked, gorgeous woman he would like to get some action with at that very moment. He shook his head. Now was definitely not the time. “Of course, none of us is getting as much as Shane over there. Ain’t that right, kid?” He winked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you mean sexual intercourse, then no.” Shane fiddled with the buttons on his dress shirt. Though he was dressed to a nerdy tee, as usual, behind his gold-rimmed glasses and shy attitude there was a fighter in there, and Jace knew that if Shane would just ditch the specs and let loose, his problems with women would be cured.

“Come on, Shane. One of these days you’ll need to get familiar with the ladies.” David lightly punched Shane’s arm.

Damon frowned. “If all of you would stop goofing around, we’ve got a bunch of mutilated dead girls to talk about.”

Like he would ever forget that vicious mess he’d encountered in the alley, Jace thought, and pulled hard on his cigarette. “Mutilated dead girls—way to spoil the mood.”

Damon’s eyes narrowed into thin slits, his permanent grimace still in place. “Mouths shut and weapons in the bin. You know the drill. McCannon, you first.”

Damon grabbed a plastic bin from the floor, placed it on the table and pushed it forward. All weapons went into the bin before anyone was allowed to enter the HQ room. Standard protocol given the scanners they had to pass through in order to enter.

Jace pulled out his gun and unsheathed his dagger. He slapped both on the table and pushed them toward Damon.

Damon shot him a glare. “All of it.”

Jace frowned. He reached toward his ankles, feet still on the table, and removed two more daggers. “There.”

“David, your turn,” Damon said.

David stuck his hand down his shirt and pulled out a large Star of David necklace. He set it on the table before he emptied the contents of his pockets: multiple vials of holy water, a small collection of gold religious relics, several knives and finally a bag of salt. Rochester’s premiere demon exorcist, David Aronowitz, was more likely to be found wandering heavily armed through the city’s underground scene than wearing a yarmulke and keeping kosher. Unknown to the tiny ninety-five-year-old grandmother he adored, David regularly filleted demons Rambo style for a living.

David leaned his elbows on the table. “That’s all I got, D.” He shot Shane a glance. “You next, buddy.”

Shane pulled his basic nine-millimeter handgun from its holster on the side of his dress pants and carefully placed it on the table. He grinned for a moment, like he was finished, before he put his hand up. “Oh, sorry, I forgot—just one second.” Twisting in his chair, he unsnapped the flap of the messenger bag hanging from the back of his chair. With a loud boom, he dropped a massive book on the table.

Jace chuckled, and David belly-laughed right along with him.

David rested his head in his hand as he continued to laugh. “Shane, how many times do we have to tell you that a book is not a weapon? The scanner won’t even pick it up.”

“I beg to differ. It’s actually a very powerful tool. This book contains mounds of information about the rituals of pagan religion. It comes in quite handy when...”

He continued rambling while Jace stubbed out his cigarette. Dr. Shane Gray specialized in all things occult and studied the nastier ends of human society. But while his multiple Ph.D.s proved he had a lot of brains, he’d acquired jack shit in terms of street smarts.

“If you look at this page here, it shows you the diagram of the—”

Jace plucked his flask from his pocket and unscrewed the cap. “Come on already. If the kid thinks the damn book is a weapon, let him check it. He’s gotta have something other than a gun. It proves he’s got brains. That’s one hell of a weapon in my opinion.” He took a swig of the whiskey and felt the burn slip down his throat. With the way the evening was going, he would need a lot more alcohol to drown out the nightmares. Damn things had plagued him nearly every night since his dad left, and on the nights when his inner beast surfaced, it was nearly impossible to find any peace. That, combined with his thoughts continuing to wander to the divine woman in the backseat of his car, who happened to be a werewolf...well, best to start drowning the beast now if he had any hope of sleeping tonight.

Damon banged his fist on the table. “Would you all quit chatting like schoolgirls and get a move on?”

Jace dropped his boots off the table. “Why’re you in such a hurry?”

“Efficiency,” Damon said. He slapped a stake, a crucifix, two daggers and a handgun on the table, before he unsheathed a short but sharp steel-bladed sword from a holster on his spine.