Flag Abuse

(Still time to enter the contest, details here: How to Win)

Chapter 1

Jace's memory of the event that changed his life ran in slow motion, but in reality everything happened quickly, and in the blink of an eye his world turned upside down. Experienced hunters of the supernatural, the Bennett brothers moved cautiously through the night. With the full moon hidden behind a thick bank of clouds, they were handicapped by the lack of light as they made their way through the tangled underbrush still wet from an earlier storm. Jace cursed when a branch Wade pushed out of the way sprang back, showering him with a fine spray of cold water. Frowning, Wade glanced over his shoulder, and motioned for Jace to be quiet.

In that split second of distraction, the creature they hunted stopped running and turned on them, surging out of the shadows; a thing born of the night howling with blind fury and anguish. Wade whirled around, but too late; the beast hit him low, taking the elder Bennett brother down with a growl of murderous intent. Rendered immobile by the unexpected appearance of the werewolf, Jace stared in shock, watching the pair tumble into the thick underbrush and out of sight.

He came back to his senses already in motion. "Wade! Goddammit." Jace tried to run in the direction they'd rolled under the plants, struggling through wet

foliage that tangled around his legs and slapped his face. Cursing, he couldn't get free of the undergrowth. It clutched at him, holding him back, keeping him from reaching Wade. The sounds of the fight became more intense just before a gunshot ricocheted through the night, followed by another. Heart pounding, Jace broke free of the underbrush and found Wade sitting spread-legged, a huge tree supporting his back, head slumped. At his feet, the werewolf, reverted to human form, lay dead on the ground.

Fierce relief surged through Jace as he rushed to drag the naked body into the dense brush surrounding the tiny clearing. With the body hidden, Jace turned back to face his brother. Wade didn't move, not even to lift his head. Pale moonlight broke through the cloud cover filtering through the tree branches. It played over Wade's white-blond hair but did little to illuminate his face. Jace couldn't make out Wade's expression, and a chill of premonition crawled along Jace's spine. Wade never sat around after a successful hunt. Pumped with adrenaline, he loved to relive the adventure, talking a mile a minute. He left it to Jace to remember the monster had once been human and somewhere a family had lost something irreplaceable. Father. Mother. Child. Jace felt killing someone, even when circumstances left no other choice, seemed little reason to celebrate. Jace understood Wade's need to distance himself from the human aspect of some of the nightmares they hunted, but this kill brought none of his usual post kill antics. Wade sat silent watching Jace from under the fall of silver bangs.

Jace's initial relief at finding the werewolf dead and Wade alive leeched away. "Wade?" He dropped to one knee at his brother's side, the damp of the leaves seeping through Jace's jeans chilled his skin. Wade didn't look up. In silence he turned over the arm lying on his lap to reveal torn leather and bloody shredded skin.

Bitten.

"Oh fuck, Wade. Oh fuck." Jace trembled, his heart racing in panic. "It's okay. It doesn't look bad. I'll get you back to the car and when we get home we can…" The feel of a gun being pressed into his hand quieted Jace's babbling. No. Jace's lips formed the word in silent protest. His frantic eyes met Wade's. The brothers locked gazes for a long moment.

"You know what to do." Wade's voice remained rock steady. His good hand gripped Jace's arm, hard. "I'd do it for you."

Blinded by tears that refused to retreat no matter how furiously he blinked, Jace nodded. The next cycle of the moon would transform Wade into a howling, murderous beast. Werewolf. Knowing there were things worse than death made pulling the trigger possible, but three months later the sound of the gunshot still echoed in Jace's mind. Shaken, Jace wiped a rough hand over his face, forcing himself back to the present. Three months later, the quagmire of memory still sucked him in for hours at a time, replaying those last moments as if reliving it could create a different outcome. Instead, inside the torture chamber of his own mind, Jace shot his brother.

Over and over again.

Jace stared at the bottle of liquor standing next to his empty glass. The contents had become his constant companion in the months since Wade's death. Now the

alcohol glowed amber in the last rays of the sun, an unfilled promise of forgetfulness in the warm depths. The headache came in a bright flash, sapping his strength. The signs of the onset of a vision were unmistakable. Jace slumped in the chair gripping his temples, attention focused on the bottle of whiskey. The

color of the alcohol enveloped him, filling him with warmth and a sense of coming home unlike anything he'd ever experienced. Jace's usual visions weren't so vague. He didn't always remember what he saw but they were visions, not sensory experiences. This time it felt more like he'd touched a pleasant person than a prediction of the future.

Not that Jace touched many people. As a touch empath, avoiding skin to skin contact had become a way of life for him. For the most part people were miserable and no one felt all warm and glowy. Left shaken and uneasy, Jace grabbed the bottle and went to pour its contents down the sink. If the alcohol gave him hallucinations it had to go. As the bottle emptied, Jace looked out the window over the sink; the full moon hung low in the night sky, reflecting round and bloated on the dark surface of the lake. He and Wade had grown up on the hundred acres clinging to the side of the mountain, the wilderness their training ground. Most hunters lived and worked alone. His family had been an anomaly.

Their parents loved each other and felt no hesitation about having children. Introduced from the crib to the ugly world of the supernatural, the five years between the brothers meant little to their parents in terms of training. Despite their parents' point of view, Wade had been consumed by a sense of responsibility from the first time he laid eyes on Jace and watched over him obsessively.

I'd do it for you.

Jace hadn't believed Wade. It would have been more like him to drag Jace home with plans to lock him in a cage every full moon despite their pact. Their nights had often been filled with discussions about what to do if the unthinkable happened. When the idea of a cage came up, they'd both rejected it as too risky and so the pact between them had been born. They promised to "do what had to be done" if one of them got infected by a werewolf, vampire or any other 'turn you into them' type monster. The agreement had turned out easier said than done. Only knowing that if left alive Wade would have found a way to end his own life kept Jace sane.

Growing up had been a series of adventures, but they'd been isolated by necessity. Homeschooled, home trained. Jace's social skills beyond the bounds of family

were practically non-existent, and he'd lost everyone in the last six months. First his parents to vampires and three months later, despite his promises to always stand between Jace and the world, Wade died too. Jace fought the feeling of despair whispering to his heart. The one telling him he had no reason to live. He focused on the one thing he had left. Killing monsters. He turned away from the window and went to get his gun.

* * * *

Elias stood over the open grave; the dirt-caked shovel at his feet silent testimony that he'd been the one to dig it up. The casket's lid lay in shattered pieces over the perfectly preserved body inside. The Egyptians with their mummies had nothing on modern science. Embalming and airtight caskets kept bodies looking fresh long past their expiration dates. Elias didn't know which he found more disturbing, moldering bones or what he uncovered in more recent graves. Pouring gasoline over the dead girl's brittle blonde hair, which was still carefully arranged around a face that appeared to be napping, Elias decided well-preserved was

worse. A lot worse.

The wind picked up behind him, shoving him towards the yawning pit. He planted his feet solidly in the earth and stood firm against the assault. A stormy beginning, but soon she'd manifest in an attempt to defend herself, the angry ghost of a young woman killed in an unfortunate accident. Instead of moving

peaceably into whatever lay ahead for ghosts, she lingered, growing more violent in her exhibitions of resentment over what had happened to her. Elias felt bad for the dead girl, but intended to protect the living. He held no delusions about the consequences to a spirit when he broke their final connection to the corporeal world. He didn't provide a transition for violent spirits; he put an end to them. The afterlife remained a mystery. No one knew what happened to spirits who moved on in a normal fashion.

Comparatively speaking, few dead people became ghosts. The very fact there were ghosts proved people had a spirit and so common sense dictated the ones not lingering around went somewhere. When a spirit didn't leave, move on or whatever, guys like Elias stepped in. The ghost finally appeared, hovering over the grave, her once beautiful face shadowed and contorted by fury. Long hair whipped around her head as she floated barefoot and bare armed over her body. The faded blue dress dotted with daisies, a copy of the one she'd been buried in, wafted around her lending an air of innocence belied by her countenance. "Wait!" She struggled visibly to control her expression, reaching towards him with her hands open, palms up, pleading. "You don't understand."

The memory of her two-year-old brother lying in the hospital, fighting for his life after a fall killed any compassion Elias may have felt. The baby gate had failed,

sending the child head over heels down the stairs. A horrible accident, except Elias knew it'd been no accident. His jaw firmed. Kindness had no place in hunting monsters and he didn't have the energy to waste on mercy for the dead.

"Too late." He rubbed the head of a match against his jeans and it flamed to life, a single flickering beacon in the darkness. The ghost's eyes fixed on it and she wailed. Her open pleading hands curled to claws, grasping for his throat. Elias dropped the match into the grave and stepped back from the rush of flame leaping for the sky and engulfing the form of the ghost. She howled. The fire couldn't harm her physically, but it would destroy what tied her to the earth. Cremation would solve a lot of his problems before they happened.

Elias knew he should hit the road. The cemetery stood in the middle of town, and he'd already stretched his luck attempting the burn. Remembering the small boy

fighting for his life in a sterile hospital bed, Elias sighed and crouched down, settling back on his heels. The tail of his black leather trench coat pooled around him. He couldn't leave until he made sure. The ghost made a theatrical exit, keening in the midst of the fire until it began to die down and she dissipated, floating away, indiscernible from the dark smoke. Elias opened himself to the energy released by the end of her existence. Closing his eyes, he absorbed it, feeling renewed strength flow through his body as the core of his life-force rejuvenated.

Incubus.

Being one of the monsters wasn't the best thing in the world, but Elias had come to terms with it. He'd come a long way from the terrified and panicked fifteen-year-old boy, finding himself alone in a room with the lover he'd inadvertently killed. The death had been ruled an unfortunate accident. When Elias insisted he'd caused it, that he'd sucked her soul out, he found himself in the best home for the mentally deranged his parents could afford. With expense of no consequence, the mental institution seemed more like a country club than a hospital, but it provided his worried parents reassurance he wouldn't try to kill himself when they weren't looking. Elias' second kill came not long after his doctors released him from the hospital. Getting out proved as easy as claiming he'd worked through his guilt and accepted the death of his girlfriend as an accident.

During his three years at the institution Elias had fallen in love with Dale Carson, one of his nurses. Still innocent of his true nature, Elias believed in Dale's

proclamations of undying love, unaware that as he grew up he became irresistible to the humans around him.

When Elias left the hospital, he moved in with Dale. They shared a month together before the lust between them flared so white-hot it slipped out of Elias' control, bringing his second sexual encounter to the same end as the first. With another sex partner dead under him, Elias knew where to lay the blame, even if he didn't understand why or how. Cleared of murder a second time due to lack of evidence, Elias refused to repeat his stay at the hospital. His parents, more understanding than he'd deserved, opened his trust fund to him, no questions asked, and he disappeared.

With a last look into the darkening grave, Elias shrugged off his memories. He couldn't change the past, but he had complete control over the present. He retrieved his shovel and the gas can. Another shrug settled his trench coat on his shoulders, the weight of the arsenal hidden within its folds made sure it hung close against his lean form. Time to move on.

Elias' stomach growled, reminding him he had other needs. Nothing a pizza and a six pack wouldn't cure, another night alone in an endless line of hotel rooms. In the ten years since his last human kill, Elias had grown accustomed to his isolation, preferred it.

When he was alone, no one died.