"Ravenous" - читать интересную книгу автора (King Sherri L. - Horde Wars 1 - Ravenousvoto6 (html))

Prologue



“Die, you son of a bitch—hijo de puta. Die! God, why won’t you just die?” Cady Swann choked out as she buried her hands in the gushing black fount of the demon’s chest. She searched out the giant beating heart of the beast, seeking to crush it and end the struggle at last. Her hands closed around the slippery black organ and she sunk her fingers deep.

“Die!” The demon’s clawed hands were digging into the flesh of her back, as the monster tried to make her join him in the throes of death. Cady’s hands tore into the burning, putrid heart of the monster, sinking into flesh and sinew as if they were an over-ripe orange. Dark, sticky blood erupted from where her hands were buried, drenching the both of them as they struggled.

Bracing herself against the flailing form of her dying foe, she jerked back, away from the grasping claws at her back, and away from the open cavity of the creature’s chest. Stumbling, she broke free at last of the creature’s embrace, its black, oozing heart still clutched desperately in her fists. The skin of her back was aflame. It was an accompanying pain for the myriad other bruises she had sustained during the night’s dark work.

Ignoring her wounded body’s weakened condition, she immediately set to work on the still-pulsing organ in her grasp. She pulled upon the humming power that even now flowed like a raging torrent through her form, drawing upon the supernatural strength that she would need in order to fulfill her task.

With a strength that would have torn the limbs from a mere mortal man, she ripped the preternatural heart in two. The wet, tearing sound of it echoed through the moonlit wood. Pulling a small container of lighter fluid from her pocket, she doused the hideous heart, lit a match and set it ablaze.

The fallen form of her monstrous foe writhed and screamed as its heart was swallowed in the flames. Moments later with a gurgling, choking sound the creature was still at last. Dead without its beating heart.

She’d learned the hard way that to leave even a small bit of the heart still unburned would give the creature a chance to rise from its death. So it was after the heart had been reduced to a blackened husk of ash that she rose wearily from her crouch on the forest floor. With tired eyes she surveyed the scene around her.

Her night vision was excellent thanks to her ‘spooky talents’—a phrase she liked to use when referring to her enhanced senses. She could clearly see the fallen forms of two of the monsters as they lay dead about her. She would need to burn the bodies, she knew, to wipe away all traces of their existence. To hide the evidence of their evil.

No one must know these beasts existed. No one.

The two monsters she’d just killed brought the night’s score up to five. And she still had four hours before dawn in which to find more of them to kill. She could feel the presence of more monsters out in the night. It was like an electric hum in her blood. Wearily she released a long-suffering sigh.

It was going to be a long night.


Chapter One


Her hands were covered in the black muck of demonic blood. Her clothes were saturated in the thick, viscous substance, causing the fibers to harden and stick to her skin like glue. The job was getting more and more dangerous as time went on. If job it could be called, this strange nightlife she lived.

Unfortunately, if killing these monsters—vicious beings with preternatural strength and power—was a job, it sure didn’t pay anything. Nor was it a career that promised much hope in the way of comfortable retirement. Hell, it was highly doubtful she’d even live to see retirement.

No. Killing the evil, murderous monsters was not so much a job for her as it was a calling. She’d been doing this for fifteen years now. Saving her town, maybe the world, from demonic infestation. Though admittedly she’d battled more and more often in recent months. This was her life.

One thing was certain. She had no intention of slacking off in her self-appointed duties any time soon.

As far as she knew the threat was limited to her hometown of Lula, Georgia. And for certain she was the only person who knew of the monsters’ existence. Whether these creatures were an invading force of evil minions sent from hell to invade the world, or simply abominations who’d come to her town by chance, she didn’t know. But no matter the answers to her endless questions, she had to fight the creatures. Or hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives would be put at risk.

It was a thankless job, but she couldn’t, in good conscience, shirk her duties. Lula might be a small, out-of-the-way railroad town, but it was her home. She cared about the simple, country-bred citizens. Knew most of them quite well. It was up to her to keep them safe.

Cady entered the darkened foyer of her small home situated on the outskirts of town. Her house was a humble one. Hardly the type of place you’d think a supernatural assassin would call home. The plain-fronted farmhouse had been built by her great-grandfather, and had been bequeathed to Cady in her grandmother’s will upon her death, three years before.

She loved this house. It was her only safe haven.

It was a structure rich with fond memories. Memories of quiet summer days that smelled of sun-warmed crops growing in the garden. Of dancing in soft evening rain, and of tobacco-smoke from her grandfather’s ever-burning pipe.

Her grandparents had raised her here after the death of her family, in the comforting shelter of their quiet home. She missed them both desperately. Her grandfather had died of a stroke when she was eighteen and her grandmother had died in her sleep nine years afterward.