Excerpt
2 from Sons of Darkness by Gail Z. Martin
“Who are you,
and where the hell am I?”
Travis got his
first good look at their houseguest in the harsh light of the clinic. It had
been too dark in the warehouse to see much, and the nachzehrer had kept his
attention occupied elsewhere. The man sitting on the edge of the clinic bed
looked to be a few years younger than himself, early thirties, with short blond
hair and a muscular build that suggested boot camp rather than gym rat. The
haircut said “civilian” but the way the man sat, poised to spring at the first
sign of threat said “military.”
“My name is
Travis Dominick, and you’re at the St. Dismas Center.”
The stranger
gave Travis a glare. “The homeless shelter?”
Travis shrugged.
“That, and more.” He took in the set of the man’s chin, and the fire in his
blue eyes, anger covering fear. “Who are you?”
The newcomer
remained silent long enough that Travis began to doubt he would answer. “Brent
Lawson,” he said finally. “And don’t get me wrong, I appreciate what you did,
saving my ass, but why the fuck were you there?”
A side effect of
giving up the clerical collar was that people stopped watching their language
around him, Travis thought. The upside was that they now treated him like a
human being, in all its messy glory. “Why were you?” he countered.
They glared at
each other, and Travis was reminded of staring matches back in middle school.
Finally, Brent chuffed out a breath and looked away. “I tracked that thing to
its lair. But I had bad intel, and the weapons I had didn’t work.”
“I noticed,”
Travis replied. “A nachzehrer is a vampire shifter. You needed silver to kill
it, and nothing short of a head shot, decapitation, and then burning would do
it.”
Brent gave him
an appraising look. “And you know this, how?”
“Training,”
Travis replied with a maddening smile. “But you still haven’t told me how you
ended up tracking a monster to a warehouse.”
“It’s what I do,”
Brent said after a moment. “At least, it’s part of what I do, anyhow.” He
glanced around. “Looks like you’re in the part-time monster hunting business,
too.”
Having been a
full-time hunter with the Sinistram, Travis was quite content to be “part-time,”
although he couldn’t tell Brent that. “You would have died back there.”
“I said ‘thank
you.’” Brent’s eyes narrowed.
Travis leaned
back against the wall. “You really need to leave this kind of thing to people
who’ve been trained for it.”
“Like you, Father
Dominick?”
Brent couldn’t
have known about Travis’s past, but the barb still made him wince. “I’m not a
priest. Not anymore,” he said quietly.
Brent frowned,
then managed to look contrite. “Sorry. I thought priests only went monster
hunting in the movies.”
“And I thought
soldiers didn’t go freelance.”
This time, Brent
flinched. “Yeah, well. I’m out now. I have my own detective firm.”
“And someone
hired you to look into the family’s deaths?” Travis guessed.
Brent nodded.
“Yeah. A brother from out of town. When I put the pieces together, I knew it
wasn’t something the cops would ever believe. So I decided to handle it on my
own.”
Travis tried to
unpack that statement, because there was as much not said as what Brent
admitted. “The cops wouldn’t believe a monster killed those people, but you
did?”
“Apparently, so
did you.”
Travis was in no
mood to explain his past, and from the look of it, neither was Brent. “So the
nachzehrer is dead, and the family is avenged,” Travis said, trying to defuse
the stubborn glint in Brent’s gaze that told him the man wasn’t going to back
off. “Now you can go back to busting Worker’s Comp fraud and finding cheating
spouses. Or tracking mobsters.”
“Fuck you,”
Brent said, sliding down off the table and reaching for his shirt. His face and
shoulder were already starting to bruise from where the creature had thrown him
around, and despite the stitches, the wounds looked sore and puffy. There were
older scars, too. Two that looked like bullet wounds, but others that might
have been from knives, teeth, or claws. Travis had similar scars, knew what
made marks like that. It lent credence to Brent’s claims that he wasn’t new at
this.
“It’s the middle
of the night,” Travis replied, ignoring the outburst. “You’re welcome to stay
here. Matthew would probably like to check on your stitches in the morning.
Those claws can carry taint.”
“Not my first
rodeo,” Brent replied, grimacing as he moved to pull on his shirt. “Thanks for
the assist, and the medic. But I need to get home.”
“You almost died
out there,” Travis said, blocking his way.
“And I’m glad
you were there,” Brent said evenly. “But I’ve been at this for a while now, and
it’s like any battle—you win some, you lose some. Every fight might be the
last. Goes with the territory.”
Trent reached
into a pocket of his tactical vest and pulled out a card. “Look, the next time
you hear of something like this, how about giving me a call? If I can’t talk
you out of going after it, maybe we team up? Safety in numbers?”
Brent scowled,
staring at the card as if debating whether or not to accept it, then finally
snatched it from Travis’s fingers and shoved it into his jeans. “Yeah. Maybe.
Depends.” He moved around Travis. “I’d give you my card, but why bother? You
think you’ve got it all figured out.” With that, Brent walked out of the door
and headed down the hallway, to the rear exit and into the night.
Matthew returned
to the clinic before Travis could leave. “Did you talk him out of a repeat
performance?”
Travis shook his
head. “Nope. And I believe him when he said he’s done it before. Hell, maybe
‘Special Ops’ goes after creatures like this, for all we know. Not like they’d
tell civilians.”
“Then it’s out
of your hands,” Matthew said. “Maybe, with luck, he’ll decide it’s a bad
business and you’ll never run into him again.”
Travis stared
down the empty corridor at the back door. “I doubt that. I wonder what his
story is. No one starts hunting monsters for fun,” he said quietly. “They lose
someone. It’s always personal.”
