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“What is it?” I asked, watching the fire burn down, reducing the draugr to dust. The heat from the fire warmed my cheeks.

“Animal attacks,” Donny answered dryly. “Series of animal attacks. With no animal left to speak, occurring inside locked houses in the middle of the night.” She paused, the sound of a lighter flickering before she inhaled loudly. I could practically smell her brand of Lucky Strikes.

“Hearts ripped out,” she continued, voice thick with smoke.

My own heart skipped a beat. I clenched my fist, angry at myself for the reaction. The chances of it being the thing that I’d been hunting for a decade were slim to none. Most likely, it was just another monster.

I wiped my knife on the thigh of my pants before sheathing it and turning toward my car. Leaves crunched underneath my feet, the brisk fall chill and the increasing distance chasing away the heat from the fire.

“Now you’re speaking my language,” I replied, reaching into my jacket to unearth the flask of whiskey I always had on me. Worked in a pinch to clean out wounds while also a useful way to warm me up and banish any rogue emotions that slipped their cages. “Where am I going? Please tell me Florida. Or California. I’ll take the vegan assholes if it means I can escape pumpkin spice lattes and the general fall hysteria.”

I hated this time of year. Fall. Glorifying the mystic, the uncanny. Every basic white bitch clutching their crystals and reading books about vampires falling for them. They’d be horrified to know real vampires were grotesque, mindless cretins.

Donny chuckled. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to go right into the thick of basic bitch central—upper middle-class, small-town America.”

I took another swig of whiskey, wincing not at the burn but at the mere thought of such a place. There was nothing worse than a bunch of rich assholes and their children.

I sighed. “I should just let whatever it is devour them all.”

“Yes, you’d probably be doing the world a favor,” she snickered. “Although it doesn’t really jibe with the whole ‘saving people, killing monsters’ part of the gig.”

I was grateful when my 1968 Dodge Charger came into view. My flask was nearing empty, as was my stomach. I needed a cheeseburger, a cheap bottle of whiskey, and maybe a fuck. It had been a while.

“I only do it for the ‘killing monsters’ part,” I told her, opening the door, thankful for the slight squeak. The smell of leather, an old pine air freshener, and stale takeout greeted me.

“Saving people is just a side effect.” I leaned over to open the glove box, rooting through it for the bottle of cheap whiskey I left in there for such instances.

“Well, you’ll be saving the oblivious residents of Dreadwood Falls.” At Donny’s words I froze in place.

“Local police chief shouldn’t be an issue,” she continued, unaware of the fact that I was stock-still. “He’s a couple of months out from retirement. Former army. Married to the same broad for years—she comes from money. A whole fucking bunch of it. Him too. He’s a God-fearing, ’Merica loving, good old boy. His⁠—”

“Dreadwood Falls?” I interrupted, my voice a low croak. “What state?”

My heart was a wild drumbeat in my ears. There were plenty of towns with that name in the country, surely. It wasn’t a common name but not uncommon either. Our founding fathers weren’t exactly original. Almost every state had a “Midway,” “Fairview,” “Springfield,” or “Riverside”—or a European city name like “Paris” or “Naples.” I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be ironic or not.

In the past ten years, I’d been to every single state at least once, including Hawaii and Alaska, in the process of eliminating bloodthirsty supernatural creatures from the face of the earth.

Okay, that sounded really fucking narcissistic. It was not me alone saving the world. The mere thought of such a responsibility gave me hives. I didn’t care much about the fate of the world. Even without the things that went bump in the night, the human race was absolutely fucked. We killed each other, the planet, and raped and pillaged every natural resource, colonizing every indigenous culture. There was no saving us now.

No, I didn’t care about saving people. I cared about revenge, nothing more, nothing less. Don’t try to find anything noble about me or my intentions. You’ll just be disappointed. I was just another asshole whose “good deeds” were an occupational hazard.

Many in our chosen profession were also driven by revenge. Sure, there were a few zealots who did it for the “good of humanity,” and I’d even heard rumors about a secret sect with connections to the Catholic church operating globally. But I was sure that even they, especially they, had something to gain from this. I’d encountered many creatures, ghosts, wraiths, demons, and witches in my time, but not once had I come across someone driven by the need to do good with nothing in it for them.

“Connecticut,” Donny replied to my question about the location of the town.

My heart stopped beating.

There was only one Dreadwood Falls in Connecticut. And I hadn’t been there since I was eighteen.

Donny couldn’t know that’s where I grew up because Donny didn’t know where I grew up. She might’ve been as close to me as anyone could be, but we did not sit around with Cosmos sharing about our pasts and crying over old boyfriends.

No, we sat in dingy bars, sharing cheap whiskey, talking in clipped tones about what got us into the job—for me, the werewolf killing my parents, her a strigoi turning her daughter and her husband before she had to kill all three.

Those things were fucking dark enough as it was, no need to go gabbing about the lives we had before. Our origin stories were as dead as the people we’d buried.

“Hadley?”

Donny did know my first name. My real one. Not the one that was on the various driver’s licenses in my possession.