The Hunter's Call (Monster Hunter Academy Book 1) Read online

  Ahhh…sewage?

  A third, softer yodel, closer this time—so much closer—rippled down the street. A large form shifted in the darkness beyond the cone of lamplight closest to me. My skin prickled with awareness, and my breath hitched in my throat. I was no longer alone.

  I pivoted slowly, my hands going up, my right hand gripping my knife. Go for the neck, I told myself. You always went for the neck. You take off a monster’s head, it was all over, full stop.

  But as I squared myself to the lamp post, the overhead light parted over a huge, bulbous form shuffling into view. The blood drained from my brain, making me sway as I took it in. What the hell was this?

  The creature was easily ten feet tall, its long, flabby body bobbing on what had to be a half-dozen legs. It sported an even longer head with beady eyes and slimy, flapping lips that hung far past its chin like fleshy walrus tusks. It was a giant freaking cuttlefish, but with feet. A lot of feet.

  Worse than any of that, though, were the thick, rolling bulges of skin behind its eyes. They extended in glistening slabs straight down to a thick, oily-skinned torso…without any obvious break.

  “No neck?” I groaned with real feeling. “How can you not have a neck?”

  Apparently, that was the wrong question to ask. The cuttlefish reared back, let fly a yodel of absolute fury—and launched itself at me.

  2

  When it comes to winning a footrace, six legs are better than two.

  “What is your deal?” I wheezed as I pounded around the corner, arms pumping, legs churning. The galloping mess of a creature right behind me lurched closer, squishing forward as its elongated maw stretched toward me in several flapping sections.

  Something else I’d learned about my second date of the night—it also spit acid.

  “Gross.” I ducked to the side, a glob of streaming mucus shooting past my shoulder to catch the tree in front of me on fire. I poured on the speed.

  Out of nowhere, I felt a sharp, masculine presence, a sheer and vital punch of power so strong it nearly made me trip. My gaze ping-ponged up and down the street, but there was nobody here but me and the cuttlefish, and we weren’t exactly on speaking terms.

  Still, I couldn’t ignore the sense that I was being focused on, watched, even as I raced down the street.

  Nina, whispered the wind—or maybe it was just my brain trying to warn me that the galumphing creature behind me was hacking up another gob of drool.

  “No, you—ugh.” I twisted to the side, not fast enough this time to miss the smoking stream. I staggered a little as it splattered against my right shoulder. The sleeve of my T-shirt was instantly incinerated, and I sucked in a ragged breath as the acid ate into my skin.

  Bastard. I generally tried not to kill more than one monster a night, but enough was freaking enough.

  I leaned down long enough to yank the short, squat blade out of my ankle sheath—the only real weapon I carried. My left-handed knife game was DOA and always would be, so that arm mainly served as a shield, complete with a fancy iron-lined wristband I’d rigged up as a monster barrier of last resort.

  This mini arsenal had done the job up to now, but I’d never dealt with a creature quite so sloppy as the one currently chasing me. Even the ghoul had been less…moist. Just thinking of the flopping, glopping cuttlefish locking its saggy lips on me made my stomach roll.

  I wheeled around another corner and strained to piece together the path ahead, but something was screwed up with the streetlights along this stretch. The glare was too bright, making me flinch. Add to that the road had started angling downward. I could run faster that way, sure, but so could the cuttlefish. And it had more legs.

  As I raced on, I picked out a wall stretching ahead of me along the right of the manicured sidewalk, covered in slender, cheerfully curling ivy. Pretty, but nothing I could use to haul myself out of harm’s way.

  Behind me, the monster thudded around the corner. It issued a furious shriek before tearing after me down the lane. Was it having trouble seeing too? Either way, it apparently was done screwing around. I looked back in horror as it launched itself through the air, legs tucked underneath it, maw stretched wide, outstretched lips waggling like electric eels—

  Then it was on me.

  Shockingly, the creature’s slimy skin didn’t burn me the way its saliva had, and we went rolling down the sidewalk, the thing squawking and squalling with enraptured kill fever as I twisted into its body, slashing out with my right hand to cut deep into the creature’s midsection.

  Its skin was thin, its body unreasonably squishy. But since I couldn’t tell where this thing’s neck started or ended, I couldn’t decapitate it. So gutting it would have to do.

  I sliced into it again, to the left this time, and scored pay dirt. The creature gave a keening howl and tried to jerk away from me, acid spittle flying, leaving my shirt and hair smoking with drool. I screamed as the caustic droplets hit my skin, then hauled off with my reinforced left wrist and clipped the monster right beneath what I hoped was its neck.

  The creature arched backward. Given that my knife was still buried inside it, the violence of the movement ripped open its belly the rest of the way. I used the knife like a trowel to scoop out anything I could reach, covering myself in steaming gore as the thing expired with a final, shuddering gasp.

  I flopped over on my stomach, lungs heaving, squinting through sheets of sticky goo. We’d stopped right in front of some kind of doorway cut into the rock wall, a fancy arch with vaguely creepy decorative faces surrounding it. Beyond the entrance, I saw a beautiful tree-lined drive and hints of large stone mansion-like buildings.

  Some sort of private college campus? Probably. This part of Boston was crawling with them. Well, I hoped they had a good street cleaning crew, because there was no way I was gonna be able to drag off this roadkill. Hopefully it would be a good monster corpse and just disintegrate on its own, pronto.

  As if responding to my unspoken plea, the monster husk started to shrivel up beside me, emitting a foul, acrid stench. I planted my hands on the street’s cobblestones, forcing myself back to my feet. Goop streamed off me, stinging like fire everyplace it connected with unprotected skin. I scraped the worst of it off my arms and staggered forward a step…then groaned with real feeling as another blood-freezing screech split the heavy night air.

  “Oh, for the love...”

  A second land cuttlefish came boiling around the corner, easily twice the size of the first. It took one look at the remains of its buddy on the street, then at me covered in monster guts, and bellowed a livid, yodeling howl. Yep, these guys were definitely related. It surged forward, its half-dozen feet churning with blinding speed.

  I didn’t hesitate. I flung myself to the right and lurched beneath the archway, my goop-covered running shoes slipping and sliding on the pristine cobblestone street. The creature galloped right through the opening as well, screaming its elongated head off, and I’d barely turned around when it landed on me, flabby lips first.

  “Jesus!” I thought I heard someone yell—a startled, masculine someone who sounded…strangely familiar? But how—?

  Between holding my breath and trying to hack my way free, I didn’t have time to work through the mystery before powerful hands latched onto my ankles. With one impressively powerful heave, I was yanked out of the cuttlefish’s mouth and onto the cobblestoned street—right as the entire creature exploded into heaping mounds of sludgy ash around me.

  That left me steam-baked, drool-glazed, powdered with monster guts…and looking up at the most drop-dead gorgeous guy I’d ever seen in my life.

  Holy Hotpockets.

  I tried to peel my lids wider so I could stare with my entire eyeballs at the dark-haired Adonis looming over me like Mr. October in the Ivy League calendar of Hard-Bodied Hunks. Low-slung jeans framed narrow hips and meaty legs. A soft blue polo shirt with a kicked-up collar stretched across a solid chest and what had to be A+ abs.

  Sadly, I couldn’t
pick out any more details. Remnants of monster guts lacquered my face in a layer of yuck the color of vomit, leaving me to squint through its yellow-tinged crust. In other news, the insides of cooked cuttlefish smelled a lot like sewage, too.

  The heart-melting hottie peering down at me didn’t seem to notice. He huffed a short, dry chuckle, and my heart gave the world’s hardest lurch to the left. Was I having a stroke?

  All I knew was, I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything but stare into deep, whiskey-colored eyes fringed with dark lashes, wondering if maybe I hadn’t made it out of the monster alive after all and this was my heavenly reward. Then the wide, perfectly formed mouth with the slightest hint of fullness stretched into a cocky grin set to stun. The guy studied me like I was some angel sent down from heaven, and not some exotic form of sushi.

  “It’s Nina, right?” he asked in a low, husky tone. “Welcome to Wellington Academy.”

  3

  I jolted with surprise at the sound of my name, the shellac around my mouth cracking a bit. I couldn’t move any further, though. I’d somehow adhered myself to the cobblestones beneath me, my fingers stuck together around my knife.

  My knife. I was sprawled on the ground in front a guy so beautiful, butterflies had marshaled a frenzied conga line through my stomach, while my hair and clothes and several pounds of monster goop remained matted to my skin, and my fingers were glued to a deadly weapon. Did that make my situation better? Worse? It was so hard to tell.

  “Where’d you come from, anyway? Did Commander Frost put you up to this?” the guy tried again, stepping to the side and dropping to one knee to tap the thick rime coating my forehead. “Because news flash, dumb idea. You obviously had no clue what you were doing.”

  My eyes narrowed to slits, all the butterflies dying in a ferocious napalm blast that seared through everything but the crust of monster goop rendering me practically immobile. Mother. Fucker. Forget all the babble I couldn’t understand, had this pretty-mouthed preppie dared attack my monster hunting skills, when all he’d done was hook his doubtlessly baby-powdered fingers around my ankles and give a little tug? Yeah. No.

  “Thanks,” I wheezed in percolating outrage as I realized—I was going to be sick. Not merely your garden variety, I-just-killed-a-monster-let-me-have-some-space sick either, but full-on gorge that rose up in my throat fast and hard, desperate to evacuate my body. I flopped over on my knees, my arms finally ripping through the thick varnish of monster parts, and heaved. A rush of bile spilled out over the cobblestones. I gagged, then gasped desperately for oxygen.

  “Whoa, whoa… Liam,” the frat boy shouted. “Liam, for fuck’s sake, get over here. Zach!”

  Oh, flipping fanstastic. Was he calling for reinforcements? Security? A TikTok camera crew? Could this get any worse? It didn’t matter. I was too weak to move, my arms shaking, my stomach churning. I sagged at the sound of running feet.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted, my mouth gritty with stomach acid and annoyance.

  “What the—Tyler, what’d you do?” A new voice cut through my haze, and I felt a weird, unexpected thrill as strong hands closed around my shoulders, apparently oblivious to the sludge that covered them, and turned me around.

  “I’m—” I broke off, blinking hard, convinced I now totally was seeing things. Guy No. 2 had to be Hollywood’s next most eligible vampire—all dark, brooding eyes, porcelain skin, and a shock of thick black hair. Wow.

  “Liam,” the vision said urgently, ruining the moment. “Wanna hurry it up? I think she’s going to puke again.”

  I stiffened. “Get away from me,” I tried to say to everyone within three feet of me, though it came out as more of a snuffling growl. I shook off Guy No. 2’s hands and spit out a fragment of something I didn’t want to think about too closely as someone else ran toward us. “I’m not going to—”

  “I got you, I got you,” Guy No. 3 interrupted. I swung toward him, more looking for a way out of this screwed-up Bermuda Triangle of boy toys than anything else, but as I turned to face him, he absolutely blasted me. And this time, not with a rush of manly gorgeousness.

  “Hey,” I snarled, flinching away. The burst of warm water shocked me into immediate action, my hands coming up for battle, my blade still stuck to my palm. I slashed hard to the right, choking out an incoherent warning, but the guy never stopped coming. He crowded me so fast, I stumbled back into the arms of Guy No. 1—Tyler, was it?—who grabbed me and held on tight.

  A hot, wet burst of intense physical awareness deluged my insides at the intimate grip, right before my outsides were drenched in actual water. An entire canister of something was dumped over my head and splashed over my shoulders and chest.

  “Will you stop?” I tried again.

  Guy No. 3 didn’t stop, though. He bore down on me, upending a second flask of water over my belly, soaking my clothes all over again. I writhed and spluttered in Tyler’s solid grip, but I also recognized that whatever the dude was pouring on me was doing the job, ripping through the layers of cuttlefish puke like a hot knife through butter. It was like some kind of industrial strength—

  “Holy water.” The voice of Guy No. 3 confirmed. I hadn’t gotten a full look at him before he’d holy-water-boarded me, and now my eyes were screwed shut beneath another blast of the warm liquid. “You get coated in monster guts, it’s one of the few things that will cut through it.”

  I couldn’t deny that he was right as I felt the veneer of goop clear from my mouth and skin. I flinched away again as Guy No. 3—I assumed it was Guy No. 3—rubbed a soft cloth over my face, like I was some sort of duckling caught in an oil spill. I had no doubt that he was as gorgeous as his friends, because that was the sort of night I was having. I jerked away from another swipe of the cloth, blinked my eyes clear, and—yup.

  Guy No. 3 was a total babe.

  His complexion was darker than the others, with deeply tanned skin, a pile of sandy brown hair, and eyes that practically danced as I yanked the cloth out of his hands so I could mop off the rest of my face myself. I also used the cloth to wipe off my knife, then stuck the blade back into its ankle sheath, straightening to see the guy’s smile hadn’t dimmed.

  “I’m Liam,” he said, his tone light, almost teasing. “Liam Graham. And you’re more than welcome. Holy water doesn’t have an expiration date, but it gets heavy. I’m glad to have gotten some of it out of my pack.” He lifted one shoulder, and I noticed he had a military-looking knapsack slung over his back.

  The soft murmur of Tyler’s chuckle sent goose bumps over my skin. “Liam and his backpack. You’re never going to see one without the other, I guarantee it.”

  “Well—thanks.” I steeled myself to turn back to Tyler the college pinup model, managing what I hoped was an apologetic smile. “And, ah, thanks for…”

  As our gazes met, I jolted with a deep and visceral shock that had nothing to do with potential sexy times. “Wait a minute. You knew my name.”

  Tyler smiled smugly, but if he replied, I couldn’t hear it. Not with the sudden rush of blood roaring in my ears. “You knew my name,” I said again. A surge of fear lanced through me, not even remotely proportional to the issue of being identified. I mean—that was strange, sure, but it shouldn’t scare the pants off me. And it seriously did. “How do you know who I am?”

  Tyler’s hands came up at the obvious panic in my voice. “Hey, now. It’s okay—totally okay. I don’t know who you are. Not really. I only know your first name, honest. It came to me through a spell.”

  I blinked at him, taking another sharp step back. “A what?”

  “Oh, give me a break,” Liam snorted beside Tyler. I swung my gaze his way, and he rolled his eyes. “You were getting chased by the largest Tarken land worm witnessed in the last two hundred years, and you’re going to flip out at the idea of a magic spell?”

  “Liam,” Tyler said warningly, but I didn’t mind the sarcasm. It helped bring me back into focus. Because Liam had a point—I did f
ight monsters. I had my whole life. The idea of magic spells shouldn’t be all that much of a stretch. That said, I knew better than to ignore my reactions. If my instincts were to get out of here, I needed to roll.

  I just wanted to understand what “here,” was, first.

  “What is this place?” I asked. “Specifically. And what’s your connection with each other?” Because that was the problem, I thought. There was something about the fact that the guys were all together that was bothering me the most…some danger here I couldn’t quite understand.

  Tyler took the lead as if he was born to the job. His relaxed, rich-guy energy seemed pitched to a perfect vibration with the cobblestoned pathways and manicured lawns. “We’re students here,” he said easily. “At Wellington Academy. Where we learn magic spells and hunt monsters.”

  Just like that, my fear banked sharply, ebbing away like water sluicing over a dam. I blinked. “Students,” I repeated. “You’re students. At…um, a monster hunter academy.”

  Setting aside the crazy of an entire academy dedicated to fighting monsters, there was absolutely nothing scary about students. So why were all my warning bells still banging and clanging like Christmas in the old country?

  “Stop sounding so surprised.” Now it was Tyler’s turn to serve me up a sly, silver-spoon smile that implied I was way out of my Ivy League. “If it wasn’t a monster hunter academy, we wouldn’t have been able to identify that thing that just tried to swallow you whole. A Tarken land worm, in case you missed that part.”

  “Wait a minute.” An all-new and improved realization hit me, further blunting my spurt of irrational anxiety. “Is that how you saw me getting attacked? Because I ran onto your, um, magical monster hunter campus?”

  Ordinarily when I was attacked by monsters, it was like I was invisible. People wouldn’t help me, couldn’t hear me—and most of the time, didn’t even look my way. Over the years, I’d come to understand that was because most people couldn’t actually see monsters until they were about to be killed. Whether I was taking on rampaging yetis or screaming fire birds or even a full-on winter warlock one bright and snowy night, no one ever saw any of that. I simply stepped away from wherever I was and showed up several minutes later some other place, without anyone seeming to notice how I got there or even, oddly, caring all that much.