"You dare speak that name in my presence?!" Lee sighed almost apologetically. "Oh, I forgot you guys don't like people doing that." "Wait, y-you know what that thing is?" Elena all but stammered in both shock and fright. He gave her a weird look as if she had asked something stupid. "You don't? Man, what're they teaching you kids nowadays?" Turning back to the enraged skinwalker, he spoke in a condescending tone. "Now, I'm going to give you two choices. One: you remove all your curses and tell me what your plan here is. Or-" The skinwalker cut his words short by leaping over the entire space between them and lashing out with a clawed hand at his neck. The attack was foiled when Lee grabbed the limb inches away from his throat and smiled wickedly. "The hard way it is then. Bad choice." 'Devon' struck again with his other hand which was promptly restrained by Lee. Then in a movement Elena could barely follow, the Hunter swept the skinwalker's feet off the gr

It hovered over her, faint growls echoing from within its throat and sending shivers down Elena's back. Her heart threatened to beat a hole out of her chest and she suddenly had trouble breathing when the creature's breath washed over her. It stank of blood and death. When a drop of blood rolled down its jaw and landed on her face, she nearly lost it right there and then. Then it suddenly raised its head and howled. Elena felt like she was about to have a heart attack. Was it calling the others? Were they going to eat her together? She saw its mouth open and instinctively shut her eyes in dread. Then she felt it bite down on the collar of her shirt and hauled her forward like she weighed nothing. A weird sensation passed over her as she felt her surroundings change in an instant. When she opened her eyes, the rest of the Hunters were all looking down at her with strange looks on their faces. Before she could form a coherent thought, she felt hot air at the back of her neck.

Veronica had always loved the night. The fact that she was a vampire may have had something to do with it. But there were other reasons too. The biggest one for her, was the freedom that came with the darkness of the sky. At night, the whole world became free. There was nothing to hide in the darkness. There was no need to hide anything. The night accepted all. No wonder most humans choose that time to engage in whatever dastardly habit they possessed. There was no one to judge them. No one to control them. The thought brought the night's events back to the front of her mind and her anger surged up again. The Hunters had always fascinated her since her childhood. She had spent a good deal of her time in her family's library reading up every piece of information there was about them. The fact that there was so little available always aggravated her to no end. Most of what was written about them were their exploits. Thus when she had gotten the chance to meet them and study them u

Fifteen minutes later, Dan sat at the table with his guest. Michael had a cup of tea in front of him from which he took small sips until the other man finished his meal. After cleaning up, Dan returned to the table and stared at Michael pointedly. "So what does the leader of the Hunters want with me?" Michael cleared his throat and leaned forward on the table. His eyes returned to their default coldness as he explained the details of the peace exercise to Dan. "So you have to look after some children? That's hardly a reason to seek me out." "Watching them shouldn't be a problem," Michael said and his features hardened. "But it becomes one when skinwalkers are involved." The other man's eyes darkened immediately and he frowned. "That's not right. Where did you say this school was?" "Starlight Bay. It's a city on the coastline between Providence and Boston." "That's not too far from New York. Skinwalkers are not supposed to be found in this area." "Yeah, I t

Whitney was having the time of her life right now, although she would never admit to it. She had been drawing out her fight with the skinwalker, her intention being to gain information on its commonly used skills. But after a while, it had proven to be quite resilient to her attacks. Normally, this would have been frustrating but she was simply glad to have an opponent on which she could test out her arsenal of techniques. At least she would not have to worry about burning to a crisp after a few seconds. The training dummies back at her coven were not nearly as fireproof as this guy was. The beast attacked with its claws again in a move Whitney had seen several times that night and thus was able to telegraph the sequence perfectly. She went underneath the paw and danced around the beast until it turned to chomp down on her head. Its open maw filled with razor sharp teeth was promptly stuffed with orange flames that stung it badly enough for it to rear back in pain. She wasted no ti