The Killing Season (2 page)

“Um, sure thing. I mean, I can. I am.” She fumbled with the handle and practically fell out of the car. When I joined her outside, she pushed up her glasses and we looked around.

The Barrow base. The front lines of our secret war. Luke’s childhood home.

The place looked seriously fucked. I instantly hated it.

The building could only be called a concrete fortress. It rose four stories into the swirling snow. Additions jutted out here and there, new added on to old as more room was needed. Instead of landscaping, spikes jabbed out from the ground around the base to keep the ’swangs from digging down into earth. Bright floodlights beamed down from every corner of the roof. More heavy iron spikes and razor wire guarded the roof. Between the blinding spotlights, I caught sight of guards circling up top, their forms disappearing behind large gunners. There were no windows and the only door into the base was a solid corroded plate of steel.

A jagged set of claw marks streaked down the center of the steel, from top to bottom, like a warning.

Countless more claw marks were scratched into the concrete as far as I could see. Some went as high as the second story, where ’swangs must have leaped up during an attack. Here and there, rusty patches marred the beige concrete walls. Blood.

“How quaint,” I said under my breath. Luke shot me glare, which I happily returned.

“We’re seriously staying here during break?” Sunny asked in a quaking voice. Her eyes lingered on the massive machine parked close to the front door. A snowcat. But it looked like a monster with steel teeth and claws.

Just then, the front door began to rumble and move, sliding to the side and allowing only the slightest room for us to enter.

“Welcome to my home.” The click of guns aiming down at us punctuated Luke’s words. If ’swangs rushed the door from the shadows, we were all going down.

“Ha. Ha,” I said under my breath. Unwilling to spend another moment exposed outside, the others walked on ahead of me. I took a few more deep gulps of fresh air before I had to follow them inside.

I slid through the narrow gap of the front door, which instantly started rumbling shut behind me. Our group stood in a sterile, narrow security room with another door in front of us similar to the one at our backs. In the tiny room’s corners, cameras swiveled and whirred, registering our faces and making my skin crawl. We hung our winter jackets, gloves, and scarves on the metal prongs lining the concrete walls. Only when the front door closed fully did the second one unlock. Luke shouldered it open and we stepped into the real Barrow base.

I blinked in surprise.

I’d fallen down a rabbit hole and stepped into the interior of a gothic mansion. The walls were paneled in rich cherry and adorned with hundreds of antique light fixtures with slender Edison bulbs blazing inside like tiny fireflies. My attention swept to the back of the entry where a sprawling, curved staircase led up to the second floor, and a huge series of stained-glass windows covered the entire back wall of the base, the design mimicking an abstract sunrise. They weren’t real windows, but the artificial light behind them looked realistic enough to bring life to the vivid array of colors splashing down the stairs and across the floor in a kaleidoscope of pigmented reflections.

Luke and the other hunters’ boots clicked over the parquet wooden floors fashioned together with slivers of light and dark wood resembling fangs snapping up from the floor. A massive table sat in the middle of the main entry with a huge arrangement of fresh purple and blue flowers, their tall, strange blooms spilling over the vase like a wave. They gave off a strange, musky scent that made me slightly dizzy. I reached forward to touch one, but Luke appeared beside me and yanked my hand back.

“They’re poisonous to the touch,” he said before I complained. He quickly dropped my hand once he’d pulled me back a safe distance, but my stomach still flipped from the familiarity of him, the thought of where his hands had once been on me.

Gritting my teeth, I focused back on the bright blooms and wondered how they managed to grow such delicate, beautiful things up here. “What are they?”

“Wolf’s bane. We grow it in a greenhouse to use on the bullets and blades. Cuts down on ammo costs.”

“Yeah,” Hatter said from the other side of the flower arrangement. He made a gun out of his fingers, including the one reduced to a small nub from a ’swang bite, and pointed it at me. “Takes two shots instead of five to bring down a ’swang.
Pop
.
Pop
. Just like that.” He blew imaginary smoke from the tip of his finger.

“Thanks, Hatter.” I focused back on Luke. “Why have such dangerous flowers right out in the open?”

His brows rose. “Have you met my father?”

His sarcasm was more than I’d received since Fields, and I was surprised at how relieved I felt to know he’d still joke with me. Before I came up with something snappy to make him smile that little hint of a grin that could look more like a scowl if you didn’t know him, he moved away, putting distance between us.

“Luke Aultstriver, don’t you dare track snow through this house.”

My gaze darted toward the stairs, where a feminine, soft voice had issued the order. Not that it sounded like an order in that breathless, high-pitched tone, but Luke froze nonetheless.

A wisp of a woman hurried down the stairs, clutching the banister as she went to keep from falling, a gray silk dress flowing around her legs. Her hair was so blonde it looked silver around her pale, slender face, where the only color came from her stark honey-colored eyes.

Luke’s lips hooked up in a warm, easy smile that made me hate this woman slightly. “It’s nice to see you too, Mother.”

I nearly choked. This was Luke’s mom?

“How have you been, dear?” Her smile trembled, and Luke reached out a hand to steady her slight wobble. If I’d thought the wolf’s bane too delicate and pretty to grow up here—greenhouse or not—then Mrs. Aultstriver certainly was.

“I’m good, Mom. What about you? You haven’t been calling much lately.”

His mom reached up and patted his cheek. “Oh, you know me. I lose track of the days.”

Her response made Luke frown, but from the bend in the stairs, Killian Aultstriver, lord of the manor in title and shitty attitude, appeared. He wore his permanent scowl, but it deepened when he saw his son and wife embracing. His expression turned positively stormy when his eyes swept over our small group and recognized me standing by the door. We’d met once before at Fear University, and it was safe to say we wouldn’t be besties anytime soon. Or ever. I smiled widely at him.

Nice to see you too, asshole
.

I was so busy staring down Killian I didn’t notice Luke’s mother had come over to me. She took my hand, her silver face filling my vision, and said, “You must be Ollie. I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Abigail, Luke’s mother.”

Up close, I cataloged the details her previous distance hadn’t allowed me. Her eyes were bloodshot and weak, pupils dilated. Her skin stretched sallow across sharp bones that might have looked regal if she were thirty pounds heavier. When she exhaled, the reek of alcohol, which explained her teetering wobble, almost made me stumble backward.

I saw none of Luke in the jagged, sinking edges of her features.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m Ollie Andrews. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Andrews?” Abigail cocked her head in thought, a confused smile tugging on her lips.

“That’s right, Mom. She’s a civilian.” Luke came over then and put his arm around her frail shoulders, tucking her into his side, just as Killian approached.

“
Was
a civilian,” I corrected.

“Ollie Andrews,” Abigail repeated, drawing out the syllables like she was testing their sound in the air.

“Once one, always one,” Killian drawled. “Welcome to my home, Ollie.”

I pasted on a syrupy smile and said, “I’m so thrilled to be here, Killian.”

“It’s time for dinner, Abigail.” He took his wife’s thin arm in his iron grip and tugged.

“I’ve got her.” Luke kept his hold on his mother’s shoulders. She giggled, eyes wide as she stared at me, tracing the lines of my face.

“No need, son. The other hunters will be coming along any moment. Stay and introduce everyone.”

Killian gave one final tug, and Abigail tumbled into his arms. Luke had to let her go or else break her in half. With Abigail in tow, Killian marched toward a room through a wide archway at the other end of the entry. “Dinner in five,” he called over his shoulder.

“Is she okay?” I whispered to Luke, who had also watched his mother leave.

“I’ve never seen her this skinny before.” He shoved his hands through his hair. “Does he even make her eat?”

“I—”

“The prodigal son returns.”

Luke gritted his teeth at the voice bouncing across the entry, but he’d smoothed the flash of irritation by the time we’d turned around to see who’d spoken.

A trio of hunters breezed in through a door at the side of the entry, heavy boots thudding over the floor, chains and leather whistling with each stride. As they approached, their strong scent, like licorice with a sharp metallic bite that might have been blood, blasted up my nose and made my eyes water. Graphic red tattoos and black scars covered nearly every visible inch of their skin, merging together into a blur. Sunny took a careful step closer to me.

“Nice to see you too, Sin,” Luke greeted the hunter who’d spoken with a coldness to rival Barrow’s current temperature before he turned to Sunny and me. “This is Absinthe Hussar, the lead hunter here at Barrow base. We just call him Sin.”

“Good to meet ya,” the guy in the middle, the tallest and rangiest, said. He jerked his chin up in greeting, his nose piercing catching the light. Wild black and red tattoos laced up his neck in swooping dots and curves that ended in the solid silhouette of a snarling ’swang along the right half of his face. Its teeth moved as he smiled at me, making the ’swang look like it was biting down on his face. His eyes slowly traveled down my body and back up, leering at every inch of me.

“Finished?” I snapped off the word like I wanted to snap his kneecaps.

“She’s a live one, eh?”

“Yes, I am breathing. Thank you.” I crossed my arms and glared. Sin just laughed.

“Sin takes some getting used to,” Luke explained, though he shot Sin a long, hard stare. “This is his brother, Haze Hussar. He’s second in command to Sin.”

The guy to Sin’s right inclined his head by way of greeting. He stood shorter than his brother, but while Sin’s body consisted of more corded, sinewy muscle, Haze was just a solid block of hulking steel. He had tattoos like his brother, but a massive black cluster of scars covering his mouth dominated his face, mangling his lips and chin into one jumbled disaster.

“Don’t be offended if he doesn’t speak a lot,” Sin said, grinning at me, “cause, ya know, he can’t. ’Swang fucked him up real good. But Haze got his payback.”

“How?” I asked, looking back at Haze, who met my gaze with quiet, unflinching dark eyes.

He pointed over my shoulder, back to the steel door behind me. I turned around, following the line of his finger. Sunny gasped at the sight.

A ’swang’s head perched on the wall above the door. Its inky black fur and glassy eyes were perfectly preserved and so life-like I fell speechless beneath its delicately curving ears and snarling expression. Bright-red velvet ribbon stitched its mouth closed. From its mounted neck hung a sign.

Every dog has its day
.

My throat constricted with disgust. Hanging a head on the wall, like a trophy, made me sick. “Does it switch to its day-form when there’s enough sunlight?”

Sin slapped Haze on the shoulder. “Naw,” he drawled. “We had its brain removed. Be pretty low-class to have a head on the wall that looked like a human. Am I right?”

“I guess you need a stuffed teddy bear to remind you just how manly you are,” Thad said, surprising me. He’d been so quiet in the back of the group that I’d forgotten about him until now. An angry red flush spread up his neck above his bandages.

Haze’s brows shot up in surprise. Thad relaxed his arms and flexed his fists, but before a real fight broke out between them, the third and final member of their group stepped forward with a shake of her head toward the unruly brothers. “Just ignore them. I do.” She smiled, the gesture the first to actually make me feel welcomed. “I’m Bloody Eve, but you can just call me Eve.”

She had raven-black hair spiked through with shots of red that complemented her patchwork tattoos. She wore a leather vest and nothing beneath it, her breasts squeezed together above the zipper. Long, black acrylic nails with little white crosses brushed softly against my scarred palm as I shook her hand.

“I’m Ollie. I like your hair.”

“I know who you are, and I like your face,” she said, nodding toward my fresh bandages—my hallmark as a hunter.

I released her hand and ran my fingers over the raised gauze on my cheek.
“Thanks.”

“That’s everyone then,” Luke said after he’d finished everyone’s introductions. “We’ll be working and living closely together for the next couple months, so try to get along—”