“Solange won’t ever find you. We’ll make it so that even your own troop members won’t remember you. It’ll be as if you never existed.”

JJ did step back now, unable to keep his mouth from falling open. Would Warren really do that? He knew Micah could erase the memories of mortals, rewire their minds so that new pasts defined their futures. It was especially useful if one had happened upon an event or object derived from their hidden world. But could Warren really convince Micah to alter the troop’s collective memory? It’d be a huge undertaking…not just rewiring the minds of the twelve senior star signs, but the ward mothers who’d helped raise JJ in their underground sanctuary, and the flexible minds of the initiates, too—the children of the next generation who so looked up to him now. Would Warren do that?

He looked at his troop leader’s gaze—level again, and cool. Yes, he would. None of them would have a choice in the matter, and most wouldn’t even question it. If they ever read about JJ in the back issues of the manual of Light, it would be like reading about someone else entirely. And it made JJ wonder: had Warren ever done this before?

But he’d be alone in his wonder, JJ realized. That would be his punishment. To remember what he’d done, to know the failure forever, and to live among his peers as a fraud. So it was almost as harsh as a death sentence.

JJ nodded yet again.

“You will take the appearance and job I determine for you, you will return to the sanctuary every night without fail, and you will log your activities for me down to the last detail.”

“Yes,” he replied woodenly. He no longer cared where his needs and desires ranked in his own life. In fact, it would be a relief to follow orders and let someone else do the thinking for a while. He would give his life over in service to mortals, and he’d do it wholeheartedly…or at least with what was left of it after Solange’s betrayal.

Warren continued, voice thick with everything he wasn’t allowing himself to say…and do. “You will be the exemplary superhero in every way. If I even suspect you’re faltering, I’ll kill you myself.”

JJ nodded numbly. Then Warren punched him so hard he fell into the sea of pillows. A cloud of dust rose around him, and he coughed, tasting loss and death and a dry guilt that smothered any burning desire to fight. Warren didn’t want his numb acquiescence, he realized.

Not when there was so much dust.

“I’m not doing this for you.” Warren hissed, pointing a finger at JJ, tears rolling down his cheeks as he said it. “This is for your parents and what they meant to me, and what they sacrificed for us all.”

“I won’t forget again. Ever.”

Though his parents were gone, he would live for them, as they’d once lived for each other. And he’d learn to listen again to his intuition, the inner voice he’d muted while reaching for his own selfish dreams, reaching until Solange had snagged his palm, and pulled him into all this dust.

His answers, his sorrowed scent, seemed to mollify Warren. His leader turned to the bedroom window, trench billowing at his ankles, and looked out at the city he was charged to protect. “You may choose your own name.”

JJ stood and joined Warren at the window. “Hunter.”

Warren looked at him sharply.

“Hunter,” he repeated, sending back the steely gaze. Warren wanted the perfect embodiment of a superhero, so that’s who he’d be. The purest predator in the city. The most concentrated essence of good, he thought, looking up at the sky.

The quintessential hunter.

Because somewhere out there was a woman with a thing for dark-haired men, a preference for Mustangs, and a need for relevance. She took action based on the constellations, her deeds steered by the dark matter in between, and she did it with his daughter, his Lola, in her belly.

And a child, Hunter decided, rubbing faintly dusty fingers together, was a damn good reason to continue the fight.

The Dead, The Damned, And The Forgotten

Jocelynn Drake

1

A body was waiting for me at the morgue.

That wasn’t the type of message I was expecting to receive when I awoke at sunset, but there was no avoiding it. My voice mail contained a semi-polite message from Archibald Deacon, Savannah’s coroner, informing me that a nightwalker had just been delivered to his morgue. The message was followed by one from homicide detective Daniel Crowley, also informing me of the waiting corpse. A final message was from the now frantic coroner, who wanted me to deal with the corpse immediately. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do until the sun had finally set beneath the horizon, allowing night to reclaim the world.

The private examination room was in the basement of the morgue, away from the main room that held the majority of the dead. It was one of the few buildings in Savannah with a basement, given the city’s high water table, and it came at a great cost. Due to moments like these, I had been more than willing to make the contribution to the city.

The cinder-block walls had been covered with a thick coat of white paint that had begun to yellow with age. A handful of narrow windows lined the walls more than six feet above the floor. The glass had been painted black to deter any inquisitive people who happened to wander too close. A window-unit air conditioner sputtered and coughed randomly from its perch at the far end of the room, spewing forth a semi-steady stream of cool air.

I looked up from the coroner’s report to watch Knox as he leaned over the body of the dead nightwalker. His lips were curled in disgust, revealing faint flashes of fang. The opposite wall from where I stood was covered with a stainless steel refrigeration unit for corpses. There were only four doors that opened to slide-out drawers. A larger unit was in the main examination room on the first floor.

“Are you sure there were no other wounds on the body besides the main two?” I inquired, turning my attention from the disgruntled nightwalker to the coroner, who hovered close by. Archibald was a short, round man who stood on stubby little legs. His dark brown hair was thinning, leaving the top of his skull nearly exposed. Archie, as I preferred to call him, had been the coroner for Savannah and the surrounding counties for nearly twenty years and we had known each other for almost as long.

“Mira,” he snapped. His bushy grayish-brown brows bunched together over his large, bulbous nose. “Half the body was destroyed! How could I possibly answer such a question?”

“Can you at least tell me if the body was burned before or after he was beheaded?”

“After,” replied a new voice.

Archibald jumped at the unexpected appearance of Detective Daniel Crowley, but I didn’t flinch. I had sensed him walking through the building toward our location in the basement.

“How do you know?” I asked, looking over at Daniel as I closed the file folder that held a copy of the coroner’s report. It was the real copy, one that would never be officially filed with the police department. Archibald would create a second version that would carefully omit any questionable details like the elongated canines, the sensitivity to sunlight, and any kind of genetic abnormalities he was already aware of.

“I talked to some of the guys who were first on the scene,” Daniel continued, closing the door behind him. “When they found the body, one of the officers opened some curtains to let light in and the body started being reduced to ash like a slow-burning ember.”

“They saw him burn?” Knox demanded in a harsh tone. Daniel took a hesitant step backward and looked over at me again. Knox and Daniel had never worked together. In fact, I was the only nightwalker in contact with Daniel and Archie, but it was time for that to change. If Knox was going to aid me with managing my domain, he needed to know the humans I was in contact with.