Blaze Monroe and the Shattered Heart: A Supernatural Thriller (The Hunter Who Lost His Way Book 2) Read online

  The Hunter Who Lost His Way

  Book Two:

  Blaze Monroe

  and the

  Shattered Heart

  By

  Alex Villavasso

  Copyright 2019, Alex Villavasso

  All rights reserved

  This novel is a work of fiction and is a product of the author’s imagination.

  All events, places, and characters are either fictitious or portrayed in a fictitious manner. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form except by an authorized retailer or once written permission from the author is received.

  For inquires, contact the author at AlexVillavasso.com

  Please support the author and do not encourage or participate in distributing this work through illegal means.

  Thank you.

  Cover Illustration by Jesse Gerbrandt

  Chapter 1: Love Sick

  She slings me to the back wall with the simple flick of her hand. Lucky for me, I was able to get a shot in before she dislodged my gun and tossed me like a ragdoll. Damn. She’s telekinetic. My head ricochets off the wall and her psychic hold on me dampens as she grabs her bleeding shoulder. Of course, her magic is tied to her vitality. That’s why she does what she does to her victims. Blood pacts. In the absence of her strength, I scramble for my gun, but she moves it away just in the nick of time. I glance up at her and she winces in pain from the use of her abilities. I grab a knife from my boot and sling it her way. She stops it, and reverses its trajectory, causing it to fire back at me.

  I roll to the side, dodging the blade as it digs into the wooden floor only for it to take a life of its own. It stabs at me again and I continue my roll, causing it to miss. I then hurry to my feet and break the line of sight between me and the witch, making her abilities useless without a visual. I post up against a supporting wall and pull out my second Berretta—a weapon she isn’t aware that I possess. If I can shoot quicker than she can react, I’ll be done with this one.

  “I’ve seen your future, hunter. It’s quite the sight to behold. A reunion. Heartbreak. Loss. Regret. Death. I knew you were coming for quite some time.”

  “Bullshit,” I call out and cross over to the adjacent wall. In the brief opening when I transferred, she wasn’t in sight. She’s hiding. “What’s my name? What high school did I go to? Give me something that you have to work for. Parlor tricks don’t impress me.”

  “Who pushed you over the edge?” the witch asks. “Did you love her?” Her loss of blood causes her to get sloppy. I hear something rattle in the foreground, and I make my move to pursue. I pop out from the corner and a knife hurtles towards my face, instantly shifting my focus from attacking to surviving. I dodge it by bending back around the corner.

  “Better.” I eye the knife lodged into the wall. “But you’re still speaking in generalities.”

  “I can bring her back to you. Show her the way.”

  “Not interested. We both know how that’ll go,” I say dryly from the wall. I make a break from the wall and press deeper into the witch’s shop, following the drips of blood spattered on the floor. She pops out from the array of artifacts and statues and tries to hit me with a kettle. I dodge and pistol whip her in the face, causing her to fall onto her hands and knees. “So, you’re feeling it, now. Good. I was wondering when you’d burn through the rest of your juice.”

  “What did you do to me?” she asks, from the ground, her lip bleeding and her face full of disgust.

  “What happened to being psychic?” I quip. “I neutralized your magic with a seal. That bullet in your arm was the one that did you in. It took a while, but I’m glad it kicked in. You’re a strong one.”

  “I can fill that void in your heart,” she claims as I hover over her. “Ease your pain. Make you whole again…it would be so easy to do.” She starts to laugh, even in the face of death. “When you finally figure it out, the look on your face will be priceless.” She cackles. “I’ve seen it all. Blaze Monroe and the shattered heart.”

  My hand recoils from the force of my Beretta.

  The shot echoes, but after the sound fades, my world returns to the eerie stillness that I’ve come to know; come to love. That glorious moment when something you hunt dies and the reality of it is still fresh to your senses; that you’re alive—that you’ve won—that you’ve earned your right to live for the next moment in this Godforsaken existence.

  The sound of pottery falls behind me and I twist to see a jagged shard of the kettle a few feet away from me…one last hoo-rah to turn the tides.

  Damn. I almost let her get me.

  “Maybe you could have done something, but, you and I both know the cost would have been too high,” I muse.

  I watch the witch’s body as she lie still, her blood leaking out onto the wooded floor, dying it red.

  She was a powerful witch, but she dealt in darkness. No good could ever come from that.

  She was placing curses on the townspeople. A witch for hire. Sometimes for money, other times for favor. Didn’t matter. In the end, it was only victims. Her power stemmed from the dark arts. She was merely a middle-woman who charged a service fee for setting up her clients for their demise. Her specialty was revenge. Jealous boyfriends…girlfriends…business partners, former lovers; couples. She did it all for a couple bucks and a ritual she used to unknowingly draw from her victim’s soul to fuel her own power. Some ancient pact that dealt with blood works and drinking a tonic to seal the deal. I don’t know what she was aiming for, but she was using the resources gathered from her victims to empower herself. It made for a hell of a fight, but I’m the lone survivor, I think.

  I pull the trigger again and shoot her in the spine just in case she tries to pull something like before.

  With my eyes still on the witch, I fish out my cellphone. “Roc?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s done.”

  “Good shit.”

  “She had telekinesis. Threw me for a whirl. Literally.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah,” I say after sighing. “Banged me up, but it’s finished.”

  “Did it stop the curse?”

  “Yeah, I think so. I’ll have to wait and see. I’ll text you. I’ll know tomorrow.”

  “Good deal… Hey, I just wanted to let you know that—”

  “I appreciate it buddy. I know you have my back, but I don’t want to talk about it. Okay? I’m doing fine and I have work to do. I’m trying to see what I can find and clean up the place a bit.”

  “…All right. Talk to you later.”

  “Yup.” Roc hangs up on me and I slide my phone back into my pocket.

  I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose as I sit on a nearby stool, my eyes honing in on the dead witch. Could she have really brought her back? I stare at her downed body for longer than I should, letting the thought tease me even though it’s a line I know I’ll never cross. I’ve lost so much. My family. Sailor. Everything that I knew. I never asked for this, but I can’t stop…and no matter what I do, I’m constantly reminded of the ones who didn’t make it.

  I pull on my resolve and stand from the stool. There’re tracks to cover. So that’s what I do. Make like a ghost and leave without a trace, that is, after I do a sweep of the interior for anything that can be of use.

  After that, I hit the bar to drown out the air of misery that often lingers these days after a successful hunt.

  Chapter 2: The Time of Our Liv
es

  We went straight from the bar to my hotel room, and things didn’t stop there. I kiss her down her neck while she unbuttons my shirt. A finger glides along the curve of my jawline—her feminine touch redirecting my lips to hers. I breathe into her collar bone and she pushes against me, forcing me back until my head hits the wall.

  I don’t care.

  Her kisses intensify and I reverse our positions, leaving her pinned. Her hands go from my face and begin to work her way down to my chest, and then I freeze, snapping free from the alcohol induced haze I plunged myself into after slinging back shot after shot.

  No. I do care. A lot. I can’t do this.

  “We can’t do this.” I pull away from her, ashamed and disgusted by my actions. Her face warps in a mix of confusion and shock while I look at her, fully aware of the sense of heaviness I’m casting from my body.

  “What’s wrong? Is it me? Something I did? Something I said?” It’s not her. Not in the slightest. Cool personality. Smart. Bold. Beautiful. She could very well have been the one that got away for tons of guys. It’s just that she’s not her.

  She’s not Sailor.

  “No, no it’s not you.”

  “I’m not the type of girl who just—you know.”

  “Yeah,” I sit on my bed and massage my thumb and pointer finger across my eyebrows. “Yeah, I know. I didn’t plan for my night go like this either, Sydney. It’s not that,” I say as she sits down next to me, genuinely concerned for my wellbeing. “I don’t even know what I’m doing.”

  “Ugh! Don’t tell me you’re one of those assholes who has a whole family on the side. I go out for the first time in forever and this is the shit I get into.”

  Well…ah…I really don’t need this shit right now.

  I rub my eyes with my pointer and index fingers, holding back my thoughts.

  “Night life is overrated, but no. It’s not that. I…have a girlfriend.”

  My head ricochets from Sydney’s hand smashing against my face. Hell, her name even starts with the same letter. I’m pathetic.

  Same hair. Same eyes. Same body type, but she doesn’t look at me the same way.

  “Asshole! I hope she leaves your ass!”

  Sydney storms out of my room and I’m left to ponder about my life choices. It’s been a little over three weeks since I got the news—that Sailor and her dad had died.

  I’ve been doing okay for the most part…hunkering down on work and trying to stay alive. That witch must have whammied me because, look at me. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. This isn’t me.

  I unlock my phone and pull up a picture of Sailor and I together. It’s both of us posing melodramatically at an art gallery’s cafeteria. Sailor’s idea of a date. I scroll through the pictures and they get more and more goofy until she snaps one of her planting a kiss on my cheek. I’m trying to play it cool and she’s looking at the camera, smiling with her eyes.

  A smile finds its way to my face but quickly fades.

  Could she really have brought her back?

  I’m tripping…buzzed…it doesn’t matter if she can or can’t. It wouldn’t be her.

  I rise from my bed, looking to clear my head. Bringing home a rando sounded like a good idea, but now I feel like an asshole and realize just how lonely it can get on the road.

  Time apart is normal, but when it’s permanent, it’s a whole different perspective. Things didn’t end on a good note and I can’t stop beating myself up about it.

  Maybe if I fought with her she’d still be alive right now. Or at the very least, I’d have died by her side along with her pops. We would have all went down swinging.

  “Hope tomorrow works out better for you, Syd. This city’s a trip.” I look at the time, sluggish from apathy and not so much the hour of the day. It’s a little past two and I’m wide awake.

  I try do the right thing and make sure Sydney makes it to a cab or her driver, but by the time I make it outside, she’s already on the other side of the street, a block and some change down. Most importantly, she’s safe, even if she thinks I’m the embodiment of everything wrong with our generation.

  I decided to stay in the city for this hunt. Dealing with the psychic witch I bodied was more of an urban affair as opposed to something in rural America. She dealt with the young and uninformed. The skeptics. The ones looking to be proved wrong or desperate to make something out of nothing. The millennials.

  Either way, cities like this are almost always ripe with the paranormal, as most up and coming places are. You just need to know where to look; and choose your battles wisely, because it just might be your last.

  I continue my pace from the entrance of my motel and travel down a couple more blocks on the opposite side of the street that Sydney went. The night air and the reality of my situation makes my buzz become a distant memory; there was still work to do. I was an idiot for laxing up when I did. I still need answers.

  Again, I blame it on the witch who took me for a spin.

  “Aye, what’s good? You looking for something, fam?” I look to my right as I pass by a group of guys on the sole step of a home. The single light bulb hanging over their heads lights the top of their darkened hoodies, casting a light on their array of skin tones. I stop at the proposition, not concerned, but curious. “Yeah, you look like you’ve been a little down on your luck, man. Girl problems?” a white guy asks me. His earring catches the light and it reflects into one of my eyes as he tilts his neck up and smiles. There’s a snake tattoo running from the side of his neck down into the depths of his grey hoodie.

  “Something like that, man,” I say after a quick chuckle.

  “Don’t let a girl trip you up, man. You new around town?”

  “Just passing by. Business trip. Well, job interview for an internship.”

  “Word? Good shit, man.”

  “Could have went better.” I shrug while slowly starting to pull away.

  “Hold up, bro.”

  Shit.

  “You know, I’m always telling these bozos to stay in school around here. You see this guy?” He turns to the side and smiles at his clique. “You guys could end up like him if you play your cards right, eh.”

  “Thanks.” The man runs his finger along the opening of his nose and sniffs, his movements, skittish.

  Homeboy is tweaking on some serious drugs.

  What a time to be alive. My life is literally one sketchy encounter after the next.

  I try to make my peace and move from the crowd but he steps forward. Not so much that he’s in my space, but just enough that I know he’s trying to impede my path and demands my attention.

  “How long you in town for, huh?” He sniffs.

  “What’s it to you?” I ask, more on guard than I was seconds before.

  His eyes go down towards his pocket and mine subconsciously follow. He unearths a vial no bigger than three inches long with a murky, sky-blue, liquid. “Wanted to see if you were interested in a little pick-me-up. You know, something to help you celebrate. Get your mind off things.”

  “Out of curiosity? Do I come across as the type of guy who gets loaded, or are you just that desperate to make a buck?”

  One of the guys puffs his chest and walks up to me but the white guy calms him down. “Hey, hey, hey, no need to cause a scene, Bruno. It’s cool.”

  “I don’t like his attitude.” He looks me in the eyes and I glare back, flatly. Unamused. I took out a hoard of werewolves, like, a month ago. Intimidation from petty-thugs doesn’t get much mileage from me. That or the booze is doing what it’s supposed to do. Liquid courage.

  “What’s that shit called, anyway? I’ve never seen it before.”

  “That’s because it’s just now started to make waves. Got a few samples from a friend of a friend, of a friend.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I shit you not, pass it on to some co-eds and let the good times roll,” he answers more excitedly than I’d hope to expect. I really don’t feel like throw
ing down right now, but this dude is becoming more cringe-worthy by the second. “Give it a couple more months and you’ll see. This Sphinx shit,” he says as he pulls out the vial in full and shakes it my way, “the assholes at your office will be downing it on their lunch break.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like something I’m not interested in. I’m a social drinker at most, but thanks for the offer. Tantalizing stuff, I’m sure.”

  “Well, what are you interested in?”

  “You really have me pegged out as someone looking for a fix, don’t you?” I smirk. “But to answer your question. Nothing. Unless you know where I can get my fortune told. In fact, the more psychics, the better.”

  “The fuck?” a girl in the group exclaims from the step. I should be saying the same thing to her. She’s smoked out with visible track marks, and it’s almost three in the morning.

  “Exactly. It’s as crazy as it sounds, but I’ve had good luck with them so far.”

  “Well, I don’t know where you can get your palm read around here, fam. Whatever floats your boat.”

  “Hey, maybe he can reach out to my Aunt Tabitha while he’s out there,” another druggy says after slapping the chest of one of his friends.

  “Yeah. Maybe.” I take that as the opportunity to make my exit. I don’t put it past them that they’d be potentially up to no good. A group of dealers hanging around the shady spots of the city right on the cusp of where nightlife begins and ends. No one is getting jumped or brawled on around here. Not in the open like this. But still, it doesn’t stop me from being ready just in case. Things would have been more interesting if they would have taken the bait—they don’t know anything about the witches down here…which is a good thing, I guess.

  If what they did made it to local-street-pusher level, I’d be in for a real treat.

  A sharp pain erupts across my back and I fall to my knees.

  Maybe I was too quick to jump to conclusions.

  Shit. The other half of a broken two by four falls to the ground beside me. A boot buries itself into my exposed ribs and a dull pain radiates from my core, causing me to roll over onto my back by instinct. Steel-toe. Nice.