Epilogue

Dani woke up in her bed without remembering getting home. It felt as if her head had been through an earthquake, and she was slowly picking up the pieces. The vampires, the hunters, the witch’s apprentice, her winter tires. Wouldn't it be so nice if it were all a dream? What if the past fourteen years of her life were simply one long, exhausting nightmare? Alas, the piercing pain in her thigh from the fight, and the routine hangover, were proof that they weren't.

She checked her phone to see that it was noon. The sun rays were creeping through the blinds and assaulting her retinas. After a few twists and turns, she decided it would be best to continue sleeping. Perhaps this time she could dream of something more pleasant than the jumbled mess of past events that usually plagued her subconsciousness.

As if just to test her nerves, a skin-crawling shriek shook her awake, causing every cell in her now sober body to assume they were under an electric shock. She rolled out of the bed, immediately in search of her machete, which as always rested on the nightstand. The awful sound grew into a deep growl, shaking the very walls of their small two-bedroom house.

Dani barged into the living room, stumbling along the way. The dip on the wooden floorboards made her trip and fall, slamming her face against the back of the couch.

"Nastja!" she fumed at her sister, who between bobbing her head to the cacophony of guitar riffs coming from the speaker and screaming along to the instrumentals couldn't hear Dani's yelling. "Nastja!" she yelled once more, this time yanking the AUX cable out of the socket.

"Oh, hey sis!" Anastasia's voice returned to her natural chirp, as if the demon her sister thought was possessing her suddenly decided to call it quits. "I didn't know you were home. How did the hunt go?"

"Poorly," Dani muttered while dusting herself off, her lips twisted in a frown. "Where is Ian?"

"He's sleeping."

"How can he sleep during this… this. What the hell were you singing along to?"

"New industrial ritualistic symphonic prog Norwegian black metal." Her seemingly nonchalant answer raised more questions than answers, but Dani didn't bother to wait for any further explanation. When they began living together, she came to the understanding that her little sister had the strange habit of picking up a hobby for a week or two, becoming utterly obsessed with it, and leaving it once it started to become uninteresting.

At first, the huntress was more than overjoyed to find out there was at least one member of her family who didn't detest her. It was, in fact, quite the opposite; her little sister was in awe to find out that she used to be a gangster and even somewhat foolishly bragged about it at school. It, however, brought her nothing but weird looks and rumors that she was lying for attention, as one might expect. For some unknown reason, the young girl had the brilliant idea to convince her parents that she had been accepted into a prestigious school in Russia. She then immediately boarded a flight to the state of Colorado in search of her long-lost older sister, only to discover that she had taken an even more peculiar career path.

"I cannot wait for this phase to pass."

"It's not a phase," Anastasia protested with her arms crossed, making her braids wiggle on each side when she huffed. "I want to be a metal vocalist."

"Just like you wanted to be an artist, a dancer, a bassist, a YouTuber, a children's author, a carpenter for some reason."

"This time…"

"Is different, I know. You said so the last time. Stick to something quiet while you're still living with me, ay?" said Dani, putting her hands on her hips, assuming the position their mother used to scold them. “Otherwise, I'll tell our parents where you really are."

There was no more protesting.

The fridge was nearly empty, except for the four pieces of now stale bread and the half-eaten jar of ijvar. On the table was lying a burnt attempt at an omelet with a dubious amount of spices that failed to hide the fact that it was inedible. Anastasia had various talents, but unfortunately, cooking was never one of them. There were times her dishes had an appearance more horrific than the creatures the huntress had to fight. For the sake of their budget (and mostly their stomachs), Ian was assigned the duties of preparing meals in the household.

Dani rested her face against the table, reminiscing about the days she didn't have to do math every time she went out to do groceries, or at the very least, have something more decent than a piece of charcoal for breakfast.

"Can you order something? I'm starving," she mumbled, glancing up at her sister for a second before facing the oilcloth.

"They don't deliver to our address. Our house isn't even registered," said Nastja.

"Then order it to our closest neighbor's house and take it from there."

"Do you have cash?"

Dani's stomach rumbled before she could say 'no'.

"Yebem mu matter," she grumbled with annoyance. "Wake up Ian and tell him to run to the store and get us something to eat."

"I don't know about that. He seemed pretty tired when he came back. I don't want to be rude and—"

"That didn't seem to be an issue when you woke me up!" Dani shouted, peeling her face off the table. "Fine, I'll go!" She sprang up and took off.

It was quiet for a moment. Nothing but the sound of the fridge buzzing and the occasional strange sounds coming from the AC. Last winter, they had a rat infestation and no way to pay for an exterminator. Dani had a splendid idea to solve the issue by capturing dozens of street cats and releasing them in the house to capture the rats, and weirdly enough, it worked. Days later, much to their discontent, they realized that fleas now invaded them. Somewhere on the internet, Ian had read that frogs and lizards were natural predators of fleas, and so they 'borrowed' an aquarium of geckos from the natural history museum. They did take care of the fleas, but before he could return them to their rightful owners, two of them went missing, and it wasn't until much later that they found their remains stuck in the AC.

Nastja had long grown used to the unsettling rattling sound. What she never got used to ever since she moved in, and perhaps what troubled her the most, were the times their usually level-headed vampire roommate had forgotten to take his ‘medicine'. A twist in her stomach, followed by the rushing of footsteps coming her way, told her it might be one of those times.

The scene unraveled in the blink of an eye. One moment she was staring blankly at the stains on the wall, and the next her sister was on top of Ian's back, trying to put him in a rear naked choke. His eyes—beaming red and bloodthirsty, with dark veins creeping underneath, spreading throughout his entire face. He was twisting like a rabid dog, trying to escape her grip.

"Easy, boy!" Dani shouted as she tried to shove her forearm in his mouth. "Here, drink, you stupid vampire!"

Ian sank his sharp teeth into her flesh with enough force to tear it off. He drank to his heart's content, savoring each drop, and once he returned to his senses, he spat in disgust what was left in his mouth.

"Ew, what the hell! You know I feel squeamish about drinking directly from people!" He raised his voice, shocked.

"You would have killed us all if I didn't react on time, budala ! When was the last time you drank human blood?"

"I don't know, I was too busy not dying when you dragged me to that hellhole of a building!"

"Set a reminder, pichko ! You're a tech guy; you should figure it out. I have enough problems to worry about you going insane overnight!”

Their bickering was suddenly disturbed by a stifled titter. They turned towards Nastja to see her holding her mouth, struggling not to burst into laughter.

"What's so funny?" they asked almost in unison.

"Ian forgot to track his period." She barely finished her sentence before exploding into a gust of giggles. Dani scolded her, then joined in. Ian was the only one who wasn't laughing. Part of him still wished to tear a piece of her flesh, as unpleasant as he found it.

"Now that you've gotten your snack, it's your turn," Dani continued, gesturing to the front door. "Go to the store and grab me something to eat."

"Are you insane? The sun is still out!” Ian frowned.

"Then take an umbrella or something! I don't have a car anymore. I can't go there myself!”

"So, you can walk ten miles in a single night, but can't go to the market on foot?"

Their argument dragged on longer than Nastja had the patience to endure, although their routine scandals were just another one of the things she had grown accustomed to. It was like tuning in to watch a TV show each afternoon. When they were gone, it even felt weird not having them around to argue about whose turn it was to scrub the blood off their clothing.

"I'll go," Nastja suggested, but her suggestion was ignored.

"I didn't walk," Dani explained. "A fellow hunter drove me home after you left."

"You gave a hunter our home address?" Ian screeched in distress.

"Don't worry, he doesn't know about you, and if he did, I would have taken care of it."

"Like you took care of that sorcerer?"

"You guys fought a sorcerer?" Nastja intervened, intrigued.

“I did," Dani specified. "Ian ran away like a little bitch in the meantime. To top it all off, he let that little turd get away. Oh, and did I mention, we didn't even get paid! I almost missed Khabib's fight for nothing!"

"Is that your biggest issue at hand?" asked Ian as if he didn’t know the answer.

"The biggest issue at hand is that we're broke, Ian! If we don't get another request soon, we'll starve," said Dani, grabbing her head in despair. "Nastja, go through my e-mail and see if there's a new job available for me." She tossed her phone towards her sister before collapsing on the couch.

"There is a request from a place that's been taken over by what appears to be zombies. It's from a town near Denver," said Nastja.

"Is that somewhere near your necromancer friend?" asked Ian.

"That pervert isn't my friend," Dani hissed, furrowing her eyebrows. "The only reason I have his number is because he's a real sorcerer. I'm gonna need his brains in the future to catch that old hag and hang her by her guts.”

“I met him once. He seemed like a decent guy. I don’t know why you keep calling him a pervert.”

“It’s for the best,” Dani muttered before turning her attention to the e-mail.

She had an eerie feeling about it. The files attached contained pictures of corpses poorly stitched together. Some had their insides hanging from their tatters. It couldn’t be the work of the necromancer she knew. He was too skilled to leave such a mess. There were police reports dubbing the sightings of the undead a sick prank pulled by someone knowledgeable in practical effects. Other articles describing the cases were proof enough that even the media struggled to pull the wool over the eyes of civilians. Whoever was behind it cared little about preserving the truth about the existence of magic, which was unbecoming of real sorcerers.

“I’ll be going alone this time,” Dani stated belligerently.

“Oh, thank God,” sighed Ian, tilting his head back in relief.

“No way! I want to come with you,” Nastja insisted. “You never take me with you on your missions.”

“But of course I don’t,” her sister said. “You’re a teenager. It’s too dangerous.”

“I promise I’ll be suuuper careful.”

“I can’t rely on promises.”

Dani wasted no time. She grabbed her machete, reloaded her pistols, put on another tracksuit, tied her hunting boots, and took off.

That marked the beginning of a journey that would lead her down a path of darkness, love, betrayal, and the sinister truth about the world they lived in.

To be continued.