The storm had passed by the time the fighting stopped. The church was quiet now, its pews shattered, its walls cracked with the aftermath of spells and teeth and gunfire. Only the faint smell of sulfur lingered, curling with the smoke rising from Eve’s paws as she prowled the nave, keeping guard.
Eden knelt beneath the hanging hunters, their pale faces slack and bloodied. With the coven dead, the spell holding them flickered and died. Chains dissolved into ash, dropping each hunter one by one into Eden’s arms or onto the cracked stone.
“Easy,” Eden muttered, lowering a tall, grizzled man to the ground. His chest rose shallow, but he was alive. The others coughed weakly, groaning as their senses returned.
She dragged them away from the ruined altar, propped them up against what was left of the pews, and waited.
Minutes passed. Rain pattered faintly through the holes in the ceiling. The banshee was gone, her wail vanishing into the distance once the bindings shattered — free, for now, though Eden wasn’t sure whether that would be a blessing or a curse.
At last, one of the hunters stirred.
A young woman, maybe early twenties, her freckles hidden under bruises. She blinked, squinting at Eden as though unsure if she was still trapped in some vision.
“You…” Her voice cracked, thick with hate the moment recognition set in. “No. No, not you.”
Another hunter, the grizzled man Eden had caught, woke next. He groaned, clutching his side, then saw Eden crouched nearby. His eyes narrowed into slits. “Damnation,” he rasped. “They sent you?”
Eden leaned back on her heels, arms crossed. “Saved your asses, actually. You’re welcome.”
A third hunter spat blood into the dust. “We don’t need saving from a monster.”
The words hit sharp — not unexpected, but still sharp. Eden’s jaw tightened.
She’d seen that look too many times before: disgust, fear, revulsion. Not at her skills. Not at what she did. But at what she was.
The girl pressed herself against the broken pew, trembling but glaring all the same. “You shouldn’t even exist. Half-breed freak. Bad omen. You’re everything hunters swore to stand against.”
Eden’s mismatched eyes caught the dying light that filtered through the broken ceiling. For a heartbeat, they glowed again — one angel’s grace, one demon’s fire. She didn’t flinch away from their stares.
“Yeah?” Eden said quietly, then louder, steel in her voice: “Well, this bad omen just saved your goddamn lives.”
The silence after was heavy. The hunters looked at one another, but no one spoke, no one offered thanks.
Eden stood, shouldering her shotgun, her leather jacket smeared with ash and blood. Eve padded close behind her, growling low, her fiery eyes daring anyone to move against her mistress.
Eden glanced back once, voice flat. “You don’t have to like me. You don’t have to trust me. But you’d be corpses on a witch’s altar if I hadn’t walked into this town.”
The older man sneered, spitting on the ground. “And we’ll still be corpses when you bring damnation down on us all.”
Eden’s smirk was humorless, her tone edged with bitter sarcasm. “Good pep talk. Try it in front of a mirror next time.”
She slung her shotgun across her back, tugged her helmet from where it had fallen among the debris, and slid it over her head. The hum of her motorbike echoed faintly from outside, where she’d parked it in the weeds.
Without another word, she strode toward the doors, Eve’s heavy paws following.
Trace’s last message still buzzed in the back of her mind, a thorn she couldn’t ignore. If you get this… don’t trust anyone in Hollow’s End.
She paused in the doorway, rain dripping onto her boots, then muttered just loud enough for the broken hunters to hear: “I’m going to find Trace.”
And with that, she left them in the ruins of their fear, their hatred, their survival owed to the very omen they despised.
The roar of her chopper broke the silence a minute later, fading into the distance.
Eden’s war wasn’t done.
Trace was still out there. Somewhere.
End of Chapter Six
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