My mother tried to get me to start keeping a journal almost as soon as I could write; according to her, all Soul Collectors keep journals or records of some sort. I was too young at the time to understand what she was talking about, but just shy of a decade after they died, I met someone in Scotland who could answer all of my questions. She saved what was left of my life, taught me about the monsters people had branded me as insane for seeing and how to kill them if needed; she gave me a work that, for me, became an escape—an obsession.

Then she had to vanish.

I made my way back to the states five years ago and occasionally, I hear whispers of her amongst those of ‘the Bloody Red Queen of the East’, but they’re told as fairy tales, like the bogeyman meant to scare children into behaving.

No one remembers.

This particular journal was a gift from Michael in honor of my surviving a full decade as a hunter and right now, it’s clean and smells of new paper and leather, but by the time I’ve filled it, the edges will be frayed and the scent of blood will cling to it just like the others in my library. With any luck though, it’ll remain free of the inevitable bloodstains for some time. I’m leaving tomorrow morning for its christening hunt in Scottsburg Town, Virginia; one of Michael’s contacts called it in, he said there’d been a series of murders where all that was left of the victims were their mangled corpses short their hearts. I could list at least a dozen different possible perpetrators just off the top of my head that any other hunter could’ve handled, but there was one in particular that made them call me—one that remained unspoken during the call

because they’re my kin:

An Alcaimynder.

By the time I got to Scottsburg Town, the body count was up to ten, though the most recent one wouldn’t be discovered until later that day. I started the case just like I did just about every case I worked: with research. I realize it sounds boring, but it’s important and there’s never a dull moment when breaking into police stations. Their files didn’t tell me much, they had them listed as animal attacks despite the pattern and the missing hearts, but at least I had a pretty good idea of where the creature’s hunting grounds were based on where the bodies had turned up. I paused to study the coroner’s reports, noting the varying degrees of defensive wounds mixed in with other injuries, but most importantly the massive, “unidentified” bite marks on the back of the neck. I flipped through the accompanying pictures, studying the injuries and trying to narrow down what exactly I was hunting, but the image of the chest cavity made me stop. The cause was easily identifiable for me, but then I was probably more familiar with the exacting of this particular wound than most. I swallowed the rising sense of dread and took a deep breath as I closed my eyes, trying to shake the image in my head of my own stained fingers holding a nearly human heart as the blood dripped down my wrist and arm.

It took the sound of a nearby door opening to really shake me free of the hallucination and I hurriedly replaced the files before bolting back out one of the windows.

I’ll be honest, I hadn’t intended to be anywhere near where the tenth body turned up, but the call came over the police scanner while I was pulled over on the side of the road and lo and behold it was only a couple miles from me. I scrambled to put the notes I’d been going through away and started my Jeep before pulling back onto the road. It didn’t take long to find the crime scene, the flashing lights made it stand out quite a bit. I pulled to a stop a few paces from the other cars, turning off my engine and slipping out the driver’s side door, pausing only briefly to tie my wild red hair up in a loose bun and make myself look somewhat professional. I started to approach one of the detectives, but stopped short; he was human, as was his partner, so what was I going to tell them. I hesitated a moment before opening my Jeep again and leaning across to rifle through my glovebox.

“Here we go,” I murmured to myself as I found what I was looking for, tucking the fake badge into an inside pocket of my jacket. One of the perks of being all too familiar with law enforcement was that I’d picked up enough, impersonating them was pretty easy. Fancy suits helped, but really it’s all in the body language; lengthen the stride, carry yourself with a sense of purpose, act like you run the place even if you don’t know what’s going on. “Good afternoon Detective,” I ducked under the tape ignoring the officer that tried to stop me and reaching in my coat for the badge.

“Ma’am, you can’t—” I showed the detective my fake badge and he waved off the officer.

“The FBI’s takin’ an interest? Things must be slow for you guys.” I smirked as I returned the badge to the inside pocket of my coat.

“Yeah, something like that. They send me when they catch wind of stuff that’s too… weird to ignore.” The detective laughed.

“You mean like the X-Files? Should I be calling you Fox?” I suppressed a chill at the name, covering it up with a charming smile.

“Mulder is fine.” I turned my attention to the body, “Mind if I take a look?” The Detective shrugged.

“We’re still waitin’ on the coroner so don’t move anything, but you’re welcome to it.” I peered down the hill into the muddy ravine where a biker had found the body. It looked like a typical animal kill to me, like whatever had killed him had wanted to be able to come back for seconds. I hesitated, checking the mud for tracks before carefully climbing down to get a closer look at the body.

“You guys get pictures already?” I called back up the hill, glancing up in time to see the detective nod before I crouched down. I moved the branches carefully aside, scanning them for fur or blood that wasn’t the victim’s, but no such luck. I pulled a pair of gloves from my pocket to lift and examine the man’s arms, studying the defensive wounds and trying to gauge the size of the beast’s claws. A quick check and I found that once again the killing blow had been a bone-crushing bite at the neck along with signs of a hole in the chest. I didn’t want to roll him over, didn’t want to disturb the body that much before their coroner came and besides, I had what I needed. I stepped away from the body, stepping carefully through the mud as I looked for tracks and pausing occasionally to check for a scent I could follow.

“Find anything interesting?” The detective called down to me as the coroner’s van pulled up and I started to reply, but… there, I caught wind of something inhuman.

“Yes, but nothing new,” I called back as I cataloged the scent in my head, I didn’t recognize it, but I sure as hell recognized the scent of death that clung to it. I started back up the hill, pulling a business card from one of my pockets, “I have a lead to chase down, but give me a call if anything new turns up.” I finished jotting down my cell number on the back and the detective took the card, glancing down at it briefly before looking up to question why the card was for Dogwood Apothecary back in Pembroke, Maine, but I was already halfway back to my Jeep.

In the confines of a small hotel room, I’d spread out my notes and a map of the local hiking trails much in the same way I sometimes would in my library. The papers had taken over the bed, marks written on the map triangulating the most likely area to search for the beast. I’d done all I could from here, now it was just a matter of heading out to the woods. I shrugged my kevlar lined leather jacket back on over my tank top and double checked the silver rounds I’d loaded in my pistol before tucking it into the shoulder holster under my jacket. I tucked one of my mother’s old silver hunting knives into the sheath on my hip before grabbing my keys and heading out the door.

It didn’t take long for me to find the part of a local hiking trail the most recent victim had been taken from. It was oddly quiet and whatever I was hunting didn’t seem to care that it left a pretty obvious trail; having no real predators will do that to you, I suppose, or going feral. I followed it a few hundred meters north of Gibson Creek before it finally lost me and it was getting later than I liked while standing in the thick of this thing’s hunting grounds. Part of me, the arguably feral part of me in all honesty, kept walking while hoping it targeted me; Virginia is part of my territory, after all, and I don’t tend to play well with others. Then I stopped, catching the scent of relatively fresh blood in the air mixed with the strange animal scent I’d picked up around the body earlier and sending out yet another prayer that I wouldn’t find a fellow Owhi at the source. I followed it to a den in amongst the roots of one of the older trees, hesitating long enough to listen for movement in the silence, but all I could hear was two faint heartbeats from deep inside. Almost on reflex I pulled the silver blade from my hip and crept closer to the entrance, pausing again to listen for any warnings of attack before I ducked inside. My eyes adjusted quickly to the dark and I wrinkled my nose at the overpowering scent of old blood that hung thick in the air. By some stroke of luck, it wasn’t another corpse I found, but a pair of Adlet pups. I exhaled slowly as the unconscious relief that it wasn’t an Owhi problem settled over me and I smiled softly as I crouched to examine the little ones. They were still blind from what I could tell as I stroked their heads and they didn’t shy away from my touch when I reached out to them; I could thank my faither’s canine blood for that. It made sense really, a new Adlet mother in the area explained the attacks around town if she hadn’t been able to find enough food by other means. My smile slipped away and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end when I heard an angry snarl from the entrance and felt the mother’s hot breath on my skin. I turned slowly, adjusting my grip on the knife in my hand and repressing the urge to bare my own teeth in response as I met her amber eyes in the dark; I wasn’t going to simply offer myself for attack. She pounced, knocking me to the floor of the den and pinning my arm down with sharp-clawed fingers digging in and making me thankful for my leather jacket. The scent of blood was stronger laying in the permanently stained earth; it was intoxicating—disorienting—it filled my mind with what my mentor had once called “the wild hunt”, but I fought it off as I tried to slip my arm free from the Adlet’s grip.

Of course, my luck never does hold out for long and it all went downhill from there.

The Adlet closed strong jaws on the meat of my shoulder and I gasped in pain as I felt bones begin to crunch. Sheer stubbornness let me hold onto my fragile grip on self-control right up until her free clawed hand tore into my chest as it reached for my heart.

I wished to God I’d zipped up my jacket, because maybe then, the kevlar lining would’ve at least slowed it down.

It didn’t matter though, because I couldn’t fight the madness anymore.

My world slipped.

Reyna’s exclamation of pain came out more like an angry snarl as her emerald eyes slipped into red tinged gold and her primary set of canines extended to their full length. She was running on a cocktail of adrenaline, instinct, muscle memory, and spite as she worked her pinned arm out of its socket and free of the sleeve of her jacket in order to transfer her knife to her uninjured side. Her heart was pounding in her head as she felt her ribs begin to crack under the Adlet’s assault, but the beast let go of her shoulder at least and she took the opportunity to drive her silver knife up to the guard and through the beast’s heart. The beast thrashed momentarily before collapsing on top of Reyna as her heart stopped. Reyna took a moment to steady her breathing before rolling the beast off of her, but she didn’t sit up yet.

Instead, she started laughing almost hysterically as the madness ran away with her.

I came back to myself breathless and in pain about an hour after I’d found the den according to my now broken watch. The Adlet mother was dead in the soft earth next to me, a bloody hole in her chest over the heart to match the blood-slick knife in my loose grip. I sat up with an involuntary groan, one of my bloody hands going to my dislocated shoulder and taking stock of the black and blue bruises already forming where the claws had been. I took a moment to relocate the shoulder and slip my arm back through my sleeve, exhaling through grit teeth before my attention turned back to the pups where they stayed, curled against the wall. I staggered to my feet, taking a moment to wipe the blade clean on my jeans before sheathing it and reaching out to the crying pups; they were scared and hungry. When they approached me, I lifted them into my good arm and climbed back out of the den into the fresh air. I took a deep breath once there as I tried to rid the blood tainted air from my lungs and glanced down at the pups again where they’d settled comfortably against my chest; I couldn’t bring myself to condemn the two to death simply based on their mother, but I still wished I hadn’t had to kill her.

I got us back to my Jeep and from there back to the hotel before settling the pups on my stomach and collapsing across the back seat; the adrenaline was wearing off and the pain was setting in. I dialed Michael almost entirely out of muscle memory, staying awake long enough to update him on what happened and ask him to come give us a lift home. I woke up only once on the drive back, long enough to inform him that I’d nicknamed the pups Romulus and Remus in what apparently came across as a very sarcastic answer to his question about them, but I only remember waking up on the sofa at home still wearing my bloody clothes and still cradling the pups on my stomach.

I was a bit disappointed to find I’d already managed to get blood on this journal.