The Hunter’s Daughter
Excerpt:
“I didn’t mean for you to find out like this, Elena.”
A soft voice echoed from the other side of the house. I turned my gaze to a pile of rotted fallen beams. My dad sat there quietly in the dark, perched as he would in a tree stand in the forest. His hat was low over his head, and his rifle was slung over his shoulder.
“I didn’t mean for you to find out at all.”
I whimpered.
He sighed.
“Are you a monster?” I demanded. The word didn’t seem adequate. “Monster” sounded like a word for fairy tales. Not my beloved dad.
He looked at the bodies arranged around the room. “Maybe.”
He stretched his legs and slid down the pile. I backed up against the rusted stove. Liquid sloshed, and something cold and wet splashed down my side. I recognized the smell immediately: curdled blood. A metal bucket turned over and crashed on the floor, spilling the rest of the blood over my sneakers.
I was frozen. I saw the outline of the door, and I should’ve run. But I was rooted in place, as motionless and helpless as any of these women.
My dad loomed over me. His face was strange, his eyes too dark and still. This man who stood over me was not my dad. He was some changeling who had come to take him, leaving an evil shell in his place. A monster.
“What have you done with my dad?” I croaked.
He reached out to touch my cheek. I flinched.
“Your dad is gone.” His voice was a low hiss, like rain in a gutter.
And I knew then what I saw. It was my dad’s Forest God, the one he called Veles, dark and terrible and devouring everything under this roof. He wanted me. I didn’t know if he meant to consume me like those other women or if the Forest God was wanting to do to me as he was doing to my dad, wearing my skin like his own . . .
The door crashed open. The Forest God spun, reaching for his rifle, but he was tackled by a snarling dog. Percival.
An armed shadow stood in the doorway. Agent Parkes. “Freeze,” he ordered.
The Forest God had no intention of obeying anyone’s orders. He wrestled with the dog, and the rifle went off. A new hole was blown in the roof, and I was partially blinded by muzzle flash and deafened by a gunshot in a closed space.
“Drop it!” Parkes commanded. His voice was faint and tinny over the ringing in my ears.
The Forest God scrambled away from the dog, kicking Percival in the chest. He sighted his rifle on the dog.
I screamed.
The Forest God hesitated for an instant—only an instant.
It was enough.
More gunfire, muzzle flashes. The Forest God tumbled across the floor. Parkes advanced on him, shouting, his shoes slipping in the blood. Percival was growling, clamping my dad’s right hand in his jaws. The rifle spun out on the floor, the barrel skidding up against my sneakers. It was hot, and it singed the rubber of my shoe.
“Put it down!” Parkes yelled. The man who had once been my father had gotten his hunting knife loose from his belt and was slashing at Percival. He’d pulled himself up into a half crouch, dripping on the floor, snarling like a cornered animal.
“Put it down now!”
I knew Parkes was going to kill my dad.
Trembling, I reached down for the gun at my feet.
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