Coming Soon from Totally Bound Publishing:
Intervention
Aurelia T. Evans
Released 28th July 2015
Excerpt
Chapter One
“Land, what time is it?”
“It’s seven.”
“What do you mean it’s seven? Why didn’t my alarm go off?”
“You needed the sleep, Em,” Land replied.
“So you decided to go off on your own at night just so I could get a little shut-eye? Land, we’ve watched enough horror movies to know that splitting up is not a good idea.”
“I know. But we’ve also watched enough reality TV to know that not getting enough sleep also isn’t a good idea.”
“Touché. Did we get a call?”
“No, Em. I found him.”
Emily sat straight up in bed. “You found Matt?”
“The lures worked. He’s in the trap.”
Emily rocked out of bed and yanked on a pair of leggings. Then she did some fancy moves to get a sports bra on without taking off her long tank sleep shirt. “That’s great. That’s really great. Is he okay?”
“More or less,” Land replied.
Emily stopped rushing through their dark bedroom. “Is something wrong? You sound weird.”
“The important thing is that we found him. You should come down. We need to do the intervention together. He won’t listen to me. He’ll listen to you.”
“Um, okay. I’ll get my coffee and drive right over.”
“Love you, Em.”
“I love you, too, Land. Are you sure—”
The call abruptly ended.
Land had never hung up on her like this, not unless they were in a knock-down, drag-out kind of fight, and they’d only had that twice in their relationship. And both times, Emily had known they were in one.
Her stomach tightened, but she forced herself not to overanalyze.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t hurry. By the time she made it to the warehouse, it would be full-on dark.
She grabbed a large bottle of iced coffee from the second shelf of the fridge. Then she hopped into her subcompact. Land had the company car, but hers had an extermination kit or two for emergencies, so she wasn’t going out to the warehouse district half-cocked.
As she drove away from the glittery, bustling part of the city, the blue velvet of the sky went black.
“Ladies and gentlemen, lock your doors,” she whispered.
* * * *
Three years ago, if someone had told Emily that she was going to be in pest control, she would have laughed in that person’s face while spraying a line of Raid around her apartment.
These days, she could pick up a cockroach without flinching. They were nothing in comparison to the kinds of infestations she, Land and Matt had to deal with in addition to the usual suspects. It just so happened that the usual suspects tended to hang around the unusual ones so often that they’d get paid on the books for the usual, then off the books—cash, goods or services—for the unusual. Because how were they supposed to put ‘rat-sized cockroach demon spawn’ on the invoice without raising some red flags during an audit?
Their unconventional night job had started as an accident, evolved into a hobby then turned into a full-on occupation.
The accident had happened during a bit of urban exploring that had followed Land’s side job at the time as an exterminator’s apprentice. When rats started having red eyes and a person didn’t have holy water on hand, they’d better hope they had a cross necklace or a rosary. Emily had. Land hadn’t.
Back then, it had been a good thing the vampire family hadn’t really been interested in bothering or being bothered, otherwise Land might have died then and there.
After that encounter, though, they’d felt like they had a responsibility. ‘Once seen, never unseen’ and all that. Balancing the work with school had meant creative hours, cat naps, copious amounts of caffeine and a few prayers, but it was totally worth it.
They hadn’t even thought about making a profit out of the hobby until after Land had gone solo with extermination.
Around that time, they’d stumbled upon Matt at one of those bars that discreetly catered to hunters—demon hunters, vampire hunters, regular hunters looking to score on exotic creatures…the scene took all sorts. Emily and Land had largely been viewed by that community as newlywed newbies, cannon fodder that wouldn’t last a year. They hadn’t taken it personally.
Matt had been new himself, drawn to the supernatural underbelly of the city by the promise of an unconventional thrill. He’d been the first one intrigued by the idea of not hunting the big game. And he’d been just charming and enthusiastic enough about the idea that Land had eventually welcomed him to the extermination team.
Para-exterminators, Matt called them, for when a job came along that was too small or too damn infested. After all, what did the other demon hunters know about corpse beetles, ectoplasm residue and specter slugs, except that they seriously stained leather boots?
Emily’s parents were still trying to figure out why she hadn’t gone running the second Land had become a full-fledged exterminator instead of something more ambitious and less icky, and why she’d actually gone and married the bastard. Or why she and Land had opened up their house to another man. Emily knew the whispers, the bets on who was going to cheat first.
But it made financial sense for Matt to contribute to the mortgage and for them to work out of their house instead of renting an office somewhere. Let the hens and roosters cluck in their narrow little barnyards. The three of them were fiscally sound, would be out of debt in less than five years if business kept up, and they didn’t drive each other crazy.
If Matt had a crush on Emily and Emily admired Matt too, what did that matter as long as they kept their hands to themselves and out of each other’s bedrooms?
That’s how it had been, anyway.
It wasn’t like Matt to just run off. He was a thrill-seeker, yes, but if he’d decided to go to Louisiana for an alligator-wrestling lesson or to Florida to swim with bull sharks, he would have left them a note. The only clue they’d had was a bunch of bloody footprints at a warehouse where a hunter had said he’d seen Matt. Some of the footprints had been human, some of them not. No bodies to be found.
Emily and Land specialized in the small, but that didn’t mean they were clueless to the larger problems. A creature that size wasn’t a Texas chupacabra or a werecat. Those paw prints could be nothing other than a werewolf.
Their local urban sprawl didn’t have much in the way of werewolves. The small forest area that ran through the center of the city with the river could only ever hold the territory of a single small pack. There were a few in-city packs as well, but they weren’t like vampires or other demons. They didn’t thrive in a concrete jungle, and those that did take up residence there were usually pretty passive and self-policing, for their own protection.
However, that only meant that werewolf attacks were less common. Not that they didn’t happen.
In general, most hunters left the city werewolves alone, as long as they didn’t start killing things they weren’t supposed to. New wolves, however, weren’t always good at toeing that line.
And that was the best-case scenario for Matt—that he’d been turned. So they’d set the traps outside the forest, hoping to lead him in with game and blood to one of the many abandoned buildings in the warehouse district, hoping against hope that he was still alive and that he was the one they’d catch.
Well, Matt was still alive, and he was the one they’d caught, thank God.
Now that Matt had been captured, what she and Land needed to do next was convince Matt that he was still a part of their family, fur and all. That they’d help take care of him.
No matter what.