The Other Side: How to be a Hunter

chapter 3

“Really? So nobody has the same first name?” I asked Andy.

“Not in the same generation. But that’s how our world works. Parent’s middle name, another name, and then the circle name. Most people marry inside their circles though, so it’s not that much of a big deal when it comes to which parent’s circle gets chosen. But it usually is the father’s.”

“But my mom’s name is Jennifer Juliet. I have no clue what her last name is, but I think I’ve seen a few things that say Firelight around the house.”

“She’s a Firelight? Because my father is too,” he said and looked down at the ashes. “Oh, Jesus. We have to get to the basement and freeze these.”

“There’s a demon freezer in my basement. And lemme guess? There’s a magic box in the attic?”

“Nah, there’s a portal in the attic. Speaking of, we need to get the others and get everything we can from the basement and get out of here. ASAP.”

“Torri! Andy! There you guys are! A whole wave of Brightlighters is on the way here. I picked one up across town,” Derek said as the three of us went into the kitchen to find Sammie, Kelsea, and Eli.

“TORRI! Are you okay? What was hurting you before?” Eli asked. He must’ve been worried about me. :)

“I’m fine; don’t worry about me. And the thing that attacked me was you. Well it looked like you… I didn’t know that it wasn’t you until it got red eyes and fangs! I thought I was gonna die!” I said and hugged him. He wrapped his arms around me, silently saying that he’d never do that to me and that he was thankful I was okay.

“It was just a pagime. They won’t hurt you; they’ll just scare you to death. Nothing to get all worked up about,” Sammie said from her spot next to Kelsea.

“Let’s go! We got Brightlighters coming for us!” Andy yelled and led us to the basement door. “Torri put your hand here with the rest of us. You first.” I did as he said. “What the—?”

The door had opened without anyone else’s help. We all had walked down the flight of stairs into what I’m guessing was my basement. Is this what a Hunter’s basement looked like? Colorful and bright? It was like a huge hall painted with bright neon colors. There was no spec of black in here, except Kelsea and Derek’s—wasn’t their hair black two seconds ago? It was now a brilliant shade of red. What on Earth was going on? Were we even still on Earth?

“Sam,” Andy said, “are we—?”

“Yep, we are. But why are we here? We were going into Torri’s basement…”

“Can’t you just relax?” a girl said and Sammie, Andy, Eli, Kelsea, and Derek looked at me. A group of kids, looking and sounding exactly like us, walked in the same door we just did. And they walked right through us, like we weren’t there. “We’re gonna do this exactly as we planned. We’re going to get every weapon we possibly can and get to the portal. We need to defeat Blackwell.”

The world around us got so bright that we each had to close our eyes, and then we appeared in what I’m guessing is my basement. It looked exactly like my living room, except for the random weapons and stuff from the world the others grew up in.

“Grab everything that we can use and let’s get out of here.” We all went crazy grabbing practically everything in sight when I remembered my mom’s wristlet. She’d told me when I was six that it was a gift from my father and that I’d get it when I grew up. I knew that it could fit a lot more than it looked like it could, yet it was only a wristlet. I was looking frantically for it when I saw it on the coffee table, near Derek’s feet; he was lounging on the couch.