Out of habit, she cast her gaze left and right as she stepped out of the coffee shop and locked the door after herself. It was a habit she'd learned long ago, hammered into her for so long that she caught herself doing it every time she stepped outside. As usual, the night was quiet, the streets almost empty of people. But forewarned is forearmed, as her grandfather used to say when she was little. She knew for a fact that there were things out there in the dark that most people only dreamed of in their worst nightmares.
Stop it, she berated herself angrily as she started walking in the direction of her apartment building. You left that life two years ago. It's time to move on.
But she was Alexandra Quinn Antanov, once a member of one of the oldest and noblest Hunter clans, and old habits died hard. She still got up before dawn. She still took long runs through town to keep in shape. She still kept an eye on the local papers for any sign that something was amiss. And she still stowed a small knife in her boot, tucked safely away so that she didn't alarm any of the customers in the coffee shop.
Growing up, she'd learned quickly that a Hunter's life was all about their duty. They went after the monsters hidden in the dark places of the world, keeping them from terrorizing the human world. Love was a rarity amongst her people. If Hunters married, it was only to ensure that the bloodlines continued. A Hunter had no use for emotional attachments beyond that of direct blood relatives. It made them weaker.
Her mother had been the kind of woman who put duty before anything else. Most Hunter parents at least took some kind of interest in their children's lives. Quinn's mother had raised her daughter until she was old enough to be placed in the training program and then she'd gone off into the field, leaving Quinn to be raised by her trainers. Quinn had no idea who her father was. All she knew was that her mother had spent a year away from the clan and had come back with a newborn baby. No one knew anything about the baby's father and she'd refused to answer any questions about him.
And any opportunity to learn about him had been crushed when word came of her mother's death. It had been on a standard raid conducted by the clan. Seek out, destroy, wipe clean ... only the monsters had been ready for the Hunters' arrival and they'd been killed. Quinn was pretty much left to fend for herself after that, and she threw herself into her training. It had nothing to do with vengeance – you had to have felt some kind of connection to the person you were avenging for that to mean anything.
She became an efficient tracker and a deadly fighter in the practice arena. She had lived up to her family's reputation of being the most skilled Hunters of their people, enough so that she had quite easily earned a reputation in the training yard of being someone you didn't want to cross. Her skills and dedication to her studies had garnered the respect of some of the higher ranked officers in the clans, but it also put her under a harsh microscope when she put a toe out of line.
And then the events of the Gathering two years ago had happened and everything had changed.
Every year, clans from all over came together at a predetermined location where they would catch up with old friends and form new alliances. Then, they would all go on a hunt. There had been word that a large werewolf pack had settled in the area and the clans were going to exterminate it before it became a problem. The information had been highly inaccurate. The reports had made it seem like there was an army being amassed, but when the gathered clans had arrived, Quinn saw only a small community.
None of her training had prepared her for what she'd seen that night. She'd been taught that the things in the dark were monsters and were a danger to the human world, that they had to be eradicated. What she'd seen, however, were people. Some scared, some angry, some desperate. When they changed, they could certainly be described as monstrous, but Quinn had seen that it was only done out of necessity to defend themselves.
As the others went about the slaughter of the werewolves, Quinn had found herself in a house where a mother and her two small young children cowered. She'd had every intention of doing her duty and killing the creatures as she'd been trained to do, but she found she couldn't do it. Her hands shook, her body felt cold and numb, and her heart screamed at her that what her people were doing was incredibly wrong. These people hadn't done anything to anyone. They lived far away from human civilization. They weren't a danger to anyone.
And as the woman's mate had burst through the window to protect his family, Quinn had laid down her weapons. While the other Hunters were preoccupied, she let the family go and did her best to help any others that she could find. The last group she'd tried to help had been her downfall. A member of one of the other clans had seen her watch the three children disappear into the woods without doing anything to stop them and he had reported her actions to the Hunter Council.
It had gone against every rule in the Hunters' code, their way of life, and although there had been no other witnesses, only her word against another's, her grandfather, the patriarch of the Antanov clan and leader of the Council, had responded accordingly by their laws. Not even her mother's memory could protect her from the backlash of her actions. And Viktor Antanov didn't waste time on things that were no longer of any use to him. A Hunter that wouldn't kill a monster was expendable.
Quinn had been banished from the clan, from her family. She'd been given a small sum of money to set herself up anywhere in the world, so long as it was away from any of the clans, and she was never to contact them again. She moved to a quiet town in the middle of nowhere and pretty much disappeared from the Hunters' radar, leaving that part of her life behind.
But that didn't stop images of that night from haunting her dreams. It couldn't erase twenty-two years of a Hunters' lifestyle and teachings that had been ingrained in her soul. She lived alone in a small one bedroom apartment, where she had several little knives tucked hidden away, just in case, and she mostly kept to herself.
Quinn didn't have friends. She had acquaintances. She was unable to connect with the people around her in any solid way that mattered. None of them had gone through what she had in her short life. She couldn't relate to anyone in town. There was a cold emptiness in her heart, a hole that had been inside her for as long as she could remember. Even when she'd still been a Hunter, she hadn't really been able to have close friends. There was something that set her apart from her people, that kept her from really fitting in.
She longed to connect with someone, anyone. She longed for the kind of relationship that she saw human couples shared, but she knew hell would probably freeze over before that happened. She was just too out of place in the human world.
As she made her way through the streets toward home, Quinn wrapped her arms around herself to try and ward off the cold. She kept her sharply honed senses thrown out for any sign that something was off, ignoring the wisps of steam her breath made. Her tiny, five foot two frame was tensed and ready, her dark green eyes scanning her surroundings carefully. Something tonight just didn't feel right.
She was a block away from her apartment when she became aware that she was being followed. There were two of them, one trailing several paces behind her while the other was across the street. They were doing their best to match their pace with hers, but her heightened hearing could make out their heavy footfalls in the quiet of the night.
Shit, she thought. Cornered.
She was trying to formulate the best way of getting out of the predicament she now found herself in without attracting attention from anyone watching when she passed by an alleyway and a man stepped out directly into her path.
She was forced to stop, and a moment later found herself surrounded by her followers. Each of them was tall enough that they dwarfed her and they smelled strongly of booze.
"Hello, beautiful," the one that had stepped in her path said, his lips formed into a leering smile as he pretty much undressed her with his eyes. "What's a pretty little thing like you doing all alone on a cold night like this?"
Old instincts began to rise to the surface, telling her that these men were more than they appeared. Something about their eyes were too bright, too keen.
"We've been watching you, girl," one said from behind her with that same leering smile. "You look like you could do with a good night out. A man or two to warm you up a bit ..."
One of his buddies snickered and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him. Seriously?
"I'm good, thanks," she said coldly and made to push past him. This was not the kind of situation she needed to be in. If she kicked the shit out of them and left, it would raise suspicion and she would have to pick up and leave.
And as solitary a life as she led in the small town, Quinn liked the area and she didn't want to leave if she didn't have to.
They were faster than she had thought and a hand shot out and grabbed her around the wrist. She felt something jab into her right thigh. The next thing, she was being dragged down the alley with a large hand closed firmly over her mouth.
Stupid, she thought to herself, her thoughts starting to go a little fuzzy. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Since when do you get jumped by common thugs?