Mavericks hunters moon, p.1
Mavericks - Hunters Moon, page 1
Mavericks
Hunters Moon
Jack Hunt
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Also by Jack Hunt
Synopsis
Prologue
The Missing
She’s Dead
Funeral
Obsession
The Hunt
Victims
Tough Break
Double Barrel
Prophecy
Pick A Fight
Invite
The Clan
Challenge
Visitation
Interrogation
Courting the Enemy
Family Tree
Lycan
Hunters Moon
New Beginnings
A Plea
Newsletter
About the Author
Copyright © 2016 by Jack Hunt
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
MAVERICKS: HUNTERS MOON is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
For Mia, Finn, Jay, Lexi, Bud and Catherine.
“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”
Mark Twain
Also by Jack Hunt
The Renegades Series
The Renegades
The Renegades: Aftermath
The Renegades: Fortress
The Renegades: Colony
Mavericks Series
Mavericks: Hunters Moon
Synopsis
Surfers by day, hunters by night, family by bloodline.
My name is Ethan Slater. I’m a hunter. Twenty years ago, my sister and I were sent to live with Bud and Catherine Maverick in Luna Bay, California. Along with a group of orphaned and abandoned kids we were trained to track and kill every kind of legendary evil from mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. Five years ago, tragedy struck and we went our separate ways. Now we’re back, investigating the strange and unexplained while fighting our way through a world of monsters, demons, spirits, shapeshifters, vampires, and even the boogeyman under your bed. We are… Mavericks.
Prologue
The first time I killed one I was nine years old.
They weren’t innocent and the blood spilled sure as hell wasn’t human.
Fifteen years later, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve looked death in the face.
My name is Ethan Slater. I’m a hunter. No, I don’t cover myself in deer piss or sit around in trees for hours waiting for Bambi to come along. What I hunt is cleverer than an animal, and a hell of a lot more elusive. It takes a special skill set, years of training, and razor-sharp instincts — and even then there’s a chance you’ll die. Now, I wasn’t asked to be a hunter. Neither can I say it was a choice. I stumbled into it by accident. Actually let me rephrase that, I became one because of an accident. Nineteen years ago my parents were killed in a car crash. At least that’s what I was told. It would take me years to discover the real truth.
In that time I’ve seen, hunted, and killed it all.
Every kind of legendary creature from mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. You name it, monsters, demons, spirits, vampires, shapeshifters, hell, even the boogeyman under your bed. And while most are quick to dismiss it, laugh it off, or roll over and sleep…
Don’t!
Believe me, they are very real and you’d better hope we are in your neck of the woods when they show up, as we might be the only reason you wake up the next day.
Who are we? There are four of us including myself. My twenty-seven-year-old sister, Mia Slater, Jay “Twiggy” Davis, and Finn “Rabbit” Palmer, all of us were part of a large group of kids that were abandoned, orphaned, or sent to Luna Bay in California to be raised and trained as hunters by Bud and Catherine Maverick.
Surfers by day, hunters by night, yeah, I guess you can say we live an unorthodox life.
But it wasn’t always like that. There was a time we went our separate ways.
This is how we came back together…
The Missing
Luna Bay, California
September 22, 2015
It wasn’t meant to be this way and yet here she was about to die in these godforsaken woods. Move it! The thick redwood trees rose up around Emily Burchard like giant fingers. A chilly coastal wind whipped at her skin as she raced through the dark and gloomy California state park, stumbling over tree roots.
Only fifteen minutes earlier, she and her fiancé had settled in for a cozy night inside their tent. It was meant to be a weekend getaway. A time to escape into the wilderness and get up close with Mother Nature. He’d been badgering her for months about camping. She hated it. All the mosquitoes nipping at her flesh. The constant fear of a bear or panther attacking. Now it all seemed so trivial compared to what was chasing her.
Those monsters!
Her mind flashed back to Gavin. With his arms locked around her she’d never felt so safe. Now he lay in a bloodied mess back at the campsite beside a tent torn to pieces by huge claws.
The attack happened so suddenly. There was no warning except a few branches snapping outside. Gavin had laughed it off as nothing more than a few small critters.
But those weren’t small. They had to have been at least two hundred and fifty pounds.
A mass of hair, fangs, and those eyes... Deep gold, glowing eyes.
What the hell are they? It wasn’t a bear. It looked too human. It wasn’t a Sasquatch, not enough hair. Stop thinking. Run, she told herself. Keep moving, there is no time.
She stumbled and staggered forward, slamming into another tree after hearing a ferocious howl behind her. Her heart pummeled against her chest. She could hear the blood pumping in her ears as her thighs screamed for her to stop.
You better move it, or you will die too.
The pain in her side burned. Every step forward was filled with agony. She hadn’t stopped to see how deep the cut was. It was only the fear of being caught that kept her moving. Whimpering and trying to control her breathing so she wouldn’t black out from the pain, all she could think about was getting as far away as possible.
It was pitch-black. A crescent moon drooped over an expansive dark green forest that covered almost five thousand acres. She tripped and landed in a slow-moving creek. The cold water slapped her senses. Panting hard, she cast a glance over her shoulder as she scrambled to her feet and burst forward. Trees seemed like shadows and the undergrowth felt like barbed wire scraping at her bare legs.
It was a hellish nightmare that her mind couldn’t even begin to fathom. Was she dreaming it all? Surely any minute now Gavin would wake her up and tell her she was having a nightmare.
But it was real.
She couldn’t wake up. Gavin! His blood was all over her.
They were meant to be married in a couple of months. She was looking forward to a picture-perfect wedding, with her entire family, overlooking Luna Bay.
Now it didn’t matter. None of it did unless she could escape from those hellish…
Emily didn’t even have a chance to finish the thought when the predator slammed into her back and sunk its razor-sharp teeth into her neck before tearing the flesh like a rabid dog. She let out a bloodcurdling scream that echoed off the trees.
But no one would hear it, not even those who lived a few miles away in the town of Lunar Bay. The campsite he’d chosen was as isolated as could be. She couldn’t even curse Gavin for bringing her out.
It had her by the throat. Claws hacked at her skin, slicing her to pieces in a matter of seconds. Then, her head was yanked back so she choked.
Bones crunched as her own blood muffled her final scream.
Then there was silence.
She’s Dead
Underground Parking Garage
Los Angeles, California
September 22, 2015
God, I hate funerals.
There’s nothing worse than seeing people moping around with sorry ass looks on their faces. It’s not that I’m insensitive, well maybe just a little. It’s just so damn awkward. No one ever knows what to say. You just hope they get the service over and done with so you can hit the bar and notch it all up to a bad hangover the next day.
But this wasn’t anyone’s funeral. It was Catherine’s.
Which meant returning to the one place I’d hoped I would never see again.
The message from Bud Maverick was delivered sometime between a flying side kick to my face and a right hook to the family jewels. You see, for the past five years I had kept my nose to the grindstone in the city of Los Angeles, doing what I did best — fighting.
No, not supernatural forces, I’m talking about MMA. Ugly ass, cauliflower ear, sweaty goons whose only aspiration in life was in beating the living shit out of everyone and holding a shiny belt at the end of it all.
Yeah, someone has to do it.
Problem was, this evening I wasn’t competing in some by-the-book competition where you’re matched according to weight and given plush gloves. Neither was there a sexy little female sliding around the ring holding a number. No, this was undergrou nd, totally off the books and completely illegal. Oh, and the only way to win is if the other person stays down or isn’t breathing. Yeah, it still goes on and I’m one of those fighters that people love to hate. But with the amount of green that passed through my hands, I could live with that.
Look, it wasn’t ideal but it was easy money and it suited my skill set.
Besides, if it’s any consolation, most of these chumps were criminals who had escaped the justice system for robbing, raping, and causing untold havoc on society. They were the scum that slipped through the cracks, doing the only thing they could do to earn a living. I just so happened to be the top contender that everyone wanted to beat.
Think Fight Club or the Roman Colosseum and you wouldn’t be far off what this was like.
Blood dripped on the hewn concrete below me as a robust crowd of two hundred chanted my contender’s name. Two minutes earlier it was my name ringing in their ears. How quickly the tables turned. The smell of sweat, blood, and bleach from previous fights stung my nostrils as I tried to catch my breath and hear what Lenny was trying to shout.
“Ethan! Bud Maverick. He says it’s important.”
He was holding out his cell phone as if I was going to stop in the middle of the fight. From the ground I flashed him my usual “are you fucking kidding me?” look. My heart pounded against my chest as I experienced double vision. I spat a bloodied tooth on the ground and smiled.
That was going to cost him.
On my hands and knees I cast a sideways glance to my right to check on the meathead who’d just slipped in a lucky kick and punch. Encircled around us were a mob of suits and an overly tattooed rabble of knuckleheads who would usually stick around for a dog fight after — except I had busted the organizer’s nose and called animal protection on them last night. That soon put an end to that. Yeah, I hated that shit; nothing riled me up more than animal cruelty.
I blinked hard.
This guy had one helluva punch. Now I’d fought a lot of people in my time and some were hard nuts. Most however were easy. Usually Lenny, my manager, roommate, and the guy who lined up my fights, sent me all the has-beens. All the nobodies, who had done time inside and were looking to make a fast buck. But this guy wasn’t just anybody, he knew how to duck and dive and he sure as hell hadn’t learned that kick from a Jackie Chan movie.
I cracked my head from side to side and staggered to my feet wearing nothing more than a pair of tight shorts. I opened and shut my jaw, loosening it up. The crowd roared with delight. They were getting their money’s worth tonight. This fight so far had lasted three rounds. Three rounds may not sound like a lot but that was quite something, being as I usually ended my opponent in the first round. My fastest time was six seconds. I still remember that chump. The guy was an idiot. He spun around doing some Wing Chun gymnastic shit before coming at me all psycho-like. I KO’d him in the face with a flying jab. Oh, did I enjoy that one. Like someone close to me once said, the direct path to finishing a fight doesn’t have to look pretty, it just has to do the job.
But this guy I was fighting, no, he was determined. I was pretty sure he had some gang or military background, going by all the ink covering his body. There were symbols I recognized, some I had seen before on other guys.
The most noticeable were a gorilla on the chest and a tiger on the stomach. Black facial hair sprouted from his jaw like a Chia Pet. It was the kind of mess that didn’t look like it had been cut in at least two years. He stared me down without even a smile. His eyes were black and soulless. This was personal to him. He wasn’t in this to get it over with in a matter of seconds, otherwise he would have finished me off. This was all about inflicting pain. He was enjoying it.
“You should have stayed down,” he muttered, flashing me some gold teeth.
He came at me hard, bringing a rapid succession of jabs and hooks. I weaved my way beneath them with as much precision as a drunk trying to walk straight.
Now, as much as I didn’t like hearing his voice, it was in times like these that I usually did. And believe me, I had tried to forget the past.
Bud Maverick had trained us all from an early age. We were his punching bags. Figuratively speaking. No, he didn’t need to lay a hand on us, he had others do that.
First, you will learn to withstand pain.
His motto was, if we couldn’t endure pain we wouldn’t survive as hunters.
He was right. He was always right.
I felt the fist strike my jaw and my lip burst wide open. Another, then another and I found myself back on the ground, however this time he didn’t let up. He pummeled my back with his elbows and when that wasn’t enough, he decided to change things up — big mistake. He rose to his feet and thought he would switch to using his heel. As he lifted one leg for the first time, I spun around and swept the other.
The crowd went silent when they heard the crack from his skull hitting the ground.
I could almost see the look of shock in their eyes.
For all his training, he hadn’t learned one of the most basic lessons — how to take a fall.
There was no use learning all those jabs and kicks if you couldn’t protect your noggin from gravity. I got up and was about to finish him when I noticed he was no longer moving.
The crowd roared with delight. Someone pretending to be a referee rushed over and pulled up his eyelids, flashed a light in his eyes, and then lifted a hand.
He was still alive.
The mob surrounding me called for death but I just elbowed my way through the crowd and took the phone from Lenny.
“Send half of the winnings to pay for his medical bill,” I said.
Lenny’s eyes widened. He hated me doing that. Despite it being an illegal fight, I had one rule. I didn’t kill humans and I sure as hell didn’t need all the money. Believe me, I didn’t do it for everyone but this guy had balls. I had to give him that. I glanced back at him before I ambled into a quieter room.
I stuck a finger in my ear so I could hear.
“Bud?”
“So when are you going to put those skills to real use?”
I’d had this conversation with him many times. The last had been over five years ago. It ended in an argument. After that, I left Luna Bay. But that wasn’t the only reason.
“You call just to bust my balls?” I asked.
He hesitated before replying. “Catherine has died.”
I ran a dirty hand over my sweaty face and braced myself against the wall. The sound of the crowd became faint as the weight of it all bore down on me.
It was pissing with rain when I arrived the following day.
My flight landed in San Francisco around noon. I caught a taxi to Bud’s place. It took just under an hour.
Luna Bay has a population of around eleven thousand people. Four miles of beaches, scenic parks, and a state forest full of huge redwoods, it’s one hell of a place to live if you’re a surfer. The waves are as gnarly as fuck up around Mavericks, which was a surfing location just one mile from Luna Bay. Bud and Catherine Maverick owned a surf shop up in that neighborhood that doubled as a training ground for hunters. You name it. They had seen it. It was a shock to my system the first time I learned about them. But I was so young back then. It now seemed like a bad dream.
In the early days it wasn’t all that bad. Mornings were spent in the ocean, afternoons and evenings, training or in the field doing what they said we were born for — hunting.
My sister and I arrived there when I was five years of age. My memory is still foggy about that night. I just remember a really long drive, and being greeted by two warm faces. What little I remember about my parents dissipated quickly.
Jay and Finn came a few months later. Jay’s parents, we later came to find out, had sent him there. They couldn’t put up with his antics. In their mind they saw that place as a way to rectify his bad behavior. It didn’t exactly work very well. It only brought out the worst in him. He had a pretty rocky home life. His mother had shot up with heroin, while his father was away hunting. We all thought it was more about her problems than it was about Jay. As for Finn, well his parents said they were coming back. They never did return. Poor kid. At least with ours we knew they were dead. But his were still out there.
