Dark Designs (Monsters of New York, book 1)

TIPPED OFF

River stepped off the bus and onto the quiet street. She threw a wary glance around, always one to be aware of her surroundings; this wasn't exactly the best area of town for a young woman to be walking around at night. She pulled out her phone, glancing at the address Caleb sent her, before starting off down the street to the old gym.

"It's probably nothing," Caleb had told her over the phone. "Just some addict high out of his mind." But there had still been certain things in the police report, key words and phrases that Caleb kept an eye out for that meant the Guild had to look into it. Like, vampires. Blood cults. Just to make sure all bases were covered, because the truth of the matter was, there very well could be such things running amok.

River had learned at a very young age - too young, really - that there were things that went bump in the night, and that the monsters under your bed could be real. Better to look into these things just in case, and if it was nothing, then it was nothing. If it was something, well, then she'd just have to take care of it. Either way, it was job security.

The young woman pocketed her phone and pushed her way through the gym's doors. It seemed to be a typical fighting gym, people in sparring gear or squaring up with punching bags or dummies. Not unlike the gym at the Guild HQ, just older, more run down, with the smell of stale sweat heavy in the air.

"I'm looking for a K Webb?" she told the front desk clerk. "Clerk" was generous: a kid in his late teens, probably still in highschool. While she waited for this K Webb guy to appear, she leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest.

Green eyes wandered around the edge of the entryway to watch a pair of guys sparring in the ring. She didn't really have much formal training besides what her father taught her when she was young, and he wanted to make sure his daughter could handle herself in a world full of monsters both human and not, and the hand-to-hand combat training the Guild provided, which was very broad and general in its design. The rest had just come with experience in her four years since becoming a hunter. Even with those brushes with death, she somehow, some way came out on top despite the deck being stacked against humans in such situations. 

The best bet was honestly to not be close enough to your opponent to have to scrap like that at all, especially for someone with her slim build. Especially when you went up against some of the things she faced. You needed firepower— like the gun she always kept concealed on her person. Or knives, wooden stakes. Silver. Like the silver knife kept tucked inside her left combat boot, just in case she stumbled upon something a regular bullet wouldn't stop. Silver was a good reassurance against most supernatural beings.

She threw a glance at the time on her phone after a few minutes of waiting, wondering if this guy would even come to talk to her. She didn't look like a cop, dressed in her black leather jacket, black jeans and combat boots. She was too young at 22, too baby-faced to be able to pass as a detective in street clothes. There was also just the way she carried herself, the line of her shoulders always tense, in a way that made it seem she was always gearing up for a fight. Her eyes always wary and assessing. Shay had told her once that she reminded her of a snake, coiled and ready to strike. River hadn't been entirely offended by the description.

There were plenty of hunters that did pretend to be cops, or whatever they felt gave them the most power and control over a situation. It didn't help that some considered the Guild as a kind of police force for the supernatural and occult. Even the Guild's motto Stamus Contra Malum, a cheesy latin phrase that River honestly hated, roughly translated to "we stand against evil."

As if the Guild didn't have its own host of issues and corruption: a good old boys' club that traced its lineage to the Witch Trials in the US and things like the Inquisition in other parts of the world. River had spent a short time freelancing in the beginning, when she had first dropped out of college. It had been rough living, and so she had bit the bullet and joined the Guild for the steady paycheck and a (fairly decent) roof over her head, even if it had felt like selling her soul to the establishment.