He Who Hunts Demons Chapter 4: 4-The New Recruit

Read chapter 4 of He Who Hunts Demons by A_Random_Turtle on NovelPedia.

4-The New Recruit We made our way down a narrow flight of winding stairs, brightened by lines of torches hanging from the brick walls flanking us. Every step I took echoed in my ears, and I couldn’t sense a single person below us no matter how far we descended. I was slowly beginning to think of all sorts of circumstances that could occur from following someone into a basement, but calmed down rather quickly. If Gaston wanted to kill me, then he had no reason to go through all this trouble. And honestly, I couldn’t think of one single reason that would make him view me as a threat. I was in a den of Transcendents. That thought reignited my curiosity and the countless questions I’d pushed aside for a second came rushing back. And since Gaston and I were not engaged in any conversation at the moment, I decided this was the best time to ask. “Are you going to tell me why I was chosen now?” I asked. Gaston hummed, turning his eyes up to the ceiling above us for a second. “I suppose that would be only right,” he began. “However, I’ve said it a lot already.” He pointed a languid finger at me as he kept walking down. “It’s your talent, Elmer Hills. There were no eighteen year old hunters with a hundred percent kill rate until you came along. You have the teeth for this sort of job, and only an idiot wouldn’t bring you in.” I frowned. “You honestly do not expect me to believe that, do you?” Gaston glanced at me but said nothing. “How would you have known about my talent if you didn’t know of my existence in the first place?” I said. “In other words, you’ve been watching me long before I became a hunter. Why?” Gaston sighed. “You have a severe case of paranoia. Why did you skip the simplest deduction and jump right to the more complex one? The Golden Eye has some sort of information on every illegal hunter in Ur. We are privy to that information as well, in the case that we come across one on our everyday hunt. You, Elmer Hills, had your name and age in their records. A fast-track hunter. Of course you’d get noticed quickly. And with notice in your world, comes notice in our world. It’s that simple.” I gritted my teeth. His explanation was extremely plausible that it was impossible for me to argue against it without sounding pesky. But I didn’t believe it. Something was crawling inside my head telling me not to believe it. The vampire was letting me in on far less than he knew. Perhaps I had to change my manner of approach. From the way everyone I’d come across reacted to my presence, I was certain that they all knew of why I was here—of why I was recruited. Since this vampire was so tight-lipped, then I would have to take my chance with someone else. Lue was certainly out of the question. She seemed to be the worst of the bunch. I fancied my chances with Alma. But before I made my decision on who to probe, I decided to study the rest of the crew first. We arrived in the basement a few seconds later, and the first thing I saw was a black gate keeping us from venturing to the other side. “Veva!” Gaston called out as he banged on the gate. “Why is this locked?” I waited just as patiently as Gaston—I was more patient, to be fair, as he kept banging on the gate every chance he got. It took a few seconds after Gaston suddenly stopped his persistent knocking and took a step back for the gate to finally open. “Will you stop it already!” said the lady who appeared on the other side. She had ebony skin, was tall, taller than the gate even, that she had to lean over to look through it—I approximated her height to be about six feet—had red dreadlocks hanging over her skinny face and sparkling hazel eyes set narrowly within their sockets. She sneered at Gaston, who raised his hands to admit penance, before turning to me and raising a brow. “Ah, the new recruit,” she mumbled, sounding unimpressed. “Well, get in already. Geez.” As she turned around and vanished from our sight I struck her off my list of people I would question. There was just too mu