Prologue

Eve

Growing up, I thought I’d gotten pretty damn lucky hand in life. That might seem weird given that I was an orphan, but I got adopted and grew up in a middle-class family when most kids in my position ended up a lot worse. I can’t even remember spending time in the orphanage. All I remember is that I lived a mostly normal, comfortable life with a loving mother and father. I even had a little sister who thought I was the best thing ever. The feeling was mutual, and I thought that I was going to have a great life… until the Para Wars.

It was then that the world that I thought I knew changed forever. One car ride, one night… one attack later, and things were never going to be the same. Orphaned again, this time with a little sister, in a world that wasn’t quite as kind to orphans. After all, there were tens of thousands of us, victims of the Para Wars. But through the ups and downs, I kept my sister by my side. I got tough, strong, smart, and became what I thought was one of the good guys, one that fought for justice and peace.

The price was that I hated Paras for the longest. I fell into the same line of thinking as most others, that the vast majority of Paras were bad. Or weak, or just inherently evil. While I wouldn’t go as far as some of the Abolitionists, who advocated that all Paras needed to be ‘abolished’ to eliminate the disease of Paranormalism, I did believe they needed to be kept in check, lest their evil take over the world.

In my eyes, even the supposedly good ones had to take the hit for all the evil that the bad ones did. Besides, a little voice inside me whispered, if there were good Paras, why weren’t they speaking out against their own?

Why weren’t they cleaning up their own?

Slowly, as I gained experience and spent more time on the streets, I began to realize that things are a lot more complicated. I saw that everything wasn’t so black and white. I saw Para families, their eyes filled with fear not only at what their evil kin would do, but by my mere presence with a badge and a gun. I saw anger and shame as people who hadn’t chosen their fate were put into awful situations and treated in a way that no one should be treated.

More importantly, I learned that Humans could be just as evil.

Evil. A word I would never use to describe myself. Yet in the past few days, I’ve done things that fit the description. In the past forty-eight hours, I watched my hometown nearly go up in flames, nearly torn apart by hatred. It doesn’t matter if it was inflamed by evil magic, or if the people were treated like chess pieces on a game board by a creature far more evil than I’d ever thought existed.

I watched the world descend into a whole shit pie, and while I might not like it, I can’t shirk my responsibility. Everyone’s gotta take a big ol’ bite.

But that isn’t the worst of it.

I’ve been told not only am I Faerie, but in one terrifying instant, I learned that I’m also at least partly Demon. At first, when I blew someone’s head up with just a thought, I tried to deny it. Rationalize it. But with a flash of dark fire from my eyes, consuming three Faerie handmaidens and condemning them to a terrifying, agonizing death, I can’t deny it any longer.

Good or evil, deserved or undeserved, the irrefutable fact is my powers are destructive. And if I don’t find out how to reconcile who I am, it might spell disaster.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the hunter when it came towards Para justice.

But now I’ll be the hunted.

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