I haven't been standing in the hall for more than a few minutes when I decide that silence is really freakin' weird. If I didn't know better, I would have thought someone had pressed the mute button on the world. I can't hear anything but the beating of my own heart and adrenaline-quickened breathing. It almost seems unnatural, and I find myself quietly humming a song I heard recently. I stand against the wall, waiting for the right time to move.

For a fraction of a second, it seems as if someone or something is coming, but it turns out to be my imagination, inventing an opportunity to do something. I've been standing here for what seems like an hour but if I'm being honest, it's probably only been about ten minutes. If patience is a virtue, it's clearly not one I possess. My foot starts tapping without my permission. I have yet to find a good outlet for nervous energy on hunts. Except, y'know, actually hunting.

Standing here idle gives me the chance to berate myself for wearing boots today. Even if they are my favorite shoes, they are definitely not the most inconspicuous. Each step makes a clicking that is deafening in the noiseless surroundings, and I'm beginning to question whether I was intending to hunt or tap dance when I chose them. The sooner I can get out of here, the better - I can practically feel the air conditioned bliss of the hotel room. I'm pretty sure it's at least 90 degrees in here, and I'm wearing jeans. I make a mental note to listen to Ali the next time she tries to talk me out of an outfit. It's not my fault it had been a lot cooler the day before. Weather in the United States is an enigma I'm not sure anyone fully understands.

A little further down the hall is a door that I don't think has been checked. I know I'm supposed to be the backup this time, but I've gotten tired of standing still and since Ali still hasn't returned, I might as well start looking for the stupid thing myself. Besides, someone has to take care of the situation if something happened to Ali, right? I manage to convince myself of this as I start moving down the hallway. I don't expect to actually find anything, but at least a short walk should make things a little less monotonous.

I proceed towards the door, doing my best to minimize the offending sound from my shoes. It doesn't work, and the clicks have now earned themselves a spot on my list of least favorite sounds.

I gently place my hand on the door (which has developed a coating of I don't want to know what after years of neglect) and slowly push it open. Despite my cautiousness, it still manages to creak in protest. Oh Claire, I'm pretty sure you've managed to attract everything in the building by now, I scold myself.

Inside the room is nothing but overturned desks and a thick covering of dust all over the furniture, which from what I can tell hasn't been disturbed since before I was born. I stand motionless and listen for any sign of sound or movement. Nothing.

After a few more seconds, something changes. I can't pinpoint what it is - a shift in the stale air of the decrepit building, a hint of a sound, or even a hunch that something is coming. Maybe all three. I whip around to face whatever is behind me. About fifteen feet away, I notice the barest flash of a ghostly white face. I finally get a better view once the figure moves slightly and isn't hidden by the shadows. The creature has skin so pale it seems to glow in the moonlight that is penetrating the room through the pitiful remains of a roof. She smiles, revealing deadly sharp fangs.

I walk along the wall, running my hand along it in an attempt to find a light switch so I can see beyond the narrow beam of my flashlight. The moonlight helps, but it's not nearly enough for me to fight by. If I can find light, I'll have an advantage. When you're fighting the spawn of evil, you want any advantage you can get.

"Nice try," she sneers. "But you're gonna have to do better than that. I could hear you coming before you even set foot in the building. Humans, they think they're so clever."

My scowl deepens. Where is Ali? She should be here by now. Slacker. Stupid vamps and their stupid supernatural senses. She draws closer and I abandon the idea of looking for light. The electricity probably doesn't even work. "I guess being a monster has some perks after all," I remark, glancing around the room for possible escape routes. Door? No good, it's blocked. Window? I wouldn't survive a fall from this height. I have no choice but to fight and wait for Ali. I'm seriously beginning to regret moving from that nice spot in the hallway. At least there were no bloodthirsty monsters back there.

The vampire grabs my arm and yanks me away from the wall. She shoves me back to it, knocking my sword out of my hand. The back of my head smacks against the solid concrete of the wall and a blinding pain shoots through my skull. I grit my teeth as I struggle to stand up. Somehow I manage to keep my gaze locked on her.

"Monster? Are you so sure I'm the monster here? Who's the one who came barging in with a deadly weapon?"

Every word feels like a knife to my head. This is really not the best time to be discussing morals.

"Yeah. Freaking. Right," I say, my ability to speak finally returning now that the pain in my head is starting to subside slightly.

She picks up my sword from the ground and holds it to my throat. I almost feel the edge of the blade make contact with my skin when suddenly the grip on my shoulder releases and I almost topple forward.

I hear a muffled groan and before I know it, the vampire is halfway across the room. In front of me is a redheaded girl twirling a knife in her hands. She glances over at the creature.

She notices my bewildered expression and her smile fades. "She should be fine."

She realizes my expression isn't changing and sighs. "This is going to take some explaining, isn't it?"

I warily step away from the wall. "Who are you?" I ask her.

"I'm Katie," she says. "And I just saved your life, so you're welcome. And if you don't mind, I'd like to get out of this death trap."

She tosses me a bottle of a viscous pink liquid.

"Drink it," she instructs me. "It'll fix your head and I'm pretty sure you'd be more than happy to avoid a trip to the hospital."

"It could be poison," I sputter.

"It most definitely could be. Or it could be a healing potion from heaven. Take your pick. Besides, if I'd wanted to kill you, I easily could have done it by now."

I take one last look at it before carefully taking off the cap and taking a small sip. Based on the consistency, I'd expect it to taste like syrup, but I'm astonished to find it tastes like my favorite orange soda. The pain in my head is already diminishing, and I frown at the strange little bottle. Katie shrugs nonchalantly, as if to say I told you so. After another sip, my head feels almost better than it had before seeing the vampire. Even the bruises on my arm from the last hunt are gone without a trace.

Just then, I hear footsteps and quickly turn around in case it's another vampire. I release the breath I had no idea I was holding when I see it's just Ali. She shakes her head in resignation when she realizes I didn't wait for her. It's not like she expected I would anyway.

"You took your sweet time getting here," I mumble.

"I'm sorry, I was just dealing with some bloodthirsty monsters who probably wanted my head on a stick," she retorts. Then she notices Katie. "Who's that?"

"That's Katie," I tell her.

"And?"

"And," Katie interrupts. "This probably isn't the best place to stop for a chat."

"What about the vampire?" I ask her. "We can't just leave her here. The whole point was to stop the people in town from dying."

"She's cured."

"How do you mean cured?" I ask her.

"I mean, cured. Human. When she wakes up, she probably won't even remember any of her time as a vampire."

We finally end up leaving the building, careful not to make too much noise in case something is still lingering inside and decides it would be fun to follow us. Although we probably had caught the attention of anything inside by talking, it can't hurt to be careful. After we determine that nothing is pursuing us, we slow down a bit.

Katie puts her knife into the locket she's wearing. I blink a few times to make sure I'm not seeing things, especially after hitting my head.

"You just put that knife into a locket," I state, almost expecting her to deny it.

"You're an observant one, aren't you?" she says. I can almost feel her eye roll. "It's a simple spell. Could come in handy for you, actually. You can finally stop carrying around that monster of a bag."

It takes me a second to realize she must be talking about the bag we use to carry weapons and supplies, because she shouldn't have known about it. I'd left it back at the hotel. So she was a mind reading hunter who'd somehow been to heaven, if she'd been telling the truth earlier.

She starts to walk away once we're closer to the center of town. "Good luck," she says. "And try not to get yourselves killed. I think saving your life once is enough, don't you think?"

"Where are you going?" I ask, ignoring that last comment.

She shrugs, as if she's forgotten that she's actually supposed to go somewhere. "I don't know. Haven't decided yet."

"So what? You randomly decide on a place to show up?"

"Basically, yes. Is that a problem?"

Make that a traveling mind reader who'd somehow been to heaven. This day just keeps getting better and better.

"Someone is going to tell me what's going on here," Ali demands.

"Honestly, I have no idea," I reply. "But we should probably get back. We're already late, and you know what Adri's like. She's probably been cursing our names since 5:01. I wouldn't be surprised if she's already got voodoo dolls out."

Katie snickers. "What's an Adri?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Miss Mind Reader, I thought you would know," I say, my voiced tinged with irritability. The heat is getting to me. I want away from this place and the heavenly creature. Getting indoors would be heaven enough for now.

Katie's expression shifts for a second, but she quickly recovers. "That's not important."

"Adrianna is the leader of our group," I tell her, glad to be the one explaining something for once. I might have let a touch of haughtiness into my voice. Just a touch. "There aren't many of us. There was a disaster of a mission a few months ago, and she's been trying to avoid more incidents like that."

Katie sounds slightly mollified by this. "Oh. Well. Good on Adri, then."

She looks like she's about to say more, but she suddenly stops. Her eyes shift almost imperceptibly, like there's something behind her that she doesn't want to look directly towards. All she says is "run". It's barely a whisper, and I'm not entirely sure it wasn't my imagination.

"What?" I ask.

"Don't argue. Just go. I don't care where, just get away from here."

"No. I'm not gonna drop everything and run unless I know what the hell I'm running from!" I demand.

"I'm not talking spirits or vampires or something like that. I've dealt with things straight out of your worst nightmares. When I say run, it's probably a good idea to listen unless you have some kind of death wish."

I'm still not fully convinced she's not just doing this so she can have a good laugh later, but if I've learned anything, it's better to be safe and look ridiculous than to be dead. I start into a decently paced jog when I notice a flash of motion behind me out of the corner of my eye. My speed abruptly quickens to a sprint with Ali not far behind. I have no idea what's behind us, but I have no intention of finding out. I lose track of time as we run, but I only stop when it feels like my chest is about to burst, and I'm as confident as possible whatever was behind us is gone. I practically collapse onto the dirt, but Ali takes a few seconds more and finds a more satisfactory seat on a log a few feet away.

"Think that's far enough?" Ali asks, a momentary pause between each word as she tries to catch her breath.

"Any further and I think we'd be in another state," I tell her.

After a while, I determine we've recovered enough to do a quick survey of the surroundings. I stand up, brush the dirt off my pants, and take a look around. We can't have gone more than a few miles, but we might as well be in another state for all I know.

"Now what? Adri's gonna kill us when we get back, if we don't get mauled by a bear or something first," Ali grumbles.

"If we get back," I remind her. I'm quite the optimist.

That's when our favorite ginger suddenly decides to show up. One second we have nothing but trees and animals for company, and the next she's there, impatient expression and everything, as if she's been waiting there for hours. She takes one look at us and rolls her eyes. "When you run," she says slowly, calculating her words to find the least condescending way to say this, "you should probably have some idea where you're going."

I huff and roll my shoulders. "Next time you yell at us, actually telling us what you want us to do might be a nice change of pace."

"I thought not getting lost was pretty self explanatory," she says, stifling a giggle. She climbs onto and takes a seat on a tree branch and looks down at us.

I glare at her, trying out the expression Ali sometimes calls the "Burning Eye of Sauron". I only manage to incur another eye roll. Freaking eye rolls. She did them better than I did.

"So," I ask her, "is there anything you actually wanted to tell us? Or did you just come to have a laugh?"

"You're killing my buzz here," she sighs. "And since you asked, I'm here to get your sorry butts back home."

"We can handle ourselves, thanks," I retort. I'm starting to get a headache again, and the Great Heavenly Creature is getting on my last nerve.

"Really? Definitely doesn't look that way."

"You don't look like much a hunter either, so maybe judging by appearances isn't the best idea here."

"I'm not a hunter. Hunters are about killing out of revenge and a screwed up sense of obligation, and don't you think for a second that's what I am."

"Yeah, well, this screwed up sense of obligation has saved a lot of lives."

"At the cost of how many more? Are those creatures you kill not alive? You think they can help who they are?"

"Right, you were taking us home," Ali interrupts.

"Fine, if that's what you want," Katie says with a sigh.

"So what are you gonna do now?"

"I think I might see this one planet," she muses. "There are supposed to be fourteen moons aligning in about an hour. It happens once every few thousand years. I suppose I could just go see the next one, but that's rather missing the point, don't you think?"

"Another planet?" I ask.

"Well, of course, you didn't think I just hung around here all the time, did you? Nah, there's plenty of other places to go and people to meet."

"You...have fun with that," I start to turn, waving vaguely in her direction.

"Can we come?" Ali asks, ignoring me.

Katie pauses for a second. "I'm sorry, but it's probably better if you forget about this and go home. The last time I had someone with me, it didn't end well."

"But how many people get the chance to see another planet? Come on, just one trip?"

"Fine," she says, sighing her acquiescence. "One trip, and then you're back home."

I'm not sure I'm entirely thrilled with the idea of going to a planet I know nothing about, but Ali's right. Dangerous or not, it's a unique opportunity. I turn to Katie. "So how exactly do we do this?"

"We teleport, obviously," she states, entirely nonchalantly.

"Well, what were you expecting?" she asks, noticing our blank stares.

"Maybe flying," I suggest skeptically.

"In what? A spaceship? Do you think I'm from Mars or something?" she says with a snicker. "Take me to your leader!"

"Oh shut up," I say, no longer able to keep a straight face. "Do we join hands?"

"It's like you've been learning everything from sci-fi shows. No space ships, no holding hands, no police boxes. Just stand there."

"Fine," I huff. I close my eyes and wait. I've seen some weird things in my lifetime, but this is definitely new.

Nothing seems to change. And then everything does.

The most pleasant thing I can say about teleportation is that it doesn't hurt. The worst thing about it is that you end up fairly sure all the food you ate within the last 24 hours is about to come right back up. It's like the loopiest, highest, stomach-droppingest roller coaster in the world.

"Oh crap," I hear Katie mutter. I quickly open my eyes and then close them again. I decide that I don't really want to see where we've ended up. I do however know for sure that I never want to set foot in an amusement park again.

"What?" asks Ali. "Are we lost? We're lost, aren't we?"

"No, we're not lost," Katie assures her. "But there's a bit of a change of plans." I keep my eyes closed. I hadn't known it was possible for Katie to sound so...unnerved.

"Change of plans? What is this, a freakin' vacation?"

"Fourteen moons is going to have to wait. We're gonna meet a prophet."

"A prophet? Like...Bible-type prophet?" Ali asks incredulously. "You have got to be kidding."

"Just shut up for a second," Katie exclaims. "I need to figure out what we're doing." I finally open my eyes, doing my best to ignore the brightly-colored sky surrounding us, and the fact that the ground is pink. She pushes a lock of red hair away from her face and takes a deep breath.

"Why is this such a big deal?" I ask, as delicately as I can.

She sighs. "The archangels used to protect the prophets from harm. But seeing as the archangels aren't here, I'm making an executive decision that we're taking this on as our responsibility."

"Don't we get a say in this?"

"We have no idea who else is looking for her. We need to keep her safe. I don't think we have much of a choice. There's no one else to defend her," Katie says, as if she's trying to convince herself of it. Her expression is a dead giveaway that she knows something is very wrong about this.

"Come on, we're leaving," she says.

"But we just got here!" I attempt to protest. Katie shoots an icy glare my way, and accept that arguing probably won't end well for me.

"Oh fabulous," Ali groans, her face looking the slightest bit green after the lovely teleportation experience.

"If you want to stay in the middle of who-knows-where, feel free," Katie says, aggravated. "I stopped at the nearest place you two could actually survive, so by all means if you want to stay here, be my guest."

There's no response, and soon I feel the increasingly-familiar nausea that signals we've arrived somewhere. Somewhere happens to be in the middle of a city street, as I barely avoid being flattened by an oncoming car. I practically sprint to the sidewalk, with Katie and Ali following close behind.

"Holy crap, Katie, next time can we try to avoid near death experiences?"

I'm expecting some sarcastic quip or angry response, but Katie looks surprisingly calm. She has a faraway look in her eyes, as if she's a million miles away.

"You okay?" I ask, snapping her out of her reverie.

"Oh, yeah. Of course. It's just...I haven't been here in a long time. And the last time, well…" she falters. "It's not important. Let's go find that girl."

"Where do we start?" asks Ali.

"I don't know," Katie says.

"You brought us here with no idea where to go? In the middle of a huge city?"

"If you'd let me finish, I'd have told you I know someone who might know where we should go."

We end up outside what looks like a boutique, and it would probably help to stare a little less. It's hard though, with so many decorative lights and reflective surfaces. Katie breezes in, and the bell above the door makes a nauseatingly adorable sound. I'm not sure I actually want to be seen in this place. I hesitate before stepping inside, where I'm struck by a wave of flowery air freshener and air conditioning. The overall effect is something like an excessively lit dollhouse. It's the last place I want to be.

"Here we are," Katie says, the typical brightness back in her tone. "Perfect. Perfect. Bri!"

A blonde girl comes bouncing out of the back room, scissors in one hand and a bottle of glitter in the other. I don't have the slightest intention of coming into contact with either of those things. "Katie! I haven't seen you in forever."

She notices me and Ali. "Hi!" she greets us. "Friends of yours, Katie?" The look on her face tells me that with Katie the word "friend" can indicate a lot of possibilities, including the words "not human".

"We were supposed to go see that planet with fourteen moons I told you about once," Katie says cautiously, as if she's still deciding how much she should reveal.

"Obviously something happened or you wouldn't be here," Bri says, giving Katie an almost disapproving expression.

"We're looking for a prophet."

"But didn't you say - "

"Yes I did. That's why I'm here."

"Alright. Got a name?"

"I don't know anything to locate people, but I know someone who might. He's...interesting, but he should be able to get you what you need."