Wraith ; Semblance Read online

  WRAITH

  (CHASER BOOK 1)

  SEMBLANCE

  (LOST INNOCENCE BOOK 1)

  RILEY MASON

  Semblance is the first work introducing the LOST INNOCENCE Collection.

  WRAITH is the first work introducing the CHASER Collection 1

  Future works include:

  CHASER BOOK 2: ABOVE

  CHASER BOOK 3: FALLEN

  FINAL GIRL BOOK 1: VISION

  An avid reader and lifelong fan of mystery, thriller, and horror genres, Riley would love to hear from you, so please feel free to email.

  Thank you for taking the time out to download/order this book. A lot of hard work goes into the writing process, detailing, formatting, editing, proofreading, etc.

  It’s a project I appreciate being able to do and I want to thank you for making this book a part of your collection. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  I would absolutely love to hear from you as well. Please feel free to email me with a comment, question, or idea and I will respond back.

  Also, as a little treat, I’ll attach a PDF of a short story that I’ve written entitled Choice.

  [email protected]

  NIGHTMARES WILL COME POURING OUT OF HELL WHEN THE DEVIL GETS DESPERATE

  -ANONYMOUS

  Table of Contents

  WRAITH

  (CHASER-BOOK 1)

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Book 2

  The Aftermath

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Semblance

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  EPILOGUE

  WRAITH

  RILEY MASON

  (CHASER-BOOK 1)

  Prologue

  It was a long time since I had seen one. It wasn’t what I had remembered that it looked like, this one was worse than the other ones that slip into my memory from time to time, different than the ones that I’ve killed before.

  My breathing is heavy, and I can feel my chest lift to try and carry the weight of the air that I’m pulling into myself. I hate this thing. More than I’ve hated most things. Despite how difficult some of these monsters are to kill, this one is smarter than most but it’s one of the most satisfying to slaughter.

  They’re strong, I’ve been at the wrong end of one, down on my back with its wild salivating fangs hanging over my skull. That was the closest that one has ever gotten to me. If I h
adn’t grabbed my knife then and there and slid it into its face, it would’ve left a lot more than a scar down my back.

  Now I don't even bother.

  Now I use my gun, I wasn’t the biggest fan at first. Maybe it’s because I’m too emotionally tied to giving pain when I put these things down. Gun’s might be the easy way out but at the same time it's the way that I can get to more of them. I don't need to be smart or cunning with a gun, it's with a gun that I can just shoot and move on to the rest of the night that’s waiting for me.

  I see this thing as I walk down the alley. The sounds of water dripping from pipes whispers along the barriers of old brick slick with runoff and spongy mold.

  I can see it at the end of the alley, trying to nurse the hole that my gun put into its’ leg. If I leave it there, thinking that it’ll die on its own I’ll be wrong. They can heal themselves better than most things and faster than most things too. They are unnaturally fast healers, a part of me is curious if it’s trying to bait me.

  Maybe it’s because they’re not alive to begin with. I’m one of the only ones that I know that can see them. Despite the damage that I know they can do, most people just feel the repercussions, after the invisible teeth have ripped into their skin and they feel the bite of teeth crush bone.

  As I walk towards it, I can hear that even in its pain, its angry and it's willing to put up every bit of strength that it has left inside of it to kill me. It’s better like that. That anger, seeing it, hearing the growl rattle along the brick cage that surrounds the both of us, it brings a sinister smile to my face. One that can only be brought out when my adrenaline is this on fire. That slow dip of my eyes as my own head seems to slow down time to savor this and the following moments like it's a delicate flavor on my tongue.

  The gun was heavy in my hand when I was younger, now that I’m holding it, it’s more like an arm then it ever was a weapon. I twist it at its joint and it slides the bullet back into the chamber for me and my thumb without realizing pulls the hammer backwards, first one, then the second. I do it without even really realizing, my mind is so concentrated, watching the animal ahead of me in pain to make sure that it doesn’t pounce.

  As I stare at it, I can see the fear in its clouded eyes, eyes that seem to glow against its dark leathery skin as the mandibles of its mouth stretch and send the stink of its breath into the dead, humid air.

  I don’t want it to end but it has too. Even at this distance I can see the wound in its side from where the shot ricocheted starting to close on its dark skin. I don't miss, not usually, especially something that calls to my attention so well. I missed because I wanted to, I didn’t want the kill shot right away, I wanted the suffering, I wanted to hear that hideous whine that it makes when its mandibles stretch and tremor as the sound falls out of it. I want them all dead, but I love to see them in pain.

  As I get to it, looking down at something that would normally be standing up to my chest whimper and growl so folded in on itself it's barely above my knee. I study the muscular ridges under its leathered skin, it is strong, I know that. There is a chance that if I shot it point blank that it might not have stopped it if that were the only shot that I put into it.

  I prop the weapon up and slid the butt of it into my shoulder and lean into the pressure that’s coming. I could lift it one handed, the kickback is nothing special, I killed it off years ago, but I want to make sure that I get the full experience. It’s been so long since I saw the slugs from one of these bullets slip into one of their bodies.

  It knows what’s coming, I can see the lip slide over the fangs just as the mandibles close. I press my finger against the curved steel of the double trigger releasing out two shots, one from each chamber and I watch the explosions that follows.

  Blood spatters on the wall, filthy, thick dark blood. That’s when the animal turns a cold grey as the color change slowly moves along its course skin and then it dissolves into an ash and slides back into cracks in the ground. I want more but I have to be patient. There are always more but seldom more than one on the same night.

  Chapter 1

  My name is Arianna and I’ve been hunting creatures like that for my entire life. At least as far back as I can remember anyways. They never go away, not for forever at least. The creature that I killed has more than ten names depending on what country of the world you ask about them. Most of the things I hunt have long tenured and differing histories but in the end they all come from the same place.

  I didn't want the sight. I never once asked for it, but it was a gift that had found me despite how hard I tried to get rid of it. The sight of the leather skinned creature is as light as it gets. It gets worse and I’ve seen so much worse wander through the cracks that no one else can see.

  My life is simple, at least the part that I put out to the public.

  I’m a single woman living in Manhattan.

  On the surface there is nothing spectacular about my life and I almost prefer it like that. The mundane and the routine have always been the exceptional to me because it was never the routine I was used too. When little girls at six or seven were still playing with dolls, I was learning how to reduce down rock salt to load it into shotgun slugs and how to sharpen blades on whetstones coated in dead man’s blood. I would say that there is a simple bliss in doing tasks like laundry and shopping if they’ve never been done before but I know few would likely agree.

  There was one time in my life that I craved the normality of everyone else. To see it happen all around you, the blank stares in people’s faces as they move throughout a day that they don’t particularly like but they do because they have no other choice. I can see that point, but I would kill at times to be part of that type of excruciating simplicity. I saw my first dead body at four, that was one of the first memories that I have to claim. I saw my first dead body move when I was six.

  I sit there at my computer, right now it's about three in the morning, which is more than fine, to me it's more like seven in the morning. This is really the normal shift for me, my version of the nine to five. Time ends when my work is done, if the sun’s up I’m at overtime and I’m going to have to fight to get some rest.

  For that reason, I made sure that my apartment has special dark drapes to keep out the sun since my apartment is eastern facing and it looks dead on to the sun that lifts into the day. Around six they get closed and depending how compliant my body is with sleeping is when they open up again. I’m lucky if I can pull four hours a night.

  I’ve been home for about an hour now, it's been that long since the creature was killed. That was about enough time to make myself a cup of coffee and pull up my computer screens and start to hunt the news sites for more information about appearances. I know that I wasn’t the first to get it. The beasts have gotten smarter over the years. At one time, when I was young and new to this career path, they attacked without mercy and without conscious, they hunted as I do but in pacts without thought or strategy. As time went on and they realized that they were vulnerable from the Chasers, their attacks became better planned, built on purpose and need rather than desire. When they’re that tactical, when they’ve evolved to that level, it gets harder to hunt them. They are always smart and cunning, but they’ve evolved to add cautious to that list.

  The first thing I do whenever I come home is reload the customized Desert Eagle. It's more elegant than this job really should have but it was a gift from someone that meant a lot to me. It’s also about six years old now and it’s been in this career through nine Chaser’s I’m only the most recent, but I doubt very much that I’m the last.

  After about an hour on the news sites, I find that for the most part the crimes and deaths are status quo, nothing is out of the ordinary at least for Manhattan. It’s almost unappealing when I see it like that, it means that I'm behind, it also means that sometimes the road ahead just became more challenging and more uncertain. It means that despite how much I want to, I have to wait, just a little bit longer. It tests my
patience even when I know something will always come. It never fails.

  Chapter 2

  I stand there at the outer-limits of Hell’s Kitchen a small neighborhood inside Manhattan bordered by 34th Street to the south and 59th to the north, 8th to the east and the Hudson River to the west. To me it’s home. Tonight these things hunted three blocks from my apartment, to me it almost seems malicious in intent, I’m convinced that they have a taste for Chasers. Most of them would feed easier if they hunted the less prepared but they seem to enjoy the danger behind hunting something with experience.

  The rain overhead is threatening, the cloud cover has hung over the city in my little corner of it for the last two days now. There have been streaks of lightning and the low groan of thunder, but the rains have held off. Then a vibration in my pocket, news on my phone scrawls a message on my screen. There’s been a murder and it’s a block and a half from my house.

  I’ve seen the girl in the neighborhood lately more than usual; I’ve run into her a few times in the deli on the corner, sometimes she gets milk, my shopping list a little more deliberate, shopping for beer or some liquor. Drinking is part of the trade, that’s at least what I’ve been taught at the same age I learned to slide slugs into a chamber and pull back on the pump action of a twelve gauge.

  I stand there and observe. I’m not the only one. Cops have a tendency to draw crowds and with all their phones hanging in the air like surveillance taking in the night’s video’s and watching for another instance of police brutality.

  I know better.

  They aren’t going to make an arrest tonight. Tonight is nothing more than an investigation into a brutal death. Since I’m late I know it’s not the first one that's going to happen, if I don’t work fast, the cops and the coroners will be busy for the next few days. The headline told me as much.

  “Can you believe in this neighborhood?” a woman to my right says, she's older, not quite elderly but right in that sweet spot of middle aged. She was out to dinner with her husband, she wore a Burberry raincoat, it looked like it was his. He had given it to her since the clouds had thickened, chivalry wasn’t dead despite the war to keep trying to kill it. He stood there with more eagerness to see the scene of the crime. He wore a black sweater and dark blue jeans, he looked a few years younger than she was.

  Despite its ambiguous name, no one expects a Coroner van or even a real showing of police presence in Hell’s Kitchen, it's not a neighborhood that gets that kind of attention anymore. I supposed that’s why I live here, it's quiet and quaint, like it's boxed off from the rest of the island by barriers and it can exist as its own city.