Crash! Clang! Crack!

I sighed and shook my head. This rookie is going to get us killed. I leaned further over the building's edge as the rookie joined me trying to imitate my pose. I still couldn't believe the home office teamed me up with him. He was beyond hope.

"What are we looking at?" the rookie asked.

"Tonight's Halloween. Tonight the veil between realms is at its weakest. Creatures and journey-men from all over come through. Our job is to hunt them down."

The rookie gulped. "All of them?"

"All of them."

"Surely, they all can't be evil."

"They are. Their very presence here upsets the universal balance. These monsters bring with them exotic matter." The rookie gulped again. "If you're not willing to do what it takes then maybe you shouldn't be a monster hunter."

The rookie shook his head. I couldn't tell if he was trying to convince me or himself. "Why'd you become a monster hunter?" he asked.

"Monsters invaded my home realm. If it hadn't been for some hunters, they would have destroyed it." The rookie was about to say something else but was interrupted by the beeping of my HuntBox. It'd picked up some activity. I narrowed my eyes. "It's time."

***

The Box led us to a warehouse by the docks. It looked to still be in business. From the looks of the equipment it was a packaging plant. The rookie and I followed the signal further into the plant. What we found was disturbing, but not surprising.

"Human sacrifice," I whispered.

Below us a group wearing red and black robes chanted and swayed while a young woman (about 16) dressed in white was bound to an altar.

The rookie wanted to know what was going on. Don't they teach anything at the Academy anymore? I told him that they were harvesting phantasmic energy from the woman. "It's the most powerful matter-energy in the universe. What makes it so special is that the more you share it, the more there is. Science calls it dark matter. Religions call it faith. The average person calls it the soul. Some call it love. The only safe way to mine it is for it to be given freely. But some find that too time-consuming and take it. They plan to mix her energy with their own faith-fueled energy and feed it to whatever nullspawn monster they worship."

We dropped in on the cult. Using our specially designed weapons, we began dispatching the cult members. The rookie then went to free the woman only to find that she was a psychic. She prophesied that he would become a great teacher and that the time of the monster hunters was ending.

"She's a monster," I said. "Kill her now!" He wouldn't, so I had to. But she managed to activate her inter-realm travel device and escape. Angrily, I ripped off the rookie's badge. "You'll never be an Ether Operations hunter."

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Words: 496

My entry for the Urban-fantasy Halloween Vault prompt.

https://my.w.tt/HhD5SIUprR