Brothers of Chaos (The Unstoppable Titans Book 1) by Jerry Hart Page B

completely separated in the alley from the rest of the world.
    And then
someone came stumbling toward them from the opposite end of where Owen and
Chris had originally entered.
    The two boys
stopped laughing immediately and watched the newcomer. They couldn’t tell if it
was a man or a woman, because the figure wore heavy clothes, even though it was
July and the sun was blazing.
    “Stay here,”
Chris told Owen as he stood up. The figure took a step forward, then
immediately fell to the side, leaning against a brick wall.
    The alley
was mostly covered in shadow, though there was a slice of sunlight that cut an
angle a quarter of the way in. The fallen figure was bathing in the light.
    Owen slowly
stood and looked over the trashcans to see the figure better. He had no
intention of going near it, like Chris was doing.
    “Oh, my
god,” Chris said as he stood over the figure.
    “What is
it?” Owen asked.
    “Hey, are
you okay?” Chris asked the stranger. “Did you get burned? Your face looks
burned.”
    There was no
reply. Owen, seeing no immediate danger, walked up behind Chris. The young boy
saw what the old boy had been talking about. Owen could now tell the stranger
was a woman, though he couldn’t tell how old she was.
    Her face was
red and severely cracked—it looked like she was suffering from very bad
sunburn. She was wearing what had once been a red sweat suit with a hooded
jacket, but the suit was so dirty it was brown in most places. The hood was
drawn over her head, but her face was exposed to the sun.
    Both Owen
and Chris gasped as her face appeared to burn and crack even more before their
very eyes. The girl must have been severely sensitive to sunlight.
    “Help me
drag her into the alley,” Chris said to Owen. They grabbed her arms and started
pulling the unfortunate girl into the shadows.
    What
happened after that turned Owen and Chris into what they were today: monster
hunters. The girl turned out to be a vampire and she had attacked them once
they were out of the sun. Owen and Chris didn’t kill her that day, but instead
ran away, leaving her alone in the alley. The seed had been planted, however,
for they devoted their lives to fighting the creatures after that.
    The alley
vampire showed up again later, when Owen and Chris had been sleeping in Chris’s
car under an overpass. Owen stabbed her in the heart with a pencil. He and
Chris learned these vampires were slightly more allergic to the sun than the
most fair-skinned humans, and the sun wasn’t much of a useful weapon.
    As for the
Busters and Rejecters, Daniel said those would be the most effective tools in
their arsenal. When Owen once asked why those weapons in particular, Daniel
said, “Alyssa encouraged me to make them.”
    *   *   *
    Owen snapped
back to the present and realized his eyes were leaking. He wiped away the tears
and thought of something else, something he hadn’t thought of in years. His
family, together, before Mom left. He remembered how they all used to play in
the field that surrounded their home in Birch. Owen could feel a headache
coming on but ignored it.
    He also
remembered an old man with white hair—Grandpa? Owen had been very young when
the old man passed away, so he barely remembered much about him. All he could
remember was that, at some point, the Walters family had been together and
happy.
    The headache
increased drastically; it became so bad he forgot what he’d been thinking about
just then.
    Oh, yeah, he
was thinking of Chris. Owen had to tell him something, right? He pulled out his
cell phone and dialed.

CHAPTER
7

 
 
    Stephanie sat awake in her
hospital bed, subconsciously rubbing the bite mark on her neck. The nightmare
she’d had was still fresh in her mind. She had lost a considerable amount of
blood but did not require a transfusion. Her doctor had told her hours earlier
she would be able to go home the next day. Stephanie simply nodded, not really
listening.
    When asked
for an emergency