The Hecatomb Labyrinth

By L.A. Kennedy

Book Nine in the Bestselling Series "An Iverland Marks, Demon Hunter Novel", from Bestselling author, L.A. Kennedy.

Everyone has a breaking point, a point of no return, that moment when your soul can’t take another death.

When Ivy is forced to fight in the second annual Hecatomb Labyrinth, a Labyrinth filled with one hundred souls; she is faced with her breaking point. The only way out is to kill ninety-nine innocents or become one of the ninety-nine.

Iverland Marks, demon hunter, vows she would do just about anything to stay alive. Has she reached the point of no return? Or are there some things she just won’t do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L.A. Kennedy
• Release date: Jul 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311570130

L.A. Kennedy

L.A. Kennedy is the author of two hit series that mix mystery, horror, romance, fantasy, and intrigue. Her Iverland Marks: A Demon Hunter (A Demon Hunter) novels started with MACABRE, where Iverland Marks continues to battle with her demons, while being sucked even deeper into the world of monsters and mayhem. Kennedy's THE DIVISIONS series features Temperance Millicent, the Nosferatu Princess, with four titles now available.L.A. Kennedy is a Canadian born writer, living in the ever-growing city of Vancouver, Canada. Here, she spends her days getting lost in the beauty of reading and writing. L.A. Kennedy mainly writes fictional books. And can be found researching myth, folklore, and everything in between.L.A. Kennedy's other published work includes two completed series titled "A Sinful Series" and "The Skin Trilogy".

Book preview

The Hecatomb Labyrinth

By L.A. Kennedy

Iverland Marks, Demon Hunter

Macabre

Wraith

Bloody Vindicta

Demon Games

Marquis de Mort

Ichor Rising

Danza Del Diablo

The Collector

The Hecatomb Labyrinth

COMING SOON: Marked

The Divisions Series

The Divisions

Division Two: The Nosferatu

Division Three: The Lycans

A Divisions Triad

COMING SOON: Division Four ~ The Magicks

The Skin Trilogy:

Skin Deep

Skin Trade

Skin Game

A Sinful Series:

Sloth

Lust

Wrath

Pride

Envy

Greed

Gluttony

All in one: A Sinful Series Collection

The Hecatomb Labyrinth

An Iverland Marks, Demon Hunter Novel

L.A. Kennedy

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to action persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 L.A. Kennedy

All rights reserved.

Dedicated to you…

Loving you was like going to war, I never came back the same. (W.S.)

To those who ask if I’m writing about them when I kill off a character. Yes.

And in the end, we were all just human… drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.

- F.S. Fitzgerald

PROLOGUE

Shooting someone in real life is nothing like how it is in the movies. Blow back is a bitch.

For starters, they never show a realistic blow back scene, from shooting someone close range. You never see someone picking brains and bone fragments out of their hair and eyes, or going off the deep end because the guts won’t come off. Innards don’t magically clean off like it does in the movies. Nope, it’s pretty much like luggage, with you for-fucking-ever. Innards are a mix of glue and dirt. It gets under your nails and into the creases of your hands. Movies make it look like a water balloon burst close by, a small splatter of blood on the chin and arm. A diaper wipe and you’re back to your perfect self, and somehow your makeup and hair aren’t effected in the least. I fucking wish.

Take my word, it really isn’t anything like that. Even if you manage to clean it all off, your eyes hold the reality of what you’ve just done. It doesn’t matter how many wet naps you pull out, it’s never cleaning off of your soul. It’s deep in those creases, forever there. Each death adds up, eventually you’ve caked your soul and nothing you do will ever clean it off. I’m currently working on my second layer.

Monsters are not an exception to that rule, it’s just as much of a bitch to pick their pieces from your hair and nails. Killing them before they kill you or someone you love, makes pulling the trigger a little easier. But in the end, you’re still standing over their body, flicking viscera onto the ground, and you’re thankful. For me, that part is what bothers me most. I’m thankful I’m standing over them and not on the ground under them. I can tell my brain that I did what I had to do, but my soul doesn’t listen to that bullshit. My soul reminds me of every other option I could have gone with, before shooting them, before picking their guts off of my face, before adding one more bloody nightmare to my list.

But what bothers me most about it, is that it doesn’t really bother me at all anymore. Not really, or at least, not as much as it probably should or used to. Gone are the days of knowing who the bigger monster is, now it was a guessing game and sometimes I really was the bigger and badder monster. To be honest, when you’re picking their brains off of your chest, you’re thankful for being the bigger monster. You’re thankful you could out-monster them.

Over the years, pulling that trigger has become easier than parallel parking. To be fair to myself, parallel parking is bloody hard. Recently I watched a friend of mine give it the good ol’ college try, after a fifty point turn, she left her car half in and half out and abandoned the idea. I think she would have preferred to shoot someone, to parallel parking, blow back and all.

New mentalities took over, kill or be killed, damned if you do and damned if you don’t, shoot now and ask questions later. Problem was, I only aimed for kill shots. I never wanted to wound and piss off, asking questions later wasn’t really an option in my world. In the moment, I had a hundred and one problems, I didn’t need a pissed off and bleeding monster to add to it.

There comes a time when you hesitate. Hesitation in this world, my world, ends with death, your death. If you hesitate, you’re dead, because they don’t hesitate. The bad guys bank on your humanity, and then they take that humanity and beat you to death with it. Everyone learns the hard way, including me.

Shoot him! Eric screamed.

I shook my head, backing up, He’s a child. I can’t shoot him.

The little blond boy looked six or seven years old, small, fragile, and helpless in the way he shuffled on the floor. He crawled on his hands and knees, his one hand outstretched, shielding his face in fear. His hand glistened in still wet blood. His nails were crusted in old blood, dried into the cracks and creases. His little blue eyes turned up towards me, little puppy dog eyes, glittering with tears.

He’s older than you and I put together, I can smell it, shoot him, Eric screamed.

My brain said vampire, but my eyes saw something different. The two wouldn’t meet up until it was too late. The little boy lunged off of the floor, his face twisted in a grin. He knew as well as I did, I had hesitated, and he would ride that hesitation to freedom.

No help would come, not here. This place held death. It was painted on the walls in the blood of those who had died just moments ago. Here, you had to kill to win your freedom. I’d never leave this labyrinth the same, I’d never see the world in the same light, I’d never see humanity the same, that’s if I even left here alive.

Beelze, help us, please, I whispered, crawling backwards, away from the ruined mess Eric had left at my feet. Why did I bother calling for him, my father would sooner let me die than allow someone to help me. We were the very definition of dysfunctional family. And now people would die because of it, including myself.

Chapter ONE

Father David sat across from me, wearing the usual clerical attire of the church, and wore it well. But seeing him in a clerical collar made me roll my eyes. It was tantamount to me dressed as a nun. It would be kinky as hell, but complete bullshit.

David was a pain in the ass before he died. His being the walking dead didn’t change him much. He was still a pain in the ass, and a major force behind the legalization and equality of Vampires. That very fact alone made me want to reach across my desk and slap him silly with a bible. The new legalization laws felt like a child waving around a loaded gun, eventually people were going to die. The safety of humanity had turned into a party piñata and every idiot for miles had a stick.

From the looks of his spit shined shoes and the sprinkle of bling here and there, death was treating him fairly well, for the most part I’d say. The whole dead as a doornail with the thirst of a caged animal, evened it out. There was always a balance. Vamps were given speed and strength, and held back by holy objects and the sun. Apparently that was balance. It didn’t feel that way, but I wasn’t exactly a lover of the blood sucking variety.

I didn’t want them all dead, but it wouldn’t hurt to microchip them, that could even the playing ground. You wake up as a vamp and boom, chip in the neck. Maybe one that held the power of the sun, now that would be something I’d invest in with my tax dollars. OK, so maybe I had a few issues with the blood thirsty and fanged variety. In my defense, most of my run-ins with them involved me bleeding or fighting for my life. So I’m a little jaded, who the hell isn’t now a days? When you’ve been chewed on and spit out as many times as I have, you’re bound to have a few issues.

I wanted to ask David how life was, or should I call it death, now that he was a blood sucker and couldn’t touch his old bible without bursting into flames. But I didn’t. I knew enough to know the changeover was never what people expected. It was never as glamorous as the pure blooded made it out to be. It was brutal as hell. Suckers. No pun intended.

Father David was about to receive his honorary title of Monsignor, when he died. Died, that’s a strong word, before he became a vampire. That was more fitting. Death doesn’t mean what it once meant, it’s rather subjective now a days. The Medical Examiner had a bitch of a time, given the percentage of dead who sat up in the morgue. The only way I truly knew if someone was dead was by counting the body parts, if more vital pieces were scattered on the group, than still attached to the body, I was ninety-nine percent sure they were dead. Or my go to, ashes, I’ve yet to see someone bounce back from that, I’d have been bloody impressed to be honest. But to be one hundred percent sure, they still gave them a few days before dumping them in the ground.

I wonder what went through his mind when becoming a vampire, undoubtedly the same thing every cretin thought of. Glamor, power, beauty, and immortality. Instead, Father David was a lapdog to the pure blood suckers. A lapdog who had fangs, and still had the desire to move up on the ladder. Death doesn’t remove the hunger for power, it only makes it worse. Should I tell him that he wouldn’t climb very far? He wasn’t a full blooded vampire, he’d always be a second banana. A little game of fetch, him being the mutt, for the rest of his life. Immortality, didn’t include him. He’ll live as long as he has a purpose. Life was going to be damn glamorous for him. Ish. Not. At least as a human, you knew eventually, you’d die.

His death made the news worldwide, Catholic Priest attacked by blood suckers. It was bigger news when he rose and rallied behind the very vamps who took him out. Can anyone say cahoots? Foolish folks thinking life would be grand as a vampire. It was almost comical.

Now he ran a local church for vampires who still had faith. Minus crosses, holy water, or objects that would burst his flock into an inferno of crispy vamps. I think it’s more for good publicity than anything else. Because throughout history we have never seen religion or churches destroy a population of people. Insert my sarcasm here. This was more comical.

David, I don’t know how I can help you. I gave him my best professional smile, trying to hide my I think you’re crazy as a loon look.

Father David was my last appointment of the day, scheduled later than usual. I didn’t really mind, Zek, my fallen Watcher, didn’t really sleep during normal hours and had taken a liking to watching reality shows. In other words, he was driving me as crazy as David clearly was. I was even staying for the staff meeting tonight, the first one I will have ever gone to. Usually I ducked out before I could be pulled into it. I had a shitty attitude, no one minded when I didn’t show up. There were two staff meetings a month here, the day shift and the night shift. I was both and neither. My schedule varied, depending on my warrants and hunts.

Father David. He corrected me, Miss Marks, how can you say you cannot help me, you haven’t even tried?

David looked like a sane man, handsome even, younger than he should have looked. The one and only perk of being a vampire, the good looks. Unlike many other people, I knew the truth. He was expending energy to look as tasty as he looked.

He had an edge of Army to him, from his short hair to his build, to his commanding voice. He