Atia is a monster who feeds on fear.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Night Hunt by Alexandra Christo, out from Feiwel & Friends on October 10.
Atia is a monster who feeds on fear. As the last of her kind, she hides in the shadows of the world to escape the wrath of the unpredictable Gods. Silas is a Herald, carrying messages and ferrying the dead as punishment for a past he can’t remember. Stripped of his true name, he yearns to recover his identity.
Atia would never dream of allying with someone like him, but when she breaks a sacred law and the Gods send monsters to hunt her, Silas offers an irresistible deal: he’ll help avenge her family and take on the Gods who now hunt her, if she helps him break his curse and restore his humanity. All they need to do is kill three powerful creatures: a vampire, a banshee, and one of the very Gods who destroyed both their lives. Only together can they finally rewrite their destinies.
Despite what you might have heard, the night was not actually made for monsters.
It was made for the humans to find freedom from the harsh light of being seen. To let them loose from the restraints they’d chosen for themselves or the ones that had been put onto them.
It was made to let them be vulnerable, exposed.
That’s when the monsters came.
When we claimed the night for ourselves.
We have no choice, my father once said as I, eight years old, stared up at him. After Oksenya, this is all the Gods left for us. Just the night. Just the shadows. And we must treat those shadows well, for they keep us hidden.
Despite its apparent beauty, when my father spoke of Oksenya, his voice was always carved from the narrows of the world, quiet and foreboding. Only when he spoke of the human realm and the memories we’d make was it filled with warmth and comfort.
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The Night Hunt
That’s the thing I remember most about him.
Not the large spiraled horns that were so grand and intricate they looked like mazes on his head. Riddles that had sprung from his mind to take shape for all to see.
I remember his voice and how safe it made me feel. How it made me wonder about others of our kind and if they were all so reverent.
As for my mother, I remember the way she sang in clucks and hums, a mix of sweet murmurs and clicking tongues. The melody of her, even in the way she walked around the small barn that we called home.
She fed the crowing roosters with a spring in her step that felt like a dance, and gave the horses bushels of apples that made them nuzzle into her neck like they were telling her secrets.
The farm had all manner of arias and so did my mother.
She was a song. She made me smile the way music makes the humans smile. Made me dance and laugh, the way their favorite ditties do.
Whenever she held my hand, I couldn’t imagine why the Gods hated us enough to start a war. Why they blamed us when one of their own died for it. Or why others of our kind would have killed humans when they were thrown to this realm.
Yes, we fed on nightmares. We left the farm to steal fear, but that was chaos, not carnage. Dream, not reality.
How could it have all been a lie?
I grit my teeth now as the moon hides behind a growing cloud, darkening the streets.
I linger in wait at the top of one of the stone staircases that connect the streets of Rosegarde. It is a village of hills and steps, with houses that connect up a mossy backdrop and canals that slip between them like delicate veins, leading to the forested lake below.
I watch the drunks stumble through the streets.
There’s a knack to hunting.
For the first year I was alone after my parents were killed, I’d hunt anyone and anything, crawling through windows to steal whatever nightmares I could. Now I prefer to be more meticulous in the hunt. Savor it. Take the time to find the perfect prey.
I lick my hungry lips.
The confrontation with Tristan’s stranger has left me famished and the beast inside me must be fed. It must be settled.
So I watch.
It doesn’t take long before I see Tristan meandering into a nearby alley.
The moon is dark and the air bites hard enough for him to pull the collar of his thin coat up high to his chin. He exhales a cold breath and holds his books close to his chest, as if protecting them from the harsh wind.
A scholar, through and through.
I smile a little.
Tristan is a strange kind of human, untouched by any horrors the world has to hold. He studies monsters, but he knows nothing real of them.
I hope it stays that way. Let him be wide-eyed forever, speaking of myths like they are magic. Leave the shadows and their world for creatures like me to deal with.
Tristan looks up to the moon and holds his thumb out to it. Then, with a large grin, he turns on his heel and heads down the alley that leads toward the first of many canals.
It’s only a moment later that I see a figure slip after him.
I pause and step forward, peering closer through the brush that hides me.
The stranger from earlier throws his cigar to the ground, the end blazing against the cobbles.
He was waiting for Tristan.
How could he even be so sure Tristan would take this route?
The slopes of the alleys are certainly not the quickest way to his home. They’re a far more winding and scenic path.
The man stares after him.
I recognize that stare. It’s the same look I’ve had for the past few hours—of wanting to make prey from someone.
Never get involved in the business of humans, Atia.
That is how they trap you.
I hear my father’s scolding voice, warning me to keep my mind on my own problems and not those of mortals.
Yet as this man follows Tristan through the narrow alleyways, I follow too.
Excerpted from The Night Hunt, copyright © 2023 by Alexandra Christo.
