Chapter 1: Lana

B eer foam tickles my lips as I drink. My best friend, Mike, prattles on, and I catch about a third of his words. The ambient lighting is low, there's acoustic music playing, but instead of paying attention to what my friend is telling me, my gaze is drawn to the neighboring table, more specifically to the toupee gracing the head of the middle-aged man sitting at it. He's talking animatedly to the younger woman at the table across from him and with each wild gesture, said toupee bobs up and down, shifting his clearly non-existent hairline. By the look of barely concealed disgust on the woman's attractive face, this is a first date and Tim/Bob/Chad used old pictures on his Tinder profile. It probably also claimed that he's thirty.

"Are you even listening to me?" Mike drums his fingers on the table and his nails make rhythmic clacking sounds loud enough to hear over the music. He's used to my fickle attention span and the fact that I'd rather be doing pretty much anything than sitting in the crowded bars he drags me to. He tracks my gaze and laughs under his breath. "You clearly need another hobby, Lana. You're too easily amused."

"What? I read and I know things. And my taekwondo class is the most I'm willing to subject myself to people outside of my job; you know this. And yet, you insist on dragging me to happy hour, which inevitably always leads to an unhappy hour sometime around midnight."

"You need to go out." Mike levels a stern look at me and my stomach clenches. I know I'm being a shut-in. "You're a late-twenties single woman unwilling to socialize, you teach history, of all the possible boring subjects, and you live alone in a one-bedroom apartment." His expression changes to a comical look of fear and I exhale. He hasn't given up on me yet. "You're a walking crazy cat lady starter pack."

I let out a relieved chuckle as the last of the tension leaves my body. "Don't you, I don't know, need at least one cat to be labeled that? And I'm already a walking cliché, having a gay best friend; I don't need cat fur on my clothes."

"Semantics," he replies with a smile on that dear, dear face. If he didn't love dick more than I did, we'd be married by now and he wouldn't be concerned. Alas, I'm probably going to worry him until we're old and gray. According to Mike, he's had some good dick. All the dick I've had was the disappointing kind, and I'm tired of even trying.

"Let's get out of here," I say and drain the last dregs of my beer. "I have a lecture to prepare for and I've been putting it off by reading a book series that has me by the metaphorical balls."

"Vampires?" he asks, side-eyeing me with narrowed eyes. He knows of my love for anything lore and mythology.

"Dragon shifters," I reply, waggling my eyebrows.

He snorts, the sound way too cute for an adult male, and looks up at the heavens. Or, I guess, the ceiling. Following his gaze, I see that it could actually use a fresh coat of paint.

"You're hopeless," he says once his gaze meets mine again, " but I love you anyway."

He settles the tab – feeding a book addiction is an expensive business – and we walk out of the stuffy bar. I drag in a deep breath of fresh air.

"See you tomorrow for our movie night?" I ask Mike and he nods. I met Mike a few months after I moved into this city. He was signing up for a self-defense class at the studio where I chose to continue my taekwondo training. We've had a standing movie night date since.

"Are you sure you're okay walking home?"

"You ask me the same thing every time and every time I give the same answer: I live a couple of blocks away. I have a martial arts black belt. I'm probably safer than you are, twinkypoo." I wink at him and try to keep the smile from sliding off my face. In truth, I've been a bit spooked lately.

Sometimes I feel like I'm being watched. At school, when I stay late grading papers, or when I'm walking towards the bus station early in the morning. It's not that I see or hear anything, I just get the sense that I'm not alone. "I'll be fine," I add, both to reassure Mike and myself.

"Famous last words," he says with a pinched expression.

"Shut up and let me go home, worrywart."

I give him a quick hug and turn in the direction of my building. It's late and the streets are empty – I can see why he was worried. Heck, maybe I should have escorted him home and kept him safe. He's the only person who bothers to drag me out of my shell. Without him, I'd just be working and reading. I give the night a sad sigh. I need to stop going down this spiral or I'll start crying. I must not think of the pathetic contribution I have made to this world so far. Maybe I should get a cat?

A flicker in the corner of my vision makes me turn my head toward the alleyway I'm passing by. Standing at the end is a tall man – judging by the build, at least – in a long gray cloak. The hood is up and there's a white mask on his face. That's all I can see from this distance and I don't want to see more. Masked stalkers are hot in a romance novel, not in real life .

I turn my face back toward home and speed up my steps.

Next thing I know, my nose is slamming painfully into a hard surface and I'm surrounded by the smell of… fire? I look up to see the cloaked stranger.

"How –" escapes my mouth before the man slides behind me with a speed my logical mind cannot comprehend. How was he in the alley one moment and in front of me the next?

I start screaming, but too late – a gloved hand covers my mouth as the stranger walks back into the alley, pulling me along.

I'm pretty sure it's curtain time for me. I wish I'd gone home with the skinny accountant who flirted with me at the bar the other week; at least then I wouldn't have died with cobwebs clinging to my privates.

Yes, my priorities are certainly out of whack.

On the brick walls on each side of us, red flickers of light are reflected from something behind the brute still dragging my struggling body. It's the same flickers that captured my attention in the first place. I now wish I was colorblind and just kept my nose pointing forward. Maybe then I'd be just a minute away from the dubious safety of my too-thin apartment door.

The red light gets brighter but at the same time the world around me darkens. What in the unholy fuck is going on right now? I'm still screaming into the masked stranger's hand, trying to bite through the leather glove and hurt him enough to let my mouth go. Only muffled sounds come through and my teeth are ineffective. There's pressure in my head and my ears feel like I'm on a rapidly descending plane, as if I need to yawn and let my ears pop. Fear twists a knife in my belly and tears leak out of my eyes.

A moment later the pressure disappears, but my head still feels like he reached in and stuffed cotton swabs where my brain once was.

The blackness dissipates and I see stone walls. Not brick, but giant blocks of dusty stone, the kind Mike and I saw in that abandoned medieval village we visited last summer. It's dark, lit up only by the torch that is now somehow in my abductor's hand. He pushes me forward and in my shock, I take two steps down the hallway.

"Welcome to Purgatory, half-blood," the giant says, his voice so deep it's made for Barry White songs.

Half what, though? And where?

"Purgatory?" I ask, still stunned, snippets from the theology-centered parts of my history studies coming back to me. He has to be kidding. This is probably some underground goth nightclub hidden in the alleyway near my home, and my attention made him think I was interested in a night with women in corsets and men with black nail polish. Oh, and can't forget the guyliner.

"Think of it as the anteroom to Hell," he says, pushing the cloak back and revealing his head. I know he's grinning because I can hear it in his deep raspy voice, and the next moment he takes his mask off, revealing a handsome dark-skinned face. A face with glowing eyes of a golden yellow. Eyes with slit pupils. "Or you can think of it as home," my abductor adds.

No. I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore.