I’d been chasing Tracy Robertson for several weeks. It was the most fun I’d had in my twelve years of bounty hunting. Multiple warrants meant multiple paychecks from five separate bondsmen. No She wasn’t accused of anything violent, which meant the pursuit wasn’t quite as fun as the usual, she’d made up for it with her craftiness. It had been a good run.

I was close to her now, I wasn’t as much running after her as I was waiting for her to show herself. The only lights in the place were hanging from the ceiling. Old incandescent bulbs cast a cone of sickly yellow light on cardboard boxes with a logo that resembled a dead rat, with a big, black X over each eye.

A creak less than thirty feet to my right alerted me to her presence. She’d been quiet the whole time, maybe holding her breath. It was too bad she fell for my oldest trick. I’d expected more from my elusive prey.

I burst from my hiding spot and toward the sound. Tracy had managed to climb to the top shelf, nearly twenty feet high, and she gasped when she saw me. She whirled around and started to run. 

I followed along the ground as she jumped the six-foot gaps between the shelves, scrambled over boxes too big to avoid, and knocked a few to the ground. She’d chosen the wrong path. I sprinted ahead and slammed my shoulder into the shelf in front of her, sending it slowly tipping to one side. There would be some property damage, but she would be the one to pay for it.

She had too much momentum. She tried to find a footing on the shifting boxes and pallets, but let out a little squeak of defeat when she finally stumbled into the gap.

I caught her flailing form on the way down. It wasn’t hard, she weighed barely a hundred pounds. She gasped and wrapped her arms around my neck. The shelf she’d just fallen off of crashed into the one next to it. That one crashed into the next, and so on. I was glad I didn’t work there. The clean-up would take hours, maybe days.

She looked up from my arms with big eyes, they were such a light shade of brown they were almost orange. She had sharp, exotic features and big eyebrows that perfectly matched her olive complexion. She was almost primitive. Not one of the many photographs I’d seen of her did her justice.

“Thank you,” she said, batting her long lashes at me. Her chest was heaving.

“You’re welcome,” I said. Then I flipped her over, dropped her to the hard concrete and put my left knee in the small of her back. “These are a little tight,” I warned her as I retrieved my handcuffs, “but that’s because they're new. Don’t worry, though—they’ll stretch to fit your wrists after a while.”

I fastened the cuffs gently but firmly. “My name is Zachary Novak. You can call me Zac. Better yet, Mister Zac. I’m not going to read you your rights, because you don’t have any. I’m a bounty hunter, and I’m returning you to the Cottonwood Police Department, where you’ll be locked up until your trial. You should’ve shown up to court. Nobody hides from me for long.”

“You have nice hands,” she said, moving her hands as far back as she could to stroke mine. “How about a backrub while you’re back there?”

She twisted around enough for me to see her eyes. She wasn’t kidding. If I’d been on top of her for any other reason, I might have taken her up on the request. Still, it wasn’t normal behavior for someone I’d just pinned to the ground and cuffed.

People high on drugs often said weird shit. If she was on drugs, the jail would insist she visit the hospital before they’d accept her. I flipped her over onto her back and retrieved a little flashlight from one of the pockets of my black cargo pants. I’d seen enough fugitives to know what to look for in their eyes.

When I looked, though, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. She had deep blue eyes, but when I looked, they were milky white. There weren’t even any little red veins—just white.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

“My name is Jayna,” Tracy whispered. Her voice had changed and she’d suddenly developed a Slavic accent. “You must save me. I will unbind from this world and bring you to mine. Find the items I have left for you. Free me and I will be yours.”

Of all the things I’d heard fugitives say to try to get out of custody, this was—the most original, to say the least. The girl was proving to be a lot of fun, even when in custody. I barely had the time to think this thought when I felt the universe turn in on itself, tilt a little to the left, and escape out some kind of cosmic funnel.

The objects around me stretched and spun, creating a kaleidoscope of colors, bubbles, and swirling shapes. A few seconds later it was all over, and I found myself on my hands and knees, trying to catch my breath.

My first thought was that the lady had kicked me in the head and knocked me stupid for a moment. I didn’t see how she could have done it, though. Maybe she had an accomplice. But there was no way anyone could sneak up on me like that. It all became a little more—and a little less—lucid as the seconds passed.

The girl was gone. So were the concrete floor, the heaps of crushed boxes, the toppled shelves, the lights and walls and anything else that might have resembled a warehouse. Instead, I found myself in a cave. There was light, but it looked like it was coming from some kind of nasty, glowing fungus which lined most of the ceiling and walls.

I glanced around, taking in everything at once as I searched for possible threats, and for my quarry. I found neither, but I did see a pair of three-level daises of about a foot high and three feet wide. On the first lay something that reminded me of a sword, only bigger—a lot bigger. There was another dais to the right of it, and though there was something on it as well, I couldn’t properly see what it was; in any case, it didn’t attract my attention the way the big-ass sword did.

I stood up and checked myself for injuries before scanning the room once more. I noticed a third unnatural feature in the cave. It was a wooden shelf, sitting on top of two wooden rods protruding from the stone. On it were several small discs. I ignored them while I touched my head, elbows, and knees, searching for hurts.

I felt fine, beside the fact that I was no longer in the warehouse, and that Tracy—or “Jayna,” as she called herself—had gotten away. No matter, though. As soon as I found out where I was and got back home, I’d find her again. Next time, though, I planned on shackling her ankles as well. She wouldn't get far after that.

I approached the dais on the left. The sword had to be close to four feet long, with a foot-long crossguard. Its silver pommel was shaped like a dragon’s clawed foot and held a black gem that sparkled in the dim, green light of the slime. I didn’t see any signs anywhere and it didn’t look like anyone was there to claim ownership, so I decided to take it for safekeeping. It would look nice mounted on my wall with the rest of my blades, even if I did have to find a way to hang the thing. It looked like it weighed at least fifty pounds.

There were runes forged into the blade by a master smith. “Pinion,” I whispered. I could read what it said, even though I didn’t recognize the language. Weird.

An ornate sheath lay next to the sword. It looked like it was made of lizard skin, maybe snake or alligator. 

I grabbed the sword by its long grip and nearly threw it when I heaved it off the ground. It was surprisingly light. My first thought was aluminum or titanium, but it was even lighter than that. 

“Nice,” I said to the empty room. “This isn’t a legal residence in anyone’s definition. And, abandoned property can’t be stolen. Finders keepers.”

I checked the edge and discovered it was razor sharp. If I encountered any dragons, I knew I’d have a fighting chance. It meant I needed to find a mount the sword wouldn’t gouge, but at least I wouldn’t need any heavy-duty anchors. I imagined myself cornering my next fugitive and drawing the huge blade. Whoever it was would shit their pants. I laughed aloud.

I picked up the sheath and inspected it, too. I looked for a way to attach it to my tactical web belt but couldn’t find one.  Then I remembered the other dais. On it was a thick leather belt, decorated almost the same as the sheath—a matching set! What didn’t match, though, was the brass rings running all the way around one side of the belt. It looked like something had been held there at one time. I had no idea what, though.

I ran the belt through the sheath and secured both to my waist with a brass buckle at one end of the belt. After giving the sword a few more practice swings, mesmerized by how light yet solid it felt, I inserted it into the sheath. It was a perfect fit.

Then I turned to the small coins stacked neatly on the shelf. Each dull silver coin had a small rune on each side, all four of them different. The coins were lighter than aluminum, but I couldn’t work out what these were made of either. I dropped one on a dais to listen to the sound it made, but it simply stuck to the stone, not bouncing even once.

The ground at my feet began to vibrate. I instinctively stepped back and drew Pinion, holding it with both hands. A second later, thick, barbed vines burst out of the ground around the coin like a clawed hand and snatched at the air. I began to wonder if I’d been drugged, but it looked so real, and yet so unreal. It was like magic. At that moment, I suspected it was.

It was a magic trap of some kind. I glanced at the sword, touched the belt, and marveled at the rest of the coins in my hand. I wasn’t in Phoenix anymore.

The vines calmed a moment later, so I approached cautiously and poked one with the tip of the sword. The plant, if that’s what it was, didn’t react to being rudely gouged. The six tentacle-like vines waved and bobbed.

I carefully reached in to scoot the coin closer to me. As soon as I touched it, though, the vines receded back into the ground. I picked it up without further incident and placed all of them in my pocket. I wasn’t sure what I’d just stumbled into, but I was intrigued.

It was time to find an exit. I kept my new sword out and ready. Besides pepper spray, a short expandable baton and a stun gun, I’d left the rest of my tools locked in my truck. Tracy Robertson weighed barely a hundred pounds, after all. And, she wasn’t wanted for violent crimes, just theft, forgery, things like that.

I crept around the edge of the cave. The floor was mostly flat with small pebbles and some scattered pools of water. It was only about fifty feet wide and more or less circular, but I didn’t find the exit until I got half way around. It was small, no more than three feet high, but after crawling for just a yard or so it opened back up again to a ten-foot-wide passage with a ceiling nearly as high. The floor undulated, and I guessed it had once been the home of an underground stream.

I hadn’t traveled far when the passage turned left and I heard chittering voices. I noticed the orange flicker of fire and smelled burning wood. When I finally reached a place from where I could see the fire, I couldn't believe my eyes.

Three giant rats, wearing matted, loose clothes, sitting around a small fire, eating and talking. They had to be at least four feet tall when standing up straight, and though they spoke a language I’d never heard before, I understood.

I recalled what Tracy—or Jayna—had said. She said she needed me to free her. She said she needed me to collect the items she’d left for me. I had a strong suspicion she hadn’t been saying those things because she was drugged—at least not just because she was drugged.

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“Excuse me,” I said, stepping into the light, doing my best to keep the giant sword out of sight. “I’m looking for someone named Jayna.”

The rats looked startled. One of them dropped a bit of what looked like bread. They sniffed the air, long whiskers quivering as they did so, then cautiously sat down and continued to eat. They didn’t take their eyes off me, though.

“Jayna?” I repeated. “Anyone know who she is, or better, where she is?”

The rat who’d dropped his bread stood and hissed at me.

“Begone or we’ll eat your flesh,” the creature hissed, drawing a nasty-looking short sword from his belt. The others stood and drew their own strange blades, and though they didn’t look as confident, the menace in their expressions was unmistakable. They wanted a fight, and they were certain they could win. I was more than happy to disappoint them.

I lifted Pinion to low guard, twisting the blade in my hand to make sure they could see it. The sight of it only seemed to infuriate them more. They attacked.

The first came in straight, screaming at the top of his lungs. It sounded like a police whistle mixed with a harmonica. I swung my sword in a hard downward arc to cause the most damage possible. I was surprised when I split the creature in half and buried my sword several inches into the stone.

The rat dropped his sword, his brain no longer able to send signals to each half, and came apart as the pieces toppled down in opposite directions— one toward me, the other away. Halfway down, the creature’s guts fell out of his belly and onto the stone in two sloppy piles.

The other two didn’t even blink. They charged forward, and it was immediately clear to me what they were going to do. One was approaching on my left, the other on my right. When they got to me, they intended to swing their thin blades at the same time.

I pulled hard at my sword to get it out of the ground, and was again amazed with how light it felt in my hands. I rolled to my left, blocked a wild swing from the nearest rat, reversed my swing, and cleanly severed his head from his body. He began to twitch violently as he fell, and although his brain was several feet away, the creature’s corpse began to run as gouts of blood fountained out of its neck.

The last creature came straight at me, his sword pointed forward like he meant to run me through as if with a lance. I batted his blade down, and the rat impaled himself on his own pommel. As blood bubbled from his dark lips and he gripped his wound, I grabbed his filthy tunic and put my blade to his neck.

A new sound reached my ears. Scurrying feet, whistles and chittering. There were more. I was in their nest, and they were coming.

Those I’d killed must’ve been scouts, there to sound the alarm if they were invaded. Since I was only a single person, they must not have felt threatened. But there had been enough noise to inspire others, possibly hundreds, to find out what had happened. A rat army was on its way. I needed to hurry.

“I’ll ask you again,” I growled at the ratman in my grip. “Where is Jayna?”

The creature smelled like piss, I could barely stand to be as close to him as I was. He lifted one thin, clawed finger and pointed to a tunnel, one of several exiting the small room. Then he died, and I allowed him to slip from my grip.

I headed down the tunnel. This shit was getting weirder by the second. My mind raced to try to find an explanation, but the only solution I could come up with was Jayna. She had some explaining to do.

The tunnel was as tall as the last one but had clearly been worked. The floor was flatter, the walls were straighter. The ceiling still undulated, but, based on the short stature of the rat people, if they were the ones who’d done the work, I didn’t think they would have bothered to correct the natural features of a ceiling they would have trouble reaching.

As I progressed further, I noticed more. There were small alcoves carved into the walls. A few had ruined statues within them, mostly just feet and knees. None of them appeared to be humans or rats. It was difficult to tell with only the moss light, but it looked like the legs were too hairy and too long.

I continued in silence. If there were any other creatures, none of them had checked on the rats I’d killed, or none had been alarmed.

The tunnel suddenly became a proper passage. The floor was as smooth as the concrete back at the warehouse. The walls were straight, and even the ceiling looked like it was finished. I knew I was about to get to somewhere important.About twenty feet ahead, the slimey glow became less intense, and I got a sense of a vast open space beyond. I thought about calling out to Jayna, but if she’d really transported me somewhere by magic, she might have been worried I was pissed and meant to kill her. I was more curious than pissed, though.

I stepped slowly into the room and laid my eyes on the eeriest sight I’d ever seen. I’d been in some weird places before, but they didn’t come even close.

The room was vast, at least a hundred feet deep and maybe twice as wide. The ceiling was far enough away that the glowing moss barely cast any light onto the floor. Most important, though, were the carvings and statues filling the space

Dragons. Lots of dragons. Whoever had commissioned this really had a thing with giant flying lizards. There were other creatures too, though, many of which I recognized from books and movies. I spotted a centaur, a hippogriff, and a giant squid with curling tentacles covered in hooks and barbs.

It was a temple.

The craftsmanship was amazing. Every one of the statues was exquisite and I found myself wondering, if I ever found a way back home, whether the landlord would lose his shit if he came into my apartment and found a couple of these in there.

One statue, however, looked more realistic than the rest. It was a ten-foot-tall hairy beast with hunched shoulders. Its arms were thin and long, its fingers nearly touching the floor. Its legs were long too. As I approached it, I become more and more convinced that it was too lifelike to be made of stone. I stopped and raised my sword to high guard.

How, if Jayna had truly come this way, had she managed to sneak past the beast?A half-second later, it whirled on me and attacked. It lunged, its wide-open maw displaying inch-long pointy teeth. It had black claws, and it was fast.

I spun behind a statue of a winged horse. The creature’s claws raked the stone, sending hot sparks bouncing across the floor. I ducked and felt a gust of air as the thing tried to take my head off with another swing.

There was barely time to bring my sword up before it was knocked aside and I had to roll away to avoid another clawed attack at my head.

I stabbed at its forward leg, but the creature lifted it out of the way surprisingly nimbly and attempted to kick the sword from my grasp. I followed the momentum to my right and made a sweeping strike at its leg again, which it easily dodged before coming at me again.

I didn’t have time to think or plan. I swung hard and ended up cleaving a statue of something that looked like a big-breasted naked woman in half. Too bad. That one would have looked nice next to my television.

The statue fell toward the creature and I backed away, hoping it would be crushed. The hairy beast saw things differently. It picked the half-statue up and hurled it at me as if it weighed no more than a bag of flour.

I dived out of the way but still felt shardsl from the statue pepper the back of my head. The creature howled, turning its drooling muzzle toward the far-away ceiling, listening to the echoes as I stood up and braced myself for battle again.

It looked down and stared at blankly me for a moment, before glancing at the stump of the statue next to it, then at a smaller one of a winged monkey. It looked back at me a last time before finally grabbing it.

I considered using my stun gun, but the monster was far too large. Instead, I reached into my pocket and grabbed one of the dull silver coins I’d found. I wasn’t sure if they all did the same thing or not, but I might as well try. I had to make sure it didn’t see what I was doing, though, so I started backing up like I was preparing to run.

The beast threw the statue up and down in his hand a few times, looked at me, and apparently decided it would be better to attack me with its claws instead. As it lowered itself on its haunches, I dropped the coin and quickly retreated, keeping my sword between my opponent and myself. It lunged, mouth open and clawed fingers extending just as the vines erupted from the ground.

I rushed forward as it frantically fought against the snaring tentacles, stepped to my left to avoid its flailing claws, raised my sword, and brought it down on its neck. It cut through it like butter. The creature’s head fell to the floor and the body stopped moving. The vines, however, continued to snake around it, squeezing tighter and tighter. Blood cascaded from the thing’s neck.

No sooner had I taken a step back and began to relax, than wind began to rush through the temple, swirling eons of dust into the air. I was battered from side to side and had to take a knee, keeping my sword raised against the unseen threat.

The violence of the wind continued to increase, but it started blowing from just one direction. I wrapped my arm around a statue and held my sword close, trying to peer into the dimness as the wind ripped tears from my eyes.

Then I noticed something.

The beast’s hairy body was glowing. I had no idea what it meant, but I didn’t like it. The wind was blowing too hard for me to try to move, though, so I waited.

As the light intensified, so did the wind, until suddenly, I was freed. A glowing cone of wind had formed itself over the creature’s body and was slowly sinking into it. A few seconds later, it vanished, but the body still glowed.

Then a beam of yellow light shot out from the body. I tried to dodge, but it followed me. I brought my sword down to try to block the beam, but it was as if my blade didn’t even exist. When I looked, I saw where the beam was aimed. It was illuminating one of the empty brass sockets on my belt.

I wasn’t in pain. I couldn't even feel it, so I waited and glanced around the room, double-checking that some other opponent wasn’t taking advantage of the situation to sneak up on me. The coast was clear.

Suddenly, the body stopped glowing, and a smooth yellow gem filled the socket on my belt. Neat!

Just a moment later, though, another beam appeared, but it came from the newly appeared crystal this time. I watched in fascination as it formed a glowing cloud in front of me, which began to coalesce into a human-like shape. It slowly became less transparent as limbs, a torso, a head, and the rest of a body began to form. I kept my sword in my hand, just in case.

A few seconds later, the beam stopped, but the cloud remained, darkened, solidified, in the shape of a gorgeous woman. She was completely naked and very human-like except for an abundant crop of hair on her shins and a pair of enlarged canines protruding over her full bottom lip.

She had an olive complexion, and her breasts were well over a plump handful with small, pink areolas. Straight, black hair fell over her shoulders down to her hips. I drank in the sight of her as images of tasting her wet depths flashed bright through my mind.

She was a few inches shorter than me, and when she lifted her eyes to meet mine, I recognized them immediately. There was only one person I knew whose eyes were such a light shade of brown.

“Jayna,” I said.

“Hello, Zac,” she said.

I motioned to the dead, hairy beast. “You were, what, hiding inside that thing?”

She smiled and shook her head. “No. “I was imprisoned within the myth. I was once a powerful witch, but I feel my powers have waned. It took everything I had to bring you here. It was selfish, I’m sorry—but I needed you.”

“Was that a werewolf?”

“Yes.”

“Awesome. I never killed a werewolf before. ”Anyway, now that I’ve saved you, what are your plans? Will you be sending me back?”

Jayna stared at me with a curious expression and cocked her head to one side. “I can’t send you back. I’m sorry, but I no longer have the strength. I have many sisters who are also sealed in myths, as I once was. Please hunt down the myths. Kill them, and rescue the others. They are prisoners and will remain so, but you are good and it would be better to serve you than them.”

It was quite clear what I should choose, but I considered it briefly anyway.

Firstly, and most obviously, there was the sword I held in my hand. I lifted it and inspected the blade. It was completely unmarred, even though I’d chopped through stone twice. I’d do anything to spend more time with this thing of beauty.

Secondly, I was in a world filled with magic—something we didn’t have on Earth, at least not that I knew. Anything and everything was possible. I had coins, for instance, which made dangerous vines pop out of the ground like angry, hooked pythons. I bet the other ones did something different, and I looked forward to finding out what.

Thirdly, well, there was the woman standing in front of me, flaunting her fine body shamelessly. When she noticed me inspecting her body brazenly with my eyes, she even pulled her long hair over her shoulder so I could get a complete view of her gorgeous breasts. The look in her eyes told me it had been a long time since she’d been bedded.

Lastly, instead of hunting humans—which had become routine until I’d met Jayna—I got to hunt monsters. Big monsters. Legendary monsters. I felt a big grin spread across my face.

I sheathed Pinion and grinned. “Count me in.”

I was about to step forward and grab her around the waist, when I heard familiar high-pitched, frantic voices. I turned around, and there they were. Gray bodies draped cloth, leather, and ill-fitting metal armor marched up to the temple entrance. One scurried forward before the others, gasped, and pointed to the werewolf’s corpse.

“They’ve killed the Protector!” he squealed.

The entire mass of overgrown rodents surged forward as angry curses and hisses drowned out all other sounds. I’d tried to avoid fighting the army, but it didn’t look like I had a choice anymore. I drew Pinion and stepped forward.

Jayna had retained some of the fur and fangs of a werewolf. I wondered if she’d kept anything else. She answered my question with a low, guttural growl that echoed off the walls. 

This was going to be fun.