Bill Blais

“I’m in a secret underground hideout of a group of monster hunters, filled with magical totems, brass monkeys that move and enough firepower to take over a small country.”

“We fight monsters and unholy creatures for a living here. Grotesque, evil, violent, dangerous; they’re certainly all these things. And yet, we somehow manage to go to sleep each night and wake up each morning. The terror wears off. What was horrific becomes mundane. We lose ourselves to a numbed normalcy after a while, a self-inflicted detachment. You forget how you got here, what it was like before. And then someone comes along, someone new, someone who sees it all with fresh eyes, and it snaps you out of your daily coma, reminding you of what you’ve forgotten. Of what you’ve become.”

“That thing ruined my favorite T-shirt," complains Mario."Whatever." It’s Marianne’s voice. "You were just looking for a reason to get your shirt off." I try to look around for her, but my neck refuses.”

“Down every hall is a gruesome tangle of impossible creatures, and every one of them is split open or strung with barbs or dragging their insides after them, flailing along on shattered limbs or shredded wings or blasted stumps. I’ve got the pistol, half a can of spray and a handful of useless shotgun slugs.I’m dead.”

“Telling someone like my mother that Hell is a real, physical place, somewhere you can travel to and from, would be like spray-painting the statue of Jesus hanging over the pulpit during mass. Better off telling her the Pope is gay.”

“Demons exist,' he says simply, as if talking about the weather. 'They are real and they are dangerous. We hunt them when necessary and return them when we can.”

“I chew the inside of my lip, considering for a second what it would be like to slap this skinny little witch right across her tight-lipped little face. ~Kelly about Suni”

“Most people create a destiny of minutiae, of the mundane. They create their own limitations. When the moment comes for them to stretch and leap, they find themselves boxed in, locked down by their own fears.”

“You want me to join your group of demon hunters," I can’t believe I just said that out loud, "because of a can of pepper spray and a boat load of luck? You’re insane.”

“The glove suddenly feels much heavier, now, more dense. The rush of power didn’t come through me, but wrapped around me; invisible and strangely empty, like a purely mechanical force. It wasn’t like I just got stronger; it was separate from me, like something stepped in and punched him instead of me. I pull the glove off gingerly, half afraid I’ll punch my own fingers off.”