Five: Out of the Dark Read Online Free PDF

can of beans. We were all a little surprised to find out she was thirteen years old, I would have guessed closer to nine or ten.
    The addition of Seth and Halli strengthened our team, but the food situation was becoming dire. We were down to just a week’s worth of beans.

    We started to patrol at night. We stuck to the seedier parts of Seattle, the places that seemed to be hotspots for paranormal activity. The cops didn’t patrol in those areas. Any unexplainable incidents were chalked up to druggies or crazy homeless people. We found the dark streets and alleys were the perfect places for those of the Netherworld to conduct their business. We decided to use our special abilities to protect the poor and downtrodden people that lived or merely existed there.
    We stayed out of human affairs and concentrated our efforts on the un-human. On dark forces like Demons and the evil men who summoned them. Or baby-stealing Faeries, flesh-eating Trolls, annoying Goblins, and other such nefarious creatures. My life as a pastor’s daughter certainly hadn’t prepared me for any of this—these weren’t things he mentioned in his Sunday sermons.
    With the protection of our fellow humans in mind, the five of us set out in an area we hadn’t been before. We walked past a small grocery store and heard a terrified scream coming from inside. I was closest to the door, so I rushed in and I saw, with a small measure of excitement, a small group of Goblins. They were terrorizing the grocer and one of his customers. I shrunk back from the ugly little creatures that looked like chubby meth-heads. I didn’t want to get any of the oozing yuck on me that was coming from the open sores that pocked their yellow-gray skin. They were all disgusting, but one in particular made me want to hurl when it stuck a short, fat finger in its bulbous nose and removed a slimy booger the size of a small rodent. It flicked the booger at the grocer.
At least it didn’t eat it
, I thought with disgust.
    A rope was wound around the grocer and the elderly customer. The Goblins were taunting them and throwing produce at them. The store was a mess.
    “Hey! Perfect timing!” Alec yelled as he stepped to my side. “We just studied about Goblins.”
    I smiled.
    It took us no time at all to dispatch the nasty creatures. I took aim and exploded my Goblin into a pile of green tar-like ichor.
    Halli and Alec ganged up on one and it burst into flames before it was even aware we were there. Seth dropped a shelf full of canned goods on his, smashing it like a pancake. Johnathan cast a spell that made the Goblin’s tongue swell up so big the creature turned purple and choked on it. He won the prize for the most creative kill of the night.
    As creatures of the Fae, the Goblins’ remains didn’t stick around for long. They smoldered for a few minutes before evaporating back into the Netherworld where, we’d recently read, they would eventually reform. So killing them didn’t really kill them, it just sent them away for a while.
    Alec and Seth untied the grocer and his customer. The elderly woman hobbled away screaming from the store.
    The grocer said, “Thank you, kids. My name’s Joe and before you ask any questions, I don’t want to talk about what just happened. I’d rather just pretend it was a bad dream.”
    Johnathan introduced us and asked, “Can we help you clean up this mess?”
    “Oh, that would be great. Let me put out the ‘closed’ sign.”
    During the hour it took us to clean up the store, Joe skillfully turned the conversation in such a way as to coerce us into telling him we lived on our own. He didn’t pry, or try to find out why or where we were staying.
    Joe handed a bag full of non-refrigerator dependent groceries to each of the boys before he let us out the locked door. We started to walk away when he called, “Johnathan? Uhh, just so you know. I … uh,
throw out
the old stuff every Wednesday, you know, to make room for my Thursday morning