Hunters Blues (Woodcutter's Grim, #9) / Woodcutter's Grim (ePub)

For the ten generations since the evil first came to Woodcutter's Grim, the Guardians have sworn an oath to protect the town from the childhood horrors that lurk in the black woods. Without them, the town would be defenseless...and the terrors would escape to the world at large.

Loosely based on "Little Snow White" by the Brothers Grimm.

The year is 2093. When the evil in Woodcutter's Grim unleashed with a vengeance fifty years ago, humans turned into ghouls that avoided the sun and water...and had the innate instinct to contaminate others with their evil. In no time at all, the evil spread and wiped out most of the world's population before the Protectorate--the guardians sworn to protect Woodcutter's Grim and those outside against the evil pervading it--came up with a way to hold the threat at bay, not completely but enough to save those few left. In these years, everything has changed, from occupations to marriage. A curfew has been imposed and all live within the heavily-fortressed walls on the Shaussegeny Estate. Few children are born and those that are have a mutated form of dwarfism that makes them barren. Protectorate hunters patrol the world outside in the daylight. They are the last of humanity with no idea how much future they actually have left.

Unofficial Guardian and hunter, Reece Pallaton, wonders what it's all for and whether he'll lose everyone he cares about in this endless battle. Fellow Protectorate Brethren, Mishell "Shell" Anderson insists that they can find a cure, a way to survive and push back the evil, that life will someday go back to normal. But Reece is beginning to believe that the battle he and what's left of humanity are waging can never be won...until he discovers the source of the evil, the mirror that's only the opposite half of the "glass darkly" world he lives in, and his own terrifying connection to both.