by Mia Archer
It was a girl whose veins were pulsing and looking grotesque. She had fangs in her mouth, and her fingers were already turning to claws.
She took one of those claws and swiped at one of the soldiers who fell back with a cry of surprise.
I frowned. Sloppy. They should’ve been keeping a better eye on what the fuck was going on around them. I was going to have to give dear old dad some shit.
I glanced up to the sky. The sun was almost over the horizon now, but I guess it was close enough to nighttime that there was still opportunity for these fuckers to do some damage.
The girl barreled straight towards me. So it was easy enough for me to trip her as she ran past. The girl went skidding on the ground, and when she turned around she looked like she’d taken one hell of a spill. Like imagine skinning your knee when you’re a little kid crying because that hurts like a motherfucker, only it’d happened to her face and the rest of her body.
“You bitch!” the girl screamed in a rage snarl.
She was on her feet in an instant, and coming right for me. Which was too bad for her.
I pulled my gun and fired two shots right at her center of mass. She flew back, letting out a surprised howl instead of a snarl this time, and went skidding to the ground on her back.
This time the trail of blood she left behind was from the two wounds I’d just opened up in her backside.
“Fucking werewolves,” I said as I holstered my weapon.
I turned around just in time to see a group of soldiers standing there looking dumbfounded as they held their weapons up.
“Are you shooting me next?” I asked. “Because you’ve kind of missed the target.”
They glanced at each other like they were unsure of what to do, then one of them rolled his eyes.
“She really is just like the boss,” he said.
They lowered their weapons. I guess I’d passed the sniff test, or whatever it was they were doing to make sure that I wasn’t a werewolf. Then again the fact that I’d just drilled that particular werewolf with a government issue weapon was probably a big hint I wasn’t one of the hairy beasts.
Not to mention the family resemblance. It seemed like everybody in this unit knew who I was, which was a surprise since I hadn’t been around them since I was a very little girl, but whatever.
“Where’s the boss man?” I asked.
Their leader nodded towards the arena. So I kept right on in the direction I’d been heading before that werewolf had so rudely interrupted me. I was about to step through the front entrance when I heard a familiar voice.
“Kirsten!”
I wheeled around. Angie stood there with a gun at her side, covered in blood and matted fur. She looked exhausted, she was breathing heavily, she had a little bit of a limp and what looked like a claw mark on her leg, but she was alive.
“Angie?” I said.
“Live and in the flesh!” she said, holding her arms out.
“You look like shit,” I said.
She looked me up and down and frowned. “You’re not looking so great yourself!”
I looked myself up and down. Sure I had a little bit of blood on me here and there, but I thought I looked a hell of a lot better than she did.
She had the haunted stare of someone who was trying to come to terms with fighting the supernatural. Though it looked like she’d done a pretty good job of holding the supernatural off if the continued existence of everybody in this arena was anything to go on.
“Rough night?” I asked.
“You have no idea,” she said with a sigh. “They attacked right after you left. After that it was nonstop shooting, but we did it!”
She grinned. It was the kind of grin that made her face light up, despite being covered in the blood of her enemies. Hell, seeing her covered in the blood of her enemies only made her that much cuter.
Not that I was going to follow that thought to its natural conclusion. Something told me Cara would rip Angie to shreds if I started to show even so much as an inkling of interest in my longtime friend. Which I wasn’t going to do because she was a longtime friend.
“Did everyone make it out okay?” I asked.
Angie’s face fell. “Almost everyone. Dave got pulled out through an open door when they were smashing through, and from there…”
I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know the two of you were close.”
“He wishes we were close,” she said. “Still, it sucks to see that kind of thing happen. I could hear his screams through the door.”
“With a little luck you’ll never have to go through something like that ever again,” I said. “I went a good chunk of my life without having to worry about it, after all.”
“Says you,” Angie said, looking up at me with something strange in her eyes.
It was a burning fire I recognized all too well. I’d seen it in my dad’s eyes on more than one occasion. She’d gotten a taste for killing supernatural creatures, and now that she’d gotten that taste she wanted more.
“You’re not coming back to the cheerleading squad, are you?” I asked.
“Why would I?” Angie asked. “Supernatural things are real! Can you believe it?”
She stared at me for a long moment, and then seemed to realize just how ridiculous what she’d said was. Because of course I knew all about supernatural creatures. I was the one who broke the news to the arena that they were about to be invaded by a bunch of fucking werewolves, after all.
“Right,” she said. “Well the fact remains that I’ve discovered all of this shit, and there’s no way I can go back to my normal life after that.”
I looked at the soldiers all around us. Most of them were the same as Angie. People who’d had a brush with the supernatural, managed to survive it somehow, and when they came through on the other side and realized that not only was the supernatural a real thing, but there was an elite government unit dedicated to finding those things and killing their asses with extreme prejudice they signed up almost immediately.
There was something about the kind of person who could survive an experience straight out of a horror movie that made them predisposed to wanting to sign up to go and frag more monsters. Sort of like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, but without any of the reluctance to go back and blow shit up that she’d expressed at the beginning of that most excellent movie.
“I’m sure my dad will take you if you volunteer,” I said. “It’s not an easy life, but you might like it.”
“You’re damn right we’ll like it!” Clint said, stepping up and grinning. “Glad to see you made it through the night, Kirsten.”
“You and me both,” I said, grinning right back at him. “So you’re going to be signing up as well?”
Suddenly everybody from the squad was around us. Including Coach Anderson. I recognize the same look from Angie in all of their eyes. They’d discovered the way the world really worked, and they were ready to go out into the world and kick some ass.
“Wait a second,” Angie said. “What was that you said about your dad?”
“He runs this unit,” I said. “Has for the past twenty years or so. He’s kind of got a reputation, even. I came to college to get as far from that reputation as possible.”
“I knew it!” Angie said, grinning from ear to ear.
“What are you talking about?” Carrie asked.
She looked just a touch ridiculous. She was her usual smiling and bubbly self, apparently a night of werewolves trying their best to kill her still wasn’t enough to overcome that personality trait, but at the same time she looked odd with her blonde hair matted with blood and covered in scratches and bruises.
“My dad is the head of the unit, and if any of you want to get started I’m sure he’d be more than happy to take you on,” I said. “The less said about my family history, the better.”
I looked up at the arena. There were soldiers streaming in and out of the place. Mostly moving college students along and making sure
none of them tried to make a break for it. After all, the last thing they’d want was to let a werewolf get loose.
What kind of stupid idiotic government would let someone who tested positive for something like that just wander around and potentially spread their curse? No, much better to test them before they got out and quarantine them while the opportunity was still there.
“Speaking of family,” I said with a grimace. “I’d better go in there and have a chat with my dad. Something tells me he wants to know all about what happened tonight.”
“What did happen last night?” Carrie asked. “We really could’ve used you in that fight!”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “But I had to settle a grudge with the bitch who started all this, and I couldn’t do that at the arena.”
“Did you take care of her?” Clint asked.
I grinned. “You bet your ass I took care of her!”
“Good,” he said.
I guess everybody had been changed a little by what happened last night. This group had gone from being terrified of werewolves at that house party to being ready to kill any they came across. It was a startling transformation, more startling than some of the more lupine transformations I’d seen since this started, but I guess they had the right stuff in them, as my dad was so fond of saying whenever he came across someone who’d inexplicably survived an encounter with the supernatural.
“You have fun with your family reunion,” Angie said. “We’ll be waiting out here for whatever.”
“Did all of you make sure to get tested?” I asked.
I glanced over to the nearest testing station.
“We did,” Angie said.
I breathed a sigh of relief. After all, it’d be awkward to talk to them about joining up when there was a very real possibility that the curse might’ve been transferred to some of them in the middle of fighting. That was one of the bitches about fighting supernatural creatures, whether you were talking about werewolves, zombies, or vampires. Hell, even ghosts from a certain point of view.
Fighting them meant getting killed added you to their ranks, which was a real son of a bitch in a protracted firefight.
It was a relief to know my friends had made it through mostly unscathed. Sure they looked like they’d gotten the shit kicked out of them, but they were still alive and breathing and they weren’t being turned into werewolves.
“Right,” I said, clapping my hands together. “We’re going to have to catch up later, but I really need to have that family chat.”
“Have fun,” Angie said. “We’re going to be hanging out here for a little while.”
“Put in a good word for us with your dad, though,” Clint said.
“You know it!” I said.
“This is so awesome!” Carrie said. “It’s like a cross between Buffy and Ghostbusters or something!”
I rolled my eyes as I headed into the arena. Of all the people who’d be excited at the prospect of the supernatural being real, Carrie seemed like she should be at the bottom of that list. It was just a touch ridiculous to hear her approaching this with the usual excitement and glee she did everything else in life, but I figured it was better that she was excited rather than being terrified and psychologically scarred.
Whatever. It was time to have that talk with my dad I’d been putting off.
40
Kirsten
“Ma’am, you can’t go in there,” the soldier said.
“Like hell I can’t,” I said, rolling my eyes as I pushed past him.
The guy moved his gun up, but I grabbed it and gave it a quick squeeze.
I wasn’t exactly Kal El come down from the planet Krypton, but I was strong enough to bend the barrel. The guy looked down and blinked a couple of times, and then someone leaned in.
“Boss’s daughter,” the lady said.
“Oh, right,” the guy said, then looked at up at me with an accusing expression. “You could’ve told me.”
“Then we wouldn’t have shared this fun moment, would we?” I said.
“He’s right through there,” the soldier said, still staring down at his weapon.
As I walked inside I could hear their conversation.
“Do you think he’s going to charge me for this?” the dude said. “I mean she was the one who technically broke it, not me!”
“You know how he is about that sort of thing,” the lady said. “You’re so fucked it isn’t funny.”
I smiled as I closed the door behind me. I found myself in a conference room adorned with all sorts of college sports stuff. I figured it was a conference room the coaches or higher ups used.
My dad looked up from some maps laid out on a conference table, but if he was surprised to see me he didn’t show it. Other soldiers stood around him looking at the same map. I recognized some who looked at me and nodded.
“Glad you could join us,” he said. “I hear you took out an entire theater full of werewolves?”
“You know it,” I said.
I meant that literally as well as figuratively. After all, he wouldn’t be saying it if he didn’t already know exactly what I’d done.
“Good,” he said. “We’re mopping up around campus. They were heavily concentrated in the campus village, around the arena, and for some reason the campus nature preserve, but I think we’ve got everything enough under control.”
Other soldiers, men and women alike, standing around the room nodded.
It was odd seeing how cool and collected they were. Like a werewolf invasion wasn’t a big deal.
But of course it wasn’t a big deal to them. They had plenty of experience with this kind of thing, and something as simple as a campus full of werewolves would hardly hold any terror for them.
“So what now?” I asked.
“I have a lot of paperwork to finish,” Dad said. “I’ll have to start the usual cover up stuff which is always a pain in the ass with an incident this big, and…”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” I said. “What about me?”
He paused, then turned to look at everyone around the conference table. They got the point, because they all started filing out as though he’d sent them a telepathic message.
Which he totally hadn’t. He didn’t have the ability to read minds no matter what the rumors said. Even if there had been a few times growing up when it felt like he had that power.
When everyone had filed out he leaned on the table.
“So we’re still having this conversation?” he asked.
“The one where you expect me to be your perfect little hunter?” I said, rolling my eyes. “Yeah, I guess we’re still having that conversation.”
“I always said you could do whatever you wanted with your life,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, letting out a hollow laugh. “And then you went ahead and forced me to do all that training bullshit anyway. That let me know where your heart really was.”
“I trained you like that because of who you are and what I knew you were going to face someday,” he said. “Didn’t that training come in handy the past couple of days? If I hadn’t taught you how to do that stuff then you’d be a corpse somewhere on this campus right now. Not standing here to have this conversation with me.”
I opened my mouth to say that wasn’t fair, then stopped to think about it. The man had a point. I always hated these arguments that started with him having a point. Especially when he had a point that involved me going along with whatever he wanted for my life, and not what I wanted for my life.
Even if I hadn’t been sure what I wanted for my life since getting here other than to define “what I want out of life” to mean the opposite of whatever my dad wanted for my life.
“I’m still not happy about it,” I said, crossing my arms.
“You not happy about being alive?” he asked.
“You know what I mean,” I said.
He sighed and put a hand to his face as he shook his head. It was a surprise seeing him lookin
g vulnerable like that.
“Do you think I don’t know exactly how you feel?” he asked. “You think I don’t know exactly what you’re going through?”
I was surprised. I’d never seen this much vulnerability from him before. It had me freaking out just a little.
“I mean…”
“I thought what I had with your mom would be my chance for having a normal life, then you came along…”
I flinched. Talking about mom had never been my favorite thing.
“And then the night she died. Because of what I do…”
“Please,” I said. “The last thing I need is the tortured monster hunter routine because your day job got your wife killed.”
“But it did,” he said.
“Weren’t you the one who was just getting on me for discounting all the training I had? Maybe if you didn’t have the training and powers you do then you wouldn’t have survived that night. Maybe I wouldn’t have survived that night either, even if mom didn’t make it.”
He shook his head and smiled, but I could tell he still blamed himself for what’d happened that night.
Hell, there’d been plenty of years when I’d blamed him for what happened that night. It was enough to make me wonder if maybe there was something to that. If part of the reason I’d pushed him away was because of that blame.
“Whatever,” I said. “What’s next? You’ve convinced most of the people on my cheerleading squad to join you and become monster hunters.”
“Really? I imagine they’re all in pretty good shape? We could use them. Especially if they’re the ones who held off that werewolf assault last night.”
“They are,” I said. “They had a little help from yours truly, but they were the ones who were in here holding it off.”
“They saved a lot of lives,” he said. “You saved a lot of lives giving them those weapons and a warning.”
I looked away. The last thing I wanted to get into was whether or not I’d been a hero last night.
“As for you,” he said. “You can do whatever you want.”
