by Chloe Garner
“No,” Samantha said loudly. “I’m going to bed now.”
“Sleep well,” Jason said.
“Hey,” Sam said, touching her wrist. She jerked away and felt silly. He frowned. “Just. Thank you.”
She nodded.
“Yeah.”
She scurried into the bed, taking care to choose the side that Sam didn’t sleep on, and forced her eyes shut and her brain to shut down. She didn’t want to think about it. She just didn’t want to think about it.
<><><>
Sam woke her once, hours later.
“I need help,” he gasped. Samantha sat up sharply in bed, looking at him. Jason was sitting woodenly on the couch, pretending to watch television. Sam was drenched in sweat and was talking through clenched teeth.
“Idiot,” she said, moving aside for him to lie down. His body was stiff. She put her hand on his chest and poured a shot of energy into him. He sagged into the mattress with, if she had been any less generous, what she would have characterized as a sob.
“You need to wake me up if it gets bad. At all,” she said, shoving his shoulder. “This can cause brain damage if it goes badly. The neural networks in your brain are changing and that has every potential of failing.” She pinched him. “Do not.” She pinched him again. “Let it get that bad. Okay?”
He nodded and rolled to the floor, landing in a crouch and standing slowly.
“Are you okay now?” she asked. He nodded. She got up onto her knees and put her hand on his chest again and hit him once more. His shoulders dropped and his breathing evened.
“Don’t lie to me, not to protect me, not to make me feel better. Not about this,” she said. He sighed and nodded.
“I’m not used to…”
“Being dependent. Yeah. Get used to it. Just for a few days, but get used to it.”
Jason’s eyes jerked over, then jerked back to the television. He looked angry.
“Go back to sleep,” Sam said. Samantha nodded.
“You’ll wake me,” she said. It was an order. He nodded.
“Yeah.”
Samantha brought her laptop over to the bed when Sam went to bed, sitting on top of the comforter, illuminated by the screen. He fell asleep to the sound of her tapping on it, and slept hard. He woke happy with warm dreams to find her still there.
“Did you even move, last night?” he asked, rolling to face her. She smiled, but inched away from him. He frowned. “What’s wrong?”
She licked her lips and glanced at Jason.
“I don’t want you to think…” she said and trailed off. He rubbed his eyes.
“What?”
She looked at Jason again for a long time. He sighed.
“Look, if you’re interested in Jason, I get it.”
She sprung off the bed.
“No. No no no no no. No, no, no. No no no no no.”
He laughed.
“Then what?”
She opened her mouth, then sighed.
“Nothing. I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” she said. He rolled onto his back and stretched. He felt good, today. Really good.
“Look, I’ll try, but if you don’t tell me what the wrong idea is…” he said. She screwed her eyes shut, then shook her head.
“Just… never mind, okay?”
“All right.”
“Shut up, Abby,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“What did she say?” Sam asked. She looked at him.
“Oh. Um. I don’t actually hear her say anything,” she said. “It’s not like that.”
Sam stared at her for a second.
“So did you figure out where the lair-slash-nest is?” she asked.
He sat up and stretched again.
“Think so,” he said. “There’s an old mining camp in the middle of their range. Couple of old buildings. Goblins like abandoned buildings.”
“You guys do cultural studies?” she asked. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. His mind was clear, his chest was easy, and his stomach was… hungry.
“Just really old knowledge,” he said. “We add to it when we can, but most of it is just passed on.”
She nodded. His stomach grumbled.
“I’m going with you, today,” she said. “You’re never going to trust me, if I don’t just go.”
“I completely trust you,” he said, genuinely offended.
“Not to be able to take care of myself,” she said. He had to admit, that wasn’t untrue.
“This could get bad,” he said. “If I wasn’t worried about the group fracturing, or deciding that hunting humans wasn’t so hard, I’d call in backup.”
“You guys have backup?” she asked.
“There are lots of us. We work together sometimes.”
She walked over to her backpack and started rooting around in it, apparently organizing.
“All the more reason for me to go with you,” she said.
“Absolutely not,” Jason said, yawning grandly. “You’re not coming today.”
“Is it because I’m a girl?” she asked.
“No,” Jason said, getting up and yawning again. Sam looked over at Samantha.
“It really isn’t. Some of the best Rangers we know are women.”
“Then it’s because you don’t think I’m good enough,” she said. Jason gave her a wide-eyed ‘well, duh’ look and went in to the bathroom.
“Where do new Rangers come from?” Samantha called in after him.
“Well, when a mommy Ranger and a daddy Ranger really love each other,” Jason called back out. She snorted.
“You know what I mean.”
“Where do you think? We train them.”
“So train me,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere until I know Sam is stable. You may as well just accept that I’m eventually going to go out with you for the dangerous stuff, and stop fighting it.”
Jason stuck his head out of the bathroom with a toothbrush stuck in his mouth and said something unintelligible.
“What?” she asked. He pulled his head back into the bathroom and spat loudly.
“You seriously want us to train you?” he asked. She spread her arms.
“Sure.”
Jason glanced at Sam, then turned on the faucet and spat several more times.
“I’m not a patient trainer,” he said. She shrugged.
“I promise you wouldn’t be the worst I’ve had.”
He looked at Sam again, and Sam shrugged. She had a point.
“Fine. But today, you stay behind us and do your best,” he said, then waved his toothbrush at her, “and I mean your very best to stay out of all of it. You observe.”
She closed one eye menacingly, but Jason didn’t back down.
“Fine,” she said. “Deal.”
He considered for a minute, then nodded.
“Deal. Who wants breakfast?”
Sam’s stomach grumbled audibly, again.
<><><>
The mine had a processing facility that had, at one point in its proud history, pumped tons and tons of gravel around and about, up this conveyor and through that wash pit, probably in the hope of finding gold. Now it was thick with dust, except where stray goblin footprints had disturbed it and in their main walkways, which were perfectly clean. From the clicking and buzzing around them as they walked into the building, Sam knew they had hit a huge nest. Bigger than he’d ever heard of. Jason pulled out a gun and Sam carried a steel-studded baseball bat and a hunting knife. Jason motioned at the doorway that this was as far as Samantha went. The building had a pair of corrugated steel doors slid apart by maybe six feet, and it was in this gap that Jason stopped her.
Sam and Jason looked at each other and counted it out. One, two, three, then made their way out of the main room and into the first office.
In some ways, it was like a video game. They knew their parts and they played them the same way every time. The goblin up in the corner of the room, Jason shot. Sam clubbed do
wn the one that came out from under the desk, then stabbed it in the chest to ash it. The angry cries drew new ones into the doorway leading deeper into the building, some of which simply hissed at them, and others of which charged. Jason shot them down, one, two, three, four, and Sam clubbed the one who survived the shot, stabbing it as well.
Jason cleared the doorway, some kill shots, some not, and they counted the next advance. One, two, three. A surprise from behind them got a hold on Sam’s elbow - how had he gotten there? - and Jason kicked it, holding it down under a foot and shooting it in its hideous, gourd-split face. Their features were desiccated, like skin strung over bones, but their mouths were massive, two plates of solid teeth, like a shark. They spat blood and dead tissue when they screamed, and they smelled like death rot until they ashed.
Sam felt a decent gash in his arm where the goblin had gotten a good grip on him, but it didn’t interfere with his motion, so he nodded and they pressed on.
Fourteen dead, one-and-a-half rooms down.
They continued into a small processing room where Jason had to change clips. A few of the smarter goblins charged them, but Sam had his gun out before they were halfway across the room - two of them in flight - and he killed one and knocked back the other three, long enough for Jason to load the next clip, then they were back on task. The three survivors from the wave died quickly after that. The next room was open and properly swarming with goblins, in the air, on the ceiling, walking. Sam thought he might have seen more than twenty of them, just in that space. He and Jason pulled back.
“Are they going to attack or are they going to run?” Jason asked. It was speculation either way.
“We’ve got them plenty mad,” Sam said. “I’d rather pull them through the door and risk them running.”
Jason nodded.
“Done.”
They settled and braced for the swarm, Sam standing in advance of Jason’s left by several feet, so that he would draw the goblins left and across Jason’s range without endangering himself.
<><><>
Samantha stood near the entrance to the garage, looking up at the second story windows where, occasionally, she would see a muzzle flash from Jason’s gun. She sighed. There was a song forming in her mind whose only lyric was ‘bored’.
She turned her head when she heard glass break above and in front of her, and she took a step back as a flood of so-called goblins came flying out of it.
“Uh, guys!” she called, reaching into her bag. The goblins settled on their feet and formed a semi-circle around her, advancing on her and the gap in the doors that she was blocking.
“Guys!” she called again, dropping her backpack at her feet. There was no answer.
“Dang,” she said, unzipping the top of the bag and reaching into it.
<><><>
Sam and Jason ran into the next room, realizing what had happened. They looked down into the open first floor with a sick dread. Samantha was standing in the midst of easily thirty goblins.
“What has she got?” Jason asked.
“Looks like a crowbar,” Sam said.
The first goblin worked up the nerve to charge her, and Jason raised his gun. Sam pushed it back down.
“Do you really believe you’re that good?” he asked.
“We have to do something,” Jason said. Samantha swung the flat end of the three-foot crow bar at the goblin and its head exploded, morphing mid-air from gore to ash. Three ran at her at once, and she cut the first one in half and doubled the second one over, then stabbed the third one in the chest and spun to hit the second one over the head, driving it to the ground, and then smashed its head with a full overhead swing.
Then things got chaotic.
Goblins attacked her on foot and from the air, no longer in waves, but in one sudden press. She took them on one at a time, then exploded them all back with a full-circle sweep of the crowbar.
“Are you seeing this?” Jason asked.
“Are you going to go help her?” Sam asked back. Jason made a popping noise in the back of his throat.
“Are you kidding? I’m not going anywhere near her until this is all over. She’s insane.”
The last half-dozen fled, and she gave chase. Jason hunted in his bag for a long hunting knife, glancing at Sam.
“I’m not going to get outdone, cleaning up, but I don’t want to shoot her by accident, either.”
Sam nodded, and they charged into the next room, running into two fleeing goblins with rolling, fearful eyes. Sam took a full swing at the first, and Jason grabbed the other one’s arm and stabbed it in the ribs. Another tried to get by overhead, but rained ash on them, when Samantha’s stiletto hit it. Sam dodged to the side as the knife clattered onto the floor.
“There’s one more downstairs, if you want it,” she said, shaking ash out of her hair. Sam and Jason followed her back downstairs, and she pointed up at the rafters. Jason pulled his gun out and took aim, shooting it neatly in the head and ashing it. They turned to look at Samantha. Her eyes went from one of them to the other and back again, waiting, the tiniest hint of a smile playing on her open mouth.
“Well, I’ll say it,” Jason said. “Damn.”
<><><>
Thirty minutes later, they were sitting in a booth at a steak-and-ribs joint where it was yet too early to turn on the mechanical bull. Sam and Jason glanced at each other again.
The ride back had started with the two of them starting one question, then another, and finally Samantha had asked if she could turn on some music, instead. Now Jason looked at Sam, and Sam nodded.
“Okay,” Jason said. “First of all, that was awesome. Truly, truly awesome.” He looked at Sam, and Sam nodded, first at Jason, then at Samantha, his face earnest.
“Awesome,” he agreed.
“Second,” Jason continued, “who the hell are you?”
Samantha leaned back against the back of the booth and spread her arms to either side. She crossed a leg at the ankle across her knee and glanced over at the bar, a saucy, familiar smile spreading across her face. She looked back at the brothers, who were watching her expectantly.
“Well, here’s the thing. I used to run with a cat named Carter,” she said.
There was a beat, then Jason shook his head.
“Carter who?” he asked. Samantha frowned.
“Carter. The Carter.”
Jason shook his head, then looked over at Sam, who also shook his head. Samantha dropped her foot on the floor and leaned forward onto the table.
“I’m further out in the sticks than I thought,” she said. She paused. “I’ve never had to explain him before. Jeez, I’ve always had to put on the pretentious act, just so people would believe me.”
“Carter who?” Jason prompted again.
“Huh.”
She looked out the window.
“Sam?” Sam asked. She waved at him.
“Give me a second,” she said. “This isn’t something I’ve had to explain, before.”
Finally she looked back at them.
“Okay. Carter was, is, my mentor. He’s the one who taught me everything I know. He’s also the most powerful human who has ever lived.”
“No ego there,” Jason said.
“No, it’s true. Here, phone. He’s actually my emergency contact, too. If something goes wrong and I need help, call him, and say what you need while the phone is ringing. Otherwise he won’t pick up.”
She punched buttons on Jason’s phone, then looked up.
“I’m a Shaman. I learn things. I know things. It’s what I do. I’ve spent the last seven years, well the five years before the last two, studying. Mostly demons. Quite a lot of magic, too. Some about angels, but there’s not really a lot of reliable literature on them,” she said.
“Shaman,” Sam said.
“Then why didn’t you know what the gremlin was?” Jason asked. “Or the goblins?”
She winced her nose.
“Technically, I never said I didn’t know what t
hey were. I just didn’t know what you’d call them.”
“What would you call them?” Sam asked.
“Fire demons, class five and four, when I’m being technical. Mostly we call them scrub demons… squish demons… algae… bog demons… bugs…” she paused. “There’s a long list. We don’t actually include anything below class one in the census.”
“What would you call the Nix?” Sam asked. She laughed.
“Humanoid. Not my problem.”
Jason snorted.
“Right. You study demons,” he said. She shrugged.
“Oh, we hunt them, too,” she said. “Kind of our purpose.”
“Who? Who is we?” Jason asked. Samantha pursed her lips.
“We. Us. Not them. You know? We don’t give ourselves a name, because if you don’t know who we are, you don’t matter,” she said. “It’s exactly as egotistical as it sounds, but it’s elite. Really elite. And I got in. And then I got out.”
“If we do the same kind of work, how come we’ve never heard of… them?” Jason asked. Samantha looked at him guiltily, feeling bad for what she was about to say.
“We call you mad dogs. Or crash-test dummies. Beggars. Bugs. Actually, a lot of the same things we call squish demons,” she said. “We know about you, in general. Though, I’d never heard of the Rangers. I kind of assumed you would know about us.” She ducked her head. “The way the minor league players know the major league players, but not the other way around.”
Sam and Jason were silent for a minute. Jason looked stormy.
“Look. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of it. I had a normal childhood. And I got out, because I didn’t want to be a part of it any more.”
“Why?” Sam asked. She paused, looking at him.
“We know how this ends, right?” she asked. “Everyone who does this kind of job? We die bloody. If you’re lucky, you die in a puddle of your warm blood. If you aren’t, you die, screaming, in a puddle of your cold blood.” She felt her eyes darken, as she remembered. “I had enough.”
“Not everyone,” Jason said.
“Almost,” Sam answered softly. Samantha looked up, realizing that they had their own stacks of bodies.
“Not me,” Jason said defiantly.
Samantha looked out the window, somber.
