Rangers

by Chloe Garner

  “Sit still, keep your mouth shut, and I may resist the urge to stab you.”

  “Again,” Jason teased.

  She drew a complex symbol on his left shoulder blade, then, in a burst of inspiration, went and got the bottle of dark rot blood and, holding her thumb over the top of the bottle, turned it over and back, then put the fingerprint of blood at the center of the mark.

  “I’ll draw from that in the morning,” she said. “It should have filtered out everything okay.”

  She stood and looked at Sam, then smiled.

  “I need you to listen to his heart,” she said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Put your ear to his chest and listen to his heart.”

  Sam walked slowly across the room and sat down on the bed, far enough from Jason that he would have had a hard time reaching him with his arms, and looked at her again. She smiled the same mildly sadistic smile and nodded.

  “Tell me what you hear.”

  He shifted forward and glanced at Jason. Jason rolled his eyes and shrugged. He leaned in and put his ear to his brother’s chest. That was a heart beat, all right.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Focus,” Samantha said. “What do you hear?”

  He closed his eyes and listened harder.

  “Okay, obviously, I am not the only one who thinks this is weird,” Jason said.

  “Shut up,” Sam said. There was something there. A strange whispering whooshing noise, like a secret.

  “You’ve got it?” Samantha asked. He nodded. “Here,” she said. He looked up. She offered him a stethoscope.

  “Oh, come on. That’s just mean,” Jason said.

  “Tell me where it’s coming from,” Samantha said.

  “You mean, other than his heart?” Sam asked.

  “You’ll know when you find it,” she said.

  Jason yelped when Sam put the stethoscope against his chest, and Sam sat back, warning Jason with his eyes. Jason grinned.

  “Cold.”

  Sam slapped the cup against Jason’s chest again and listened. It was clearer, now, but… he slid the cup down, following the source of the sound. It came through his heart, but it didn’t start there.

  “Watch it where you go with that thing,” Jason said, leaning away.

  “Shut up,” Sam said. “There. It’s from there.”

  Samantha nodded and elbowed Jason further out of the way, wrapping her fingers in a fist over the point that Sam had indicated. She massaged the air for a moment, as if she were getting a better grip, then pulled. Jason yelped, pulling away, but she was merciless, twisting her wrist as she wrapped some invisible strand around her hand over and over again until she hit a hard stop. She tugged at it and Jason yelled. She pushed his shoulder down onto the bed and jerked.

  “Ow!” he yelled. She relaxed her hand and shook it. Sam wondered if it were something physical she was shaking loose, or just an idea of it. How strange.

  “Well done,” she said to Sam, ignoring Jason. She dragged her backpack into the front of the room and sat down at the table, pulling out her laptop and proceeding to ignore them both.

  Samantha agreed to stay. Just until she figured out what she should do. They hunted a ghost in Baltimore and then a small group of demons in Orlando, and somewhere along the way, Sam met a girl.

  “Aww, look…” Samantha teased one morning. “Look, Jason. He’s texting her again.” She held splayed fingers out in front of her mouth, grinning. The puppy-ish affection he had felt for the girl named Carly from the first night had amused her, and she and Jason wasted few opportunities to mock him. He kept checking with Samantha to make sure that he wasn’t hurting her, but the truth was that the relief she felt easily swamped her jealousy and the secret feelings of betrayal somewhere deep under everything else. The pressure was off. Even Jason stopped suggesting that she was Sam’s girlfriend when he introduced her to people. One day he had even called her his own girlfriend.

  They were happy.

  Except when she teased him.

  He dropped his phone into his lap and glared across the table. Jason dropped his arm across Samantha’s shoulders and rubbed his chin.

  “Over-under on hearts and kisses?”

  “Three,” she said. He nodded.

  “Too low. I’ll take the over.”

  Samantha held out her hand for the phone and he put it in his pocket defensively.

  “When are we going to meet the mysterious Carly, anyway?” she asked.

  “It’s not like I ever see her, either,” Sam said. They had run into each other in passing in New Orleans, and he had taken her for dinner as they were headed north, once, in Nashville, but in the three weeks since they had met, he had only actually spent a few hours with her. He had explained, as carefully as he could, that he didn’t want to explain Samantha until absolutely as late as possible, because there was no way that wasn’t going to be awkward. Samantha heartily agreed. Which meant she was free to tease him as much as she wanted.

  “So, how has your internet stalking gone?” Jason asked. “Anything new on her?”

  “I’m not stalking her. I’m just… finding where she has accounts and…”

  “You’re following her around like a puppy,” Samantha said, then turned to Jason. “Puppies don’t stalk. You’ve got it all wrong.”

  She apparently had a business online and did a lot of traveling. Samantha and Jason had a theory that Sam was manipulating when they started off across the country so that he could ‘accidentally’ bump into her, but that he was completely inept. Sam was not ignorant of this theory.

  “Guys…” Sam said. “I really like her.”

  Samantha reached across the table and took his hand.

  “And that’s exactly why we have to make fun of you. Supporting you would just be creepy.”

  Jason nodded agreement. The waitress came with their breakfast check and Jason paid it.

  “Shall we head up?” he asked.

  Samantha knew that now it was her turn.

  They were a tiny town in the high mountains of Colorado, hunting a werewolf.

  “We could just leave her here,” Sam said. “Since she knows that we aren’t going to find anything.”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking that maybe the fresh mountain air might be enough to justify the hike,” Jason answered. “But obviously we aren’t going to find anything.”

  There was a plot of land miles away from the nearest paved road where teenagers dared each other to go camping, apparently. They brought back shredded tents and stories of near-escape. The land was owned by a wealthy man in Boston who, some years, would come in the winters to hunt. No one knew much else about it, other than that there was a tiny cabin that the hard-core dares centered around. If the werewolf didn’t get you, out camping, he would certainly get you if you tried to sleep in the cabin. Here the stories turned hysterical.

  “It’s a hunting cabin,” Samantha said. “Ooooh.”

  “I hate the idea of us just wasting your time like this,” Sam said.

  “Think of it as an educational opportunity. You’re going to prove just how right you are,” Jason said.

  “As if I need more of those,” Samantha answered. He grinned and they set off.

  Thirty miles out of town, they left the car on the side of a road, and Samantha picked up her backpack and pulled out a compass. She handed Sam the topographic map and started up the hillside.

  Up this high, it was always cold, and they were starting off too early for the sun to have warmed the ground much at all. The first couple of miles were as much in mountain shade as they were in sun. Samantha felt great.

  They were in and out of the tree line a lot for the next several miles, and Sam and Jason started to fall behind.

  “Come on, guys. You were the ones who felt bad for wasting my time,” she called. “Keep up.”

  “It’s because she’s so much smaller than us,” Jason panted as she waited for them.

  “I’m
the one carrying fifteen pounds in knives, alone,” she said.

  “Not that those are going to do her much good, against a werewolf,” Sam said, bending over his knees.

  “Not that she plans on having to use them, anyway,” Jason said, then stood up. “How do you do it?”

  “This is home,” she said. “I grew up within a hundred and fifty miles of here. The land’s all the same. That way, it’s green, that way it’s brown, but the rock. The rock is the same.”

  She smiled up at the sun, lifting her sunglasses and squinting her eyes at the sky.

  “Your body doesn’t forget what home feels like.”

  She turned and trotted on, checking the compass. They should be getting close. Another few miles should put them within range of the cabin, where she’d have to use the topo to get the rest of the way there. Sam and Jason staggered on behind her.

  They were on the down-side of a mountain, back well below the treeline when she saw the first shadow. She stopped.

  Could have been anything. Probably startled an elk. They had an uncanny ability to blend away to nothing, despite their bulk. She waited.

  Sam came up behind her, gasping and dropping to a knee.

  “Something ambushes us now,” he said, taking another breath, “we’re in trouble.”

  He looked at her, paying just enough attention to realize that something had changed.

  “What?” he asked, standing. There was another rustle, and she drew her machete. Jason staggered into the small clearing, and a giant gray body sprang out of dense undergrowth, knocking him to the ground and then dashing away. Samantha felt her arm drop to her side.

  “Huh.”

  <><><>

  Jason struggled back to his feet, trying to put the brief snatches of images into some semblance of sense in his head.

  “That was it, wasn’t it?” he asked, leaning against a tree.

  “Are you okay?” Sam asked.

  “No harm done,” Jason said. “Let’s go.”

  He pulled out the clip of silver ammunition that they kept for the special creatures and loaded it into his gun and checked to make sure that Sam was ready with the shotgun. Lead wouldn’t stop them, but it would slow them down plenty and give Jason a shot at it with silver. They followed, but the trail was hit or miss. Twice more, the big gray body sprung out at them. Sam got a clear shot at it once, but there was no evidence whether he had hit it or not.

  “Something isn’t right,” Samantha muttered. Jason glanced over as she snagged the map out of Sam’s back pocket.

  “You?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure that I’ve got all the evidence I need to believe in werewolves. Again.”

  Samantha’s head was up, and she pointed.

  “That way,” she said. There was a crashing sound in the opposite direction and Jason caught another glimpse of gray fur.

  “That way,” Samantha said again, leading off. Jason looked at Sam, who shrugged. Jason looked after the crashing noise, then reluctantly followed.

  “You did see the giant monster running around in the woods, right?” he asked. “You know, the one we came here to kill?”

  “We’re close,” she said.

  “Yeah, he’s just… right over there.”

  She found a deer path and followed it at a trot over a crest in the mountainside and stopped.

  She had found the cabin.

  It was in a relatively large clearing, with a stream coming down the mountainside cutting a rocky swath in the green turf in front of it.

  “This is where it lives,” Samantha said. Jason pointed again.

  “And… that’s where it is,” he said. Sam put a hand up.

  “Give her a minute,” he said.

  “Why?” Jason asked. “We know where it is.”

  “I don’t know. Just give her a minute.”

  She waved the map behind her until Sam took it and then she set off across the lawn, cautiously opening the front door to the cabin. It squealed, but Jason noticed that the wood didn’t have the sense of complete disrepair of an abandoned building. Looking inside, he was certain that something lived here.

  The three of them walked inside. It had the sparse, utilitarian feel of a survivalist cabin, but the far corner was what drew Jason’s immediate attention. Fully a quarter of the cabin was empty of furniture. The floor and walls were dark brown in a pattern that he had long ago learned to recognize.

  “That’s blood,” he said. It was almost overwhelming in quantity. Soaked thick in the wood on a six foot by six foot floorspace, easily, it also coated the walls to shoulder height, with spray patterns above that. The door behind them slammed into the outside wall of the cabin, and the huge creature screamed at them, a high-pitched barking noise. Sam and Jason raised their weapons and it charged on four feet, knocking Sam to the floor then rearing up to swipe at Jason. Jason ducked and fired, but missed way wide right. It swiped again and smashed him into one of the bloody walls.

  “Wait,” Samantha said, stepping forward. It raised a huge, hairy paw to strike her, but she held up her hands. “I’m unarmed and not a threat. You will not attack me.”

  “Sam, get out of the way,” Sam said. She stepped more intentionally in front of him. Jason was back on his feet in another second, and she stepped closer to the creature, blocking his clean shot of it.

  “Wait,” she commanded loudly. “Just wait.”

  She looked at Jason.

  “Get behind me. You make me nervous over there.”

  He held his hands out and she widened her eyes at him.

  “Now.”

  He walked over and helped Sam up, shaking his head at his brother.

  “She is the float queen of the crazy parade,” he said. Sam was staring at her.

  “Now. They aren’t a threat. I am not a threat. I’m going to take a look at you, and you aren’t going to do anything to stop me,” Samantha said. The beast was visibly deflating as she stepped forward and pulled at its ears, its fur.

  “Open,” she said, pulling at its lower jaw. It looked at Sam and Jason with shame and opened its mouth.

  “You’ve got all the necessary parts. You will speak,” Samantha ordered. “You’re gray?”

  “Yes,” it said.

  “Is this all feeling a bit surreal to you?” Jason asked Sam. Sam nodded wordlessly.

  “You’re clean?” she asked.

  “Yes,” it said. She turned and looked back at Jason and Sam.

  “Put the guns away.”

  Jason looked at the handgun and slowly holstered it, unable to come up with any convincing argument. Sam put the shotgun into his bag. Samantha pulled a chair away from the table and sat down, crossing her legs.

  “I expect that get-up seemed like a much better idea, a hundred years ago,” she said.

  The creature nodded.

  “It worked until the last thirty years or so,” he said. “Used to be, you scared them as teenagers, they stayed away for the rest of their lives. Now they just send their friends.”

  “How long have you been here?” she asked. It appeared to struggle to answer.

  “Two hundred years. More or less. I’ve never counted.”

  “You own the land?” she asked. It nodded.

  “Impressive paper trail. Who set it up for you?”

  It told her, and she nodded.

  “He does good work.” She waved her hand at Sam and Jason. “I’m sorry. I’ve been rude. I’m Sam. The half-wits over there are Sam and Jason.”

  It made a noise that Jason could only guess was its name. Samantha looked over at him smugly.

  “This is a mist demon,” she said. “Not anything more exotic.”

  “But… the silver,” he said. “They’re allergic to silver.”

  She tipped her head back and sighed, then smiled apologetically at the demon.

  “He’s allergic to silver the way you’re allergic to cyanide. You know why humans are completely moon-struck with gold and silver? They don’t exist in Hell. At a primal
level, we can tell that they’re special. On a functional level, apart from being hideously expensive, they’re excellent for killing all demons. They have no natural defense against them.”

  “Still a demon,” Sam said. She shrugged.

  “Means it wouldn’t be wrong for you to kill him.” She glanced at the demon. “Sorry.” It shrugged. “Doesn’t mean it would be right. He’s gray. Proper gray.”

  “Obviously,” Jason said. She winced condescendingly.

  “No. Angels are light. Demons are dark. Humans pick a side. In the middle, you find the grays. Gray demons. Dark angels. He’s gray. It means he doesn’t kill people.”

  “What about the killing floor over there?” Jason asked. Samantha shrugged.

  “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t eat. You prefer your meat raw?” she asked. It nodded. “Pretty normal, really.” She looked at Jason and sighed again. “Deer, you trigger-happy nit-wit. It eats deer.”

  “Moose,” it said softly. She looked at it and grinned.

  “I imagine.”

  “Do you want dinner?” it asked haltingly.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it. We won’t force our company on you.” She stood. “I’m afraid I can’t do anything about the teenagers, but if you keep your record clean, I’ll do everything I can to keep this lot off of you.”

  It bowed slightly, then turned deep black eyes on Sam and Jason.

  “Hey, she doesn’t actually speak for us,” Jason said. Samantha stepped in front of him.

  “He hasn’t killed anyone in two hundred years,” she said, squeezing his arm with the intent of drawing pain. “He’s got you beat, for pacifist. He is off the menu.”

  “She’s right,” Sam said.

  “Demon,” Jason said.

  “But not evil,” Sam said. “What kind of people would we be if we could shoot something like that in cold blood for no reason at all?”

  “Demon,” Jason said again.

  “Good luck,” Samantha said, turning back to the demon, then looked at Jason.

  “You could really just point and shoot?”

  He looked from her to the demon and back.

  “Yes.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Probably the best thing about you, actually,” she said, “but in this case, wrong.”