20 Shades of Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Demelza Carlton

Chapter 2

  Aunt Sophie’s treat turned out to be a visit to a diner called George’s, which was a tidy, neat little place close to the center of Wicked. Aunt Sophie led Briony inside, and Briony found herself staring at some of the photos on the wall, which seemed to encompass every famous, nearly famous, and not at all famous person who had visited the town in the last century or so.

  “Ignore them,” Aunt Sophie said, following Briony’s gaze. “George got them at a garage sale so that he could give this place a sense of history. He actually opened it fifteen years ago. I know. I was there.”

  “You were indeed.” A good-looking man in his early fifties stepped out from what was probably a kitchen to greet them. His greying hair was cut so short that Briony just knew he had been in the military at some point, and his physique seemed to bear it out. This was not someone who had let himself slow down as he aged. “Hello, Sophie. How’s the most beautiful woman in Wicked?”

  Briony watched her great aunt roll her eyes. “Briony, I would like you to meet my friend George. Do your best to ignore him. I only put up with him because he also happens to make some of the best food in town.”

  The man grinned. “Why, is that a compliment? Who would have thought it? Now, what can I get the two of you today?”

  They had burgers and milkshakes, sitting at the counter to eat them. Both were indeed delicious, though Briony found herself having to deal with the sight of her aunt attacking her burger with a level of enthusiasm that Briony suspected you probably weren’t supposed to see in elegant older ladies.

  While they ate, George wandered off to serve other customers, and there were certainly plenty of those. A red-headed waitress in her twenties, whom Aunt Sophie greeted as Jill, handled most of them, but there always seemed to be more. Apparently, news about the quality of the food had spread. Even so, George kept coming back to chat with the pair of them, asking polite questions of Briony, but mostly keeping up the kind of running argument with Aunt Sophie that you generally only got between people who had been friends for years. Finally though, he got around to asking the one question Briony had kind of been hoping to avoid.

  “So, how were things on your first day at the school?”

  Briony thought about lying, just to be polite, but her great aunt was watching her too, and Aunt Sophie had always been able to tell when she wasn’t telling the truth.

  “It was,” she declared at last, “the single worst day of my life, socially, at least.”

  “Oh?” George had acquired a milkshake glass, which he started polishing. Briony wasn’t sure if it really needed cleaning, or if he had just decided that it was the kind of thing people should do while they were listening to other people’s troubles. “What happened?”

  “Um…” Briony wasn’t sure how an explanation involving vampires would go until Aunt Sophie patted her on the arm.

  “It’s all right, Briony. George knows as much about these things as I do. Or he likes to think he does, at least.”

  “This from the woman who has been working on the idea of ecumenical holy water?”

  “It might work.”

  Briony did her best to explain, if only to cut off the beginnings of the banter. She spent much of the explanation fighting the urge to blush with embarrassment. Now that she came to explain them to someone else, the things she had done today did indeed seem more than a little stupid. She explained about the events of the previous night, keeping her voice low until Aunt Sophie pointed out that no one else would believe what they heard, even if they did overhear something they shouldn’t.

  After that, Briony talked normally, explaining about the garlic and the improvised crucifix, the falling asleep in class and the name-calling. When she got to the part with the head cheerleader, George raised an eyebrow.

  “This would be Pepper Freeman? She comes in here sometimes. Always looking round to make sure someone is watching her. My guess is that she didn’t like the potential competition.”

  “Competition?” Briony said. “I had garlic breath.”

  George shrugged. “Well, whatever. I hope you won’t let it put you off, anyway.”

  “Yes, Briony,” Aunt Sophie put in. “You mustn’t let one bad day ruin your academic career.”

  Briony shook her head. She didn’t have any plans to let that happen. “I’ll be fine. I just need to find some ways of making sure I don’t get bitten by vampires that don’t include me looking like a total idiot to the rest of the school.”

  “There’s worse than that out…” George began. Aunt Sophie stopped him with a look. “What?”

  “My niece barely slept last night, and you want to tell her horror stories about your past?”

  Briony shook her head. “I don’t mind, Aunt Sophie. I think I’m probably going to be tired enough to sleep tonight no matter what happens. Besides, it can’t be any worse than last night.”

  Aunt Sophie gave her a long look. “Oh, how I wish that were true, child. Still, we probably should come up with some ideas that don’t leave you a social outcast. Ah, I remember my first day at school. This horrid boy insisted on following me around, making fun of the way I had my hair.”

  “What happened?” Briony asked. “What did you do about him?”

  “Oh, things eventually settled down with Peter once I married him. Of course, that’s not much of a help to you. George, should we take this into your office?”

  The diner owner nodded. “Jill, are you okay to take care of things out here for a few minutes?”

  “Sure,” the waitress said, “just remember that it’s not long till I get off for the afternoon. I have to pick up Sarah from the crèche.”

  George nodded, leading the way back behind the counter and into a small office, kept with the kind of neatness that matched his haircut. Not a scrap of paper looked to be out of place on the desk off to one side, while two chairs were aligned perfectly with it. A couple of framed certificates indicated prizes the restaurant had won for the quality of its food.

  Only a couple of points didn’t really fit in. The wooden panels that lined the room looked like they’d been added as an afterthought. More oddly, a stuffed moose’s head sat on the wall opposite the desk, gazing down on events with what Briony thought was a rather mournful expression.

  “Shut the door,” George instructed, and Briony did so. Aunt Sophie smiled the secret smile of someone who knew what was coming next, and who was looking forward to seeing the expression on her niece’s face when it did.

  George reached up to the moose, twisting one antler. There was a click, a whir, and a couple of the panels on the wall slid back to reveal a high tech cubby hole filled with enough weapons to arm most of the town. There were crossbows with silver quarrels. There were stakes. There were silver-bladed knives and even a few swords. Other objects caught Briony’s eye. A neat stack of bibles sat next to a collection of silver crosses, while jars of herbs stood labelled off to one side.

  On the backs of the panels that had swung back, there were maps and hand-drawn diagrams. One purported to show the weaknesses of werewolves, with arrows pointing to the eyes, the throat, the heart, and other easy to hurt spots. There weren’t many. A map detailed the area around Wicked, pointing out paths through the woods, the locations of caches of weapons and supplies, the known hunting grounds of supernatural creatures, and other items of interest.

  To Briony, it was all interesting. Interesting, and more than a little frightening.

  “You have all this in here and nobody knows about it? People don’t know about the vampires?”

  “Some do,” Aunt Sophie told her. “George’s cook and pot washer both know, and so does Jill, whom you saw outside. Peter did, obviously, and there are a few others.”

  “All the members of the Wicked Woods Preservation Society, for example,” George said. “It’s a very important society around here, but people outside of the society don’t get we are more interested in preserving the people of Wicked and the surrounding woods than its historic buildi
ngs.”

  “They just don’t want to face up to what’s around them,” Aunt Sophie said. She sounded quite dismissive. “But then, I suppose it can be dangerous if you do.”

  It’s why all the members carry these.” George picked up one of the crucifixes. It seemed a little bulky for its size as Briony held it.

  “There’s more to this than meets the eye, isn’t there?” she guessed. George and her great aunt gave her pleased looks.

  “The cross is silver,” Aunt Sophie explained, “so that it’s useful against werewolves. The center is hollow, containing a vial of holy water which you can uncap.”

  George flipped open the top. “There’s also vervain below the vial,” he explained. “That makes it harder for anything to control your mind. Harder, but not impossible. And there’s one last feature that is especially useful.” He pressed something on the cross, and the end extended by several inches. It looked sharp. “A stake. More than long enough to reach the heart.”

  Briony looked at the device for several seconds before she spoke. “I guess that’s a lot better than improvising something out of pencils.”

  “It is,” Aunt Sophie said, taking the pendant from George and hanging it on a silver chain. When she was done, it looked like nothing more than a slightly bulky crucifix once again. “Which is why I would like you to wear it, Briony.”

  Briony stood still while her great aunt hung it around her neck, letting it fall out of sight under Briony’s sweater. The metal lay cool against her skin. Somehow, just wearing it made her feel a lot safer.

  “There,” Aunt Sophie said. “That should keep you a lot safer than any garlic would, and you’ll probably be a lot more popular too. For future reference, most vampires don’t care one way or the other about garlic. Not everything you’ve heard about them will be correct.”

  “Then what is?” Briony asked. “I mean, if one comes at me, how do I kill it?”

  “Would you listen to her?” George said, with a widening grin. “Already, she’s wondering how to kill them. You have picked well here, Sophie.”

  “Picked me for what?” Briony asked. The other two ignored her.

  Aunt Sophie nodded. “I know. The girl is a natural. But then, it’s in her blood.”

  “Picked me for what?” Briony insisted.

  Her great aunt shrugged. “Why, to be my replacement as a vampire hunter, of course, Briony. It’s what we do, after all.”

  Chapter 3

  Aunt Sophie caught the slightly shocked expression on Briony’s face, because she took her by the arm.

  “Perhaps I should explain. Come and sit down, Briony.”

  Briony did as her great aunt had asked her, taking the chair on the far side of George’s desk. The diner owner, meanwhile, twisted the moose’s horn again, and the secret compartment in his office closed up so completely that Briony could hardly believe it had been there at all.

  “I’ve got to go out and take over for Jill,” George said. He nodded to Briony. “I’m sure that everything will work out. Just listen to what Sophie has to say.”

  Briony nodded back, even though she didn’t feel very confident. Aunt Sophie really wanted her to hunt vampires? It was only once George had gone that the older woman started to talk.

  “Wicked is a very old town, at least by the standards of this country. It has been here since a few years after the first settlers arrived on the Mayflower…the very first settlers. It started life as… I suppose you could call it a kind of resort. It’s a place where people came when they were sick of working in other towns, or needed to be closer to the wilderness. There weren’t many at first, but there were enough.”

  “Enough for what?” Briony asked, mostly because she suspected that was what Aunt Sophie wanted her to ask. This sounded a lot like the kind of conversation where the adult involved had worked out her half of it in advance.

  “Enough for vampires to take an interest in them.” Aunt Sophie shook her head. “People didn’t see it at first, of course. People would go missing, and it would be explained away by bears, or wolves, or even outlaws. After all, who would think that there might be vampires out there?”

  Briony nodded. She didn’t have any difficulties with the idea herself, what with having seen a pair of the creatures, but it was easy to understand that people wouldn’t want to believe in them. Aunt Sophie kept going.

  “For some reason, over the years this little town has become quite a hot spot for supernatural creatures of all sorts. Vampires, werewolves, if you can name it, it has probably tried to eat assorted members of the local population at some point. Maybe it’s because this town is so close to somewhere wild, where they can get lost in the wilderness. Maybe it’s something different about the town.” Aunt Sophie looked wistful for a moment. “Peter always thought that there might be something in the water, making things go crazy around here. Spent hours testing local creeks and springs. Silly man.”

  Briony could hear the note of regret there. She had to ask. “So Uncle Peter knew all about vampires?”

  “Oh, absolutely. He and I found out together, while we were still at school. We both found hunters willing to teach us, and we ended up killing the creatures together for years. After a while, it gets so that you know someone so well, it’s almost like there aren’t two of you fighting anymore. It’s just one of you that happens to have four arms and four legs.” Aunt Sophie thought for a moment.

  Briony shook her head. “Sorry. It’s just all a bit…”

  “Insane?”

  Briony nodded. Her great aunt reached out to pat her hand. “I know, dear. The first time I heard it, I thought it was utter madness, but someone has to keep these things in check.”

  Briony bit nervously at her lip. “You make it sound like killing vampires is organized. Like it’s some big secret society, or something.”

  “It isn’t quite on that scale,” Aunt Sophie said, “but yes, we are organized. We have been almost from the beginning. People who slay vampires have existed in almost every country for thousands of years, doing their best to keep people safe. Most of the time, they are simply very ordinary people who happen to have a lot of training and the right equipment. Just knowing about vampires is almost half the battle.” She paused. “Of course, the other half is stopping the things from killing you long enough to stake them, but you can’t have everything.”

  Briony tried to imagine it, but there is only so much you can imagine on only a couple of hours sleep. A nearly endless war against supernatural predators who saw the human race as nothing more than a mobile buffet didn’t seem to be one of them. Another thing she was having a hard time imagining was Aunt Sophie doing battle with the forces of darkness.

  “Um… Aunt Sophie? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t exactly look like a vampire slayer.”

  Her great aunt cocked her head to one side. “And what does one of those look like, Briony? Some young woman in too much leather, wearing dozens of knives? Some hulking man weighed down by so much weaponry that he’ll fall over backwards if you push him hard enough?”

  “Um…” Briony hadn’t given much thought to it. She suspected that most people didn’t. If she did have to describe the kind of person who hunted vampires though, she was certain of one thing. It wouldn’t be the kind of person who wore pink fluffy slippers at night and fell asleep in front of the television.

  “Let’s try this another way, shall we?” Aunt Sophie suggested. “In a fair fight with a supernatural creature that is faster, stronger, and generally deadlier than the average human, how much use do you think it would be to be some pumped up bodybuilder?”

  When she put it like that, it was obvious what answer Aunt Sophie wanted. “Not much,” Briony said.

  “Exactly. So we don’t fight fair. We kill them before they have a chance to turn it into a fight. We take them by surprise.” She paused, looking Briony up and down. “Often, the people best placed to do that are the ones who don’t look that dangerous. Frail old ladies like my
self, for example.”

  Briony couldn’t help laughing at that. “Frail?”

  Aunt Sophie smiled. “All right, maybe not that frail. And I note that you didn’t say anything about the old part, young lady. But the point remains. I don’t look dangerous, so I can get close enough to kill them. And so could you.”

  There was the heart of it. Aunt Sophie wanted to take Briony and have her kill things that until yesterday she hadn’t known existed. That had kept her awake last night just thinking of them. More than that, she wanted to send Briony out against things that she had just as good as said could kill her in any kind of fight.

  “So why are you doing this?” Briony asked. “Why are you trying to recruit me to do this?”

  “You mean aside from the fact that someone has to protect people?” Aunt Sophie asked. Briony could see the sympathy there. She clearly knew how much she was asking. “Well, I said before that this wasn’t some big secret society, but we’re still organized enough to have rules. One is that a vampire hunter has to train at least one successor before he or she can retire. I am, as you so rightly pointed out, getting a bit old for this.”

  Briony nodded. She could kind of understand that. “Ok, that makes sense. I mean, there must be a lot to teach people. Vampire slaying probably isn’t the kind of thing you can pick up by trial and error.”

  Aunt Sophie shook her head. “It’s the ‘error’ part that is the difficulty there. It isn’t the kind of thing where you get many second chances. Yes, there’s a lot to learn.”

  “Like what?”

  Aunt Sophie raised her hands, ticking things off on her fingers. “Hand to hand combat, weapons, basic anatomy-you’d be amazed at how many people don’t know where the heart is, and it’s always embarrassing if you stake anywhere else-silent movement, surviving in the forest, and a dozen other things besides. And that’s just with vampires. There are so many types of creature to learn about, none of them particularly nice.”

  Briony tried not to think about that, but it wasn’t exactly easy. Besides, her great aunt seemed to be promising her nothing more than a great deal of training, with the near certainty of eventually being killed by a vampire as a reward for it. She tried to think of a way to put it.