The Wicked Woods

by Kailin Gow

  “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 myself, 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.

  “Aunt Sophie, I know all this is important, and I can see why you might need to train a successor, but-”

  “Why you?”

  Briony nodded, and her great aunt shrugged.

  “I think you have the right qualities to be an exceptional vampire hunter. You’re athletic, but not dangerous looking. You’re smarter than you let on, and pretty enough that a lot of the things will underestimate you. You’re tenacious, but still compassionate. And of course, you have as much reason as anyone to hate the things.”

  Briony went still. She licked her lips. “Are you saying that my parents were…” she couldn’t say it.

  Aunt Sophie squeez
ed her hand. “None of us can know for certain, but when people go missing in these woods, there are only a few options when it comes to what has happened.”

  Briony couldn’t help thinking about it. About vampires like the ones that had come to the door falling on her parents and drinking their blood. About them killing her brother. Even though she tried to push the images away, they still came back. Something rose in her then, angry, but not hot with anger. If anything, it felt cold. Cold, and violent, and eager for revenge.

  “I’ll do it,” she said, her hands clenching. “When do we start?”

  Aunt Sophie shook her head. “Not yet. That’s one of the big things that you’ll have to learn. All this has to fit in with a normal life.”

  “Normal?”

  “Well, as normal as life can get while you’re looking around for the undead. But I think we should at least get you settled into your school properly before we start thinking about things like this.”

  “But I want to start now.”

  Her great aunt shook her head, and Briony felt the first tears. She’d hardly cried since learning of her family’s disappearance, but she cried now. Aunt Sophie held her, whispering meaningless things that barely registered as proper words. Somewhere along the line, Briony looked up enough to see that her great aunt was crying too. Was it for Uncle Peter, just as lost to Aunt Sophie as Briony’s parents and brother were to her? Or was it at the thought of what she was about to turn Briony into?

  “Shh, Briony. I shouldn’t have told you all of this so soon after everything else that happened. If those fools hadn’t come to the door like they did, I wouldn’t have had to. For now, just concentrate on being a normal teenager. So long as you have your pendant with you, you should be safe enough.”

  Briony bit back the urge to smile bitterly. She was in a town full of vampires, about to be trained up into a vampire slayer by her great aunt, and have already convinced the rest of her school that she was a freak. Normal, Briony suspected, was no longer an option.

  Chapter 4

  The next morning came, and Briony met it feeling a lot more refreshed. With more knowledge of the dangers that were out there, she found that she wasn’t nearly so worried. Of course, it helped that she also had some protection that might work, in the form of the cross her great aunt had given her.

  The only question now was how things might go at school. After all, first impressions could do a lot of damage, and Briony had already made hers. Was it too late to change people’s opinions of her? Would she be stuck as the loner girl who stank of garlic?

  Briony was not going to let her disastrous first day at Wicked High dictate the rest of her high school career. She shook her head. As frighten she is about vampires, she now had to put it behind her. Aunt Sophie needed her. She was now part of Aunt Sophie’s world, and that meant she had to get used to fighting vampires and whatever was out in the Wicked Woods. Didn’t Aunt Sophie said someone’s got to protect the people in Wicked? If there were more people like Aunt Sophie protecting people, then Briony’s family would not have disappeared. Aunt Sophie needed her as her replacement. Wicked needed her.

  Briony clamped her mouth into a determined grin and picked out her best jeans and a light pink top. As bad as her first day at school had been, she was going to grin and bear it. She brushed her silky hair until it was shiny and smooth, applied light makeup, and checked her appearance before she left the house. She was also careful to make sure that her cross pendant was still in place around her neck. Just because she felt a little safer now didn’t mean that she was going to take chances.

  She also felt a little better prepared for her classes now that she knew what they were going to be doing. With her mind not quite so firmly on vampires, Briony had been able to concentrate enough to do the reading required for the day’s lessons. Hopefully, it would get her through. At least she wouldn’t fall asleep this time.

  Even so, when she arrived at school, Briony found herself taking a deep breath before she stepped through the door. She stopped herself. All she had to do was be confident. Briony did her best. She smiled and greeted the few people whose names she remembered. She walked down the corridors like she knew exactly what she was supposed to be doing, though she did have to pause a couple of times to ask the way to her first class.

  “Oh, we’re going that way,” one of a pair of pretty, dark-haired girls said. Briony recognized them from the cafeteria the previous day. They’d laughed just as hard as anyone else at her. “We’ll show you, if you like. I’m Tracey. This is Claire.”

  “Hi!” Claire said, or at least exclaimed. Briony had the feeling that she was going to be one of those people who had to exclaim things, mostly because the world was too exciting to merely say them. “You must be new!”

  Briony considered pointing out that she had been just as new yesterday, but she didn’t want to draw attention to yesterday if she could help it. Instead, she let Claire babble as they made their way to class, noticing that when people stared at her today, it was only to wonder who the pretty new girl was, not to point out the weirdo.

  It was like she hadn’t been there yesterday. People saw her, and they could hardly connect the image with what they’d seen of Briony before, so they ignored that part. The boys from the football team shot her admiring glances, while those friends of Claire and Tracey they passed nodded to her and welcomed her to the school.

  Briony suspected that being with the other two helped there. It was like being accepted by a couple of the school’s more popular girls was some kind of test, and having passed it, everyone else decided that she had to be all right. It probably wasn’t the fairest way for things to work, but at that moment, Briony was prepared to accept it if it meant that people wouldn’t make hurtful comments about her.

  The first class was History, which Briony always enjoyed, and getting a few answers right proved to be another way of getting some attention from her classmates. Now, she wasn’t just the pretty new girl, she qualified as smart too. The only slightly awkward part was that Briony spent a lot of the class wondering if any of what they were being taught was true. After all, if the teacher could get through the whole thing without mentioning vampires once, wasn’t that proof that they weren’t exactly being told the whole story?

  That question gnawed at Briony a little as the morning classes continued. How much did supernatural things do in the world? How much got hidden? It wasn’t easy learning things like biology when you already knew that there were things out there that didn’t abide by rules as people knew them.

  Even so, by the time lunch came around, Briony was feeling a lot happier than she had the day before. So far, things had gone without incident. Nothing had tried to eat her. No one had been mean. If anything, people had been kind. That kindness continued in the lunch hall, where Claire and Tracey invited Briony to sit with them. Briony took up the offer, and soon found herself sitting at the center of a cluster of the other girls’ friends, talking about what life had been like back in Florida. Briony did her best to answer, though she steered things away from any mention of her family.

  People drifted in and out of the group, but two boys named Bill and Ross were constants. Briony got the feeling that they liked Claire and Tracey, and were angling for dates. She had more sense than to get in the way. Besides, neither boy was really her type. Both had the bulky look of regular football players, along with nearly identical short haircuts and a tendency to finish each other’s sentences. Briony wasn’t sure if she could ever be that into someone who couldn’t at least pretend to think for himself. Still, they seemed nice enough.

  That was one good point about all of this. Briony could feel the press of the cross under her top, but no one around her seemed to be reacting to either it or the silver. It was a lot easier to relax when you were fairly sure that no one nearby was a vampire or a werewolf. Gradually, the conversation drifted onto topics other than Briony, for which she was actually a little grateful. There was only so long you could talk ab
out yourself without feeling self-conscious or coming across as self-centered.

  Besides, after a couple of days that had featured the weird, the outlandish, and the simply inhuman, Briony was grateful for the chance to talk about things as simple as boys, music, the chances of the football team winning (quite good), and the odds of Claire passing the math test they had coming up (not so great). Briony did her best to keep up, though in some ways it was like tuning into a soap opera where you didn’t know any of the characters. Some things were easy to guess at, because the same kinds of things seemed to happen in most places, but at other times, Briony just had to smile, nod, and hope that it would all make some kind of sense once she knew who the people involved were.

  Briony should probably have guessed that at some point, Pepper would show up. It was, after all, her clique of friends. Besides, she couldn’t let the new girl gain admittance to it without at least putting in an appearance. She showed up about half way through lunch, still in a uniform that suggested she had been putting in some last minute practice before the big game.

  She strode over with the confident gait of someone expecting her usual warm reception. When she didn’t get quite the enthusiasm she had been hoping for, Pepper glared at Briony.

  “Why, if it isn’t garlic girl. What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, leave her alone, Pepper,” Tracey said, “she’s okay.”

  When the others agreed, Briony felt her heart lift. Could it really be so easy to sort these things out? Certainly, Pepper seemed to let Briony’s presence go without further comment for a while, as the conversation kept going on the same convoluted topics.

  Eventually though, it somehow got back around to Briony. Pepper wanted to know all about her, and unlike when the others had been asking, her questions had barbs. The really annoying thing was that she managed to do it without ever sounding anything other than sympathetic.