Half an hour and a long conversation on the phone later I pulled a
red leather jacket over my outfit before making my way downstairs.
The normally quiet house surprisingly alive with noise, I wasn’t
even at the top of the stairs before I heard the distant arguing.
Arguing in the sort of tone one made where you pretended you were
whispering while yelling, I let out a small sigh as I walked towards
its source in the dining room with Barbie close behind.
The door closed, my dad’s recently acquired rottweiler Helsing
slept across the threshold with his body laid flat, only looking up
as I asked, “do I want to get involved?”
Dad has friends over, Helsing told me, wagging his tail as he
stumbled to his feet and padded over to get his entry tax of pets,
Sam and a woman. They’re fighting.
Great, my dad was fighting with my current mentor, and I was going to
probably end up stuck in the middle.
Well, at the very least I probably needed to peek my head in and
check that it wasn’t important, and taking a moment to
gather my courage I stepped forward and entered without knocking. The
dining room table greeting me with a mess of scattered papers and old
photos, jackets tossed across chairs, everything drenched in
cigarette smoke, and three people scattered across the room of whom
only two were familiar.
My dad was the most animated person there, not even speaking and
pacing the room as he rubbed his beard with determined anger. The man
he was speaking to, Samuel looking in his thirties if grayed heavily
and wearing a suit of all things, barely moving as he declared,
“Martin, how long have you been sitting on this? Are you even sure
you got it right, are you sure-”
And Samuel stopped as he saw me, closing his eyes and taking in a
deep breath as I asked, “bad time?”
“We were just talking,” my dad half-snapped, taking up a pair of
papers from the center of the table and shoving them into a box he
closed, “and Samuel was about to leave. As was his guest.”
Samuel not moving from his spot, I took the break to turn my
attention to the other woman in the room, someone I didn’t
recognize. A shorter but broad woman who physically looked fifty and
must have been much older if a werewolf; a little fat though in the
way a strongman was with broad arms and a stomach I could tell hid a
good bit of muscle. Tattoos much like my own, the scarification
common in the Purists, visible under the sports bra and sweats she
wore, even along her neck and cheeks up to green-dyed hair.
Her sunglasses were large, pressed to the skin and dark, and she took
a long draw from the cigarette she was holding before asking in a
thick accent I couldn’t place, “the daughter?”
“I’m Mary,” I agreed, frowning as I tried turning over all the
reasons another (hopefully former) Purist was here.
“Chasseresse,” the woman answered slowly, chuckling darkly as she
leaned forward, a pair of mismatched eyes catching me off guard as
she lowered her sunglasses. One brown, the other a yellow so light it
looked unnatural as she added on, “you can call me Chasse. I have
the feeling you’d make the language feel quite ugly, little lady.”
“We’ve worked together before,” Samuel said with a bit of venom
behind the words, “you were on vacation, I was getting her help
with a matter I was looking into with The Lady while she was in
town.”
“And yet I am so busy myself, and Martin stonewalls us all the
same,” Chasse complained as she twirled her cigarette in the air,
the smell only growing stronger as she stepped closer.
I needed a cigarette.
“He’s stonewalling us, but he’s right it’s probably not
related,” Samuel muttered with a rub of his eyes, “superstition
and legends aren’t going to help us actually figure out what’s
going on. We needed to just figure out if it’s the Purists behind
these killings, right?”
“The guy killing hunters?” I asked, a little surprised The Lady
was investigating that.
And, to my slight surprise, Samuel brushed it off, “contacts of The
Lady’s, no hunters.” a long pause, and he looked up to ask, “is
someone killing hunters too?”
I frowned, not sure if he was pulling my leg, and with some
hesitation asked, “is that not why you’re here?”
“No, your father failed to mention that was an issue,” Samuel
stressed with an annoyed hiss, slowly turning to glare at my father.
My dad crossed his arms, obviously not wanting to acknowledge
anything as he paced a moment in place, “didn’t seem related,”
all he had to say on the matter.
I was about to complain, point out all the problems with that when I
heard Leila yell and ask, “were you expecting someone, love?”
“Just my mom, is she here?”
“Not unless she drives a muscle car now,” my step-mom laughed,
and Chasse and Samuel both tensed a moment before my dad.
Taking their cue I left the room first, the wolf letting out a small
growl, Barbie looking at me concerned as I walked to the kitchen
where Leila cooked. A small affair with a breakfast counter she was
preparing sides at while a large pot boiled on the stove.
A tall woman with short-cut blonde hair, a decade older than me and
relatively muscled, the woman was currently heavily pregnant and
ready to burst. Wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and a large
maternity gown that came to her knees, a nervous smile as she saw me
and pointed to the window.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
By now the owner of the vehicle had left his car, opening the trunk
and humming a tune I could barely hear with my enhanced senses. In a
pair of coveralls, blue latex gloves over his hands, and boots I
didn’t need to look too hard to realize had duct tape thickly
coating the bottom. His face uncovered, though strangely generic in a
way I couldn’t quite place with the brown hair shaved pretty short.
Alarms rang in my head, and it only took the faintest hint of
mechanical pieces being slammed together for me to yell, “Leila,
get down!”
The man pulled a fucking machine gun from the trunk, a belt of
bullets trailing behind it, and I myself hit the floor only a half
moment before the world erupted in a scream of bullet fire. Glass
shattering, wood splintering, bullets exploding, and the wolf
growling behind it all as I shed my jacket and stripped all but my
skirt. Modesty not important, but something I would welcome as
long as I could if I didn’t need to turn into a werewolf.
We were under attack, an unknown foe, definitely something
resembling professional, and behind all that a nagging question as I
yelled back, “is Percy outside?!”
“Store, five minutes ago!” Leila yelled back with a surprising
calm as she struggled along the floor in her pregnant state.
She was a fighter, more experienced than most people not working for
The Lady in fights, but pregnancy wasn’t exactly helpful for a
firefight. I knew how much trouble I’d had in the Purists'
pregnant, and I’d never had to lay low as well as I could and fight
someone with a gun. Even if she was moving well, I knew I couldn’t
rely on her if dexterity was an issue or if she needed to match me
running.
All the same, she pushed through it, head low as she moved to the
kitchen sink and opened the cupboards under them. A shotgun halfway
out before the top half of one the doors exploded and she fell back
with a splatter of sweet smelling blood and a scream. My own blood
racing with anger as I skittered over, glad to see her face still
contoured in anger and the shrapnel in her shoulder not leaking too
much blood.
A moment later the gunfire died down, and I grabbed a rag from the
top of the counter and tossed it to her as I told her, “I’ll
handle him, can you walk?”
“Arms stiff and I feel-” she stopped, cringing in pain as she
gripped her belly, “fuck I hope that’s not bad.”
I didn't ask anything else as I forcibly pulled her to her feet,
making sure she could stand on her own wobbly legs as I ordered,
“make sure the others are okay, Samuel’s a nurse he can take care
of you. I’ll handle this guy as long as I can.”
She nodded, her eyes glistening with fear and never leaving me as she
stumbled off and I took the opportunity to plan.
The man tossed his machine gun back in the trunk and pulled a handgun
from his pocket with a surprising calm. His hands dancing along the
gun as he started to slowly pace towards the home and a new
realization hit me:
He didn’t know there were werewolves inside.
The air didn’t reek of silver, he wasn’t going in like he was
expecting angry werewolves but injured and surprised humans. He was
coming after my dad as a hunter, and wasn’t aware so many of The
Lady’s allies were inside.
A smile crossed my lips and, taking a chance, I slipped Percy’s
shirt back on and decided to make a show of this.
Dressed just as the man reached a now blown-out window, I watched as
he kicked the rest of the wood and glass out of the bottom and
climbed in. A soft whistle followed him as I, with some annoyance,
realized it was All I Want for Christmas is You, and an
overall cocky air I hated even more as he dropped down and looked up
at me with dulled surprise.
“I wasn’t expecting guests,” the man declared in an accent I
couldn’t quite place either, his confused expression suddenly
breaking with a bright smile, “appetizers”
He raised the gun with a speed that almost surprised me, and while I
could have dived out the way and made this a real fight I let him
shoot. My body erupting in pain for only a moment, the first two
bullets slamming through my chest and a final one ripping through my
bad eye. Every part of me giving out as I felt the world briefly fade
to nothing and my brain found new pathways again and tried healing
the old ones, My next conscious thought coming to on a cold tile
floor and the man whistling once again as latex covered fingers
pressed into my neck.
My eye focused on him and Barbie standing behind the man, his eyes
scanning the room before he frowned and looked down at me. Seeming to
process I was still alive with several seconds of growing horror.
Eyes focusing on him, pulse going strong, probably was getting a good
view of the wound closing as I growled and readied to lunge…
BANG.
A final gunshot rang out through the air as my fangs were still
coming in, blood splattering my face as the body crumbled on top of
me and I jerked myself away. Looking up in shock at the woman
standing a few feet away, someone I hadn’t been expecting and
certainly hadn’t seen in a while.
Shorter than even most old women, bright white hair cut into a bob
and bangs, wearing a black dress and red coat that came to her knees,
her over sized leather purse over one arm and the other held out with
a revolver expertly gripped. Her expression calm, actually fucking
smiling, and with a slow pace to her as she walked over to
stand above me and a pack of plastic hit my face.
“Have some decorum, Eva, it’s already ruining my day seeing
you’re still alive,” my grandmother announced, obviously not
knowing who I was. My hands fumbling around until I realized she’d
thrown a packet of wet wipes on me, “Go on now, I’m sure you’re
used to wiping a stranger’s fluids from your face, and I know
blood’s at least one of the more common ones.”
“I’m Mary,” I muttered, a little annoyed yet another
person knew my mom and not me as I quickly wiped myself off as best I
could. My grandmother stopping dead in her tracks to look me over a
surprisingly long time as I worked. Most of the blood off me,
stumbling to feet still having their neural-pathways heal while I
leaned heavily on a counter for support and looked over to her,
“I’m…um,” she doesn’t know who you are, “Mary.”
“I see,” my grandmother said slowly, eyes narrowed as she glared
daggers at me before dragging them to someone over my shoulder while
holding her hand out for me to take, “Cynthia, darling, now care to
explain-”
“Mom!” my dad yelled, rushing from his room and pulling my
grandma into a grip that looked like it’d break someone so old; the
woman seeming surprisingly unimpressed as he asked, “are you okay?
He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Marty, I’ve killed werewolves, vampires, witches, fey, urban
legends, and a reanimated T. rex once; I don’t plan to die in a
fight, or I would have done so already. Besides, the doctor says I
still have the health of a forty year old, and this man is low rung
by mercenary standards,” my grandmother purred with a small giggle,
“professional though, goes by The German Sword, if you got The Lady
mad at you it’d explain it. I met him when Christopher and I had
our alliance.”
I sighed, head held low as I realized the implications of that even
as I knew that the answer wasn’t going to be that simple. The Lady
would have used supernaturals to do this, she wouldn’t have had
someone attack while her own people were here. Someone was killing
informants, hunters, and apparently there were mercenaries involved
which I was hoping was
connected to that issue or we were having problems.
I was supposed to have a fucking vacation.