by Mia Archer
“Are you sure you’re okay Cara?” Carrie asked.
“I know this sounds crazy,” I said, trying to sound reasonable as I said it.
No one had ever gotten anywhere convincing people something terrible was happening in a horror movie by freaking out. So I wasn’t going to freak the fuck out. It was a coping strategy I’d come up with years ago if I should ever find myself in a horror movie, and even though I’d never believed it would happen I was suddenly glad I’d spent so many years gaming out exactly what I’d do when confronted with a situation like this.
“That does sound crazy Cara,” Carrie said, laughing just a little but sounding nervous.
“I need you to listen to me very carefully Carrie,” I said, not believing that I was saying this even as the words left my mouth.
I’d promised myself I’d never be the crazy person no one believed. The one trying to convince everyone they were in mortal danger. My big plan had always been to get while the getting was good.
Yet here I was playing my least favorite role in a horror movie because the place was surrounded. And from the way people were looking at me they were worried I was a danger. Not the fucking werewolves outside waiting to claw all these drunk assholes.
“I think you need to listen to me,” Carrie said. “I don’t know what’s wrong here, but we can fix it. You just have to…”
“Shut the fuck up!” I screamed.
I was getting frantic. Frantic wasn’t good. Frantic never convinced anyone. Frantic was the kind of thing that got someone locked up or tied up right before the monsters came in and started killing everybody, which incidentally usually meant the Cassandra who’d been locked up or tied up was easy pickings for whatever monster was coming at them.
“There are fucking werewolves out there,” I said.
Again everybody stared at me for a long and uncomfortable moment. Again I got the impression they were trying to decide just how crazy I was, then everyone erupted into laughter.
I frowned. They were all going to die because they didn’t believe me.
I should’ve taken some satisfaction in the knowledge that they were all going to die, but I couldn’t. No, all I felt was a profound sadness. They had no idea what was about to happen.
“Is this a prank show or something?” Carrie asked, looking around for the cameras. “Like is this a podcast or something?”
“It’s not a podcast, and it’s not a fucking prank show,” I said through gritted teeth. “There are werewolves out there. They just killed someone on the porch. If we don’t do something then we’re all going to be in serious trouble.”
“Seriously?” Carrie asked. “You’re not giving up on this? You can show us the cameras or the microphone now.”
“Seriously,” I said.
“So if I open this door I’m going to see a body?”
“You are,” I replied. “You’re also running the risk of getting clawed and adding to the body count.”
Carrie went from her usual happy-go-lucky self to frowning. Like she really wasn’t happy about what I was saying.
I wasn’t happy about it either, but it’s not like anyone asked me whether or not I wanted to be the Cassandra for this party that was about to be raided by a bunch of fucking monsters from straight out of Rick Baker’s worst nightmares.
“Okay, this really isn’t funny Cara,” Carrie said.
“I never said it was supposed to be funny,” I said.
“I’m serious,” Carrie said. “I brought you here to be nice, and you’re freaking out my friends.”
Her meaning was clear. If I terrified her friends and made her look bad then I wasn’t going to get invited to the next party because I was turning her into the idiot who brought the girl who couldn’t hold her liquor and freaked the fuck out.
Not that I thought there was going to be a next party if the werewolves got their way.
“Fine,” Carrie said with a sigh. “If there really is a body out there then I’ll take a look.”
To my horror she went for the door. Which wasn’t much in the way of safety, but it was a barrier between me and whatever scary things were lurking out there.
And it looked like Carrie had every intention of opening that door and dropping the meager protection on offer. Fuck!
16
Kirsten
I stared at the door. I couldn’t believe I’d been such a first-rate bitch. All that girl wanted was help, and I’d blown up at her.
I never should’ve come here in the first place. Clearly I had some issues left over from the theater. Clearly…
No. I didn’t have time for feeling sorry for myself. The past was the past, and I’d done what I’d done. Now it was time to fix things!
So I stood and looked down at my purse. I reached in and double checked that I had my trusty silver slinger. The specially manufactured gun was overkill for most situations, but most people didn’t have to worry about running up against monsters straight out of a horror movie.
I pulled out my sword next. That was another present from dear old dad. Something he’d helped design himself. I flicked the little switch and the blade materialized from the hilt up to the point.
It was impressive to watch, and not for the first time I wondered if there wasn’t a little bit of magic involved. I’d never been able to figure out how it worked mechanically.
I had no idea how dear old dad would’ve gotten his hands on that sort of magic considering the kind of people who used magic were also the kind of people who didn’t like what he did, but that wasn’t my concern right now.
No, my concern was a terrified girl who was about to leave the flimsy protection of this house party, and I needed to make sure she didn’t get her sexy ass killed.
I put the gun back in my purse, then looked over to the window.
I was getting that same unsettling feeling I’d had earlier with that girl in the woods. It was a tingling feeling with the hairs rising all over my body. It was the sensation there was something out there, very close, that wasn’t part of the natural order of the world.
It was something I’d hoped to never experience, something my dad had described to me plenty of times, and I hated that it was happening to me now.
Then I sighed. There was nothing to be done about it. I was here, the hand had been dealt, and it was time to do something about it.
So I walked over to the window and peered out into the street below. The only illumination came from a few flickering street lights. There was no sound.
Which was odd. I’d been to enough of these parties that I knew how loud things got. The streets were never empty, whether it was the massive migration of freshmen and sophomores who couldn’t drink at the bars streaming from the dorms out to the house parties, or people stumbling back to the dorms after the fact.
The sudden lack of noise and movement had me worried. Something was terribly wrong out there.
“What the hell is going on,” I muttered.
And then I saw exactly what the fuck was wrong. Someone moved into view at the edge of one of the lights. It was a guy who was just a little wobbly on his feet. Clearly he’d already had a little too much to drink, and he was looking around like there was something wrong.
He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and no doubt there were parts of his senses that’d gone into overdrive. Senses that hadn’t gotten a workout before, because most humans these days didn’t live in a world where they had to worry about apex predators hunting them down.
Only that’s exactly what was happening to this poor bastard. I could see the wheels turning in his drunk head. Maybe they were turning a little slowly, but they were still turning. He sensed the same thing I did.
That was the funny thing about the human brain. There were so many subtle cues it picked up on that people never thought about consciously. The brain was able to process all sorts of danger signals and give people an uneasy feeling without telling them exactly what that danger was.
I t
ried to pull the window open. I figured the least I could do was warn the poor drunk bastard that he was in deep shit, but the window refused to budge.
I frowned, stared down at the thing, and realized some idiot of a landlord had painted the thing shut. There was no way I was getting it open quickly unless…
I punched the window. If I couldn’t get the window open the traditional way then I’d bust through. Thankfully the wood holding the glass panes in place broke before the glass, sending the panes flying intact down into the street below and saving me one hell of a cut.
I stuck my head out and was about to shout when something loomed out of the darkness behind the drunk. I screamed.
“Behind you!”
That broke through his drunken haze. He wheeled around and looked up. The thing let out a growl that was loud enough I could hear it from up here, then it swiped at him.
Well shit. One moment that poor bastard, probably out hoping to get drunk and get laid, had a head on his shoulders. The next he’d been relieved of about nine inches of height.
The body stayed standing for a moment. As though it was having trouble reconciling the catastrophic damage above the neck with the blood still pumping through it. And pumping out of the neck stump and landing on werewolf fur, for that matter.
Then the body slowly toppled to the side like a massive tree that’d been felled. The werewolf looked up towards me, and that growl got even louder.
That bastard, or bitch, I couldn’t quite see what equipment they were sporting, was laughing at me!
“I’m going to get you,” I said, low and under my breath.
I knew the thing could hear me. They had incredible hearing on top of an incredible sense of smell. There was probably enough of the human left in that animalistic brain that it could understand what I was saying too.
It could certainly understand enough to laugh at killing someone while I watched helplessly. The prick. Or bitch. Again, I couldn’t tell.
I took a deep breath and tried to take control of the feelings surging through me. I wanted to throw myself through the window and show that furry fucker that taunting me was one hell of a mistake.
But I knew that was a terrible idea. If there was one out there then there were more.
Contrary to what the movies usually depicted, werewolves were pack creatures. Humans were social animals and wolves were social animals, so it only made sense that an unholy supernatural abomination that was all of the above would also be a social animal.
I wasn’t interested in getting attacked by the two werewolves I never even saw at my sides while one of them stared at me to keep my attention.
I felt a sharp pain. I looked down at the window edge lined with bits of broken glass. I cursed and pulled my hand up, sucking on the spot where I’d cut it, but already that cut was starting to heal far faster than it had any business healing. Especially something that deep.
I must’ve been seriously distracted to not realize I was slicing up my hand, but the way that wound was healing up was even more bothersome than cutting it in the first place.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered, watching the cut slowly knit up.
It was another situation where I was glad it was happening, but at the same time I could’ve done without that ability considering what it meant. The family curse was coming for me.
Though I supposed it was probably going to be a good thing considering we were currently under siege. Even if no one else had realized it if the sound of partying going on down below was anything to go by.
One thing was for sure. If this was a place that was suddenly under siege, then I needed to do something to save the people down there. They were my friends.
At least the people on the squad were my friends. I could honestly take or leave the basketball players. They were more of a buzzing annoyance at these parties, always trying to hit on me for all that I’d always made it clear I wasn’t interested.
But my friends got the full mama bear treatment. At the very least the basketball players would make useful claw fodder to throw at the werewolves if shit got real.
As I headed for the stairs I could already hear a commotion downstairs. That sent another chill running through me. I worried that the attack had already started. Visions of somebody being ripped through one of the big windows in the front room danced through my head.
Only when I looked down I saw that the commotion was none other than Cara standing there looking terrified with her back against the door refusing to let Carrie open it.
“Come on Cara,” Carrie said. “All you have to do is let me take a look out there. Everything is going to be okay.”
“And you need to fucking listen to me!” Cara said. “This isn’t going to be okay! That person is dead out there!”
I frowned and wondered how she could possibly know about the guy out there.
“Dammit Cara,” Carrie said, grabbing Cara’s hand and trying to pull her away from the door.
Whatever Cara had seen out there must’ve really terrified her. Not that I could blame her considering what I’d seen. She refused to budge. She tried to fight, but Carrie had the freakish cheerleader strength nobody ever expects.
Sure there was a struggle, but it didn’t last long.
Especially not when other people came to Carrie’s aid. A couple of basketball players appeared at her side, and they pulled Cara away from the door.
While she was in the middle of that struggle Cara looked up the stairs. She locked eyes with me. Those eyes were pleading. Like she knew I was the only one who could fix this.
“Carrie, wait,” I said.
Carrie looked up, her hand still on the door handle, and frowned.
“Kirsten?” she asked. “What the hell did you do to her? She’s freaking out!”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “What she’s telling you is true.”
“She’s telling us there are werewolves out there killing people,” Carrie said, rolling her eyes.
“I know this is hard to believe,” I said. “But there are werewolves out there. There was one in the movie theater last night. That’s the thing I killed, not a shooter. Another one attacked Cara last night in the nature preserve.”
Carrie looked between the two of us like we’d both lost it.
“I already told Cara I don’t appreciate this joke,” she said, laughing. “That’s cute that the two of you came up with this, but I’m not dealing with this shit. There’s nothing out there!”
Everyone else in the room laughed right along with her. They kept laughing right up to the moment Carrie turned the doorknob and pushed it open. That laughter cut off abruptly as a massive hairy clawed hand reached in and grabbed Carrie by the wrist.
Carrie had the space of a breath to look down at that hairy arm attached to an equally hairy hand with five fingers and wicked claws sticking out of them.
All the laughter was sucked out of the room as the werewolf theory went from being a funny joke to something that was all too terrifyingly real.
The werewolf tried to pull Carrie out, but Cara was right there holding onto her roommate with a look of determination that was a surprising counterpoint to the terror she’d been exhibiting.
I figured a girl that brave needed to be rescued. Not to mention I liked Carrie, and I really didn’t want to see her eviscerated.
I leapt down the stairs with my sword hilt held out. It materialized as I sailed through the air, and partygoers gasped as I flew. I hit the werewolf arm with all the force of my landing on top of my newly acquired freakish strength, and the werewolf arm was severed as the wolf it was attached to let out a surprised yelp on the other side.
Carrie stumbled back, screaming as the werewolf hand attached to her started turning back to a human hand. Cara smacked it to the ground where it twitched a few times, like it was still grasping for the flesh of the living, and then it went still with blood pooling out of the stump.
Then the other screams started.
Pa
rtiers stared out the massive windows along the front of the house. Windows that looked out on a front porch that was a popular spot for the idiots who’d decided to take up smoking at a young age despite knowing how bad it was for them.
Something big slammed against those windows, though they had to be toying with us. There was no way those windows could hold up against a werewolf that wanted to get through. The partiers nearest the window screamed at the impact and pulled back.
A growl and a low mournful howl filled the room.
Everyone turned and looked at me, all of them freakishly pale. Those were the looks of sheltered people who’d just discovered there were terrifying things that could end them, and now they were looking to someone, anyone, to save their asses.
“Okay then,” I said, looking at everyone in turn. “Is there anyone else who still doesn’t believe in werewolves?”
There wasn’t a single peep from any of them.
I hated that they had to learn about the existence of the supernatural like that, but they were going to learn sooner or later. Better that it was just a severed hand rather than someone getting ripped to shreds, though the night was still young.
“Right,” I said. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we all need to move fast if we’re going to make it out of this alive.”
17
Kirsten
I looked around the room and took stock of the situation. It was mostly cheerleaders looking terrified and basketball players who also looked terrified while trying their best to look like they weren’t terrified.
They wouldn’t want to admit they were terrified. Not when there was a room full of cheerleaders they wanted to fuck.
I could tell, though. There was a look to someone who was scared shitless and trying very hard to act like they weren’t. I imagined it was a look I had right about now as well, for all that I was armed and knew how to fight these things.
“Um, so it would be great if you assholes could move away from the big windows?” I said.