by Mia Archer
Hey, I might be terrified for my life right now, I might be worried a werewolf was going to walk in at any moment and rip my lungs out, but I also wasn’t above taking a look at a pretty girl who was showing off for me.
And God was she gorgeous. I’d never get tired of looking at her. She was toned and fit in all the right places, and she stood there for a moment staring at me in all her glory as though she was basking in the attention.
Then she blushed and turned to look up and down a row of lockers. She opened them and started rummaging through them.
“Are you sure you should be doing that?” I asked.
“Why not?” she asked. “Everybody’s evacuated. I need their clothes more than they do.”
“They might feel different when they get back,” I said, but I didn’t press the issue. If she wanted to go rummaging through the nice medical professionals’ lockers then I wasn’t going to stop her.
I didn’t think I could stop her if I wanted to.
I also didn’t want to think about what the mess must look like in the shower, though I suppose if there was any place where blood on a shower floor wouldn’t look out of the ordinary it was in a hospital where presumably that kind of thing happened all the time.
Though something told me the doctors doing the surgeries never got blood on themselves. Just on their scrubs. Whatever.
“Here we go,” Kirsten said, pulling out what looked like freshly laundered scrubs.
“You’re going to dress in scrubs?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Why not?” she asked. “I bet I’ll rock some scrubs! Besides. I only need something to keep on until we get back to my place.”
“We’re going back to your place?” I asked.
There were two very good reasons for me to want to go back to her place. The first being that she was a pretty girl and I very much liked the idea of going back to her place, with all the implied fun that entailed.
But of course the other reason was there wouldn’t be any werewolves at her place. After everything that’d happened at the theater and at the party last night I figured her place would be the last place they wanted to hit, even assuming they’d figured out where she lived.
“We need to stop by there, at least, but we won’t be staying for long,” she said, ruining any thoughts I might be having of some post-werewolf killing fun. She looked down at herself in the scrubs. “I need to get a fucking bra, don’t I?”
“Do you?” I asked, looking at the front of her scrubs and thinking she was looking pretty good.
“You’re right,” she said. “We probably don’t have time for that.”
“Definitely not,” I said, trying to play it off like I was being practical, and not at all like I was looking at her shirt and thinking the way her nipples were poking out was distracting.
I’d never known that I had a hot medical professional fetish, but I was definitely starting to feel something as I looked at her. Then again maybe it was just that I had a Kirsten fetish, and looking at her in anything was enough to get me hot and bothered no matter what the profession was.
“We should get going,” she said. “There are going to be more werewolves coming through here soon enough.”
“Are you sure about that?” I asked, looking towards the door like even mentioning the werewolves would be enough to make them appear.
“They’ve been chasing us for three nights running,” she said, hitting me with a flat look. “Of course the bastards are going to come looking for us.”
“Right,” I said. “And what sort of plan do you have for getting the fuck out of here without drawing the attention of the werewolves who are no doubt chasing us?”
“The trouble there is there’s not any good way to make sure they’re not chasing us,” she said. “All we can do is move fast and hope for the best.”
“I was worried you were going to say something like that,” I said. “Do I at least get to carry your gun?”
She stared at me for a long moment. She seemed to be seriously considering whether or not that was a good idea, and then finally she shook her head.
“I think I’ll handle that,” she said.
“Oh come on,” I said. “I drilled a werewolf last night at the party before it could kill you.”
She blinked like this was news to her. Because of course it was news to her. She hadn’t been conscious for me drilling that werewolf with her gun.
“I appreciate that, but I think I’ll do more damage with this than you if we do get attacked,” she said. “We’ll get you something from my apartment.”
“Fine,” I said, jutting my lip out in a pout to make it clear I didn’t care for this turn of events, but from the way she hefted her gun she didn’t look like she gave a shit.
“Then let’s go,” she said, stepping towards the exit and grabbing her purse on the way. Her purse that was still covered in blood, but I suppose there was no getting around that.
“You never did tell us where we’re going,” I said. “Beyond the shower and then a stop at your place, that is. By the way, you got my hopes way up when you said we were going to the showers, and now I’m a little disappointed.”
“Sorry about that,” she said. “But we don’t have time, as fun as that might be. We have to get to the basketball arena, and we have to get there like thirty minutes ago.”
We walked past a nurse station where they had the radio on and tuned to the local campus radio station. An announcer was talking about the game tonight, but I had no idea why the hell that game had anything to do with werewolves.
“Um, why are we going to a basketball game?” I asked.
“That’s simple,” she said. “They’re trying to pull a reverse Buffy the Vampire Slayer on me.”
That was enough for me to miss a step.
“Um, excuse me?” I asked. “What the hell is a reverse Buffy the Vampire Slayer?”
“I just made that up, actually,” she said. “But the practical upshot is they’re going to try and do the ending of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only they’re looking to succeed this time around instead of having their big plan defeated.”
“Is Pee-wee Herman going to be there?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Kirsten said. “I mean I suppose anything is possible, but I really don’t think that one is going to be happening tonight.”
“That’s a damn shame,” I said. “And Rutger Hauer is dead and everything.”
“So you do know the original Buffy,” Kirsten said.
“Of course I do,” I said. “One of my brothers was convinced he was going to marry Kristy Swanson once upon a time.”
“Really now?” Kirsten said, pausing to look around the corner and then stepping out once she’d established that the coast was clear.
“Yeah,” I said. “When he discovered her role in The Chase, well let’s just say he didn’t leave his room for a whole night and my mom bitched him out about running through a couple of tissue boxes.”
“Gross,” Kirsten said, pausing again to look down a stairwell. She listened, probably for snarls coming up from inside the thing, and then she stepped inside.
“Better to avoid the elevators in an emergency.”
“Even when the emergency is werewolves attacking the hospital?” I asked, kind of surprised that emergency rules like that would even apply.
“Especially when the emergency is a bunch of werewolves attacking the hospital,” Kirsten said.
We stepped out into the main lobby. The place was just as empty as every other part of the hospital. I wondered if they’d evacuated the patients as well. There was a line of cops near the door, and one of them came towards us.
They must’ve gotten there while we were moving through the hospital. That or they didn’t run lights and sirens because they didn’t want anyone in the hospital to know they were coming.
It also looked like there was an altercation happening at the front of the hospital. A group of college kids were standing there argui
ng with the cops trying to get in.
“What the hell have you done now Kirsten?” the cop in front, an older guy who I thought was the campus police chief, said as he approached us.
“You need to get your men away from those doors now!” Kirsten shouted, holding her sword out and letting it materialize as she broke into a run.
To his credit, the chief didn’t pull his gun out or ask questions. Which was the kind of thing most cops would’ve done when a girl with a deadly weapon ran straight for them. Especially if he had any idea just how deadly she could be with that weapon.
Instead he turned and started bellowing orders at his men, but it was too late by the time he started bellowing.
Because of course the line of college students who’d been trying to get into the hospital started transforming the moment they realized Kirsten was in the lobby. Or maybe they were transforming the moment they realized I was in the lobby, but something told me they were there for Kirsten.
And they were out for blood.
30
Kirsten
The area in front of the hospital was filled with the dismayed screams of people seeing something that shouldn’t be happening right in front of them. Which was about par for the course these past few nights.
Doctors and nurses stood out there, people who’d spent their entire life studying science and the rational world, so naturally they would be a little more freaked out when it came to realizing that there were supernatural things in the world trying their best to kill them.
Luckily for them, I was here as part of that supernatural world to do some killing. I pulled out my sword, the blade and ran for the doors.
“You’re going to be too late!” the chief shouted. “You’re going to…”
He was cut off by a grunt. I turned and saw that a werewolf had tackled him and sent him sprawling. He was staring up at the thing, but his eyes merely narrowed as he looked more pissed off than terrified.
I hesitated. I glanced between the chief and Cara. I was worried the werewolf would turn on her next. It didn’t look like it was in a mood to finish the attack on the chief.
She was defenseless, and it was all my fault. She’d wanted my gun, talked about killing a werewolf last night even, but I took the gun for myself because I figured I’d be better with it under pressure.
And now I didn’t have time to get it out and stop that thing from hitting her. The werewolf turned to stare at her, flexing its claws. I had a moment to see the look of wide-eyed terror in her eyes as she realized I was going to be too late no matter what I did.
Then shots rang out. One shot that took the werewolf right in the eye. A clawed hand shot up to its right eye and it let out an ungodly shrieking noise as it started flailing around, looking for all the world like a certain werewolf that’d gotten a rocket to the eye once upon a time in a little remembered Gary Busey/Cory Haim vehicle.
The werewolf stumbled back and landed on the ground, and I turned my attention back to the chief who was sitting there with a revolver of all things pointing at the werewolf. His hand didn’t so much as shake despite the fact that he’d just been taking on a supernatural horror that shouldn’t be.
My eyes narrowed. The more time I spent around the guy, the more I was convinced that he’d had run ins with the supernatural when he was in the military.
It was something I was going to have to ask him about some time, but that time wasn’t tonight.
“I’ve got this!” the chief shouted. “Get your ass in gear!”
I turned and ran for the door.
Things were made a little difficult because of the revolving door at the entrance. One werewolf had gotten into the thing and was clawing at the glass as it was pushed around, and I got there just in time to shove my sword right through its gut before it could step into the hospital properly.
I stepped into the massive rotating door and then out into utter chaos. A werewolf was tearing into the crowd of doctors, nurses, and patients. It was like the movie theater, only these people had the good sense to try and get the hell away. Not that trying to get away was doing them much good considering they were bunching up on each other.
I looked on in horror. The cops were bad enough, but that werewolf was going to cause some serious damage.
Shots rang out all around me as the campus cops tried to defend themselves. Those shots weren’t going to a damn bit of good in the grand scheme of things, but they were hurting the werewolves enough to buy the cops some time even if old fashioned non-silver bullets weren’t going to land a killing blow.
So I ran for the doctors first.
I reached the werewolf as he clawed at a guy in a white coat. The poor bastard spit up blood and his eyes turned to me. He was clearly begging me for help, but the wounds were so catastrophic that there was no helping the poor bastard.
Talk about a real bitch. Spending your entire life studying medicine and how to heal people, only to have that knowledge amount to knowing how completely fucked you were at the very end.
That didn’t stop me from punching the werewolf to get it away from the guy. The werewolf stumbled, looking surprised that someone would dare to take it on. Its eyes narrowed and it let out a low growl when it got a good look at me.
I glanced through the crowd to make sure there weren’t any other werewolves hiding in human form in the crowd waiting for me to be distracted.
I didn’t see anyone with obviously glowing yellow eyes hiding in the crowd waiting to ambush me, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone out there waiting for the opportune moment.
Whatever. I brought my sword around and stabbed the werewolf who’d been on the attack out here. Then I whirled around and relieved it of its head before it could react, ignoring the gasps and screams of disgust from people who’d been close enough to get spattered with werewolf blood.
I looked back to the cops. One of them had pepper sprayed a werewolf. Another one was firing at a wolf which was keeping it back, but not killing it. One cop had pulled out his Taser and was pumping the werewolf in front of her with electricity. The thing writhed on the ground looking like it was having a really bad day, which I figured was the least the fucker deserved.
Play stupid games, when electrified prizes and all that.
My heart stopped as I saw yet another werewolf doing a run through the rotating door leading to the front lobby. Only shots rang out from inside, and I saw the chief standing there in a classic shooting stance with his revolver pointed at the thing.
The werewolf crumpled to the ground, and the turnstile kept right on rotating. Only the werewolf’s transforming body was in the way which blocked the thing from turning any longer.
I returned my attention to the werewolves fighting the cops. Several were fighting, sure, but there were more who were down for the count. I decided to start with the guy who was still shooting at the werewolf. I couldn’t do anything for the cops who were bodies on the ground, but I could hit that fucker with something that would take it out more permanently.
So I walked over to the werewolf getting shot just as the cop ran out of bullets and his gun started to click. Which was good timing for me.
The werewolf was so focused on the cop that it didn’t notice me coming up behind it. It never noticed me coming up behind it, because I severed its head from the rest of its body before its neurons had a chance to even register that someone was approaching, let alone hitting it over the head with a sword.
“Thanks,” the guy said, staring at me in disbelief.
“Don’t mention it,” I said, feeling just a touch ridiculous standing there in stolen scrubs that were almost as bloody now as I’d been before the shower.
I moved on to the next wolf. This one was growling and snapping as it tried to fend off the pepper spray. Again I arrived just in time. The cop had run out of pepper spray, but the werewolf wasn’t having a very good time of it as it pawed at its face trying to get rid of the stuff.
The thing snapped a few more
times, but then I slammed my sword down through the its skull and into the pavement below.
That was one of the nice things about these supernatural slicers. Silver usually couldn’t stand up to that kind of punishment, but there was something about the way these blades were made, a tradition that’d been passed down from monster hunters through time immemorial, that made them pretty fucking durable while also having enough silver in them to do some damage.
I had no idea how it worked. There was probably some magic involved since I was pretty sure these things were a physical impossibility, but it worked so I wasn’t going to complain.
The werewolf let out a surprised yelp, its jaws snapping in indignant refusal to believe that it’d been killed, and then it went still.
“Son of a bitch,” the cop breathed.
I smiled and pulled my sword out of the ground. I looked at the cop who was standing there with a bottle of empty pepper spray. He nodded to me, but I was already moving on to the werewolf who was being pumped full of electricity.
“I’m going to need you to go ahead and stop on the count of three,” I said.
The cop looked at me and nodded. She looked terrified, totally a justifiable feeling considering what she was going up against, but she knew how to cooperate which was going to save her ass.
Another shot rang out and I turned to see the chief and Cara coming out of a side door. He was using his revolver to take out one of the wolves that had landed on one of his cops and had its muzzle buried in the guy’s neck like it was enjoying a tasty treat.
“Okay,” I said, gripping my sword tight. “One, two…”
I slammed the sword down. “Three!”
The wolf was snapping at me the moment the electricity stopped coursing through its body, clearly the motherfucker had been waiting for that, but my sword was already on the way down so it didn’t get a chance to react before I connected. My sword slammed into its shoulder and it screamed in pain, but then it fell back, clutching at the wound.