by Mia Archer
I stepped out into the roar of the crowd. Though it was a subdued roar. There was cheering, followed by silence.
“Devin Carl!” the announcer said.
I frowned and looked up. The big screen had a picture of one of the guys who’d been killed last night. I’d seen charred bits in a drawer with his name on it at the morgue, at least, so clearly he was being counted among the dead.
It suddenly hit me exactly what was going on. There were people holding up displays featuring numbers of players who’d died at the party.
This was a memorial.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“Looks like they decided to do a something for all the players who died,” Cara said.
“What about the cheerleaders?” I asked, suddenly annoyed.
Basketball players hadn’t been the only ones who’d died. I’d had friends who killed. Not to mention randoms who’d been at the party because they wanted to be close to basketball players and had died for the privilege.
There’d also been werewolves who died at that party, but I didn’t give a flying fuck about them getting a memorial.
“Sadie Reynolds,” the voice boomed.
Tears came to my eyes as I stared up. There was a picture of Sadie staring out across the arena at me looking like her happy bubbly self without a care in the world.
That picture had been taken at one of our first practices. Back before we knew what a hardass Coach Anderson was. Back then she didn’t have a care in the world. We’d been high on making the cut as college cheerleaders when there’d been so many others who’d tried out and failed.
It was a stark contrast to how she’d looked in that drawer. She’d had no idea what was happening to her. Just the feeling that there was something terribly wrong going on with her body, and one of her best friends was pointing a gun at her. That had my body shivering and shaking.
I tried to be cool and collected when it came to that sort of thing. I tried to channel my father, but the plain truth was I’d never had to do something like that before, and it was fucking with me thinking about one of my best friends looking up at me while I had to kill her because she was about to suffer a fate worse than death.
“Kirsten?” someone said from somewhere.
I felt like I was coming up out of a dark pool of water. I blinked a couple of times and looked around. Then my eyes focused on what was happening on the big board.
I was staring at a picture of myself. One that’d been taken at that same practice.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“And finally, Kirsten Talbot,” the voice boomed through the arena. “Who we understand not only fought off the shooter at the movie theater two nights back, but was also instrumental in saving lives at the terrible explosion that took so many of our athletes! She’s fighting for her life and…”
Only there was a sudden roar from the arena. And the view on the board changed to show me standing on the arena floor with a duffel bag thrown over my shoulder in a pair of shorts and a tank top, with Cara beside me armed to the teeth.
Hell, I was armed to the teeth. I had my sword strapped to my side along with my silver slinger. I looked ridiculous, but that didn’t stop the moment of giddy happiness from the crowd as they realized I was alive and well and here in the arena with them.
Though that giddy roar started to taper off as they got a good look at what I was wearing and what I was carrying.
“Kirsten?” that same voice said again.
I whirled around to see Angie standing on the sidelines seeming unsure of herself. Her eyes darted down to the guns at my side.
“What are you doing?” she hissed.
“We’re all in danger here,” I said. “The werewolves are going to attack the arena.”
Angie went white. She looked around like she was afraid someone was going to overhear what I’d said, and then she leaned in a little closer.
“You can’t just talk about those things,” she hissed. “The cops talked to us last night, and…”
“I don’t give a shit what the cops think,” I said, looking at my other friends on the sidelines. My fellow cheerleaders, and the basketball players who were looking anywhere but at me.
Maybe the people at the movie theater from a couple of nights back had the luxury of going back to their lives. Of telling themselves they hadn’t seen the impossible things they’d damn well seen, but everybody here on the sidelines with me knew what had happened.
There’d been to many werewolves for them to tell themselves they were seeing things, yet here they were trying to pretend it hadn’t happened.
I looked around. And then finally I saw something that looked like it would be helpful. There was an announcer standing on the sidelines with a microphone in hand. They weren’t running their little “woe is me that our players are dead” show from the announcer’s box up on high.
The official looked up at me with some surprise as I stalked towards him. He had white hair and was dressed in a suit. He was probably some higher up in the athletic program or maybe even in the University administration, but I didn’t care how important he was.
“The microphone,” I said. “Now.”
“I don’t know who you think you are, young lady, but I’m not giving you this microphone,” he said.
I glanced around the arena. Everything looked so normal. It was almost enough to make me suspect that there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary going on, only…
That threat had been pretty obvious. Even if I couldn’t see the threat when I did a quick scan of the arena.
Anyone in the massive crowd could be a werewolf. The basketball teams and cheerleaders lined up for the memorial service were less likely considering the ones from the house party would’ve been cleared by the cops. Maybe.
There were the refs, and the mascots. I frowned when I looked at our mascot. It was a wolf, which seemed totally inappropriate given the circumstances.
I shook my head. Any of those groups could turn into werewolves at any moment. Everybody in this arena was in serious danger, and I needed to save them.
“This place is in serious danger,” I said. “Werewolves are about to attack, and…”
I never got a chance to finish my thought. The guy started laughing hysterically. Like werewolves attacking the arena was the funniest damn thing he’d ever heard.
“I don’t have time for this,” I growled.
I landed a punch right on his nose. There was a crack and blood flowed down from his schnoz. He looked at me in surprise before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he fell like a tree toppling.
I snatched the microphone out of his hand before he fell.
“Kirsten, what are you doing?” Cara asked.
“What I need to do to save lives tonight,” I growled.
I held the microphone up to my mouth. The whole place had gone quiet. Everyone was staring at me. I can’t say that I cared for having every eye in the place on me looking at me like I was a madwoman, but if saving these people meant making a fool of myself then whatever. It would be worth it as long as I was able to save lives.
“You’re all in terrible danger,” I said.
There was a collective gasp from the crowds. A couple of screams as well. Someone screamed about how I had a gun, and someone else yelled at me not to do it.
I looked down to the gun at my side, and then I let out a sigh.
They thought I was going to shoot them. Which was a reasonable fear in the modern world, but that’s not what I was planning on doing here, dammit!
“It’s not like that,” I said. “You’re in danger. Werewolves are about to attack this game.”
There was another pause. I looked around the arena, hoping desperately that someone would believe me even as I knew that was a tall order.
I’d seen plenty of people talking to my dad who refused to believe they’d encountered what they’d encountered even when the evidence had been right there in front of them. This was
an arena full of people who were fully invested in the “real world” where supernatural creatures didn’t exist and couldn’t rip them to pieces.
No, the scariest thing most of the people in this arena had probably ever had to confront was a drunken frat guy trying to hit on them or get their girlfriend to come into the frat party while they were left high and dry.
There was a moment where I thought the people might actually believe me. A moment where everyone was staring intently.
Then the arena erupted in laughter, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to convince them easily.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, and I said it right into the microphone. I didn’t care if I was cursing. I didn’t care if I was getting irritated looks from some of the officials.
There were a couple of security guards making their way around the edge of the arena as well. Like they were going to try and tackle me and bring me down, but they weren’t in any hurry to do that because I was heavily armed.
“I’m serious!” I said, keeping an eye on those security assholes. “You’re all in danger! There are werewolves in this crowd, and they’re going to kill you.”
“But there aren’t werewolves in the crowd,” Cara said, coming up next to me.
I hit her with an irritated glance, but then I looked around the crowd and realized she was right. There wasn’t a single werewolf to be seen in the arena. If there had been then surely they would’ve started transforming the moment I let the werewolf out of the bag.
Any cats that might’ve been in that bag with the werewolves probably weren’t happy right now.
So the question of the moment was: why weren’t there any werewolves turning? They’d been more than happy to reveal themselves and start shit at the theater, in the nature preserve, and at that house party. This made no sense.
“What’s going on here?” I muttered.
I looked to the basketball players and the cheerleaders. They were pointedly refusing to look at me. Probably because they all remembered the horrors they’d witnessed and wished I hadn’t come along to remind them of all of that unpleasantness.
Well that was tough shit if they didn’t want to be reminded of that unpleasantness, because it was about to visit them again.
“Please,” I said, looking to Angie who looked away. “You have to believe me. You know what happened at that party, and it’s going to…”
The wind was knocked out of me as something slammed into me. There was some cheering and laughter from the crowd. I figured one of the security guards had finally gotten to me while I wasn’t paying attention. I slammed an elbow back into whoever had just made the mistake of attacking me. I was going to make them regret the dark day they decided to fuck with me.
Only there was something off about this attack. My elbow slammed into something a hell of a lot more solid than a pudgy security guard. Yet it was soft at the same time. Like my elbow was hitting something rockhard under something fluffy.
I turned to get a look at my attacker, and panic seized me as I realized there was hair all over my attacker. Like a werewolf.
“Cara!” I said. “It’s on me!”
I grunted and turned back around. Of course she could see that it was on me. I needed to avoid panic. I might be getting up close and personal with…
I managed to wiggle around and finally got a good look at what was holding me down. I’d been an idiot. It wasn’t a werewolf. No, it was the mascot. Apparently the joker had decided to take the opportunity of my distraction to tackle me to the ground. Maybe they were trying to be a hero, or maybe they thought this was all a joke.
I pulled my hand back and got ready to punch them to get them off of me, and then the screaming started.
Because when my fist made contact with that head it made contact with something surprisingly solid. And there wasn’t a surprised bellow from whoever was in that costume. No, the sound that came out was more an angry snarl. Like there was something inside that costume that was feral and dangerous and pissed off.
When the head went flying it revealed that this was a Russian nesting doll of wolfishness. Because that wasn’t a college kid in that costume. No, that was a wolf inside the wolf head. Only the replacement wolf head was way more realistic and it was snapping at me like it was trying its best to pull my head off.
Because there was just the one werewolf in the arena tonight, and it’d gotten in a hell of a sneak attack.
“Son of a bitch!” I shouted as it got down closer and closer, pinning me to the ground as its fangs moved for my neck.
33
Cara
I looked around in a panic, trying to find something, anything, that could save Kirsten.
Only everybody was reacting in terror. They weren’t used to seeing a wolf head coming out of that costume.
I mean it was a wolf mascot costume, so I’m sure people were used to seeing a wolf’s head coming out of the thing. But not when the original head had been knocked off revealing a werewolf underneath.
Already I could see the rest of the costume fit in odd ways. There were rips and tears here and there. As though someone had gotten into that costume before they transformed, and then they’d turned into a wolf while they were in there which had really done a number on the thing.
Fuck.
The cheerleaders and basketball players were pulling back from the thing. They looked terrified, but they also had the sort of hunted deer in headlights look that said they were terrified.
People in the seats had gone from laughing to murmuring. There were a few screams from people closer to the basketball floor who could see how realistic that thing was and knew it wasn’t all part of the show.
I glanced up to the actual seats. There weren’t any werewolves up there transforming, and everyone was frozen in shock or horror.
Then I looked back to Kirsten. She had a hold on the thing’s neck and she was barely keeping it from biting down on her own neck, but it wasn’t going to be long.
And then it hit me. What was I waiting for?
I blinked. I looked over to the line of cheerleaders. Carrie looked furious, and everyone else in that line was also undergoing a transformation. The cheerleaders were going from terrified to angry. I looked down to my side. To the guns there.
What was I waiting for?
I was the rescue I’d been waiting for. I didn’t have to be terrified of these things. I was the girl who’d been forced to watch thousands of horror movies growing up. I was the woman who had a plan for each of them, and in a situation where I was confronted with a werewolf and I had a gun filled with silver bullets I knew exactly what the fuck to do.
So I pulled out one of those. I held it in a two-handed grip, because I remembered how powerful the last shot had been. Admittedly I hadn’t done much shooting outside of video games, just going to a range with my brothers once in a while when I was younger because they were into that sort of thing, but I knew what to do if I didn’t want to get knocked on my ass.
I walked up to the werewolf. Placed the gun right against its head. I figured there wasn’t a chance that I could miss at this range, and luckily for me it was so distracted by trying to kill Kirsten that it didn’t notice me pointing a gun against its head.
Honestly I would’ve taken a shot at more distance if it weren’t for the fact that Kirsten was right there under the thing as it tried its best to remove her head at the neck.
I didn’t want to risk hitting her. It was totally different from the house party when a werewolf had been charging at us and no one was in the way.
I pulled the trigger. There was a loud yelp from the creature, and then it went limp. A moment later it was pushed to the side and slid across the hardwood, leaving blood streaking behind it.
That was good for even more shrieks and yells of terror from people in the stands. I looked up and saw that I’d been put up on the big board. Oops. I guess that gave a little show nobody had been expecting tonight.
Then the werewolf started to
change back into its true form. Its human form. So everybody in the arena was treated to an up close and personal view of someone going from werewolf to a human in a reverse of all the money shot special effects scenes that’d been so great in the ‘80s and then turned to ship as soon as computer graphics came along and every filmmaker with a few thousand dollars and a copy of aftereffects could put together a shitty transformation scene.
I turned my gun on Kirsten next. Pointed right at her face. She looked up at me and grinned.
“Did it bite you?” I asked.
“If it did?” Kirsten asked.
“You’re one second away from me pulling this trigger,” I said. “Did it bite you?”
“It didn’t,” Kirsten said.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I would’ve done what had to be done, but I wasn’t going to like it any more than she’d liked shooting her friend earlier at the hospital.
“I’m going to do a more thorough inspection later to make sure you’re not bullshitting me,” I said. “But for now I’ll take your word for it.”
“I look forward to it,” she said, a twinkle in her eye.
I reached down and offered her a hand. She took it. As I looked down at her I realized that she had some of the werewolf blood on her.
“That curse can’t be transferred by blood spatter, can it?” I asked.
“Just a bite as far as I know,” Kirsten said.
She said it like it should be the most obvious thing in the world. And maybe to her it was the most obvious thing in the world. But for me, having no experience with the supernatural, there was a serious gap in my knowledge of things that went bump in the night.
“Drop your weapons!”
We turned to see a campus cop had finally showed up. He was probably the one cop in the whole building considering how long it’d taken him to get here. Though it also looked like he was a little soggy around the middle which might’ve had something to do with his delayed arrival. The guy was huffing and puffing like he’d just run ten feet.