by Nicole Thorn
“I didn’t bring it back with me,” I said, starting to get upset now. A werewolf attacked me and not only had it been my fault, but worse than that, it was this horrible thing that I had done to my mother. I almost got killed and the first thing that she said was that her kitchen got messed up.
“Of course, you didn’t,” Mom said, rolling her eyes. “That would make things too easy for you, wouldn’t it? This creature just happened to show up when you weren’t doing anything wrong. Ever since you started spending time with your father, it’s like you don’t even take what I want into consideration. You’re nothing but a disaster!”
I winced again, looking down at my feet.
“Look at this mess,” she said, flinging her hands out to the kitchen. “What do we even do with the body? Throw it in a dumpster? What would people think if they saw me throwing a wolf into a dumpster? And the tiles!” She mourned, gesturing to them. “You even messed up the carpet. I’m going to have redo everything in this room now, all because of you!”
“I’m sorry,” I finally said.
“Sorry?” Mom demanded. She sucked in a hard breath, staring at the dead body. Her hands shook with rage. I didn’t know why I thought I’d seen some kind of affection in her eyes earlier, because they had become two orbs of ice when she faced me again. “You’re sorry? If you were sorry, why do you keep doing things like this? I’ve told you time and again not to let your father’s sort come into my life. You’ve ignored me every single time. I can’t put up with this anymore. If you don’t shape up, then I’m going to have to do something, Aster. Something drastic. I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t see what choice you’re leaving me!
“You don’t help out, you don’t have a job, you’ve done nothing but turn my life upside down. I’ve given up so much for you and the only thing I have to show for it is this. A dead body, ruined kitchen, and a broken knife!” She grabbed the knife, holding it up as if it was the epitome of everything she had to worry about with me.
She threw the knife onto the counter, shaking her head. “I don’t know what to do anymore. I . . . I’m going to my bedroom. Please don’t bother me. I think I need a few minutes away from all of this.” She turned away and walked back to her room without looking back at me. As the door slammed shut, I turned to look down at the body in my kitchen.
That was a person. The thought stilled all the other emotions that had been rolling through me. I’d never really gotten into fights before, and when I did, the other person didn’t get killed, just roughed up. This person hadn’t gotten roughed up. I killed them.
My stomach twisted around so hard that if I had eaten anything that day, I’d have thrown up. Instead, I stared at the body, unsure of what to do about it or anything around me.
Sure, the person had tried to kill me, but I had to assume that someone sent him. I hadn’t pissed off any werewolves recently, but I had gone to the underworld. Which made me think that had something to do with this. My knees went weak, and I started to sit down on the ground.
I only stopped because of the blood. The lightheaded feeling didn’t go away.
This man probably had a family. He might’ve had children or a spouse. Maybe both. They would never get to see him again; his family would never get to know what happened to him. All because I reacted fast when it attacked me. I should have felt justified but instead, I just felt sick.
The door to my apartment burst open. Since I couldn’t remember it closing, I had to assume it had been slammed shut during the fight. Callie and a strange man I’d never seen before rushed inside. Callie’s eyes darted around until they landed on the werewolf. I waited for her to freak out and stare at me like I had done something wrong.
It surprised me when she ran into the apartment, leapt over the corpse, and wrapped herself around me. I held onto her tightly, mostly because I felt like the world had stopped moving until she grabbed me. “I’m so sorry that we didn’t get here sooner!” she shouted. “Are you okay?”
I didn’t know how to answer that, since I couldn’t look away from the corpse on the ground. Its eyes staring back at me.
Callie pulled away, tilting my head down so that I had to stare at her. “Are you okay?” she asked me again, her eyes looking bigger than they ever had before.
“Yeah,” I said, then a little stronger. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just, uh . . . shaken up, I guess. I’ve never . . . Yeah . . . ”
The man that she had come in with her knelt down next to the werewolf. He examined the wound, looked at the knife, then whistled. “Not bad. Not bad at all. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you’d done this before.”
My stomach took another sick turn.
Callie dropped down to her feet, then turned to her friend. She put her hands on her hips, glaring at him. “Would you be nice. Can’t you see that Aster is clearly upset about all of this?”
“I’m fine,” I said, though it might have sounded more convincing if my voice hadn’t cracked on the last word. Or if I could look away from the body for more than a handful of seconds. It just kept drawing my attention, looking so broken and bloody.
“What made these burn marks?” her friend asked, clearly not paying attention to Callie.
“I did,” I said.
“With what?”
“Me.”
He stared at me, an eyebrow raised.
Callie cleared her throat. “Aster is the son of Apollo. He’s got some magic because of that. I should probably introduce you two. Aster, this is Micha, Micha, this is Aster.” She waved between the two of us. Then she turned toward me. “Micha was sent by Artemis to kill the werewolf that was trying to kill me, though she didn’t send him for you, which is concerning. I would think that she’d want to make sure nothing bad happened to you first. But I suppose that’s just the way of the gods. I’m happy that you’re okay.” She put her hand on my arm and stared me dead in the eyes, as if worried that I wouldn’t believe her for some reason.
Hearing the words made me feel better, though, and I straightened up. “I’m okay.”
She nodded once, offering me a smile. Then she moved over to Micha and touched his arm. My eyes followed the movement, and I glanced between the two of them. “Have you two known each other for long?” I asked. Callie seemed to know so many people, it wouldn’t have surprised me if she happened to know some Hunters too. And Hunters were naturally very fit people and Micha was no exception. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Callie found herself attracted to him.
What did surprise me was the way my chest tightened at the very thought of that.
“Oh, only like twenty minutes,” Callie said. “We didn’t have much chance to talk, since I spent the entire drive here screaming at him to go faster.”
Micha nodded. “We got some weird looks at the stop signs.”
“You shouldn’t have stopped!” Callie screamed, flailing her arms. “Stopping at stop signs takes time.”
“Well, getting pulled over also takes time, draws attention, and costs money. Do I look like I wouldn’t piss a cop off?” He gestured to his sarcastic expression, then raised an eyebrow.
Moving around the corpse of the poor man that I killed, I sidled between them so that Callie wouldn’t get much closer. “It’s fine, Callie. Everything turned out all right. I’m not hurt or anything.”
She sighed. “Right. Well, I still wish we had gotten here sooner. I’m sorry that you ended up having to do that.”
She gestured to the body on the ground, and I frowned at it. Everything felt kind of wobbly for a second. “Um . . . I don’t suppose there’s anyway to, uh . . . take care of that, is there?”
“Sure,” Micha said. “We could bury it, we could burn it, some Hunters leave them out in the woods for the animals to eat. There are a lot of options.”
Funny how that didn’t make me feel any better. “I’m going to sit down for a second.” I took a seat on the floor of my kitchen, away from the dead body.
“First time?” Micha asked.
“Of course, it is,” Callie said, rubbing my shoulders. I felt like a wuss, but I didn’t get back up, either. I didn’t even get to see his human face. It felt like a small thing, but also so big. I should have gotten to really look at him, so I knew the man that I had killed. Instead, he’d always be this wolf that had jumped me.
“Why don’t the two of you let me handle this,” Micha said, pulling out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling in my cleanup crew,” he said.
“There are more Hunters?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” Micha responded. Then he waved his hands. “It would probably be better if you didn’t ask. If this made you squeamish, then I don’t think you’d like to know what my cleanup crew does.”
Callie’s nose wrinkled, “Oh . . . well, Artemis didn’t have to tell me that.”
“What?” I asked, looking over at her.
Callie patted my shoulder again, still with her nose wrinkled. “I don’t think you want to know. I don’t even want to know, and I’m forced to know.” She shook her head, as if trying to clear it out. Callie managed to get me to my feet and the two of us walked to my room while Micha waited for his cleanup crew to show up. I sat on my bed with Callie sitting next to me. Well, she sat next to me for thirty seconds at a time. She kept flitting off whenever she saw something interesting, pulling down pieces of art I hadn’t even really looked at since hanging up.
When I told her she could have one of them, her eyes danced and she jumped over to me. “You’re the sweetest.” Her lips landed on my cheek, and then she went off to look at something else. She plopped down in front of my bookcase, reading every single title and telling me what she thought of the books.
I didn’t think she did it on purpose, but her attitude and the calmness she showed helped ease the tension in my chest. I watched her dancing around, smiling, chattering. When someone started talking in the apartment, she began talking even faster, louder so that I wouldn’t have to think about it too much.
It relaxed me enough that I told her everything that happened with my mother. She frowned as I spoke, shaking her head. “Well, that’s . . . irritating. I can beat her up if you want me to.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m serious. I can beat her up. Look at me. Don’t doubt how awesome I am at beating people up.”
A smile broke through, and I shook my head. “You’re a good friend, that’s for sure.”
Red bloomed across her cheeks, and she shuffled her feet. “Thanks.”
Then someone knocked on our door, and Micha said, “All clear if you want to come out.”
CHAPTER TWELVE:
A Grand Party
Callie
ASTER SLIPPED BETWEEN me and Micha as we stood in my living room, trying to figure out what to do from there. I didn’t know why he’d snuggled so close, but I didn’t mind it. I gave him a little smile, putting my arm around his.
“The body is gone from the back,” Micha told me. “Someone is eating good tonight.”
My nose wrinkled as I worried if he had been joking or not. I honestly couldn’t tell. “No one saw it, right?”
“Not as far as I know.”
My mom and dad weren’t in the house at the moment, so we could talk freely without traumatizing anyone. It would have been cruel to make them go through a day where they both had to accept the truths I gave them, and then deal with a werewolf in person. That needed a week at least.
“I feel like this is really bad,” I said. “Someone wants to kill Aster and me, and both attempts failed. Once this person finds out, won’t they try harder?”
“I would,” Micha told me, not at all making me feel better. “But they probably wouldn’t come after you in the next day. It’s already almost sundown, so that wouldn’t do much for them.”
“They could try and get us while we’re sleeping,” Aster said. “How hard would it be to break into one of our places and kill us? The next bunch of attackers might be something more powerful than a werewolf.”
Micha smirked. “Lucky for you, you’ve got the likes of me on your side. Doesn’t matter what they send.”
“Really?” Aster asked. “Because I feel like a demigod could kick your ass pretty good.”
Micha lost none of his confidence. “I have a crossbow, otherworldly strength, and I’ve been hunting for fifteen years. I’m fine.”
I nodded. “I trust that you can handle whatever comes.”
Aster took a step closer to Micha. “Ya know what, I think I should do a sweep outside to see if there’s anything else out there. I’ll make sure Callie is safe.”
I smiled at him. “Aw, you’re sweet.” I got up on my toes to give him a kiss on the cheek, which naturally I had to follow up with ten more. The best way one could show appreciation was to smother her friend in kisses. Aster had a soft face. He smelled nice too, making it all the better.
Aster walked out of the house, not even taking a weapon with him on his way through the door. I worried, but he had some godly powers on his side. Not to mention, Micha would probably have known if there was danger close by.
“Thank you for helping me,” I told him. “I’m sorry that you had to put yourself in danger for me.”
He laughed it off. “That was nothing, I promise. My entire family is made up of Hunters—ya know, other than the spouses that married in—and this is the kind of stuff we do for training. Most of our training involves a parent almost killing us.”
A sad sound left my lips. “Oh my god, what are you talking about?”
Micha only shrugged. “Not because they want to hurt us, but because they want us to know how to get out of any situation we’re put in. My younger cousin got locked in a burning building, I got my arm broken and left in the woods over the weekend. It is what it is.”
I was filled with horror for how casual he sounded. Micha didn’t sound bothered, so I tried not to let it tear up my insides. I knew that not everyone got nice parents, but still, I wanted them to.
“Did you want to head home now?” I asked. “You probably don’t wanna stick around—”
My head swam, silencing me and stilling my body to the point where I couldn’t even feel it anymore. It didn’t belong to me in that moment, and I couldn’t see a thing in front of me. A bright, white light took over everything inside of me. I knew this feeling well, but that didn’t make it any easier to get used to.
“No, he won’t be going home,” Artemis said in my mind. I knew her voice, but it didn’t have that childlike quality I had become accustomed to. She sounded older, though I’d never seen her look older than twelve or fourteen. She did sound just as put out as usual though. “Tell Micha that his job is now to protect you until we’re sure you’re safe. He belongs to you for now.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I couldn’t argue with a god. Not when they could torture me if they got upset. I would rather not have the headache.
“Good luck, and try not to get yourself killed,” Artemis said in the moments before she released me.
I stumbled, only not hitting the floor because Micha caught me. I held onto him, catching my breath as my body became mine once again. Everything tilted strangely, and it would take another few seconds before I felt like a person.
I steadied myself. “Well . . . don’t get upset with me?”
Micha cocked a dark eyebrow, concerned. “What did you do?”
“Artemis just told me that you’re my new babysitter, and you have to make sure no one kills me.”
I thought he would be annoyed, like so many other people tended to be when I was involved. He surprised me, smiling, “I can do that. You got food?”
“Lots.”
“Then we’ll be fine.”
When the door opened, I thought I would see Aster coming back inside. I saw both my mom and dad instead, and they had scowls on their faces as they saw me and my new friend. Though it could have had more t
o do with the crossbow on Micha’s back, and less to do with me being alone with a boy.
“And who’s this?” Mom asked.
“Micha,” my friend offered, holding his hand out to shake hers. Then Dad’s. “Nice to meet you.”
Dad looked suspicious already. “Are you one of those . . . special friends Callie has?”
“Special?” Micha asked. “Like . . . special? I swear I haven’t touched her? I’m only twenty, but I don’t go near people younger than me. A personal rule.”
“No,” Mom said with a wince. “Special like . . . ” She looked to me to help.
“He’s a Hunter,” I said. “Artemis made five families that are supposed to hunt and kill werewolves, and he’s from one of the American families. He just moved here, and Artemis sent him to protect me.” I had second thoughts about telling them about the fact that a wolf tried to kill me, but I knew it would probably come up. For now, I played it careful.
Dad rubbed his eyes for the millionth time, sighing to himself as he probably regretted not giving me up for adoption. “Okay then, a Hunter. Werewolves are real?”
“Yes,” I said. “But you don’t have to worry about vampires or ghosts or anything. Pretty much . . . on the ghost part.” I made it so much worse before I just shut my mouth.
My mom shifted uncomfortably, trying not to look at anyone for all that long. “Why did Artemis think you needed protection?”
Before I could get myself in trouble, the door opened again and Aster walked on through. “No more murderous werewolves . . . ” He trailed off when he saw my parents, his mouth adorably falling open as he stared blankly. It made me smile, wishing Aster wasn’t frozen in place, so he could come stand with me again.
“Murderous werewolves?” Dad asked.
Aster tried desperately to do damage control, hurrying farther inside. “No, I meant that there was nothing out there. Like, never anything out there to worry about. We’re all clear, because of course we would be.”