Who is Audrey Wickersham?

by Sara Shrieves

  My dad shifted his attention from Bruce to Kirk and then Bruce finally did too, after staring at me curiously, obviously wondering about my reaction to his question.

  “That is a good point,” Agnes added, also seeming nervous after Bruce’s question. My dad, however, seemed oblivious. He was focused on the thought of battle now. That was definitely his thing.

  “Agnes, can you teach us anything?” My dad asked. “I mean, if we can take them by surprise, just enough to give us an advantage physically, that could definitely help, right?”

  Agnes nodded her head in agreement.

  “How many members are on the council?” Bruce asked.

  Agnes thought for a moment. “There are five, minus Lucian now, of course. And Besnik.”

  The room was silent for a moment, and then all three men started laughing simultaneously.

  Agnes and I looked at each other and then at the guys. Agnes waited for their laughter to subside a little before saying, “Just because there are only five does not mean they are not stronger than you. And they also have magick as their advantage. And they still outnumber you by two.”

  “Excuse me,” Bruce said. “We’re evenly matched, sweetie.”

  Agnes looked surprised, and started to speak again but Bruce continued, “Did you think the three of us would do all of the work because we’re men? Audrey can totally kick my ass, and her father’s.”

  “Well now,” my dad laughed, a little too confidently. “Let’s not go that far. I’m sure Audrey is strong now, but she’s still Audrey.”

  I stared at him, not knowing exactly how to respond.

  Kirk cleared his throat nervously. “Mr. Wickersham, Audrey has changed. I mean, you know that of course. But, she’s different now. Stronger.”

  “So, what,” my dad asked, looking from Kirk to me, “you’re saying you can kick my ass?”

  “You’re damn right I could.”

  We stared at each other for a few moments, and I waited for him to crack a smile or do something to indicate that he was finding some sort of amusement in this, but he seemed to be taking it very seriously.

  “I want to see,” he said.

  “Wait, what?” I was shocked.

  “Mr. Wickersham, that’s probably not a good idea,” Kirk said.

  “I agree,” chimed in Agnes.

  “I’d be a little curious,” Bruce said, smiling at all of us.

  Stupid, drunk Bruce, I thought to myself.

  “I want to see what you can do,” my dad said to me. He was being serious, and he seemed angry.

  “Fine. Let’s go out back then.” I stood up and walked out to the back yard, not hesitating for even a second. If I did I knew I would lose my nerve.

  “This is a bad idea,” Kirk muttered under his breath, forgetting I could hear him.

  Agnes, Bruce and Kirk hovered in the doorway, watching. I stood out on the lawn, next to our old trampoline that my dad had purchased for my twelfth birthday. I hadn’t used it for about two years, so I figured it would be good to finally utilize after all this time. My dad faced me, waiting near the back door. I could tell he didn’t know what to do. I was his daughter, after all. He’d never even raised a hand to me, and now he was challenging me to a fight. Talk about strange.

  “Well? Are you just going to stand there?”

  “Maybe we should go back in,” he said, feeling guilty after challenging his daughter to a fight.

  “Wimp.”

  He glared at me, getting angry again. “Okay then, fine.” He hunched forward in some sort of football stance it looked like, and then let out an obnoxious guttural yell and charged at me full force. I waited patiently for him to get right within arm's reach, and then I angled myself to the side, grabbed him around the waist, and flung him up onto the trampoline. He landed on his back and bounced up once really high, and then a few more times lower, until finally he stopped and then just lay there, quiet.

  “Dad?”

  “Let’s just go inside.”

  “Okay.”

  He crawled down and then we walked back in together, and he put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me really tight against his side. I looked up at him and he was smiling. “Now I can do that and not worry about hurting you.”

  I smiled back at him and we both went to sit in the living room, ready to discuss our battle strategies.

  Chapter 13

  So, you’re probably wondering, as I still am, how in the hell did I end up at the edge of this cliff?

  There we are one minute, discussing battle strategies, feeling pretty confident in ourselves, cocky even. We figured with Kirk and me we’d have it made. Strength plus Agnes’s power? No problem. The way I had it figured that guy Andrei was still on his way out to Romania. And then The Council would all have to come back here to the States. We had plenty of time. This was how my mind was working. It seemed totally logical to me. We had no idea that they were all out here already. Or that they had been here the entire time, watching me.

  So obviously our battle didn’t exactly go as planned. We fought a good fight though, don’t be mistaken.

  __

  Bruce was snoring loudly on the couch, sprawled out, using Agnes’s lap as a pillow.

  Kirk, my dad and I were hunched over a piece of paper on the floor, going over some haphazard notes we had been doodling about some imaginary scenarios that we had all been playing out in our heads which we suddenly thought we should write down. By this point, we had several.

  Bruce’s snoring came to an abrupt stop when the front window exploded inward, shattering glass all over him and Agnes. The three of us were slightly sheltered by the couch. Kirk and I sprang up and ran to either side of the window, ready to attack anyone that came through it. We did not expect it to be The Council, even though there was no one else it could’ve been at this point. My dad had no enemies. That I knew of.

  There was dead silence for about twenty seconds, which seemed to feel like hours, and then my dad whispered from the kitchen, “Do you hear anything?” He was trying to look out of the window in there, seeing if he could spy anyone trying to sneak up on us. The curtain still remained intact over the large frame of our former window, so we still had some cover to move around. But whoever broke it did too, unfortunately.

  “What’s going on?” Bruce squeaked from the couch.

  “Bruce just shut up,” I snapped.

  He clamped his mouth closed and hunkered back down on the couch, trying to pull Agnes with him. She chose to go into the kitchen with my dad, however. After only a few seconds of indecision, Bruce followed her.

  The curtains seemed to be billowing inward because of the wind outside, but we all knew it was someone coming into the house. A humongous foot stepped through, treading delicately for a moment before fully stepping onto the living room floor. It seemed arrogant to enter this way. Almost as if we were being toyed with. After another moment the entire form of our intruder stepped into the room and we understood that it was not arrogance, but pure confidence. This was the most gigantic human being I had ever laid eyes on. In real life I mean. He was so tall he had to crane his neck off to the side when he tried to stand to his full height in the living room. And we didn’t have low ceilings. He compensated for this by bending his knees, and turning slowly to face me directly. He hadn’t seemed to notice Kirk off to his left yet. Facing me directly he seemed to be as wide as four of me put together.

  He scowled deeply as we made eye contact, and his lopsided eyes glimmered dully with what seemed to be glee. He sniffed loudly in my direction with his giant, turnip shaped nose. As if he needed to also identify me through smell. After this he began to smile, and then took one giant, lurching step forward.

  At this moment I felt like leaping out of the window, all of my newly acquired vampire/zombie powers or skills fleeing from me in one oozing puddle of pure fear. This guy was terrifying. I mean, talk about your worst nightmare. Before I could gain back any courage, or actually manage to try and move
, Kirk leapt onto his back from behind and grabbed him around the neck. This managed to surprise the behemoth, which helped me to gain control of my senses and snap me out of my initial instinct to flee.

  I watched the monster reach up slowly over his shoulders, growling angrily, to try and grope at Kirk, wanting to yank him off. Kirk crushed tighter around his neck, squeezing his eyes shut with the effort, obviously putting all of his strength and energy into this maneuver. It seemed to have no impact on the giant, however. He had begun to thump Kirk vigorously on the head, while still managing to glare at me and take another step in my direction.

  I prepared to be throttled and ran towards him, going for his midsection. I ran directly into his lower abdomen with my shoulder and almost fell back onto the ground, but was caught and pushed back up by my dad. I looked back at him to see him making eye contact with the creature (that’s how I was coming to think of this guy) and then he looked at me and said, “Give him everything you’ve got, Aud, I’ll try and go around back to help Kirk.”

  I steeled myself up again and rammed him once more. “Shit,” I yelled, gripping my shoulder with my undamaged arm. The damn thing didn’t even seem to notice me now. Kirk had his head tilted back and was pulling him by the nostrils.

  Suddenly I saw a small plastic object fly past my shoulder and thump the big guy in the eye. He made a loud unpleasant sound and lurched forward towards me again. I backed up a little and looked over my shoulder to see Bruce hiding behind the kitchen counter, with a little arsenal of household items lined up in front of him. He had another one ready and aimed to fire. He met my eye and then winked at me, giving me a companionable grin. Hey, whatever worked, right? I looked around and didn’t see Agnes, but then turned quickly back to my own battle. I heard my dad making some noises, and I assumed he was having a hard time with this gargantuan pain in the ass. I was scared then, because I knew if Kirk and I couldn’t take him, my dad definitely shouldn’t be involved.

  I faced the creature again, sucked in my breath, and this time went for his legs. I hit him hard, full force. He had been lifting one leg up to walk forward again and I knocked him off balance a bit. I saw him suddenly get a grip on Kirk, finally, as he also began tilting precariously to the left, and he threw him across the room. Kirk landed right on our television, causing it to explode, making Bruce cry out from the kitchen.

  I waited for the giant to either fall or catch his balance, unfortunately it was the latter, and then I rammed his legs again. I felt him scoop me up as I did this, and lift me over his head. He was about to toss me as he did Kirk when I suddenly heard someone shout, “Dolph!” loudly, sounding as if they were in pain. He swiveled in the direction the shout had come from, bringing me with him, though I was seeing everything upside down now, and I saw my dad standing over a much shorter, sharp-featured, skeletal version of the man-beast that was currently holding me above his head.

  “Davin,” my captor said slowly, sounding slightly confused. Before he could react any further, my dad swung down with a huge battle sword that he had kept in his den and had purchased from a Renaissance Faire we had attended a few years back, and slammed it directly into Davin’s head, literally cutting off any response he may have had to his colossal brother.

  There was silence for a full minute, except for my dad’s panting after what had obviously been a struggle between him and this man Davin, until finally Dolph screamed out in a rage and threw me forward, launching me past my dad, into the dining room table. I hit it hard and it broke apart, and scattered the chairs everywhere.

  I recovered quickly in time to see Dolph running at my dad, about to throttle him, but then I saw Kirk coming up behind him, and he managed to tackle him around his legs mid-stride, and get him down on the ground. It was a long, slow fall. And when he finally hit the ground, landing partially on his brother, the whole house seemed to shake.

  My dad had removed his battle sword from Davin’s corpse already, and swung it swiftly into the back of Dolph’s neck when he landed, making a juicy smacking sound that echoed throughout the room. Dolph cried out loudly and started trying to turn over.

  We all looked at each other in surprise, and suddenly jumped as a small rubber duck came flying out of nowhere, smacking Dolph in the back of the head.

  I looked over at Bruce. “Really?”

  “Just trying to help!”

  I turned back to Dolph and looked at my dad. He had put his foot onto his shoulder and was using it as leverage to get the sword out from the back of his head. It was squirting blood everywhere and it was beginning to make me hungry. “Again!” I yelled, knowing he was going to do it anyway. He swung down once more, this time plunging the sword deeply into Dolph’s spinal cord, severing his head enough to actually kill him this time.

  “Holy shit,” said Kirk, after a few seconds of silence. “That was intense.”

  My dad stood quietly, looking down at the two bodies he was responsible for. “Audrey, are you okay?” He asked, finally looking up at me. He seemed energized somehow. I didn’t know what I had expected him to be like after killing two people, but it wasn’t this.

  “Yeah Dad, what about you?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Bruce?” Kirk called out.

  “I’m good too!” He called back from behind the counter. “I don’t really care to see the carnage. But hey, has anyone seen Agnes? She just disappeared after Mr. Sasquatch jumped through the window.”

  We all heard noises coming from outside and went together to the front window to see Agnes in some sort of awkward battle with two women. One woman was dark-skinned, with liquid black hair pulled into a long ponytail, with dark, almond shaped eyes. She shot around Agnes, lashing out at her with quick striking movements, seeming to try and find a weak spot. Agnes managed to deflect each shot that the woman aimed at her. The other woman was much older, older than Agnes, with a cascade of silver hair, which flowed around her elegantly, with a life of its own as she moved. She had icy blue eyes which looked directly into mine as soon as I looked out the window. She had been slowly circling, watching Agnes and the other woman fight each other.

  She broke away from their odd battle and began to move towards me, slowly drawing me in with those arctic eyes.

  Bruce, in a surprisingly heroic moment, stepped in front of me, pushing me back, trying to shield me from this woman. “Audrey, get back!” He shouted. Without warning, before I could push him aside, he was sent flying out onto the front lawn, where he lay motionless, at an unusual angle. I heard my dad shout his name and then suddenly Agnes was rushing towards me, appearing to use up most of her strength to push the creepy woman aside with her crazy hair and her weird blue eyes.

  “Audrey you must run. Now! I cannot keep them away from you much longer-” She turned suddenly back towards the women and flung out a phrase that I couldn’t understand, and managed to slow their approach. She turned back to all of us. “We need to help keep them off her trail.” She looked back at me again and said with as much force as she could, “Run now and do not tell anyone where you’re going. Do not stop.” She shoved me onto the front lawn, shot another phrase out at the two women to halt their progress again, and then yelled, “GO!” one last time before I finally turned and began to run. I had no idea where I would go.

  As I ran aimlessly, at what I figured was my top speed, I kept thinking of places I could go to hide out. Maybe Kirk’s apartment? No, that would be too easy. They could figure that out if they had really been watching me this whole time. I would just keep running until I had nowhere else to go. Kind of like what I had planned earlier today, but never got to fully play out.

  I wound up coming to a halt at the Griffith Observatory, jumping up on and walking slowly along its curved, white wall, which fell to a steep drop off point that led to a pathway up to the Hollywood sign. The actual sign was fenced off now, so I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to cross it or not. What was I thinking though, who even cared at this point? I jumped down from the wall
I had been standing on, ran up the pathway that led to the iconic sign, and deftly jumped the fence (my speed and dexterity still happily surprised me) that was blocking my way. I decided to sit behind the big “H” for a bit until I decided what I should do next.

  I began to let myself relax, which I should have known was a mistake. I should have known stopping at all was a mistake. Agnes had been seriously freaked out. But it’s not like I was still human. I could fight! I was running all of these things through my head when I heard my name called. It sounded like it came from a little further down the hill, over near the drop off point. I peeked around the edge of the sign to see who it was.

  I didn’t recognize him, but I knew instantly that it was Andrei. Who else would have followed me up to the Hollywood sign? He stood there arrogantly, smirking as I peeked out at him from around what had now become my hiding place. I sat back up and leaned against the letter again, closing my eyes and thinking about what my next move was going to be. Agnes had been trying to protect me from this exact thing, but I had apparently led myself right to it.

  Okay, I had speed and strength, he had magick. I could just launch myself at him before he even knew what was happening. That’s the angle I had to go with. Surprise. I had to get him talking though. I knew he was just waiting for me to say something anyway.

  “So what do you want from me, exactly?” I yelled out at him.

  “Want from you? There is nothing I want from you, Audrey. I am here to offer you something.”

  “And what is that?”

  “A chance for a new life.”

  “But, I have a life.”

  He laughed, loudly. “No Audrey. What you have right now is not what I would call a life.”

  “Then what would you call it?” I got up into a crouching position, quietly, so that I could spring out at him while he was speaking. It had to be the right moment though. I had to get him going on a rant or something. Right now he was being almost as abrupt as I was.