The Caitlin Chronicles Boxed Set

by Michael Anderle

  Many of them didn’t seem to fit the requirements of the captain’s usual high standards.

  At one point, a young lad of no more than seventeen marched over to Kain and raised his hand. There was a smug grin on his face, as though the kid’s birthdays had all come at once.

  He tried to stop them and ask them where they were going. Kain stepped forward, head-butted him in the face, and told him to get lost.

  “Way to not draw attention to yourself,” Caitlin said, rolling her eyes.

  “Sometimes words just won’t cut it,” Kain replied.

  “You could still try.”

  Caitlin looked at the poor kid, now snoring gently on the floor. She recognized his face but couldn’t think of his name.

  So young. Too young to be playing grown-up games.

  What the hell was the governor thinking?

  They continued through the town, doing their best to remain inconspicuous. A couple of times, Caitlin caught people looking their way with interest, but no one else stopped them.

  After a short while and a lot of turns, they found what they were after.

  “You’re sure about this? You’re sure this is safe?” Kain asked.

  Caitlin nodded. “It’s strange, but out of everyone who lives here, she’s the only one I trust now.” She raised her fist and knocked on a small red door.

  They waited a moment and heard footsteps approaching cautiously on the other side. The door swung open to reveal a woman who looked as though the years had not been kind to her. Her hair was greasy and clung to her head, her clothes tattered and torn. Huge bags hung beneath her eyes as she looked them up and down.

  “Miss Harrison?” Her voice was barely a croak. “I’d heard a rumor that you were dead.”

  “Not yet,” Caitlin said. “Can we come in?”

  The woman looked Kain up and down. “Both of you?”

  “Please. We need your help. It’s about the governor.”

  The woman winced at that word, a shadow crossing her face. She leaned forward and scanned the street, looking for anyone who might be watching. She waved them both in. “In you come, in you come.”

  Kain looked around the room, and his face clearly said he couldn’t believe what a mess it was. His nose wrinkled, and Caitlin surmised that the smell had caught his attention. He had the look of a man who had been reminded of something he hadn’t smelled in years but recognized all the same. Dust, grime, and… Caitlin waited for the moment of truth.

  Gunpowder? The silent inquiry showed in his eyes.

  She raised an eyebrow in response, sure now that he knew exactly what so many others missed. His gaze swept the room and over what clearly left him speechless. Strewn across the floor amidst clothes, foodstuffs, and dirt were pieces and parts of weapons that had not been seen in years.

  Silver Creek Forest

  “This is boring,” Alice said as she sat with Ash in the forest and waited for dusk to fall.

  Ash smiled and took Alice’s hand in his own. “There isn’t a boring second when I’m with you.”

  Alice put a finger to her mouth and pretended to throw up.

  “Hey!” Ash got to his knees and pushed her playfully.

  “I’m kidding! I’m kidding,” Alice said. They both smiled and stared into each other’s eyes. “Y’know, I never thought I’d feel the way I feel so soon after…well…” She trailed off, remembering the brute of a man whom they had left to rot beneath a bed in New Leaf.

  “I’m sorry,” Ash said. “How long were you married?”

  “Married?” Alice looked confused. “Marriage doesn’t count for shit anymore these days. It was much more of a ‘you’re mine’ situation. After I was old enough to…y’know…we were paired up, and I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. My parents weren’t thrilled that Bill had claimed me, but they got caught by Mad out in the wilds not long afterward and the rest was history.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ash repeated.

  “Quit apologizing, you big turd,” Alice said, pushing him back and straddling him.

  They were far enough away from the other Revolutionaries that they would not be heard but close enough that they could jump into action should anything happen before their time was up.

  “I’m not a pity case to be had by a Silver Creek guard. Now, are you man enough to take me, or do I have to take you myself?” Alice leaned forward, and they kissed.

  They rolled and frolicked, doing their best to keep their moans of pleasure as quiet as they could. That was always a tough sell, though, especially in the heat of the moment. They never expressed it outright, but there was a little fear in both of them. What if they were to charge Silver Creek and never make it out alive? What if only one of them did? Caitlin was an easy leader to fall in behind, but there was always that ‘what if.’

  Make every second count, Alice thought as she felt Ash in places she’d only dreamed of, unaware that merely a hundred meters away, two Revolutionaries, Belle and Vex, sat with their eyebrows raised.

  “And they told us not to draw attention to ourselves,” Vex said, eyeing Belle up and down with a wink.

  “You touch me, and I’ll cut your cock off,” Belle replied, only half joking as she giggled at the gentle moans which floated on the wind.

  Silver Creek

  Monica Chapman bustled around her house, never really taking a second to sit down. There was a frenzied air to her, as though if she ever stopped, she might die.

  “As long as you keep that dog in check, we’ll be just fine,” she said, her voice croaky and dry.

  Jaxon looked at Caitlin, then Monica, then lowered his head onto his paws.

  Caitlin smiled and watched Monica with fascination and pity. She had come to know the woman over the years. As a child, she’d been sent on errands by her mom and dad to get small trinkets and tiny pieces of technology from Monica and her husband. That had been back when she was fair and young and carefree, before that moment in the market square where Trisk had given his speech and ordered Hank to shoot her husband right up there on the platform.

  Since those days, there had been a visible decline in her health. Despite the governor’s orders, Monica continued tinkering and inventing, and Caitlin guessed that no one had ever really bothered too much on checking in with her. They had much bigger fish to fry than to waste their time with a deranged lunatic.

  “Here you go,” Monica said, the tray in her hands shaking so furiously that the contents of the three cups spilled in every direction. By the time she laid the tray down, there was hardly anything left in the cups. “I’m sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve had visitors. How have you been, dear? It’s not often I hear of a person’s death and live to see them darken my doorstep another day.”

  Monica sat for all of thirty seconds, her leg tapping non-stop. She stood up and began to pace around the room.

  “We need your help,” Caitlin said without any preamble.

  “Oh? Straight to it, eh?” Monica stood dangerously close to the fire in the corner.

  “The governor has my brother,” Caitlin said. Monica cocked her head to listen.

  Caitlin told her everything from her inauguration as a ranger, to her kidnapping at the manor, to her travels at New Leaf, and now, her return. The only thing she excluded was the vampire part as, given the current state Monica was in right now, she hardly wanted to chance an overload of information.

  She told Monica of the Revolutionaries, and the woman’s eyes lit up at that. She continued to circle around the room, her feet kicking odd parts of metal on the floor—coils, springs, and cogs, pieces of the old world.

  By the time she had finished talking, Monica had reversed her age five years. Her eyes were vibrant and alive with hope and possibility.

  “You’re really taking on the governor?” It emerged more rhetorical than as a real question. “After all these years, the time has come?”

  “Yes. That’s why we came to you. I know it’s beyond the realms of possibility that you
have had time through the years to test and try any more weapons, but as much as swords, bows, and daggers are great, we really need to one-the-fuck-up the guards. We’ve counted nearly double on the streets than there were before, which means they know we’re coming for them.” Caitlin took a sip of her drink, instantly regretting her decision and doing her best to fight back her own gagging.

  Kain chuckled quietly. She threw him a quick look, his subtle gesture revealing that his own drink now fed the dead plant in the flower pot next to him.

  “Oh, dears,” Monica said, a wry smile playing on her face. “You think I’d let Trisk slaughter my husband and not spend every day since dreaming of ways to blow his tits into the stars? I thought you knew me, Caitlin.”

  “She goes by Kitty Cat now,” Kain chimed in.

  “No, I don’t,” Caitlin snapped. She turned to the older woman. “Ignore him.”

  Monica picked up a long piece of metal from the floor. Black powder painted its tip, and when she prodded it into the fire, it roared into life. Caitlin and Kain gasped as the flames burned red, then blue, then green.

  Jaxon growled.

  Monica laughed, something she hadn’t done in years. It had been so long that it sounded more like a crow coughing than the tinkling of bells.

  “I’d be careful what you say around that one,” Monica said to Kain. “There’s always been something about her. Something fierce. The last place you want to end up is on her bad side.”

  Caitlin slapped Kain hard on the arm. “See! Told you,” she said, poking out her tongue. “What kind of magic is that?”

  “Flavors of the old magic. The burning of chemicals the folks of Silver Creek have long forgotten.” She opened a door at the back of the room and motioned for them to follow her. The corners of her mouth wrinkled into a smile. “You want to see?”

  Kain gulped, looking suddenly fearful of what magic the woman had referred to. Caitlin instructed Jaxon to stay put, then followed without looking back, a steely determination on her face.

  They walked down a narrow hallway with doors off to either side, then took a right and found themselves in a small cupboard-sized room. Monica lit a torch, dropped to her knees—Caitlin heard them clicking—and lifted a small square of carpet.

  “I’m warning you,” Kain said, his face a strange cocktail of emotions. “The last bastard who tried to lead me into his sex dungeon found himself without his genitals and coughing up blood.”

  “Relax,” Caitlin said, a hint of amusement in her voice. She had never seen Kain afraid before. The last few days, he’d been nothing but cocky and arrogant. She didn’t doubt he could hold his own in a fight—judging by the way he swung his sword—but it was fun, all the same, to see him worried. “If anyone’s on the good guy’s side, it’s Monica.”

  Monica lifted a trapdoor and revealed a set of stairs. They filed in one after the other into a cavern of blackness. It was cold down there, and the air smelled stale.

  Monica lit a final torch on the wall, and the room came alive with light. Where her upstairs looked like several pigs had had an orgy amidst a pile of scrap metal, this room was incredibly tidy, organized, and clean.

  Lining the walls was a vast array of weapons. Pistols, shotguns, and submachine guns—at least, those were the names that came to mind, though where she’d heard them or what they really meant didn’t seem all that important. A hundred relics of the old world hung within reach, contraptions that blew Caitlin’s mind into Kingdom come and made her breathless. She had no idea how any of them worked. How anybody had ever had the knowledge to be able to assemble the damn things in the first place was beyond her.

  “Okay, now I’m turned on,” Kain said, crossing the room to where a table of handguns, pristinely ordered and displayed, lay temptingly on top. He reached to pick one up. “I haven’t seen one of these in years—”

  “Nah-uh.” Monica reprimanded him, moving instantly to his side and slapping his hands. “No touching. Not yet, anyway. These ones are just works in progress.”

  Caitlin’s mouth wouldn’t close. “Where in the name of holy hell did you find all of these? I’m not being funny, but there are so many guns here, and it’s not like these things are just lying around, ready to be pillaged, collected, and restored.”

  Monica crossed the room and removed a small black gun from the wall. Its barrel was immaculate, gleaming in the torchlight. She rolled it over in her hands, then aimed it at Kain, closing one eye and staring straight down the barrel.

  “Woah. Hey, woah!” Kain said, immediately backing up against the wall and lifting his hands in surrender. “Are you fucking crazy?”

  “You like snakes?” Monica asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “This is a Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver. Near mint condition. Now, that’s rare. After the leaders of the world cracked themselves up on imbecile juice and tried to blow the fucking world to pieces, there wasn’t a whole lot of stuff that wasn’t damaged by the bombs. By the explosions. But every now and then, just occasionally, you can stumble across hidden gems and treasures. Buried in basements. Taken from the hands of dead men. A lot of bandits and hoodlums out in the wild have no idea just how precious the things are that they’re aiming at strangers on the road.”

  “You found that gun in working condition?” Caitlin asked.

  Kain jittered uncomfortably against the wall.

  “Don’t be stupid, my dear. My dear Zach found this beauty while out on the road, years ago.” Monica’s eyes glanced at a large sketch of a younger version of herself with her late-husband, Zach, on the wall. “He was an adventurer. A wanderer. No matter what I told him, he’d sneak through the hidden ways he’d found and explore the world beyond the walls. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Every time, I’d worry myself sick, but it was all for naught as he’d return with a sack full of treasures he’d found soon enough. Obsessed with it, he was. The old world. Which is where my interest came from.”

  A tear pooled at the corner of Monica’s eyes. “One day, he returned covered in bruises and cuts. He’d been ambushed on the road by bandits. Four men, each holding pistols or guns, asking that he turn over the goods he’d foraged that day. He’d taken them all on one-by-one, stealing their weapons. It was never often you had to fear them, really. Guns hardly ever worked in those days, and when he squared up to them and saw that flicker of fear, he just took them down.”

  Monica lowered the gun. “This is just one of the guns he brought back from that trip. Left in the finest condition I’ve ever seen.”

  She lifted it back up at Kain who instantly straightened.

  “No!” he screamed.

  “No point shouting. This room is so soundproof you couldn’t even hear gunfire from the surface. Believe me. I’ve tested it.”

  Monica’s finger tensed on the trigger. She pulled. There was a click. Both Kain and Caitlin gasped and took a deep breath in.

  Kain opened his eyes when he heard the laughter. Monica was in stitches, doubled over and wiping tears from her eyes as she clapped her knee and pointed at Kain.

  She opened the cylinder and displayed it to them.

  There were no bullets inside.

  Kain’s eyes flashed amber. He shouted with rage as he dashed across the room at unbelievable speed and picked up Monica by the throat. Coarse hairs began to sprout across his face, and his teeth began to turn razor sharp.

  “Kain!” Caitlin shouted, springing after him. “She didn’t mean it. She didn’t mean it.”

  Kain felt the sharp tip of Caitlin’s sword against the back of his neck. He looked into the fearful eyes of the human in his grasp, the lunatic lady who pined after her husband day in and day out. He set her on her feet, stepped away, and looked at his hands in shame. Dark hair had sprouted on their backs which, years ago, would have already receded to where they’d come from. Not now, though.

  Kain looked at Monica who, to his surprise, didn’t look frightened. She looked excited. He turned to Caitlin who had an eyebrow raised and a knowin
g smile on her face.

  “Vampires, guns, and werewolves, oh my,” she said. “So that’s what you are.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Silver Creek, Silver Creek Forest

  At first, he wasn’t sure what the shape was in the dark. Then, Clint saw the woman with dark skin emerge from the trees and walk along the dusty road to the gates.

  “Here you go, Balski,” he said, patting a guard with snow-white hair to his left. “Another bimbo for your late-night romps.”

  Clint turned back to his view of the road from the top of Silver Creek’s gates. The woman now stood directly below them, waiting patiently.

  He blinked and rubbed his eyes.

  How had she moved that fast?

  “Halt. In the name of Governor Trisk, who goes there?”

  The woman looked up at him, and his heart froze.

  Mary-Anne looked up at the guards above. At least two dozen of them stood up on the parapets, half of them with bows. The one who called down had nothing more than a sword.

  What a stupid choice of weapon for a gate-guard.

  The air was still, the calm before the storm.

  Mary-Anne cracked her neck left, then right. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they glowed red. Her fangs extended, and she had to stop herself from laughing as the shouts of panic came from above.

  Just like old times.

  With an order shouted, arrows rained at the spot where Mary-Anne had been, but she was already at the gates now. They were nothing more than wood fashioned into a doorway, strong enough to hold back the Mad, but a freshly fed vampire? No. She charged, punched through the wood, reached through the hole she had made with her fist, and unlocked it from the inside.

  A swift kick with the bottom of her foot, and she was in.

  “Get her!” the gate-guard shouted from somewhere above as guards appeared from all angles. “Get her!”

  She saw a guard sprinting for the walls where a large bell hung. Immediately, she saw his intention—to alert the entire town to her whereabouts. That wasn’t about to happen.