I stood there, taking in this strange and unexpected emotional display from my boss. Unsure of what to say or where exactly to look—it felt rude to stare the teary-eyed woman in the face—I looked at the picture. Beyond the startled expression, the pale-skinned girl’s blue eyes shone within a tight frame of black bangs that hung down on either side of her face. Though her hair was short—far shorter than I’d ever feel comfortable wearing my own dirty-blonde hair—there was still enough length to show the movement of her head in mid-turn as Miss Leon and the photographer caught her off guard. The effect of her shock seemed to carry over with a flare in the lens, because the same sapphire-like glow of her wide eyes seemed to shimmer across the spectrum of the photograph, creating barely-visible streaks of what looked like blue lightning. I realized then, with no bit of pride, that if Miss Leon were to ever startle me like that there was a strong possibility that, with all of my training and constantly tense nerves, I’d have her thrown over my shoulder and her arm broken in three places before I’d even realized who’d grabbed me.
This Estella may have been magical or whatever, but I was deadly.
And Estella… she was just dead.
“That’s what normal gets you,” my father’s voice chimed in the back of my head.
I’m sure that Miss Leon was convinced I’d been moved by her story and was somehow studying the Estella-girl’s face as some sort of silent homage to her memory, but the truth was I was just taking in the features for a long enough time that it wouldn’t seem weird that I hadn’t offered any words of comfort.
Guess I couldn’t blame my father for all of my abnormalities.
There was always good, old fashioned social awkwardness to fall back on.
And at that moment I had just enough social grace to know that I should say something, though not a single idea of what that something should be.
“I’m… uh, sorry for the loss,” was all I could manage.
“Oh, hun,” she said, her normal spark beginning to return to her voice, “if I thought you had something to be sorry for I’d have gotten an apology out of you for it a long time ago.” Then, seeming to remember where we were and what our relationship really amounted to, she asked, “Did you finish up with those magazines?”
4
Miss Leon let me leave early.
Well, no, that wasn’t entirely accurate. “Let” seems to imply that I was given some sort of permission, or that there was some sort of desire on my part.
Nope. That wasn’t the case at all.
Miss Leon made me leave early.
Smart-yet-stupid me, being the “hard-working” type I was, managed to finish all the work early. And while this was usually the case—and while I usually got the rest of the time to sit around and enjoy my sanctuary in peace—catching Miss Leon in her moment of mourning seemed to motivate a change.
My body tensed as though I was sensing an impending attack as the doors clicked shut behind me, and my suddenly poised body was rewarded with an extra-sharp chill from a late-evening breeze. Normally Daddy’s car would be pulled up tight to the curb and waiting to take me home. Since I was out early, that wasn’t the case this time. I’d called him, of course—it’d be my butt in a sling if I hadn’t—but he’d told me he was on some sort of important call. Apparently this new group, a “church” as he’d called them, was interested in his expertise and he’d cleared that block of time specifically because he knew I’d be at work. Upon hearing this, I was quick (perhaps too quick) to assure him that I was more than capable of walking home. His voice told me that he wasn’t happy about the idea, but that he didn’t have a choice in the matter, either.
Strange how even an abnormal life can have its abnormal moments, isn’t it?
Five minutes and two blocks later and I was feeling pretty good about the whole turn of events. I’d been ousted from my sanctuary, sure, but Daddy and his phone-date with the church (boy, did that feel strange to say in my head) had given me an otherwise unprecedented freedom. It was exhilarating and thrilling and… well, normal.
And yet I couldn’t shake the strange tension crawling through me since leaving the library. What I’d passed off as jumpy nerves at the sound of the doors had yet to relax since then, and more and more it was beginning to seem like the familiar precursor I often sensed whenever I was around a nonhuman. While I might have called it “fear” at one time, my training had turned it into something else, something that existed somewhere between “excitement” and “rage.” It got my heart thundering in my chest, my palms sweaty and eager to tighten into fists, and my entire body revved and ready to be used as a weapon.
And it wasn’t going away…
I looked around, being careful to make the gesture look like a normal teenager checking the street before crossing it. This, however, condemned me to committing to crossing the street. It wasn’t that I necessarily didn’t want to cross the street. That was where I needed to be, and I had just obviously looked around, apparently to do just that. But I’d caught sight of Jason Menkin walking on the sidewalk exactly where I intended to cross. This meant that, like it or not—though I secretly really liked it—I was committed to walking across the street seemingly to intercept him.
Or, as far as anybody else was concerned, to talk to him.
As it turned out, that was how Jason Menkin interpreted it, as well.
“Abby?” He smirked at me as he saw me jogging across the street toward him. Hearing him say my name—just knowing that he knew my name—nearly had me tripping on my feet. So much for monster-hunting ninja training. Then he said, “What a pleasant surprise,” and my feet melted entirely.
Stumbling, I tripped over the curb and saw the cement flying toward me. And then, just like that, it wasn’t.
Did I mention that Jason’s arms were around me? ’Cause they totally were.
Oh god… since when did I think like that?
Was this what normal felt like?
“Well that was…” I sucked in a breath of air, partly from relief and partly from shock, and tried to remember what my voice was supposed to sound like. “… embarrassing.”
“Nah,” he assured me, hoisting me back to my feet. “’Sides, it was nothing compared to yesterday.”
My face went magma-hot and I dropped my gaze to my feet despite every blazing instinct telling me there was still danger to be on the lookout for. “You would remember that…” I groaned, palming my face. “Guess you must think I’m a total spaz, huh? Major klutz?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Why would I? This was the first time I’ve actually seen you fall for real, and, truth be told, that curb was sneaking up on you. I saw it myself,” he finished with a wink.
Part of me swooned at that (swooned? Really? What was wrong with me?)—the other part caught the first part of what he’d said:
“First time? But yesterday…”
“Yesterday you tucked your elbow in mid-flip and braced your neck before you’d even started to fall. It might have been a convincing play for somebody who hasn’t seen so many so-called athletes taking falls to get phony foul calls.”
I stared at him. “You… how could you have—”
“Sometimes it’s about having eyes trained to see what not everyone’s looking for,” he said with a shrug, still smiling.
Jason Menkin. I’d known he was athletic from the start. Anybody with working vision could see that. I’d also seen him in class, reciting original poetry or speaking passionately about history, and during his debates, where his words had become razor-sharp weapons shot from a machine gun tongue. I’d always seen in him something of a kindred spirit, somebody just as multifaceted as I was without all the restrictions anchoring him from indulging in exactly who he wanted to be. He represented everything I dreamt of, and that he was so painfully good looking only added to the dreaminess of it all.
And at that moment he was proving to be even more than what I’d already known.
However, that moment was bringing
with it a few other—far more unwelcome—surprises.
That lingering sense of danger intensified, hitting me like a punch in the gut, and I felt more than saw several shadows pass overhead. Close enough to only be coming from the neighboring café’s rooftop, big enough to only be something man-sized, but fast enough to prove it was no man. And, to sweeten the deal, there seemed to be several of them.
“I should probably—” I began, but saw an equally unsettled and urgent look on Jason’s face before I could finish the get going from my sentence. Whatever was on that roof was operating in a way that most wouldn’t be able to pick up on, but he was undeniably frazzled, as well.
And he was looking at me with the same confused look that I was giving him.
A look that said, “How are you sensing that, too?”
Neither of us said anything more—what more was there to say, after all?—as we took off down the sidewalk, side by side, and started putting as much distance between us and the café as possible. Whatever was occupying that rooftop didn’t wait to give us a head start. Though it wasn’t something that most people’s senses could pick up on, there was no question that they were following.
It was a strange sensation. The running-for-my-life part was terrifying, definitely, but I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of kinship and awe at Jason. The way he effortlessly matched my stride, the way we navigated through alleys, over divides, and around obstacles without ever needing to voice our intent; it was all so… perfect. We were a pair of gears to a machine we’d never known about that was suddenly working in perfect harmony because of how perfectly we fit.
It felt like the beginning of something beautiful.
Which was ironic, because there was a growing possibility we wouldn’t survive the night.
As harmonious as we were, nothing we did seemed to shake our pursuers, and all the distance we put between us and the downtown area only served to put us that much farther away from reliable cover or the security of human onlookers…
Which, we soon realized, was the only thing that had kept them restricted to the rooftops.
As we bolted past the entrance to a lumber yard on the outskirts of town, the first set of footsteps impacted a short distance away from where we’d just been, followed soon after by several more. A moment later, a shimmer of movement appeared in front of us and a leering man with long, lanky limbs and a curtain of brown hair appeared. I cursed, my breath catching in my lungs (and not at all from the exertion of the run), and Jason and I both veered to the left and start down a narrow path between two towering stacks of freshly cut trees. Though neither of us said a word, we both seemed perfectly aware of what we’d just witnessed. A vampire. Or, rather, the sort of vampire that could do that. My mile-in-under-five minutes was a joke to them; they could cross that same mile in a second. Probably less. I don’t know—I’d never timed one, to be honest.
Mostly because I’d never fought one.
Not many humans could claim they had.
That Jason and I had actually seen that vampire—that it hadn’t just killed us during its “trip” from being behind us to directly in front of us—meant that it wasn’t in this for a quick end. More and more questions rise up from that, stacking on top of the already demanding ones, like how is Jason tied into all this?, which one of us are they after?, and, of course, why?
My guesses so far: who the hell knows?, probably me (just my luck), and because they’re monsters and it’s what they do.
Lanky-limbs appeared in front of us again, his body slowing down enough to come into view already laughing, the sound emerging like a high-pitched whistle that slowed down and deepened into a cackle. Both of our bodies tensed as we heard another pursuer come up behind us, and we shared a shiver as several more steps echoed along the logs above our heads.
“FOR JERRICK,” the one behind us shouted.
A round of FOR JERRICK’s echoed around us as the group recited the bizarre chant.
Then Lanky-limbs took a step toward us.
“What’s this about?” Jason demanded in a voice that was more snarl than not. Something in that didn’t sit well with me, but I was too concerned with the obvious threats to give it much thought.
“You know very well what it’s about, Jason Menkin.” LL laughed at the name like a bad joke before shifting his blood-thirsty gaze on me. “And Abigail DiAngelo is no less aware of her own infringements, though it would certainly appear neither of you are aware of the other’s involvement.” He cocked his head as he glanced between us, obviously amused by what he knew. I could only guess that he knew of my family—but he was probably either a vengeful vampire seeking his own form of justice for some vamp my parents killed, or some self-fulfilling hero to his kind on a mission to execute hunters.
In either case, the vampire was basically outing my biggest secret to one of my classmates.
Though, in some way, I supposed, he was just as much outing a secret of Jason’s, as well.
Jason and I shared a mutually embarrassed-yet-confused look. It was a strange moment, both of us feeling so obviously naked to the other, but still unable to see past one another’s masks.
He was the first to say the words aloud, though:
“What’s he talking about, Abby?”
Of course I couldn’t just tell him. There were reasons on top of reasons that I couldn’t; and each of those reasons had its own sub-lists of reasons to reinforce and embolden them. So all I managed was a subtle and graceful “Umm…” before a bittersweet distraction was offered by one of the other monsters.
“Ugh! I’m not waiting anymore. The interloper and the hunter have already earned more time than they deserve.”
I wasn’t certain which one of them said it—it certainly wasn’t LL, but between the twin walls of lumber, sound seemed to come from all around—but when a hand came down from above and latched onto my shoulder I decided I’d found the speaker. Not waiting to see what they had planned for the hunter, and still wondering how Jason was an “interloper,” I took the initiative before my attacker could. Gripping his wrist in my opposite hand, I caught him off guard by moving with the pull rather than against it like he’d been expecting. I heard a confused grunt as I used the grooves in the logs as footholds and started a clumsy sprint straight up the wall of stacked boards. Four steps up, I found my would-be attacker, a partially transformed therion with a bad set of burns on his face and chest. Though his remaining hand and each of his feet were well planted, his claws extended and buried into the stacks of wood, the shock of having his prey rocket up to meet him face-to-face had him wavering with what I could only imagine was rising concern.
Between the increasingly animalistic face and the extensive burns, however, it was hard to tell. It just as easily could have been gas, I supposed.
Whether or not the concern was there to begin with, though, I certainly earned it the instant I drew my butterfly knife. My free hand worked from memory as I swung the handle open and let the blade whistle around in a silver-streaked arc of moonlight and malice. The two ends of the handle came together with an audible slap at almost the exact moment two other sounds were loosed into the night:
The therion’s last breath and the wet pop of the blade finding its mark.
The monster’s claws slipped from their hold and, with a sharp tug on the arm that was still in my grasp, the monster’s body tumbled to the ground below me.
Climb.
The thought was as much a plea as it was an order. Lanky-limbs was still down there, and the only hope I’d have of avoiding his speed would be to take that unholy ability out of the equation. Vampires were tricky, sure, but they couldn’t vanish without flat ground to scamper across. Daring a glance back, though, I saw that I’d started clambering a bit early. Below me, a short distance away from my recent kill, Jason was locked in a struggle with the vampire.
“JASON, NO! HE’S—”
“Can it and run,” Jason said… no, growled. There was no denying it anymore, he was
growling.
And, from the looks of it, he was holding his own fairly well against the vampire.
Despite both my years of training and every survival instinct telling me to do exactly what he was telling me to do, I found myself locked in place, staring as Jason and his monster opponent tried to overpower one another, snarling and hissing in each other’s faces.
“How’d you think it’d work out, Cujo?” LL demanded through clenched fangs, “Enroll in high school—high school of all things—and turn yourself into an outstanding member of society? Maybe get a job at a call center or something?”
“Like chewing scabs and playing errand-boy for a radical psychopath is so much more glamorous?” Jason forced a laugh at that, but I could already tell from the strain in his voice that speaking was becoming a chore.
And I had a pretty good idea why…
“Jason… no.” I didn’t mean to say the words, but they slipped free all the same.
His focus slipped as his gaze drifted up toward me, taking in my rigid poise on the practically vertical surface and the bloodied knife in my hand. “Feeling’s mutual, trust me,” he forced the words out before his jaw started to reshape.
A theriomorph.
The only boy who had ever made me feel like a normal girl… and he was a werewolf?
Not Just Voodoo Page 15