Chapter 24

 

“Pretty please?”

“No,” Aleda said to Mara while they walked to Chemistry class. “Don’t do anything to her.”

“Come on,” Mara begged. “She totally deserves it after what she said to you!”

Aleda frowned and gnawed on her lip, considering her friend’s offer. “Lizzy might be a little brat,” she said finally, “But that doesn’t mean she deserves to have her car set on fire.”

“Alright, not her car then. What about her backpack? Locker?”

Aleda stopped in the middle of the hallway and glared at Mara. “Stop it! Nobody deserves that kind of crap. Now look me in the face and tell me you don’t just want an excuse to set something on fire! It’s not as though you, of all people, ever have a hard time finding excuses for that,” she added in a grumble.

Mara’s face fell.

“Okay, maybe a little,” she admitted quietly. “But I really do wish there was something I could do to get back at her for you.”

“I’m fine,” Aleda insisted.

“You don’t look fine.”

The two girls walked into the classroom and found their usual seats in the back.

“What do you want me to say?” Aleda finally said with a sigh. “Yeah, I’m pissed at her. Yeah, I’ve been fantasizing about getting back at her for the past week. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to do any of it, and I don’t want you to, either.”

The odd thing was, she really didn’t. If she was honest with herself, she hadn’t been all that surprised to have found an enemy. It was like Ryan had said: people were b******s, most of them. But that didn’t mean they deserved bad things to happen to them. For her to retaliate would only make the situation worse, and Aleda didn’t feel like adding to the crap that the world already had in such great supply.

So however angry she might be with Lizzy, she would do nothing. She would ignore her in the two classes they had together and avoid her the rest of the time. As far as Aleda was concerned, Lizzy wouldn’t even exist. Let her say what she liked, Aleda wasn’t listening. She was actually glad that the girl had revealed her true nature so quickly that Aleda didn’t end up wasting any time trying to be friends with her. A few months more, and she really wouldn’t have to deal with Lizzy anymore, because at least one of them would surely end up leaving after graduation. Maybe Aleda would even go back home to Spain, or England to live with her great-grandfather.

The first time she saw Lizzy was the hardest. She was in the same homeroom as Aleda, and more often than not sat near the front with a few of her friends. Aleda had to pass the girl to get to her own seat, and it was all she could do not to show any reaction when their eyes met. Lizzy sneered at her and turned pointedly away. Her friends, meanwhile, continued to give Aleda dirty looks until the teacher started taking attendance.

Great.

All she needed was for Lizzy to be telling other people bad things about her.

Snide comments to her friends were one thing, since she was fairly certain they wouldn’t believe any of it, but anybody who didn’t know her—and that included most of the people at the high school—would soak up any gossip they heard. She wondered how hard it would be to live like Talia and just never stay in any one place long enough for something like this to happen if she weren’t a hunter. She also wondered how much Talia would mind having her along.

“Nate?” she said morosely, coming up to his locker after the last bell had rung. She had been obsessing over this all day.

Nate turned and smiled at her, his expression fading when he saw the look on her face. “What is it?” he asked.

“Where are you… what are you going to do after graduation?”

“Why, are you worried you’ll never see me again?”

Aleda was slightly taken aback. She hadn’t even thought of that. “N-no. Actually. Er, I mean… Well, you’re not going to college are you?”

Nate laughed. “Of course not! What would I go to college for?”

Aleda shrugged.

“There’d be no point,” Nate continued. He frowned at her. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking about going. You’re hunterborn, you don’t have to get some silly degree.”

“No, it’s not that, either. Look, do you have a couple of minutes?”

“Well, I have to be at practice at two…”

“This will only take a few minutes, I promise. Come on.”

“Where are we going?” he protested, finding himself half-dragged down the hallway by the arm.  Aleda took him to the second floor of the library. They would have a little more privacy there, and she didn’t particularly want anybody overhearing their conversation.

“What?” he demanded when she finally let him go.

“It’s about Lizzy,” Aleda began. “Well, kind of…”

“Geez, not this again!” Nate groaned. “I can’t believe you’re still hung up on that!”

“No, not that!” she answered with an incredulous glare. “Well, yes that, but it got me thinking about something else. What happens after we graduate? I’ll never have to see people like her again, because she will being going off to college somewhere. But what about people like us? Can we stay here?”

“Is that what this is all about?” Nate asked. “You don’t know what you want to do after high school?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. What’s the rush?” he asked, shrugging. “I’ll get called, be a hunter, stay with my parents for a while until I save up enough cash and find myself a place on my own.” He saw her face fall and completely misinterpreted it. “Or not on my own, if you like. We’ve got plenty of time to figure things out. As long as we want. So there’s nothing to worry about, okay?”

“And you’ll just… be a hunter. And I’m supposed to be a hunter…”

“Well I won’t just be a hunter,” Nate countered, rolling his eyes at her. “I’ll actually hunt; it’s not like you can just sort of be a hunter.”

“…I know,” Aleda said quietly.

“I mean, my parents have been training me for almost a year now. It’s hard work. I’m good, but it’s hard work.”

Aleda sighed miserably. “My parents haven’t trained me at all,” she finally admitted. “Talia—I told you about her—just started to a little, but it’s only been a couple weeks.”

Nate crossed his arms and let out a low whistle. “…Wow,” he finally said. “No wonder you’re freaking out. You’d better get on with it, or you’ll never be any good at hunting. I could even help,” he offered. “Mom and Dad have already taught me everything, so I could show you. It’s the least I could do since you’ve been helping me with my Spanish homework.”

“Thanks, but no. Talia has it covered now… I think. I just thought… what if I do decide go to college?”

“I’d say it’s an awful lot of money to waste while you’re training to hunt.”

“…Instead,” she added with a wince, apprehensive of his reaction.

Nate snorted and made a face at her. “Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “You’re hunterborn—that means you grow up to be a hunter.”

“There’s always a choice,” she pointed out. She was getting annoyed.

“Yeah,” he scoffed. “If you’re being an idiot.”

Aleda’s mouth dropped open at his words. Her head was screaming at him, appalled that he would talk like that, but nothing would come out of her mouth. Instead she just turned away from him to go back downstairs.

“Hey, wait!” he called after a moment, running to catch up with her. “Wait. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Look—how about I blow off practice and we get out of here?”

Aleda turned back to look at him, studying his face for several long moments.

“No,” she said finally, “I have to be somewhere.”

She left him there at the top of the steps in the library and walked resolutely back to her house through the cold November air.

 

 

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“Are you still here?” Ryan sighed when he saw her. He’d had one peaceful day; one extremely relaxing day without this little girl getting underfoot. It had been wonderful.

No wonder they called Sunday the ‘day of rest’.

This time, against all logic, she had actually shown interest in their daily excursion. Talia had been beside herself with joy. Now they were trudging back into the woods and he could look forward to six hours of babysitting.

“So what’s your deal?” he finally asked, his bafflement at seeing the girl’s change of heart having gotten the better of him.

“What do you mean?”

“You actually want to come out and watch feeders with me?”

“Yeah, sure,” she grumbled. “Why not?”

“I’m not buying that. What’s your deal?”

“I fail to see how that is any of your business,” she replied, parroting his words from the week before.

That snarky little…

“It’s my business if you fall all over yourself to get out here and then turn into a brat once we’re in the woods,” he snarled back. “That’s definitely my business.”

He glanced over at her to see that she had crossed her arms defiantly in front of her chest. She continued walking alongside him towards their destination, but her face was twisted into an angry pout.

“Look, little girl,” he hissed at her. “I signed on to be teaching you how to hunt, not to be babysitting some tetchy lass! So say what’s got ye pissed or not, just don’t be making me own life shite!”

She finally got mad enough to stop.

“I am not a little girl!” she shouted at him. Ryan grimaced at the noise, knowing how likely it was that something could have heard her, and stepped close in warning. She shrank a bit as he got near, looming above her, but her jaw remained set in stubborn indignancy.

“Prove it,” he growled low in his throat, his eyes boring into her own.

She stared back up at him for several long seconds, taking deep breaths. For the life of him he couldn’t figure out what she was thinking. Regardless of her thought process, though, he could see the change in her eyes as she made a decision.

She looked away, and her hard-set face softened.

“It was stupid,” she muttered. “Just a stupid argument. Forget it.”

“I take it you’re not talking about our little row.”

She shook her head, refusing to meet his eyes again. After a moment it became apparent that she was done. He shrugged and started walking again. As long as she was done being a brat for the night, it didn’t concern him. Part of him worried at the distress he had heard in her voice; she had acted bratty before, but this was the first time he had seen the girl genuinely upset. He’d had many years practice of ignoring that part, though, and he shut it off before it could get to him.

They sat in silence for the next several minutes, him not in the mood for talking and her staring at nothing in particular.

Whatever her problem was, she was clearly determined to deal with it herself. It was hard to tell what had gotten her this troubled. It must have been pretty bad, though—he couldn’t see Aria or Alejandro doing anything to upset her this much, so it must have been something at school… hours ago. He hoped for her sake that it really was something stupid. Stupid arguments hurt just as much as real arguments, but at least they could be forgotten sooner, and were less likely to cause serious harm.

He would never admit it to himself, but he hated to see her—anybody—so distressed. He berated himself for acting like such a jerk when she was already upset, even though he hadn’t realized at the time that it wasn’t him that she was angry with. Maybe he should ask… No. He was not going to get involved. He wouldn’t let himself. He would just end up wounded again.

He did risk another glance at her, though. Her face had transformed from hard to soft, her features almost peaceful as she was carried away by whatever thoughts troubled her. Not happy, but at least peaceful. Only her eyes betrayed her inner turmoil, for as much as they had lost focus on anything in this world, he glimpsed hints of a deep fire. That surprised him somewhat—it was rare for him to see that in the eyes of any mortal.

She must have noticed him watching her because she turned to face him, a question written in her eyes. He quickly looked away, shrugging, and she frowned slightly.

“For a moment there…” she began. “Your voice changed. The accent. Irish?”

Ryan nodded, somewhat startled.

“Where did you get it?”

“My da, of course.”

The girl waited for elaboration. Ryan sighed.

“He came from Ireland originally,” he continued. “And he never quite lost the accent. I grew up hearing it, and picked it up from him. I usually don’t use it, though… Just when I’m…” he trailed off.

“Pissy?” she offered with a smirk that made him laugh quietly.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he conceded.

“That would explain why I’ve heard it so very, very often,” the girl pretended to muse.

That one actually stung.

He turned away from her, not caring to pursue that line of conversation anymore. The girl gave him a disparaging look that he adamantly ignored.

And they were back to stony silence.

Ryan hoped that they would be able to clear out the damned nest soon, so he wouldn’t have to deal with this fickle little girl much longer. Many more nights of petty arguments and thick silences and he would surely lose his mind.

“It looks like Bobbo is back early tonight,” the girl observed after a while, nodding toward the approaching feeder. Ryan rolled his eyes at her.

“Bobbo?” he asked, eying her incredulously. “Are you serious?”

“Hey, it’s hard coming up with names for fourteen different feeders. Here, if it makes you feel better you can name any more that turn up.”

“I’ll pass, thanks. I’ve got better things to do than think up ridiculous names for empty bodies.”

“They don’t have to be ridiculous,” she pointed out, pouting a little.

“The whole concept is ridiculous,” he retorted. “Look, kid, just sit there quietly. Do you think you can manage that?”

She just sneered at him.

“I don’t know how you stand it,” she said a few minutes later. “Sitting out here like this all by yourself.”

“It’s easier when I really am all by myself.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“When I’m out here alone, I don’t have some little girl chattering in my ear the whole time.”

“Jackass.”

“Brat.”

“Ugh!”

“Shush!”

She exploded “Fine! I’ll be qu—.”

Ryan hastily clapped his hand over her mouth. She almost bit his hand, but then she saw what he was looking at. Just barely visible through the sparse underbrush another feeder was approaching the nest. She could just make out its silhouette moving among the dark treetrunks, not nearly enough to make out any features, and yet there was no mistaking what it was.

The last feeder.

“Get your parents,” Ryan breathed in her ear. “Call Talia.”

He let go of her and helped her stand so that she did not make a sound. Fifty feet away, the final feeder disappeared into its nest. The girl looked at the nest. There were now fourteen in that nest. If even one of them heard her in the woods, it would be the end. She looked up at him with wide eyes.

“Get on with it, kid. We don’t have all night.”

 

 

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Heart pounding, Aleda moved as quickly as she dared out of the woods and toward her house. Twigs snapped and dead leaves crackled beneath her feet, sending her heart straight into her throat. By the time she left the woods she had broken out into a run and she arrived at her front door breathless and exhausted.

Her parents, watching television in the living room and not expecting her home for another two hours, looked up in shock when she burst through the door.

“Feeders. All of them,” she panted. “Hurry!”

Papá grabbed the phone. Mom grabbed their coats.

Aleda collapsed on the couch.

“Talia is coming as fast as she can,” Papá said when he put the phone back down. “She should be here in fifteen minutes. We will go ahead, in case any of the therions try to leave before she arrives.”

“Okay.”

They left.

That was it.

The feeder nest in Keeney would be gone.

It was hard to imagine not having to be afraid to walk outside at night anymore. If she had thought about it, she would have realized that even humans could be dangerous after dark, but at that moment she felt far too much relief that this particular danger would be gone after that night. She snuggled into one of the couch’s throw pillows without even realizing it, staring vacantly at the television program that her parents had been watching before she returned.

The sound of a car pulling into the driveway startled her out of her reverie. Talia had arrived. Aleda ran out to meet her, too excited to realize what she was doing.

“I’d say that’s a record!” she exclaimed to the other girl, who had already started walking towards the woods.

Talia grinned mischeviously.

“Yeah, well, speed limits. Who needs them?” she joked. She started jogging, just slowly enough that Aleda could keep up.

“As long as you didn’t kill anyone,” Aleda said. She didn’t even notice the looming, bare trunks standing out in silhouette against the moonlit sky.

“Oh, silly girl, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Not on purpose,” Aleda conceded.

“You be nice, or I won’t drive you into Philly any more!”

“…Promise?”

Talia laughed.

They fell silent after that—they were too close now to risk any noise.

It was too late.

A few steps more and Aleda could hear the sound of fighting. One of the feeders must have tried to leave. Now that they had gotten them all in the same place, they couldn’t risk letting them split off again. Especially not so close to their next feeding.

Aleda’s feet carried her all the way to the clearing where Ryan and her parents were industriously destroying the demons. Her eyes widened in surprise to see her parents fighting with such enthusiasm. Even having seen her mother kill that demon on her first hunt could not have prepared her for the sight before her. Mom was flipping through the air, just as Talia had said, her claws slashing through the demons around her with abandon.

Talia enthusiastically lept into the fray—literally.

“You started without me?” she shouted in midair. “Good thing you saved a few for me!”

 

 

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Ryan’s blood flamed through his veins and roared in his ears. It had been far too long since he had taken on so many at once, and the rush was intoxicating. He hadn’t had a worthy challenge since he arrived in Elkton. As grateful as he was to have Alejandro and his wife to help, a part of him wished that he could have taken them all on himself.

Through the chaotic fighting, his sensitive ears picked up the sound of additional footfalls on the forest floor, followed closely by a familiar voice calling out to them. Ryan turned from his opponent toward the noise, smirking a little to see his gymnast sister already flying through the air.

Then he saw the little girl, and his smirk turned into a mask of horror.

“Aleda!” he cried out, his voice hoarse. “No! Get out of here!”

His forgotten opponent took the opportunity to disappear into the woods. She stared at him, frozen, suddenly realizing exactly where she was. Another feeder attacked him while his attention was focused on her; he grunted and rolled, dispatching it after a moment’s struggle. His eyes met hers once more before she turned and fled.

Behind her, a feeder followed her for a few steps before Ryan tackled it to the ground.