Aghast

Chapter 2

Witnesses; the bane of our existence... other than the demons we slay, obviously. The problem is, most people don't understand what they see. They ended up concocting many dubious explanations in their heads, often more ridiculous than the reality of the matter. They usually ended up believing we're murderers of some sort. For the obvious reasons we can't let that sort of stuff get out to the rest of the public.

The really problematic ones though are the ones who are... pushy. Although we find a way to disprove their theory, to hide the truth, they stubbornly refuse to give up. They get nosy. They dig and delve for information, for an inch of proof that they're not crazy and that what they saw was real.

Ah, I know what you're thinking. No, we don't kill them. That would be murderous, villainous even. If there's one thing us slayers are most certainly not, it's murderers. We threaten, we blackmail and we bribe. It's an entirely different matter.

The thing with witnesses is that you have to get a hold of them quick, and make sure they keep quiet. You don't, for example, stand there gawping at the place the witness has been, and thinking things like 'shit, this is bad'.

Mistake number two on my part. By the time I'd shaken off the dread that held me in place, he was long gone. I didn't expect him to hang about, not when he thought a psychopathic lunatic was lurking in the dark with her sword.

I suppressed a groan of frustration, cursing my own stupidity. I'd cornered myself this time, I really had. If I'd acted quicker, I might have been able to persuade the man that he 'saw nothing', and not have had to worry about it. Now it was kind of my obligation to admit to my mentor and the other slayers that some stranger had seen me hack a monster to pieces, and that I'd let him go. Not to mention, all I knew of his identity was that he had red hair. I didn't expect them to be thrilled by that. I expected laundry duty for a week, and a note made in that dreaded folder. The folder that would one day determine if I was going to be promoted to a slayer. I very much wanted to be a slayer, so this qualified as 'not good'.

 Maybe I could persuade my mentor to cover it up for me, but I think he'd had quite enough of my mistakes. Of course, there was another option. I could just keep quiet, and hope that the witness, whoever he was, also kept quiet. That protected my future prospects as a slayer, so long as the witness wasn't the chatty sort.

I thought about it for a minute. I envisioned sheepishly admitting my mistake to my mentor, and the way he'd shake his head and make a sarcastic comment about still having to clean up after me. He would be disappointed. That was something I couldn't stand. Making my mind up, I resolved not to mention the matter. With any luck, it wouldn't come up again.

I slid my sword into its cylindrical wooden sheath, securing it with a twist and flicking a catch to hold the two together, so that it was neatly disguised as a walking stick. It's what is known as a swordstick, or cane sword. Sure, it looked ridiculous, a fifteen-year-old girl carrying a walking stick, but the only other option that allowed me to conceal my weapon was a short sword strapped to my back. Problem was, since I wasn't exactly tall, a short sword that I could conceal on my back would be a very short sword indeed.

I tested my injured leg, but it didn't seem to be giving me much trouble. I wasn't going to have to hobble all the way home, at least.

Done with time wasting, I pulled up the shutter and ducked out from under it, closing it behind me. Naturally, we have ways of bypassing security. Once through the corridor, I was out on the pavement. The streetlights gleamed on the slick tarmac of the road, keeping the city awake. There was no traffic down its length. It was late, far too late for a sensible person to be up. I was one of the not so sensible people. So was my mentor, because I could see him lounging against the wall of 'Just Jeans', blowing smoke rings. Of course, on a Friday night, Wellington was normally full of insensible people. This night was no exception; they had simply gone to more entertaining parts of the city.