For the Hopeless

Chapter 9: Her Gay Best Friend

"She...kissed you?" Dameon sounded astounded, as if such an occurrence simply wasn't possibly. He stumbled, swishing loudly in the water of the sewer that they tread through.

Bailey glanced back, cocking an eyebrow as he steadied himself and continued after her. "Or I kissed her," she answered as she turned her attention back to the wet, smelly path ahead. "I'm not really sure how it happened. All I know is..." She trailed off, embarrassed to finish the thought.

"You liked it?" Dameon suggested, following her as she began to climb the rusty old ladder out of the sewers. They were dank, damp, and disgusting. He was glad to be on his way out.

"I loved it," she corrected him. She couldn't see it, but the werewolf's expression turned bitter, downright jealous, and he dropped back a step.

"Then why do you sound so...unhappy?" he asked, continuing to play the part of what was apparently the "gay best friend."

"Besides the fact that you now know what I am?" she questioned in return, glancing down at him as she neared the manhole at the top of the ladder. He nodded, and she went on with a sigh. "I don't know, honestly. It just...It changes things."

"Shouldn't you be happy, then?" He stopped a couple of rungs down from her, wincing as she pushed the heavy metal hole cover aside with a sound worse than nails on a chalkboard. The horrid sound ended soon enough, and he forced his face into a less pained expression. "I mean, things are changing for the better, aren't they?"

She sighed so softly that he wouldn't have heard it in a less echoing environment. "See, that's what I'm not so sure about." Before either of them could pursue the subject any further, a set of long, thin fingers tangled in Bailey's hair, an equally long arm jerking her from her spot on the ladder.

"Well, well, well. Look what we 'ave 'ere," a man said in an exceptionally ugly British accent as he set Bailey on her feet. His fingers still in her hair, he jerked her head to the side, closer to his face. "A pair of worthless Novie do-gooders."

"I told you we picked one too close to the police station," Dameon muttered halfheartedly as he was dragged out of the manhole by a pair of bigger men. He went unnoticed, however, everyone's attention on the scrawny man and the captive Bailey.

"What is it you two were expecting to do?" the smaller man asked, arching an eyebrow at Bailey as their faces gradually grew closer together, certainly not with her help. "Sneak in an' kill us all? Burn the place to the ground with us inside?" He laughed heartily, and the men holding Dameon joined in. "As if we wouldn't notice you!"

Bailey visibly, audibly, and exaggeratedly grimaced, finding the man's face much too close for comfort – his thin, obviously chapped lips were nearly touching her cheek, after all. "No," she began, noticeably mocking his accent. "Actually, we planned on bringing you out into the open, jus' like this." She smiled wickedly, thoroughly enjoying the sight of the man's face as it fell. Dameon's mutter of "That so wasn't the plan" went completely ignored. "The sewer was simply to avoid the other police officers and Traitors patrolling the town." She laughed, low and evil, and her natural accent returned. "Who knew we'd find three of you just sitting here outside of the police station?" She clocked the man holding her hair, and he fell limply to the ground, out cold. "Who knew you'd be that easy to knock out?" she mumbled, cocking an eyebrow at the bony male. Hearing a thump to her left, accompanied by a grunt, she turned to the rest of the men.

Dameon had attacked one of the men, and the two were now locked in a vicious battle. On one side, a set of fangs had started to emerge; on the other, a pair of amber eyes and sharp, claw-like nails had made an appearance. Blood was already beginning to fly.