Chapter 7
‘Holding down the fort,’ sounded exciting and all in theory.
In reality, it was boring as hell.
I spent the first hour of the night checking and rechecking the locks. Then, I patrolled the main room, observing the intricate lines of Dave’s spells as they criss-crossed the ceiling like lace—as if the sight alone could somehow increase my own skill.
Wishful thinking, that was.
According to Dave, magic was something that even the most mundane human possessed—they just didn’t know how to use it. It was like a muscle, so to speak, that needed to be honed and trained.
He had been really into Wicca and magic stuff, even before joining the slayers, so I guess that seemed logical to him. I had believed it, too…at first.
But now, I was beginning to think that the words were just something nice he said to make me feel better at the fact that I sucked at magic. Though, to be fair, I wasn’t the only one.
Carlos, Anna, Melissa and Sasha didn’t seem to have a knack for it either. Neither did Misty. They didn’t seem to mind their lack of skill, but it annoyed me. Even Dustyn seemed to have a little bit of a way with spells.
Dave had tried to teach me, of course.
But I had a feeling that I would never ever—not in a million years—be able to craft a protection spell capable of guarding the whole warehouse.
Dustyn hadn’t been lying. He and Dave—especially—had left nothing to chance. The spells were incredibly advanced. I had no idea how Dave managed to find the time to practice in all the chaos, but his skill was unmatched by anyone else.
I observed the slender lines for a while, watching them twinkle in the light of the overhanging lamps—but even that got boring after a while.
So then I tried my hand a polishing a bit of dusty equipment. I even organized the storeroom of supplies for a little while, but my mind was too buzzed to focus on the busy work.
Misty was still in the infirmary and hadn’t come out, but I was too nervous to check on her in case she freaked again.
Something told me she didn’t want me to, anyway. Antiseptic and gauze couldn’t cure everything; some wounds just needed to be licked in peace.
In the end, there was nothing to do but wait. Which somehow turned into me creeping up the ramp to Dustyn’s office and slipping inside before common sense could steal my nerve.
So, I wasn’t butt naked…but I was bored, and snooping had always been a favorite pastime.
Besides, Sasha had told me to find the newspaper clipping—I could always claim that I was doing very important Slayer research if I got caught.
Yeah right.
It was pitch-black inside the office, and I had to fumble along the wall just to find the light switch hidden beside the door. A single light bulb illuminated Dustyn’s bare, neat desk and the stark gray walls.
I expected to hunt for the newspaper clipping—giving me a much needed excuse to go through Mr. Perfect things.
Sadly, the clipped article was lying out in plain sight on a corner of the desk for anyone to see.
LOCAL TEEN STILL MISSING, read the headline in bold print, followed by a rather grim byline that stated; feared to be latest victim in East Haven murder spree.
The story below, read:
Local teen Ashley Anne Bryson, 16, is still missing four weeks after disappearing from her family’s midtown apartment. Bryson, a cheerleader for Midton High School, was last seen in her bedroom the night of Nov. 14 by her parents Makayla and Randal Bryson. There were no signs of forced entry, but according to an inside source, foul play is still being considered a factor in the girl’s disappearance. Last week, the Bryson family was dealt another tragedy as the girl’s stepfather, Randal, died suddenly of a heart attack. The Bryson family still remain hopeful that Ashley will be found and plead that anyone with any information in her disappearance please contact…
The story made me cold as I read it…and there were more. Five other articles waited in a neat stack beneath that one—all with equally gruesome headlines; teen found slain in river.
No sign of Missing East Haven boy.
Unidentified bodies found in abandoned warehouse.
I was inclined to agree with Dustyn on this—vampires had to be behind these attacks. But, if this particular group of vampires had no problem killing ‘several unarmed men and leaving their bodies to rot in an abandoned warehouse’ according to the last article, then I couldn’t help but wonder what they would do to four teenage slayers in way over their heads…
Maybe Melissa was right. Maybe Dustyn’s little mission was just plain and simple suicide—
I cursed as the stack of articles slipped from my trembling fingers to float the floor. I bent to catch them and nearly brained myself on the sharp corner of a drawer that jutted open. Groaning, I rubbed my sore head and glared at the culprit.
Inside it, stacked neatly as neat could be, were folders. The topmost one had the word, ‘records,’ written unimaginatively across it in black marker, but underneath were several more with the little tabs sticking out that had our names written on them.
Carlos Sanchez, Anna White, Misty Copfield… all the way down to Mary Tanner.
Dustyn kept records on all of us—how practical.
How delicious.
Oh goody.
I snatched a folder from the fray at random, before I could help myself, and curled up in the shadow of the desk like a naughty school child stealing the answers to the teacher’s test.
Anna M. White, read the heading of the first page in bold lettering.
Age: 17
History: Comes from a long line of slayers. Mother was killed in a raid by werewolves. Father’s whereabouts unknown. Recruited by Dustyn Grayson.
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that part. Dustyn was so anal that he even referred to himself by name in his own notes.
But for some reason, the joke didn’t amuse me as much as I thought it would.
With a frown, I turned back to Anna’s file—which was not quite as interesting as you might think.
Basically, it read like a bunch of lists; info on where she lived, her skills—but all of it was vague enough to not be incriminating if the folder happened to fall into the wrongs hands.
In other words, it was about as interesting as a dry piece of toast.
After scanning the entire page, I learned that Anna was a straight-A student who took a photography class and had a penchant for throwing knives.
How boring.
How utterly Dustyn.
With a sigh, I slipped Anna’s file back into the drawer and reached for Dave’s. Unsurprisingly, his was equally as biographical and dry as Anna’s—except for one sentence that made my eyes bulge from their sockets.
History: Mother was a practicing witch.
No wonder he was so good at spells. ‘Everyone can do magic,’ my ass—it was in his blood.
I couldn’t help but wonder why he never told me—but that was Dave, for ya. I did most of the talking in our relationship.
My file was the very last, tucked near the bottom. It was as if Dustyn had wanted to make sure it was as far from his sight as physically possible.
I had no idea what kind of stuff he would write about me; that I was the bane of his existence? The worst Slayer who ever lived—ever?
With an ominous feeling in my gut, I slipped the folder onto my lap. As I did, a slender strip of paper slipped out to land on my knee.
Fingers shaking, I picked it up only to drop it with a curse once I realized what it was.
An obituary…of one Mr. Andrew Tanner.
My dad.
________________
I didn’t like to dwell on the past.
Call me a realist, or whatever, but I always thought that it was must better to just face the present. Keep a stiff upper lip, as they say.
Never look back.
That tiny newspaper clipping resting on my lap, terrified me for reasons I couldn’t explain.
I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to bring up those memories—but it was like an unspoken dare; are you chicken?
Even within my own mind, I couldn’t back down from a challenge. So, taking a deep breath, I settled the obituary in the palm of my hand and forced myself to read;
Local man attacked in suburban apartment.
I blinked. I didn’t expect that reading those words would hurt quiet so much—it had been four months, after all. But, it was almost like reliving that whole day again.
Local man attacked in suburban apartment. Andrew Tanner, age 40, was found dead in a Lower Side duplex by local officials after his daughter—name withheld—age 16, witnessed an unarmed intruder attack Tanner physically—
“Ha!” I laughed aloud at that, even though it came out snotty and pathetic. I had told the police officers point-blank what attacked my dad; a massive figure with red eyes who looked like a cross between Dracula and Batman. A beast that had literally ripped out his throat out. As I watched.
But, for some reason the police officers hadn’t seemed very convinced of that theory. Their line of questioning had gone a little something like this;
‘Did he have any distinguishing features?’
Well, he had red eyes and fangs, if that’s what you mean.
‘Could you see him clearly, Mary?’
Clear enough to see that he had big, black claws.
‘Was you’re father involved in any illegal activity, Mary?’
Of course. Buying bootlegged movies.
‘Is there a history of mental illness in your family, Mary?’
Is sarcasm a ‘mental illness?’
I had stopped playing along with the interrogations after that.
In the end, I quickly came to realize that, as long as it didn’t involve a generic description of a shadowy bad guy with a gun—the cops, detectives and everyone else didn’t want to hear it.
It didn’t matter what the evidence told them. It didn’t matter that my dad had never had a run in with the law.
They just saw the broad points their naivety allowed them to and let those pieces paint a neat little picture.
I could practically see them writing off the murder in their heads as Drug deal gone wrong, rather than consider anything remotely out of their realm of ‘possible.’
It didn’t matter to them that Dad and I had lived in that crappy two roomed duplex for almost two years without any incident. It might have been in a shady neighborhood on the poor side of town, but nobody bothered us.
Until that one day when I came home from volley ball practice to find a stranger standing in my living room with his fist through my father’s chest.
The intruder had been tall—massively huge—wearing the clichéd villain outfit of a black leather jacket and nondescript jeans. His skin had been the color of a piece of notebook paper, with long, spindly fingers topped by sharp black nails that had seemed more like claws…
When he noticed me—
“Easy girl,” I whispered as my heart began to pound like a sledgehammer in my chest.
When he noticed me, his blood red eyes seemed to suck me in whole—soul and all.
I wasn’t much of the dramatic type, but looking in the eyes of that thing had been like…looking into the face of pure, one-hundred percent evil. Four months later, and I still had nightmares.
I would never forget
But, oddly enough, that was all I remembered. The beastly man had gauged my father with black claws, looked into my eyes and then…nothing.
The next moment, two police officers were shaking me awake, demanding to know what had happened.
I had been stunned and scared shitless by what I’d seen. I didn’t want to believe that any of it could have possibly been real.
But that fear quickly turned to anger when no one else believed my story, either. The terms mentally scarred and traumatized had been tossed around a few times. There was talk floating around the precinct of sending me to a mental hospital.
I don’t ever remember ever feeling as alone as I had those dark few days.
But all that changed when Dustyn found me.
I could still remember the day he strode into the police station like he owned the damn place—a kid not much older than I was.
In retrospect, I guess I should have been a little more curious.
As it was, I didn’t care about much of anything the moment he looked into my eyes with those stormy gray ones and said the three little words I’d been longing to hear from anyone; I believe you.
Grown men snickered behind my back whenever I had the guts to say what I had seen. Hardened police officers who’d seen more gore and blood than an action flick didn’t even buy my story.
And then some punk kid just strode up—cool as you please—and reassured me that no, I wasn’t going crazy; what I had seen was real.
Along with everything that I’d been told my whole life was a lie. Monsters really did exist; along with werewolves, witches, monsters, fairy princess…
Whatever you wanted to call it; the supernatural was real.
Somehow, Dustyn had managed me out of police custody and take me to the warehouse, where I blended in with his motley crew. Then, he found my crappy little apartment and got me whatever I needed to start a new life.
He made the mess with the police go away—looking back, I guess I should have wondered how a teenager could have so much clout, but, at the time it hadn’t mattered.
The boy commanded respect. Even I saw that. He was the type of person you just listened to, no questions asked. As much as I hated to admit it, he was reliable—boringly predictable, yes—but someone you could always count on.
I guess one of the reasons I was always at his throat—I felt guilty; guilty for taking so much from him and giving nothing but headaches back.
And, of course, I guess he didn’t like the fact I didn’t just salute and fall into line when he ordered me around just like everyone else.
In spite of myself, I could admit that we were alike, me and Dustyn; bossy assholes with too much sarcasm for our own good.
But that was all we would ever be.
Yep. That’s what I told myself, as my shaking fingers spread my file out over my lap. Anxious for a distraction, I began to scan the first page. Dustyn’s crisp handwriting formed the same neat list that had topped everyone else’s file—but mine seemed more…
What was the word?
Negative.
Name: Mary Elizabeth Tanner (according to birth certificate)
Age: 16
History: Father killed by rouge vampire—no leads. Lived in the city for past two years—no records elsewhere available.
Skills: None.
I flinched at that. I may not have been a fighting ballerina like Dustyn, or a kick ass spell caster like Dave, but I had tons of skills; like sarcasm, for one, and witty humor. The next topic on the list was no better.
Temperament: Combative.
I laughed out loud. How very Dustyn; describe a girl’s ‘temperament’ as a ‘combative,’—like I was some damn cat up for adoption in an animal shelter.
I couldn’t help smiling…until my eyes fell across the last few sentences scrawled across the bottom of the page.
She’s confusing. The story she gives doesn’t add up—background check doesn’t make sense. No record of her that predates two years ago—need more research. But she’s smart. Could be useful.
It was the last part that got me; useful.
Dustyn Grayson thought I was useful— but how useful could I be when I was stuck here playing the role of house-sitter while the others risked their necks fighting murderous vampires?
How useful could I be with a broken hand?
I frowned, and gently slipped my file back into the open drawer. Suddenly, I wasn’t quite so bored anymore.
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The main room was quiet and peaceful, I saw as I slipped down the ram leading to the upper level. Without the others around the wide open space seemed as empty as a graveyard.
But peaceful, too.
In the end…no one could blame me for dozing off. Though, to be fair I was exhausted—it seemed like whatever had possessed me to write that stupid note hadn’t allowed me to catch much sleep, either. Throw in a day spent being everyone’s lackey and a few injuries, and my energy was drained.
So, with a yawn, I curled up in a corner and leaned my head against the walls. Then, my eyes closed and I drifted off…