Spitefic: To Catch a Monster (Part One)
Title: To Catch A Monster
Author: afterandalasia
Artist: chosenfire28
Fandom(s): Twilight
Rating: R
Word Count: 10,622
Inspiration: Leah's incomparable awesomeness.
Warnings (skip) Graphic violence, character death, strong language. Discussion of imprinting, not taken to extreme lengths, which could be considered problematic.
Summary: Set a thief to catch a thief. To catch a monster...
Leah Clearwater knows that there are more dangerous things than her in the world than her, and she figures that it's her job to go out and fight them when humans can't. Then in one day, she gets in a fight, talks to a man, and meets a woman. Those aren't the sort of things that are usually exceptional, but this time they might just turn out to be. Perhaps it's time to remember that the word 'monster' was not always negative, and that there might be some hope still to come.
Disclaimer: Twilight is not mine, and I make no profit from this work.
Notes: This was actually produced for the werewolfbigbang, but it was done with this comm in mind. On that note, I really want to thank the mod and artist chosenfire28 and the last-minute beta Kitt who helped me with this.
At AO3 | My Journal | At Werewolfbigbang
Set a thief to catch a thief, the saying goes. It isn’t that old, in the way of things; perhaps three hundred years, perhaps four. There are some things that are far older.
The problem is, you see, that there are many dark things that walk the earth. Things that feed upon humans, directly or indirectly, that make men mad and tortured, that would destroy this world if given the change.
There are many monsters in this world.
Set a thief to catch a thief.
To catch a monster. . .
Of course, not everyone thinks of us as monsters. Most people don’t even know that we exist, or think that we are just something made up by Hollywood. Those who do know of our existence usually remember us as people, and therefore don’t believe that we are monsters at all.
I wish that I could agree with them.
The Latin word monstrum means something outside the natural order, nothing more; the English word became more negative over time. And, if nothing else, we’re certainly outside the natural order.
Sadly, this never did manage to exclude me from having to deal with the problems of the real world. Being a monster doesn’t get you out of the need to eat, to sleep, and most importantly to have money to allow you to do those first two things. It just brings with it the extra problems that come when your metabolism could outstrip a train and you end up - way, way too often - tangled in the affairs of other monsters.
You wouldn’t know it to look at me. After all, I looked just like most of the other workers taking advantage of our twenty-minute lunch break on the California farm to scarf down food, water, and cigarette smoke. We were all pretty much dressed the same - t-shirts and cargo pants, dust-caked boots and slightly more varied hats - and we weren’t talking much. Mostly we just sat there, in companionable silence, smoking shitty roll-up cigarettes and mentally calculating how little money we were going to get for this day’s work.
What day was this, you might ask. Hell, it was most of the summer, as far as I could tell.
I liked not talking to them. I liked quiet in the outside world as much as I liked the quiet in my own head, and believe me when I say that since splitting off from the pack, I really appreciated having my head to myself. I liked being in the sun, the heat, far away from Forks in Washington fucking State and its perpetual clouds, and I didn’t mind the job too much. I’d gotten used to being almost entirely around guys long ago, and at least these ones didn’t see me as a freak. Anomaly, maybe, but not a total freak of nature.
And, possibly my favourite part, none of them really give a damn about me. I’d be impressed if they even recognised the name Leah Clearwater, let alone knew who it belonged to. They didn’t care about me, and I didn’t have to care about them, at least not during the daylight hours. Even at night, it’s nothing personal; I take my pay, kick off to the heap of junk that I call a car, and ponder whether tonight was going to be a night where I had to take on another goddamn bloodsucker.
I should probably admit straight out that I love my car more than it might seem sometimes. It’s trawled back and forth across the country with me, been with me longer than most humans I know by this point, and I can’t count the number of nights that I’ve slept in it. An olive-green eighties Chevy with manual transmission and windows might not be everyone’s idea of a sweet ride, but Jacob used to say that listening to me trying to start the grumbling thing in the morning was like hearing an old married couple having a bickering session. I didn’t dignify him with an answer.
The weather was good, and I have always been an outdoors sort. I found a quiet stretch of road for the evening and sat in the back with a camp stove to make dinner. It’s amazing what you can cook on one of those things if you put in some effort, and after the last couple of years I knew more than enough dishes that I could cook over one gas flame and store in the car. This particular evening involved ploughing through a huge bowl of spicy rice ‘n’ veg, a recipe I’d picked up in Texas and scaled up to match my appetite.
A normal sort of day, and not just for me. I’m willing to bet that most people, looking at the life I live, wouldn’t call me a monster. Drifter, perhaps. Nomad, if they were feeling nice, or hobo if they weren’t. All I can say to that is: well, duh. This far south, at least when the sun is shining, I got most days off to play at being human.
I turned on the radio and watched the sun set, the stars rise. The heat was unusual, even if it had been breaking three digits, but there was an edge to the air that I didn’t much care for: a heaviness, and something that made me feel as if the hairs on the back of my arms were standing on end. I didn’t like it, and even if there weren’t any clouds in the sky yet I didn’t doubt that there would be soon. It put a dampener on my mood as I crawled back into the cab and kicked back for the night, wondering already how much complaining I could get away with and not look weird.
After all, I didn’t hate the clouds because they bought out the rain.
I woke up with a crick in my neck and a guy knocking on my window. He was shading his eyes with one hand, and I didn’t think it was going to be too wild a guess that he was just another migrant worker looking for a lift or a job. I gave him the finger; he did the same and stalked off. It wasn’t like I was going to get any less awake, however, so with a groan I sat up and ran one hand through my hair. Could probably do with getting that cut again, as well.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said as I caught sight of the clouds starting to gather in the sky. I knew what that was going to mean.
You’d think that the bloodsuckers would be smart enough not to come to the sunniest city in the country, but there you go. Apparently they just don’t fucking learn; something about being stuck in the same state as when they were changed. The night and the clouds always bought them out, and I could guess already that today wasn’t going to be any different.
It was annoying that I was going to have to miss a day’s work - ‘no day, no pay’ - but there would be plenty of people wanting to replace me, so it wasn’t like the farm would go short. They’d probably take me back again, but if not then somewhere else would. One of few advantages. I rolled down the windows and hit the streets, waiting for that tell-tale smell of vampire to hit me in return. Jacob just used to complain about how sweet it was; to me, at least, it smelt almost like rotting flesh. Not that I realised it straight away - when you’re nineteen, you don’t have that many opportunities to come across rotting flesh, after all - but after a while in the world of vampires and werewolves you find out what it smells like. It was unmistakeable, right from the first moment, and it never quite went away again.
High summer in the middle of the city, and I was stuck in a car with no working AC, cruising around the cloud-shadowed streets and waiting for the smell of fucking vampire to spring out at me. Not exactly my favourite way of passing the time, even with the biggest and spiciest burrito I could get my hands on to help it along.
I was starting to think that it was a waste of time, as the hands of the clock crept past midday and the rumbles of thunder started in the distance, when one of the gusts of wind that came through my car window sent my hackles rising, my hands tightening on the steering wheel. Ripe bloodsucker, directly upwind.
I parked up in a place that looked like it was fairly unlikely I’d get my car stolen, then kicked my feet into sandals, took off my bra from under my top, and grabbed a sports bag from under the front seats before exiting the car, locking it, and hiding the keys under the chassis. There were spare clothes in the bag, but an ill-timed fursplode and I could lose my keys for hours. That was the last thing that I needed when I was probably about to take apart another blood-drunk vampire who was out on a cloudy day in search of a snack.
I swung the bag over my shoulder and started following the scent, ignoring the way that my stomach twisted violently with each fresh wave that I caught. The further north I went, the stronger it became until it made me wonder how humans couldn’t smell it as well - how I had not been able to smell it before I first shifted. Tracking the sent took longer than I expected, and I thought about going back for the car, but before I could make up my mind, my other senses started to kick into gear as well. The vampire was here.
I found myself outside a foreclosed house with an overgrown lawn and curtains drawn behind the windows. It made sense; I’d never gone in for hiding in abandoned houses myself, but they probably worked well for a leech in need of a sunshade. At least it meant that this was going to be out of sight, as well.
There were things that you could allow yourself to think about, and things that you couldn’t. That this had once been someone’s house fell into the latter category; for now, I was more relieved that it didn’t belong to anyone currently. When I opened the door, the cool damp air of the inside hit me like a wave, and I gagged, covering my face with my arm. That sweet, putrefying smell was stronger inside, with two notes together like actual dead human flesh and vampire. No surprise there, either.
I didn’t do the cop thing, shouting out, trying to draw attention to myself. I closed the door as quietly as I could, letting it click back into place, although if the vampire was paying attention at all then they already knew I was there.
Of course, they might not have been paying attention.
“I’m… I’m not really sure I should still be here…”
A voice caught my attention from below my feet: male, without that tinkling sound that vampires always get after they turn, human. I couldn’t help but feel my lips curl, the growl rising in my throat before I held it back. The wolf deep inside was already growling, straining beneath my mind: danger danger human danger threat protect save PROTECT. Or perhaps it wasn’t that deep down anymore.
There was a reply, but one which I couldn’t make out the words of, low and musical. It had vampire written all over it. The man started talking again, nervously, as if he was trying to politely extricate himself from an unwanted conversation. I half took it in, my mind skimming for any important words, trigger words which meant the danger was becoming more immediate, as I walked round to the kitchen, feeling the cooler air around the door back there which meant that it led to the basement.
The door handle looked damaged, at least to the unknowing eye; I could see that it had been crumpled slightly beneath an over-strong grip. Yeah, my kind and I can do that as well, but I doubted it was one of us. As far as I knew, none of the others had even left La Push for more than a vacation at a time, and it sure as hell hadn’t been me in this house.
I turned the handle; just as the vampire voice below - female, soothing, hypnotic - continued. “That’s right, there’s no danger here, none at all…”
She trailed off, and I didn’t know whether it was because of the man’s continuing silence or because my scent was probably starting to get stronger, wolfier. Still the wolf in my head, as much a desire as a voice: danger cold one COLD ONE protect human fight protect- I wrapped one hand tightly around the bannister as I picked my way down the stairs, darkened at first then pooled with light as I reached the lower levels.
Having super-senses doesn’t mean that you actually use them, of course. I jumped down the last half a dozen stairs, landing with a sandalled flap, and was already poised to spring as the woman finally caught on to me and turned with a feral snarl.
The man - the human protect save danger - was backed up against the wall, an expression of very faint fear on his face as if he could not remember why he was supposed to be scared. I pegged him for a tourist - slight sunburn on his cheeks, the sort of shirt that you wore on holiday and not at home - in a fraction of a second, barely sparing a glance away from the vampire.
She looked older than some of the vampires I’d met before, maybe in her thirties, but she had that same almost otherworldly beauty about her if you weren’t paying attention. Her face was uniformly, smoothly pale, features made even by vampirism, sleek dark hair past her shoulders, her posture graceful and poised. Her whole point was to be beautiful, to put humans at their ease and draw them in.
I was having none of it.
For an instant, she continued snarling, red eyes narrowed at me, then without appearing to move she was back to standing upright, smiling like a hostess and tilting her head just slightly to the side to examine me. “Well,” she said, “good gracious. You appear to be lost, my dear… there’s nothing to see here…”
Bad danger cold one danger look-
I wondered whether she usually had some particular power over humans, or whether this was just another attempt at the usual vampire magnetism. We both walked forwards, slowly, matching our paces and never breaking eye contact. I didn’t even worry about the man; if the vampire was looking at me, then he was safe.
It felt like a game of chicken; she stopped first, when we were only a yard or so apart. Her eyes bored into mine, as I let the bag slip from my shoulder to the floor, stepped out of my sandals. My heart rate was starting to accelerate, body feeling as if my skin was a little too hot, a little too tight.
She breathed in deeply, taking in a full lungful of my scent; hot, Bella had called it once, scorching and sharp. This time, it earnt a look of disgust, one that turned to shock when I couldn’t hold back my smile any longer.
“What are you?” she asked, voice perfect southern-belle horror.
“I’m Leah Clearwater,” I replied. “And I’m about to fuck up your day.”
Then I punched her.
Even in my normal shape, my speed makes me a fair match for bloodsuckers, and my fist connected with her face before she had even managed to start the next question. Her nose crunched underneath my knuckles, with a sound like cracking eggshell and a stab of pain as the skin on my knuckles split for a moment.
To do her credit, she barely flinched; instead, with a banshee howl, she made to pounce on me, arms outstretched. I could see her hands reaching for my neck, the fury in her eyes, but I braced my feet against the floor and reached in to her, her hands passing me as one of my forearms struck her in the neck. My other hand grabbed her forearm and twisted, pulling one arm up behind her back and tightening my hold on her throat as I slammed her against the wall.
It hurt my arm as well, and I drew it out from around her neck before banging her head against the wall once, twice, a third time, leaving a dent in the wall and earning another outraged cry. Then with a fierce twist of her arm, she wrenched free from my hold and threw me to the floor, clear across the room. I heard ribs crack, but forced myself back to my feet even as black patches swirled in my vision. Everything would heal soon enough.
She didn’t jump on me again straight away, but held back, watching warily as she started to walk in a circle, heading towards the human again. He was still looking at us with horror and had not moved an inch.
I made to step forward, and she blurred, moving back in the other direction and making me spin to orientate myself to her again.
“Fuck it,” I said finally. There was only so far I could get in human form anyway.
Fur time.
It had become easier to phase over time - to fursplode, as my brother so charmingly put it. The brain stands still and the body handles the rearranging, and quicker than the human eye can see the human is gone and the wolf is in their place.
Cold one danger hunt threat protect threat danger fight KILL-
Louder, that voice, that devil on my shoulder. I growled, long and low, tensing to spring even as the vampire’s shock overwhelmed her. She staggered back a step, one hand going to her mouth in an expression so human that it surprised even me, then recovered herself and drew back to a combat position.
“Werewolf,” she said, disdain dripping from her voice.
Shapeshifter, technically, but close enough.
I covered the distance between us in one leap, hitting her bodily but nails-first and feeling chips of her fly off from wherever my nails found some purchase. She slapped me - no, not quite a slap, that is the wrong word for a vampire palm rattling all of the bones in your skull, vampire fingers scratching at the skin beneath your fur. A flash of pain ran down the left side of my face, and I responded with a barking sound before sinking my teeth into the line of her jaw.
Vampires aren’t like humans, in just about any way that I have found. Their skin hides flesh that has changed, become rock - and not just muscles, but the structures of the body that used to run beneath. They might have some sort of digestive system to process blood, sensory organs, nails and teeth and hair, but what need does a creature of rock have for bones?
My teeth sank through her cheek and chin, scooping out a section. The taste of rotting flesh flooded my senses and I spat out the chunk in disgust, even as she screamed and reached up for her face again. No blood, just sheared white flesh, like cutting through a block of plastic. I pinned her shoulder down with one paw, her hand with the other, exposing her arm beneath me. The other hand balled in my fur and tried to pull me off, but even as she sank her teeth into my leg I bit into her arm, almost clean through in one strike, and dragged hard enough to snap off the rest even as she threw me aside.
Burning, icy pain started pulsing through my right leg, pouring out from the venom in the wound. It wouldn’t kill me, wouldn’t turn me, but it felt as if someone was boring into me with a red-hot poker, sending the rest of my leg almost numb. She tried to grab for her arm again, but I pounced on it, kicking it to the far side of the room, then spun behind her and bore her to the ground one last time.
This time my teeth went into her neck. It was more of a struggle, but finally her head rolled off and away, and the thrashings of her body stilled.
I stepped back, panting, then phased back to human form again. My right forearm bore an ugly red wound, distorted by the phase until it was almost a row of tooth marks rather than a semi-circle; it felt cold against my heated skin, and my fingers hardly twitched as I tried to move them. I curled it into my chest with a groan, then remembered where I was and turned to face the human that was still backed up in the corner.
He looked from me to the headless, torn-apart body, and back again. “Oh dear,” he said in a shaking voice.
“Something like that,” I replied. “Hang on.” Crossing back to the sports bag, I grabbed the loose dress inside and slipped it on over my head, then slipped my feet back into my shoes. Clothes tend to help with looking human, and even if I had long since gotten used to guys seeing me naked, I doubted that this man was going to be too comfortable with that. Turning back, I grimaced faintly, wondering how the hell I was going to explain the situation. “This…” I gestured to myself, and to the pieces of vampire, “is kind of a long story, okay? Just stay put for a minute, and then we’ll get out of here, and I swear I’ll explain.
“I am dying to hear the explanation for this,” he said, fervently and with an utterly inappropriate choice of words.
Now that I didn’t have to worry about someone’s throat getting torn out, I could look at him properly - he was probably about my father’s age, with hair that was more salt than pepper, dressed nicely but still striking me as more of a tourist than a resident. I pointed out the crumpled straw hat on the floor next to him. “That yours?”
“What?” He looked round, as if remembering, then bent down and reached out with a shaking hand to scoop it up. “Ah, yes. I dropped it when…” Another look at the body.
“They have that effect,” I replied. I grabbed the roll of garbage bags from the sports tote, and started bagging up the smaller pieces of vampire that I had chewed off along the way. The head went into a separate bag, the arm in a third, and then I looked at the rest thoughtfully for a moment before moving in to rip off the legs and place them in separate bags as well.
“Oh God,” said the man. I glanced up to see him looking queasy and holding onto the wall.
“Go sit on the stairs,” I said, pointing. He started to walk past me, taking a very wide berth. “I promise, I’ll explain this too.”
He nodded, then hurried over to the steps, as I continued portioning up the vampire, bagging up the pieces, and packing them into the sports tote. I’d found that one could easily hold a moderately-sized corpse, provided I packed it right.
Once upon a time, I’d caught myself thinking sentences like that and been horrified. Now I was getting used to it.
By the time that I finished the job, collected the larger pieces of the clothes I had shredded, and zipped up the sports bag, my right arm was starting to shake and sweat was beading on my forehead. It was easier to handle these things wolfed out, with more body mass to spread the venom, but that wasn’t really an option in the middle of a big city and with a pulled-apart vampire to deal with. I slung the bag over my shoulder, with a grunt that was more to do with the way that the rocks hit my back than the weight, and walked round to find the man I had rescued sitting at the foot of the stairs with his head in his hands.
I hesitated. I’m not good with freak-outs, and this looked like a very reasonable time to be freaking out indeed. He glanced up between his hands, caught sight of me, and scrambled to his feet. Sunburn aside, he was almost ashen, and was clinging tightly to the bannister. “What are you?” he asked. “A werewolf?”
The same words as the vampire. That made me wince a bit, though I could see why he was asking. “I’m human,” I reassured him. “I just… can do some things, you know. To protect people. That’s one of them. And please, can I explain this properly? Like, not in a basement of a house with this great big bag over my shoulder? Seriously, I won’t hurt you.”
It might sound strange, but I wasn’t in the habit of saving humans. I rarely catch a vampire in the middle of something - they don’t really spend that much time hunting, after all. So normally I’m either taking care of it privately, or clearing up human bodies as well. It might have been more pleasant to actually know that I had saved someone’s life, but it was as awkward as hell.
He looked at me like I’d suggested walking into the dragon’s lair. I couldn’t really blame him for that, either.
“Look,” I said. “I need to finish dealing with… this. I promise you that I don’t want to hurt you, I’m not going to hurt you.” I didn’t add that I could have done that already if I had wanted to. That sort of thing tends to sound creepy. “I just saved your life, okay? I’m here to protect you, and I could walk off now, but I’d rather explain to you what you just saw before I kick you back out into the world.”
I don’t have a high tolerance for bullshit; I get that from my mother. Entirely my own is my tendency to get frustrated with people so easily, which was about where I was right then. When I’d first wolfed out, I wanted to know why - to be fair, I still do - and now I was offering this guy an explanation for everything, and he wasn’t biting. Plus I had a vampire over my shoulder, every nerve in my body was screaming about the reek of it, and I’ve never been much of a fan of going commando.
“Okay,” he said finally. His voice was still a little shaky, but he seemed a bit more together. “I’ll come with you.”
I gestured for him to go upstairs, then followed, making sure that I closed the doors behind us. The smell of death - real death, not just bloodsucker - had been weak enough that I was fairly sure there were no bodies on the premises, that it had just been a convenient hidey-hole and the vampire must have been disposing of the evidence elsewhere.
We walked almost in silence back to my car, where I slung the sports bag in the back, grabbed my keys from under the chassis and pulled some underwear on beneath my dress before getting in. The man seemed nervous, and I gestured impatiently for him to join me.
“My name’s Julian,” he said once he was inside. “Julian Annable.”
Fuck, I’d been away from people too long. I’d fallen out of the habit of using names, or at least of caring about them. “Leah Clearwater,” I replied, letting my hands rest on the steering wheel for a moment. “And I’m sorry that you saw what happened today. I really am. I… try to be more discreet about things.”
“What did happen today?” he asked. Both of us were just sitting in the Chevy, staring straight ahead down the narrow alleyway that led onto a quiet street. Avoiding each other’s gazes at all cost.
“You got taken by a vampire, she was probably going to kill you, but you got saved by a shapeshifting human.”
There was a long, pregnant pause. “Tabernac,” Julian said finally.
“Something like that.” I drew myself together, turned the key in the ignition, and hit the clutch to shift into first gear. The Chevy growled into life. “Come on, I need to get somewhere outside the city so I can set a bonfire. I’ll give you the long version on the way.”
Author: afterandalasia
Artist: chosenfire28
Fandom(s): Twilight
Rating: R
Word Count: 10,622
Inspiration: Leah's incomparable awesomeness.
Warnings (skip) Graphic violence, character death, strong language. Discussion of imprinting, not taken to extreme lengths, which could be considered problematic.
Summary: Set a thief to catch a thief. To catch a monster...
Leah Clearwater knows that there are more dangerous things than her in the world than her, and she figures that it's her job to go out and fight them when humans can't. Then in one day, she gets in a fight, talks to a man, and meets a woman. Those aren't the sort of things that are usually exceptional, but this time they might just turn out to be. Perhaps it's time to remember that the word 'monster' was not always negative, and that there might be some hope still to come.
Disclaimer: Twilight is not mine, and I make no profit from this work.
Notes: This was actually produced for the werewolfbigbang, but it was done with this comm in mind. On that note, I really want to thank the mod and artist chosenfire28 and the last-minute beta Kitt who helped me with this.
At AO3 | My Journal | At Werewolfbigbang
Set a thief to catch a thief, the saying goes. It isn’t that old, in the way of things; perhaps three hundred years, perhaps four. There are some things that are far older.
The problem is, you see, that there are many dark things that walk the earth. Things that feed upon humans, directly or indirectly, that make men mad and tortured, that would destroy this world if given the change.
There are many monsters in this world.
Set a thief to catch a thief.
To catch a monster. . .
Of course, not everyone thinks of us as monsters. Most people don’t even know that we exist, or think that we are just something made up by Hollywood. Those who do know of our existence usually remember us as people, and therefore don’t believe that we are monsters at all.
I wish that I could agree with them.
The Latin word monstrum means something outside the natural order, nothing more; the English word became more negative over time. And, if nothing else, we’re certainly outside the natural order.
Sadly, this never did manage to exclude me from having to deal with the problems of the real world. Being a monster doesn’t get you out of the need to eat, to sleep, and most importantly to have money to allow you to do those first two things. It just brings with it the extra problems that come when your metabolism could outstrip a train and you end up - way, way too often - tangled in the affairs of other monsters.
You wouldn’t know it to look at me. After all, I looked just like most of the other workers taking advantage of our twenty-minute lunch break on the California farm to scarf down food, water, and cigarette smoke. We were all pretty much dressed the same - t-shirts and cargo pants, dust-caked boots and slightly more varied hats - and we weren’t talking much. Mostly we just sat there, in companionable silence, smoking shitty roll-up cigarettes and mentally calculating how little money we were going to get for this day’s work.
What day was this, you might ask. Hell, it was most of the summer, as far as I could tell.
I liked not talking to them. I liked quiet in the outside world as much as I liked the quiet in my own head, and believe me when I say that since splitting off from the pack, I really appreciated having my head to myself. I liked being in the sun, the heat, far away from Forks in Washington fucking State and its perpetual clouds, and I didn’t mind the job too much. I’d gotten used to being almost entirely around guys long ago, and at least these ones didn’t see me as a freak. Anomaly, maybe, but not a total freak of nature.
And, possibly my favourite part, none of them really give a damn about me. I’d be impressed if they even recognised the name Leah Clearwater, let alone knew who it belonged to. They didn’t care about me, and I didn’t have to care about them, at least not during the daylight hours. Even at night, it’s nothing personal; I take my pay, kick off to the heap of junk that I call a car, and ponder whether tonight was going to be a night where I had to take on another goddamn bloodsucker.
I should probably admit straight out that I love my car more than it might seem sometimes. It’s trawled back and forth across the country with me, been with me longer than most humans I know by this point, and I can’t count the number of nights that I’ve slept in it. An olive-green eighties Chevy with manual transmission and windows might not be everyone’s idea of a sweet ride, but Jacob used to say that listening to me trying to start the grumbling thing in the morning was like hearing an old married couple having a bickering session. I didn’t dignify him with an answer.
The weather was good, and I have always been an outdoors sort. I found a quiet stretch of road for the evening and sat in the back with a camp stove to make dinner. It’s amazing what you can cook on one of those things if you put in some effort, and after the last couple of years I knew more than enough dishes that I could cook over one gas flame and store in the car. This particular evening involved ploughing through a huge bowl of spicy rice ‘n’ veg, a recipe I’d picked up in Texas and scaled up to match my appetite.
A normal sort of day, and not just for me. I’m willing to bet that most people, looking at the life I live, wouldn’t call me a monster. Drifter, perhaps. Nomad, if they were feeling nice, or hobo if they weren’t. All I can say to that is: well, duh. This far south, at least when the sun is shining, I got most days off to play at being human.
I turned on the radio and watched the sun set, the stars rise. The heat was unusual, even if it had been breaking three digits, but there was an edge to the air that I didn’t much care for: a heaviness, and something that made me feel as if the hairs on the back of my arms were standing on end. I didn’t like it, and even if there weren’t any clouds in the sky yet I didn’t doubt that there would be soon. It put a dampener on my mood as I crawled back into the cab and kicked back for the night, wondering already how much complaining I could get away with and not look weird.
After all, I didn’t hate the clouds because they bought out the rain.
I woke up with a crick in my neck and a guy knocking on my window. He was shading his eyes with one hand, and I didn’t think it was going to be too wild a guess that he was just another migrant worker looking for a lift or a job. I gave him the finger; he did the same and stalked off. It wasn’t like I was going to get any less awake, however, so with a groan I sat up and ran one hand through my hair. Could probably do with getting that cut again, as well.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said as I caught sight of the clouds starting to gather in the sky. I knew what that was going to mean.
You’d think that the bloodsuckers would be smart enough not to come to the sunniest city in the country, but there you go. Apparently they just don’t fucking learn; something about being stuck in the same state as when they were changed. The night and the clouds always bought them out, and I could guess already that today wasn’t going to be any different.
It was annoying that I was going to have to miss a day’s work - ‘no day, no pay’ - but there would be plenty of people wanting to replace me, so it wasn’t like the farm would go short. They’d probably take me back again, but if not then somewhere else would. One of few advantages. I rolled down the windows and hit the streets, waiting for that tell-tale smell of vampire to hit me in return. Jacob just used to complain about how sweet it was; to me, at least, it smelt almost like rotting flesh. Not that I realised it straight away - when you’re nineteen, you don’t have that many opportunities to come across rotting flesh, after all - but after a while in the world of vampires and werewolves you find out what it smells like. It was unmistakeable, right from the first moment, and it never quite went away again.
High summer in the middle of the city, and I was stuck in a car with no working AC, cruising around the cloud-shadowed streets and waiting for the smell of fucking vampire to spring out at me. Not exactly my favourite way of passing the time, even with the biggest and spiciest burrito I could get my hands on to help it along.
I was starting to think that it was a waste of time, as the hands of the clock crept past midday and the rumbles of thunder started in the distance, when one of the gusts of wind that came through my car window sent my hackles rising, my hands tightening on the steering wheel. Ripe bloodsucker, directly upwind.
I parked up in a place that looked like it was fairly unlikely I’d get my car stolen, then kicked my feet into sandals, took off my bra from under my top, and grabbed a sports bag from under the front seats before exiting the car, locking it, and hiding the keys under the chassis. There were spare clothes in the bag, but an ill-timed fursplode and I could lose my keys for hours. That was the last thing that I needed when I was probably about to take apart another blood-drunk vampire who was out on a cloudy day in search of a snack.
I swung the bag over my shoulder and started following the scent, ignoring the way that my stomach twisted violently with each fresh wave that I caught. The further north I went, the stronger it became until it made me wonder how humans couldn’t smell it as well - how I had not been able to smell it before I first shifted. Tracking the sent took longer than I expected, and I thought about going back for the car, but before I could make up my mind, my other senses started to kick into gear as well. The vampire was here.
I found myself outside a foreclosed house with an overgrown lawn and curtains drawn behind the windows. It made sense; I’d never gone in for hiding in abandoned houses myself, but they probably worked well for a leech in need of a sunshade. At least it meant that this was going to be out of sight, as well.
There were things that you could allow yourself to think about, and things that you couldn’t. That this had once been someone’s house fell into the latter category; for now, I was more relieved that it didn’t belong to anyone currently. When I opened the door, the cool damp air of the inside hit me like a wave, and I gagged, covering my face with my arm. That sweet, putrefying smell was stronger inside, with two notes together like actual dead human flesh and vampire. No surprise there, either.
I didn’t do the cop thing, shouting out, trying to draw attention to myself. I closed the door as quietly as I could, letting it click back into place, although if the vampire was paying attention at all then they already knew I was there.
Of course, they might not have been paying attention.
“I’m… I’m not really sure I should still be here…”
A voice caught my attention from below my feet: male, without that tinkling sound that vampires always get after they turn, human. I couldn’t help but feel my lips curl, the growl rising in my throat before I held it back. The wolf deep inside was already growling, straining beneath my mind: danger danger human danger threat protect save PROTECT. Or perhaps it wasn’t that deep down anymore.
There was a reply, but one which I couldn’t make out the words of, low and musical. It had vampire written all over it. The man started talking again, nervously, as if he was trying to politely extricate himself from an unwanted conversation. I half took it in, my mind skimming for any important words, trigger words which meant the danger was becoming more immediate, as I walked round to the kitchen, feeling the cooler air around the door back there which meant that it led to the basement.
The door handle looked damaged, at least to the unknowing eye; I could see that it had been crumpled slightly beneath an over-strong grip. Yeah, my kind and I can do that as well, but I doubted it was one of us. As far as I knew, none of the others had even left La Push for more than a vacation at a time, and it sure as hell hadn’t been me in this house.
I turned the handle; just as the vampire voice below - female, soothing, hypnotic - continued. “That’s right, there’s no danger here, none at all…”
She trailed off, and I didn’t know whether it was because of the man’s continuing silence or because my scent was probably starting to get stronger, wolfier. Still the wolf in my head, as much a desire as a voice: danger cold one COLD ONE protect human fight protect- I wrapped one hand tightly around the bannister as I picked my way down the stairs, darkened at first then pooled with light as I reached the lower levels.
Having super-senses doesn’t mean that you actually use them, of course. I jumped down the last half a dozen stairs, landing with a sandalled flap, and was already poised to spring as the woman finally caught on to me and turned with a feral snarl.
The man - the human protect save danger - was backed up against the wall, an expression of very faint fear on his face as if he could not remember why he was supposed to be scared. I pegged him for a tourist - slight sunburn on his cheeks, the sort of shirt that you wore on holiday and not at home - in a fraction of a second, barely sparing a glance away from the vampire.
She looked older than some of the vampires I’d met before, maybe in her thirties, but she had that same almost otherworldly beauty about her if you weren’t paying attention. Her face was uniformly, smoothly pale, features made even by vampirism, sleek dark hair past her shoulders, her posture graceful and poised. Her whole point was to be beautiful, to put humans at their ease and draw them in.
I was having none of it.
For an instant, she continued snarling, red eyes narrowed at me, then without appearing to move she was back to standing upright, smiling like a hostess and tilting her head just slightly to the side to examine me. “Well,” she said, “good gracious. You appear to be lost, my dear… there’s nothing to see here…”
Bad danger cold one danger look-
I wondered whether she usually had some particular power over humans, or whether this was just another attempt at the usual vampire magnetism. We both walked forwards, slowly, matching our paces and never breaking eye contact. I didn’t even worry about the man; if the vampire was looking at me, then he was safe.
It felt like a game of chicken; she stopped first, when we were only a yard or so apart. Her eyes bored into mine, as I let the bag slip from my shoulder to the floor, stepped out of my sandals. My heart rate was starting to accelerate, body feeling as if my skin was a little too hot, a little too tight.
She breathed in deeply, taking in a full lungful of my scent; hot, Bella had called it once, scorching and sharp. This time, it earnt a look of disgust, one that turned to shock when I couldn’t hold back my smile any longer.
“What are you?” she asked, voice perfect southern-belle horror.
“I’m Leah Clearwater,” I replied. “And I’m about to fuck up your day.”
Then I punched her.
Even in my normal shape, my speed makes me a fair match for bloodsuckers, and my fist connected with her face before she had even managed to start the next question. Her nose crunched underneath my knuckles, with a sound like cracking eggshell and a stab of pain as the skin on my knuckles split for a moment.
To do her credit, she barely flinched; instead, with a banshee howl, she made to pounce on me, arms outstretched. I could see her hands reaching for my neck, the fury in her eyes, but I braced my feet against the floor and reached in to her, her hands passing me as one of my forearms struck her in the neck. My other hand grabbed her forearm and twisted, pulling one arm up behind her back and tightening my hold on her throat as I slammed her against the wall.
It hurt my arm as well, and I drew it out from around her neck before banging her head against the wall once, twice, a third time, leaving a dent in the wall and earning another outraged cry. Then with a fierce twist of her arm, she wrenched free from my hold and threw me to the floor, clear across the room. I heard ribs crack, but forced myself back to my feet even as black patches swirled in my vision. Everything would heal soon enough.
She didn’t jump on me again straight away, but held back, watching warily as she started to walk in a circle, heading towards the human again. He was still looking at us with horror and had not moved an inch.
I made to step forward, and she blurred, moving back in the other direction and making me spin to orientate myself to her again.
“Fuck it,” I said finally. There was only so far I could get in human form anyway.
Fur time.
It had become easier to phase over time - to fursplode, as my brother so charmingly put it. The brain stands still and the body handles the rearranging, and quicker than the human eye can see the human is gone and the wolf is in their place.
Cold one danger hunt threat protect threat danger fight KILL-
Louder, that voice, that devil on my shoulder. I growled, long and low, tensing to spring even as the vampire’s shock overwhelmed her. She staggered back a step, one hand going to her mouth in an expression so human that it surprised even me, then recovered herself and drew back to a combat position.
“Werewolf,” she said, disdain dripping from her voice.
Shapeshifter, technically, but close enough.
I covered the distance between us in one leap, hitting her bodily but nails-first and feeling chips of her fly off from wherever my nails found some purchase. She slapped me - no, not quite a slap, that is the wrong word for a vampire palm rattling all of the bones in your skull, vampire fingers scratching at the skin beneath your fur. A flash of pain ran down the left side of my face, and I responded with a barking sound before sinking my teeth into the line of her jaw.
Vampires aren’t like humans, in just about any way that I have found. Their skin hides flesh that has changed, become rock - and not just muscles, but the structures of the body that used to run beneath. They might have some sort of digestive system to process blood, sensory organs, nails and teeth and hair, but what need does a creature of rock have for bones?
My teeth sank through her cheek and chin, scooping out a section. The taste of rotting flesh flooded my senses and I spat out the chunk in disgust, even as she screamed and reached up for her face again. No blood, just sheared white flesh, like cutting through a block of plastic. I pinned her shoulder down with one paw, her hand with the other, exposing her arm beneath me. The other hand balled in my fur and tried to pull me off, but even as she sank her teeth into my leg I bit into her arm, almost clean through in one strike, and dragged hard enough to snap off the rest even as she threw me aside.
Burning, icy pain started pulsing through my right leg, pouring out from the venom in the wound. It wouldn’t kill me, wouldn’t turn me, but it felt as if someone was boring into me with a red-hot poker, sending the rest of my leg almost numb. She tried to grab for her arm again, but I pounced on it, kicking it to the far side of the room, then spun behind her and bore her to the ground one last time.
This time my teeth went into her neck. It was more of a struggle, but finally her head rolled off and away, and the thrashings of her body stilled.
I stepped back, panting, then phased back to human form again. My right forearm bore an ugly red wound, distorted by the phase until it was almost a row of tooth marks rather than a semi-circle; it felt cold against my heated skin, and my fingers hardly twitched as I tried to move them. I curled it into my chest with a groan, then remembered where I was and turned to face the human that was still backed up in the corner.
He looked from me to the headless, torn-apart body, and back again. “Oh dear,” he said in a shaking voice.
“Something like that,” I replied. “Hang on.” Crossing back to the sports bag, I grabbed the loose dress inside and slipped it on over my head, then slipped my feet back into my shoes. Clothes tend to help with looking human, and even if I had long since gotten used to guys seeing me naked, I doubted that this man was going to be too comfortable with that. Turning back, I grimaced faintly, wondering how the hell I was going to explain the situation. “This…” I gestured to myself, and to the pieces of vampire, “is kind of a long story, okay? Just stay put for a minute, and then we’ll get out of here, and I swear I’ll explain.
“I am dying to hear the explanation for this,” he said, fervently and with an utterly inappropriate choice of words.
Now that I didn’t have to worry about someone’s throat getting torn out, I could look at him properly - he was probably about my father’s age, with hair that was more salt than pepper, dressed nicely but still striking me as more of a tourist than a resident. I pointed out the crumpled straw hat on the floor next to him. “That yours?”
“What?” He looked round, as if remembering, then bent down and reached out with a shaking hand to scoop it up. “Ah, yes. I dropped it when…” Another look at the body.
“They have that effect,” I replied. I grabbed the roll of garbage bags from the sports tote, and started bagging up the smaller pieces of vampire that I had chewed off along the way. The head went into a separate bag, the arm in a third, and then I looked at the rest thoughtfully for a moment before moving in to rip off the legs and place them in separate bags as well.
“Oh God,” said the man. I glanced up to see him looking queasy and holding onto the wall.
“Go sit on the stairs,” I said, pointing. He started to walk past me, taking a very wide berth. “I promise, I’ll explain this too.”
He nodded, then hurried over to the steps, as I continued portioning up the vampire, bagging up the pieces, and packing them into the sports tote. I’d found that one could easily hold a moderately-sized corpse, provided I packed it right.
Once upon a time, I’d caught myself thinking sentences like that and been horrified. Now I was getting used to it.
By the time that I finished the job, collected the larger pieces of the clothes I had shredded, and zipped up the sports bag, my right arm was starting to shake and sweat was beading on my forehead. It was easier to handle these things wolfed out, with more body mass to spread the venom, but that wasn’t really an option in the middle of a big city and with a pulled-apart vampire to deal with. I slung the bag over my shoulder, with a grunt that was more to do with the way that the rocks hit my back than the weight, and walked round to find the man I had rescued sitting at the foot of the stairs with his head in his hands.
I hesitated. I’m not good with freak-outs, and this looked like a very reasonable time to be freaking out indeed. He glanced up between his hands, caught sight of me, and scrambled to his feet. Sunburn aside, he was almost ashen, and was clinging tightly to the bannister. “What are you?” he asked. “A werewolf?”
The same words as the vampire. That made me wince a bit, though I could see why he was asking. “I’m human,” I reassured him. “I just… can do some things, you know. To protect people. That’s one of them. And please, can I explain this properly? Like, not in a basement of a house with this great big bag over my shoulder? Seriously, I won’t hurt you.”
It might sound strange, but I wasn’t in the habit of saving humans. I rarely catch a vampire in the middle of something - they don’t really spend that much time hunting, after all. So normally I’m either taking care of it privately, or clearing up human bodies as well. It might have been more pleasant to actually know that I had saved someone’s life, but it was as awkward as hell.
He looked at me like I’d suggested walking into the dragon’s lair. I couldn’t really blame him for that, either.
“Look,” I said. “I need to finish dealing with… this. I promise you that I don’t want to hurt you, I’m not going to hurt you.” I didn’t add that I could have done that already if I had wanted to. That sort of thing tends to sound creepy. “I just saved your life, okay? I’m here to protect you, and I could walk off now, but I’d rather explain to you what you just saw before I kick you back out into the world.”
I don’t have a high tolerance for bullshit; I get that from my mother. Entirely my own is my tendency to get frustrated with people so easily, which was about where I was right then. When I’d first wolfed out, I wanted to know why - to be fair, I still do - and now I was offering this guy an explanation for everything, and he wasn’t biting. Plus I had a vampire over my shoulder, every nerve in my body was screaming about the reek of it, and I’ve never been much of a fan of going commando.
“Okay,” he said finally. His voice was still a little shaky, but he seemed a bit more together. “I’ll come with you.”
I gestured for him to go upstairs, then followed, making sure that I closed the doors behind us. The smell of death - real death, not just bloodsucker - had been weak enough that I was fairly sure there were no bodies on the premises, that it had just been a convenient hidey-hole and the vampire must have been disposing of the evidence elsewhere.
We walked almost in silence back to my car, where I slung the sports bag in the back, grabbed my keys from under the chassis and pulled some underwear on beneath my dress before getting in. The man seemed nervous, and I gestured impatiently for him to join me.
“My name’s Julian,” he said once he was inside. “Julian Annable.”
Fuck, I’d been away from people too long. I’d fallen out of the habit of using names, or at least of caring about them. “Leah Clearwater,” I replied, letting my hands rest on the steering wheel for a moment. “And I’m sorry that you saw what happened today. I really am. I… try to be more discreet about things.”
“What did happen today?” he asked. Both of us were just sitting in the Chevy, staring straight ahead down the narrow alleyway that led onto a quiet street. Avoiding each other’s gazes at all cost.
“You got taken by a vampire, she was probably going to kill you, but you got saved by a shapeshifting human.”
There was a long, pregnant pause. “Tabernac,” Julian said finally.
“Something like that.” I drew myself together, turned the key in the ignition, and hit the clutch to shift into first gear. The Chevy growled into life. “Come on, I need to get somewhere outside the city so I can set a bonfire. I’ll give you the long version on the way.”