Fic: Monsters and Me, Pioneer Trail/Oregon Trail (Yuletide)
I grabbed this prompt with the idea of writing a Yuletide Treat, but the more I looked at it, the more I liked it, and on a whim, I signed up for it at the end of sign-ups, and of course, I got assigned it. I then spent the next few weeks freaking out as I tried to write it, because apparently I need to have more structure in my source material. There were just too many options! Too many stories to tell! I actually crossed it over with Oregon Trail in hopes of adding some much-needed structure to my ideas, because there is an easy format to Oregon Trail stories.
And then this story took off, and first it was 1000 words, and then 3000, and then, finally, it broke 6000, and I was in love with it. If I'd had more time, I probably could have taken this to 10k or more. This is so perfectly me, I am surprised that no one guessed it was mine: adding werewolves to a story and writing about the women who hunt while the men support them.
In the end, this has become one of my favorite stories I've written, and I am so glad I was assigned this request.
This fulfilled the Missus Clause Challenge.
Title: Monsters and Me
Author: escritoireazul
Fandom: Pioneer Trail/Oregon Trail
Written for: chase_acow for Yuletide 2011
Characters/Pairings: Bess, Fanny Wildcat, Hank, Bess/Fanny Wildcat, Bess/Hank, Bess/Hank/Fanny Wildcat
Rating: 13+
Word count: 6180
Summary: When she’s a little girl, sitting on Pa’s knee while Ma cleans her guns, Bess hears her first coyote howl. It’s nothing at all like the hunting song of a werewolf, but still Bess shivers and stares out at the darkness with wide eyes. (Every hunter has to start somewhere.)
She will always be the only thing
That comes between me and the awful sting
That comes from living in a world that's so damn mean
"My Beloved Monster" Eels
1.
When she’s a little girl, sitting on Pa’s knee while Ma cleans her guns, Bess hears her first coyote howl. It’s nothing at all like the hunting song of a werewolf, but still Bess shivers and stares out at the darkness with wide eyes. The fire crackles and pops, and Ma shifts around on the log, setting down her favorite pistol and picking up her second favorite rifle.
Pa strokes Bess’s hair and hands her the long stick he uses to poke the fire. “Just a coyote,” he says, cutting the syllables off sharp. “Nothing for my little hunter to worry about.”
It rises and falls, trailing off slow, and Bess’s hands are shaking a little when it’s done.
“Why does it do that?” she asks.
Pa shrugs, but Ma looks up from her work, the long rifle gleaming in the firelight. “That’s how they talk,” she says. “Sounds like a lone coyote calling for its family.”
“Like the werewolves do, marking their locations.” Bess grips the stick tight between her hands, until the bark cuts into her fingertips.
“Something like,” Ma says with a nod. “But you’re safe from this one.”
“Lone werewolves are dangerous.” Bess repeats it automatically, and Ma smiles.
“Good girl.”
Bess wiggles her toes in her boots and pokes at the fire. She feels about as tall as a mountain, getting it right for her Ma.
Later, Pa tucks Bess into her bed in the back of the wagon, and settles into his own, but Ma keeps to her place, her back to the fire so the light doesn’t ruin her night vision, guns all tucked away except for her second favorite rifle laying across her thighs.
Long after Pa sleeps and the fire burns down, Ma keeps watch, staring out into the darkness. Bess tucks her hands under her chin and, despite each yawn that makes her ears pop and the heavy droop of her eyelids, forces herself to stay awake too.
Ma gets up sometimes, stretching her arms overhead, gun gripped tight in one hand, and paces a big circle around the wagon.
The coyote howls again, long and wild in the night. Bess snuggles deeper into the blankets. It doesn’t sound so scary now, one coyote, calling out with no response. One natural animal, all by itself, calling and calling and never hearing any song in return.
She snuggles in, safe with her family, and as she falls toward sleep, wishes the coyote could have a family too.
2.
Bess binds back her hair, red as a strawberry, bright as a flame, with a kerchief on long hunts, pulls her hat down low so it shades her eyes, and chooses sturdy men’s trousers and shirts and leather vests instead of long calico dresses. Her gun belt had been Ma’s when she first started hunting, and Bess slings it around her hips with pride.
Pa trades for a good horse for Bess, tall and broad enough to handle her long legs and wide hips. They leave the wagon behind at one of the safe houses most hunts, but when Ma hears stories about big wolves attacking wagon trains, they swing by to grab theirs and head out to Missouri to join up. Bess doesn’t know how they’ll manage to leave the wagon train without causing a fuss once they’re done, but as Ma tells her often, all serious even though the corners of her eyes crinkle with laughter, she still has a lot to learn about hunting.
In the general store, while Pa buys supplies, she fingers long bolts of calico and looks at some of the ready-made dresses, but Ma shakes her head. Some of those folks from back East don’t take too kindly to women in trousers, and they’ve dressed the part before. Bess raises her eyebrows, but she’s not going to outright ask. She’d rather wait for an answer, try and figure it out for herself.
Turns out, they’ve been hired to protect the wagon train all the way to Oregon, so they won’t have to try and sneak off, and everyone knows what they are and why they’re along for the ride, so no dressing as something they’re not. Bess cracks her neck to the right and then to the left while she gives it some thought. Long ride ahead, lots of dangers out in the wild. Not just monsters, either. It’s a bigger hunt than she’s ever been on before.
Plenty of time to add some pelts to her kills.
~*~
It’s about a hundred miles from Independence to the Kansas River. Bess rides near Ma, leaving Pa alone in the wagon. She tips her hat down and listens for awhile. Ma’s pretty quiet, eyes scanning the horizon, but the leader, Hannah, waves them over. They ride slow next to her, rifles tucked into the special holsters on their saddles, pistols at their hips.
Families in other wagons look at them fast and only when they think they won’t get caught, but Hannah grins up at them. She’s pretty grizzled, skin rough from sun and wind, but her faded blue eyes are friendly.
“Got word a couple weeks back that the last few wagon trains lost a lot of people. Some deaths are expected. Dysentery takes a fair few, and there’s always someone trying to prove something who ends up falling off a mountain or taking on a bear and losing. This was different.”
“Different how?” Ma stands in the stirrups, looking along the line of wagons, then settles back.
“As the story goes, it starts the same. Couple people disappear. Not at the same time, one at a time. Maybe they’re hunting, but usually it’s not anyone with a gun. Just someone who wanders too far from the wagons, except it happens more than once.”
“Still, could be a natural explanation.” Ma leans forward a little in the saddle. Bess mimics the motion, trying to see what Ma sees.
Hannah nods. “That is true. But then the wagon train gets hit, usually a couple months out. First few times, the survivors weren’t sure what it was. Maybe werewolves, but a lot of these city folk have never seen a wild dog before, much less a shifted werewolf.”
Something about the words she chooses makes Bess tense. “The first few times?” Bess asks.
Hannah turns sharp eyes on Bess. Bess lifts her chin, because this is part of it, too, asking enough questions to know what you’re facing without instilling doubt in those who hired you. Finally, Hannah nods and gives a crooked smile.
“We’re pretty sure at least one group was all killed. They might still be out there, lost, but another wagon train came through and found most of the wagons.”
“Abandoned?” Ma asks.
“Destroyed.” Hannah hooks her thumbs in her belt. Though most of the other women are in dresses - sturdy dresses, at least - Hannah dresses a lot like Ma and Bess. “Nothing left but wood and ox bone.”
Ma takes off her hat, wipes sweat from her forehead, and settles her hat back in place. “We’ll keep your people safe,” she says.
Bess presses her lips together in a thin line. That sounds far too close to a promise, and they try not to make promises they can’t keep.
~*~
The first night, Hannah calls everyone together for a meeting. Ma gets up in front of them, not looking nervous at all, though Bess feels sick just thinking about all those eyes on her. Hannah briefly explains why she’s hired them on, and though there are some frowns, more people than not nod a little welcome.
Ma doesn’t say much, just explains how they’ll keep watch and what to do in case they get attacked. She ends with this: “Some of you might think you can pitch in if things go wrong. You don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll just make things worse. If you’re interested, we’ll teach you some things to do to help. Come find us before breakfast and after dinner. There are bad things in this world, but with some training, you can fight back.”
Bess doesn’t think many people will show up - only other hunters have ever helped them before - but Ma doesn’t seem too worried. She’s right, of course, and Bess is surprised when she comes in from checking the oxen to find fifteen people gathered round Ma at breakfast. That night, there’s even more.
Maybe people aren’t all that bad. Bess cleans her guns and watches and for the first time wonders what she missed, growing up as she did.
~*~
Third day out, the Olson family breaks a wagon wheel. It’s early enough that the weight of the how many months stretch ahead hasn’t really settled in, and no one grumbles when Hannah calls a halt while Mr. Olson tries to repair it. Pa swings down out of their wagon, all easy movements, and goes to help.
It takes awhile. Ma stays in her saddle, gazing back along the trail. Bess stays in her saddle, too, but she stares forward, squinting in the sun. The weather’s cool, but the sky is wide and blue, so big and bright it hurts her eyes.
Whenever they stop, all she wants to do is spread out far from the fires and stare up at the stars, a heavy blanket of them. She’s seen them her whole life, but they’re different now, out here. Hunting with Ma is simple, if not easy. Hunting with Ma while trying to keep other people safe doesn’t feel simple or easy at all.
It leaves her no time to stare at the sky. At night, she and Ma ride circles around the group until everyone beds down, and then alternate. Ma takes the first half of each night, Bess the second. She likes it best then, the air cold and sharp in the middle of the night, the long slide into dawn. People start stirring before the sun comes up, but she’s left alone while she pokes up the communal fires. At night, they light one per wagon, but in the morning, it’s faster to brew up coffee and a quick breakfast as a group.
Bess takes a moment to look up at the sky while they wait on Mr. Olson and Pa to finish, but it’s not the same without the stars.
The skin on the back of her neck prickles. She doesn’t snap her body around and give away that she's noticed, but she shifts her seat, making Wolfsbane shy sideways. (She was young when she named him, and a little silly. Can’t change it now.) She and Ma trained him well. It’s good cover; it looks like real fright.
As she fakes a frantic reining in, Bess gets a quick look back. There’s no monster sneaking up from behind, not with Ma holding the line, but one of the boys in the wagons a couple back from the Olsons' is watching her. There’re probably five or six big strapping boys in that family. There’s so many she can’t keep them all straight, tumbling around as they do. Like a lot of the others, they walk during the day, but they don’t wander far, and she’s more worried about what’s going on outside the wagon train than within.
He grins, and she realizes she’s been caught staring. None too subtle for a hunter. He’s got a nice smile, all his teeth and a dimple in his cheek. Freckles across his nose, too, from the sun. She’s no coy girl with a pretty smile and a handkerchief. She tips her hat at him and faces forward, setting off at a quick trot to check on down the trail.
~*~
They get a couple weeks of easy travel after that, with clear, warm weather and plenty of good hunting, and then heavy clouds blow up as they stop for the night and set up camp. Pa cooks up a hearty stew, heavy on the potatoes and carrots and salty from the dried meat he chops into it. Ma settles down next to Pa while they eat, her favorite rifle within easy reach. (The second favorite from Bess’s childhood is long gone.) After, Pa rests his head on her shoulder, and she chews absentmindedly on a long piece of grass.
Bess shifts, trying to scratch the ghost of an itch at the middle of her back. Even though Ma has first watch, Bess leaves her parents alone and goes to walk the perimeter. All the families are settling in, eating dinner or cleaning up, the littlest kids tucked under the wagons with their blankets.
Sometimes, the fiddlers sit around playing quiet songs, singing the wagon train to sleep, but tonight, all the instruments stay packed inside the wagons. All the adults keep an eye on the weather. They’ve had light sprinkles of rain so far, but nothing worse. This could be worse.
She’s circling around the back half when someone falls into step next to her. She curls her left hand over the butt of the pistol on her left hip, but he’s come from inside the wagon train, not out, and she won’t shoot without reason. Good thing, too, because it’s that boy with the nice smile.
“You’re Bess?” At her nod, he turns that smile on her once again. “I’m Aaron.”
For a moment, she keeps her eyes out on the darkness, but then she glances at him fast. His grin is infectious. It makes her smile too.
~*~
He walks with her two more times around the circle of wagons. It’s harder to keep a good watch with someone talking to her, but Ma’s started on her watch too, and Bess don’t feel so bad about walking with Aaron. He asks about hunting, but she turns the conversation back on him, asking about his family - the brothers all have strong biblical names, Aaron and Joseph and Jacob and Benjamin and David - and his ma wants to open Harrison’s General Store out west, and his pa mostly goes along to keep everyone happy.
They’re just about to start a third circle when Ma slips up from the darkness outside the camp. “Bess, fall in,” she says, and her voice is low.
Bess turns to Aaron immediately, her left hand on her gun again. “Best get back to your wagon.”
He opens his mouth, and she expects him to argue, but all he says is, “Be careful out there.”
The corner of her mouth turns up. “Not my job to be careful.” She tips her hat at him and spins around to face Ma. Good smile or not, in that fast movement, she’s put Aaron out of her head and focused on what makes Ma frown so.
“Something’s spooked the oxen,” Ma says. She’s got her shotgun slung over her shoulder. “I think it might be wolves out there.”
Bess puts both hands on her guns. “Natural wolves?”
Ma shrugs one shoulder. “We haven’t seen any signs of other people for a couple days, but a hunting pack of werewolves could catch us up running hard.”
“We keeping this quiet?” Bess asks.
Ma shrugs. “Mount up and ride the perimeter. I’ll have Hannah stoke the fires and move everyone to the center. Your pa’s gonna set up at the north end. I’m taking south.”
Bess takes off at a fast walk. A run would make people worry, but she could be walking fast for any number of reasons. Saddling Wolfsbane takes next to no time at all, and she swings up into the saddle in one easy movement. Wolfsbane fidgets, eager to run, and she sets off at a fast trot away from the circle of wagons, rifle loosely strapped across her thighs.
She rides the perimeter long into the night, but whatever spooked the oxen doesn’t show itself. At dawn, Ma rides out to get her, moving stiffly in her saddle. Fingers of sunlight break across her face, throwing into stark relief the bruises under her eyes and the tight lines at the corners of her mouth.
Their’s is a hard life, and these long, sleepless nights can’t be done forever.
Back at camp, Bess splashes water on her face and tries not to think about what she’s seen.
~*~
The werewolves attack two nights later, no warning. All is silent, and after dinner with Aaron, she tumbles herself into her bedding and sleeps soundly, the taste of his kiss still on her tongue. Sometime later, she's dragged from sleep by the crack of Ma’s rifle. She’s on her feet, guns drawn before she’s fully awake, and then following the sound of the screams and the gunshots.
Later, Hannah says they were lucky. Ma doesn’t believe in luck, just in being well prepared, and Bess thinks she’s right. The settlers they've been training, most of them kept their heads and only a couple tried anything foolish. None of the wolves escape - Bess has to drag their bodies into a pile and light the fire. She stands and watches it burn for hours, flesh and fur melting away - and they only lose two people.
Once the fire is ash and salt, Bess swings herself up into the saddle, pushing aside thoughts of Aaron’s smile and how hard he fought to save his siblings. He did it, in the end, but that doesn't ease their pain at his loss, or their guilt, and nor does it temper hers.
~*~
They don’t lose anyone else, though Hannah breaks her leg and it doesn’t look good for awhile, and there's one more attack, just a hunting pair of werewolves that go down easy. At the end of the ride, they get paid, and everyone who has some money left chips in a little extra. The others hand over bullets or wagon wheels or whatever they have.
Bess stays astride Wolfsbane so no one will come too close, and doesn't let herself look to Aaron's family.
~*~
It takes another year for her to figure it out, but she wants someone to love, too, and as long as she’s hunting, she can’t risk someone else’s life.
~*~
Ma goes over the edge of a cliff hunting a bear shifter. She doesn’t die, but she tears up her leg pretty good. It’s six months before she can walk, and even then she needs a big walking stick for balance.
Her full-time hunting days are over. She’s gonna set up in one of the little towns that’re springing up out west, have her a little tavern, maybe share her knowledge with younger hunters, shoot whatever monsters come too close. She looks at Bess when she says that, but Bess can’t - won’t - meet her eyes.
Once Ma is settled, Bess heads out on her own. She’s a trick rider and a fast shot, and she knows how to make her way in the world. Following the trail of a vengeful ghost leads her straight into a rodeo, and on a whim, looking for some fun, she signs up to ride the barrels.
She salts and burns and wins a big belt buckle and smiles from a couple of the bull riders.
Bess takes herself back out on the hunt, knowing they’re not safe, but can’t stay away long. She runs smack dab into another rodeo, not following any monster then, just riding until she finds one. There’s a pretty cowgirl who shoots even better'n Bess does and kisses Bess beneath the stars. After that, Bess still hunts, but there's always another rodeo and there's always rodeo folk making her welcome and there's always kisses to savor in those moments when she thinks they are safe.
It’s not riding with Ma and Pa to save the world, but Bess figures she’ll find her place in it someday.
3.
Bess knows there’s something a little different about Fanny Wildcat the first time they meet, and it’s not just the way Fanny’s shy smile makes Bess want to smile back. She hasn’t felt this way since that rodeo clown broke her heart, and it’s a good thing she tracked down the black magic witch she was hunting long before things went so wrong, so she was free to escape out here, relying on her Uncle Jack to find her a place. She misses the rodeo - she misses the crowds cheering her on and the awards she kept winning, it’s hard to go back to solo hunts and no recognition after all that - but she’s glad to be away from pretty men in too bright colors who don’t give one ox tail about a girl’s broken heart.
Shapeshifter, Bess thinks at first, but with a name like Wildcat, well, it’d be too easy, wouldn’t it? So she settles in on the homestead, taking care of the animals, and she keeps watch. It’s not too hard to figure it out, but it does take a little time.
It’s when she finds the dead deer in the woods that she finally gets it. It’s winter, so cold her skin aches and her eyes burn, but she’s looking for fresh meat. What she finds instead is a carcass. Scavengers have been at it, but it’s frozen solid and they haven’t made a dent. There’s more than enough left for her to see most of the blood is gone, and was gone before the belly was slit open like that. She peels off one heavy leather glove and runs her thumb along the edge of the wound. It’s smooth, not torn open by animal fangs and claws.
Bess’s seen this before, once, on her second hunt with Ma. That’s when she learned not all vampires were for huntin’ and not all humans were on the right side of the human-monster line. Unless a vampire was killing humans, there was no need to hunt it.
Her.
~*~
Fanny’s sitting on the swing under the kissing tree one night when Bess comes in from making her rounds. She’s been hired on to take care of the animals, but hunters don’t stop hunting until they’re dead. No one else knows what she’s been doing. No one else needs to know. Uncle Jack knows her Ma was a hunter, and that she taught Bess everything, but he’s never let on one way or another whether he knows she’ll never put away her guns.
Bess drops her far hand to her gun and turns away a little, keeping that side of her body in shadow. Fanny’s eyes are bright when she looks up, reflecting the bits of starlight. The moon is new, and mostly they’re in darkness, the two of them alone outside with the animals and all the special crops.
“Such a pretty little thing,” Fanny says, and the corner of her mouth turns up into a smile, “for a hunter.”
That stops Bess cold. She may be able to pick out a monster on sight, but they’re not supposed to do the same to her. She doesn’t bother denying it, just turns all the way to face Fanny, both hands on her guns.
“You bleach the bloodstains off your teeth?” Bess asks.
Fanny laughs and ducks her head. If Bess didn’t know better, she’d swear Fanny was blushing. “I’m a careful eater,” she says instead, and this time when she smiles, she lets Bess see her fangs. Bess tightens her hands on her guns unconsciously, but she’s seen fangs bared as a threat and this isn’t that, and she doesn’t draw her pistols.
“What brings you all the way out here?” Bess asks. For a long moment, there’s only the clickety clack of Fanny’s knitting needles. Bess knows to wait out a skittish animal, though.
“It’s safer out here,” Fanny says.
“Safer for them?” Bess taps her thumbs against her guns. “Or you?”
Another laugh, and a part of Bess - small but growing - wants to make her do that again. “Both,” Fanny says. “Fewer hunters out here willing to shoot first and see if I’m a threat after I’m dead. Less temptation for me.”
“I don’t want to kill you.”
Fanny stops knitting and looks up. “I don’t want you to kill me.”
“You keep to wild animals, maybe I won’t have to.” Bess drops one hand away from her guns, slow, then the other.
“Cross my heart.” Fanny slips one hand free of her knitting and draws an x over her heart, dragging her finger slowly. It draws Bess’s eyes down the soft, pale line of Fanny’s throat and rise of her breasts beneath her bodice. Bess’s stomach flips, in a way it hasn’t since the last time she watched grease paint give way to rough skin and a sweet smile.
(The last time she watched grease paint give way at all, it was beneath her fist. She rode herself ragged for a week after that slip of her temper. Hunters do not have the privilege of lashing out.)
~*~
Fanny brings her fruit after she teaches the farm kids their lessons. They work in the fields and in the barn all day, and Fanny teaches them at night; Bess works with them in the afternoons, goes off to hunt at dusk. She comes back late, and Fanny’s always waiting for her with fruit. At first, it’s apples, and that, from a schoolmarm -- fanged or not -- makes her laugh.
Bess polishes one on her shirt. “Shouldn’t I be giving this to you?” she asks.
“I don’t eat fruit,” Fanny says, smiling, and Bess takes a big chomping bite.
When they’re in season, Bess gets pears that leave juice on her fingers and peaches that drip juice down her chin and berries that stain her hands dark. Fanny watches Bess eat, and touches her tongue to her lips after, like a cat licking her chops.
Bess sucks juice from her fingers and doesn’t bother pretending she doesn’t like how Fanny’s eyes go dark.
~*~
Fanny leaves pink rose petals strewn in the barn and tucks love letters into Bess’s saddle bags. She finds the first when she rides out to put some space between them. When she pulls out her coffee pot to brew some up that first night in the wilderness, the paper crinkles. She turns it over and over in her hands and almost throws it in the campfire half a dozen times.
The writing is too small to read at night. She shoves it into her bedroll and tries to forget about it, but sleep takes a long time after. She can’t really see much of the sky through the trees and the clouds, but sometimes, a star winks down at her.
People break your heart. Bess knows that. Too, she knows that monsters are dangerous.
But still, she thinks maybe.
~*~
Bess’ll never admit that she keeps all the love letters and some of the rose petals in a box hidden in the barn. No one else needs to know, and Fanny can probably smell it on her own. She brings fruit - apricot this time - and leaves it for Bess, but Bess stops her before she can go.
No slick of fruit juice on her lips and tongue, no pretense of a kiss in the way her teeth bite through soft, sweet flesh, just Fanny watching her with big eyes, and Bess pulling her in for something real, something a little rough and sprinkled with danger.
It takes a kiss or two for Bess to learn how to avoid Fanny’s fangs, but when she does, oh, no one, no man and no woman, has ever kissed Bess like this.
4.
The thing is, Bess knows Hank’s trouble the first time she sees him too, but it takes her awhile to figure out he’s got an animal inside. At first, all she sees is floppy blond hair and big blue eyes and dimples in an easy smile. Her stomach twists, because he’s just her type, big and friendly and hardworking, but he makes Fanny’s eyes shine, too, and jealousy adds a bitter, bitter bite to every breath.
She touches the charm bracelet Fanny strung around her wrist, counting off beads until her temper settles, and takes herself off on a hunt, because that is what she does when she’s angry or sad or scared.
~*~
Third night out, the moon rises fat and full, and in the distance the hunting song of a werewolf.
~*~
Bess hurries back to the homestead. She’s running low on silver bullets, but there’s a nice blacksmith one farm over, and they've all been plenty neighborly. If she’s careful, she can sweet talk her way into using it. She’s so busy planning her hunt she doesn’t realize Fanny is waiting for her in the barn until Bane (Wolfsbane III at this point, but it’s easier to lose them if she thinks of them all as one and the same) shies sideways to avoid her.
Bess starts to smile, but Fanny’s expression is serious and her voice low and steady when she says, “we need to talk.”
~*~
Werewolf, and she touches Bane, because for once there's no need for her to go out on the hunt, and the monster will walk right up to her like they’re friends.
Then Fanny asks - begs - for his life, hunting werewolf or not.
~*~
Hank gets back a couple days later, looking scratched and dirty and tired, but happy. The smile’s gone as soon as he sees them, Fanny standing in the shadows of the barn, Bess with Ma’s favorite rifle leveled at him steady.
“I can explain,” he says, and Bess snorts a laugh.
Fanny wants to listen, though. After all, she tells Bess when they’re alone in bed, stroking her fingers through long red hair, she knows about being a kinder, gentler monster.
“I’m no maneater,” he swears. “Strictly four-legged food for me.”
“I heard your hunting song. Werewolves only howl out like that when they hunt humans.”
He’s shaking his head before she even gets done talking, but he doesn’t stare at her gun. That’s pretty brave of him, though she’s pretty sure not even a werewolf can dodge her bullet this close. Instead he looks her straight in the eye.
“Werewolves sing out whenever they hunt.” He hesitates, and his gaze flickers to Fanny. “Especially when they hunt alone.”
Bess doesn’t want to feel sympathetic, she really doesn’t, but oh, she knows all about hunting alone. They are not the same, she is human through and through and he is something else, but for a moment, she softens.
That moment is enough for her to lower her gun. She doesn’t shoulder it, but she aims it at the ground, at least. Back in his stall, Bane stamps and knickers, but he knows how to handle a werewolf.
Bess sighs. “Fine. But I’ll keep an eye on you.”
That earns her a grin from Hank, all aw shucks ma’am, and a slow smile from Fanny.
~*~
“How’d you get started hunting?” Hank asks one night. They’re sitting on the porch of the schoolhouse, waiting for Fanny to finish her lessons. Bess is eating strawberries, perfectly ripe and bursting sweet on her tongue.
She frowns at him, because that’s what she’s trained herself to do, but it’s gone after a breath. “My ma was a hunter.” She twists one strawberry between her fingers. “It’s all I ever knew.”
“She still hunting?” He says it all gentle, and she sets down the strawberry, using it to cover the soft tension threading through her. He expects her to say Ma is dead, because that’s generally how hunters stop hunting.
Bess shrugs. “Last I heard, she was retired in Oregon, serving drinks and teaching younger hunters.” Her voice is steady, but he’s touched on something she doesn’t want to think about. Saving the world is a good thing, but oh, it gets lonely.
“Yet you’re out here.”
“Yes. I’m out here.”
Hank takes her hand. His skin is much warmer than hers, and far hotter than Fanny’s. Vampire versus human versus werewolf, part of Bess thinks, but a little bit is throwing up a warning signal -- werewolf you’re touching a werewolf -- and most is focused about how nice his mouth looks, how soft his lips, and how sweet his smile. "My pa died the night I got bit. Ma patched me up, but couldn't save him." He stops and shakes his head. "She got bit too, and taught me how to control it even when she didn't really know herself."
"Is she still out there, being a werewolf?"
That kills his smile, at least for a moment. "Hunter got her. She wasn't hunting humans, we've never done that, but some of them shoot first and don't really care who they kill."
Bess feels her cheeks warm, but she's not that. She's never been that. She came close, but she never quite got all the way there.
They're both quiet awhile after that. “I’d like to see you hunt sometime,” Hank says. Bess cocks an eyebrow, and he laughs. “Not me.”
She shrugs. “Okay. Yeah, sometime you can ride out with me.”
“I’d rather run, if you think you can resist shooting me.”
She settles back in her rocking chair - hand-crafted right here on the homestead - and plucks another strawberry from the smooth wooden bowl. They’ve been harvesting the berries for days, with no end in sight.
“It’ll be hard to resist that temptation,” she drags out the words, but can’t stop the corner of her mouth from turning up into a smile. She offers him a strawberry, but instead of picking it up with his fingers, he leans in and has her feed it to him.
Bess rolls her eyes and thinks about shoving it into his face, but he kisses her fingertips after and she knows everything’s changing.
5.
Sometimes, Bess wonders what Ma would think about her now, hunting monsters with monsters and never riding out alone. They hunt at night mostly, for Fanny, whose family name has turned out to be quite fitting. (Still, Bess hasn't figured out whether shapeshifter name on a vampire is an intentional thumbing of the nose at the shapeshifters or not. With Hank around, mostly she doesn't care enough to ask.) She’s a hellion on a hunt, fast and wild, dark hair streaming behind her, and their giant wolf on the run.
During the day, they hole up wherever they can. Sometimes that means in a cave, the entrance covered by canvas to keep out the sun. Sometimes they’re close enough to a town to get a room in a boarding house. Sometimes there’s a wagon, and they bury Fanny beneath it to keep her safe.
Dusk is the best, after Fanny wakes and before they head out for that night’s hunt. Fanny curls up against Bess while Hank cooks breakfast. Sometimes they don’t go out for hours and occasionally they take an entire night off just to be together.
Bess never lets her guns be too far away, even on the best of nights, and more than once Hank has stopped in the middle of whatever he’s doing to listen and sniff the air. He and Fanny can hear things coming for miles and miles, and Bess has never felt more prepared. She has her monsters, and with them, she is the closest she's ever been to safe.
~*~
Hank and Fanny are braiding wildflowers together when Bess comes back from town.
“I’ve got us a job, if you’re interested. It’ll mean Fanny spends a lot of time in the wagon. We’ll need a good pine box for her.”
Fanny drapes a crown of wildflowers onto her hair. “What job?” she asks, laughing. "If I'm going to play dead each day, it'd better be good."
"Oh, yeah, dead during the day, walking at night, that'll make them trust us." Hank flicks stems at her and she bats them away, still giggling.
“Group of travelers headed west. Mostly women, going out to teach. They’re worried about the stories coming back from the mountains, big wild bears, unnatural like, attacking the stagecoaches.”
Hank spills flowers off his lap and scoots back on the bed, making room for her.
“West where?” he asks, far too clever for his own good.
Bess feels her lips twitch, but manages to keep her voice steady. “Oregon.”
“Oh, Bess.” Fanny flings her arms around her and soundly kisses her cheek. “You want us to meet your parents.”
Bess extracts herself from the embrace after only a few seconds, but gently, even though she can’t really accidentally hurt a vampire. “I don’t even know if they’re still alive out there.” She gets letters from them sometimes, but mail isn’t reliable and they’re on the road too much to easily be found, and it’s been over a year since she heard anything.
“Still.” Fanny kisses her again and settles back onto the bed, flowers falling along her skirt. “I’m excited.”
Bess looks at her beloved monsters and smiles.
This entry was original posted at http://escritoireazul.dreamwidth.org/344278.html with
comments. Reply here or there.
And then this story took off, and first it was 1000 words, and then 3000, and then, finally, it broke 6000, and I was in love with it. If I'd had more time, I probably could have taken this to 10k or more. This is so perfectly me, I am surprised that no one guessed it was mine: adding werewolves to a story and writing about the women who hunt while the men support them.
In the end, this has become one of my favorite stories I've written, and I am so glad I was assigned this request.
This fulfilled the Missus Clause Challenge.
Title: Monsters and Me
Author: escritoireazul
Fandom: Pioneer Trail/Oregon Trail
Written for: chase_acow for Yuletide 2011
Characters/Pairings: Bess, Fanny Wildcat, Hank, Bess/Fanny Wildcat, Bess/Hank, Bess/Hank/Fanny Wildcat
Rating: 13+
Word count: 6180
Summary: When she’s a little girl, sitting on Pa’s knee while Ma cleans her guns, Bess hears her first coyote howl. It’s nothing at all like the hunting song of a werewolf, but still Bess shivers and stares out at the darkness with wide eyes. (Every hunter has to start somewhere.)
She will always be the only thing
That comes between me and the awful sting
That comes from living in a world that's so damn mean
"My Beloved Monster" Eels
1.
When she’s a little girl, sitting on Pa’s knee while Ma cleans her guns, Bess hears her first coyote howl. It’s nothing at all like the hunting song of a werewolf, but still Bess shivers and stares out at the darkness with wide eyes. The fire crackles and pops, and Ma shifts around on the log, setting down her favorite pistol and picking up her second favorite rifle.
Pa strokes Bess’s hair and hands her the long stick he uses to poke the fire. “Just a coyote,” he says, cutting the syllables off sharp. “Nothing for my little hunter to worry about.”
It rises and falls, trailing off slow, and Bess’s hands are shaking a little when it’s done.
“Why does it do that?” she asks.
Pa shrugs, but Ma looks up from her work, the long rifle gleaming in the firelight. “That’s how they talk,” she says. “Sounds like a lone coyote calling for its family.”
“Like the werewolves do, marking their locations.” Bess grips the stick tight between her hands, until the bark cuts into her fingertips.
“Something like,” Ma says with a nod. “But you’re safe from this one.”
“Lone werewolves are dangerous.” Bess repeats it automatically, and Ma smiles.
“Good girl.”
Bess wiggles her toes in her boots and pokes at the fire. She feels about as tall as a mountain, getting it right for her Ma.
Later, Pa tucks Bess into her bed in the back of the wagon, and settles into his own, but Ma keeps to her place, her back to the fire so the light doesn’t ruin her night vision, guns all tucked away except for her second favorite rifle laying across her thighs.
Long after Pa sleeps and the fire burns down, Ma keeps watch, staring out into the darkness. Bess tucks her hands under her chin and, despite each yawn that makes her ears pop and the heavy droop of her eyelids, forces herself to stay awake too.
Ma gets up sometimes, stretching her arms overhead, gun gripped tight in one hand, and paces a big circle around the wagon.
The coyote howls again, long and wild in the night. Bess snuggles deeper into the blankets. It doesn’t sound so scary now, one coyote, calling out with no response. One natural animal, all by itself, calling and calling and never hearing any song in return.
She snuggles in, safe with her family, and as she falls toward sleep, wishes the coyote could have a family too.
2.
Bess binds back her hair, red as a strawberry, bright as a flame, with a kerchief on long hunts, pulls her hat down low so it shades her eyes, and chooses sturdy men’s trousers and shirts and leather vests instead of long calico dresses. Her gun belt had been Ma’s when she first started hunting, and Bess slings it around her hips with pride.
Pa trades for a good horse for Bess, tall and broad enough to handle her long legs and wide hips. They leave the wagon behind at one of the safe houses most hunts, but when Ma hears stories about big wolves attacking wagon trains, they swing by to grab theirs and head out to Missouri to join up. Bess doesn’t know how they’ll manage to leave the wagon train without causing a fuss once they’re done, but as Ma tells her often, all serious even though the corners of her eyes crinkle with laughter, she still has a lot to learn about hunting.
In the general store, while Pa buys supplies, she fingers long bolts of calico and looks at some of the ready-made dresses, but Ma shakes her head. Some of those folks from back East don’t take too kindly to women in trousers, and they’ve dressed the part before. Bess raises her eyebrows, but she’s not going to outright ask. She’d rather wait for an answer, try and figure it out for herself.
Turns out, they’ve been hired to protect the wagon train all the way to Oregon, so they won’t have to try and sneak off, and everyone knows what they are and why they’re along for the ride, so no dressing as something they’re not. Bess cracks her neck to the right and then to the left while she gives it some thought. Long ride ahead, lots of dangers out in the wild. Not just monsters, either. It’s a bigger hunt than she’s ever been on before.
Plenty of time to add some pelts to her kills.
~*~
It’s about a hundred miles from Independence to the Kansas River. Bess rides near Ma, leaving Pa alone in the wagon. She tips her hat down and listens for awhile. Ma’s pretty quiet, eyes scanning the horizon, but the leader, Hannah, waves them over. They ride slow next to her, rifles tucked into the special holsters on their saddles, pistols at their hips.
Families in other wagons look at them fast and only when they think they won’t get caught, but Hannah grins up at them. She’s pretty grizzled, skin rough from sun and wind, but her faded blue eyes are friendly.
“Got word a couple weeks back that the last few wagon trains lost a lot of people. Some deaths are expected. Dysentery takes a fair few, and there’s always someone trying to prove something who ends up falling off a mountain or taking on a bear and losing. This was different.”
“Different how?” Ma stands in the stirrups, looking along the line of wagons, then settles back.
“As the story goes, it starts the same. Couple people disappear. Not at the same time, one at a time. Maybe they’re hunting, but usually it’s not anyone with a gun. Just someone who wanders too far from the wagons, except it happens more than once.”
“Still, could be a natural explanation.” Ma leans forward a little in the saddle. Bess mimics the motion, trying to see what Ma sees.
Hannah nods. “That is true. But then the wagon train gets hit, usually a couple months out. First few times, the survivors weren’t sure what it was. Maybe werewolves, but a lot of these city folk have never seen a wild dog before, much less a shifted werewolf.”
Something about the words she chooses makes Bess tense. “The first few times?” Bess asks.
Hannah turns sharp eyes on Bess. Bess lifts her chin, because this is part of it, too, asking enough questions to know what you’re facing without instilling doubt in those who hired you. Finally, Hannah nods and gives a crooked smile.
“We’re pretty sure at least one group was all killed. They might still be out there, lost, but another wagon train came through and found most of the wagons.”
“Abandoned?” Ma asks.
“Destroyed.” Hannah hooks her thumbs in her belt. Though most of the other women are in dresses - sturdy dresses, at least - Hannah dresses a lot like Ma and Bess. “Nothing left but wood and ox bone.”
Ma takes off her hat, wipes sweat from her forehead, and settles her hat back in place. “We’ll keep your people safe,” she says.
Bess presses her lips together in a thin line. That sounds far too close to a promise, and they try not to make promises they can’t keep.
~*~
The first night, Hannah calls everyone together for a meeting. Ma gets up in front of them, not looking nervous at all, though Bess feels sick just thinking about all those eyes on her. Hannah briefly explains why she’s hired them on, and though there are some frowns, more people than not nod a little welcome.
Ma doesn’t say much, just explains how they’ll keep watch and what to do in case they get attacked. She ends with this: “Some of you might think you can pitch in if things go wrong. You don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll just make things worse. If you’re interested, we’ll teach you some things to do to help. Come find us before breakfast and after dinner. There are bad things in this world, but with some training, you can fight back.”
Bess doesn’t think many people will show up - only other hunters have ever helped them before - but Ma doesn’t seem too worried. She’s right, of course, and Bess is surprised when she comes in from checking the oxen to find fifteen people gathered round Ma at breakfast. That night, there’s even more.
Maybe people aren’t all that bad. Bess cleans her guns and watches and for the first time wonders what she missed, growing up as she did.
~*~
Third day out, the Olson family breaks a wagon wheel. It’s early enough that the weight of the how many months stretch ahead hasn’t really settled in, and no one grumbles when Hannah calls a halt while Mr. Olson tries to repair it. Pa swings down out of their wagon, all easy movements, and goes to help.
It takes awhile. Ma stays in her saddle, gazing back along the trail. Bess stays in her saddle, too, but she stares forward, squinting in the sun. The weather’s cool, but the sky is wide and blue, so big and bright it hurts her eyes.
Whenever they stop, all she wants to do is spread out far from the fires and stare up at the stars, a heavy blanket of them. She’s seen them her whole life, but they’re different now, out here. Hunting with Ma is simple, if not easy. Hunting with Ma while trying to keep other people safe doesn’t feel simple or easy at all.
It leaves her no time to stare at the sky. At night, she and Ma ride circles around the group until everyone beds down, and then alternate. Ma takes the first half of each night, Bess the second. She likes it best then, the air cold and sharp in the middle of the night, the long slide into dawn. People start stirring before the sun comes up, but she’s left alone while she pokes up the communal fires. At night, they light one per wagon, but in the morning, it’s faster to brew up coffee and a quick breakfast as a group.
Bess takes a moment to look up at the sky while they wait on Mr. Olson and Pa to finish, but it’s not the same without the stars.
The skin on the back of her neck prickles. She doesn’t snap her body around and give away that she's noticed, but she shifts her seat, making Wolfsbane shy sideways. (She was young when she named him, and a little silly. Can’t change it now.) She and Ma trained him well. It’s good cover; it looks like real fright.
As she fakes a frantic reining in, Bess gets a quick look back. There’s no monster sneaking up from behind, not with Ma holding the line, but one of the boys in the wagons a couple back from the Olsons' is watching her. There’re probably five or six big strapping boys in that family. There’s so many she can’t keep them all straight, tumbling around as they do. Like a lot of the others, they walk during the day, but they don’t wander far, and she’s more worried about what’s going on outside the wagon train than within.
He grins, and she realizes she’s been caught staring. None too subtle for a hunter. He’s got a nice smile, all his teeth and a dimple in his cheek. Freckles across his nose, too, from the sun. She’s no coy girl with a pretty smile and a handkerchief. She tips her hat at him and faces forward, setting off at a quick trot to check on down the trail.
~*~
They get a couple weeks of easy travel after that, with clear, warm weather and plenty of good hunting, and then heavy clouds blow up as they stop for the night and set up camp. Pa cooks up a hearty stew, heavy on the potatoes and carrots and salty from the dried meat he chops into it. Ma settles down next to Pa while they eat, her favorite rifle within easy reach. (The second favorite from Bess’s childhood is long gone.) After, Pa rests his head on her shoulder, and she chews absentmindedly on a long piece of grass.
Bess shifts, trying to scratch the ghost of an itch at the middle of her back. Even though Ma has first watch, Bess leaves her parents alone and goes to walk the perimeter. All the families are settling in, eating dinner or cleaning up, the littlest kids tucked under the wagons with their blankets.
Sometimes, the fiddlers sit around playing quiet songs, singing the wagon train to sleep, but tonight, all the instruments stay packed inside the wagons. All the adults keep an eye on the weather. They’ve had light sprinkles of rain so far, but nothing worse. This could be worse.
She’s circling around the back half when someone falls into step next to her. She curls her left hand over the butt of the pistol on her left hip, but he’s come from inside the wagon train, not out, and she won’t shoot without reason. Good thing, too, because it’s that boy with the nice smile.
“You’re Bess?” At her nod, he turns that smile on her once again. “I’m Aaron.”
For a moment, she keeps her eyes out on the darkness, but then she glances at him fast. His grin is infectious. It makes her smile too.
~*~
He walks with her two more times around the circle of wagons. It’s harder to keep a good watch with someone talking to her, but Ma’s started on her watch too, and Bess don’t feel so bad about walking with Aaron. He asks about hunting, but she turns the conversation back on him, asking about his family - the brothers all have strong biblical names, Aaron and Joseph and Jacob and Benjamin and David - and his ma wants to open Harrison’s General Store out west, and his pa mostly goes along to keep everyone happy.
They’re just about to start a third circle when Ma slips up from the darkness outside the camp. “Bess, fall in,” she says, and her voice is low.
Bess turns to Aaron immediately, her left hand on her gun again. “Best get back to your wagon.”
He opens his mouth, and she expects him to argue, but all he says is, “Be careful out there.”
The corner of her mouth turns up. “Not my job to be careful.” She tips her hat at him and spins around to face Ma. Good smile or not, in that fast movement, she’s put Aaron out of her head and focused on what makes Ma frown so.
“Something’s spooked the oxen,” Ma says. She’s got her shotgun slung over her shoulder. “I think it might be wolves out there.”
Bess puts both hands on her guns. “Natural wolves?”
Ma shrugs one shoulder. “We haven’t seen any signs of other people for a couple days, but a hunting pack of werewolves could catch us up running hard.”
“We keeping this quiet?” Bess asks.
Ma shrugs. “Mount up and ride the perimeter. I’ll have Hannah stoke the fires and move everyone to the center. Your pa’s gonna set up at the north end. I’m taking south.”
Bess takes off at a fast walk. A run would make people worry, but she could be walking fast for any number of reasons. Saddling Wolfsbane takes next to no time at all, and she swings up into the saddle in one easy movement. Wolfsbane fidgets, eager to run, and she sets off at a fast trot away from the circle of wagons, rifle loosely strapped across her thighs.
She rides the perimeter long into the night, but whatever spooked the oxen doesn’t show itself. At dawn, Ma rides out to get her, moving stiffly in her saddle. Fingers of sunlight break across her face, throwing into stark relief the bruises under her eyes and the tight lines at the corners of her mouth.
Their’s is a hard life, and these long, sleepless nights can’t be done forever.
Back at camp, Bess splashes water on her face and tries not to think about what she’s seen.
~*~
The werewolves attack two nights later, no warning. All is silent, and after dinner with Aaron, she tumbles herself into her bedding and sleeps soundly, the taste of his kiss still on her tongue. Sometime later, she's dragged from sleep by the crack of Ma’s rifle. She’s on her feet, guns drawn before she’s fully awake, and then following the sound of the screams and the gunshots.
Later, Hannah says they were lucky. Ma doesn’t believe in luck, just in being well prepared, and Bess thinks she’s right. The settlers they've been training, most of them kept their heads and only a couple tried anything foolish. None of the wolves escape - Bess has to drag their bodies into a pile and light the fire. She stands and watches it burn for hours, flesh and fur melting away - and they only lose two people.
Once the fire is ash and salt, Bess swings herself up into the saddle, pushing aside thoughts of Aaron’s smile and how hard he fought to save his siblings. He did it, in the end, but that doesn't ease their pain at his loss, or their guilt, and nor does it temper hers.
~*~
They don’t lose anyone else, though Hannah breaks her leg and it doesn’t look good for awhile, and there's one more attack, just a hunting pair of werewolves that go down easy. At the end of the ride, they get paid, and everyone who has some money left chips in a little extra. The others hand over bullets or wagon wheels or whatever they have.
Bess stays astride Wolfsbane so no one will come too close, and doesn't let herself look to Aaron's family.
~*~
It takes another year for her to figure it out, but she wants someone to love, too, and as long as she’s hunting, she can’t risk someone else’s life.
~*~
Ma goes over the edge of a cliff hunting a bear shifter. She doesn’t die, but she tears up her leg pretty good. It’s six months before she can walk, and even then she needs a big walking stick for balance.
Her full-time hunting days are over. She’s gonna set up in one of the little towns that’re springing up out west, have her a little tavern, maybe share her knowledge with younger hunters, shoot whatever monsters come too close. She looks at Bess when she says that, but Bess can’t - won’t - meet her eyes.
Once Ma is settled, Bess heads out on her own. She’s a trick rider and a fast shot, and she knows how to make her way in the world. Following the trail of a vengeful ghost leads her straight into a rodeo, and on a whim, looking for some fun, she signs up to ride the barrels.
She salts and burns and wins a big belt buckle and smiles from a couple of the bull riders.
Bess takes herself back out on the hunt, knowing they’re not safe, but can’t stay away long. She runs smack dab into another rodeo, not following any monster then, just riding until she finds one. There’s a pretty cowgirl who shoots even better'n Bess does and kisses Bess beneath the stars. After that, Bess still hunts, but there's always another rodeo and there's always rodeo folk making her welcome and there's always kisses to savor in those moments when she thinks they are safe.
It’s not riding with Ma and Pa to save the world, but Bess figures she’ll find her place in it someday.
3.
Bess knows there’s something a little different about Fanny Wildcat the first time they meet, and it’s not just the way Fanny’s shy smile makes Bess want to smile back. She hasn’t felt this way since that rodeo clown broke her heart, and it’s a good thing she tracked down the black magic witch she was hunting long before things went so wrong, so she was free to escape out here, relying on her Uncle Jack to find her a place. She misses the rodeo - she misses the crowds cheering her on and the awards she kept winning, it’s hard to go back to solo hunts and no recognition after all that - but she’s glad to be away from pretty men in too bright colors who don’t give one ox tail about a girl’s broken heart.
Shapeshifter, Bess thinks at first, but with a name like Wildcat, well, it’d be too easy, wouldn’t it? So she settles in on the homestead, taking care of the animals, and she keeps watch. It’s not too hard to figure it out, but it does take a little time.
It’s when she finds the dead deer in the woods that she finally gets it. It’s winter, so cold her skin aches and her eyes burn, but she’s looking for fresh meat. What she finds instead is a carcass. Scavengers have been at it, but it’s frozen solid and they haven’t made a dent. There’s more than enough left for her to see most of the blood is gone, and was gone before the belly was slit open like that. She peels off one heavy leather glove and runs her thumb along the edge of the wound. It’s smooth, not torn open by animal fangs and claws.
Bess’s seen this before, once, on her second hunt with Ma. That’s when she learned not all vampires were for huntin’ and not all humans were on the right side of the human-monster line. Unless a vampire was killing humans, there was no need to hunt it.
Her.
~*~
Fanny’s sitting on the swing under the kissing tree one night when Bess comes in from making her rounds. She’s been hired on to take care of the animals, but hunters don’t stop hunting until they’re dead. No one else knows what she’s been doing. No one else needs to know. Uncle Jack knows her Ma was a hunter, and that she taught Bess everything, but he’s never let on one way or another whether he knows she’ll never put away her guns.
Bess drops her far hand to her gun and turns away a little, keeping that side of her body in shadow. Fanny’s eyes are bright when she looks up, reflecting the bits of starlight. The moon is new, and mostly they’re in darkness, the two of them alone outside with the animals and all the special crops.
“Such a pretty little thing,” Fanny says, and the corner of her mouth turns up into a smile, “for a hunter.”
That stops Bess cold. She may be able to pick out a monster on sight, but they’re not supposed to do the same to her. She doesn’t bother denying it, just turns all the way to face Fanny, both hands on her guns.
“You bleach the bloodstains off your teeth?” Bess asks.
Fanny laughs and ducks her head. If Bess didn’t know better, she’d swear Fanny was blushing. “I’m a careful eater,” she says instead, and this time when she smiles, she lets Bess see her fangs. Bess tightens her hands on her guns unconsciously, but she’s seen fangs bared as a threat and this isn’t that, and she doesn’t draw her pistols.
“What brings you all the way out here?” Bess asks. For a long moment, there’s only the clickety clack of Fanny’s knitting needles. Bess knows to wait out a skittish animal, though.
“It’s safer out here,” Fanny says.
“Safer for them?” Bess taps her thumbs against her guns. “Or you?”
Another laugh, and a part of Bess - small but growing - wants to make her do that again. “Both,” Fanny says. “Fewer hunters out here willing to shoot first and see if I’m a threat after I’m dead. Less temptation for me.”
“I don’t want to kill you.”
Fanny stops knitting and looks up. “I don’t want you to kill me.”
“You keep to wild animals, maybe I won’t have to.” Bess drops one hand away from her guns, slow, then the other.
“Cross my heart.” Fanny slips one hand free of her knitting and draws an x over her heart, dragging her finger slowly. It draws Bess’s eyes down the soft, pale line of Fanny’s throat and rise of her breasts beneath her bodice. Bess’s stomach flips, in a way it hasn’t since the last time she watched grease paint give way to rough skin and a sweet smile.
(The last time she watched grease paint give way at all, it was beneath her fist. She rode herself ragged for a week after that slip of her temper. Hunters do not have the privilege of lashing out.)
~*~
Fanny brings her fruit after she teaches the farm kids their lessons. They work in the fields and in the barn all day, and Fanny teaches them at night; Bess works with them in the afternoons, goes off to hunt at dusk. She comes back late, and Fanny’s always waiting for her with fruit. At first, it’s apples, and that, from a schoolmarm -- fanged or not -- makes her laugh.
Bess polishes one on her shirt. “Shouldn’t I be giving this to you?” she asks.
“I don’t eat fruit,” Fanny says, smiling, and Bess takes a big chomping bite.
When they’re in season, Bess gets pears that leave juice on her fingers and peaches that drip juice down her chin and berries that stain her hands dark. Fanny watches Bess eat, and touches her tongue to her lips after, like a cat licking her chops.
Bess sucks juice from her fingers and doesn’t bother pretending she doesn’t like how Fanny’s eyes go dark.
~*~
Fanny leaves pink rose petals strewn in the barn and tucks love letters into Bess’s saddle bags. She finds the first when she rides out to put some space between them. When she pulls out her coffee pot to brew some up that first night in the wilderness, the paper crinkles. She turns it over and over in her hands and almost throws it in the campfire half a dozen times.
The writing is too small to read at night. She shoves it into her bedroll and tries to forget about it, but sleep takes a long time after. She can’t really see much of the sky through the trees and the clouds, but sometimes, a star winks down at her.
People break your heart. Bess knows that. Too, she knows that monsters are dangerous.
But still, she thinks maybe.
~*~
Bess’ll never admit that she keeps all the love letters and some of the rose petals in a box hidden in the barn. No one else needs to know, and Fanny can probably smell it on her own. She brings fruit - apricot this time - and leaves it for Bess, but Bess stops her before she can go.
No slick of fruit juice on her lips and tongue, no pretense of a kiss in the way her teeth bite through soft, sweet flesh, just Fanny watching her with big eyes, and Bess pulling her in for something real, something a little rough and sprinkled with danger.
It takes a kiss or two for Bess to learn how to avoid Fanny’s fangs, but when she does, oh, no one, no man and no woman, has ever kissed Bess like this.
4.
The thing is, Bess knows Hank’s trouble the first time she sees him too, but it takes her awhile to figure out he’s got an animal inside. At first, all she sees is floppy blond hair and big blue eyes and dimples in an easy smile. Her stomach twists, because he’s just her type, big and friendly and hardworking, but he makes Fanny’s eyes shine, too, and jealousy adds a bitter, bitter bite to every breath.
She touches the charm bracelet Fanny strung around her wrist, counting off beads until her temper settles, and takes herself off on a hunt, because that is what she does when she’s angry or sad or scared.
~*~
Third night out, the moon rises fat and full, and in the distance the hunting song of a werewolf.
~*~
Bess hurries back to the homestead. She’s running low on silver bullets, but there’s a nice blacksmith one farm over, and they've all been plenty neighborly. If she’s careful, she can sweet talk her way into using it. She’s so busy planning her hunt she doesn’t realize Fanny is waiting for her in the barn until Bane (Wolfsbane III at this point, but it’s easier to lose them if she thinks of them all as one and the same) shies sideways to avoid her.
Bess starts to smile, but Fanny’s expression is serious and her voice low and steady when she says, “we need to talk.”
~*~
Werewolf, and she touches Bane, because for once there's no need for her to go out on the hunt, and the monster will walk right up to her like they’re friends.
Then Fanny asks - begs - for his life, hunting werewolf or not.
~*~
Hank gets back a couple days later, looking scratched and dirty and tired, but happy. The smile’s gone as soon as he sees them, Fanny standing in the shadows of the barn, Bess with Ma’s favorite rifle leveled at him steady.
“I can explain,” he says, and Bess snorts a laugh.
Fanny wants to listen, though. After all, she tells Bess when they’re alone in bed, stroking her fingers through long red hair, she knows about being a kinder, gentler monster.
“I’m no maneater,” he swears. “Strictly four-legged food for me.”
“I heard your hunting song. Werewolves only howl out like that when they hunt humans.”
He’s shaking his head before she even gets done talking, but he doesn’t stare at her gun. That’s pretty brave of him, though she’s pretty sure not even a werewolf can dodge her bullet this close. Instead he looks her straight in the eye.
“Werewolves sing out whenever they hunt.” He hesitates, and his gaze flickers to Fanny. “Especially when they hunt alone.”
Bess doesn’t want to feel sympathetic, she really doesn’t, but oh, she knows all about hunting alone. They are not the same, she is human through and through and he is something else, but for a moment, she softens.
That moment is enough for her to lower her gun. She doesn’t shoulder it, but she aims it at the ground, at least. Back in his stall, Bane stamps and knickers, but he knows how to handle a werewolf.
Bess sighs. “Fine. But I’ll keep an eye on you.”
That earns her a grin from Hank, all aw shucks ma’am, and a slow smile from Fanny.
~*~
“How’d you get started hunting?” Hank asks one night. They’re sitting on the porch of the schoolhouse, waiting for Fanny to finish her lessons. Bess is eating strawberries, perfectly ripe and bursting sweet on her tongue.
She frowns at him, because that’s what she’s trained herself to do, but it’s gone after a breath. “My ma was a hunter.” She twists one strawberry between her fingers. “It’s all I ever knew.”
“She still hunting?” He says it all gentle, and she sets down the strawberry, using it to cover the soft tension threading through her. He expects her to say Ma is dead, because that’s generally how hunters stop hunting.
Bess shrugs. “Last I heard, she was retired in Oregon, serving drinks and teaching younger hunters.” Her voice is steady, but he’s touched on something she doesn’t want to think about. Saving the world is a good thing, but oh, it gets lonely.
“Yet you’re out here.”
“Yes. I’m out here.”
Hank takes her hand. His skin is much warmer than hers, and far hotter than Fanny’s. Vampire versus human versus werewolf, part of Bess thinks, but a little bit is throwing up a warning signal -- werewolf you’re touching a werewolf -- and most is focused about how nice his mouth looks, how soft his lips, and how sweet his smile. "My pa died the night I got bit. Ma patched me up, but couldn't save him." He stops and shakes his head. "She got bit too, and taught me how to control it even when she didn't really know herself."
"Is she still out there, being a werewolf?"
That kills his smile, at least for a moment. "Hunter got her. She wasn't hunting humans, we've never done that, but some of them shoot first and don't really care who they kill."
Bess feels her cheeks warm, but she's not that. She's never been that. She came close, but she never quite got all the way there.
They're both quiet awhile after that. “I’d like to see you hunt sometime,” Hank says. Bess cocks an eyebrow, and he laughs. “Not me.”
She shrugs. “Okay. Yeah, sometime you can ride out with me.”
“I’d rather run, if you think you can resist shooting me.”
She settles back in her rocking chair - hand-crafted right here on the homestead - and plucks another strawberry from the smooth wooden bowl. They’ve been harvesting the berries for days, with no end in sight.
“It’ll be hard to resist that temptation,” she drags out the words, but can’t stop the corner of her mouth from turning up into a smile. She offers him a strawberry, but instead of picking it up with his fingers, he leans in and has her feed it to him.
Bess rolls her eyes and thinks about shoving it into his face, but he kisses her fingertips after and she knows everything’s changing.
5.
Sometimes, Bess wonders what Ma would think about her now, hunting monsters with monsters and never riding out alone. They hunt at night mostly, for Fanny, whose family name has turned out to be quite fitting. (Still, Bess hasn't figured out whether shapeshifter name on a vampire is an intentional thumbing of the nose at the shapeshifters or not. With Hank around, mostly she doesn't care enough to ask.) She’s a hellion on a hunt, fast and wild, dark hair streaming behind her, and their giant wolf on the run.
During the day, they hole up wherever they can. Sometimes that means in a cave, the entrance covered by canvas to keep out the sun. Sometimes they’re close enough to a town to get a room in a boarding house. Sometimes there’s a wagon, and they bury Fanny beneath it to keep her safe.
Dusk is the best, after Fanny wakes and before they head out for that night’s hunt. Fanny curls up against Bess while Hank cooks breakfast. Sometimes they don’t go out for hours and occasionally they take an entire night off just to be together.
Bess never lets her guns be too far away, even on the best of nights, and more than once Hank has stopped in the middle of whatever he’s doing to listen and sniff the air. He and Fanny can hear things coming for miles and miles, and Bess has never felt more prepared. She has her monsters, and with them, she is the closest she's ever been to safe.
~*~
Hank and Fanny are braiding wildflowers together when Bess comes back from town.
“I’ve got us a job, if you’re interested. It’ll mean Fanny spends a lot of time in the wagon. We’ll need a good pine box for her.”
Fanny drapes a crown of wildflowers onto her hair. “What job?” she asks, laughing. "If I'm going to play dead each day, it'd better be good."
"Oh, yeah, dead during the day, walking at night, that'll make them trust us." Hank flicks stems at her and she bats them away, still giggling.
“Group of travelers headed west. Mostly women, going out to teach. They’re worried about the stories coming back from the mountains, big wild bears, unnatural like, attacking the stagecoaches.”
Hank spills flowers off his lap and scoots back on the bed, making room for her.
“West where?” he asks, far too clever for his own good.
Bess feels her lips twitch, but manages to keep her voice steady. “Oregon.”
“Oh, Bess.” Fanny flings her arms around her and soundly kisses her cheek. “You want us to meet your parents.”
Bess extracts herself from the embrace after only a few seconds, but gently, even though she can’t really accidentally hurt a vampire. “I don’t even know if they’re still alive out there.” She gets letters from them sometimes, but mail isn’t reliable and they’re on the road too much to easily be found, and it’s been over a year since she heard anything.
“Still.” Fanny kisses her again and settles back onto the bed, flowers falling along her skirt. “I’m excited.”
Bess looks at her beloved monsters and smiles.
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