The Heart of Winter

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Femina
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1 - Subtle Cruelty Wounds

Jamie Mcalister had always known there was something wrong with Gloomvale Pennsylvania. It was in way the shadows of the nearby foliage always seemed to perpetuate the town’s famous gloom. It was how the sun always seemed to set two hours early and rise two hours late… a local phenomena blamed on swamp gasses from some of the surrounding marshland. It was in the way the townsfolk hunkered down in the evenings, closing up shop the point there was only ever a single diner open past sunset even in the dead of Summer, with one of the strangest owners in the known universe!

Jamie hated the little town, but had been accepted into the world renowned Gloomvale State University fresh out of high school which she definitely did not hate. The little township hardly seemed the place for such a prolific school, relatively small for a ‘state’ University with only just over a dozen classrooms, its claim to fame was actually due in part to the limited nature of that space. Professors at GSU provided a near unmatched student mentorship pedigree. In almost every area of development, there were fewer than twelve students to every professor. With a price tag that matched its pedigree, Gloomvale was an expensive place to attend without either a full ride scholarship or else utilizing the schools ‘Township’ program which was always sure to maintain enough student openings that the local population of Gloomvale could send their bright young hopefuls.

Jamie was there to major in a variety of courses focusing on forensic medicine. Up to the present she was so far satisfied with his schooling, much more so than the town proper, but damn it if she did not hate the trip from the school grounds to the dorms late at night!

That night, the same as every night, Jamie found herself staring through the glass double doors at the Universities main entrance out into the night sky with prickles of fear at the back of her neck. The nights in Gloomvale were dark, even with a full moon filtering light down over an empty parking lot, she could only make out the faintest twinkling of lights where the dorms would be. She opted to save money years go by walking to and from school… but the trip home at night never failed to give her heart a rise.

“Okay,” Jamie breathed out carefully, “same thing every night… I can do this.” She presented a tiny nod to nobody and opened the doors out into the cold December air. Snow was late this year, but she hugged a heavy jacket around herself anyway to ward off the chill winds and began to power walk swiftly across the street and out into the parking area.

Jamie was hardly even started before the hairs on the back of her neck were cutting into her jacket. She felt like she was being watched, but she always felt like she was being watched! Stop it, she scolded herself, you’re just being stupid!

Alas most of Jamie’s fears stemmed from Gloomsvale’s own folklore. Every stone blooded native in town had a ghost story, and it was easy to tell why. The surrounding woodlands bespoke a ‘haunted’ vibe, but the legends and folklore permeated even as far as common chatter among students both native and from afar. Claims of bizarre happenings were commonplace at GSU, even Jamie could swear she once saw something larger than a mere wolf or coyote shuffling through the dense patches of trees out across from the highway on the far side of the parking lot the previous year.

Stop it, Jamie chided herself once again, you know it was probably just a bear… plenty dangerous sure but… not supernatural in any way. Besides, if there was anything wrong the Cheerleader would have my back!

A smile crept across her features and a little of the fear bled away. It was a silly enough thing, but along with the spooky nonsense was another bit of recent… student bred mythology. Apparently, among the several students who swore to have seen something truly dangerous around town… more than one of them claimed to have spotted a woman dressed as one of the universities cheerleaders turn up to save the day. It was a silly old legend the cheer squad themselves had taken to with aplomb over the most recent year. So much so that in a conversation Jamie had over lunch with Lucy Styles, one member of the cheer squad, her sometimes friend expressing that if one of the Squad was moonlighting as a spook slayer, it actually aligned with some even older Gloomvale legends which occasionally made mention of the appearance of warrior women opposed to the town’s ‘mythologies’.

It was all just silly make believe of course, but nevertheless if Jamie had to be frightened of the shadows as she snuck quiet as a mouse through the night towards her Dorm in the evenings, it didn’t hurt to have a fantasy countermeasure… and that it was a little bit of girl power as well always tickled her, Run down the bumps in the night for me babe, she encouraged their fantastical protector silently, I mean, if the only thing that comes of it is that I have a mild panic attack heading home every night without incident she must be doing her job right?

Jamie was halfway across the parking lot when she realized it wasn’t actually empty like she had thought. This was not normal. Outside of the few staff members who were all parked around the back at the employee section, Jamie was always the very last student to leave campus. She had a late class in which she was the sole student. Most campuses would consider that too little to be worth the effort, but not GSU, at GSU that was advertising that they believed Jamie would succeed… and not just succeed but was worth every iota of her professor's attention… which of course left the oddness of the lone vehicle.

However after a little bit of examination, Jamie deduced that the vehicle was just a little red Stallion, a vehicle she had actually seen in the lot from time to time during the day even… all the lights were off and nobody was in inside, so she dismissed the sight. Perhaps one of the students needed to check in with the evening staff for an emergency test rescheduling or something?

It wasn’t any of Jamie’s business anyway so she stepped around the car. In the distance, the Dorm loomed a single story into the sky… and the small buildings definitions could at last be made out alongside the speckles of lights coming from the students rooms. With the vehicle at her back she planned to up her pace a little, it was chilly and she wanted to warm up… but her step froze when someone behind her spoke.

“What a lovely insect,” a high cruel voice broke the night air. Jamie spun around, wide eyed. Leaned back against the Stallion was a tall, lithe woman in dark black biker leathers. She sported harsh, distinct, one might say exotic, facial features, she possessed paler than pale skin which highlighted the bright ruby red lips of her lipstick. Deep socketed eyes looked out from beneath long black hair that seemed in equal parts to have a gloriously healthy sheen, yet strung and untamed as though it went uncared for.

The woman was strange to Jamie, not precisely beautiful, but staked an oddly attractive appeal that the student couldn’t quite pin down… since Jamie swung for the same team she noticed it… but only just, because the most prominent sense that Jamie felt in that moment was anxiety.

It was possible. Just possible that Jamie had merely failed to notice the woman leaning against the vehicle as she walked up to and around the Stallion… but she felt for all the world like that was impossible. She felt certain of it, and where she vaguely recognized the vehicle she did not recognize the woman at all. Jamie opened her mouth to begin to speak, yet nothing came out but a croak of fear.

“No need for that little insect,” the woman told her. Insect, it was a cruel thing to call a person and Jamie felt it. The hairs on the back of her neck rose still higher and she began to shiver with more than just the cold. “I’ve always found talking with your lot a bit of a bore?” The woman pushed off of the vehicle with her back and took a step toward Jamie, “better you just experience than…. Oh?”

Instantly as the woman stepped toward her, Jamie had taken a step back. Her fear was palpable now. The woman wasn’t so strange as to be worth this much fear in appearance alone… but there was more to it that Jamie felt, and it was wrong! This woman felt wrong with a vibe Jamie realized she occasionally picked up from the stranger denizens of Gloomvale, though never yet in someone whose attitude and words felt this hostile. “G-get back!” Jamie said, digging into her pocket for the little cylinder of defense she carried there. “I… I’m just going home alright? I don’t want trouble.”

The woman smiled and chuckled. Despite all the rest of her, when the woman laughed there was a chiming, musical, quality to the sound that Jamie found herself responding to… That… was weird.

“Don’t run home yet little bug,” the dark haired woman’s eyes were glued with Jamie's own. Jamie realized the strangers eyes were brighter than she thought. Not… kind, exactly, bright brown, almost… golden… The woman smiled more kindly than before, “I didn’t mean to frighten you, you only seemed so small and smelled of fear… I thought maybe you’d like a ride to the dorms?”

No I wouldn’t want a ride with you! Jamie thought to herself… but her eyes had darted to that smile, then back up to the eyes… the smile felt genuine, and the eyes kind… No! Not kind! Jamie shook her head and blinked. Her head felt foggy.

“Hey, hey don’t look away little bug,” the woman called Jamie’s full attention back to her. The stranger reached up to brush her long silky hair back over her shoulders, with better lighting Jamie realized the strangers skin was not so pale as she’d thought before… in fact this woman’s skin was beautiful… and utterly natural, and the hair wasn’t stringy at all, but lush and smooth like that of a shampoo model! “There we go,” the woman said, “not so frightening after all am I?”

“No…” Jamie shook her head. She felt a twinge when she said it, a mild psychological thing utterly alien to any physical spasm she’d ever made before. A slim string to her thought process that objected at this, angrily and with passion… but the string, while strong, was slim… and Jamie recognized it was attached to an irrational mode of thinking. She began to feel dizzy when she smiled back, and wobbled a bit, “no I’m sorry… I just… get paranoid at night… you know?”

“Oh I know,” the woman sauntered over to her, Jamie did not try to get away this time, “there’s so little to actually be afraid of in the night little bug.” The woman put an arm around Jamie and began to lead them back toward the vehicle, a hand rested first on Jamie’s shoulder, then drifted down along the spine which had the young woman shivering again, before the hand drifted all the way down to wrap possessively around Jamie’s hip, “You should relax instead... Food should always relax.”

Jamie’s brow pinched, that word dragged a faint focus back into her, the fog seemed to bring a temporary reprieve… “F-food?” she asked. What an odd thing to say? Wasn’t it? Her hand was still in her pocket wrapped around the cylinder of pepper spray so if anything went wrong she could always just… couldn’t she?

“Food, little bug,” the stranger nodded and licked her bright red lips as she said it. She turned Jamie around to face her, then applied gentle pressure enough to press the student up against the car door, “and you are such a pretty bug… really you are.”

Jamie knew it wasn’t a lie exactly. She was pretty enough, with long auburn hair, a tint to her hazel eyes which meant she could just squeeze by checking ‘green’ in the medical box. She had some roundness though, a faint chubby element to the cheeks… if only she’d exercised more… That’s not… important... now! She thought sharply. Too sharply and for a millisecond she was back, fully back. Her skin goose bumped and she sucked in a violent gulp of air while her fingers clasped tightly around the pepper spray. She tried once to push away from the car… but the stranger’s light pressure against her shoulders held her fast with a firmness that screamed an inescapable trap!

“Relaaaax,” the stranger cooed. She bent her neck down to correct their eyesight and Jamie felt the spike of fear subside again. What was she afraid of? This beautiful woman? “It’s okay little bug… it’s alright. I shan't hurt you… I’d never hurt you. You’re practically glowing?”

“I… am?” Jamie breathed out that harsh intake of air unsteadily around her words. This time the fear hadn’t completely subsided… there was calm… but now it was unable to fully rub out the fear. Something was wrong. Something was wrong that she wasn’t able to formulate in a way that she normally could. “You…. won't hurt me?” Jamie asked, “p-promise?”

“I promise,” the stranger said again. Jamie whimpered. A tear started to roll down her left cheek. The stranger leaned forward and licked the tear away. The gentle but possessive contact of that tongue against her skin forced Jamie to spasm… but she held still… frozen by something she didn’t understand. The stranger followed up the lick by kissing that same spot on Jamie’s cheek, then just below that… and she trailed a string of kisses all the way down until she found Jamie’s lips which she pressed deeply into… and despite herself, against a primal scream of terror in her chest Jamie returned the gesture angling her neck back and pressing gently forward… something that wasn’t a tongue slithered up against her lips… it very gently but insistently began to press up against, and part them.

Jamie began to cry in earnest. Tears streamed freely while she started to shake with mild sobs… the stranger pulled back just enough to cup her cheek.

“I know what you are thinking, deep down inside,” the stranger carefully nudged Jamie’s head back to make eye contact once more, “There really is nothing, nothing in the world that can completely erase fear little bug. There’s no cure for that mild spectre when you realize, inescapably, that you are about... to die.”

Jamie cried harder. Her hand was still clasped around the spray, she knew what she ought to do. She knew she should attack with it… but she could not. Jamie could not move. Her body wasn’t hers, her will wasn’t hers. Only the strongest string of her psyche still belonged to her. “W-will it… h-hurt?” Jamie asked. It was all she could force through her lips.

“Oh little bug…” the woman sighed and her beautiful features lit up with such sympathy Jamie almost believed she was about to be set free, “This is why I don’t like to talk to my food. Your worries are so… mundane.” The cruelty of her words broke something inside Jamie. Her features fell, her body went limp, the hold on her pepper spray slackened. This, she knew, was how she was going to die. Murdered by something that did not care enough to answer her that one final question for her… that last little thing she wanted to know. No mild comfort even there in the intimacy of their closeness or the kindness in her murderer’s eyes. “Now do be a dear, and open your mouth again…”

The headlights of the Stallion flashed suddenly and the sound of a ‘thunk,’ while quiet, nevertheless thundered through the still night air. Both women frowned and went a little straighter as the trunk of the car simply rose up and opened, seemingly, of its own accord.

Predator and prey turned their heads toward the motion in unison, their confusion momentarily aligned as a shining wonder climbed out of the trunk with a grumpy sigh and stood to her full height.

In her present circumstance, the vision was almost brighter than anything Jamie had ever seen before. She was a blonde woman with bright, very serious, blue eyes. She was clad in familiar attire to a GSU student, a full green spandex bodysuit beneath a short yellow skirt with golden brown trims, a crop top of the same colors with the university's mascot logo ‘Gloomvale Slayers’ shining like a beacon in the moonlight over her chest between the flaps of a short leather jacket with elbow length sleeves that let the long sleeves of the top extend from beneath it out along her arms. The ensemble was enough, aside perhaps from the differentiating knee high boots that matched all the same as they appeared to derive from the campus wrestling team, to identify the woman to Jamie in an instant…

Jamie let out a sobbing grunt of a laugh. Surely she was saved? The legends true?

Standing, ill humored and not feet away from Jamie and her attacker, clutching what looked like sharp ivory stakes in either fist, was a woman who Jamiee knew could only be her.

"I'm gonna say it once," the Cheerleader stated powerfully, "get away from Jamie."
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DrDominator9
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Very nice. Quite moody. Glad to have you writing again, Femina. I look forward to where you take this.
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Femina
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DrDominator9 wrote:
4 years ago
Very nice. Quite moody. Glad to have you writing again, Femina. I look forward to where you take this.
Thanks! Hope to have a second more juicy part up before I go to bed! Also... almost forgot the visual aid!

Meet Valaran 'Val' Winters aka, the Huntress, aka The Cheerleader

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Buffy lives!
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2 - Humanization Saves the Day

She knows my name? Jamie was first rocked by this revelation… but realized in a drunken manner that of course this woman would know her name? She was a Cheerleader at GSU, a campus where everybody knew everyone. There simply were not that many students… and yet just hearing her name spoken by this woman was worth more than anything in that moment…

“Oh?” the stranger smirked. Jamie felt herself pressed harder against the car door, “and what do you think you’re going to do to stop me Bu…” Before the stranger finished speaking the Cheerleader advanced three quick steps. The stranger released Jamie and turned to face the new threat but not before the Cheerleader's foot snapped out with obscene flexibility smashing a foot directly into the strangers face.

“Whoa…” Jamie murmured. Her head was still a little bit foggy, and a glimmer of the spell she was under remained… but she was very close to the action. For a mere second or two she was privy to view almost the entirety of the Cheerleaders long spandex coated leg. The sparkly green of the material clung so tightly to the athletic limb underneath that it made Jamie go a little red… but it was over in an instant.

The stranger snarled a freakishly guttural scream that snapped Jamie out of her hypnotized rapture. “You Bitch! I’m going to…” before the stranger could finish her statement the Cheerleader ran at her. Jamie watched her savior the whole way as she first leaped the last of the distance turned what first looked like a light aerial kick into a ‘step’ against the strangers rising arm, then the wonder of a woman planted her other foot hard into her opponent’s face and actually shoved off. The stranger went hurtling backward, crashing, rolling, and tumbling away in a torrent of enraged screams even as the Cheerleader let her the force of her momentum propelled her into an aerial back flip so as to land in a low crouch with such perfect form that no Olympian could match it. Again Jamie found herself shocked to a warm stillness just to have witnessed it…

Events were pressing onward however. The Cheerleader hurried over to her and thrust something into Jamie’s hand, “Take it and go!”

“Wh-what?” Jamie blinked. The Cheerleader reached up and, without warning at all, she slapped Jamie across the face… hard! The strike forced everything into a harsh focus. Reality crashed back into Jamie and with it the icky sensation of having been licked and molested by someone or something, and the existential dread that all her worst fears about the nights travels were valid… but before she could very much panic, the Cheerleader grabbed her by the sides of the face and locked eyes with her.

They were kind eyes. Actual, genuinely kind eyes, not the grotesque anomaly of manipulation that Jamie only moments ago was victim to, “Take the car,” the Cheerleader told her, grabbing Jamie’s hand where she had earlier put something in and shunted that hand up against Jamie’s clavicle, “and get clear of this place as fast as you can!” The savior didn’t say anything else. She rose and spun in the direction of the stranger, the skirt at her waist twirling a little bit as she did so. Jamiee glanced into her hands and saw she was holding a set of car keys…

Get out of here! She finally realized what she needed to do and climbed erratically up into the driver's seat. Jamie fumbled the keys into the ignition. When she turned them the vehicle roared to life, the thrum of an engine well taken care of. She took a final glance out the front windshield to where the Cheerleader was stalking toward that awful woman like a glorious lioness prepared for the kill...


____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


With the civilian clear, Valaran Winters, the Huntress known by some simply as ‘the Cheerleader’ turned her full attention back toward the Succubus. To combat this threat, rote information dominated her crystal clear thoughts. All the potential weak spots of a vampiric demon and the potential dangers and pitfalls were front and center. What to do, what not to do, when not to do it. Keep it angry. Don’t look it in the eyes. Stake in the heart. Be quick, be efficient, use their ego against them!

Luckily in the moment, the Succubus was too pissed off at Val’s entrance to be anything more than violent. It’s humanoid form failed a little, the creatures arms and legs extended too far out from her clothing’s arms and legs to be natural, her eyes sunk in deeper, her skin gone paler, while her hair turned stringy as with grease. It was breathing deeply and it advanced in a rage, “You cost me my food Insect!” Keep it angry!

“So sorry to take fresh blood off the menu,” Val snarled, but her features remained calm and focused, no smirks or senseless anger, she merely returned the advance, her lithe form clad in spandex and the school colors seemed very small compared to the monster, but she didn’t back down. The melee began with a vicious horizontal slice from the succubus which Val actually blocked just as swiftly with her forearm before she kicked it in the chest. The Succubus’s features went mildly wild with panic as she felt herself shunted backwards.

“How are you doing this!” The creature growled, “no mortal can stand up to me!” Valaran didn’t answer. Don’t look it in the eye, use their ego against them! She struck out with two straight kicks, the first it deflected but the second struck it solidly in the belly doubling it over. “No… wait?” Val knew it was starting to realize what must be happening… but it was already too late. Val slipped in close and with her the stake in her left hand she struck the monster under the chin with the back of the instrument, knocking the Demon’s head back and upward… she would have jammed a stake in the throat but she was dealing with something special. Quick! Efficient! Stake through the heart! While the Succubus’s head was thrown backwards Valaran surged forward with the stake in her right hand and plunged it deep into the woman’s chest.

The scream of pain was impressive and hopefully not loud enough to draw attention from any late staffers in the building. It fell down onto its back clutching at the ivory stick now protruding out from its chest… “Ngh… grrrkk…. H-Huntress… You are… the Huntress?” It moaned its agony and disbelief out at the sky as much as at her.

“That’s right you ugly blood sucker!” Valaran hissed, finally displaying some emotion, her features twisting into an angry grimace and she kicked down onto the stake, “Not so easy when they aren’t just helpless girls is it?” The Succubus gurgled blood one last time, spat a breath of blood out into the air before it laid back and was still.

Val’s fists were clenched. She almost wished the fight had been more difficult. She wanted to beat on the thing more… but angry as she was at the monster she knew the real source was turned inward. Jamie Mcalister! Val had forgotten about the girl’s nightly trips through the parking lot. This trap might have accidentally cost an innocent girl her life!

Your slipping, that growing voice echoed in the back of her mind, He’s gone, and you are slipping! She balled her fist and just evaded biting her lip to quiet the voice. She could not afford to surrender to self doubt. Even so, She knew Jamie walked home alone at night… she often watched the girl from afar to make sure she reached the Dorms if anything particularly nasty was circling about… it was inexcusable to have let this fact slip her mind!

How long has it been since I slept? She wondered idly. She was going pretty hard now? Maybe it was time to take a day off? She could call in sick and wait out her classes. She didn’t need to worry about Jamie, the girl was pretty deep in the Succubus’s glamour at the end there. Jamie would have had trouble identifying the face of the Mona Lisa in her condition… but it was definitely going to be another instance of ‘the Cheerleader’ bouncing around the schoolyard, then she'd need to sneak her car back... and probably trash it. “Gotta be more careful Val…” she murmured to herself. Something drew her attention then… something on the edge of her senses. An idle rumbling that her ears warned her was important and she began to turn her head that way...

Unfortunately this action, which might have aided her in another circumstance, also distracted her just the smallest amount… and just enough.

“You got one thing right Huntress,” the Succubus declared from beside her. Val gasped and spun at her enemy… and their gazes met. Don’t look it in the eyes! The rote fact splashed across her thoughts an instant too late and she immediately felt the probing alien influence slam into her with such psychic force that Valaran’s upper torso actually rocked backward hard enough to bounce her breasts even through the support of a bra and the unitard. “It’s not quite as easy when you aren’t helpless… but that’s all you got right, beautiful... I’m NOT a bloodsucker…”

The factoid hit Val harder than the psychic lash. She clutched the stake in her left hand more tightly but she could not raise it… instead she found that she could do little more than watch in mild fascination while the succubus simply reached up, gripped the stake in her chest and violently ripped it out. The beast grunted and tossed the weapon away. Not a bloodsucker? What!? Val’s quickly wracked her memory for any information she could find about Succubi. Like vampires, they preyed on victims for food, lived in the dark, were pale, glamorous, demonic entities that could mildly hide in societal circles under the right circumstances.

Like Vampires.

But not A Vampire. Why couldn’t she rectify this? Val could think of no book she had read, no stanza that would deny that they weren’t… except that neither could she recall anything she had ever read that stated for fact that an Incubus WAS a Vampire.

She had made a biased assumption. Because you never finished your training! Because he died and left you alone!

“Now where was I?” the Succubus lilted, she approached Valaran, who with great effort stumbled backwards, “Whoa there Huntress… Don’t run.” Val felt her strong legs lock on her at the command.

No!

“You cost me my meal Huntress… however,” the Succubus smiled deliciously while she finished her approach. She reached up casually to stroke the Cheerleader’s side over the green material between the skirt and top. Valaran inhaled sharply at the intrusiveness of the gesture, “but what can I say? I’ve traded a pretty bug for a beautiful lamb!”

Keep talking, Valaran urged the creature while her left arm maintained an Iron grip on her other stake. Val acknowledged that she had made a devastating mistake by miss-categorizing her enemy… but she just bet this monster might well do the same… the Incubus might be overly certain of her hypnotic control. She might not realize that Valaran wasn’t just physically strong enough to oppose her… but that even a psychic leash was not going to hold her for long! If she could only stall for a little longer then she could drive her stake right up between things chin… then she’d cut off its head! That was usually a pretty good way to put anything out of commission!

Nevertheless, she shuddered at the contact, that wicked gentle caress that was equal parts playful and mocking. The succubus wasn’t finished playing either, she let her palm drift from Val’s side to rest over the stomach where even her tight spandex didn’t entirely hide the definition of her abdominal muscles. It then clawed its fingers and drew tickling circles that shortly made Val bite her lip and try to suck up her gut, “You know what they say about us Incubi? Beautiful Lamb?” the monster asked, “They say that we’re more lovers than fighters…”

Oh God, Oh God, Oh God almost there, Valaran repeated to herself as she felt the creatures palm drift downward. It slipped in through the upper band of her Cheer skirt, letting the slickness of the spandex guide its fingers into the crevice between her paralyzed victims legs.

“A-ahhh... “ Val heard the unpleasantly feminine sound slip from her lips, but she was almost there! She just needed a little more time so she egged the creature on… even as she felt the first insistent strokes up and down around her labia. Her eyes wanted desperately to clamp shut, she wanted to turn away so the heat rising to her cheeks couldn’t be seen, but she forced herself to ‘play’ the disgusting game anyway ‘Th-that so? You got a… t-tender fucking side?” Her left arm twitched almost imperceptibly. She wiggled her pinky… almost...

The succubus absolutely purred as she explored the Cheerleaders inner thighs, it was almost enough to steal away the concentration Valaran desperately needed… but not quite. The demon then leaned in close and pressed their cheeks up against one another so her mouth was next to Val’s ear and she stole a little nibble… Val’s legs quaked in response… but she stood strong. She felt her elbow loosen up as her mind and body began to shunt out the invading influence. It was now or nev…

“They’re wrong too,” the Succubus whispered, she withdrew her fingers from Val’s crotch and with all the strength of a supernatural demon she slammed her fist into Valaran’s unprotected abdomen.

“AAGGHHH!” Val gagged. Her body was her own once more… but seconds to late. Her weapon slipped from her fingers just before she wrapped her arms around her stomach and she would have curled up except that with equal viciousness the Succubus slammed a fist into the heroines right bossom, producing a similar cry as before then for the Huntress to snap upward onto her toes and her back to arch while her arms rose to protect her more vulnerable breasts.


The Cheerleaders' mind was reeling, the pain temporarily lanced across discipline… it stole away thought and instinct… not letting up, as soon as Valaran’s young body was arched so pleasingly before her, the Succubus wrapped an arm around the waist, tugged her defenseless prey closer and rammed a knee up between Valaran’s thighs.

Gloomvale's Guardian screamed in anguish. The Succubus released her and watched in egotistical pleasure as the greatest force against her own kind dropped first to her knees with her hands pressed down against her throbbing sex… and then slumped over onto her side.

“Oh god yes…” the demon purred lustily. The scent of a certain meal no doubt permeated the night. She drank in the fallen Huntress, with the flick of her ankle she kicked the skirt up at the back to have a better look at Val’s well developed buttocks, she was a very pleasing meal indeed, “I’m gonna drink every single drop of you!”

A torrential flood of useless information assaulted Val all in a moment. Keep it angry. It was not angry… it was victorious! Don’t look it in the eyes. Oh if only! Stake through the heart. No dice! Quick, Efficient, Use their ego against them… Just who was hunting who now?

Pure heroic fortitude surged through Valaran's veins to resist enough of the pain that rocked her hip to breast that she could pull her head up form its curl to seek out some means of fighting… out a little ways she spotted her dropped ivory stake… and with great difficulty she slid one arm out from its reflexive huddle to amble outward… she might be able to drag her body toward it… she might do so better with both arms but as the other palm began sliding up from her spandex clad thighs, the burning pain intensified and she had to clamp both palms back down.... her fortitude defeated.

N-no… She realized in despair, I… I can’t… move at all like this? As if only to prove the point, the monster had been simply taking the moment to observe her prey. The succubus descended upon her, forcing Val’s legs apart. The Huntress, to her credit, released hold of her aching womanhood to try and throw a few punches, but the pain in her expression made clear how much it had cost her just to do this much… the Succubus was merciless. She rammed a knee up between Val’s now unprotected legs again!

“No… Unghhh NO!” Val cried in agony. This was it… she realized. The natural conclusion she’d come to. The thing she’d been fearing for a year… yet even so, for it to be at the hands of an incubus was infinitely more terrible than she could have imagined.

The Succubus giggled and wouldn’t let Val dwell for long. It was quick work to pin the Cheerleader’s arms back against the pavement. Finally, rather than pulling her knee back for another blow the monster instead kept it lodged firmly up against the Huntress’s sex, rhythmically and roughly grinding it inward, letting her leg relax then grinding it in again, over and over… the process was agony for Val who once again saw her stake off to her side… she reached out toward it in desperation… but it was very much to far away.

You knew it would be like this, the cynical voice in the back of her thoughts which had been bugging her more and more of late, What’s going to happen now? Who is going to protect Gloomvale? Pennsylvania? America? The World? You failed Winters!... I failed…

The demon continued her grinding barrage for nearly half a minute until they stopped producing squeaks of pain and the Cheerleader’s arm outstretched toward her weapon had gone slack. The Succubus then slipped her arm underneath her victims petite shoulders and lifted her upper body supported at the back… “Let’s see how you taste now shall we?” The Cheerleader was helpless to do anything as the creature kissed her.

There was no hypnosis or glamour to her misfortune, Val had willed it off just before the physical barrage had broken any defenses or strategy she had left… the Demon groped and pawed at her breasts while it made out with her, the effort seemed only in effort to prove that it could, and that there was nothing that Val could do but endure it. She felt the things pointed tipped and straw like appendage breach her lips and lay down over her own tongue before it began to ‘suck! It felt something like the air was being drawn out of her lungs but Valaran knew otherwise… what the Succubus wanted was much more valuable than air… it wasn’t her blood either.

“Mmmm...mmmmmmmmm,” Val moaned in time with the sick slurping sounds of the creature. She spasmed and gently writhed where its hands pinched, squeezed and fondled at the rest of her. She believed for certain the monster would just drink her away like this, over time, despite the horror of it, her body began to respond as much as it still could, and seeded a deeper shame in her for that… but after awhile, and before Valaran was completely lost, it broke lip contact and let its long terrible tongue slip back up between its lips, there it purred with pleasure to take a brief reflective pause which was broken up only with very light and gently playful pawing.

“Ngh… please…” Val managed to utter… with no further recourse she found it in herself to beg…

“Ohhh beautiful Lamb… begging are you?” the Demon cooed. She liked that… she found she liked it a damned lot… she liked this Huntress’s style as well… she felt like the Huntress had gone all out for her, wrapping herself like a stylishly sparkly gift then presenting herself for conquest… Perhaps she ought not kill the Huntress? It realized there might be more to earn for herself to enslave the fallen protector, to use her control over the Huntress as a status symbol? A means to control the others? To prolong the moment while she mulled these things over, the demon lifted Valaran’s head up toward her shoulder and kissed at the Huntress’s neck in gentle, possessive, pecks. She was so limp and helpless it was easy… but so proud that even know there was a deliciously wriggly quality to her. The Succubus flipped the yellow skirt upward against the Huntress’s abs and gently padded at the, now mildly wet, patch of fabric between Val’s thighs. Here was the real test... if she tasted just right, she might be more value to it as a reusable midnight snack than a one time full course meal! “Let’s have a real drink shall we?”

“Please…” Val moaned once more. At this point she could have just died of shame… instead she found herself uttering aloud for the first time the same thing she’d found herself thinking to herself lately in the darkest moments of the night just before she slipped into sleep, “please… somebody… save me…”

The succubus jerked, Please ‘somebody’? She realized at once that Valaran had not been begging her for anything after all and for some reason it made her amply furious! “There’s nobody!” the Demon growled echoing what Val already knew in her heart, the monster dropped the Cheerleader’s upper body causing her head to smack against the asphalt “You’re out here alone, Huntress, with no one but me!” She rammed her fist into Val’s abdomen one last time as though for emphasis… but this time the Huntress hardly reacted. She’s right… I’m alone. Finally, a tear fell free… “so beg me! Beg ME for your life lamb! I’m the only thing now that can save you! I’m the thing that...”

The Demon’s brow drooped at the sound of an angry revved engine! She could not have known, but dropping Val at that instant was the worst thing she could do. The idle drone which had tugged at Valaran’s attention and possibly provided the lapse in awareness that allowed the Succubus to gain eye contact with the Cheerleader earlier had, in fact, been the low drone of an idling car engine.

Jamie had not driven away at all before a gut feeling had forced her to hold off. The Cheerleader? It was a beautiful fantasy. A stoic protector to defend her from all the things that went bump in the night. If legends and fairy tales were true then she ought to have just driven away and allowed her midnight protector to clean up the monster in the parking lot and be done with it…

But something had changed in Jamie that night. It was two fold. The first was that insignificant cruelty. That a thing which would have killed her was so heartless it would not even try to make her feel any peace in it. That moment had killed the wonder of the town mythologies… as well as the fairy tales.

The second thing was when the Cheerleader had said Jamie’s name. Whomever had rescued Jamie that night knew her, went to classes with her, ignored her on a general enough basis most likely… but had known her well enough to remember her name the night of her rescue and use it with kindness… and then provide her with the only means for either of them to escape…

So rather than drive away Jamie had sat frozen at the wheel and observed. Jamie saw the skill with which the Cheerleader first took charge of the situation and felt overjoyed… but then she’d seen the strangeness after. Jamie watched the heavy set in the Cheerleaders shoulders when it appeared the monster was dead and had nearly gone out there to try and talk with her. Jamie had then grown anxious and terrified when the monster had recovered and ensnared the Cheerleader with her gaze just as it had done to her earlier… and finally Jamie was struck with terrified paralysis during the physical assault upon the hero that came after.

Fear was stopping Jamie just as before but this time there was no hypnotic monster to excuse her for her inaction… Jamie realized with a mournful sickness that she was watching her defender die… and that she was too scared to intervene herself...

Then something obvious occurred to her. Completely free of the fog of the monsters' control she recognized better the situation in front of her. The car… Jamie knew this car. She also knew her dying heroine was a Cheerleader… and she finally dug up an old dusty memory of the very Cheerleader who she had once seen drop into the driver’s seat of this car.

Not a friend, not exactly, but somebody she knew.

“Winters,” Jamie whispered. Like a hammer smashing glass, the name shattered her fear, she watched as the monster dropped Valaran Winters, her friends called her Val. That name Jamie really remembered cause it sounded like something from Game of Thrones! Jamie also noticed the perfect angle between herself and them, like it was fate. When the monster dropped Val Jamie realized she could roll right into the thing, just had to be brave enough to try and smart enough to keep the tires on either side of the Cheerleader.

She screamed at nobody, prayed to everybody, and rammed her foot on the accelerator...
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DrDominator9 wrote:
4 years ago
Buffy lives!
Hehe, thanks for the quick replies on my story :O I was a little shocked. Sorry we can't really chat much anymore without the chat box either.

Yeah she's based a lot on Buffy (Though more of the Kristy Swanson era than the series which I unfortunately haven't seen a lot of), but with a vaguely more 'super heroic' slant turning that cheerleader uniform into something more lasting and iconic. While there's tons of peril here at the outset... that's really just a big opener. It's likely to be a good long while from this point before any more overt peril happens.
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Oh boy, that was a very sweet scene of peril there! Beautifully languid, exquisitely revealed, delightfully fluid. Great job! I hope that others will read this and comment on it. It deserves attention and acclaim.
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Damselbinder

Fucking god damn, this is really good. Valara is a really fun slayer character - she doesn't even feel like an expy of Buffy, exactly, but rather another step in that character's lineage, if that makes sense. I really liked the slow introduction of the Succubus, showing its effects on Jamie, before transitioning to the fight with Valara herself. That was a great back and forth, and just a classically perilous twist of fate. The groping and touchling and so on was pretty excellently rendered (perhaps a smidge explicit for my usual tastes), and the stinger at the end was fab.

This really looks like it has a huge amount of potential. I agree with Dr D completely: I think you're onto something really special here.
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Damselbinder wrote:
4 years ago
Fucking god damn, this is really good. Valara is a really fun slayer character - she doesn't even feel like an expy of Buffy, exactly, but rather another step in that character's lineage, if that makes sense. I really liked the slow introduction of the Succubus, showing its effects on Jamie, before transitioning to the fight with Valara herself. That was a great back and forth, and just a classically perilous twist of fate. The groping and touchling and so on was pretty excellently rendered (perhaps a smidge explicit for my usual tastes), and the stinger at the end was fab.

This really looks like it has a huge amount of potential. I agree with Dr D completely: I think you're onto something really special here.
Thank you very much! Yes the idea isn't to make a carbon copy of Buffy, more of a general inspiration for character design and genre/world building. It's been a while since I saw the movie, and a little bit of that is in the DNA of Val's 'origins' which may crop up here or there in some flashback sequences or something. If I were a braver woman I'd have started at the beginning, but I simply couldn't help diving right in with the Cheerleader pretty much fully established and primed to enter the golden age of her career.

Thank you again for the lovely words. Part 3 incoming.
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3 - Cold Practice

The rest of the night passed as a frenetic blur for Jamie, which was to say that she remembered almost all of the elements, but the flow and timetable of it all was utter chaos. She recalled the collision, the inhuman scream, opening the door and checking underneath the vehicle in terrible fear that she might have rolled over any part of Valaran’s body… relief to find the Cheerleader no worse for wear, not by Jamie’s own doing anyhow. She dragged the other woman out from under the car, and struggled only a little bit to get her inside… There had been a relatively uncomfortable vehicle ride after that point, in which she had been sitting partially on top of Valaran’s legs because fear of the monster burned in her heart so badly that Jamie did not want to waste time situating anybody for comfort and because Valaran was out cold and incabable of situating herself… the drive to the Dorms… an illegal parking job… confusion when there was no blood in the dent where she knew she’d hit the monster. Half dragging, half carrying Valaran’s unconscious body through the building halls with extreme difficulty because Val was probably the heaviest woman in the Goddamn world… telling Jeffrey across the way when he poked his nose out that Val had ‘drunk too much’ and that was all!

Slamming and locking the door to her room was the first clear headed decision with adequate focus and flow of time she would recall. She was terrified… but for once, not an ounce of her current frenzy or terror was on her own behalf. Jamie could feel Valaran shivering in her arms, and she was worried that her new friends injuries might be severe. So she brought her fallen protector across the room and carefully laid the Cheerleader down onto the bed before beginning a quick examination that would determine if she was going to need to try to care for Valaran on her own… or risk whatever trouble calling for an ambulance might mean for a monster huntress? For everything she felt like she already owed the Cheerleader, Jamie wasn’t ready to just give up the ghost and call for governmental support.

Valaran was sweating and shivering uncontrollably, which was already a bad sign, but when Jamie placed the back of her hand across the young woman’s forehead she did not feel feverish, which was a good sign. Next, Jamie decided to carefully go over all the places she saw the monster actually attack. She agonized a few moments over Valaran’s modesty before compromising with herself that she would only remove any clothing if it felt absolutely necessary. Starting where it was least uncomfortable, Jamie began the examination over Val’s abdomen and almost immediately her ears were burning red.

This isn’t even the hard part! Jamie chided herself. Val’s abs were, at least by a touch test alone, impeccably well defined… which probably wasn’t that strange for someone as physical as a cheerleader who also moonlighted as a… what? Monster slayer? The effect of feeling that athleticism under her palm though instantly brought back a few memories from the night. Val’s long leg, that absolutely perfect aerial backflip… Cheerleaders could be flexible and agile sure… but everything Valaran had done that night was executed with flawless precision… as for the examination, the abdomen was warm to the touch and not as hard as the definition suggested it should be, indicating probable bruising… though on further, careful examination, she deduced there were no broken bones and there was no blood or lacerations...

Next up was a lot harder for Jamie, she had to carefully pull the top temporarily up and over Val’s breasts. The easiest notation to make was that there was clearly no bleeding seeping out of the spandex material from beneath. “I’m really really sorry about this Val,” she mumbled and leaned down to cup the Cheerleaders breasts.

“M-mmmmnnooh…. Nohmmmm,” Valaran stirred, her body stiffened for a split second before returning to her previous shivering once again… the short response was simultaneously a relief for Jamie… and also torture. If Valaran was responsive enough to feel the violation in her unconscious state that was a good sign… it also made Jamie feel like she was the scum of the earth. The examination was at least mercifully quick. The right breast was a little warmer than the left… but not overmuch… hardly concern enough to further disgrace Jamie’s moonlight defender by stripping her naked!

“Alright, last up buttercup…” Jamie mumbled in a sing song nervously chipper stutter that betrayed outright anxiety. She reached down for Valaran’s skirt… but before she could bring herself to flip it up Jamie paused, stomped over to the kitchen, snatched up the bottle of Jamestown Whisky and took three quick swigs. Due to the ‘one room fits all’ layout of the Dorm space, this was a very swift diversion. Some of, though not all of the nervousness subsided so she returned to the bedside, took a deep breath and flipped the cheer skirt up over Val’s stomach and immediately wanted to kill something.

There was no blood, but the area around the Cheerleaders upper thighs was just noticeably damp. Jamie felt her eyes watering up. Her anger chased off the last of her nerves. She brought her fingers down for the touch test. As she feared, the area was very warm, and sensitive, even the lightest brush made her patient buck and and utter a whimpering sound very unlike the strong voice Jamie recalled that had urged her to drive away… every second Jamie was down there Valaran’s body remained stiff like she was in torment and wanted to wake… but could not. The area was the warmest of all to touch. Finally Jamie brought her fingers up toward her nose and sniffed them, confirming her fears, sexual fluid… though on a more diligent visual check, at least not enough to indicate a full orgasm. You fought off that much at least…

At this point, Jamie grabbed her desk chair, swiveled it around to face the bed and nearly collapsed into it. The nature of the fluid was the final straw and her features twisted up, the blurry wetness in her eyes spilled outward. Every element of this examination she was inflicting on the unconscious woman was something that was about to happen to her… to Jamie. If not for Valaran… all of this would have been her… instead the Cheerleader had put herself between Jamie and that thing… and now she was laid out on Jamie’s bed, unconscious, shivering in her sleep for reasons that probably had a lot more to do with what was going on in her head than in her body and it made Jamie sick… angrilly, hatefully sick. If Jamie could have taken the strings of the universe to find and torment that monster for all eternity… she would have done so with a grimace of glee.

“I’m so sorry Val…” Jamie whispered at nothing. She decided now was as good a time as any and took a quick trip to relieve herself. After the night's events she absolved herself that just about anyone would need to pee… and she probably should be proud she’d not already done so in her pants!

When she was finished however she was immediately on alert. Valaran’s shivering had gotten worse and the woman was thrashing and mumbling. “Oh no!” Jamie rushed over… However when she arrived at her patients' side, she realized it wasn’t quite as bad as she thought. There didn’t seem to be any complications… Instead Valaran appeared only to be… dreaming.

“Mmm… no…. No…” Val murmured in a vulnerable whimper that further tore at Jamie before the woman said, “please… somebody… save… me…”

“Oh God!” Jamie covered her own mouth and nose with her tented palms, she forced herself to sit down where she took up Val’s hand and then covered the top of it with the other, “It’s okay Miss Winters,” she said, she wished her voice could carry into dreams, “I’m here… I’m not going anywhere.” Not after what you have done for me…

Surprisingly… it seemed to work! Almost as soon as she had Val’s hand in hers… the woman’s thrashing slowed. It was probably just coincidence, a nightmare moving onward, but Jamie refused to let go of Val’s hand after that, and eventually the Cheerleader’s thrashing ended, and even her chilled shivering slowed to a stop over the next half hour. Jamie was sure to monitor Valaran breathing the whole way, but her patient seemed strong and healthy despite her ordeal.

As the atmosphere in the room began to calm, so did Jamie’s nerves. She never quite stopped glancing spastically at the door or the window (blinds shut!) whenever she heard a mild creak or strange noise. She was scared the monster was just going to show up to finish the job at any moment… but nothing like that ever happened, and as the evening ticked over from midnight to early morning she found herself just watching her beautiful patient’s deep slumber.

She truly was that as well, Beautiful… At least Jamie thought so. The young Cheerleader sported that perfect shade of not-quite platinum blonde hair that made it sparkle like sunlight, tied up in an efficient ponytail for monster killing of course. Val’s sky blue eyes were hidden behind her eyelids just then, but Jamie knew they were there. Valaran possessed one of those faces… just round enough, just pronounced enough, one of those stupidly lucky women who won the genetic lottery, and she’d topped it on a cared for body that wore the Cheer uniform certainly better than anyone else on campus.

Val was striking, breathtaking even, probably had the eyes of every boy in school and none of that was news. Even among the rest of the Cheer Squad, Jamie knew, Val got the most attention. Maybe that was the natural result of the good genes involved with being a hyper flexible monster fighter, Jamie couldn’t say. It wasn’t like tonight was the first time Jamie had ever noticed her either. Val was a Sophomore, a year Jamie’s junior if memory served. When she’d arrived the first year, Valaran had instantly become one of those girls Jamie would sneak a quick side eyed glance at from time to time, appreciative of, except that after a single quarter Valaran revealed herself to be one of the nastiest of the nasty mean-girl types. She’d pick on fellow classmates, walk around with a casual air of superiority, all the usual bad habits most people ran off in high school… but something had changed in her over that first spring break, because when Valaran had returned, she was like a totally different person, helping squadmates with problems, assisting students with math tips across the cafeteria halls… the first time Jamie ever spoke to Val was to be labeled a ‘frumpy sort of woman’... the second was a very sincere apology for her past behaviors... and then this last year she'd notably dropped out of a lot of the social spheres... rumors were her grades were slipping as well. Was that do to all of... this?

Unfortunately, Jamie generally had trouble attempting to approach Valaran for anything. Even after the apology it was difficult to feel like she was in her rights to just walk up to GSU’s equivalent of a goddess on campus to shoot the shit about the weather…

That was all in the past! This night had changed everything. There was no going back to the Jamie who was worried about homework and Winter formals, who was too scared to tell a Cheerleader good morning because she might blush and was maybe secretly still a little raw about that frumpy comment even after the apology... Whoever Valaran had been in the past, she was also the woman who hadn’t just saved Jamie from a terrible ordeal… no that alone would have been enough, but Valaran had then taken that ordeal onto herself.

Jamie wasn’t about to forget that. Not now, Not ever. So every now and again Val would begin to shiver and moan unintelligible words in her sleep, and each time Jamie tightened her grip on the Cheerleader’s hand promising she was still there and not going anywhere, and God help her she really felt like each time she said it there was a noticeable effect that eventually resulted in Val visibly calming, relaxing and returning to a deep, restful, and hopefully healing slumber.


Eventually that’s how Jamie fell asleep as well, in her desk chair, with Val’s hand clasped between both of hers.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Oh Jesus Christ…” Valaran moaned when she finally came to. Her eyes didn’t immediately open but she felt like mashed potatoes from the hip up. Never slow to wake or recall, she almost immediately recounted the previous evening disaster. Her eyes snapped open to glance sharply around her surroundings. She wasn’t dead and half anticipated a dingy sloppy shit hole with food stains on the left wall and the rock walls of a carved out cave hideout on the other…

Sunlight filtered through the closed blinds of a nearby window. A simple visual pass revealed she was probably in one of the school dorms since the kitchen, living area, and the bed she was currently laying on were all in the same room… finally, sitting in a computer chair beside the bed, with Val’s right hand clasped firmly between both palms… was a sleeping Jamie Mcalister.

“What the fuuuck…” Valaran mumbled to herself in mild panic. She didn’t fully comprehend how she could be there, a small part of her knew it probably didn’t have anything to do with something she’d done of her own volition. I was going to die… she remembered that clearly. She was going to die, and the last thing she recalled before blacking out was…

Her car? Rolling over the top of her just perfectly enough to do no harm... and smashing into the upper torso of a demonic sex vampire!

No, she reminded herself, NOT a Vampire.

It all clicked into place. Jamie hadn’t driven away as Val had told her to… she’d come back. To... save me... “Holy shit!”

“Mnnn… wha’s with all the swearing?” Jamie mumbled as her eyes fluttered sleepily… for a mere instant they shared eye contact, Jamie had swamp green hazel eyes, but more green than brown... they were pretty. The bleariness in them slowly shed off and then sharpened before Jamie’s tired expression turned into a bright smile. “Oh you’re awake! Oh thank God you’re awake!”

Val instantly turned her head away, breaking eye contact and finding the ceiling her best bet for the time being, “Yes I am conscious,” she offered up as though it needed to be said and through a tightness in her throat she pushed out, “I feel like that is probably mostly your doing?”

“Oh yeah! Don’t even stress…” Jamie chirped and stumbled over her words as she jumped up to her feet, “I mean oh, yeah I got you here and… and I guess I looked after you some but… you know… I couldn’t have done any of it if it wasn’t… you know?”

Val didn’t know. She was finding it hard to untangle Jamie’s excited blurbs. Instead she turned her head back and focused very deliberately on her hand where it was clasped between Jamie’s… the silent notation seemed to take a few seconds to click.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” Jamie let her hand go and it flopped down against the mattress, “I was… you were… nightmares and… I’ll make coffee… and breakfast!”

Well isn’t she a battery ready to pop? Valaran thought to herself before saying aloud, “Tea please… if you have any.”

Jamie froze midway to the counter turned a blank puppy dog expression of mild panic toward the Cheerleader and winced, “I… uh… could go and ask around?”

Val sighed and flopped back against her pillow, “Coffee is fine…” it wasn’t really… Coffee was terrible for your body. In fact, she was willing to bet there wasn’t a single food item in Jamie’s refrigerator that she was good to ingest. “What do you have to eat?”

“Oh I’ve got…” Jamie scrunched up her nose in thought, and began listing things off on her fingers, “ramen, some eggs, a pizza from the other day… oh there’s some lamb chops from Dillon’s party the other day?”

Beautiful Lamb!

Val jerked up into a sitting position while her fingers clenched around the bed sheets. She instantly knew that the action was irrational… and also that it was too late to hide the obvious oddness of the motion from her… host.

“Valaran?” Jamie had frozen in place, observing her differently than before. The casual bumbling was gone and in its place a careful focus… like she was examining Val for something… the coffee and food seemingly forgotten Jamie began to walk back toward her.

“It’s nothing, it’s fine just, you don’t have to come over here, just no lamb chops!” Val barked… Jamie wasn’t convinced however and continued walking toward her, but Valaran did not want to do this! “Actually you know what? I think I have taken up enough of your hospitality.” She swung her legs around so that she was sitting against the side of the bed, preparing to get up.

“Wait Miss Winters! I don’t know if that’s a good Idea…” Jamie was saying as the Cheerleader stood up. Valaran fully intended to flee the room and be clear but instead her legs wobbled as pain lanced through her whole body from to many wounds to count, and she pitched forward ungracefully… directly into Jamie who, to her credit, caught Val around the shoulders with decent reaction timing.

“Ngh…” Val heard the disgustingly weak sound that burst from her own lips as she collapsed fully into her host’s arms.

No! God damn it no! She tried to push free and untangle herself but her arms were as feeble as her legs at the moment and other things were beginning to happen that she realized were utterly terrible. As she breathed inward, so entangled, she caught a whiff of Jamie’s old perfume from the previous night. The effect was enough to gently fog her thoughts, she broke out in hives and a cold sweat while the space between her thighs began to warm much too fast for comfort or to be natural. The memory of the succubus on top of her, forcing her lips open and protruding its tongue down inside of her resurfaced...

“Put me… down,” Valaran gasped.

“See you shouldn’t be standing up,” Jamie told her… but she was unaware of the danger, “you need to…”

“I said PUT ME DOWN!” Val shouted. Jamie complied with a mild squeak… luckily they were near enough to the bed that all Valaran ‘fell’ down onto was a seat at the lip of the bed… but she was clearly not okay. Her cheeks had gone flush and she was breathing in quick panting breaths. She reached for her thigh pouch… but found it wasn’t there.

What!? A moment of terrible panic overcame her as the heat spread deeper into her core, already she was clamping her legs tightly together, “M-my pouches…” she snapped her fingers at Jamie, “I… where’s my leg strap?”

“Um…” Jamie glanced around and then sprinted over toward a sofa against the wall where Valaran’s jacket, and a lot of her external items, such as her leg pouch and extra wooden stakes, had been left out. Jamie grabbed the leg strap lined with a half a dozen little pouches and ran back over to her, “Val are you alright?”

Valaran shushed Jamie with a hand gesture and dug through one of the middle pockets before she found a small vial filled with clear fluid… she popped the cork and downed the contents as fast as she could. For a half a second she feared it wasn’t going to do anything… that maybe her learning was wrong in this pivotal instance once again… but as the cool fluid hit her stomach she was already beginning to feel some relief and the heat began to recede… God Damn Incubus...

A few seconds of silence passed before Jamie asked, “you mind telling me what that was all about?”

“Just… I don’t know,” Val shook her head, she felt exhausted… she just wanted to take a cold shower and hug herself in a corner and not have to deal with all the complications, “I guess you would call it… Holy Water?”

“That was Holy Water!?” Jamie gaped.

“Not like… from a church,” Val shook her head, “But yes… essentially that’s what it is.”

“Holy water is real?” Jamie asked again.

“Jamie! Please will you just…” Val shut her eyes and clamped her hands down against her ears, she hated that she could feel the beginnings of a tear forming in the corner of her eye, and the way she began to lightly shiver, she hated that she didn’t at least have enough self control to staunch such overt displays like this, “I can’t deal with all of this right now. Please! I get it, you must have so many questions but I… I’m…”

She was interrupted by a pair of arms that wrapped around her shoulders. Valaran went completely stiff like an animal that had been caught in the headlights… her breath caught a little.

“It’s okay I won’t ask anymore questions right now,” Jamie told her soothingly. “Last night was hard, that’s all, and I’m just glad you were there… and I’m sad that you were there at the same time. I’ll get off your back and go make you some coffee okay?”

Valaran didn’t respond. She didn’t shove Jamie away, nor did she move to return the embrace… nevertheless she didn’t feel like such a small thing trapped in a cage that needed a cold shower to break free anymore. Her breathing began to regulate, this is… nice, she realized… and then Jamie had let her go and was gone for the kitchen.

“But seriously,” Jamie called back over her shoulder, “you should lay back down, take some time to rest and heal,” she flashed a nervous little smile, “doctors orders?”

That was right, Valaran remembered now, Jamie was a medical student…

Decent bedside manner… I’ve got to get out of here!

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After a few more hours of relaxation, and a breakfast in which her moonlight defender refused to eat anything that Jamie owned except for some scrambled eggs because the rest was ‘unhealthy’ or some nonsense, Valaran seemed to be starting to get her feet back both physically and emotionally.

It didn’t take long for Jamie to get the impression that Valaran was the sort of woman who hated to appear weak. Whenever Jamie said anything with a mildly unsettling implication, Val would would shut it with a blunt, no nonsense retort… however she was never rude or ungrateful. She thanked Jamie politely for the eggs and even affected a smile here and there, yet even when Jamie tried to broach some nonsense diversionary topics there was a far away look in the Cheerleaders eyes that, to Jamie’s healers instinct, was screaming she was not okay … so when noon came around and Valaran stood, seemingly recovered enough to accomplish that, and announced she was going to go home, Jamie found herself flustered and uncertain about what to do. She wasn’t Valaran’s warden… but she didn’t feel like the Cheerleader should be alone right now either.

“O-okay…” she clenched her teeth very stiffly together for a moment as she observed as Miss Winters collected her things from the couch, finally she felt she had to say something, “But… listen…”

“It’s better if I don’t,” Valaran shook her head, cutting her off.

“What do you mean by that?” Jamie asked, not ready to let it lie.

“Jamie,” Val turned back toward her, her expression unreadable, “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression about me. It’s better right now if you just try to forget about last night…”

“Forget about last night!” Jamie might have laughed if it wasn't the most offensive thing she’d ever heard in her life!

“Yes, you should at least try to forget about it,” Val repeated.

“Are you going to forget about it?” Jamie demanded sharply, “just forget about a monster that tried to kill you?”

“No, I won’t…” Val turned her head away.

“Good because I’m never going to sleep again knowing that thing is probably still out there…” Jamie did laugh this time, a single humorless chort, “So don’t tell me what to remember and what not to…”

“Don’t worry about that,” Val interrupted her, she reached the door, “I’m going to deal with it.” She opened the door, but before she could step out Jamie had crossed the length of the room and slammed it back shut again by leaning her shoulder up against it.

“What does that mean?” she demanded, her tone gone deathly serious and she spoke at twice her ordinary words per minute, “What do you mean you’re going to ‘deal with it’ Val? What does that mean?”

“I’m going to do what I always do,” Valaran scowled, put off by the violence of the door maneuver perhaps. Jamie didn’t care just now.

“That thing almost killed you Winters?” Jamie hissed, hardly believing what she was hearing. It was apparently the wrong thing to say however because Valaran’s features set.

“Get away from the door Jamie.”

“Not if you’re just planning to run off and get yourself killed! No I won't!”

Valaran turned the handle again and opened the door. Jamie threw her full weight against it.. But it didn’t matter, with one arm Val overpowered her attempt, and not slowly or with effort, as the door swung open Jamie found herself rebounded hard enough she had to stumble backwards a few steps, unable to retain her balance she fell down onto her behind and found herself glaring up at the woman who was already stepping out into the hall.

“Don’t follow me,” Val warned and she left, slamming the door behind her.
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4 - Twenty Questions

Val took the day off after leaving Jamie’s place. Even with the rest Jamie had provided her, she was still exhausted and traumatized. To make matters worse she found her Stallion with two wheels haphazardly up on the sidewalk with a parking ticket under the wiper. Perhaps most distressing of anything that had occurred to her in her entire life… there was an enormous dent in the front fender and over the hood that absolutely was not going to ‘buff out’.

She silently fumed as she climbed into the driver's seat then drove fifteen minutes out into the winding woodland roads that lead in toward the residential zones where she lived before she pulled over to the side of the road, hugged her knees up against her chest and had herself a good long cry. It was then she finally accepted that she was in no condition to do anything more for the rest of that day, so she finished the drive home, took that cold shower, ate some real, and tossed her uniform in the wash before she passed out on the couch.

The following morning she felt recovered enough and returned to school where the harsh raised eyebrows of every professor whose class she’d missed reminded her that nothing, Nothing, was ever easy. Val did her best to concentrate on her studies, and to keep up with the meaningless banter of her social circles which itself was an ever growing effort not to quit altogether. It wasn’t until she’d returned to her locker mid afternoon to snag her books for her last class and then her uniform for practice after that when the thing she’d truly been dreading finally erupted.

It happened just as she opened her locker… an angry hand slapped it back closed and leaned a full person's body weight up against it to keep it that way. Val sighed and turned her attention toward Jamie’s sincerely angry expression, “We need to talk,” the woman told her in a voice she probably thought was stern and impressive.

“Haven’t you figured out that leaning against a door I want to open isn’t going to stop me?” Val asked her in a measured voice, though she did not actually attempt to force her locker open again.

“We. Need. To. Talk.” Jamie emphasized once more.

“Fine,” Val agreed, she brought one hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose, “but not right now. I’ve got Criminology up next and practice after that… why don’t you meet me out at the stadium after I'm through?”

“You aren’t going to ditch me?” Jamie sucked in a deep breath and gave her a glare that seemed to almost be daring her to try and stand her up at the football stadium… the look was so much false bravado it was actually kind of sweet.

“I keep my word Jamie,” Valaran promised, “now may I please get into my locker?”

“I don’t know,” Jamie was apparently trapped in false bravado mode and perhaps had not expected this meeting to go this well, her head bobbed with all the suppressed hostility she’d not be able to vent, “I guess maybe if you ask please?”

“I just did?” Valaran felt the corner of her mouth rise despite herself.

“Right. Yeah of course you did,” Jame pushed herself off of and away from the locker and backed away though continued to speak in her hostile voice, “Alright, this went well, I’ll meet you after practice… um…” her eyes darted around a bit before she squeaked, “bye,” turned and hurried away with burning red ears.

“Dayaum,” Jeffrey Dice chuckled from his locker beside hers, “You get drunk one time with a girl and she never lets it go amiright?”

Valaran blinked at him uncomprehendingly. “What?”
_____________________________________________________________________

“Stupid! I’m so stupid,” Jamie mumbled to herself throughout the whole of her next class. The meet hadn’t gone anywhere near as bad as she was afraid it was going to go and she’d gone and made an ass out of herself in front of the kindest woman in the world! She felt so bad about it she wanted to puke! If she’d only just made a more graceful exit!

The bell signifying the end of the period couldn’t come soon enough! When it finally rang she quickly bagged her books and left the classroom… though not before little Tammy sitting next to her smiled at her and said, “I don’t think your stupid?”

Jamie had a free period after class so she decided she’d simply head out to the stadium and watch practice in the event that Val thought she might just try and ditch anyway, honor be damned. Jamie found the bleachers mostly, though never entirely during cheer practice, empty from which she watched the teams latest routine.

From her vantage it was clearer than ever to Jamie that Val’s talents far outstripped the other cheerleaders. That was probably an unfair observation, since Jamie was beginning to suspect that Valaran Winters was no ordinary human being… she seemed to have supernatural agility the other night. Even allowing for her clear athleticism she felt too strong the previous afternoon when she’d inadvertently thrown Jamie away from the shut door as well… and yet, knowing all of that, she watched the routine and found herself admiring the way Val blended in. No one could deny she was simply better than the rest, but now that Jamie knew better… she was actually watching a masterclass of holding back. Watching Winters never do more than match her fellow squad mates was almost equally as enthralling as a full aerial backflip off of a monster's face… almost.

Practice lasted forty minutes, the routines were actually becoming fairly elaborate… there were talks of competition this year, something more than simply egging the football players on would do the school some good. When it was over, Jamie stood up and hurried down to the bottom step. Jamie need never have worried at all it seemed, because even while flanked by two squad mates who were obviously trailing her, Valaran’s step was leading directly toward Jamie.

“I think he’s delicious!” Stacey Summers was saying about some boy or something when they came close enough that Jamie could hear the conversation, “He’s always just sitting there you know? With his legs crossed like… oh… Jamie… hi?”

“Hi Stacey… Val? Can we…” Jamie began to say and angled her head away.

“Val?” Stacey raised an eyebrow, “That’s strange Jamie, we don’t normally catch you medical types out here?”

“I’ve got some things I need to talk to her about,” Valaran explained to her squad mates, both of them seemed mildly confused, particularly when the lasting silence after Val’s statement finally made it clear she expected for them to afford privacy.

“Oh…” Stacey was the first to nod. Then she shrugged, “Yeah no problem, Catch you tomorrow then?”

“Sure,” Val nodded. Jamie watched the exchange like a frightened mouse. She’d not anticipated Stacey and the other cheerleader… However it did afford her an opportunity to learn something new. Something about Valaran and the way she held herself. There was a set to her shoulders and baring, it was confidence, authority, there was no questioning why her squad mates followed her and not the other way around. Valaran didn’t dither, she didn't bob or bounce like her friends did. She simply stood, and behind all of that presence, Jamie thought she could see the weight on her shoulders as well…

When the others were out of the way Valaran caught her eye and asked, “You enjoy gawking at me?”

“What!?” Jamie gaped. Val’s unreadable expression made it difficult to tell if she was joking or offended.

“I saw you watching me from the bleachers,” Valaran explained.

“I was watching the… routine?” Jamie tried.

“You were watching me,” Valaran shook her head. She could see that I was only watching her from all that way? Val’s eyesight was as incredible as the rest of her!

“Well You were the only person out there I know very well,” Jamie shrugged and recovered, “plus I wanted to make sure you weren’t going to bolt!” Though now she had recognized Val’s ‘aura’ in full, she couldn’t at all envision any scenario where the Cheerleader would ‘bolt’ off to avoid talking to a mousy medical student in any scenario.

“Hm,” Val lifted her chin and a single eyebrow as if measuring the response before finally she started away, “Come on, if we’re going to talk we should do it someplace private. Jamie hurried to match Val’s step… this wasn’t going exactly as she’d planned. There were things she meant to ask and to say… but she was starting to realize she wasn’t going to be in charge of this conversation like she thought.

Private, evidently, simply meant Valaran’s car. The injured Stallion was out in the parking lot with the rest of the student vehicles. Jamie had a million questions bubbling in the back of her mind but Val didn’t speak and her body language remained unapproachable until she actually stepped into her car and motioned for Jamie to join her in the passenger seat.

Finally, once the doors were shut and the windows were rolled up, Valaran turned to her and held up three fingers, “Three questions,” she explained, “I’m giving you three questions Jamie, for what you did for me,” she let that hang for only a second, “My life is already complicated enough without playing twenty questions to try and make you understand things that sometimes I don’t even fully comprehend myself.”

“I…” Jamie opened her mouth to protest. She felt like she deserved a little more than that! Sure, she only returned the favor when she rescued Val. Jamie would never, ever in her life, marginalize the sacrifices that the Cheerleader had already made on her behalf… but seriously? Only three questions?

“Three. Questions,” Val inflected once again.

Jamie’s mouth gaped open and she blurted, “Can you read my mind?”

“What? No,” Valaran answered with a baffled wince and dropped one finger from her countdown.

“Wait no that wasn’t a question!” Jamie barked, “I was only saying that because… you seemed to be answering what I was thinking and…”

“I was cutting you off,” Valaran shook her head with a frown, “in an effort to make you understand how serious I am about… about the… about the three questions?”

“but come on that doesn’t count!” Jamie complained.

Valaran grunted and dropped her head back against the headrest. She stared directly out the front windshield rather than at Jamie. The silence lasted for a few long seconds before her third finger rose back up.

“Thank you,” Jamie beamed, “you’re so nice.”

“I am not nice,” Val insisted, she kept her gaze forward, “now ask your questions.”

“Alright…” Jamie nodded and took a deep breath, “The first question is….” she had a lot of questions though? How was she going to distill them down to just three? Three questions? Three!? She dug around until she thought she’d hit the most important of them, maybe she should just focus on the questions most relevant to her current situation? “Alright… okay… Who are you?

“I am Valaran Winters,” the Cheerleader replied, she dropped a finger, “I am a Gloomvale native, got into the school through the ‘locals’ program so…” she shrugged to finish that sentence. Jamie gasped, and began to feel insulted, “I’m the firstborn in my family, got a little sister you’d probably like, goofy like you…”

“Val you know this isn’t what I…” Jamie began to object.

Valaran continued through her objection, “I’m also the current Huntress in a relatively long line.”

Jamie cut off abruptly, and so did Val. That was definitely the answer to her question. After a moments silence Jamie nodded, “okay, and what is that?” Val dropped another finger, “No come on!”

“That’s a second question,” Val told her.

“That… is, clarification on the first question!” Jamie insisted shaking her head, “You cant just say ‘I’m the Huntress’ and leave it like that as if I’m going to know what the fuck you’re talking about?”

“Fine,” Val hissed and lifted the finger back up but groaned in clear frustration. “The Huntress is a centuries old protector of Gloomvale, we’re always women, our job is to… ugh… to hunt monsters around town? Trust me it’s not actually a lot more complicated than that in execution.”

“Centuries old… monster hunters.” Jamie again recalled that conversation she had a long time ago with another cheerleader about the way ‘The Cheerleader’s’ story lined up with some of the town's old mythologies. Seemed like they were legitimized beyond myth now to Jamie's perspective. “So is it like… Hereditary? Was your mom the last Huntress?” Val dropped a finger, “No cut that out Val!”

“That is another question,” Valaran inflected.

“No it’s not!” Jamie insisted.

“Yes it is!” Val returned, apparently not willing to budge this time.

“Fine!” Jamie exploded, “Fine! Don’t answer it! Don’t answer it then Val! That’s not my second question! I don’t need to know if it’s hereditary! Put your finger back up!” Val lifted the finger back up. Jamie smacked the glove compartment irritably, “Fuck!”

“Don’t hit my car,” Valaran measuredly scolded her.

“I take it back,” Jamie snapped, “You aren’t nice.”

“Told you.”

“Okay second question,” Jamie took a deeper breath. She thought she had a good second question… at least in terms of how it all related to herself, “What was… that thing that tried to kill us the other night?”

“It was an Incubus,” Valaran replied mechanically, though Jamie thought she heard a drop, or a husky quality to Val’s voice now, like she didn’t want to discuss it anymore than Jamie had actually wanted to ask… but maybe also knew that it was an important thing to discuss regardless, “A demon of the Third Sphere. They eat life force which they are able to extract through various applications of…” she fell silent for a beat, not long, but long enough, “sexual assault.”

“That’s horrible,” Jamie mumbled and looked down at her hands. It brought it back. To know for certain what it was she’d been saved from, and what it had cost.

“It’s not really worse than any other demon in practice,” Valaran admitted, she seemed to not be talking to Jamie this time, only saying the words out loud for her benefit, “Most demons feed on life force, they each have their own horrible way to get at it. The Incubus just does it their way.”

“Wait, don’t you mean Succubus?” Jamie frowned. It seemed like a stupid observation even to herself, but she was confused regardless.

“Same thing,” Valaran explained.

“It’s kind of not?” Jamie sent right back.

“Do you call a female Vampire a Fempire?” Valaran finally glanced over at her, ill-humored, “You an expert now Mcalister?”

“No I guess not,” Jamie mumbled in answer to both questions and dropped her gaze back to her folded hands. Sufficiently rebuffed.

“Ask your third question Jamie,” Val insisted in a quiet voice and resumed her practice of staring out the front windshield.

Jamie was down to her final question now and for some reason, even though it was theoretically as limited and valuable as the other two… it seemed like she needed to be all the more careful and thoughtful for it. She scratched the inner recesses of her brain for something that would be relevant, that might somehow unfold the totality of Valaran’s world for her to see…

“Come on let’s wrap this up?” Val hurried her after awhile of silence. The statement drew Jamie’s attention back over to Val and what she saw stilled her mind. She simply observed her friend again. The way she sat back in the chair and looked ahead. Disaffected, stoic, collected, confident… but once again, Jamie thought she could just about see the weight there… the slightest, near imperceptible, droop of her shoulders maybe?

“Are you okay?” Jamie found herself asking before she even really thought about it, but once the words were out she didn’t feel the urge to take them back.

Valaran visibly stiffened, after a quiet beat she dropped a finger and said, “How many times are we going to play this little game Jamie?” She raised her finger back up, “I’m serious, now ask your question.”

“So am I,” Jamie stood her ground. “That was my question.” It was the question, she realized. She was going to be a doctor one day wasn’t she? She needed to ask questions relevant to herself… “The most important one.”

Valaran turned her head to look at Jamie. Her last finger dropped first… then the hand altogether down into the seat at her side. Her expression was still very hard to read. The brow was mildly pinched and Jamie knew her friend might be upset… but something in Val’s eyes didn’t feel like anger. Then after a much longer silence than any of the preceding ones, Val’s gaze broke and dropped, “I will be,” she answered at last in nearly a whisper.

Jamie reached over the middle armrest and took the hand that had just fallen, “Good.” She said simply.

Valaran took a deep, deeeep breath after that, she actually squeezed Jamie’s hand a little before pulling her own free and added, “Thank you… we should get back before one of us misses any more classes? My professors are pissed enough at me as it is.”

“Yeah, alright,” Jamie nodded. They stepped out of the car and started back toward the campus together. She then suddenly felt a strange sense of deja vu and shuddered, “I… You know I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to leave the campus and cross this parking lot in the dark ever again…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Val intoned, “I always watch…” she trailed away in that way somebody did when they’d said too much.

Jamie had caught it though, she perked up and stared sideways at the Cheerleader, “What? You always watch what?”

Valaran half sighed half groaned and she said, “I always watch you… when you make your... stupid 10 P.M. run for your life.”

“You DO?” Jamie grinned at her, not quite believing her.

“Well… not always,” Valaran deflected, “but if there’s evidence of something prowling around? You’re always leaving the building so late Mcalister… it’s like you're challenging a werewolf!”

Oh my God she’s telling the Truth! Jamie realized and she sucked in a breath and stared at Valaran with a renewed warmth of emotion. Three questions, Jamie realized, were more than kind. Jamie hadn’t actually been making things even at all! How many nights might she have been gobbled up by, if not an Incubus or... werewolf, some other creature of the dark if Gloomvale’s Guardian wasn’t keeping a watch over her? How many times over did she owe Valaran her life? She suddenly felt very small in a dangerous world… and Valaran was clearly very uncomfortable now as well… so Jamie found the first thing she could think to say that might break the tension, “So did you enjoy gawking at me?”

“Heh,” Valaran made a sound. It was a laugh! One single breath of a laugh and then a smile, a real smile and not just the lift of her lip. Jamie felt proud, “I tell you what Mcalister,” Val said, “Since the ghost is up anyway, why don’t I just drive you home from now on?”
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5 - Complicating Matters


“That’s enough for tonight I think,” Professor Mary Johnston yawned after scribbling down a few more factoids on the blackboard for Jamie to take down. She was a good looking woman in her mid 30’s with a larger build than most medical or educational sorts, she sported unkempt short blonde hair, and a pair of flattering spectacles over grey eyes, “Go ahead and take these notes down jamie then we can close up for the day.”

Jamie jotted the information as quickly as she could, keeping her eyes down and her brow furrowed as though she was utterly concentrated. Then she bagged up her things, stood and hurried toward the door.

“Miss Mcalister?” Professor Johnston cleared her throat. Jamie’s gait slowed before she reached the door, it was so near she might be able to just press on through… instead she slowed to a stop and, feeling a heat she wanted to ignore, turned to face her Professor.

“Uh, yes Professor?” she asked, feigning obliviousness. Mary’s brow furrowed in response to this and she tilted his head as she looked at Jamie. Then without saying anything she pointed at the floor in front of her desk.

Jamie felt her skin prickling. She didn’t want to do this shit anymore! Her mind drifted back to that night, that cold heartless… Incubus. The way it didn’t care, the way it kissed her without passion and stole away all of her control, the way it only cared what it wanted, “A-actually Professor…” Jamie stammered, “I was… thinking maybe it was time for a… change?”

Mary did not answer immediately. Though she did reach up to remove her glasses and set them down on her desk in front of her, “You were?”

“Yes I… was?” Jamie gupled. The vibe of the room already didn’t feel good. She’d known a lot of her professors would be irritated that she’d had missed her glasses the previous day… and Mary Johnston most of all. Worse she couldn’t help but find Mary’s commanding insistence drawing a blush to her cheeks.

“Does this have something to do with why you weren’t in my classroom last night Miss Mcalister?” Mary demanded.

“Um… Yes,” Jamie replied, she would have looked to the floor except that Mary was looking cold daggers into her soul now and Jamie was certain it would be a bad idea, “a little bit.”

“Of course, and do you understand how very disrespectful of you that was?” Mary asked. Jamie shivered… for several reasons.

Little Bug. Little Insect…

“Professor…” Jamie took a deep shaky breath and reminded herself that she was a new Jamie! This stuff had been sort of fun at first… Mary Johnston was a pretty woman, and Jamie… well she didn’t always have a lot of options… but after the other night she had sworn to never again be afraid or controlled! To stand her ground! “I don’t think we should be doing this anymore. It was… fun, for awhile but I…” the Professors expression went impossibly colder, “and you know I’d never say anything?”

“Come. Here. Mouse,” Mary inflected and pointed more insistently. Jamie’s began to breath fearfully and deeply, “Or do you not care at all about your grades?” Jamie’s heart nearly exploded at the thread and she found herself approaching Mary in small steps that did eventually take her to the very spot that Mary had demanded.

“You… wouldn’t fail me?” Jamie pleaded.

“No of course not little mouse,” Mary’s tone softened a bit and Jamie felt the tension leave her shoulders. Mary reached up and cupped one of Jamie’s cheeks… she leaned into it, “I would never deny our future a healer of your caliber… but you have an opportunity to leave our school the top of your class.” Mary’s hand brushed back Jamie’s hair and wrapped around her slender shoulders until the fingers were resting up against the back of her nape. Jamie bit her lip.

“I do…” she murmured quietly and looked to the floor. Her vision started to blur. So much for a new me…

“Good,” Mary smiled, her smirk appeared a mixture of kindness and predation while her other hand arm wrapped around Jamie’s back to ensure her little mouse wasn’t going to get away, “Well then… you missed my class yesterday. I don’t need to know why, I can accept that students have some unavoidable setbacks from time to time… but you do know what it means?”

“Yes… Mistress” Jamie squeaked. She couldn’t meet Mary’s eyes tonight.

“Better,” Mary purred, “How would you like to accept your punishment dear?”

______________________________________________________________________

“So SO what! I’m still a rock star! I got my rock moves, and I don’t neeeed you!” Val sang along with the radio and tapped a drumline on her steering wheel where she was parked, waiting at the curb for her new nightly escort mission.

The volume was cranked, blasting her ears and her senses. She let the music completely wash over her and drown out any other worries or cares for as long as it might prove a viable distraction… but nothing was working much for long anymore. On top of everything else, Val realized she was coming down with a whole new problem unlike any she had ever faced before.

She had a Mcalister problem!

Valaran didn’t know what possessed her to offer the ride home every night. It was a dangerous precedent to make. It was one thing to look after Jamie from a distance, even overtly if circumstances demanded it, but it was unsafe to be too closely connected with her. Best case scenario Jamie was going to get hurt… worst case… a vengeful Vampire might catch the Huntresses scent on poor ordinary Jamie while Val wasn’t around to protect her!

So while she sang her heart out at the radio, Valaran silently affirmed that she would make riding Jamie home at nights the last major step in the Mcalister friendship program. She felt a lot worse about limiting relations than she ever realized possible, but Val knew it was best for both of them.

A light tap on the window drew her attention and she quickly doused the volume. She glanced to the passenger side door and saw Jamie standing there. Val reached to click the unlock button… but her finger paused for a split second, she noted bags around the eyes, indicating Jamie had been crying, not much… but some. Val clicked the locks and angled her neck to indicate Jamie could let herself in.

Once the door was open Jamie’s scent confirmed she’d been crying. A twinge of salt in the air that forced Val to suppress the urge to grip the steering wheel tighter. Alright, she thought to herself, operation let Jamie down can hold off for an evening…

“Hey there kiddo,” Val greeted mirthlessly, “Your chariot awaits!”

“Thank you,” Jamie acknowledged with some uncharacteristic restraint… or at least, uncharacteristic to what Val had so far been treated with by her, “thank you for doing this… oh hey… I’m older than you?”

“I’m not doing a lot,” Valaran minimized instinctively, ignoring the shot about their age difference. Being a ‘kiddo’ had nothing to do with somebody's age in Valaran’s estimation, “honestly, letting me drive you home is probably saving me a little extra time at night since I don’t have to hang around and watch you hoof it the whole way…”

“So… you’re still going out tonight?” Jamie rose out of her melancholy a bit to give Val a side eye of unnecessary concern, “To like… hunt monsters or something?”

“That is what I do yes,” Val bit back any more defensive remarks as she started the car rolling, “though most nights there’s nothing even to find.”

“But Val you almost died!” Jamie reiterated her complaint from the morning after the fight, “Don’t you think that’s a little…”

“Jamie it’s not like a volunteer summer camp situation,” Val interrupted her this time, her jaw mildly clenched, “I’m only doing what I have to.”

“But you don’t have to!?” Jamie pushed.

“We are not having this conversation,” Val shook her head, “Why were you crying?”

“What!?” Jamie’s expression went wide with shock, “I… wasn’t!” It didn’t take a genius to know she was lying, even with the scent in the air.

“Yes you were,” Val told her simply, “I can smell it.”

“Jesus Christ…” Jamie muttered, then folded her arms, “It’s none of your business!”

“Fine,” Val swooped in with the advantage, “neither is what I choose to do with my time after I drop you off. Deal?”

Jamie’s mouth opened and closed silently, her shoulders drooped with such defeat and the mild scent of tears enhanced… indicating that Mcalister’s eyes had misted over. Valaran felt like garbage… Jamie turned her head away to stare out the window without another word. The silence stretched the whole short trip to the sidewalk at the Dorm entrance… the sense of having wronged her new… friend permeated Val’s psyche like a twisted knife the entire ride.

She didn’t buck up until just as Jamie was about to step out, “How about… another question?” Val offered up a little more quickly than she ordinarily spoke.

“A…” Jamie looked confused at her for a moment like she didn’t understand, but then her brow and her shoulders rose a bit, “You mean… like a fourth question?”

“Yeah,” Val nodded, “maybe… from now on, if we’re going to be doing this trip every night, I’ll give you one question a night?” Jamie’s eyebrows practically rose to the top of her forehead at the generosity of this offer.

“Really?” she asked, “You mean it?”

“Yeah that way you can… assuage your curiosity and I won't be… I don’t know… swamped by your inquisitiveness?” What the fuck am I doing? Val chided herself, How does this work with the Disengage from Mcalister program!? She ignored herself.

Jamie thought about it for a moment and then nodded to herself when she thought of something, “You said you watched me home at night… but that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why did you start?”

“It makes a lot more sense than you realize,” Val informed her, though she accepted that it was a valid question, it wasn’t like Val had just always been guard dogging Jamie, there was an inciting incident. “Last year there was Warg loose in town, sort of a big monster wolf, I noticed that I was finding its territory skirting nearer to the school at night, and finally that it was stalking someone in particular.”

Jamie’s expression read as a personal revelation, “The big not-wolf thing I thought I saw!” She swallowed a thick gulp, “so I wasn’t imagining it…”

“Nope,” Val shook her head, while she had never spoken to Jamie about this, it didn’t surprise her, everybody in town occasionally saw something strange eventually. It was impossible to avoid in a supernatural hotbet like Gloomvale “I guess you weren’t.”

“So then… the other night wasn’t the first time you saved my life?” Jamie put together. Valaran made sure to keep her gaze pointedly away, though she could very much feel the uncomfortable waves of emotion that seemed to be radiating from the woman beside her.

“Well there’s no way to be certain that it would have actually ever attacked you…” Valaran tried to qualify.

“Thank you,” Jamie’s voice shook a little as she opened the car door to step out, “You really are nice.”

“No I’m…” the door clanked shut and Valaran only managed to get out the last of her sentence to an empty seat, “...not.” The Cheerleader sighed. It was just about time to go find a good place to change into her uniform. But first things were first. She made sure to stay parked and keep her eye on Jamie until the older woman was inside the Dorm with the door latched shut before the Huntress leaned down over the passenger seat and began sniffing around.

Jamie’s tears had her concerned. She didn’t know what she was looking for exactly, the scent of drugs maybe, or the tricky tale tale scents of physical abuse… what she found instead was actually a little easier to pick up than the scent of a bruise or injury...

Val sat up in her seat, her jaw clenched. Time to get dressed!

__________________________________________________________________

Once Jamie was inside the building she felt utterly spent… like she was on one of those emotional roller coasters everybody was always talking about. After her class with Professor Johnston she needed a cold shower and a bucket of Ice cream… and then she was so worried about Valaran now her stomach was all in knots… and despite that, despite getting shut down by Miss Winters at the start of the car ride, despite her disaffected cold attitude… by the end of the car ride, Valaran had left her feeling better, safer… like someone cared, really cared.

Jamie had really needed that… but it wasn’t enough to completely wash away her shame either. She hugged herself as she marched down the hall toward her room, but just as with the other night, she was forced to stop when Jeffrey Dice poked his head out of his room across the hall.

“Yo Jamie!” he greeted as she reached her door.

Christ, Jamie did her best to keep her displeasure off her expression but it was sometimes really annoying that Jeffrey couldn’t just let her come home in peace… then again maybe he just liked to make sure she was getting home okay? She was always super late, and if anyone was going to notice she was missing and call the police first… it was probably him. “Evening Jeff,” she attempted a smile and didn’t quite make it, “How are you tonight?”

“Good good,” he nodded then he sort of winced, “Hey how come you told me Val Winters drank too much the other night?”

Jamie blinked like a deer caught in the headlights, “Wh-what?” she asked.

“You know when you told me Val was out drunk?” he returned pointedly, “I asked her about it today and she did not know what I was talking about at all.”

“She was pretty blacked out…” Jamie mumbled and quickly fished out her keys, fidgeting with her lock as quickly as she could, “anyway, I’m super tired tonight Jeff I’ll catch you later alright? Goodnight!”

“.... night.” Jeffrey returned after more silence than Jamie cared to consider before she arrived safely in her room with the door latched and locked. She then dropped her back up against it and she slid down into a squat before she lowered her head into her hands.

It was too much? Wasn’t it? It was all just too Goddamn much! She couldn’t unpack it all. Her mind kept wanting to wander back to Professor Johnston, but then that would remind her of the Succ… Incubus, and that reminded her of the fear that it was probably still out there among God only knew how many other terrible things, and that reminded her that her new friend was probably right now putting herself in harm's way of all those horrible things…

The Cheerleader… Gloomvale’s protector. What a great story in theory, and she was great! Everything Jamie knew about Val made her like and appreciate the woman more… but she could not at all erase what it had felt like, sitting behind the wheel, watching a monster out of nightmare positioned ready to murder her hero. The Cheerleader protected Gloomvale, great, who the fuck was protecting the Cheerleader?

“It sure as fuck isn’t Professor Johnston!” Jamie slammed her fist back against her door and stood up. It sure as fuck isn’t me either, she realized despondently, no it wasn’t Jamie Mcalister! She couldn’t even change her own stupid behavior enough not to immediately fall back in with her worst habits! She could still feel the Professor's hands on her, ghosting over her body, controlling her… and the only reason she felt disgusted for it was because of memories of a real actual monster that the Professor had dredged up! Jamie grabbed a towel from the cupboard. She needed a shower.
______________________________________________________________________

Mary Johnston stretched out in the driver's seat of her Toyota after pulling into her driveway. What a lovely evening it had turned out to be. She didn’t know precisely what had gotten into Jamie, but she quite liked her little mouse’s new spark of independence. She’d been growing tired of her submissive young student, but there had been an undeniable thrill to find and dominate that little seed of resistance. It added a whole new dynamic to her pet. Perhaps she’d give her mouse a new title tomorrow, something that more encouraged these minor power struggles. Make an opponent out of her? A… Rebel? Yes… her little Rebel with hopes and dreams to conquer and control.

Easy Mary, she reached down and settled her blouse, then checked her mirror to ensure she wasn’t blushing overmuch. The last thing she needed was to muss up her car over a student… not when there was yet more fun slotted for the evening. She finally stepped out of the car and started toward the house, a nice private place deeper into the woodlands like most of the wealthier inhabitants of Gloomvale. She fished the keys out of her purse and was just about to use them when a powerful pair of arms seized her from behind and slammed her up against the front door.

“AH!” Mary cried out as her left arm was seized and twisted backward, then up so that the back of her palm rested beneath her shoulder blades. Pinned so tightly that if she squirmed or tried very hard to move, she was going to feel a lot of pain. “Oh my God! What’s happening!?”

“God’s got nothing to do with it,” she heard a femninine whisper up against her ear. Mary tried to look back but as soon as she did her head was slammed up against the door and her arm jostled specifically to increase the pain, “Don’t turn around.”

“OW! AAAAGGGHHH! Alright! Alright Jesus I won’t look back what the fuck!? Who are you? What do you want from me!”

“I want you to never even think about touching one of your students ever again,” the voice whispered and Mary’s eyes widened. What!? This person knew about her pets!? How? Did this have to do with Jamie’s new independent streak?

“What are you… talking about?” Mary attempted to play dumb… then she flinched and whimpered when something heavy slammed against the door to the right of her head. When her eyes drifted that way she could see what looked like one of the sole of one of the knee high boots from the women’s wrestling team… then further up the green spandex of… “Are you… one of our cheerleaders?”

“I’m The Cheerleader bitch,” the voice hissed again. Whispered, disguised.. Which meant she probably lacked the intention to kill… Mary needed to not give reason for that…

She found herself oddly fixated on ‘the Cheerleaders’ ankle… it was so high, level with her head, her attacker was very flexible… oh how she’d like to snap a shackle around that ankle… she bit her lip… then bit it hard enough to draw blood as she felt her arm twisted again, she gritted her teeth and clamped her eyes shut against the pain.

“Nghhh… that’s an… urban legend!” Mary hissed.

“Not so much,” the woman behind her whispered, “Now what are you going to do?”

“I… what does it even matter to you what I dahaahhhh!” her arm was pulled up so far she was almost certain the arm was going to break, “I promise!” she cried, “I swear I won’t touch them! None of them! Ever again! Just please, you're going to break my arm!”

“I should do it anyway,” the woman holding her was pissed off, that much was certain, her rage seethed through her every whispered word, “I’m only giving you this one chance Mary. If I ever so much as suspect that you’ve done anything with one of your students ever again… Then I will do what I do.”

“Wh-what do you do?” Mary frowned, even though she felt reasonably certain the attacker wasn’t going to kill her, she felt a spike of fear regardless.

The woman holding her leaned in to her so close Mary could feel the breath against the back of her ear then the Cheerleader spoke the three most chill inducing words Mary Johnston thought she had ever heard in her life, “I kill monsters.”

Suddenly the pressure was gone. She’d been released. Mary spun around, glancing wildly for a sight line… but there was nobody there… the Cheerleader was gone. Mary found it troublesome to keep her breathing even while she fumbled with her keys. Once she had her shaking in order she hurried inside, slammed and locked the door behind her.

Professor Johnston took a few solid moments to compose herself, but as her breathing began to even off she found herself grinning with exuberance. After only a few more seconds she surged toward the kitchen, she picked up the phone from the dock and was about to dial when she thought better of it. If her attacker was quick enough and skilled enough to put her off her game like this, she could be listening to the phone lines… that left the the other way.

Mary moved away from the kitchen into the study. She poked through her bookshelf until she set her finger against the book “Pentagrams and other Portals” tipped it back and watched as the shelf slid open to reveal a cavernous opening and a stairway downward. As soon as she was on the other side she pressed the button to close the passage behind her and fished out her flashlight.

A half minute later she reached the bottom of the stairway into a lit, square, stone bricked chamber with a desk in the corner… and two naked human beings, one male and one female chained and gagged up against the wall. She ignored them for now. Once she sat down, she slid the code signaler over to herself and tapped in her credentials in morse code to begin the conversation.

It wasn’t long after she tapped the message that she heard him… his voice echoed through her mind like a stray thought, but one nobody could mistake as their own, “Mary?”

“It’s me,” she answered back with thought alone, her excited grin had slowly morphed into a smile of victory, “I am messaging to talk to you about my suspicions of our cheerleaders this year?”

“Do go on?” the thought encouraged.

“I was just assaulted in my home by a woman I did not get a good look at. I did see enough of her leg that I feel we can move beyond suspicion.”

“Mary, Mary, so brave of you, but I’m going to need you to just come out and say it?” the thought insisted. For the briefest instant she felt a chill on the back of her neck. She knew why he wanted her to say it. If she spoke, it meant it was on her if she was wrong… but she wasn’t wrong!

“I’m certain,” She smiled, speaking at the air, “The Huntress... she’s one of our cheerleaders.”

“Excellent,” her thoughts echoed, “Let’s move on to the next step then shall we?”
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6 - Gloomvale’s Guardian

Jamie left Professor Johnston’s class the following evening very confused. Throughout the class, she’d gotten the vague impression that Miss Johnston did not want to look at her… then when it was over, Mary had sent her off with uncharacteristic curtness. It left Jamie wondering if she’d done something wrong… however when she was free of the classroom she felt a sense of relief…

Maybe she thought about what I said yesterday with a clearer head and agrees? Jamie considered, however if that was the case, she hoped the Professor might at least come right out and say it… It wasn’t that Jamie wasn’t ready for this thing to be over, but if it was going to be over, then she wanted to at least know that it was over!

In any case, the early dismissal meant she was out of class much sooner than usual, so she anticipated the need to wait a bit for her ride… but when she stepped outside Val’s car was parked up against the sidewalk, the enormous Post Traumatic Stress Inducing fender lump and all. Val was in her seat engrossed in a book, or perhaps more accurately a tome that looked like it was about a thousand years old!

Jamie tapped on the glass. Even though it had not seemed like Val knew she was there… the woman looked up without any trace of being startled and provided the same ‘get in’ neck gesture as the previous night after unlocking the door. “Evening kiddo,” Val greeted, causing Jamie to scrunch her nose up a little bit. She did not like the ‘kiddo’ thing one bit, “Feeling okay tonight?”

“Yeah I guess?” Jamie nodded, “What are you reading?”

“Sure you want to know?” Val closed the book and slid it under her seat, “This’ll count as your question?”

“Ugh…” Jamie groaned and she glared. She weighed the odds that the book had something to do with Valaran’s world or not. It looked like an ancient enough thing that she decided to gamble on it, “Yes, fine.”

“It’s a book about Incubi,” Val’s jaw clenched just noticeably. She didn’t want me to ask afterall.

“Why are you reading something that horrible?” Jamie glanced down at the foot of Val’s seat where the corner of the book poked out with distaste. If she owned any such books, she would burn them personally!

“Oh sorry,” Val chuckled. It was a startling sound to Jamie because she’d never heard it before… then she realized it was a fake laugh when Valaran held her hand out toward Jamie as if in greeting, “Valaran Winters, I’ll be your Huntress for the evening?”

“So you’re going out looking for her?” Jamie hugged herself, she felt sick to her stomach at the thought.

“Yeah I’m going out looking for her,” Val nodded, her fingers tightened on the steering wheel, she then hissed, “and when I find her, I’m going to stuff her tongue up her own asshole!”

“That sounds unpleasant,” Jamie mumbled and looked away, “just… be careful.”

“Always,” Val put the car in gear and drove the short ways across the parking lot to the Dorm.

Time passed this way. Every day after school, Jamie would ride home with Val, which was their only real contact most of the time, and was provided the opportunity to ask one question.

“Was your Mom the last Huntress?” Jamie asked next.

“No it isn’t hereditary,” Val had answered, “The Huntress isn’t something that is bestowed at random. Thank you for your question.”

The weekend happened, over which Jamie had to wait an agonizing two days to ask her followup question. She officially hated weekends after this, “How is the Huntress… um… ‘bestowed?’”

“You might call it fate?” Val had replied after a moment of thought, “The… power, I guess it’s power, it chooses somebody according to a curriculum. Thank you for your question.”

A few days later after bungling and wasting some questions on duds, Jamie circled back around to her habit of following up on loose threads of her previous questions, “What curriculum does ‘fate’ use to choose the Huntress?”

Val had hesitated on this one, Jamie didn’t understand why until Val had grudgingly grumbled out, “I was told that it’s got something to do with finding a person who's already,” she’d cleared her throat, “extraordinary in some way… but don’t believe everything your told, there was nothing very special about me.” Jamie doubted that… she doubted that very much, “Thanks for your questions.”

Over the next weekend when going over the questions she’d already asked, and the answers she received, it struck Jamie that she missed an important part of Val’s answer that night so when she got in the car again on Monday she immediately and excitedly offloaded her question… perhaps too excitedly because it wasn’t worded strategically, “Who was it that told you about the selection curriculum? Was it the last Huntress?”

“No,” Val shook her head, her expression however made it clear she did not like this question, Jamie wondered why, “There is only ever one Huntress. The next won’t appear until I’m dead,” then she cut off any further communication with her customary, “Thank you for your question.”

Jamie could have kicked herself. She wanted to know who told Valaran she was the Huntress. Another wasted question.

No matter however because Tuesday arrived shortly after! Immediately proceeding another confusing lecture by Mary Johnston, who had made no advances on Jamie since the night of Jamie’s protestation, but whom every now and then Jamie thought she caught observing her with nothing less than naked lust, Jamie almost sprinted from class to her ride.

Right out of the front doors she knew something was different. Ordinarily when she arrived, Valaran was too cool for school. The Cheerleader was either utterly relaxed and all ‘hey kiddo, your chariot awaits’ or else she was deep in (sometimes frustrated with) some old book of monsters, but not this night. This night, Val was sitting stock straight in the driver's seat with her hands clenched on the wheel… then she flinched when Jamie tapped on the glass.

“Is everything alright?” Jamie asked as she slid into the passenger seat and observed her friend carefully. “You look… on edge?”

“I know what you’re going to ask,” Valaran didn’t beat around the bush with this sort of thing, it was a quality Jamie appreciated most nights, but she was especially blunt here.

“You do?” Jamie asked. It sounded like a stupid thing to say even as she said it. Valaran was ‘The Huntress’ and infinitely more suited to the long game than Jamie was… if Jamie was thinking about her questions this long in advance, Val would obviously have picked up on the trends…

“Yes… I do,” Val put the car in gear, “Thank you for your question.”

“Hey!” Jamie sat up straighter, definitely offended, “Come on Val don’t…. Don’t do that!”

“Don’t do what? You asked a question,” Valaran drove faster away from the school building than usual.

“That’s not fair and you know it,” Jamie stood her ground, “You never treat my casual talk as a question. That’s not how you set this up!”

“I didn’t set you up with anything Jamie, I never gave you a rulebook,” Val was fidgeting. She never fidgeted, ever! They slid to a mildly screeching stop at the sidewalk in front of the Dorm but Jamie didn’t move to get out. Val wasn’t looking at her but no doubt felt her gaze because she finally smacked the steering wheel and asked, “What!?”

“Valaran, if I ever ask you a question you don’t want to answer… you know you can just tell me that right?”

“That’s…” Valaran winced, “that’s not how I… set this up.” Jamie’s confusion was palpable until her friend clarified, “I promised you I would answer your questions… and I meant that I would answer them truthfully. If I don’t then I lied to you and that’s… that isn’t fair.”

“Well I don’t want you to lie to me,” Jamie agreed, “but I don’t… I don’t want to hurt you either. I just… want to understand you. So… Val, if you don’t want to answer one of my questions, I’m giving you permission to tell me that… okay?”

The effect her words had on the Cheerleader were immediate. Val’s body relaxed, and she sagged with obvious relief. Though she put a hand to her forehead and tensed up again shortly after before she said, “Ask your question.”

Jamie bit her lip. Should she? Now she felt like it was on her if she asked what she wanted to ask… but then she needed to ask the things she wanted to know? She needed to let Val know what she wanted to know too… “Who was it that told you how the Huntress is selected?”

Valaran shook her head and she uttered a quiet mirthless grunt of a laugh, “Jamie I…” Jamie reached out and touched Val’s shoulder. The gesture caused her friend to look over at her and Jamie saw the film of wetness over her friends eyes, “I can’t…” Val pleaded with her, “please don’t make me…”

“Okay!” Jamie instinctively pulled Val toward her and wrapped her arms around the Cheerleader, “It’s okay you don’t have to!” Why did I ask! Goddammit why did I ask!

“I just can’t,” Val shook in her arms… and yet after a short moment when the Cheerleader pulled away Jamie could see that Val had not let one of her tears spill out. It made Jamie worry about how much the Cheerleader was suppressing.

“How about this then?” Jamie put forth, “What’s your favorite color?”

Val half smiled, her expression thankful, “It’s… it’s blue.”

“Well then Cheerleader,” Jamie shot her a very, very, light punch on the shoulder, “Maybe you should get yourself a blue onesie for that costume of yours? You ever think about that?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Val chuckled, sniffed and ran her forearm quickly across her eyes… probably just to remove the evidence, “Thank you for your question.”

“Yeah well missie,” Jamie kept it light, “don’t think that hasn’t just fractalled off and inspired tomorrow’s question.”

“I figured it might…” Val nodded, then she did something very uncharacteristic, she reached out and she touched Jamie’s shoulder, of her own accord, “Goodnight Mcalister.”

______________________________________________________________________

“Yeah… g’night,” Jamie turned and leapt out the door to hide her blush, “Thanks for the ride! Oh! Mer..." but whatever she said got cut off when the door shut. Val watched her go, but Jamie just shrugged and hurried off toward the Dorm.

Way to fall apart Winters, Val thought to herself with no shortage of disgust… but she wasn’t willing to speak of Kenji… not that day, maybe not ever.

Furthermore, Valaran was already doing a shit job of cutting her bridges with Jamie, opening up about past traumas would only entrench the issue deeper. So far Valaran took enough care to keep track of whether or not anybody noticed her providing Jamie with a lift. Nobody was likely to be putting together that She and Jamie were chummy anytime soon… but as their relationship was fast boiling down to just a single question a night… was that so bad? Maybe that was okay wasn’t it?

She needed to continually remind herself that she wasn’t putting Jamie in too much danger doing this. It was five or ten minutes a night. She spent more time with every member of the Cheer Squad than she did with Jamie! Nobody could fault her for giving herself this much could they? So why should she fault herself!

Val sighed and dropped her face into her hands for a brief moment before shifting the car in gear. She drove five minutes out before pulling over into the parking lot of Gloomvale park. It was abandoned that time of night, so the restrooms there made a good place to change into her Cheer uniform… and what a decision that was turning into.

“You may not want to pick something this flashy,” Kenji had told her when she brought it in, arrogant, young, and stupid… but even with something as important as her armor, he’d always been supportive of her decisions, “but I suppose I can’t fault you points for style.”

She made short work of getting dressed. When she was dressed she pulled the brown pleather jacket on over the top and took a quick glance of herself in the mirror. Val was no longer much prone to vanity… but she wasn’t an idiot. She looked good in the uniform, filled it out well, and she felt like she’d made the right choice.

The Cheerleader, they called her. It wasn’t Huntess, it wasn’t Valaran… it seemed to make people around town more comfortable and less afraid. In a sense, limited as her options had been, at least the uniform was her choice… when so much of her life was not. Now that Jamie had put it in her mind though, a little part of Valaran wondered what it’d have looked like with blue spandex instead of the green…

She returned to her vehicle and pulled out of the parking lot. As far as ‘hunting’ went, there wasn’t a lot going on in town just then. The Incubus had gone to ground somewhere… it was only a matter of time before she resumed preying on the townspeople, but for the time being Val couldn’t even catch her scent anywhere. Book work was providing no aid either. She couldn’t find shit about where Incubi liked to roost, and so the work of the Huntress was currently as simple as driving a few circuits around town each night via the woodland back-roads, keeping an eye, ear and nose open for oddities.

That night the Cheerleader didn’t have to go far. Almost as soon as she was out of the school district and into the back roads between the school and the residential zones, Val caught a whiff of brimstone and slammed on the brakes.

“There are only two things in the entire world that smell of brimstone my Huntress. One of them is not native to the Gloomvale area,” he’d smiled, “The other is a Demon.”

Val stepped out of the car and popped the trunk. She walked around to the back, shunted aside a slew of useless school crap then pulled aside the flap that hid a compartment of things with more practical applications for her trade. She grabbed her thigh pouch and one ivory stake which she holstered in the strap. She slipped a bracelet over her right wrist with a ring of silver tubes lining the circumference since it was never wise to go to deep out beyond the treeline without a bit of silver even when a werewolf wasn’t suspected to be prowling about. She decided to leave the crossbow. If she had scented a vampire it would be useful, but it could be cumbersome against anything else outside of very specific circumstances. In its place she grabbed the Katana and slung the sheath over her shoulders. Sufficiently geared, she closed the trunk and slipped into the woods.

The first time Valaran had ever traveled through the Gloomvale woodlands alone had been frightening. Human beings had a natural fear of the dark, and nothing was darker than a forest of trees... but with all of her senses sharpened beyond the scope of an ordinary person, the huntress no longer felt fear under the blanketed shadows of the trees. Sometimes, primarily when she wasn’t hunting a demon, it could even be sort of peaceful. It was nice to have a space where she could simply open herself to her full potential without fear of being spotted or recognized.

“Wherever possible, take the high ground,” Kenji’s advice echoed up from her memories, “keep your scent high and stay out of sight until the moment is right.”

Naturally, the Cheerleader began the hunt by scaling one of the tree’s with a few more low hanging branches than the rest. Once she was high enough up that she might be difficult to spot or scent quickly from below, she began to make her way from treetop to treetop. This was so much second nature to her now that she could accomplish the task with relative silence, at speed, while maintaining near flawless balance. She was versed in keeping her eyes open for strong sturdy branches and though it did often require a sort of trapeze walk and the occasional leap of faith, she kept up pace.

All the while, the scent of brimstone grew stronger, and while she didn’t necessarily need to know see it to know it was there, she could spot evidence on the dirt below of recent human footprints weaving through the trees here and there in the same general direction. Eventually she caught sight of a dull orange glow further ahead. Immediately she slowed her pace, switching her focus to stealth over economy of motion.

At last, silent as a chipmunk, Valaran perched on a branch seventy feet in the air over what appeared to be the remains of a demonic ritual. The leaves and ordinary brush had been swept away to form a small clearing which made space for a, still smouldering, pentagram dug sloppily into the dirt at least six feet in diameter. Five lit candles were burning away at the pentagrams main points, and several dozen more had been set up on wood blocks surrounding the area to provide for extra lighting.

This. This right here was what Val hated the most about Gloomvale! Yes, she was scenting a demon, yes she was going to have to kill it before it could cause harm to the innocent people of her town and she was happy to do so… but not every single person she was protecting from this thing was innocent! It took human beings to perform a ritual like this one, more than one! It took research, It took planning and set up time, it took scheduling and awareness of the nature of the thing you wanted to call from beyond the natural veil! There was as much human evil in this act as there was supernatural malice.

“Never make assumptions about the nature of the evil that you hunt,” Kenji’s words surfaced once more, “your duty is not to hunt monsters, but to seek and snuff out evil wherever it may be found.”

More than any supernatural power she ever had to face, Val struggled the most with human beings. Even the smartest and most cunning of monsters was limited in their ability to sleuth by a host of abnormalities and limitations imposed upon themselves for being what they were in a realm they were not intended to exist in. Werewolves couldn’t always hide their tracks and over time became notable as people without night lives, Vampires were preternaturally pale no matter how much makeup they powdered over their faces and were forced to bed down in underground locations in order to ensure a complete lack of sunlight… most demons stank of brimstone!

Human beings had no such limitations. Human beings were natural to the world they survived in, and for every fifteen monsters Val put down, she found evidence to support at least two vile human beings connected with or even responsible for some incursions, yet in all her life she had only ever successfully hunted and put a stop to a handful. Partially this was because there were moral quandaries that dominated the hunting of people… part of Val still wanted to go back and simply deal with Mary Johnston… but the Cheerleader wasn’t a cop… not yet at least, she wasn’t always able to put all the puzzle pieces together, to be judge and executioner was a hard task, choosing when a person had crossed the line from a flawed or sick individual over toward something twisted and malicious was emotionally draining.

In all likelihood Val wasn’t going to be able to figure out who had set all this shit up anytime soon. To an untrained eye the site looked fresh, but a pentagram having spawned a successful demon would steam for eternity until somebody disrupted the pattern, while many of the candles had gone out and those still lit were nearly spent. She was too late to do anything here but clean up the mess.

Nevertheless, Val remained perched, listening and waiting for any sign of unnatural disturbances in the area for nearly ten minutes before she quietly made her way down to the ground. Once there she stuck a foot in the dirt and sliced it through the path of the carved out pentagram.

The instant the pattern was disrupted the candles still lit went dark as though put out by an ill wind and the heat rising from the demonic imagery dissipated... The first sign that she wasn’t alone was when disrupting the pentagram did not reduce the scent of brimstone. The second was the swift heavy footfalls from behind of something moving fast enough to indicate it was either quadrupedal or else simply sprinting on all fours her way.

“Always be vigilant,”

The Cheerleader didn’t waste a second. She rose and sprinted towards the tree in front of her then leaped off the ground. Val ran three strides vertically up the tree and kicked off mere instants before a hulking shadow slammed into the trunk below her and raked the base of the tree hard enough to throw it off its roots!

“Know every capability of your body and treat it as an extension of yourself. Be swift and be agile, but never swagger. The difference between economy and showboating will be the difference between life and death.”

The Huntress performed an efficient backwards somersault to ensure that when she landed on the ground in the center of the broken pentagram, she was facing her enemy. It was a hulking red skinned thing with dark patches of fur, one of its arms was as big as her whole body and the other a malformed stick attached to a wide torso over short stumpy legs. The tree it had just uprooted meant that it was at least fourth sphere, and more than strong enough to splatter Valaran into the dirt with a single strike if it ever managed to hit her.

She didn’t plan to let it. Even as she’d observed and identified the threat, Val slipped a vial of holy water from her pouch with her left hand while she drew the Katana with her right. She popped the cork on the vial and spilled its contents out along the surface of the blade.

“When the time comes to kill, Be still as the water,” Kenji was with her, “when facing the unknown, never strike first.”

She followed her instructor.

Her heart beat fast with antiquated remains of her human fears that simply could not be entirely quashed, but it served only to heighten her focus and senses. She set her feet as it started to charge at her, it used it’s enormous arm as part of its mobile limbs like the unholy mockery of an enormous Gorilla. At the last second it leaped high and outstretched it’s gigantic limb with intent to squash.

In that instant, when it was airborne and would be incapable of altering its velocity and trajectory further, Valaran acted! She sliced the sword in an upward arc with speed and finesse rather than strength. She knew what the Demon, in its unholy fury, did not. The special waters coating the blade allowed the sword to cut through the arm without fault or friction. The humongous limb was severed and spiraled to the side where it thudded heavily into the dirt. Then, while the beast wailed its shrill agonized cry, Val switched her grip and made one more quick slice, cutting directly across its throat.

Valran needed only to take a single step backward to avoid being crushed by the falling body, which smouldered and bubbled, as it hit the ground… the severed head plopped somewhere off behind her a few moments after. The scent of brimstone began to die away as its body began to dissolve and decompose before her very eyes… and in the stillness that followed she had to take a few seconds to regain her barings.

Instinct was a useful tool for situations like this, but the spike of adrenaline was always slow to fade. She slammed the sword back into its sheath and glanced sharply around, though she already knew it was over.

“Fucking satanists,” she swore, blew out the candles, and at last began to march away, taking care to maintain long even breaths to help her body recover from the exhilaration… but not so much as to fall entirely off alert. She recognized what this had been. Just as she often found it difficult to hunt her less supernatural quarry, the cults and underground peoples of Gloomvale knew of their enemy as well, but not necessarily how to find her… so they sometimes set up traps like these. The Demon had been summoned to kill her… and had only risen from a dormant state under the trigger of her disruption of the Pentagram. The difference here was that she was one person, and without Kenji she was all alone... while the Goddamn cults seemed to be growing larger by the month!

Thankfully nothing unexpected occurred beyond the battle. She reached the road and her Stallion without further incident. She opened the trunk and tossed the items and weapons back in but as she began to move around toward the drivers side door she caught sight of something odd farther down the road.

A solitary human being was walking… no… more like stumbling away. Stranger still she was wearing a cheer uniform. Val felt an immediate lump of fearful concern and hurried to start the car. She drove quickly but carefully forward, even before she was even alongside her squad mate, Val could already see she was trailing Stacey Summers… but the other cheerleader appeared pale and she wasn’t walking straight… even more concerning was that she didn’t react at all as Val pulled up. Not until the Cheerleader rolled her window down and called urgently, “Stacey?” did her friend react.

Stacey stopped walking, Val braked so as to stop even with her, then turned to look at Val. As soon as they made eye contact Stacey’s long expression scrunched up with absolute misery, “V-Val?” she gasped she looked on the verge of breaking down, “oh God Val is… is that you?”

“Yeah it’s me, stay there!” Val unclipped her seat belt frantically and hurried out of the car around to the other side. Her heart was pounding twice as hard as it had all night, “Stacey what’s wrong?”

“Oh God Val it’s too hard…” Stacey began to babble and threw herself in an uncoordinated sort of way in Valaran’s direction. Val caught her friend in an uncertain embrace as she began to sob into the Cheerleader’s shoulder, “I-It’s to… hard… I… I can’t d-do it….”

“You can’t do what?” Valaran asked as gently as she could, fighting her own urge to panic. This was not like Stacey at all. “Stace? Why are you walking out here all alone? Where’s your car?”

“My… my… car?” Stacey was trembling, “I… I don’t… Val where… wh… where…” she pulled back the slightest bit and frowned as her fingers tapped a spatter of red against Val’s shoulder, “V-val is that… bl...blood?” Then, without further warning, Stacey went slack. Val audibly gasped as she felt it. Stacey was passing out.

“Stacey!?” she shouted, she carefully repositioned her squad mate in her arms so she could put the back of her hand to Stacey’s forehead. It wasn’t hot, but it was clammy… “Stacey!” She shook her friend to no response. “Fuck!” She shouted and hoisted her friend up, fumbling with the passenger side door and so she could get Stacey inside, her own breathing uncontrolled, “Hold on Stace, just hold on I’m going to get you some help!”

She felt helpless.
Last edited by Femina 4 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
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I've fallen behind on this story but I will amend that this weekend. I'm sure it's still excellent. Comments to follow later. Sorry. :blush: You write too fast! :smart:
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DrDominator9 wrote:
4 years ago
I've fallen behind on this story but I will amend that this weekend. I'm sure it's still excellent. Comments to follow later. Sorry. :blush: You write too fast! :smart:
Hehe, no problem. Just trying to strike while the iron is hot. I often have so much apathy working against me that I fall off of whatever im working on after a single chapter or two, so it feels good to have this much down and still feel the inspiration!
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7 - Doctor Midnight

One side benefit of getting home early was that Jamie now had a few little moments to herself before sleep. After Valaran had dropped her off, Jamie took a quick shower and hopped into bed where she flicked on the TV. She surfed for a few minutes before settling on a rerun of Athena, Olympian Princess, and engrossed herself in some good old fashioned Greek Mythological camp!

She was midway through a second episode when suddenly there came an alarming shuffle from the hallway followed by heavy, frantic knocking. Jamie frowned and threw off her blankets. She rushed toward the door and was about to throw open the locks before she paused with prickling fear… What if it’s a monster?

That hesitation didn’t last long however because the door thumped again and Valaran called out her name. Jamie’s new friend sounded upset so she quickly undid the latch and opened the door to a head spinner. It certainly was Val, but there was blood flecked across her top, and Stacey Summers held was unconscious in her arms.

Jamie’s mouth moved silently for a moment, uncertain what to do or say before Val simply begged, “I need your help,” and let herself in. Once Val was behind her Jamie could see Jeffrey Dice peaking out his door from across the hall at her, alarmed, “Sh-she drank too much,” Jamie babbled at him and tried not to think about the look of utter disbelief on his face as she shut the door.

Jamie spun around and hurried after Val who was laying Stacey down on the bed, “Jamie…” Val sounded panicked, “Jamie help, I don’t know what’s wrong with her!”

“Wh…” Jamie began to stammer wordlessly again but she at last found her voice in earnest, “What happened!?”

“I don’t know,” Val shook her head, “I found her walking down the road like… like she was dizzy… and then when I stopped her she just… collapsed!”

Jamie’s eyes flicked to the blood spattering on Val’s top. There wasn’t a whole lot of it but it was still concerning, “Where is she bleeding?”

“What?” Val looked stunned for an instant, as though she had no idea that Stacey was bleeding at all, then she followed Jamie’s eyes down to her top and she shook her head, “No, no that’s not hers. That’s demon blood.” Jamie’s squeak of shock must have been equally as perturbed as her expression because Val, moved on, “Jamie please? She needs help!”

Right… Jamie steeled herself, one problem at a time. She moved over to the bed to give Stacey a quick look. Just at a glance she didn’t look too bad… she didn’t have any blood on her at all and she only looked a little pale… but what Val described wasn’t a great sign. She looked back to Valaran, who looked more frightened than Jamie thought she had ever seen, a fact she would have to file away for examination later, “Why didn’t you take her to the hospital?”

Val blanched and shook her head. The response was unreal to Jamie, then the Cheerleader said something Jamie was truly shaken by, “Never take anybody to the hospital here Jamie.”

“What!?”

“Can we talk about this later?” Val begged her, “You’re studying to be a doctor aren’t you? I didn’t know where else to take her!”

“Alright,” Jamie sighed, “Just go… make yourself comfortable, I need to grab some things from the closet... but I haven’t got a whole medical ward in here Val, if something is seriously wrong with her we have to get her somewhere with actual medical equipment!”
______________________________________________________________________

The evening passed slowly for Valaran… with little to do but to stand around helplessly until Jamie finally told her to just go sit down. Jamie also began insisting that whatever was wrong with Stacey didn’t seem to be ‘serious’... except that Val knew that couldn’t be true! Stacey was acting too strangely.

In any case… Val was eventually shamed away from the bedside with the understanding that Stacey was not on deaths door by Jamie’s medical opinion, Jamie who had turned into an absolutely authoritarian nightmare over her patient… and who wouldn’t stand for Val being in the way… which left Val with nothing to do but fret, occasionally glance toward the bed to convince herself that Stacey wasn’t dying after all… and to watch TV.

The television show was insufferable though. It appeared to be about the Greek Goddess Athena, except that she had a human side kick, and kept getting involved in human affairs… on earth. At one point she fought a group of bandit raiders or something and while she had little trouble dealing with them, she didn’t just incinerate them with god powers which a god would surely do wouldn’t she?… Instead Athena sword fought with them, made strange yipping sounds, had occasional slight difficulties, and behaved altogether very mortal for a supposed goddess.

Thankfully after a couple of hours she was freed from the nightmare of fear and bad mythology when Jamie dropped into the couch beside her with a long and tired groan. “I think she’s suffering from extreme fatigue,” she informed Val, “you said that when you found her she seemed out of it?”

“A little yeah?” Val nodded, she resisted the urge to wring her hands in front of a human person.

“What did you mean by that?” Jamie asked, “Did she seem confused or overly emotional?”

“I… I don’t know about ‘overly’,” Val shrugged, thinking back to the incident, “but she was definitely confused. When I first found her she seemed to be just… walking home like a zombie… then when she saw me she started crying and… emotional I guess? Oh! She said… that she couldn’t do something? That it was too hard, but she didn’t say what it was.”

“We should have a chance to ask her whenever she wakes up,” Jamie told her. Just hearing those words, that Stacey was going to wake up did wonders for Val’s blood pressure. She finally began to relax a little, “all the signs point to exertion. Overworked her body doing something. Not extremely serious except that, like you said, she was off wandering half aware in the woods… she’s very lucky you found her before a bear or a pack of coyotes did.”

“God I could have missed her entirely?” Val realized with a pang of realization, “If that thing hadn’t been out in the woods... if I hadn’t stopped to deal with it… I could have been all the way into town already and never would have known,” she stared blankly ahead as the irony of it struck her, “Satanists saved Stacey…”

“Satanists?” Jamie was staring at her baffled again.

“Yeah,” Val nodded and relaxed some more… it wasn’t question time, but at this point Jamie had earned an explanation… and it wasn’t like there was anything else to do but wait for Stacey to wake up, “they set up a pentagram out in the woods, summoned something up from it…”

“What like… teenage satanists?” Jamie squeaked and began to wring her hands.

“No this was successful,” Val explained, “goth types are so sloppy they can only successfully summon anything on pinnacles like Halloween or Christmas and it usually gets them killed.”

“Christmas break starts next week?” Jamie pointed out.

“No,” Val shook her head again, “It wasn’t a bunch of stupid kids. When that happens they… well let’s just say there are obvious signs when the ignorant summon anything. This was a professional ritual.”

Jamie nodded in acceptance of this but was quiet for a while after. Valaran recognized what a champ Jamie had been throughout all of this. Even when discussing stuff that was naturally very disturbing to learn she was taking it in as much stride as she could be reasonably expected to. Eventually Jamie reached out and dabbed a finger at the blood on Val’s top and shuddered, Val didn’t understand until her friend asked, “Was it… her?”

“No,” Val shook her head, she didn’t even have to ask who Jamie meant, “The Incubus has gone to roost hard. Now that she knows I’m around, she probably knows that she isn't going to get the drop on me twice… I won’t see her again till she’s starving,” or the other thing, she finished the thought to herself. The much worse possibility that the Incubus wouldn’t show herself again until she’d formulated a very serious plan of action… Christ I’ve got to find her first! Val kept talking to distract herself, “This was a big Gorilla looking thing, fresh out of a pentagram I had to disrupt, he was stinking of brimstone like a brand new babe.”

“Oh my God!” Jamie put her hands over her mouth and looked past Valaran’s shoulder. Val sat up straighter, she shot a panicked look behind herself at Stacey where the other cheerleader was sleeping… but her squad mate seemed to be no worse for wear. Val glanced at Jamie and gave her a ‘what?’ expression, “What if… what if Stacey summoned it?”

“No,” Val snorted half a laugh...but the hairs slowly began to rise off the back of her neck. No… nononono no way! She shook her head more in denial than certainty, “I can’t believe that?”

“You said you found her right after?” Jamie put a finger in her palm, “She’s exhausted from something? Maybe running from a demon? Then she was babbling about it being too hard?”

Val refused. She point blank refused to believe it… but she could not deny that, as Jamie said these things, while far from proof, they lined up enough to afford suspicion. Keep it together Winters. Val took a deep breath, “Well I guess we’ll have some questions for her when she wakes up…”

“I guess we will,” Jamie nodded succinctly.

“Just do me a favor and don’t open up with Demonology huh? Stacey’s just a student here, she knows me as well as anybody. Until we know that she is connected with this for certain my life is not going to be easier if Stacey knows what you know.”

“Alright, probably should change your clothes then,” Jamie expressed, “you’ve got red on you.”

“Oh yeah… you got any paper towels?” she asked. Jamie walked over to the kitchen, collected a roll and brought it back.

“You’re going to need more than some paper towels to…” Jamie began to say but even as she was halfway through the sentence Val had already torn off a square of the roll and began carefully dusting the, now caked, blood off of herself. It was simple enough work, the blood flaked and crumbled off of the uniform and left no indication that the blood had soaked into the fabric at all.

“How the hell...” Jamie began.

“You’ve already got tomorrow's question lined up Jamie,” Val reminded her and stood to go finish cleaning up in the bathroom.
______________________________________________________________________

Somehow, despite Jamie acting as the resident healer in the room, when Stacey Summers groaned from the bed an hour later and began the telltale signs of waking, Valaran was the first one to the bedside. Jamie watched with a frown as her friend took the nearby bottle of water and helped Stacey sit up while keeping an arm around the other woman’s shoulder for support.

“Val?” Stacey groaned, the poor thing sounded miserable… Jamie couldn’t find it in herself to feel too bad for her though… not if she was out making Pentagrams in the dark.

“Yeah it’s me Stace,” Valaran acknowledged, held the water up for her, “You should drink this.”

That's my line? Jamie thought irritably. She folded her arms and leaned up against the kitchen counter.

“Where am I?” Stacey asked. She looked around the room, spotted Jamie and blinked, “What’s Mcalister doing here?” Jamie tsk'ed.

“This is her room,” Val explained and waggled the bottle of water again. This time Stacey took it with a wince and downed the contents within a matter of seconds.

“You passed out,” Val explained while the other woman finished the bottle, “Jamie says you were extremely fatigued…”

“Oh God…” Stacey covered her face suddenly, she clearly remembered doing something, “Oh God Val I’m so sorry!”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Val replied and took Stacey’s hand. Jamie stood up a little straighter, her eyes flicked to their hands. What was that about?

“I do… I… Val I… I was going behind your back,” Stacey almost looked like she was about to cry. Here it is, Jamie thought with mixed emotions, She knows all about the Huntress and she was summoning demons!

“What do you mean?” Val asked searchingly. Jamie didn’t know if Val was worried or not, the Cheerleader’s tone was too guarded.

After a beat of silence, Stacey’s shoulders completely slumped, “The Squad Leader tryouts…” Stacey explained with a miserable expression, “The ones they posted for the other day… I went to try it out for it…”

What!? Jamie’s eye twitched, Some stupid cheerleader thing!? That’s what this is? She could see Valaran’s shoulders relax. Val tightened her hold on Stacey’s hand, “Stacey, I don’t care about that… I’m just glad you’re okay…”

“But that’s why you’re our Leader!” Stacey leaned more into Val’s arms, Jamie wanted to scream! “You’re always looking out for us... and oh my God Val it was so hard!” Stacey straightened back up again, “It was so so hard! I never imagined what a person has to go through, what you had to go through!”

“What are you talking about?” Val snorted derisively, “You were there when I tried out Stace, we were all together.”

“But… the obstacle course? You didn’t go through it?” Stacey asked, “They brought me to the course… and it was insane! I couldn’t do it! They said I had to until I could run the whole thing but…” she shook her head like a lost lamb, “I couldn’t finish it… they finally let me go, I was so tired… I just wanted to go home!”

“No… I didn’t go through any obstacle course?” Val shook her head. She glanced back at Jamie and shot her a quizzical expression. Jamie didn’t know what to think about it though… Was it weird that there was an obstacle course? That didn’t sound so rough?

“Maybe… maybe it’s new?” Stacey thought out loud.

“Maybe,” Val nodded and stood up, her fists clenched then unclenched, “and maybe somebody needs to have a chat with Coach! Stacey you could have been seriously hurt tonight! The state I found you in, you’re probably lucky you didn’t pull an injury, and even without one, you passed out on the road in the middle of the woods. If I hadn’t found you wandering off out there…” she shook her head, “I’m going to have words! Head’s are going to roll for this!”

“Well I’m never going to try it again… you have my word Val,” Stacey hugged herself and rocked a little bit, “Val I mean it, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go behind your back… they said everybody was going to have to take it eventually anyway.”

The conversation moved on from there. Jamie didn’t get a lot of time to unpack her thoughts on how close Val seemed with her squad mate before the more mundane questions began rolling down. Over time Stacey was caught up with why she was in Jamie’s room. After a little while longer and a few more bottles of water Stacey explained she was going to go home.

“Use your car this time,” Val ordered her, clapping her friends shoulder.

“Yeah… definitely,” Stacey smiled weakly. She snagged her purse from the counter where Jamie had moved it when examining her, then started toward the door but she stopped to smile awkwardly to Jamie, “Hey thanks a lot for looking me over Mca… Jamie, it was… it was really cool of you.”

“Yeah… no problem,” Jamie mumbled uncomfortably and shrugged, then more clearly began listing off medical orders, “... make sure you drink plenty of water, I know it’s already way too late to get an early night rest but try to get some rest as soon as you get home. Don’t oversleep though, keep to your schedule, but maybe excuse yourself from practice and take it extra easy tomorrow, give your body a day to heal.”

“I don’t know if they’ll let me…” Stacey began to fret, Jamie caught the stress in Stacey’s expression as she said it and felt an unwanted pang of sympathy.

“They will,” Valaran interrupted them, “and I’ll make sure it isn’t counted against you either. Just do as the Doctor says.”

Jamie wasn’t an actual doctor yet, not by a mile, but it still made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside when Val said that… which lasted only a cruel few seconds before that warm feeling was doused by ice water as Stacey gave Val a quick hug goodbye and left the room.

Once the door was shut, Jamie awkwardly scratched at her shoulder, “So… she seems nice? Maybe not so much the demon summoning type after all?”

“I didn’t honestly believe it for a second,” Val shook her head, “but it’s nice to know there are more mundane explanations for some of the weirdness around town… I’m going to give Coach an earful!”

“You might have told me the two of you are so close?” Jamie prodded, “I don’t think I’d have suspected her of anything if you had.”

“What?” Val asked, her tone and expression was genuine puzzlement, “We aren’t that close? Well,” she qualified and shrugged, “Stacey’s on my squad?”

And that’s why you’re our Squad Leader, Jamie heard Stacey’s words echo through her skull and her gut clenched. Here she stood, wincing and turning away from Val’s very genuine platonic concern for her fellow human beings. It came to her then, That’s why you’re our Huntress…

“Anyway I guess I should be going to?” Val yawned.

“Yeah… we gotta stop meeting like this?” Jamie smirked, “It’s always either quick car trips or medical emergencies with you isn’t it?”

“Well what can I say,” Val chuckled, “You’re pretty good at asking questions and patching us up?”

Jamie beamed, Val was actually smiling, she decided to strike while the iron was hot! “I’d like to add a few things to that list some time? I mean, you’ve seen so much of my life here… where is home for you anyway?”

“Just in town with my family?” Val explained while she was collecting her things. If she picked up on Jamie’s lead she didn’t show it, “Mom, Dad, Beth… I guess I disappear on them for a few days at a time now… but I’m an adult, they know I can take care of myself.”

“Maybe you should just crash here then?” Jamie offered, “You look like it’s been a few since you’ve had enough sleep, and it is already pretty late?”

Val paused in her collection of her things, she looked to Jamie. For a few seconds Jamie panicked, worried that her friend had picked up on her lead, but Val appeared thoughtfully relieved by the suggestion, “Would that be alright?”

“Definitely!” Jamie moved toward the closet to start collecting the extra blankets to set up the couch, “You know I have a hard time imagining you with a little sister,” she joked, “I’d like to meet her.”

“You should?” Val said, then said the nine loveliest words Jamie thought she had ever heard, “you should come over during Christmas break for Dinner?”
Damselbinder

This continues to be really excellent. Val and Jamie are very well drawn characters, and their budding friendship is already pretty wholesome. Professor McDominatrix is also shaping up to be a pretty interesting antagonist - alongside the mysterious whoever-it-is she's talking to. Maybe the succubus??

One thing I'll say is maybe do a little more proofreading before you post. Some of the errors are a bit distracting - a continuous one is things being given question marks when they aren't questions. But this is nevertheless a really, really good story.
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8 - The Diner That Never Closed

School proceeded as usual the following day except that Val burst into Coach Anders office around midad, “What the hell is going on?” she demanded, slapping her palms against his desk.

“What do you mean?” Anders stammered, his alarm could not be more palpable, “M-miss Wuh-Winters this is most-t unorthodox…”

“I’m aware of that,” Valaran insisted, “but what’s this bullshit I’m hearing about an… an obstacle course?”

“O-o-oh,” Coach Anders gulped, “Y-y-you know… just n-n-new school p-puh- policy.” he reached up with shaky fingers and adjusted his neck tie. Sadly, though it might be for any other human being in the known universe, this was not suspicious behavior from Coach Anders. He was the single most fidgety, stammering, sweaty human being that Valaran had known in her whole life, he was also an artist of routine choreography.

“I found Stacey Summers wandering home in the middle of the woods last night, in a haze of exhaustion because of this new school ‘policy’ Coach,” Val slapped the desk table. Andres flinched, “She could have been hurt!”

“Oh… o-oh dear,” he blanched, “W-w-we certainly d-did-don’t want any harm to b-b-befall our students!” He adjusted his tie once more, “B-but you h-have to und-d-derstand it isn’t-t-t up to muh-me Miss W-w-wuuuuuwinters.”

“What do you mean?” Val frowned, that didn’t make any damn sense at all, “You’re our coach? If it’s not up to you than who the hell is it up to?”

“T-th-the idea was s-set up th-through the Puh-P-Principles office… I… I’ll m-make inquiries annnnnd g-get back to you?” He plucked up a pen and scribbled the reminder to himself on a notepad, “I assssssure y-you I wu-will take this m-m-matter v-very seriously… D-do p-please inform miss Su-Summers sh-she’s excused f-f-from practice w-with m-muh-my app-appap- apologies…”

“Thank you,” Valaran sighed and rubbed at her temples a bit, “Sorry to burst in on you Coach, I know that’s… unsettling.”

“W-wuh-when it’s i-i-important,” Anders shook his head to brush off the apology, “C-come b-by my office tom-mor-ow. I’ll l-l-let you know what I’ve f-found.”

“Don’t put anybody else through that course until we find out who put this idea in the Principal's office okay?” Val put out as she started toward the door, “you can tell them I threatened to call the Pennsylvania Board of Education or something.”

“Y-yeesss muh-maim, I m-muh-may j-just call them m-m-myself,” he gave her a salute and a smile. She felt a lot of the pressure falling off already, she should have known she could always count on their Coach.
______________________________________________________________________

“Okay I’m torn,” Jamie announced the second she sat down in the passenger's seat that night, “I’ve got two questions from last night that are bugging me and I don’t know which one I should ask!”

Val raised an eyebrow, “Evening to you as well,” Valaran had done some thinking about this herself. She was still unsure of how much she should even be interacting with Jamie right now, but after the previous night, Val knew she owed Jamie some leeway. “How about, just for tonight… to thank you for helping me take care of my squad... I let you ask me a few extra questions?”

“Oh thank God!” Jamie deflated into her seat and puffed out the entire contents of her lungs, “That’s perfect! That’s awesome.”

“The ride is awful short though,” Val considered and tapped her steering wheel a bit, “you wanna go get something to eat?”

“Everything’s closed at this hour Val?” Jamie replied, but she looked more excited than hesitant.

“Well there is one place…” Valaran asserted.

“Oh… oooooooh,” Jamie’s excitement fell off a little, “I don’t know Val, that place is weird…”

“It’s fine,” Val brushed off her concern with absolute sincerity, “no better place in the world to spend your night. Promise, Huntress seal of approval.”

“Well alright,” Jamie straightened out again and reached over to pull on her seat belt, “If that’s not the best endorsement in Gloomvale I don’t know what is.”
______________________________________________________________________

They pulled into Derick’s Diner and Restaurant a half an hour’s drive out of town. Jamie couldn’t lie to herself, this place had always given her the creeps. It was situated on the side of the road in a tiny clearing that was otherwise Pennsylvanian woodlands stretched for miles that blotted out all other signs of civilization. It was almost normal enough in the afternoon, but all kinds of weirdos were there the one time she turned up after dark, and everybody who she ever talked to about the place shared the creep factor…

Derick’s Diner wasn’t a dilapidated joint at least, but it wasn’t sparkling clean either. It felt like it was trapped in a time bubble, as though the 1960’s had spun by and dumped the old diner in the middle of the woods for a laugh before speeding on. It sported that old red and white art deco style but was larger than Jamie was used to, she knew a couple of diners from her city days that were a lot smaller… from the parking lot she could see it was relatively empty, and she could just make out the dull thrum of music playing inside.

“So… this place, how come it doesn’t shut up at night like everywhere else?” Jamie asked as they got out of the car.

“Advertising,” Val explained, “Derick rolled into town about thirty years ago, set this place up and the papers they called it the diner that never closed… and it never has.”

“That’s impossible?” Jamie argued, “It has to have closed at some point? Derick’s gotta sleep right?” She didn’t like the expression Val made at her in answer to that question, eyebrows raised as if with a secret. The hairs on the back of Jamie’s neck rose up, and for the first time that night she took in that Val was already in her Cheer uniform when she picked Jamie up, that was something she seemed to ordinarily do after dropping Jamie off, “Val… are we safe here?”

“There’s no safer place in the world,” Val promised her, she took Jamie’s hand and guided her toward the diner, “just don’t wander away from me.”

Thirty years ago, the factoid suddenly struck her only just as they reached the door because it was one of the things she actually spoke with Derick about one of the few times she had ever come here, “Wait Val?” she grabbed her friend's arm, she felt more nervous about this than ever, “You mean Derick’s father right? He told me once that his dad left him this place.”

“Well he would say that,” Val shrugged and then before she even knew it, Jamie was led into the establishment. They were immediately beset by the music, a high energy beat that very much did not belong with the 1960’s vibe, nor did the lighting which was all neon pinks and blues. As soon as they stepped inside all eyes were on them. There was a grizzled man at the counter, and what looked like somebody's grandparents in the back… but shortly after they went back to their business.

Val led the way up to the counter. Jamie recognized Derick wiping a glass like he was a tavern keeper from a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. He was a bald middle-aged man with waxy skin and a sharp pair of dark blue eyes. His gaze passed over Jamie without recognition… not strange since she only came to the diner once or twice a year, but he smiled a little when his eyes found Valaran.

“Evening my lovely,” he acknowledged them in a cockney accent. To her surprise Valaran held out her arm, which he took to brush the back of her hand with his lips in greeting, “to what do I owe your fine patronage this evening?” His eyes ghosted a side glance at Jamie again. She held her hand tightly up against her chest. He smirked.

“Just a couple of girls looking for a bite to eat while we shoot the shit,” Valaran told him, she smiled as well. They appeared to be on friendly terms… but he was still eyeing up Jamie with something like suspicion.

“Not that I dun’ want your money girls, but if you don’t mind my saying the er… clientele, might be unsuited to you fine upstandin’ school types tonight.”

“It’s alright Derick,” Val shook her head at him, “she knows.”

I do? Jamie gulped, What do I know?

“Oho…” Derick smiled at her genuinely, “In that case welcome to the Diner that Never Closed! I ain’t got a table for you ladies but eh…” he indicated off and away with his eyes at Valarin, Jamie followed his indication passed rows of completely available tables toward where the grandparents were seated, “The old folks in the back there, I’d like to refuse em’ service before you ladies get too comfortable, that is if I had my say. Might be a comped meal in it for you?”

Jamie felt completely lost, except also that something in Derick’s tone as he explained this to them seemed mildly insistent. Jamie looked back at the old couple… the grandparents?

“Those two?” Val asked with an toned. Derick nodded yes, Jamie felt Val’s hand tightened over her own protectively then Valaran sniffed the air overtly then she went stiff, “alright, Derick I’m going to leave my friend here with you now. Can I count on that?”

“We’ve got her Huntress Ma’im,” the grizzled man sitting at the bar directly to Jamie’s right suddenly interjected. Both Jamie and Valaran turned together to take him in. He was a tall man with a scruffy beard, long greasy black hair and an ugly scar down the left side of his face. Jamie immediately didn’t trust him.

“Darius,” Val smiled, “Been a hard month for you I bet.”

“Been some high moons,” he nodded with a wincing smile and Jamie’s eyes widened to see the rows of alarmingly sharp pearly whites shining from behind his lips, “but we’re keeping up with the lunar cycles. Evelyn got some nice silver chains with extra padding to keep off my skin.”

“Any normies around here tonight?” Val asked. To which both Derick and Darius shook their heads.

“Just me cooks in the back,” Derick said, “they’re paid to ignore the racket.”

“Okay boys,” Valaran let go of Jamie’s hand. Jamie squeaked and shot her a frightened stare. Val touched her shoulder gently, perhaps as a comforting gesture, while she speared Derick with a hard look, “I leave her in your protection.” Then the Cheerleader started off toward the table at the end of the diner where the old people were sitting.

“Only be a few minutes now I’m sure,” Derick winked to Jamie, “have you classy ladies a safe table in no time.” Jamie provided him with a jitters nod, she looked sideways over to the Darius man. Her wide eyed expression must have tickled him because he grinned again.

“Don’t be afraid,” he told to her and his terrifying grin morphed into a closed mouth smile that felt much more genuine and much less frightening, “I don’t bite… and you’re with her… doing me a big favor, was starting to worry I was going to have to be the one to throw them out.”

The her in question had reached the end of her path toward the end table. They all went quiet to watch what was happening, even over the blare of the music Jamie had no trouble overhearing.

“You folks aren’t welcome here,” Valaran stated crisply, “This is a place for good people.”

“Just trying to have a meal miss,” the grandmother answered. Jamie noted for the first time that there weren’t any plates or drinks at their table.

It was the most bizarre thing Jamie felt like she’d ever seen in her life. Valaran gone off to shake down a couple of old people on behalf of the owner… Jamie was surrounded by people she was now keenly aware were not people. “Am I safe?” Jamie squeaked again, this time at nobody in particular.

“No one but friends here,” Darius assured her.

“All the same,” Derick cleared his throat, “put her on this side of the counter for me would you mate?”

Jamie sucked in a quick panicked breath as someone, it must have been Darius, lifted her from behind all the way up off her feet and set her down on top of the counter.

“Over here love,” Derick angled with his neck, his eyes still on the scene at the end of the diner, “be quick.” Jamie didn’t know what to do, but the urgency felt real, and while she didn’t exactly trust them, she trusted Val who had trusted them. So She quickly sat down on the bar facing towards the employee’s side and slid down to the floor… then turned back around and craned her neck to get a better view of what was happening with Val.

She must have missed part of the conversation because as soon as she caught sight of her friend again, Val slammed an Ivory stake flat against the table in front of the old couple. “I’m not asking again,” Valaran told them, “I promise you, this is the kindest you will ever find me, any other circumstance and my friends here would be mopping up your blood.”

“Holy shit…” Jamie mumbled quietly. Was that really necessary?

“She’s a tough talker for sure,” Derick acknowledged. Before she could ask him anything in response the grandfather uttered a growling sound from the back of his throat that wasn't very grandfatherly. That said, It was his wife (at least Jamie assumed it was his wife) who made the first move. Quick as a flash the Grandma’s arm, elongated and with sharp claws flung out at the Cheerleader… Val was quicker, she pivoted and gripped the arm, then hurled the woman up out of her seat, over the table and down onto the flat tiled flooring where she landed back first.

The Grandpa leaped up onto the table, Jamie nearly called out a warning to Valaran. The Cheerleader was facing away from him due to the grandmother-toss maneuver, but before any sound could leave Jamie’s lips, Val performed a perfect backward roundhouse. The Cheerleader swept grandpa's legs out from beneath so that he crashed flat onto the table. Valaran then somersaulted over the grandma and away from the table. Jamie blushed, both at the fluidity of the motion and the way Val’s skirt fell down over her abdomen to temporarily reveal the full length of her lower torso, before Val's legs were back on the ground with both of the elderly monsters both in her field of view. Somewhere along the way Val pulled out a crucifix which she thrust out in front of her as the Grandmother rose. The thing was about to attack but it recoiled at sight of the cross and slammed its back against the table, wide eyed and with disbelief.

“Begone thing beyond the veil!” Val cried out at the two of them, “From this realm of life I denounce thy trespass!” The Grandparents screamed with rage and attempted to charge the Huntress but either lost their nerve or were rebuffed by some unseen force, once more they fell backwards against the table, “I command thee, spawn of hellfire, return by foot or fate from whence you came!” The grandparents covered their ears then shrank away from the huntress, their expressions naked with fear. The lights in the place began to flicker while the music started to cut in and out.

“What’s she doing to them?” Jamie whispered, transfixed.

“An Exorcism,” Darius covered his ears and diligently looked away from the scene.

“That’s a real thing that works?” Jamie gripped the counter tightly, her heart beat wildly. What am I doing here?

“It works if you’re the Guardian of Life and Death luv,” Derick answered her question, “be wise not to try it yourself. You might also want to look away?”

The Guardian of Life and Death? Despite herself and despite her fear, Jamie was fixated on the scene playing out in front of them. Time slowed and sound became muted for Jamie. Valaran continued to chant something that Jamie was to zoned in on her beautiful friend to pay attention to. The building shook beyond her notice, the scent of brimstone tinted the air but Jamie didn't notice… her eyes were locked on the Huntress.

Look away? How could she? At that moment Valaran had never appeared more beautiful. The Cheerleader stood proud, her legs were pulled tightly together and her spine was straight as an arrow. She had one arm tucked up against the small of her back and the other held the cross as far out from herself as possible, twisted in her palm so as to perfectly face the elderly monsters. Valaran's body language exuded confidence, power, and conviction. The outfit, which might otherwise have appeared silly, else out of place, the Huntress wore with elegance and grace. Over time, an impossible wind blew rose up against her, causing her skirt and ponytail to flap and fair off behind her… Jamie didn’t know how long it all went on.

Eventually, Valaran broke her stance, she leaned over to lift her skirt up where she tucked the cross into a slot at her thigh pouch. She turned away from the table and began walking back their way. Jamie blinked… wait what? Her eyes flicked past Valaran to the table… nobody was there, the grandparents were gone… just gone?

Next her eyes found Darius who she noticed was watching her intently… just as he finally removed his hands from his own ears. He shook his head at her only just perceptibly because she was looking directly at him. He said in an undertone, “You got it bad girl.”

Jamie blushed, she didn’t have the time to deny anything before Valaran returned to the counter, “somebody want to go clean up the ashes before you send my friend and I over to sit on them?”

“Don’t you worry lovely,” Derick collected some cleaning supplies from under the counter and hurried around toward the now vacated booth, “Darius do show our guests to a clean seat if you don’t mind?”

Val folded her elbows down over the counter and leaned over to smile sportively at Jamie, “Hey look at that, they gave you the tour of the other side of the counter on the first night. He must like you?”

“I…. I uh…” Jamie chuckled nervously back, her heart rate was only very slowly winding back down, “I think that they actually just like you.”

“Well what did I tell you,” Val winced and her smile turned more apologetic, “safest place in Gloomvale?”
______________________________________________________________________

“Well I don’t know about the whole vaporizing of old folks part our evening,” Jamie expressed when she took a bite of the ‘After Dark Burger’ nearly thirty minutes later, “But this is a decent good burger.”

“Yeah Derick’s got a nice place out here,” Valaran acknowledged over salad and a small plate of salmon. Jamie was coming to realize that when Val ate, it was all health food… she had to admit the salmon at least looked edible.

“What’s his deal anyway?” Jamie finally got around to asking, “He never sleeps?”

“Nope,” Val shook her head, “He’s a Ghoul.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means he’s dead,” Valaran replied offhandedly, but she must have been getting used to Jamie’s mode of questioning because she hardly wasted a moment explaining, “Undead more specifically. Ghoul’s are people who died and were brought back to life through some kind of necromantic ritual. When they come back their emotions can be dulled and there tends to be some great overwhelming hunger that drives them ever onward, something that allows them to remember what it’s like to feel, so they pursue it relentlessly. The common hunger tends to be human flesh… in which case, the only cure is to but them in the ground permanently."

“Oh my god,” Jamie glanced back over at where Derick was chatting lazily with Darius, “I was on the same side of the bar as that guy Val!”

“Don’t worry Jamie I told you that you were safe here and I meant it. These people,” she motioned to the two men, “Sans the assholes I just kicked out… they may not be entirely human anymore… but these are all good people. Derick's hunger, the thing that drives him most? He just wants to feed people.”

“Why would a necromancer want to bring somebody back from the dead just to feed people?” it struck her suddenly what this all meant and she dropped her burger on her plate, “oh ew he doesn’t cook the food does he?”

“No he’s got a staff of perfectly live people back there,” Val chuckled… she seemed much more relaxed than usual in this building with a Ghoul and a… werewolf maybe? Jamie didn’t get it. “But he’s not rotting or anything. He’s probably got cleaner hands than most… as to your first question… I don’t have it all perfectly straight from his mouth, but I think he paid someone to bring him back like this… I only really met met him five or six months ago.”

“Well that’s weirder,” Jamie mumbled.

“He’s a Ghoul?” Val shrugged, “I’ve never met a demon, vampire, werewolf, undead, cursed or otherwise supernatural entity that wasn’t at least a little bit weird?”

“Point, maybe,” Jamie acknowledged. She drummed her fingers on the counter nervously. It was too surreal. On the one hand, this was exactly what she had wanted. She wanted into Val’s world a little bit, but this was a lot to take in… she felt safe and very much not safe jumbled together. Eventually she distracted herself with another bite of the burger, it was good, made by normal people in a kitchen run by a dead guy. Did they know he was dead? Did they know that there was a werewolf or something at the counter eating the mostly raw steak they didn’t have to cook all the way? Did they know two demons had just been blasted from the face of the earth only fifty some feet away?”

“Alright kiddo you had two questions tonight,” Val reminded her.

“Oh yeah. Three now,” Jamie nodded and at last speared her friend with the most displeased expression she could muster, it was time for this to be over! “The first is can you never call me kiddo again?”

Val’s eyebrows raised, she cleared her throat and nodded, “Yeah okay, sorry Jamie. Kiddo’s off the table from now on, promise.”

Jamie smiled, infinitely pleased with herself, “alright, first real question now, um… What's with the cheer uniform? It’s special right? Not just for school spirit? Cause you wouldn’t wear it so much if it wasn’t something more than that, you don’t strike me as the sentimental type.”

“I’m as sentimental as any human being I promise you,” Val assured her… but she did so over folded arms and in her unreadable way that made Jamie cough while she lifted her hand to rub her nose so she could cover a smile. “Though you’ve a fair observation. Valaran held her arms out, “This is my armor. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but suffice it to say that when I was discovered to be the Huntress, I was allowed to choose some clothing to be my armor. It’s more difficult to cut,” she plucked up her steak knife and ran it across the sleeve of her top for demonstration. Jamie was about to lean forward to stop her but after it was already done, there wasn’t a mark on the outfit.

“I think I could use some armor of my own…” Jamie admired, “you could have chosen anything and you picked... your cheer uniform?

“Yes,” Valaran replied and for the first time since Jamie had met her, she appeared momentarily embarrassed, enough so that she broke eye contact, “I was not the person I am today a year or two ago Jamie… I think you know that already… But there’s more thought to it than it looks! My armor is also resistant to all sorts of supernatural nonsense… and coverage is important. My uniform’s got a full unitard! For Huntress Armor I could do a lot worse.”

“I don’t mean to embarrass you,” Jamie expressed after hearing all of that, “and honestly… you do look pretty good Val.”

“Points for style?” Val smirked mirthlessly and nodded, “I won’t pretend like that wasn’t running through my mind when I picked it. That sort of thing used to be really important to me…”

Used to, Jamie could definitely see it. There was no part of the Valaran she knew who was prone to making a big spectacle of herself… but she also remembered the mean girl who’d insulted her that first year. I wonder what happened?

“Alright, so the Cheerleader’s a permanent situation, gotcha, question two,” Jamie held up two fingers and exploded, “Why didn’t we take Stacey to the Hospital?”

“Oh! God,” Val winced, “I meant to talk to you about this. Just don’t do it okay. People disappear at the hospital.”

“Disappear?” Jamie shuddered, was everything in Gloomvale a swirling pot of horrors to uncover? “How? Why?”

“I don’t know, I’m not supposed to go in there,” Val shook her head, “but whatever it is, it’s bad. It’s ordinarily tourists and out of towner's that go missing… but best not to tempt fate.”

“You’re not supposed to go in there?” Confusion and worry were competing with Jamie for supremacy, Val seemed almost paranoid about this? Just refusing to go to a hospital was not something you took on faith alone, “Isn’t missing people from a spooky hospital exactly the sort of thing you normally deal with?”

“Just don’t go there Jamie,” Val was starting to close up, Jamie could feel it, the way her friends shoulders drooped, the way she leaned back, getting ready to go all ‘cool’ again, “I don’t have all the answers, I was warned about the hospital alright… by someone I trust.”

“Who?” Jamie asked. Val’s answer was to shake her head. “Ugh… alright fine,” Jamie shrugged and picked up her burger with intent to scarf, “If I ever get hit by a car, or my arm gets cut off… or I have cancer I’ll just pray for healing, I’m sure that will get it done! On my tombstone I’ll have it written that I was warned vaguely against going to the hospital by someone Valaran Winters trusts.”

“I don’t have all the answers to your questions Jamie!” Valaran suddenly snapped at her with naked frustration. Jamie’s eyes went wide, her burger forgotten, “I don’t have them because I didn’t get to ask all of the things I should have either! I-I’m all alone out here? I’m just doing what I have to do!”

“I’m sorry…” Jamie shrunk in her seat, “I didn't mean to… I just don’t… know?”

“Whatever,” Val dropped her fork, “let’s just get some to-go boxes. It’s getting late, you need to rest for school tomorrow.” Jamie looked down at her food silently as Val rose to start toward the counter, along the way Val muttered under her breath, quiet enough she probably thought Jamie couldn’t hear, but she could, “what the fuck was I thinking bringing her to a monster bar?”
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Femina
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Damselbinder wrote:
4 years ago
This continues to be really excellent. Val and Jamie are very well drawn characters, and their budding friendship is already pretty wholesome. Professor McDominatrix is also shaping up to be a pretty interesting antagonist - alongside the mysterious whoever-it-is she's talking to. Maybe the succubus??

One thing I'll say is maybe do a little more proofreading before you post. Some of the errors are a bit distracting - a continuous one is things being given question marks when they aren't questions. But this is nevertheless a really, really good story.
Thanks, I'll keep a better lookout. I must be automatically valuing statements as questions more prominently than I should.

As for Professor McImpropermentorstudentrelations xD she's a major player in this, as is whomever she was speaking with :P but that's all on the hush hush for now!
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I read this last year and thought it quite exceptional. A rereading confirms its excellence; a great set up, engaging, well drawn characters, terrific dialogue which advances the plot while establishing the main relationship. Oh and a great peril-laden opening scene. In addition, the pacing is impeccable.
If I could buy this (and, ideally, many further adventures of Valaran and Jamie) at my local Waterstones I would.
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Femina
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Oh. Thank you for the kind words. I um... never COMPLETELY drop anything :/ but by the same token, my condition being what it is, I have a lot of trouble building up the motivation to do a whole lot of anything. So while I can't promise to get my ass back on this, I appreciate that you enjoyed what I did get out... I did really enjoy it while I was writting it, and still have ideas about where the story was gonna go and how Valaran would evolve as a superhero here, and how Jamie's relationship with her makes her stronger.

Thank you for your time :)
Namor
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You’re welcome.
In my brief list of some of the virtues of your story I forgot to mention the title, a little gem in itself.
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