Chapter 3

Shannie practically jumped me at school the next day. Thankfully, I had excellent reflexes and dodged her attack so that she nearly sent herself flying into the boys’ restroom, but her reflexes were just as good as mine, if not better, so she caught herself just in the nick of time. Grinning, she looped her arm around my shoulders and leaned forward to speak, talking excitedly but in a low voice.

“Hey, I heard Ben’s going to be tutoring you in the library after class.”

That single statement alone was all I needed to guess where Shannie was going.

My wonderful and slightly hyperactive friend had a strong crush on my chem partner and mentor. The first time she discovered that I sat next to her love interest during second period, she’d squealed, rambled on about Ben’s good looks, great dress style, and terrific personality for fifteen minutes, remarked that she’d love to see him in a hot pink tie for prom, and then had made me swear to God I would never tell him how she felt.

And like the good friend I was, I promised. And also because she happened to be holding a pair of very large scissors at the time.

Sadly enough, Ben was just about as infatuated with Shannie as she was with him. When he found out his crush was one of my very best friends, he’d bombarded me with too many questions to count regarding her interests, preferences, hobbies, pet peeves, family, class schedule, and whether or not I thought he was her ‘type’. I hadn’t a clue, but before I could say so, he’d already started dishing out miles of compliments about her athletic ability, mathematical prowess, and perpetually gung-ho attitude. And then he had made me swear to God I would never tell her how he felt.

And like the good lab partner I was, I promised. And also because he happened to be holding a crucible containing molten magnesium with a pair of tongs at the time.

It was a very complicated situation. It was so funny and so horrible.

I wanted those two to confess to each other and hook up, but unfortunately, if there was anything Shannie was shy about, it was conversing with guys about issues not directly school-related. Ben was too intimidated to do much more than glance her way if he saw her during passing periods.

Watching them was almost painful. If I could have done something, I would have, but alas, I’d promised and sworn to God never to tell, and I had never been the scheming type. Cooking up some fantastic matchmaker plot was not within my ability.

“Yeah, he is. Why?” I smiled and winked knowingly. “You want to tag along?”

“You’re a psychic, Jess.” Shannie laughed in a high voice, then regained her composure and cleared her throat. “I do. Do you mind?”

“Nope. Just try not to distract him too much, okay? I’m positive Mr. Jimms is quizzing us tomorrow and I need all the help I can get…”

“Oh, I won’t,” she insisted. “I mean, it’s not like I’m going to talk to him or anything… I just… uh, want to look.”

And true to her word, that was all she did. The entire time.

While it wasn’t too annoying in itself to have a third person at our study table, Shannie’s head was in constant, noticeable motion—always glancing up at Ben while he helped me go over stoichiometry. And of course, since Ben was just as head over heels for her, he kept pausing in-between sentences to shoot a furtive look at Shannie.

Seriously, I don’t know how they didn’t catch each person staring at the other. It was always timed just right so that one’s head was down while the other’s was up.

As a result, I didn’t feel very productive, but since Ben seemed happier than usual when he declared the tutoring session to be finished and Shannie had a spring in her step when she went off to visit the restroom, I didn’t mind as much as I thought I would.

Now, if only they would get over their meekness and just ask each other out, for goodness sake.

Ben left at about 5:30. I couldn’t drive yet (but it was on my to-do list, honest) and Shannie didn’t have a car to drive (not that I was certain I could trust her road habits, according to some stories I’d heard), so though I could walk home, I stayed behind to wait with Shannie for her mother. She lived farther away from school than I did.

5:30 became 6:30, and we moseyed across the street to buy some sandwiches for dinner. 6:30 became 7:30, and finally, at 7:58, exactly two minutes before the library closed and we were sitting on the front steps of the building, Shannie’s mother called and explained that she was stuck in the world’s worse traffic and that Shannie could either wait another half hour for her father or she could walk home.

“What the heck,” Shannie muttered after snapping shut her cell phone. “I’m freezing my butt off here. Let’s walk.”

It never snowed in Southern California, unless you happened to go into the mountains, but it was still plenty cold in December, and we shivered—I in my jacket, Shannie in her sweatshirt—as we wandered down the sidewalk, our steps illuminated only by a few scattered streetlamps.

“Sorry about this, Jess…” she said at one point. “You should’ve just gone home without me.”

“It’s okay,” I replied, smiling and feeling the wind chill my teeth. “I got all my homework done, and besides, it’s not safe to walk alone at night.”

She sighed. “Yeah. Don’t want to fall prey to all the robbers, stalkers, murderers, rapists, and convicted whatevers crawling around here. Not that it would be much harder to victimize two teenage girls rather than one if you’re a robber, stalker, murderer, rapist, or convicted whatever.”

“But you can only target one at a time, so the other one could run for help.”

“What if the guy’s got a gun?”

“They don’t usually… do they?”

“I dunno.” Shannie rubbed her arms and yawned. “Maybe I should ask my mom if I can get some pepper spray.”

“But that wouldn’t help if the guy had a gun.”

“True. Maybe I’ll get a gun license when I’m eighteen.”

“You’d think you’d want to register to vote instead…”

“I can’t vote if I’ve been killed by a robber, stalker, murderer, rapist, or convicted…”

But I’d stopped paying attention to her. Just then, my nose had picked up unfamiliar scents nearby, those of three adult males, and that they’d appeared on my radar simultaneously and from two different directions alarmed me. My gait slowed until I was standing still, inspecting the air apprehensively.

They could just be other night strollers, I thought, willing myself to calm down. There was no reason to panic. Yet. If at all.

But I couldn’t escape the fact that Shannie and I were on an empty street with no source of light save the growing moon. The road cut between a big hill covered in weeds and a high wooden fence, beyond which lay a thick clump of woods. There were no houses until this road met the intersection a long ways further down. It was the perfect place for a crime, and as this revelation dawned on me, my mouth went dry.

“What’s wrong?” Shannie had noticed that I’d stopped walking, and she paused as well, quizzically peering over her shoulder at me. “Jess?”

“There…” With some difficulty, I swallowed and ran my tongue over my lips. “There are people coming…” I whispered. Never mind that I’d smelled them out, not seen or heard them as normal human beings would have.

She blinked, looked straight ahead, then turned her gaze back to me, eyebrows furrowed. “Huh?”

I slowly tested the evening air again and clenched my jaw when I found that their scent was getting stronger from both directions. These guys were closing in like a vise… Did they mean to trap us? But who would go through this kind of trouble to trap two random girls?

Unless… it wasn’t random at all.

“What are you talking about?” Shannie’s slightly fearful question only spurred on my own dread.

I didn’t want to ponder what it might mean, but I still answered, trembling, “…We’ve got company.”

Just as those words left my mouth, I saw the outline of a dark figure in the distance appear and quickly become clearer. At the same time, Shannie gasped, staring at something past my back. I turned to follow her line of sight and saw two other dark figures approaching us. Their bold strides were definitely not those of innocent night strollers.

“What the…” Stepping closer, Shannie took my lower arm and squeezed it, muttering in my ear, “Dude, maybe we should get out of here…”

I wholeheartedly agreed. However, where could we run to? The two ends of the road were cut off by these strangers and our paths were likewise blocked by a tall fence on one side and a steep hill on the other. Besides, what if they followed us? Could we get away?

Maybe screaming would be of some use.

Or, that would just upset the strangers and provoke them into hurting us.

But what if they were already planning to hurt us?

I think I almost swallowed my lungs.

By now the three were no more than thirty feet away from us, and I could see that they were dressed in the strangest getup I’d ever seen. A dark robe covered them top to bottom, hood drawn over their heads, and their mouth and nose were hidden by a partial cloth mask, leaving only the eyes exposed. I might’ve wanted to make a quip about it being more than a month too late for Halloween if I wasn’t so frightened.

Shannie made a choked noise beside me, and I could sympathize perfectly as we huddled together, instinctively seeking a shred of comfort from imminent danger.

The potential assailants halted disturbingly close to us ten feet away, forming a half-ring so that we were pinned against the slope of the hill. One of them stepped forward and fixed his eyes right on me.

“I knew I’d find you again,” Assailant One commented in a low tone.

Instantly, my brain was firing off warning messages. Hey, I recognized that voice! And now that I thought about it, his scent wasn’t new, either. Confusion mixed into the fear, and I tilted my head at him as if the adjusted view would help solve the mystery.

“… Who are you?” I was a bit pleased when my voice didn’t shake.

To my surprise, he gave a short laugh and crossed his arms, causing his sleeves to slip back. There was some sort of marking or tattoo on the back of his left hand that resembled a cross (actually, all of them had it), and though my memory again insisted I’d seen this before, I couldn’t recall when or where.

“Come on,” he taunted, sing-song. “We met yesterday.”

What…? I narrowed my eyes. If I’d met him yesterday, I was pretty sure I’d remember—

Wait a minute.

“You’re the… that guy on the bench…outside the library…” I ventured. Somehow I hoped I was wrong.

“Yes.”

My heart dropped to my toes. What did this mean?

As perplexed as I was, no doubt Shannie was even more discombobulated, for I felt her squeeze my arm even harder and step forward to match Assailant One. “Hey man, I don’t know what’s going on, but you better leave Jess alone.” The command was impressively firm.

And thanks for telling them my name, Shannie.

“Are you going to make us?” Assailant Two sneered at her, and when he reached into the depths of his robes and produced a knife, a shiny knife with a blade that must’ve been at least twelve inches long and seemed sharp enough to slice rock like butter, my heart climbed back into my chest and began to pound furiously against my rib cage. I swear I’d never been so terrified.

Shannie’s fingers twitched before she released my arm, and then, in a move that shocked me, positioned herself so that she was shielding me with her body from the robed men. I was five feet three inches tall, but she was five eight, and even in this bad, bad, bad situation I was reassured by the protection of her shadow.

“I guarantee I will. And you don’t want me to make you.” Again, a dead firm tone.

Now, you have to know something about Shannie Lai. She absolutely does not accept any crap, for lack of a better term, from anyone, whether they’re her cousins, her parents, her friends, strangers, or robed guys with knives trying to harm someone she cares about. The very air she exhales is heavy with confidence, and she’s rather aggressive, especially during basketball games where she plays power forward for our school’s varsity team. Sure, she harbors a soft spot for cute things and underdogs, but in general, she is the last person you want to piss off.

But there was no way Assailant Three knew this, and he laughed at her, waving his hand as if he were symbolically shoving her aside. “Move it, you stupid girl. We don’t care about you. We just want Jess to come with us.”

When I heard this, I meant to ask ‘why’ but my voice died in my throat. These three, they… they wanted to kidnap me. Kidnap me. They had tracked me down to this deserted road at night for the sole purpose of kidnapping me. For a few seconds it was impossible to gather rational thought.

Fortunately, Shannie kept her cool and asked for me, albeit in her own fashion.

“What the hell? Why?”

“It doesn’t concern you,” Assailant One responded smoothly, and they all slowly started to close in, suffocating the precious separating space we had. “Now, move it.”

“I’m not going anywhere, and neither is she.”

Darn right I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t. I think my legs were paralyzed. But Shannie, amazingly composed, bent her knees slightly and opened her arms as if to protect me.

I cannot tell you how grateful I was for her support even though I was horribly afraid she would be injured on my account. No one should have to be hurt on my account. I’d rather let myself be kidnapped than see someone else punished for my refusal. I mean, I hadn’t refused my attackers either verbally or otherwise, but that was beside the point. If the price for prolonging my freedom meant a knife in Shannie’s abdomen, I’d rather go now.

They seemed to want me alive. That was a minute scrap of relief I could salvage. As soon as my ransom was paid or I was rescued or they let me go, I wanted to be able to see her well and alive and hear her rant about the three robed men in long strings of colorful and vulgar words. And that required her to be alive, damn it, so Shannie step aside and please don’t sacrifice yourself for me!

But saying this was easier in theory than in practice, and I found that my voice still wasn’t functioning properly. About all I could do was raise my hand to place on Shannie’s shoulder to calm her down.

However, I couldn’t even do that; Assailant One pulled a round pendent from beneath his robes and brandished it, reciting something in a weird language, possibly Latin. And then a raw, powerful pressure fell from the sky.

At first, I thought a house had been dropped on me. One moment I was standing upright just fine; the next, every inch of my body had been seized and dragged downwards with incredible force. I ended up flat on my stomach with an “oomph”.

It took my last ounce of strength and a lot of struggling just to push myself back onto my knees. I simply couldn’t get any higher; mysterious, invisible impediments seemed determined to keep me welded to the ground.

“Jess!” With an anxious cry, Shannie was immediately kneeling by my side, holding my shoulder. I wondered why she hadn’t been affected—there was no mistake, this was magic—but perhaps I should’ve been more concerned with my greatly increased vulnerability.

“What did you do to her?” she demanded. Secretly, I wanted know that too.

“Like I said, it doesn’t concern you,” Assailant One scoffed, lowering his arm. I could see the pendent dangling from his fingers, and when I sniffed, I caught the odor of blood.

Werewolf blood.

My stomach performed somersaults, but not just because of the smell. No, not just because of that. I knew now why we had been ambushed and why I was being targeted specifically. These three robed guys were hunters. And if I was correct, which I was certain I was, that pendent served as a medium for an imprisonment spell designed to trap werewolves.

Oh God, I was in deep deep trouble.

Kidnapping was the least of my worries.

“I’ll give you one last chance,” Assailant One was saying, and to my dismay unsheathed a knife identical to that of Assailant Two. “Move it, girl. I promise we won’t have to kill you as long as you give up your friend nice and quietly.”

Well, Shannie rarely did anything nice and quietly, and I really doubted she was going to start now. She stood up but didn’t reply.

“Well?” Assailant One took a threatening step forward, twirling the knife between his fingers like a baton. I might’ve been impressed if I wasn’t so scared out of my mind. “What’s your answer?”

When I looked at Shannie, I was surprised to find rage etched into her face, every muscle taut. Personally, I was terrified to the point of lightheadedness, but she looked ready to break someone’s arm. It confounded me how she could be feeling more angry than scared.

And then her response nearly made me suffer cardiac arrest.

“Fuck off, you son of a bitch.”

I closed my eyes.

I did not just hear that. I did not just hear Shannie oh-so-eloquently tell Assailant One off. I did not just hear her curse at the least inopportune moment when we were both in great danger, possibly her moreso than me since they’d already expressed interest in keeping me alive but considered her quite expendable.

Apparently, Assailant One was having trouble believing his ears too, because he didn’t react right away. But two short seconds later, he advanced on us and swung his hand at Shannie, smacking her across the cheek with such force she stumbled.

For the second time that night, I think I barely avoided a heart attack.

The blow triggered a violent response: suddenly screaming like a madwoman, Shannie leapt on Assailant One and rained a series of swift, hard punches on his person, most of them connecting solidly. Miraculously, though he used the knife in retaliation, Shannie wasn’t cut even once, and I thought she was actually going to win the impromptu spar until Assailants Two and Three reminded us of their presence by grabbing her and hauling her off their comrade.

Assailant Three held her firmly around the waist, trapping her arms against her sides while his other hand clamped over her mouth, muffling her screams. Shannie continued to flail about with stifled yells, probably profane ones, but after a while she realized the futility of her predicament and stopped, slumping wearily in her captor’s grasp.

Just like that, it was over.

“Goddamnit!” Assailant One spat as he rose to his feet, throwing her a vicious glare and rubbing his chin. “Crazy bitch! I’ll take care of you later...”

“As for you…”

My throat constricted as he turned to address me.

Uh-oh.