The apartment building was surprisingly quiet, sparse and with little noise to be heard except the distant pattering of rain and the sound of running water in the walls, bubbling the “landlord white” paint. A sign of our destination, Percy and I stopped outside the relevant door, taking a spot either side of it (me on the hinge side in case the occupant did look out) and I let Percy rap his knuckles on the cheap wooden door.

  We’d dressed up, hunters not having the fake ids and connections I was used to using, wearing blue coveralls and heavy tool belts. Percy, a little old fashioned with women, had insisted on carrying the tool box, and seeing as it carried his gun I couldn’t even mock annoyance this time. It didn’t matter how he tied up his dirt-blonde hair, if he had a stab vest under his coveralls, if he had a silver knife up his sleeve, if a supernatural attacked him his chances were slim.

  Also it felt nice to get treated with a little chivalry as a trans woman, as much as it felt silly how he always insisted on carrying the heavy objects when we worked together.

  It did upset the wolf, wanting to growl and put ourselves between him and just prove how strong we were, but I resisted that. Did my best to ignore the wolf, the blonde woman following us down the hall, Percy couldn’t see her anyway, and just stayed still as no one answered Percy’s knocking.

  “You think we should go in?” I asked with a raised brow, and Percy looked more than a little conflicted by that option.

  People knew who I was in Richmond, even if I wasn’t exactly a well known face in the hunter communities. I was The Lady’s right hand, I was her enforcer, and if I went bursting into a hunter’s apartment and he recognized me, well…yeah no that’d be bad for us. Most hunters kept silver on hand, and in the time between “sorry you didn’t answer” and “dead” there’d be little time to explain why I was working with Percy.

  Still, Percy seemed to know as well as I that we needed to get inside, and with a small sigh asked, “quiet or loud?”

  “Well, we’re supposed to fix a leak right? Anyone hears a bang, they’ll assume we’re knocking something around to fix it,” I said, knowing it was our flimsy cover. Whatever plumbing company the landlord had called knew a hunter lived here, hunters were going missing and dying, why not have someone a little more experienced come investigate?

  “You ain’t dying if he uses lead,” Percy muttered, and with a step back the man gestured me towards the door.

  I was about to argue I’d die if he used silver, but it wasn’t like humans were immune to silver bullets. Instead I took my position in front of the door, pulling my long, curly auburn hair into a messy ponytail, and adjusted my brown leather eyepatch before bracing my shoulder against the door. The wolf pulled forward from the depths within me, I let it come out just enough for my muscles to burn, try to expand, and try to form the combat ready hybrid form before I launched every muscle in my body at the door.

  The wooden frame snapped, the lock breaking inwards, and I stumbled only briefly as I forced my body to remain human.

  Pitch black in the apartment, even with heightened senses and it being just past noon, the door only had to be open a few seconds before the smell of blood and waste hit us. A frown crossing my lips, I felt the wolf clawing to get out even as Percy leaned in from behind me and flipped the apartment’s light on.

  Every piece of furniture in the studio pushed against the wall, flipped, or broken, the center of the room cleared out except for where a single metal folding chair sat. Cuffed, tied, and zip-tied to it in a collage of restraints that had to be superfluous, an old man sat naked; white beard stained dark purple with blood, skin and muscle cut off and laid in neat rows on the ground, and large mason jars of blood laying open around him.

  On the ground by his foot, a car battery sat, connected by jumper cables between his legs.

  “Jesus, fuck me,” Percy snapped, looking away with his face twisted in disgust even as I walked forward unbothered.

  Gruesome, fucked up, definitely worst I’d seen at a crime scene in a long time, but truth told? I’d seen a lot worse.

  The woman was judging me, stood against one wall now staring me down silently as she had for some time now. I couldn’t help but stare her down for that, wondering why she was judging me for not reacting to this before I focused on the scene in front of me.

  Gripping the hunter’s scalp I tilted the head back and forth, appreciating the bruises and cuts inflicted on him. The eyes burnt, almost boiled, but with little damage done to the flesh around them. The lips torn and in shreds, the mouth a gory and bloody mess on the inside. His nose…untouched, which felt like an interesting choice.

  “They didn’t break any bones,” I observed dryly, trying to force my brain to not focus on the sweet smell of the blood around me, the iron tinge filling all aspects of the world. My hands fumbling for the cigarettes in my pockets, I started a slow circle around the room as I explained, “bones are risky. They cause a lot of immediate pain, but it activates a lot of things in the brain to deal with pain and causes internal damage.”

  “So they were trying to stop him from dying, trying to stop him from experiencing less pain,” Percy muttered in disgust, putting on a surgical mask from his pocket I knew wouldn’t be doing much for him.

  Whatever made him feel like he was doing something for the smell.

  “They also controlled the blood loss, which…I don’t know how,” I muttered, looking around the room with no small amount of surprise, “the cut off bits of flesh have the wounds cauterized, and there’s not all that much blood on the floor. What he loss, it looks like they did it on purpose and fed directly into those jars, but,” I let out a sigh as I realized genius would not strike me mid sentence, “I don’t know why.”

  “Never seen anything like that before?” Percy asked, seeming to stop in place as he stared something down. Marching over quickly, he dropped to his knee, pulling out a large trunk from against the wall, locked with two heavy padlocks.

  “If they took it I’d think they were fear junkies, The Lady explained that to me once,” I grunted as I walked over to watch Percy work, fumbling for the bolt cutters from his tool box he quickly took to the locks, “Vampires are affected by the emotions in the blood they drink, vampires who drink extreme fear or pain enter blood frenzies, some use it for a high.” He was ignoring me, and I decided to not continue that course of thought, “You think you found something there?”

  Percy grunted his answer, obviously having some trouble with the latch as he admitted, “only visited Hendricks once, but never saw this here. Might be new, or something-”

  The trunk jumped, a muffled scream coming from within, and, my feet moving faster than my brain, I ran to Percy’s side to force it open, snapping the latch in the process.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  A woman was inside, young, maybe a teenager in a pair of bloodstained jeans and a black shirt. Eyes covered with a blindfold, duct tape covering a blood-covered mouth, her arms zip-tied behind her and tight enough that too was trickling blood down her hands as Percy quickly helped the poor girl out.

  His voice low and comforting, barely hiding the fear, he half-whispered, “you’re safe, you’re okay, we’re here to help you, can you hear me?”

  He had to whisper it several times, and it was times like this I wished I had been born with my former mentor’s ability to manipulate emotions even while I looked on frozen. Something holding the wolf still, making my heartbeat in my ears even as Percy managed to calm the woman enough for her to stop struggling against him. The woman we'd come in with moving to stand behind me, a cold hand resting on my shoulder providing none of the warmth it should have.

  Percy calm and steady, he gently reached up to her mouth and told her, “I’m gonna take the tape off, it might hurt but I’ll be fast. I think you should leave the blindfold on for a minute though, if you can manage it, it’s kinda ugly in here.

  She nodded and Percy ripped the tape off. She yelped, whimpered, and in a voice with a surprisingly focused tone asked, “are you the police?”

  “Something like that,” Percy muttered, looking down at her bleeding wrists with a pained hiss, pulling me from my frozen horror as he asked, “Mary, I think Hendricks kept his emergency bag in the bathroom, can you see if the water went and ruined it? It’s going to take me a minute to get all these ties off, but I think she’s going to need something to wrap them in, you know?”

  I nodded my answer, rushing to the bathroom and not thinking again until I was through the door. The floor flooded, water pouring from under the sink, but a red medical bag sat out on top of the counter left open. My feet slowly carrying me over as I looked down at a mess of supplies and bottles that I carried back to Percy.

  “I don’t see any gauze or anything,” I admitted, passing the bag over to Percy while my eye scanned the room, looking for anything else out of place. Why did someone go through all this trouble to get us over here? Why take out the first aid bag just to leave it in the bathroom? there was no sign of a fight here, no blood, no one looked like they were injured here who wasn’t supposed to be, and they didn’t use the gauze on our hunter.

  The woman surprised me by speaking up, voice a whisper as she asked, “why was it so dark when we came in here?” and I heard Percy curse from behind us as I walked over to the apartment’s single window. Percy couldn’t hear her anyway, no use in asking him what he thought of that point.

  The curtain was heavy and thick, a blackout curtain, but at the same time…too dark for the middle of the day. My hands gripping the fabric softly, I jerked them back, greeted by blue tarp and duct tape completely sealing off the window.

  Completely sealing off the window, but hiding it behind the curtains.

  Something rolled in my brain, and turning back to Percy I watched him fumbling with his knife to cut through the zip-ties as my eye dragged along the carpet. My gaze pulled to one of the open mason jars, all of them open to the air, but one in particular different from the rest. The blood not just a pool at the bottom, but on the side, on the lip, on the outside…

  “Percy, she’s a!-”

  The restraints had snapped no more than half a second before the vampire lunged forward and tackled the hunter to the ground. A scream erupted, quickly turned to a low croak, and I rushed forward as I started ripping open my coveralls.

  Naked underneath, I let the wolf take over while my boots were still being kicked off and I tackled into the vampire as she looked up towards me. Bodies clashed, muscles grew and shifted, bones snapped and turned to find new forms, body hair grew thicker to form fur.

  I sunk teeth that were still turning to fangs into dead flesh, rot and fear on my tongue, and ripped back my head as my jaw snapped its way into a muzzle and my eyepatch slipped off a skull changing shape. Corpse flash sloshed down my throat, a cry rang out, and I looked up to two red spotlights baring down into my soul a moment before my chest erupted in pain.

  Glowing pain, nails sharp as iron tearing into the flesh, gripping ribs that changed shape under them, and I threw my own weight at her as I snapped at her neck. Missing as I snapped too far back, but close enough for her to rush away, almost too fast to see, crouch low to the ground and ready to charge as I forced the transformation to finish.

  Percy was too close for me to take on my hybrid form, the building too cheap, and there was too big a chance I’d crush him or break through something. Wolf form was a little safer for my companion, and raising less questions if seen by others, but it was nonetheless risky. The wolf form was good for fighting humans, other wolves, working in packs, but one on one against a vampire was new to me.

  Well, good story if I survived and good way to die otherwise.

  A growl rose in my throat, my body sunk low, and with a bark we both charged towards one another, bodies colliding, teeth finding flesh…

  And a moment later a scream breaking out, light flooding the already lit room, and the vampire trying to pull its arm from my mouth as sunlight bathed it. Flesh grew gray, the taste of rot grew thicker on my tongue joined by ash, a screech rang out in the air, and an orange glow grew under the creature’s flesh. Not more than a few seconds later, the creature falling apart under its own weight, collapsing and breaking, crashing to the ground in piles of ash even while I coughed and spit out what I could as a wolf.

  A long moment passed before I could look up, the taste of death and ash still strong on my tongue as I watched Percy slowly slide to the ground. By the window, hands still gripping the tarp he’d ripped off with white knuckles, blood staining his neck and coveralls as he looked at me with a confused blank stare.

  Not much else to do, I forced myself back to my human form, naked as I slowly walked over to pick up my coveralls and asked, “are you okay?”

  “I feel…fuzzy,” Percy admitted with a grunt, rubbing where the vampire had bit with a shaking hand, pulling the hand away in surprise as he muttered, “I don’t even feel the mark, I’m not turning into one of those things, am I?”

  I had to laugh at that, shaking my head as I looked down at the clothes I’d carried, sadly stained with blood from a tipped mason jar, and explained, “vampire saliva is a powerful healing agent as long as its fresh. Once they’re done feeding the wound closes almost the instant it hits air.” The man tilting his head in confusion as I did compliment him, “Good thinking on the curtain, Hunter.”

  Percy let out a grunt of acknowledgment, shaking his head for a moment before he muttered, “thanks, werewolf.” and I closed my eye as I realized what I’d call him even as he continued to ignore it with, “let’s wash off in the sink, I’ll run down to the truck and you can call someone to clean this up. I think you still have a change of clothes in my truck, and if I throw one of Hendrick’s coats over my coveralls no one will notice the blood.”

  “Had to use the shirt the other day, or did you forget the claw incident?” I muttered with a nervous laugh as I stumbled to the sink to wash off my face and mouth, grumbling as I tried forcing the ash taste away through mouthfuls of tap water. Maybe Hendricks had some beer or soda in the fucking fridge?

  Percy joined me, fetching a towel from one of the drawers he wet to clean the blood from his neck. A small smile on his lips, perhaps a little loopy from the lost blood, and he half unzipped his coveralls and quickly pulled off the shirt underneath he draped over my head without warning as he started out. His coveralls half-zipped on by the time he reached the door, fetching a canvas coat from the rack as he called back, “at least have that on before I get back, how about that? Doesn’t matter how much you do it, I’m not gonna get used to you stripping for a fight.”

  I grumbled, but didn’t complain as I hastily pulled on the shirt Percy had given me, some faded shirt from a local band he liked from where his family lived. A little tight in the chest, still showing off the vines, roses, and blades, carved into my flesh on both arms, but better than anything else a six foot two woman blessed with curves could expect on short notice.

  It didn’t mean I wasn’t still pulling at the chest and hem in an attempt to make it sit right while I dug my phone from my coveralls pocket.

  Hunters going missing and dying, I’d ended up unexpectedly killing a vampire, and I’d not told my boss about that and was about to call asking for a body clean up.

  I had to laugh at that, rolling my head back while I scrolled my contacts and I looked at the woman with us. Sat on top of the trunk the vampire had been a short time before, leaned forward with her chin resting on her hands, blonde locks framing her smiling face. Distracted by her beauty for a few seconds until I asked, “are we speaking now?”

  And Barbie didn’t answer, returning to her silent stare.