Mysteria Nights

Six

He found Charlene at a small outdoor shooting range on the east end of town. The triplets had, at the last second, disdained to accompany him, instead giving him a map that disappeared as soon as he saw the range with his own eyes. Disappeared like a trick: poof. He spent five minutes trying to find it in his car before giving up. He wasn’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Not that he had needed it; the smell of gunpowder and spent casings was very strong on this end of town; he would eventually have stumbled across it himself. Still, it was good to know the triplets could be helpful when they wished.

He had seen silver slices of the mysterious second river on the road out of town, but every time he got close, it turned out to be a mirage. He could smell water, but it could have been from the river on the other side of town.

Meanwhile, Charlene was gamely plugging away at a series of turkey-shaped silhouettes about fifteen feet away from where she was standing. The silhouettes were made of iron, and he could hear the bullets plinking and whining off of them, and smell the stench of gunpowder. It was so bad he almost didn’t go up to her, but the fact that she overwhelmed even those bad smells decided him. Also, the sight of her butt in denim.

He found a spare set of earphones at the shooter’s table, slipped them on, then said, between her shots, “Shouldn’t you be a little farther away?”

She didn’t turn around, just kept banging away in the general direction of the targets. The gun in her hand was so big she could barely hold it upright. It made him feel slightly ill to look at it. Hunting with lead and pieces of metal seemed kind of . . . he wasn’t sure. Cheating? If you couldn’t bring someone down with your hands and feet and teeth, it—

“Don’t you have a hot date with Pot?”

“No.”

She slipped the earphones off her ears, popped the cylinder on the revolver, set it on the small, waist-high stand, and turned to face him. “And you better watch out for the triplets. They could get a guy like you in big trouble.”

“Thank you for the advice.”

“Is it true?”

He blinked. “Is what true?”

“That you’re a werewolf?”

“Sure.”

“Is Pot helping you—you know—find others of your kind?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Interestingly, her scent went from sharp suspicion to sweet surprise—honey over oatmeal. It made for a pleasant change from the gunpowder. “Well, maybe I can help you. I’ve, uh, had some experience in this stuff.”

“Selling houses to werewolves?”

“No, no. I’m a . . .” She paused dramatically, then rushed out with, “I’m a vampire slayer!”

“But I’m not a vampire,” he said mildly.

“That’s okay, I’m not really a slayer. I’m more like a vampire beater-upper. I don’t like killing them. Hey, the undead are people, too.”

She was lying. But he was so used to it—people lying like they breathed—that it wasn’t especially alarming. He assumed that she was stressed and tense about her job(s), and couldn’t tell him the full truth about her night business. But a vampire beater-upper might be handy, if she could—

“I’ve run into lots of werewolves,” she assured him. “I bet I could help you find some of your kind.”

“One of my kind lives in this town,” he reminded her.

“Right, right. But I meant, your herd. Find your herd.”

“Oh.” He almost smiled at her, and didn’t at the last minute. His smile made people afraid. “That would be good.”

“Yes, indeed, I’ve seen more creatures of the night than you can shake a stick at,” she continued, slipping her tinted shooting glasses off her face. And now she was telling the whole truth . . . probably a truth anyone living in Mysteria could tell. “We’ll get you hooked up.”

“I’d like to get hooked up,” he said, and this time he did smile. Oddly, she wasn’t afraid; instead, she blushed prettily, and he wondered just how important finding the others really was.

Seven

“The first thing we ought to do,” Charlene was telling him after they had parked in front of a small house north of Main Street, “is leave Justin a note.”

“A note?”

“I told you, I’m pretty sure he’d be helpful to you, but he’s out of town right now.”

“For a vampire slayer—”

“Vampire beater-upper.”

“—you’re not very aggressive.”

“I’m a little bit of a pacifist,” she admitted, scribbling something on a piece of stationery and getting out to slip it into the mailbox.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Uh . . . we wait until Justin reads his note?”

“Isn’t there anything else we could do? Isn’t there an underground contact you can call, or e-mail?”

“Oh, sure, loads of them. Tons. But right now, they’re all sleeping. See?” She pointed to the sun, fat on the horizon and tinting the clouds orange. He couldn’t believe it was almost evening. They’d been driving around and chatting all day as she gave him a tour of his new town. “Everybody’s resting up for their nightly battle against the scourges of the underworld.”

“Oh.”

“So, why don’t you come over to my house for supper? I stuck a roast in the Crock-Pot this morning; there’ll be plenty.”

“Oh.” He thought that one over. If he went to her house, there would be food, and her company, and that would be pleasurable. But he would want to—

“I guess you don’t want to,” she said, and blood had rushed to her face again, that charming blush.

“I do want to,” he assured her. “I’m just not sure I’d want to leave.”

“Well,” she said, blushing harder and starting the car, “who said you’d have to leave?”

Pot roast was awkward, but delicious. He couldn’t get what she’d said out of his mind. She was so there it was driving him crazy; he wanted to be done with potatoes and carrots and meat and just get her on the floor and fuck her until they were both slick with sweat and out of breath.

But you didn’t just do that. He was pretty sure. There were women in his old neighborhood, of course, but nobody like Charlene. What was the protocol? Goddammit!

He was never more aware of being a werewolf than when he wanted to get laid. Sex made the difference between species yawn like a chasm, a bottomless one. Because he knew when the woman wanted to do it, but she rarely came out and said it.

So he had to sit there (at the movies, at dinner, at a car show, whatever) and pretend he couldn’t smell her lust. And she pretended she wasn’t giving off enough hormones to make him feel like he was losing his mind. The whole thing made his balls hurt.

Charlene wanted him. He wanted her. She’d joked about him spending the night. She’d made him supper. She was helping him find his—what was the term? Herd. His herd. And she’d been helpful in a hundred other ways,