1. I Need A Vacation
I Need A Vacation
“Oh, my God! You are so funny!” Every word I say takes effort, but by now, I've mastered the art of feigning interest. I'm used to enduring lazy jokes and leering gazes, knowing they'll only grow hungrier as the night wears on.
As long as I get what I'm after, it's worth making this guy feel like he's God's gift to women.
The blonde-haired yuppie gives me one more appraising look, taking in my tight black cocktail dress and done-up raven hair. Then he offers me a hand in what might be his first genuine attempt at gentlemanliness.
“What do you say we get out of here?” He licks his teeth as he says it. I still have no clue why anyone does that. Though I think I know why he does it, because of what he's about to do, or at least try.
I take his hand and let him gently guide me off the barstool. “I thought you'd never ask.”
He licks his teeth again, and just like before, it takes everything I have not to shiver. “Right this way.”
This is always the moment I get nervous, not because of the guy, but because I always seem to mess up here, or get too confident and give myself away. I try to mask the nerves with laughter, pretending I'm tipsy instead of anxious.
We get to the entrance, and he gestures to the elevator bank across the way. “Are you staying at the hotel?”
I shake my head, and just as I hoped, he suggests, “Why don't we go back to my place? It's just around the corner.”
I keep a sly smile as he guides me out of the hotel, past signs for whatever conference he supposedly attended, and into the cold Georgia night.
He drapes his arm around me in a show of chivalry, a gesture that would fool someone more na?ve into thinking he's being protective.
But I know better. He's just making sure I can't run.
We are barely at the end of the block before he's turning me down a sleepy, narrow side street lined with detached houses and fenced yards. Aside from a vintage Cadillac parked at the far end, the street is utterly empty. I know he won’t make his move until I’m actually inside whichever of these is his den.
The entire time he's smelling me, appraising me like a cut of meat. “You really are exquisite.”
I feign a blush as he leads me to a squat blue house halfway up and gets his keys out. Apparently, I smell so exquisite that he hasn't even noticed the person shadowing us since we left the bar. Or maybe he has and simply chooses not to pay them any mind as he unlocks the door and leads me inside.
I'm no stranger to this, but something feels off. Normally, guys are more handsy, more lustful, and eager to play with their food before they eat. This one is different, and that unsettles me. Only now do I realize I never even got his name.
The moment the door clicks shut behind us, the charade finally drops. I'm actually grateful for it, as I immediately start to hear bones crack and skin tear as whatever creature was inside him finally reveals itself.
It has a gaping maw like a piranha, fingers like hooks, and stands a foot taller than the man who led me here. Only now does it seem bewildered by how very uninterested I am in its horrific transformation.
“Yeah, I can do that too,” I say flatly.
Until now, I hadn’t been able to change; my transformation isn’t always within my control.
It’s reactive. I need to smell a curse, to feel the corrupting magic fill my nostrils before I can shift.
The faint traces I caught earlier, the ones that told me he was my mark, weren’t enough.
Only now does the stench fester, finally pushing me over the edge.
When it hits, the release is almost euphoric.
Unlike this freak, my transformation isn’t grotesque.
My bones don’t crack, and my skin doesn’t tear.
I simply expand, pouring out of myself, becoming more ursine.
Matted fur spreads, and two thick bull horns rise like a crown from my temples.
My dress is the only casualty, and suddenly I’m standing a little taller than the thing before me, the thing that’s been hunting and killing for months, uncontested.
The thing that took us too long to find, and that won’t be hurting anyone again, as it finally realizes its mistake.
Past the remaining shreds of human skin, and those stiff, sunken, scaly features, I think I glimpse something like fear as its already large yellow eyes grow to the size of saucers.
Most monsters start attacking by this point, but he hasn't.
He seems paralyzed, and that almost makes me feel bad.
Then I reach for him, and my thick dagger-like claws close around him in a macabre mockery of the way he tried to hold me earlier when he was leading me here.
All he can do is stare, then thrash, far too late, as instinct takes over for both of us. I’m driven by an insatiable need to snuff out his curse; he’s driven only by primal fear. And in the end, I win.
I open my jaws and bite into his neck, ripping and tearing as I search for the source of his curse, the rotted thing that was once his heart. He yelps and hisses pathetically, but I know he’ll be quiet soon. Remembering his earlier blathering only makes me work faster.
Finally, I find the source, shriveled but still beating.
I wrench it free with my teeth as massive spurts of purple and red paint my fur.
What little life is left in those eyes watches in horror as his heart slides down my throat so his cursed magic can be digested.
Slowly, those eyes dim. As much as I wish I could say I felt bad for the thing, I doubt he felt bad for the countless people he killed before I stopped him.
With the curse gone, I slowly return to human form. The extra muscle and matted fur retreat, leaving only a young, naked woman in need of a shower and clean clothes.
Without all the yelping, I can finally hear that someone's making a ruckus at the door. Still naked except for where I'm covered in blood and bits of sinew, I hurry over, shouting, “I'm fine. Everything's fine.”
By the way the banging continues, I can tell the room is too soundproofed, likely to hide people's shouts for help from passersby. I try to open the door, but of course, it needs a key on this side too. Why wouldn't it? He wasn't expecting to let me run away.
I hurry back to what remains of the man and hope I didn't accidentally swallow the key, too. Mercifully, I find it in a pair of ripped jeans that are still part of his intact lower half. Then I turn to go back to the door just as buckshot rips through the place where the bolt meets the frame.
I'm lucky I took my time because, before I even register how close I came to getting hit by shrapnel, the door flies inward. I see my savior, a young woman with blue eyes and auburn hair who’s scanning the room's interior down the barrel of that same shotgun.
The moment she sees I'm the only one standing, she lets the gun fall so that it hangs off of her by its sling, and rushes to throw her arms around me, paired with a deep sigh of relief.
“Oh, thank God! I thought he’d got you!” Ann squeezes me tight, tighter than that freak when he was guiding me here, then plants kiss after grateful kiss on my forehead. She’s relieved I’m okay, seemingly indifferent to the fact that I’m covered in blood and guts.
I know she just wants me safe. What girlfriend wouldn’t? Still, it drives me crazy that I’m the one who can turn into a giant, horned Div, yet she always acts like she’s the one who has to rescue me.
“I'm fine, Mom,” I say teasingly, knowing just how much it will get under her skin. “Now, did you bring me a change of clothes or not?”
Ann pulls back, her lips pulling into a tight frown. “Ha. Ha. Yes, I brought your clothes.”
She pulls off a backpack and hands it to me. Then she steps back, appraising me, not to eat me, at least not like that. “Shay, are you okay?”
“Yeah, why wouldn't I be?” I huff as I pull a towel from the bag to wipe the chunks off me.
“It's just, we've been having a real go of it lately.”
“Yeah, well, when we decided to become monster hunters, we knew it would come with odd hours.” I exhale as I look around the ruined remains of the room.
It’s the lie I keep telling myself: I chose this, I’m fine with this, I wanted this.
I’m a Div. I can consume curses. It’s my duty to save people who don’t even know these things exist. Still, I worry: what if this is all there is to my life?
Or worse, to our life? Is this all I can offer the girl of my dreams?
I catch Ann watching me, so I bark out a disgruntled, “Are you going to help me find some clues or not?”
Ann keeps that same disappointed look as she stops appraising me and starts appraising the room. “If I were part of a weird Kabal of monsters, where would I hide my crap?”
I do the same. That's the weird thing about monster dens like this: from outside, it just looks like a house, but inside it's as much a cage as it's supposed to be a vault.
A place to play with food as much as a place for a creature's literal housekeeping. But now that I am actually looking, I realize there’s almost nothing here.
We take our time, really digging through the place.
One of the scariest things about this life isn't the monsters, it's how quickly you learn how many other people know about them.
There's almost a symbiosis between monsters and a certain class of asshole, whether because one wants to become the other or to make sure they stay out of the others' way.
That's why Ann and I know no one is coming to investigate this place anytime soon, even though she just blew a hole in the front door.
And yet, like the monster, this house is odd, weirdly bare, lacking the tiny touches that let you know this place is for dining as much as living and storage.
I slip into sweatpants and an oversized hoodie, so I’m less naked as I search through another empty room. “Anything?”
“Nope,” Ann shoots back.
We converge on the last door, a hall closet, and stack up, like we are in an action movie, because there are no rules to this. Then Ann kicks in the door and… nothing.
“Shoot, another dead end,” Ann says, surveying the empty shelves of the closet, oblivious to the way my face twists. “Did this guy ever even move in?”
I punch the drywall behind us as Ann swings, gun still in hand. “What the fuck?”
She finally notices the grief twisting my face as I try to shove it down. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Did you see something?”
“God dammit!” I squeeze the words out. “How many more times is this going to keep happening?”
Ann doesn’t drop the gun, but she frees one arm to rest it around my shoulder. “Babe, what’s going on?”
“I, I just can’t believe we keep running into these dead ends,” I lie, trying to hide my pain, pain that I have dragged Ann here on another goose chase.
“No, that’s not it,” she protests, holding me tight. “You’ve been in a mood ever since we left Atlanta.”
Now’s not the right time for this conversation, but something snaps in me.
Maybe it’s the frustration of chasing monsters and never finding the one truly responsible.
I let out a rough laugh. “Of course I have. Is this all we ever do? Is our relationship just going to be new variations of getting covered in blood and guts every night until you get sick of it?”
Ann gives me a reassuring kiss on the head. “Shay, you know we are close. This place is proof they are getting desperate.”
“Are we though?” I snap. “What bullshit is Al going to have us chasing next week?”
“You're right.”
“And I know what you're going to say-” I stop mid-sentence. “Wait. What did you say?”
“I said, you are right.” Ann pulls away so I can look at her. “We have been pushing ourselves a lot, and judging from the lack of anything in this place, I think we have a decent excuse to tell Al we need to regroup.”
She gestures around before turning on a tap. “I mean, the place doesn't even have running water or a bed.”
She throws her arms around me again, resting her head on my shoulder. “I think we both need a break from monster hunting. And right now seems like the ideal time.”
“Like, a vacation?” I practically sound out the word, the syllables sounding foreign on my tongue.
“Yeah!”
I blink at the thought, the promise of normalcy, the chance to be with Ann doing anything but this. Just being together, with no monsters looming over us, like at the start. A chance to prove I can give Ann something more than a constant horror show.
“You really mean it?” I croak, somehow still needing the assurance.
“Yeah, dummy, my dad still lives not too far from here. If I recall, you promised you'd teach him how to cook some silly rice dish?”
“Making Tadig is not silly! It's an art!” I blurt before catching myself and giving a small chuckle.
“I know, I just wanted to make sure my girlfriend was still in there.”
I follow Ann back to the front door, and just as we are about to leave, I take Ann's hand and gently pull her back to me, resting my forehead against hers. “Thank you. About the vacation.”
“Yeah, of course. It’ll be good for us both.”
I smile as I press in a little more, my body now flush against hers. “I love you, babe.”
She holds me tight and gives me a quick kiss on the lips. “Tell me that after you've taken a shower.”