One
I clung to the branch in my tree, concentrating on the woman just twenty yards away in the center of the clearing in the forest. Well, I use the term "woman" loosely. She was a maenad. I stared at her dirty, tangled blonde hair, hanging down to her naked waist. I watched her gracefully sit on the ground over a chalice with an athame and slice into her hand. Gross.
From my perch, I watched her start chanting over the chalice. Greek, of course. I rolled my eyes. Can't these Supes ever chant in English? I tried to get the gist of what she was saying but it was no use. It's always some damn dead language with them.
Behind me, a twig snapped. I turned to look, almost falling out of my tree. Two idiots were bumping their way through the forest. Shit. I swiveled back to look at my maenad, who was, of course, gone. Dammit!
I waited for the morons to pass under me and searched their brain signatures. Human… ish. Ish? What the Hell? How can someone be human-ish? More crap to deal with, Clove.
Slipping from the tree, I ducked into the shadows and followed them to the clearing where the maenad had just been.
"What exactly do you two think you're doing?" I asked, cocking my hip, placing my hand on it.
Before I knew it, there were two .45s pointed at my forehead. "Who the Hell are you?" The shorter one asked.
"Easy there, cowboy," I said. "Friend, not foe." I put my hands up where they could see them. They may be dumb, but they were the ones with guns.
"He asked you a question," the tall one said, slightly less aggressively. Wow, he's tall.
"Sorry, I tend to respond better when there aren't two pistols aimed at my face. Could you lower them so we can talk like civilized people?" I asked.
They exchanged glances toward each other and lowered their guns to tuck them into the waistbands of their jeans.
I slowly lowered my hands, reaching my right out to shake. "I'm Clover. And you two charmers are…?"
"I'm Sam, this is my brother Dean," the tall one said, shaking my hand.
"Come on, Sammy!" Dean was aggravated. "You have to just tell her who we are?"
This is gonna take a while. Bye bye, maenad. I cut to the chase. "What are you doing out here?" Hands went back on my hips.
"Taking a walk," Dean grumbled.
"At midnight? With .45s?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Can never be too safe," Sam shrugged.
"Right. Well, I guess I'll be the one to be honest here. I was following that maenad. And doing a pretty good job until you two decided to break every single branch in the woods." I sighed. How was I going to track that thing down again?
Both jaws dropped open.
"What did you call that thing?" Dean asked.
"A maenad?" I raised one eyebrow at them. "Wait, you two were out here, hunting this thing without knowing what it was? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You could have gotten killed."
"We're good at what we do. And why were you following it anyway?" Sam asked.
"I was trying to kill the bitch," I said simply. I trolled over to where she had been standing and crouched close to the grass. There were a few blades that had drops of blood on them from accidental dripping. I plucked them carefully and dropped them inside of a Ziploc bag.
"And how did you plan on doing that?" Dean crossed his arms over his chest.
"Well not with a gun, that's for sure, seeing as she'd just deflect the bullet. And silver won't work either, so don't even think about it." I chuckled. "To be honest, Prince Charming," I said to Dean, "It's going to be a hell of a lot easier for me to kill her simply because I'm not a man."
"Hold up there, what does that mean?" Sam asked. Clearly he was the brains of the operation.
"Men are more suceptable to a maenad's…" I searched for the word that would scare them the least. "Charms." I stood from where I had been crawling around looking for a hair, a broken nail, anything that would give me a way to track her. "How did you two start tracking her?" I asked.
"We're hunters." No shit. "We track strange occurrences and waste whatever is causing them." Dean looked around the clearing.
Come on, Clove, get out before they waste you too. I ignored my inner voice. "Look, normally I work alone but seeing as you two will get yourselves killed if you go up against it on your own, I'm gonna suggest a team up."
"No thanks," Sam said, crossing his arms. "This is a two man operation."
"I don't really think you have a choice, Paul Bunyan. See, I happen to know a lot about maenads and you now know what they're called, thanks to me." I fished my car keys out of my satchel. "So what do you say we head in and grab a cup of coffee and go over some facts?"
The two brothers looked at each other and seemed to deliberate without words for a second.
"Fine," Dean said. "But only because we don't want you getting hurt out here by yourself."