On a sidewalk in the suburbs of a Texas city, we see a lone teenage girl strolling down a sidewalk. She's expressionless as her hair, dyed a nostalgic black and cut in the Bettie Page style, waves around her shoulders as she clomps down the sidewalk in scuffed black work boots.

The full moon above her is shining down a silvery bath of soft light that brightens her already pale skin that is starting to bead with sweat in the early May heat.

Her daypack bounces against her lower back and the straps cut into her black hooded sweatshirt.

The snaps on her blue jeans are straining to stay together against the bulk of her belly, so she's buttressed them with a thick studded belt that corrals the round swell of fat. The sweatshirt hides the effect of the belt somewhat, but her requisite black t-shirt is stretched across her front with a flash of bright skin in relief against it.

Her thick, pale kneecaps shine through the holes in her jeans.

Coming down the sidewalk ahead of her is a group of women.

Well, there are 5 young women that look to be her age and 1 older woman who could be in college or maybe her mother's age.

The 5 young women are all dressed out of a catalog, or the Gossip Girl set. Each of them has a unique style, but all are put together very well. They're all hard and tanned, with the trademark sculpted shoulders and trapezius muscles showing from sleeveless tops appropriate for early summer. They've bought everyone a ticket to the gun show, sporting arms that America's first lady would envy. At first glance, they look thin, like those starving girls in the Noxzema ads. As they approach laughing and gliding up the sidewalk, it becomes easy to see the feathery definition of their shoulders and the jumpy defined bulk of their legs.

They look like a cheerleading squad or gymnasts out on the town with their coach. Except the coach, she's what they hope they'll be one day. She's a tall and fit woman with long sun-bleached blond curls held by an ornate jeweled stag horn hair barrette. Her tanned olive skin glows in the moonlight. The first few lines around her eyes form when she laughs with them. And, when she laughs with the girls, her voice is like a brook in a quiet part of a secret wood.

As they pass each other on the sidewalk, the girl with the Bettie Page hair doesn't veer to one side. She doesn't look at them. She doesn't look away. She walks through the middle of them upsetting their good time.

They audibly and visibly protest. Who does she think she is, anyway?

As the girls with the bangs keeps going, one of them turns and slaps her on her backside, saying "Watch where you're going, Bettie!"

She takes a few steps and stops.

They've gone quiet.

She turns toward them, her head tilted to one side and an eyebrow raised. She looks over her shoulder to her backside and gets a glimpse of a sticker they put on her. It's round and black, and she can see just the top of a person's head in the center.

The 5 are standing looking at her, arms folded and hips stuck out to one side or the other. The older one steps toward the girl.

"You should run." She says in a heavy Italic honeyed voice, as she pulls off her sunglasses to reveal her green eyes.

The girl's face goes wide with terror and she turns to run, but falls flat on the sidewalk. The 6 of them all burst into laughter and begin walking toward her.

She scrambles to her feet, scuffing her exposed knees. She only makes it about 10 feet until the backpack she had been wearing thuds to the ground and she's pumping her arms and legs as fast as she can.

The 5 young voices are howling with laughter and she can hear their footsteps behind her.

She turns the next corner at a dead run and hides behind an old blue Chevy Caprice in a driveway.

She can't hear them anymore.

After a few minutes, she slips from behind the Chevy and peers down the street.

She cautiously walks under a big weeping willow tree in the same yard, hiding herself behind the hanging limbs and crouches to look down the street.

"I seeeeee you." A young voice says, giggling above her.

She looks up, and one of the five is sitting in the branches above her. She stumbles backward into the street and starts running again, sweat soaking her hoodie in a dark stripe down the back as she makes it past street after street.

She's looking for cover. She just needs to find somewhere to hide.

She looks to her right and sees an alley between two brick buildings. She almost runs in, but in her peripheral vision sees a figure jump from the roof of one brick edifice to the other. She turns back to the street. Her breath is heaving now. Her face is red and sweat is pouring from her now in sheets all over her body.

She continues down the street at full speed. Her hoodie, breasts, the roll of fat around her middle, and her Bettie Page hair all moving and grooving under her panicked stride marked by the thunder of her boots, and the sound of her breathing mixed with terror.

She runs one block, then two without looking back. She looks left and sees a figure running along the rooftops keeping pace with her. She looks right and hears a voice say "Where you going?" and it's sneering laughter.

Ahead, there's a large green hedgerow. It's only 2 more blocks. She'll turn there and get off this street.

Her mouth is getting dry and foam is forming at the corners as she heaves her breaths in and out of lungs that are indignantly burning from the demand placed upon them.

She passes a big Red Oak tree in the front yard of a small house with a perfect green lawn and geraniums on the porch. Leaning against it is the older woman. A savage smile darkly lighting her face cuts into Amy's wide, terror stricken eyes.

The girl sprints past her, her face the color of a beet and her jeans now damp with sweat. Her black boots stomp loudly across the concrete sidewalk.

She can hear the woman's steps behind her now, easily keeping pace with her. Unlike the younger women, she doesn't make any catcalls or laugh. The girl thinks she can feel the woman's breath on her neck as she easily runs what is, for her, speed she can only get from adrenaline and terror.

One more block, she runs with this woman's breath on her neck, her footsteps in her ears. Head back and chest out, gasping for air, she's making as much speed as she can, but it isn't much.

As she reaches the green hedgerow, she hears footsteps subside behind her. She keeps running full tilt, her face purple now. Her lungs are on fire, and her mouth feels like its made of desert sand.

She leans into the turn, still pumping her arms and legs at top speed. The boxwood limbs grab at her sweatshirt. Her arms flail as she puts on the brakes as hard as she can.

In front of her are the 5. You would say they were grinning if you were looking for the right verb. But, if you were in the boots of the girl with the Bettie Page hair, you'd say that they were showing her their teeth. There is no literary difference of opinion about their eyes. They're filled with a smoldering hate that can only be fostered by the bittersweet taste of retribution close enough to smell, and soon enough, to taste.

She turns and dashes away from them, but the woman who had been following walks around the corner and puts out her left arm, knocking her off her feet. The young and out of shape Bettie Page scrambles backward on her hands and feet as she's still gasping for air in desperate gulps.

The woman reaches down and picks her up by the sides of the damp hoodie, easily tossing her into the arms of the five who hold her fast, not a drop of sweat could be found among them except what came off of the girl's drenched body.

She's still gasping for breath in gulps, her face a blotchy watercolor of purple and red and white as they hold her by the arms, hair, belt, anywhere those strong little hands can grab.

"I.."She begins to shout hoarsely,"I didn't.."

"What's that?" The woman says, putting a hand to her ear as she steps slowly forward.

The 5 look at one another and laugh in that savage way that young girls in groups can.

"I didn't know!" She says, desperately between gasps.

The woman walks up and reaches in past her t-shirt, and finds two strands of rawhide. As she continues pulling, the two strands meet at a medallion fashion of cheap metal. It's an oval shaped piece that depicts a woman, nude from the waist up and holding a bow. She drops it and grasps the hoodie, jerking it down over the girl's left shoulder and tearing the sleeve. She has a tattoo of the same image on her arm, but it's surrounded by a circle of characters not quite English, but faintly close.

She looks at it, and looks back at the face of the girl.

"Goddess protect me?" She sneers, laughing that same bubbling laugh again.

"No I..." The girl begins again. "I didn't know. You gotta believe me!"

"I don't gotta do anything!" She barks, taking the girl by the throat with her left hand and raising her right into a fist.

The girl begins to blubber incoherently and the woman slaps her face with a vicious right hand in a flash that leaves a white print in the red and purple.

"Have a little dignity, despite your low station!" She growls in a low and irritated voice.

The girl sobs and struggles as the five hold her fast, though only barely.

"I don't want to die!" She whimpers, a miserable storm of pain and misery written across her face and her body going limp.

In a fluid punching motion, the woman thrusts her arm into the girl's throat nearly to the elbow. She looks away, as if she were feeling for something while the girl squirms and tries to scream, tears streaming. A ½ second later, a wry smile illuminates the woman's face as the girl's body suddenly jerks involuntarily.

"Hold her!" One of the five barks as she reaches down and pulls the black sticker from the girl's gyrating backside.

The woman draws her arm from the girl's throat. In her hand she grips a smoky, writhing, inky, dusty terror. As she pulls it, it tries to worm away and go back into the girl's mouth. The girl's eyes go from brown to black and back again twice. But, the woman continues to draw it, hand over hand, like a clown pulls a handkerchief that never ends from his pocket.

When the last of it finally clears the girl's quivering mouth, her eyes are rolling back in her head and her body is seizing and shaking violently as blood and spit foam in her mouth.

The 5 put her down on the sidewalk gently and begin to recite a series of foreign words with the woman who holds the coiling and straining darkness in her hands. Slowly, the girl's body is at peace and her brown eyes blink at the fullmoon and starry sky.

The five help her to her feet.

She is still breathing hard from the exertion and blinking as if she'd just been awakened.

As she gazes around herself, wide-eyed, the woman stands looking at her with a motherly concern.

"Are you alright, child? She asks.

Seeing the black, cloudy, struggling thing held only feet away, she takes a step backward and points accusingly.

"What the hell is that?" She gasped.

"This is the thing that was inside you, Amy." The woman says calmly. "This is the evil infested you and hid in your skin."

"Oh..." She says, standing staring for a moment with her mouth open and then putting a hand up to her mouth and going to one knee.

Her back heaves and she vomits a bit of bile on the gray sidewalk unceremoniously.

The five kneel around her and pat her on the back. One pulls an ornate white linen handkerchief from her back pocket and offer it as Amy stands again on shaky legs.

Amy remembers how she had been walking home from a night of work at the local Sonic, and the black cloud had surrounded her, filling her body with its darkness. She remembered how it had shoved her aside and taken over the levers and knobs that controlled her flesh. It had murdered and maimed, trapped, tortured, and mutilated her whole family as she had been made to watch. All the while she screamed and pleaded for nearly a week inside, trapped in her own runaway body, a prisoner in her own mind.

She remembered how it laughed. She remembered the joy it felt and how it fed on its horrible actions and her anguished reactions.

They all watch as it begins to struggle even more to free itself from the woman's grasp. It pulls and writhes. It tries to constrict her arms. And, its struggles intensify as she begins to pull her hands apart from one another, her shoulders and back tensing. When it comes apart, a flash of what can best be called black light briefly issues forth, only to be swallowed by the moonlight that bathes the town. It falls to the ground as no more than dust.

With a sound of disgust, the older woman holds her hands away from her.

"Oh, these things are so disgusting." She says, "I need some soap and water."

One of the young women hops a short stone fence beside the hedgerow and turns on a garden hose that lays beside a bed of growing daisies at a doorstep. Another pulls a small container from her pocket and squeezes some soap into the woman's hand. She lathers up her hands and washes them very carefully, scrubbing vigorously.

When she finishes, another of the girls hands her a small towel and she dries her hands as she looks over at Amy standing on the sidewalk looking stunned.

"You didn't really think I'd let one of those things get one of my girls, did you?" She asks playfully.

Amy can't respond, but swallows hard.

The woman sits on the stone wall, and motions for Amy to sit down beside her.

"Do you still want to be my daughter, Amy?" She asks, looking in Amy's eyes.

Her normal pale color had returned and her breathing had slowed now, but she sat with her mouth open staring.

"Well, it's not as easy as wearing a medallion or getting a tattoo. You'll have to devote your whole life to me. Can you do that?" She asks.

"Well.." Amy stammers. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that you will need to go out in the world and become a warrior and a hunter, for me." She begins. "I mean that you'll have to forge yourself into the kind of woman that these women are."

She motions to the five as they stand quietly only a couple of feet away.

"There are a lot of these things out there, and a war is coming. I need soldiers. And, I need loyal soldiers."

Amy's mouth gapes.

"You're lazy, Amy." She continues. "If you want to be my daughter, you'll have to make yourself into a woman who is equally dangerous and wise. You'll have to remake yourself in my image. And, I can make that happen. But, there's no room for slackers."

Amy looks down at her black boots.

"You won't find me in games or books. You won't find me on Google, though I do have a g-mail account. So, maybe you can." She said, laughing a bit. "You'll find me out here. Out in the cold, the rain, and the snow, but also in the moonlight, and the flowers, and in beautiful mountains."

Amy looks up into her soft green eyes.

"I saved your life tonight partly because you have marked yourself as mine, and partly because there are a lot of these things around now that need to be taken care of one way or the other." She says in a serious tone. "But, if you are serious. If you really want to devote yourself to me, you need to know that it is very real and I take it very seriously. And, I'll take your commitment seriously. As should you. This is not a game or a fairy tale."

Amy remains silent, but kept listening.

"Will you join me in the wild hunt? Will you spill the blood of my enemies and be part of our sport as well, leading a life of danger and adventure? Or, will you go back to your life, at least what's left?"

Amy scrunches her cheek and pulls her hair behind her ear with a quivering finger.

The woman reaches out and grabs the cheap medallion, pulling it from her neck with a harsh snap. She grabs her arm and holds her hand against the tattoo that fades at her touch and disappears.

"You are released from your previous contract with me, Amy." She says quietly. "And, now you have the opportunity to take an oath knowing that I am not a page on Wikipedia, some statue in Italy, or a symbol of a rebellion against your now dead parents or some establishment."

"I'm no good at stuff like that. I don't even know how to shoot a gun." She says, looking at her boots again. "I never even get picked in gym class."

"You fought a demon for a week inside you and never gave up, didn't you? I can mold you into a great hunter, and a dangerous foe to these things. What you've never done will become your greatest triumph. Your failures will be cornerstones of success. But, it is a lonely life. It is a bloody life."She says, putting her finger under Amy's chin to look in her eyes. "So, you must choose for yourself knowing that you are choosing something very real, rather than some fiction you learned in a game or read in a book. And, there is no turning back."

"I have to choose now?" Amy asks.

The woman beams at her with a proud smile.

"No, Amy." She says. "You have until the moon is full again to decide."

With that, she stands facing Amy. The five began walking down the sidewalk toward the hedgerow and around the corner, chatting and laughing as they go.

"Until then." She says,"Here's a better medallion than that cheap junk you had. It'll keep you safe."

She tosses something at Amy who throws up her hands to shield herself, rather than trying to catch it. She is too late to keep it from hitting her in the nose. It is a very old gold coin with a piece of finely cured leather thong through it that lands in her lap. The woman's face is on it in profile.

Walking backward down the sidewalk she waves at Amy and turns to round the hedgerow.

Amy listens to her footsteps trail off and stares at the medallion in her hand.