Chapter Two
Queensland, Australia, January 1992
It hadn't been a Hunt, so she wasn't tooled up with anything beyond ordinary ammo and a knife; and for that, she would never forgive herself.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
It was part necessity, part a measure of the trust her father had in her, that Ronnie was the designated driver, chaperone and guardian to take her twin sisters, Anya and Maeve, to Brisbane for the state final of the music competition. With Anya's precious violin stashed carefully in the front seat, complete with seat belt, the twins sat in the back seat, and bickered about who would win, and who would be relegated to second place.
Ronnie watched them in the mirror, smiling. They were so very different from her that people often didn't believe they were related, let alone siblings (at nearly eighteen, with her hair grown into a long braid, they had thankfully moved past the point where people would tell the twins how lucky they were to have such a good 'big brother' to look after them). They were a pair of beautiful girls who were everything that their older sister was not: lithe, graceful, engaging and possessed of artistic talent that bordered on prodigy.
It had been an adventure, a real girls' road trip. Ronnie was already a veteran of time spent away from home with her father whilst Hunting, so she had them booked into a motel, fed and watered, and the pillow fighting broken up in time for them to have a decent night's sleep, then they were dressed and tizzied for the part in plenty of time on the big day.
"You pair will end up studying here," she told them as she herded them towards the Conservatorium at Griffith University.
"We'll come and live with you, Ronald!" piped Anya, "Because you'll be in third year by then."
"She won't want us in the way," Maeve said slyly, "She'll have a boyfriend, and they'll do it every night..."
"I won't have time for that crap," Ronnie rolled her eyes, "I'll be studying, and still Hunting with Dad when I can. Besides which, I have no intention of playing housekeeper to you two brats, driving me nuts, sawing away or banging away, bloody scales all night, up and down, up and down, like somebody's torturing cats or something. And it'll be a cruddy student place. No room for a piano, Mav."
"You'd only do it on the piano, anyway," sniffed Maeve, "With your boyfriend."
"Since when am I the boyfriend type?" demanded Ronnie.
"Well, der," Maeve pulled a face, "That's what people go to uni for. To get away from your parents."
"Won't happen," Ronnie told them. "Who'd want me, you idiot?"
"What about Tony Walsh?" said Anya. "He asked you to that party."
Ronnie's face darkened in recollection at the episode. "That was just for a bet, with his mates," she told them, "Anyway, if I was so keen on doing it, why did I break his arm and his nose when he tried to grab my tits?"
Anya stared at her big sister. "It was you!" she yipped, "I knew it was you! He told everybody he'd been beaten up by the opposition after a match, but I knew it was you..."
"Well, you couldn't expect the school rugby captain to own up to getting his arse kicked by a girl," Maeve declared loftily. "He's a dickhead, anyway. He's got no neck. And he practically walks on his knuckles. The only thing that would root him is a gorilla. Or maybe Tania Pitt, but she's a slag and she'll root anything." She grinned. "Don't worry, Ronald, you'll find a much better one at uni."
"Yeah, he'll be a good bloke," agreed Anya, "With a neck."
"Yeah, right," Ronnie snorted, "If you figure out who this bloke is, let me know, so I don't punch him when he tries to talk to me."
"Okay!" said Maeve brightly, picking a young leaf from a nearby tree, then grabbing a flyaway hair from Ronnie's braid, "Give me a hand, An!"
"What? No!" Ronnie yelped, but it was too late: her little sisters were shredding leaves, looking for all the world like two girls fidgeting before the big occasion, but Ronnie recognised a working when she saw one. With a giggle, they threw the shreds together, then...
"Hmmmmm," Maeve frowned importantly, "I see an A, I see an N, I see a D... whadda you reckon?"
"Hmmmmm," echoed Anya, tapping her chin, "Yesssssss, I'd say you're looking for an Andrew, Ronnie."
"I'd say you're looking for a fat lip," grumbled Ronnie, "Come on."
"Or maybe an Anders," suggested Maeve. "An international student, maybe."
"Hellooooo! My name is Anders," intoned Anya musically in a bad Scandinavian accent. "I am from Sveden. I am Svedish. On account of being a Svede. From Sveden."
"I have a large Svedish dick," added Maeve, "For doing it, most efficiently, and Svedishly."
"A moose once bit my sister," nodded Anya.
"You do realise that I have weapons in the truck," sighed Ronnie in a pained voice, as they entered the concert hall, "Although strangling you with my bare hands would be so much more satisfying."
She sat in the seating reserved for contestants' family and friends, and watched them blow the opposition right off the stage. Still, occult Talent found its way out in all sorts of ways, and she couldn't help but wonder if she was seeing it happen right in front of her.
The wait for the judges' decision seemed to go forever, and Ronnie smiled to herself, suspecting that they were having a hard time separating the Shepherd twins...
Eventually they did, of course. Maeve was declared the winner, with Anya the runner-up, and a boy flautist in third place.
They were in their element, she could see that: they were interviewed by the university paper, a classical music radio station, and the TV crew that had been recording the event. They were performers, destined to go on to great things, and she thought that she might explode with pride for them.
By the time the post-contest reception had wound down, they were still chittering and actually squealing, on such a natural high that she thought she might initiate the pillow fight herself that night, if only to try to tire them out.
"We gotta ring Mum!" shrieked Anya, "We gotta tell her!"
"Aaaaaaand," Maeve waved her trophy, a truly ghastly silver thing, "We gotta fill this with champers!"
"Yeah, right," Ronnie pulled a face, "I'm not legal for another week, and you sure as shit aren't."
"You'd pass," Maeve told her airily, "You have before. Go on, you're supposed to celebrate when you win a trophy! You drink out of it!"
Ronnie gazed levelly at her sisters. "If we do this," she intoned, "You gotta look not hung-over by the time we get home tomorrow." The twins nodded earnestly. "Okay then," she grinned, "But no drinking until after we call Mum. And if there's a disturbance in the Force, you drop what you're doing, and we hide, because if she finds out we're getting pissed on cheap plonk, we're dead meat."
So they'd celebrated with fish and chips for dinner, and a bottle of cheap champagne that turned Maeve's trophy black. They screwed their faces up at the taste, then drank it anyway.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
They had a late start the next morning, and the twins insisted on a shopping trip before the long drive home, so there was plenty of time for the twins to look presentable. Ronnie stopped at a supermarket to buy a bottle of silver polish, and set them to cleaning the tell-tale tarnish from the trophy.
"Why do we have to do this?" grumbled Maeve.
"Because she's our mother, and she's not stupid," Ronnie told her. "She'll take one look at that, and know exactly what we've been up to."
The hideous thing was gleaming spotlessly by the time they were past Childers, less than half an hour from home in the fading light.
It was then, on a lonely stretch of the Bruce Highway, that the engine spluttered and died.
Ronnie swore as she put the hood up.
"What's wrong?" asked Maeve, getting out of the truck and peering under the hood too.
"Distributor," sighed Ronnie, "It's been playing up. It'll be the brushes. I was planning to replace it, but I can fix it to get us home. Get back in the..."
She never got to finish the last sentence she ever spoke to Maeve.
It came out of the scrubby trees, moving so impossibly fast that she didn't see it until it was right on top of them. Maeve didn't even have time to scream as it grabbed her, cutting her throat and snapping her neck with a single swipe of lethal claws.
Ronnie's body was moving before her brain had time to register what the fuck was happening. It took several seconds for it to get with the plan. She'd never seen one up close before; they weren't that common, and smart Hunters dealt with them at a distance.
Werewolf. Werewolf. Old North Werewolf...
Anya's shocked white face stared at her from the backs seat as the monster slaughtered her twin.
"Window up!" screeched Ronnie, scrabbling for her gun, "Anya! Put the window up!"
Across the hood, she emptied the clip into it, but that just made it angry. Dropping Maeve's rag doll corpse, it leaped across the hood without touching it.
Letting out a scream, Ronnie scrabbled around the truck. With an angry roar, the werewolf thrust its long arm through the window as Anya screamed too, and tried to wind the glass up.
Ronnie pulled the opposite door open, and hacked at the hairy arm with her knife as it savaged her sister. Anya's screams of pain and terror mixed with the wolf's snarling. She reached across, trying to get to the window winder without having those claws take her head clean off – if she could trap it, get it stuck in the window, maybe they could get away...
With a crack, the window broke, and the monster reached in to grab for Anya.
Ronnie, fell back, screeching with rage, and her hand fell on something lumpy.
Maeve's trophy.
Still screeching, she grabbed it up it in both hands, and brought it down on the werewolf's arm as hard as she could.
With a howling shriek, the thing withdrew. Ronnie left the truck, and scuttled around it again, putting herself between it and her moaning sister.
"COME ON!" she screamed, hefting the trophy, "COME ON, I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"
Enraged by the pain of the wound, the wolf charged in, claws raking at her, followed by the biggest set of teeth she'd ever seen...
The slashing was white hot agony across her face, across her body, and the teeth closed on her arm.
Howling almost as loudly as the wolf had, she brought the trophy down as hard as she could on its head. It jumped back, tottering almost comically, as if stunned by what had just happened.
Ronnie staggered after it, the blood on her face obscuring her vision in her left eye, and she hit it with the trophy again. It went down on all fours, so she hit it once more, then again, and again.
She kept hitting it, until it collapsed, and stopped breathing, and its head cracked open, and then she was slumped on the road pounding the head of a naked man until his brains splattered her and the tarmac.
The whole episode had taken less than three minutes.
She sat, stunned, looking at the mangled corpse in front of her, shock and blood loss numbing her to her own wounds. She crawled back to the truck, slipping in her own blood, and fumbled to open the door.
"Anya," she croaked, the tears starting as she found a faint pulse in her sister's torn body, and tried to triage the injuries, the worst of which was the mauling of her sister's right arm, "Anya, hold on, I'll... I'll..."
She paused, and started to sob with relief.
"It's okay," she quavered, collapsing by the door and taking her sister's unresponsive hand, "It's okay, An – feel that? There's a disturbance in the Force..."
I know about cheap bubbly tarnishing silver trophies, because it happened to me In A Previous Life, when I was one of those horrible horsy children – our pony club celebrated at the end of year gymkhana by drinking ghastly stuff from the silver trophies, if you were around the legal age, give or take a year or two. And yes, my Mum knew exactly what I'd been doing. It also explained the tarnish pattern on some of her old squash and tennis trophies...
Winchesters will be provided next chapter, bickering about... well, feed Bruce the plot bunny reviews: what would you like them to bicker about? Fair and reasonable towel usage? Acceptable level of noise when entertaining a lady acquaintance? Maximum permissible flatulence before eviction from car/motel room/state? Bruce awaits your suggestions!
