Lily and I talked, we met up in a safehouse a few miles of campus. The entire thing was heavily guarded with ancient wards that I didn't even know. Apparently Lily was one of those academic types of slayers, she was trying to set up wards around Barden when she found out she couldn't. Wards couldn't be spoken out loud, it would mess up human minds. One of the few benefits of being a demi-goddess, I could hear the ancient words of power.
It was strange how we met, Lily grabbed my arm after practice and practically dragged me over to the safehouse. The only reason why I didn't run away from her was that she said the password, a phrase all hunters knew to recognize other hunters.
"My name is Lily, and I'm the daughter of Kiro. My favorite thing to do to demons is set them on fire." She said once we were safe inside. For some reason, she decided to reintroduce ourselves the way hunters do. Name, parentage, and abilities. Apparently, she was born with fire powers? Kiro was the embodiment of fire, I met him once and all he did was drop mixtapes. They were actually hot, but that was a different story.
I blinked. "Okay… um, My name is Beca, I don't know who my otherworldy parent is. I, um, don't have a favorite thing to do to demons? I don't have a superpower."
I could swear she said "Shame", but I couldn't hear her. Well, technically I did have a "superpower", but it was stupid. Literally, all it was is I can't die, and I'm an immovable object when I want to be one. That wasn't cool, especially when my dad was one of the most powerful beings in the universe.
Prof. Mitchell was a cover-up for the fact that half my DNA wasn't human. When he left, Mom explained everything to me, without explaining it to him, and I still didn't know how I felt about that. I mean, I wasn't his kid and he didn't know, but at the same time he did pack up and leave.
"So, there is a demon on campus." Listening to Lily's normal voice was strange, shocking really. It sounded like a regular person, and I didn't expect that. "I've been setting wards, but they've been here longer than me so they are grandfathered in."
"I saw it yesterday after hoodnight, it killed a few people." I said. It made news, but instead, the mortal authorities blamed it on a random wild animal attack.
I pulled the Bible from my pants and Lily raised a brow. I wasn't going to explain this yet, stupid girl pockets couldn't actually hold things. I wasn't going to get a purse, I wasn't that desperate.
"How should we start tracking it?" I asked.
She shook her head. "I was thinking we should set up wards to trap it to the campus, and then weaken it with expelling wards."
"That's cruel, but brilliant." I said, edging away from Lily.
"I know," She smiled. "I need that Bible and a few drops of Aubrey's blood."
"Why?" I asked, handing her the book.
"She's the only person who stays on campus all the time, and the trap ward I'm thinking about needs to be anchored to a very strong willed person." Lily said, leafing open the Bible.
"Won't that hurt her?" I asked, vaguely remembering the ward from Hunter Basic Training. Not that I liked Aubrey or anything, but it was a really cruel ward. It turned the person into demon repellent while draining on their soul.
"I'm not really sure, to be honest, at least a demon won't kill her."
POV Switch
Chloe was an assassin, or at least came from an assassin family. It was far less interesting than I thought it would be, I even allocated an hour to research. I knew the family, they worked for mine under a different guise, we were the Casimir's to the Beales. It was rather stupid of me to not notice, her father was one of the better assassins. Also, it explained her knife collection.
One of her knives were rusty, I took the liberty of scaling the rust off. Being who I am meant I had "powers", the ability to make things happen. Honestly, there was no logic to the powers, I could make rust fall off blades but I could not use it to scale walls. It was as if I had to catch my powers by surprise and force them to work if I knew I knew it wouldn't happen then they wouldn't work.
I asked Father about this and he simply said, "Skylar is idiotic."
I dropped a hint about knowing Chloe's history by inviting her to rock climbing one evening. She gave me a strange look but complied, thinking it was some strange form of stress relief. I knew all Assassin families had to learn how to rock climb, and looking through my records it turns out she won a few competitions in years past.
"I don't know how to climb Bree." She said, looking up from her paper.
"It will be safe, all the equipment is rated to hold several thousands of pounds and I hardly think you come anywhere near that," I say, looking over all the equipment I just purchased. I didn't know if it was safe, I just bought the cheapest shit. According to Google, the "good" stuff was several hundred more than I was willing to spend on Chloe.
I knew how to rock climb, just not the safe, painless human way. Being a demon had its perks sometimes.
"Why are we doing this?" She asks, slowly making her way over to me.
"We are going to test if this is an appropriate form of cardio for the Bellas." I said.
No, wait. Fat Amy would break this shit. I checked off the thought, not willing to buy more cheap crap I would never use again.
I don't quite remember much about almost getting assassinated on the way to rock climbing. Father hadn't paid a family because they failed their mission, and that upset them. Posen's don't reward failure, what were they expecting?
Of course, since they thought we were just rich people they cleverly decided to hit my father where it should hurt, his metaphorical balls so to speak. Me. I was flattered of course that they thought Father thought highly of me. Right now we were barely on speaking terms because I set a massive skyscraper on fire. He was upset that I hadn't fixed my "Skylar" issues earlier, but the plan wasn't complete yet.
Chloe drove, and if I was human I would have been terrified for my life. The redhead drove like her personality, intimately close to others. I pursed my lips, Chloe was driving because mine was in the shop for repairs.
The technician frowned at my car, having the audacity to question my story of hitting a moose in the middle Georgia. I may or may not have run a man over in my rage to meet Chloe at Starbucks. Father called about that, he congratulated me on getting away with it. He even offered to pay the damages.
And that man may or may not have been related to the assassins chasing us.
Thus it lead to a relatively high-speed chase in Chloe's red Nissan Versa, you could feel the car's tiny engine shrieking going a breakneck 60 miles an hour, followed by a showdown that kicked Chloe into high gear. She morphed into the assassin she always was and I fought a smile. I didn't want to go rock climbing anyway. Her car got trashed, filled with lead, and then exploded.
Imagine talking to insurance about that. Do assassins have insurance in general?
In the meanwhile, because even Chloe wasn't good enough to go ten against one, I took out a few assassins myself. I'm sure it would have looked, "epic" if someone else saw it, but all I did was crush their throats and toss the bodies off the side of a cliff. Having no fingerprints was really convenient sometimes. Other times it was a pain in the ass, such as when I'm trying to open my smartphone. Stupid phone.
She confessed once we "survived" our encounter. It was redundant, but I suffered through like a good girl. Unfortunately, boredom also looks like shock, so Chloe instantly began comforting me.
How would an uptight blonde bitch react?
I pulled a muscle overreaching, and I should have gotten an Oscar for the performance. I had a limp for days because of how fast I stood. Chloe, the woman who was born a mood ring, couldn't tell that I really didn't care about "almost" dying. Instead, she started sobbing and begging for forgiveness.
I paced up and down the room, yelling random phrases about how I could have died, and a few others just to test Chloe. One of my favorite, that I managed to slip past her, was "Bless your heart I'm fixin' to make your madder than a wet hen.". She didn't notice my brilliance.
"I forgive you." I snapped once she calmed down a touch. "Don't think this excuses you from Bella practice tomorrow. 10'o'clock sharp!"
Chloe must have gotten whiplash, but I didn't care. There were living people that I needed to take my rage out on. The newspaper the next day proclaimed there was an Alligator attack in the middle of Georgia. Those poor souls, it was their fault they were delicious.
