CHAPTER 4: AND YOU CALL YOURSELF A HUNTER

When I thought back on it, I realized that Ms. Wu had told us the week before that we'd be working with the advanced biology class when we did the heart dissection, but I guess I'd been too busy working my magic on the lovely Gina Andrews to really get the message into my head. I mean, who'd've thought it would be big news anyway? I could handle a class period with the geeks. Most of them were alright. What I had a harder time handling was when Ms. Wu's tiny hand pulled open the door to usher in the advanced class and the fourth person through was accompanied by that fucking mat of dark hair, which, trust me, by this point I was ready to cut off and use as a mop for the rest of forever. See how pretty it was then! Ha! It would also make a pretty decent scrub brush: thick, just the right-coarseness, smelled kinda nice… like a carnival: kettle corn, windy air, and sugar… I mean, not that I'd really smelled it, of course.

By that point, I was frowning at the chalkboard. When they announced our partners and Ms. Wu called out in her tinny voice, "Dean and Samantha" …Well, then I was finding it just a little bit hard to stop myself from driving the lab kit's scalpel into the very center of the sheep heart we were going to be dissecting. Too bad basically all the blood was gone; a good squelch would've been really satisfying right about then. Sam, big surprise, looked just as thrilled as I did. She blew out a quick puff that sent her bangs flapping up like a hot air vent, and then stalked over with long, purposeful strides.

I turned away to catch Gina Andrews's eyes across the room. She noticed and beamed back with a finger flipping up to curl around a strand of sandy hair. I raised my eyebrows at her and shot her a grin of my own like we were the only two people in the room. Shameless flirting was way more up my alley than geek people. Still, because my senses are super fucking sharp and I'm just awesome like that, I knew Sam had reached the table and was standing only a few feet away, but I pretended like I hadn't noticed and waited for her to get tired of the game first. Finally, she did.

"Hi, Dean," she interrupted, voice flat.

Like I had all the time in the world, I turned back to face her and noticed that her lips were already beginning to suck inwards. I mean, seriously? I hadn't even said anything yet!

I nodded in return. No greeting, but I did suavely put in, "No offense, but I don't think I really need your help with this one."

"No?" Sam's eyes flicked after mine across the room to where Gina's pretty little ass was scooted up on her metal stool. "Cut open a lotta hearts in your time?"

My eyebrows pulled down and I frowned at her, unsure if there was supposed to be some double meaning to that that I wasn't getting or if she really had meant it as straightforward as that. Finally, deciding that, what the hell, I'd walk into the trap if there was one, I said, "Yeah. I have."

And sure enough, a very dry smile tugged up one side of her mouth, which was fucking infuriating. What did I miss? Freakin' smartass, that's what she was, but she was going down soon enough.

"Fine," she said as she tugged up the other stool, not even trying to dull the screech of the metal legs across the floor tiles. "Cool with me. I'll just sit here and let you handle it."

I tried to hide my deepening frown. "Good," I said, and nodded to emphasize the point.

Of course, freaky Miss Witch had undoubtedly seen her share of hearts, too, and probably, being the industrious little scientist that she was, made a closer study of them than I had, but I still couldn't help myself from trying to get her to flinch as I cut through the thinner portion of the muscle to open up the right atrium. She stared at the heart levelly. Fine. Time to kick it up a notch. I stuck my finger through the superior Vena Cava to push out one of the few remaining blood clots. It slumped in a dark, glistening mass on the tip of my glove, oozing paler liquids down the blue latex sides. She glanced up with the word, "Seriously?" written all over the hazel of her irises. I just flashed my own eyebrows at her in return and set in to hacking the right ventricle open.

She wrinkled her nose. "Very mature. You do realize you're supposed to be a scientist, not a butcher."

I continued with my animated hacking, and only when I was finished looked up to say, "You want a turn then?"

Her mouth puckered. At last she said, "Sure," and reached out to grab the heart. Once it was firmly clutched and bleeding in her talons, she turned her eyes upon it with a look that could've shot through a bulletproof vest, and by that I mean seriously fucking intense. Noticing something, her lips cinched up even tighter, like a drawstring bag she was determined not to let me see inside. "You cut through the septum," she said. "You weren't supposed to do that yet."

Like hell I wasn't! Anything that got Ms. Perfect's granny panties in a twist was totally, one-hundred-percent, fucking certainly something I was supposed to be doing. I stretched my lips into a simpering smirk to let her know just how I felt about the septum situation and watched as her eyebrows snapped down in response.

Snatching the scalpel off the tray with a stupid little flourish, she set down to carving up that heart nice and slow. The juices of life splattered out of it onto the slick gray surface of the lab table, and it let out a last-gasp, please-no, suctioning sound as she slipped the blade out — Schlooop! — and then back in. Slow, but with relish. When I caught the itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy twist of her mouth as she dragged the knife through the whimpering cardiac muscle, I knew she was doing exactly what I'd been doing when I had the heart — trying to make me wince. Well, I had news for her: no fucking way was a little nip-n-tuck gonna get me green-faced. Like I hadn't seen it all before. Smirking, I stared back with a challenge and then pointedly shifted my gaze down to focus directly on the sheep's heart, which was begging for mercy under the ruthless hands of its torturer.

That's when Ms. Wu walked by to check in, and Sam, a little blush creeping up her cheeks, instantly flipped back to dealing with the dissection in an entirely professional fashion. However, the interruption also caused me to glance up for the first time since Sam and I'd gotten into our flinching war, and I realized that we had an audience. A few of the tables around us had stopped their own labs to watch the unfolding carnage. The bug-eyed blonde girl who was working with Robert looked a little sick, but for his part, my good friend Robby was just smirking at the two of us... the bastard. Dave Brooke was laughing like a hyena, not caring about the disgusted look his freckle-faced lab partner shot his way in response.

Sam noticed, too, and she pushed her lips further together. For once, though, I didn't think it was because she wanted to be a complete bitch; there was something about the way that her gaze dipped quickly to the table top that made me think maybe, just maybe, the witch was hiding a smile. And for some reason that thought had me smiling. What can I say? I'm just a deeply caring person and happiness blossoms like a tulip in my soul when other people are happy.

"Guess you know your way around the heart, huh?" I said, 'cause for some stupid reason, my mouth decided it was a good time to open up. As soon as the damn sentence was out, my brain let my mouth know just how wrong it had been.

"Ruminant hearts, anyways," she said, and though she didn't take it back, suddenly the way her lips were wrinkled up didn't seem to be hiding a smile.

Cheesy bitch. No way in hell was I following the conversation along that route — human hearts and emotions and all that shady stuff — so I decided to take it a different direction. I felt the smirk coming on before it hit my lips. "Really? Have a lot of experience with sheep?"

Dave, who had apparently overheard, fell off his stool. The blonde girl by Robby looked mortified. Robby hadn't joined Dave on the floor, but he was laughing pretty hard, too, and Dave's lab partner had apparently choked on his own saliva and was hacking it up over the dissection instruments.

"Fuck you, dude," Sam said, but the smile was back in the pucker of her mouth… along with a, Seriously?

I felt accomplished… and I felt like a total dumbass for it, but what the fuck; I'm honest (kinda) and I will admit with my head held high that I felt accomplished for amusing Samantha Tucker. That definitely didn't stop me from intentionally taking her words to mean something else and popping out, "Let's not, if you don't mind. Sharing with sheep?" I shuddered. "Woolly smell's just too overpowering."

"Really?" she said, leaning forward and lacing her gloved and bloody fingers together. "It isn't the lack of stimulating conversation you can't handle?" Her eyes were ablaze with the green sparks of a challenge. "Why am I not surprised?"

Ouch. Points for Bitch Chick. I came back with a very witty, totally premeditated, "Fuck you."

And Sam, letting one corner of her mouth flick upwards for a dry second, just said, "Thought you didn't want to." ...leaving my brain to fall back on its ass, totally shell-shocked.

Wow. When had it gotten so hot in there?

…

"Man, she roasted you," Dave was saying, his mouth — which was way too fucking big for his own good — still ripped back in a broad grin.

It was passing period, and the two of us were shoving our way down a hallway full of short-ass underclassmen, who kept getting right in my way like they wanted to be stepped on. "She totally didn't," I protested, scowling down at some scrawny kid, who wilted like a petunia under the look.

"Oh yeah, roasted!" Dave insisted as he clapped me on the shoulder and headed off down a side hall, "On a fucking spit!"

I shot him the finger, but only got a dirty look from a passing teacher for my efforts. Well, fuck you, too, Mr. Random Educator. Samantha Tucker, for anybody's information, had so not roasted me… she'd just gotten in a few more clever jibes than I had… but I would get my revenge, and soon.

Sooner than I thought, actually, because I'd just spotted the dark swoosh of my chestnut scrub brush ten paces ahead. And there, sticking out of the smart bitch's pocket, were the ragged edges of what looked like bunched-up leather. Now, what on earth could that be? I smirked and kicked my walking speed up a notch or two. 'Course I knew she'd just make another when she realized it was gone, but who was I kidding? Right now this wasn't really about stopping a witch; this was about taking down a bitch, and I was going for it.

Packed as the hallway was, only the creamy walls paused to glare at me as I caught up to my target, dipped my fingers into the very top of her pocket to retrieve my prize, and then fell back again… And she just kept listening to her bouncy friend blabbering on about whatever the fuck geek chicks talk about. The hex bag was all mine. Ha! Being the totally mature person that I am, I stuck my tongue out at the back of her head. Except then, of course, it hit me that I could be holding a pretty package of some seriously bad hoodoo, and I wasted no time ducking outside to torch the fucking thing.

Who was roasted now, bitch?

…

Of course, I couldn't gloat too much because I was still stuck on tailing duty. Dad hadn't lightened up even after I'd practically proven Sam was our girl because — surprise, surprise — he didn't trust me. To quote: "High school kid? I'm gonna wanna see it with my own eyes before we go stabbing her with anything," which I translated to, "I told you it would be good to work this case on your own, but we both know that was total crap and I just wanted you out of my hair. Now that it looks like your lead might actually be the lead, I'm gonna have to go over this whole damn thing from the start to make sure you didn't fuck it up." Yeah, things were going great with dad.

But hey, at least he'd let me start bringing more than my butterfly knife to school. I'd felt fucking naked without a silver blade and my lighter, and I actually exhaled in relief — yes, like some goddamn chick reunited with her boyfriend — when I finally got to tuck them into my pockets before heading out the door. 'Cause Columbine High? Dangerous place, man. You never knew what was goin' down with all those punk-ass, skirt-wearing, rich kids; one of them might just up and decide to jump you one day, and then where would you be? (Probably stuck at home writing an apology note to the guy whose nose you just broke… but that's beside the point).

So, the point… The point was that I was trailing Sam out of school across the grassy quad like the stalker that I totally wasn't, using the broad-trunked trees in tactical ways to avoid enemy perception, and pushing aside all the little dumbasses who got in my line of sight.

"Scoot it, shrimp!" I snapped at one snail-like sophomore, who ignored me and decided to give me a dirty look and take his own sweet time… that is, until I wacked him smack between the shoulder blades and sent him plummeting face-first into the lawn. "Punk," I said, and danced away before he could get all indignant about it.

The whole thing seemed normal enough at first. Sam crosses quad. Check. Sam talks to Friend A. Check. Sam talks to Friends B and C. Check. Sam greets Acquaintances F, R and T on the way to student parking. Check. Sam gets in car. Check…

But she didn't drive home. And she didn't drive into town. She drove out towards the countryside, leaving me on the sidewalk with a huge "What the hell?" floating around in my head.

So, being a good son, I snapped the lock on some kid's bike and took off after her.

By the time we got to wherever the hell we were going, I was exhausted. I mean, crap; bike-riding is harder work than people give it credit for… probably because bike riders are men in tights, so it's hard to really think of them as hardcore. Respect and all, but spandex? Seriously?

Anyway, when I'd seen Sam's brake lights come on and stay on, I'd pulled off the road right away, 'cause no way in hell was I gonna let her realize I'd been following her. I stuffed the kid's bike — which I now hated more than my first fifth grade teacher — in between the trunks of two yellow-leafed trees, and then high-tailed it back along the roadside towards Sam's ugly-ass car. I ducked down behind it and peered just over the hood to get a good view of what was going down in the muddy clearing there. Sam had this big tin bucket full of all kinds of hoodoo shit: stalks of various plant stuff, a plastic Tupperware that looked like it had blood in it, and… were those chicken feet? Gross. Witches are so friggin skeevy. She plopped her bucket of disgusting crap down in the damp, dying grass and glanced about nervously. Then she knelt down next to it and dumped out each bag into the bucket, totally unceremoniously, just jammed it all in there. Next she tugged a crumpled sheet of binder paper out of her shirt, flattened it with her palms, and began to read. Gotta say I was liking the casual vibe, especially since I had a smug hunch that all her little chanting was gonna amount to a steaming pile of nothing. Sure enough, once she was done with the incantation, she reached for her pocket… and realized that the hex bag wasn't there. Nope. Burnt nice and crispy in a school trash can, bitch. I smirked. Whatcha gonna do now?

It turned out she was gonna panic. She jumped to her feet, eyes wide and on fire and… afraid? Well, okay, so I wasn't exactly smirking anymore, but the fuck did she have to be afraid of? So she couldn't knock off another poor, innocent bastard who'd made some insulting comment about her favorite pencil; she could get him tomorrow, right? I mean, what the hell was the big deal? Still, my intestines were knotting up a bit as she spun in circles, frantically combing the muddy, flattened grass around her and finding nothing. She looked up then, hazel eyes still blown so fucking wide, and they landed right on me… and I could tell she knew. There was just enough time for her China doll lips to part in the tiniest of horrified O's before she was flying off her feet and slamming down into the mud fifteen feet away.

"I thought I told you to back off!" a voice snarled through the air, just as some big-ass motherfucker stomped into the clearing from the woods. "You bitch."

My mouth popped into an O just like Sam's. The hell was happening here? Witch wars?

The big dude, who had that fat-but-tough look down to the T, marched over to her, bent down, and dug his porky fingers into her hair as he ripped back her head so that she had to look at him. "Samantha," he said, voice halfway between a croon and a growl, "I was sparing that cute tush of yours for bigger and better things… but you just had to go and ruin it." Then he drew back his fist and plugged her right in the face, forcing her back into the mud.

My brain was still stuck on a repeated loop of, "What the fucking fuck?" because here I suddenly was with one person who I was pretty damn sure was a witch getting beat up by a different dude who was also probably a witch… or maybe a demon? But I just didn't fucking know. I mean, not exactly what I'd been expecting for today. So, like, was I supposed to be saving someone? Or killing someone, maybe? And who?

"Dean!" a voice called, a mumbled and pretty hoarse voice, but it only took me a second to realize that it must be Sam's. "Light it," she croaked as the man's fist connected with her stomach.

From the way she was just lying there, taking every goddamn punch that he fired into her ribs, face, and really her whole fucking torso, I figured he must've had her pinned by some magical method because Sam didn't strike me as the type to give up and eat it for nothing.

Still, I didn't act. Just because I knew Sam a tiny bit better than the other guy didn't mean she was the one in the right here. Hell! For all I knew she could've murdered dozens of people in her life. No way was I helping her out with no proof… except then that fat motherfucker's hand knocked back her head, and she went completely limp, and some switch flipped in my brain. I mean, I couldn't let an unconscious girl get beat to death before my eyes, could I? Regardless of what she'd done. So suddenly I was up on my feet, sprinting towards her bucket as I fought with my jeans pocket to get the damn lighter out.

Evidently Sam had come back to because I heard a very garbled voice blubber out, "Burn it," and then, "Read back."

"Back of what?" I yelled. Accompanied by the dull thuds of fist on flesh, I flicked the lighter on and dropped it into the bucket.

"Bi…per…" she managed through the sticky pool of blood that was now dribbling down from her nose and filling her mouth.

I guessed that she meant the binder paper, and snatched it up out of the mud. Thank god there were only two sentences on the back, because, number one, I wasn't all that great at Latin, and two, I couldn't read her handwriting for shit. I mean, you'd think someone who was that big of a smartass would at least be able to make an A look vaguely like an A. But I guess little Miss Perfect just didn't bother wasting the time.

"Dean!"

Right. I stumbled out the spell, wincing at a particularly painful sounding crunch, and then turned to watch as the big man yelled. Digging his fingers into Sam's forearms, he glared up with bared teeth. Apparently the dumb fucker hadn't realized I was there until then, but too late now. As I watched, he was disintegrating into a mass of black dust, or ash or something. Who knows. More importantly, who the hell cares? Fucker was gone, and that's what mattered.

"Goodbye, witch boy," I heard a cracked voice mutter from the mud. Sam, of course. "That's why… you don't fuck… with hunters."

Oh, a hunter, huh? I snorted, dropped the binder paper back into the mud, and strode over to where she was wheezing on the ground. I held out my hand to help her up, but she beat it away. 'Course she did. Hunter or not, she was still an ungrateful little bitch.

Even given that, I wasn't expecting what she said as she panted to her feet, words coming out in scratchy gasps like a cat hacking up a hairball, "You—" Wheeze. "—are an idiot."

"What?" I stuffed my hand back against my side. "If you didn't notice, I just saved your sorry ass!"

She was on her feet now and I knew that if she wasn't still breathing so hard her mouth would've been the tiniest pucker I'd seen yet. "I wouldn't… have needed saving… if you hadn't jacked… my fucking hex bag," she managed at last. Who knew hazel could burn like that. "It was a protection charm. He couldn't detect… my presence while I had it."

"How the hell was I supposed to know that?" I protested as I hunched defensively into my jacket. "I thought you were a witch. Thought I was doin' the town a damn favor."

"Yeah," she muttered, having to some extent regained her ability to take in air. "Big favor."

I shook my head and looked away. In a voice that I thought was too low for her to hear, I muttered, "Bitch."

"Jerk," she shot back, hazel eyes still flaming dark like embers. "Talk about a near death experience."

"Fine, okay? My bad. But you coulda told me you were a hunter you know. Would've cleared up a lotta misunderstandings."

"And why would I have done that," she snapped, "when I didn't know you were a hunter?"

I hated it when she had a point, and, with nothing to say, I just scowled through her, but, after standing there and breathing at each other for an awkwardly long time, I felt my anger draining, replaced by embarrassment, and, okay yeah, a little bit of guilt. "So…" I said, shooting her a sideways glance. "Why don't we just say we both could've played this hand better and celebrate that we're alive and the witch is dead."

Sam's eyebrows lowered. She opened her mouth as if about to argue and then snapped it shut again. She closed her eyes and I could see her forcing the lines out of her face. With another deep breath in and out, she opened her eyes again, fire now just smoking softly, and said, "Yeah. Let's do that." Then, with a sigh, she huffed, "But how in God's name am I going to explain this to my parents?"

It was true. Her entire body was covered in blossoming bruises, mud, and blood, her hair tangled up into a wild knot. She could've been a feral animal crawling straight out of its burrow in the woods after a really bad run in with a coyote. I couldn't entirely hide the grin spreading over my lips.

"Say you got jumped by this jerk named Dean," I shrugged with a glint in my eyes that she couldn't fail to miss. "Crazy-ass motherfucker. Totally unpredictable."

I could tell she didn't want to, but the corners of her mouth ran away from her, and then she was looking down at the squashed dirt with a lady-like snort of laughter, and I was looking at a pair of dimples that, for the very first time, had bloomed just for me.

Okay, fine… so maybe there was one thing that wasn't one-hundred-percent terrible about Samantha Tucker. That didn't mean I was going soft.