Waking up the next morning, feeling groggy and aching in my back and the back of my neck from sleeping at a weird angle in the front seat of my car, I was really craving a cup of caffeine but there is no diner nearby. Unless I want to drive back into the main town I just left behind, which I don't in case Zack catches a glimpse of me. So instead, I get out of my car, and pop the trunk open, and grab a beer from the cooler, before walking back to my driver's seat after locking up the trunk and I drink a morning beer instead to wake me up. Sure it isn't clever, but I need some kind of 'pick me up' so I can drive all the way back to the Roadhouse and get another case from Ellen. I'm about to start the engine when my cell starts blaring my usual Motley Crue ringtone, startling me for a brief moment. I pick up seeing Bobby's name up on the caller I.D.
"You there Kiddo?" Bobby greets me when I click 'answer'.
"Yeah I'm here Bobby, hey you should put me in the hunter's record books. I killed the damn woman in black and saved the last remaining kids that are alive without causing any of them harm" I greet back to him, deciding to try and get some praise from him to start the day.
"You're surprising me more and more Mika, but I want you on another case already so ya better start driving ya hear?" Bobby replies to me, well… I guess that is some sort of praise from my uncle.
"Sure, where and what?" I respond back to him instantly, my body is screaming for a day's rest but my head is screaming for another kill- it's the only way I can keep on living.
"Good, there's something going down in Gainesville, people are disappearing off the map, and turning up in morgues with dog like wounds. Then the bodies are disappearing from the morgues as if they're walking right out there" Bobby explains briefly to me, from what he's heard through the grapevine… always the same bloody grapevine. Sighing and pinching my nose from the vague information yet again, I accept the mission and start driving for days on end all the way to Gainesville Florida.
In the time it took me to get to Gainesville, I've calling around to try and get more information than what Bobby told me, whilst he also tried to get more information. Ellen (always reliable) wass the first to get back to me with a possible idea of what is going on and I don't like her theory at all.
"Zombies sweetie, that's the main thing I can think of from what Bobby keeps saying about the bodies just walking out of the morgue" She told me over the phone one evening when I was getting some rest before arriving into Gainesville the next morning. I spent the night researching zombies and to be honest, I am now wishing someone else would take this damn case. I can handle any damn creature thrown in my path, but zombies not so much. Yet Bobby thought I could handle it, so I continue my work. The next morning I drive into town and visit the morgue where these victims had last been seen. The coroner gives me all the information he can, whilst under the influence I'm an FBI Agent and one of the victims is on the FBI watch list… which may I add is complete and utter bullcrap. Walking out of the morgue, and making my exit I see another victim turn up on a slab and being wheeled in, so I turn in my smart high heels and walk right back inside to check the body with the coroner.
Something wasn't right to me, it didn't seem right to me to fit in with a zombie attack, for a start why would a body be found and wheeled in during the day and no one is screaming zombies. I mean, if zombies really were limping around town surely someone would freak out and start screaming the odds? Right? I look at the wounds more closely in between the coroner taking Polaroid pictures of each and every wound, and the victims for his report.
"Hey, can you take doubles for our records please?" I ask him in my most professional FBI like voice ever, and I notice he is looking down my shirt to my cleavage which is annoying me greatly, but it gets what I want and before I can say "zombie apocalypse" I have Polaroid pictures of every wound and anything else that stood out to the coroner as strange or brutal. I walk out, taking my jacket off and shoving it in the backseat of my car, sitting down in the driver's side and flicking through the photos. "Knew it couldn't be zombies!" I can't help quietly exclaim to myself almost in joy.
I press the requirde button to speed dial Ellen at the Roadhouse and wait for her to pick up, only to get her daughter and the only other girl my age I actually get on with; Jo Harvelle. "Roadhouse" Jo answers the phone when it clicks to be connected. "Hey Jo it's Mika, can you put your mom on the phone for me? I need to get some information from her" I request to Jo, and with a simple 'sure' spoken in response, Ellen is on the phone to me and I'm explaining about what I found out in the morgue and the photos I have gotten a hold of.
She asks me to email copies of the photos to Ash so she can take a look with him and then she'd get back to me, so I do exactly that, I take some some bad photos on my phone and upload them onto my laptop, emailing them straight over to Ash, with the header 'photos for Ellen- case: Gainesville' and it only takes them a few moments before Ellen is back on the phone to me with her synopsis.
"Well it's not zombies, those tears and wounds? Werewolf or Lycanthrope more to the point with your case… they're more like shape shifters than anything else, but their limited to the shape of the wolf. They can shift into animal like forms any time of the day or night without the full moon. People or doctors think that lycanthropy is just a disease, that's more mental than actual fact. I guess you just came across your first real Lycan sweetie." She starts explaining to me, and I can't help but get this sick and twisted grin on my face. I mean… it isn't zombies! I couldn't be happier if I am to really be truthful.
"So Lycans... silver bullet to the heart right?" I ask her, getting into the glove compartment and pulling out my handgun, and checking what bullets I currently have in there, your standard issue. "You got it sweet pea, look… you sure you can handle this on your own? Isn't it about time that you get partnered up on a case?" Ellen replies to me, throwing in a little hint at the end, I know who she means when she said 'partner up'. "Nice try Ellen, it ain't gonna happen!" I chime to her, with almost a little melody to my tone of voice. I really am too excited for this hunt, and on the ball with her little digs. "Can't blame me for still trying Mika, we're all worried about you kiddo. Especially after that woman in black and yes Bobby rang me to let me know about that suicide mission of yours" Ellen says back at me, with her usual motherly lecturing tone of voice seeping through down the phone. "Oh come on Ellen, give me a break! I killed the damn thing when hunters twice my age haven't been able to! I saved the town and the kid it was going after, I think I deserve at least a week of you and Bobby not trying to hook me up with Dean," I tell her back. Yeah, my voice is sounding like I'm complaining and being a whiny little kid, but my point still stood.
I hear Ellen sigh down the phone to my come back, and wonder if she is ever going to reply back to me or just hang up. Sometimes it is rather difficult to tell with Ellen, I love the woman… I truly do, but sometimes her being difficult to predict can be more of a pain than fighting anything else that's not natural. "Okay, Okay… you're right, look it's only because we worry about you… you've changed too much kid, and I don't think you even know who you are anymore. We certainly don't… Dean not being in your life makes you incomplete and you know it. It makes you down right scary and sometimes myself and Bobby wonder if we're gonna find out you're dead because you're a cold hearted hunter who doesn't care about herself anymore. You scare us sometimes, that's all" She tells honestly me down the phone, and it hits a nerve, but I don't let that show as I speak to her on the phone. I let what she said to me sink into my memory, she's right… I am a different person. I am a cold-hearted hunter and that's how I get the job done. "Look, I better go, got the case to do" I tell her, just before we both say our farewells and the usual 'I'll check in when I'm done' scenario and speech. I hang up on the phone and thump my fist on my steering wheel.