DISCLAIMER: The storytelling game Hunter: the Reckoning and the World of Darkness in general is the property of White Wolf Publishing. However, all characters appearing in this story are my own creation. The character Kevin Johnson, who does not, in fact, appear, but is mentioned, is the property of Tessa Smolenaars, should that be of interest to anyone. =]
For the record, I'm not sure if mothers generally do nag their sons and daughters to provide grandchildren for them. My own mother has certainly never done so. However, I followed tradition in this case, partly because I know my mother is not what you might call a normal mother, and partly because, well, few things would be as efficient for driving Catherine out of her mind… =]
The journals of Doctor Catherine Faller, entry # 14:
I am a Hunter. I see things when I'm walking down the street that would make hardened criminals or veteran mercenaries ruin their underwear. I have been shot at by people who want to cause the end of the world, and chased by things who want to prevent it. I have stared down walking corpses and wrestled things from other worlds.
All this I can handle. What frightens me is a thing that is far darker and infinitely more evil, a horror straight from the kind of nightmares Stephen King has when he's had Mexican food before bedtime, more impossible to escape than a black hole and less reasonable than a thunderstorm.
I am talking, of course, of the monthly Faller family dinner.
Don't get me wrong. I love my mother. I do! I can even find some affection in my heart for my brother Rick, at least on a good day. I just wish that it was possible to put some sort of electric leash on them, like the one you put on dogs that give them electric shocks if they walk too far away from the house. Only this leash would give shocks if the conversation went too far away from what I consider to be pleasant dinner chit-chat, like work, movies, common friends, and so on.
Ah, if only…
"Are you sure you don't want just one slice of roast, dear?" Lily Faller said. She was tall, pleasantly plump and had a friendly smile. Her hair was dark and greying, and cut short.
"Yes, mom," said Catherine Faller with all the dignity she could muster. She was tall as well, but as slim as healthy food, regular jogging runs and a trip to the gym once in a blue moon could make her. She had inherited her mother's hair, but she wore it long. Whether or not her smile was friendly was up to debate. It was rarely seen.
"That's the spirit, dear," Lily said and placed a piece of roast on Catherine's plate before she had a chance to defend herself. "You really have to try to eat better, you know. You're thin as a pole."
Catherine looked down at what had at some point been a part of a living animal and wondered if it would do her any good to point out that she had meant 'yes, mom, I am sure. You know, what with me being a vegetarian and all'. Probably not. Mothers had selective hearing.
"I eat," she defended herself. "I make sure I have at least one warm meal a day…"
"Really, dear?" Lily said. There was nothing especially doubtful about the way she said it. There was nothing in it that hinted that she did not take Catherine's word for it. All the same, something in her expression made Catherine squirm.
"Well, one every other day, anyway," she said.
"Really, dear?"
"Okay, okay, one per week," Catherine admitted. Her skill in lies, deceit and subterfuge worked like a charm on employers, boyfriends and fellow Hunters. It worked rather less well on relatives. "At least one per week. Look, I'm kind of short on time these days."
"That's probably why she doesn't return calls, mom," Rick Faller said helpfully. He was a veritable giant of a man, easily six feet five inches, broad-shouldered and shaggy-haired, with a round, reddish face that was right now grinning innocently. Next to delicate-featured Catherine, he looked like a friendly giant.
Catherine wondered faintly if there were actual giants, friendly or otherwise. She had seen people turn into shaggy monsters or dissolve into dust; it did not seem too far-fetched to have other people who could grow twenty-feet tall at will. Maybe one of those could come along and step on her right now. She could thank him. Or at least think nice thoughts about him as she was being crushed.
"That's not it!" she said. "It's just that I've got a pretty irregular schedule right now. You wouldn't want me to call in the middle of the night, would you?"
Yes! Good one! Lily was very particular about her eight hours of sleep. This might actually make her look like a considerate daughter who did her best in a tight situation, rather than a neglectful daughter who wanted as little to do as possible with the woman who had given her the gift of life. Which was kind of what she was, to be honest – but never mind that.
"How can you have an irregular schedule?" Lily said, wrinkling her brow in what had every appearance of honest confusion. "You don't have a job, do you?"
God damn it all to hell. Who would have thought that her mother actually listened once in a while?
"Not as such," Catherine admitted. "But I have some personal stuff that I have to take care of…"
"Or a boyfriend, unless there's something you want to tell me?"
"I have a date for Friday night," Catherine said, feeling that she could at least claim that much as an accomplishment. And possibly derail her mother's train of thought before she actually had to come up with a better excuse for not returning calls than mother, I love you to bits and everything, but every moment spent talking to you counts as high-grade emotional torment, so if I can avoid it, I do!
Lily gave off a delighted, high-pitched yell.
"That's wonderful, dear! Why haven't you told me about this boy? What's his name? Is he nice? What does he work with?"
"What's his position on providing grandchildren for people?" Rick said, giving Catherine the grin of a man who is watching bad things happening to someone who is not him.
"Now really, Rick!" Lily laughed and gave her son a playful slap on the arm. He chuckled.
"Kevin Johnson," Catherine said, feeling that she was not only on the defensive now, but her battle lines were breaking down and her troops were fleeing in panic. "Er. I think he's a deliveryman or something…"
That was the wrong thing to say.
"A deliveryman?" Lily said, raising an eyebrow. "You mean, like an errand boy? At his age?" She looked suspicious. "Wait, he is about your age, isn't he? I know that they say age doesn't matter, but I say that you only make yourself look silly when you walk around with someone young enough to be…"
"He's about my age! He's about my age!" Catherine said desperately. Actually, she had a feeling that Kevin was a little younger than she was, but should she ever fail at making sure he never met her mother, he would just have to follow the Faller custom of modifying the truth until it did not risk offending Lily. "Er! Er! It's our first date, actually! I don't know him that well!"
"Oh." Lily first looked disappointed, then shifted to mildly disapproving. "Well, I know you think you're too busy to waste time on anything as unimportant as finding someone to share your life with, dear, but take it from me, when you get older you'll be sorry that you didn't even give it a fair try. Whatever happened to Stefan, by the way? I liked that boy."
He is studying to become a wizard-priest of a heathen forest-god whose name I can't pronounce, and he wants to kill me because I, as a Hunter, am a violation of the 'natural order'.
"Creative differences," she said diplomatically.
"Well, that sort of thing can be fixed, if both of you are willing to put some work into it," said Lily. Catherine's father had died when she was six, so Lily had what was in her own mind a perfectly good excuse not to have a partner. She had given married life her best shot, and the fact that it had not worked out was not her fault. Now she could relax and hassle Catherine instead. "Why don't you give him a call some time? See if you can straighten things out?"
Because he hasn't been home for a week. Either he's dead, or he's hiding somewhere because he's afraid that if I find him, I'll kick his tree-hugging butt all the way back to the Stone Age he's so infatuated with. Which, let's face it, is correct.
"I think he's moved, actually," she said. "I'm not sure where."
"Oh, that's a pity." Lily gave Catherine a look that said that had she been any kind of daughter, she would have made sure that boyfriends which her mother liked would not break up and move away. Catherine shifted uneasily in her seat.
The door bell rang.
"Don't you two get up," Lily said. Not that you were planning to, her tone added. Motherhood gave women supernatural powers when it came to distributing guilt among their children. "I'll go see who it is."
She left the dining room to answer the door. Catherine took the chance to bang her head against the table a few times. It helped. A little.
"Am I a horrible person for really loving this?" Rick said happily.
"Yes!"
"Well, I can't help it. It's better than Wrestling, because there's no referee who can tell her to stop pummelling you. It just goes on and on and on…"
"And on and on and on…" Catherine groaned. She looked up slightly from the tablecloth and glared at Rick from beneath a veil of dark hair. "How come she never gets like this with you? That's what I want to know. Every month, the three of us sit down at this table, and she starts telling me I'm a pathetic loser."
"She doesn't exactly tell you that…"
"All the while, you just sit there grinning annoyingly, and making the occasional smug comment. Why does she allow that? I'm serious, why doesn't she ask when you are going to get a steady girlfriend?" Catherine pulled up straight and drew her hair back, scowling. "It's like just by being born a guy, you've accomplished enough."
"Cathy, Cathy, Cathy." Rick laughed and shook his head. "It's got nothing to do with that at all." He smiled, actually looking a little sympathetic. "I own a very small butcher shop. I live in a one-room apartment that constantly looks like the battle of Waterloo just was fought all over again there. And the last time I had sex was," he clicked his tongue as he thought back, "well, it's going on three and a half year now."
"I needed to know that?" said Catherine and fought to keep the image out of her mind.
"No, but I'm such a generous and giving person that I enjoy giving you the full picture," Rick said with another one of those annoying grins. "The point is, that's what my life looks like… and I'm happy."
"Happy," Catherine repeated darkly.
"Yep. Happy." He shrugged, smiling disarmingly. "I've a bunch of pals, enough money to keep myself with the essentials in life, like beer and TV, and I go on a hunting trip every fall. Life is good. Mom doesn't need to help me get my act together, because my act's doing great."
"Help you get your act together?" Catherine said, feeling her face go red with anger. "That's what you think she's doing with me?"
"No, I think she's being a pain in your ass," Rick said sincerely. "But that's what she thinks she's doing. She really does mean well. She thinks you just need a push in the right direction, and you'll get right on track."
"Well, I'm happy too, so there," Catherine said.
"Oh, come on, Cathy." Rick rolled his eyes. "Maybe what's missing in your life isn't a husband like she thinks, but something is missing all right, anyone can see that."
"Anyone can see that, huh?" Catherine grumbled.
"Yep. Don't shoot the messenger." He looked thoughtful. "Actually, you're not exactly cheerful at the best of times, but I've never seen you this down before."
"Well, mom's hitting me harder than usual."
"That's because she can see it too. Come on, Cathy, spit it out. Is it just the unemployment thing? I think not. You'll get a new job in a heartbeat, and you hated your work anyway. So what's up?"
Catherine felt surprisingly touched. Rick was a pain in the neck most of the time – okay, damn nearly all of the time – but in his weird way, he honestly cared. She supposed her mother did, too. That was family for you – by your side for better or worse, driving you crazy every step of the way.
"It's kind of complicated," she said hesitantly.
Rick smiled and raised an eyebrow.
"Too complicated for big, dumb guys who spend their day in the company of raw meat to understand?"
Catherine smiled in spite of herself.
"I didn't say that…"
"So give it a shot."
Catherine considered it, and decided to make the attempt. If he tried to have her committed or something, she could just say that she had been kidding.
"Do you believe in the supernatural?" she said.
Rick blinked.
"Huh. Not exactly the answer I was expecting… I suppose I'd be willing to keep an open mind about it. I mean, you hear about stuff."
"Do you think it might be possible that parts of dead people stay behind?"
"Sure."
"How about those parts getting into their old bodies and climb out of their graves? Could you believe that?"
He hesitated.
"No," he said. "No, that sounds a bit too much like Night of the Living Dead."
"I'm not arguing," Catherine said. Just because it was true it did not mean it was not bloody ridiculous. "Well, how about shape-shifting? Or demonology? Telepathy, clairvoyance, pyrokinesis…?"
"No, no, and I seriously doubt it," Rick said. "Cathy, what have you gotten yourself into? Some sort of cult?"
One day when I was walking down the street a voice in my head said FIND THE ANSWER, and ever since then I can see through the masks that the supernatural creatures of the world use to hide themselves from us. Apparently, people like me are called Hunters, and most of us are fighting some sort of half-witted war against the supernaturals. One that we're losing, at that.
Me, I just want to know how the things I can see are even possible. But it seems like every time I try to learn something, I just add another bunch of names to the list of people who want to kill me…
"I haven't caught religion, if that's what you're asking," she said with a weak smile. "But I've run across some things that I can't really explain, and it bothers me."
"I bet. You never could stand to not know something." Rick smiled wryly. "You'll figure it out, though. Don't worry so much."
"Easier said than done." Catherine wrinkled her brown and looked around. "You know, speaking of worrying, hasn't mom been away an awfully long time?"
"Maybe she heard us call her a pain in the ass and went to change her will." Rick got up. "Come on, let's go see what she's up to."
Catherine followed him out of the dining room and into the hallway. The first thing that caught her eye was Lily, lying limp on the floor next to the door. The next – as her eyes went higher – was the man standing next to her, casually leaning against the doorpost.
"Well, that took you long enough," Stefan said.
The journals of Doctor Catherine Faller, entry # 14 (continued):
I have to admit that part of my mind screamed "Yes!" when I realised that I would not have to spend the rest of the day listening to my mother, but would instead be fighting supernatural evil (well, a supernatural asshole, anyway. Close enough). I'm a bad person.
Doctor Stefan Larsson went to the same university as I did and graduated the same year, though he specialised on somewhat different subjects than I did. I met him during our last semester, we fell head over heels in love and for a bit more than half a year, I was happier than ever before in my life.
Come to think about it, Rick's right; Mom didn't make me feel as inferior during that time as she usually does. Instead, she kept giving me advice in the ways and means of getting a man to the altar when Stefan wasn't in the room, and making lots of comments about what a good wife I would make to "some lucky man" when he was. There's no winning with my mother, I'm afraid.
Never mind. Things started going wrong after we had graduated and found jobs. He started working at the local hospital, while I was hired by a pharmaceutical development company called Aesop (see journal entry one through four for details). They kind of expected me to work my fingers to the bone to deserve my (admittedly very generous) pay check in that place, and Stefan started complaining that I didn't have time for him anymore. Eventually, we had a pretty nasty break-up, and that was that.
Anyway, last Monday, during that whole fiasco with that werewolf and his wife (see journal entry seven through thirteen), I was in need of someone to patch up a bite-wound I had gotten, and I didn't want to show up anywhere that the hairy self-styled defenders of nature might be monitoring, so I went to Stefan to hold him to his Hippocratic oath.
How was I to know that he had joined some sort of nature-cult the month before and now considered werewolves to be the chosen servants of all that was holy? He ended up betraying the group, shooting me in the process – one of the others used some sort of Edge to make me heal faster, or I'd still be in the hospital – and was left behind, wounded, when a team of werewolves attacked us.
I've got really great taste in men, don't I?
Stefan was slim and dark-haired, with delicately handsome features and an unshakable calm. To Catherine's surprise, he was wearing clothes that looked like he had gotten them from the kind of cheap stores that she had not even wanted to touch back when she was a dirt-poor student. They were the wrong size, and looking old and worn to boot. She had never seen Stefan wear anything that was not neat and tidy before.
"What the fuck have you done to her?" Rick yelled, red in the face. Stefan shrugged.
"Nothing much. I let her inhale a bit of chloroform. Oh, calm down, man. She will be fine. Everyone will be fine, as long both of you stays reasonable."
"Reasonable? Have you gone out of your mind?" Rick started walking towards Stefan, fists clenched. "I'll beat you to a bloody pulp, and then I'll call the police, and then I'll beat you some more while we wait for them!"
Stefan's hand came out of his jacket pocket. It was holding a small but still very lethal-looking gun. Rick stopped in his tracks.
"Like I said," Stefan said. "Reasonable."
"Hello, Stefan," Catherine said. "I was kind of hoping you'd be dead."
Again that shrug, while his hazel eyes swept over her and her brother in calm, calculated motions, making sure that none of them did anything hasty. Stefan had always been careful. And he had already proven to her that he was capable of pulling a trigger. She could feel an ache just below her left breast at the thought. She had healed, but her body remembered where it had been hurt, and it wanted desperately to avoid being hurt again.
"Mestraquaran don't let his faithful servants die if he can help it," he said. "That's the benefit of being one of the good guys, you see. Employers who actually care if you live or die, instead of just throwing you away when you've served your purpose."
"Mestra-who?" Rick said. None of them paid him any mind.
"Of course he cares," Catherine said. "It's probably hard to find people who are stupid enough to sell out humanity for the sake of some flower-power bullshit ideal."
"Sell out humanity?" Rick said.
"As far as I can recall, I haven't sold anyone," Stefan said. "I serve Mestraquaran because it's right and proper to obey the spirit of nature. I don't expect you to understand, though. You never did care about anything but yourself, or bothered to do anything you didn't profit from."
Rick very obviously had no idea what was going on, but he recognised the hurt expression on Catherine's face. His eyes narrowed.
"You mind how you talk to my sister," he growled. "You mind that real good, or I'll see how quick you are with that gun. And if you're not quick enough, then I'll show you how I skin deer."
"Oh, please." Stefan turned the gun away from Catherine and pointed it at Rick instead. "You're not in any position to make threats. In fact, if you were going to take a swing at me, you should have done so instead of talking about it. Now that I know that you're considering it, the smartest thing for me to do would be to shoot you before you get a chance, wouldn't it?"
Rick struggled for words. Stefan smiled thinly.
"I won't, though. That's because I am one of the good guys."
"Chloroforming old ladies, aiming guns at innocent people…" Catherine winced. "Yeah. You're a saint."
"Catherine, please be quiet." Stefan sighed. "I'm not here to argue ethics with you. I'm here because I want my life back."
"I could check my pockets, but I'm pretty sure I don't have it."
Stefan scowled.
"You know what I mean. You and your friends have effectively taken everything from me. I can't go home. I can't go to work. I only survive because I've got some friends that you don't know of who has taken me in, but their charity won't last forever. Tell your goons to back off!"
Catherine shrugged.
"I don't have any goons."
"Really? So who's staking out my house?"
"Me, sometimes. Some of my friends, mostly." Well, 'friends' might not really be the right word for Fred and his lot, but it was close enough. Hunters could not be picky when it came to who they allied with. There were far too few of them around.
Stefan nodded.
"Yes. Those. Get them off my back."
"I can't."
Stefan turned the gun back to her. His eyes shot knives at her.
"Not good enough!"
"Too bad. I really can't. They don't listen to me. The only reason I can get them to do me any favours is because I'm a Hunter, and according to them that means that I've been chosen by God to fight evil or something."
It was a human thing, she had realised. If you could not explain it, then it simply had to be God's work. If you could not find a scientific explanation right away, it meant that there was none. And then they started going on about how science was all very good and well, but there were things that it could not grasp, and how could she be so narrow-minded as not to admit that obvious fact, and bla, bla, bla until Catherine felt like banging her head against the wall.
Yes, it was a human thing. If an animal noticed something it could not explain, it just went on its way knowing that the world was a big and complicated place, and there was bound to be surprises along the way. Only humans were willing to accept any convenient explanation rather than admit that they could not, at present, understand. It took a lot of intelligence to be stupid.
Luckily, that meant that those Hunters saw her as an anointed comrade in arms rather than the selfish, opportunistic freak of nature she really was. If God had seen fit to Imbue her, He had to have had some sort of reason for that, right?
"In a way," Stefan said, "that's kind of funny, but I don't have time to get into that now. Show some inventiveness, Catherine. You're good at that. Find a way to get them away from me."
Catherine bit her lip. Show some inventiveness? Easy for him to say…
But then she looked at the man she had once loved, and realised that at this point, anything that was not easy was beyond him. Those scruffy clothes were just the start of it. He had not shaven for days, from the looks of it, and his pale eyes were bloodshot. The hand that held the gun was steady, but that in itself was shocking. Stefan had always hated violence. If he could hold a weapon in such a natural fashion now, it meant that he had been driven way past the point where he was capable of being 'inventive' himself. This was the best he could do.
Three months ago we were talking about getting married, Catherine thought sadly. Just how the hell did we go from there to here?
"If you wait around long enough," she said, "all of us are very likely to end up dead. Hunters die a lot. You'll have your life back then."
"What?" Rick gasped. Apparently, he had some trouble taking in the news that his little sister was part of a group whose members 'died a lot'. Fully understandable, she supposed, but she did not have time for him right now.
"That's not good enough either," Stefan said. "I don't want to hide for years and wait for you to be killed. I want to go back home now without getting killed for it."
"That might not be possible," Catherine said.
"Make it possible."
Catherine grimaced and tried to think. He was being unreasonable. But he was unreasonable with a gun, which meant that she had to be careful. Make it possible? Find a way to get Fred to back off and leave an Abnormal – which was what he called anything that was even vaguely supernatural – alone? Could it be done?
Maybe.
"I… could tell them you're dead?" she said, listening to how the idea sounded. Then she nodded. "Yes, I could do that. Tell them that you attacked me, and we fought, and I killed you and… and…"
"Dumped the body in the sea," Stefan supplied. "Will they believe you?"
Catherine shrugged. She could lie while keeping a straight face, which was more than most people could. But she was not exactly Mata Hari. It might go either way.
"It might," she said. "Told you, they think I've been chosen by God to fight evil. That means they have to consider me on their side until they find reason to think otherwise. But if one of them bumps into you on the street two months from now, Fred will shoot me. I mean, we're talking about a man who is wanted for murder, arson, assault and God knows what else in several different states. He's not exactly squeamish. Or reasonable."
"My little sister knows people who are wanted for murder, arson, assault and God knows what else," Rick said in the hysterically cheerful tone of the terminally shocked. "This is all a dream and I'll wake up in a moment, right?"
Stefan smirked.
"Too bad for you. You know, I can't help it wonder. How can you keep friends like that and still talk yourself into thinking you're anything but on the side of evil?"
"He's not a friend!" Catherine spat. "He's a psycho who thinks that he's fighting to save the world, and because of it he's allowed to use any methods, no matter how many innocents he hurts or kills! Does that description sound familiar, maybe? Sound like anyone you know? Anyone who's got fur and claws half of the time?"
"Watch your mouth," Stefan snapped. "If the world hasn't completely gone to hell yet, it's them we have to thank for it!" He gestured towards the telephone, which was hanging on the wall a bit to Catherine's side. "Make the call. I'll be listening."
Catherine shot him an angry glance, but walked over to the phone and dialled a number. Stefan took a few steps closer, keeping the gun aimed at her.
"Fred Jones," a voice answered after only two signals. It did not sound particularly much like the voice of a homicidal maniac. In fact, it sounded normal. It was not especially loud or especially quiet, especially rough or especially soft. It was not especially anything. It was not even boring; Catherine had met people who had had voices that made her feel the smell of dust whenever they spoke, but Fred did not have a voice like that. He sounded like just about anyone.
Catherine had a feeling that she would not have liked Fred even if she had met him in the old days, before he became a murderous Hunter. Something deep inside her was always prodding her to strangle him, just to make the world a little bit more interesting. It was downright amazing that a man who had successfully avoided the police for three years now could be so dull.
"Fred?" she said. Sounding frightened and out of breath proved to be all too easy. "This is Catherine. I'm at my mother's house."
"Is there a problem?" Fred said. He was good at hearing problems in people's voice. Usually he was the problem he was hearing.
Catherine hesitated. Stefan made an impatient gesture with his left hand. Come on, say it.
"Well, remember Stefan?"
"An Abnormal. Last seen at the site of a major fight. What about him?"
"Well, he turned up here…" Then, without warning, she started talking three times as fast as usual. "And he's still here he's got a gun he's going to kill me get here!"
"No!" Stefan yelled in outrage and despair. And pulled the trigger.
Time seemed to slow down to a crawl.
Catherine could see Stefan's finger tightening on the trigger, could see every line of pain and fear in his face. Cold fury formed in her chest. This man had once told her he loved her. She had told him secrets, comforted him when he was sad, made love to him. After all that, and regardless of the way they had broken up, he owed her better than this. He had no right to point a gun at her, or to threaten her family.
She let the anger she felt came roaring through her, starting all the way down at her toes and moving up to her throat, all in the brief second it took Stefan to fire the gun.
"No!" she echoed, meaning something else entirely. No, he could not shoot her. No, it would not work like this.
Because she did not allow it, it did not.
Stefan's hand was struck aside, as by an invisible force, at the moment he fired. The bullet went into the dining room and shattered Lily's favourite milk decanter. Stefan swore and stared at his arm, disbelieving.
He would have caught himself and turned the gun around towards her again in another second. Catherine refused to give him that time. She threw herself on his outstretched arm, keeping the gun pointed away from her.
"You bitch!" Catherine felt pain explode on the right side of her head, and realised, startled, that Stefan had used his free hand to hit her. There seemed to be a lot of stars and flashes of light appearing in front of her eyes, but it did not matter, not as long as she could obstruct him for long enough to let the inevitable happen.
The inevitable happened. Rick had been threatened, frightened, confused and pissed off for the whole run of the conversation between her and Stefan. And he was a hands-on kind of guy.
There was a sound of fist meeting face, and Stefan's struggling body abruptly went limp. He almost pulled her down with him when he fell. Catherine shook her head to clear it – a mistake; that gave her a dizzying, splitting headache – and smiled weakly at Rick, who was standing next to her, rubbing his knuckles with an expression of grim satisfaction on his face.
"I never did like him that much," he said smugly.
"I did," Catherine said sadly. She bent down and picked up the gun, which had fallen out of Stefan's hand. His eyes were still open and trying to focus, but his attempts to get up only resulted in random spasms. "But I guess people change." She looked at her brother. "Get some twain or something. Tie him up."
"Right," Rick said and went into the kitchen for twain. Catherine went back to the phone and picked up the receiver. Fred was still shouting through it.
"Catherine! I don't know where your mother's darn house is! Catherine!"
"It's okay!" Catherine said. "It's okay. I took care of it."
"Ah." He did not question that. Fred was not really the questioning type. "Did someone get shot?"
"Only our dinner."
"Is he dead?"
She could say no. Give Fred the address. Let him make Stefan disappear. Fred had been killing people – and things that were not exactly people – for three years. He was good at making people disappear. She could get rid of the problem so easily…
For some reason, the only thing she could think about was her twenty-eight birthday. Stefan had given her a golden necklace. Stupid. She did not wear jewellery. But it had been a really pretty necklace, and he must have spent a fortune on it, so she had smiled and thanked him and given him a kiss. The look on his face had been a present all in itself.
He owed her better than pointing guns at her. But by the same token, she owed him better than handing him over to psychopathic Hunters.
And regardless of what he said, she was the one who held the moral high ground here. She would like it to stay that way.
"Think so," she said. "He took a nasty fall."
"You don't need help, then?"
"No."
"Okay." Fred hung up without further ceremonies. Catherine slowly did the same. Okay, so now what? Holding the moral high ground was nice and all, but how did you combine that with survival? She did not much fancy the thought of Stefan attacking her again. He knew about the Denial now. And he was smart. He would be ready next time.
Rick came back from the kitchen with a big ball of twain and started tying Stefan up with it.
"So," he said, deliberately not looking at her. "Want to tell me what that was you did?"
"I just tied up his arm," she said, "so you could…"
"Cathy." Rick's voice was not really hostile, but it conveyed very efficiently the message that he was having the worst day of his life, so would she please not make it even more difficult for him?
She was quiet for a moment.
"It's called an Edge," she said.
"An Edge." It sounded like a sigh.
"Sometimes," Catherine said, fumbling, "when someone is trying to shoot me, or hit me, or," tear her throat out with its big, sharp teeth, "or something, I can sort of make him… not to."
Finally, he turned his head and looked at her.
"Cathy, what are you?"
The question was simple, naked and painful. She could do nothing but give him the straightest answer she had.
"I honestly don't know."
He nodded mutely. Stefan was all tied up now, his hands behind his back and his legs fettered by the knees and the ankles.
"So what did he do to you and… those others," he said slowly, "that makes you all hate him so much?"
She shrugged.
"I told him about what I was. Thought I could trust him." Bitterness filled her as she looked down on Stefan. "As it turns out, I couldn't."
"No." Rick got up and looked around, like he was searching for the sane world that he had lived in a few moments ago. Catherine knew exactly how he felt. She had done the same, from time to time.
She rubbed her forehead. Okay, now what? The neighbours would have heard the gunshot. The police was probably on its way. She had done nothing illegal here, but if Stefan was brought to trial he might start mentioning the names of some people who would really rather not have their names mentioned, and it would be messy. Maybe she could…
"Cathy?" Rick said.
She looked at him, silent.
"Me you can trust."
For a long, terrible moment, she felt like she was going to burst into tears. Then she got herself under control again.
"I know," she said, her voice somewhat hoarse.
She turned back to Stefan. His eyes were open, but squinting and unfocused. That blow to the head had not been healthy.
"Stefan?" she said. "Can you hear me?"
He made a choked noise as he tried to speak, then settled for nodding.
"I'll tell you how this is going to go," she said, her voice soft and quiet. "In a moment, I'll untie you. The neighbours will have heard the shot, so the police are probably on their way, but…"
"Untie him?" Rick protested. "Catherine, that's not a good idea!"
She ignored him. They had grown up in the same house; she had years of experience in ignoring him.
"But maybe you can avoid them," she went on. "I hope so. And do you know what will happen then, Stefan?"
This hazel eyes were focused now, locked on her face. He had such beautiful eyes. Once, she had been so happy to just look into them and know that she was with the greatest guy in the world. Had that been true? Had he just changed? Or had it all been a lie?
Or was it she who had changed?
No, she determined. I'm the same as before. I still believe in science, reason and humanism. It's he who's stopped doing that, if he ever did.
"Then you're going to stay away," she said. "You won't hurt me. You won't hurt my family. Because if you do – are you listening to this? – if you do, I'll forget that I'm not the bad guy here. I'll hurt you. I'll hurt you badly. Back at Aesop, they taught us to perform experiments on test-animals that amounted to senseless torture. When I developed the… the Second Sight, I realised that the reason for that was that there were invisible things feeding on their pain. Scary, isn't it? We were supposed to do research, but we were also supposed to provide food for monsters."
Her voice hardened. She could not stop the bitterness from pouring out.
"But you see, before that, I didn't know. I didn't knowingly help and nurture things that wanted nothing more than to hurt and kill and force the world into whatever form they thought was right. I didn't knowingly betray anyone. You did. So if you come back here and hurt anyone, Stefan… then I'll make you my little lab rat. I'll experiment on you. Do you understand me, Stefan?"
"… bitch…" The word was pushed out of his mouth with a lot of effort.
Catherine shrugged.
"Maybe."
"… I want… my… life back…"
"You do, do you?" Catherine gave off a sound that was part laugh, part sigh and part sob. "Well, you know what? I wanted you to be a good guy. I wanted you to choose people over a bunch of murderous walking rugs. But we don't always get what we want, do we?"
He did not answer. Catherine knelt down and started untying him.
The journals of Doctor Catherine Faller, entry # 14 (continued):
So, do I actually think that my little speech will have scared him off for good?
No. Not really.
But good solutions are hard to come by. This was the best one I had. I will not turn into another Fred Jones. I will not resort to solving problems by killing people. There's far too much of that going on in the world anyway, and the supernaturals are only part of it. I never was very idealistic, but I do believe in some things, and I'm going to keep believing in them, if I can.
What troubles me is that I'm starting to realise that Stefan must have gotten involved in the whole nature-worshipping thing right after we broke up. And the reason we broke up was, at least partly, that I had gotten a job which mainly consisted of torturing small animals for financial gain. He yelled at me over that plenty of times. Actually, I don't blame him. In retrospect, it feels to me like I must have been out of my mind. I wanted to make lots of money, and that made me blind to everything else. Stupid.
I can imagine how he must have felt. Someone he loved – I honestly do think he loved me, at the time – was involved in something he found repulsive. He must have been desperate for some sort of answer to that – something that would balance it out, make him feel less… violated.
This Mestraquaran cult was happy to provide, it seems.
He's responsible for his own actions. I didn't force him join some sort of crusade against the evils of civilisation. He's a doctor, a scientist – he should have been smarter than that. But I can't escape from the fact that he very probably ended up where he is today because of me.
Just another thing to add to all the things I have on my conscience.
What I don't have on my conscience, luckily, is the lives of my mother and brother. Rick came out of it not much worse for the wear – he's too thick-headed for emotional traumas – and Mom woke up ten minutes after Stefan had staggered out the front door…
"… why am I lying on the floor…?" Lily mumbled. She tried to get up, but her limbs would not quite support her. Rick bent down and firmly pushed her back to the floor by her shoulders.
"Take it easy, Mom," he said. "Everything's okay."
Catherine was leaning against the wall, rubbing her forehead. This Faller family dinner had been a particularly trying one. Too bad they did not pay Hunters overtime, or she could at least have made some badly-needed money on this whole mess.
Of course, the conversation had not revolved primarily around how she was a complete failure without a job, a boyfriend or a future. As these occasions went, that was rather unique. It was true that the reason the conversation had not rested too long on that was that it had quickly moved on to whether or not people were going to get shot, but still, a slight improvement.
The police had not arrived yet. That was for the best, Catherine supposed. She wanted Stefan to get away, because if he got caught, he would start making accusations against her and the other Hunters he had met, as a last-ditch attempt to save his own sorry skin. And she could not return the favour; she had no idea who the other worshippers of Mestraquaran were. Better to let him get away. She would rather fight him again than fight the entire justice system.
Even so, you would think that a gunshot in a heavily populated area would draw some attention from the upholders of law and order. Why was she paying unfairly high taxes if they were not being put to use?
"What happened?" Lily asked groggily.
"Stefan grabbed you and held a chloroformed rag over your mouth," Catherine said wearily.
Lily blinked owlishly.
"He did?" she said. She sounded a bit clearer now. "Really?"
"Yes, Mom," Catherine sighed. "Really."
"Oh." Lily took the time to process that piece of information. Then she got pushed herself up into sitting position, scowling. "Well, I've never been through anything like this before! That maniac! I never liked that boy! I can't imagine what you were thinking, Catherine, going out with him! And…"
"But…" Catherine croaked, staring in disbelief. Lily seemed to have forgotten that she had been all for Stefan an hour ago.
"… the sheer amount of disregard you show for the safety of the woman who brought you into this world is unbelievable! Unbelievable, Catherine! Bringing a crazy lunatic into my home, with absolutely no thought of…"
"But!" Catherine whimpered. Lily was not listening; she was in full rant mode, explaining in great detail Catherine's failings as a daughter. Rick watched the scene in silence. His eyes were still a little vacant, but he could not keep a self-satisfied grin from his lips. Force of habit took control.
Catherine groaned inwards. The monthly Faller family dinner was back on track, the appearance of an armed and dangerous nature cultist hardly having made it skip a beat…