5.

"This is a mistake." Trinket mumbled against his mouth before capturing it again in another savage kiss.

"What?" Haymitch snorted, forcing himself to draw back long enough to take a good look, telling himself that if she didn't look human anymore he wouldn't hesitate twice before stabbing her. "Conflicted conscience?"

It would have been a first. A conflicted demon. It was hard to suppress one's nature, all the more so when survival was involved.

She opened her mouth, probably to eat him and he kissed her again. One last time, he told himself as he licked the roof of her mouth, prompting to make another one of those keening sounds. Just one last kiss. Then he would let her turn demon and he would get rid of her… Or let Katniss get rid of her. He would…

The things she would do with her tongue were evil.

He slipped one hand under her blouse and pressed his palm flat on her lower back. Her skin was soft and warm and it made him want more.

Then again, he figured succubus knew their trade. She would probably only show her real self once he was too far gone under her spell…

"Haymitch…" she breathed out against his lips. "Haymitch, you need to stop. I strongly suspect there is a…"

A man screamed.

They both snapped their heads to the side to look at the door at the same moment, their mouths separating with a popping noise that would probably have made him ashamed in other circumstances. The scream had been one of agony, of someone dying – he had heard enough people dying to know.

Haymitch's heart was racing in his chest, his lips were still tingling from all the kissing.

"You ain't the succubus." he stated – just to be sure.

She huffed and shoved at his chest but she wasn't very strong and it wasn't enough to make him move. Not when her legs remained locked around his waist anyway. "You thought I was a sex demon?"

Which, as it was becoming obvious, she really wasn't.

But she was well-informed. That, however, was a problem for later.

"Shit." he spat, moving away from her. "Stay here. Lock the door. I'm gonna come back for you when it's safe."

"Why don't you have any weapon in your classroom!" she half-asked, half-complained, going back to rummaging through the drawer of his desk.

"Cupboard!" he shouted over his shoulder, already taking off at a run.

He wasn't sure where the scream had come from so he picked a direction a little at random, listening hard for any noise, hoping it wasn't Peeta who had fallen down.

He patted the back of his jeans, remembering the phone a moment too late but he couldn't find it. Had Trinket groped him? Had it fallen down? He couldn't remember. The whole thing had been so… He was reluctant to use the word passionate. And yet… If she wasn't a sex demon, she certainly had good moves.

Switching the lights on in his classroom had been a bad idea, his eyes were having troubles getting accustomed to the dark again. It was probably why he tripped over the dead janitor and landed face first in a puddle of blood. He scrambled back, staring at the man whose chest had been ripped apart and the deep hole where the heart should have been. It was messy, just as messy as Woof's crime scene had been, and the bile rose at the back of his throat. The man's pants were also down to his knees but Haymitch wasn't sure this one had died that happy.

Had they rushed the succubus? Did she know they were hunting her?

He got back to his feet with difficulties because the floor was slippery and looked for the hunting knife he kept at the small of his back.

That was when he heard the sobs.

He didn't have to look far. Felindra Tigris was huddled between two row of lockers, curled up in a tight frightened ball, tears running down her cheeks.

"Tigris?" he whispered.

She looked up, her face one of pure relief mixed with terror.

"Haymitch!" she exclaimed in a rough voice. How long had she been crying? "Haymitch, there was a… I know it's crazy but there was a monster. It ate him. It…"

She was working herself in a panic and Haymitch crouched next to her, rubbing her arms. "It's alright. I believe you. Where did it go?"

Footsteps noises from around the corridor's corner answered that question. Only one person and far more heavy than his Slayer could be. It wasn't Katniss nor Peeta.

"Come on. We need to move." he ordered, hauling the poor trembling woman to her feet.

"The Biology classroom…" she whispered, clinging to his arm. "It's in the next corridor…"

"Yeah. Okay. Good." he agreed and dragged her in that direction.

Although given the way she was gripping his arm, there were little chances of her running toward danger anyway. She looked so frail, so fragile… Someone like her would have zero chance against a demon. He felt compelled to help her.

They rushed into the Biology classroom and he closed the door softly, pressing his face against the small window in the middle so he could see outside. It was too dark and the plexiglass was too thick in any case.

"I need to go back out there and find this thing." he told her without looking back. "Just lock the door and…"

"No, you need to help me." Tigris objected, still clinging to his arm. Her nails were digging sharply into his flesh.

"I'm trying to." he scowled. "Look…"

"I'm so hungry, Haymitch…" she hissed. "You have to help me."

A chill ran down his spine.

He looked down at the small woman with her mane of red hair and felt his stomach coil in dread. Was it his imagination or did her eyes look split, like a cat?

"Tigris…" he said, a little warningly.

He felt around the small of his back for his knife but it was too late.

Strong hands had grabbed his face and had pulled him into a kiss.

°O°O°O°O°O°

The door to Haymitch's classroom was open and Katniss barged in without hesitation, ready to let her arrows fly on the first thing that moved. The light threw her for a second because she had grown used to the corridor's darkness but it wouldn't stop her getting her stupid mentor to safety.

The problem was nothing was moving inside the classroom.

It was empty.

A wave of panic came over her and she froze.

Peeta came sprinting in right after her and almost collided with her.

"He said his classroom." she breathed out. "He said…"

He had been there. The cupboard in which he kept the emergency weapons was open, the padlock was broken on the floor. He had probably tried to get something heavy to defend himself… The knife mustn't have cut it…

Peeta immediately grabbed the phone out of his pocket. "Haymitch?"

Peeta's distorted voice came out from near the teacher's desk. They looked at each other and she knew they were both wondering the same thing: was the desk enough to hide a body?

Katniss couldn't move.

She was the Slayer. It was her job, her duty, to go check if he was lying there, if the demon was still there… It was her duty but the thought of Haymitch dead on the floor with a missing heart…

He was a grumpy, nasty old drunk but his heart… His heart was so big it would have been far too cruel to have a demon rip it out. She had only known him for a month and already her life had taken a drastic turn – and, sure, she could have done without the vampires but he had made it a lot easier for her to take care of Prim. He gave her money for groceries, he had found a doctor for her mother, he had sorted the bills for her… She had never thanked him for his help or even told him how grateful she was for any of it. She had kept up the pretence that he did those things to compensate her Slayer activities because any other explanation involved too many complications.

You got attached to people and they died or became catatonic…

"Katniss."

Peeta's voice cut in through her sudden panic and she jerked her head to look at him, realizing only belatedly that she was on the verge of fainting because she was holding her breath. Her eyes were blurry and she blinked…

"I'll go look." he told her, in a tone that wasn't as confident as he probably wanted it to be. "Get ready. In case…"

In case there was a feasting succubus waiting to jump on them.

She nodded once and wiped her eyes with a sweep of her arm. Then she got into position, training her arrow at the desk. Peeta crept toward it carefully, the knife Haymitch had given him awkwardly clutched into his hand. He was holding it wrong and she told herself she would teach him if they ever got out of there in one piece.

He was pale and probably as scared as she felt when he finally reached the desk. Suddenly, though, the tension left his body. "He's not here. There's no one here."

Katniss breathed out in relief and joined him in a couple of quick strides. Her eyes spotted the stake on the floor but it was Peeta who found the phone with its split screen. It must have fallen from his pocket.

"He made it out." she deduced, turning from the desk to the weapons cupboard.

"There's no blood." he said. "So he's not injured or anything. That's good."

"Then, why did he scream like that?" she retorted. "You don't scream like that unless you're dying. And he was in there with her."

A sword was missing from the cupboard. She knew for sure because Haymitch had made her memorize the contents of the classroom's 'armory' in case she ever needed it. It was modest compared to the arsenal he kept at home but he insisted it was better to have a stash of weapons in different locations because you never knew when you might need one.

She grabbed a cutlass. She was still hoping the arrows would do the trick but a cutlass was bigger than a knife and she didn't want to go that close to a sex demon anyway.

"Maybe it wasn't him…" Peeta suggested. "There are other people here… The cars in the parking lot…"

Maybe. She wasn't sure. She had heard a man shout and she had panicked. And now Haymitch was missing as well as a sword and an Art teacher and it didn't bode well either way.

"Grab that axe." she told Peeta, nodding at the only big weapon left in the cupboard. "I'm going to kill this demon."

They were just exiting the classroom to search for more clues when they heard the crash. Katniss ran straight toward the noise. A few corridors away, she narrowly missed slipping into the puddle of blood.

"Guess it wasn't Haymitch." Peeta commented with relief, grabbing her arm to steady her.

She recognized the uniform more than the man. The janitor. His chest was cracked open and the stench was enough to make her eyes watery again. She swallowed back the bile and bumped into Peeta's shoulder to make him stop staring in morbid fascination. Even in the dark, she could tell his face was clammy and he was fighting the same nausea she was.

A pained cry echoed from the next corridor.

"This was Haymitch." she growled and took off again.

Trinket was dead, she vowed.

°O°O°O°O°O°

Haymitch managed to get his knife from the small of his back and kissed the demon harder, hoping to distract her enough that she wouldn't notice the blade he was holding behind her back. He tried to get the angle right. If he got the angle right…

"Drop it, Haymitch." the woman purred, her cattish eyes shining a soft yellow in the darkness. "You don't want to hurt me."

He really, really wanted to hurt her.

And yet his fingers loosened their grip around the handle of the knife. He fought it, fought the soothing voice in his head that was telling him everything was fine, fought the lie… But he couldn't resist it anymore than he usually could resist the lure of liquor.

She kissed him again, steered him away from the door and to the lab bench… He tried to resist, tried to call for help…

"Shh…" Tigris whispered before he could form a sound. "You don't want to struggle, Haymitch. You want to help me. You want me. It will be over before you know it. Pleasure like you cannot imagine and then… oblivion."

He wasn't sure how he ended up on his back on top of one of the lab benches, he was barely aware of her ripping his shirt open.

"I'm sorry, this will have to be quick…" she continued. "But you will still enjoy it, I promise. You want me after all, don't you? And you want to help me. I am so hungry…"

Her nails left a scratch down his chest but he was far beyond protesting now. Everything she would give, he would take. Everything she wanted, he would give.

"You will do just fine." she grinned. He caught a glimpse of teeth. Except they were not teeth but fangs. "You…"

The door crashed down.

Tigris looked up with a hiss, her face not at all the one he had grown used to in the last month. Her features had grown pointier, a soft fur covered her body, the mane of hair had become a real mane and there was a tail flicking the air behind her. And, of course, there were the fangs and the claws and the terrible fact that five of those claws were hooked around Haymitch's belt.

He had been expecting Katniss' great entrance.

It wasn't Katniss.

"My apologies but if anyone is going to rip his heart off tonight, I believe I was here first." Effie Trinket declared very seriously and Haymitch couldn't decide if he was hallucinating or not because she was standing there with a sword in her left hand and a fireball in her right one and that…

He was already hard. Demonic pheromones and what not. But if he hadn't been, he was pretty sure that sight alone might have done it.

The fireball caught the demon on the side and flung her away from him. It must have severed whatever form of control Tigris had pulled on him too because he felt like himself again and he rolled off the lab bench to get out of the line of fire.

"So what?" he scoffed. "You're a witch now?"

Could she pick one and stick to it? Council spy, demon, re-Council spy, and now witch? He hated it when puzzles resisted him. It annoyed him. And it annoyed him even more that he had never known how to ignore one. That woman was puzzling.

"I dabble." she said in a modest tone, as if they weren't in the middle of a fight.

"I dabble." he muttered. And he sucked at it. Anything involving magic, he usually preferred to call an expert and only did it himself if he had no other choice – and he stuck to reading spells. He had no talent for magic, very little power and certainly none of the smoothness she was demonstrating. "That's not dabbling."

He tried to haul himself up by using a table and winced when she grabbed his arm to help him. He decided he was getting far too old to get his ass kicked by a demon. It had been a lot more thrilling when he had been young.

"Are you hurt?" she worried, her eyes flickering between him and something behind him. "Duck!"

He ducked without question and he had been right to do so because she swung the sword without much coordination in a deadly half-circle. Behind him, he heard the demon hiss and he immediately got back on his feet, snatching the blade from her hand.

"Do you even know how to use that?" he snapped. Tigris looked enraged now that Trinket had opened a shallow cut on her collarbone and he didn't like the way she was watching him at all. She still wanted him to be dinner alright. "Sorry, you're not really my type. Wouldn't have worked out."

He had expected the demon to leap and he reacted immediately by lifting the sword. The impact was more brutal than he had calculated though and he ended up falling on his back, the blade knocked off his hand. He rolled with it, intending to use the momentum to kick her off him.

All fight deserted him when she purred.

He couldn't remember why he wanted to hurt her. He shouldn't… She was… She was everything he wanted and…

Claws dug into his chest and he shouted in pain.

Tigris was projected off him and against the wall again.

Trinket was panting as if she had run a marathon but there was another fireball ready in her right hand.

"Magic will not kill her." she warned.

Magic wouldn't kill her and he couldn't go anywhere near her without feeling the need to lie down and let her have some fun and a nice meal. Being a good demon hunter – and a good Watcher – was knowing when you needed to retreat. Because demon hunters who didn't know when to admit they had bitten more than they could chew always ended up dead. A good demon hunter was one who survived.

He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain and the blood freely trickling down his chest, and grabbed Trinket's wrist. "Run."

It was a command, not to be discussed, but she resisted when he tried to pull her away. He looked back to see what the hold-up was and saw the sword he had lost flying through the air toward the demon. It stabbed her in the shoulder and pinned her to the wall. Next thing he knew frost was crusting over the demon's weird-shaped paws and up her legs…

Trinket let out a deep breath and swayed a little.

"It won't hold her long." she warned, finally letting him tug her into the corridor. "But it should give us a head sta…"

Her sentence ended in a yelp when he used the grip he had on her wrist to push her behind him, shielding her with his body. He wasn't sure what had made him do that until he found himself face to face with the business end of an arrow.

"No!" he shouted. "She's with us."

"She's a demon." Katniss growled.

"Turns out she's a witch, after all." he replied, trying to assess his Slayer's condition in the dark. Peeta was standing a foot behind her, gripping the hilt of an axe, and looked okay enough. The girl didn't look any worse.

"I dabble." Trinket insisted. "And can we discuss this once…"

The wall burst.

Between the moment the wall exploded and the moment he landed against the opposite one, he only had one thought: they needed to get the hell out of there before Heavensbee showed up because he wasn't explaining that one.

°O°O°O°O°

The wall right next to Haymitch and Trinket burst. Haymitch was projected against the opposite wall amongst a sea of dust and flying pieces of concrete but Katniss lost sight of Trinket in the flying debris.

She couldn't, however, miss the huge cat-like demon right in front of her.

Behind her, Peeta let out a curse.

"Get back." she ordered. She didn't want him to get hurt.

She let loose three successive arrows and while they all found a mark, they didn't seem to do much good either. The demon screeched a high-pitched scream that made her wince.

Haymitch was slowly getting on all four but he didn't look like he was getting back to his feet any time soon.

She shot more arrows, stepping back to get more range, forcing Peeta to step back too, hoping she would at least annoy the demon into following her… But the demon's feral yellow eyes were riveted on Haymitch who didn't even look aware of the danger he was in. It was bleeding and clearly wounded but its hunger was greater than its pain. That, or it didn't consider them dangerous.

She was about to toss the bow and risk taking her chance with the cutlass when Trinket crawled out from under the collapsed wall, coughing dust. She looked up and their eyes met, then the woman looked at the demon's slow but steady advance toward Haymitch and her face hardened.

"Keep shooting." Trinket ordered with the same authority Haymitch always used when she was facing a particularly difficult vampire.

In the same moment, the bow seemed to hum under her hand. The next arrow she let loose was on fire, it left a trail of light in the dark. And so did the next. And the next. The demon finally seemed to notice her and turned away from Haymitch to march toward her, forcing her to step back even more.

"Katniss…" Peeta warned behind her. She knew what he meant. If it jumped, it would be on them in seconds and there would be no time to retreat.

"Get back." she ordered again.

"I'm not leaving you!" Peeta foolishly proclaimed.

And he wouldn't. She knew he wouldn't. If he ever were to abandon her, he would have done it a lot earlier than now. And she wasn't sure what to do with that because in her experience, everyone always left.

And she needed to make sure he would stay safe. "Find a switch! I need to see what I'm doing!"

If she had to get her hands dirty, she wanted to see what she hit.

Meanwhile, Trinket had dragged herself up.

"Light. Yes." the woman murmured.

Katniss barely heard her under the demon's pained screeches. Next thing she knew, the corridor was flooded with light. It blinded her for a second and it was enough for the demon to take advantage of that. The succubus crouched, ready to pounce, only to let out a roar when frost crept over it, trapping it in a carcass of ice.

Trinket's nose was bleeding and her clothes were torn in places. She outstretched a hand and Peeta's axe flew right past Katniss. For a second, she thought her friend had tossed it but it soon became obvious that it was the witch's doing. The woman's fingers had closed around the hilt.

Creepy.

Were witches on a Slayer's killing list? It felt like they ought to be.

Too late to wonder though.

The ice prison exploded, sending shards everywhere.

"Take cover!" Katniss shouted at Peeta, shooting two burning arrows while the succubus leapt, only to drop the bow and grab the cutlass right before it reached her. She rolled to the side, avoiding the claws aimed at her throat and her face.

She was aware that instead of obeying her, Peeta had rushed over to help Haymitch back to his feet, her mentor seemed to be unable to do it by himself. His shirt was torn open and there were deep gashes on his chest. Since that brought her friend away from the fight though she didn't insist and focused on the succubus instead.

She was about to attack when it roared and the already burning tail flew off, half severed from the rest of the body by the axe Trinket had stuck in it. The woman hastily stumbled back toward the wall and didn't try to get the weapon back.

Katniss didn't let the occasion pass. She darted left and then right when it tried to grab her and stuck the cutlass into the demon's neck. She dug it in until she felt bones and only let go once the succubus collapsed.

She stood there, out of breath, staring down at the unmoving thing on the floor.

"Is it dead?" she asked eventually.

"Kick it. If it moves, finish it." Haymitch grumbled, hopping closer. He was half-leaning on Peeta's shoulder but let go to grab the wall Trinket was propped against.

"It is dead." Trinket professed.

Katniss still kicked it.

It didn't move.

"It's dead." she confirmed.

"We need to get you to the hospital." Peeta declared and Katniss was about to protest – because this time she hadn't dislocated her shoulder or bruised her ribs or even suffered from smoke intoxication – but realized that he wasn't talking to her.

"I'm fine." Haymitch obviously lied.

The gashes on his chest looked deep.

"You don't look fine." he snapped. "You look like someone tried to claw your heart out. How close was it?"

"Tell you what, next time there is a sex demon on the loose, you can be bait." her Watcher retorted, maybe a little vexed.

"Perhaps try to find the right culprit next time." Trinket huffed. "I truly expected better from you."

"Perhaps don't go ferreting in my classroom next time." Haymitch retorted. "You'd look less guilty."

Trinket glared at him but it lacked heat. She was leaning against that wall just as heavily as Haymitch was. She was pale, her forehead was clammy and her nose hadn't stopped bleeding yet.

Katniss remembered the flaming arrows and the flying axe and couldn't find it in her to have much compassion even though the woman had helped defeat the succubus. They would have managed without her and magic looked on the same frightening scale as vampires and demons to her.

"What do we do with her?" she asked. Haymitch and Peeta both contemplated the dead demon with expectancy, as if waiting for it to turn to dust. It didn't. "No." She rolled her eyes. "I meant her." She nodded at Trinket who suddenly looked offended.

"You are just as rude as your Watcher." the woman huffed.

Katniss' gaze darted to Haymitch, not sure if it was expected that the Art teacher knew who they were because she was a witch or…

"Are witches evil?" she insisted.

"Some are. Some are not." Trinket answered before he could. "But as I repeatedly tried to make you understand, I am not a witch, I simply dabble in defensive magic. I never quite liked being powerless."

"That wasn't only defensive." Haymitch argued. Katniss discreetly reached for her knife but he shook his head no once, just as discreetly, so she dropped the idea of simply stabbing her and be done with the whole witch thing. "And if you ain't a witch, who are you? Cause you won't make me believe you're just an Art teacher, sweetheart. You play the axe a little too well."

Trinket stared at him with exhausted eyes. "Axes and swords were never my forte unfortunately. I suppose I can handle my own with a stake and I can shoot a crossbow although nowhere near as well as your Slayer." She sighed. "I can also quote the Slayer's handbook, if that would help, you seem to be in serious need of being reminded how things are supposed to be done."

"Watcher." he spat almost like an insult.

Katniss frowned. "So she's a spy after all?"

She wasn't sure why the Council of Watchers would need to spy on them but Haymitch had expressed doubts and mistrust about it and that was good enough for her.

"Why was the boy tagging along with your Slayer? The rules are very clear…" Trinket asked and then shook her head. "No matter. We should leave while we can."

"We still can't leave the dead beastie lying here." Katniss countered.

"Do you want to bet the police is going to say it was a wild animal?" Peeta snorted. "How else are they going to explain it?"

Trinket wriggled her fingers and the corpse burst into green flames. They all took a hasty step back.

"Okay, that wasn't smart." Haymitch remarked.

"Wasn't it?" Trinket whispered, looking even paler than earlier.

"You overdid it." he berated, genuine anger in his voice. "What are you trying to do? Kill yourself?"

"I saved your life three times tonight, A little more gratefulness would be appreciated." she deadpanned.

Then the light she had conjured earlier abruptly disappeared and they were left with the quickly fading magical fire for only source of light. Haymitch cursed and grabbed the woman before she could fall.

"Peeta, help me." he demanded.

The Art teacher hadn't completely fainted but she looked close enough to unconscious. She didn't even protest when Peeta picked her up.

"I wasn't done asking her questions." Katniss grumbled.

"Questions can wait until tomorrow." Haymitch decided. "She saved my life, she gets an out of jail card for tonight." He pushed himself off the wall and squeezed Katniss' shoulder. "Good job, sweetheart."

She made a face. "I wasn't quick enough to save the janitor."

"You can't save everyone." he said flatly. "Don't obsess over it or it's gonna drive you mad. You did what you could."

"I could have done better." she argued.

If she had had more training, if she had kept a cooler head, if…

He shrugged. "Then, next time, you do better."

Next time, she'd not let people die on her watch.

So Haymitch didn't get kicked in the groin and Effie isn't the demon after all (as many of you had guessed). What did you think of this chapter? Did you like it? Was Effie a little badass or what? Poor Katniss thought she had lost her mentor... Is Peeta a useful sidekick? Will Haymitch eventually manage to kick a demon's ass or is his reputation overrated? Are you looking forward to the discussion between Effie and Haymitch?

Let me know your thoughts!