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Tara Wren is twenty-five, spit-fired and ready to hunt chanan ass til kingdom come.
They took her family from her in May, and while it was never much of a family in the healthy sense, it was all Tara had. She loved her baby brother the most, and she watched a chanan eat the toddler like her was a pre-meal snack, like his life meant nothing when it hadn’t even been given the chance to start yet.
Tara grew up street-smart, knows how to handle a gun and even a knife if it comes down to it. She cut her hair short, buzzed it nearly to her head so no hands can grab, no one can pull her in by anything other than her limbs-- but those are strong, extension of her willpower and black as night so she blends into the shadows just fine, comes up on the monsters when they least expect it.
Ironic, she likes to think, that the dark is her ally when it's supposed to be theirs.
She travels around Mexico for months and never really lands anything; she knows the chanans are out there, hears hunter gossip in every corner but everyone tells her to stay out of it, that a girl can’t do the job.
Except for one.
Her name is Kate Gecko, and she hunts with her husband, Seth, whose brother also happens to be the enemy, fighting under the goddamn lizard queen from hell herself.
Tara thinks that’s funny, but won’t believe it until she sees it with her own two, slightly near-sighted eyes.
Her first hunt goes better than expected, all things considered.
She’s in a back-lack bar in San Jose and this biker tries to get frisky, grabs at her ass one too many times. She smashes her beer bottle against the counter and turns on him, only to see he’s sprouted fangs and slit eyes, as has every other biker in the grubby place.
“It’s my lucky day,” Tara says to herself, pulls out her gun and takes aim. “Which one of you sons of bitches wants to go first?”
She slaughters five by the end, and when it’s all finished she cleans the blood off her knife-- once her daddy’s knife before the monsters ate him to the bone-- she smiles.
Motels aren’t really Tara’s thing.
She’d rather sleep in the back of her truck, stare up at the sky with a rifle crossed over her chest like a lover. She spies Orion and Sirius Major, follows the Taurus to the Gemini and wonders if her momma’s looking down, if she’s proud.
Eventually Tara surmises that probably not-- her momma always wanted her to be a lawyer or a doctor, not a killer in the night.
It’s on her second hunt, two of the fuckers holding her down and getting ready to rip her guts out that Tara finally meets the famous Gecko spouses.
The little one, the girl-- Kate, helps Tara up and she believes it now that she sees it. Kate outdid her husband in body count by ten, after all.
“We’re gearing up for a war with them,” Tara says, not a thank you or a hello; small talk’s never been her strong suit.
Kate just smiles. “The only war we can afford is survival,” she says.
Her husband finishes hacking off a chanan’s head with a chainsaw and joins them, puts an arm around Kate and the opposite hand out for Tara to shake. “You okay, miss…?”
“Tara,” Tara says. “So you’re the famous Geckos I’ve been hearing about?”
“I hope not too terrible things,” Kate says, and it’s then Tara notices how much younger she is than her husband-- barely budding where he’s already gray at the temples and in the beard. But it isn’t a surprise, not really. Tragedy brings unlikely people together, and with all Tara’s heard about these two, tragedy is not in short supply.
“Naw,” Tara lies, because Kate seems like a nice kid and Tara could use a friend in this lonely business. “Not too terrible.”
Kate and Seth let Tara hunt with them for a while; she follows in her truck as they drive down to South America, on the search for Santanico Pandemonium.
Tara’s heard about the lizard queen of course, that she’s building an army for some impossible quest. But Kate tells her the real truth of it, how Seth’s brother got turned, why the other hunters spit on the Gecko name every chance they get.
“And you stay involved with all of that?” Tara asks one night, shaving her legs over the lip of the bathtub while Kate plucks her eyebrows in the mirror above the sink, both happy to be doing girl stuff for once in forever; they're even playing Nicki Minja from Tara's iPod and it's kind of stupid and it's kind of awesome.
“I love them,” Kate says in explanation of her need to not give the Gecko brothers up, sets the tweezers on the sink and turns to look Tara in the eye-- Tara likes that about the girl, that she’s always direct and God honest. “You do stupid things when you’re in love.”
“Amen, sister,” Tara snorts. “A-fucking-men.”
Tara’s room is always adjoining to Seth and Kate’s at the motels they stay at-- she still slept in her truck at beginning, but eventually the bed called, the company called, and all that lonely bullshit.
Sometimes she thinks she should’ve stayed in her truck though, on the nights that Kate and Seth fuck. She can hear them through the wall behind her bed, Seth calling Kate baby girl and it makes Tara grimace, because yes, captain obvious, your wife is way younger than you and apparently has a daddy kink.
But then there are nights when it’s weirder, when it’s sadder.
They talk about Seth’s brother, the one that’s all but dead to them now that he’s a monster. They talk about what Richie Gecko would do to the both of them, and sometimes they just stop in the middle and cry with each other, or separately, or call the bastard’s name when the come.
Tara really fucking wishes she would’ve just slept in her truck on these kind of nights, but hey, who is she to judge?
“How did you make it out?” Kate asks one morning, sharing candle-smores with Tara while they watch some Mexican soap opera on the television; Seth’s out making a beer run, and Kate always seems to be able to speak about deeper things when her husband’s gone-- Tara knows every little secret Kate has to tell, even the one about her Frenching her boyfriend in the back of her daddy’s church.
“It was a bone white afternoon-- I hid under the sink,” Tara says, blinks and the scene unfolds before her, her momma falling on the floor, neck split open. Sticking her hands in the blood, covering herself in it, hiding while they ate her baby brother whole, followed by her little sister, her father too, and she never tried to help, not even when they moved on to her big brother and he called her name again and again. “I should’ve done something.”
“You were scared,” Kate says, taking hold of Tara’s hand and squeezing. “You were a scared, little girl.”
“I’m older than you,” Tara says. "I hear them screaming in my dreams. Sometimes I count the stars and think they hate me."
“They don't,” Kate answers, and at the glimmer in her eyes, Tara can’t help but kiss her.
It’s soft and it’s chaste and it’s easy, like loneliness quelled and it’s been so long since Tara’s had human contact that she tries to take Kate’s shirt off before she knows what she’s doing and Kate just lets her, lets her push her down into the mattress and sighs when Tara mouths at her throat, wants to eat her whole if only to suck up her body warmth, the sound of a beating, living heart.
“Am I interrupting something?”
Both women look up to find Seth in the doorway, twelve-pack in hand and he’s frowning, doesn’t like anyone else touching his wife except his brother, apparently.
“Yup,” Kate shrugs, grins over at him.
“Back to your own bed, Kill Bill,” Seth says, nickname he’s adopted for Tara as the weeks have worn on, and hikes a thumb over his shoulder to the opposite room. “Party’s over.”
Tara rolls her eyes. “Cock block,” she says as she brushes past him, but he just laughs and she knows it’s all good, that these people are her friends, and it’s been a long time since she’s been able to say that about anyone.
She meets Richie Gecko in a very unexpected place, her and Kate and Seth playing pool at a small bar near the edge of Montero.
Santanico Pandemonium walks in like she owns the place, and Tara can’t help but think that maybe the woman does, looking like sin on a goddamn stick and all.
“Richie,” Kate says, tugging on Seth’s sleeve.
“The trials?” Tara asks, because she knows all about that by now, has the story of the famous Maya brothers memorized beginning to end.
“Not tonight,” Kate says, holding her husband close. “Tonight Richie just wants to get laid.”
Tara blinks, glances over to where Richie’s walking towards them, this tall drink of water of a man, if not fugly-dressed, hair slicked back like the boy she remembers Kate describing him as once being. Tara breaks the pool cue over her leg before she can stop herself, aims it out at the vamp threateningly.
“I see you guys have gotten a friend,” Richie says, touches the shattered end in front of him with a finger and pushes it out of the way. “It was a lovely wedding, by the way. And you did let him fuck you in the dress, Kate. Knew it.”
“Shut up, Richard,” Seth says, pulls Tara back next to him protectively the same way he’s holding Kate and for once Tara feels like she has a family again. “Go home.”
“I am home, brother,” Richie says, opening his arms out wide. “You’re the one out of your element.”
“Then we’ll go home,” Kate says, grabs the arm of her husband and tugs. “Have fun with your own devices, Richie.”
“Kate…” Richie says, and Tara flinches because she remembers Kate saying something about Richie having this lulling tone he uses with her, always drawing the girl in.
“Fuck off, Richard,” Kate says then, and Tara blinks.
Richie blinks too.
“Well,” he says, glances over at Santanico and then to Tara. “Looks like you’ve got a deflector.”
"What did he mean by deflector?" Tara asks on the ride out, having driven with them to the bar so they're all in close quarters and questions.
"Beats me," Seth says. "Richie's crazy though, so whatever."
"I'm getting tired of it," Tara confesses to Kate one evening, the girl having come to her room for once while her husband sleeps on the other side of the wall. "I don't know how you live with all the blood."
Kate just smiles. "You've gotten enough revenge," she says, like it's a secret. "You can go home now."
"Isn't that like quitting?" Tara asks.
At that, the smile turns into a full-out giggle, Kate's nose crinkling like a rabbit and Tara wants to kiss her again, but knows she can't. "No, Tara. It's like being set free."
They get Tara a job working for a man named Freddie Gonzalez up in Texas.
Her grandma called a week prior and said that she was going to be put in a nursing home, and Tara said that she'd come and take care of her instead so her granny could spend the rest of her days in her own house. There may have also been some of her grandma threatening to curse her beforehand too, and since the woman was into Voodoo back when New Orleans was happening, Tara didn't want to risk the bad juju by getting her own apartment. At least now she doesn't have to pay rent.
“So I’m gonna be a Ranger?” Tara asks at the border, hugging Kate and Seth goodbye.
“Yeah,” Seth says. “But don’t let it turn you into anymore of an asshole than you already are, K.B.. Just fight the good fight, stay out of trouble. Call us if you ever want back in.”
“Will do, Gecko,” Tara says, leans in and kisses him, just wants to feel what it’s like once; he tastes like beer and Kate. “Huh. Like your wife better.”
“Everyone does,” Seth smiles, rolls his eyes.
"Call us anytime," Kate adds. "We're always friends."
The words kind of make Tara want to cry-- if she ever cried, that is.
“Goodbye, guys,” Tara says, and they watch her as she crosses the border, gets into the Ranger’s car on the other side. “You Freddie?” she asks the man behind the wheel.
He nods. “I am.”
“Okay,” Tara says, turns and smacks him across the face, smirks when he recoils and blinks. “That’s from Kate. She’s mad you haven’t called lately.”
“Oh yeah,” Freddie says, puts the car in gear and starts driving forwards. “You’re definitely perfect for the job."
Tara calls the Geckos two months later, half-way along in academy and her grandmother doing just fine; Tara still has her daddy’s knife stashed under her pillow when she sleeps at night, but she doesn’t clutch her rifle like a lover or count the stars.
“I don’t have bad dreams anymore,” Tara tells the Gecko spouses.
“Good,” they answers. “We’re glad.”
Tara smiles. “And Kate?” she says before she hangs up.
“Yeah?” the girl answers.
Tara sucks in a breath, loses the nerve. “Nothing,” she says, hangs up the phone because she doesn’t want to make a new graveyard out of another bone white afternoon.