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Yasha was hungry.
She didn’t like the cities, where the people were, and she didn’t like attacking people and leaving them and their companions half-bled out on the ground, and lone hikers didn’t like being followed by tall, black-haired homeless women.
Ergo, Yasha was hungry.
And she might be in luck.
“So, you like hiking?”
Yasha blinked out of her hunger. “Um. Yes.”
The other woman nodded, a few steps ahead of her. “Cool, cool.” She laughed awkwardly and scratched at her undercut. “Dumb question.”
“Do you like hiking?” Yasha asked at the same time. Oops.
The woman—what was her name? Belle? Bear? —shrugged. “Yeah, I like it all right. I usually go with friends, but they’re all busy today so we’re hanging out later tonight.”
“Oh.”
She twisted and winked at Yasha. “But you’re not bad company yourself.”
“Um.” Yasha fiddled with her arm brace. “Thanks?”
There was a natural stairway where a cluster of tree roots crossed the trail, exposed by weather and hundreds of feet. Bear—she was pretty sure it was Bear—darted nimbly up the root structure and then offered a hand.
Yasha stared for a moment. “I don’t think you would be able to pull me up.” Where Bear had been gracefully acrobatic, Yasha simply hefted over the entire clump in two strides, hauling herself up onto the rest of the path.
Bear made a little noise. “Oh. That was hot.”
Yasha couldn’t tear her eyes away from the motion of Bear’s throat as she swallowed.
She was so hungry.
“Thank you?”
Bear collected herself and started back down the path. “So, uh, Yasha, what do you like to do for fun?”
Bear had a green, triangular tattoo on the back of her neck, vivid against her dark brown skin. Yasha kept tracing it with her eyes, planning out the perfect place to bite so that she wouldn’t mess it up.
“Um. I... collect flowers?”
“Dope. I’d love to see them sometimes.” She turned around again, and Yasha looked up quickly. Look at people’s eyes when you’re having a conversation. “I mean if you don’t mind! You don’t have to. Uh. Anyways.” Bear coughed and looked away again.
Yasha winced. She’d made too much eye contact again. She was making it awkward. It had been so long since she’d actually talked to someone.
She should just end the conversation now. They were close to the trailhead, and it was a Saturday. (Was it Saturday? Yes, it was Saturday. There was a café down the road, and whoever worked Friday night always left the uneaten cakes by the back door instead of throwing them away.) Someone would find her.
Yasha started walking right behind Bear. Her footsteps were naturally silent, despite her size, and she didn’t need to breathe, so there was no worry that Bear would hear her.
She had just chosen the right spot to bite and opened her mouth when Bear spoke.
“Also, I wouldn’t bite me if I were you.”
Yasha shut her mouth with an audible click.
“What?”
Bear turned around entirely—completely nonplussed by Yasha’s proximity—and started walking backwards. “You’re a vampire, right?”
“...No.”
Bear snorted and stumbled over a root. She caught herself easily and started walking forwards again, walking next to Yasha instead of ahead of her.
“You’re a shit liar.”
“Why aren’t you scared of me?”
“Why should I be? I mean, you’re just a person. One who happens to need human blood to survive, sure, but just a person.”
Orphanmaker. My beautiful weapon.
The combination of Bear’s words and the echo of Obann’s voice in her head left Yasha feeling itchy and off-balance. “I could just bite you anyways.”
“Well, first off, I’ve got this.” Bear fished a necklace out of her crop top. “Symbol of the Wildmother.” She showed Yasha a simple silver circle with the crook running through it.
Although Bear was careful to hold it away from her, Yasha flinched instinctively.
Bear tucked it back into her shirt. “Second, I just ate a shit ton of garlic.” She pushed aside a branch with her walking stick. “Also, one of my friends is a vampire and he like, just fed on me last week? And according to him I taste awful.” She showed Yasha her arm, and sure enough, partially healed in the crook of her elbow were two fang marks.
“But he fed on you?” Even when she swung her arm away, Yasha couldn’t look away from the spot the bite was.
“Yeah, I like, just said that.”
“No, I mean. He’s still your friend?”
“Oh! Yeah. That’s why I let him bite me at all.” She shrugged. “The friends I told you about? A lot of them are spooky and shit. We take care of each other.”
“Spooky and shit?”
“Yeah.” Bear pointed at a horizontal log on the side of the trail. “Here, I’m gonna take a quick water break.”
She sat swung a bag off her back, and Yasha took a moment to reassess. There was a bundle of sticks tied with red thread hanging from one zipper, and another from her belt, and when she opened the bag to retrieve her water bottle, Yasha caught a glimpse of a pair of gleaming silver scissors shaped like a heron.
She wiped a stray drop of water off of her chin, and Yasha’s eyes lingered. “Y’know, werewolf, zombie, dead tree person. Spooky and shit. Like I said, we watch out for each other,” she said, zipping up her bag and propping one foot up on the log to retie her shoe. “Make sure everyone’s taken care of and doesn’t fuck up too much. Keep watch during the full moon. Go on road trips to the ocean.” She gave Yasha a significant look. “Make sure my friend doesn’t have to stalk strangers in the woods to get food.” She finished the knot with a decisive tug and swung back into motion. “You know, we could probably support another vampire.”
Yasha stared at her, but Bear was crossing a stream trickling across the trail and didn’t see. “How...” She trailed off, not sure what she was even trying to say. “There are lots of people who just let a vampire bite them?”
“I don’t know about lots,” Bear said. “But there’s four of us who are close enough to human that my friend can feed. And we take a fuck ton of precautions. A couple of us have phlebotomist certifications, so we always have someone making sure he doesn’t take too much, and everyone else is ready to pull him off if it’s needed. And then we watch a movie and drink juice boxes or shit.”
Yasha gripped her elbows tightly, squeezing her body. “They’re... awake? After your friend...?”
She realized too late that telling Bear that most of her victims didn’t end the experience conscious was maybe not the best thing to say, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Like I said, we’re careful. It took a lot of practice to get to that point, and a lot of yelling, and a lot of Conversations-with-a-capital-C, and we kinda ruined a couch, but yeah. And I’m sure plenty of us would be willing to repeat the process if we needed to.”
Bear froze suddenly, and Yasha almost ran into her. “Hey, look,” she said, hushed.
Yasha opened her mouth and tasted the air. A threat? No. It smelled like—
“There’s a deer over there.”
Bear slowly lifted one hand to point, too calm for danger. Yasha followed her hand, but the deer blended into the pattern of the foliage.
“D’ya see it?” Bear glanced at her without moving her head. “It’s just—right—” With all the stillness of a hunting predator, Yasha bent her head to line up with Bear’s fingers. She could feel Bear’s breath on her cheek.
The wind shifted. The deer caught her scent; Yasha finally spotted the motion of the deer as it raised its head and darted away down the path.
“Oh.”
“I don’t see a lot of deer around here,” said Bear after it was out of sight. Her voice was still quiet, as if the deer was still just down the trail.
“Sorry for scaring it away,” said Yasha.
Bear turned her head minutely to look at Yasha, and for a moment she thought she’d spoken too softly again, and Bear hadn’t understood her.
“It’s alright,” said Bear. “Animals are scared of my friend too.”
Yasha tugged on one of her braids. “Um." She couldn’t call Bear’s friend a monster. That would be rude. “Why are you being nice to me?”
For a long moment, the only sound was Bear’s feet squelching slightly on the damp trail. “I always used to think that monsters were only creatures that hid under beds, and I was too fucking cool to be scared of monsters because they weren’t real. And then shit happened, and I ended up in, like, a kind of fucked-up school, and I learned that there were monsters and that they were real, and one of my teachers told me they needed to be hunted and taken out because they were dangerous and a threat to human society.”
Bear kicked a rock so hard it bounced off a tree and ricocheted into the woods. “Well, he was full of shit, and it turns out my dad fucking paid him to—well. Anyway. I met a bunch of ‘monsters’ like you.” She made air quotes, awkwardly gripping her walking stick with one hand to do it. “And what I found is that ‘monster’ is just something humans with too much power call anyone who scares them. You’re not a monster just because you have—fucking—extra teeth or night vision or tentacles!”
“And my weird school wasn’t as fucked-up as I thought it was! It was just this one guy!” She whacked a tree trunk with her stick and laughed a little. “I guess in a weird sort of roundabout way I did end up a monster hunter, but not in the way he wanted. My dad’s a monster. Zeenoth—the guy who taught me—is a monster. A bunch of other humans are monsters. And sometimes to fight monsters you have to take care of the people who get hurt by them.”
“I hurt people,” Yasha said. Bear was wrong. She was a monster. She was a violent, bloody creature that would hurt anyone who tried to get close to her.
“Do you want to hurt people?”
She thought of Obann and the Skysibil. “Yes.”
“People who didn’t hurt you first? People you don’t have to hurt?”
She thought of Bear, and the man with a bird tattoo on his sternum she had fed from three months ago. He used to go hiking every Wednesday in the foothills, a reliable reminder that time passed. He had been alive when she left him and his blood pooling on the forest floor near the trailhead, but she hadn’t seen him since.
Yasha didn’t answer.
“Look.” Bear pulled a dark blue permanent marker out of her bag. “You don’t have to come today, or ever,” she said, writing something on Yasha’s arm in blocky, precise print, “but here’s my phone number and the address we’re meeting at tonight. Not an invitation to enter whenever you like just yet, though one day it might be.”
She tapped Yasha’s bicep with the pen, then seemed to double take. “Wow. You have, like, so many muscles.” Bear reached out one hand as if to touch before snapping to attention. “Oh! Sorry! Henry Crabgrass.” She cleared her throat and shoved the pen back in her bag.
Yasha hesitated. “I thought your name was Bear?”
Bear stared at her for a moment, mouthing ‘name was Bear’ to herself in bewilderment.
“Oh! Shit!” she said, eyes lighting up as she understood. “No, yeah. Henry Crabgrass is. Fuck. Like, a,” she said, waving her hand elaborately. “It’s a friend thing. Means make sure you ask for consent. And I’m Beau, not Bear.”
“Oh.” Yasha blushed and ducked her head.
“Don’t worry about it though! It’s really fine.” She laughed. Yasha didn’t think it was in a laughing-at-Yasha way. Beau didn’t seem like that type of person. “Kinda cool, actually. Maybe I should start going by Bear.”
“Beau is a good name.”
“It’s a dope name.” Beau smiled at her, and Yasha hesitantly smiled back, aware of how her fangs must show.
“A dope name,” she echoed in agreement.
Beau glanced away and her brown skin glowed with—embarrassment? That didn’t make sense, but Yasha wasn’t good at reading faces.
Bear—Beau—scratched her undercut. “But, uh, seriously. Call me if you need to eat. Or someone to bench press.”
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Huh. Actually, that tracks. Uh, well, then come sit in my backyard or something. No, don’t, I might punch you. Hm.” Beau stabbed at the earth with her staff.
“I think I’ll come tonight.”
Beau stumbled over nothing and barely caught herself, almost managing to make it look purposeful. “Uh, what? Oh! Oh. You meant. Right. Shit. Come to the house. Okay. I’m going to stop talking.” She cleared her throat. “Sorry.”
Yasha’s mouth twitched. “It’s alright.”
“Cool, cool. Cooool.” She bobbed her head a few times. “Well, the first people should start trickling in around six tonight, but you should be good as long as you make it before midnight. Sometimes even after.”
“…Alright.” She was awful at tracking time, and becoming immortal-ish hadn’t helped. Show up sometime tonight.
Beau squinted at her. “Wait. Do you have a watch?”
“No.”
“Alright, cool.” Beau pulled out a phone and fiddled with it. “Okay, this says sunset is seven thirty, which is actually probably better ‘cause most everyone should be there by then.”
“Come here—” she tapped the address on her arm— “around sunset.”
“Yep.” Beau popped the p.
Yasha nodded as she thought. “Okay.”
“Awesome.”
They hiked in silence for a few minutes; it felt comfortable to Yasha. Beau picked her way across another stream, delicately balancing from stone to stone, and Yasha splashed through the water, her heavy, battered boots keeping her feet dry.
“So, we’ve got the rest of the hike, unless you want to turn around now… any good stories?”