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Reason over feeling. That was what Calliope had always been taught. That was the way things were done in the Guild. That’s the way to be a hunter. That’s the only way to be a hunter.
Even now, miles away from her family and the Guild, she can still hear those words as clear as day. Our hearts drive us but duty and logic lead us.
She couldn’t tell any of her friends, but it was how she did so well in her university classes. She was trained for this, to put the mission above all else. Dedication ran in hunters’ bones. It was what they were forged with. Her professors noticed it. Her classmates noticed it. It made her more enemies than friends, but she wasn’t here to make friends. She was here to get her degree and kill whatever stray monsters wandered onto campus for the next four years. Special assignment from the Guild and one she was very grateful for at that. Most hunters didn’t get to go to college or leave home. Most got their fake jobs and never questioned it. It wasn’t the real mission, after all. The real mission was to keep humans safe from the monsters who wanted to hurt them.
And if for one night, Calliope decided to lead with her heart instead of her mind, how much could that really hurt?
It was that thought that led her to this doorstep. The music shook the front door and neon lights flashed through the half-covered windows. She sighed. She didn’t like disobeying orders. It made her uneasy. But the entire point of getting away from her family was to figure out who she was without them and the only way she was going to do that was by getting out there. And hey, maybe she’d find a monster here and earn another tattoo that she’d apply herself in her dorm while her roommates slept, wishing it was one of her brothers or their father.
She pushed open the front door. A cloud rolled out and she covered her face as she coughed. College kids and their damn vapes. A hunter would never dare touch one, and honestly, Calliope hated the smell. Especially the fucking cotton candy ones. She walked as fast she could, honestly searching for a breath of fresh air. She finally found it by an open window … that two frat boys were throwing a third one out of.
“Excuse me!”
The voice came out of a short girl with light brown haired clipped back. She looked down at her shirt, now covered in whatever she’d been drinking in her red solo cup.
“Sorry, bro.” The frat brother who had crashed into her just laughed. His smile shifted. “We could help you out of it though.”
“Not interested.” The girl threw her arms up before he could touch her, instead thrusting her empty cup into his hands. She took off in the direction of the bathroom.
Calliope followed her. She couldn’t explain what it was that drew her to the girl but it was undeniable. She knocked at the door.
“It’s occupied.”
“I have a shirt for you,” Calliope said. She waited for a response, but it never came. Instead, the door just swung open. Whatever Calliope was going to say was replaced with the sudden realization that: “This isn’t a bathroom.”
“No, uh …” The girl smiled awkwardly as she looked over her shoulder. “I sorta realized that after I had closed myself inside.”
Calliope smiled back, stepping inside the pantry. Her eyes wandered down the rows of half-opened snacks.
“Where’s the shirt?”
“What?” Calliope looked over her shoulder, still dazzled by the bathroom not being a bathroom.
“You said you had a shirt for me.”
“Oh! Right!” Calliope jumped a little. She had almost forgotten why she’d come in here in the first place. She pulled her sweater off, passing it to the other girl.
She took it cautiously, her smile growing. “Do you always wear two shirts?”
“Only when it’s cold out,” Calliope answered smoothly. Only when I might get monster guts on the first one.
“Well, lucky for both of us,” the other girl said. Her eyelids were starting to droop as she looked at Calliope in the dark.
Calliope tilted her head, amused by the girl’s face. “Both of us?”
“I get a shirt, and you get …” She was leaning closer now.
“I get what?”
“What do you want?”
Calliope considered it carefully. “To know your name.”
“Juliette.”
“Juliette.” Calliope liked the way it sounded on her lips.
Juliette bounced on her toes. “Do I get to know your name?”
“You want something else from me?” Calliope teased. She held out a hand. “Calliope.”
“Calliope. I like that.”
“Most people call me Cal.”
Juliette took her hand, shaking it slowly. “I’m not most people.”
“No,” Calliope agreed. “You’re not.”
She stared at Juliette, losing herself in her huge, brown eyes. Minutes ticked by. She was stuck there, in one spot, too transfixed to move a muscle.
“Did you want to help me change …?” Juliette asked suddenly.
“Oh!” Calliope blinked a few times, breaking the daze. Of course. This was the part where she stopped making a fool out of herself and let the poor girl get changed “Sorry.”
She turned to leave, but Juliette caught her arm. Her eyes tried to communicate something silently.
“No, I mean … did you want to help me change?”
Oh. “Oh.”
Calliope’s brain had barely caught up to what Juliette had said by the time she was pulling her into a kiss. Juliette’s lips were soft and Calliope finally figured out what she had spilled down the front of herself - cheap vodka watered down with lemonade. She tasted it on her lips. Sweet, burning, and sour.
“Sorry,” Juliette said as she suddenly pulled back. “I just … I’ve really wanted to do that ever since I saw you in BioChem, and I’m socially awkward and more than a little tipsy.”
“That’s okay.” It was really okay if Calliope was being honest. Making out with a pretty girl in a pantry at a frat party really was what tonight’s mission was all about. Get out. Do something new. Do something Calliope would never do as a hunter. Let her guard down.
Juliette went back in for another kiss, and Calliope closed her eyes, melting into it. She didn’t mind the other girl taking the lead. For as confident and headstrong as Calliope was on the battlefield, the bedroom - ahem, the pantry - was another story. There, she froze. She doubted herself. She questioned her next move. It wasn’t like killing monsters. It was more important. It had bigger consequences if she messed up.
Juliette, on the other hand, went for it. She had no reservations about kissing the pretty girl from her morning class. She didn’t second-guess herself. She knew what she wanted, and she went for it. And right now, what she wanted was Calliope Burns.
Calliope’s hands found her waist, hovering on the bottom edge of Juliette’s shirt as if she was daring them to go further. They wouldn’t budge. Juliette’s hands, however, went wherever they felt like. From Calliope’s warm, flushed cheeks to her hips to the back of her thighs. Calliope prayed she wouldn’t find the stake tucked in the back of her jeans, just in case she stumbled upon a random vampire on her way home. It seemed the universe answered her prayer, because Juliette slipped her hand in the opposite side of Calliope’s jeans.
“There’s something else,” Juliette whispered against Calliope’s lips. “Something else I’ve wanted to do for a very long time.” Juliette’s kiss trailed down her jawline to the side of her neck.
Calliope should’ve been more prepared. Calliope was a hunter. Calliope knew to put reason over feeling. She knew to let logic and duty guide her.
So how did she end up at a party, hundreds of miles away from her family, with a pair of sharp fangs pressed right against her most vulnerable vein? Why didn’t she reach for her stake when Juliette broke her skin in the gentlest way possible?
Why did she forget she was a hunter for a minute?
Why did she just let herself be Calliope?