Supes mowed over one another to get to me and I opened fire.
Gunshots went off left and right, loud enough to only add to the pandemonium. Bullet casings hit the veneered counter with little tinks. I shot one after another, aiming for the same place each time.
The fun thing about supes was that for a long time they were really fucking hard to kill.
Each of them had different weaknesses, and most of them were nothing like the legends.
Vampires, while they didn’t like sunlight, they didn’t burn alive in it. It just blinded them.
Werewolves weren’t allergic to silver. At all. In fact, no metal really harms them. It’s where you hit them that matters.
Witches and warlocks would be the easiest, were they not such a pain in the ass to get near. A single word or wiggle of their fingers and they could kill you faster than you could kill them.
And that was really just the tip of the iceberg as far as supernatural species went.
The one thing I really had going for me was that I was a near-expert on all of them.
Being human and only a little kid when magic became known in the world had its perks. Largely that I had the time to study them, because in a world where half the people had magic and weren’t afraid to use it—being human was a major disadvantage.
So I embraced the one universal truth I knew: knowledge is power.
And because of that, I knew a single shot between the eyes would either kill or disable everyone in this bar. The best part? They usually woke up with jumbled memories from their brain healing and didn’t remember me shooting them.
The click of my guns trying to fire and failing to release jarred me back to the moment.
“Shit,” I cursed under my breath.
The time it took me to pull a magazine from my jacket cost me. I exhaled harshly as some vampire bitch came flying at me with fangs snapping.
My back hit the concrete floor behind me as she straddled my body. Her pale, sallow cheeks and violet eyes told me she hadn’t fed recently enough. She pinned me as I focused on releasing the empty magazine and shoving the new clip in it. Just as it clicked, she loomed only inches from my face.
“You’re a feisty one,” she purred. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
Her jaws stretched wide as her eyes zeroed in on my neck. The thirst had her in its grips, and I used that to my benefit, letting her lunge for a bite—only to find herself with a mouthful of gunmetal.
I shoved the barrel deep enough down her throat that she gagged. Her fangs bit into the side of my hand, and shock permeated her features before her eyes rolled back in her head. Disgust filled me as I pulled the trigger and the backside of her skull exploded.
The body slumped over me, and I twisted, flinging it away. One of her fangs stuck in my hand and I picked it out, flicking it behind my shoulder as I got to my feet.
The bar was silent, everyone in it dead or gone.
Just the way I liked it.
I whistled to myself as I went to grab Trenton.
He was just starting to stir as I dragged him from under the table.
Perfect timing.
2
“Wh—what’s going on?” Trenton asked, jerking awake. I was surprised it took him so long to come to, in all honesty. “Who are you?” he demanded next, jerking at the duct tape I’d used to bind his hands together in front of him. I even taped the fingers together so that he couldn’t use them. Most witches couldn’t, but it never hurt to be careful.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, putting both my hands on the table in front of me. In one of them, I held my gun loosely pointed in his direction. He pulled at the bonds again, quickly realizing I hadn’t bothered with his mouth or feet. Time was of the essence at the moment, and I’d done a fast job and then put him in the booth across from me. “I’ll have you know that if you try to curse me or use magic, I’ll put a bullet in your brain faster than you can complete that spell. Your friends tried to save you thinking my shot wasn’t that good.” I motioned to the dead supes around the bar. He took one look and swallowed hard. “They’re now dead, and the person who hired me doesn’t care if that’s the way I bring you in. So, let’s have a little chat, then we’ll be on our way, and you won’t have to see me ever again.”
He looked back and forth between me and the dead supernaturals twice before nodding.
“Can I ask who hired—”
“Nope,” I interrupted. “You’ll find out soon enough, anyway.” I smiled, and it was all for my own benefit. Once, I might have felt pity about my actions. That day was almost a decade ago, though, and a lot had happened since then. “Now, tell me what you know about magical comas.”
He blinked twice, clearly not expecting that line of questioning.
“Magical comas?” he repeated. I nodded. “Uh, well, a spell has to be cast to be put in one . . .” he started, and I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah, I got that part, Florida State.”
“My name is Trenton.”
“I’m aware.”
We stared at each other for a second before he continued. “There’s a number of ways to put someone in a coma using magic. You can be direct and put them in a coma, you can put them in an extended sleep for as long as you want, you can transport their consciousness somewhere else—”
“There’s a lot of options,” I said. “I know they depend on how powerful or skilled the witch or warlock is. How do you break someone out of one?” This was a conversation I’d had over a hundred times now, and I could already tell it would be the same as all the others.
“The original caster has to do it,” Trenton said.
“And if you don’t have the original caster?” I asked.
He mulled that over for a moment. “It’s near impossible. You’d need to—”
“Assess the cause, figure out the exact spell, find a witch or warlock that basically has the power of a god and can counter it—and then hope that they do it right because if even one thing goes wrong the person in the coma is likely to die. Anything else? Come on, Florida State, dig deep.”
His mouth fell open, and then closed. “If you already know all of this, then why are you asking me?” I looked at him and laughed humorlessly.
“Because I keep hoping I’ll find someone that can give me a different answer.”
At that, I moved to get to my feet.
“What—” he started. I reached over the table and hit him upside the head with the butt of my pistol. Again.
I’d done this exact thing so many times now that just like his answers, I knew where it was going. I’d pull him out of the booth. He’d try to curse me and run. Or, provided we got past that, we’d get out to the street where he would inevitably find some stupid supe that would try to help because they didn’t know what they were getting involved with.
Trenton fell sideways, and I hauled him out of his seat. Flinging his longer arm over my shoulder, I wrapped mine around his waist and walked right out the front door.
Now, anyone that saw us would think he was drunk, and I was the poor girlfriend or friend helping his ass get home. Worked like a charm every time.
With it being dark out, most people didn’t look close enough to notice how hard I gripped his middle, or that there was a goose egg forming on the side of his head where I’d hit him twice.