Full Moon Strays Ch. 02

Jane sat down on the bed, even though she realized it was inappropriate. She wasn't just exploring anymore. Instead, she was snooping . . . invading someone's privacy. Red was a leader, yet lived apart. And Jane lay on the woman's mattress, closing her eyes and breathing deeply, inhaling the faint aroma of roses. She wondered where that smell was coming from, then noticed a vase of flowers on a nightstand on the other side of the bed.

'Those are pretty. I wonder where she got them?' It occurred to her that they had to be gathered fairly recent . . . they wouldn't survive down here without sunlight for very long. 'Something that beautiful shouldn't be kept under the earth,' Jane thought. "God this bed is comfortable," she muttered, drifting into a half-sleep.

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A little while later . . .

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Hellfire and brimstone, the sirens were loud! Jane awoke from her daze with a start. There was a blaring noise pulsing from down the tunnel. It sounded like an alarm. And even at that distance, she heard a commotion, and she felt her heart sink in her chest. She scurried up the stairwell and down the tracks. And the sounds she heard began to gel into an unpleasant cohesive concept . . . there was a fight going on.

Jane poked her head around the corner and up over the floor of the lower platform. There was a full-scale battle going on in the underground subway station. She saw the Strays locked in mortal combat with . . . things . . . in suits and sunglasses and . . .

'Oh God,' Jane whimpered inside her mind, 'it's those things! The ones from the alley . . . the ones that almost killed me.' Jane's feet froze, thought her heart was going a mile a minute. She felt her skin growing cold and her hands hand become clammy. She couldn't move . . . she could barely think.

The "Hellspawn" were carrying swords that seemed to go on forever, and several were covered in blood. But the Strays weren't the only ones with casualties, as a number of the evil beings were lying on the floor.

'No,' Jane thought, overcome with fear. 'Not now . . . not with the lycanthropes all gone.' Then it occurred to her . . . that was EXACTLY why they were here. Somehow, they had known that the strongest warriors wouldn't be there. 'How could they know?'

She saw Shield, the Stray's defense wizard with a shield around the Strays many non-combatants, temporarily keeping the monsters at bay. It was true that everyone down there had a Talent, but many of those Talents were useless in a fight. She saw the flier Patrick flying around madly with a club, apparently trying to get to one of the Hellspawn that seemed to be working magic against the defense shield. Grunt, a virtual powerhouse, was swinging a heavy club and sending one flying, and Jane saw a sword, floating of its own volition thrust itself through the back on another enemy.

'That has to be Anya,' Jane thought. Arthur appeared to be feeding energy into Shield, but he was sweating and looked ready to drop at any minute. With so few warriors, the numbers game was working against the Strays. A Hellspawn threw a handful of white powder in the direction of the floating sword, and bits and pieces of Anya became partially visible. The thing grinned and approached her with its own weapon raised high. Jane should do something . . . It knocked Anya's sword from her hand. The girl had training, but her primary weapon had always been stealth. These things had come prepared for her . . . they had known all about her somehow.

While dodging, Anya tripped and fell off the upper platform and onto the lower platform. The Hellspawn jumped down after her, raising its sword one last time. Anya had nowhere to run.

Jane looked at the monster . . . the little bit of hell shoved into a flesh-suit and sent to hurt and kill. Its hand was raised, and she distinctly remembered the last time she had seen one of those monsters like that. It had been when Jane herself had been left bleeding to death, trying only to do the right thing. And now, it was going to kill Anya.

Anya wasn't sure what was happening at first. Some kind of . . . rope . . . appeared from the tunnel behind her and wrapped around the Hellspawn's sword-arm. Then a second rope grabbed the creature's other arm, then a third and forth grabbed both legs.

'Those aren't ropes,' Anya realized, 'it's . . . hair.' She looked behind her and saw Jane emerging from the tracks, four braids holding the beast and the other four being used as legs. But there was something different about the young woman. Anya had seen Jane have expressions of hope, fear, pain, self-doubt, and hopelessness, but nothing like this. There wasn't even humanity in those eyes . . . just rage. It was as pure and unadulterated a rage as Anya could ever imagine, and it was directed at the creature in her grasp. One of these things had hurt Jane, now Jane was going to hurt it back. Right before Anya's eyes, Jane ripped the thing apart one limb at a time.

There is a saying that goes something like this . . . "The lights are on, but nobody's home." This was especially true for Jane at that moment in time. She held the Hellspawn's miscellaneous limbs in her magical appendages for a moment, staring at the pieces of her enemy with immense hatred. She looked up on the upper platform and saw that about twenty Hellspawn were gathered, waiting for the shield to collapse, and it was visibly weakening. Jane was going to kill them . . . all. She looked around maniacally, her eyes finally come to rest on one of the old subway cars that was sometimes used as housing. Eight braids of hair whipped out and grabbed the car by whatever portion of the structure they could.

If Anya hadn't been recently fighting for her life, she might have been amused by the expression on her enemy's faces as they turned, hearing the infernal sound of metal grinding on concrete. They saw a young woman, no more than one hundred and ten pounds when soaking wet, hurling several tons of metal right at their core group. They had nowhere to run and no time. The subway car plowed into them and smashed a dozen of them against the wall, knocking many of the others to the ground. But Jane wasn't done. She grabbed fallen swords and Hellspawn limbs and strode up the ramp to the upper platform with diabolical purpose. She had eight magical and two normal arms flailing attacking anything non-Stray in her path with reckless intensity.

The Hellspawn had no idea of how to react. Their plan had been working, with their opponent's warriors out of the way and their remaining guards accounted for and neutralized. They had no idea who or what this new menace was. A foolish few of their number attacked the woman and were beaten and cut to ribbons by the girl's flailing hair. The rest realized that the odds were very much no longer in their favor and began to run.

One of them was just a little too slow. Before it could vanish, its feet were ensnared by Jane's braids. She hauled the thing back, then smashed it against the wall with thunderous force.

"Stop it!" she screamed in a voice tinged with madness and pain. "Stop hitting me!" With a twitch of her head, she flung her captive against the ceiling, then the floor. The Hellspawn was barely twitching anymore, as most of its bones were crushed and broken. "That's all you ever had to do was stop!" Jane's voice was breaking and her eyes were clouded with tears. "How does it feel Jack?!? How does it fucking feel?!?"

Anya got it. Like a lightning bolt from the heavens, she got it. Anya remembered from her conversation a week earlier that "Jack" was the name of Jane's stepfather. Jane punished the Hellspawn, name by name. Shield lowered the protective barrier, and the remaining Strays watched on as their newest member, who was supposed to be the quiet one, beat the demon to a pulp. Except for Arthur and Anya, no one understood or recognized the names that Jane was calling out. The former denizen of hell was on the wrong end of a decade's worth of therapy rolled up into a single moment in time.

Jane felt someone soft and friendly take one of her hands, and then someone else took the other. Arthur and Anya were at her sides, looking at her with a mixture of fear and love.

"Let go," Anya whispered. "It will never hurt you again."

"Not anymore," Jane whispered. Then her eyes rolled up in her head, her hair appendages dropped the almost liquefied Hellspawn and Jane collapsed in her friends' arms.

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A few hours later . . .

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It had taken a while, but Johan had hurried out to the woods and located the hunting pack, and they had all made haste back to the Den. Their faces were grim and wracked with guilt as they dropped their kills off at the main table. They had been out having fun while their friends were dying.

The lycanthropes burst through the opening and looked around. Tarloh went over to Arthur to check on the wounded. Talia checked in with Grunt, who had been piling up the bodies of their enemies . . . and friends.

"We should have been here," Red whispered, walking around the carnage.

Patrick landed next to her. "You couldn't have known," he reminded her. "The hunt has been going on for decades and there was never a problem."

Anya walked up after having gotten dressed. "Somehow they found out," she said. "They knew you would be gone, they knew about the powers of those who stayed behind . . . they knew everything. Either they've been spying on us more closely than we thought . . ."

"Or we have a traitor in our midst," Red finished. "Check the . . . the bodies. Find out if there is anyone from our side that isn't accounted for. If there is anyone missing, tell me." Despite their guilt, none of the rest of the Strays blamed the werebeings for what happened.

Red looked around. She was no stranger to war, but it was the first time she had seen it fought in her own home. "How the hell did that subway car get up there?" she asked.

Anya looked back towards the tunnel. "Yeah . . . uhm . . . I was going to get to that. You see . . ."

Red realized that someone was missing . . . someone she hadn't seen. "Anya . . . where's Jane? Is she . . ."

"She's . . . actually, she's hiding back in your room. She seems to feel safe there. Red, she . . . Jane saved us." Anya told Red everything that had happened.

Red went and talked to Tarloh. He told her to go check on Jane, and he would take care of everything else.

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Back in Red's chamber . . .

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Red walked back into her room. She wondered how Jane even knew about it. She wasn't particularly mad, just confused. She found the younger woman sitting on the floor, staring at the bookshelf. Jane was covered in the green blood of the Hellspawn. Red had wanted to thank her . . . to praise Jane for what she had done, but she could tell Jane wasn't in the mood for praise. So Red just sat down next to her, and didn't say a word when Jane rested her head on Red's shoulder.

"I'm glad you're back," Jane said.

"I shouldn't have left," Red replied. "Anya told me what happened. She told me what you did. How . . . how are you feeling?"

"Red . . . I . . . I've never killed . . . anything . . . before," Jane stuttered. "But I saw them . . . everyone was dying. It was going to get Anya and . . . I couldn't let it. I've been afraid so long, and just when things were getting better, the monsters came back."

Red stroked Jane's head. "There were demons that needed fighting . . . in the world and in your head. And I'd say you pretty much kicked their collective asses."

"But . . . am I evil now? Red, the things I did . . ."

"You did because you had to. Jane, those things WERE evil, and that's something you could never be. Power always comes from somewhere. Yours came from emotion tonight. I won't pretend I know how you feel now, or how you felt when the fight broke out. And I won't pretend that I'm not a little afraid now that you've shown what you can do. But I also won't pretend that I'm not thankful beyond words that you were here, because you saved a lot of lives. There are people out there that will live to fight another day because of you."

Jane actually felt considerably calmer now. "So what happens now? Do you . . . we . . . retaliate?"

Red sighed and rested her head on Jane's. "As tempting as that would be, we don't even know for sure why they were after us or who sent them or where they came from. And I'm not going to risk anyone else in a blind attack. We have to find out how they knew about the hunt and everything. We need to know if they just spied on us or if we were betrayed. And we may have to move." Red looked around. "I don't even know how we'd begin to move. I've lived here since I was turned . . . ever since my parents were killed."

"I'm sorry," Jane said. "I keep talking about my problems . . ."

"Because you need to," Red interrupted. "My pain lasted for a little while. Yours lasted for what? Eight years? Besides, it hasn't been all that bad. There are some good people out there . . . good friends."

"Any . . . special . . . friends?" Jane asked, then blushed furiously. "I'm sorry. It's none of my business."

"It's okay," Red said. "No. No one special, at least not anymore." She noticed Jane's quizzical look. "There was someone a while back. She . . . she and I split about a year ago. We'd been together for years."

"I didn't mean . . ."

"No, actually things ended okay. She kind of got tired of living down here. You know, stealing and hunting to survive. She wanted a more normal life. I couldn't imagine doing the nine-to-five thing. I thought we had it all, but I didn't love her enough to go with her and she didn't love me enough to stay."

"You miss her, don't you?" Jane said. For some reason, Red's answer was important to her.

"Yeah. Yeah I do. No one ever really got me like she did. This room," Red said, waving her arm around, "was the two of us trying to pretend we were normal. I liked it." She sighed. "Natasha . . . that was her name . . . she's dropped by a bunch of times. Her Talent is basically that she's invulnerable. She's a little stronger than most people, but mostly she just can't be hurt. So she's working as a bodyguard for a major movie company down in Hollywood." Red stopped and looked at Jane, seeing if the mention of Hollywood caused the girl any painful memories. But Jane looked . . . content, so Red continued. "She earns damn good money, and she still tries to help out by sending donations our way. Sometimes I think it would've been easier if we hated each other or had a bad breakup. But we didn't. We just weren't together anymore." Red scrunched up her eyebrows. "I guess this is a silly question, but you DID realize I'm gay, right?"

Jane actually smiled a very pretty smile. "Yeah, I got that."

"Listen, why don't you go get cleaned up. I've got to talk to Tarloh and the others." Red was suddenly very aware of the Jane's proximity.

"Okay," Jane said. "I . . . Red, I'm afraid of what will happen when the others . . . look at me."

"You've got nothing to be afraid of. If you like, you can crash here tonight. If you'd be more comfortable that is." 'What the hell are you thinking?' Red thought to herself.

"I . . . I'd like that," Jane said as she stood up. The two of them walked back down towards the opening and out into the light of the Den. Tarloh and the council had been discussing some of the same possibilities that Red and Talia had earlier, so she joined them while Jane went off to clean the gunk off her. She knew people were staring at her, but she tried not to let it bother her. One thing did stop her . . . it was a large green stain were she had pulverized that one Hellspawn. Strangely, she no longer felt any guilt or remorse about obliterating her enemy. After all, she hadn't started that fight.

Jane showered quickly, but realized she had no clean clothes to change into. Luckily, Mindy came into the shower area and Jane was able to get her to go snag a robe for the time being. But Mindy promised to clean Jane's stuff personally, because they had been a gift from Red. When Mindy got back and Jane finally had something to wear, the lycanthrope gave Jane a big hug.

"What was that for?" Jane asked.

"For being amazing tonight," Mindy said.

"Not amazing enough," Jane replied absently, looking at the half-dozen Strays that had lost their lives defending the Den.

Jane tried creeping back towards the lower platform, but this time she encountered more people. The meeting had broken up, but not much had been resolved. The lycanthropes were going to take shifts for the day, keeping watch while everyone else rested. As Jane made her way, a number of people, some whom she knew and some she didn't, hugged her or clapped her on the shoulder. She didn't sense any fear . . . any trepidation that she was some unstable monster. She was one of them, and she had done well by them that night.

Jane got back to Red's room, but Red herself wasn't there yet. She stared at the little world that Red had created for herself, and Jane realized she felt safe there . . . she felt good there.

"Hey," came a voice from behind. Red walked in, looking tired. "It looks like I've got the last shift, so I figured I could . . . get some sleep." Red seemed nervous. "Listen, Jane, when I told you that you could stay here, I . . . I didn't want you to think that you had to . . . you know, do anything. I just thought . . ."

Jane was just staring at Red's lips again. She realized she'd been doing that a lot since she had come to live in the Den. And she no longer kidded herself about why. So she stepped forward and kissed those lips. For a moment, time stopped.

Taking that one step forward to kiss Red was one of the hardest things Jane had ever done, but she also wanted it more than anything else on Earth. There was not exchange of tongues, just Jane pushing her inexperienced but incredibly soft lips against Red's. She had been taken by many men in her young life, but she had never felt anything from any of them. They had all left an empty feeling inside her soul. For many years, she had thought there was something wrong with her. There wasn't . . . at least not in that sense, or at least not anymore. There had been something wrong with THEM. Jane had simply been looking for affection for the wrong reasons and in the wrong places.

Red wanted to say that she was surprised at the kiss, but she wasn't. She watched it close in on her, but did nothing to dissuade it. She had to stand on her toes to make contact but she still managed to make contact. Red could tell that her friend seemed inexperienced in kissing, simply pressing her mouth against Red's. 'This is when I have to stop it,' she thought. But she didn't stop it. She turned her head a bit so that their mouths fit together perfectly. She could feel their breaths beginning to mingle and lips growing warmer.

Jane felt something . . . it was Red's tongue. It wasn't forcing its way into Jane's mouth, as had been the case in what had happened in what constituted Jane's sexual history, which was more similar to a bull in a china shop than an erotic act. Red's tongue seemed to dance with Jane's own, almost playfully. Jane wasn't sure how to react, but she had to try. Her own tongue slid into Red's mouth, and the redhead pressed her lips down on it, sucking on it as she finally pulled away. Jane hated the separation but realized it was necessary . . . neither woman had put much thought into breathing for quite a while.

Jane's heart was beating faster than ever before, but for the first time in her life it wasn't because of fear or hatred. She longed for Red in an all-encompassing way.