Sunset was smart the second time. They met in the evening at Sour Sweet’s dorm, heading off the next round of roommate-induced humiliation. Good thing, too – a broken dryer meant Applejack’s damp socks were hanging from every ledge and doorknob, and Adagio set off their smoke alarms by burning a magazine that interviewed Aria Blaze. Sunset even managed to wrangle Twilight, convincing her the latest theory of positron-whatnots could wait.
Sour Sweet’s rooms were a bit of a culture shock for all but Twilight. A private den and kitchenette gave her more space than the four dorm-mates combined, though marks of new paranoia marred the well-to-do opulence. A crowbar rested against her modern glass desk, and the window blinds stood closed.
Applejack went to open the blinds, but Maud’s dull tone broke in. “Don’t.”
She stared levelly back at their curious looks. “The werewolf may be sapient. If it sees different people in the window it might know you’ve brought in help.”
“Good point, Miss Maud,” Sour said happily before finishing with a grumbled, “This is your specialist, Sunset?”
Sunset grumbled right back. “You know, no one’s paying us to be here. This is our free-time, money, and lives, so it wouldn’t kill you to be a little grateful.”
“‘Grateful’ comes after you do something.” Sour shrugged and tossed Sunset a bottle. “But whatever. Here, have a snack, make yourselves at home.”
Sunset caught and examined the tube. “Cheese-Whiz? Are there crackers somewhere?”
“No.”
“Give it here,” Applejack and Adagio said together, both reaching a hand out.
Sunset passed it off to Applejack. With the group perched on various beds, chairs, and dressers, she looked to Maud. “The floor is yours, and please take it. I called Miss Redheart again today and she said Mom’s group won’t touch this without her. It’s us or nothing, and I for one am getting a little nervous with how everyone says werewolves are bad news but no one says why.”
“Because if knowledge is power, inadequate knowledge is the illusion of power, and that is dangerous.” Maud put her back to the window, staring straight ahead and so seeming to catch every gaze. “Werewolves are large, fast, and cunning. They can quickly move to and dispatch any threat, and their heightened senses means they can often detect and ambush would-be assailants. They are also physically invulnerable, requiring a sufficiently large and powerful silver weapon to pierce their muscle and enter the heart to kill them. Silver bullets in a handgun, for instance, will only hurt and enrage it.”
“Long-arms,” Sunset said, head bowed as she listened. “Rifle, crossbow. We’ll need to work on that.”
“Shotgun?” Applejack asked.
“Limestone says shotguns are stupid,” Maud intoned. “They are only useful at very close ranges, where the werewolf could easily reach you.”
Applejack frowned, flushing slightly. Maud unzipped a camping backpack she brought with her and laid out a huge mining pick with a gleaming silver head. “I fight with this.”
Sunset tried the weight, gulping as she found it barely manageable with both arms. Her gaze shifted from the pick to Maud’s malnourished stature, then to Adagio as the two exchanged a shrug.
“Question!” Wallflower sang out, giving Sunset a twinge of guilty pleasure as Sour jumped in surprise. “Why doesn’t it just change into a human and walk into the dorm? Or jump her at class, because what are the other students going to do?”
“What wonderful questions,” Sour cheered, following with, “I wasn’t scared enough already.”
Maud’s blank stare moved to Wallflower. Or perhaps it remained still – hard to tell with that girl. “There are different kinds of werewolves. Loosely, there are two: humans who are cursed by the bite and can transform at night, or those who have lost themselves in the beast and never turn back. The former is just a human during the daytime. The latter has a wolf’s instincts, and so prefers its prey alone and vulnerable.”
“Wow, cool,” Sour groaned. “So why me? Why frickin’ me?”
Grey bony shoulders inched upwards. “It could be someone out for revenge on you. It’s also not unknown for feral werewolves to get attached to some prey that was denied to them and compulsively seek it out to eat.”
“Or mate,” Adagio said, licking her lips broadly at Sour. “I saw it happen in London once. Bit the girl, next full moon she turned, and they ran off happily ever after.”
Sour’s mouth twisted up in an angry sneer. “Go fuck yourself, because no one else will.”
“Easy, easy.” Sunset waved them both down. “Let’s stay focused.”
Applejack gave the yellow siren a firm poke on the shoulder. “And be. Nice.”
“That was nice.” Adagio’s voice turned to silk. “If all goes wrong, isn’t it better to be turned than eaten? Losing one night a month seems like a pretty good...”
She trailed off, shivering with the room’s sudden chill. Her gaze, along with the rest, turned to its source.
No angry squint or snapped reply signaled Maud’s displeasure. No frown aside from her eternal neutrality, and no aggressive motion. Not even a curled fist, or twitch of the eyebrow. Just the cold, and a distant rumble as she spoke. Like a cave-in beneath the placid face of a mountain.
“That is not better at all.”
The chill seemed to come from her eyes, still eerily meeting everyone’s at once. “There is no ‘controlling’ being a werewolf. There is no ‘living with it.’ Not without some very professional guidance. People try, yes. They realize what happened and act like they’re losing one bad night per month. They go about their lives, pitying themselves and pretending the curse isn’t real. They learn to sleep with the windows open so they don’t have to clean up glass after the full moon. Then they wake up the next morning, brush their teeth, and go to work. Dead animals, pets, missing people… ‘human’ werewolves never even hear about what they do. They get used to the idea of being a werewolf, and as the months pass they decide it’s not so bad. Then the full moon comes again, and with every swing of the pick I wonder what I killed: a mindless beast, or an entitled fool? And I wonder which is worse.”
The cold green gaze shifted like melting ice, bringing itself squarely to Sunset. “I can’t rightfully tell you to stay away. I would not hunt a werewolf alone, which means I would then have to wait and hope it doesn’t strike before my family was ready. But I do want the stakes made very clear to you all. And I want you to follow my instructions to the letter.”
The gaze was terrifying, but Sunset held her ground. “Agreed.”
Maud gave a slow nod, and the vague, distant rumble came to an end. “Pass the Cheese-Whiz.”
Maud’s first orders were anticlimactic, though Sunset had enough experience by now to know it was for the best. They bored a few peepholes in Sour’s window blinds, while Applejack departed after promising to return with long-arms. Twilight took some device to the woods and ran tests, though three hours of work yielded nothing but vaguely-reliable evidence a real werewolf was involved. And Wallflower… well, Sunset didn’t know where she got off to.
All this left Sunset and Adagio to watch from one end of the dorm’s rooftop while Maud minded the other. Both shivering and grumbling in the fast-chilling October, with Sunset feeling more naked than usual without her side-arm. Werewolves could smell both silver and gunpowder on the wind, and knew what the combination implied. The pair had only binoculars between them, equipped as such to gather any information about its size, habits, and whether it really existed.
Adagio of course grumbled loudest, which Sunset wasn’t having. “Not my fault you wore a sleeveless belly-shirt and short-shorts to a nighttime stakeout.”
Adagio sniffed, not looking up from her binoculars. “Not my fault you can’t rock it like I can.”
Sunset bit back a retort, letting it fade with a sigh. She leaned back from her own search and checked her phone. Eleven at night – nine hours til her next class. Cutting it was a tempting prospect, not made less so by how little Mister Discord seemed to care. Her gaze moved up to Adagio, still intently searching despite all expectations.
Sunset reached in her purse, smiling at her own foresight. “Split a granola bar with me?”
The siren lowered her binoculars, but remained at her post and held out a hand without looking. “Give me the bigger half, I’m starving.”
“You’d starve less if you ate more than lettuce for dinner,” Sunset said. She broke the bar imperfectly, and after a moment’s dilemma handed off the larger part.
“Gotta lose weight.” Adagio snatched the offering and jammed it into her mouth.
Sunset stood next to her, leaning out over the railing. A nice night, werewolf or no. “You might want to do some actual research on that. I’m pretty sure starving and snacking isn’t a winning strategy.”
“I don’t snack,” Adagio said airily. She flicked her curls, and Sunset dodged.
“Is that why our ice cream always disappears the night we buy it?”
“God yes, I love it when you jam yourself into my business.”
Sunset rose from the lean and folded her arms, looking right to Adagio. “It’s what I’d do for a friend.”
That at least got the siren to look at her. Pink eyes met green, with their bags visible beneath the makeup.
The response came too late to be natural. “We’re not friends.”
“Then what are we?” Sunset asked. “Never mind, answer this instead: why are you here? You said you’re a virgin so that makes you a target… I didn’t call you out then, but that’s sketchy. And it doesn’t explain why you’re spending beauty sleep out here looking for werewolves, or why you joined this very dangerous hunt in the first place.”
Adagio smirked with one side of her face. “Can’t a lady have secrets?”
“Of course.” Sunset took a deep breath, her gaze finally wavering to the darkened woods. She rubbed her hands, only partially for warmth. “For whatever it’s worth, and however much you care: I appreciate your help. I’m glad you’re here, and I’ll keep any secret you ever want to share.”
There. Adagio could do what she wanted with it. Sunset raised her binoculars and resumed scanning the woods.
A voice purred from outside her narrowed vision. “Any secret at all?”
“It’s what I’d do for a friend.”
A soft, squeaky laugh burst out from the side. Sunset looked to see a less familiar Adagio in place, grinning back to her with a smile that seemed almost genuine. “You and Applejack. Sappy, white-knight idiots. But that’s why you won, isn’t it?”
She threw out her curls, for once not aiming at Sunset’s head. “Fine, fine – maybe we’re friends, maybe not. Where’s the line, anyway? One way or another, you lot are the closest things I have. Hunting with you gives… hm, ‘fulfillment’ is a good way to say it. You act like superheroes, while I’m just drinking in the thrill and uncertainty, and getting reacquainted with the feeling of jamming knives into flesh. And when college is done, I’ll either flip burgers and drown slowly in debt or join an orchestra in pathetic memory of my siren days. This is fun-time, and I’m happy to have someone to share it with.”
Sunset closed her eyes and gave a kindly grin. “You’re on the same page as a lot of Mom’s cowork–”
“AnIWanGeBaWithAJ.”
“Huh?”
Sunset blinked her eyes open to see Adagio wearing a curious frown. “What?”
“What was that last part?”
“What last part?” Adagio asked, then shook her head. “Back to work. Actually I think we’re supposed to keep it… oh, hello. Sunset, get low and train your binoculars on that big elm right at the edge.”
Sunset moved to obey. “Shouldn’t you get down, too?”
“A girl on a roof won’t attract its attention.” Adagio sniffed, leaning out over the railing. “Another with binoculars might.”
It took Sunset a moment to bring the elm into focus. Succeeding stole away her breath, not that it matched what she imagined of a werewolf. Even to her suspicious eye it seemed only a wolf. Not even a large one through the binoculars, until she compared it to the elm tree and saw just how big it really was. Easily eight feet in length, with thick corded muscles bulging from the shaggy frame. It paced and sniffed, driven to anxiety yet oddly reluctant to close distance to the dorm. Strange patched brown and blond fur rustled in the breeze, each agitated motion never carrying its gaze from Sour Sweet’s window.
Breathless minutes passed. Sunset opened her mouth to ask a question, then closed it without word as the wolf bared its fangs. Thinner and sharper than she imagined. The lips pulled back further, then beyond what should have been possible to display still more teeth behind. It set a claw upon the tree and unleashed a throaty, vicious howl.
...Claw?
Sunset rolled the dial on her binoculars, zooming out slightly. The beast had changed, or had she just been mistaken before? It was clearly bipedal now, with meaty ape-like arms. Long length had become height, giving an illusion of thin lankiness curving into a hunched back.
“Definitely feral,” Adagio murmured. “A human would try to be clever. Look at that thing, it wants her bad.”
It really did. Yellow eyes seemed to glow in the moonlight, staring intently to Sour’s window as it unleashed another howl, and in that moment Sunset forgave the unlikable girl for everything. To be besieged by such a creature, helpless and disbelieved… Sunset would be a little snippy, too.
Adagio mimed shooting from her fingertip. “Maud’s the expert, but if that thing is this predictable, I see no reason why we can’t get it from up here. Carry some bacon or whatever to hide the smell, and boom.”
“We need a good hit through the heart, not sure we can swing it at this range...” Sunset murmured, half to herself. “We should check in with Maud, see what plan she wants.”
“Good talk.” A moment’s hesitation broke it, but Adagio gave Sunset’s shoulder a friendly shove. “There aren’t many people I’d rather freeze my ass on a rooftop with.”
Sunset smiled back, but the corners wobbled upon seeing just how sharp Adagio’s canines seemed under the moon. A trick of the light, but still…
“Tomorrow’s going to be fun.”