Sanctuary's Fiend
Chapter 30

I jerked awake, throwing my hands in front of my face.

“Ow!” a man’s voice shouted behind me.

I spun around to see Mr. Anderton sat on a couch, blood spilling all over his hand.

I grabbed at my forehead. There wasn’t a hole. But he’d shot me! I remembered the feel of the bullet slamming into my head!

He stared at me as he wrapped his hand up in a bandage pulled from his vest.

“Hello, Rel,” he said, warily.

“’You… you shot me, right? I remember you shooting me!”

He cocked a half smile, just like Rick’s. “I told you I would.”

“What the hell is your problem! You just shot me! Am I dead?”

“Not at all. You’re as alive as I am. It only took you a few moments of sucking on my wrist, and look, you’re good as new. I saw the hole close itself in front of my eyes. Just like the huge claw marks disappeared from your back when you… you know.”

“But… you shot me in the head!” My brain couldn’t process it. There are things you can count on in life. The tides will ebb and flow. The sun? Probably going to rise. And a bullet in your brain will kill you. Facts of life!

“I said that I’d killed a Draugr before, remember? Well, it wasn’t the bullet that I put in its head that killed it. In fact it barely flinched when I tried that. I got worried when you fell, but a bit of my blood, and you seem fine.”

“I’m…only young. I guess,” I said blankly. What was going on? Why was Mr Anderton being – friendly? It had to be some sort of trap. Perhaps he wanted to get me to incriminate Ariel and the rest of us. But I felt too weak to focus and think this through properly.

He nodded, accepting my excuse for being slightly affected by a bullet through the brain.

“What about the others?” I asked, carefully.

“They’re alive. I would have called for an ambulance, but I needed answers first. Answers like, would you,” he waved his good hand around at everyone, “monsters want an ambulance?”

“We’re not monsters! We’re supernaturals. That Fiend was a monster!”

“I can’t say I’ve ever made a distinction before.”

He hunted us but didn’t know there was a difference? Did he know anything about us apart from how to kill us?

“So… you have four supernaturals at your mercy. Except you just brought me back to… life, or consciousness, or whatever. Why? You’re a Hunter, I’ve always been told you’d want to track us down and kill us all.” I fingered the bridge of my nose, where there should have been a bullet hole. “And, yeah, why am I still here? You hate me, don’t you? I mean, after Rick…”

“That is a very good question.”

I looked around the room at all of us. My head was foggy and sluggish, and no one else was stirring. I thumbed the corner of my mouth, and wiped away a drop of Mr. Anderton’s blood. “You already made your decision.”

He sighed. “No. Not really. But whatever it is that’s going on here, I didn’t really feel like killing children today. Assuming you even are children. I don’t know anymore.”

“I’m sixteen,” I said weakly. He grunted like it didn’t really matter. “And what’s going on here is we’re just trying to live our lives. As people.”

“Me too, kid. Me too.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and crossed his legs. He was only missing a cup of tea, and he would have been the perfect picture of civility in this wrecked room. “You know, I’ve never come across more than one monster at a time? Now I’m sitting in a room with five of you. Do you have any insights about this?”

I was pretty sure that telling him anything would be a bad idea. I wasn’t exactly sure what this whole ‘Masquerade’ thing was, but telling a hunter? However, he was heavily armed…

“’There’s just a few of us,” I hedged.

He nodded thoughtfully. “And Tom - I mean your dad - is he…?”

“An Incubus,” I admitted.

He snapped his fingers. “Damn. I should have gotten that. And your mom?”

“Succubus. I’m adopted.’

He nodded in strange approval. “It’s nice to see a proper family unit, I suppose.”

I heard a moan and looked around to see Johnny’s head rolling to the other side. Mr. Anderton hauled himself to his feet and carefully picked out a safe path around the gently smoking green blood.

“From his daggers, I’m guessing he’s an elf?” As he said it, and as I nodded, he ran a finger behind Johnny’s ears, and tweaked a long elvish ear up from the long blonde hair. I’d never actually seen them before. They were about the same length as Mr. Anderton’s hand, and slimmed to a point. They would have stood up from Johnny’s head like antennae if the hair hadn’t kept them hidden. Normally the elvish glamour kept them hidden too, but Johnny was unconscious, so I couldn’t really hold that against him.

He squatted down next to Johnny, who was just coming around. I saw Johnny’s eyes widen as he recognized who was staring at him, and he was opening his mouth to say something when Mr. Anderton’s fist smacked into the side of Johnny’s head.

“Woah! What the hell?” I jumped to my feet. “Why did you do that? He’s harmless!”

Mr. Anderton stood back up after checking Johny’s pulse. “Rel, if there’s one thing you take away from this right here,” he said, indicating the entire mess of a room. “It’s that no elf is ever harmless. They are vicious and evil creatures.” He pointed a finger at me and caught my eyes with his. “Never forget that.”

With that, he made his way back to the couch and sat down heavily.

I heard a loud pop behind me and jumped. I looked around, and the floor was now covered in even more green goo.

“Just its second plague gland, nothing to worry about,” Mr. Anderton said absently.

“Yeah, about that,” I began. “Something’s been bugging me. How did you kill it, where all of us failed?”

“Oh, Fiends are strong and extremely resilient, but they’re not too dangerous if you know what you’re doing. I’ve dealt with plenty over the years.” He looked at me. “Come on now, did you really think a group of kids would be more effective than a trained soldier? It didn’t hurt that you punched a hole through its head, of course. That definitely made things smoother for me. I’d have dealt with it when I found it in the crypt if I hadn’t chosen to get you out of there instead.”

That wasn’t a big deal? The thing that just dealt with a gargoyle, elf, siren, and almost a draugr? I didn’t want to know what he thought was a big deal.

“So we just needed to know where to hit it?”

“Effectively, yes. Knowledge is power, and all that.”

“Knowledge is power. You know, I don’t even know why you’re so scared of me. I don’t know what a Draugr really is.” Why did I say that? He didn’t care! I must have still been fuzzy from having a bullet tear through my brain.

His mouth opened and closed a few times before he finally said, “I was never the info guy. Or tracking. I only got told what little I needed to know to finish the job.”

I slumped down on the couch next to him. Yup, this was weird, but right now, everything was weird, so what did it matter if I sat next to the man who had wanted to kill me six hours ago.

“Doesn’t matter, I guess. My parents know someone, and they’re coming soon.”

He nodded. “A monster… monster specialist? That’s a bit odd.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. They both seem really weird about it, like they don’t really want to call her over. Some Ms. Raich. From Europe.”

He stiffened next to me and cleared his throat. “They should definitely be ‘a bit weird about it’. I know her. Used to work with her.”

“Does that mean she’s… a hunter too?” I asked.

“’She used to be on my team. She was the researcher, yes. She also used to be my wife.”