Helen
Carson was simple. My senses declared him alone and once he answered his door, I ran past him. I headed straight up his stairs into the room I sensed was his. He followed behind, of course, begging for an explanation. Once inside, I started rummaging around for a pen and ink and samples of his handwriting. Naturally, he was wondering what the hell I was up to and that’s when I grabbed him and after a bit of wrestling coaxed him into blowing his brains out. Well, I pressed the gun into his finger, but you get the idea. The suicide note had taken a little longer to write but I’m good at mimicry and he’d plenty of handwriting samples around. Fortunately for me, no one heard the shot or maybe they just didn’t care. Was that Gavin’s Luck? Anyway, no cops.
He was everything I had expected he would be. A good kid. Once I killed him, his innocence poured over me, bathing me in wholesomeness and scouring away all the guilt about killing Eric (and of course Carson himself). Hell, he’d even restored my virginity (though I was still a virgin from the last kid I’d killed). Pity I had no time for a proper, sexual Feeding but these would do for now. Tidying up as best I could, I snuck out of Carson’s house, creeping through a backyard or two before resuming my usual bouncy walk towards home, my mind positive, guiltless, care-free, and girlish. The towels I donated to a sewer and the film I would keep, but hide.
Yes! It’s great to be the Huntress!
At home, I changed clothes and chucked the old ones into the laundry (just in case). I hopped out of my window just as my “Father” drove up the driveway. A couple of superhuman leaps later, I landed in a neighbor’s back yard and hid behind a nice cluster of ferns. I had never shifted states in this just this kind of situation—I’d never searched for a newly Transcendent sibling—but I had chased down family members when I knew their position (one nice thing about Transplaner Projection was that both parties learn the exact planer whereabouts of one another so it’s easy to reach them). And this was pretty much the same situation. I had a sense, not a map location, but a feeling of where my new sister was. That’s all anyone could manage since the planes shift constantly. Luckily a convenient Shift point existed near my home and I found it within minutes, willing myself into a State in the same place my newfound sister was.
Damn if it didn’t work. In fact, it was easy, instantaneous even.
The ferns disappeared when I blinked and I found my hand supporting my body against the jostling motion of a subway. Someone was feeling up my ass. God damn it! For a second, I thought I was in Tokyo, but the faded graffiti, white people, and smell of beer and urine convinced me otherwise. My hand went from my side to my backside faster than a teenage boy can get an erection. And speaking of teenage boys, what should I find but that the hand was connected to a thirteen-year old brat. He had a pack of friends who were gaping open mouthed at his boldness and they started laughing outright now that he’d been caught. The little prick had the decency to act embarrassed. I slapped his cheek, threatened him, and then shouldered my way through the crowd, getting away from the little shits before I felt the need to kill again.
“Score!” I heard one of them say. I rolled my eyes.
Who the hell was I, here? Besides someone with an ass worth feeling up. But I always have an ass worth feeling up because I always look the same. Small, buxom, blond, blue-eyed, and so on and so on. Too bad, really. I envy my brother Gavin who can virtually shapechange between States; or my sisters with their multichromatic hair, letting them be blondes or brunnetes on a whim—basically a magical dye. Sometimes my hair-color doesn’t even alter when I assume a State in, say, an Asian country or Africa. Can you imagine being a blond-haired, blue-eyed Chinese girl? It takes some explaining, I can tell you, but one of the good things about States is that they often do the explaining for you (“Ah, dear daughter, your father was the Yellow Dragon King so of course you have his blue eyes and yellow hair; and I am the Ghost Queen so you are half-ghost and therefore very pale…”; though for the record, I have a permanent tan so my skin is typically a coppery-gold).
Just in case, I took a visual survey of myself. Checking the ponytail: Blonde, yes, good, good. Same body, same hands, almost certainly the same face because men (and women) were staring at me as I barged through the crowd and with eyes indicting they were not put off by my rudeness nor did they shy away from contact with me. Checking out my own cleavage visibly proved my body was suitably endowed for a woman of Eden. I wore a red skirt that almost deserved a miniskirt designation but just narrowly—hah, hah—skirted it. The blouse was red and silk. I finally found a pole instead of those damn handholds, and I circled it with my right arm and searched through my black purse.
The first thing I noticed was seventy-thousand dollars inside.
That might strike you as odd but I love carrying large amounts of cash because I love people trying to rob me. It’s so much fun. States often fulfill a Regal’s hidden desires and we can usually count on a good deal of consistency.
I’m usually a princess.
The driver’s license in my wallet supplied the name Helen Eden, which pretty much was my real name. It’s a bit odd that I had the Eden name. I had a deck of credit cards and, oh, by the way, a .50 Desert Eagle. I love big guns. A couple of clips and were those silver bullets, hmm? Something told me that this innocuous looking plane was extremely dangerous.
My family would call my State conditional, the worst kind of State, because it depended on the State of another family member—probably my new sister—who had been here first. This happens when you go hunting relatives.
The subway seemed technological, derived from purely natural, predictable laws. Nothing in my purse was magic which suggested magic was rare. My ID read 2022. All this tracked nicely. This was probably some variation of the Nexus plane we call Earth Mundane.
Generally it takes hours or days to adjust to a new State in the best of circumstances. I wondered how my new sister would be doing. Or should I even assume that she had shifted her State? Was my State merely mimicking her birth State? Or would the life she lead when born count as a State? Argh, this was confusing!
Anyway, where was I going to go?
Then I remember thinking, hey, wait a minute! For what possible reason could I be taking a frigging subway when I had seventy-thousand dollars in my purse?
“What’s that?” someone said and I heard the sound of claws scraping against metal. Yes, unfortunately, I’ve heard the sound so often I can accurately identify it. My danger sense went wild and I knew that a monster crawled atop the subway car. I couldn’t read its shape or even its precise location despite the sound. That suggested a monster that could mute its presence; probably a hunter rather than a terror.
Most of the people ignored the sound, pretending not to hear it. Eventually, even the man who mentioned it pretended he’d heard nothing. Then, of course, I realized he wasn’t pretending. Whatever was on the roof just didn’t exist for these people. Magic was a secret here hidden from the mundane. I was on the Wary Earth and although it’s not what I called it then, I had pretty much figured out its main feature and my job.
In this State I was a monster hunter and no one knew monsters existed. And the monster I had been hunting was creeping on the roof of a fast-moving subway.
Fight or leave? My internal debate boiled as the subway screeched to a halt. I’m by far the best at hunting in the family and I hate leaving monsters—or for that matter demons—behind. And it might follow me. Also, of course, it could be hunting me and not the other way around but then why would I be on a subway with so much money in my purse?
Crap. Decisions, decisions. A good sized crowd herded out of the subway door and reluctantly I joined them. I was within a mile or two of the place my sister’s Transcendence occurred so I would catch a cab and leave this infestation behind for now.
“Shit,” I said loudly, as the crowd shoved me towards the “up” escalators. That drew only a few stares leading me to conclude I was indeed in America or its equivalent (OK, I saw signs too, but part of it was swear-based deductive reasoning). As the escalator lifted me, I craned my neck and peered at the subway roof. Nothing. If this world defied the supernatural than I would probably be safe until night when the monsters could stalk more readily. Unless the monster was a shapeshifter but that could only mean a demon and my senses insisted a monster and monsters hate the light almost.
Wondering at the difference between a demon and a monster? Ask my sister Démia, she’s the taxonomy expert. She might say something like, “Demons are either the ancient race of daimon or perma-damned humans; they prefer humanoid forms though they sometimes assume monstrous shapes. Monsters typically emerge straight from Corruption, lack any kind of soul, and any intelligence they acquire comes from eating humans.” All bollocks to me, really. I generally call a demon a demon because they look like a guy with horns or a girl with batwings; and I call a thing with monsters because it looks like a jaguar combined with a monkey.
Anyway, I turned my head and let the escalator carry me into the sunny afternoon. It was probably about noon but the cold against my skin brought goosbumps and I wondered what happened to my coat. At least I was safe for a while. I’d hail a cab and, with any luck, find my newest sister!
