Calvin woke up naked in a dimly lit room. The back of his head throbbed painfully and he reached around to gently brush his fingers against where it hurt the most. There was no blood that he could feel, but even touching it lightly sent a shock of pain through his skull.
Looking around the room, Calvin recognized where he was. He was in the abandoned house that he had taken Nel to the first night of the full moon. It was early Saturday morning and very little light crept in through the thick trees surrounding the house. Someone had placed a pile of what was clearly a girl’s clothing next to him. Calvin sighed and pulled on the purple sweatpants that only went down to his mid-calf. He considered not pulling on the tiny black shirt that said, “There’s a Fine Line Between Not Listening and Not Caring” on the front, but in the end he stretched it over his head and onto his torso. It left his belly button exposed and was preposterously tight across his shoulders, so much so that he was certain it would rip if he moved too suddenly.
“Ah, don’t you look lovely, especially for a fella who got shot in the head last night” Sara said pleasantly as she strolled into the room, her oversized revolver in her right hand.
“Why the hell did you shoot me?” Calvin asked angrily.
Sara shrugged. “I don’t know Marla well enough to know why she has me do what she has me do, but I understand how to obey.” She walked around the perimeter of the room, keeping her eyes on Calvin.
“I was cooperating,” Calvin growled.
“And I appreciate that, but Marla assured me that it would take far more than a gunshot to kill you.”
“And if she had been lying?” Calvin asked. He had to turn slowly in place to keep Sara in his field of vision.
Again, Sara shrugged. “I’m not the same weak little girl you saved from her stepfather that night. Everybody dies, Calvin.” A wicked grin spread across her face. “Unless you’re pals with a necromancer, that is.”
Calvin’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re what, some kind of glorified zombie now? Doing Marla’s bidding?”
Sara laughed, it was a cold, unnerving sound completely alien from the quiet snickers Calvin remembered from the rare occasions he had made Sara laugh in the past. “Sure, I guess you could say that. Really though, I’m everything I should have been before Marla brought me back. All the hatred I used to feel I would just bottle up. Now I know what to do with it.”
“Because Marla tells you what to do with it,” Calvin snapped.
“Some,” Sara admitted. “Other things, though...well, I have a lot more initiative than I used to. Logan, dear, won’t you come in?”
Logan thumped into the room, his footfalls heavy and his eyes glazed. Logan had by no means been fat, but he had always been heavyset. Now though, it was as though someone had dropped him into a cartoon, squished his pudgy middle until his belly had been forced up into his arm and chest muscles, and then pulled him back into the real world. Just like Calvin’s shirt, Logan’s was straining to contain his upper body. The difference though, was that Logan was not wearing one of Sara’s ladies small t-shirts. Unless Calvin was crazy, which he really wondered at this point if he might be, he thought Logan looked a couple inches taller too. It was difficult to tell with the way he was slouching.
Calvin glared at Sara. “What did you do to him?”
“Improved him, obviously. No more idiotic speeches about how awful it is to be a ‘nice guy’ that always gets ignored by the pretty girls. Now he just does what I say and keeps his dumb mouth shut.” Sara grinned proudly at Logan.
“How?” Calvin demanded. “How did you even know how to do this to him? You’ve only been whatever it is that you are now for a day!”
“I’m a smart cookie.” Sara smirked. “And Marla is a good teacher.”
“Did you kill him and then bring him back? Have you sunk that low that you would kill one of your friends just to have your own minion?” Calvin accused.
Sara laughed again and Calvin couldn’t help but squirm a little. “First of all, Logan was never a friend. More of an obnoxious acquaintance that I you insisted on letting hang around all the time. And no, I didn’t kill him, nothing like that. I’m not a necromancer like Marla. From what I understand, I’m something altogether new. A custom creation of Marla’s, never before seen by man nor beastie.”
“But you still destroyed the old Logan against his will! You as good as killed him! You’re no better than your stepfather!” Calvin spat venomously.
“Except I didn’t,” Sara whispered. “He felt so guilty about leaving me to die in that pool that he volunteered. All I did was ask your poor, stupid, white knight friend to help me and he was ready to sign on the dotted line.”
“You’re lying,” Calvin shot back. “Logan would never willingly become...this.”
Sara sneered at him. “Maybe I am and maybe I’m not. But what does it matter, after all? You are the king of half-truths and letting others believe what they want. You pretend to be an honest man, but you haven’t even told your best friend that you’re a werewolf.”
“That is for her protection,” Calvin said defensively. “I didn’t want anyone to know what I was. I figured the less they knew the better off they’d be.”
Sara shook her head. “Classic idiot-hero syndrome. You and Logan really ought to have teamed up and fought crime. The werewolf with the heart of gold and his white knight sidekick. The press would have loved it.”
“What do you want, Sara? Or are you just going to ramble at me? Are you making up for lost time now after so many years of not talking to anyone?”
“I want what you promised.” Sara tossed him a cell phone.
Calvin looked at the phone. “I don’t have Tim Kane’s number memorized. I only met him once and looked at his card for a second.”
“Logan found your car for me and retrieved the business card. I programmed the number into the phone,” Sara said.
“And you didn’t have him grab my clothes while he was getting the business card, gee thanks,” Calvin grumbled as he dialed.
“It’s more fun this way. Besides, don’t you feel pretty in my clothes?” Sara chuckled.
“Tim Kane’s office,” a woman’s voice answered after two rings.
Calvin cleared his throat. “Mr. Kane gave me his card yesterday morning. I need to speak with him to give him some good news.”
“Your name?” the receptionist asked.
“Calvin.”
“One moment, please.” Hold music played for a moment before Tim Kane picked up the line.
“Calvin, I wasn’t expecting to hear from you nearly so soon. I like a man who achieves results quickly. How did it go?” Tim asked cordially.
“Well, not exactly as expected,” Calvin said. He looked at Sara who was staring at him malevolently. “I wasn’t able to kill her. I need you to come take her into custody. I’m not sure how well I have her contained.” Calvin did not like lying and he did his best not to tell any outright lies as he spoke to Mr. Kane.
“Every Guardian has a little trouble handling their first crisis,” Kane said pleasantly. “The important thing is that you got her. I’ll be there in a little over an hour to take her off your hands.”
“Thank you.” Calvin gave him directions to the abandoned house he was in and then hung up.
“Clever,” Sara complimented him. “You did not technically lie to the good business werewolf.”
“What’s the plan?” Calvin asked. He tossed the phone back to Sara.
“When Mr. Kane arrives I will appear to be tied up and while his attention is on me you will kill him,” Sara answered.
“How? You shot me in the head and I lived,” Calvin pointed out.
Sara smiled. “That was while you were transformed. As a man, you and Kane are both quite killable. I’ve taken a liking to this gun, but there’s one for you in the other room. And please, don’t insult me by trying to shoot me with it. Unlike you, my powers aren’t on some silly schedule.”
Calvin muttered to himself and nodded. He tried to think of a way out of his predicament. It was possible that he could kill Sara by shooting her and she was lying, but even if she were he didn’t know that he would be able to pull the trigger. Sara had been one of his only friends just yesterday. Then there was Hulk Logan to consider. If Calvin tried anything then Logan would probably smash his face in.
The hour it took the business werewolf to drive there from Seattle passed and Calvin had not figured out an escape plan. So he answered the door with a pistol tucked into the waist of his women's sweatpants and greeted Tim Kane pleasantly.
“Hello, sir. Please come in. Just you?” Calvin asked.
“Oh yes,” Kane answered. “As I said, no one else in the werewolf community really enjoys this kind of tedium. I have all the skills and tools to transport a captured necromancer, however. So fear not.”
Calvin led the way into the room where Sara was pretending to have her wrists tied to her ankles as she knelt staring at the bare floor. “Here she is,” Calvin said.
“What the damn hell?” Kane asked when he saw her. “This isn’t-”
Calvin had never shot a gun before, so he wasn’t surprised that his first shot missed, even from less than four feet away. But his second shot ripped into the business werewolf’s shoulder and spun him around like a top. Calvin kept firing and hit him two or three more times before Kane fell down.
“Kid,” Tim rasped painfully as he lay on the floor in a growing pool of his own blood. “Whatever they promised you was a lie. They’ll kill you too and they won’t let it be this quick.”
“Finish it,” Sara commanded. She had risen from her false captivity pose and stood beside Calvin staring down at Tim Kane.
Calvin pointed his gun at Kane’s head and closed his eyes. He squeezed the trigger and then immediately threw up.
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