Huntress Ch. 01

This is my first time actually writing a story like this. Not a lot of sex so if that's what you are looking for, turn back now. Also, this is a supernatural type story (vampires, werewolves, witches, the whole shebang) so if you aren't into that...well, turn back as well. For those of you who have not left yet, I can only assume you're staying... so enjoy.

Carmen wasn't drunk.

Sage watched from the opposite side of the dance floor as her best friend leaned tiredly against a man whose shirt had been unbuttoned and lay open, chest bare, shaved and sweating. The man who was probably as intoxicated as Carmen pretended to be was trying his best to hold her up and carry on a drunken conversation. Every so often, the dark haired girl would nod.

Sage couldn't help but laugh

Thus was a night out for her and the girls. Somewhere in the sporadically lit room, her other two best friends were hiding, one with a guy who she probably would end up kicking in the balls by the end of the night, and the other probably on the phone with her sister.

Sage was the bystander, as usual. She had no desire to go out onto the dance floor and get sweaty with a man she didn't know nor did she feel like drinking herself into oblivion. There was too much going on. She needed to be on her 'A' game in case Brie came back, distraught over her little sister, which was bound to happen.

The loud bass of the techno song that had been on for at least twenty minutes changed into a slow rap song. Carmen stood up abruptly, a smile plastered on her face. She yelled something to the man, along the lines of how much she loved the song, and began moving her hips with such energy one would think she had just arrived to the club an hour ago instead of four.

Sage faked a smile, as she walked around the floor, avoiding flailing bodies, to the bar. Her feet were killing her and as soon as her behind met the bar stool she flipped the shoes off and onto the wooden counter in front of her. Next to her, a dark haired man with a five o'clock shadow smiled as he brought a small glass filled with ice and brown liquor to his lips. He closed his eyes as the liquid slid into his mouth and down his throat, swallowed and then opened his eyes again, eyes heavy with suggestions and liquor. Despite his half-lidded gaze, Sage could see that his eyes matched the amber color of his drink. His eyelashes were full enough to make most girls jealous, and despite the dusting of hair she could make out the hard lines of his jaw.

He was definitely attractive.

So Sage ignored him.

"My bar is not your kitchen table." The bartender, Geoff, informed her as he walked over, glass at the ready.

"Gimme the usual," was her only reply. Not caring about any looks she was getting, Sage kneaded the ball of her foot. She was thankful that the girls were getting older and their partying days per week were slowly decreasing in number. Her feet couldn't take much more.

The blond haired bartender set an electric blue drink on a coaster by her heels. "Should I call Carmen a cab cause you don't look like you're staying for much longer," his blue eyes glanced on to the floor. Carmen was still moving her hips in an intoxicating rhythm. Rico Suave was trying to keep up, but she batted his hands away every time he reached for her.

"She's more sober than you think," Sage said with a smile, going back to what she was doing to her feet. God, it felt amazing. If she hadn't been with the girls, she would finish her night in the club barefoot. Hell, if it weren't for the girls she wouldn't have even come. It was taking everything in her now just to not walk home. Her bed was calling her.

She felt Geoff's eyes on her as she worked the heel of her foot. "I could do that for you, you know?" His offer was a quite one. She was surprised she had even heard it over the music, but whether she had or not, the look in eyes repeated the question like a marquee in Times Square.

"You're a bartender, you serve drinks and touch people's ice. I'm not sure anyone would be particularly happy to know that prior to making their fuzzy navel you were working the kinks out of my toes."

If it had been anyone else, Sage probably would have walked away from sheer annoyance, but Geoff had been a good friend and informant for her and the girls for a while.

His flirtations were excused.

At least the ones directed at her. He had had a serious crush on her friend, Brie, since middle school. As the year's progressed, his taunts about her black wavy hair and not so big chest had turned into loaded questions and fearless innuendo. Brie found it tiresome. It was highly entertaining for everyone else.

The light in his eyes died as quickly as a firework in a summer night sky, and he picked up a spotless glass and began wiping the outside rim, looking everywhere but at her.

The man that had been sitting next to her vacated his seat, leaving Sage with an inviting smile. Out of curiosity, her eyes followed him into the crowd, and he tossed her inviting looks as he disappeared. Sage wasn't interested. She almost felt bad for staring so hard in his direction. In the next twenty minutes, after he realized that she had no intentions of following him into whatever dimly lit corner he was hiding in, he would probably wonder why she had stared so hard in the first place. Was it him? Did he stink? All the things that his drunken mind would wonder.

But then again she wondered the same thing. Why hadn't she? He hadn't been bad looking. Hadn't tried to come on to her with cheesy, 'did it hurt?' lines. In fact, he had been just the way she liked her men lately.

Silent.

Sage sighed, dropping her foot down on to the pegs under the stool. She was made of marble. She knew it. No one could get passed whatever emotional barrier she had erected in front of herself these passed few years.

No one.

The girls had begged and pleaded with her to come out with them. For the last couple weeks, she had made it a habit of either locking herself in her room or only going out when the girls had a job to do.

"It's depressing," Brie had told her the week before.

Sage had no desire to be out in this crowd of people. All these strangers. How could anyone feel comfortable here?

Sage grabbed her drink and took a sip as she glanced onto the dance floor. Carmen had switched dance partners and now she was in the arms of redheaded man, whose tight shirt highlighted every muscle in his body. His sleeves alone looked as if they would pop from his biceps, and curled around one was a tribal ring. Just like the other one, Carmen was just toying with him. He didn't even look interesting.

And what was that? Sage sighed, placing her drink back down with a slam.

What the hell was wrong with her? Was she turning into a recluse? Everyday, to her and to the girls, it sure as hell seemed like it and everyday, Sage didn't care. She almost preferred to keep to herself sometimes. She loved her roommates more than anything, but who was there to talk to other than them? Her sister? Sage chuckled to herself as she played with the condensation at the bottom of her glass.

She couldn't. Not to Vicki.

Sage's phone buzzed in her back pocket, and she leaned over the bar to pull it out. She glanced at the screen and tossed the phone a little ways down the bar, uncaring of the harm that came to it.

"Jesus, why won't you stop calling me?" She hated boyfriends. She hated them because she knew that eventually they would become exes and exes were an annoying phone ritual for her.

Alek, for instance, couldn't get a clue. He was like a fly during a BBQ. They had broken up because of his in ability to control his foolish desires for other women, and now every night he called and made his apologies, most of the time while drunk.

Geoff grabbed her phone and placed it next to her drink. "Please, don't throw phones at my patrons," he said, a smile returning to his eyes.

"He won't stop calling me." Sage couldn't hear her whine over the music, and was glad for it. Geoff grabbed a glass from the sink behind him and began cleaning it off with the same rag she had seen him use to wipe down the bar a few minutes ago. Sage pushed her drink away from her slightly.

"Alek, right? The cheater guy I always saw you in here with?"

Sage nodded. He had hit the nail right on the head. "He calls me every night to tell me that he's sorry." Sage shrugged. "I get it. You fucked up. Get over it."

Sage realized how mean she sounded, but nothing could move her to care. She was fed up with everything it seemed like. Was this how her parents felt right before they decide they would drown their life away in gin vodka? Sage pushed the thought away before it could manifest itself anymore.

She wasn't them. She never would be.

The thought made her push away her drink a little more. Geoff noticed and picked up the cold glass, examining it. "Did I not make it right?" Sage shook her head and waved her hand in unison. He caught the hint and tossed the drink out. When he turned back to her, his forehead was scrunched up, eyebrows raised.

"Are you feeling okay?" Geoff went to put his hand on her forehead but she batted it away.

"I'm fine."

The bartender wasn't having it. He leaned forward on the wood of the bar, searching for her eyes. Sage made an effort to make her hands more interesting than anything else in the club.

"Seriously," he probed. "What's going on?" He glanced around, then leaned forward a little more.

"Is it the hunts? "

Sage scoffed at the absurdity of his statement.

She loved the hunts. They made her feel alive. More alive than she felt sitting in a dingy bar, watching people dance and drink. More alive than she did talking to Alek over French onion soup and red wine. More alive than she had felt in a long time.

Sage had to smile.

To every man and woman in here, Sage, Brie, Carmen and Regan looked like four regular girls who had come to the club to unwind from their stressful 9 – 5 work schedules. They talked like normal girls, acted, when necessary, like normal girls, but to the few that knew, they were something entirely different. Sage glanced around the room. She could probably count on one hand the amount of people who knew that there was an entire community within the one they lived in. She could only imagine the way the blond at the end of the bar would react if Sage told her that nine times out of ten, those blemishes she had tried her best to cover up on her neck weren't blemishes at all. And that Goth bar she had visited a week ago was definitely not just a Goth bar. The poor girl would probably fall out of her seat.

The Huntresses.

They hadn't started calling themselves that. Someone had whispered it one night and it had stuck. They hunted the things that human's didn't need to know about. Didn't need to associate with. They were paranormal hunters. They specialized in vampires, but could also handle your occasional demon. They had done away with some troublesome Fae before (the Unseelie queen hated them.). They didn't go near Werewolves or Were-anything for that matter. The girls left those to the big guys, or to the vamps. The unpredictable mongrels weren't their problem. But the girl's were more than feared in the vampire community. And the thought made Sage's fingertips tingle. She needed a hunt right now. She needed to feel one of those bastards's bleed. Needed to feel her heart beat fast and see the look in their faces when they realize that she was not in fact a lost young woman who had decided to take a shortcut on her way home from work.

Sage had to reel herself in. "No. The hunts are fine."

Geoff shook his head. "Is it Caleb?"

The thoughts shot through Sage's mind before she could stop them. Brie's younger sister, with her bright green eyes and her unusual colored hair. Caleb was home by herself. She had begged Brie to go out and have fun. Since their parent's death, Brie had been a mother to the younger girl, all of the girls had, in fact, and it wasn't easy being a mother to a child with a mental disorder, no matter how many "mothers" were helping. The wealth of emotions that passed through Sage shocked her.

They almost felt new.

She remembered how her heart had dropped into the pit of her stomach when Caleb's doctor told all the girls what was wrong with her. Why she hadn't been sleeping, or eating, why she would look at people as if they had maggots and bats flying out their head, and why she woke up screaming almost every night.

Sage had felt her stomach drop that day. It had been months since she had felt anything similar to it, and despite her desire to feel something other than boredom, that feeling had not been welcome.

"Brie is probably in a corner somewhere blowing up Caleb's cell phone, but the kid's fine. She's home, hopefully sleeping."

When Geoff looked as if he would plague her with more questions, Sage cut him off with a reassuring smile that she knew didn't quite reach her eyes. "Look, I'm good. Just a little tired." She spun her chair around to avoid looking at Geoff, and hearing his reply. Instead she searched the floor for Carmen. This time the girl was dancing back to back with their roommate, Regan.

Regan's red hair, reflected off the lights giving her a glow that made a few men and women on the dance floor stop and stare. Almost as if she could feel eyes on her, Carmen glanced up at the bar, searching. She met Sage's hazel eyes.

'Are you okay? '

Carmen's voice sounded like a distant echo. Over the loud music, Sage hadn't even been sure she'd heard it, but she knew by her friend's concerned look that it had not been in her imagination. Sage only nodded. She wasn't telepathic. She couldn't reply to her, but Carmen could pull her thoughts, she would see the words and memories Sage had placed at the foreground of her mind to give the impression she was having a blast. Carmen seemed to do just that and her concerned look was replaced with a smile, as she continued dancing.

She needed an out.

Bad.

She searched around the club for Brie, but her unmistakable lengthy black hair and cafe au lait skin was nowhere in sight.

"Dammit," she muttered, turning her seat back to face the bar.

Geoff, thankfully, had made his way to the blond at the end of the counter. As he offered her a refill on her drink, she unconsciously touched the blemishes on the side of her neck, trying to hide the redness, while leaning unnecessarily far over the bar to point to a bottle on the top shelf. Sage could see her breasts spilling out of her scoop neck dress. Geoff was going to be busy for a while.

Sage grudgingly gathered her shoes off the bar, to put them back on her feet, but stopped when the light from her phone caught her attention.

4 missed calls.

Sage scrunched her eyebrows, as she picked up the phone. Mentally, she went down the list of people she hoped it hadn't been as she pressed the button to show the calls. All four had come from a number she didn't know and not one of them had produced a voicemail, but Sage didn't need to have the number saved in her phone to know whom it was. She jumped off the bar stool, and paused for a second as the sting of her feet settling back into the heels passed. She pulled a five out of her bra, and left it on the counter. When Geoff wasn't occupied with Plastic Surgery at the end of the bar, he could grab his money.

Sage pushed through the crowd of people, making her way to the front door.

Occasionally, a man would turn to her, assuming she was nudging him to get his attention not to move him out the way, but she ignored their interests. She pushed through the velvet door and welcomed the cold fresh air that hit her skin.

"You leavin' without the girls?" Darrell, the bouncer, stood against the door, arms folded in a classic bouncer pose. 'No one 's getting in', the muscles bulging out of his short sleeved black body armor said.

"They ain't gonna be to happy 'bout that." The smile that lifted up his chocolate brown cheeks told her he was kidding, but Sage's sour mood had turned bitter.

"I know, " she answered, walking backwards as she made her way across the street. "But I gotta go get my sister out of jail."