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Chapter Nineteen
Red poked her head up from under the covers, barely able to make out the annoying red numbers on her digital clock.
"Crap," she muttered. "Time to get up." 'Time to go deal with the dead,' she thought. Then the lump next to her began to shift and turn. 'I don't want to wake her,' Red thought, 'but I don't want her to come around and not know where I am.' So she reached over and turned on the light.
Jane's face was so peaceful as it pressed against the pillow. Red hadn't seen her that much at peace. Even when she had been spending a lot of her time unconscious after almost being killed (the act that had brought her to the Den in the first place), she had been restless. 'I'm just so comfortable,' she thought to herself. But it was time to get up. She slowly worked her way out of bed and started grabbing clothes.
"What . . . what time is it?" Jane asked groggily, opening one eye and noticing that it was annoying light in the room.
"Almost five in the afterno
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Midnight Strays Chapter Twenty
---------- ------------ An hour later . . . ---------- ------------ There was an air of unease around the central table and the adjoining bleachers as everyone settled in for the meeting. Jane sat quietly towards the back of the aluminum steps, planning on being a silent spectator of the proceedings. She was watching Red who was still in consultation with Tarloh as well as the shadow demon known as Johan. Jane hadn't spent much time with that particular trans-dimensional traveler, but Mindy and Anya assured her that he was a class act. "Okay people," Tarloh boomed, his voice as intimidating as his six-and-a-half-foot frame, "let's settle down. First things first. We lost six of our own yesterday, and there will be a service for them an hour after the meeting ends. So nobody goes running off. Now, we need to discuss what happened. The Hellspawn got too close and knew us too well. As many of you know, there are two ways this probably happened. The first is that they've been spying
Midnight Strays Chapter Twenty One
Topside . . . Robbie had tried keeping things light, but Mindy had been pretty sour all evening. So Robbie and Chris had fallen back together and the redneck wereboar was trying to convince his counterpart why tractor pulls should be an Olympic sport. Jane was still in a mental gloom of her own, thinking back to the funeral service for the fallen Strays. It was the first time she had heard their names, and that was important to her. 'No one should die without someone remembering their name,' she thought. Mindy stormed out a personnel door of Springfield Memorial Hospital with a scowl on her face and a bag in her hand. "I hate flirting with orderlies," she practically spat. "You've got to let them get to second base before they'll take you to the supply room for a quickie. At least then," she added, "I get to knock them out." "Did you . . ." Jane started. "Yeah, I got everything on the list. That's all I'm good for apparently," Mindy bitched. She didn't notice Jane shirk away. Jan
Midnight Strays Chapter Twenty Two
---------- ------------------ A little while later . . . ---------- ------------------ Jane couldn't believe how late it had gotten. She was sitting on Red's bed in a pair of flannel pajamas (with footys) that Mindy had finagled from their stores. Mindy had apologized for about an hour before she and Jane made peace with each other. Jane had donated almost all of her money to the Strays coffers, except for about twenty dollars, plus enough to buy Red a gift. She had picked up a candle that gave off three different scents as it burned its way down, all of them floral. "God, that's so stupid," she muttered. She hadn't bought a gift for anyone in a long time, and never for someone she was trying to form an intimate relationship with. "What's stupid?" Jane jumped, her braided hair swirling around and rearing up like eight individual snakes until Jane actually saw Red standing in the doorway. When she began to relax, her extra appendages relaxed. "My . . . uhm . . . I bought somethi
Midnight Strays Chapter Twenty Two
---------------- ------------ Out in the Den . . . ---------------- ------------ Mindy was sitting on the edge of the lower platform, her feet dangling over the tracks as she gnawed on a bit of beef jerky. She heard and smelled someone approached from behind her, but she didn't turn to look. She was still feeling fairly annoyed at herself. "Want to talk about it?" Robbie asked, having a seat next to her. "Or would you rather mope some more?" Arthur added, sitting on the other side. There's nothing someone wallowing in self-degradation hates as much as someone else making fun of them for it. "Kiss off," Mindy muttered. "I think that means she wants to mope," Robbie said, leaning forward and looking at Arthur. It was Arthur's turn to lean forward. "But she did actually speak, which means she may want to talk about it, but in a hostile way." "Mope," Robbie reiterated. "Talk," Arthur countered. "Mope!" "Talk!" "Thumb wrestle to see who's right?" "Jolly good idea!" Both men e
Midnight Strays Chapter Twenty Three
Jane was sitting by herself, trying very hard to get some food down before the night's activities. She could barely tie her shoes without having an emotional crisis, but she was supposed to go out into the world on her first "mission" to gather information. She felt good that she was going to have some "muscle" in the form of Chris, who wasn't in on the tracking party due to his lack of stealth. He actually had a really great nose when morphed out, but he was also a little slow on the trail. But Chris was as good in a fight as anyone in the Strays, and Red wasn't going to leave Jane unprotected. Mindy was getting pulled into the hunting party, so it would be Jane, Chris, Robbie and Anya that night. "Hey Jane," Mindy said, plopping down beside the younger woman. "Howdy," Jane replied, concentrating on her sandwich. Mindy just stared at her friend for a moment. "So, still mad at me?" Jane looked over at her, obviously confused. "Why would I be mad at you?" "For being a bitch yester
Midnight Strays Chapter Twenty Four
----------- ------------------- Up on the rooftops . . . ----------- ------------------- Jane was peeking over the edge of an apartment complex at two familiar-looking forms, dressed in black suits, white shirts, gloves, and sunglasses with shaven heads. Jane could steel feel the cracking of her ribs when she had been hit by one of these things, and she grew almost nauseous as she remembered ripping one apart down in the Den, then beating another into a fine paste. One of them handed a small back to a young black man they were talking to, who handed them some money and then walked away. Jane wanted to go after the young man, telling him what an idiot he was for throwing his life away. 'Who are you to judge?' she asked of herself. 'You spent just as much time hiding from the pain of living . . . you just didn't use narcotics.' The two hellspawn grumbled between themselves for a minute and then headed down a side street before climbing into a luxury car with dark windows. Jane wishe
Midnight Strays Chapter Twenty Five
------------ -------------------Several hours later . . .------------ -------------------Jane was practicing manipulating her Talent, swinging around the Den and perfecting fine manipulation skills with her hair when the hunting party returned. They were dirty, some of them seemed to have been cut and were bleeding, and all of them seemed pissed as hell.And the most pissed off of them was quite obviously Red. Jane found it harder than she imagined not to run over and hold the beautiful warrior in her arms, but good sense told her this wasn't the time. So she approached with caution.But while Jane was a whisper, Tarloh arrived with a bellow. "What the hell happened?" he asked.Red was almost growling. "Apparently, we got too close. We followed Jane's lead and were roaming the woods East of town. We saw power lines leading off, but no one knew of any business out in that area. We decided to investigate, and apparently, we tripped an alarm. We wound up in a fight, but they didn't se
Midnight Strays Chapter Twenty Six
---------------- ----------------------- In another part of the Den . . . ---------------- ----------------------- "Hey big guy," Anya said, wandering over to Chris as the big redneck was sitting down for a midnight snack of beef jerky and Dr. Pepper. "Hello Miss Anya ma'am," the lycanthrope replied, standing up as she approached the plastic picnic bench he was using. Anya knew that if it was physically possible, Chris probably would have wandered around and pulled her chair out for her. "Mind if I join you?" "Not at all," he said. "Did you want me tuh get ya somethin' from storage?" "That's all right," she replied, holding up a banana and a bottle of water. "I'm not up for anything much heavier than this right now," she added. "Nervous?" "Not really. A little I guess. Tarloh's pretty worked up." Anya peeled her banana very slowly. "He won't say what he thinks it is that we're up against, and that's making it worse." "The boss knows what he's doin'," Chris replied. He was wat
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