Here is my belated Christmas gift to you all. Sorry it took so long, I was busy with the chaotic hideousness of the holidays. Once again, thank you all for your wonderful and helpful reviews!

blood_shifter: Ha, regret does not even begin to describe it x)

Argentum Vox: Yes, I’m afraid that James is as dead as a doughnut. If it’s any consolation, it did take me a few days to make myself kill him because I liked him so much.

tain89: Thank you! Hopefully the events below will not disappoint.

Devonshire-Dumpling: I’m glad you liked it! Usually I catch flak for making my characters just as gross and stupid as real people, it’s gratifying that someone appreciates it.

Muffing: Thanks very much, the Typo Faerie never fails to deliver her gifts ^^;

Chapter Four

Stressful Situations

The thing was almost eight feet tall, armed to the teeth (assuming it had any) and Kelly was standing up to it, only as big around as one of its legs.

Those Eddelstein girls. They’d always looked out for each other. When they were kids, Kelly got into fights with the boys that made fun of Grace. Grace was there to take care of Kelly when they were teenagers and Kelly thought she might be pregnant. She had held her sister while she cried, driven to the drugstore to buy a test alone, held Kelly’s hand and her own breath until the little blue negative sign appeared like an angel of mercy. Kelly was in trouble again, a bigger, meaner, more awful trouble than she could ever have imagined, and there was nothing Grace could do about it.

Nothing to do but reach for her favorite cuss like a frightened baby clinging to a security blanket. “Oh, putain-moi doucement avec une scie à chaîne!”

It was like a counter-spell. The thing looked up, away from Kelly, and fixed its concealed eyes on Grace. It deftly stepped around the younger woman and walked towards Grace, with an easy, powerful gait like a wolf. Grace shrank away from it, her relief that it was away from her sister not quite overshadowing her own sense of self-preservation. The thing crouched until they were eye-to-eye and tilted its head.

“Vous comprenez la langue que j'utilise?”

The accent was damn near butchered, and the voice was so odd that at first Grace didn’t register that the sounds it was making were actual words. She hadn’t thought her jaw could drop lower or her eyes could get bigger, until that alien and horrible creature had walked right up and spoken to her in French.

“Gracie?” Kelly’s worried voice floated out from the darkness, and soon her head appeared behind and to the left of the creature.

“Ohhhhh, fuck me!” Grace threw her hands up in apparent defeat. She seemed to forget the monster completely and turned away from it and began to pace, waving her arms furiously. “That is it. I’m done, d’you hear me? I am fucking DONE. I’ve had enough! No more being lost in the woods, no more dead bodies, no more fucking bloodsucking bugs and no more evil, man-eating hulk beasts that speak French! I mean, seriously, what the crap is that all about? At what point did I begin my ride on the fucking crazy train to hell?!”

“Gracie, maybe you should calm down,” Kelly suggested in a nervous, timid tone that was completely unlike her. “I think you’re aggravating him…”

“Oh, I am aggravating him!”

The low rumble emanating from the creature certainly sounded aggressive, but in reality he was merely curious. He rose to his full height, turned, and looked down at Kelly, who had moved to stand beside him with her arms crossed over her narrow chest.

“Touché à la tête, est-elle?” He muttered. (Touched in the head, is she?)

Grace whirled around and glared at the creature. “Excusez-moi?!”

Kelly knew a bomb about to go off when she saw one. Somehow, whenever her sister took on the French way of speaking, she also adopted a French temper. Kelly scuttled forward until she was between the creature and her sister and held her hands out, as if she had any hope of keeping them apart if they decided to go at it. It occurred to Kelly that she was attempting to keep the peace between her sister, who was verging on psychosis, and a gigantic, otherworldly monster. Crazy train to hell, indeed. Still, Kelly forced herself to just not think about it, lest she too start going stark raving crazycakes.

“Why don’t we just chill out for second?” She said with as much authority as she could muster.

In her present state, Grace looked less likely to ‘chill out’ then to try and rip the creature’s head off. Something else occurred to Kelly, and that was that while Grace was supposed to be the intelligent, rational sister, she really was no good in stressful situations. All you had to do was rattle her up a bit and she’d go completely to pieces.

Grace might have been quick to lose her head, but it didn’t last long. The older sister sighed wearily and threw her hands up in the air.

Kelly put a hand to her forehead, relieved, then returned her attention to the creature. He had been watching them this whole time with the tone of his reaction completely indiscernible. Kelly figured that if he was any kind of smart he’d be feeling mighty regretful about now.

“Can you talk to him?” Kelly asked her sister without looking away.

Grace sighed. “What do you want me to tell him?”

“Um, just…” Kelly hesitated for a bit, then turned to her sister with a shrug. “Just start by telling him our names.”

Grace rolled her eyes, putting up adolescent sullenness like a suit of armor against the insanity of the situation, and stepped forward to address the creature. “Ah…j’mapelle Grace, et c'est ma sœur, Kelly.”

“Mei’hwei-ju…” The creature tilted its head, nodding slowly as if to itself.

Kelly moved to stand next to Grace. “What did he say?”

“Hell if I know,” Grace shook her head. “That wasn’t French.”

“Okay…now ask him what he’s doing here.”

“You think that’s a good idea? It might come off a bit…”

“What?”

“Impertinent? Inductive of violence?”

“You’re a writer, just pretty up the wording a bit.”

Grace raised her eyebrow, then turned back to the creature. “Ma soeur cherche à savoir pourquoi vous êtes ici.” (My sister wishes to know why you’re here.)

“Je ne suis pas tenu de justifier à moi-même vous.”

Grace narrowed her eyes.

“Well?” Kelly prompted.

“He says he doesn’t have to justify himself to us.”

There was a moment of uncertain silence. Grace felt uncomfortable, looking into the empty lenses of the thing’s mask, and let her gaze slip down to the skulls hanging from its belt. Human skulls. Grace counted eight, though there was plenty of room for more. Proportionally the creature’s waist was actually rather trim, but it was still tree trunk thick. Every inch of it bubbled with muscle, like one of the really hardcore bodybuilders you saw on the front of fitness magazines, the ones that looked like they were about to explode. While those people had always appeared freakish and nearly inhuman to Grace, the creature standing before her was, in fact, freakish and inhuman, so she was not so shocked by its appearance.

It was lightly clad. Layered armor that reminded Grace of an armadillo’s shell covered only its calves, forearms, chest and shoulders. The rest of its body was wrapped in a clingy, wire mesh material that was torn in a few places. At its, ahem, Southern regions, was a metal covering that reminded Grace of protective codpieces knights wore in Renaissance paintings, made of the same ridged, pitted material as the rest of its armor.

Gradually, Grace worked her eyes back up to the mask. Now that she was really looking at the creature, she noted how large its head was and the bulbous shape of the front of its skull. In the center of the forehead, a foreign mark had been etched into the metal of the mask, sort of like a jagged and disproportioned number five with both ends ending in thin spikes. Grace found that she just didn’t care enough to wonder what the mark might mean.

There was a mysterious and exotic being from another world looking her in the face, and Grace did not care. She had as much intellectual curiosity as the next lady, but the thing was dangerous, it had killed people, and she just wanted it gone.

“Laisser,” She said. Leave.

The word was out of her mouth for only an instant and suddenly, Grace found herself pressed up against a tree with a clawed hand around her throat, her feet dangling in midair, and no bloody idea how it had happened.

Damn, this sucker’s fast, Some little voice muttered from the back of Grace’s brain.

Grace had never been strangled before. It was not pleasant. As the creature held her off the ground with one hand, it’s clawed fingers locked around her neck, Grace’s eyes teared up and she helplessly struck her heels against the tree. She choked and gagged, her head swimming as her windpipe constricted. She was dimly aware of Kelly shouting something, and then the younger woman was beside her, tugging at the creature’s thick arm.

The creature didn’t budge no matter what Kelly did. In a random act of desperation, she put both hands on its arm and swung herself up like a kid on a jungle gym, and then she was sitting on its bicep. Kelly took a second to acclimate herself to this new perch, then she reached out, put her hands on either side of the creature’s head, and turned his masked face towards her.

“Let her go,” She entreated. Her own sweaty, pinkened face was reflected back at her in each of those mirrored lenses, almost mocking her. “Please…er…s’il vous plait?”

The creature grunted derisively. Without bothering to look at Grace, he opened his hand and dropped his arm, letting both sisters fall to the ground.

Grace slid down the tree trunk, the rough bark hiking up the back of her tank top and scraping the skin of her back unmercifully, and fell right onto a jutting root. Now with an awful sunburn, a savaged trachea, a bloody back and a bruised ass, she slumped in the dirt and glared miserably through the dirtied lenses of her glasses at the world that seemed intent on beating her senseless like any schoolyard bully.

Kelly, by stark contrast, had landed on her feet and let momentum carry her into a crouch, easy as a cat. She rocked forward onto her knees, wide eyed, and a put a hand on Grace’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Grace rubbed at her aching neck with both hands. “Fine,” Her voice sounded brittle and scratchy, and her throat stung like the words burned it on the way out.

Kelly reached out and gently pushed Grace’s hands away from her neck, then lightly felt the area with careful fingertips. “You’re going to have bruises.”

Grace didn’t want to speak again and irritate her throat, so she merely shrugged her shoulders.

Kelly stood up and turned back to the creature, who had moved back a few paces and was staring up into the dark canopy. It appeared to be listening for something. Kelly cleared her throat, once again displaying an uncharacteristic timidity. For the second time, she had stood between the creature and her sister, and he had listened to her, for reasons utterly unfathomable. While she wasn’t complaining about having some sort of minor influence over his actions, not knowing why she did worried her. She could be getting deep into something she wouldn’t be able to get out of again.

Honey, purred a mean little voice in her head. You’re in deep enough already.

The creature appeared to be ignoring her. Kelly took two steps forward and centered her courage as best she could. “If you ever touch my sister again,” she informed him, “I’ll kill you.”

The creature inclined his head in her direction. He appeared to be looking at her, but while he had that mask on it was impossible to tell. Kelly was suddenly intensely curious as to what his face might look like. As Kelly’s gaze traced the edges of the mask, she noticed various pipes and wires running under the sides. She wondered if the mask served as some sort of breathing apparatus. If so, all she had to do was indulge her curiosity, snatch it right off his face, and this particular problem would be solved. Of course, she had enough sense to know that if she made a move towards him, he could kill her five times before she hit the ground.

Hang the knives, guns, spears, whatever else, he could kill her so terribly easily with his bare hands. Kelly was aware of some morbid fascination dragging her eyes down to the creature’s hands, hanging loosely at his sides. His palms were as white as salt, and as large as Kelly’s face. His fingers were as long as Kelly’s whole hand, each ending in a long, pointed black talon.

Kelly drew in a quick, hissing breath and her hand flew to her throat. “Gracie!”

Grace stood up and made her way cautiously to stand beside her sister. The younger woman’s eyes were wide, her fingertips hovering over the carved surface of the bone hanging around her neck.

“Gracie…” Kelly moaned. “Look at his hands…”

Grace looked. Other than being enormous and greenish, everything looked spic and span to her eyes. “Kelly-“

“Where did you get this necklace?” Kelly demanded, her voice rushing out fierce and frightened.

Grace returned her gaze to her sister, frowned worriedly at the bone and claws on the cheap leather cord that Kelly still had not touched. “My friend found them back in L.A. Leo Yitzkowitz, the sculptor. You met him once.”

As Grace looked at the necklace, something in her brain suddenly and emphatically went ding! and she gasped as well. She looked back at the creature, standing there watching them, his hands hanging casually at his sides. Those hands, with long, tapering talons shining black as ink. She slowly turned her head and stared, open-mouth and disbelieving, at the necklace she had given her sister. The bone which was about half as long as one of the creature’s middle fingers. The two talons, decidedly smaller, with their tips sanded blunt for safety. It was undeniable that they had come from the same creature.

Grace felt as if her heart had stopped and her stomach had disappeared to be replaced by a cloud of liquid nitrogen. It couldn’t be…

“One of those things has been in Los Angeles,” she squeaked.

Though it was ridiculous, she had subconsciously believed that the creature standing in front of her now was unique. The knowledge that it was not, but a member of a species of its own entirety, wasn’t nearly as shocking as the incontestable proof that this species was not confined to the forests and other wild places where humans did not often go, knowing they were unwelcome intruders who would be shown no mercy, but also roamed cities. Cities like Los Angeles, where she had been born and raised and barely ever left for all her posturing as a world-weary sophisticate. Grace Eddelstein: Urban Hillbilly.

The buildings, towers and alleys, suburbs, industrial sectors, the polished tourist district. A creature like this had walked there freely, armor glinting in the light of the streets, wild hair waving like black flames in the hot wind off the ocean. It had killed people there, oh, surely. People Grace might have passed on the street without a second glance, or stood behind in line at the supermarket, people who she had chatted with and immediately forgotten at book signings or film screenings or one of Leo’s shows. But for luck, chance, circumstance, she herself might be nothing but a skull on some monster’s belt at this very moment.

Grace had lived blind to the shadow that flitted at the peripherals of her life. A whole race of shadows, soaked in blood, ornamenting themselves in the bones of their victims, stinking of death and unrepentant brutality, to which Grace and all other human beings were just fish, and Earth an enormous barrel.

Grace was delivered from her horrified introspections by the gentle sensation of her sister’s hand, no longer hovering over the carved bone, slipping around her wrist and gripping her hand tightly. Grace turned and looked at her sister, her eyebrows furrowed questioningly, but Kelly was staring straight ahead, at the creature.

“This is why he didn’t kill us,” She said. Her voice no longer held the shock and confusion it had before, but was now cool and strong. She may as well have been relaying data after studying a specimen on a microscope slide.

This statement didn’t make sense to Grace. Surely, seeing the remains of one of his kind hanging from Kelly’s neck would have only have made him all the more eager to exterminate her, for the sake of vengeance.

As if answering this unspoken question, Kelly continued. “Look at the skulls he’s wearing. Why bother keeping them, unless they’re trophies from all the things he’s killed? He must think that I’ve killed one of whatever he is, and this necklace is the trophy. He must think it’s pretty impressive that I took down one of his kind. A sort of…’prey becomes the predator’ thing.”

“Kelly,” Grace whispered, though she didn’t know quite why, as the creature didn’t understand English. “You didn’t kill one of those things. Before now you’ve never even seen one.”

Kelly looked at her sidelong, her expression unreadable. “He doesn’t know that.”

Grace couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if and when he ever found out.

This revelation, though it had shocked her at first, seemed to have given Kelly her spitfire back. Knowing that the creature had a reason not to kill her, that she had a shield, allowed her to finally lock away the events of that long and horrific day in a back corner of her mind where they wouldn’t get in the way. She touched the bone at her neck lightly, then curled her fingers around it and gripped it like a talisman before turning fully toward her sister, something in her manner shifting before Grace’s very eyes like the rise of an invisible but brilliant internal sun.

“We should make a shelter,” Kelly said. “Since it’s too dark to keep moving.”

Grace’s eyes widened slightly. Without waiting for a response, Kelly turned away and walked towards the mud-splattered red oak, apparently having forgotten all about the eight foot tall monstrosity standing not four feet from her. Kelly dropped to her knees among the roots and started digging, scraping the soil up with her bare hands and pushing it out between her legs like an animal.

Grace edged towards her sister, warily keeping her eyes fixed on the creature, who had gone back to ignoring them. She knelt beside Kelly, her back to the shallow bowl the younger woman was working to widen, and came to the decision that trying to twist this around to somehow make it reasonable was a futile mission, and it would do best to simply ask.

“Kelly,” Grace addressed her sister through gritted teeth, her eyes still on the creature’s back. “What in the name of all that is sane and rational are you doing?”

“If I just make a little hollow bit,” she responded breathlessly. “…And bend down some of the branches…maybe weigh them in place with rocks…that’ll at least be some cover. Kind of like a tent…”

“Capital idea, very sensible. Except that you seem to be forgetting that we’re lost in the mountains with the Creature from the Black fucking Lagoon. What is it you intend we should do about that?”

Kelly went into her digging with renewed fervor. “He’s not making a nuisance of himself. Let’s just let him be, for now.”

Grace scowled darkly. Not due to her sister’s response, or lack thereof, so much as because she realized that there really was nothing they could do. The creature obviously couldn’t be persuaded to leave them alone--Grace’s new purple necklace being the proof--and the idea of them using force against the thing was so ludicrous it wasn’t even worth entertaining.

It’s like that joke, Grace mused. What does a three hundred pound hamster do? Whatever it wants.

Fucking hilarious.

With a sigh of both irritation and defeat, Grace bent down to help Kelly widen the dip she had created in the ground, always sure to keep the creature in her sights. With both of them working, the dip was soon large enough to snugly fit two people in the moist, earthy bowl. Kelly pulled down some of the lower branches of the red oak and held them in position around the hole while Grace secured them in place with heavy stones, until they had created a rough, leafy teepee. Proclaiming the structure habitable, Kelly dropped to her knees and crawled inside. Grace gave the creature, who was still to its own enigmatic devices at the other end of the clearing, a last suspicious glare before she followed.

The inside of the teepee was filled with the crisp smell of the leaves. While the full, overlapping branches provided adequate shelter, there were still plenty of gaps between leaves that made Grace think of being underneath an enormous, overturned colander. Grace sank to her knees and lay down beside her sister in the soft, wet soil they had turned up and cleared of as many rocks and worms as they could locate. The hole that served as their bed was narrow, so the woman had to press together in order to fit. The pale, silvery light from the half moon above was dappled through the oak leaves and cast a mottled glow across their dirty, aching bodies.

After a few moments of silence broken only by the women’s breathing, Grace heard the hiss of leaves being stirred as the creature approached them. Her whole body stiffened, and she turned her head slightly to peer through the curtain of leaves at his huge, clawed feet. He crossed the clearing, stood before the teepee for a few minutes, then bent into a crouch so low that for a moment Grace could see his whole body between the leaves, and then leapt into the air. A heavy thud of wood and the scratch of bark told Grace that he had landed in the tree. She listened as he clawed his way into the dark canopy like a cat, loose pieces of bark showering onto the roof of their shelter. Soon, the forest was quiet again.

Kelly rolled over and wrapped both arms around her sister’s waist, snuggling against her side like a child. “Gracie,” she whispered. “Tell me a story.”

Grace put her arm around her sister’s shoulder wearily. “A story?”

“Yes,” Kelly yawned and closed her eyes. “A nice one, with a Princess.”

Kelly hadn’t asked to be told a bedtime story since she was twelve. Grace was quiet a moment, ruefully looking over all of those times in her life when Kelly had specifically needed the love an attention of a mother, and she had had to settle for her grumpy bitch of a sister instead. She also couldn’t help but think at the implications of such behavior resurfacing now. Grace felt tight around the eyes for a moment, then cleared her throat gently to dissuade herself from such thoughts.

“Once upon a time…”

Long after Kelly had fallen asleep, Grace still lay wide awake. All around her, leaves whispered and branches creaked in the wind, and every so often she could faintly hear the call of some animal out in the night. With no electric lights to drown it out, the half-moon shone clear and strong through the leafy curtain separating Grace from the outside.

Visions of memories from the day earlier attacked her unrelentingly. The bodies hanging from the buckeye tree, handiwork of the creature. The creature itself, the savagery and raw power in the way it carried itself, a born killer.

Her skin stung, her throat ached, the material of her shirt stuck in the congealed blood from the scratches all up her back. Grace would be in utter misery if it weren’t for her sister’s warm, sleeping body pressed against her, even Kelly’s unconscious kicks. Knowing her younger sister was safe and having her close was all Grace could hold onto now.

A sudden interrupted Grace’s thoughts and turned them instead to vicious, hungry bears. She froze, listening with every ounce of her concentration. There were sounds of sniffing not far away, maybe a few yards past the other edge of the clearing. Whatever it was, it sounded interested. As the animal moved closer, it became obvious by the lightness of its movements that it was far too small to be a bear. This did nothing to ease Grace, as it could just as easily be some kind of predatory cat or a badger or…were wolverines native to this area?

There was a sharp, metallic sound, followed by a whistle of disrupted air. Something flashed from above like a lightning bolt and disappeared into the undergrowth with a moist snapping noise and a single, terrified squeak.

For a few seconds, all was silent.

Then, Grace heard the groan of wood as branches were moved overhead, followed by the scrape of claws. Bark showered down, and Grace squeezed her eyes shut. She kept them closed as she heard the creature drop down from the lowest branch and land among the crackle of dry leaves. She heard his movements as he crossed the clearing, retrieved whatever he had killed, sheathed his weapon, and returned to his nest in the branches above. When all traces of the creature had faded from her perception once again, Grace still refused to open her eyes.

Okay, okay, before you guys lynch me, just let me explain. I know the idea of a Yautja speaking French is a little bit ‘WTF?’ but I wanted him to be able to communicate with the women without him magically understanding English or me having to slog through writing a bunch of tedious pantomime. In case you’re wondering, he picked it up while hunting in Paris during the student uprising of 1832.

And if you already guessed about Kelly’s necklace, don’t laugh at me. I thought it was very clever at the time.

Many thanks for the reviews, and by all means keep them coming.

-Zippy