“Annywaay,” I said, gathering everyone’s attention, “They brought Toni in and put her in a cell between Caeco and I. Then Chris and Tanya and Awasos, which is the big bear-wolf—” They all nodded, having seen the television and not been under rocks lately “—arrived and things went crazy. They sent an agent in to hold Toni hostage and we… stopped her,” I finished with a shrug.
“You two stopped an AIR agent?” Ariel asked, eyes wide. “Just the two of you?”
“Yeah, what, you don’t believe me? I’ll call Chris if you want?” I asked, annoyed at her disbelief.
“No, no, no, that’s fine. It’s just I’ve seen AIR agents before and I doubt they would send a weak one to guard an important hostage, that’s all,” Ariel said quickly.
“That’s right, you’ve worked for Oracle before, haven’t you?” Caeco asked
“She puts the oracle in Oracle,” Ashley interjected.
“Right, precognition. How’s that work out?” I asked.
“I’m pretty good at certain events, like portal openings and demon outbreaks. Not so good at winning the lottery or anything,” she said shyly.
“Wait, I’m still stuck on the two of you beating a trained assassin,” Jetta commented.
“I thought warlocks were pushovers?”
Another glance at Caeco, catching her minute headshake. “That’s the stereotype,” I agreed. “But any witch has some skills, and Caeco’s kung fu is very strong.”
Jetta’s head snapped around to Caeco. “You know kung fu?”
My deadly girl shrugged and nodded, but I wanted the focus off me. “—and jiu-jitsu, karate, escrima, penjat-silat, aikido, muay tai, and wing chun,” I offered, earning myself a glare from Caeco.
“No way? Will you teach me?” Jetta asked, breathless. Both Ariel and Ashley leaned forward, almost simultaneously saying, “Me too.”
“I thought you were hunters?” Caeco asked Jetta and Mack, confused by all the martial arts enthusiasm.
“We are, but we’ve never had any formal fight training,” Mack answered.
“If we have free time, I guess we could do some classes,” she said, then whipped her head around to me, “but you’re teaching the Krav Maga portions.”
To the others, she explained. “Mr. Beanpole here has been instructing Krav Maga for several years now.”
“What’s Krav Maga?” Ariel asked.
“Israeli army self-defense,” Ashley said, then went on at our questioning expressions, “What? My dad has studied a lot of martial arts too and shown me some. But I want to learn more.”
“We can start tomorrow, after everyone gets their books and schedules figured out,” Caeco said. “But understand, I believe Mr. Jenks will be teaching us some skills as well.”
Amid the excitement, I realized we had forgotten a topic.
“So just what do you two hunt?” I asked Jetta and Mack.
They exchanged a glance of their own before Mack turned back to the group.
“A couple of years ago, our parents went to the far edge of our property where we had a little cabin, for a weekend. They would do little getaways like that because our horse farm kept them fully occupied and we could radio them if there was a problem. Jetta and I were both old enough to handle the horses and our uncle was close by if we needed him.
“They didn’t come back on Monday, so we called Uncle Pete and we all rode out to the cabin. It was torn to shreds, they were torn to shreds, and Uncle Pete knew what had done it.”
“Werewolves?” Arial guessed.
“Yeah, apparently they have lived in the Tennessee Mountains for generations and he was aware that a pack had occasionally traveled through our territory. But they never bothered humans and never really came near our property before. This group was different. All the tracks were big, so it was just the males. We helped him track them down. This pack was fucked up, like a bad biker gang or something. They were all criminals, treated their women like shit, and liked to hunt humans. Uncle Pete said that wasn’t how the other weres he had known of had been. So we hunted them, one by one. Pete helped us with the first couple but then he had a heart attack and passed on. So we went on by ourselves. Wiped out almost the whole pack. Forced them to run south to North Carolina and join another pack. But the cops and FBI got involved and then the Alpha of the pack we were hunting caught