Emily blinked out of her bored stupor as a hand waved in her face. She looked up from where she had been staring vaguely in the direction of the laughing, dancing, and drinking around the fire pit and pulled down her headphones. “Hey Mira,” she greeted. She had tried to inject some enthusiasm into her voice, but her tone had unfortunately still come across disinterested. Putting in a bit more effort, she added, “What’s up?”
“You look like you’re having a world of fun,” her friend sarcastically noted. “Don’t want to join in on the fun?”
“I am having fun.”
Mira smirked as she plopped down onto the log next to Emily. “You think I don’t know you’d be perfectly happy sitting in the middle of a dump as long as you have your music?”
“I dunno about that,” Emily remarked, a hint of a smile creeping onto her face. “Might be I couldn’t get into the right headspace with all that awful smell around the place.”
They shared a laugh together before settling down and just watching the others for a minute. Emily wasn’t sure if the campsite they were at was properly rented out or who had done it if it was, but what she did know was clean up in the morning would be hell. Someone had managed to acquire beer and wine boxes for the party, but nobody had designated a spot for trash collection. That meant that as the cans and boxes had been emptied, they had been flippantly tossed aside wherever was convenient and out of the way at the time, and as more people had begun dancing, the issue had been compounded by them kicking those trash even further away from the fire pit. Things would only get messier when everyone broke out paper plates and plastic cutlery to begin eating the chili and pig spit still roasting over the fire.
“So why did you come along?” Mira eventually asked, dispelling the silence that had hung between them as they watched those partying around the fire.
Emily shrugged then reached down to pluck up the beer on the ground by her feet and take a sip. Slowly working away at it had been enough to ward off anyone from thinking she wasn’t drinking at all and kicking up a fuss, and the slow pace meant she wasn’t so much as buzzed. “This sort of thing may not be my taste, but it’s still better than spending New Year’s Eve with the fosters.”
She sluggishly swirled the can around for a second, the liquid inside sloshing against the aluminum, then added, “Besides, it is your thing, and I can live a bit vicariously through you.”
Mira hummed consideringly. “Honestly I was surprised they approved this.”
Emily snorted. “Who says they did?”
That earned her a sharp glance. “Ems.”
“They’re shittastic, Mira. Only in it for the paycheck.” She frowned and glanced down at the beer can. She hadn’t meant to say that. Perhaps she was more buzzed than she had thought.
“Still! They’re a roof over your head, and that’s better than nothing.”
“Don’t worry about it. Go have fun, okay? I’m fine here,” Emily said, trying to divert focus elsewhere. Her latest foster parents were hardly the sort of topic she wanted to discuss tonight of all nights. Ringing in the new year was supposed to be the time when you put your past behind you and focused on the upcoming year—on the future.
“Ems…”
Dammit. She had come along to escape for the night, to forget her shitty life and lose herself in her friend having fun. She hadn’t meant to drag the focus onto her, and now that she had, she’d probably ruined the evening for herself and was afraid she might have done the same to Mira. She wracked her brain, trying to figure out how to fix things and slip back into the comfortable dynamic they had been settled in just a few minutes ago, but whether because of the alcohol or else because of her own inadequacies, she was drawing a blank.
“Mira,” she started to say, fishing for something that could rectify her mistake. “I—”
The music abruptly cut off with the sound of crunching metal, and a voice boomed, “Well doesn’t this look like fun?”
Assembled teens were initially angry at the interruption, but that all changed the moment everyone’s eyes landed on the interlopers who had obliterated the sound system. There were five of them, three men and two women, and they were all similarly dressed in primal attire of cloth, bandages, and warpaint. It was the primary focus of their outfits, however, that made Emily’s blood run cold. Bones ranging in size from small teeth up to femurs, most carved into sharp, jagged points and all strung together in arrangements that advertised the brutality of those wearing them. There was no mistaking who these people were.
“Teeth,” she hissed at Mira as loud as she dared as the three of the villains spread out, positioning themselves so they formed a rough triangle around the now cowering teens, while two of them ambled straight into the midst of the teens on a path towards the fire. With as far away from the gathering as Emily and Mira were, they may not have been noticed. Could they sneak away? Mira had driven her car to get them here—did she have the keys on her?
“It’s so good to see today’s youth engaging in a bit of revelry, don’t you think?” the man who had spoken before said as he and one of the women reached the fire pit. Sharpened bones were arranged around his head like the jaws of a predator clamping down on his face. “Still, this is all so lacking. Where is the bloodshed? On a special night like this, you should all be testing your mettle against each other!”
“Do you have your keys?” Emily frantically whispered to Mira as she put a hand on her friend’s back and pushed her down to reduce visibility of them.
“Hm, the food is lacking too,” the woman complained as she ladled some chili and slurped it up.
“What?” Mira replied, her voice hushed, confused, and above all else terrified.
Emily couldn’t blame her. Everyone for states around knew about the Teeth and the atrocities they committed. Abductions, brutalized bodies, desecrated buildings… Their reputation was bad enough that it didn’t matter if the Teeth actively claimed responsibility for a particular event—if it was barbaric enough, it was inevitably attributed to them.
“Well don’t fret because now that we’re here, things are going to get really interesting,” the man darkly announced, his lips pulling back into a tooth smile made all the eerier by the teeth framing his head. “See, we’re going to play a little game.”
“Do you have your goddamn keys?”
The woman who had tasted the chili dropped the ladle on the ground and kicked it at a quivering girl with a sneer. She nudged the man, saying, “Don’t forget Heavensword wants the site cleared out soon, Spurt.”
“Uh. I… I… I dunno, uh—”
He chuckled. “A quick game then.”
Spurt pointed a finger into the woods, and a bolt of something difficult to see shot out of it at a blistering pace. It struck a tree a hundred feet or so away from Emily, and it immediately and violently exploded. A hail of fragmented pieces of wood rocketed outward in the wake of the blast, and on instinct, she tried to shove Mira and herself to the ground. It was too little too late, and a pike clipped her upper arm, tearing through her jacket and sending pain rippling through the area. She narrowly avoided the urge to yelp in pain, but she might as well have, since Mira screamed in agony when a similar pike slammed into her cheekbone, shattering it and clipping her eyes, which began to gush blood.
The teens by the fire scattered. Some of them tripped over their haphazardly distributed trash and fell to the ground, trampled by the very people that had been partying with just a little bit ago. One girl who had been slow on her feet, the one the ladle had been kicked at earlier, was gutted when the woman drew the bracer of sharpened bones across her other arm and a blade of blood shot out of the resulting cuts through her victim’s belly. A couple of the boys dove into their tents, and one produced a knife that gleamed in the flickering firelight while the other procured a darker object that must have been a gun with how he took aim at the Teeth member closest to them, who had been framing the perimeter but was now advancing on them.
Emily didn’t catch any more than that as she returned her attention to her friend, who she was trying to drag to her feet so they could flee. “C’mon, we’ve gotta run!”
Mira scrambled upright, and together the two of them fled into the woods, close behind some of the others that had gotten a jump start by being on their feet. Another bolt from the cape flew past, and they hastily took cover behind the tree they had been passing, just barely managing to avoid a shotgun burst of splinters and larger hunks of wood that sailed through where they had been moments prior. All too aware that their cover could just as easily become their death sentence, Emily grabbed Mira’s hand and resumed sprinting through the woods.
It was the time of year darkness descended early, and with the moon waning overhead, it was nearly impossible to see. The night had already almost swallowed up the fire back at the campsite, and Emily began to lose the battle with the terror welling up in her. Where were the others? Where were the Teeth? Would they get lost in the woods, escaping the Teeth only to die of starvation? And Mira, she needed medical treatment immediately—what if she bled out?
“Wait, stop!” Mira said, grabbing Emily’s hand and tugging her abruptly to the side.
“What are you doing?!” Emily replied far too loudly, the fear overwhelming her thoughts.
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What would happen to them if they were caught? The cape with the blood power had complained the food was poor. What if the abductions were about more than just getting bones for their costumes—what if the Teeth were cannibals who ate their victims? Would they be raped before their throats were slit and the monsters painted themselves with the blood? Would they be tortured for fun, made to suffer unimaginable pain for hours?
“Keep quiet!” Mira hissed at Emily. Despite the awful damage to her face, which was half covered in the blood oozing out of her wound, her other eye had a deadly serious look in it as she brandished a small ring of keys. “I do have my keys. We need to get to the cars and get the fuck out of here.”
“The cars? Are you nuts?” Yes, that had been Emily’s idea before, but now? They had been running for a couple minutes and hadn’t passed the gravel parking lot. That meant they had gone the wrong way. And with darkness pervading the woods, there was only one option they had for finding their way to them. “We’d have to go back.”
“It’s that or get lost in the middle of a goddamn state forest,” she reasoned, grunting a bit as she wiped at her wounded eye. “We’ll have to risk it.”
“No—no way!” Emily refused, resisting when Mira tugged on her hand to follow. There were still explosions and screams happening off in the distance, but that didn’t mean all of the Teeth were in that one place. “We’ve got to run before—”
Another anguished scream tore its way out of Mira’s mouth, and Emily shrieked in horror when the female cape’s face slipped into the moonlight, her lips curled back off of bared teeth. Mira fell to the ground, doubtlessly having been stabbed somewhere Emily couldn’t see, and she was running an instant later, leaving her friend for dead.
“It’s useless running, you know!” the cape called out, her voice not that far behind Emily. She had to be running after her, but she didn’t sound winded in the slightest. “A wound like that on your arm? Might as well be holding a neon sign for me!”
My arm? Emily thought as she rounded a tree and narrowly avoided colliding with another of the Teeth, who had been running towards them. She didn’t so much as spare a glance at him as her thoughts raced, searching for a way out as her muscles and lungs began to scream at her. She had always considered herself fit—it was hard to get overweight when your foster parents fed you practically nothing—but apparently all of that meant dick when you were running for your life from a band of murderous sociopaths who may or may not eat people.
A tree nearby unexpectedly exploded, and she screamed in pain as shards of wood slammed into her, sending her crashing to the ground. She struggled to rush back to her feet, but that sent a jet of pain searing through her right leg, which gave out under her. Another tree exploded, and Emily began to hyperventilate. The cape who had killed Mira had been right behind her, and the cape making the trees explode might just hit her. She was going to be tortured and killed and with Mira gone, every last person who gave an actual fuck about her was gone.
The moonlight illuminated the outline of the frame standing over her, their features cast in shadow, and Emily screamed as they drew back their hand.
The world was full of shadows and tiny dots of light being swallowed up in it, fighting back as best they could. But try as they might, each star began to fade one after the other as the shadows began to creep over everything, engulfing entire worlds in darkness. Just when she thought all hope was lost, two creatures of light entered the stage and cast back the shadows. She wanted that—the power to bring light where before there was none—and one of the creatures heard her plea. A speck of luminance, just a tiny portion of their radiance—was almost nothing, but it was something. It was a chance to push back against the encroaching darkness, to bring light to a world where there was none.
Suddenly Emily wasn’t screaming with sound but liquid. The figure above her flailed backwards and away when the liquid hit its chest and burst into flames, but Emily couldn’t stop screaming. In moments, she was surrounded by hell come to life as all of the trees caught fire as they were struck with her liquid. The heat swiftly became overwhelming, and as she tried to pick herself up to flee, she choked on the smoke already filling the air. The coughing fit cut off the stream of liquid from her mouth, and a roar of fury from her left made her head snap to the side. The Teeth member she had run past was rushing towards her with a hand axe coat in blood raised overhead. She screamed in fear, and the liquid burst from her mouth once more, slamming into the man’s face and sending him crashing to the ground, the skin covering his skull already mostly melted away.
The flames were everywhere, and she couldn’t stop screaming as they licked at her skin, heating it to the point it was red and beginning to blister. She needed to stop—she knew the liquid would stop if she could just stop screaming—but the pain of the rapidly developing burns was overwhelming, She was going to—
Emily picked herself up off the ground, confused and disoriented. She screamed when she realized she had been laying in a puddle of burning liquid, and the liquid that streamed from her mouth splashed against her legs, which hadn’t quite gotten out of the way yet. Her pants burst into flame, but where she had been in agony because of the fire before, she now no longer felt the flame. Or rather, she felt it, but it was a pleasant feeling, like being wrapped up in an electric blanket during the winter.
The sound of pained moaning nearby brought Emily’s attention to the felled male Teeth member, who was in a panic trying to roll on the ground to put out the flames, and the cape, who seemed to be recovering from a stupor. Without hesitation she ran. She ran, and ran, and ran until she could only jog, then she kept doing that until she finally stumbled onto a paved road.
The only paved road that should have been nearby was the one the park entrance branched off from, and that meant she wasn’t far from the gas station she and Mira had passed by on the way to the campsite. She looked back over her shoulder and her jaw dropped at the amount of smoke rising into the air above the orange glow of flames illuminating the otherwise dim night while the state forest burned to the ground.
She had done this. The other party-goers—had they made it out alive? Had some of them successfully hidden from the Teeth only to now be choked out and burned to death as the forest fire she had started swept through the area? A sick feeling churned in her gut as she stared at the scene, unable to tear her eyes away, and even though she knew Mira had already been attacked by the female cape, she couldn’t help the thoughts rising up from within her.
I killed Mira. I killed them all.
She wasn’t sure how long she had been standing there when the truck pulled up and a woman jumped out of the driver’s seat, rushing over to help her.
----------------------------------------
There were only two aspects of Emily’s power that she liked. She loved that she was never cold—she probably couldn’t get hot either, but it wasn’t exactly the right season to verify that—and she liked that she couldn’t be harmed by flames.
“Maybe I could be a firefighter,” she mused to herself before taking a bite of bread. “Sounds more noble than being a mercenary.”
It wasn’t the first time she had thought about being a firefighter, but picturing herself actually racing into on fire buildings to rescue people felt downright wrong when her primary power was clearly creating fires. She sighed as she laid herself back against the concrete wall of the pier and set down the loaf she had fished out of the trash earlier. It was frustrating to be eating like this, but she couldn’t precisely beg for money like most homeless people, seeing as she was high school age. The one time she had tried since she had found her way to Brockton Bay, the police had been called to come check on her almost immediately, and she had needed to resort to blocking off an alley with flames to prevent them following and to warn them off trying to come around to catch her instead.
“You could be,” the lady in front of her acknowledged with a nod. She had introduced herself as Faultline, and her hands hadn’t left the shoulders of the two teenage girls standing on either side of her. Both of them were watching her with curious eyes, but the Asian girl kept glancing elsewhere as well, her eyes landing on something unseen and remaining for several moments before inexplicably returning to Emily. “But is that what you want?”
It had been ten days by her count since the incident with the Teeth. The lady who had found her on the road that night had been a tremendous help, especially with getting her clothed after what she had been wearing had damn near been obliterated, but she had been forced to flee when the subject of where Emily lived had come up. Returning to her foster parents in Providence had been out of the question unless she was prepared to answer some questions she didn’t want to think about, much less answer. She imagined trying to fly under the radar in a small town would likely be damn near impossible, and given her starting position east of Providence, there had really only been two options: Boston or Brockton Bay. And with Boston being shinier and better policed—in other words, the sort of place where repeated sightings of a homeless girl might draw more attention than she was prepared to handle—she had settled on the Bay.
“No, I suppose not,” she acknowledged. “How did you track me down? I won’t use the info to run.”
“If you run, then that is your choice to make, and none of us will stop you or track you down any longer,” Faultline answered. “There’s no sense in trying to forcibly recruit you. Either you’re interested or you’re not—being forced into our group would only result in trouble and wasting everyone’s time."
Emily fiddled with her hands for a moment. “You’ll understand if I’m skeptical of that.”
“Being skeptical is healthy. But you had asked a question. Please allow me to explain: You came to our attention when the Dighton Rock State Park was reduced to cinders.”
“Don’t fires like that happen all the time?”
“Yes, but rarely do they happen so quickly. I suspected cape involvement, and a quick check with some local sources of mine turned up your trail. The woman who picked you up said you fled when she asked about your family. Enough truckers at the truck stop heard you asking about rides to the Bay. A bit of bribery turned up the police records of your stunt fleeing when they approached you about your begging.”
Emily sighed. “I didn’t realize I’d been that obvious.”
“You were walking out of a disaster,” Faultline pointed out. “And teenagers aren’t exactly known for being inconspicuous.”
The Asian girl rolled her eyes, and the blonde giggled. An inside joke? These girls were roughly her age, now that she thought about it. Was she a… collector wasn’t the right word, but it was the only one coming to mind. It was easy enough to confirm or refute, at least. “Tell me about your team. Is it just the three of you?”
“No. Our other two members, Gregor and Newter, are at our nightclub, the Palanquin. Are you familiar with the term ‘case-53’?”
“Not really. Should I be?”
“It’s of no consequence. Allow me to explain: Case-53 is the designation given by the PRT to capes with so called ‘monstrous’ bodies who wake up with powers but no memories. Our other members are Case-53s, and as such they would draw unwanted attention traveling with us in public.”
Something about this was tickling Emily’s brain, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. “And these two are?”
Faultline looked down from Emily towards the girl on her right, who piped up, “Labyrinth.”
“Meteor,” the other girl said, clearly distracted by whatever it was she was sensing via her power.
It suddenly clicked. “Faultline’s Crew. Yeah, I thought I had heard of you before. You all attacked that prisoner convoy in Providence—saw you on the news.”
“The one and the same,” Faultline confirmed. “If you need time to think about it, we understand. Please allow us to at least give you the gift of staying at our club a few nights. You can enjoy a proper bed and meals, and you can see what it is like to live and work with us. No commitments necessary. Like I said earlier, forced recruitment is against our interests, if not our morals.”
The promise of a warm bed and meals convinced her. Ten days. That’s all it had taken for her to reach the point she would do damn near anything for creature comforts. Homeless people who had lived on the streets for years of their lives deserved seriously mad praise.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Maybe a proper night’s sleep in a bed will stop all the weird dreams. “I’ll take you up on that trial run.”
Faultline stepped forward, her hand extended for a shake. “Understood. Is there a name we should call you?”
Emily paused, having not considered that. Still, it only took her a few moments to think of a suitable name. After all, she did literally spit fire.
“Spitfire.”