Around us, motorcycle engines revved up, some sounding like old school choppers, roaring like wild beasts. Meanwhile, others, sport bikes screamed a dying woman’s terror.

Dread creeped up my spine like a snake across sand, and I shivered.

“Chort,” Felix yelled in a drill sergeant's timber and pacing, “are from the Russian territories. At least that’s where they breeched. They bring dour misery, and destruction, to anyone who encounters them. Do NOT allow them to influence your emotions. It will only strengthen them. Understood?” he barked and marched toward us, a shotgun appearing from where it was slung to his back.

Just as he reached us, the light shining off the parked cars snapped off. Row by row, the lights dimmed and vanished, as if the cars were swallowed up. Leaving only the racing sounds of motorcycles and the sporadic flash of a headlight.

“Great, it’s the blood sucking Brady Bunch.” Mogwai said emotionlessly and or some reason 1980s movies with bad acting and entirely too many pretty boys on motorcycles popped into my mind.

“What do we do?” I asked as Felix backed toward me and racked a shell into his shotgun.

“Chort aren’t fairy creatures. They’re tough as hell, so you have to make sure you hit something vital because they live and breathe just like anything else. Not to mention they seem to be spun up on Sweet Wax, Which makes my shotgun more of a deterrent than a lethal weapon,” Felix snarled, and at a glance I saw his shooter’s vest held twelve gage rounds, but it all looked like no. 2 water foul shot.

“Yeah, It’s good to see you Felix, but you didn’t really come prepared for bear did you?” I said a nervous laugh squeaking out.

“This isn’t the army, Remington. I rarely load for human targets anymore,” he shot back as I drew the judge and popped in a speed loader of Speer Gold Dot .45 JHP.

“I guess, 230 grain jacketed hallow points will be the pick of the day then,” I responded, and got an eye roll from Mogwai.

“Gun nerds around the world are swooning,” she snarked, but pushed in closer to the people with guns.

“Your new a friend a Liberal?” Felix asked with distaste as he looked this way and that, trying to identify targets.

“No,” Mogwai answered for herself, “Psychopath,” she grinned and pulled out of her tri-fold bag a set of folding three bladed combat claws and extended them.

“What the hell are those?” I asked, bout around us the darkness grew deeper.

“Watch the edges of the shadows,” Felix said and suddenly fired off a shot. The round roared like you’d expect a shotgun to do, but for some reason it didn’t seem like the sound penetrated the darkness. Penetration or not the ten-inch patter scored a hit and one of the goat-like Chort yowled and disappeared into the darkness. Felix pumped another round into the chamber with satisfaction and continued covering his zone of fire.

Mogwai finished strapping on the claws. On her slight frame, the five and a half inch claws looked oversized and, if I’m not going to bullshit you, she looked terrifying. Nothing should look so small and so vicious.

A Chort darted in, swinging a hammer, the same one from the car ride, I was sure. “You think you’ll collect the bounty before me?” It screamed, and Mogwai ducked.

The strike was off balance and failing to land the Chort over rotated. Mog, seeing the motion stayed low and swiped with her claws. The claws bit deep into the haunches of the Chort, and blood splashed out on the ground in front of her.

Crippled the Chort screamed, but Mogwai wasn’t done with it yet. She grinned manically, her eyes nearly a light with fury as she pushed the claws into the goats lower back.

Biting deep, the claws drug against the creature’s spine, and Mog attempted to sever the spine. Her effort failed. Vicious as she was, she was still small, and the weight and size of the creature was more than she could cut through.

The Chort either slipped into fight mode, or just didn’t have any other lizard brain responses because it turned its rear cloven hoof slamming into Mogwai’s upper arm and chest.

A burst of air came from Mogwai, and she flew back into me. Fortunately, I’d been monitoring her movement, so I absorbed the weight into the side of my leg, and at the same time fired a round from The Judge into the Chort’s upper chest.

“What the hell did you do? Feed her after mid-night?” Felix asked as he glance down at Mogwai.

“I’m not even worked up yet,” Mog said, with far less placidly in her voice, but far more breaths between words.

“Besides, Rhett killed him, I just gave him a permanent limp,” Mog said, and for some reason her words hit home.

Knowing it was dead, part of me cheered, but then something happened, and a wave of sorrow and despair washed over me. I felt guilt, guilt like I’d never felt before.

This was the second person I’d killed in so many days. What was I. who was I becoming? I never wanted to hurt people or kill people. I just wanted a freaking night out with the girls, maybe some skinny-wine, and if I got lucky some line dancing to the Cha-Cha slide, or the classic Achy-Breaky Heart. But NO, there I was being assaulted by stinky Russian goat-bikers from another dimension!

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“Watch your front, Rhett, Damn it,” Felix demanded, and as I looked up, I could see the Chort with his GetBack whip swinging at Mogwai.

Mog dodged the first swing, then as the second one came around, she swiped out, severing the whip into two pieces.

The Chort skipped back, and Mog pulled back to our core, then paused. “Shoot him Rhett!” She screamed, but the words seemed like echoes from a far-off TV.

“Rhett, you okay?” Felix asked, then his shotgun roared again and another Chort yowled. While his blasts were effective as maiming the course haired bastards, it wasn’t enough to stop them. Still, between shadows, I could see the occasional red flash as one of the Chort shifted positions.

“Rhett, shoot them!” Mog demanded, and I saw the one I’d been tracking. Hitting him would have been easy, but in my heart, I felt like I shouldn’t.

“Its already hurt, it can’t really do anything-” I said but Mog wasted no time and slashed out with her claws and three ribbons of crimson appeared on the Chort’s brown fur.

“I warned you about their doomy Jedi mind-fuck,” Felix growled and brought the stick of his shotgun around into a Chort’s head.

The Chort let loose a baying laugh, and Felix’s shotgun broke apart into two pieces.

“Butt stroking a Chort in the head? Really big guy? It’s a goat,” Mog admonished him, and jabbed her claws out to keep another at bay.

“Rhett, snap out of it! Either get in the game or give me your stupid gun,” Felix swung his upper receiver at the nearest Chort, managing only a glancing blow.

Looking down at The Judge, I saw how massive it looked in my hands. I’d been told the day I bought it that it was too large of a gun for a girl like me. I was told that it was a gimmick gun, no practical applications, that a girl like me was better off with a Glock.

I remembered that smug salesman as he held out the pink and white designer Glock 9mm, and the annoyed doubt in his eyes.

“No one is taking my gun! No one,” I said as a rage filled me.

"You sneaky little buttheads went after my emotions because you thought I was weak,” I growled and raised the gun and fired.

My round slammed into a Chort sending it rolling off into the darkness, “Fuck Glock! I’m never using a girl gun!”

Mogwai’s jaw dropped and even Felix paused as if baffled.

“You can take, “

BLAM!

“Your Stupid Pink Gun,”

BLAM!

“And Shove it Up Your ass!”

BLAM!

I fired three more times, not sure if I hit anything at all, but any doubt or melancholy evaporated under my rage at the patriarchy!

“What the hell?” Felix said through clenched teeth.

“I think one of them flashed its red rocket at her. She said, pink gun, I don’t know. I think she hates men,” Mog shrugged.

Then strangely I heard thunder from outside of the gloom. Low, at first, then came the whip crack of the report, and I knew it wasn’t a storm. At least not a storm nature produced.

“The gloom is breaking,” Felix said exhilaration showing in his face.

Looking around, I realized he was right. The normal Saturday night street noises were coming up n volume as if someone was cracking up the stereo, and in the background the sound of retreating motorcycles echoed off buildings uptown.

“What happened?” I asked and quickly dumped the empty shells and reloaded.

“I’d say you got ambushed, and were nearly killed by a low-level mob,” a familiar southern voice washed over me like cool whiskey on a hot day.

“I wasn’t ready for them,” Felix said, his eastern Germanic accent thick, nearly Slavic sounding as ground his teeth.

“So, it would appear. But that hardly makes for a great first impression,” Henry glanced at me, and I saw Felix redden a little.

“Henry Holliday?” I asked, looking around until my eyes landed on the lean figure, who stood with his back pressed up against suburban, reloading his M1911 .45s.

“Yes, well. I spotted the herd when they tracked you from your abode. It didn’t take a genius to determine their intent, with the bounty and all,” Henry pushed off the Suburban and walked toward us in a cowboy’s strut that would have half the country girls in the club begging to be his saddle bunny.

“Took your sweet ass time didn’t you cowboy?” Felix said with that same growling voice he’d used with the Chort, but his eyes were twice as hard.

“As I said, I caught them after you left. Following Mogwai in traffic is a rather difficult endeavor for anyone. Fortunately, I could follow the path of dinged cars until I got here, which was easy enough even due to the nature of the poor piloting ability of the natives,” he said, and Mogwai responded with a raised middle finger.

“Sorting out that pocket dimension, now that was a trick,” he explained.

“Good thing you showed up. One of the Chort showed Rhett his red rocket, and she nearly lost her mind. She was spouting off non-sense about pink guns,” Mogwai said, and I wondered when I got an annoying little sister.

“He didn’t flash me, it’s just,” I pause as I realized all their eyes where on me, and I really didn’t have a good explanation.

“You have to understand, the gun shop guy had a pink gun, and it was really cute, but he dissed me, so I got The Judge, and-“

They were all looking at me like I might need a ride in the white van with flashing likes and bars between the back and the driver.

“Oh, to hell with you skunks!” I said and put The Judge away.

Henry lowered his head and adjusted his hat. “Okay, sure. However, I fear I must apologize for not getting a warning to you sooner. I had no idea those vermin would be so hasty. The bounty has only been staked for a few hours.”

“What bounty?” I protested.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. No wait, I’m the bounty hunter,” I felt my heart sink as I asked, but I almost didn’t want the answer.

Henry looked at Felix, who suddenly found his shoes very interesting. “I was coming to tell her,” he said, and Henry shot him a look.

“I was, I was. The Chort just found her first. They must have a tracking spell on her!” Felix said.

“No one was close to her,” Mogwai said passively as she wiped her claws on the body of one of the dead Chort.

“More likely, the GPS locator for Mogwai’s Uber account,” Henry said, as he put his guns away and glanced around at the bodies.

“Cops should be here soon,” I said, but Felix was already shaking his bald head.

“Maybe they heard the last few shots, but I doubt it. The Malaise spell they were using was pulling us into pocket dimension consisting of gloom and sickness. No sound was heard,” Felix said confidently, though his accent was growing thicker with his stress.

“The 1911 is an elegant weapon, for certain, but it’s hardly sound suppressed,” Henry said as he dug out a small leather notepad and started flipping through it.

“However, the local constabulary received no telephonic communications. Of that I am certain,” Henry said and moved his hands around all funny for a second. To my amazement the bodies of the Chort’s dimmed and vanished.

Felix’s eyes bugged out a rapidly flashed between Henry and me,” That wasn’t wise.”

“Okay this is insane!” I said and headed for Mogwai’s car.

“Oh, come now, Ms. Remington. You killed a Succubus, you just fought the Chort’s, and a little translocation turns the tides?” Henry drawled in an amused tone.

Spinning, I turned on him and marched back. “I don’t want nothing to do with all this!” I yelled.

“And here you are, perfumed with gun smoke and wrath,” he smiled.