The Wicked Woods Read online

  It was nice to see that, in some respects, schools were the same everywhere. The cafeteria was a large space made smaller by the number of tables stuffed into it, and one look at some of the students’ faces told her that the food was going to be only just the right side of inedible. Briony grabbed a tray, and ended up with something generously described as spaghetti bolognaise. They ignored her request for extra garlic.

  Briony looked around for somewhere to sit, and found that things were familiar in another respect too. The school’s inhabitants clustered in little clumps and cliques that split along lines Briony could pick out easily. The jocks from the football team occupied a couple of tables shoved together, not far from a group of pretty girls who had to be cheerleaders. A set of geeky-looking kids sat further off, apparently arguing about some computer game Briony had never heard of. A couple of girls with flute cases bolted their food so that they could get to some kind of band practice.

  There were some Goths in one corner. Briony avoided them instinctively. After all, in a place like this, what kind of person wanted to dress like a wannabe member of the walking dead? Briony found herself thinking of her great aunt’s warning that the dangerous ones were the ones where you couldn’t tell, but she suspected that in at least some cases you definitely could.

  Inevitably, Briony found herself gravitating towards the group that looked like they were cheerleaders. It was where she fit in, after all. At her old school, she would have been sitting in the middle of a group like that, easily the prettiest girl in her class, with plenty of friends around her. She wouldn’t have been standing around, looking for the spot where she fit in, because she would already have known.

  Briony made it to the edge of the little group before one of them detached herself from the conversation to intercept her. She was dark-haired, blue-eyed, and expensively dressed. Just her shoes would have cost as much as Briony’s entire outfit, even if Briony hadn’t been looking quite so bedraggled from lack of sleep. Just from the way the other girls looked at the rich girl, Briony could tell that she was in charge. It was important at times like these to be confident and outgoing, even if you mostly felt tired. Briony did her best.

  “Hi, I’m Briony.”

  “Oh, how sweet, the weird new girl wants to sit with us.” It was not a promising beginning. “Well, I’m Pepper Freeman.”

  She said it like she expected that Briony would have heard of her already. Briony looked around at the rest of the group. They seemed to be content to watch the unfolding show.

  “You’re must be… let’s see… head cheerleader? You look the type.” It wasn’t the most diplomatic way of putting it, but then, Briony was a bit too tired for that kind of thing.

  “Of course I’m head cheerleader. And if we’re talking about types, what’s yours?” she got hold of Briony’s pencil cross, which had slipped out from under her dress and was in plain view. “Some kind of low budget Goth, maybe? Perhaps a weird hybrid of Goth and Nerd. Not exactly the most elegant of fashion statements, is it?”

  “Yeah,” said someone in the back, obviously Pepper’s groupie. Briony considered a comment on the other girl’s jewelry. It was certainly easy to spot. What kind of person wore what looked like genuine diamond earrings to school? Someone, or more likely her father’s credit card, had been very generous.

  “Look,” Briony said, “I don’t want trouble, I just want to eat my lunch.”

  “Then go somewhere and eat it, weird girl.” Pepper held her nose. “Presumably, you’ll fit in somewhere people can’t smell that garlic breath.”

  That got a laugh from the other girls. Of course it did. When your official head mean girl gave you the signal that you should be laughing at someone, you laughed at them, because the alternative was finding yourself as her next target. Briony knew how it worked. She was the Pepper Freeman at her old school, but she was never that mean…was she? Hopefully not. That didn’t make her feel any better as the laugh rolled out over her, though.

  If she hadn’t been feeling so tired, she might have been able to come up with some witty comeback that would have put Pepper Freeman in her place. If she hadn’t had enough garlic in her to stun passers-by, she would certainly have been able to at least reach out to them. It wouldn’t have taken much. It never did. As it was though, Briony found herself beating a hasty retreat to eat her lunch on her own, in that corner of the cafeteria that seemed to be reserved for loners and misfits. She didn’t even try fitting in with one of the other groups. There didn’t seem to be much point.

  After lunch, she was subjected to physics and English. Things didn’t get much better. Briony did her best, but her concentration waned when faced with the onslaught of sleep deprivation. And news of her brief conversation with the head cheerleader had obviously gotten round. Girls who thought that they fit in with that clique, or at least that they should, didn’t bother hiding their smirks as they looked at Briony. More than a few made their own comments about garlic, just quietly enough that the teacher didn’t hear.

  Briony had the worst school day in her life. She couldn’t just rise above it all, because the comments and the looks kept coming. She couldn’t react either, because the moment she opened her mouth to do so, a teacher would give her a stern “you don’t want to get into trouble on your first day” look. The only thing she could really do was sit there and try not to let any of her frustration show.

  Briony was so grateful for the final bell that she practically sighed with relief. She wanted to run straight to her great aunt’s car, but she didn’t. Briony forced herself to walk slowly and confidently. The more scared she looked, the more people would start to think of her as an easy victim. That would only make things worse. You couldn’t let fear control you.

  Of course, Briony realized she had been doing exactly that all day. All that stuff with the garlic had just been crazy. And not being able to calm down enough to sleep was about the worst move she could have made. Fear, specifically the fear of vampires, had ended up making her a social misfit. At this rate, she would be lucky if her classmates ever accepted her. She shook her head, removing her improvised cross and vowing to find a breath mint at the first opportunity. So vampires were real, so what? She still had to go to school. She still had to find a way to fit in. If she let fear rule her, Briony knew that she might never have a social life again.

  Her decision made, Briony felt a lot happier. Things would be better tomorrow. Almost certainly. Even so, she was immensely happy when she finally slid into the passenger seat of the battered old Ford Aunt Sophie drove. Her great aunt looked Briony over with an expression that said she had a pretty good idea of exactly how Briony’s day had gone. Even so, she smiled.

  “Rough day, darling? Well, I thought, this being your first day and all, I should take you out to celebrate anyway. Maybe it will make you feel better.”

  Briony was too tired to answer as Aunt Sophie put the car in gear and set off. Wherever they were going, it had to be better than this.

  Chapter 2

  Aunt Sophie’s treat turned out to be a visit to a diner called George’s, which was a tidy, neat little place close to the center of Wicked. Aunt Sophie led Briony inside, and Briony found herself staring at some of the photos on the wall, which seemed to encompass every famous, nearly famous, and not at all famous person who had visited the town in the last century or so.

  “Ignore them,” Aunt Sophie said, following Briony’s gaze. “George got them at a garage sale so that he could give this place a sense of history. He actually opened it fifteen years ago. I know. I was there.”

  “You were indeed.” A good-looking man in his early fifties stepped out from what was probably a kitchen to greet them. His greying hair was cut so short that Briony just knew he had been in the military at some point, and his physique seemed to bear it out. This was not someone who had let himself slow down as he aged. “Hello, Sophie. How’s the most beautiful woman in Wicked?”

  Briony watched her great aunt roll her eyes.
“Briony, I would like you to meet my friend George. Do your best to ignore him. I only put up with him because he also happens to make some of the best food in town.”

  The man grinned. “Why, is that a compliment? Who would have thought it? Now, what can I get the two of you today?”

  They had burgers and milkshakes, sitting at the counter to eat them. Both were indeed delicious, though Briony found herself having to deal with the sight of her aunt attacking her burger with a level of enthusiasm that Briony suspected you probably weren’t supposed to see in elegant older ladies.

  While they ate, George wandered off to serve other customers, and there were certainly plenty of those. A red-headed waitress in her twenties, whom Aunt Sophie greeted as Jill, handled most of them, but there always seemed to be more. Apparently, news about the quality of the food had spread. Even so, George kept coming back to chat with the pair of them, asking polite questions of Briony, but mostly keeping up the kind of running argument with Aunt Sophie that you generally only got between people who had been friends for years. Finally though, he got around to asking the one question Briony had kind of been hoping to avoid.

  “So, how were things on your first day at the school?”

  Briony thought about lying, just to be polite, but her great aunt was watching her too, and Aunt Sophie had always been able to tell when she wasn’t telling the truth.

  “It was,” she declared at last, “the single worst day of my life, socially, at least.”

  “Oh?” George had acquired a milkshake glass, which he started polishing. Briony wasn’t sure if it really needed cleaning, or if he had just decided that it was the kind of thing people should do while they were listening to other people’s troubles. “What happened?”

  “Um…” Briony wasn’t sure how an explanation involving vampires would go until Aunt Sophie patted her on the arm.

  “It’s all right, Briony. George knows as much about these things as I do. Or he likes to think he does, at least.”

  “This from the woman who has been working on the idea of ecumenical holy water?”

  “It might work.”

  Briony did her best to explain, if only to cut off the beginnings of the banter. She spent much of the explanation fighting the urge to blush with embarrassment. Now that she came to explain them to someone else, the things she had done today did indeed seem more than a little stupid. She explained about the events of the previous night, keeping her voice low until Aunt Sophie pointed out that no one else would believe what they heard, even if they did overhear something they shouldn’t.

  After that, Briony talked normally, explaining about the garlic and the improvised crucifix, the falling asleep in class and the name-calling. When she got to the part with the head cheerleader, George raised an eyebrow.

  “This would be Pepper Freeman? She comes in here sometimes. Always looking round to make sure someone is watching her. My guess is that she didn’t like the potential competition.”

  “Competition?” Briony said. “I had garlic breath.”

  George shrugged. “Well, whatever. I hope you won’t let it put you off, anyway.”

  “Yes, Briony,” Aunt Sophie put in. “You mustn’t let one bad day ruin your academic career.”

  Briony shook her head. She didn’t have any plans to let that happen. “I’ll be fine. I just need to find some ways of making sure I don’t get bitten by vampires that don’t include me looking like a total idiot to the rest of the school.”

  “There’s worse than that out…” George began. Aunt Sophie stopped him with a look. “What?”

  “My niece barely slept last night, and you want to tell her horror stories about your past?”

  Briony shook her head. “I don’t mind, Aunt Sophie. I think I’m probably going to be tired enough to sleep tonight no matter what happens. Besides, it can’t be any worse than last night.”

  Aunt Sophie gave her a long look. “Oh, how I wish that were true, child. Still, we probably should come up with some ideas that don’t leave you a social outcast. Ah, I remember my first day at school. This horrid boy insisted on following me around, making fun of the way I had my hair.”

  “What happened?” Briony asked. “What did you do about him?”

  “Oh, things eventually settled down with Peter once I married him. Of course, that’s not much of a help to you. George, should we take this into your office?”

  The diner owner nodded. “Jill, are you okay to take care of things out here for a few minutes?”

  “Sure,” the waitress said, “just remember that it’s not long till I get off for the afternoon. I have to pick up Sarah from the crèche.”

  George nodded, leading the way back behind the counter and into a small office, kept with the kind of neatness that matched his haircut. Not a scrap of paper looked to be out of place on the desk off to one side, while two chairs were aligned perfectly with it. A couple of framed certificates indicated prizes the restaurant had won for the quality of its food.

  Only a couple of points didn’t really fit in. The wooden panels that lined the room looked like they’d been added as an afterthought. More oddly, a stuffed moose’s head sat on the wall opposite the desk, gazing down on events with what Briony thought was a rather mournful expression.

  “Shut the door,” George instructed, and Briony did so. Aunt Sophie smiled the secret smile of someone who knew what was coming next, and who was looking forward to seeing the expression on her niece’s face when it did.

  George reached up to the moose, twisting one antler. There was a click, a whir, and a couple of the panels on the wall slid back to reveal a high tech cubby hole filled with enough weapons to arm most of the town. There were crossbows with silver quarrels. There were stakes. There were silver-bladed knives and even a few swords. Other objects caught Briony’s eye. A neat stack of bibles sat next to a collection of silver crosses, while jars of herbs stood labelled off to one side.

  On the backs of the panels that had swung back, there were maps and hand-drawn diagrams. One purported to show the weaknesses of werewolves, with arrows pointing to the eyes, the throat, the heart, and other easy to hurt spots. There weren’t many. A map detailed the area around Wicked, pointing out paths through the woods, the locations of caches of weapons and supplies, the known hunting grounds of supernatural creatures, and other items of interest.

  To Briony, it was all interesting. Interesting, and more than a little frightening.

  “You have all this in here and nobody knows about it? People don’t know about the vampires?”

  “Some do,” Aunt Sophie told her. “George’s cook and pot washer both know, and so does Jill, whom you saw outside. Peter did, obviously, and there are a few others.”

  “All the members of the Wicked Woods Preservation Society, for example,” George said. “It’s a very important society around here, but people outside of the society don’t get we are more interested in preserving the people of Wicked and the surrounding woods than its historic buildings.”

  “They just don’t want to face up to what’s around them,” Aunt Sophie said. She sounded quite dismissive. “But then, I suppose it can be dangerous if you do.”

  It’s why all the members carry these.” George picked up one of the crucifixes. It seemed a little bulky for its size as Briony held it.

  “There’s more to this than meets the eye, isn’t there?” she guessed. George and her great aunt gave her pleased looks.

  “The cross is silver,” Aunt Sophie explained, “so that it’s useful against werewolves. The center is hollow, containing a vial of holy water which you can uncap.”

  George flipped open the top. “There’s also vervain below the vial,” he explained. “That makes it harder for anything to control your mind. Harder, but not impossible. And there’s one last feature that is especially useful.” He pressed something on the cross, and the end extended by several inches. It looked sharp. “A stake. More than long enough to reach the heart.”

  B
riony looked at the device for several seconds before she spoke. “I guess that’s a lot better than improvising something out of pencils.”

  “It is,” Aunt Sophie said, taking the pendant from George and hanging it on a silver chain. When she was done, it looked like nothing more than a slightly bulky crucifix once again. “Which is why I would like you to wear it, Briony.”

  Briony stood still while her great aunt hung it around her neck, letting it fall out of sight under Briony’s sweater. The metal lay cool against her skin. Somehow, just wearing it made her feel a lot safer.

  “There,” Aunt Sophie said. “That should keep you a lot safer than any garlic would, and you’ll probably be a lot more popular too. For future reference, most vampires don’t care one way or the other about garlic. Not everything you’ve heard about them will be correct.”

  “Then what is?” Briony asked. “I mean, if one comes at me, how do I kill it?”

  “Would you listen to her?” George said, with a widening grin. “Already, she’s wondering how to kill them. You have picked well here, Sophie.”

  “Picked me for what?” Briony asked. The other two ignored her.

  Aunt Sophie nodded. “I know. The girl is a natural. But then, it’s in her blood.”

  “Picked me for what?” Briony insisted.

  Her great aunt shrugged. “Why, to be my replacement as a vampire hunter, of course, Briony. It’s what we do, after all.”

  Chapter 3

  Aunt Sophie caught the slightly shocked expression on Briony’s face, because she took her by the arm.

  “Perhaps I should explain. Come and sit down, Briony.”

  Briony did as her great aunt had asked her, taking the chair on the far side of George’s desk. The diner owner, meanwhile, twisted the moose’s horn again, and the secret compartment in his office closed up so completely that Briony could hardly believe it had been there at all.