The three of them spread out as they moved.
Not randomly — deliberately, each one angling to cut off a different direction, working the position of the street with the quiet efficiency of things that had done this before. By the time I came to senses all three already surrounded me.
There was nowhere to go.
I turned slowly, keeping all of them in my peripheral view, and accepted the situation for what it was.
I am completely screwed.
One had been enough. One had nearly finished me, and I'd needed something I still didn't understand to pull through it. Now there were three more, fresher than I was, and I was standing here with shaking hands and a chest that still felt strange from whatever had just happened inside it.
A thought drifted through my mind, almost amused in its own tired way.
Am I cursed? Is this what happens when you absorb a demon — the universe just starts sending things to your address?
I didn't know how close I was to the truth of that. That was a conversation for another time.
I rolled my shoulders. Pushed the exhaustion down as far as it would go.
Okay. Think.
Escaping clean wasn't happening — I'd already let go of that. But dying here wasn't an option I was willing to accept either. Not like this. Not to a pack of things I couldn't even properly name, on a quiet street, after everything that had already happened today.
I killed a demon. An actual demon.
I was not going out to a group of oversized, smoke-covered mutts.
I set my feet and started working through the problem — which one to move on first, how to keep the other two in sight, whether the energy from before would come back if I needed it or whether that had been a one-time thing I'd already used up —
White light crossed the street faster than I could follow.
Then again. Then again.
Each of the three creatures dropped in rapid sequence — clean, precise, no wasted motion. The whole thing took about four seconds.
I stood very still.
The street was quiet again. Three bodies on the ground, smoke already beginning to thin at the edges of their shapes.
I turned slowly to find where it had come from.
Above me, on the roof of the building at the end of the street, a figure stood at the edge looking down. The lamplight reached her just enough. Platinum blonde hair. A dark fitted outfit — tactical, practical, nothing unnecessary about it. She looked at the scene below with the calm expression of someone who had just completed a minor errand.
Then she dropped from the roof.
Two stories. She landed in front of me without stumbling, knees barely bending on impact, and straightened up like it was nothing worth mentioning.
I'm not going to pretend I handled that moment with particular composure.
I'd had my share of interactions with girls throughout high school — I wasn't completely hopeless, I'd like to think. But not one of them had ever dropped from a rooftop to save my life after casually eliminating three creatures I'd been genuinely struggling against.(I dealt with one already)
That was a new category of person entirely.
She didn't look at me. Not really.
She walked past me without a word and moved to the nearest body. Crouched beside it. The same violet sphere I'd seen rise from the creature I killed earlier lifted from this one too — soft, hovering briefly — and was drawn into her. She moved to the next. Then the next.
Methodical. Unhurried. Like she was completing something routine.
When she'd finished with all three she finally turned to face me.
Grey eyes.
A beautiful, unfamiliar face that didn't try to impress but did anyway.
She was lean but fit, with just the right curves, standing at about 5'9 — balanced, composed, completely at ease in the silence of the street.
She looked at me the way someone looks at a form they need to fill out.
"Name and batch," she said. "Name and year."
I blinked once. "What?"
"Your name. Your year. Which academy."
Her voice was even, flat in the way of someone used to being answered quickly. No hesitation, no small talk buffer.
"Redcrest High," I said automatically. "Graduating batch."
Something shifted in her expression — subtle, precise. Not surprise exactly. More like a calculation updating.
"Redcrest High," she repeated. "Is that a new academy? I wasn't aware this region had a school for hunters."
I stared at her.
"A school for… what?"
She studied me then. Properly this time. Not a glance — an evaluation. Her eyes moved once, quickly, taking in details I wasn't aware I was presenting.
Then something settled behind her gaze.
"You're not a hunter."
Not a question.
"I don't even know what that is," I admitted. "I was walking home. They came out of nowhere."
Her eyes lingered on me for a second longer, as if confirming something internally. Then she exhaled slowly through her nose, decision made.
"Your number," she said, holding out her hand.
It took me a moment to process that this extremely composed, slightly dangerous stranger had just asked for my phone number in the middle of a street with four dead monsters lying around us.
"That's… direct," I said before I could stop myself.
One corner of her mouth moved — not quite a smile, but close enough to acknowledge the comment.
"We don't usually have the luxury of indirect," she replied.
Fair enough.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and unlocked it. My hands were still not entirely steady, which felt slightly embarrassing given that she had just eliminated three creatures in the time it took me to blink.
She took the phone lightly, fingers quick and precise as she entered the number. She didn't hesitate, didn't double-check with uncertainty — just typed, saved, and paused for a fraction of a second as if committing something to memory.
Then she handed it back.
"I'll contact you," she said. "Go home. Stay inside tonight."
That was apparently the full briefing.
"Wait," I said, because there were approximately a thousand questions competing for first place in my head. "Hunter? Those things? The — whatever this is? You can't just—"
"I can," she said calmly. "And I am."
That same almost-smile flickered again — brief, controlled.
"You've already had enough information for one night."
That… was difficult to argue with.
Still —
"At least tell me your name?"
A pause.
"Alice" she said.
Then she stepped back once.
And she was gone.
Not walked away — gone.
Between one breath and the next she had simply stopped being there. No sound. No motion I could track. No visual trick I could follow after the fact.
Just empty air where she had been standing and the distant hum of the lamplight filling in the silence she left behind.
I stood there for a moment.
Four bodies on the ground.
A street that looked completely normal again if you didn't look too closely.
A phone in my hand with a number in it that hadn't been there ten seconds ago.
"Great," I muttered. "More questions."
I looked down at the contact screen. No name saved. Just the number.
Looked at the space where she had been standing.
"At least she was easy on the eyes," I thought, already starting to walk. "Considerably better company than the hyenas. That part I'll take."
I slipped the phone back into my pocket and headed home.