Third Strike by Heather Brewer Page B

in. He was hoping that maybe Paty had a shirt he could wear as well, and that maybe she wouldn’t mind if he took a shower there. As Joss freed his stake from the vampire’s corpse, he heard a sound. Spinning around, he was ready for anything. But what he saw was his cousin Henry, standing there staring at him in disbelief and horror. Not two steps behind him was Kat, looking just a little bit smug and a little bit sad.
    Joss had no idea what to say. He couldn’t explain the vampire’s death any more than he could explain why he was holding the stake. And he certainly hadn’t wanted his cousin to see him like this. It was one thing for Henry to know that Joss was a Slayer. It was a quite another for him to see Joss in action, or at least in the immediate aftermath of a takedown.
    Henry stepped forward and looked from Joss to the vampire and back. At first, Joss thought he was going to say something about what a horrible thing it was that Joss had done, or that maybe he’d ask Joss if the vampire had attacked him. But Henry reacted in a way that, for whatever reason, Joss hadn’t been expecting.
    Without a word, Henry drew his arm back and punched Joss in the gut. Hard. It hurt, but Joss’s Slayer instincts were stronger than pain. Before he knew it, he had Henry by the wrist, twisted around, and pinned with his face against a tree. Kat beat at his back, screaming, “Stop it! You’ll break his arm, Joss!”
    With a shaking breath, Joss released his cousin and stepped back in utter shock at his own actions. He hadn’t meant to grab Henry like that. Who knows what he might have done if Kat hadn’t stopped him?
    â€œHenry, are you okay? Did he hurt you?” Kat looked over Henry’s wrist with obvious upset. She glared at Joss and tried to gently coax Henry away. “Come on. We need to get that checked out right away. It might be broken. I can’t believe you call that guy your friend. Family’s one thing, but who does that to a friend?”
    Henry cradled his wrist in his hand, his fingers paling and shaking slightly. Joss wondered if it really was broken. Henry shouted back to Joss, who was standing beside the vampire’s corpse in a daze. “You’re a monster, Joss! You know that?”
    And Joss did. He did know that. He was a monster.
    But at least the people of Santa Carla were safe now.
    The last thing Henry said to him before disappearing with Kat was softer spoken, but still immeasurably angry. “I can’t believe you did this.”
    Joss couldn’t help but feel like Kat had gotten what she wanted for the moment. With a deep sigh, he looked slowly around at the forest that surrounded him, slipping his stake back into the leather holster on his hip with complete disregard of the blood that was still coating its surface. One thought played on repeat in his mind: The thing about monsters is that there’s always something worse out there.

11
    CURIOSITY AND THE CAT
    J oss stood still with his thoughts, going over in his mind what had just transpired, for several minutes after doing what he could to hide the vampire’s remains until a Slayer Society cleanup crew could step in and take care of things. He’d covered the body with fallen leaves, fallen branches, and hoped that no human would find it. Death wasn’t something that humans typically dealt well with. It also wasn’t, Joss thought, something that Slayers dealt with either. The distinction in his mind between human and Slayer had come suddenly, but it seemed to fit. He didn’t feel like a human half the time. He felt like something that operated on the fringe of humanity.
    He moved through the woods for almost a half mile before exiting, not wanting anyone who had been at the boardwalk to see him and wonder why he was spattered with fresh blood and who that blood might belong to. He didn’t go home. Too many questions were waiting for him there.