Circe sat at the bus, center at the right side, on her way home. She would have taken the very back seat where it was warmest thanks to the engine, but all Five seats were already occupied. Not by humans, mind you. They were all occupied by Egregors.
From the very right, there was a creature that looked like a deathly pale and bone-thin man dressed in black robes like a court judge. But his head was thrice as big as the average human's and he had only black empty sockets where eyes should be. Next was a portly clown in yellow court jester garb. He had one eye and was constantly smiling, exposing a set of sharp, beastly fangs. A large, hairy arm cut off near the elbow took the middle seat, the fingers of its upright hand wriggling about. The last two seats were claimed by a green freeway sign with chicken feet.
In a foul mood still after that argument with Morgan, Circe heatedly thought, That stupid moron never listens. Never ever. And she has the gall to call me useless, when she never even thinks anything through. Well, whatever. Let her get herself eaten. I don't care anymore.
She could feel the blood rushing to her head. The more she thought about Morgan, the worse it got. She was dangerously close to popping a vein.
Realizing she needed to calm down before a medical emergency could happen, she quickly pulled out her phone, put earbuds into her ears and pulled up a standup comedy video she had saved to watch at a more convenient time. Now was a good time for it.
Before hitting Play on the video, she also opened the phone's map app and set it to alert her when her stop was near. She didn't want to miss it because she was too distracted. Again.
She stared at her phone unmoving. From behind her seat, an eyeball attached to a fleshy pink stock popped out, watching her with curiosity.
Circe slowly turned her head and glared at the curious eyeball. Through gritted teeth, she growled, "Do you mind?"
The eyeball slowly sank back down out of sight, leaving Circe to finally watch her video in peace.
There were many stops along the way back to Chinatown. At one of those stops, the bus picked up a man and a woman, both with mouse-brown hair, storm gray eyes and looking somewhat stressed. The pair, twin siblings, scurried over to the back of the bus as quick as was allowed to claim the back seats that were extra heated by the engine. But along the way, the man's nose detected a smell that made him pause. He stopped just an inch away from Circe's seat and sniffed quickly twice before one big and loud sniff.
The man's sister elbowed him and hissed, "Quit it! What's with you? We're in a bus! You're embarrassing me!"
The man threw his sister an irritated glare and then told her, "Just smell. You'll see."
The lady frowned, but she decided to just humor her brother and subtly took in air through her nostrils. Her eyes lit with surprise. And then she took a big whiff even louder than the loud sniff her brother had done. She turned and looked at him.
"See?" he said.
The lady didn't like the faint hint of smugness she detected on her brother's face, but that was not important right now.
"Where could it be coming from?" she whispered.
Her brother looked around before finally stopping his gaze on Circe who was engrossed in the story being told by a freckled, redhead man in a green checkered shirt and baggy blue jeans, swaying around the stage while speaking into the silver microphone in his left hand. It was an amusing story that brought a smile unconsciously to her face. She remained blissfully unaware that she was being watched and that her smile had caused the man to flare with anger.
His mouth twisted open in a half-snarl, exposing a long fang jutting down from a row of otherwise average teeth.
Sensing something amiss, the driver glanced up at the rearview mirror and called out, "Everything okay back there?"
He got no response, but he could see the two passengers he just picked up quickly sitting down. Satisfied, but put off by the twins' rudeness, he got the bus moving again.
Circe continued to stream standup comedy on her phone throughout the entire ride, ignorant of two people staring daggers at her, like a predator observing prey. It wasn't until her video was interrupted by a pop-up notice, letting her the next stop was the last that she put the phone down and yanked the cord pinned to the side of the window. A chime let the driver know someone wanted to get off soon.
After exiting the bus, Circe headed to the end of the sidewalk and turned. From there was a straight path to the Chinatown arch. She never looked back once. If she had, she would have seen the twins following her just a few feet back. The sky was completely blanketed overhead with dark winter clouds casting a shade that mimicked the shadow of pre-night. Under that all-encompassing shade, the twins' storm gray eyes softly glowed red like two pairs of eerie lanterns.
After taking a look around to see that they were all alone, the twins exchanged looks and nods. The red glow of their eyes grew bright, and the pink color of their faces was wiped away by a hue of light blue. Their round ears had become pointed. They picked up pace and quickly approached Circe, reaching for her with hooked fingers. But before they got the chance to snatch her away into the nearest back alley, Circe suddenly whirled around, startling the twins to collectively back away couple of feet in a single jump.
Circe was also startled. She never noticed them so close and only turned around because a trio of black rags flew straight at her face. She was in the middle of ducking down when she saw the twins and froze in surprise. The three rags brushed past her face with ghostly high pitch giggling and then soared upward before flying out of sight over the roof of a white, box-shaped building.
Circe stared at the twins and the twins stared at Circe. The twins' blue skin, glowing red eyes and pointed ears made it clear to Circe that they were not human. Their exposed fangs were a dead giveaway what they specifically were: vampires. (What else could they be?) And their hooked fingers were a dead giveaway for what they wanted, which, for reasons unknown to Circe, was to attack her.
As soon as she realized the vampires meant to do her harm, Circe did not waste a second more to run. But her reflexes were nothing compared to a vampire's. Circe only managed to take one step before the lady vampire was on her. The lady vampire grabbed Circe by the hood of her jacket and flung her into the alley before calmly strolling after her, followed closely by the man vampire.
Circe hit the ground hard with a pained yelp. She looked up and saw the two vampires walking over to her. In the darkness of the alley, the red glow from their eyes was more pronounced, making them look several times more terrifying.
Circe rolled to her hands and feet and frantically scrambled on all fours before rising to a run. But there was only a dead end up ahead, a solid brick wall stained black with age and damp from the weather, which she crashed into from running too hard. She looked right and left but found no way to escape. The only way out was through the vampires.
She faced the vampires with her back against the wall, heart pounding, sweating and breathless. Circe just barely managed to contain her fear as the vampires approached her with malicious sneers.
"What do you want with me?" she asked them. "Who are you?"
"You don't need to know that, wolf," said the lady vampire. She spat the word, "wolf" with great disdain.
"Wolf?" Circe was confused, but then her face lit with realization. "Wait! I'm not a werewolf!"
The two vampires laughed.
"Nice one," said the guy vampire. "Really convincing."
"I'm not lying!" Circe insisted with all her heart and soul, but the vampires would not believe her.
"Don't bother trying to talk your way out of this," the lady vampire said. "You mutts have had it good for too long. It's about time you all know your place."
As she spoke, she raised her hand next to her face. Her fingernails grew long, thick and curved into razor sharp points.
"Maybe a quick, and painful, shave will finally teach you wolves not to bite your superiors."
"For Drake," said the man vampire.
"For Drake."
Drake? Circe pondered the name. "You don't mean Jim Drake, do you? The lawyer? He's a vampire?"
The vampires didn't answer. They were done talking.
From the alley's halfway point, the lady vampire vanished and then reappeared a few inches away from Circe. It looked like to Circe that she teleported. The vampire lady roughly pinned Circe to the wall with her left arm. Their faces were just centimeters apart, nose to nose and they could hear each other's ragged breathing, one from fear and the other from evil excitement.
The vampire lady cackled and gently brushed a claw down Circe's cheek. "What's the matter, wolf? Too scared to turn beast? You guys bark loud, but always turn meek in the face of real power."
She pulled her claws back and raised them over her head. Circe watched, eyes fixed on those claws she was sure was going to fall at any moment to tear her flesh. But it was at that moment, she noticed something. A section of the brick wall stretched out into the shape of a man's face, yawning. It was an Egregor, an invisible monster only she could see. One that had taken on the form of a brick wall.
Instantly, Circe cried out for help. Putting all the willpower she had into it. "Help! Help me!"
The vampires laughed.
"There's nobody around to help you now, little cub!" said the man.
But he was wrong.
The vampire lady decided she had done enough teasing and swiped her claws down towards Circe's head. But before those deadly, sharp claws could touch Circe's scalp, they stopped. No, some-THING stopped them.
The lady vampire stared at her arm, astonished and puzzled. She could not see what, but the indentation on her coat's sleeve look like a set of teeth had sunk into it, stopped short of biting into her skin.
More than a dozen bald, human heads popped out of the brick wall and stretched out with long, long rubbery necks. One of those heads flew over to the lady vampire and chomped on her arm as she was about to attack Circe. With the power of its neck and jaws of steel, the head pulled the vampire lady away from Circe and threw her into her brother.
The two vampires tumbled to the edge of the alley where they laid for a couple of seconds in a messy pile before turning their gazes at Circe. The surprise and, perhaps, fear in their eyes emboldened her to get aggressive.
With her own power, Circe had the vampires lifted sharply into the air and pulled back into the depths of the alley.
"Hold them for me," she told the wall of heads. Four heads held the arms of the vampires up while two coiled their necks around the vampires' bellies. Once she was sure the vampires were securely bound, Circe relaxed her psychic grip on them and focused on producing a mean glare.
The vampires quivered. No trace of their earlier arrogance remained. All that they had now was fear. But despite that fear, the vampire man managed to speak.
"Y-you're no wolf!" he cried out. "What the hell are you?"
Circe paused to consider her words thoughtfully. And then, looking straight into the vampire's glowing red eyes with fierce eyes of her own, she replied, "I'm a witch.”
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