They Call Her Psycho

4. Hunting

In the dingy alley on the other side of a fire exit, Evan was whispering anxiously into his phone.

"I'm out, I'll meet you behind the service station."

"Yeah I'm afraid that's not going to be possible."

Evan dropped his phone in shock and spun around to face the owner of the snide voice. She stood there ominously all in black. She wore laced up army boots, cargo trousers with a dagger strapped to her thigh, a low-cut cropped top and her worn leather jacket with the gang's emblem, a serpent wrapped around a red rose, intricately embellished on the back. She was the picture of death

"Hang up the phone Evan." Tequila serenely held a sleek gun pointed between her victim's eyes as he followed her orders. "Now take off the mask."

Reluctantly he pulled off the golden mask but rapidly switched stances and pulled out his own pistol.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. If you look behind you you'll see Tobias and Titus, on your left are Tyrone and Tyson, and next to me are Tariq and Tiger. So you see you're surrounded. I would advise you drop the gun." Tequila chuckled maniacally.

She watched him closely as his eyes darted to each of them, desperately trying to find an escape. She smiled to herself as she thought that after 3 years in their gang he should know better than thinking there was an escape after crossing her and her brothers. She watched as his eyes slowly filled with panic and a gunshot echoed through the alley making birds in distant trees flee for the sky. Tequila didn't flinch. She knew what he was going to do before even he did but knowing that Evan was a terrible shot, she had every confidence that when he aimed at her heart he would miss. She could smell the blood trickling down her arm but could only feel a small pinch where her arm met her shoulder. She couldn't help feeling sad that she could no longer feel pain after being shot so many times. She'd stopped feeling pain at eight years old but could still remember getting every scar and burn that covered her skin. The pain stopped but the memories never did and she'd learnt a long time ago that the nightmares would haunt her for the rest of her days.

"Kill him!" said Athena, pushing to the surface of Tequila's mind furiously.

"Gladly A, but not yet. We need information from him and I want him to suffer" replied Tequila in her mind.

Collecting her thoughts, she pushed the memories from her past back behind the locked door where she kept them, and once again focused on her new enemy.

"That was a mistake" she said pointedly.

A second shot rang out as she shot him in the thigh sending him rolling around on the ground in agony.

~

Back in the safety of the warehouse, Tequila sat on a bed in one of the gang's infirmary wards. Her other sister-in-law, Naomi, was patiently attending to the wound in her arm. Naomi had been married to Tobias for nine years and together they had a four year old daughter named Quinn. At eighteen she'd moved to America from her birth country Kenya to study medicine at Harvard University. She was incredibly smart and a year into their marriage, Naomi joined the gang as head doctor to further develop her skills to heal werewolves. The she-wolf had dark skin, kind, chocolate eyes and a baby pink, curly faux hawk. Naomi was the most caring person Tequila knew, she was firm but a great listener and advisor.

"Ok, all your vitals are normal, I've removed the bullet and stitched up your wound. With your accelerated wolf healing you should be healed by tomorrow." She switched tones from her doctor voice to her pointed motherly voice. "Until then no strenuous activities, and that means no interrogating any prisoners tonight. Understood?"

"I know better than to argue with you Doc." said Tequila sarcastically but clearly irritated by the doctor's words.

"Hmm good" said Naomi, still not convinced, but she knew better than to push Tequila further so she simply added, "You can go, I'll see you back at the hotel."

"See ya!" Naomi rolled her eyes at Tequila's over-excited goodbye. Even after eight years she was still baffled by her sister-in-law's complete disregard for her, often life-threatening, injuries. She chuckled to herself before tidying up the room and leaving for the night.

~

A few hours later, on the balcony outside her room, Tequila stood barefoot in a matching navy-blue shorts and bralette pyjama set, smoking another cigarette. Her tattoos stood out against her pale skin; the gang's rose and serpent emblem on her thigh and the cobra that started at her shoulder and wound its way around her arm with the tail ending at the base of her middle finger. That was her favourite tattoo. She'd got it when she'd started collecting pet snakes, her favourite of which was the King Cobra, similar to the art on her arm. She fiddled with the simple silver necklace that she never took off. Her mother had given an identical one to each of her siblings before she had passed away.

Tequila couldn't shake the feeling of unease that her and Athena had felt ever since the traitor had shot them. It had been a while since she'd been shot but every time it always brought up unwanted feelings and memories. She didn't deal well with feelings. Ever since a young age, she was taught that feelings were a weakness. She learnt that being emotionless was the only way for her to survive so she'd built a wall that only her brothers and Kamryn had ever managed to see through. To almost everyone else she acted cold and distant. She didn't like it, but it was the only way she knew how to be. She took a deep breath of smoke and thought back to what Harley had said to her in the gym.

"You owe it to yourself to let someone love you."

It wasn't the first time someone had told her to love, but it went against everything she'd been brought up to believe. She was raised to be a monster, a killing machine. Cold, heartless and murderous. Some might even say psychotic.

"Why would anyone fall in love with a monster?" she spat the words out to the city below, busy with carefree strangers going about their evening thirty-nine floors below her. Even if they did she knew that she would never be capable of loving someone back. She accepted many years ago that she didn't and won't ever have a mate.

"No wolf deserves a broken mate."

Those words were repeated to her by her father every day for ten years and they continued to play like a mantra in the back of her mind. She knew that Athena still secretly thought that they had a mate, but she'd never admit it to her human counterpart.

She took a long drag of her cigarette, calming her racing heart. She constantly assured herself that she'd always have her brothers, Kamryn, Harley and Naomi and she knew they would never break her heart. They're the only people that she truly trusted and she would never trust anyone else again.

She inhaled a final breath of smoke looking out over the illuminated city below. Standing on that balcony with the world at her feet was her favourite place in the world to be. Nothing scared her when she was up there, it was as if none of her fears could reach her. It also made her feel closer to her mother, something she'd longed for since she was five.

~