Tentacle University pt. 3

Charlotte Westgate watched the police extracting the bodies from a safe distance.  She didn’t need her students to see her there.  As the Dean of Hartmore could not be seen watching something as morbid as a crime scene being worked over.  She needed to remain impassive and strong, and most importantly, she needed to seem distant.  She needed to be a pillar for the school community, especially now as the student body was sure to be facing a heartbreaking challenge. 

A frown twitched at the edge of her lips. 

She had been prepared for this.  Expecting it.  From the first moment she had seen that shooting star pass over campus, she knew that something like this was coming.  It had only taken a week.  Now, she was certain, similar attacks would become more common. 

“Ma’am.” Her assistant, Whitley, stepped up next to her, a cellphone clutched in his hand.  “I made the call.”

“What did they tell you?”  She glanced at him, her demeanor softening.

“Wait and see.  We are on our own for now.” He handed her the cellphone. 

“You don’t need to call me ma’am.” Charlotte sighed. 

“The students are watching.” He scanned the crowd.  “I have to keep up appearances.  Just in case.”

Whitely was one of the few people she felt calm around.  He understood her, and he understood her purpose.  They had trained together, years ago, and his position as her assistant was for show.  Whitley was her partner, the man she had gone to hell and back with.

Charlotte was tall, with short, white blonde hair, ice blue eyes and pale skin.  Her face, while striking, held a stern look, and she had perfected the death stare.  Whitley was short and stocky, with dark brown skin and short cropped hair.  He filled out his suit nicely, but a closer look at his scarred, rugged features gave away his past as a soldier. 

No matter what titles they had to live by in public, in private they both had the same objective.

They were to defeat the Mythos. 

Those damn Mythos, monstrous creatures that snuck through brief dimensional rips.  They prayed on the life force of humans.  Each had their own particular flavor, for lack of a better term.  Some preferred the elderly, others children.  This one, it seemed preferred young men. 

“Are you sure the male was the only one… fed upon?” Charlotte watched as the stretcher was loaded into the back of an ambulance.

“Yes.  The female was brutalized, but not drained,” he said. 

“Interesting.” Her eyes wandered from the ambulance to the rest of the crowd. 

She and Whitley had been sent to this school to protect these students.  She had already failed.  Two people were dead.  There was no excuse.  They had ample warning.  The shooting star signaled the rip, and that meant that a Mythos was not far off.  There were steps she could have taken, barriers they could have constructed, but both she and Whitley had thought they had more time. 

They were naïve.

“What do you think we should do?” She turned to Whitley, her ice blue eyes glittering with tears. 

“We hunt when we can.” He ran a thick, callused hand through his short hair.  “We may not know where the thing is, but we know it is here, and both of us have trained long enough to spot the warning signs of an impending attack.  We search for a lair, and force it out.  Then, we kill it.” 

“You make it sound so simple.” Charlotte couldn’t help but laugh.  “If only it was.”

Before turning away from the crime scene, she gave the growing crowd one final look. 

Who would be next? Could they move fast enough to make sure that answer was no one?

Sadly, she doubted it.