Jesus fuck, AGAINST!

“I’ll go get her, then we’re gone,” you tell her. You’re lying, of course. No way you’re letting this psycho do what she wants. Her motivations are moderately purer than Atlee’s, but C-4 is technically more stable than gasoline. “Just leave her alone, and we’ll leave you alone.” Atlee pauses for an uncomfortably long time, her tentacles tensing and coiling back. They don’t look … intimate at the moment. They look predatory. You just hope you’re selling this enough to overcome whatever insight she has on you.

“… alright,” she finally answers, tentacles receding and vanishing behind her back. “I mean it, though, Jaquelin. Cross me, and she dies torn, ravaged, and drowning in my seed. It won’t be fast and it won’t be pleasant. And it will all be on you. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal.” It’s hard to **** back the urge to reach out and smash her to bits. She clearly isn’t confident she can take you one-on-one, not if she’s resorting to threatening Eva to keep you in line. But you don’t know what that means for the other girls. Killing them isn’t an acceptable answer; if Atlee wasn’t so gung-ho on intimidating you with this display, the sales pitch being secondary, you imagine she makes a solid case, and it’s not exactly uncommon to be a little curious about tentacles. ‘Thanks, Japan.’ It’s hardly their fault they fell for her trap. Or worse, what if you still can’t keep her dead, and then she comes back when you’re not ready? Or what if her hive-mind thing lives on and another girl becomes top dog, just moving the problem around? That’s still killing all of them, just slower and sloppier. And none of those options keep Eva safe. “One question?” She nods, but impatiently. “What happened to Kurt?”

“**** takes a lot out of you, Jaquelin. And energy can’t come from nowhere. I needed a pick-me-up.” Your eyes widen as she grins, very intentionally flashing you her pearly-white teeth. “Anything else?”

“I think I’m good, thanks.”

“Shoo, then,” she sighs, waving dismissively at you. “I have no use for you if you’re denying the chance for greatness. Oh, and I think it goes without saying? But you didn’t make Kappa house. So sorry.”

“I’ll cry myself to sleep,” you say bitterly as you turn and storm out of the room. You move faster than you probably need to on the way down, eyes frantically searching for Eva. She’s in the living room, drawing the attention of two Stepford Sisters … though you can spot the other six Atlee alluded to in the same room, the ones not speaking to her staring you right in the eye with tacit malice as you walk towards your friend. “We have to go. Now.”

“Yeah, of course.” You see Eva think about arguing, but read your face too well, like she always does. “So, anyway, that’s the plot to Book of Henry. Bye!” She takes your hand when you grab and it quickly lead her away, watching back over your shoulder as sixteen eyes distinctly track your departure. “Okay, I’m guessing you found something?” she whispers as you cross the street to the other side of campus.

“Atlee was waiting for me in the guest room. You were right, she’s basically shoving their brains together after some sort of weird tentacle initiation thing.”

“Good to know. Anything we can actually use?”

“I don’t think so,” you groan defeatedly. “I’m pretty sure I can take her, like, head-on … but I don’t know what that’ll do to the people she’s already roped in.”

“Wouldn’t imagine anything good, if you even CAN kill her. I hate to say it, but … is it worth it to stop it early, before she gets more girls? I mean, if there’s NO way to save them, which, maybe there isn’t, shouldn’t we be paying that cost before it gets higher?”

“There was a threat.”

“What’d she try to do?” Eva’s anger is instantly visible at the idea of Atlee menacing you. You can see her tiny fists clenching hard, throwing a quick glance back towards Kappa with murderous intent.

“Convince me to join up,” you say slowly, a little afraid of the whole truth. “She also said that if I didn’t, we didn’t, even if I went after her, she’d put every resource I couldn’t engage into killing you. And I’m pretty sure it’s not a bluff, intent or execution.”

“Fuck.” The frown that appears on her face breaks your heart. “Why did she try to get you to join? It’s not like you’re her biggest fan.” Oh, that’s going to get worse.

“She … was trying to thank us. For creating the scenario that let whatever’s inside her now … it **** her to make a deal with something bad and dark and terrible to live. And, according to it, Atlee was literally soulless and this is a considerable improvement for her.”

“So, it’s my fault these girls are getting brain-napped.” Her voice is soft and weak. You aren’t surprised, but you still hate seeing her like this. “I should have made sure. I should have dragged her fucking body out the window and burned it to ashes. Jesus, I’m so stupid. I know dead people can come back now, why wouldn’t I make sure?”

“It’s not your fault, Eva. She was going to die before you got there. Remember, you finished her so I wouldn’t be in this alone?” She nods, the oncoming tears halting for the moment. “You’re not alone, either. And we’ll find a way to stop her.”

“I’ll start moving on something divisive once we get back. Thinking about it, it’s probably a symbol, like a cross to Dracula or a cat to the mummy from The Mummy. The Brendan Fraser one, not the Tom Cruise one.” She looks back up as she goes into theorizing mode, apparently a welcome distraction. “We can probably use it to hold her and her minions back, maybe there’s even a way to weaponize it for real? Cross-referencing some ideas should make it clearer, but with the whole gentrification thing …”

“Not a lot of legit antiques in Northwoods. And I don’t trust a delivery service to bring us our monster-warding magic shield. There has to be somewhere, right?”

“Hope’s not lost, sweetie,” she responds as the two of you reach your room, double-checking the front and bathroom door, then the window and blinds. “Old crap doesn’t just go away. If we have to find the local dump, we’ll make it work. Did you learn anything about what she can do, exactly?”

“Yeah, and I also got some new tricks of my own, apparently.”

“Ooo! Exciting!” She claps her hands together and pulls out her computer, setting up to move into research mode. “Okay, I need to hear about all that in exact detail. Anything could be the clue we’re looking for.”

The rest of the night you largely spend telling Eva what you saw, what you heard, and what you did. She checks everything she can as thoroughly as she can on short notice, but nothing immediately comes up besides certain cult behaviors, magnetic psychopaths, and some weird occult stuff about manifestation of negative energy. You WANT to say it’s crazy … but it sounds too much like how Atlee talked about her “other parent,” being born from soulless Atlee’s monstrous actions and systemic corruption of her sorority.

After managing to hang on until dawn, you finally hit your bed to the first sounds of morning birds you’ve heard in a week. It’s … almost relaxing. What’s less relaxing, though, is that as you hold on to hear it for just a few more seconds, you can also hear Eva begin to quietly cry, muffling it with her pillow. It hurts that she was afraid or ashamed to let you see it. You want to spring up, run to her, hold her, tell her it’s going to be okay and that you’ll keep her and the girls safe and stop Atlee. Maybe you can even believe it if it’s for her, and maybe if you can, that means you can do it! But the sun waits for no vampire, and even urging yourself to rise, your mind shuts down under the invisible weight of morning’s onset.