This is a series of short stories, detailing the adventures of Chelsea Childling. You can start with her origin story or pick any story from the index.
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Bremerton didn’t have a haunt.  With Seattle a boat ride away, hunters on the west side of the bay tended to gather at the ferry terminal to trade stories and look for work. It was open nearly twenty-four hours a day, but mostly it was cheap coffee and a place to congregate in the weird morning hours without too much attention. But to call it a haunt would be a lie in Chelsea’s mind. If she couldn’t talk to the staff about monster hunting, then the ferry terminal couldn’t be a haunt. 

As the wet wind whistled its way dawnward, Chelsea sipped her coffee. Her partner for the last hunt, and supposed source of knowledge, Casey, stood a few feet away, talking with other hunters by the ticket counter.

 It was infuriating to have to wait some more, but the gumberoo hunt had burned off most of Chelsea’s nervous energy. Still, a sense of dread rose in her chest, and she studied the group in front of her.

Like Casey, they dressed practically for winter on the coast, lots of denim, flannel, and wool under raincoats. Chelsea didn’t see any obvious weapons, but she didn’t doubt there were more than a few hidden knives in the group. The two men kept throwing searching glances at Chelsea and her friends, setting her teeth on edge. She tried to convince herself it was likely nothing more than typical hunter suspicion of strangers and hoped her growing anxiety was wrong.

A snort announced Andy’s presence beside her. “How long do we give her to get this bullshit story straight?”

Chelsea tossed him a glare. “You set this up and now you don’t trust her?”

He shrugged under his huge backpack. “I don’t trust anybody completely, and certainly not people I just met a few hours ago. She’s not even my local contact.”

Keegan snickered from the bench underneath the arrivals/departures board.  He had curled up as much as possible. Lanky arms around thin legs, and his sharp, pointed features hidden by his dark hair. 

She answered both with an upraised middle finger before sauntering over to the small group of hunters. “We need to talk.”

Casey chuckled. “Yes, I owe you information. I was just letting some friends know where we fought. I doubt those four were the only gumberoos in the forest.”

Chelsea nodded, pretending that she cared. “Cool. Come on.” She stalked back to the boys, anger bubbling in her stomach.

Casey smiled pleasantly at them. “I’ve known Jackson for a few years now. He’s good in a hunt, if a little…”

“Flirty,” Chelsea supplied.

Andy snorted. “Flighty.”

 “Exactly,” Casey shrugged. “But I owe him a few favors, and two months ago he needed a ride to Oregon. Astoria, to be precise.”

“Amber.” Casey’s tone was carefully blank. “We picked her up around Aberdeen. And they both seemed… uneasy about this hunt. I offered to help. Like I said, I owe Jackson a few. But they said they had it covered.” A single eyebrow rose as she studied them. “I take it you all disagree.”

Andy waved his hands through the air, wafting away the alleged criticism.  “We just want to help.”

Chelsea nearly giggled. Andy said help, but what he meant was stop. They wanted to stop the two morons who had decided to take on a demon lord by themselves. 

Casey eyed them one by one, but refrained from calling them liars. “Anyway, the Astoria haunt is where I left them. Can’t say where they went from there, but I’ll text you the address.”

“Thanks,” Chelsea bit out the word. They’d waited almost twenty-four hours for this little tidbit about where those two idiots had been two months ago. Jack and Amber could be long gone by now.

“Any time.” Casey seems utterly unbothered by their glares and attitude. “Good luck finding those two. I got the feeling they weren’t giving this up, whatever it is.” She smiled happily at them. “Hope I get to hunt with you all again soon.” With a jaunty wave, Casey walked back to her friends.

Keegan snickered. “She might be the most agreeable hunter I’ve ever met.”

“I take enormous offense at that,” Andy sneered.

“And my point is made.” Keegan unfolded himself from the bench. “How far is Astoria from here?”

Chelsea met both their expectant looks with a shrug. “I bummed around here in Washington, but I don’t know Oregon.” She waved a hand at Andy. “You’re the one with the contacts.”

Andy flopped onto the bench Keegan had just vacated, phone already in hand. “I have two western contacts, and one of them is driving me to Astoria.” He leveled a finger at Chelsea with an expectant frown. “The other one lives in Seattle, but crosses over here a lot.”

“Wait,” Chelsea heaved out a sigh. “I’m the other western contact?”

“Since you won’t stay in the city with me and keep running off to winter in the Dakotas, yes.” He looked at his phone. “Astoria is about three hours away. We should hit the road. I’ll have an address for a haunt soon.”

The car was blessedly warm and dry, as was her dog. Chelsea knew full well how long wet dog smell lingered in a closed car, and had chosen to let Bentley wait here rather than in the rain. He greeted the three of them with warm wuffles and headbutts. Then pivoted to pouting when Chelsea banished him to the backseat with Andy. “I want to get going too, but we need to sleep.”

Andy gave a long-suffering sigh. “I’m not sleeping in the car again.”

Chelsea once again raised a middle finger to both men and their snickering. “Let’s get a hotel.”

Andy’s eyes bugged out of his head when she pulled up to the nicest hotel in town and flashed her thick, black credit card. He kept his comments to himself until they shut the door. “And you sleep in a car?”

Chelsea smirked and flopped onto a bed beside Keegan. “There aren’t four star hotels in the Black Hills. Besides, I have to make that trust fund last the rest of my life. I’m just spoiling you.” 

Keegan yawned and kicked off his shoes. “Don’t get used to it. She likes living rough.”

They rose as the sun went down, and were on the road with the stars. They arrived in Astoria with the night fog, creeping along the wind. But the address that Andy had found lead them to an abandoned beach house.

Chelsea sighed from the passenger seat. “Looks like folks had to move on.”

Andy echoed her sigh as he aggressively tapped at his keyboard behind her. “Per the message boards, the Astoria folks were run out of town due to owing too many bills and the next closest haunt is Cannon Beach. About an hour south of here if we stay on 101.”

Keegan snorted. “Nice of Casey to give us a head’s up.”

“You sound like you hate people.” Chelsea didn’t hold back her snark, and Keegan had the audacity to laugh. She turned back on to the highway, and headed south. The fog blew in thick, blocking all sight beyond a few feet in front of her.

The sign for Highway 26 bled out of the fog and a flash of white appeared in front of her car. She slammed on the breaks and felt her tires slip on the slick concrete. Gritting her teeth, she cut the wheel and pumped the breaks. She slid the last foot, but her car stopped.

“What the fuck was that?” Keegan gasped.

Chelsea didn’t answer as she threw open her door and rushed out, hand already on her ax and Bentley on her heels. She wished the huge mutt would stay in the car, but she knew better. Her dog assumed he was the best backup she had. That he often was broke her a little every time they fought a monster.

 A figure stood on the fog-riddled highway. Not tall, but solid, and wrapped in strips of white cloth. Not quite a child’s mummy. More a desperately injured person, barely held together by bandages.

The figure raised its head, seeming to sniff the air. Sharp teeth glinted in the lights overhead. 

Chelsea heard the guys exit the car, but it was the creature in the road that held her attention. The way its head tracked something beyond her. “What’s it looking for?”

“Dunno,” Keegan growled, “but it’s focused on you.”

Chelsea shifted her weight deliberately, watching the thing continue to test the air. “No, it’s not.”

“Fucker,” Andy snarled. “It’s after Bentley.”

Red hate sizzled in her brain and Chelsea shrieked, moving across the fog-wet pavement without thought or plan. Vaguely, she knew Andy and Keegan were yelling at her, but she didn’t care. Bentley had saved her life more times than she could remember. And no discount B-movie monster was touching him.

Her axe sliced into the monster’s shoulder, holding it in place for her knee to it in the gut. She yanked out the ax, using the momentum to aid her kick to the monster’s chest. The monster staggered backward, but Chelsea didn’t let up. Teeth bared, she pressed forward, ax swinging again.

She caught it in the neck this time and yanked it forward. A metal staff shot out of the night, clipping the mummy in the head. It staggered backward, pulling itself off her ax, neck exposed. Chelsea swung again. This time she got the right angle and removed the monster’s head. 

Hot, red blood sprayed in the air, smacking her in the face as the monster fell. Breath heaving, Chelsea looked around. Keegan and Andy stared at her, their staves in hand.

She hefted ax at her friends. “This is why a bladed weapon is better.”

Andy snorted. “Just going to pretend you did that alone, huh?”

She lifted her middle finger as headlights came towards them. Keegan and Andy both started swearing, staves collapsing as they rushed her.

Chelsea barely had time to step in front of the headless monster, hoping to hide it, when the car stopped.

The men who exited were both large and rangy, dressed in wool and denim. The taller of the two stared at the road before grinning at them. “You got the bandage man? Mind splitting the bounty?”

Andy sighed and looked up at the cloud-filled sky. “Why is the West Coast so disorganized?”