Take The Stage By Storm: A Tina Storm Short Story (2) by Lissa Bilyk

TAKE THE STAGE
BY STORM
     
    I suppose
this story really starts at the beginning – where
a ll good stories start.
It was two weeks into the school year when the audition notices for
the annual musical started appearing. It was my first year at
college, and with no school uniform to hide behind I had taken to
the disguise of a ‘goth’. Real original, I know. It’s not like I’m
disguising myself because I’m being chased by the police or
anything quite so dramatic.
    I’m
hiding because m y family
comes from a long line of demon hunters.
    Both my
parents were blue-black haired demon hunters, and both Storms, but
my mother came from a small offshoot from Germany and her parents
had immigrated to Australia during the war. They’d lost the name
due to marriages, but they were still recognised as Storms, and
you’d find them on the family tree (if there was ever one big
enough). My father’s side of the family had managed to come with
the First Fleet to help keep the new settlers safe. It’s not like
the two Storms were inbreeding or anything. That’s a gross idea.
But when they met each other at a work ‘do’ they instantly
recognised the hair, and the crackling of power that we Storms can
feel whenever we’re gathered in a small space.
    Every
Storm knows their heritage. We’re not allowed to adopt because we
don’t want the name being passed on to mortals without any power.
Granted, there are some people around who are Storms and aren’t
demon hunters , but
they’re the people that were destined to be something else –
politicians, lawyers, police, and other people who help cover up
Storm involvement when a hunt gets messy. And there are demon
hunters who aren’t Storms, but are still part of the family. And
then there are the regular demon hunters. My brother Teddy and I
are born Storms. Born demon hunters. Gifted with incredible power
and cursed to use it to hunt demons. Sort of like a superhero, I
suppose. Not that I fancy myself as a vigilante: most of the time,
the demons find me.
    It’s not
an easy life, what with
being a teenager and all. I have to worry about math grades and
pimples and boyfriends – and demons trying to kill me and my
family. I think that’s why I find it easier not to have friends at
school. It doesn’t help me in an educational sense, but it does
save those hypothetical friends from being hurt because of who I
was born to be. Sometimes the Council of Elders (all annoyingly
related in one way or another) send us on missions, like this one
time I hunted a nix all the way from Germany to the arse end of
Australia. She was honing in on a young musician so I enrolled at
his school and quickly made friends. I suppose you could say we
were ‘going out’, but Micah never knew I was a demon hunter until I
vanquished the nix in front of him. I hadn’t seen him since, though
sometimes I think I would have liked to look him up. See how he was
going.
    Anyway. I seem
to have forgotten what I was talking about. My first year of
college. Yeah.
    In one of
my numerous attempts to appear normal, I had decided, against my
better judgement, to sign up for the school’s annual musical. I’m
not particularly musical myself. It has been said that I am
tone-deaf, and when I attempt to sing I sound like two cats in a
tumble dryer. Not my fault. I can act well enough to pass an
audition, apparently, and I’m a decent dancer. So I was put in the dancing
chorus. This suited me just fine. The singing chorus would cover us
during numbers, leaving us more breath to dance with.
    Being a
part of that cast? An interesting experience. Almost like a team environment, but with
politics and reputations and egos to contend with. The two leads
were beautiful people. The female, Sarah: tiny yet curvaceous with
big brown eyes and long curling blonde hair. The male, Nick: tall
and slim yet muscular with green eyes. I’ll admit, I was jealous.
I’d love to able to sing like them, to convey that kind of