#emilios — threads

[gossipsnake]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: A swamp PARTIES: Anita (@gossipsnake) and Emilio (@mortemoppetere) SUMMARY: Anita planned on spending the day wading through swamp water to observe aquatic bugs. Emilio was out at the swamp on a jewelry mission. Something flying through the air had other plans for the day.   CONTENT WARNINGS: none

Sometimes, Axis got cases so stupid that a part of Emilio wanted to turn them down altogether. Depending on his mood, he might follow that inclination. Some things were a waste of his time, and not every case was worth the cash payout. Emilio liked to feel as though he was helping. He liked to pretend he was making a difference, even if he often felt like he was doing little more than shoveling dirt back into the same hole he was trying to dig. Taking too many stupid cases made him feel like he was stuck in a rut, like there was little to do to get himself above water.

But sometimes, those stupid cases were brought to his desk by stupid kids, and that made everything harder.

The girl who’d hired him with a fistful of wrinkled bills and a handful of coins couldn’t have been much older than fifteen, though she swore she was eighteen when he’d asked. She wore ratty clothes, and her shoes had holes in them, and the money she gave him was nowhere near enough to actually cover his usual fee but he took the case anyway. At the end of it, he knew damn well he’d give the cash back to her, even if it was a stupid case. 

She’d lost a necklace. Her lip quivered when she said it, and he didn’t need to be a detective to understand that the necklace she lost was important to her. She’d dropped it in a swamp, and she was so desperate to get it back but afraid to go back and look for it herself. Emilio was fine with that. In a town like this one, it was smart for kids with ratty clothes and holes in their shoes to be afraid. 

It did suck a little that those kids’ fear often led to him trudging through dirty swamp water, though. He muttered incoherent complaints under his breath as he moved, scanning the dirty water with sharp eyes in search of a glint. “Be a detective, Milio! You’ll make money, Milio! Fucking shitty —” His foot sank a little deeper in the muck. “¡Puta madre! Stupid… Fucking… Swamp…” He punctuated each word with a yank, pulling his foot free and managing not to lose his shoe in the process. “This is so…”

He stopped. There was a sound nearby, the quiet splish splash of footsteps not belonging to him. Immediately, Emilio tensed. “All right,” he said, just loud enough to be heard. “If you’re something that wants to kill me, take your best fucking shot. If you’re something that doesn’t want to kill me, and you’ve seen a necklace lying around, let me know.”

—

Summertime was the best time of year as far as Anita was concerned. Classes were out, as was the sun. Warm weather also meant that insects were more active, as were all other aspects of the local ecosystems. It was a bright sunny day and Anita didn’t have much else to do so she decided to head out up to the swamp and see if she could manage to spot any rare insects. After packing up her camera, waterproof pack, and water wader pants and boots, she drove the scenic route (there is only a scenic route) out to the swamp. It was pretty early hours by the time she made it out there which was generally how she preferred it. 

As much as she loved fancy and expensive things, there was little pleasure greater than breathing in fresh air surrounded by nature and an absolute lack of humans. If the goal had been anything other than observation, or if she had gone to a more secluded area, Anita may have shifted. That was the only downside to the summer - she had to share the forest with a lot more people who were also drawn out by the warmth and beauty. 

It had been several hours of peace, the nature around her made sure that things never got too quiet though. But then Anita heard someone else cursing - in Spanish no less - and splashing about in the water. “And what if I don’t yet know whether or not I want to kill you?” The tone she used was playful, as was the grin on her face as the man came into her view while she took gentle steps through the water towards shore, on its surface her question was a joke. But as anyone who was around water should know, there was always something more going on beneath the surface. “You lose a necklace?” 

_ 

A voice called out in return to his question, and while this didn’t mean there was no danger to be found, it did lessen his chances of being eaten just a little. Emilio wasn’t so stupid as to assume that a human consciousness disqualified someone from making a meal out of him — he’d seen plenty of evidence to the contrary there — but he knew that most people who were planning on killing someone didn’t respond to their questions with jokes. (Most. Not all. Emilio’s paranoia would never quite allow for sweeping generalizations that guaranteed his safety. He was many things, but he was no fool.) 

Snorting at the response he received, he shook his head. “Then you let me know when you figure it out,” he called back, keeping things just as light as the stranger had. He waited to see if she’d come into view or not, the question answered only seconds after it was silently raised when she stepped out where he could see her. He offered her a small nod, taking in the outfit. Unlike Emilio, this woman was dressed for the environment they’d found themselves in. It told him that she hadn’t wound up in the swamp accidentally, and that she was here for some sort of purpose.

“Someone did,” he replied, making a face as his weight shifted and the ground beneath him squelched quietly. “Hired me to find it for her. If I’d known it was going to be like this, I would have told her no.” He wouldn’t have. He was a goddamn bleeding heart for shit like this, and he knew it. He wasn’t really fooling anyone. “You been out here long? Seen anything shiny?” He hesitated a moment. “Don’t think it’s worth much, but… Worth something to her. Like to find it, if I can.”

–

“Oh, trust me, you’ll know when I figure it out,” in actuality, if Anita wanted to kill this man she would not grant him any kind of warning before striking. If she wanted him dead he would know by her actively working to kill him. For the time being, however, she saw no immediate reason and had no particular desire to kill him. She continued to move towards him, taking gentle steps to not disturb the water or the creatures living within it more than necessary. Unlike her, he seemed woefully unprepared to be in the swamp. Which seemed odd since he appeared to come out to the area specifically, for a job that would logically require him to get into the water. 

“If you had known the swamp was going to be … swampy?” The water wasn’t exactly clear and the sediment beneath their feet was not so compact that an object would simply rest atop it unbothered. Anita gave him a run down once she got a few feet away, “No boots, no shovel, no metal detector, no sift?” An uneasy feeling washed over her as she became rather suspicious that his story about why he was out here was fabricated. He was too unprepared for it to be real. “What does the necklace look like?” 

Pretending to look around the area for it, Anita took a few more cautious steps in his direction, wanting to be in striking distance should it be necessary. “Silver? Gold? Any gemstones or pendants?” 

_ 

“I’m sure I will,” Emilio agreed. Maybe he ought to be a little more worried about how casually a stranger he met in a swamp spoke about murdering him, but… it wasn’t the kind of thing that concerned him. In a town like this one, he knew, odds of her actually trying to kill him were probably pretty high. But Emilio liked his chances if it came down to a fight, liked his odds of at least walking away with air still in his lungs even if his victory was never a guarantee. He was more of a cockroach than a man, some days; the things he was able to survive, even without wanting to, would surprise anyone willing to take a closer look.

Huffing a laugh at her obvious judgment, he shrugged. “Client’s a kid,” he replied. “Didn’t think a kid would be out getting deep into a swamp. I figured I’d find it hanging off a tree branch or sitting on a rock. Guess she’s more of an exploradora than I thought she was.” He shouldn’t have been surprised, really. Most of the kids in this town had strange hobbies. Wandering through a swamp was less weird than living in a crypt.

He dug in his pocket for a moment, retrieving his phone and pulling up a photo. It was zoomed in on a necklace around someone’s throat, the only photo his client had had to show him. It looked more like costume jewelry than anything remotely expensive — the chain definitely wasn’t real silver, and the purple stone seated at the end of it probably wasn’t worth anything. Its only value was in its sentimentality, which of course made Emilio more determined to find it. He didn’t give a shit about expensive jewelry, but he cared about a necklace that clearly meant something to a teary-eyed teenager. “Not even sure a metal detector would find it. Pretty sure it’s got more plastic than metal in it.” 

–

Oh this just got far more interesting, Anita thought. A child hired him. So he was either sentimental or a fool; or worse, a sentimental fool. She trudged through the swamp water closer towards him, the movements getting more difficult the closer she got to shore as the mud got denser. The necklace looked a bit gaudy. Not something she would ever wear around a swamp if it held any value: emotional or monetary. Standing closer to the man, Anita felt like there was something about this guy that was familiar. She couldn’t place why, yet, but she knew she would figure it out. 

Anita scanned the area around them briefly, already convinced that this was a lost cause. “There are some birds that like to collect shiny things they find. Others that like to use mud to construct their nests. How long ago did this child lose their necklace? Can’t you just go buy her a new one and pretend you found it?” she asked, settling into Spanish without any conscious thought to it.

Looking up at the treelines around them, Anita wondered how likely it was that one of the birds nearby had taken the necklace. Magpies, historic lovers of shiny objects, tended to avoid large wetland areas. Crows were always an option, could never count out those crafty little geniuses. Then she spotted a strange bird. It was large and she was captivated by its purplish plumage. Maybe that was the necklace thief. “I think you should cut your losses, vato.” 

_ 

He was hoping for an easy resolution. Maybe the woman had seen the necklace and picked it up, thinking it was valuable; maybe she’d give it back when she realized it wasn’t. But it was clear from her expression as she looked at the photo that she hadn’t seen the necklace before, and disappointment crawled down his spine like a living thing. He sighed, drawing the phone back to himself and slipping it into his pocket.

There was some relief, at least, when she slipped into Spanish; Emilio might not have been able to solve this case with ease, but at least conversation would be simpler in a language he understood. “A few days ago. Have you seen any birds around that look like they might have snatched it up? I’m not looking to buy her a new one. They probably don’t make any exactly like it anymore, and it’s… important to her. She didn’t give a lot of detail, but I get the sense it belonged to someone she lost.” The photo she’d given him was too zoomed in to tell anything about the person wearing it, but the throat didn’t belong to the girl who’d hired him. There were a few too many wrinkles on the skin for that. 

He followed the woman’s gaze, glancing around the area. The only bird he could see was a large, crane-like creature. He nodded towards it. “That could be something,” he mused, taking a step towards it. The bird turned towards the sound of his uneven footsteps, stretching out its wings. There was something odd about its beak, but Emilio was more focused in the gleam of shiny plastic caught in its feathers. “Shit! There it is!” 

—

“If this necklace was important to her she should have known better than to be wearing it in a swamp.” That didn’t seem to matter much at this rate, however, the child had already done the damage. A fitting lesson in consequences, perhaps, for the budding exploradora. Had she not spotted the strange bird, Anita would likely have been on her way already - back to collecting samples and enjoying her swamp time. But there was something so intriguing about the large creature. 

Anita was no ornithologist, standard or supernatural, nor would she pretend to know all of the species of birds out in the world. She had never seen anything like this one before though. “How peculiar…” she commented as the bird spread its wings out. “It seems equally unlikely that the necklace got caught in its feathers as it does that the bird put it there on purpose.” As if it knew they were looking at it, talking about it, the bird took off from its perch in the trees and began to fly around the air above them. There was something almost metallic about the way the sunrays hit off its beak and feathers. 

The bird had not taken to the sky to fly away, though. After doing a loop, the heron-like creature circled back around and seemed like it was swooping down on a path headed straight for the two of them. “I don’t think it wants to give that necklace back!” Without knowing where it was heading, Anita couldn’t decide if it was smarter to try and get out of the water or to go further into it. Based on anatomy alone this was clearly a bird that seemed built for aquatic activities. In her moment of indecision, the bird dipped down and flew around her - almost as a warning - its feathers brushing against her side. It wasn’t until Anita began to feel water trickle down her leg that she realized the creature had somehow torn her water wader pants. 

_ 

“Probably,” Emilio agreed with a shrug. “But she’s a kid. Kids don’t think about that shit, I guess.” Kids like this — kids without a duty of martyrdom hanging over their heads, kids who would get to grow up and get wrinkles — made stupid mistakes without thinking and got to live to wade through the consequences. It was what Emilio had wanted for Flora, before the world reminded him in brutal fashion that such things couldn’t make a home in the chest of a child who bore his name. He couldn’t do shit for his kid now, but he could find a stupid necklace for this one. And it probably wouldn’t matter much in the long run — she’d lose the necklace again in a month, or break it in a year — but it would make him feel… decent, for a minute or two. Maybe that could count for something.

He wasn’t expecting the woman to stick around after pointing out the bird, really. She seemed disinterested, and Emilio couldn’t fault her for it. After all, she was here doing her own thing, and Emilio hadn’t done much more than get in her way. But she seemed interested in the bird, somehow, and Emilio figured it wouldn’t hurt to have another set of hands to help him wrangle it. “Does a bird do anything on purpose? It’s a bird.” Emilio snorted, half amused. But then, the bird was flying, and he was scrambling just a little. Wading through the swamp and not finding the necklace would have been annoying, but seeing it and not getting it back would only serve to piss him off. 

But the bird wasn’t flying away; instead, it was circling back towards them, swooping down. Emilio cursed, scrambling after the woman as the bird dove towards them. There was something undeniably strange about it, the way the sun gleamed off it, but it didn’t matter much. What mattered the most was the stupid necklace. Emilio made a brief grab for it, but the bird was out of reach in a moment, circling back around for another swoop. “I don’t give a shit if it wants to give us the necklace back,” he ground out. “I’m getting it back.” He glanced down, making note of the rip in the woman’s pants before looking back to the way the bird reflected the sun. “Something weird about it. What weapons have you got on you?” He was assuming she had some, at least, given the fact that she was wandering around in a swamp in Wicked’s Rest alone and didn’t seem like an idiot.

—

Anita couldn’t help but scoff at the ignorance of the man’s comment. “You think animals cannot act with purpose?” But she didn’t have to go into a lecture about how wrong he was, fortunately, the bird decided to show off its self determination right there. She found it quite amusing to watch him scramble as the creature dove down and around them as he swatted at the jewelry dangling from its wings. It was possibly the least graceful thing she had seen happen in water. 

As perturbed as Anita was that the bird had, somehow, ruined her favorite swamp wading pants she was infinitely more intrigued by the question of how it had done so. “Well, you’re determined I’ll give you that. Even if your determination is delusional.” Her eyes stayed on the bird, watching it as it circled them - both sizing one another up it seemed. Truly she couldn't care less about the investigators quest for the necklace, however, Anita wanted to see what was going to happen so she decided to stick around. “Weapons? I know you are not going to kill this beautiful creature just to retrieve a necklace …” 

_ 

Emilio had always been good at saying the wrong thing. It seemed that talent was rearing its head now, too, pissing off a woman he’d just met by making a blanket statement about animals she seemed to find offensive. Emilio grimaced, preparing himself to sit through some annoying rant about how animals were smarter than people thought or something. He wondered if he ought to introduce her to the bat guy. Maybe they’d get along. 

Luckily, though, the bird saved him from the lecture with its attempt to take his damn head off.

Unluckily, his attempt to snatch the necklace back came up short.

Cursing quietly, he kept an eye on the bird so he wouldn’t lose sight of it. “Delusional works better in this town than it does anywhere else,” he replied flatly, watching the bird circle. It didn’t seem as if it was going to fly away, at least. Maybe that shouldn’t have been a relief, given the way it was dive bombing them, but it was. The necklace was important. Emilio didn’t want to lose it. (Fucking kids. He always got a little too ‘determined’ when kids were involved.) “I’m going to get the necklace from it. If I have to kill it to do that, I have to kill it. Natural order, yes? Survival of the fittest, whatever.”

—

“Survival of the fittest has to do with evolutionary progression. How does being killed because a little child lost a cheap necklace help this species evolve? Grow? Get better?”  It wasn’t a perfectly accurate recounting of Darwinism, but Anita was feeling more inclined to continue disagreeing with this man than actually educating him. “If anything, losing her necklace will help this girl learn to be more careful with her things. Survival of the fittest in that sense.” 

The bird kept circling the two of them, as if it had decided that they were invaders that needed to be taken care of - or at the very least taught a lesson. As much as she dreaded agreeing with his plan or killing this creature, Anita did in fact subscribe to survival of the fittest mentality. And she was undoubtedly the fittest. 

“Well what about you? What weapons do you have on you? I’ve got some stuff I could make do with but nothing very, uh, traditional, I suppose.” 

_ 

“It will teach the next bird not to try to take my head off,” he replied. “See? Lessons learned.” He disliked the idea of letting the kid lose the necklace; Juliana’s ring hanging around his neck seemed to burn his skin, brushing against the stake charm Teddy had gotten him where they sat on the chain beneath his shirt. The necklace was important to the kid; it didn’t mean shit to the bird. This wasn’t a lesson he thought she needed to learn. “She’s had enough hard lessons, I think. Maybe it’s better if the world gives her a break this time.” Kids deserved that. Kids might have been the only people who deserved that.

At least the bird was doing its part to prove that his plan was the best way forward, even if it was doing so by making obvious plans to take another dive at them both. Emilio liked being proven right enough that he didn’t mind the method with which the proof was offered. If he had to dodge bird attacks while knowing that he was correct, he’d do so gladly. 

“Knives,” he replied, pulling one out. He made no mention of the stakes; there was no shiver down his spine warning him that the bird was undead, so they wouldn’t be of much use, anyway. And bringing them out would be revealing a little more than he’d like to, to a stranger. “What ‘stuff’ do you have? I think we can use anything we can get.” 

—

It wasn’t surprising when the man pulled out a knife, or indicated that he was carrying more than one on him. There wasn’t much about the occupants of this town that surprised Anita. The bird kept swooping down at them, its motions and movements seeming to turn from just threats towards preparation for offensive action. She did not trust this man to pull out her real weapon, herself in true form, but it was evident that she was too vulnerable in her current state. 

Turning her backpack around so she could dig through it, there really wasn’t much that could qualify as a weapon. Anita pulled out a bag of breadcrumbs, which she had brought to feed some of the wildlife she encountered during the day, knowing it was unfortunately the best “weapon” other than trying to hit it with her camera which she was not willing to sacrifice. “I can try and blind it, I guess. Or maybe it will get distracted by food.” 

What she had really wanted to pull out was her fangs, or her tail to just reach up and grab the damn bird, but Anita did not have enough skin in the game right now to risk out-ing herself to this man - or any nearby hunters - in his efforts to kill this bird and get that necklace. 

_ 

The bird made a swoop towards them, and Emilio struck out with his knife only for it to bounce off the thing’s feathers with the distinct sound of metal crashing against metal. He cursed, pulling his hand back and narrowly avoiding losing the damn limb to the bird’s hungry beak. 

The woman was digging in her backpack, and Emilio grunted in response to her suggestions. “Knives don’t seem to be doing shit,” he commented. “Not sure how easy it’ll be to blind it, or what it eats. Breadcrumbs might not be in its diet.” It seemed more interested in eating the pair of them, really, which wasn’t something Emilio loved the idea of. 

The bird was flying circles, clearly preparing to make another swoop. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to do it quick. Maybe if I can get the knife between the feathers…” He trailed off, knowing the idea was an unlikely one. Running no longer seemed like an option, either, even if he’d wanted to (which he didn’t). Flying would allow the bird to move a lot faster than the two of them could trudging through the swamp. If the woman left him and his bad leg behind, she’d have a much better shot. Emilio wasn’t sure he wanted to point this out.

—

As could have been expected, given how sharp the feathers had been when they cut through her waders, they seemed to afford the creature protection from the knife. Anita knew that the breadcrumbs weren’t going to be effective, but already having prepped the attempt she was also sort of curious as to what was going to happen. As the bird circled around her, foolishly not perceiving her as the more direct threat between the two of them standing in the water, she opened the bag and tossed its contents in the direction of the bird's face as it passed by. 

“Okay… fine… that did nothing,” she conceded as she moved closer to the man with his knives as he was brainstorming. Anita did not know what this bird was but she knew that it was supernatural and that the other did not seem to be phased by that. If he was going to get the knife in between the feathers, they were only going to get one shot so it needed to really count. Sighing heavily, Anita knew what she needed to do. 

Reaching towards his arm that held the knife, she brought it towards herself as she let her teeth transform into fangs. “Don’t let any of this get into your bloodstream, yeah?” Anita warned as she let venom drip down from her fangs so it coated the blade of his knife. Frowning now, and singing again for good measure, she released her hold on his arm and took a few steps away. 

The bird seemed to be checking on a tree everytime it flew away from the two of them, maybe guarding a nest? Anita started walking towards it, not thrilled about the idea of putting herself in harms way just to assist him in this strange quest. “It seems to keep circling back around to check on that tree over there. Try and catch it when it’s distracted… don’t waste your shot. Or … your stab or whatever.”  

_ 

As expected, the breadcrumbs were… ineffective. It would have been a nice surprise to see them somehow save the day, but Emilio wasn’t really one for optimism. He grimaced as the bird paid no attention to them at all. “Any more ideas?” He was stuck. Problems he couldn’t solve with something sharp were never his favorite problems to face, after all.

She reached for his arm, and Emilio tensed briefly before allowing her to pull the knife towards herself. He had more, after all, and it wasn’t as if it was doing him much good. If she wanted one, he was more than happy to share. Except… she brought the knife up towards her mouth, and the motion made little sense to him. It made less sense when her teeth sharpened into fangs. She wasn’t undead; he would have known if she was, would have sensed it long before the bird was in the sky at all. 

Something dripped onto the blade, and then he was pulling his arm back to himself as her grip released. He eyed the substance on the blade dubiously, glancing between it and the woman with a furrowed brow. Don’t let any of this get into your bloodstream, she’d warned. It wasn’t the kind of thing Emilio needed to be told twice. He held the knife at arm’s length, looking up at the sky.

The bird was circling, paying extra attention to a nearby tree. It made its movements easy enough to track, to predict. Jaw set in a determined line, Emilio nodded. He had one shot at this with whatever she’d put on the knife; he couldn’t guarantee a second. He waited until the bird started its path over, reared back his arm, and threw the knife. It sailed through the air, striking the bird between the wings and going in far easier than it had before. Whatever she’d added to the knife, there was no denying its effectiveness as the bird fell from the sky.

—

Stepping back, both to give herself a better vantage of what was about to happen and to get out of the line of fire, Anita watched as the bird circled around again briefly diverting its attention from the two of them and to the tree it seemed to be attached to. Her eyes darted between the man and his knife and the creature, as she slowly backed out of the shallow water while she awaited some sort of action. 

His arm pulled back, the knife gripped expertly, and with a force that she imagined required exceptional strength the blade soared through the air and actually managed to close the distance between them and the bird. Anita was pleasantly surprised when she heard a slight shriek from the creature, cut short undoubtedly by the fast-acting venom that started working to incapacitate the bird. 

It was thankfully not the kind of creature that enjoyed immunity to venomous neurotoxins. Feeling content that the threat had been eliminated, Anita let her fangs shift away and she stopped her slow retreat from the area. “Nice aim.” She figured he deserved one, singular compliment for the work he had done. Without waiting to see what he was going to do next, she began walking towards where the creature had fallen. “I’m a scientist. I know how to dispose of this bird’s body safely. It can’t simply be left here, people could get sick. You should retrieve your necklace now, and wash it thoroughly before giving it back to that child.” Mostly she just wanted him to leave now, but thought saying so too directly might make him suspicious. 

_ 

A curt nod was the only response to the compliment. Emilio knew he had good aim; anything else had never really been an option. Hearing it from a stranger didn’t fill him with anything more than apathy, these days. Besides, he was far more interested in claiming his prize than he was basking in a compliment that was little more than stating the obvious… even if part of him was interested in knowing more about the woman who’d delivered it.

Her fangs disappeared as if they’d never been there at all. If not for the substance on the knife that had made it glide between armored feathers with ease, Emilio might have wondered if his addled mind was playing tricks on him, inventing scenarios that weren’t quite real. He fell into step beside her as she waded through the water, grimacing a little at the way his bad leg protested the uneven terrain with each and every step. Now that the adrenaline of killing the bird was dying down, he was sure he’d be feeling the effects of this ‘hike’ more and more.

But first, he had a necklace to retrieve. As they approached the bird’s corpse, Emilio leaned down. He pulled the blade from between its feathers, holding it out towards the woman. He couldn’t risk putting it in his pocket without contaminating everything else in there, and he couldn’t wash it in the murky water without knowing what was on it. He’d let her deal with it; he had plenty more knives. With his other hand, he untangled the necklace from the dead bird’s beak, shoving it into his pocket. At home, he’d wash it in the sink, soak it in alcohol. “Appreciate the assist,” he said to the woman, standing carefully. “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me how you did that?”

—

They walked in silence towards the corpse of the creature after her comment, which was rather pleasant. While there were questions she wanted to ask, the curiosity fueling them was not strong enough to want to prolong the interaction any further. Watching him reach for the knife and then present it to her, Anita accepted it with a puzzled expression. He could have just left it in the bird if he was going to give it to her. It was a nice looking knife, though, so she wasn’t exactly going to complain about getting to keep it. 

“Yeah, well, by that point the bird clearly lumped me in with you and saw us both as threats. I did it to not die, not specifically to assist you with your necklace quest.”  Anita had expected a question about her venom but hadn’t thought to prepare a response to it. He didn’t seem overly shocked by it, even if he didn’t understand what she had done. Just as he wasn’t overly shocked by this bird. Anita looked at the necklace in his hands, then up into his eyes. There was something that told her he wasn’t going to challenge an outright lie. 

“Dental implants. Can fill the little capsules with anything. Guess we’re lucky I went with deadly venom this morning and not cabernet sauvignon, huh?” Anita shrugged a bit, a defiant look in her eyes as she practically challenged him to call her on her bullshit. But with him holding the necklace that he had come here searching for, and her now holding the knife that was still coated in her venom, she doubted that challenge would come. 

_ 

It didn’t matter much why she’d decided to assist him instead of leaving him behind, though he’d wager a guess that it wasn’t just self preservation that kept her in place. After all, wouldn’t it have been easier for her to make a run for it? Emilio wasn’t particularly fast; his bad leg was an obvious, glaring weakness. He had no doubt that she’d seen it. (Though, given his general default level of paranoia and his hyper-awareness surrounding the mangled limb, he tended to figure most people saw it before anything else.) Still, if she wanted to claim she’d stayed for her own self interests, he wouldn’t call her out on it.

He wouldn’t call her out on the obvious lie about her teeth, either, though his expression made it clear that he didn’t buy the excuse. She wasn’t human. Once upon a time, that would have been enough to find Emilio drawing a second knife from his pocket. Now, though, he only stepped away from the dead bird with a shrug. “Guess so,” he agreed, fiddling absently with the necklace in his pocket. “Well, I’ve got what I came for. Name’s Emilio, by the way. Something tells me I’ll be seeing you.” And with that, and with the necklace in hand, he was off. It wasn’t often these days that he finished a case with something that felt like a win. He figured some kind of celebration might do him good.

[dirtwatchman]

PARTIES: Caleb/Aesil (@dirtwatchman), Emilio (@mortemoppetere), Erin (@corpse-a-diem), Lil (@the-lil-exorcist) and Father Liam TIME: Current (July 7th) SUMMARY: Aesil wants to attempt the ritual again and thinks using Emilio is the best way to go. Erin, Lil, and Father Liam have other plans. WARNINGS: Surprisingly none.

A ritual was a finicky thing but Aesil had been so certain that they had what they needed the first time around. The words were said perfectly, everything was set up the way it should have been in Caleb’s janky basement of refrigerators, but when they’d performed it all with no results they realized that one of the ingredients hadn’t been quite right. The blood of the damned hadn’t been strong enough. The victim chosen must have been a better person then they’d thought but there was a quick fix to that. 

And it had to be quick now that the annoying sister was in the way. 

Looking back on it, the demon had chosen Caleb because they’d thought he was a loner. The few days they had spent following him around hadn’t been enough though, that was clear now. This man had more people in his life that cared about him than even the zombie realized and they’d met one of the fiercest after that failed ritual. Her love for Caleb could be Aesil’s downfall.

The quick fix was currently tied to a chair that Aesil had brought down with them, his head lulled while he slept off that blow to the head they had given him. They had to get him here somehow and they were sick and tired of things going wrong. Besides, the small conversation they’d had at the bizarre was enough to tell Aesil that this one had too much fight to not take precautions. It had also told them that he might just be damned enough for this to work. There was a certain look these people held, a certain glint in their eye. This man had it in folds.

“Wake up.” It might have been a weakness of theirs but Aesil did enjoy the games they could play with these people before they took what they needed. Their foot launched forward, kicking the man hard in the shin to rouse them even further. “I need you awake for this. Open your eyes.”

Most days, Emilio was a difficult man to catch off guard. He was beyond paranoid, always looking for trouble even when there was none to be found. In his mind, the idea of the world being out to get him was more certainty than it was fear, and he tended to be guarded as a result. But no one was impossible to surprise. That was an unfortunate fact that he’d learned time and time again, from many different teachers. Catch him after a bad night, when sleep was a distant thing and alcohol coursed through his veins, and you might just get lucky. Knock him on the back of the head before he had time to turn around, and there wasn’t much fighting back he could do.

His only real warning before the blow had come with that familiar twisting in his gut that signified something undead nearby. He’d assumed it was the spawn he was tracking — a stupid mistake, he realized now. He listened as someone moved around the room, feigning unconsciousness as he took stock of himself. His most obvious weapons had been removed, his more hidden ones impossible to reach with the binds holding him to the chair. It was rope he was tied with — no locks to pick. The knots were tight enough that simply dislocating a few fingers wouldn’t get him loose. The chair didn’t seem like one he could break without drawing attention to himself, especially not while whoever had grabbed him was in the room. And whoever had grabbed him was undead, meaning there was likely additional strength to account for on their end, too. The only stroke of luck seemed to be in the fact that his head was the only obvious injury, and it wasn’t bad. A dull ache was easy to ignore; he was used to that.

Emilio tried not to tense as he heard the footsteps approaching his chair, tried to pretend he was still out cold. Whatever this undead person wanted with him, they seemed to want him awake for it. If he could keep pretending he was out, he could buy himself more time. Unfortunately, there were certain responses that were… a little more involuntary than he’d like to admit. A foot made harsh contact with his leg, and the pain that shot through the limb forced a grunt from between his clenched teeth. He knew his captor wouldn’t miss it.

With the illusion shattered, he allowed his eyes to open slowly, darting around the room. Basement. Underground. His heart ticked up a beat at the thought, and he tried to ignore the feeling of the walls closing in by gathering more information. Residential, from the looks of it. Probably still in Wicked’s Rest. His eyes darted up to his captor’s, head tilting slightly in familiarity. “If this is about the jar from the market,” he said dryly, “I already threw it out. You can go through my garbage, if you want, but this seems like overkill to me.” 

His mind was spinning as he tried to work out the reason behind this particular brand of bullshit. Was it to do with that missing man in the graveyard, the one he was sure would lead back to the groundskeeper if he followed it closely enough? Or was it related more to the encounter in the market, when the stranger seemed an entirely different man than the one he’d met that first night? Usually, when someone went through all the trouble of tying Emilio to a chair, he at least had some idea about the reasoning behind it. In this particular situation, he felt a little lost. And he didn’t particularly like feeling lost.

They ignored the question, Aesil not wanting to give the man the satisfaction of knowing how much he’d gotten under their skin that day. Yes, the demon had ignored him for the most part since they had better things to do but he’d always been in the back of their mind lying in wait for an opportunity. They figured it wouldn’t come until Andras had made his way to the surface and taken over but this had been too good to pass up. A slow death, maybe not as painful as they’d been hoping, but one where the man could have time to think of everything they were leaving behind. They only wished they could have taken those things away from him before taking his life. They liked to think that Caleb would have wanted that too.

Crouching down in front of him, they tilted their head as they studied him. Gruff in appearance and personality, obviously a fighter able to take care of himself, but there was an undercurrent that flowed with those unfortunate personality traits of his. Aesil could see it, something that showed the teeniest soft side of desperation. They’d seen it in every person that they had killed since coming to this plane of existence making it so easily recognizable. It was in the eyes mostly. Yea, he had at least one person that would miss him. 

Good.

“You are not an easy man to take down.” Out of everyone they had encountered, even Caleb’s sister and her affinity for eyes, this man had been the hardest to get the better of. Sneak attacks weren’t usually their thing, they liked when people saw the face of who was coming after them, but this one would have been tough to defeat as much as they hated to admit it. “I’ll give you credit for that one. Most humans are easy but you…you have too much fight in you. I almost want to let you live.”

Still, the demon pulled out the sharpfinger knife they’d been relying on,pressing the tip of their finger to the sharp edge as they showed it off. “I need you for something much bigger than a jar of fur, though.” They gestured all around them with the knife. The work table to their side had been redecorated with all the collected ingredients, the new heart they’d acquired the night before placed in a tiny bowl in the middle. Candles were lit, wax spilling over the sides as they waited to do their jobs. The floor beneath had been decorated with new sigils with a makeshift drain that led all around it so that the blood they needed from this man could get to every nook and cranny of the drawn shapes. Last time they’d thought just having the blood near would be enough but this time they knew it needed closer contact. Everything was ready for this new chapter to start. “You get to be a part of something so big tonight. You should feel honored. I bet Andras would even agree to give you a dying wish for your sacrifice…like maybe keeping anyone you love safe?”

He hadn’t expected a response to the taunt, but he scowled at the lack of one, anyway. Reading people was a big part of what Emilio did, as both a hunter and a private investigator. It was a shared aspect of both ‘jobs,’ a thing they had in common. Getting under someone’s skin could pull down their defenses, trick them into saying more than they meant to say. You could get good information just by pissing someone off, even if that information was often punctuated by a punch to the face. This, though? This stony silence, this look on the groundskeeper’s face as he knelt down to study Emilio? This told him next to nothing.

His nostrils flared, his chin tilting up in some useless show of defiance. He knew he didn’t have the upper hand here. Given enough time, he could probably gain it — he’d been in plenty of tough scrapes, even woken up tied to chairs far more than once now — but he wasn’t sure he’d get the chance. Most of Emilio’s strategies involved being allowed to run his mouth in a way that encouraged enough anger to make a person sloppy, but the undead groundskeeper didn’t seem like he’d go for that. 

He might die here. It was an absent sort of thought, one only half-considered. He searched the groundskeeper’s eyes carefully, trying to determine the motive behind it. Was he getting too close in his investigation? Did the man know he was a hunter? Which of his jobs was getting him killed here? His eyes studied the other man’s face for answers, though there was no fear in his expression. Though… he felt a little more regret than he’d thought he would. 

And he was pissed off. That one was a little more expected, though.

“Tell you what,” he said, leaning forward as far as his binds would allow. “You cut me loose, I’ll go home, and we can pretend none of this happened.” It was a bluff; the groundskeeper would probably know that. Emilio wasn’t the type to let things go. But, hey, a guy had to try, didn’t he? Leaning back again, he added, “Or I’ll cut myself loose and take your head off. Both of these things are fine with me.” 

His eyes slid to the knife as the groundskeeper pulled it out, expression shifting to one that looked more like a mild interest than any real concern. Double-blade. Old style. Won’t feel great slicing you open, but what does? He glanced to the table, to the things spread out on it. Candles. Sigils. A human heart. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was some kind of a ritual. Emilio let out a quiet laugh, shaking his head. Christ. Teddy would get a real kick out of this one, wouldn’t they? 

Looking back to the groundskeeper, Emilio tilted his head. “Ah, tonight is not good for me. Got other plans. Maybe we pencil this in for next week.” At the mention of people he loved, the feigned amusement melted off his face, replaced with stormy rage. He leaned forward again, straining against the ropes. “If you think I will tell you anything about anyone I love,” he said lowly, “you’re a lot stupider than you look. And you already look pretty stupid. Seen plenty of people get big heads, think they can pull shit like this off. Most of them get eaten.”

If this had been any other day, Aesil might have lost their cool. They’d done it already. They’d let countless people slip through death’s fingertips because they weren’t thinking straight. Their excitement had gone to their head, their anger had blinded them to their own weaknesses. That night things were different though. The demon knew they’d already won. There was a quiet confidence buzzing through Caleb’s veins in place of the blood that should have been flowing. The zombie was gone, the ritual was ready, and this man was stuck. 

A slow smirk pulled at their lips as they used the knife to start ripping away useless fabric. The clothing would have only made the blood flow too slow and they needed all of it. Every last drop of the damned had to be spilled just in case Aesil was wrong again. They had a feeling they weren’t after kidnapping yet another spellcaster for information. “Actually, none of those work for me. I have a deal for you though.” Bright eyes met dark ones, that confidence the demon was feeling slipping through more and more. “Stop saying stupid shit and I won’t eat your lungs as you're desperately trying to breathe through them.” A deal they most likely wouldn’t keep. They still wanted to see this one suffer after all. 

They stopped tearing the clothes as soon the man’s act dropped, amusement joining Caleb’s features. “I hit a nerve with that one. Jeeze, you would think I had all of them locked down here with you.” They grinned up at him, now knowing something they hadn’t before. “Good to know you have more than one in your life. I couldn’t find a license but I’m sure circulating your picture around will get some bites online. You should have just taken the gratitude.” They reached up, patting the man’s face a few times, eyes blazing with more of the confidence. “I’m not most people. A foot soldier, maybe, but I know my master. They’ll be so grateful to get away from that plane of existence they’ll reward me.” 

The knife ripped at his clothes, the sound of tearing fabric seeming louder than it should have been in a basement that was otherwise far too quiet. Emilio could feel the coolness of the blade getting closer and closer to his skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake as his body anticipated the all-too familiar feeling that would come with the knife ripping through more than just his clothes. “This was one of my nicest shirts,” he said, clinging to the dry humor as he kept searching for buttons to press, kept looking for a way under the groundskeeper’s skin. He was running out of time, and he knew it. If he didn’t find some way to pause this process soon, he’d have more than just rope preventing him from putting up a fight.

He raised his brow as the man who’d brought him here offered up his own ‘deal,’ unsurprised that it was just as undesirable to him as his deal had been to his captor. “Not sure you’d like the taste,” he replied. “Been smoking more than a decade now. Probably doesn’t do much for the flavor.” His fingers twitched, desperately searching for any kind of weakness in the binds with a quiet subtlety. Emilio wouldn’t give this man the satisfaction of knowing just how badly he wanted out of this chair, wouldn’t risk letting him know that this wasn’t how he’d been hoping to spend his evening. The groundskeeper was looking for a reaction. Emilio was trying very hard not to give him one.

It was so much easier said than done.

The slip had been unintentional, and his jaw twitched at the realization that he’d offered up information not previously available. Most people had more than one person they gave a shit about, but Emilio had needed any upper hand he could get, and he’d just lost one of the last ones available to him. For once, his lack of any kind of legal identification served in his favor — no license meant there was no way for this man to know his address — but there were still ways for him to find out who Emilio gave a shit about. Would he really go after them, even after he finished carving Emilio up here? Based on his expression, the detective was inclined to think he would. 

“I’m going to kill you,” he said lowly, eyes dark. “I’m going to get out of this chair, and your reward is going to be your own goddamn blade taking your head off your body. I want you to know that.” It wasn’t much of a threat, coming from a man thoroughly bound to a chair, and Emilio knew it. Still, the storm brewing behind his eyes spoke to how much he believed what he was saying. He’d never been one to go down easy, after all.

“The act that you all put on is so tiring, is it not? I did it for a few weeks and it was so much worse than I imagined. Had to drop it halfway through.” They shook their head, Aesil tired of the pretenses. Nobody was real, nobody showed who they truly were, not even to who they were supposed to trust the most. They knew this whole journey wasn’t going to be easy but they’d never expected all the lies from humans. It slipped easily from their mouths like it was second nature. They didn’t even have to think about it.

And they called demons the bad ones.

That was one thing about where they were from that they would miss; there was no hiding who you were. Demons were mean but they were real. The more time that they spent around the fakeness that humans produced the more they realized how right their master was for hating them all. “You’re allowed to be scared in the face of death, you know? No need to hide it.” But, as always, they did appreciate the fight. 

Then they looked up into the eyes of a man who was no longer playing games. This. This was the real human lurking beneath the snarky comments. It was always when a loved one was threatened when they showed their true nature. Half the time they didn’t care about themselves but talk about hurting someone they loved and the true nature of who they were bled into their words. And this was a true fighter. It was just too bad that all that fight was wasted on a man who couldn’t break through a simple knot. “Sure thing, buddy.”

Something caught Aesil’s attention. After the incident with the sister they had placed something called a Ring on the front porch so they wouldn’t get any more surprises and it was going off in the corner of the room. Fuck whoever that was. They were so close to getting this done that they didn’t bother getting up to check. If they came to the basement they would just join this poor sap in his fate. “Time to die.”

The knife sliced through the man’s bound wrists, just above where the ropes were. One, two slashes to let the blood drain to the floor and start curling through the sigils. Aesil moved the blade to the back of his thighs and made two more cuts, one on each, hoping they had gotten a good vein or two. They watched the blood pouring down into the markings on the floor impatiently, willing it to move faster to fill in quicker so they could start the Latin that needed to be said. The last thing they needed was this interruption. 

“Mark it down as another thing you’re bad at,” Emilio replied, eyes narrowing. A few weeks. Had he been putting on an act when Emilio met him the first time, then? Was this the real man, and the bumbling, nervous one in that graveyard had been playing pretend? But what for, if he was so willing to kill, anyway? People who made ritualistic sacrifices to demons didn’t tend to bother trying to convince strangers in graveyards late at night of their innocence; it would have been far simpler for him to kill Emilio the first night and have no one be the wiser. 

There were still too many pieces missing for Emilio to solve the puzzle in its entirety. He could make guesses here and there, but there was nothing concrete to cling to. Emilio wasn’t sure how much it mattered, anyway. Understanding the man holding him captive wouldn’t get him out of this chair. He was beginning to think nothing would. And even still, he refused to give this man what he wanted. He refused to let even a sliver of fear grip his chest. He let his gaze burn through the groundskeeper, shaking his head. “I haven’t been afraid of death in a very long time. You’ll have to try much harder than this if fear is what you’re after.”

Threatening Emilio did little to upset him. Threatening the people he cared about had a far different effect. The slayer was all the more determined to break his binds now, unwilling to let any of the people he loved suffer because he’d pissed off the wrong person. There had been enough of that already, hadn’t there? Emilio yanked against the rope, no longer interested in a subtle escape attempt. If this was his last chance, he’d give it all the strength he had.

There was a sound from the corner — a proximity alarm, maybe? Emilio prepared to use it as a distraction, hoping he might be able to use brute strength to break through the binds and take the groundskeeper by surprise well enough to knock the blade from his hand. But the alarm seemed to spur his captor into action more than distract him. 

The knife sliced through his skin, eliciting a small grunt from the slayer. The process repeated, and he bit his tongue hard enough to taste blood, clenching his teeth to keep any sound from escaping. Blood flowed down towards the floor, towards the sigils drawn there. It was slow-moving, but still quick enough to leave Emilio a little dizzy. He’d bleed out slow, this way… but he’d still bleed out. Sooner than he’d like, too. Straining, he tried to angle his bleeding wrists in a way that would allow the blood to soak through the ropes, a last-ditch effort to allow him to pull them free.

Distantly, he thought he heard the sound of footsteps above them. He resisted the urge to glance up, hoping that it was someone who meant well and not just someone come to watch the show.

Erin could still feel Caleb’s hands around her neck. She watched his house, safely hidden away in her car just a little bit down the road so that it was out of eyesight. She’d wanted to get here early. Alone. She needed time to reacclimate herself to the idea that Caleb’s face did not belong to Caleb right now. That the hands that bruised her skin weren’t the same ones that happily fixed every loose cabinet the funeral home had seen for the last decade. He was as instrumental to the place as she was. As any of them were. More importantly, he was family. 

The house was quiet. No one in or out for a while now. Erin couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. Didn’t stop her stomach from incessantly folding in itself when she thought too hard about it. Made sense that he’d go back to the heart–and brains, apparently–of the home. When she saw Lilian and her acquaintance pulling up, she took one last look at the house–no face in the window, no sign that he knew anything yet–and stepped out. Her eyes went to the man with her. Taller than most priests she knew and with a stoic look that gave her more confidence than she had five minutes ago. 

“He’s here,” she greeted them, too anxious to be polite and too worried to care. Lil said this would work and the priest looked ready for a reckoning. This would be fine. Caleb would be fine. She glanced back at the house, resisting the urge to touch the knife hidden under her jacket for comfort. An old hunting knife her grandfather had left her father, abandoned in a drawer until last night. Just in case.“We go in, I distract, and you guys do your thing,” she summarized the already laid out plan. She just needed to say it outloud again. It helped somehow. There was a long pause as she looked between the both of them, her nervous gaze steeling slowly into a hard set stare. She swallowed hard. “We’re going to to get him back. I’m going to get him back.” That was the only outcome she could entertain in that moment.

Lil’s hand stung as she wrapped it up carefully moving quickly with what was the weirdest team she’d ever been a part of. When Erin had said something was happening to her friend - brother and that it felt off. It didn’t take too long to figure out what it might be. With the town the way it was, and the whispers of demons all around, Lil would have been a fool not to know. 

Perhaps Lil really did need to get out of this town one day. She was getting way to comfortable slicing her hand open and performing the one ritual that she knew. Still, unlike the last ritual there was no demon on their side - or whatever Levi had turned out to be. So she forced Jamie to call in a favor with a demonologist he knew. It was - tense Father Liam wasn’t at all fond of Lil - her name preceding her. If it mattered, Lil wasn’t at all fond of him either. Still, she had to hand it to the priest; he wasn't one to wait around and let things happen. He had readily accepted Lil’s stupid plan and she wondered idly if Jamie’s reputation had saved hers. 

Standing in front of the door with her hand prepared, Lil nodded looking at Erin and the Priest. “Right, Erin you distract us and we’ll bum rush him okay? Father, you got your sword or whatever?” 

It was perhaps the only cool thing Lil thought demonologists had - a physical weapon from their soul to use. She wondered idly what happened to it once they died - where her sister’s weapon was - before going back to present. “If you get him still enough I can make the barrier.” 

With a nod from the priest and him pulling out a sword that seemed obsidian black, Lil tried to relax the almost screaming worry in her soul. With a look to Erin she nodded holding the door handle ready to go in front of her if needed. 

Demonologists. Exorcisms. Swords. Erin’s eyes jumped to the priest again, wider this time. She’d never felt more out of her element, even with Lil’s game plan fresh in mind. This was her new normal, she realized suddenly. Whatever this was. It shouldn’t have felt sudden (things had been weird for a long time now) and it shouldn’t have been this moment, but preparing to barge in on her demon-possessed brother with a sword wielding priest and a fellow medium was it. Lil nodded and she looked at the door, the world a little different than it had been before. She’d figure out what that feeling meant later. She pulled out the knife, clutching it tightly. Just in case.  “You know, you could have brought a sword for everyone,” she teased flatly, trying to quell her nerves. But she’d heard the doorbell go off–that was new–and time felt like it snapped into overdrive. They’d lost their element of surprise. Caleb knew someone was here. 

Erin took one last glance back at the priest, then at Lil, a note of gratitude prominently featured amongst her fear. If she lived through this, she owed Lil and Liam more than she could truly explain. “Let’s get this fucker,” she spat bitterly and finally pressed into the dark house. 

That same smell hit her, worsened by time and hot summer heat. She could only charge forward, expecting Caleb to come at her from each and every corner leading to the basement. There was nothing but maybe what sounded like muffled voices. Alright. Well. She was the distraction. Time to distract. She didn’t think about it–just pulled open the basement door and ascended quickly, like this was a casual trip. She nearly gagged at the smell down here. “Do all demons live like pigs or is that just your speciality? Because–” she started, a taunt to get his attention on her, but there was a second figure in a chair. All the ropes and blood told her that he probably wasn’t here by choice. She stopped two-thirds of the way down, thrown briefly at the poor sight of him. Lil had mentioned some of the things that she’d likely see when they’d concocted this initial plan but–fuck. “You’re, uh… well, you’re not Caleb.”

Aesil leaned down closer to the man’s ear, that same shit eating grin that seemed permanently plastered to their face now that they were sure they had won pulling at Caleb’s lips. “I may be bad at acting like a walking shithole of depression and anxiety but you’re still the one tied to this chair…bleeding out, might I add.” Their eyes fixed to the blood running along the floor filling in the empty spaces as they stayed in that position behind the man. “I don’t need your fear, I have plenty of that coming to me. I just need your death to move along here. I know that bitch is probably back.” That was partially due to them if they thought about it. Taunting the woman online was a bad idea and only provoked her more but if she was here then Andras could have a little snack upon his arrival. 

As soon as the words were out of their mouth they heard the unmistakable sound of her throwing the basement door open and bounding down the steps. Aesil twirled the knife in hand before catching the hilt, pressing the blade to the hunter’s neck while they prepared to do what it took to keep her at a distance. She seemed like the type that wouldn’t let a man die just to bring Caleb back. She didn’t have to know that he was going to die anyway. “Erin! Nice of you to join us. I would have hated for you to miss this. I wouldn’t come too much closer though, you wouldn’t want this poor man’s death on your hands.” 

The sound of more footsteps threw them off, brows furrowing together. Shit, had she come more prepared this time? The demon couldn’t even blame her. They were more prepared this time as well and seeing as she’d narrowly escaped them during their last encounter it was smart of her to bring some friends. It didn't matter. None of them could stop this. “I’m always up for a party but it would have been nice if you’d let me know to expect more company. It’s alright, I’ll forgive you this time. But only because you’re not going to be around too much longer.” 

They pressed the blade further into the man’s skin, eyes flicking over to the floor. He wasn’t fully drained but all the etchings in the floor were full so this would have to be enough. A foreign language started to spill from their lips, one that the demon was sure had never been spoken on this plane of existence before, and they concentrated as hard as they could on their main goal. Andras would rise. He would take over this town and skin every person alive until it was time to move on to the next and Aesil would be right there by his side. 

It was strange, in a distant sort of way; Emilio could feel the presence of the groundskeeper behind him, but there was no breath in his ear as the demon spoke. Had they possessed an undead man on purpose, he wondered? He didn’t know enough about demons to know the answer. He might have made a mental note to ask Teddy if he weren’t reasonably sure he was going to die here. He grit his teeth against the thought, angry at the mere concept of giving this demon the satisfaction of killing him. “Been in worse spots,” he ground out, unsure if it was a lie. He’d been certain he was going to die before; it wasn’t a new feeling. But this? There was a helplessness to this that he didn’t enjoy. The blood rushing in his ears was a deafening thing, the pain in his extremities as he tried to keep the twisting of his wrists subtle enough not to be recognized nauseating. 

And then, the door opened.

He registered the feeling of the blade pressed against his neck, scowled at the coolness of it. Emilio disliked the idea of being a hostage almost as much as he disliked the idea of being a sacrifice. His eyes darted to the woman who’d just entered the room, making note of the shock on her face. She definitely wasn’t here for the show. She mentioned Caleb, and his eyes darted down quickly, as if trying to catch a glimpse of the hand holding the knife against his throat without moving his head enough to allow the metal to dig in deeper. “Guessing that’s not Caleb right now, either,” he replied flatly. The act of speaking moved his throat enough for the blade to nick the skin; privately, he thought it was worth it. Maybe he would die here, but he certainly wouldn’t die quietly. It wasn’t much, but it was all he really had right now.

The demon behind him was spitting threats, and Emilio made eye contact with the woman. “They’re going to kill me either way,” he told her. That had been the plan from the beginning. He knew that. “If you’ve got a way of ending this, you end it.” 

More footsteps joined the fray, and Emilio blinked as a pair of figures entered the room. One of them was familiar enough to bring some relief. Lil might not deal with demons often, but she knew a lot more about them than Emilio did. And, if he had to guess, the guy she’d brought trailing in behind her was some kind of an expert. If this woman, Caleb’s friend, Erin had known to call Lil, it meant she came prepared. 

The relief was a little short lived, the blade pressing harder against his throat as his blood continued to drip onto the floor. He was starting to get woozy; blood loss was always a bitch. Behind him, the demon started chanting, and — and chanting was bad. Emilio knew chanting was bad. Desperately, his eyes found Lil’s, darting between her, Erin, and the third figure they’d brought along. “Whatever you’re here to do,” he yelled over the chanting, “you do it quick. Don’t stop on my account.” 

Lil knew that hesitation was akin to stalling in life. As she rushed forward there was nothing in her movement that stopped her - moving to hold the man that she knew was influenced by a demon. Her hand screamed as she wrestled him still - part pure objective fury and part hope holding him still for the briefest of moments as she felt the Father move around him saying some sacred sacrament that didn’t register to her. 

“Hey man - I got you. Don’t worry, ” Lil said softly looking at Emilio in as she pinned a man that could have been called Caleb. In her determination Erin was at least a distraction as she kept on the other the salt laid. Father Liam pouring the salt that was necessary for her to do her job and without much fan fair she stuck her hand in the salt slowly saying the ritual that Jane had taught her. 

“Demon - I beseech Sancte Michael,defende nos in proeliout non pereamus

in tremendo iudicio. -” the words of the air  by Father Liam in the area as Lil muttered her own ritual putting down an area that would keep the demon contained. The father’s sword kept steady at the zombie, a focus that Lil couldn’t conceive of a continuation of Latin similar to any that she knew. It was more direct and harsh then anything she would have performed. 

It was taking everything in Erin’s concentration not to focus in on Caleb’s figure standing behind the profusely bleeding man. They had a job to do. And it seemed that the man bleeding out before their eyes knew the severity of this situation, even outside of his very dire one. This ritual could not be completed. And for all of Erin’s words earlier, it was becoming clear that getting Caleb out of this alive was going to be a mountain of a mission in itself. She nodded solemnly, understanding. 

She ignored the demon’s words, ignored the way they burned in Caleb’s voice and got to work. “You can party all you want when you get home, huh?” She murmured, moving further into the disgusting basement. Lil, to her surprise, was fiestier than she would have guessed and was already attacking the demon. The Father was laying down salt and Erin ran to the bleeding man’s side. Lil seemed to have Caleb distracted enough for right now. And if this man was important to the ritual, it was equally important to get him the hell out of here. 

The rope was tied impossibly tight and she was glad for the knife she’d brought and started to slice through his confines, though it was going to take a minute. “Hey–looking a little pale over here. Stay with me, okay?” She nudged the man gently, watching Lil struggle with Caleb still. “How are we doing Lil?” She called out a little over the Latin filling the room. 

The man bleeding out had served his purpose so the demon abandoned the knife that was to his throat when it became clear threatening him wouldn’t stop them. Someone was on them anyway, hands making an attempt to stop what was happening. It was cute the way this girl thought she could make any kind of difference. Sure, she was putting up a good fight but Aesil was well versed in struggle. Multitasking came easy, their words still slipping through Caleb’s lips as they brought their hand up to wrap around her neck to try and keep her at bay. Laughter started to lace their words when the man’s blood started to rise an inch off the ground, swirling in a circle, flickers of another world coming into view. 

Words faltered as the Latin mixed in with their voice, catching in their throat and causing droplets of the blood to fall back to the ground. Aesil’s eyes burned as they fell on The Father, realizing the circle wasn’t flickering into view as much anymore. The pain was barely noticeable but the more that both the priest and the girl uttered those wretched words the more they could feel themself being pulled away, feel Caleb rising back to the surface.

The bastard was fighting with them. 

It was just like the pathetic excuse of a man to give up until he thought he could win. But Caleb should have known better. He should have known that Aesil had a lot more fight left in them even as they faltered that much more. Whole sentences of their chant were now being dropped, each word the two of them muttered digging deeper into the pale skin of the zombie, fighting to dig out the shadow that had taken over. Their grip on the girl’s neck tightened, the demon trying to stop the flow of her words while they struggled to remember their own. “Fuck. You.”

The circle formed by the blood was still flickering, their words having been repeated enough to keep it struggling to fully form despite Aesil not being able to continue but their confidence in this was starting to plunge. They couldn’t fail again. Andras would not be happy if they had screwed up twice but how were they supposed to know that the fucking sister knew an exorcist? They started to sputter out the words again which only made The Father work harder, Aesil letting out a roar of anger. It was easy to hear the amplified pain they were starting to experience. That happened when an entity was literally being ripped away. Their knees were growing weak as tendrils of their shadow started to slowly seep out of the zombies skin, being pulled towards the blood circle. It wasn’t intended for this use but too much was against the demon now. It was then that they knew they weren’t getting out of this one. 

‘You’ve lost, you bastard. Stop fighting it.’

Caleb’s voice broke through, stronger than it had ever been in Aesil’s mind. He was taking over again but the fear that was in the zombie’s eyes belonged solely to the demon. The Father’s words intensified in meaning and in the next moment, all at once, that shadow of Aesil burst through the zombie’s skin. With the last flicking of the blood circle they disappeared back into their own world and the blood fell back to the floor.

Caleb was free.

The zombie blinked once, twice, swallowing the bile rising in his throat when he took in the whole scene before him. Eyes wide with horror, he wrenched his hand from Lil’s neck, the force of his quick retreat throwing him back into one of the freezers. 

It was nice of Lil to bring a priest with her, Emilio thought. He wondered if the guy could be convinced to take a break from exorcising long enough to give him his last rites… or if he was still Catholic enough to want that. There was something almost funny about the thought, eliciting an amused snort from the man as the knife at his throat disappeared and the presence of the groundskeeper — Caleb, or not-Caleb, or whoever the fuck — disappeared with it. With the immediate threat of the knife gone, Emilio went back to working the binds, the blood on his wrists doing him the favor of making his skin a little more slippery. It was the only favor it was doing him. He was pretty sure the half-hysterical laugh bubbling up in his chest at the sight of the priest mid-exorcism was a blood loss thing. 

The blood on the ground seemed to be moving, somehow, and Emilio wondered if that was real or if he was a little farther along in the stages of blood loss than he’d like to be. He paused for a moment to blink down at it, head tilting to the side. There were flashes of something else, something strange that reminded him a little too much of what he’d seen in Wynne’s compound when Levi went up against the demon Wynne’s family worshiped. Whatever the groundskeeper was summoning, Emilio knew it couldn’t succeed. Someone needed to stop it. And, despite his martyr complex screaming that it ought to be, he didn’t think that ‘someone’ was going to be him this time. 

A new presence joined him as he did so, and he tensed momentarily at the sight of a knife. But rather than add any new injuries to his body (which, in his humble opinion, would’ve been overkill, anyway), this knife began slicing through the ropes he was struggling to slip out of. He had enough sense to still in his efforts to avoid any accidental injury as the woman — Erin, the demon called her Erin — freed him from his binds.

“Doing the best I can,” he ground out, yanking his wrist to his chest the moment the rope dropped from around it. The second one joined it when it was free, and Emilio pressed his bleeding wrists against his bare chest in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. He wished the demon had let him keep his clothes, at least. Fabric was a lot better for stopping the bleeding than skin. 

As Erin finished severing the binds, Emilio turned his attention towards the rest of the room. The blood on the ground — his blood, which he’d like to get back, actually — was still moving, though it seemed to be struggling against something now. It wasn’t the only thing struggling. The demon and the priest were locked in some kind of something, the former’s hand wrapped tightly around Lil’s throat. 

It was a new feeling of helplessness, sitting and watching. For a moment, he wasn’t sure which side was going to win, but… he probably should have known better. He might not have known the priest doing the chanting, but he knew Lil. He knew she knew her shit, knew she wouldn’t bring in anyone but the best to help with this kind of thing. The blood in the circle served a new purpose as shadowy tendrils were drawn from the groundskeeper to the ground. Then, all at once, it was over. The blood stilled. The groundskeeper came back to himself, releasing his grip on Lil’s throat and scrambling backwards. Emilio let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, slumping back into the chair and closing his eyes for a moment. No one was dead. It was a pleasant surprise. 

For a moment, he was silent. There was a buzzing in his ears, adrenaline thrumming as his body tried to catch up to his mind’s knowledge that the threat was over. He took a deep breath, trying to ease his addled mind. Then, opening his eyes, he glanced around the room. “Anybody have an extra shirt?”

Lil hadn’t quite expected the hand around her neck as the Priest did his thing, the blood on her hand was after all for a circle ritual to keep the demon in, but like most things in her life things rarely went to plan. Even so as she scrambled to keep his attention she could tell the Father was getting close to the end of the ritual, her own only working in as far as it kept her body as a barrier, her palm pressed to his back. It meant it was incredibly dangerous now. 

And stupid, but luckily only the Priest knew that and he didn’t seem to be complaining. Still,It was getting hard to mouth the words though as he choked her, her hands changing to finger signing the ritual behind his back until it was up. It meant that she couldn’t stop him from choking her.

Sometimes in life it’s just about outlasting and making a very stupid bet. Feeling the ritual about to end she could feel Father Liam’s power as she started to pass out. Oddly her thoughts went to her sister - had she done something like this when she started out? She never really knew how demonologist training started. Would she get to breathe again? It didn’t look good as she rapidly kept her concentration on the barrier. She wanted to respond to Erin at the very least. Tell her to get Emilio and run - but she couldn’t breathe. 

It would be ironic at least. Fighting so long to not deal with demons and ending up dying to one she didn’t even know the name of. She’d call it fate if Lil could believe in that. 

Father Liam didn’t go to Lil’s aid and focused on pushing the demon out before anything else his sword flashing with an indomitable soul finally slashing the circle dropping to a knee after a moment. “Lilian are you still alive?” He said not looking up. The girl should be fine after all, she had a lot of audacity. 

Dropping to the floor Lil gasped out loud for a moment coughing. “God damn - yeah Father I’m fine. Not the first time -” She coughed her voice a little raspy. “Also it’s fucking Lil you -” 

“Language,” The priest said getting up and pulling up the younger Exorcist who scrambled away looking to make sure her friends were okay going to grab her bag to start helping to stop Emilio from bleeding out. “I have extra shirts in my bag. Young man, I assume you aren’t possessed anymore?” Father Liam said his eyes went to Caleb. 

Lil instead put a hand on Erin’s shoulder. “We gotta get him patched up - and Emilio we gotta stop meeting like this.” 

It was all happening faster than Erin could comprehend. Lil was fighting a possessed Caleb. Caleb was squeezing the life out of Lil. There was a man bleeding out in a chair beside her and the flash of the priest's sword ominously swinging about was more than distracting in itself. She felt helpless watching it happen, though that’s why she’d brought along Lil to begin with. This was always bigger than she could reckon with herself. 

And then it stilled. Caleb’s eyes were no longer the hardened, empty spots they’d been even moments before when they’d charged in. They were afraid. They were full of remorse, of feelings other than hatred and violence. They were Caleb’s. Tentatively, Erin stood by Lil, nearly forgetting the man bleeding beside her–the Emilio she’d heard so much about from Van and Nora, apparently. The one with the 3-in-1 shampoo and the disgusting couch. Funny how worlds collided sometimes. She’d have to ask him how he got caught up in this mess some day. Right now didn’t seem like the time. 

“Are you okay?” She asked, Lil, who was by her side now. Thankfully still breathing. She sent a tentative glance Lil’s way, giving the hand on her shoulder a squeeze in return, before taking steps his way. The priest seemed confident and his eyes alone could almost convince her, but she’d been fooled long enough by the demon possessing him that she still questioned her judgment even now.

“Caleb?” Her voice felt loud now that a majority of the action had calmed down. She stepped closer–but stopped, eyes on the freezer that was behind him. A staunch reminder of what had been here before the demon ever took possession. Of the things he’d done without any help from outside forces, if the word of the demon was to be believed. Hesitance stiffened her muscles. This wasn’t how this was supposed to feel. She was supposed to feel overjoyed, relieved, that they’d come out of this relatively unscathed. But that wasn’t the case. She knew it in her bones. “Are you–is that you?” She asked, holding a hand out, then dropped it slowly to her side, eyes glued to him the whole time.

He could hear the distant voices of the others around him as they stirred back to life. He could smell the thick copper scent wafting through the room. He could feel the hard casing of the freezer as it dug into his hip, the zombie cowering into it. He could even taste the regret that was already starting to build in every inch of his being. But Caleb refused to look at any of them. He wouldn’t meet the eye of anyone in that room, his gaze stuck to the cement floor beneath him, because the memories of the last few months were playing out for him. His mind was gracious enough to bring on the images of every person he had terrified, maimed, and killed while Aesil was in control. Tears were brimming the edge of his vision, threatening to spill over at any moment, but none of those images would break the dam.

No…nothing broke him the way Erin’s voice did. As soon as his name slipped from her lips the horrific images started to fade into the back of his mind. With the relief she brought came those tears that had been threatening to fall, streaking down his cheeks. Caleb’s eyes lifted to hers, watching carefully as she stepped forward. The questions in that simple gesture were endless. Is it you? Are you really back? Are you going to threaten me again? Lay hands on me? Is everything that demon told me true? Are you what you are? He could hear them all so clearly echoing in his mind as she looked towards the freezer he was pressed against, and with those questions the fear, sadness, and anxiety returned. 

He imagined that this would be the new normal. Anyone who had been involved with Aesil’s actions would give him this look from now on. Why wouldn’t they? It was his face they saw, his hands that had hurt them, so seeing him would definitely bring out a wariness that he knew would be well deserved. It still hurt. Her fearful eyes gazing at him stung like nothing ever had and nothing ever will. He refused her outstretched hand just as she seemed to think better of it and lowered it to her side. That was good. She should be afraid of him no matter how much it killed him.

“It’s me.” The zombie finally tore his gaze away from her, pressing further into the metal to relish the sting of it digging into his hip, and looked at the other three. One bleeding man who might need a hospital, one priest who seemed to be no nonsense, and one very brave girl whose neck was starting to bruise just so. The five of them, all seemingly normal in their day to day (or maybe not in this town) now very much interconnected by the most horrific event that had ever happened in Caleb’s life. And he was so sorry that this is what had brought them all together. 

But at least he was back, right? It was him. Or…a version of himself. A new version, one that would never again be the same. He didn’t know or understand the impact that this would have on him, not yet, but he knew that the very fabric of who he was was now tattered and soiled. It was him, but at the same time it wasn’t.

And suddenly, he wondered why so many were desperate to be reborn.

[bountyhaunter]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Outside the Keep PARTIES: Emilio @mortemoppetere and Daiyu @bountyhaunter SUMMARY: Emilio bumps into Daiyu while investigating. CONTENT WARNINGS: Abuse (hunter), sibling death (past), lots of talk about inhumane imprisonment

If he was going to break into a facility full of supernatural prisoners and stage a prison break, he was going to make sure he didn’t get anyone who didn’t deserve to bleed out killed in the process. That was a fairly important aspect to this whole ordeal, the kind of thing that Emilio wanted to be sure of. He’d fucked up with this kind of thing before, had freed Joy’s supernatural captives without thinking, and it hadn’t ended particularly well for anyone involved. So… he was going to do it right this time. He was going to… research, or whatever. He was, at the very least, going to plan his way in before actually doing the breaking and entering part.

The blueprints the necromancer had given him were a good start, but Emilio knew he needed to see the place in person. He needed to observe the shift changes, needed to determine when the best time to stage a break-in might be. He was quiet as he strolled the perimeter, forcing himself to take strides that were uncomfortable with his bad leg but quieter than dragging it behind him the way he normally did. Four steps this way. Guard at the door, but he’s on his phone. Looks like he’s got a radio — need to take him down before he can use it. Nonlethal — he might not know what he’s doing. 

It was a quiet narration, an echo in his mind. He was into it, but not so much that he lost sight of the area around him. If anything, he was hyperaware of his surroundings when he was like this. Aware enough, it turned out, to recognize the strides of the person moving towards the building from just outside the shadow where he was standing.

He hesitated a moment. If he’d seen her a while ago, when all they did was bicker online without any real understanding, he would have just let her go in unbothered. But now, after their last interaction�� He snaked out a hand to stop her. “Daiyu,” he whispered, trying to catch her attention without catching anyone else’s. “Hey.”

—

It had been a fair while since she’d moved up in the Good Neighbors and was now part of Winnifred’s inner circle. Daiyu did not try to think too much about what it meant, what it made of her. When she did think of it, she thought of it in terms of how those around – and still away – from her would think of it. Her father would think Winnifred a foolish woman with a heart that bled in a way he could exploit, and so would her sister. They’d think keeping the creatures alive just to lock them away a waste — would suggest further action. Experimentation. Selling parts. Selling whole things. Pitting them against each other.

They’d call her a bleeding heart, too. A stupid little girl, for falling in with something like the Good Neighbors. Enticed by that notion, by the idea of goodness. Hunters were born to protect, but the Volkovs knew better than that. You didn’t get rich through protection. And though Daiyu was making a buck off her work, it was nowhere near what she could be earning.

But she kept at it. There was always conflict to find in anything she did, so this was no different. She went out into town and the forest and took out the creatures, shifters and monsters that plagued the town. She tried to remember she was savings lives. Only taking out those that should be. That had earned it. She collected her money and didn’t worry about rent any more. She slept in a soft bed with a new duvet. She was fine. 

Sometimes, when she went to the Keep to do a shift there, she brought along a bit of brain or blood she’d gotten off a kill she’d done for another bounty. She slipped the gore to angry vampires or zombies and did not think about the implications. 

She was scheduled again today. Scheduled, as if she had a fucking job. And in a way, that was what it was, wasn’t it? Some people worked for mega corporations. She worked for Winnifred, who made really good hot chocolate and who was doing something good. Daiyu moved to the Keep with a backpack slung over one shoulder, her car abandoned a few miles back in the name of security. She was unsuspecting and not thinking about the implications of the ziplock bag with an aufhocker brain and so when someone’s hand appeared from a dark corner.

Daiyu responded as she was trained to, smacking the hand aside with a flat palm and getting ready to pounce. But it was just a whisper, and a familiar face. Emilio Cortez. A liar, a slayer, a dog owner, a saver of her life, but only on a technicality. “What. The. Fuck.” She pushed him back into the shadow. “What are you doing here?”

—

She slapped his hand aside, and he’d been expecting that. He pulled back before she could slap anything else, before she could do any kind of damage. He studied her carefully, tried to work out why she was here. At first, he thought she might have the same goal he did, but it was a notion he quickly pushed aside. Since his tenure in Wicked’s Rest, since his softening, he’d met only a handful of other hunters who thought the way he thought. Kaden, whose philosophy seemed close to Emilio’s even if they still disagreed on parts of it. Andy, who gave up hunting altogether and didn’t seem to regret it in the slightest. But other than that? Jade still thought of the undead in much the same way Emilio had prior to the massacre and his uncle’s hand in it, even if she was more open to supernatural creatures with beating hearts. Rhett probably would have ended up killing him if Ophelia hadn’t come along and shifted things just enough for him to make an exception for Emilio’s failures. Parker, Owen… every other hunter in this town seemed to be, at least on some level, what a hunter ought to be.

He didn’t know Daiyu well enough to think she was much different. He’d met her twice now, in two different scenarios, and he trusted her only a hair more than he might a complete stranger. But he knew she didn’t hunt indiscriminately. He knew she took bounties, and didn’t have much interest in things outside of them. He knew he’d never seen her hunting a sentient beast, never heard her talk about them in a way that sent up red flags. He knew that he didn’t have a lot of allies here, and that the information the necromancer gave him was good but not enough. He knew that Daiyu was walking towards the Keep with a purpose, and not being stealthy enough for that purpose to feasibly be the same as his. He knew that Daiyu could be swayed, too. She was stubborn — maybe even as stubborn as he was — but not immovable. If money was what she was after, Emilio could get that. He still had a fairly sizable chunk of the cash Levi had given him stuffed into his mattress, and it wasn’t like he was using it. He could buy Daiyu out, if it came down to it.

So… either he’d gain an ally here, or he’d get himself killed. It was a coin toss. But Emilio had never minded gambling so long as his own life was the thing on the table.

“Thought I’d go for a walk,” he replied dryly. “See the town, visit the prison for supernaturals. Real tourist destination, you know. On all the maps.” He kept his voice low and quiet, careful not to attract any attention from anyone else. Meeting her eye, he grimaced slightly. Heads or tails. Fifty fifty. Here we go. “Caught a case. Client has a friend who got grabbed outside her apartment. Tracked her here.” He nodded towards the building. “I looked into it. I didn’t like what I found.” He paused, tapping his finger against his knee. “I’m breaking it open. And I could use some help.”

— 

The Good Neighbors practiced in the shadows. This was a no-brainer that even Daiyu could get behind. It was how hunters operated too, after all. Flaunt your position as a human who chased and killed creatures with supernatural powers and you might as well paint a target on your back. (She was not very good at not doing this — though she understood the need for secrecy she was a very bad practitioner of it, in part because she was a horrible liar and in another part because she had little impulse control.) 

It was troubling that Emilio was here. That he was lurking in a shadow around the Keep when he was decidedly not involved with the organization it housed. She’d know if he was, right? Someone would have told her. Right? It wouldn’t be unprecedented that she was left in the dark about something, but in this case she would have been told, if another hunter had been added to the team. Yes. Certainly. Winnifred would have informed her of it. So then why was Emilio here, if he wasn’t part of the team? Her face was filled with suspicion that only got affirmed when the slayer spoke.

Daiyu wanted to knee him in the groin for a short moment and run away. It would be a good temporary solution to this problem he was throwing her way — the knowledge that he was planning on causing trouble for the Keep and the organization that kept it filled. The judgment he passed against the place he called a prison. It was the latter she grappled with most, the moral conundrum that Emilio was offering her by pointing out the flaws of the place. He was going to make her think about the implications with words like these and Daiyu didn’t want to. 

“Your client’s friend probably grabbed or bit or ate a few people herself,” she said coolly. Or at least, she tried to sound cool. Like she wasn’t going to have a long think about whatever was about to transpire. Like she never ever lost sleep over kills or kidnappings. “What, you don’t like dangerous supernatural individuals being separated from the people in our town so they can’t eat, drain or bite ‘em? Weird. I think I remember you killing a vampire not too long ago.” She moved her weight from one leg to the other. “Breaking … it … open … yes, sure, explain to me why that’s a good idea, wiseass.”

—

Emilio wasn’t much of a planner. For most of his life, he’d let other people do that. His mother called the shots when she was alive, pointing him in whatever direction she believed he needed to go. As they got older, Rosa did much of the same, primed to take over as head of the family when it was her turn. (It would never be her turn now.) The only planning Emilio had ever really attempted was his desperate hope to get Flora away from a life he didn’t want for her, and how had that ended? His only real attempt at a plan had ended with everyone he’d ever loved dead. Didn’t that say all that needed saying about his skills there? 

But… He wanted to be better. He wanted to plan something that worked, wanted to help people instead of hurting them. He didn’t always have to be a blade, did he? He could be something else, something better. For Nora, who needed that now more than ever. For Wynne, who’d always been given so much less than what they deserved. For Teddy, who was never as happy as they pretended to be. They all wanted him to be better for himself, and he knew that. But if he couldn’t manage it, if he still couldn’t quite see himself as a person instead of a thing, wasn’t it all right if he tried to be better for them instead? Wasn’t being better the thing that mattered more?

This could be a step, he thought. A step towards something that was more than a weapon, even if it was still something less than a man. He could help people here. He thought of Zane, who’d really only needed a steadying hand. He thought of Metzli, who’d been good the moment they had the choice to do so. Some of these people might belong here, but from what he could tell, Raisa’s friend didn’t. That had to mean there were others who didn’t, too.

“Come on, Daiyu,” he said lowly. “Even if she did, is this the way to deal with it? If someone’s a problem, you take them out. I support that. I do that. But sticking them in a cage…” The thought made his throat go dry, made his mind go back to that goddamn shed, made his palms sweat. “It’s fucked up. What’s the endgame here?” Human prisons were fucked enough, but at least they maintained the illusion of attempting to reintegrate prisoners into society, even if that wasn’t the reality. Emilio had a feeling this particular prison didn’t share the same views. Letting someone rot in a cage for the rest of their days was so much worse than just killing them. “Explain to me why it’s a good idea to keep them locked up. You really believe it’s right?” He paused for a moment, eyes darting to her duffel. “What’s in there?” There was no reason for her to bring a lot of supplies here. Emilio had a feeling whatever she had was for something she thought was important inside. He was going out on a limb here, but he hoped it’d pay off.

—

When she’d been ten, her father had taken her down the back of the estate, where spare and broken down cars were stored and there was a place like the Keep. Not as big, not as well-hidden (and yet just as protected), but made with a similar purpose. A holding place. Never for long, but it was the same. Barred rooms, locks that clicked and humanoid creatures that looked enraged, desperate, exhausted or all three at once. Daiyu did not remember a lot of her youth, but she remembered that day. His hand on her shoulder, almost paternal, and then in her neck as her eyes trailed away. Fingers digging in the soft skin behind her ears, palm pressing against the vertebrae in her neck. He’d reminded her: they are not human. He barely had to say it for her to remember that lesson. He’d filled her hands with buckets, had made her carry them down to the wild wolves. They had been heavy, but she’d been training for years by then. She managed. She placed the buckets down. Water. Raw meat. They are not human.

They called themselves hunters, her family, but they were more like poachers or smugglers at times. Cutting deals with researchers and magic users that lift on the fray of morality, selling them parts of if not full shifter corpses. There were the fights, the vicious displays of beast on beast violence. Not as organized as the fighting ring she’d visited – or so she guessed, at least – but similar. Similar enough to turn a profit.

She didn’t participate in it any more. She could not give up hunting — that was a step too far, but she could stop being part of that side of the family business. She could pretend she’d stopped feeling that hand in her neck. She could stop.

She had stopped — right?

She wasn’t a complete fool. She knew that the Good Neighbors were something sinister. She knew it because she collected spare bits of gore for the undead creatures in the Keep. She knew because she made some portions bigger. She knew because she felt her appetite dissipate after every visit of that place with bars. She knew every time she got her paycheck, every time she bought stuff with that paycheck, every time she was put on a job. She knew. Even if Winnifred made it hard, sometimes, because she seemed so sure they were doing the right thing. She was so passionate. She made fruitcake that tasted surprisingly good and organized community meetings and seemed so good. And it was nice, to not be stained with blood every time she fulfilled a hunt, but was it worth it? Was it worth those eyes behind bars?

Emilio was speaking and she grit her teeth, his words piercing through the paper thin haze with which she surrounded herself. She knew. She knew she was repeating patterns. She knew that it was best to make the kill quick and clean. Drawing out the suffering was what her father did (in cases like this, he’d grip her neck too and make her watch, or stick a silver knife in her hand and make her help). She looked away from the slayer but it didn’t matter if she stared into the distance, gaze hardening. He was pressing his thumbs on all her sore spots, knew where to find the bruises, knew what to look at. He’d said he was a detective and when he pointed out her duffel he proved his skill in sniffing things out.

Finally her gaze fell back onto him. “Food.” It was said curtly. “For.” She finished the sentence there. She wanted to punch something. Him, maybe. “It’s blood and brains, for your type of monster. Yeah? Locally sourced. From — beasts.” She grit her teeth. “I don’t know, man. I don’t make the plans. I just do … what they want me to.” What kind of bullshit excuse was that? When had Daiyu Volkova ever done what was asked of her? “I’m figuring it out, okay? It’s none of your business.” She glowered at him, feeling exposed. “You put ‘em in to the world again and this town’s going to shit.”

—

He could see the doubt dancing across her features. It was a slow thing, with swaying, uncertain steps and disjointed, harsh notes of music. What was she thinking, in this moment? Was it familiar? Emilio thought back to Mexico, to the way uncertainty had been a cold shadow that clung to his intestines and slithered up his throat. How soon after the first domino fell did the rest tumble to follow? 

Rosa told him once, only a few short months after Victor’s death, that you couldn’t be half a hunter. She’d seen Emilio’s uncertainty the same way he was seeing Daiyu’s now, had felt his doubt as if it were living in her gut, too. Everything after Victor’s death had been so unbalanced, and part of him had wondered, even then, what it was worth. He’d had a brother, and then he hadn’t. Victor had been a person, and then he’d been a name scarcely whispered, a lesson Emilio wasn’t sure how to learn. Victor had done what he was supposed to do, but why was he supposed to do it? For a little while, Emilio had let his anger ask questions that his mind knew were off limits, and only Rosa had known him well enough to recognize them.

You can’t be half a hunter, she’d told him, her eyes hard. You’re all in, or you’re useless. And there’s no reason to keep a useless thing around, Milio. I know you know that. And he had. He’d known that whatever his family gave him was a conditional thing, and it had made sense. You didn’t keep broken tools or dull blades around for sentiment. You threw them out or you sharpened them. And since Emilio didn’t want to be thrown out, he had allowed himself to be sharpened. He’d let himself strike against a whetstone over and over and over again, eating away at the parts of him that were dull, at the doubts. 

It wasn’t until years later when, looking down at his daughter’s sleeping face, he’d wondered whether some things shouldn’t be conditional. He’d have loved Flora if she were a hunter, and he’d have loved her if she wasn’t one. The doubt came back, it hollowed him out, it left him empty. It was easier, he thought, not to question things. It made life simpler, made it make more sense. Doubt crept in and left you breathless in the moments when you most needed to breathe, and wasn’t it cruel to knock the wind out of someone? Wasn’t it a cheap trick to use in a fight?

Still, he kept his eyes on Daiyu. He watched that doubt curl fingers around her throat, and he made no move to pry them off. What did it mean, to sit by and watch someone be strangled? Was it a kindness or a cruelty to force someone to face things they’d clearly been avoiding? He thought of Rosa again, and he thought that some questions were better left unanswered.

“Yeah.” He looked at the duffel bag again, pleased that his hunch had been correct. He hadn’t put the doubt there. Did that absolve him of the sin of feeding it? Did that make him better? He didn’t think so. He doubted Daiyu would, either. “It’s my business when people pay to make it my business. And that means it’s my business now.” He wondered what other kinds of people were locked away inside the walls of this building. Were there bugbears, like Nora? The thought of her getting caught up in something like this, after everything, made his chest ache. “This town’s already gone to shit. If we let these people out and they make it worse, I’ll take care of that. I like my chances. I’m not asking you to help with clean up. I just need you to get me in the door.”

—

The notion had crept into her head again when she’d first heard of the neighborhood initiative from another hunter. The idea that she could do something good. Winifred had seemed so driven, the humans she went on patrol with so dedicated to their neighbors, the targets she took out truly threats onto the people in town. Daiyu had felt it for a while, that foreign concept — goodness. She was helping to keep a town safe, offering her skills to make sure humans could live in continued ignorance without being turned into meals or victims of a ‘freak accident’.

But it had become twisted, hadn’t it? Not when she’d first heard of the Keep, but when she’d visited it that first time. When she’d seen the bars and the creatures behind them. The human sides of the creatures. The side she didn’t tend to see when she was out in the woods and hunting, the side that had human pleading eyes and a mouth that could tug at that heart she’d been condemned for since youth. Every time she came there she’d tried to remember all the people she had saved, that these were preventative measures to keep murderous creatures from wreaking more havoc. She’d tried to remember what Winifred had said about how many people would thank her if she knew. She forcefully remembered how her father looked at the concept of goodness. It was an empty thing, a performance, a soft pillow people created for themself so they could sleep at night. It was something that held you back while also being meaningless.

So maybe it didn’t matter, that this ‘goodness’ didn’t feel good. Maybe Daiyu could never know what goodness looked like, anyway. Maybe the concept was not for her or anyone, really. Maybe she just saw through the illusion, her gaze hardened through her training. It wasn’t like she was desensitized against the sight of creatures in cages – that was the whole fucking problem – but she had found ways to cope with the internal struggle. Maybe goodness didn’t exist, so why should she try?

At some point she’d started bringing in food though. Not human food – they did supply that themself, at the Keep – but the kind of food that fit into an unorthodox diet. Blood, brains. Daiyu hadn’t even thought too much about it when she’d done it. She’d just killed a smaller beast and noted bits of brain sticking out and she’d used her hunting knife to take parts of it. Later she’d added ziplock freezer bags to her arsenal, collecting stray bits of flesh and blood for the undead in the Keep. It was waste, anyway. 

Was that goodness? No, it couldn’t be. It was violence that benefited another. It was just another spoke on the wheel of that endless cycle of violence.

Emilio was somewhere on that wheel too. And maybe that was where they existed. Them, the hunters, as well as the creatures in the Keep. On that ever rolling wheel of violence so that ignorant humans could live in safety. (But they were not good either — they also wielded violence — they also —) 

“So what, you’re doing this for money?” She couldn’t really judge. She was doing this for money. And the distant notion of goodness that was slipping from her grasp with every visit to this prison. Daiyu pushed Emilio further into the shadows, her heart hammering in her chest. She felt the kind of confusion that often ended with her breaking something and storming off. This was not a situation where she could break a nose and get away, though. Even she recognized that. “Not here, okay? This chat, not fucking here.” 

Her head was spinning. She really did want to punch something, herself included. Daiyu bristled. She knew that as far as good things go, this was not one of them. Letting the people rot in jail cells, watching them starve on rations, taking them out of the equation but not definitively. Didn’t she try to be merciful in her kills? To not draw it out like she’d been taught? 

She had been looking for an out, but an out would mean putting on blinders and turning her back. An out meant the wheel would keep rolling and rolling and never stop. An out would mean the vampire called Johnny – she’d learned their names, which didn’t help – would not receive her snicker-snacker blood rations any more. An out would also not be doing something good. An out would mean running and the rock of shame in her stomach growing heavier. But this —

“You’re doing this, then?” He was. She didn’t know Emilio that well, but he seemed like a stubborn fuck. “I could help. I thought this — you have to –” She frowned, not sure why she was trying to convince Emilio that she wasn’t rotten. “I hate cages. I’ll get you … I can get you in. Not today.”

—

Was he doing this for money? Emilio wasn’t really sure. There were other cases, easier ways to get paid. Technically speaking, he’d already solved the case Raisa brought to him, already found the answers she’d asked for. He’d been hired to find her friend, not save her, and he’d done that. He could give her a location, could walk away without consequence, and it would be fine. He’d done his part, he’d fulfilled his promise. But the very thought of leaving things as they were felt so unfinished that it turned his stomach just a little. Were answers enough when you could give someone more than that?

Maybe it was an inevitable side effect of the way Axis’s cases usually ended. More often than not, someone hired him to find their friend or their family member or their lover and Emilio returned to them with a corpse or an ending they didn’t want to hear. In this town, it was so rare to find a missing person in one piece. Maybe his determination to break Raisa’s friend out of the prison she’d been put into was a way of coping with that, a way of convincing himself that he was still someone capable of helping people. After all, hadn’t his track record as of late been a long line of failures, one after another? He couldn’t save the people he loved, and he couldn’t save strangers, either. Would breaking free the prisoners in this facility absolve him of that? Would it make him a better person? He didn’t think anything could.

But it might make him feel better for a moment or two. There might be the briefest sense of accomplishment to be found with it, the quietest heartbeat of relief. Maybe Emilio was digging his heels in here for the same reason he spent most of the money he made on cheap whiskey to pour down his throat. Maybe everything he did was some desperate attempt at escape.

Did it matter? That was the question he focused on now. Did it matter why he was doing it? He was doing it. That was the important thing. With Daiyu’s help or without it, Emilio was going into that facility and opening those cages. He had the information the necromancer had given him, outdated and incomplete as it was. He was a lot less likely to survive the attempt without someone on the inside helping him out, but that didn’t matter. The result was more important than the risk. He knew that.

Daiyu pushed him back into the shadows, and Emilio let her. He didn’t think she’d rat him out, at least, even if she wouldn’t help him. She didn’t fully believe in what she was doing here. The question was whether or not she believed it little enough to help him dismantle what she’d helped build. 

“I’m doing this,” he confirmed. “One way or another.” 

The world seemed to stand still while he waited for her to speak again, only returning to spin on its axis when the words tumbled out. Uncertain, jumbled, but enough to know that it was what he’d wanted to hear. I could help. He had to bite back a sigh of relief. “Not today,” he confirmed, a little reluctant. “But soon. We need to move soon. Before they know we’re planning anything.” He didn’t trust the necromancer not to offer up a word of warning, even if they had been quick to turn on their partners.

—

These foreign concepts – to want to do good, to want to help – did not fit Daiyu. They were like a jacket she’d borrowed of a person better than her that she tried to wear convincingly even if she could not pull it off. But what kind of coat would fit her well? It seemed she always struggled with most identities that came with being a hunter. She could not be the sadistic type, like her father and sister. She could not be the heroic one, striving for a safer world for humanity and speaking of duty. She could not be the good neighbor, putting people in cages and thinking it goodness. She fell short every time.

That was why she enjoyed the simplicity of bounty hunting. It allowed her to not think of such things. She was a bounty hunter, like a character in an old western, someone motivated by posters and other people’s assignments. Moved by money, but only the amount she needed to make it through her days. 

She was not just a bounty hunter any more, though. She was a good neighbor, an inner circle member. And now she was talking to someone hoping to infiltrate the place that housed a wide range of supernatural creatures, wanting to do what exactly? If she were a more calculated person she’d be asking Emilio about his full intent, but at present Daiyu was just trying to control her urge to destroy something. 

Later, she’d said. Later, after she’d gathered her thoughts, after she’d driven off with her car with her music so loud her ears would ring all night, after she’d been able to hit her steering wheel a few times. Later, when she wasn’t so close to the Keep as she was now. 

But she knew that if this was going to happen – and it would, judging off Emilio’s expression – she’d be all in. Daiyu did hate cages. She did hate the looks on the faces of some the people in them. She did not feel right or good. She was already making tiny waves against Winifred and the other members, smuggling in things and smuggling out messages. Emilio offered allyship.

Also she’d really hate to see him get caught up in the fray. But that wasn’t something she was going to say to him.

“Alright,” she said. “Then … I should go in, to get my shift done. To get …” She gestured at her duffel. “This in. I’ll … I can get us an overview of what we’re dealing with, alright? So you know what you might be walking into.” Kirk, Johnny, all the other creatures with names and lethal abilities and dreams and body counts and loved ones. A werewolf who’d killed three people in one night, a vampire who’d left a trail of student bodies, a lamia who kept the bones of the people she ate, a zombie with a taste for blonde’s brains. What made a good person? Was it the person who locked monsters up or the one who killed them quickly and quietly? Was it the person who released them because it was right, but who would put a town at risk? 

Everything always confirmed the same thing to her. There was no goodness. There was just failed attempts at it. “Can’t be just us, either. We’re too few.” And though she was sure that Emilio and her could raise quite a lot of hell, she also knew what they were up against. “But fine. Soon.”

—

When he was a kid, things had been black and white. There were monsters and there were people and there was a clear line of humanity between the two. His mother made sure he understood it bit by bit, carved hints and cheat sheets into his skin so that he wouldn’t forget. She showed him how monstrous monstrous things could be, let them prove their danger to him with teeth and claws. And it made sense, back then. Everything seemed to fit together like a puzzle, pieces all perfectly aligned. 

And then he had a daughter. He had a little girl with hands too small to grip the hilt of a knife and eyes that looked like his. And he couldn’t fathom carving those hints into her skin, couldn’t bear the thought of sending her teeth and claws and letting monsters prove themselves to be monstrous. He had a daughter, and it was monsters who killed her but it was a hunter who had caused it. She had been so small, but her presence in the world was so monumental that its sudden absence turned the universe on its head.

The world wasn’t black and white anymore; Emilio knew now that it never really had been. There were monsters and there were people, but humanity didn’t separate them. Sometimes, the monsters had beating hearts and dull teeth. They stared at you from behind the mirror, or they carried your blood in their veins. And sometimes, the people looked like the things you’d been taught to hate. They had still chests and inhuman blood in their veins, but you still ached when you freed them from vans or offered them a drink. 

There were monsters in those cages. Emilio had no doubt of that. There were awful things who had caused irreversible damage thrashing against the bars and banging on the walls and he knew it. Emilio understood, better than anyone, that some monsters needed to be put down. But there were, inevitably, people in those cages, too. Some of the ones locked away might not deserve to be. Even the monsters, he thought, might not deserve to be locked away. Death was kinder. Some of them would probably agree with that.

So Emilio would do what needed doing, and maybe Daiyu would help him. Maybe he’d feel better about himself after, or maybe he’d feel worse. It was hard to know the difference, sometimes. It was hard to know what to strive for. He swallowed around the lump in his throat, nodded his head. “Get me more information,” he agreed, “and we’ll figure it out from there.”

She was right, too, that they’d need more manpower. Emilio hated the idea, but he knew it was an inevitable thing. “I have a friend who might help,” he said reluctantly. He felt bad already at the idea of pulling someone else into his mess, but… what else could he do here? If he went at it alone and got himself killed, that was one thing. But if he got Daiyu killed, too, and the people in those cages… wouldn’t that be worse? “And… someone else who might help. They told me where this place is. Don’t know how much I trust them, but might be useful.” The necromancer was someone he needed to keep a close eye on, whatever that looked like. “Get the plans, and we’ll all get together. Meet up, talk it out.” Someone had to be better at thinking ahead than Emilio… and Daiyu, he suspected. Hunters weren’t known for their strategizing. 

—

So they were coming to an agreement. Daiyu was going to go behind the Good Neighbor’s backs and offer Emilio inside information to conspire against them. She felt her stomach sink, felt a queasy kind of rush pass through her. She wasn’t sure if she was a loyal person by nature or not, but it was still strange to know she was bound to become a traitor now. Would this role fit her, if none of the others did?

Questions of morality were often discarded by her, as they were too intrusive even if they were thought alone and by herself. She could not start to think about goodness in a way that really mattered without starting to undo her foundations, without drowning in the guilt and shame that lingered within. So Daiyu kept moving as she did, chasing down monsters, beasts and shifters and undoing their heads from their bodies after (or sometimes during) killing them. She joined this neighborhood watch in the hope that she could keep humans safe, but in stead found herself smuggling blood so she could breathe easier. And now she was aiming to betray it all, which would lead to more bloodshed.

It was like being a child once more, refusing to give into the demand of violence and being pushed and pushed and pushed until she brandished her knife and committed the atrocities demanded of her bloodline. There was no escaping it, the violence. And so maybe this was better. To side with Emilio. To bring down this prison. To kill swiftly and mercifully. To return to just hunting bounties and not think about the rest of it.

She glared at the slayer, because she needed to glare at something. “Fine. Deal.” She was thinking about her other fellow members of this little inner circle and wasn’t sure if any of them would be possible to recruit. And she wasn’t made for this, was she? Infiltration, scheming, lying. It was fine when she was a lone wolf, but to find allies wasn’t her strength.

“Cool. I’ll think about whoever I can ask,” she said, knowing she’d come up short. Daiyu would try, though, so that was something. She was too caught up in her inner ruminations to wonder who had told Emilio where this place was, her hands still itching with the desire to punch something. She wasn’t sure how to tolerate this precipice they were standing on, now. She’d never been known for her patience. “I’ll text you my number. And we’ll recoup elsewhere. Best get running now, yeah?” She didn’t want him – even if he was annoying and a liar and much too tall – to get in trouble. 

[faustianbroker]

TIMING: Recent LOCATION: The Jones residence PARTIES: Leviathan (@faustianbroker) & Emilio (@mortemoppetere) SUMMARY: Levi finally emerges from the basement, and runs into Emilio in the house. They have some things to discuss. CONTENT WARNINGS: none.

—

If it was the type to be dramatic, Leviathan would complain that it'd been down in that basement for what felt like an eternity… and actually, it was, so it had. Eventually though, the demon did conjure the strength to return itself to its human form, and not finding any remaining wounds that would threaten its life, it finally walked up those stairs on two legs instead of four. 

Opening the door, Levi squinted against the light. It was early evening and a warm golden glow filtered in through the large living room windows that faced the sea, and the sight brought a smile to its face. Unsure about who might be around in the home, Levi made its way toward its old bedroom to get some clothes, slowly climbing the steps to the second story of the home, pausing halfway to rest. 

As it crested the top of the staircase, it heard a sound. A lazy glance was thrown down the hall, away from the double doors to the master bedroom in front of which it now stood, hand sitting still on the handle. That blank stare turned into something more like a smirk as it saw a familiar silhouette moving out of Teddy’s room and into the hall, stopping when it was noticed. “Emilio,” it said in a friendly tone, pushing down on the handles and letting the doors swing wide as it stepped inside.

The room was just as it had been left nearly a year ago, and Levi moved to the dresser, pleased to find that its clothing still filled the drawers. Grabbing a few items to help make it a bit more decent, it was pulling the shirt on over its head when it heard that uneven gait come to a stop in front of the open doorway. It looked Emilio’s way again, wondering how much Teddy had talked to him about… everything. Would he still be as mad as he was when Leviathan had left? There was only one way to find out.

“Enjoying the fruits and comforts of my labor?” it asked him with another knowing smile, something dark flashing across its expression. It certainly wasn't ever going to be above giving someone a hard time, least of all the hunter that had threatened it several times. 

—

Since Teddy’s announcement that Levi was back, Emilio had felt a little like he existed upon the backdrop of a ticking clock. It wasn’t that he thought Teddy’s father was going to kill him — they might have had their disagreements when Levi had left, but at the end of the day, Emilio liked to think they both understood that those disagreements had come from a place of wanting what was best for Teddy — but he doubted that his life would remain as it had been for the last few months. 

Moving in with Teddy hadn’t been a plan so much as a quiet manipulation, with Teddy insisting upon its necessity while Emilio’s apartment was trapped beneath goo and both of them pretending not to understand that it was no longer necessary when the goo dispersed. From where he stood, it felt a natural thing. But from Levi’s point of view? It was probably a little jarring to come back to your kid living in your house with a guy they’d at least pretended to hate the last time you saw them. 

So, he figured it was only a matter of time before Levi sent him packing. It was lucky he’d kept the apartment in Worm Row; he wouldn’t mind going back there, even if it was saddled with memories of things he’d probably be better off forgetting. He hoped Teddy wouldn’t feel the need to move with him; they’d be better off staying with their father in the nice, big house. He really hoped they wouldn’t try to convince him to move onto their boat with them. Emilio loved Teddy, but living on that damn boat certainly sounded like a level of Hell he wasn’t ready for just yet.

In any case, it was probably easier to rip off the bandage quickly rather than dragging it out. When he heard Levi moving around out of the basement (which he’d largely been avoiding under the illusion of giving the demon space), he made his way dutifully towards the noise. Levi called his name and he hesitated, hanging in the doorway as it made its way into its room. He watched it pull a shirt over its head, made note of its movements. It was clearly in some amount of pain. He wasn’t entirely sure on the details of its return, but the fact that it had spent the time since in the basement instead of bothering everyone in the main house probably spoke of some physical damage there. 

In spite of everything, he raised a brow as it addressed him. “What labor? I don’t think much work went into all this.” His tone was flat, though there was the slightest hint of amusement to it. He was trying, in any case. Even if Levi evicting him was unavoidable, he’d like to keep things as civil as they could be for Teddy’s sake. 

—

It really wanted nothing more than to go out the back of the house and down to the edge of the sea. While changing its form again was going to be off the table for a while until it had fully recovered, it could still enjoy the waves and salty breeze that came off of them. But in due time, because there were more pressing matters standing in its doorway right now. Turning to face Emilio fully, Leviathan held a hand over its chest in feigned offense. 

“Excuse me, I’ll have you know it’s very tiring work talking people out of all their worldly possessions,” the demon answered with a grin, allowing the humor to shine through whatever antagonistic reflex had been there before. “But it’s a burden I’m happy to bear. Only the best for my darling Teddy,” it added with a hint of challenge in its tone, its dark gaze raking over Emilio like it was sizing him up and determining if he was best for the spellcaster. It stepped toward him, still very obviously casting some unknown, silent judgment in its head. 

“I asked you to take care of them for me… I see you took your duty very seriously.” It narrowed its eyes at the hunter, but there wasn’t any malice in that gaze. Quiet curiosity, maybe… trying to figure out what had changed their relationship from barely tolerating one another to… whatever it was they liked to call themselves these days. To the hunter moving in with Teddy. To Teddy confessing their intent to marry him. While Leviathan was loath to deny Teddy anything that they wanted, it did want to make sure that Emilio was earnest and honest about this relationship. After all, the hunter had been a bit more loose the last time they’d crossed paths… and even though it’d been over a year ago, Levi hadn’t forgotten that night at the bar, or how the two of them had ended up here that night, in this very bed. As much as it might want to, now that Emilio was sharing a bed with its child. 

—

Levi seemed to take to the humor well enough, and Emilio wondered if he ought to be relieved. He didn’t particularly want to make an enemy out of a demon — the still-healing scars on his arms and legs left by Aesil itched at the thought — but he certainly didn’t want to make an enemy out of Teddy’s father. It was clear, in every word Teddy spoke about their father, that they both loved and respected Levi. What would they say if it disapproved of Emilio’s presence in their life? They loved him, he knew that. But their father’s displeasure would weigh on them, and Emilio couldn’t imagine that he was capable of outweighing a thing like that. 

Levi’s mention of Teddy now sewed more tension between Emilio’s shoulderblades, uncertainty clinging to him in a way that felt utterly unfamiliar. He’d never been in a situation where he needed to impress a significant other’s parents. The only real committed relationship he’d had before Teddy was Juliana, and her father had been mostly indifferent. Emilio had had a last name that carried enough of a reputation to satisfy him. But if anything, that same name worked against him where Levi was concerned. He had no idea if his family’s reputation was a thing the demon was aware of at all but if it was, it probably wasn’t something it viewed positively. Only the best probably wasn’t the kind of thing that Emilio fell into. He knew that.

He shifted his weight, defensiveness crawling up his back as he tried to force it down. Snapping at Levi probably wasn’t his best bet here. “Wouldn’t have let anything happen to them either way,” he said carefully, and he meant it. Even if Teddy had never returned his feelings, even if they decided to end what was between them now, Emilio would do everything he could do to keep them safe. That wasn’t because of any promise he’d made to Levi, though he thought it might be better not to reveal that part. “I know this probably isn’t what you wanted for them.” Flora had never gotten old enough for Emilio to even consider worrying about who she might one day decide to date, but he imagined he’d have wanted the best for her, anyway. Someone better than him, in any case. But… “I think they’re happy. With me. For… whatever that’s worth.”

—

Levi only hummed at Emilio’s insistence that he’d still have protected Teddy either way, not fully believing him, but deciding it wasn’t worth bringing into question. Hypothetical situations served no purpose here, and Emilio had taken care of Teddy, which was all Leviathan had asked of him. 

It moved around Emilio, very much like a shark circling its prey in the water, brows rising when the hunter admitted that he knew he might not be what Leviathan had envisioned for its ward. The demon clicked its tongue, coming to a stop in front of Emilio again. “That remains to be seen,” it offered, cocking its head to one side and listening as the other tried to explain that it felt like Teddy was happy. 

“It could be worth a lot,” Levi responded, turning its back on Emilio to move to the dresser again, snatching up an elastic from the top of it and pulling back its long hair. “Are you happy with them? Do you feel content to be the keeper of their heart? Only their heart?” It sighed. “I know it’s a long-standing human cliche for the parent that still needs convincing to threaten violence, and while I don’t like being predictable, I think we’re both already well aware of… situations that could arise.” It looked at him hard, expression stoic for only a few seconds before it smiled again. “But I don’t want to get caught up in hypotheticals. Just tell me how you feel.”

–

It was hard not to tense as Levi circled him. Emilio turned his head, following it with his eyes as best he could to avoid having his back turned on it. He wasn’t sure whether or not he genuinely thought Levi was an active threat. Paranoia played up every look the demon gave him, reminded him how easily it could get rid of him if it wanted to… but logic dictated that it probably didn’t want to. He had done what it asked, after all, and it wasn’t as if Teddy didn’t want to be in a relationship with him. They loved him; no part of him doubted that. 

The question, of course, was about what Levi felt. It seemed willing to at least give Emilio a chance, which felt like some relief. There was still the matter of the living situation — the slayer found it doubtful that Levi wouldn’t kick him out of the house, even if just for fun — but that was less important than the rest of it. 

The fact that it turned its back on him offered some relief, too, some quiet idea that it must at least not distrust him enough to assume he’d make a physical attack against it. Emilio relaxed a little, though it was impossible for him to relax entirely. He considered Levi’s question, weighing it in his mind. Happy was a big word. Over all, he wasn’t sure it was one he could apply to himself. But where Teddy was concerned… “There’s nobody else for me.” Teddy was it, as far as Emilio was concerned. He pressed his tongue against his teeth, nodding. “I won’t bullshit you,” he offered. “Never been one for that. Can’t say I’ll never do anything to upset them. We both know who I am. What I am. We both know I’ll be the one going out before they do, and we both know it’s better that way. But… I’d never break their heart on purpose. That’s a promise I can make. When it’s something I can control, I want to give them what they need.”

—

It was a good answer, as far as these things went. Clearly honest, as it didn’t paint Emilio as a glowing beacon of light when they both knew there were shadows that enshrined him (and his ilk) that would never be shaken off. But Leviathan was nothing if not used to the shadows, and by extension, Teddy was too. It was one thing to have to impress a guardian that was lawful and good, but a greater demon? Honestly, Emilio had a better shot with Levi than he might have with anyone else. It was just that the stakes were higher, if he were to fuck up. Instead of angry phone calls, it would be annihilation. You win some, you lose some. 

The demon nodded. “I believe you,” it said in a low, even tone. “And I want you to remember that I am what they need. They said it themself, down in that basement.” It lowered its chin. “I am the paterfamilias. I had to leave to protect them, and now I have come back to protect them.” From what, it would not — could not — say. But the sentiment was what mattered: Leviathan would not be separated from Teddy again, come hell or high water. And Emilio, though the demon had no reason to believe he would attempt to separate them, would suffer the same fate as anyone else inserting themselves where they did not belong. That was the message, and it hoped that it was conveyed clearly. 

With that out of the way, Levi slipped into a familiar role, one that was easier for all those around it to engage with. It cleared its throat and clapped Emilio roughly on the shoulder, letting out a short, barking laugh. “Well then, Cortez—welcome to the family. You know, I half expected to have to kick the both of you out of my room,” it added, gesturing at the bedroom they were standing in. “But I see Teddy was far too sentimental for that. That’s good. It could have been awkward.” It raised a brow, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man still expected to be removed from the household. And it would let him continue to think that for as long as the charade amused it.

—

He watched the demon’s face, trying to determine if his statement had been well received. It was difficult to tell, with Levi. It had had centuries upon centuries to perfect its poker face, after all, and while Teddy might have known it well enough to see through the smooth, careful expression it wore, Emilio didn’t. All he could do was guess at the thoughts that might be going through the demon’s mind, and he’d never enjoyed guessing. Emilio liked to have clear, concise answers. Anything less made his palms itch.

So it was a relief, the way Levi stated its belief in his claim as a simple matter of fact. He wasn’t sure he liked the follow up — Levi being something Teddy needed around wasn’t a thing he could argue with, but he didn’t like the idea of needing to trust the demon to stick around when Teddy needed it. He kept that uncertainty to himself, though. If Levi was telling the truth, if both leaving and returning had been designed to keep Teddy safe, then it had proven it would do what was best for Teddy. Emilio was reckless, but he wasn’t stupid enough to argue with the demon and risk his death in this hallway, even if only because he knew Teddy would feel guilty for it.

Then, Levi seemed to relax. It cleared its throat, it clapped his shoulder, it laughed, and Emilio surmised that the ‘threat’ part of the conversation was over. He still didn’t relax entirely, but then, he rarely did. He raised a brow at Levi’s statement, eyes darting to glance to the room behind it. “Yeah,” he said flatly, “I wasn’t really looking to move in there.” He had no desire to share a bed with Teddy in their father’s room, for… many reasons, really. Looking back to Levi, he sighed. It was probably time to bite the bullet, in any case. “Look, you give me to the end of the day, I can be back in Worm Row. Not like I’ve got much shit to pack.”

—

He was jumping right to it then. Not leaving much room for vague interpretation, confusion, or worry. How dull. How practical. Still… maybe the demon’s fun could be salvaged. “Kept the old place, did we? Hm… lots of ways to interpret the fact that you’re living here, but still paying rent there… fear of commitment? Difficulty letting go of that bachelor lifestyle? A backup plan, in case things go wrong? In case I ever came back?” Leviathan smiled knowingly — these were all shots in the dark, all things that it was more or less certain were untrue, given what Emilio had said and done thus far. All but the last one. That could still very well be true. It let the accusations hang in the air for a moment before speaking again, interrupting Emilio as he no doubt went to defend himself. “Never you mind, never you mind! You can stay…” It raised a brow, clearly enjoying itself in this new dynamic they shared. “For now.” 

Moving back into the room to pluck a pair of sunglasses off of the dresser, the demon gestured broadly with its hands after situating them on its face. “Well! Now that’s settled, I am going to go park my ass on the beach out back. Please tell Teddy where to find me if you see them first, hm? There’s much pondering to be done and work to consider…” It ought to check in with Ichabod and see how things were operating in its absence. Like a well-oiled machine, it suspected, but nevertheless… confirmation would go a long way in helping it relax. 

It moved toward Emilio again, that satisfied grin never leaving its face as it stepped past him and called down the stairs. “Oh Gabagool!” It looked over its shoulder toward the slayer as it walked over to the top of the staircase. “Have you seen the little gremlin? I missed him something fierce.”

—

Of course Levi would question the reason behind Emilio keeping his old apartment. The detective scowled, crossing his arms over his chest as the demon cycled through different excuses, focusing only on the ones that made Emilio look bad. Well… except the last one. Maybe, subconsciously, some part of Emilio had considered Levi’s return a possibility but mostly? He’d held onto the apartment for Teddy’s sake. So that if Teddy ever wanted him gone, they wouldn’t have to grapple with the idea of kicking him out on the streets, wouldn’t let him stay out of guilt or obligation. There was a little more to it, of course; with an apartment in his name, anyone who was looking for him would likely go there before they showed up at Teddy’s, giving an added layer of safety to the house. But before Emilio could say any of this, Levi was barrelling forward, clearly not concerned with the possibility of interrupting Emilio’s explanations. And, surprisingly… not kicking him out. Emilio’s mouth, which had been open in preparation of defending himself, snapped shut in surprise. The for now was a clear threat, but it was still a step above being kicked out entirely, he supposed. “All right,” he said cautiously, eyeing Levi carefully. There would be a catch. He was sure of it. He wasn’t looking forward to learning what it might be.

He watched Levi saunter back into its room, grabbing a pair of what he’d often described to Teddy as asshole sunglasses and rambling on about the beach. If that was where it planned to spend most of its time, Emilio thought, it at least lowered the risk of the two of them running into one another often. The slayer wasn’t much of a fan of the sand or the sea. “Sure,” he replied good naturedly. “I’ll let them know.” 

Relaxing a little, he moved back towards the bedroom he shared with Teddy, only to falter when Levi asked after Gabagool. Shit. There was no way that little asshole wouldn’t do everything in his power to sully Emilio’s good name here. “Ah, haven’t seen him,” he lied smoothly. The little shit had been napping in the living room with Perro when Emilio walked by. He’d have to get to him first, find a way to bribe or threaten him into keeping himself from spreading shit with Levi. “Probably off doing whatever he does.”

—

“No? Hm, right… must be out gathering gossip for me. Such an eager little beaver, always looking to please papá.” Leviathan smirked, having little reason to not believe Emilio, though it did recall that he and Gabs were perhaps not the best of friends. Ah well. Maybe Levi could convince the badalisc to be nicer, now that it was home. Perhaps he was just feeling sad in the absence of his father figure, and was lashing out. It served Emilio right, anyway. He hadn’t given the poor thing any of the lamb he’d been promised while being babysat. 

With a nonchalant wave of its hand, Levi drifted down the stairs to the main level of the house, moving past the large, open living room and toward the wide glass doors that led out to the patio, and beyond, to the beach. It spotted Gabagool quite quickly, but the fuzzy ne'er do well was napping happily with that scruffy mutt that’d been clicking around Emilio’s shitty apartment when it last visited, so the greater demon went on quietly so as not to disturb them. It unlocked the door slowly, pulling it open and slipping outside, sucking in a deep lungful of salty sea air. Its gaze was drawn to the horizon, settling on a distant point where storm clouds seemed to perpetually hang over the ocean. Those dark eyes narrowed for a moment, the whisper of an eldritch curse on its tongue before it pushed away the negative thoughts and forced itself to smile again. No. Not right now. Focus on the warmth of the sun, the coarse sand underfoot, the feeling of home. Focus. Just for today.

[loftylockjaw]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: World's End Isle PARTIES: Wyatt (@loftylockjaw), Winter (@longislandcharm), & Emilio (@mortemoppetere) SUMMARY: Wyatt is mad about Winter blasting him on social media after his arrest. He decides to put the fear in her, but Emilio intervenes. CONTENT WARNINGS: none!

—

Her car was still outside of Mack’s house as Winter made her way down the street, her eyes glued to the spirit that had been trying to get her to follow the moment she’d arrived. Ignoring it hadn’t worked, especially when the woman realized she could be seen, so the medium started walking behind her with Henry hot on their tail in the hopes that she could get the ghost to leave her alone. Trees were thickening around her the farther she went, dark eyes pulled up and around as Winter followed onto an overgrown trail into the woods. There was an eerie air to this whole situation. She should be used to this by now but something about today had been setting her on edge even before she’d arrived at her best friends. The feeling of being watched came to mind but she shrugged it off the moment the spirit had appeared in front of her, thinking that that could have been the reason.

It was still there, though, even as she pushed the branches of trees aside to keep up with the woman leading her astray. This wasn’t smart, was it? Letting a ghost lead her into what felt like a trap wasn’t her brightest moment and Winter felt her movements slow with the realization of it all. “Excuse me? Why are you leading me out here?” But the woman continued forward without even a glance back at Winter. Her eyes found Henry’s, the ghost reflecting her own confusion back at her. She considered turning around until the woman stopped and looked back at them expectantly. “Lady, I’m not following you anymore unless you tell me what’s going on.” 

The ghost didn’t speak, only huffed and vanished away causing Winter to roll her eyes. “Must not have wanted to talk too much then.” She muttered the words before realizing the hairs on the back of her neck were still standing. Henry’s proximity didn’t do that much anymore and this time it felt…different. Did the ghost really lead her into a trap? Was there something else out there that not even the ghost was aware of? “Hello?” Her voice rang out through the trees as she squinted, trying to see through the slight fog that was rolling on the ground. Something large darted through her vision, disappearing not long after, and it made her blood run cold. What had she just gotten herself into?

—

Finding out who she was hadn’t been a difficult task. Finding out where she lived had been harder, but once that was determined, Wyatt had kept a close eye. He was pissed, and in the face of all the other bullshit going on in his life, he wanted to cling to one tiny scrap of control, he wanted to do one tiny little thing that would scare this girl into hopefully being less of a bitch to people she didn’t know, who’s stories she didn’t understand. She’d publicly dragged him for getting arrested, but she couldn’t have known why he was flipping out on that woman. No one could unless Wyatt told them, and he wasn’t about to go blabbing about his nightmares to anyone who would listen. Truth be told, he didn’t have a good reason to be here. He was being petty, reactionary, and downright stupid. But his world was falling apart anyway, so what the fuck did it matter?

Following the girl from her home was simple enough, and he was patient in his pursuit to see where she’d stop. Some mansion on World’s End Isle, turned out, because of course she’d know someone who lived in a place like that. He waited patiently outside the home at a respectable distance, and upon seeing the girl exit the house and wander into the woods he himself was already hiding in, he smiled at his good fortune. Or… well, he smiled as best an alligator could, having already disrobed and shifted in preparation for her eventual departure. 

Laying in wait, the lamia watched the girl pass him by, unaware. She was… talking to herself. That was weird. He followed quietly, giving her a wide berth as she came to a stop again and getting in front of her. The underbrush provided ample cover as long as he stayed on all fours, but she seemed to suspect something, calling out into the darkness like the first to die in a horror film. 

He nearly laughed. 

Moving quickly from one tree to the next, the lamia rose up off the ground, standing at his full nine foot height as he lumbered toward her. A growl started in his belly, rolling up his throat and over his flat tongue, sounding very much like something you’d imagine would come from a dinosaur. Yellow eyes glinted in the dim light of the moon as the creature stepped forward and into sight. “Hello?” he mocked her, but there was no innocence in his tone. Those long jaws parted and the shifter let out a loud, angry bellow, snapping them shut again dangerously close to her fragile human body. 

—

Following Wyatt around had started as a joke, mostly. As much as Emilio hated to admit it, the guy really had saved his ass in those underground tunnels. Without the gator dragging him away, he probably would have died trying to get that corpse out in one piece, desperately trying to save something that was lost long before he arrived. The idea of owing someone his life made him feel uncomfortable, like he was waiting and waiting and waiting for some other shoe to drop directly onto his head. When Wyatt implied that he found plenty of trouble on his own, an idea had formed in the hunter’s head. If he could catch Wyatt in need of help and provide an assist, they’d be even. And, as an added bonus, he might get to see Wyatt in a vulnerable position, which would make him feel a little better about the way the gator had seen him in those tunnels.

He figured it was a no brainer. After all, it wasn’t as if he was doing anything bad. He was trying to help the guy. If anything, Wyatt ought to be grateful when he figured it out. Emilio was a model goddamn citizen here. (Minus the ‘citizen’ part, technically. But he was a model something, for sure.)

Trailing people was… a little boring, when you got down to it, though. The movies Teddy made him watch always made it out to be some great and exciting thing, full of shootouts and danger, but the reality was always a little more dull. There was a lot of standing around and waiting and being quiet, and those were three things that Emilio wasn’t particularly great at. But he could manage it, when he put his mind to it. He could stand unseen behind the lamia in the underbrush, could watch carefully to see what he might do next.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, really. His introduction to the guy had seen him taking a bite out of someone, and most of their interaction that followed had involved Emilio filled with an overwhelming certainty that he, too, would wind up between the gator’s teeth. Still, there was something a little jarring about seeing the lamia accost a woman in the woods, mocking and snapping at her. Standing and waiting and being quiet fell off the table all at once, and Emilio found himself rushing forward without thinking, looking to get between the lamia and the woman before he could go in for a snack.

—

Why was it that when Winter was scared she could never get her feet to move? The fight or flight in her was broken, the medium decided, as every single time she just stood there waiting for what was to come instead of doing something about it. It might have stemmed from her not knowing how to fight but the least she could do was try to run from a gigantic growling monster standing before her. Sure, she would still die, but she wouldn’t have handed herself over on a silver platter. A shrill scream filled the silence of the woods as the thing that had been following her moved forward, the full picture of an alligator on its hind legs towering over her finally kicking that response mode into gear. 

Only for her to fall back on her ass. Instead of the graceful departure she had been expecting she’d tripped her own feet while trying to take a step back from the beast. So much for ice skating and the grace she was supposed to gain from it. She would bet money that she would have been halfway home by then if the ground was covered in the sheets of frozen water but give her regular dirt and she was a goner. 

Was this asshole reptile talking? Her eyes widened at its mocking tone, something familiar about the voice grating in the back of her mind but she was too busy trying not to let those sharp teeth pierce her skin to really think about it. She jerked her head back as those jaws snapped in front of her, vaguely aware of Henry shouting for her to get up and run but all she could focus on were those sharp teeth ready to slice through her. Until she saw another figure running towards them, this one very much human, and her eyes started to dart between the two. She should try to keep the attention on her, right? To give this guy an opportunity to surprise it? Her specialty was always going to be pissing people and things off, wasn’t it? Her contribution to society was A plus. Fuck, she was doing this.

“Alright, you ugly bitch, who the hell taught you how to speak?” Because really, what crazy person was out there teaching gigantic alligators to talk? Much less mock girls alone in the woods? Must have been a man. “I’d choose a bear over you any day.” Despite the bravado of her words, she felt her hands digging into the earth, desperate to clutch something to keep her grounded. 

—

Now Wyatt did laugh, lowering himself onto his hands and crouching there in front of her. “My mother,” he ground out between the laughs, though they still managed to sound threatening, in their way. He took a step toward the girl that’d fallen on her ass in fear, relishing the terror in her gaze that she couldn’t hide as she tried to act brave. He was so singularly focused on drinking in the image that he barely noticed the sound of irregular footfalls as someone came running at them, swiveling his head just in time to get smacked in the face with—fuck, what was that?! Wyatt snarled and reared back, bringing his hands to his maw to rub it soothingly. 

“What in the shit,” he complained, blinking once or twice before his gaze focused on the man now standing between him and his fun—Emilio. The lamia let out an annoyed huff, dropping back onto all fours and pressing himself into the hunter’s personal space, the tip of his snout poking the man’s chest. “Get outta here, hunter,” he warned his acquaintance, “this don’t concern you.”

—

There was something a little admirable about the way she talked back to the lamia. Emilio had been raised to view his life as a disposable thing, trained to throw it away the moment it was more convenient to others for him to die than it was for him to live. For him, tossing insults at something large and dangerous that wanted to make a meal of him was nothing. It was expected behavior, it was a thing he was meant to do. But for her? For a woman who, from the looks of her, had no idea what it was she was even facing? It was impressive that she managed it, even if her hands trembled in the dirt. 

It worked in his favor, too. It allowed him a moment to scoop up a fallen branch, brandishing it like a baseball bat as he surged forward. He wasn’t looking to kill the lamia — not if he didn’t have to, at least. He liked Wyatt, but he wasn’t about to let the guy eat a civilian. He didn’t put his full strength behind the blow; it was more of a warning than an attack. It was enough to draw Wyatt’s attention away, though, and Emilio didn’t drop the branch. He stood over the woman, facing the lamia, and held the branch like a warning even if he knew it wasn’t a suitable weapon now that the element of surprise was gone. He’d be better off going for a knife, but… if he could resolve this bloodlessly, he’d prefer it. That was a new feeling.

“I’m making it concern me,” he said flatly. “You seriously attacking women alone in the woods now?” He didn’t flinch back from the snout against his chest, demeanor remaining calm despite the clear threat. He was… about sixty percent sure Wyatt wasn’t going to kill him. Maybe fifty-five. “Fuck off. No reason for this.”

—

Fuck. She’d actually whimpered when the mutated gator answered her. A fucking whimper that she hated more than anything that had showed her fear so far. Winter hated that it would give this thing the satisfaction, give it whatever it wanted from her. He was playing with her, she knew that now, whether he wanted her as a meal or not. And she was giving him exactly what he wanted from her. It was infuriating.

But she must have bought enough time because soon the gator’s focus was on her savior after a satisfying wack to the face. She didn’t know what it said about her that she was relieved the monster had his sights set on someone else entirely but hell she didn’t care at the moment. Especially because he wasn’t attacking the man brandishing a stick. She had been expecting some all out brawl where the man would be torn apart as she ran away but the two were only squaring up to each other, having a conversation. “Um, not to interrupt your moment or whatever, but do you know this alligator?” The indignation in her tone was clear, the fear having subsided in lieu of confusion and annoyance. It was perfectly clear that they knew each other so the question was redundant but Winter wanted it known how utterly ridiculous she thought this was. Tilting her head back, she saw Henry in an upside down view and it was also clear that the ghost mirrored her thoughts. 

By the looks of it, she wasn’t in much danger anymore, an assumption that would most likely get her killed if she were wrong. But Winter got to her feet anyway, brushing the dirt away from her backside while she glared at the two of them, that underlying fear only visible in the way her hands still shook. “Anyone want to tell me what the hell is going on? Are you the one who taught him how to talk? Might want to put a leash on your monster, he’s a bit volatile if you haven’t noticed.”

—

“I ain’t his pet,” Wyatt snarled, gaze darting from Emilio to Winter, then back again. “And there’s plenty of reason for it, couyon. Don’t expect you to keep up.” He looked at the girl again, eyes narrowed into slits, his muzzle dragging across Emilio’s chest as he nudged him slightly to the side. His movements were slow but deliberate—he didn’t want Emilio to think he was worth suddenly attacking worse than he already had, but he also didn’t like how comfortable Winter was getting. “This one needs to be taught a lesson, is all. I ain’t gonna kill her.” He pressed himself forward a little more, a growl rumbling in his throat as he tried to angle his head around the hunter that stood in his way. “Just chew her up a little. Give her a few nice scars to remember me by.” 

That was when he lunged, bowling Emilio over as he scooped the girl up in his jaws, standing upright again to lift her very high off the ground. He held her by her midsection, gently enough that any damage he did wouldn’t be permanent (probably), but tight enough to make a fucking point to her that she had shit-talked the wrong shifter. Who cared if she didn’t realize the man she’d publicly shamed for getting arrested was this very alligator? Fear was fear, and that usually lent itself to a more humble attitude. Usually. The bridge of logic might not have been present, but Wyatt didn’t care. Wyatt was just pissed. He stepped away from Emilio, carrying the girl with him to the base of a large tree. With a twinkle in his eye, the shifter scaled the trunk and perched on the lowest branch, out of reach of his acquaintance.

—

“My pets are much better than this,” Emilio agreed flatly, shooting Wyatt an unimpressed look. “What’s the reason, then? Because way I see it, you’re going after someone who’s just out for a damn walk. Think we both know I’m not going to stand by for that, cabrón.” If he’d thought Wyatt had a decent reason, maybe he’d have let it happen. Emilio was fine with people getting vengeance where it was deserved. But… it was clear that this woman didn’t even know what a shifter was. However she’d slighted Wyatt, he doubted it was anything intense enough to earn her the scars he was threatening to give her for it. The fear ought to have been enough.

Before he could say anything further, though, the shifter surged forward. Years ago, before the injury to his leg and the shit that left his head so messy that he was only half present on his best days, Emilio’s reaction time might have been quick enough to get another swing in with the stick and stop Wyatt in his tracks. But now? He was on his ass by the time his mind caught up with the situation at all, watching the shifter scurry up the tree with the woman in his mouth. Gritting his teeth, Emilio traded the branch for a blade. “I got good aim with this,” he warned. “I’ll throw it into your fucking ass if you don’t cut the shit.”

—

Again, her great talent would be pissing things off. The thought ran through her mind when the gator snarled at her and continued to talk about her slighting it. She couldn’t think of what she had done to this thing but that was mostly due to her having so many different instances to look back on. Sifting through them all would only cause more confusion. Winter blanched when the gator mentioned scars, not really believing that it would come after her even with the threats. If it wanted to hurt her it would have already.

Or so she thought. Suddenly it was lunging at her, the girl’s shriek coated the silence of the forest around them, so loud that rustles started in the trees from animals that had been disturbed. There was no time for her to even attempt to run with the thing moving so quickly and soon she was up in a tree feeling all kinds of uncomfortable by the pressure those sharp teeth were causing. At least he hadn’t pierced her skin yet. “Holy fuck, let me down you crazy bastard!” Winter wiggled as much as she could in his clamped jaws but it wasn’t a good idea. His teeth started to scratch her skin, the faint smell of copper hitting her nose telling her that she was only causing damage to herself. She stopped but her body refused, shaking inside the giant gator’s mouth while she clamped her eyes shut. 

“His ass?” That wasn’t good enough. No, this thing needed to be taken out. If it didn’t kill her today she was sure it was going to kill someone down the line. “Throw it into his fucking neck!” As she screeched out the words she was trying to pry it’s mouth open with her fingers. Winter didn’t care if she fell out of the tree, breaking an arm would be preferable to being inside this thing’s mouth. The fight mode came in too late but it was all too present now. 

—

He could swallow her whole if he wanted. She was small enough, she’d go down easy, shoes and all. That wasn’t why he was here, he wasn’t even hungry, but the thought was a tempting one. She was trying to pry his jaws open (that was cute) and Emilio was threatening to throw a knife at him (also cute). The lamia was terribly amused, laying down on the tree branch like a cat stretching out for a nap, tail dangling well within Emilio’s reach. He kept the girl firmly in his strong grip, squeezing down a little harder just for the fun of it. The taste of blood on his tongue was a welcome one, the muscle moving beneath Winter’s body to push what might as well have been an aperitif to the back of his gullet. 

Hm. Maybe he ought to put her down before things got out of hand. Meaning that the taste of her blood was inspiring a bit of an appetite after all. Wyatt turned his head to the side to deposit her onto her feet on the branch, giving a final warning bite before releasing his grip on her middle. He angled his head up and swung his jaws over her head, snapping them shut with immense force just an inch or so above her head. 

“Well? Go on then, cher. Git,” he snarled happily. His gaze jumped to Emilio and he gave the hunter a curt nod. “You want ‘er so bad? Fuckin’ catch ‘er.” And with that, the lamia shoved Winter rather unceremoniously from the tree, watching with a toothy grin as she tumbled back toward the earth. 

—

He didn’t think the woman was helping her case much, but… he also figured he was just about the last person who could comment on another person’s habit of yapping in the mouth of danger. Fuck knew Emilio did plenty of that himself, after all. Still, he shot the stranger a look of warning, still gripping the knife in his hand as he weighed his options. He didn’t want to kill Wyatt, in spite of the situation. The guy had saved his ass once before, and it felt a little impolite to off a guy after that, especially when he knew damn well that if the shifter had intended on killing this woman, he’d have done it by now. He remembered how quickly the gator had gobbled down the body he’d found him with upon their first meeting. Whatever Wyatt was doing here, his intention really didn’t seem to be to kill the woman.

That didn’t make it all right. The woman was clearly afraid, in spite of her running mouth, and Emilio couldn’t blame her. In her shoes, with her seemingly limited knowledge of the supernatural (she thought Wyatt was a pet, after all), he could only imagine how terrifying the situation must have been. He eyed the gator’s tail, shifting the knife in his hand. If he shoved it in, would it work in his favor? 

He was about to test the theory when Wyatt seemed to decide enough was enough. He released his jaws from around the woman, and Emilio knew well enough to know that he wouldn’t let her climb down from the tree peacefully. He had just enough time to toss the knife on the ground before she was falling, and he struggled to get beneath her. This is probably going to fucking suck, he thought before the tangle of limbs knocked the wind out of him.

—

As much as she refused in her mind to show any more fear to this thing, the glare she was trying to send  obvious proof, Winter’s body kept betraying that request. Tears pooled in her eyes as the gator squeezed down even harder, the uncomfortable feeling giving way to a dull pain. ‘I’m going to die.’ How many times had that thought run through her mind in the past year? Each time she had truly believed it as well. It was hard to think anything else was a possible ending to being clamped between the jaws of a psychotic talking alligator that could walk on its hind legs, right? She whimpered again as the thing started to move her, wondering if this was when she would finally perish for the crime of being human in a supernatural world.

But then she was placed upright on the branch, her legs wobbling beneath her while she did her best to stay standing. Once again, she had evaded death. Wide eyes looked the gator over when its voice reached her ears, all bravado finally lost to the overwhelming mix of fear and relief. If the point of this was ‘don’t piss off random mutants in the woods’ this thing had been successful in its endeavor.

The racing of her heart was just starting to calm when the gator rumbled their next words, Winter’s head shooting to the side for her to watch a limb shove her backward. She was tired of screaming yet a raw screech fell from her lips in the split second before she was hurtling towards the ground, silent prayers tearing through her thoughts for the hunter to reach her in time. The impact hurt, she knew it had to hurt him too, but it was softer than her crashing to the forest floor and for that she would always be grateful. She didn’t even know this man’s name but in that moment he was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She made a mental note to thank him the best way she knew how; showering him with gifts.

The wind had been knocked out of her and her chest heaved while she tried to take in as much air as her lungs would allow. Despite this, she rolled onto her back off of the man she had crashed into and looked back up to the gator still sitting in the tree, not wanting to take her eyes off of it in case it decided to come after her again. She brought a hand up to her bad shoulder that was now aching from the impact, her fingers brushing the scar that had been left after being stabbed. “What the hell did I ever do to you?” She croaked the words out, Winter knowing deep down that she had done plenty to deserve this fate. That didn’t mean she was going to admit to it.

—

“Mind yer fuckin’ business!” he bellowed at them both, leaping down from the tree with a tremendous thud. His gaze was fixed on Winter, and while he didn’t love making a habit of outing himself to strangers, he figured this one wasn’t about to be any kind of threat. “You need to learn when to leave well enough alone, ya little shit. Makin’ a mockery of one of the worst days of my fuckin’ life—I should eat ya, ya know. I should, but I’m a nice guy, so I won’t. But that woman you wanted to buy a drink for? She’s the fuckin’ devil and you’d do well to stay the fuck away from her.” His emotions were getting away from him now, and he wheeled around on Emilio. “And you! Why the fuck are you followin’ me, couyon?! Lemme live my damn life without a mopey ol’ raincloud hoverin’ over me at every fuckin’ second.” He huffed out an irritated breath, then turned on his heel and bounded off into the trees and back toward the coast. This island sucked.

—

There was no fear in his chest as the gator leaped from the tree, though perhaps there would have been had he had even an ounce of self preservation lurking within him. Emilio shifted the woman’s weight off him as gently as he could manage, retrieving his knife and holding it idly at his side as Wyatt yelled about something that made little sense to him. His grip tightened on the hilt momentarily when the shifter claimed he should eat the woman, though it loosened when he added that he wouldn’t. Whatever point Wyatt had wanted to make, it was clear that he believed he’d made it. So long as he didn’t actually kill the woman, Emilio figured it was fine. 

He tilted his head as the gator turned to him, anger burning dully in his chest. “Was trying to make sure you’d have someone watching your back when you ran into trouble,” he replied flatly. “Didn’t know the kind of ‘trouble’ you run into is the kind where you try to eat women for pissing you off.” He continued glaring at Wyatt as he turned to leave, not looking away until he’d disappeared into the treeline. Then, with a sigh, he looked to the woman. “You good?”

—

She knew that voice had sounded familiar. Winter gaped at the alligator, man, whatever he classified himself as (even though psycho should have been the only classification here) when she realized just who he was. Running her mouth about him online must have pissed him off more than she’d realized but she didn’t give any fucks about his hurt feelings, especially after this. “You’re only proving my point, you dumb bastard!” She called after his retreating form, the irony of her calling him dumb while she was screaming at someone who could, and most likely would, kill her not lost on her. 

She sighed out the frustration filling her chest, looking down at the small cuts littering her arms while Henry slowly lowered himself next to her. “You really should shut your mouth.” Her glare turned to the ghost, just about to retort when she heard the other man ask her a question. Remembering herself, she only nodded her head at him. “I’ll be fine. It’s only a few cuts. He could have done worse.” She got the feeling that he wanted to. She made sure the other was okay as well, aware that even with her tiny stature that didn’t mean she couldn’t do damage after falling onto him from that height. He’d tried to slip away after but Winter insisted on getting his name at least before they parted ways. 

As she walked back to her car she realized her fear had settled, morphing into agitation as so many things rolled through her mind. Winter had someone to talk to about their supposed friend and just because the man thought he could scare her away that didn’t mean he actually could. She was born to escalate, to ruin, and the gator would soon find that out.

[morendodifame]

" hey, " emilio made his way through the open dorm room, not bothering to knock or even announce himself. he studied the person on the other side, he was just looking for some fresh blood at their parties. " we're throwing a party this weekend, wanna come? " he smiled, tilting his head to the side, " rarely see you at them. "

[ohwynne]

TIMING: Early April PARTIES: Emilio @mortemoppetere & Kaden @chasseurdeloup & Wynne @ohwynne LOCATION: Worm Row SUMMARY: Kaden helps Emilio and Wynne get a passport. They half-succeed. WARNINGS: None.

Kaden didn’t know the details of why the hell Emilio needed to convince Nora to come home from another country but those didn’t matter too much. Despite the issues Monty may have with the guy, Emilio was another hunter – one who seemed to have similar enough values to his own which was rare to say the least. He was going to help out. It’s what hunters did for one another, that was how you survived. And however annoying he might find Nora, the connection Emilio had with her was clear. If the situations were reversed, if it had been Alex, he knew the slayer would do whatever he could to help him. It was an easy choice to connect him and Wynne to Buzzy to get whatever papers they might need fast, no matter what that meant he might owe the guy this time.

The office in question wasn’t too far from Axis, funny enough. Kaden waited a few doors down from the entrance for the others, he knew Buzzy liked to keep it discreet. “This way,” he said when he saw the pair of them. He’d seen Wynne in and out of the cabin a few times and knew they were a good kid. If they were willing to put themselves out there for Nora, too, he had to believe Nora was worth going out on a limb for after all. Kaden approached the door of Marcelli & Associates Ltd. and rapped on the door in a pattern that was probably morse code for something that he never bothered learning. Two hard knocks back and he knew they were cleared and everyone was on the same page of what kind of business they were here for. 

Once they were all shuffled inside, Kaden shut the door and addressed the man at the desk. “Long time no see, Buzzy,” he said with a nod. “Got a favor to ask you.”

“And you brought the whole gang with you to do it,” the man replied. Buzzy looked up from whatever notes he was scrawling and got a good look at all of them for the first time, his face souring in a way that Kaden didn’t get a good feeling about. “You know I don’t hand out favors, Langley. Even to you. And especially not to him.” His eyes narrowed as he stared down Emilio and it was clear that this wasn’t the first time they’d met. Putain de merde, what the fuck had the slayer done to piss this guy off already? Besides being himself. “Anyway, you,” he said to Wynne. “Who are you, kid? You a hunter, too? You must be some kind of special if Langley’s daring to drag you in to see me. What do you need?”

—

Citizenship had never been a particularly big concern for Emilio. It was the last thing most hunters worried about. When your ‘life plans’ included dying a violent death before you were forty, entering into a long, drawn out process for the grand prize of paperwork wasn’t really high on your to do list. He never thought it would bite him in the ass like this, though. Nora, in another country, in a community he had more than just a bad feeling about, and Emilio trapped an ocean away with no way to get to her… It wasn’t something he wanted to experience. So, when Langley mentioned knowing a guy who could get him papers good enough to land him on an airplane, Emilio hadn’t hesitated. It would cut the time involved in the process for Wynne in half, too.

But… the closer they got to the guy’s ‘office,’ the less confident Emilio felt. The streets were familiar, obviously — this was close to his apartment, after all. But the building Kaden led them to was familiar, too. “What did you say this guy’s name was again?” Emilio asked lowly as Kaden knocked on the door. Before the ranger could answer, said door was swinging open to reveal an unfortunately familiar face. Emilio tensed, jaw tightening. Right. 

Of course Kaden’s contact was someone Axis had once screwed over. He could still remember the case — some trembling twenty-something who’d had her identity stolen, begging for a solution in a way Emilio was never going to be able to say no to. He wasn’t sure what the end result had been for Buzzy’s business, but he knew it had taken a hell of a hit. And, given the look the other man was giving Emilio, he hadn’t exactly forgotten about it. Maybe if Emilio stayed quiet enough, he could still get what he needed out of this. He glanced to Wynne, figuring their odds were better here if he let them do the talking.

—

They wondered if there was such a thing as a chronically nervous person in the field of psychology. If there was, they probably were one. Wynne walked into Marcelli & Associates Ltd. with a tightness in their stomach, even if they were with two strong and capable hunters. At least, they assumed that Kaden was strong and capable. It seemed like a fair assessment, up until now, especially considering his willingness to help with this very illegal thing.

That was one of the sources of their discomfort. Though they didn’t always agree with the law and especially not the government, they didn’t enjoy breaking rules. But no longer were they as passive as they had once been and it was simple, really. They needed to help their friend in need, who would do the same for them. So they tried to stand straight and tried to make polite eye contact with the man called Buzzy. (Was that his real name?) Buzzy did not like Emilio, which was a red flag, even if Emilio was very good at making enemies. Wynne tried not to jump to his defense.

They were asked a question, after all, and they were good at answering questions. “I’m Wynne and I need a passport. It’s not — it won’t have to be a favor,” they clarified, “We will pay for it, of course.” That was something they had grown more used to, over this past year. The power of money. How it could make many things happen, even if they hadn’t quite figured out how to do that. “And oh, no. I’m not a hunter. I’m just –” They weren’t sure. “I’m Wynne.” They remembered themself. “Please.”

Buzzy’s sour expression had a hint of confusion to it as he took stock of the stranger in the room, looking up at Langley for an explanation. “The fuck.” It was half-question, half-statement. A finger pointed at Cortez without addressing him. “And I reckon he’s in need of one too? Don’t have a falsified document growing tree in my backyard.” Heaven knew it wouldn’t grow in Worm Row, anyway.

—

Kaden raised a brow and looked at Emilio. How the fuck had he screwed this up before he walked in the goddamn door? He waited for some kind of explanation from the slayer, but none came. Putain de merde. 

“Cut the crap,” Kaden said to the guy. “I know you can get a passport or two in your sleep. It’s not like I’m asking for a social security number or five.” As much as he hated leveraging his last name in this town, there were some times that it came in handy. It was risky running around in hunter circles, considering half the people he cared about weren’t exactly human, but sometimes the risk was worth taking. 

“Oh, do you?” Buzzy said, shaking his head. “You know how this works, Langley, but let me explain to yous two.” The man leaned back in his seat as he addressed Emilio and Wynne in turn. “Money is great. Love it. Big fan. But if you ask me for special favors, I ask special prices, got it?” Kaden was hoping he wasn’t going to say that but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t expected it. “Frankly, Cortez, I don’t think you can afford my prices. Not after the mess you and your little detective agency got me into. I have to applaud your audacity, though, I’l give you that. Try and shut me down for identity theft then waltz on in here for forged papers.” He burst out a laugh to punctuate his point. “So for now, let’s talk about the kid. You need a passport? And you need it quick, ey?” Kaden shifted nervously. He didn’t know if his “good” name was going to be enough to swing this deal, but it was worth a shot. 

“Now, pardon my French.” There was a moment’s hesitation as his eyes darted to Kaden. “No offense, Langley, but what are you, then? If you’re not a hunter, I’m assuming there’s some other kind of reason you’re coming to me and not the good ol’ US government. So what is it? You some kind of supernatural? That it? Or some kinda criminal?” Buzzy held up his hands in a mock surrender. “No judgment here, kid, none at all. Just need to know the truth of things so I can get the fakes right.” He laughed at his own joke. “You know I’m a little less inclined to help on account of you being with him,” he said pointing to Emilio, “but a gig’s a gig. And I have a few favors I could use taken care of so depending on the complexity, I’ll entertain it.” 

—

He was practically biting his tongue at this point, just trying to keep the smart remarks from slipping out. Axis’s policy tended to be more or less the same as the one Buzzy boasted here — a job was a job, and money was money. There’d been nothing personal about the job Emilio had done that had landed Buzzy in hot water but, roles reversed, Emilio doubted he’d have been bending over backwards to help Buzzy, either. And it wasn’t like he could afford a lot here; Buzzy was right about that. When it came to cash, Emilio was always scrambling. And with Teddy out of town and Nora having made off with their credit card to Ireland… Emilio was cut off from his usual cash flow. 

It had been a long shot, anyway. There’d been a moment of hope when Kaden said he might have a way to get Emilio and Wynne to Ireland, but hope wasn’t the kind of thing Emilio banked on. He’d been prepared already for it to be just Wynne and Regan’s friend, even if he hated the idea now just as much as he had when it had been introduced. It was far better than Wynne making the journey alone… even if the loss of control over the situation had Emilio’s skin crawling.

“Fine,” he ground out, exhaling shakily. “Just them, then. If we do the favors, will you get them what they need to fly somewhere?” He resisted the urge to add that he was more than happy to beat the necessary documents out of Buzzy’s vault; something told him that wasn’t the most effective strategy here.

—

Some of the talk went over their head and Wynne wasn’t sure what to say, so they kept quiet when it came to transactions and special favors. They didn’t have a lot of favors they could offer besides making meals and maybe fixing a leaky faucet, but they doubted the other wanted that kind of favor, or the one people at gas stations had asked for when on the road. They tried not to shiver at the thought. 

They nodded. “Yes, I need it quick,” they said. “I’m – human. And not a criminal.” Not convicted, anyway. They had condemned a man to death, which was probably not great. “But I …” Wynne swallowed. Maybe they should use the word they hated. “I escaped my commune that’s like a cult, so I don’t have much paperwork. And it will take a long time to do it officially, probably longer considering …” Well, the aforementioned not-a-cult. “Because of the nature of the place I left. They’ll want … answers and questions and everything, right? It will be a whole thing that’s best avoided.” They weren’t sure if that was true, but it seemed about right. “And I just —” They grit their teeth. “Don’t have the time.” Or the energy. Maybe the government would want to see their parents for this. Maybe it would lead to more and more things spiraling out of control now that the demon was no longer capable of protecting the Protherians. They needed to go get Nora, not bring bureaucracy to their former community. “I have a birth certificate, if that helps.”

They were looking at Emilio, wondering what the favors could be, but tried to focus on Buzzy. The idea that Emilio might not get a passport was concerning, but it was better to get one than none. It was also not their place to argue right now. “We will do it.”

—

Kaden was practically screaming his mind for Emilio to not fuck this up and to just keep his fucking mouth shut. Not that he had any delusions otherwise, but it was clear that neither of them were telepathic since the slayer just had to fucking chime in. Kaden gave his leg a small kick, hoping it wasn’t the one with the busted knee, to tell him to cut it out since the telepathy clearly wasn’t coming anytime soon.

“A cult, you say?” Buzzy asked, raising a brow. “I feel like I should be asking yous which one so I don’t accidentally ruin a business opportunity or two.” He waved his hand like he was swatting the notion away. “Actually don’t tell me, then I’m not lying when I say I don’t know shit. But sure, if you do the favors and if you don’t interfere with my business again, I get them a passport in a few days. Kapeesh?” Buzzy looked directly at Emilio as he answered the question. “Anyway, birth certificate helps plenty. Makes my job easier, one less thing to forge and a few more things to use for inspiration. Now, I’ll let yous g—

Kaden held up his hands to cut the guy off. “Before we agree, what kind of prices are we paying, Buzzy?” He was more than willing to pay them but he wanted to know what kind of shit he was getting into before they jumped off that particular cliff. 

“Langley,” Buzzy replied, putting a hand to his heart as if it were wounded, “do you really not trust me after all this?” The look Kaden shot him seemed to be enough of an answer for him. “Fine, fine, I’ll tell you. See I know you’re a ranger and I’ve got a siren that could use a shake down. Figured like something that would be up your alley. Hell, I bet that’s your typical Tuesday night, am I right?” Kaden’s face remained hardened, not as amused by the joke as Buzzy. “You hunters, are you all this sullen all the time? Geeze. I’d hate to go to one of your parties.” He said, shaking his head. “Anyway, got a few odd jobs like that for the two of yous. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

Kaden nodded, it was about what he expected. He didn’t love it but it would be worth it. At least, it better be. Buzzy shoved a contract to them to sign and the ranger had no intention of reading it all line by line but he skimmed it. Looked pretty similar to the one he signed last time for his own papers so he went ahead and signed, handing the pen to Wynne and Emilio in turn. 

“Perfect,” Buzzy said with a grin. “There’s one more thing, though.” With that, he reached down to pull out another piece of paper. This one was also full of legalese that Kaden couldn’t and wouldn’t parse through.

“The hell is that?” Kaden asked, brows furrowed. “If this is some kind of—”

This time it was Buzzy who held up his hands to silence Kaden. “Not a trick but you want a rush job, I need a little extra.” His eyes fell back to Emilio. “I’ve got a feeling Cortez in particular could be useful. What with that little detective business you got there. I’ve got some people I could use off my back.” He shoved the paper and pen towards the slayer. “What do you say?”

—

Kaden kicked his leg (the good one, thankfully), and Emilio shot him a glare that was far more half-hearted than what he might usually deliver. He’d been on edge since the moment Nora made her big announcement that she’d snuck along to Ireland to hang out with a community of banshees, and the fact that Wynne would soon be joining her, that Emilio would be an ocean away with no control over the situation… It only made things worse. Already, he could feel the shadows swirling in his mind, shrouding him in a darkness he didn’t quite know how to get out of. He kept going back to Mexico, to all the things that could happen when you were only a street away. How much worse could it be with an ocean blocking your path? 

Buzzy was speaking again, and it wasn’t politeness or self preservation or Kaden’s hard glare that kept Emilio from interrupting. He could barely hear the guy at all, could barely make out the sound of his voice over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. By the time he unpacked and translated Buzzy’s words, it was too late to make any dry comments, anyway. Any other day, he would have hopped in to help Wynne, or made a remark about how hunters didn’t really have parties, or told some bad joke at Kaden’s expense that no one but him would find funny. But not today. Today, Emilio was more of a shell than usual. And wasn’t that saying something?

A paper was put in front of him, and he signed it. There was no time to read it — it would have taken ages, anyway. Then, there was another paper, and Buzzy was looking at him. Emilio forced himself up to the surface enough to look back, to actually listen. This is important. His mother’s voice was a harsh echo in his mind. How can I expect you to learn when you don’t listen? When you can’t sit still, when you won’t pay attention? I expect better from you. He swallowed, setting his jaw in a hard line. Buzzy didn’t know him well enough to notice anything off about the expression. He wasn’t even sure if Wynne or Kaden did. Maybe there was no one left alive who knew Emilio with any kind of clarity.

The request was vague and fuzzy and not something Emilio would have said yes to in any other situation. He didn’t get into things with people like Buzzy without knowing exactly what he was signing up for. Any other day, he’d have told Buzzy to give him more information or fuck all the way off. But this was for Nora. This was to get Nora home safe. There was nothing Emilio wouldn’t do to achieve that goal. If it cost him his soul, that was fine. It wasn’t like he got much use out of it. “Fine,” he agreed, holding out a hand for the paper. “Whatever.”

—

They winced as Buzzy called their former commune a cult, even if they’d described it as one. “It’s just kind of like one. And it’s not close. It’s far from here.” Wynne said the lie with relative ease, as it felt like Moosehead was lightyears away, even if sometimes it felt like it was in their backyard. They felt around in their bag, took out a slip of printer paper. “Here is the copy of my birth certificate.” 

It was dizzying, what was transpiring before them. The man named Buzzy spoke to Kaden and Emilio about prizes, hardly paying them any mind. Wynne would prefer to also pay, but they also figured they weren’t very good at what it was Buzzy was asking for — shaking down a siren sounded like something they’d not be able to do convincingly. Or at all. They glanced nervously between the two hunters and the strange man and hoped they wouldn’t hold it against them. 

Emilio and Kaden both signed the contract without much thought and so they did too, following them and their expertise blindly. Wynne hadn’t signed many contracts before and so far most of them had done well for them, as they’d been for jobs and their former apartment. They didn’t fully understand their concept, though. As if signing your name was going to make you properly indebted to someone. For that you should ask demons for help, they figured. Not just a pen.

There was another one, signed by just Emilio. Their stomach felt tight. At least Emilio was part of this more than Kaden was, even if it seemed like he wasn’t going to get a passport. They swallowed and remembered what the slayer had told them. Their eyes were big and their voice a little meek. It didn’t require a whole lot of acting. “Are you sure you can’t get one for him too? He’s …” They glanced at Emilio, whose face was set. “Sorry.” He did not look sorry.

—

Kaden glanced over, watching Emilio as Buzzy pulled out the second contract. He couldn’t tell if the distant look he had was to keep himself from punching the guy sitting at the desk or if he was actually failing to pay attention. When Cortez realized it was his turn to sign his own paper, the ranger tensed, worried that the man was going to grab the thing and rip it in two. Not that he would blame him — Buzzy was a pain in the ass. 

A cackling pain in the ass, too. He threw his head back and chortled at Wynne’s remark. “Is that so, kid?” He had to contain more laughter. “That bastard ain’t sorry about nothing. Are ya?” he goaded. Kaden was ready to step in between the two men, worried that someone (Emilio) was about to lunge across the desk and strangle their forgery guy before he could get the passport needed. 

“Come on, Buzzy,” Kaden said, rolling his eyes. “You survived and you have him on the hook. At least consider it.”

The man sighed as he sorted his stack of newly signed contracts. “I’ll consider it.” There was a spark of hope that lit in Kaden’s chest, stupid as that was. “But it’ll take me a while to consider. And I’ll need that favor first. Then I start considering if I’ve changed my mind.” Right, should have remembered it was foolish to hope around these sorts of folks. 

“It’s fine. We just need the one for the kid right away. Right?” Kaden looked over to the other hunter, hoping he wouldn’t fucking argue. For once.

“And you’ve got it,” Buzzy said with a smug smile. “Come back in a day or two and I’ll have something for the kid and marching orders for yous twos.” Kaden knew he wasn’t going to enjoy whatever those fucking marching orders were but at least he didn’t have to do this shit alone this time. “See, was that so hard?”

—

Wynne was trying, that much was clear. And if Emilio were smarter or better, he’d try, too. He’d pretend to be something he wasn’t, he’d put on an apologetic mask. But there was no real point to it, was there? Buzzy made up his mind the moment they walked through the door. They were lucky he was helping Wynne — there was no way in hell he’d help Emilio. This would end the same way everything always did, and Emilio knew it. He wondered if explaining the situation more would help matters, if admitting that him not getting a passport could mean the difference between life and death for Wynne and Nora and Elias and maybe Regan, too, would change Buzzy’s mind. But, deep down, Emilio knew the answer. He always had. 

“I’m not sorry for doing my fucking job,” he ground out, doing his best not to take a swing at the guy standing in front of him now. “I’m sorry you don’t want to do yours.” It wasn’t the right thing to say, but was that a surprise? Emilio never said the right thing, never made the moves that needed making. He was a goddamn mess on his best days, and today was one of his worst. There was never any chance of him swallowing his anger well enough to grovel. Everyone in this room knew it. 

Maybe Buzzy would get him the passport someday, after he’d held it over Emilio’s head long enough to satisfy. But it would be too late then, and everyone in the room knew it. What was the point in getting a passport when he no longer needed one? Who did it serve? It wasn’t as if Emilio was the sort to take a vacation.

His jaw was tight as Kaden turned to look at him, blood rushing in his ears as the anger warmed his chest. Kaden needed him to agree, but he didn’t trust his voice. He nodded his head instead, curt and tense. 

It took everything he had not to take a swing at Buzzy. If they hadn’t been doing this for Nora, to help Nora, he probably would have. Even now, knowing the stakes, he felt like he was physically holding himself back to the point of aching muscles. The moment Buzzy agreed, Emilio turned on his heel, shoving by Kaden and moving a little more gently past Wynne towards the door.

—

Emilio didn’t look sorry, and even worse, he confirmed that he was not sorry. Wynne felt a rush of frustration that made them feel ashamed of even feeling it. They worked their jaw, averting their gaze from the three men in the room. They were afraid they’d cry if one of them looked at them wrong. Emilio not getting a passport was bad news, after all.

They remained quiet as the conversation fizzled out, save for their, “Appreciate it,” to Buzzy. It was accompanied with a respectful nod, even if they thought him a very bothersome man. Sometimes you had to deal with bothersome people to get what you wanted, that was something they knew by now. It was a frustrating and hard lesson to learn, but it was one that stuck.

And so they all went out, Kaden at the front and Wynne at the rear. They closed the door behind them with a softness that the others would probably not have afforded Buzzy. Their eyes moved between Kaden and Emilio now, big and still teetering on the edge of crying. “You could have —,” they began at Emilio, but they shook their head and left their sentence unfinished. Then, at Kaden: “Thank you. And … if I can ever do something for you to make it up to you …” They didn’t have a lot of skills. Maybe they’d just bake him some bread, they could do that. Kaden was good at cooking himself, they recalled, so maybe he’d appreciate that.

The trio moved down the street, back to where they’d met before the fiasco of a meeting. A strange feeling took hold of Wynne as they considered the strangeness of life and these two hunters, willing to do an ugly job on their behalf. Despite the strangeness, they decided they didn’t mind the feeling. 

[scorched-sunrise]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: The Jones Household PARTIES: Ophelia (@scorched-sunrise) & Emilio (@mortemoppetere) SUMMARY: By chance, Emilio sees the letter left to Ophelia by the fae that abducted her father. This results in some very heartbreaking news for the young nymph. CONTENT WARNINGS: Parental death (mentions), child death (past, mentions)

—

Reluctant as she was to involve her surrogate uncle in the search for her father in any meaningful capacity, Ophelia recognized at length that she was making no actual progress and that her hope was wearing thin. She had nothing new or helpful to offer to him, and wondered what the purpose of this visit would even be, other than to say “I’m scared and upset”, because what else could he do to help outside of searching the mountains himself? It would amount to nothing, she knew, so she didn’t present the visit to the home he was staying in (his home, then?) on the Isle as a matter concerning her father, though it sat heavy in the back of her mind. 

She’d been there an hour before her fingers dug into her pocket to retrieve the familiar piece of paper. It was the one that had been left on her mother’s bedside table, the one that detailed the fae plot to kidnap her father and the hardly regretful admission that they’d slain Mariela for attempting to stop them. She rubbed the corner between her thumb and forefinger, her eyes raking over the message for the millionth time. It always managed to light a fire in her belly, to reignite the embers that turned cold after days of no news and no discoveries. 

The writing was a messy scrawl, distinct in its way. She wondered often who had been the one to write it—Barley, perhaps? He’d always eyed Rhett suspiciously, and had not even been overly fond of Mariela and her daughter when Solomon brought them to the aos sí. Outsiders, he’d called them for a while, before finally relenting after seven months. She wouldn’t put it past old Barley to do such a monstrous thing, not now. Not having seen the true brutality that her kind were capable of. She imagined his hand scribbling out the note she gripped tight, imagined the smile on his face as he did so… perhaps even the blood on his hands, creating the curious stains that dotted the paper here and there. 

Emilio came back into the room after having stepped out a moment, and Ophelia looked up at him. Her gaze was hard and soft at the same time, bitter but glad to see him, glad to be near him, even though it hurt. She sighed, setting the paper on the coffee table in front of her and pulling her socked feet up onto the couch, hugging a pillow to her chest. Again she stared at the thing, shaking her head. “I’m never going to find him, am I?” 

—

Family was a difficult thing to navigate. Emilio used to think himself good at it, arrogant enough to consider himself a professional. Every scar carved into his skin by someone he loved was a lesson, clusters of them forming classes worth of lectures and things learned. How many years did people go to school to achieve elaborate titles? Didn’t Emilio, with his thirty-two years worth of lessons in family, have them all beat? He used to think so, used to believe he was an expert. He’d been wrong.

It hadn’t been Lucio’s revelation that revealed this. It hadn’t even been his betrayal years before. No, the thing that made Emilio understand just how little he knew about family had been holding his daughter in his arms for the first time. She was such a tiny, fragile thing, and he’d felt so helpless. Nothing in his life had prepared him for it. Even helping his sister raise her son felt like poor practice compared to what was expected of him with Flora. There was no way to adequately ready yourself for parenthood, he thought. No amount of lessons in the world could make you ready for that.

He felt a similar cluelessness with Ophelia. It had grown since her mother’s death, since she showed up in town to tell him that Rhett was gone. She had so much hope, and Emilio had no idea how to approach it. He didn’t know if it was kinder to let her hold on to that desperate belief that they’d find Rhett alive or to rip the bandage off and tell her that he was certain they wouldn’t. He wasn’t sure either was the better answer. There seemed to be no approach that would spare her, no way to keep her from aching. And he hated that.

There was a heavy feeling hanging over the living room today. He got up to get a drink, but it was more of an excuse to escape that suffocation than it was anything else. He lingered in the kitchen, and he wished Teddy was there. They’d know what to do better than he did, he thought; they were better at being a person, even if they’d spent most of their life as something else. He gripped the counter for just a moment before nodding to himself, sucking his teeth to return to the living room. He would have been more comfortable walking into a battlefield; at least in a fight, things were simple.

Ophelia looked up as he reentered the room, setting something down on the coffee table. He moved to sit beside her, stiff and uncertain but trying all the same. She asked the question he didn’t want to answer, and he tried to find the best way to reply. He didn’t want to lie to her, but he didn’t want to hurt her, either. It was an impossible thing. 

“What happened on that mountain…” He trailed off. “Rhett knew his odds going up there weren’t great. He must have known that.” He chose to go anyway. And Emilio couldn’t help but think that he wouldn’t have made that decision if not for the fight they’d had just before it, couldn’t help but wonder, as he always did, how much of this was his fault. He cleared his throat, trying to distract himself by letting his gaze wander to the paper she’d been clutching before he came in. He nodded to it. “What’s that?”

—

She closed her eyes and buried her face in the pillow for a moment, unwilling to let Emilio see the way pain flashed across her face. “I just don’t get it,” she said finally, lifting her chin again to instead prop it on her knee. “Why come to us if he knew it was so dangerous? Why not stay here?” She knew of the fight, of course. And that was probably it, wasn’t it? He’d felt abandoned, even though Emilio had begged him to stay, and he saw no other course. Such a fool. Ophelia heaved another sigh, knowing that Emilio would not and could not answer the question, knowing that they both had the same idea in their minds, though one inspired guilt where the other inspired anger. So instead she turned her attention to the letter that he was pointing out now, biting down on her lower lip for a moment before answering. 

“The letter they left behind after—the one they left for someone to find. For me to find.” She glanced away again, feeling suddenly embarrassed for having carried it around all this time. “I should probably toss it out. There’s no reason to keep it, it just makes me angry and scared all over again. But I…” She didn’t know. “... maybe that’s why I keep it. To keep me motivated to find him.” Her gaze raked across the room as she turned her head to look at him, her eyes gleaming with the heartache of it all. “You… can read it, if you want. I don’t imagine it’ll help any, it’s just an account of what happened and why. Bullshit it may be.”

—

Guilt sliced through him like a knife, and the silence that followed on its heels was heavy and poignant. He could try to explain it to Ophelia, try to make sense of the tangled web of shit that had led to Rhett storming out of that apartment and marching off towards his doom without so much as a glance back in his brother’s direction, but what good would it do? There were things that couldn’t be held in words, explanations that would never quite fit the way they were meant to. To properly explain why Rhett left, Emilio would have to go back to the very beginning — to an angry teenager who didn’t know how to grieve properly and the angry man who slid into his family by feeling just the same. No words could fully encapsulate what it felt like for the both of them to love Flora, or what it felt like to lose her. Anything he said would come up woefully short. 

So, he focused on the piece of paper instead. It had always felt like an odd piece of the puzzle, from the moment she’d told him about it. He’d chalked it up to not fully understanding fae customs, though there was still something undeniably strange about leaving a written confession when the perpetrators could have just as easily let Ophelia assume that her father was the culprit and avoid any retribution. He’d never pushed on it; it had seemed cruel to ask. But now, with it sitting in front of him, curiosity tugged at his chest. “Might give us some kind of clue,” he offered, leaning forward to pick it up but hesitating, looking to her for one last nod of permission.

—

For her own part, Ophelia had never considered it odd that the fae had left behind an explanation. Maybe they feared retribution upon their return, she thought—which was wise of them, because that had been her intention all along, but… they hadn’t returned. Or maybe it was more a matter of gloating. Barley, the assumed author of the note now sitting perilously between them, was one that would surely love to do this. I told you so, she could hear him saying. I told you that stray and her pup were nothing but trouble! Sun above, she should like to carve him open from sternum to pelvis, she thought, and then recoiled. That was a violent desire, even for her. Up to now, they’d all been nameless, descriptionless things. She didn’t spend the day imagining how she’d kill Barley and his company, only that she would, sun help them, if she ever found them. 

“Might,” she muttered, watching his hand reach for it. At the pause, she met his gaze again and nodded, hugging the pillow closer to her. 

She knew there was nothing helpful to be gleaned from that message, and yet her heart sped up as Emilio picked it up from the table, watching him intently as he read it, searching his expression for any kind of sign that he’d discovered some truth she’d overlooked. He was a detective, after all. She hugged the pillow even tighter still, realizing she was holding her breath when the look on his face changed. But it wasn’t to something that she’d hoped to see: the revelation, whatever it was, did not brighten him. No, instead it seemed to drag him down, and the young nymph felt fear rising from her gut. “What?” she barked impatiently. “What is it?”

—

He would have liked to have claimed he knew the moment he picked up the paper, like some invisible jolt went through him and revealed the truth all at once. He would have liked to have claimed he knew before then, even, and maybe a part of him had. After all, his mind had jumped to certain conclusions the moment Ophelia told him her mother was dead, even if he’d chased those conclusions away the best he knew how. He’d come to accept the version of events she placed before him regardless of the inconsistencies or puzzling questions, because it was easier. It was easier to live in a world where things were simple, where you could tell yourself that the heroes were the people you loved and the villains were the people you hated and there was no complexity beyond that.

But the world was not a simple place.

Emilio didn’t know the moment his hand touched the paper, but he knew the moment his eyes found the words. What was written didn’t matter. The letters on the page might as well have been hieroglyphics for all the difference they made. It was the handwriting that sent his heart plummeting down to his stomach, made his mouth go dry. 

Rhett would never let Emilio claim that they’d lived together in Mexico. He’d had his van, and if he’d parked it outside Emilio and Juliana’s house so he could use their shower or eat whatever Juliana made in the kitchen that night, it wasn’t the same as living there. Emilio would roll his eyes, even if he’d known better to argue. And when Juliana noticed Rhett at her table more and more, she’d done things like demand he write down his favorite meals so she could make them from time to time. (Only when he deserved them, she’d say, pointing at him with a sly grin.) Those notes were always scattered around the house, Emilio laughing every time he found one. How the fuck is she even going to read this, man? This looks like you’ve never seen a pen before. 

There had been others, too. Secret notes to Flora, left in the hollow space behind a brick on the porch. Emilio used to read them to her, pointed at the lettering on the page in hopes that she’d learn to read better than her father had, in hopes that she’d be more than barely literate the way most Cortezes were. Letters when he was away for long periods of time, little reassurances to his family that he wasn’t dead yet. Responses to the crude jokes Emilio scrawled by hand into the dust coating the outside of the van. 

Suffice to say, Emilio knew his brother’s handwriting, knew it as surely as he knew his own.

He knew when he recognized it staring up at him from a page.

Ophelia was talking, was asking him what he saw, and he clearly wasn’t as good at schooling his features as he used to be. His hands trembled a little and he thought, with a bitter jolt, that Rhett would have made fun of him for that once. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to respond to his niece. The room felt tight around him. Her world had ended, and she didn’t know it. How did you inform someone of such an apocalypse?

“Who… Who did you say wrote this?” Maybe he was wrong. He clung to the idea, though he knew it wasn’t true. There was no mistaking this.

—

She wished she could decipher what it was in his expression that had him asking that question. Her gaze jumped from his face to the note and back again, trying and failing to make sense of his reaction. He was on the precipice of something, but she knew not what. He shook as whatever it was that he now understood settled in his mind, almost imperceptibly, but not for someone who was looking as frantically as Ophelia was. She searched, and he gave nothing. Nothing but dread, which she couldn’t understand. What was more dreadful in the note than what she already knew? The death of her mother and disappearance of her father, who she was feeling less and less certain would turn up alive with each day that passed? What could be worse than that? What?

“Barley,” the nymph answered slowly, terror constricting her throat. She was afraid to know what he knew. She didn’t want to share in whatever it was that had him questioning what he was seeing, but she also needed to. She couldn’t go another moment without knowing, and yet it seemed to be the worst thing she could ever hope for. “I… think. He never liked Rhett. Never liked us, either. Not really. He was a bastard, and he went missing that night.” She swallowed thickly, realizing that she was trembling just like her uncle. “Why? Why does it matter who wrote it? What does it mean?”

—

He wasn’t sure what he was hoping for in her response. Some piece of the puzzle that would make the picture it created into something less harrowing, some explanation that would make sense in a way that didn’t leave him gasping. But her answer wasn’t some magical key that unlocked a kinder truth. It was a guess at something she didn’t know, something she couldn’t know. How could she? Ophelia had never received letters from her father the way Emilio had in his absence in years past, had gotten no secret notes like the ones left for Flora or dinner requests like Juliana demanded. Ophelia knew her father, but only on the surface. She knew the parts of himself he chose to present to her, and it seemed that those parts weren’t as true as he’d let himself hope they might be.

It was funny, in a way; part of him could understand what she would feel when he answered her question. The part of him that still lived on those bloody streets in Mexico with his uncle murmuring useless apologies in front of him, the part of him whose hand still held the hilt of a blade that disappeared into the gut of the only father he’d ever known, that part of him knew exactly what it was to find a betrayal like this waiting for you at the end of an already harrowing experience. It wasn’t something he would have ever wished upon his niece; it wasn’t something he would have wished on anyone.

He struggled with how he could answer her question, tried to find words that would make sense. Would it be easier for her in Spanish, where his tongue better understood the syllables bouncing off of it? He sometimes thought that bad news should be delivered in a language you had a poorer grasp on. It made him sick, sometimes, the way the people who’d killed his daughter had done so screaming the same language he’d once used to read her the silly notes her uncle left in their secret hiding spot.

Would she even believe him if he said it? Ophelia trusted him, but Rhett was still her father. He was the only biological family she had left in the world, and now Emilio had to tell her that he was also the reason why. Deciding, as he usually did, that action was a thing he understood better than words, he set the note aside and reached into his pocket. He retrieved his wallet, fingers still trembling as he opened one of the folds. 

He hadn’t always carried sentimental items like this. It was something he’d started after Flora’s birth, though he’d always been sure to keep it a hidden habit. His mother would have found some way to punish him for it, for daring to make some attempt to be something he wasn’t, something he couldn’t be. Even now, years after her death, it would have been difficult for someone who didn’t know what to look for to find the small cut in the worn leather of the wallet, to know to open it and slip their fingers inside. There was more there than there used to be, more than just the photo of Flora that sometimes felt like the only proof she’d ever existed at all. Things like notes from Wynne, Teddy, and Nora had joined it over the last year. There were a few other scaps — momentos from Xó and Jade and even one from Zane that he’d deny if pressed. 

But the scrap of paper he pulled out now was older than those. Worn and faded, creased in a way that spoke of how many times it had been folded and unfolded. He unfolded it now, setting it down beside the one Ophelia had brought with her. It was one of those secret notes to Flora, her name scrawled out carefully at the top of the page. But, like the note Emilio had just finished reading, the content of it didn’t matter. It was the handwriting that was important. It was the way it sloped and sprawled in letters identical to the ones detailing the ‘truth’ of Ophelia’s mother’s death.

Emilio let the two pages lay side by side, damning Rhett and Ophelia and himself, too. He didn’t know what to say, how to add to it. No language seemed correct for something like this.

—

Confusion laced itself into her anxious expression as she watched Emilio take out his wallet. Her gaze jumped to see what he was digging for, but staring didn’t make it make any more sense. Eventually he pulled it free, and her dark eyes followed his hand movements as he unfolded it carefully, then leaned forward to set it beside the letter. He said nothing, and she squinted at the second piece of paper for a second before looking back at him. 

“What…” Ophelia began, turning to the letter once more. She unfolded her legs, setting aside the pillow and leaning forward to get a better look. She jumped between the two of them, startled to find that the writing was the same. 

No. 

She read the second letter, the note left to Flora, Emilio’s dead daughter. Something Barley couldn’t have written, obviously. That made sense to her brain, but the rest didn’t. Then who? Who wrote the letter she herself had discovered in her mother’s bedroom? The answer was clear, of course. It was staring her in the face and she was squinting her eyes tightly shut, turning away, refusing to see it. But now it grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her to attention and forcing her to make the connection. 

“No,” she breathed, drawing herself up from the couch, snatching both pieces of paper in her hands and comparing them a final time. Tears sprang to her eyes. “No! He can’t—he wouldn’t—” He would. She knew he would. He was a warden who did not let grudges go, and he’d been crossed by her mother. Apparently, in all that time he’d been chasing her, he’d become an excellent actor too. Good enough to fool both of them into thinking he had changed. And Mariela, sun above, she’d been right to be wary. For all Ophelia’s desperate insistence that he’d changed, that he was different from the man that had run her off decades ago… she’d been wrong. She’d been deadly wrong, and it had cost her both of her parents. 

Barley would not be returning to the aos sí. None of the missing fae would. Her father, be he dead or alive, had seen to that. All this time she’d been harboring a hatred for the victims, and defending the man she’d called her father when he was the one who—the one who—

Ophelia wailed, dropping the papers to the floor and letting her hands fly to her face. All that anger was gone, replaced in a flash by a bottomless sorrow. She fidgeted on the spot, panicking and needing to flee. She didn’t want to desert Emilio like this, but how could she stay? How could she not be reminded of everything she’d lost and the lies she’d been fed any time she looked at him? 

She looked at him. It hurt just as much as she expected. “I have to go,” she squeaked out, hurrying to gather her things. “I-I can’t stay here. I have to go.” She didn’t know where, she just knew away from this town. Away from this state. To some place her father had not touched, where his far reaching influence could haunt her no longer. “I’m sorry.” She was speaking quickly, throwing on her jacket and shouldering her bag. “I won’t bother you anymore. I’m sorry.” 

—

He’d heard that when people witnessed tragedies, they later described it as feeling as though the events happened in slow motion. For the most part, that hadn’t been Emilio’s experience. The massacre in Mexico had happened in flashes, in blinks of an eye. His sister was screaming, and then he blinked and she was dead. His brother was running, and then he blinked and he was laying motionless on the ground. Lucio was apologizing, and then he blinked and there was a knife gripped in his hand and more blood under his nails. Tragedies that happened after that were always sprinkled with moments of bitter time travel. In the basement of the barn where Zane’s clan nearly killed Wynne and their roommates, Emilio had traveled from 2023 to 2021 with a brutal effortlessness. In the factory where Rhett lost his leg, Mexico and Wicked’s Rest existed in the same space. To Emilio, tragedy was a quick and savage thing. There was never even any time to flinch.

This one seemed slower. For the first time, he understood what people were talking about when they described car crashes as a thing that happened at half speed while you tried to look away. Her eyes darted between the two pages as metal grinded against metal, her eyes widened as airbags deployed. The realization that slammed into her seemed a physical force, a thing she couldn’t get away from. Emilio longed to pull her from the wreckage, to turn back the clock, but there was no use, was there? A factory, a barn basement, a living room. He was useless against every tragedy that struck, no matter how hard he tried not to be. He’d never been particularly good at rescues.

The thing he hated most, he thought, was that he should have known. He should have realized it from the very beginning, should have understood it right away. This story was one that had been written long before he’d even met Rhett. It was always going to end the same way. No hunter Emilio had ever known could let something like that go, no matter the circumstances. A tragedy was a tragedy was a tragedy, even when you dressed it up in something else’s clothes. A hunter was a hunter, even when he let you hold his hand.

“I — I’m sorry.” For what, he wondered? For telling her this, for not knowing how to make it easier? For loving the man who’d killed her mother, even now that the proof was on the table? For loving her, too, even when that only ever ended one way? She fell and she wailed and he didn’t know how to comfort her, didn’t know how to make things better. There was no recovery from a thing like this. There was no moving on. There was falling and there was wailing and that was it. That was all.

She looked at him, and he flinched as if her gaze was a fist swinging towards him. He thought he would have preferred a fist, would have been more comfortable with a physical blow over to look on her face. What was he to her now, he wondered? An uncle, still, even if the person who’d created that connection between them had likely relinquished his right to be called her father? Or a stranger who’d delivered to her the worst news of her life, the way he was to so many of his clients? 

“You — You don’t have to…” He trailed off, unsure of what to say. How could he tell her she could stay when he knew how badly she wanted to leave? He wouldn’t have stayed in Mexico for anything, even if it had been safe for him there. No one could thrive in a ghost town, and wasn’t that all this could ever be to her now? “It’s not — You don’t bother me. I want…” He couldn’t say it, couldn’t figure out how the sentence ought to end. He wanted something, maybe, but he didn’t know what. He didn’t know how to ask for it. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Opie, I’m sorry.” 

—

Pinning her wrist over one of her eyes, Ophelia overflowed with agony that she tried in vain to shove back down into the pit. She suddenly hated everyone that had ever told her how much she reminded them of her father—they were mostly other hunters, anyway. Others who saw her as a curiosity more than a person, she realized now. Others who… who probably knew, somewhere deep down, what was to come.

Others like Emilio. 

He was speaking to her, apologizing and telling her she didn’t have to leave, and she couldn’t decide if she felt angry or heartbroken. Both, probably. Deciding to lean into the latter, knowing that the former would only burn another bridge that didn’t deserve burning, she stopped in her frantic hurry to leave and walked over to him. “I know,” she said, misty-eyed as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “It’s—” It wasn’t okay, but… “It’s not your fault. It isn’t.” Her lower lip trembled and she sniffed, closing the distance to pull him into a tight hug. “You’re a good person. I know that. You are, no matter what you think.” Not like his brother. Not capable of such monstrous things. A good heart. A steady hand. A troubled but functional mind. He was fair, and kind when he chose to be, when it was the people that deserved it. Rhett’s kindness had been a mask. He was a faker, a fraud, a liar. Emilio might have guessed what had happened, might have worried about it after having met her, but he couldn’t have known. Rhett had fooled all of them into thinking he wanted to change, that he just wanted to have family again.

“I just… need space. From this town, from… anywhere he’s been. I’m sorry.” She moved back again, wanting to be able to smile for him and tell him she was okay, that everything was going to be all right, but she couldn’t. That would be a lie. She wasn’t a liar. She had no idea how she was going to make it through this, but she knew she couldn’t do it here. “Te amo. I wish… I was stronger.” But she wasn’t, and she needed to run. The girl stepped back, letting her arms fall from his shoulders. “I’ll… write you, okay? Once I find somewhere else to… be.” Running the back of her hand across her eyes, she kept her gaze turned down toward the floor. She had this address at least, so she could send a letter here, should she ever gather the courage to write one. 

“Take care of yourself, tío.” There was nothing more to say and she couldn’t bear to stand there and give him more time to protest, so she just turned and headed for the front door, feeling her shoulders start to heave again the closer she got to it. Would the hurting ever stop?

—

She moved towards him, and Emilio stiffened the way he always did, froze like the only way anyone had ever touched him had been with the intention of making something hurt. But that hadn’t been true in a while now, and never with Ophelia. She wrapped her arms around him and it wasn’t a blow, but he ached, anyway. He thought of the world they lived in, of the shitty place where they all existed with no place else to go. He thought of his mother, who would have killed him no matter how much he told himself she’d cared. He thought of Ophelia’s father, who’d done something unforgivable and lied about it. He thought of his daughter, who would never be anything more than a ghost. How were any of them expected to live like this? Was this all there was? He wondered if everyone ached the way he did, or if he was just doing something wrong.

His throat felt tight as she spoke, like someone’s hand was closed around it and tightening more and more with each word. He didn’t believe her words, though he thought he might want to. He thought he might want to think that he was a decent man, even if he knew he wasn’t one. He thought he might wish the things she said sounded true, even if they felt as fantastical as a storybook. Rhett had lied to Ophelia, had done everything he could do to make her think he was something he wasn’t. And Emilio, without meaning to at all, had somehow done the same.

Maybe some things still ran in families, even if those families weren’t connected by blood.

“I understand.” He wished he didn’t. He wished neither of them knew this ache, but that wasn’t an option on the table. Other people made choices — people like Rhett, like Lucio — and they were the ones left to deal with the fallout. Emilio was still in that living room in Mexico. Ophelia was still in that house on the mountain. They could, both of them, travel nations and worlds away, but it wouldn’t matter. There were rooms you never left. There were moments you never forgot. He knew that.

He closed his eyes for a moment, nodding his head. “Yeah,” he agreed quietly. He wondered if she ever would send that letter, or if he was something that would be easier to forget, too. He wouldn’t blame her for it. “You take care of yourself, too. Okay, kid? You… You stay safe.” 

And then, she was leaving. And Emilio hated himself for how much it felt like watching Rhett walk out of his apartment those months prior, hated the fact that, even now, he couldn’t help but think how much she looked like her father. He watched her go, watched the door shut, stared at it for a moment longer. The house was empty. Everything was silent. And he was alone. 

Wasn’t that how this was always going to end?

[visceralprayers]

" I didn't know what you'd want, so I just grabbed a little of everything, " emilio explained for no good reason, his friends weren't exactly the type of people that protested to food of any kind. he layed everything out and offered a cup of lemonade to the person closest to him, " for you. "

[longislandcharm]

PARTIES: @longislandcharm and @mortemoppetere TIMING: Current SUMMARY: Winter wants to enjoy a day at the beach. Emilio is trying to clear his head. Disaster strikes. WARNINGS: Very brief mention of medical blood tw

It was one of the hottest days that Winter had experienced in Maine so far. It reminded her a little of days back in LA when the warm weather was enough to push her towards the beaches, nostalgia pulling at her tiny heartstrings. Luckily, Wicked’s Rest had beaches too and she intended on taking full advantage of it. The sand between her toes, the sun kissing her skin, all of it brought a smile to her lips while she looked out over the water…only for the smile to fade when she thought back to her conversation with Mack. Nobody could enjoy anything around here, could they? All of it brought out memories that weren’t pleasant, or thoughts that she didn’t want to have like Mack floating in the sea for a few days after being thrown over the cliffs. She wasn’t even there but a chill still went up her spine at the thought of what she had to go through.

But Winter was never one to dwell on the bad when she didn’t have to. She shook the thoughts from her mind, wiggling her toes in the sand, and continued her walk along the shoreline. There weren’t too many people around, the heat most likely driving them to stay home, so peace was easy to come by until a shriek filled the air stopping her in her tracks. She whipped her head around in search of where the sound came from only to see people running towards their cars. Blood had seeped into the sand that seemed to be dipping inwards, little flecks of red graininess flying out and through the air. “What the hell? God, what else could go wrong?”

It was the wrong question to ask. She knew it as soon as it was out of her mouth, especially when the sand near the red clumps started to move. Something was underneath, causing the ground to rise as it moved like some gigantic groundhog, and it was moving straight towards her. That wasn’t even the weirdest part of it all.  No, the weirdest thing was the fin that was rising up, Winter’s eyes widending when she realized what it resembled. Land Jaws was coming straight for her. “Oh, hell no.” 

Her feet slipped a little when she turned to take off. Some Scooby Doo commercial came to mind with the movement but she dug her toes in and took off towards the parking lot as fast as she could. ‘Don’t look back.’ She kept telling herself that same thing over and over, knowing it would only slow her down if she took the time to turn her head and see if the thing was still following her. The sounds of the sand moving started creeping closer though, it was hot on her tail, and she was pretty sure she was about to die despite her best efforts.

He preferred weather like this. The cold of Maine’s winter left him with an ache in his bones, but the heat was familiar. It still wasn’t quite as hot as he was used to things getting in Mexico, but it was warm enough to set his mind at ease, to make him feel a little more comfortable in his own skin. Lately, this was a hard feeling to come by; Emilio would chase it as far as he was able, would cling to it for however long he could. He’d lost some of his confidence lately, left it in various places that became unreachable the moment he walked away. He didn’t know how to get it back; he didn’t really know if he could. 

It seemed he’d had more failures than victories in recent months, and it had always been hard for him not to internalize those. He knew he was… a shadow hanging over Teddy’s house some days, knew that the darkness that lurked in the corners of his mind sometimes seeped through without him really meaning for it to. Teddy would never call it out, though they would try to ask him if he was okay when it surrounded him. Emilio knew they didn’t mind it in a sense that meant anything more than caring for his well-being, but he still didn’t feel that it was fair to drag it around the house, to fill their space with shadows. So, when it got especially bad, he’d go out. He’d take a walk, or go for a hunt.

He wasn’t really sure which he was doing now. He had various weapons on his person, because he always did. There were knives lining his pockets, stakes shoved alongside them. A cross hung from around his neck, clanging against Juliana’s ring and the stake charm Teddy had given him a thousand years ago. There was holy water tucked in the fold of his sleeve, but there was no intention to the way he walked. He didn’t think he was looking for trouble.

It wasn’t particularly surprising that he found it anyway.

People were running away from something, which meant Emilio moved towards it. Someone nearly barreled into him in their attempt to get away, shouting a well-intentioned warning over their shoulder at him as they escaped. Emilio ignored it, still moving towards the chaos. What he saw was… unexpected. A shark on land, all sharp teeth and powerful jaws. He thought Teddy might have liked it, though any thoughts beyond that were interrupted by the face of a familiar woman running away. This was the same woman Wyatt had gone after in the woods, wasn’t it? Emilio’s brow furrowed. She was good at finding trouble, too. 

“I got this,” he told her, pulling a knife from his pocket. He didn’t know what this thing was, but he was assuming something sharp could dispatch it. “You hurt?”

Was this man trailing her now or something? The thought popped into her head as soon as Emilio came into view only clouded by the relief that pooled inside of her. Winter was pretty sure if anyone ‘had’ this it was going to be him. Still, this was the second time he had come to her rescue and she couldn’t help but think maybe he was taking pity on her and making sure the poor human stayed alive a little bit longer even if she knew he had been trialing Wyatt first. The thought was a slap to the face, her confidence shot by all the weird shit that had a hold on this place. She didn’t know why she stopped a few feet behind him. Maybe to answer his question or maybe because she felt safe in his presence or possibly because she wanted to watch this thing meet its fate, either way she did stop. And she would come to regret it.

The shark was gone. The fin had disappeared while the sand went immobile and Winter had a bad feeling about it all as she stood with her toes wiggling. Her feet were begging to move again but with the animal gone she couldn’t be sure if that was a good idea or not. “I’m not hurt.” 

As soon as the words were out of her mouth the sand beneath her started to fall away. She moved as quickly as she could but cried out in pain as sharp teeth dug into her left thigh. A row of them had dug into her flesh but thankfully she’d been quick enough that the shark hadn’t been able to bite down before her leg was wrenched away. Blood covered the sand around her limb, pooling beneath. Her blood. Winter stared at it and then terrified eyes looked up at Emilio as if asking what she should do, unwanted tears pooling in the corners of them. “Spoke too soon…”

He figured she’d make a break for it the moment he was between her and the shark. She’d been brave enough in the woods with Wyatt, even though it was clear she was terrified, but running hadn’t really been an option when the shifter was targeting her directly. Now, though? She could have disappeared with the rest of the crowd, vanished to leave Emilio to face off against the thing on his own. He wasn’t sure if the fact that she didn’t impressed him or pissed him off. 

Probably both. It was usually both.

She said she wasn’t hurt, and he nodded. He was about to tell her to get the hell out of there when the shark vanished, disappearing into the sand. Some people might have been relieved by this; Emilio wasn’t. He was immediately put on edge instead, heart pounding in his chest as he scanned the area, trying to figure out where his opponent had disappeared to. Winter was speaking behind him, answering a question he’d already forgotten asking; he couldn’t offer her any of his attention. His mind was overcome with the paranoia of an enemy he knew was there, but couldn’t see. 

It made itself known all at once, bursting out of the sand to wrap its massive jaws around Winter’s leg. Emilio cursed, diving for it knife first. His blade found the creature’s flesh, but it disappeared beneath the sand again and took the knife with it. Emilio’s chest heaved, eyes scanning the sand for any sign of it. He looked back to Winter, gritting his teeth at the sight of the blood. “Need to get that taken care of before you lose too much blood,” he acknowledged, almost hesitantly. Teddy’s house wasn’t far from here, but he hated the idea of leaving the beach before the creature was taken care of. “We have to get off the sand first. Then, I patch you up.” He had… materials on him. Given his ability to find trouble, he tended to carry something to patch himself up in his pocket. Unfortunately, most people didn’t agree with his medical prowess, but he didn’t think Winter was in any position to be choosey. “Can you walk?”

Fuck fuck fuck, she was in a lot of pain. It was hard to concentrate on his words as she stared down at her thigh, tears finally spilling over. How the hell was a land shark real? How the hell was any of this real? Winter wondered if she would ever get to a point where she wasn’t asking herself that question but it seemed unlikely now. New and more terrifying things kept popping up. It could be worse though. She could be missing an entire leg. The thought brought her mind to Henry and she winced, her wide eyes searching for the ghost that couldn’t be found. He wasn’t around for once and now he’d never leave her alone to go wherever ghosts went when they weren’t on Earth again. 

‘Too much blood’ caught her attention and she looked down at her thigh again. It was bleeding pretty profusely. “Oh my god…I’m going to lose my leg.” It was a whispered panic, the medium reaching out and gripping Emilio’s arm tightly as if she were afraid he was going to leave her there. “Tell me I’m not going to lose my leg, I need it. Tell me it’s staying where it is.” They didn’t need this. Not when there was a fucking land shark hiding in the sand just ready for another taste. This was not the time for her to freak out. Winter had survived being stabbed. She’d survived a poltergeist trying to kill her. She’d survived a crazy alligator with foul breath. She could survive this, right?

Her skin was losing color, the paleness of it once again sending her mind towards a tale spin but she bit hard into her bottom lip to stop those thoughts, leading them back to what she had survived, and did her best to climb to her feet (with Emilio’s help). She couldn’t put too much pressure on it but if he could help her she could get to where they needed to be. “Get me the hell out of here….please.” God, she was going to owe this man so much whiskey. 

She was panicking, talking about losing her leg, and for a moment, Emilio thought about Rhett. His brother wasn’t someone he particularly enjoyed thinking about these days, especially not in this context, but there was blood dripping from her mangled limb and, for a moment, the sand flickered into concrete and the open beach shifted into that abandoned factory. He shook his head to rid himself of the thought. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to pull his gaze away from her leg to look Winter in the eye instead, finding that the easier thing to focus on. Usually, it was the opposite. Blood made more sense to him than emotion, but in this context… well. He was no use to her if he couldn’t keep his head in the present, was he?

“You’re not going to lose your leg,” he snapped. “Shut up so I can think.” He wasn’t good at comforting, even when he knew someone well. Winter’s panic mixed with the chaos around them, and Emilio tried to keep a grip. He shoved a hand into his jacket pocket, yanking out the roll of duct tape he’d taken to carrying with him half because it was useful in a pinch, and half because he enjoyed being petty enough to come home with hastily constructed duct tape bandages just to piss people off. “Hold still,” he told her. “Gotta stop the bleeding before we move you. Keep an eye out for the shark. If it looks like it’s about to hop out and take a bite out of me, just… yell or something, I don’t know.”

Looking back to her leg, he set the tape aside to rip away the torn fabric of her pant leg around the wound. It was deep enough and wide enough that it would probably need stitches later — she wasn’t a hunter who healed quickly enough for such things to be overkill, after all — but they had neither the time nor the supplies for that here. Once he’d opened up the area a little more, he picked the tape back up and yanked at it, pressing the torn fabric from her pants against her leg and wrapping it tightly in tape. When the wound was sufficiently covered in the makeshift bandage, he ripped the tape with his teeth and sealed it off. “There,” he announced. “Good as new, no? Now we need to get off the sand.”

“Excuse you?” She knew Emilio was trying to help her but telling her to shut up was the last thing someone needed to do in her presence, especially when she was in panic mode. Winter’s face started to heat with her frustration but that started to make her lightheaded. Apparently it wasn’t the time for her temper either. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself but then the man brought out a thing of duct tape and the panic started up again. “What the fuck is that?” He couldn’t seriously be thinking of using tape to stop her profuse bleeding, could he? 

Oh, he was. “This isn’t going to work, Emilio.” She gritted the words through her teeth but still kept her eyes on the sand as the hunter got to work. It was a good time to reflect on what her life had become and how idiotic she felt as the tape started to get wrapped around her skin like the faux bandage that it was. But she soon started to focus more on the beach, knowing that was more important than contemplating hopping on a plane to follow after Mack. Every little movement she thought she saw in the sand had her head jerking in different directions even though she knew that if this thing wanted to come after them there probably wouldn’t be much warning. 

Wincing at the tightness in her legs as the tape bandage was finished, Winter looked down at it, her mouth dropping open slightly. How the hell had that worked? It was ugly and she looked like an idiot but the blood wasn’t seeping through the way she thought it would have. “...Why do I get the feeling you have experience with this type of thing? I bet you never go to a doctor, right?” She could tell that even if he wasn’t a hunter he’d probably still refuse healthcare unless he was dying…maybe even then. He just had that air about him. Why did she even care? The medium must have been slightly delusional from the blood loss. They did have to get off the sand though, something that was abundantly clear as that fin rose and started to cut through the ground heading straight for them. “Emilio!” 

He wished she were more agreeable, or that he was better with people. She was yelling at him, and that wasn’t really helping with his whole ‘trying to think of solutions without getting eaten’ dilemma. And, sure, maybe he shouldn’t have told her to shut up, but it wasn’t like her panic was helping anything, was it? “It’s duct tape,” he snapped as she questioned his first aid skills, “and it’s kind of all we fucking have right now. Sorry I don’t carry a full fucking first aid kit with me everywhere I fucking go.” If not for the memory of Rhett in the factory shoving itself repeatedly to the forefront of his mind regardless of how hard he tried to combat it, he would have found this less stressful and more irritating. After all, this sort of thing was close to the norm for Emilio, as commonplace as a flat tire or running out of coffee. But the blood on her leg kept yanking his mind back in time, and he found it harder and harder to focus. 

“It’ll work,” he insisted, wrapping another layer of tape around the wound just to be safe. “I use this shit all the time. It’ll hold you over until you can get to a fucking doctor, or whatever.” Winter was human, as far as he knew. That meant she was probably fine to walk into the hospital with this wound and have a professional stitch her up without worry of exposure or unanswerable questions that might have arisen had she been a little more supernatural. Of course, they had to get off this fucking beach before they could worry about any of that, and that was the kind of thing that was far easier said than done, wasn’t it? 

She seemed surprised that the bleeding was staunched, and Emilio tried not to be offended by her obvious lack of faith in him. “I told you,” he said gruffly, rolling his eyes. At her question, he snorted. “I look like the kind of guy who goes to the doctor?” The closest experience he had to a doctor’s visit was Masami, and he only ever showed up there if someone dragged him in. Strictly speaking, hunters could see human doctors if their injuries were bad enough. Rhett had done a few stints in the hospital at Wicked’s Rest, after all, and Daiyu had had a visit of her own, too. The quicker-than-normal healing was the kind of thing that could be easily explained away to people who didn’t want to acknowledge the existence of the supernatural. But… Emilio didn’t like doctors. Hospitals made his fingers twitch, made him feel like he was trapped in a too-small shed or a stranger’s basement. Even just visiting Rhett when he’d been forced to stay a few days after losing his leg had seen Emilio sweaty and uncomfortable. 

Which was why he’d really like to avoid being eaten by a sand shark.

“I see it,” he murmured through gritted teeth as Winter warned him of the approaching fin. “Come on, get up and lean on me. We need to get to the sidewalk as quick as we can.”

“Yea, yea, this is not the time to gloat.” Winter rolled her eyes at his words but there was an underlying nervousness lacing her own. It probably wasn’t the time for her own mouth either. He was right, they needed to get off this sand before the shark decided it was going to finish its job. “Maybe you should go to the doctor. You could probably pick up better methods.” 

She should have panicked more earlier. Her heart was racing as she did her best to get to her feet again, the tape wrapped tightly enough around her leg that it was hard to move without the edges digging into her bloodied skin. She inhaled swiftly when she tried to put weight on her leg, Winter finally leaning into the hunter when she realized she couldn’t do this one on her own this time. The ground around them was starting to shake softly, the sand moving in between her toes with each step they took towards the parking lot. People were standing around watching in horror, some screaming (especially one ghost who wasn’t tearing his eyes away from the two of them), but none of them made a move to come onto the sand themselves to help. She couldn’t blame them. She couldn’t even be sure she would do something like that with this crazy sand thing on the loose.

It wasn’t until her foot hit the pavement that she realized just how close the thing was to them. It shot up out of the sand intending to bite one of them again but they’d thankfully made it off just in time and the shark went back empty handed. Winter was panting and ready to pass out but she kept her focus on just staying conscious even as she sank back to the ground to lay back against it. “Tell me you’re good and the shark is picking its teeth off the pavement.” 

Emilio disagreed with her assessment. Now was a great time to gloat. Gloating kept him grounded, kept him in the present day, and he figured she’d prefer him here to somewhere else when she needed a hand to get to safety. But, of course, he couldn’t admit to that without admitting to the sorry state of his own head, couldn’t say what gloating was doing for him without copping to why it was necessary, and Emilio wasn’t much of a talker. He had no real interest in letting anyone in on the way his head sometimes dragged him backwards in time, especially not to someone he only really knew in passing. The gloating would continue, but he wouldn’t tell her why. “My methods are saving your ass right now, aren’t they? I’d like to see a doctor do that.”

She managed to get to her feet, and while Emilio’s own bum leg didn’t love the way she leaned her weight against him, it was easy enough to push the pain to the very back of his mind. He’d deal with it later, he was sure — his knee would probably lock up on the walk home, and he’d have to drag himself through the front door and hope no one noticed — but there was no use in bending to it at the moment. He couldn’t save Winter and spare himself a little extra leg pain, so the pain was acceptable. It wasn’t like anyone else was jumping in to help, after all.

He dragged Winter towards the pavement, hyperaware of the sand moving behind them. Shifting his grip on the woman, he fished a knife out of his pocket and waited until a snout came out of the sand to toss it, grinning when he heard it hit but not risking a glance behind him to see where it had landed. Instead, he focused on dragging Winter to the concrete. When they got to it, he lowered her down as carefully as he could with the adrenaline still flowing through him, eyes wild as he glanced around. “In one piece,” he replied. And the shark is…” He looked back to the sand. “Gone.” There was blood staining the sand, though, and he knew not all of it was Winter’s. “Made off with one of my knives. Not sure where I hit it, but…” He trailed off with a shrug. “Probably going to need time to lick its wounds, if they don’t kill it.” He sighed, glancing back to her. “You, uh… You good?”

She nodded, his explanation of what happened with the shark satisfactory. Winter was vaguely aware of Emilio’s words towards his lost knife, her brain passing over the rest of his words entirely as her head started to spin and her vision started to go black around the edges. The adrenaline that had been funneling through her was fading fast and she was fading along with it. Even with the tape on her leg she had lost a lot of blood before he’d patched her up making it hard to breathe properly as her body worked overtime to pump what she had left through her veins. She closed her eyes, bringing an arm up to cover them and block out the sun while still fighting off the abyss that was trying to overtake her.

“Hey Emilio?” Her voice was soft, vulnerable in a rare moment when she allowed herself to be taken down by whatever was trying to wipe her out. It was the most embarrassing thing to happen to her that day but she couldn’t fully focus on the tone she was giving off anymore. Later she would chastise herself for the weakness that was displayed, tell herself that next time she needed to work harder to keep up her image, but for now she was content with giving Emilio that weakness as if she had any choice in the matter. “I think someone should call an ambulance.” 

That was an answer, right? He’d maybe asked if she was okay, his voice having long distorted by that point, but Winter was sure that was enough. Sleep was calling to her, a call that she so desperately wanted to answer despite a voice in the back of her mind telling her to resist. Or maybe that was Henry? It did sound deeper than her usual inner monologue. “I’m okay.” The ghost didn’t need to worry. 

Emilio saved her with duct tape.

[honeysmokedham]

@mortemoppetere

Is Rhett your alter-ego? You keep talking about him, but I'm over at yours a lot and I've never seen a Rhett.

[howdy-cowpoke]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Farmer’s Market PARTIES: Monty (@howdy-cowpoke) & Emilio (@mortemoppetere) (+ Hector) SUMMARY: Emilio is at the farmer’s market picking up some groceries for Teddy when he unexpectedly runs into Monty. He’s curious about the man accompanying the cowboy, and tries to get a read on both of them — but doesn’t really like what he’s seeing. CONTENT WARNINGS: Emotional abuse/manipulation

—

Emilio wasn’t usually tasked with doing the shopping. It was something that predated his living situation in Wicked’s Rest, went all the way back to Mexico when Juliana sent him to the store while she was making dinner to pick up a zucchini and he’d come back with a cucumber instead, earning him an eye roll and a kitchen towel tossed at his face. He was probably worse at it now than he had been then, addled mind easily distracted by the creeping feeling of uncertainty down his spine and the question of whether or not the guy with the manbun running the booth full of artisanal dog treats was planning on killing him or not. 

No, the farmer’s market really wasn’t his scene. But Teddy had asked him to pick some shit up and had given him a pretty detailed list, and Emilio was more than willing to do whatever they asked him to do whenever they asked him to do it, so here he was. Weaving through the crowd of the farmer’s market, glancing behind him periodically, and reminding himself that dog treat guy probably didn’t even own a damn knife. 

“Tomatoes,” he murmured to himself, staring down at the list. “Yeah. All right. Know what those look like.” He steeled himself, limping over to a booth full of them. Some were green, some were red. Emilio had no idea if there was a difference. He picked up one of each, holding them in his hands and staring down at them. “Didn’t say how many,” he mumbled. “Might as well get a few of each. Yeah. All right. Tomatoes.” He turned to speak to the girl running the booth, faltering when he felt a familiar shiver run down his spine. He forced himself to ignore it, because it didn’t matter if someone nearby was undead. Emilio wasn’t going to stab a stranger at the farmer’s market. (Not unprovoked, at least.) 

He grit his teeth, unable to prevent himself from doing a cursory sweep of his surroundings in spite of the adamant internal insistence that it wouldn’t change anything. His eyes darted over a few faces before stopping on a familiar one. Some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. Monty was an annoying, self-righteous ass, but Emilio was pretty sure the guy wouldn’t kill him. He didn’t even think the zombie noticed him, the way he approached the stand. He seemed focused on the guy next to him, who was more unfamiliar to Emilio. The slayer couldn’t keep himself from making a comment as Monty moved into earshot, humming in acknowledgement. “Didn’t think they sold food for your diet here.”

—

Despite the farmer’s market not having things that either of them needed, there was one man living at the cabin who very much needed human food, and while Monty wasn’t much of a cook, he was determined to have something nice waiting for Kaden when he got home that day. Hector, the cowboy was surprised to find, had significantly advanced his culinary skills somewhere along the way, so he could at least take solace in the idea that what they cooked would not be bad, if only… heavily spiced. And it might have been something of a peace offering, if Monty was being honest with himself. While Hector and Kaden had not been at odds, necessarily, he knew that Kaden still felt very wary of the man. So had Monty, in the beginning. But it was hard to not fall into familiar, comforting patterns, and so he’d relinquished all concern and hesitation in favor of having someone around who shared in his struggles, diving headfirst into repairing the friendship that had so heavily defined the person he’d become. And Kaden… well, there was a chance that Kaden wasn’t exactly happy about that. So they’d do something nice for him! A gesture that would hopefully help to convince him that Hector had changed, that he meant well! Monty was sure it was a good idea. 

List in hand, Monty squinted at it a few times before passing it to Hector (who was a faster reader, too), and let himself be led from this stall to that, just enjoying the mild weather and his less mild company. The two were conversing in Spanish for the entirety of the trip — they both preferred it, and since Kaden wasn’t around, it didn’t feel exclusionary. 

Both men glanced up as they were addressed, Monty’s expression quickly darkening. But Hector, who hadn’t heard anything of the (un)healthy rivalry these two shared, smiled. “Shut up,” Monty groaned at Emilio, glancing at the tomatoes in his hands. “It is for Kaden.” He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to explain their presence there — it wasn’t like Emilio actually cared, he was only looking for a chance to start another argument. Hector, who had several very important questions lingering in his mind, was finding that many of them were answered purely by observing how the two were interacting. 

“Ahh, yes, we are preparing a feast for the young man!” he interjected brightly, looking from the stranger to Monty. “... well, Montaña, aren’t you going to introduce me to your… friend?” Monty scoffed, keeping his eyes down on the produce and picking at it absently, pretending that he was trying to pick the best specimen when really he was just praying that Emilio would buy his damn fruits and move on. Hector, sensing that no such thing was going to happen, laughed and turned to Emilio, holding out a hand for a moment before realizing the stranger was a bit preoccupied with tomatoes. “Hm. Well, it’s nice to meet you, I’m Hector,” he introduced himself, instead pointing at the tomatoes the man held. “Good eye, by the way. Those ones look tasty.” 

—

It was clear that Monty wasn’t happy to see him and, in a way, this helped to ease Emilio’s mind a little. The market was an unknown entity full of unknown entities. He couldn’t predict most of its occupants, couldn’t determine how the people running the stalls or the ones buying from them would think or act in any given situation. Monty, however, was a touch more familiar. The two of them were far from friends, but Emilio understood him, to a certain extent. Certainly not in the same way he knew other people, but well enough to carry some comprehension of what he did and how he would react. It was ironic, in a sense; he disliked Monty immensely, and Monty was the safest person at this market. Few people understood how Emilio’s mind worked, least of all Emilio himself.

The man with Monty was still an unknown, of course. Emilio could pick up on the barest of basics from the way he’d approached with the zombie — he spoke Spanish, he was someone Monty was clearly familiar with and comfortable around, he was in charge of the list so he clearly carried some of Monty’s trust. The way Monty responded to his light goading offered another hint — he’d specified that the shopping the two men were performing was for Kaden. No second person, just Kaden. That implied the man with Monty had the same disinterest in the groceries as Monty himself. Emilio’s eyes flickered between the two briefly, and he wondered if the hair on the back of his neck stood on end not for one undead presence, but for two. 

“Brave to cook for a Frenchman,” he commented, sliding into Spanish with little thought. He preferred the language, but rarely allowed himself to be the first one to switch to it in conversation. Somehow, it felt a little too much like exposing his throat in a fight, like admitting that English was still a complicated, clunky thing even now. “He’s probably not going to like it. I know you’ve heard him complain about food.” Emilio certainly had, and he wasn’t the one sharing meals with the guy. (Or watching him eat? He wasn’t sure how dinner dates worked when one party was undead.) 

His eyes slid back to Monty’s companion as he spoke, carefully studying him in a way that tried to make it seem like he wasn’t. The guy seemed friendlier than Monty, though Emilio supposed Monty himself might have been friendly to people who weren’t Emilio. He looked down at his hands, still full of tomatoes, when the stranger held one out for a shake. It was something of a relief when the guy pulled back; Emilio didn’t particularly like handshakes, anyway. Deciding Monty would probably be irritated if Emilio struck up conversation with his friend, the slayer nodded and vowed to do just that. “Emilio,” he replied. “I don’t know shit about tomatoes, man, I’ll be honest. Is there a difference between the green and the red? I’m not really in charge of the cooking.”

—

Rolling his eyes, Monty chose to try and ignore Emilio’s attempts to belittle their decision to do something nice for Kaden — just because he was incapable of feeling anything other than anger didn’t mean that everyone else was, too. Putting down the tomatoes in his hands, he was about to ask Hector if they could go look for some nice green beans instead when he heard the other man laughing at what Emilio had said. 

“Well, we’re going to try our best to impress him! And yes, they’re very different. The greens are great for pickling, baking, or frying! They’re less juicy than the reds, and way more acidic. What is it you’re making?” It was a bold assumption, but maybe Emilio was just new to this — everyone had to start somewhere! Monty watched as Hector started to chat him up with a slight look of disbelief, then an indignant snort. 

“Please, he is not the one cooking anything, that I can guarantee you,” he sniped. “It is for Teddy, his partner.” Hector raised a brow as an amused smile crept over his face. 

“Ahh, I see… Well, in that case, if you were sent off for tomatoes, there’s a very strong chance that Teddy only wanted the red ones. That’s the safe bet.” Okay, so this Emilio person was not a friend of Monty’s, and had in fact brought out a very catty side of the other zombie that Hector hadn’t ever seen before. “I would say… the ones you have there, plus those two,” he added, gesturing at a few more that sat near Emilio. “This really is a small town, eh? I feel like every time we leave the cabin, we are running into someone else that Montaña knows.” He wanted to ask how they’d met, but could already tell that Monty was primed to shut that conversation down as soon as it began. So instead, because he was genuinely enjoying himself at his friend’s expense… “What do you do, Emilio?” 

—

Monty’s friend was… well, friendly. Somehow, Emilio was caught off guard by it. It was entirely due to the fact that Hector was here with Monty, of course; Emilio tended to expect most people would try to kill him upon first meetings, and anything less than that was always something of a surprise. But the fact that this man was here with Monty made his eagerness to help seem all the stranger. Was it arrogant to have assumed Monty might have spoken of him? It would make sense for the zombie to offer Hector a word of warning, if Hector was what Emilio suspected he might be. Evidently, though, the cowboy hadn’t seen this as something that was necessary. Emilio wasn’t sure how to feel about that, wasn’t sure if it felt like an insult or came as a relief. When you’d been one thing all your life, it was jarring to realize that no one considered it to be true of you anymore.

He was about to tell Hector that he wasn’t the one doing the cooking when Monty beat him to it, sounding rather irritated in the process. Emilio let his eyes slide over to the zombie, brows shooting up in an expression that could really only be described as smug before he looked back to Hector. “They like to cook,” he added. “Always ‘experimenting’ in the kitchen. Half of it looks like it’ll eat you before you have a chance to eat it, but it’s usually good.” Not that Emilio ate most of it; his appetite had never quite returned to him after the massacre and, most days, Teddy had to trick him into eating anything at all. But he liked complimenting their cooking, and he liked how pissed off Monty looked at his conversation with Hector, so he kept it going anyway.

And… it turned out, Hector was helpful. This, too, came as a surprise. Emilio nodded thoughtfully, putting the green tomatoes back in the stand. He picked up the ones Hector indicated, nodding again. “That’s very helpful,” he commented. “I appreciate that. I’m not much of a shopper. Someone else is usually in charge of this kind of thing, but I guess I’ll do in a pinch.” Were it not for Monty’s presence, he might have turned away there and let the conversation end. Emilio wasn’t social, after all, and had no real desire to continue getting to know… anyone, really. But Monty was there, and he was irritated, and that was enough for Emilio to decide this conversation was worth his time after all. “I’m a private investigator. I have a small firm in town, take on as many cases as I can keep up with. How about you?”

—

That was a curious way to describe someone’s cooking, Hector thought. Monty, having been inside the house before, felt that it sounded appropriate — but he wasn’t invested in this conversation. In fact, he’d rather be anywhere else, talking to anyone else, but Hector was doing what he always did. The man had never lost that ability to command a room, or in this case, strike up conversation with the unlikeliest of strangers and immediately get on their good side. Of course Emilio’s willingness to continue talking probably had a lot to do with the way Monty was frowning at them from the other end of the stall’s display table, but pretending he was happy to see the slayer wasn’t going to make anything better. 

Hector chuckled, giving Emilio a shrug. “Ah, me? I’m kind of… in between jobs right now. Just got into town not that long ago, you know? Always on the lookout for opportunities. I guess that makes me a freelancer for… odd requests.” He always had to be his own boss, Monty knew that much. “But hey, if you still  have some things you need to pick up for Teddy, we’d be happy to help! Wouldn’t we, Montaña?” Monty looked absolutely gobsmacked. 

“Have I not suffered enough?” he answered lamely.

“Oh, come on now, it’s just some vegetables,” Hector argued with an amused grin. He nodded at Emilio and his handful of tomatoes. “Pay for those, then let’s figure out what you need next, ah? I’ll make sure whatever you grab isn’t going to put a spanner in the works.”

Monty could have continued to argue, but he knew better. Hector had his mind set on this for whatever reason, and honestly, he was too damn beaten down from everything that had happened lately to complain about it any more. He might’ve told Emilio (or both of them) to fuck off at one time, but he didn’t have the anger in him for it anymore. So he just rubbed the bridge of his nose and shook his head, hoping that Emilio had a short grocery list.

—

The ever-present unease that had lived in his head for years now meant that Emilio was dissecting every word from Hector’s mouth as soon as the syllables settled. He was new to town and between jobs, which meant his friendship with Monty likely predated his time in Wicked’s Rest. The two seemed too comfortable around each other to have only just met. How far back did it go, then? Hector’s accent was from Mexico, but Emilio had no idea how much time Monty had spent in their shared home country after being turned. Had he fled the moment Emilio’s ancestor refused to kill him, or had he stayed longer? Had he met Hector in Mexico, or had the pair run into one another out in the world, just as Emilio and Monty had? The questions swirled in the detective’s mind, eyes darting between the pair carefully as he tried to narrow things down further.

It was hard to say if it was the mystery or the promise of bothering Monty that made Hector’s offer to stick around feel tempting instead of annoying. Most days, Emilio had little desire for companionship from someone he’d only just met in a casual setting. There were too many people in this town already who’d fooled themselves into thinking he was someone worth hanging around, and he didn’t tend to jump at the opportunity to add to that list. But he wanted to know more about Hector, even if only for the sake of his own suspicious curiosity, and he wanted to annoy Monty, even if only to satisfy his petty streak, so he nodded. 

“Ah, I’d appreciate that,” he said, flashing Monty a shit-eating grin. “I’m a little out of my depth here. Never been much good at groceries.” Especially not when there were so many options available to him. It was a stupid thing to feel overwhelmed about; Emilio felt like he was drowning all the same. 

Turning back to the person manning the tomato booth, Emilio passed some cash over with a nod. At least that part was the same no matter where you were. With the tomatoes bagged for easy transport and his wallet tucked back into his back pocket, he turned back to the pair of undead men. Pulling out the list he’d been provided with, he held it up. “Got a few more ingredients I need to pick up,” he commented. “No idea what it’s all for.” He’d found it was better not to guess, with Teddy’s cooking.

Scooting away from the tomato booth and immediately finding it a little easier to breathe with a few less people surrounding him, Emilio headed towards the next target. He glanced back to see if Hector and Monty would follow, nodding to Hector again. “So, what brings you to town?” Was he here for Monty, or had running into him been a surprise? 

—

Arms folded across his chest, Monty followed after the pair, taking up the rear with his head down. It felt familiar, in a way. Back in their livelier days, Monty had often followed the other man around, trying to learn how it was that he managed to charm everyone he talked to, or even just as a support in case he needed anything. He’d often fade into the background while Hector talked jobs with other, more experienced gang members, absorbing as much as he could until their leader would eventually turn to him with a grin and clap a hand across the back of his neck, announcing that Monty would be joining the team for this one. So, as he walked and the other two talked, he felt somehow comforted more than he felt annoyed or awkward stepping back into those very well-worn shoes. 

“Well, if I am honest, I heard about the fire.” Hector glanced back at Monty, who failed to acknowledge the statement and instead just kept his gaze focused on his boots. “I had been looking for him for some time, but he did not make himself easy to find. Then one day, I saw his name in print and had to come see for myself. So I set up camp on his farm and waited.” He seemed proud of this, wearing a satisfied smile. “And he turned up, of course. He’s always been very good at coming when called — I do not even have to speak the commands anymore.” Monty lifted his head now, furrowing his brows at Hector, wondering what on earth he meant by that. Why would he say something like that to a perfect stranger? There wasn’t any time to protest, however, because Hector was barrelling through the brief pause with a sharp inhale and a very animated glance downward at Emilio’s list. “So! What is next, my friend? Ahh, yes… I think those are this way!” Lifting his head and pointing to their right, Hector motioned for the other two to follow. Monty hugged his arms to himself a little tighter, avoiding Emilio’s gaze as they carved their way through the thin crowd and over to the next booth.

—

There was something off about the way Hector spoke about Monty. Emilio sent a subtle glance back towards the cowboy, trying to gauge his reaction. If Monty made himself hard to find, had he been hiding from Hector? The pair seemed friendly now, but he figured Monty was more likely to put on an act in front of him than anyone else. And the rest of it… saying Monty came when called, as if he was a dog responding to his owner’s sharp whistle… It didn’t sit quite right in Emilio’s chest. He wouldn’t pretend he was Monty’s biggest fan, but the fact that he knew the guy put him above Hector on the list of people Emilio wasn’t entirely uncertain about. He didn’t trust Monty — he was pretty sure the guy would leave him to die in a heartbeat, even if he was too self righteous to kill him directly — but he was, at the very least, a known entity. Hector was something else; something dangerous, maybe.

Or maybe Emilio’s paranoia was getting the best of him. He’d thought the guy with the manbun and the homemade dog treats was dangerous, too, after all. 

He tried to push his uncertainty to the side, tried to remind himself that he didn’t really care one way or another. Monty was surely capable of taking care of himself, so it made no difference to Emilio what his ‘friend’s’ intentions might be. Presumably, Kaden was aware of the situation, too, and that was someone the slayer did trust. He figured, between the two of them, a skilled ranger and a guy who was probably pushing two hundred could take care of themselves. 

“I was sorry to hear about the farm,” he commented, glancing back to Monty again. The apologetic tone was a genuine one, though he wasn’t sure Monty would accept it as such. “I guess it’s good Monty’s got your support.” He kept his eyes on the cowboy as he said it, waiting for a reaction. Was Monty happy with the ‘support?’ He avoided Emilio’s gaze in a way that made it difficult to tell. The detective studied him for a heartbeat more before turning back to his shopping list, nodding his head. He followed Hector as he led the way to the next booth, still looking at Monty out of the corner of his eye. “My partner can be picky on ingredients. We’ll have to make sure we get the best ones.” And maximize the amount of time he could spend trying to figure Hector out. (Not that he gave a shit or anything; he was just curious. That was all.)

—

A brief, melancholic glance was spared in Emilio’s direction when he expressed his condolences — it was funny, really. He’d come to the farm the first time to kill someone who worked there. Had threatened to do it again if he found out that Monty was protecting anyone he wanted dead. How could he be sorry? How could a slayer be sorry that a community of undead had been almost completely wiped from existence?

Yet his tone wasn’t the snarky, sarcastic one he usually used around Monty. It didn’t seem to be digging for any kind of specific response, or trying to egg him on in a way that would end up with Monty upset and Emilio either amused or threatening to do something he wouldn’t like. It was just that — sympathy. Or pity, maybe. That felt more likely. 

His gaze darted back to the ground when Emilio said he must be glad for the support. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure yet. Some things about it seemed good. There was comfort in that familiarity, in having someone around who shared his complicated, bloody past. But Monty wasn’t sure that Hector had moved beyond that past, especially not with comments like the one he’d made about Monty being… the way that he was. It wasn’t untrue what he said, but it didn’t feel quite right. Still familiar, but something that Monty had grown unaccustomed to. Still, if he stayed too quiet, then Emilio might read into it too much. And Monty didn’t want to accidentally reveal anything about himself that he wasn’t prepared for someone like Emilio to know, so he just laughed a hollow laugh and nodded. “Yes! Very grateful for Hector’s…” Help wasn’t the word. “... presence. It had been a while. Always good to have your friends around.” 

Hector smiled at him in a way that almost felt approving, and that confused, annoying anxiety was swirling in his gut again in seconds. “Of course, of course, only the best,” Hector agreed, attention having returned to Emilio and his list. 

For the most part, Monty hung back while the other two men went around and completed both shopping lists. He was handed bags to carry, Hector of course far too busy helping Emilio pick out the best of the best to be bothered with lugging produce around. He didn’t really speak unless spoken to, and by the time both lists had been completed, he’d lapsed into a state of distracted staring off into space and only half-listening to their conversations. Hector chided him for it once, but Monty tried to brush it off by saying he was thinking of work that still needed to be done at the cabin. Which wasn’t untrue, there was a lot that could be done to the makeshift pen and stable that they’d erected on the property and he was often thinking of ways to improve it, but… well. He just didn’t care for this situation, nor the way Hector seemed intent on getting Emilio to like him. He was agreeable, warm, and helpful — all the things he’d been back in the 1800s, when a teenage, captive Monty had been untied from that tree and brought to meet him. It was how he drew people in. Always had been. Then he’d start asking things of them, but Monty wasn’t sure that was the case here. More likely, he was just looking for something to lord over Monty in moments of impatience or anger. 

—

Reading people was the kind of thing you needed to be decent at if you got into as many scrapes as Emilio did. Understanding a person’s body language allowed you to decipher whether they were going to start throwing punches or buy you a drink when you pushed their buttons, let you decide whether someone was a threat or a nuisance. (Monty had always been the latter.) Emilio had gotten good at it over the years, had started figuring it out as a kid who had to try a little too hard to please his mother and carried it with him until he was an adult at a farmer’s market standing between two undead men. 

He stared at Monty a moment, dissected his hesitation and his carefully chosen words. The pause before he described Hector’s assistance as little more than his presence, the intentional choice in terminology. Coupled with the way Hector had spoken about Monty, and Emilio wondered if the two were friends at all or if there was something else going on. They seemed familiar with each other, but familiarity didn’t always equate to fondness. He thought of Lucio, turning up again out of the blue and turning his life upside down. He thought of Rhett, who had been both a welcome and unwelcome presence from his past. Maybe this was something closer to that, some uncomfortable uncertainty shrouded with a past obligation. Monty described Hector as a friend, but was that just because there was no word that really fit? 

Emilio studied Monty a moment longer before turning back to Hector, not wanting to alert either man to his own uncertainty. Monty would only grow defensive, and Hector was an unknown entity whose reaction couldn’t be predicted without further exposure. (Emilio wasn’t sure he wanted further exposure.) 

The shopping continued, and Emilio continued trying to solve the puzzle presented to him throughout without cluing either man in on his suspicions. He was civil with Hector, even friendly; as long as the other man thought Emilio liked him, Emilio could continue gathering more information. And he’d be lying if he said he didn’t still want to irritate Monty, even if it was far less fun when the cowboy was as withdrawn as he’d become throughout the shopping trip. Emilio tended to poke at people in hopes of gaining the satisfaction of a reaction, and Monty wasn’t giving him that anymore. And the more Hector spoke, the less Emilio liked him. It was clear that he was trying to get Emilio to like him, and the paranoid corner of his mind that had grown larger and larger of late insisted that there was some unknown ulterior motive behind this. Whatever Hector wanted from him, Emilio wasn’t sure he wanted to provide it. Mostly, he just wanted to get his groceries. 

In the end, he was successful in that much, at least. Hector made short work of his list, and Emilio’s arms were full of bags full of shit he figured Teddy would be happy with. He nodded at the two undead men as they neared the entrance of the market. “Appreciate the help,” he said, glancing to Monty but keeping the majority of his attention focused on Hector. “Probably would have taken me all day to make it through that shit on my own. Maybe you can come by for dinner sometime.” He couldn’t be sure how much of his suspicion was valid and how much was his paranoia rearing its ugly head. Having the pair in his house, in a situation where he was in control, and with Teddy as an additional witness… that would help him figure this out. He was sure of it. 

—

Monty remained quiet, his gaze distantly focused on the ground beneath their feet until they came to a slow stop, preparing to go their separate ways. As he lifted his chin again, he realized Emilio was inviting them over for dinner. A sense of dread started to climb up his spine and he flicked his gaze over to Hector to see what he’d say. There wouldn’t be any arguing it, at least not while Emilio was standing right in front of them. The reason he was inviting them over escaped Monty entirely: he knew that his dislike was mutually shared, so it certainly wasn’t a sudden change of heart. Hector might be charming, but he wasn’t that charming. Not enough to inspire something like that, especially not from someone so paranoid and angry as Cortez. 

“Ah, so kind of you,” Hector answered for them both, that disarming smile never leaving his face. “We’d love to.” There was no attempt to ask for Monty’s confirmation this time — there wasn’t even so much as a glance in his direction, Hector’s focus solely on the man standing in front of him, zeroed in with a predatory focus. “I’ll have one of the boys get you my contact information.” The statement was marked with a playful wink, goodbyes were exchanged, and Monty didn’t speak a word until Emilio had disappeared from view. Hector was still staring at the spot they’d last seen him, and Monty could swear he saw the gears turning in the man’s head. 

“He’s a hunter,” Monty explained bluntly, voice low and soft. “A slayer.” Hector smirked.

“Of course he is. And you haven’t killed him?” Monty looked back down at his feet, swallowing hard. 

“It’s complicated.”

“Isn’t it always?”

“Hector, please… can we just go home?” The man narrowed his eyes in the direction Emilio had gone, the smile falling from his face. 

“Fine.” The question of whether or not it was Emilio’s intention to lure them somewhere where he could kill them went unspoken, which Monty was grateful for. He didn’t know how to answer, because he was pretty sure that Emilio wouldn’t try anything like that on him, at least, since… well, because of Kaden. And if he had to tell Hector that, then Hector was going to want to know what Kaden and Emilio had that bound them, and Monty just wasn’t prepared to lie about that. It was easier to say nothing at all. 

He only hoped that these dinner plans would never come to pass, because he truly didn’t know what Emilio intended to gain from them. And he didn’t want to find out. 

[dirtwatchman]

PARTIES: Caleb Aesil (@dirtwatchman) and Emilio (@mortemoppetere) TIME: Current (May 27th) SUMMARY: After getting information from their last kill and her ex, Aesil heads to the bizarre in town. They run into Emilio, someone they thought had been friends with Caleb but clearly wasn't. WARNINGS: None

This meat suit was getting on his nerves. Aesil was ready to get rid of it and move on but there was an underlying voice underneath all of Caleb’s whining that was keeping the demon there. Despite the protests, the occasional moments when his host would break through and effectively scream at him in his own head, the feelings that came through didn’t always match up with the disgust or whatever it was Caleb was trying to convey. Some part of this weirdo liked something about all of this. It sometimes made him more content when Aesil added another body to their collection as if the person who had lost all control was feeling relieved of some sort of frustration he had been holding on to for years.

Or something like that. Aesil didn’t know what the fuck his feelings were supposed to portray and after being so confused everytime they broke through to the surface the demon had decided that Caleb could keep them. Still, knowing that it wasn’t all tears and anger and blah blah blah kept them inside of the dead guy because there was something intriguing about that. They wanted to know more.

But for now they were stuck at a supernatural bizarre that the stupid ass humans of Wicked’s Rest were oblivious to. They’d ended up finding the ex-boyfriend of their latest victim, realized he was a spellcaster, and tortured the information for the bizarre out of him. Now the man was chained to a chair in Caleb’s basement just in case the demon needed more information from him later. Now, though, it was time to spend all of the money this loser had stashed away…if the vendors took money, that is. 

They were browsing some of the rarer ingredients at a booth towards the back when they noticed one of those humans in the know looking over at them. God, was this another lover? Another weirdo living in this man’s house? Why did he know so many people? He was supposed to be a loner and yet half the town wanted to talk to him on any given day. Trying their best Caleb impression, Aesil lifted a brow at the man with a half smile. “Uh, hey…man. How’s it going?” Or was it ‘what’s up’? That was the stupidest phrase he’d ever heard. People knew the sky was what was up, birds, clouds, all of that shit. Why did they ask every time they saw someone? “You looking for something in particular?”

Emilio didn’t spend a lot of time at markets like this one. They only ever served to make him uncomfortable, like he was doing something he shouldn’t be. They were open to everyone, he knew, but there were times he felt his status as a hunter was reflected like a neon sign above his head, a quiet plea for someone to take him out because of it. If not for a case bringing him here, he doubted he’d have come at all. But… his client’s missing friend spent a lot of time here, so Emilio was here, too. Investigating. Snooping. Ignoring the churning of his gut warning him of something undead nearby.

His eyes scanned the crowd, stopping on a familiar face — and the source of that churning. It was the groundskeeper, the squirrely one from the cemetery who almost certainly knew more than he was letting on. Emilio wondered if his presence here was enough to make him a suspect in this case, too. Paranoia insisted that it very well could be, but logic leaned more on the side of it being a coincidence. Wicked’s Rest wasn’t a huge town, after all, and he was pretty sure you could buy… zombie food at places like this, if you knew who to ask. The groundskeeper might just be trying to avoid being the subject of one of Axis’s cases.

There was some surprise when the man turned to him, more when he spoke. He greeted Emilio like they were friends, like they knew one another. It certainly didn’t feel reflective of their last – and only – interaction. The slayer’s brow furrowed a little in response, fingers twitching at his side as if longing to wrap themselves around the hilt of a knife. He thumbed at his wedding ring to calm them, an absent, unconscious thing.

“Fine,” he replied gruffly, shooting the groundskeeper a confused look. “The fuck are you doing?” Blunt, sure, but Emilio didn’t know another way to be. He’d never learned tact, and it tended to show in situations like this one.

Well, they definitely weren’t friends. It was almost amusing as Aesil watched the confusion flicker onto the man’s face. They’d seen it happen enough throughout this experience that they knew what that furrowed brow meant. Their enjoyment of that was drowned out by the annoyance that was bleeding through them at more suspicion being tossed their way. Being Caleb wasn’t as easy as they’d thought it would be. He’d seemed so simple minded, so standoffish to people, so…alone. But he wasn’t alone and that was making this journey so fucking difficult as they tried to navigate the complexities that came with human life.

It was exhausting.

“Browsing….the fuck are you doing?” They gave the man the same tone back, mocking him, while the look sent his way was challenging as if they were daring him to cause any sort of scene. The day had been boring so far, maybe it was time to spice it up a bit and Aesil could most certainly get behind a little hate spat. Maybe it could be fun to hear why these two didn’t seem to get along. Maybe they could learn something in the process. 

They lifted the corner of Caleb’s lips into a smirk before looking back down at the table before them, not worrying about keeping an eye out. The man he possessed was dead, there wasn’t much the other could do and they doubted very much he would try to physically harm Caleb in such a public setting. It wasn’t often Aesil underestimated people like this but they felt comfortable in doing so with this one. “Looking for a nice sand chomper tooth. The last one I saw was cracked.” They made a point to eye the vendor who scowled their way.

Something was wildly different about the undead groundskeeper here. When Emilio had confronted him in the graveyard, he’d seemed uncertain. Polite in a way that alluded to discomfort, uneasy with the detective’s line of questioning but unwilling to bluntly tell him where to shove it. This certainly wasn’t the case here, and Emilio found his interest piqued. Was this a telltale sign that, in catching him off guard in that graveyard, he’d spooked the groundskeeper into revealing something after all? If this was his default demeanor, that uncertain politeness might serve as proof to Emilio’s suspicion that he’d known more about the case Emilio was investigating than he’d let on. 

He had the upper hand here, he realized. He knew very little about the groundskeeper, but he still knew more about him than the man knew about Emilio. For example, Emilio knew the man was undead. He was fairly certain he was a zombie, specifically, but he wasn’t sure he’d put money down on that assumption just yet. The other man had no idea that Emilio knew this, and he certainly had no way of knowing that Emilio was anything more than a particularly nosy private investigator, and Emilio intended to keep it that way.

He also intended to learn more. 

You could never have too much information. That was something Emilio believed wholeheartedly. He knew plenty about the zombie, but he could stand to know more, could learn enough to solve his case and decide what to do with the guy after. “Yeah? What do you need it for?” He didn’t know much about things sold here or what they were used for; he thought, with some irritation, that he probably should have listened a little closer to Teddy’s rants on places like this instead of spending the conversation staring at their lips. He’d ask them about it later, see if their response lined up with what the zombie told him.

Straight to the point, not giving anything even after Aesil had given him something. Rude. But they kind of liked him for it even if they didn’t plan on giving much more. The demon picked up a live gremlin in a jar poked with holes, the little monster of a fae ramming into the glass trying to get out. They needed something to do while they made the man sweat out a wait and the creature was entertaining enough. Their nail tapped against the glass while the gremlin gnashed its teeth at the taunting gesture and Caleb’s laugh rang out through the market.

“Gee mister, I just think they’re neat.” They finally answered as they lowered the jar back onto the table, eyes flickering back to the grump next to them. They were pretty sure Caleb would never be so difficult, even to an enemy, but they couldn’t help goading him a little. “What makes you think I need it for anything? Sand chompers are kind of rare. It might be cool to own one of their teeth.” 

Hands going into the pocket of their jacket, Aesil turned to give the man their full attention. “But really, what are you looking for? The eye of tenome? Tentacle of a yeth hound?” They looked over and picked up another jar, holding it out to him. “Fur of a santauff? You seem like the kind of guy who likes the cute factor. You can admit it.” The demon gave a shit eating grin as if that were the worst insult in the world. For all they knew, to this guy it was. “No?”

Something was definitely different about the man, and Emilio felt some irritation in the fact that he didn’t know enough about him to know which version of him was the normal one. He needed a ‘control’ group, so to speak — a third encounter to determine whether the bumbling, nervous politeness or the haughty, irritating arrogance was closer to the groundskeeper’s daily attitude. Either something had been different in that graveyard, or something was different now, but without a third piece to the puzzle, it would be hard to solve. Not impossible — no case was impossible to solve — but more difficult than Emilio liked.

He tilted his head slightly, not believing for an instant that the groundskeeper wanted something like this ‘just to have it.’ There were collectors, sure — Parker came to mind in a way that made his stomach churn — but the groundskeeper didn’t strike Emilio as one of them. There was almost certainly something deeper going on here, and Emilio intended to find out what. It wasn’t even really about the case anymore. He’d always had this unquenchable curiosity in his gut, the kind of thing his mother had despised and discouraged that had taken on a new life after her death. Emilio liked to know things. And he wanted to know more about this.

The way he listed off items, too, seemed… off. Their conversation in the graveyard hadn’t gotten too deep into things, but Emilio had gotten the idea that the groundskeeper was fairly new to the world of the undead back then. He’d spoken of things that went bump in the night, but he hadn’t seemed to know about many of the things he ought to be afraid of. Laymen didn’t know what to call a yeth hound or a santauff, much less which parts of them might be of interest to a buyer. “Window shopping,” he replied flatly, unbothered by the rest of the sentence. He wasn’t sure if it was meant as an insult or not but, given the guy’s demeanor, it seemed safe to assume it had been. “Pretty expensive thing to buy for no reason. Are you lying, or are you just stupid?” No need to play nice — he was pretty sure it was clear that he wasn’t that. 

Was Aesil not trying here? Did they not try to be friendly in the beginning and only match the attitude of whoever this guy was after he showed his true colors? In fact, they still tried to make the conversation go in a nice direction, right? So, why did this man want to make things so difficult for them? If he hated Caleb so much maybe he should have walked away instead of starting an interrogation that the demon was pretty sure he wouldn’t enjoy giving because it wasn’t going to go his way. It was too soon to reveal plans. They had none of what they needed and most likely weeks to go before they did. This man was getting nothing.

The sarcastic smile dropped slowly, irritation now flashing in those pretty blue eyes they had taken control of as they lowered the jar in their hands. “Has anyone ever told you how rude you are? It’s not very appreciated. Especially when I’m trying to help you….window shop.” They knew that the two of them both had ulterior motives for being there, there was no use in thinking otherwise, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t play along with each other's games. 

The jar was placed back on the table and Aesil looked over at the merchant who was staring at the both of them. “My good man, why don't you put an item of his choosing on my tab. I think he could use something to cheer him up.” Their smile faltered once more as they turned to fully face the other man, moving closer as they lowered their voice. “I suggest you choose your item and go. I get the feeling that we’re not going to be friends so even if I were up to something, which I’m not, I would feel less than inclined to tell you what that something is. I think that means our conversation is over.”

He saw the irritation. It was the kind of thing he’d learned you couldn’t afford to miss when you were standing face to face with someone. Anger was an important thing to recognize, a prelude to something dangerous. If you were luring an undead enemy into a false sense of security, if you were getting ready to charge a client for a completed job, you needed to know if they were going to try to kill you. (You needed to know it at ten years old, when you slipped up and made a mistake while training with your mother, too. Emilio pushed the thought firmly from his mind, disliking the notion of the comparison.) So he saw the irritation in the gravedigger’s expression, and he thought it might have been the most honest thing he’d seen from the man yet.

He plastered on a grin far less honest than that irritation marring the groundskeeper’s face, shrugging a shoulder. “Believe it or not,” he said, “I get that all the time.” Rude was hardly the worst thing Emilio had ever been called. He doubted it was the worst thing this guy wanted to call him, now. So why not go for a more cutting insult? Would he have in that graveyard, or would that strange jumpiness have won out? And which was real? The irritation seemed genuine, but so had the fear. It was hard to decipher how the same person could be so different now.

Emilio glanced to the merchant with a calculating gaze, trying to determine the best course of action. He could stay. He could keep pressing, could inevitably cause trouble and pick a fight, but it would likely end in him being removed from the market in one way or another and he doubted it would get him anywhere. Investigations weren’t solved by antagonizing suspects, even if it was Emilio’s idea of fun. Reaching a hand out, he swiped the same jar the groundskeeper had been holding, careful to let it touch his skin as little as possible. Maybe there was something to be found by taking something the guy had held onto, or maybe it would just irritate the man. Either way, it felt like a win. Holding it up for the merchant to see, he nodded before turning back to the undead man. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

“Very much believed.” They murmured the words, head tilting as they took in someone who clearly had something against Caleb. From everything Aesil had seen they never thought they would meet a foe. Caleb was a gentle, anxious little thing that backed down from confrontation. Another reason Aesil had chosen him. The less enemies someone had the less resistance they would face. This man was a reminder of why they’d made the choices they had made despite their hate for the body they were stuck in. Perhaps Aesil should have been grateful for that but as the jackass raised the glass jar they had just been holding in the air all they felt was a burning hatred. This human could be one that died. 

They couldn’t attack him so publicly though. They had to bide their time and Aesil, for the greater purpose, could be patient. A slow smile spread over their lips while their eyes burned into the man’s back. “I’m sure you will see me around.”

The merchant cleared their throat and Aesil’s eyes landed on him. He was clearly waiting for something, his eyes going down to the empty space on the table and then back to who he thought was going to pay him for the missing merchandise. “Seems you have a thief on your hands.” They shrugged a shoulder. “Consider it payback for the damaged tooth.” The man huffed, his head whipping in the direction of the retreating form and then back to them. Aesil was still gazing at him, heat in their eyes daring the merchant to do something. It must have been so unsettling that he gave up on the demon and started running towards the man with the glass jar in hand.

[bountyhaunter]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Daiyu's house PARTIES: Alistair @deathsplaything, Emilio @mortemoppetere, Vic @natusvincere, Zane & Daiyu @bountyhaunter SUMMARY: A conspiracy meets to plan an ambush. CONTENT WARNINGS: N/A

She had never had this many people in her house. Scratch that: Daiyu had never had people in her house, ever. Not this one, anyway, this small cabin that she’d been able to rent through hunter connections and had been living in for about half a year. It was kind of overwhelming, if she was honest, but she never was to herself and so she didn’t pay it any mind. 

She returned to the living room with a stack of mismatched cups and a bottle of soda, placing them on the table where a few other key ingredients for a strategy meeting already resided. A package of grocery store chocolate chip cookies and a bowl of potato chips, for one, and then all the bits and bobs of paper like the blueprints and guard schedules Alistair had provided. She looked around the strange combination of people — from Emilio to Vic (who she’d just thought a very sweet suburban mom up until recently) to a guy named Zane (whoever that was) to Alistair. Brutus and Nugget were hopefully entertaining each other in corner. She’d be very sad if they didn’t get on.

“Alright,” she said, ignoring the cups and soda now that she’d placed them on the table. These people were capable of pouring themselves a drink and she wasn’t very good at hosting, anyway. To the dismay of her father — but well, that wouldn’t be the main thing that’d bother him about this ordeal. “Where were we? Us …” She gestured at Alistair and herself. “On the inside. We’ll make sure there’s not a lot of peeps on schedule.” Daiyu tucked her legs underneath herself as she got comfortable on the floor. She didn’t have enough chairs. She barely had enough forks for one person. “Whatever. Getting in’s not the issue.” She was down to brush over those details, because something else was nagging at her. Daiyu wasn’t very good at boring planning details. She pulled a messy list of captives toward her. She’d worked on that over the past week. “What do we do about the people?”

—

Tension turned his body into a coiled spring, ready to leap up at the slightest irritation. Emilio stood in the kitchen with his back against the wall, eyes darting periodically between Alistair and the woman he didn’t know with the occasional uncertain glance towards Daiyu. The only person in this room he trusted fully was the one he’d brought himself, and he was already feeling a little guilty for dragging Zane along. 

He looked to the table, to the blueprints and papers and things he probably wouldn’t understand. This level of planning was new to Emilio. Most of the time, his plans consisted of ‘go in, kill what needs killing, try not to die.’ (Except for the ones that omitted the last point — he tried not to let himself think of those for the moment.) This kind of strategizing was foreign to him. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing here. Part of him wanted to protest, wanted to point out that it wasn’t necessary for the blade to know what the hand was planning. Point him in the direction where he needed to slice, and he’d do it. Everything else seemed wasted on him. 

But… he wasn’t sure he trusted any of them, even Daiyu, enough not to know the plan. If he was going to put Zane’s stupid life on the line, he was going to make sure the plan was a decent one. He owed the vampire that, at least. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved a flask and took a swig, ignoring the soda and snacks Daiyu had set out. This was more his style. “Case by case, I think,” he piped in, glancing at the list Daiyu had provided. “Some of them might not be the kind we want to put back into the world.” But Emilio wouldn’t leave anyone locked up. A quick death was kinder, he thought; he’d give them that. It was what he’d want for himself, when the time came. “Okay. So, we need to… look into this. Right? See why they were brought in, decide what to do with who. We don’t want to send serial killers loose on the town.”

—

It had taken a lot from Alistair to leave Tommy at the apartment to come to this meeting. The two had become dependent on each other since the loss of Melody and both of their worlds crumbled from under them. The only thing that propelled Alistair forward on this mission was that his life was on the line, and there was no way they would leave Tommy alone. They owed everything they could to make this out alive. And if that meant going against The Good Neighbors and Winnifred herself? Then so be it. Brutus had been playing with Nugget in the corner, but Alistair gave the command, and Brutus ceased his playtime and made his way over to his owner, eager to work. 

A case-by-case basis was necessary. Alistair remembered a lot of the names that went into those cages and remembered the atrocities that were committed. “Winnifred has a better-kept log that has names, dates of imprisonment, and reasoning,” Alistair spoke up, arms crossed over their chest as they stared blankly forward. “Daiyu and I could call her to the keep to discuss overcrowding,” Alistair suggested, knowing that the keep was getting seriously overcrowded. It was something they’d have to talk about eventually, whether Winnifred wanted to or not. “She’d bring her book with her and make decisions for ‘the good of the town.’ or whatever she tells herself.” 

“Listen, this mission is not going to be easy,” Alistair warned, hand gripping around the hold of Brutus’s harness. “People are going to get hurt, people are going to die. Not everyone you release will be happy to see you.” Alistair knew from experience how wily they could be. They knew they had to prepare for the worst, a spell that they’d already begun to prepare for. Alistair was going to die there, they knew they were. But they didn’t want anyone else to get killed along with them. If they could warn them of the dangers, they’d at least have done their part.

__

Vic had turned back home three times before she finally convinced herself to join this meeting.  This was why she’d joined the Good Neighbors in the first place, right?  To protect the vampires she’d suspected were being targeted and start the path toward righting the wrongs of her past.  Sure, she may have gotten a little distracted by the delicious little taste of neighborhood power joining the group had provided her (she’d made more citizen’s arrests in the last month than probably her entire time in Wicked’s Rest, but littering was down a good 10%). But after finally overhearing the truth from Alistair and Daiyu a few days ago, it felt like something substantial was finally about to happen.

As she sat straight-backed in the chair that had been offered to her, pursing her lips at the menu offered to them, a punch of guilt invaded her stomach, scolding her for even thinking of freeing monsters from their cages.  She had known for nearly 300 years that they deserved to die, and if she were in this meeting three years earlier, she would have elected to kill them all on sight.  What kind of world was she leaving for Rosie-... for humanity… if she let monsters like herself walk free?  But then her mind flipped again, to all the work she’d done to be better, to all the ‘monsters’ that had proved her wrong… Why couldn’t this have been easier?

“Why do we get to decide which of them deserves death?” Vic chirped from her corner, the first thing she’d uttered the whole meeting.  “Is that not just as reprehensible as what Winnifred is doing?  Who’s deciding morality here?”

__

Zane had rarely felt as out of place as he did here, working very hard to piece together the bits of information Emilio had provided with the people in the room and the words they were exchanging. It probably didn’t help that he’d chosen to stand, wanting to fade into the background with his ill-defined role here but realizing it probably made him look like Emilio’s bodyguard or something equally silly. How the slayer would have seethed at that notion. Moving to sit now seemed worse but he did uncross his arms, trying to match names and what they were to the faces in the room. 

It didn’t take long for the conversation to turn grim - who gets to live. He’d had this conversation with Emilio, about how locking up things like Zane wasn’t a viable option. Not humane, either, especially for something that would practically live forever. It still made his skin crawl but the naivety he’d possessed last year existed no more, gone up in flames when that barn did. “Someone has to do it,” he found himself speaking up, not sure how much of it was his own opinion and how much was simply support for Emilio, which seemed his only true role here. “At least this way it’s… informed.” Was he even supposed to take part in the conversation? Well, too late now. 

—

This was why she shouldn’t get caught up in affairs. Not human affairs, not supernatural affairs — none. Daiyu functioned best on her own. If she had never joined up, she would have never known about this and she would have been able to spend this night watching Buffy. But here she was. Hosting the revolution for a place that should perhaps not be overthrown, hearing people talk about what she preferred to avoid. Morals. She tended to let herself be led by the bounty board, not by what felt good.

She started stuffing a cookie into her mouth so she had an excuse not to talk (which was nonsensical, considering she talked with a full mouth all the time) and felt herself grow agitated. “Yeah, we could totally get the book off her, no doubt,” she said, “Whatever, but — even those are — you know.” Vic was making good points. All of them were. She wanted to slam her head into the table.

“Way I see it, Winnifred isn’t … she’s just a human. Trying to do what she reckons is best, but she doesn’t … she’s clueless, yeah?” She glanced at Emilio. “Cortez and I, we’re hunters. We know this shit. We’ve been raised for this. We know what’s a risk, what’s not.  What beast to take out in the woods and which to let run its course, ya know? So it’s the same as that. Just … more …” She wiped a crumb off the table. “Premeditated. Whatever. Most important is that it ends here. And yeah, for many that’s gonna mean it ends-ends.” Daiyu’s job was to figure out who in town should be targeted, hadn’t it? She knew in some cases why some of the prisoners had been put there. She’d made that judgment. None of them were innocent. (None of them at this table were either. Well, maybe Zane and Vic, she wasn’t sure.) “I’ll make sure there’s plenty of weapons around for when push comes to shove.”

—

Zane had his back, though Emilio wondered how much of what he was saying was what he really believed and how much came from his perception that he still owed Emilio for what happened in that barn a year ago now. He didn’t bring Zane along to have a yes man in his corner, didn’t want someone who would agree with everything he said. He needed Zane for the same reason he needed Teddy, or Wynne, or Xó: because sometimes, Emilio led with something that wasn’t his head. Sometimes, the past got muddled in with the present, and nothing was quite right. If he was making the wrong choice here, he needed someone to tell him that. He needed it to be someone he trusted, someone who understood him. He had to hope that Zane was speaking his mind and not saying what he thought Emilio wanted to hear. He spared the vampire a quick glance, hoping to communicate all of this in a simple look. It was a lot of pressure to put on an expression that really wasn’t much different than his usual.

He glanced to the necromancer, scoffing quietly. “I don’t think anyone here walked in that door thinking this would be easy,” he replied flatly, crossing his arms over his chest. “If it were easy, we wouldn’t need this meeting.” This was going to be rough. It was going to be hard and it was going to be dangerous and people were probably going to die. People at this table were probably going to die. Emilio felt a surge of guilt for the fact that he hadn’t shared his plan to participate in this with any of the important people in his life. If he died doing this, none of them would know until after. They’d probably be upset about that. 

He nodded as Daiyu spoke, glancing around the table. “Look, I think… These people got into this shit thinking they were doing something good.” He let his eyes go from Daiyu to the clean-cut looking woman beside her to the necromancer. Maybe all of them had gotten into the Good Neighbors with good intentions, and maybe they hadn’t. Emilio wasn’t sure it mattered. What mattered more was their intentions now. “Some of the people locked up there are bad. There’s no denying that. But some of them aren’t. Some of them are just people who have made mistakes, maybe, and they can learn from this. And the ones who can’t…” He trailed off, clenching his jaw. “I would rather die,” he said simply. “If I had to choose between being locked away for as long as these people live or dying for what I’ve done, I would rather die. It’s better. It’s faster for them. It’s safer for everyone else. It’s better. So this is what I’m doing. If someone has a problem with it, you can try to stop me, but something tells me we’re all here because we’re on the same page, yes? So we figure out who gets what, and we figure out how to give it to them. That’s what we do. Anyone who wants to leave can leave, but I’m all in.”

—

When it came to killing, Alistair was no saint. They’d done it before, they’d probably do it again. They’d done it for the sake of saving Tommy, they’d done it to save countless others. But they’d never killed someone without someone else benefitting from it. They’d never killed on a scale such as this. And that’s what they were doing, wasn’t it? All those people who couldn’t be set free were going to die. It caused Alistair to shift their weight from foot to foot, head downcast as they thought about the implications of taking more lives. They wanted no part of it anymore. Still, if it had to be done to keep people safe, then the benefits outweighed the costs in their minds. 

“There are alarms.” Alistair piped up, looking through Brutus’s eyes to point in the correct placements. “Once when the front gate is breached, once when the button on the cages is hit.” Alistair pointed to the center control panel with a frown. “If you want to set them all free, that’s where you want to go.” He tapped his finger against the paper before removing it.

Alistair pulled out a set of keys that Daiyu had. “This one opens cages.” They explained, pulling out a rather large key and laying it on the table, then pulling out a passkey. “That’ll get you in the building without detection. We’ve made sure that security is lighter that day by putting ourselves on duty.” Alistair put the pass key down on the table alongside the large ring of keys. “Daiyu and I will stick together, so we don’t need both of us to have this on us.” 

“As for who lives and who dies, we’ll deal with that when the time comes when we have that book from Winnifred. What are we going to do about her?” They implored, knowing that Winnifred would go down kicking and screaming if it came to it. “She’s a human, but she’s a human that thinks what she’s doing is justified and within reason.” 

__

Vic had known some of them were hunters before she arrived.  Of course there’d be hunters in a situation like this.  For years, hunters were probably the people she felt most comfortable with, as long as her bracelet was functioning properly.  She was practically surrounded by them, whether at her old bartending job where they frequented or her more nefarious meetings where she was trading information about vampires for cash.  But now, with everything between Rosie and her change of heart, she found herself actively avoiding them.  She felt herself toying with the cloaking bracelet as they argued.  

As Emilio spoke, Vic couldn’t deny the familiar feeling that fluttered through her stomach, the one she felt after she was presumably betrayed by her first love, and again after she was sired.  “I’m still not comfortable with us being so egotistical as to think we get to be the deciding factor, but…”  People were still important.  Humanity was still important, as much as it sucked.  There had to be a nuance between the belief that all vampires were monsters and all vampires were saints.  Her sire was no saint.  Neither was she.  She sighed before she continued.  “It seems with the time crunch, it’s our only option.”  She wasn’t happy with it, because morality in general felt so gray these days, but she couldn’t sit by and watch them all be prisoners.  Not with everything she knew now.

The group that they had gathered seemed valuable, and willing to work together, and for a moment, she doubted her place amongst them.  Would she be much help?  “There won’t be much use in us trying to get through to her”, Vic said.  She was the newest member of the group, the one who knew Winnifred the least, but she knew more than her fair share about having the wrong idea about supernaturals and using it to try to rid them of the world.  “Perhaps she needs a taste of her own medicine.  At least until we figure out what to do with the others.”

__

It would be even more difficult when the time came. This discussion was one thing, even looking over names on paper might be easy but when the time came… Zane wondered briefly if rehabilitation was an option. Where was the line? For humans, those who would eventually perish during a life sentence, there were cases of atrocities bad enough that redemption wasn’t in the cards, would never be on the cards. Was this scenario that much different? They did lack a judge and jury but if murder, especially repeat offenses, meant a life sentence, wasn’t that what they were executing in a way? At least for the ones like him, hadn’t they already used up all their allotted time and simply cheated death? The brief ethics course in nursing school hadn’t exactly prepared him for this. 

Emilio was staring him down, face unreadable as always. Did he not want him to talk? Or maybe not agree? Who knew, honestly. At least it seemed settled that not everyone would be released into the wild from their prison, the older man with the dog moving on to plans that made Zane feel eerily like this was a heist movie. The odds for an end scene showing how they pulled everything off smoothly with no casualties didn’t feel great, though. “What are we dealing with in terms of the people… running this? Are they all… human?” Zane found himself asking as they discussed the fate of the ring leader - it was hypocritical in some ways but the idea of harming humans didn’t sit well with him at all. It had been over a year but he still felt more of a kinship with them than his fellow undead. 

—

All of this went against all Daiyu had made herself know for the past years. She was a bounty hunter, plain and simple. The Good Neighbors had been a gig, a lucrative one at that — but she’d joined with that stupid notion of doing something good and it seemed she hadn’t given up on that. “We don’t touch that button, then. The one that opens everything at once. That’s disaster.” She looked at the keys, then at the would-be intruders. “Just get in with those, don’t raise any fucking alarms, and the first bit should be smooth. It’s when start opening the cages that we should be more alert.”

She took her list back. It had names, species, some transgressions on it. It wasn’t Winnifred’s color coded book, but it was something. “Let’s get through some, at fucking least. We’re here now.” She didn’t want many more of these meetings. Daiyu splayed it on the table, pointed at the name Mack Ross. “Like, I can tell you now what and how. She killed a buncha people, isn’t in control, which is …” She made a motion. “Ludacris, ‘cause it’s Mack fucking Ross. Then, Johnny no surname, he’s a vampire. You know, I think he’s alright, he loves Snicker Snackers, he could totally do an animal based diet, maybe.” She pointed to another name, “Svetlana, serial student killer. Stake.” Daiyu motioned staking a vampire, wooshing sound and all. She pointed at another name. “Chang, dunno his first name. Kept the bones of all his kills after he ate ‘em whole. Probs best to not release him into the world again.”

To speak about killing undead and shapeshifters was something she did with an eerie ease, as it was who she was brought up to be. Later that night, she’d reflect on her lackadaisical attitude with distaste, but for now it was something to hold onto. She felt something stir in her stomach at the mention of Winnifred, though, and her eyes moved to Emilio. Hunters were supposed to protect humans. Winnifred had tried to do the same, foolishly and cruelly, but she had. “We destroy the keep. We make sure they don’t make one again. And yeah, all human. Or like, human with some zest, like Al and I.” She wasn’t going to kill them. “So yeah. We destroy their means and that’s that.”

—

“Agreed,” Emilio said, nodding towards Daiyu. “Setting everyone free at once would be a bloodbath.” The more violent offenders would kill each other, the ones offended by the time they’d lost behind bars would kill anyone who got close. And that was to say nothing of the ones who might just be hungry. That wasn’t the sort of chaos any of them could afford. They needed to do it slowly. It would be risky, sure, but… less risky than setting loose a whole slew of problems. “Whose cage gets opened first, then?” The ones with the best shot of actually getting out would be the ones freed in the very beginning. But beyond that… “Any prisoners who might help us out? Without killing any of us, ideally.” His eyes darted towards Alistair and Daiyu, who’d both had some kind of a hand in the… acquisitions. 

Daiyu, at least, seemed to be on the same page. She was already pointing to her book, and Emilio felt a little uneasy at the first name she pointed out. Mack Ross. Kaden and Monty were both fond of her, weren’t they? “We should spring her early on.” He pointed to Mack’s name. “At the beginning.” He offered no explanation as to why. “Johnny no-name, too. Get the ones out who we think will need the… least amount of help staying honest. The ones we know we’re going to kill, we should get to last. That way if something happens and we can’t get to everyone…” At least they could free the ones who needed freeing before going out in a blaze of glory. He let the thought hang unfinished. Looking at the list, he pointed at another name. “That’s my client’s friend. We free her early, too.” After all, that was why he’d gotten dragged into this whole mess to begin with.

Winnifred, though… That was more complicated. He met Daiyu’s eye, then glanced to Zane. Did it matter if a human didn’t think they were doing harm, as long as harm was done? How much did good intentions matter, in a case like this? Emilio had to believe they meant something. After all the bad shit he’d done with good intentions, he wasn’t sure he was the best one to judge. “We don’t have to kill any of them.” But would he stop any of the prisoners, if they tried? He wasn’t sure. “We destroy the place,” he agreed. “How… detailed are their records? We should destroy those, too. Make it impossible for them to start up again next week or something.”

—

Staying silent as the others deliberated who lived and who died, it was like he was healing people all over again. The wellbeing and life for one, was the only way to help another. Some of the people who were locked up in those cages were less monsters than Alistair was, and they knew it. They stayed silent as they deliberated, then perked up at the name of Mack Ross. “Yes, definitely free Mack,” Alistair spoke up finally, knowing that she was a sweet girl who had already been through enough. What she did to land her in the Good Neighbor’s in the first place be damned. They, like Emilio, also offered no further comment. 

“I’m all for destroying the place.” They muttered, knowing that their opinion on matters held little sway. “Winnifred will fight for this place, it’s her baby, it’s been her sole purpose for so long,” Alistair explained, tapping a finger against their other arm as they thought. “The records are kept here,” Alistair spoke, tapping the map to a back room. “It’s got fireproofing, so you’ll need to go in there first.” Alistair frowned, realizing the problem with that. “Only Winnifred has access to that room, not even I can get in there.” 

Winnifred had good intentions, but she didn’t know what the real world was really like. She saw what she wanted to see, and turned a blind eye to all the rest that made the rosy picture anything else. They’d learned that after being close to her after all these years. “There will be after-effects of this we should think about as well. Just because the keep is gone doesn’t mean they won’t try to reform somehow. People will always find a way. The top hitters are the ones you’ll want to keep an eye on, like Winnifred if you decide to leave her in the ruins of her keep.”

__

Vic shifted in her seat, uncomfortable as the names down the list were being read.  None of them sounded familiar, even the first one that Daiyu seemed to imply would be well known, but the talk surrounding them didn’t make her any less uncomfortable.  What had kept her from the same fate as these vampires?  What if they were freshly sired, or hadn’t had a chance to learn yet?  What if an old, grumpy bitch of a vampire had betrayed her own kind and caused them on a path of destruction, somehow?  She stood up from her chair suddenly, crossing her arms over her chest.  “You don’t have to speak of this so crassly.  It’s almost as if you’ll enjoy killing them.  If that’s the case, you’re no better than them.”

She was no better than her old self, if she was allowing this to happen.  Perhaps she could find a way to rescue those they were intending to harm.  She could buy a property in the outskirts of town, far away from Rosie, and teach them to be less monstrous, somehow.  It felt wholly cruel to take someone’s second chance away.  What would these people say about her if she had found herself in the keep? Their words sounded muffled around her as she concocted it. Victoria Larsson, reformed vampire hater and only feeds from what she calls ‘ethically sourced’.  Currently brainwashing a slayer child.  Monster. Stake. 

She sat back down with a huff.  “So our moral code includes deciding that some prisoners die for their crimes, but all of the people who locked them up just get to roam free with some property damage?  Alistair is right.  They’re just going to find a way to do this again.  Maybe with more permanent consequences, as a backlash to our success.  Letting them walk without consequence would be as foolish as not doing anything at all.

__

The one with the notes, Daiyu, started moving down the list in a way that so clearly established her as a hunter. It was crass but not necessarily… wrong. There seemed to be a distinction made between pure malevolence and mistakes, a lack of control. Zane felt relief, realized that if his own transgressions were being judged, he would have stood a chance at this proposed reform. “Is it safe to assume no one’s been… feeding them?” he wondered as Emilio suggested letting the previously captive help. “Because I can… provide blood.” He didn’t offer any explanation as to how - skimming from the hospital seemed like a necessary evil in this scenario. 

—--

Daiyu felt her stomach sink as Vic chastised her, eyes blazing as she looked at her, “You don’t know shit about shit, lady,” she bit, before trying to turn to other matters. A headache was forming behind her eyes and she looked at the list before pulling it towards her again. With a pen she found somewhere on the table she added some asterisks next to names they’d discussed and X’s next to others. “This isn’t about being better or worse than ‘em, it’s about ending it. So. What the fuck do you suggest we do about the rest of the good neighbors? Should we punish ‘em all? Hang ‘em from their thumbs or something? What about you? Me? Alistair? Should we throw ourselves under the rubble to repent?” She was mostly talking to Vic now, even if she spoke to all of them. They were humans. Daiyu might not really keep to a code, but hurting humans? You didn’t do that. That was the main hunter rule. 

She tried to refocus. “The cages are split in different rooms. We can make a plan, an order of operations. I can … Alistair and I can list who seem aggressive.” Daiyu considered suggesting they just kill them all, but that was too crass, even for her. “We just light all the shit on fire. Getting a flamethrower shouldn’t be hard.” She would like to have one on hand, anyway, for totally legal reasons. 

She glanced at Zane. “Sometimes. When there’s stuff. I give them some of the … leftovers from my regular hunts sometimes. But if you’ve got proper shit, sure. Smuggling stuff in isn’t too hard.” Getting it out was what was harder. “Might be better if the vamps aren’t starved. Can you get brains too?”

—

“I don’t think trying to keep serial killers off the streets makes us shitty people,” Emilio added, nostrils flaring with brief irritation. “We’re not talking about killing the people who were tossed in cages for fucking up. We’re talking about the ones who carve people’s fucking hearts out for fun. You really want people like that running around this town?” The thing was, he understood where the Good Neighbors must have been coming from, in the beginning. Their philosophy wasn’t that far off his own. The only real difference was that Emilio killed the people he deemed worthy of his judgment, while the Good Neighbors locked theirs away. In Emilio’s opinion, killing was kinder. In the opinion of others… Well. There were different schools of thought.

He glanced to Daiyu, nodding his head. “Good idea,” he agreed. “Go in with a plan for the order, get it done as quick as possible. And destroy everything we can. Maybe they try to pick up again later,” he looked to Vic, acknowledging her concern, “but it won’t be easy. We take away their base. We show them that their plans can go wrong. We put the fear in them. If they’re smart, they go underground, try to put distance between themselves and the people they locked up. If they’re not smart…” He trailed off, letting it hang. Odds were, they wouldn’t have to kill any of the people involved with the Good Neighbors. If they didn’t disappear… someone else would take care of that part. Emilio found he didn’t have any real desire to stop that. He wondered if he ought to feel guilty.

He nodded at Zane’s question, looking at Daiyu again. Her smuggling shit in was part of what had clued him in that she might be willing to join his side of this shit. “They’re probably not well fed,” he replied, “so more blood is better. I… might know someone who can get us brains.” He grimaced, unsure he wanted to ask Monty for a favor. But if the zombie was really as into peace as he claimed, he’d probably be on board. And Emilio figured he owed it to him to let him know what was going on with Mack, anyway. He’d want someone to tell him, if it were Nora or Wynne. 

—

For a while, Alistair stayed silent, listening as people listed off what to do, about what they would do with what. For a moment, they found themselves completely detaching from the conversation, dissociating as they thought about the very real possibility of dying here. Some people were locked up who wanted them dead, they’d been too close to Winnifred for too long. They were responsible for their cellmates disappearing and never returning. If anything, Alistair was just as much a monster as those who were locked behind those cell doors. It’s something they’d been wrestling with for quite some time, but now? Now they had to finally address it. 

They couldn’t let themselves simply die, they had to continue preparing for the worst-case scenario. While everyone else planned who to set free and what to do, Alistair was making a mental checklist of what they needed to gather for a spell. “There’s no world where Winnifred wouldn’t come after us if she was allowed to walk away unscathed.” They finally spoke up after some time, still distant, still somewhere else in their mind. 

“I say we let the prisoners deal with her.” It was harsh, it was crass, but it’s what they thought. “I’m sure the prisoners will take care of Daiyu and me if we’re not careful,” Alistair added, crossing their arms over their chest. “We’ve been to the keep countless times, they know our faces.” They spoke to Daiyu, though they didn’t look over to her. “It’s something to keep in mind, that’s all.” They nervously scratched at the side of their nose, knowing that they were opening a can of worms with their words.

__

Vic felt her grip tighten around the arm of the chair, staring Daiyu in the eyes as her sharp words echoed around the room.  For her part, her expression remained stoic and still, but inside, she was seething.  “Those who wish to take down positions of power inherently have to be better.  It’s the whole goddamn point of what we’re doing.”  This was a bad idea, she should have never agreed to join this overtaking- never eavesdropped on Daiyu and Alistair in the first place.  “I suggest that we do anything other than stick our thumbs up our asses and hope for the best.”  Perhaps she should be one of the ones to be punished.  Not for crimes involving the Good Neighbors, but for all she’d done to vampires for centuries.   

But Emilio had a point.  Some of the people in the cages were bad.  That was the long and short of it.  The problem, to her, came with who got to decide what bad was.  “No”, she said quietly, and she stood up again, walking to the other side of the room in a huff.  She wasn’t used to having to work with people, or having to compromise on her beliefs to make  someone else’s plan work for someone else.  But she wasn’t naive to the fact that she was the newbie in all of this, and that everyone here thought they were doing the right thing.  No matter how ignorant some of them sounded.

She glanced at Emilio, then at Daiyu, and then at the others, feeling calmer than she had a moment ago.  “Then I think it’s worth discussing continuing to meet up after everything.  Periodically, to make sure she doesn’t try this again.”

She raised her eyebrows at Alistair’s suggestion, not hating it in the slightest.  It would be the truest justice to let those that were scorned by Winnifred be the ones to decide her fate.  Even if it were just the supposed ‘good’ ones.  She looked between the rest of the group, eager to hear their thoughts.

__

All of the arguing wasn’t exactly inspiring hope. This was a group of people clearly not accustomed to working in a team, basically a bunch of Emilios struggling to find ways to make this collaboration work. Zane wondered if he was the only one in here with actual experience of working in a team - granted, a team focused on saving lives and not… whatever this was. “We’re not gonna get far if the four of you tear each other’s heads off, first,” he muttered, finally moving from the perceived safety of his position backed against the wall. “It’s a shit situation and there’s obviously not going to be a conclusion everyone is comfortable with. So we’re all going to be uncomfortable and really morally compromised and we either deal with it or actual, good people are going to continue to rot away in cells.” It had come out a bit more… scolding than intended and he backed down again, arms once more crossing over his chest. “Up to you, I guess,” he added, withdrawn and hoping he hadn’t overstepped any boundaries as the ‘random fifth addition’. 

Maybe all of this would work. Maybe it wouldn’t. Honestly, it probably wouldn’t and something would go wrong. Zane thought about the last ‘jail break’ he’d been a part of. It had definitely gone wrong but… overall, it had been worth it. All he could hope was that this would be worth it, too. And he needed to remember to ask Emilio later where in the world he was procuring brains from.

—

It was easy to keep looking at Vic. To stare her down and take her words and consider throwing the soda bottle at her head. “Then you can fuck off if you want. There’s no better. There’s just ending it. And we are better, for ending their suffering, rather than keeping them there to rot.” Daiyu’s eyes glared darkly at Zane, another person she barely knew who was suddenly mounting a moral high horse as if there was any morality to be found here. Violence begot violence. This would ripple out. It was just another punch thrown in a never ending brawl. “Fine.”

Speaking of brawls, she’d prefer one of those rather than planning this. “M’fine with meeting up after this.” Then, to Alistair: “She can try to come after me. I wish her a ton of luck fighting her hired muscle.” Daiyu didn’t think herself above harm, but there was no way that Winnifred would win in a fight against her. “Best to keep her away from the Keep when we destroy it, if you ask me. Not alert her and all that shit. Just more trouble.” She rubbed her forehead. “And yeah, people will be pissed. I can deal. I’ve dealt with pissed off supernaturals before.” Kind of part of the job description. “Will watch your back though.” 

She wanted to beckon Nugget over and bury her face in his fur before rushing out and going for a run (where she punched trees). In stead she exhaled. “Alright. Emilio and Zane, blood and brains duty. Alistair, spells. Me? Weapons.” She glared at Vic. “Explosives?” 

—

“If the people she’s fucked over want to go after her, that’s between her and them. I’m not risking my ass to save her from shit she brought onto herself,” Emilio added, crossing his arms over his chest. He wouldn’t kill Winnifred, but he wouldn’t stop anyone she’d wronged from doing so if they chose to. After all, he’d hope that anyone who came across him on his never ending quest for vengeance would offer the same courtesy. People got what they deserved, sometimes; Emilio had no intention of standing in the way of that. “If you two want to get out before we start freeing the ones who might be a little angrier at you than others, that’s fine, too,” he added, looking to Alistair and Daiyu. The latter, he figured, would turn down the offer. The former was more likely to take it.

Zane spoke up, and Emilio was reminded why he brought him in the first place. Having someone he knew he could trust was good, but having someone he knew he could trust who could also wrangle people in a way Emilio himself was incapable of? It was a good thing. It made Zane kind of perfect for this shit. He offered the vampire a curt nod. To the rest of the group, he said, “We shouldn’t wait long. They’re likely to figure out someone’s planning something soon. We need to act before then. Catch them off guard. If everyone knows what they’re doing… I say we move in sooner than later. Good with everyone?”

—

The slayer was giving Alistair an out, an out that they very well thought about taking before frowning and shaking their head. “I’m seeing this through.” They spoke, voice harsh and determined. There was so much that they still had to get done, and now was the time to expedite everything they’d worked so hard to accomplish. They were going to do this. They were doing it for Tommy, no one else. Not even themselves.  The plan was set into motion, and there was nothing to do but go ahead with it. From helping to create the Keep and the Good Neighbors to taking it down, Alistair knew they were nothing more than a hypocrite and a traitor. But if this is what it took to keep themselves alive, then so be it. They gripped Brutus’s lead tightly, then nodded their head. “Then so be it. As soon as we’re ready to go, we go. Not a moment later.” Alistair waved a hand, and the papers in the middle of the table began to move around until they were in a neat pile. “Then next we meet, we burn it all to the ground.”

[necrosemancy]

Location: Mother Morta’s Nursing Home

Timing: Current

Parties: Emilio( @mortemoppetere ) & Rosemary( @necrosemancy )

Summary: Rosemary accidentally calls Emilio while looking for assistance of a necromantic variety. Needless to say, Emilio strongly disapproves.

Content Warnings: mentions of child death tw

Rosemary was happily humming ding dong the witch is dead as her thumbs tapped across her phone screen, and hastily hit the call button. She was in the blessedly empty staff break room of Mother Morta’s and she had big news for her necromancy teacher. She hadn’t yet attempted reanimating an actual person, but that was only due to a lack of uninhabited bodies. But all that was about to change.

Mister Latimer from room six-thirteen had passed. Rosemary had done her level best to seem saddened by the news of the man’s death, but in reality she was elated. Mister Reginald Latimer had been, frankly, a god damned son of a bitch, and Rosemary had hated him. No, hate was to kind of a word. Loathed entirely would have suited nicely. Not counting the innumerable times he had very intentionally run over the witch’s toes with his wheel chair, or the number of times he had been incredibly rude on the basis of her outfit, her gender, or whatever the issue d’jour was that day, he had been a firm believer in his own superiority and that young women like Rosemary ought to be home. Preferably making her husband and two-point-five kids a sandwich or something.

The pointed toe of her heel tap-tap-tapped against the laminate floor as the phone rang for what felt like the millionth time. At long last, the ringing stopped and she heard rustling on the other side that meant she hadn’t been sent to voice mail. “Alistair!” She whispered into the phone excitedly. “You’re never gonna believe this shit. Creepy rude old man Latimer is dead! He kicked the bucket sometime during the night shift. I’ve heard mixed reports on the cause of death but I can only hope that he had some Christmas Carol esque dream where he was visited by three ghosts, except they all decided he sucked and was irredeemable and dragged his ass to hell.” Rosemary paused, listening to make sure there was no one coming into the room before she continued.

“So I know you’re probably busy with Tommy since school has started back up, but I could really use a hand getting Atimer-lay out of the orgue-may. Like if I pick you up tonight, can you come and like reanimate him to walk into the trunk of my car? Because I really need to practice reanimating something other than skeledog or the boy band mice, and there’s a perfectly good corpse here for me to borrow while they try to track down his relatives that never visit.” Rosemary crossed her fingers, waiting for a ‘yes’. She’d been working so hard, and had made so much progress in her practice. She could only hope she would be given a reprieve from healing to work on something more interesting.

______

The phone rang, and Emilio’s first response was an irritated exhale of breath through his nose. This wasn’t a particularly good response for a business owner who relied on his phone to bring him new cases and, therefore, new revenue. Emilio knew that. A few months ago, when cases had been dry and he’d been desperate for distractions, he would have killed to hear the phone ring. But here lately, he wasn’t exactly hurting for cases. There’d been an influx of missing people around town, and Axis had been pretty busy collecting information on them. Emilio suspected something sinister… but Emilio usually suspected something sinister.

All this to say, he didn’t really need to pick up the phone. He could have let one case go to voicemail, could have let them leave a message and decided after the fact if it was worth his time. But Emilio was bad at that. The idea of leaving someone hanging made his fingers twitch, so he picked up a few rings in. He went to grunt out his standard greeting, but before he could get a word out, the person on the other line was talking. She said Alistair, and it hit Emilio that her voice was a familiar one. A beat later, it hit him that she hadn’t meant to call his number.

Now, someone else might have cut her off right there. Someone else might have told her she had the wrong guy and save her from giving away more than she meant to. But Emilio was nothing if not a nosey fucker, so he listened. He let her ramble, even when her words made little sense (what the hell was orgue-may?), allowed himself to piece together what she was talking about. There was a dead body in a morgue, and she wanted it. His skin crawled a little at the thought, distaste sitting heavy on his tongue. A body was just a body. He knew that. There was nothing inside of it, no one left to care. A body was just a body, but the idea of using one as a toy made him… a little pissed off, really.

When Rosemary finally stopped talking, when she finally awaited a response from Alistair, Emilio grunted. “I’ll be right there,” he said, not bothering with any kind of impersonation. There was no way in hell he was helping her steal a body… but he’d figure out what the fuck she wanted to do with it. And keep her from succeeding.

Maybe it was a good thing he’d picked up the phone after all.

—

Four words. That was all it took to utterly rob Rosemary of her glee. In what felt like slow motion, she looked down at the contact in her phone. Horror dawned on her as she realized that she was happily chattering away about stealing a body to a literal fucking private investigator. Her phone slipped from her hand and hit the floor with a clatter.

She was going to be sick.

After ten minutes, she was pacing back and forth outside of the nursing home. She bit her knuckles, trying to distract herself from her impending doom. She didn’t know what she was waiting for exactly. A sea of blue and red lights and sirens perhaps. Maybe a crowd of people swarming her, pointing and jeering ‘grave robber!’. Or maybe the cartoonish idea of the devil would appear with his little red pitch fork and bring her down the red brick road to hell.

She was frantically firing off texts to the number in a plea to spare her when they arrived. It seems her insisting that it was all just such a funny-haha-joke had done abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Her now shattered phone screen went dark as she hastily pocketed the device. “Didn’t you get my texts?” Rosemary asked in a strained voice. “It’s a joke! A total joke, I was kidding! Like a prank call! Did you never do prank calls growing up? It’s almost Halloween so I thought I’d be on theme and make macabre prank calls! Sooo funny, right?” Her voice had gone up in pitch with every sentence. She was going to cry. “Right?”

____

He stayed on the line just long enough to hear the phone clatter against the ground, a small, satisfied smile on his face. If there was one thing Emilio enjoyed, it was catching people off guard. If there was another, it was pissing people off. Rosemary had so helpfully handed him a gift wrapped opportunity to do both at the same time. He might have thanked her if he didn’t find her so irritating.

Hopping on his motorcycle, he made his way towards the address he’d hastily looked up. Unsurprisingly, he had no idea what a nursing home was, much less where to find the one in town, but he wouldn’t let a little thing like that slow him down. He felt his phone buzzing in his pocket every few seconds as he drove, and it didn’t take a detective to guess who was trying to get in touch with him. Part of him was curious as to what she might be saying. Was she the type to threaten him with things he didn’t want, or promise him things he did? He pulled over at the entrance to the nursing home, glancing down at his phone screen to satisfy the curiosity. Ah. Pretending it was a joke. Not the most effective strategy.

Pulling off his helmet and hanging it off the bike’s handlebars, he made his way towards the figure pacing near the door. “Very funny joke,” he said dryly. “Maybe I tell it to the people who run this place. I’m sure they’d like to laugh, too.” It was an empty threat. Emilio had no intention of letting the necromancer make off with a corpse, but he wasn’t the type of guy to rat someone out, either. He preferred to take care of problems on his own.

—

Rosemary’s eyes widened, and she shook her head furiously. She darted into the man’s path, holding out her hands as though she were trying to soothe wild animal. “Woah, woah, hey, no need to do that.” She cooed, panic pitching her voice higher and higher. She hoped the soft pastel packaging she carefully curated to sell herself as just a regular woman would help to dismiss his suspicions.

But then she remembered one tiny fact from a conversation on her now shattered phone.

Wide eyes narrowed to slits and she took a step toward him, jabbing a manicured finger at him in accusation. “You knew!” Rosemary couldn’t believe how unlucky she was. Of all the people she could have accidentally dialed, it had to be the one that Alistair had described as being ‘judgy’ and ‘thinking he was better for not being a necromancer’.

“You knew the whole time I was sitting there telling you everything I knew, and meanwhile you knew Aleksander’s body was walking around with another guy occupying it!! And you let me think you were going to help me!! What were you going to do? Take my money and fuck off to Tahiti or something?” The necromancer took a long, deep breath. She tried counting down from one hundred to calm herself down- gods forbid any of her coworkers see her in the parking lot having a meltdown of epic proportions.

“How about this. You don’t tell them I made a ‘tasteless joke’ about a shitty old man who I’m pretty sure the only good thing he did with his life was maybe donate his body to science, and I won’t blow up your spot for scamming me. Sound like a deal?” It wasn’t like mister judgy anti necromancer would deign to help her steal the body anyway.

——-

She was talking to him in the same tone Teddy used when trying to convince Perro to spit out a piece of food he’d found in the floor, and irritation flared up like a fire in his chest. If she thought Emilio could be talked down the same way a terrier was, she had another thing coming altogether. Emilio had been reliably informed that he was a damn stubborn asshole; when he set his mind to something, there was very little anyone could do to stop him.

And tonight, he’d set his mind to ruining her plans. The corpse in the nursing home morgue would remain there, even if there was no family to claim it. Emilio wouldn’t think too much about the fact that, as little as a year and a half ago, his own corpse probably would have gone unclaimed if he’d dropped dead in some hospital somewhere. The necromancer would continue to be annoying, but it’d be someone else’s problem. Everything would be fine.

…except for the fact that, apparently, Alistair had a big fucking mouth.

Irritation gave way to a more secure sort of anger at the realization that the necromancer must have blabbed everything to this woman without running it by the rest of them, as if they were the only one affected. Emilio pressed his tongue against his teeth, nostrils flaring briefly. “Actually, I was hoping you’d fuck off somewhere,” he replied, unapologetic. “I don’t know you. I barely knew your friend. Only information I had about him was that he spent his spare time kidnapping people and locking them up in cages to starve so, yeah, I wasn’t looking to help you figure out what happened to him so you could pick up where he left off.”

He let out a short, humorless laugh. “What are you going to do? Write a bad review?” He rolled his eyes. “Oh, no. How will my business ever survive something like this. My stars will never recover.” His reputation was bad enough that he didn’t care about her promise to ruin it… but he also had no real intention of telling anyone about her bodysnatching plan. She didn’t have to know that, though. “If you know I knew your teacher, then you know I know this was a little more than a joke, hm?”

—

It was entirely possible that this man was sent from hell to torment her specifically. But from the expression on his face that said she was irritating the shit out of him told Rosemary that she might just have been sent to torment him too.

“Sorry to rain on your parade sweetness. I have a mortgage to pay off and enough petty stubborn pride to stay here for an eternity. Even if he had left town and he hadn’t gone and gotten himself killed and body snatched, I would have broken into his house, taken all of his books and materials I needed, and figured it the fuck out.” She hissed through clenched teeth.

The automatic doors of the nursing home slid open with a squeak, and a woman walked out pushing and older woman in a wheelchair, the two chatting away as they moved toward a car on the other side of the parking lot. Rosemary forced her gritted teeth to become a grimace of a smile, and she waved to them. She wouldn’t give this man the satisfaction of thinking he had her backed into a corner. “Have a nice time at your granddaughter’s birthday, Phyllis!” She called as they packed themselves into a car and drove off. The smile fell from her face and turned back into a scowl as she swiveled her attention back to Emilio.

“Listen. Clearly I have questionable taste sometimes. But so do you, since you left the house wearing those shoes with that belt. We all have our lessons to learn. And obviously if I had known that Aleks was gunning for the title of Mister War Crimes Universe, I wouldn’t have asked him for help! Does this look like a face that would want to commit war crimes?” Rosemary asked before shaking her head. “ Actually, don't answer that. Your fashion choices here today have made it clear that you may need glasses. To answer my own question- no! I watch fucking hallmark movies in my free time, for fucks sake. I don’t spend my time plotting for world domination or looking for ways to hurt people.” Of course there was the question of what the cost for healing people was, but she could cross that bridge when she got to it. Which based on her current studies wouldn’t be for a while.

Rosemary knew that talking this much at a man who had clearly already made his own decisions about her probably wasn’t the wisest idea. But apparently the wire that connected the wise decision making part of her brain to her mouth had been cut.

“Yeah, I do know that. Which sucks for me. But somehow I don’t think the town authorities would be peachy keen on believing a guy who clearly got his private eye badge in a box of Frosted Flakes that nursing home Barbie is trying to steal a body. Tell me, if you knew and had evidence that a man was taking people and holding them hostage to do truly heinous things, why the fuck didn’t you call in some reinforcements? And why, if you didn’t call for backup in that situation, would you stop me from taking the very dead, very not-in-use body of a man who made one too many misogynistic comments in my presence for me to feel even remotely bad about practicing on him?”

——

“Yeah, well, no point in getting you out of town now, anyway, is there?” Besides saving himself the annoyance, maybe, but… Frankly, if everyone who annoyed Emilio left town, Wicked’s Rest would have a population of maybe ten people. And as nice and peaceful as that sounded, it wasn’t really feasible. Life meant dealing with people who irritated him endlessly, and that was a list that Rosemary was quickly making her way to the very top of. Alistair was bad enough, all self-righteous and self-serving. He hadn’t wanted to add a second necromancer to that list, but… the world very rarely gave Emilio what he wanted, didn’t it?

His eyes darted to the doors as they opened, body tense like he was expecting a fight, because he always was. Instead, it was an old woman — named Phyllis, apparently — who was there and gone in an instant. Rosemary clearly wasn’t phased by her presence, greeting her with a smile before she disappeared into a car that drove away.

Emilio turned back to her, letting out a sharp laugh. “His boss was the kind of person who makes cookies for new neighbors and wore expensive shoes,” he pointed out, crossing his arms over his chest. “You think people always look like what they are? I’ve seen monsters that pass out food at the soup kitchen to help them find someone to kill on their way home. People who look like you and spend their free time murdering kids for fun. You can’t tell shit about someone just by looking at them or knowing what their hobbies are. I mean, Christ, if you really think that, you must have been born fucking yesterday. Someone’s clothes, what movies they watch, what their face looks like, none of that shit means anything. People are who they are. You can’t know any of that just by looking. For all I know, you’ve got a basement full of people whose throats you’ve slit for more bodies.”

She had a point, of course; the authorities would believe her over him, for a lot of reasons. He didn’t trust the cops as far as he could throw them, anyway. “I did call for backup,” he huffed, rolling his eyes. “The police weren’t going to do shit. They’d rather close their eyes and pretend things like that aren’t happening. I called people who could help, and they did.” If he’d gone at it alone, without Zane and Daiyu and Vic and even Alistair, he probably wouldn’t have made it out in one piece. “I didn’t call for backup here because you’re one person. If I need to stop you, I can. And I will, if you try shit.” Something tightened in his chest a little, some quiet rage. “It doesn’t matter who he was, what he was like. He was a person. Not a fucking toy for you to take home to play with. If he was shitty, he was shitty. He’s dead now, that’s great. Doesn’t mean you get to keep his fucking corpse.”

—

After the conversation ended, Rosemary decided she would put the words ‘DO NOT EVER CALL’ in all caps in place of the investigator's name.

His ranting caused the tendril of guilt that had snaked its way inside her upon learning of Aleksander’s extracurricular activities to coil around her chest. She drew in a sharp breath, trying to keep herself calm. Rosemary knew she’d done nothing wrong, at least according to her own code of conduct. And she couldn’t expect people who hadn’t grown up in the Kane family to understand the intricacies of her family legacy. The legacy that her family didn’t want her to carry on… she pushed her shoulders back and lifted her chin. She knew her rules. She knew she was a good person. It didn’t matter to her what this one man thought. Or at least, it shouldn’t have mattered.

“Contrary to popular belief,” she began, trying to sound as cool and collected as she could manage. “Not all necromancers relish murdering people. The only bodies in my house are a few taxidermied mice and a skeleton of a dog. Slitting throats is kind of like. The exact opposite of what I do. Or what I would do, if I was even a full necromancer, which I am not yet, if you would actually listen.”

She pressed two fingers to her temple, willing the headache she could feel beginning to dissipate. “Listen, if people like Aleks were your only experience with necromancers, I’d get your grudge against them. But clearly not, if you know Alistair. If you know anything about them, it’s that they’re not running around killing people for their own diabolical gain.” Rosemary crossed her arms. Maybe if she held herself tight enough, she’d collapse in on herself and simply disappear from existence and be excused from the rest of this debate. “Especially if you know anything about the kid.” Tommy had become an unexpected fixture on her daily life. The boy had been through far more than any child should, and she’d taken a liking to him. She’d been plying him with baked goods since her lessons with Alistair had started. Rosemary didn’t have any siblings growing up, but she’d decided the universe had saved up to give her a little brother in the form of Tommy.

She knew there was no winning the debate. Emilio did not like her, or the concept of stealing a body, even for practice. “I won’t be able to heal anyone or bring anyone back from the dead later down the line if I don’t learn everything leading up to that.” She admitted. Maybe humbling herself before this man was the only way to win, even just a little. “I don’t have any use for a body in my house, and in truth, it would likely be more of a hassle than my over eagerness to progress as a necromancer is worth. And your good friend Alistair would likely tell me the same, were they here. I won’t remove the body from the premises.” Rosemary was sure to pick her words carefully. She wouldn’t promise not to practice her craft- she didn’t want to lie outright. But obscuring the truth was really the only solution she could see.

______

“And how do you think you’re going to do ‘the exact opposite,’ exactly?” He was hardly a pro when it came to necromancy; in all honesty, he knew only the barest of basics, and most of that came with his relationship with Javier, where talking had never been either man’s primary concern. He’d really only delved into the dirty details of necromancy once before the shit with Alistair went down, when a case seemed to involve a necromancer and he’d badgered Javi for information. The bartender had been uncharacteristically hesitant to oblige, but he’d given Emilio enough to understand what needed to be understood to solve his case and get his payday: that nothing could be gained without losing something of equal value in return. To gain a life, you had to lose one. That was what had happened to his client’s boyfriend back then, why he’d suddenly been dead while his rival had been alive again.

So Emilio didn’t know much, but he knew Rosemary was either misinformed or full of shit. And he couldn’t decide which was worse, really — an inexperienced necromancer playing with things she didn’t understand, or one who knew exactly what she was doing and could seamlessly lie and say she didn’t.

“Aleks isn’t my only experience,” he confirmed, thinking again of Javi. He and Javier got along best when neither asked what the other was doing. He figured it made both of them shitty people, but it put them on even footing, at least. “And Alistair’s not exactly a fucking saint. They tell you how they knew Aleksander? They tell you how they came across my radar? They tell you they were one of the people who built the shit we tore down when Aleksander died? From the ground up, yeah. Spent years kidnapping people just like Aleksander did. Only stopped when they figured it was going to come back and bite them in the ass.” He huffed a quiet, bitter laugh. “You can love your kid and still be a shitty person.” Emilio was proof enough of that. “You can give your kid everything you’ve got and still ruin the fucking life of someone else’s. If you’re trying to tell me most necromancers are good people, you’d better find a better example than fucking Alistair.”

It was clear with her confession that she was inexperienced; he wondered to what extent. How long had she been at this? How much did she know about it? “You won’t be able to bring anyone back without killing someone else,” he told her bluntly. “And that’s fine. That is what it is. I won’t sit here and pretend I don’t think there are some lives worth more than others. But you kill someone, you need to own up to it.” For years, for decades, he’d done something a lot like what she was doing now. He killed undead people without any kind of prejudice, told himself it was about protection. Things were different now. He still went out night after night, stake in hand, but he called it something else now. He called it what it was. It didn’t make him a good man, but it made him an honest one. He liked to think that was better than nothing.

—

Rosemary really, really hated when people acted morally superior just because they weren’t necromancers. She hated it even more when they had a point. At the end of the day, everything in the world came down to balance. Especially necromancy. A life for a life was an adage as old as time. Rulers of civilizations long since past had written entire codes that upheld the concept. An eye for an eye may seem archaic to some, but to Rosemary it had always made sense. It was an exchange and nothing more. And if upholding those ideals meant she was playing god, well, at least her self ordained divine status came with less fire and brimstone than some other gods people prayed to.

There was no real point in debating this man. Emilio had already made up his mind on the practice. Rosemary had decided long ago that she needed no man’s permission to do anything. No matter how many times she fallen short of living up to that promise to herself, she still strove for it. And at that moment, she knew this stranger's perception of her would never matter more than her perception of herself. She was a good person. Or at least, she tried to be. She’d never be able to shelter everyone from the butterfly effect of every action she made. If she tried, she’d go mad. All she could do was make her decisions carefully. Measure the strings of life twice, and cut only once.

“I’ve always known the cost.” Rosemary had only ever known the cost. It was the one lesson her father would impart. In only one thing was everyone equal- death. So the cost of a life saved would always be the death of another. And so it was for her. The birth of her enlightenment was the death of her relationship with her family. And perhaps that would prove for the best. “It was practically my birthright to know that price. So please don’t lecture me on the cost of teachings that I have fought long and hard to even begin to yield. I know it ends with blood on my hands. But the scales balance for everyone in the end. Me included. I’m a student, Emilio. Don’t you think I’m learning lessons from the mistakes of those who came before me? Especially when those mistakes got them both killed. Alistair was simply better at utilizing the deaths around him for the sake of self preservation. But he’s clearly learned his lesson from the ordeal.”

—

It wasn’t as if Emilio didn’t understand the concept of trading lives; it was something he did every day. He killed bad people so that good people could live, and he made his peace with that. He wasn’t a good man; he’d never claimed to be. He was quick to correct anyone who did, quick to make sure that no one got the wrong idea about him. He knew what he was, knew what he did. He just wasn’t sure Rosemary could make the same claim about herself, or Alistair for that matter. Necromancers, in his experience, tended to hold themselves to different standards. In the minds of some of them, it seemed, the lives they took didn’t count if someone else was alive at the end of it. As if you could swap one person for another and have nothing change, as if there wasn’t at least one idiot who loved the person who was dead at the end of the ritual. Emilio got his hands dirty. He turned killers to dust, and he accepted what that made him.

What he did, in his mind, was a necessary thing. He took lives to prevent more lives being taken. Was necromancy just as necessary? Was it the same to undo the damage once it had been done, to cause more in the process? He didn’t know. He knew that, if it were him, he wouldn’t want someone taking a life to restore his when he was gone. He knew he’d never tried it for his daughter, even if he ached every moment she was gone. He knew he disliked the way Rosemary spoke about it, the way she wanted to take a corpse home with her like it was a toy she could practice with. He knew he disliked the way Alistair spoke about it, too, like having the ability to do it meant they had to, as if they didn’t make a choice each time they removed a wound from one person by carving it into someone else. Emilio wasn’t sure he could judge necromancers for doing what they did, but he would certainly judge them for the lack of responsibility they seemed to take with it.

“Then maybe it’s time to start fucking acting like it,” he snapped. “You want to learn, you learn to be better than them. Learn not to treat people like they’re fucking puppets for you to move around however you want. That dead guy in there,” he motioned to the building, “was an asshole. That’s fine. But he was a fucking person. Somebody gave a shit about him. Maybe not when he died, maybe not for a long time, but someone gave a shit about him once. You want to use people to practice on, that’s on you. But you could at least have the goddamn decency to remember that they were people. You do what you do, but you fucking own up to it. You call it what it is. And you call yourself what you are, too.”

—

Rosemary could not believe that as a grown woman she was standing there letting a veritable stranger lecture her like a spoiled toddler who broke into the cookie jar. It was taking everything in her to not find some dead bird to reanimate to come sit in the man’s hair and peck him. She had left home because she was tired of hearing the men in her life dictate what she could and could not do. If she could leave them, why should she take it from a private investigator who barely knew her, had lied to her face, and yet was still standing here trying to claim the moral high ground?

“How, exactly, is what I do any different from what medical students do? They go down to the morgue and practice procedures on cadavers. They do it to learn. You wouldn’t stop a resident from practicing something on a cadaver that could one day allow them to help save someone else. But the cadaver was a person once too. Yet here you are, acting like a sanctimonious jerk to me for doing what is essentially the same thing. Why don’t you go to the hospital and find some second year resident to make cry instead of wasting the-“ she glanced at the time on her now cracked phone screen “two minutes I have left on my break?”

Rosemary shoved her phone back in her pocket and fished her wallet out of her bag. She found a crumpled up twenty dollar bill, and thrust it in the man’s direction. “Here. For your services rendered.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “I should have waited a few more days before hiring you, I could have saved myself money and spared myself the drama.”

—

“Well, med students don’t kill people to ‘save’ other people, I think,” he replied flatly. He didn’t know much about how medical school worked, didn’t know enough to say more than that, but he thought it made sense to claim that the cadavers on those tables consented, before their deaths, to have such things done with their corpses. If the man whose body Rosemary was trying to steal from the morgue had agreed to be a puppet for a bored necromancer after his death, Emilio would have cared far less. But something told him that, if that were the case, she would have brought it up before now. She was full of nothing if not excuses, and that would have been one worth touting, if it were the truth.

He raised a brow as she thrust the cash towards him, reaching out and plucking it from her hand if only to make himself more difficult. Whether she’d been genuinely offering the money or only proving a point in the same way a spoiled child stomped their feet during a tantrum didn’t matter much to him; if he could make life harder for someone who was annoying him, he’d jump at the chance.

Shrugging at her outburst, he tucked the twenty into his own pocket. “Probably should have,” he agreed. She didn’t strike him as the patient type, though he was the last person who could point out something like that. He was hardly patient himself, after all. “Look, I hear about you killing people or hurting them to play with necromancy, we’ll have problems. Other than that, you can fuck off to play with your dead animals without hearing from me again.” And he really, really hoped he wouldn’t have to make sure she heard from him again. She was nails on a chalkboard, at this point; Emilio would be happy never to see her again.

—

She barely managed to bite her tongue. Rosemary didn’t get a medical degree for a reason, so she was really in no position to argue her case further. And the jerk on the opposition of the debate would no doubt rub that fact in her face. She gritted her teeth together in what she hoped was a dazzling smile. In reality she looked more like a cornered animal baring its fangs in hopes that the bigger creature would get lost.

The witch rolled her eyes. “You’re going to be really fucking bored as my paranormal parole officer. I haven’t even commited a crime.” Everyone thought they were above necromancy until they lost something they didn’t know they couldn’t live without. Or at least, everyone who’s moral code burned to ash the moment that one thing stopped breathing. Rosemary couldn’t say why that particular train of thought resonated with her. Or she did, but she didn’t want to admit to herself that it would be nice to have someone choose her over everything else.

She shook her head as she glanced back at the time. So much for a nice break. “As lovely as this conversation has been, I have to get back to work. Have the day that you deserve.” Rosemary turned on her heel and stalked back into the building and to her desk. The witch wondered if some light hexing would be appropriate in this particular case. Nothing harmful- maybe just cursing him to hit every red light for a month. Or that his milk was always expired. She’d have to be more careful from then on, especially if Emilio was planning to make good on his word to watch her.

[ironcladrhett]

TIMING: Current

LOCATION: Still an abandoned soap factory

PARTIES: Inge (@nightmaretist), Siobhan (@banisheed), Emilio (@mortemoppetere), & Rhett (@ironcladrhett)

SUMMARY: On the night that Rhett is to lose his second foot and probably his life, Emilio makes a daring entrance and tries to bargain with his captors for his freedom.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Suicidal ideation (of the life exchange variety)

—

It wasn’t really like Inge was short on nutrition at the moment, with Rhett providing a steady supply of snacks, but there were still those human cravings. Besides, Siobhan presumably did require human sustenance (or did Banshees sustain themselves on screams?) and so a grocery store run seemed fitting. The mundanity of overhead lights and inflation were a stark contrast to the blood that had just coated Siobhan’s fingers, but it came with important rewards. Lollipops. 

As the pair walked to Siobhan’s non-conspicuous car, Inge was sure to continue the point she’d been trying to make. “I think you’ve– we’ve had our fun. The longer go on like this, the riskier it gets.” She pulled open the passenger side door, tossing the groceries in before taking a seat. “Someone’s bound to look for even such a sorry sod at some point.” She pulled the door close, muffling any other words from any sharp ears, looking at Siobhan sharply. “I want him dead before sunrise. Can you settle with that?”

—  

Torturing Rhett had given Siobhan an emotional and creative fulfillment that she’d never felt before. It had also—though she would never admit it—given her a friend. A friend she hated and a friend that was an abomination and a friend that, perhaps, didn’t see her as a friend at all but a friend nonetheless. It would be embarrassing to admit that she had prolonged Rhett’s torture not just because it was fun but because she was having fun with Ingeborg. She thought they were really bonding. Violence was what made true friends; so it had been in her aos sí, so it was in that soap factory. 

“Oh.” Siobhan leaned against the driver’s side door; one arm spread on top of the hearse, which she rested her chin upon. “What risks? He’s hardly a danger. Risks of having too much fun?” Following Ingeborg—could she just call her Inge now? They were friends, after all—lead, Siobhan ducked into the car. “You’re such a bore. I wish someone would come for him. That’d really make it interesting. I could use one of the other saws on them. I was thinking about the circular one; it’s brand-new.” Siobhan turned to her accomplice and noted the lack of amusement. “Fine.” The car sputtered to life, wheezing and coughing up black exhaust. “Dead tonight, meanie. Give me one of the candies.” 

—

Ever since he’d found Rhett’s cane abandoned on the street, Emilio had been a flurry of activity and nervous energy. No time had been taken to pause for stupid things like sleep or meals, and any responses to texts or messages from friends had been brief and curt. He wasn’t stupid. He knew how this was likely to end, knew he was probably looking for a corpse more than he was looking for a man, but even so, he searched tirelessly. If a corpse was all that was left of his brother, he’d still bring it home. He’d still do for Rhett what Rhett had done for Juliana and Flora in Mexico two years ago, even if he was the only one who’d care enough to visit the patch of dirt he planted him in. 

And he’d still make sure whoever was responsible paid for it.

That anticipatory grief in his chest was matched only by the anger, the rage that warmed him like a furnace in the dead of winter. On some level, he knew it was a stupid thing to feel. Rhett had been reckless since coming to town, had gone after too many people and let too many go. The fact that most of them were people who didn’t deserve it ached in a different sort of way, but it wasn’t relevant to the point. This town was probably full of people who’d like to hurt Rhett, and Emilio shouldn’t have been surprised that one of them took a shot. But the grief was there anyway. The rage was there anyway. So he did the only thing he’d ever really been good at — he followed the trail. 

Javier heard from Lara who heard from Beto that a professor at the college hadn’t been in in a few days. The professor was one with a familiar name — if anyone would go after Rhett, Emilio thought, it would be the mare he’d locked in his bunker. But wherever she was hiding, she was hard to find. In a way, that gave him hope; it meant Rhett might still be alive, though it promised he’d be in bad shape. Still, Emilio did his best to douse the feeling. Hope would do nothing but get him killed here.

It was funny; when he finally found her, it wasn’t even intentional. He stopped by the store to pick up a protein bar when his stomach finally began to cramp in protest of its emptiness, and there she was. It was something of a surprise to see her with Siobhan; maybe it shouldn’t have been. He hadn’t heard anything about Rhett going after the banshee, but a fae would have every reason to want a warden dead regardless. Neither of them spotted him. He wasn’t sure either of them would know to look for him. It was easy enough to fall into step behind them, far enough away to avoid detection but close enough to keep from losing them. Inge’s presence helped with that; all he had to do was follow that pull in his gut towards the undead thing ahead of him, ignore the way it mingled with the dread there.

One way or another, he’d get his brother back tonight.

—

Siobhan’s complete apathy to the risks was something that made Inge feel inferior. She was not overreacting, was she, in assuming that this could lead to more trouble? Violence begot violence. That was why they were here now. That was why she tended to run rather than face the people who chased her tail. She dug around for a lollipop of a flavor she liked and unwrapped it with a note of frustration, telling herself she was wary and that was good and that it wasn’t really that Siobhan was better than her, she was just … unhinged. Yes. That was a good term. 

She popped the lollipop in her mouth and got a cola-flavored one for the banshee (this was, in her opinion, the worst flavor), undoing the wrapping for her as well before holding it out. “The best hunter is a dead one,” she said sagely, wondering if Siobhan would simply bite down on the lollipop or if she’d reach for it with her hand. Inge kicked up her legs, licking her own candy merrily. “We can have our fun another way.” 

The drive was quickly over and done with, the hearse pulling up to the abandoned factory with fitting noise. The place had grown familiar, but the sight that was Rhett the Warden hadn’t. Inge’s torments and her horrors existed somewhere else, on a plane not bound by earthly harm. Or so, at least, she had told herself. So Sanne had told her, eons ago. It was different. It was more sophisticated. It was a gift. Her eyes flicked over the sight of him before tossing the bag of groceries on the ground. This was hardly a gift. The only thing left was to kill him in a poetic manner and move on. “Told you we’d be back soon,” she said to Rhett, wondering if he’d want a lollipop. “Do you like artificial sweeteners?”

—

The best hunter is a dead one. Inge’s simple statement rattled in Siobhan’s head; bouncing around with each rumble of her hearse and each jump over cracked concrete. The clever retort that she felt obligated to have didn’t leave her mouth—it hadn’t even been formed. Instead, Siobhan watched the shifting landscape as they approached the factory. There was a time where she believed in the practical minimizing of harm; a time when Fate’s course seemed linear. Life existed in a tangle: webs and threads interwoven, pulled through space-time, woven again, transported into unknowable, unthinkable dimensions. When she’d tried to minimize harm, when she’d tried to be kind, she cost her people seven other lives. The best hunter was a living one, until Fate came. And Fate had not yet called for Rhett. 

Lost in her thoughts, Siobhan hadn’t realized that she’d entered the factory at all. Had she remembered to turn the hearse off? Park it in the overgrown bushes where it couldn’t be seen from the road? She shook her head. She tried to bring back the face of the woman who adored violence, who only knew it, but instead a woman who mourned controlled her features. She saw Rhett as he was: bloody, broken, miserable. She wondered if he’d ever forgive her one day—then she castigated herself for thinking that. And, anyway, he would be dead soon. But she hadn’t screamed for him yet, and until then, she wondered if he would forgive her and if he’d think it was silly that she cared about that at all. 

Siobhan knelt to the bag, crinkling plastic cutting through the air thick with the acrid scent of old blood. Off to the side, the bits of Rhett’s lost leg buzzed with a swarm of happy flies. “What flavour do you want, Rhett?” She smiled for him; dead men deserved kindnesses, sometimes. “We got everything because I said—well, it won’t be funny now if I retell it—but I wanted all of them. And there’s jellybeans…” Siobhan held up the little bag full of them—a plastic bag inside of another plastic bag. Did humans hate the world this much? “I don’t know anyone that likes jelly beans. They’re an abomination.” She pointed to Inge. “Worse than her, actually.” 

—

He couldn’t be absent for everything, unfortunately. While his tendency to slip into altered states of consciousness had done him some favors over the last few days, sending the two creatures off in the wee hours of the morning to resume their activities the next day, he always came back out of it. The first time they’d decided to take a break, they’d left him secured to a pole that ran from floor to ceiling so he didn’t excuse himself without their consent. He’d been stuck there since, sitting with head bowed and long hair framing his face, silent until he heard the sound of them returning. 

Rhett drew a long, shaky breath as their footsteps grew louder. They’d taken his leg, cut it off just above the knee and cauterized it about as well as you’d expect, and he was pretty sure he had an infection on top of the constant, agonizing pain of nerve endings being ripped to shreds by less than surgically precise methods. He stared down at it, down at the bloodstain where his limb should have been, at the frayed edges of pants hurriedly cut away, stained a blackish-brown. His right leg, while still attached to him, wouldn’t be for long. Siobhan had started in on the toenails of that foot last night, which meant that tonight, if she was working in a pattern... It was a miracle he hadn’t died from blood loss already, but maybe that’s what the breaks were really for. And maybe, he thought as his captors questioned him about sucker flavors, that was the only reason they were giving him any kind of sustenance.

Rather than answer on the subject of his liking of artificial sweeteners or his preferred synthetic flavor, he just lifted his chin and stared. If you didn’t count all the tormented hollering, he hadn’t spoken a word to them in two days. He just shivered, underdressed for the frigid weather, and blinked blearily at them.

“You ain’t screamed,” he finally said pointedly and in a hoarse voice. That meant he wasn’t going to die… yet. He knew the amount of time that could pass before the banshee let one rip was highly variable—it could happen days before he departed from this mortal coil, or it could happen seconds before what remained of the light in his eyes was snuffed out. It would happen, but there wasn’t much comfort in that unless he was on his way to someplace safe. This was not someplace safe. This was… hell. 

His gaze jumped to Inge.

“Why am I here? This about you? This about revenge?” he growled, lowering his chin again. His hands, now more loosely tied behind his back and keeping him from wandering far from the pole, twisted against each other at the wrist. His frustration was building, unexpectedly, since he’d more or less been floating through the last few days in a quiet haze or full dissociative state. He was frozen half to death, he was starved, exhausted from lack of sleep and blood loss, and everything hurt. How long were they going to drag this out? Even he didn’t torture fae for this long. Once they told him what he wanted to know, he killed them. 

“What d’you want?” the warden snarled before giving them time to actually respond. “Just fucking—get it over with. Just fucking get it over with.” He wasn’t begging. Rhett would never beg for his own life. But maybe that was only because he tried to mask the desperation with anger. He snapped his head up to look at Siobhan, looking furious. “Scream, already!” he commanded, like that would help anything.

—

It was agony, following them. Keeping back, suffocating that rage in his chest to something that had him acting tactical instead of lashing out… it wasn’t in his nature. Emilio had always been a flurry of fury, with a style of fighting that could only really be described as animalistic. His advantage always came in the way he kept fighting until consciousness left him, not in anything resembling planning. He knew he was no good at that. He’d proven it time and time and time again. And, right now, everything he had wanted to launch himself at these women who’d taken his brother from him, wanted to rip them into pieces, wanted to tear their throats out with his fucking teeth. 

But then, he stopped to listen. 

He eavesdropped, he let their conversation wash over him. They spoke about Rhett like he was still alive, and Emilio knew he’d never get his brother back before it was too late if he killed his captors now. The way they spoke implied that Rhett was in bad shape; there would be no time to look for him, especially not when he knew he’d have to do it alone. He couldn’t ask anyone to help him with this. Not Wynne, who had good reason to hate him. Not Teddy, who he’d seen having pleasant conversations with Siobhan online. Not Jade, who was so interconnected with Regan that going after the other banshee in any way was bound to cause complications. The only person he could realistically expect assistance from was Parker, and he was pretty sure his rage at him matched his rage towards Rhett’s tormentors at this point. He’d never be able to trust the other warden in a fight.

And so, Emilio was on his own. It was hardly a rarity, hardly an experience he was unfamiliar with. He’d spent two years on his own after he and Rhett parted ways in Mexico, would have kept at it if not for Wicked’s Rest and its citizens’ strange habit of giving a shit about people they shouldn’t. Emilio was fine on his own, could handle himself in a fight just fine. He’d get his brother back or he’d die trying, but either way, at least he’d be saved the grief of losing him.

So, he followed. To the parking lot, watching what car they slipped into. It was recognizable, hard to mistake for anything else on the road. Not many hearses driving around. That was good. He slipped into the driver’s seat of the car he’d once again ‘borrowed’ from Teddy, maintaining a slight distance behind the hearse as he drove with his hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. His heart stuttered uncomfortably. Left turn. Nausea tugged at his gut. Right turn. He saw a flash of Edgar’s body on the road, crumpled and bloody. Stoplight. Victor sat beside him in the passengers’ seat, sporting every injury his mind could imagine since he’d been spared the knowledge of knowing what killed him. Accelerate. Edgar’s corpse again, but his hair was longer now. Gray. His head tilted, and it was Rhett’s face there instead. Victor, in the seat beside him, morphed in a similar manner. 

The hearse pulled off the road, and Emilio did the same. Into a parking lot, with no one else around. He switched off the headlights, parked a ways away. He watched them enter, and he waited. One heartbeat. Two. He couldn’t stomach the thought of a third, moved from the driver’s seat and onto the concrete. The ache in his bad leg was a long-forgotten thing, his mind forcibly pushing it aside. Pain is a message, his mother told him once. Messages can be ignored. He was getting better at it with practice. 

He unpacked the trunk. Iron blades, weapons borrowed from Teddy’s basement. He grabbed a knife Rhett had gifted him years ago, the handle worn but the blade kept sharp. He thought it might be poetic to kill one of them with it. Both of them, maybe. Everything in the damn factory, if Rhett was dead inside of it. 

The closer he got to the door, the clearer he could hear the murmurs. The sensation of the dead thing inside made his stomach turn just as much as the smell of blood did. The two of them combined had his mind reeling, skipping back and forth between here and there. The factory was a living room was a street. Long dead corpses rotted scentlessly in the corner. His daughter’s body was crumpled in the center of the room. Rhett was missing a leg. Juliana was screaming. Siobhan was silent.

For a moment, he thought he was too late. He thought he’d gotten here just to collect a corpse, just to give himself something else to bury. But then, Rhett shifted. He spoke. He sounded rough, sounded more pained than Emilio had ever heard him, and the world fell apart and fell back together at the same time. It was strange, seeing his brother this way. For so long, he’d thought of Rhett as invincible by necessity. Victor was dead. Edgar was dead. So Rhett couldn’t be. His other brothers died screaming, too young or too old, so he made Rhett a monument to them in their absence, created an immortal thing out of a husk. He’d been proven wrong before, of course; Rhett was already down an eye, had needed a cane even before the monsters in the shadows had taken his fucking leg. But even so, Emilio had never seen him like this. 

He looked small. Emilio wanted to tear the world apart with his bare hands.

There was no time to waste, he knew. The first thing he needed to do was take care of the mare. Prevent her from using the astral to her advantage, keep her from slipping into the shadows to attack him from behind. If she got one hand on him, put him to sleep, this whole thing would be over. The banshee’s scream was a concern, too, but the mare needed to be grounded first. Fighting deaf would still be easier than fighting unconscious. 

Slipping the sword off his back, he tested its weight momentarily. Balanced. High quality. If he survived this, he’d have to thank Teddy for letting him borrow it. He waited until Inge moved a little, waited until she was lined up the way he needed her to be with the wall. And then, in a flurry of rage, he went in for the strike.

He made no sound as he stormed into the room, offered none of his usual dry humor as he shoved the blade through the mare’s stomach and into the wall behind her with all the strength he had. It went in deep, stuck hard. It would take enhanced strength to pull it out again. Otherwise, she’d have to peel herself off it by slicing through herself, sliding to the side. It would hurt either way. Emilio was glad for that.

—

She never stuck around to see the results of her actions when it came to her sleepers. She visited them on a schedule, slowly pushing further and further into their minds to make it her own playground. Sometimes she witnessed them wake, but that was it — Inge always disappeared until they could fully react. And here was Rhett, tied like a stray, wounded dog with blood sticking to him and the surface below him. He was reduced in a multitude of ways. 

It was a strange thing, to be so confronted with her actions. To have the harm done by her collaborator (not her — for all her assistance, Inge remained convinced it was Siobhan responsible for that missing leg) so clearly on display. It wasn’t that it gave her pause, but it was a sensation she wasn’t sure she’d intend to experience again. Even if she’d gained material for new works. She turned the lollipop around in her mouth while considering the sight, distantly glad that it would be done before dawn. It was not a feeling she had any interest in investigating. 

So she simply stared back at him, popping the lollipop from her mouth to answer his growled questions. Questions. He had barely spoken these past days, an impressive feat that Inge would not have achieved had the places been reversed. They had been, once, though not for as long. Humans were easier to trap. “Well, the idea started when you hurt a mutual …” She thought for a moment, “Student of ours. I’m not generally one for vengeance like this, but Siobhan is an inspiring woman and well, I really would like to see you and your experimental ways out of this world.” It would be bad praxis to reveal that Siobhan and her hadn’t really agreed on what had occurred, but Inge wasn’t tactical, nor was Rhett long for this world. “So we agreed to put our differences aside to kill you. We’ll get there.”

She had judged him, hadn’t she? For locking her in that bunker. For putting Ariadne in that van for a week. For the cruelty of it — not just a quick axe to the head, but something drawn out. But this was different. This was retribution. “I don’t like to limit my fellow creatives, though.” With the way he was asking for it, for that inevitable end, Inge almost felt inclined to let Siobhan follow her whims and let this draw out. Even if she was growing antsy from this space, her mind bending in strange ways, leaving her giddy and nervous and wondering if she should start packing, wondering if she should try to help Siobhan with the next toe and whether she could even handle such a thing. Whether she was weaker, for not being able to fight or maim in such a way, or whether it just made her more sophisticated. Whether she was worse than the hunters for this. Whether it mattered. 

She’d blame that spiraling mind for not noticing what came next until it was too late.

The blade reached her only a few seconds after she’d caught sight of Cortez, eyes widening and mind preparing to reach for her beloved astral — but she couldn’t. The sword ran through the full depth of her and a sound fell from her lips, somewhere between a scream and a roar. Her fingers let go from the lollipop, which shattered like glass onto the ground. Eyes dropped to what had been slid through her insides, wide and frightened and furious. She tried to focus, not entirely convinced that this should lock her in place but it wasn’t there, her connection to her favored place of existence. 

Panic was an emotion spread easily, especially when it went hand in hand with adrenaline, and Inge reached forward to try and claw at the now-free hilt, but she only cut herself deeper. Another wail of pain, eyes dancing through the room, “Do it, Siobhan.” Surely the banshee knew what she meant by that.

—

It was interesting being told what to do. Siobhan had spent so much of her life listening, obeying, deferring. She was, by her very nature, a vehicle for choices that weren’t hers. Rhett wanted her to scream, as though his death was up to her—well, it was up to her but it wasn’t up to her. Another banshee would understand (but not Regan, Regan understood nothing). Inge also wanted her to scream and that one tickled in the back of her throat; she almost did it reflexively, just because some woman told her to. She thought it was all a little funny. 

Emilio burst in like a rabid dog—remarkably silent—and honed on Inge as though she had personally eaten the kibble from his bowl. Siobhan watched it all in slow motion: Inge’s expression, the sword, the wall. The sword was a nice touch, Inge obviously trying to blink away from the scene wasn’t. Did she plan on leaving her here? With the hunters? And she was telling her what to do? Yes, do it. She ought to do it. It was always about her and needing to do it; all her life, a series of things to do. All it would take was one scream, in a matter of seconds, to rid the world of Emilio, Rhett and Ingeborg. Did they understand that? Did they ever once think about her generosity? Or, perhaps, why was it that she just didn’t go around screaming? Was any intelligent thought spared for her? Considering the people surrounding her, probably not. It was embarrassing that she’d considered Ingeborg a friend for a moment; she’d be blocking that memory out. 

Siobhan knelt to Rhett’s level, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Any of you move and I scream,” she said. “Except you, Ingeborg, feel free to squirm.” She looked along the bloody factory ground to Emilio, and the pinned mare; he was bundled up, she was oozing glitter. “I shouldn’t have to remind you, Emilio, that all it takes is one breath for Rhett to turn into pudding. Rhett, you tell him.” With her free hand, she rummaged around the grocery bag, freeing a lollipop. Ripping the plastic with her teeth, she slid the treat against her tongue. “Ugh.” She frowned. “Grape.” The plastic stick danced from one end of her mouth to the other as she thought about their situation. 

Ingeborg probably felt very good about herself, impalement aside; she should have listened to her and killed Rhett on that first night. Emilio seemed very upset. Rhett seemed….pale and sticky; torture had that effect. Was he relieved? Scared? He still hasn’t told her what flavour he liked best; she guessed lemon. “I think we should relax.” Siobhan smiled sweetly. “Get acquainted. Emilio, this is Rhett, maybe you know him: he’s a child torturer. That’s a Ingeborg, you can kill her if you want but keep in mind that you will be robbing the world of her attractiveness—she has material value. In addition, she does smell strangely nice.” Siobhan turned to look at Rhett. “Are you sure you don’t want candy, darling?” 

—

A mutual student? The girl, then. The blonde with the flower. He frowned, his gaze dancing between the two of them as that momentary spike of adrenaline seeped away again, leaving him hollowed and hurting. They wanted him dead, but they wanted it done slow—maybe for each day he’d held that young mare in his van. Maybe more. For as long as it was interesting to them. Well, he could try to keep it uninteresting by being mute again, taking their abuse without complaint. They’d get bored eventually. 

He was just about to slump back against the pole when there was a sudden explosion of movement, and the warden jerked away from it on reflex before realizing it wasn’t Siobhan. In fact, she was crouched in front of him now, hand on his shoulder, and—

His one-eyed gaze fell on Emilio and was fixed there as the banshee voiced her threats. She was right, he knew—Emilio probably didn’t. Why was he here? He should have been home, he—

“No,” Rhett moaned woefully. Tears sprang unbidden to his eye and he shook his head, staring at his brother. “Get out of here. You shouldn’t be here.” He could hardly speak above a whisper, throat raw from all the screaming he’d been doing, worsened by his outburst only moments before. He sucked in a gasping breath, glancing away from the other hunter to meet Siobhan’s gaze. “Let him go, he’s not—he ain’t like me. He’s good. He’s a good person, please, let him go, he made a mistake—” He looked back at Emilio sharply with that final word, teeth bared in a grimace. “A mistake,” he repeated. “Go home.” 

He would never beg for his own life, but he'd be the first to beg for Emilio’s. 

Logic and reasoning was not something he’d ever had a strong grasp on, but that was even farther from the truth now. In some desperate attempt to appeal to Siobhan’s chaotic nature and hopefully get his brother out of there in one piece, Rhett gave her a stoic nod. “I like lemon,” he confirmed unknowingly. He spared one last quick glance at his last remaining family, feeling sick to his stomach. “We’re fine here, hua. Havin’ a great time.”

—

It was hard to focus. His mind was still bouncing, still half in the present and half in the past. Flora’s body was still in the corner, crumpled and bloodless and so small. Juliana’s was a few feet away. Edgar was there, too; Rosa, his mother. Even Lucio’s ghost haunted the scene, staring on with the same stricken expression he’d worn when Emilio buried his knife in his gut. None of it was right, he knew; everyone he loved was two years gone, rotting in holes someone else had dug for them.

Everyone but Rhett.

His eyes darted to his brother, who was clearly far more out of it than Emilio himself and with far better reason. It was hard not to focus on the place where his leg ended, on the too-long pant leg and the bloodied concrete beneath it. He wanted to think, what kind of a monster does that to a person? He wanted to condemn it, wanted to think that it was an unforgivable thing. But Rhett had locked a kid in a van for days just to see what would happen. Emilio had tortured so many vampires that he’d lost count now, had done worse than this to them for days and days on end until even their already-dead bodies couldn’t hold on a moment longer and gave out under his hands. There were monsters in this room; there were nothing but monsters in this room. 

In the far corner, his daughter’s body continued to rot.

The mare was screaming. Her — Its blood touched the edge of the sword, sparkling in the dim light of the factory. In a way, it grounded him a little. The screams, the glittery substance. He tried to focus on it instead of Rhett’s blood, tried to ground himself in the present as best he could. Edgar was dead. Victor was dead. Rhett wasn’t. Rhett wouldn’t be. Not as long as there was breath left in Emilio’s lungs. 

His chest heaved as he glared at the banshee. The mare was forgotten now, an afterthought; no longer a threat, and therefore no longer worth looking at. He gripped Rhett’s iron knife in his hand, tight enough to stop it shaking. He wanted to slice the banshee open, wanted its guts to spill on the floor as if that might somehow cover up his brother’s blood that stained it, as if the presence of one would chase away the presence of the other. 

The banshee put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. It made threats. Emilio continued to glare. “Si haces eso te mataré,” he growled. Juliana laughed, a harsh and unnatural sound. He blinked once, hard, trying to remind himself of where he was. When he was. He pushed his tongue against the bottom of his canine, tasting blood in his mouth. Opening it, he tried again. “If you do that, I will kill you,” he said, the words slow and heavily accented as he forced them out in the language that still felt unnatural behind his teeth. “I promise, I’ll kill you if you do that.” Rhett would hate that. You weren’t supposed to make promises to fae; Emilio knew that. But this promise was one he intended to keep, anyway. It didn’t matter if Rhett was a monster; Emilio loved him all the same. He’d do anything for him. He’d tear the world apart with only his teeth. 

His eyes darted back to his brother as he spoke, surprised to see him aware. Not quite himself — Emilio was fairly sure he’d only seen Rhett with tears in his eyes once, in the woods just outside Etla — but here all the same. His chest ached as Rhett ordered him to leave, and he wondered if this was what his brother had felt in those woods when Emilio begged him to let him die. He’d give the same answer to Rhett as Rhett had given him back then: “Fuck off with that shit.” There was nothing in the goddamn world that would convince him to leave Rhett here. If Rhett died here, Emilio would either kill the things responsible or die trying. His glare made that much pretty clear.

Said glare returned to the banshee now, eating its candy like none of it mattered, like it hadn’t mutilated his brother in the floor of an old factory, like all of this was a joke. Like Rhett wasn’t the only family Emilio had, like he wasn’t the last piece of a unit that was otherwise irreparably broken. “I’m not leaving here without him. Whether you’re alive or not when I go is up to you.” 

—

She felt like a fly that someone had swatted and left to die stuck to the wall. Not fully dead but incapacitated in a way where there was little to do for her but watch in growing agitation and continued pain what played out before her. Inge wanted to scream, but only if the scream could have the impact that a banshee’s would have. In stead she followed Siobhan’s instruction (when she should be following hers!) and squirmed, fingers trying to grasp at the blade but getting nothing out of it.

The warden was crying. Putting up a show of emotion, cracking the way he’d not been cracked before despite the horrors Siobhan and her had put him through. This could be perfect. This could be perfect. If the banshee only used her head and did what needed to be done, this could be two birds with one stone — or rather one scream.

But the banshee was impossible to understand, a strange combination of motivations that Inge didn’t get. (Not that she got her own.) They were all talking as if there was something to talk about. Why wasn’t she doing it? She grasped the blade once more, the metal cutting into the palm of her hand as she tried to gain purchase. But to get to the hilt she’d have to bend over and to bend over was to slice into herself deeper. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure what kind of organs remained inside her and if they had any function. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out today, here.

She was shrieking, though not with any intention. Just out of instinct. Her hands were covered in that useless glittery solid now and she was useless. A fly on the wall, left to observe the inaction of a banshee who had once proclaimed to love murder. “Siobhan!” It was a bellow more than a scream, lower than the previous expressions of panic and pain. “Get it over with!” 

—

Amusement fluttered inside Siobhan’s chest: this was the sort of situation that reminded her of her greatest hobby. Emilio’s anger delighted her—his gaze could become so sharp, his words could drip with such acid, he could promise her silly things just to keep himself from charging at her (he was like a dog right now, but with just enough sense to keep himself alive). Ingeborg squirmed on the sword—how wonderful it was to watch her expressions dance, flickering with rage (was that fear under the red glow of her eyes or more anger?). And Rhett—as silly as it was, she’d come to like the man. Over the last two nights she studied his expressions: anguish, sadness, fatigue, acceptance. Her greatest hobby was to watch the ways life existed. What made torture fun was seeing how far she could push an emotion, seeing how she could twist a feeling. And here was something she coveted, something she hardly understood: affection, the most curious of human conditions. 

She waved Emilio’s words away. “I don’t accept your promise. You’ll end up hurting yourself with that one: it’s too vague.” Siobhan’s gaze then flicked to Ingeborg. “That sword looks really cute on you, it brings out your eyes. You should consider it as a permanent look.” 

Siobhan smiled, rummaging through the plastic grocery bag: orange, cherry (her favorite), cola, watermelon, peach, something neon green. “I knew you were a lemon man.” Eventually, she found a bright yellow lollipop and tongued hers into the other side of her mouth so she could rip the plastic wrapping open with her teeth. She held the piece of candy out by Rhett’s mouth. “You are a very astute man. I like this awareness: you’ve always understood how pitiful you are, haven’t you?” She looked at Emilio. “But that’s not a ‘good man’, that’s a selfish one. He holds more compassion for you than he does for poor Ingeborg on the nice sword. Who, for all my knowledge, has never tortured any anxiety ridden blonde children. Emilio’s selective, isn’t he? You don’t charge in here, promise to kill someone to save someone else, unless you’re selectively compassionate. Of course, most humans are like this, but it hardly makes him ‘good’ does it?” 

Her grip tightened on Rhett’s shoulder. “I don’t like selfish men, Rhett.” And Siobhan knew she was cruel enough to kill Rhett only to anger Emilio. Then she’d tie him up and…well, maybe she’d go for the arms this time. And who would come to save him? Would this be a never ending cycle of interrupted torture? The idea exhausted her. “Emilio, are you aware this is a terrible man? Objectively terrible. He won’t argue—tell him, Rhett. Why don’t you? Tell him all the terrible things you’ve done…or does he already know?” She looked at him, wondering if he was the sort of man to share his secrets or if he had any shame for his duty. Did Emilio want to save him regardless? Why? Why? 

Why would anyone want to save this wretched man? 

“Emilio.” In her curiosity, Siobhan’s head cocked to the side. “Why should I let you go? Why should I let Rhett go?” She blinked. “Don’t try to threaten me again, or threaten Ingeborg, it’s juvenile. If I cared about staying alive, I wouldn’t be here. If I cared about Ingeborg staying alive, I would have screamed already. Use your brain, I know you have one.”

—

Wincing beneath her tightened grip, Rhett stared at the lollipop still held aloft in front of him as he spoke. “Emilio. Shut up,” he ordered his little brother, knowing that the man’s temper would not do them any favors in this situation. Then, with the smallest tilt of his head in Siobhan’s direction, he began speaking to her, answering her questions slowly, making sure he didn’t miss anything. If he missed something, she might think he was trying to ignore it, and she might do something rash. Something unhinged, like she was. He had to be careful about what he said for once in his stupid life.

“Pitiful, aye. N’ he knows all ‘bout all the things that make me like that.” Most of them, anyway. “He is bein’ selfish, right now. He should’ve let me go days ago. But he’s family, n’ he don’t let family go easy.” His head was swimming, vision blurred. He felt like passing out, but he had to keep going. “He’s the one that got her out. The blonde girl, the mare. He’s the one that let her out of the van, the one that made me promise… not to go after her again. No one else woulda been able to convince me, so… if ya… care about ‘er, ya got Emilio to thank. Ya should… let him go ‘cuz he’s got more green than red on his ledger. Does more good than bad. Only does bad when… when it involves me, or the people that took away our family.” It was surprisingly introspective for Rhett, but he’d had a lot of time to think about it. The warden sucked in a wavering breath, squinting his eye closed. “I don’t wanna leave here.” He’d tried to run once, back before it had gotten really bad, but now… “But that don’t matter, ‘cuz ‘Milio ain’t gonna leave this place without me.” He finally brought his gaze up to look at Siobhan, and for all the world, he looked genuinely apologetic. 

“I get why ya did what ya did. But don’t make my brother pay for the wrong shit I done. I know he’s bein’ selfish right now, but he is a good man. I promise he is. I promise.” That’s how sure he felt, despite what Emilio might say, what he might think. He knew the last living Cortez was a better person than he himself believed. “I’ll be dead next year anyway. He just wants a few more months.” With that, Rhett deflated from the effort of remaining coherent, bending forward to bite the sucker from Siobhan’s grip and then lean back against the pole, closing his eye like he was relaxing into a nap. He should’ve still been worried for Emilio, and he was, but he was too damn tired to do much more about it. As it was, his grip on consciousness felt weak—held only by one pinkie finger. He hoped that he’d still have a pinkie finger as he slipped away from them, his mind carrying him elsewhere just in case things went wrong and they all had their guts liquified by a pissed off banshee. 

—

The mare was screaming; Emilio ignored it. With the threat of its escape through the astral plane eliminated, it would be simple enough to take its head off when he finished with the banshee. Or he’d leave it here to starve, focus more on getting Rhett to safety instead. He needed some kind of medical care, though Emilio wasn’t sure how to provide it. (If he took his brother to the hospital, what questions would he have to field? Would Zane help him out, understand that Emilio’s presence would need to be an under the radar thing?) Either way, the mare wasn’t important at the moment. Its screeching, its pleas for the banshee to act and its fear disguised as rage. None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered at all was sitting in the floor with a goddamn lollipop stuck in front of his face.

The banshee spoke, and Emilio kept his steely gaze on it, body tense and ready to strike at any moment. It would do him no good, he knew. The iron knife in his hand could be thrown with accuracy, but it wouldn’t be faster than a scream if the banshee chose to release one. The most he could hope for was for the blade to find the banshee’s throat just a moment after its scream obliterated him. Maybe if the sound was focused on him, Rhett would survive with only his eardrums ruptured. Maybe someone would come looking, would find him before infection took him. Or maybe they’d both turn to mist with the echo of the banshee’s cry. Maybe they all would. It still felt better than the thought of walking out of here alone.

There were insults, there were implications. This was about the other mare, the kid. Wynne’s girlfriend, the one who hadn’t deserved what Rhett had done to her. But the kid hadn’t even wanted to speak poorly about Rhett; Emilio doubted she would approve of someone being tortured in her name, of someone being killed. He thought of Flora, of the blood he’d spilled and the dust he’d stirred up because she was gone and he was here and things like that needed retribution. Maybe she wouldn’t have approved, either. Maybe she’d never gotten to be old enough to understand the idea of approval. Either way, the blood on his hands remained just as present as his brother’s blood on the floor. His eyes flickered briefly to the corner. She was rotting. She was always rotting.

The banshee kept saying his name, and he wished it would stop. The syllables exiting its tongue felt wrong, felt different. Even when Rhett said it — that fond, shortened version, the one only Rhett was still alive to use — it didn’t feel right. The name reminded him that he was a person, and he didn’t feel like one now. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be one. People ached. People struggled with the things Emilio needed to do. People hurt when you hit them, and he thought something was probably going to hit him soon. He stayed quiet as the banshee spoke, eyes darting to Rhett as his brother joined in. I’ll be dead next year anyway, he said, like it didn’t matter. Like there weren’t little girls rotting in corners and long-dead wives screaming in the distance, like he wasn’t the only family Emilio had who hadn’t decayed long past the point of recognition. Emilio wanted him to shut up, but he was afraid of what might happen when he stopped talking. He was afraid that if Rhett stopped speaking now, he’d never hear his brother’s voice again. The thought made him nauseous. 

He let the silence stretch, periodically looking from the banshee to his brother to the empty corner where his mind conjured up long buried corpses and long silenced screams. He knew he should say something. He was supposed to. He knew that.

“I’m not good,” he confirmed, looking at Rhett as he said it. “Neither is he. Neither are you. Or that.” He gestured to the mare like an afterthought, like he’d almost forgotten it was there at all. (Would Teddy want the sword back? He should leave it in place until he’d killed the thing, at least, but he probably ought to clean it after. The thought felt laughably mundane, even as his mind clung to it.) “But he’s my brother. And I’m not the only one who needs him. He’s got a kid who wants him around, who wants to know him. She’s good, and she deserves to keep him. To get to know him, to decide for herself if she wants him in her life. You can —” He looked to Rhett, to the empty gap on the floor where his leg should have been. “You can do what you want with me. Let me call an ambulance for him, and I’ll let you do whatever you want to me. Take my lungs, my liver, my heart, take whatever, but not him. You can take me apart like a goddamn puzzle, but let my brother go. Please. Just let him live, and I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

—

Siobhan was accosting her with a compliment that made Inge just shout an expletive her way, “Kutwijf!” Her mother tongue, because maybe that would shield the truth of her frustration. The truth of her dread, her — well, her fear, really. It was an ugly thing to admit, but as she was stuck on the wall and her ally in all this seemed to be negotiating with the two hunters rather than killing them, she was afraid. She tried to lean into her anger more. Even as Siobhan revealed her hand. She cared not about what might happen to either of them, had no intention as of yet to commit the murders that seemed to Inge as the only logical next step.

Why were they here? Why had Rhett put her in that basement, Ariadne in that van? What was the point? Inge had thought that perhaps this all could lead to one less hunter, that a proactive stance against a monster like Rhett would lead to the erasure of him — but here she was, pinned to that wall, waves of cold pain radiating from that wound. She and Siobhan had done what she condemned all hunters for. Played with their food and not pulled through.

And then there was the revelation that Emilio had been the one to save Ariadne. The man with the murderous eyes of his mother had saved a girl better than them all. It didn’t add up. There was an angle to it. There was some motive she didn’t understand. 

What was the point? Emilio may have saved Ariadne and Rhett may not have killed her, but there was still blood on all their hands. Emilio had a point — none of them were good. But Inge didn’t want to die, whereas these hunters seemed all to ready to lay themselves down to rest out of some kind of sentiment that she’d perhaps never felt. Her siblings were like strangers. Her late partner she had let die so she could get out. (A price deserved, considering she’d killed her once.) And even now, she had no interest in dying for another. “Well, I guess that makes it simple, doesn’t it?” Her voice was shrill and ugly, directed at Siobhan only. She would be damned if she would stop trying to make her demands. “They’re both down to die for the other, so why not do them that favor?” She wasn’t quiet after she stopped speaking, another shriek of pain accompanying her words from the strain her words had put on her abdomen. She wanted this to end.

—

Siobhan wasn’t sure it made anything simple. The word ‘family’ caught in her head, stuck in a warped loop. The bloody factory floor morphed into long, soft blades of green—the fields of Ireland. Muffled cries echoed behind her ears—smothered, she knew, by biting down into the flesh of her palm, sweet blood filling her mouth. Mother hated it when she cried. She turned to Rhett and waited for the pain that would follow his broken promise—Emilio wasn’t a good man—but there was nothing but fatigue and honesty. He believed it and that was enough. She looked at Emilio, listened to his plea. He really would have given her anything, just like that. And why? Why? Siobhan’s hand trembled against Rhett’s shoulder; under her gloves, under the myriad of scars on her palm, was the half-moon carved by her small teeth and it throbbed. “I don’t understand.” Her voice dropped to an almost whisper. “I don’t understand.” And then her grip tightened all at once, and she crushed Rhett’s tired body under her fingers. “What does family matter? You knew! This is a bad man!” Her voice rushed over itself, vibrating through her. “Family isn’t above punishment!” 

The scars down her back throbbed as her body trembled. The grass and the crying withered away and instead it was her own screams, her own blood and her mother’s heel between her shoulder blades. Siobhan still remembered what the dirt tasted like the day she lost her wings: sulfur, wet clay and saliva. It was a temporary loss, she reminded herself. The same essence of family that Rhett and Emilio were on about was the one that meant her mother was waiting for her, keeping her wings safe, eager to reattach them and be with her daughter again. Yet, even as Siobhan told herself this, her face continued to twist. Her back was on fire; her mother had insisted on pulling them out like a weed, roots and all. “You knew… You knew and you let him live. You know and you come here demanding his life? This man?” She jostled him. “This putrid man?” She heard one of her own bones pop in her hand as she squeezed his shoulder. “What does it mean that he’s family? What does that mean?” How could he be saved? How could he be loved? How could he be forgiven? 

Siobhan’s watery gaze snapped to Rhett. “What does it mean? How can he want to save you? How can he give himself away to save you? You, who are not worth saving. How can he? Why? What is—what is that? I don’t—I don’t understand.” She looked at Inge, still stuck on her wall, and blinked rapidly at her, trying to ask without words. Inge was a mother, so she must understand better than these men. If Inge child’s betrayed their family, she would rip their wings out, ruin their beauty, cast them out and strip them of familial title—no longer a daughter. She would. She had to. Good mothers did that. Family would watch it happen too: grandmothers, cousins, aunts. Family was just. “I don’t understand, Inge.” 

—

He was only marginally aware of what was happening in the room after he’d stopped speaking. He could hear Emilio talking, probably refuting everything he’d said in some stupid attempt to swap their positions—they didn’t want Emilio, they wanted Rhett, for the shit he’d done to that girl. For the shit he’d done to the one pinned to the wall, still screaming her threats and pleas. But of course, just because a plan was stupid didn’t mean that would stop Emilio from trying it. He knew that much about his little brother.

That is, until the banshee’s grip on his shoulder threatened to break his collarbone and he snapped back into the moment, groaning and weakly trying to tug himself away from her as her words caught up to his addled mind. She shook him, sparking the anger that had fizzled out to little more than embers. She was demanding to know what they meant, to know how someone like Rhett could still have someone like Emilio who cared for him, in spite of everything. 

He was annoyed. He spit out the lollipop to better speak.

“Rack off,” he barked angrily, sinking lower to try and relieve the pain that was her fierce grip on him. Something snapped, and he roared the next words in response. “This ain’t a fuckin’ therapy session, you stupid bitch. It ain’t a negotiation, neither! Fuck, all’ah you, just—” His  words caught in his throat as Desmond crouched beside him, a large hunting knife protruding from his back. In his arms was little Flora, eyes vacant as the day he’d buried her. The warden stammered, gasping for breath as his fury was diluted by fear and sorrow. “Ya choose family, ya dense slag. Yer mama ain’t got no skin in the game. Fuck’s sake, let go.” Of his shoulder, of her fucked up relationship with her mother… or both. He didn’t really care. He just wanted this over.

—

The banshee was angry. Yelling (but still not screaming), tightening its grip. And it was hurting him, hurting Rhett. Emilio could see it in his brother’s eyes, in the way he came back to himself. He wished he’d stay in his head, stay out of the conversation. It would be easier to convince the banshee that Emilio was the better toy to play with if Rhett went silent. He doubted a hunter who was already broken would be nearly as much fun to pick apart as one still standing, and that was what the banshee was after here, wasn’t it? Fun. The thought of it — that his brother was a game they’d played for days now, that everything he’d gone through had been for the entertainment of the creatures in this room — made him a little sick. The thought that Wynne’s girlfriend in that van had been the victim of a similar game with Rhett as the creature entertained didn’t help.

The banshee was still talking and Rhett was yelling and Emilio couldn’t make out any of it, couldn’t pick apart the words over the rush of blood in his head. Flora was dead and here and rotting. Juliana was glaring and decaying and gone. Rhett was on the living room floor with blood all around him. The banshee had sharp teeth. The mare was shedding dust. Victor had been dead for twenty years now, and Emilio still heard him laughing.

“Stop.” He didn’t know who — what he was talking to. To Rhett, who was going to make things worse for himself in some misguided attempt to make things better for Emilio? To the banshee, whose grip was too tight? To the mare, whose voice was too shrill? To the ghosts that existed only in the confines of his own mind, or to his mind and itself and its awful method of time travel that he’d never consented to? He took a step forward, and it was a risky move. The banshee only needed to scream. But it had Rhett locked in its grip, and if it was going to kill him, Emilio thought it might as well kill him, too. If Rhett was going to die, he wasn’t going to die alone. 

Another step, and then another. His feet made a sickening squelching sound as they moved through the blood, his brother’s blood, that soaked the ground. He kept walking anyway, until he was right in front of them, until he was reaching out and grabbing the banshee’s wrist where its hand held his brother’s shoulder, until he was squeezing it to loosen that grip in any way he could. 

“It doesn’t matter why,” he said hoarsely. “It — there is no why. He’s my brother. He’s my brother, and I love him. Let him go, and I’ll do anything you want. I promise, I will. I’ll stay here with you. Or I’ll go with him, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone anymore. I’ll make whatever fucking promise you want me to make, just let him go. Please. He’s my brother. He’s the only family I have. You don’t have to understand. I don’t know how to make you understand. But that doesn’t matter. I’m — Christ, I’m fucking begging here. Anything you want, I swear. Just let him go.”

—

They were talking of family and punishment and Inge squirmed on her sword with no stakes in the game. Her parents had been distant and quiet in their love. Her siblings had been companions of silence, each of them haunted by the dead sibling most of them had never met and none of them spoke of. She must have loved them, once, when they were kids. She never really stopped loving them, maybe — but there was no liking them. No sacrifice. No grand gestures. They were not parts to hold over her, they were just abandoned limbs from a past life she didn’t think of much. They weren’t to her like Rhett was to Emilio. So she didn’t understand, either.

And the ones that mattered, the truly familial – chosen and blood – that had once existed had already been severed. She’d watched both her daughter and partner die. For Vera she would have done what Emilio was doing, but there was no comparing Rhett and her child. There was no common ground, besides perhaps the love that existed. And Inge didn’t much care for such sentiments as a sword throbbed in her belly. She didn’t much care for it because love was a wound that could not be tended to. It remained bleeding and raw much like her abdomen. 

And above all, there had been no space for heroics in the face of the disease that had taken her daughter. There had been no space for morals or punishments, no use for them. They’d made up and they’d waited it out, the spread of disease. There had been no people to plead with, unless you accosted the doctors who were already on your side. Did Emilio understand how lucky he was, that he got to at least try? That there was at least something to do? That he could drive a sword through an antagonistic body and carry his weapons and make an attempt to sway a woman who could not understand the love he wielded? He was so lucky. He was so undeserving of it. 

“I don’t care,” she retorted, mostly to Siobhan, “You don’t have to understand. It doesn’t matter. The love doesn’t matter. The punishment doesn’t matter unless you do what you gotta. Just end it. It doesn’t fucking matter, Siobhan.” 

—

“Bitch? Slag?” Siobhan shook Rhett violently, rattling his body against the rusted pipe, ringing it like a gong. “A slag? I hold your life in my hands and you’re calling me a slag? Where’s the respect? I’m twice your age!” She leaned to the side and spat out her grape lollipop, which had been mostly crushed under her hurried conversation. “A promise?” She perked up, then, self conscious about how typical of her species she was being—it was just like a fae to lunge at the first chance for promised favors—and in front of a warden, she cleared her throat. The tendrils of the Gaes, warmed up her stomach. She exhaled on the memory of Emilio’s words—I promise. He would do anything she wanted, he promised. She snapped her jaw shut, clamping down on his words. “I accept your promise.” She had claimed something more valuable than a leg and yet, where she expected and waited for glee, ice knocked through her body. 

In her head, her tearful words still cried out for answers: I don’t understand. Siobhan’s gaze fluttered between the bodies: Emilio, so certain and sacrificing in his love; Ingeborg, who understood something that she wasn’t sharing; Rhett, who had given up on himself but not once on his brother. Hollowed out, she was observing something beyond her; each of them spoke an unknowable language. Rhett said family was chosen—Siobhan didn’t understand. Emilio and Ingeborg said it didn’t matter if she understood, but their idea of what did matter was opposed—Emilio wanted Rhett free, Inge wanted them both dead. How could both opinions exist in the same space? How could someone be loved this much? To be begged for? What was love? How did it relate to being a family? What did these words mean other than nonsense? Emilio and Ingeborg were right, what did it matter to her? Why did she care? She ought to kill them; all three. 

She stared at her accomplice, still stuck on the damned wall. If she found herself missing a leg, tied to a pole, would Ingeborg beg for her life? Of course not, they were hardly friends on a good day and after this, she was certain that would have many, many bad days. And if Ingeborg happened to be stuck on a wall, what would she do? “I want promises from you both,” Siobhan said, rising from the floor to grab nearby bolt cutters—she’d been hoping to use it to chomp through Rhett’s toes. “Neither of you will personally end or help to end Ingeborg’s undead existence. You may hurt her, I don’t care, but you will not kill her; give me promises.” This was a kindness and she hoped to feel something; a sudden invitation into their secret language. With this act of what she assumed to be love, she waited for the sudden clarity of family and affection. Instead, her arms trembled holding the bolt cutter to Rhett’s ropes. “And promises not to disclose the identities of Rhett’s torturers with anyone—you will not tell anyone about Ingeborg or myself. I want this too.” 

—

All he could do was stare up at Emilio miserably as his brother made promises he shouldn’t have, but all the fight had left him with those final insults in Siobhan’s direction. He dropped his head, resigning himself to whatever was to come. 

The mare stuck to the wall was doing her best to get them both killed, and Rhett couldn't blame her. But as blind luck would have it, the banshee wasn't interested. He didn't move as she requested promises from them, feeling himself start to slip away again. And as tempting as it was to give in to the out of body experience, he couldn't bear the thought of Emilio suffering for his inability to remain in the present moment. He didn't want to promise the banshee anything, that went against everything he'd ever stood for since Mariela had used it against him, but… this wasn't about him. He knew that. It was about making sure Emilio got out of here safely, and if he had to abandon his principles to do that, he would. He always would. 

“I promise I won't kill Ingeborg,” he muttered without looking up, his voice raw. There was no emotion in it, nothing snide nor sad, just a statement of fact. “N’ I promise I won't tell no one who so generously hacked off half my bad leg for me.” Okay, there was a bit of sarcasm in that one, but it couldn't be helped. Finally, the warden angled his chin up at Siobhan again, realizing that he couldn't see her at all — she was nothing more than a silhouette against a dim background in his limited field of view.

He smirked, letting his gaze wander uselessly. He knew Emilio wouldn't have any issue promising these things; he'd already given the fucking thing a freebie, after all. Idiot. 

—

It took the promise; he figured it would. It didn’t matter, anyway. All that mattered was the man trapped in the banshee’s grip, the only family Emilio had left. Emilio kept his eyes locked on Rhett’s, expression still and icy as the banshee took the promise. He wondered, almost distantly, if Rhett was disappointed in him. If he still thought Emilio was worth it, even now, or if whatever remained of the respect he held for him vanished the moment he started to beg. 

The banshee would use the promise, he knew, but only if it allowed him to survive the experience. He thought that might still be in question, thought it was the kind of thing he ought to be worried about. He wasn’t. He didn’t care what happened to him, meant every word of his stupid pleading. If the banshee let Rhett go, he’d do whatever it asked. He’d pull his heart out of his chest and hand it over. He’d put the saw it had used to hack off his brother’s leg to his own throat. He’d do anything, anything if it meant Rhett got to leave here, if it meant he could go home. Rhett, after all, had a daughter waiting for his return. Emilio had nothing.

Another promise was asked of him, and his eyes darted over to the mare stuck to the wall. He’d almost forgotten about it there; it wasn’t a threat anymore, and it had been written off as a result. An afterthought, a concept not worth his attention. Distantly, he thought it was interesting that the banshee cared enough to request such a promise. There was no request that they not kill the banshee, after all; only that the mare’s head stay on its worthless corpse. Emilio regarded it for a moment but, in truth, he knew it didn’t matter. He said he’d give anything, and he’d meant it. This was included in that.

“I promise I won’t kill your mare,” he replied, letting his eyes move back to the banshee, “or tell anyone who did this, just as long as neither of you hurts him again.” Tacked on the end, a condition of his own. He wouldn’t make a promise only for them to track Rhett down as soon as he was gone to slit his throat. It was a fair enough trade, he thought, especially since he didn’t bother including himself in the conditional. Something like that might have threatened the other promise the banshee had taken; he doubted it would go for that. But Rhett… They’d had their fun there. Emilio wouldn’t risk the chance of them having any more.

—

“She’s not my…oh whatever.” Siobhan sighed, taking her promises from Emilio and Rhett with a forced smile. “Yes, I agree to your deal: I will not physically harm Rhett again.” She waited for Ingeborg’s voice, confirming, before she pulled the final thread of magic and bound them all together; for better or for worse, though usually, it was worse. 

The bolt cutter went through the rope, sawing and snapping at the threads; there was something to be said about her insistence on using the wrong tools for every job. Eventually, Rhett was free. Siobhan stepped back, leaned up against her table of supplies and watched them. Love was no more clear to her seeing Emilio take Rhett away. Something, however, sparked watching Rhett’s blanket drop from his shoulder and Emilio’s rough hands pull the fabric over him again. In seeing the man’s arm steadied so carefully on his brother’s shoulder; their steps done in time together, Emilio’s limp and Rhett’s tired hops. Emilio’s body angled towards them, using his body—his life—as a shield. Their soft voices—or was it just Emilios?—too quiet for her to understand. Despite the bloody floor, Rhett’s haphazardly bandaged stump and the pieces of his leg, buzzing with flies, there was a strange peace; a delicate pace. Until the edges of the factory stole the family from her view, she considered if that was love: if it was those two broken men, tethered, going on to live another day knowing they’d both be in it. If it was Rhett’s weight on Emilio, Emilio’s arms around him. If it was knowing that they both would have given their bodies—limbs, ligaments, organs—just to be certain the other would breathe for one more night. Love seemed to be violent in its sacrifices and selfish in its stubbornness. 

She didn’t understand it, but she knew they did.

Siobhan looked at Ingeborg, still on the wall. She wondered if anyone loved her—maybe they were the same, in that sense. Silently, she gripped the saw beside her, painted with Rhett’s dried blood, and approached the mare. Her strides were long and deliberate, the blade knocking against her thigh. She made it halfway across the factory floor before she dissolved into laughter. “You should look at yourself; it’s hilarious.” Siobhan bent down and picked up Rhett’s rotten foot. “This one’s for me….” And his rotted calf. “And this…” She pointed at the pile of bloody toenails. “You can have those.” Blowing Ingeborg a kiss, she was gone, not feeling much of anything: not remorse, not confusion, and certainly not love.

—  

She was puzzled by these developments, confusion washing over her face as Siobhan made the moves to keep the two hunters from killing her down the line. Inge wondered why she wasn’t throwing her own life into the promise — did she care so little for it? Or did she think herself so invincible? Though she had gotten to know Siobhan a little more intimately over the past few days, this shed another light on the banshee. She squirmed on her sword. Three promises were made and she spoke in a quieter tone as she too, agreed, “I promise not to harm him again.” It was hard to hide the defeat in her voice.

So the banshee, the harbinger of death, was letting them all go. Was keeping them from killing one another in revenge, even. What a miserable turn of events. What a worthless twist. Inge had expected this to end with a corpse to get rid of, but in stead there was the stains of blood that Rhett left as he and his brother moved away. She watched them for a moment, then looked at the blood and flesh, then at Siobhan. Her cruel ally. Her protector, in a way. But also her traitor. She’d wanted a corpse. She’d made that abundantly clear. All she had was her ripped open gut.

She watched her near closer, toying with her saw like a child holding scissors. Not rushing over to come to her rescue, to peel her off the sword. Menacing. “You —” Inge’s face grew furious. “What was – why are you not – you …” She was laughing. The high ceiling made the sounds echo, round and round and round. Was a banshee’s cackle also magical? It had to be, with how miserable it made her feel.

It dawned on her when the kiss was blown that Siobhan was not just pulling her leg and Inge inched forward, eliciting a scream of pain as she hurled words at the other, “Get me off here, you can’t just leave me here, you absolute — SIOBHAN!” The name was repeated a few more times, losing volume every time and Inge remained. Like a fly stuck on the wall, with no purpose and no accomplishments, made witness to a scene that had already ended.