Chapter Text
It started with a fire.
In late July, there was a lightning strike. Or maybe it was a negligent camper. Or possibly a runaway firework left over from 4th of July.
Regardless of cause, a spark turned into a flame, which turned into a blaze, which spread like a rash up and down the Blue Ridge Mountains. The spark lept from one patch to the next, from Woodstock down to Roanoke and back again, and left the mountains smoking for weeks.
“Think this is going to fuck with the line?” Ronan Lynch asked one stifling August day as he tended to the flower garden around the farmhouse porch.
“It’s the worst wildfire in recent history. I’m more concerned that the line caused it,” Adam Parrish replied. He sat on the porch swing with sweet tea and an old book of Irish poetry he’d found in the house; Adam was far more interested in watching Ronan weed than he was in the book, but he couldn’t very well say that aloud.
Ronan scoffed, and pulled another handful of weeds. Dirt scattered. He wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. “Why the fuck would it destroy itself?”
Adam shrugged. “It let a 17-year-old become its hands and eyes, so. Not exactly the smartest magical object.”
Cicadas whirred in the treeline. Ronan cursed and ripped a family of wild onion from the garden. A carpenter bee bumbled along the porch railing.
“Maybe it needs a refresh. You know, wants to build the soil nutrients back up,” Adam said.
Ronan grunted and yanked out another plant. “Maybe it’s trying to mess with the pipeline builders. Tell ‘em to fuck off.”
“Who knew it was such an eco-warrior. That was a flower, by the way.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“That’s a daffodil bulb.”
“How the fuck would you know?”
“Because I planted them.”
Ronan grumbled something that sounded like seven unique variations of “fuck,” scrubbed the sweat from his forehead with the hem of his muscle tank, and carefully replanted the bulb.
A breeze blew through The Barns, hot and sticky and thick with honeysuckle. Ronan hauled himself over the porch railing. He gulped down half of the tea before Adam could snatch it back with a glare and then threw himself into a wicker chair. “Think we should check on Cabeswater II?” Ronan asked.
Adam put the book on the table. “Wouldn’t hurt. Opal’ll be happy.”
“Brat,” Ronan said with a snort that meant he cared.
“Wanna go today?”
“Why the hell not. Maybe it’ll be cooler in there.”
“It’s only 80 degrees in New Haven today,” Adam said.
Ronan scoffed. “Don’t fucking remind me, you goddamn yankee. C’mon. Wanna shower? I’m gross as shit.”
He took off his tank, soaked with sweat and covered in dirt, and threw it at Adam’s head. Adam batted it away with a grimace. “Disgusting. You’re going to actually shower before I get in there, right?”
Ronan only laughed.
#####
At the end of July, the fires started. And in early August, something ate half of the cow named Hurricane.
Ronan found the carcass. And he was pissed . So he did what any self-respecting livestock farmer would do: dream up a very plump, very stupid, and very fake cow to lure the predator to him. He planted the cow in the pasture and spent all night in the hayloft watching for murderous beasts. He expected a wolf. Maybe a bobcat. Possibly Bigfoot.
It was none of those things. It was a--well, he wasn’t exactly sure what it was. But it was big, bloodthirsty, and howled like a chorus of screaming babies and angry geese.
“That’s a…very specific simile,” Adam said, scrubbing his eyes in the harsh lamplight after Ronan shook him awake at eleven PM.
“I just told you about a demon predator that’s been near our house , and your only takeaway was what the fucker sounded like?” Ronan replied.
Adam paused. “Did you just say ‘our’?”
“Don’t change the fucking subject,” Ronan snapped, but his blush was more than telling.
Ronan, being Ronan, wanted to avenge his livestock. And Adam, being Adam, got a bowl of grape juice and was ready to scry for the cow eater’s location. “Once I find it, we can go,” Adam said.
“No, once you find it, I will go,” Ronan countered.
Adam raised a brow. “Excuse me?”
“This thing is dangerous. You’ve got school. You are not putting yourself at risk, even if it’s to bring justice to poor Hurricane’s name.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I’m coming. Someone needs to track it. That someone is me. I’m not fighting about this,” Adam said. And that should have been an effective concluding argument had they not proceed to fight about it again after he scryed. And again on the way to the car. And again, and again, and again.
The ley line led them (led Adam, more specifically, “which is why I needed to come with you, so stop being such an asshole”) to Pembroke, a scraggly town deep into the heart of Virginia’s Appalachia. Adam directed Ronan down twisting back roads of dilapidated farmhouse and condemned trailer parks until they reached the end of the road: a trail in Jefferson National Forest called The Cascades.
“So it likes hiking,” Ronan muttered, pulling into the empty and very-much-off-limits-during-off-hours gravel parking lot. “Fucking great.”
“More like it can’t travel far from the ley line,” Adam replied, closing his eyes and reaching tentatively for the energy that thrummed beneath them. It wasn’t hard to feel; they were directly on top of the line, in what felt like one of the most powerful spots in Appalachia. “C’mon. It’s headed up the creek.”
“Wait wait wait,” Ronan said. “Say that again.”
“Say what again?”
“What you just said. Say it again.”
Adam didn’t need perfect hearing to catch the god-awful smirk in his voice.
“It’s headed up the creek,” he repeated, far more carefully this time.
“Bullshit. You said ‘crick’ the first time.”
“Seriously? Stop dicking around and let’s go,” Adam sighed--not without fondness--as he grabbed a maglite from the back seat.
Ronan paused at the head of the trail. “D’you smell that?”
Adam did: it was smoke.
“Did the fires reach this far down?” Ronan asked.
“No,” Adam said. “They did not.”
They trekked the well-worn trail in the earliest hours of the morning, following the rushing river deeper and deeper into the forest. Ronan stormed ahead, beating back brush that was not at all in the way with his nail-laden baseball bat (“Isn’t this thing fucking awesome? Saw it in a TV show. Dreamed one up that’s indestructible. Y’know. Just in case,” he had explained when pulling it from the trunk of the car with such incredible nonchalance that Adam had almost believed it wasn’t seriously concerning that he had this crazy weaponized bat, just, in his car for whenever .)
The air was thick as soup, as they marched along to the cacophony of crickets and cicadas. “I could have done this without you, is all I’m saying,” Ronan said, clearly unwilling to let this fight be laid to rest until Adam surrendered. As Adam Parrish would ever surrender in a fight when he knew he was right.
“Oh really? And how, exactly, did you plan on tracking this thing?”
“I had some ideas,” Ronan muttered.
“Yes, because as we all know, Ronan Lynch Certified Ideas work out so well.”
Ronan whipped around to face him. “You have no fucking idea what we’re dealing with, Parrish,” he snarled.
“Neither do you,” Adam replied evenly, without a flicker of uncertainty.
Ronan glared at him, but turned back around with a huff and started stomping his way up the trail again. “Stupid fucking psychic,” he grumbled.
“Doesn’t take a psychic to figure that out, Lynch,” Adam said. “You know we have a better chance of figuring this out if we do it together. So stop whatever this shitty bravado act is, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yeah, yeah, ‘we’re a team’ or whatever that Dick Gansey bullshit is,” Ronan growled, running up a set of inlaid stone stairs. “Stop reciting Hallmark Cards and keep up.”
They heard The Cascades’ namesake waterfall before they saw it. Ronan suddenly shoved Adam behind a rock, took his Maglite, and shut it off.
“It’s here,” he whispered, voice barely audible above the roar of the falls.
Adam looked around the rock.
It was a dog. No. It was a spider. No. It was a shadow. No. It was….
A monster. A nightmare.
“What. The fuck. Is that,” Adam whispered. Ronan elbowed him a little too hard and raised a finger to his lips.
Too many legs. Too many teeth. Eyeshine that was too bright a red to be natural. And its edges were fuzzy. Not in the way that Noah had been: oddly intangible even when solid. These edges looked like…static. Like this thing couldn’t hit the right frequency. It smelled like fire and rot.
“You sure you didn’t pull this thing from your dreams?”
“Sure as shit,” Ronan hissed. “Now shut up or it’ll hear us.”
“Does it even have ears?”
“Wanna test it, dumbass? Keep talking and we may find out.”
Adam pushed past him, crouching as he moved closer despite Ronan’s protests.
The creature was bent over the water, possibly drinking from it. Adam wasn’t sure that this thing, whatever it was, was capable of consuming anything.
The rocks along the shoreline were slippery from the constant, ice-cold spray of the waterfall. Ronan slipped with a vehement curse.
The beast’s head snapped to attention. They froze, but it was too late. It shrieked. Exactly like infant cries and screaming geese. Adam’s breath caught in his chest. He dropped the Maglite.
“Told you!” Ronan shouted, and readied his bat.
The beast charged.
Adam ran.
Ronan swung.
The bat collided with its side, and the creature–whose shape was no more defined up close–let out a cry that hurt even Adam’s deaf ear. It fell backwards, claws scraping against the stone.
Adam ducked behind a rock. If this thing was like other creatures they’d dealt with, it wouldn’t like light very much. The Maglite. If he could get to it….
Ronan landed another hit. Adam scrambled for the light. His converse had no traction. His feet slipped from beneath him. Pain shot through his arm as he landed, hard, on the rocks. And he kept sliding. He turned the light on with one hand, and clawed for a grip in the slimy rocks with the other. He found none. He flung the light up the rocks. The creature shrieked.
And then he fell.
Rushing water, black as ink; ice cold like a punch to the gut, so much colder than it should be in August. Something touched his arm, his leg, his cheek. Slimy and thick, like vines. Water deafened his right ear, whispers flooded his left. Hissing and biting in a language he didn’t know but could still understand.
A door. A door. It comes, it comes.
He flailed desperately for an edge, a crack, something, anything. His fingers found purchase. He hauled himself out of the current with a gasp.
“Adam, Jesus,” Ronan cried, pulling Adam further onto the rocks.
“The thing–” Adam coughed.
Ronan turned. The creature was scrambling up the rocks face, blood black as ink oozing down the wall in its wake. It crested over the edge and, with a howl like nails on a chalkboard, scurried into the forest above.
Ronan cursed and ran to follow.
Adam shivered on the shore, soaked to the bone.
It comes. A door. It comes.
Whispers in his ears, vines curling against his skin...he shivered and wrapped his arms around his core. That was how Cabeswater had spoken to him.
But this had not been Cabeswater. This was something else. Something far less friendly. And Adam did not want to find out what.