Chapter Text
Virgil flailed listlessly as the car rumbled and bounced over yet another pothole. At this point it wasn’t even worth tensing up anymore, especially since his driver seemed determined to hit every single crater between them and their destination. Outside, the world rushed past in streams of green and brown and blue, and though Virgil already knew exactly where they were headed, it didn’t stop him from leaning closer toward the window or breathing just a little bit deeper as they sped past a turn off for RV campers.
He had learned long ago just how important it was to know the land, by sight and by smell, and this trip was no exception. In fact, this time it was more important than ever that he found a way to escape.
This time his life could depend on it.
“Virgil?” The voice that broke into his thoughts sounded irritated and tense. Virgil knew better; he could smell the concern wafting off the women, and it took more self-control than he expected to keep from asking her to crack a window. Instead, he leaned even closer to the door, doing his best to focus on the scents outside the speeding car, rather than the cloying emotions inside. “Virgil, this is important. I need you to try and make this one work out, ok?”
They passed a MacDonald’s sign for a limited time offer of spicy Cajun chicken nuggets, and Virgil breathed as deeply as he could without drawing attention. It worked: the mingled scents of greasy, preprocessed beef and the burning aroma of peppers and spices overwhelmed the distracting stench of feelings.
His driver sighed. “Don’t you understand? You’re 17 now. There’s not that many people who are willing to foster someone that old, regardless of what the State says. And especially given your track record.”
A right turn at laundromat. Left at the Goodwill. Three traffic lights down, then brake for the pedestrians crossing the road.
“Look, once you turn 18 you age out of the system. Then you can go wherever you want. But for now, you’re still technically a ward of the State. It’s my job to find someone to take care of you until then. And it’s your job to not drive this family out of their collective minds until they send you back. Again. Do you think you can handle that?”
A right turn down Sycamore Lane. They were getting close now.
“Virgil? Are you even—why do you have your headphones on?!”
To drown out your infernal screeching. Pity it doesn’t work, the teen in question thought to himself. To the service worker, however, he gave no reply. As she continued blustering, yelling louder and louder for him to take off the headphones, he continued to ignore her, his thoughts turning to a much more demanding topic. Alright, I know where to go once I get out of here. Now I just have to figure out how to escape. If I wait until night and swipe enough junk before leaving, I could probably make it to the border by sunrise. If I ran at my limit all night. But I’d have to stick to the backroads—can’t risk some ‘good Samaritan’ seeing me and getting the cops involved. Then again, even that might not be enough. This ‘Mr. Sanders’ could probably track me down anyway—even if I screwed roads altogether and went freaking cross-country! Freaking foster care! They just had to place me with an ex-Hunter, didn’t they?! They could have put me with a nice, normal Ungifted family. Or even just a Gifted one, minus the insane, psycho, elite killer. But no. The system, in its infinite stupidity, decides to place me in the home of a retired murderer! Ugh, good thing no one actually knows I’m a Wolf. I’d hate to see what they’d do to me, then.
The sound of the engine cutting off broke through his inner monologue. Turning his attention back to his surroundings, Virgil grimaced with distaste when he noticed the manicured lawn and pristine two-story house waiting outside his window. “Well, we’re here,” his driver chirped, her voice taking on a painfully obvious timbre of false cheer. Virgil turned away from the window, staring blandly the social worker. Their gazes met for a minute, maybe a minute and a half, before she cleared her throat, purposefully molding her lips into a mild scowl. “Really, Virgil, stop staring. It’s rude.”
Virgil snorted. Rude. Right. And that jolt of nervousness he smelled when she noticed him looking at her had nothing to do with it? No, Virgil had been around humans long enough to know they hated it when he made eye contact. It unnerved them when they heard his normal, human voice and saw his normal, human body and looked in his normal, human eyes and saw a predator staring back at them. Even though they were too blind to see him for what he truly was, they had enough common sense to realize there was something dangerous about him. And that realization terrified them. It always did.
Taking pity on the social worker, Virgil obligingly slid his gaze away, smirking to himself when he heard her ‘inaudible’ sigh of relief. “Ok!” She clapped her hands once, the sound making him wince even through his crappy headphones. “Let’s go meet your new foster family!”
“Oh, is it time already? I don’t know how I’m possibly going to contain all of my excitement.”
“C’mon, Virgil, don’t be like that.” The driver got out of the car and motioned for him to do the same. He did, but his movements were more stilted, more cautious, as he turned to take in the full view of the neighborhood. There were nine houses on this side of the street, as far as he could see, anyway, and at least that many on the right side. Each one had a fresh coat of paint and sparkling windows. Each had a perfectly trimmed lawn without even a single dead leaf or molehill defiling its beauty. Some houses were two-story, some had balconies, some had trellises, and some had pools or porch swings. But all were luxurious and extravagant and far out of the normal tax-bracket for people who took fosters in just to get a government check every month. Virgil flared his nostrils, taking in every scent he could. The more information he could get, the better.
His driver, on the other hand, was not nearly as surprised or concerned about the potential affluence of the family she would leave Virgil with. Adjusting her black Katie Spade bag over shoulder, the women continued her speech without even glancing backward to see if her client had followed. “Cheer up! The Sanders’ are good people, Virgil. In fact, Mr. Sanders has already adopted three other foster kids already, so he’s very experienced at this sort of thing. Not like your last family. Of course, none of the other kids were teens when he fostered them. But I’m sure it’ll be fine! You just have to try harder this time, ok? Virgil?”
Virgil scoffed, ignoring the social worker yet again, his attention fixated on the information the earth and air were yielding to him. So many scents were mixed together, running over one another, swirling and twisting and doubling back on themselves. But some were more deeply embedded in the land than others. Carefully, Virgil picked his way around these smells, untangling them from the fainter scents, and tracing them again and again until he formed a complete picture in his mind.
There were four people who lived in this house. The strongest scent belonged to an adult male, very likely the Hunter, and carried the aroma of cinnamon and rain and metal and flowers. He would remember that one well. His life could depend on it. The next strongest scents were hopelessly entangled in a way that not even Virgil could hope to separate. There were two of them, and while they were both unique to a point—one smelled of chocolate and sugar and dust and oak, the other of ink and electricity and mothballs and old books—they also both carried slight hints of the other, as if those who had caused the scents were irrevocably connected somehow. There was also the pungent undertone of adolescence, and Virgil breathed deeper, relieved when he was able to place the scents as younger than him. Facing down a full-grown Hunter was bad enough, he didn’t need to be distracted by idiots who would’ve probably assumed that they could boss him around just because they were born into this world before he was.
The final scent was even younger than the two intertwined, and what it lacked in strength it more than made up for in frequency. It was so present in the area, so engrained into every nook, every cranny, every speck of dirt, that Virgil doubted he would ever forget the smell, even if he left right now and spent the rest of his life hiding in the sewers. That wasn’t to say it was a rancid scent, if anything it reminded the Wolf of the musty scent of ash and the fresh wind racing through the trees and the salty undercurrent of the sea. It smelled like freedom and, like all the others, it smelled like magic.
Virgil stifled a groan. A family of mages. Wonderful. It wouldn’t have been easy to hide his true nature from an Ungifted ex-Hunter; how much harder would it be to conceal himself from a Gifted one? How much more eager would a Gifted one be to turn him over to the government, instead of just killing him outright? How much smarter, more careful, more cunning would he need to be to survive?
But survive he would. He had spent eleven years in foster care. He had learned when to hide and when to hunt, when to flee and when to fight, when to adapt to fit a challenge and when to force a problem to change to fit in his world. He would survive because no one had ever taught him how to succumb. He would survive because he didn’t know how to do anything less.
“Virgil! Quit dawdling and get over here.” The social worker snapped, only just realizing that her temporary ward had paused in the middle of the yard, rather than following her up the porch steps like a polite young man.
Virgil, for once, didn’t need his nose to tell him her emotional state. The creeping blush and the way she wrung her hands as her eyes cut nervously to the unassuming doorway more than revealed her second-hand embarrassment at his behavior. The teen couldn’t help but give an amused huff as he stalked over to the porch. Humans and their social graces.
“Use the driveway!” She hissed as he cut across the picture-perfect lawn. “And for goodness sake, take off those ratty old headphones! Do you want to make a bad first impression?”
“They aren’t even plugged into anything,” Virgil sneered, holding up the end of the plug as proof.
“That doesn’t matter. It’s impolite! You promised me you’d try this time, Virgil!”
I have literally never once said that, Virgil thought caustically. But he didn’t waste his breath arguing, and he certainly made no move to take off the headphones. The driver glared at him, but when he turned to meet her eyes just a little bit more, she quickly spun back around and jabbed the doorbell, her mouth settling into a petulant frown. The two-tone chime of the bell rang out, sending Virgil’s hands flying to cover his ears, even with the headphones in play. His lips curled in pain, revealing a row of teeth that were just a little too white, a little too sharp, to be normal.
In contrast, the social worker had managed to push away her earlier discomfort and was standing calmly in the doorway, a cheerful smile painted over her face. And as the last tone faded into silence, as Virgil settled his features into something less feral and his driver carefully pushed a wayward lock of her perfectly coiffed hair back into place, a low creaking noise easily reached Virgil’s ears.
Ever so slowly, the door began to open.