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The wind was howling and the moon was bright as Elsa sprinted through the forest. Dead branches whipped by her, the tiny trees barren in the late winter. Her feet pounded against the earth, rhythmically, right and then left, right and then left, footfalls careful and quick. She had to keep enough presence of mind not to put a foot down incorrectly, to twist an ankle and tumble to her doom, and she had to keep enough presence of mind to pay attention to where she was heading, to watch out for the larger branches and tree trunks hidden by the darkness.
A cold winter midnight, frost coating the dead leaves on the forest floor, wasn’t exactly the best time for a sprint through the woods, but Elsa was as prepared for it as she could have been. She had the bloodstone around her neck, a dagger strapped to her waist, athletic footwear to deal with the impacts jolting up her legs with each step, and just the right balance of winter-wear and hunting outfits that she wouldn’t grow too cold or work up enough of a sweat that she was too hot.
The stars were beautiful, though, the moon almost full, the night cloudless. She could see her panting breath as she ran and she was almost tempted to laugh at the thrill of it all, to take joy in the hunt, in the danger, in the adrenaline. Except things had gone off the rails rather quickly, as soon as she’d realized she was facing three foes instead of one, and that they were all perfectly human, and the bloodstone was completely useless.
Elsa had few qualms about killing humans. She’d done it before, she’d do it again. Mostly in self-defense, occasionally against the sort of jackass who thought serial killers were cool, or was one himself. But she’d come in expecting a monster and she’d packed accordingly. One man was dead already, body cooling five hundred feet behind her as his blood spilled out into the dirt. The second she’d gotten with a good cut through the thigh right before he’d sliced across her right bicep. She couldn’t say for certain she’d gotten the artery, quickly as she’d been moving, but if he wasn’t dead already then he certainly wasn’t up for a chase through the forest.
The third man was a hundred feet behind her, shotgun in hand. Elsa planted her right foot down, pushed off, and zagged to the left, ducking behind a large tree. Just in time too, the sound of a shotgun blast rippling out from behind her and overtaking the quiet of the wood and the crunch of the frost-ridden leaves and twigs under her feet. Something small hit her back. Damn. Buckshot. She’d been hoping against that. It wasn’t as instantly deadly, but it had a wider area of attack.
“Nowhere to go, bitch!”
The shout carried too, in the cold air. Elsa let out a curse under her breath – not at the insult, but because he might be right. She didn’t know these woods, didn’t know this area. It looked like the forest was clearing up ahead, four hundred more feet, three-hundred-eighty now, but what was on the other side she didn’t know. She ran anyway. The forest was too young, the tree trunks too thin and barren, for her to have had any hope of hiding here and losing her pursuer. She needed to be somewhere else, or she needed to put enough distance between them to make the shotgun moot.
Three hundred feet now, and Elsa couldn’t see much else besides emptiness on the other side of the trees. She zigged to the right and kept sprinting.
Two hundred feet.
One fifty.
Was that a clearing just beyond the trees? It certainly wasn’t a city. She zagged to the left again. Ten seconds later, there was another shot, and she ducked her head and kept running. A hundred feet left, and her heart started to sink in her chest. It wasn’t a clearing, just a thinning of the trees before the land dropped off into nothingness. The moon hung low and bright just over the cliff.
Shit. Fuck. He was right. Nowhere to go. She zigged to the right again, and shifted her run to be more of an angle. At the very least, she needed to get a little closer before she wrote off the cliff as an option, needed to follow along the edge for a bit to examine the terrain. Maybe it wasn’t that far of a drop. Maybe it wasn’t that sheer. If it wasn’t an option, she’d dive back into the woods, at least keep the cover of the trees.
Fifty feet now, with the edge of the land stopping maybe about another hundred feet past the last of the trees. They were skinnier and more spaced out already, providing little cover. Except… there was movement up ahead, a figure silhouetted in the night. It couldn’t be the other man, the one she’d left behind with a leg injury, but now that she was thinking about it, if she was remembering the news correctly, these cliffs were where all the dead bodies had been found. (Shit, she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten that; she’d been so focused on finding the lair she’d disregarded the dumping ground.) Another hunter, then, maybe? Someone else investigating the deaths?
There was no time to wonder if the new person was friend or foe, as quickly as she was approaching them. But if they weren’t foe – and surely they’d have spotted her by now if they were – then there was a high probability they were about to get shot, too, just for being around.
Elsa searched her mind for something short and to the point she could shout out to save her breath. “Clear out!” she settled on, figuring maybe the shock of seeing her sprinting toward them would do more than the words.
The figure turned toward her, silhouetted by the moon and the emptiness behind them. “Elsa?”
Holy shit. Holy shit. Elsa knew that voice. It’d been months, and she’d only known the man for all of a few hours, but she knew that voice. “Jack?” she returned, equally as confused and bewildered. She slowed, almost unconsciously.
Now that she was close enough to him, she could see his beaming grin. “Elsa!” he said, clearly delighted.
Holy shit. Jack Russell, werewolf, and here she was letting herself be chased by a regular old human. She was ten feet from him now, barely jogging, and his grin was fading quickly.
“What…” he trailed off, eyes locked on something behind her before they widened quickly. His whites shown in the darkness, and he dove for her without warning.
Elsa braced herself for the hit, reminded herself that she trusted Jack, then relaxed enough to take the fall together. His reaction had been just in time, a shotgun blast echoing over the cliffs above them.
The two of them rolled for a minute, Jack’s arms around hers, before coming to a stop. Jack had had enough presence of mind to roll them away from the cliff edge, and the reflexes to release her quickly as they settled. He was on her right, closer to the cliffs, stomach to the dirt. Elsa had ended on her back, staring up at the night sky, and she stayed there, catching her breath and keeping low.
“Hunter?” Jack asked, breathless, quiet and sure. He was already pushing himself up with his hands, but keeping himself low to make a smaller target, and his breath was warm on her ear as he spoke.
Elsa fought back the urge to shiver. “Serial killer,” she returned, quick and brief, even more winded than him after her sprint.
To her surprise, Jack let out a low growl. It wasn’t too wolf-like, conceivably, a human could have made the same noise in frustration or anger, but it was enough of a slip – and a reminder – that it startled her enough to flinch.
Jack, because he was right next to her on the ground, noticed. His expression turned regretful for a second as he met her gaze, then evened out again as he looked back up. There were footsteps near them now, the crunch of solid boots against the frosted ground, now more gravel and rocks than dead leaves and twigs.
Sucking in a breath, Elsa rolled to the left to put her chest to the ground and push herself upward, already looking for the last man, but Jack was quicker than her. He sprang to his feet even as she caught sight of the serial killer and sprinted for him, faster than the man was expecting. He hadn’t expected there to be two of them and Jack was quick to go for the gun, grappling for it. Elsa didn’t waste any more time. She pulled herself to her feet too, going for her knife.
The two men were scrabbling now though, Jack unable to pry the shotgun from the man’s hands but having effectively removed it as a weapon from the playing field. He had strength on his side, but not, Elsa realized as she watched, technique. She should have known that; he hadn’t done much fighting in her father’s maze. Not as himself, anyway.
She rushed forward, circling around to get the man in the back instead of risking hitting Jack, but Jack didn’t know what he was doing. Not really. He looked up at the sight of her behind the two of them, eyes lighting up with surprise and muted delight, and his foe got the upper hand. Just for a moment, just for a second, and in any other situation it wouldn’t have mattered, wouldn’t have been enough, except…
Except they were near the cliff’s edge. Except all it took was one good push, one good shove, and now Jack’s feet were scrabbling for purchase as the rocks started to give way beneath him. Elsa dropped the knife and lunged for him, but the other man was in the way. She grabbed onto him instead, because Jack still had a good grip on the shotgun, and for a moment the three of them hung in the night air, suspended like that, connected together.
Elsa saw the killer’s next move coming clear as the night sky, saw the creeping realization cross his face. Jack was barely stable, feet teetering on the edge. All it would take was one small push, and all that was holding him up was his grip on the shotgun.
The next few seconds happened in slow motion. The killer pushed, letting go of his grip on his own gun. Jack started to flail, started to slip. His eyes met Elsa’s over the man’s shoulder, wide and startled. Elsa let go of the killer, trying to lunge over him and get to Jack. Jack’s eyes hardened into determination. He dropped the gun too, reached up with one hand, but it wasn’t a hand Elsa could reach, and it was clear in an instant that he wasn’t trying to reach Elsa in turn. Instead his fingers twisted into the killer’s shirt and then he was gone – they both were, Jack’s momentum more than enough to bring the killer down with him.
A shout escaped Elsa’s throat without her permission. Her own forward momentum turned into a desperate fall to her knees, reaching out over the cliff’s edge even though she knew it was already too late. There was a river beneath the cliff, she remembered, but the fall was too high, and Jack had been disoriented already. He wasn’t, he couldn’t have –
No one could have survived that. She knew it. He’d known it, known he only would have pulled her down with him, and he’d chosen to save her life instead.
Fuck.
“Fuck,” she said, soft and obscene. Her gut roiled. Fuck. Jack was dead. She’d barely even known the man – why was her throat tight already, her hands clammy? Why did this failure hit so much harder than anything else? Her eyes were already stinging, water pooling in the corners. She sniffed, drew in a deep breath, then wiped her sleeve roughly over both eyes.
Right. Well then. Jack was dead. Tough luck; nothing she could do about it. She could mourn later, maybe get down there and look for the body. Right now, there was a possibility that one of these fuckers was still alive. The least she could do was take that possibility out of the equation too. Pulling herself to her feet, Elsa picked her knife up off the ground and set out back the way she’d come. She had a mission objective to complete.
Five hours later, the morning sun was starting to peak over the horizon, washing out the darkness of the night sky into a gentler, softer blue. It did nothing to improve Elsa’s mood. She climbed over another rock, ignoring the way the hard stone scraped at her hands, and scanned another section of the coastline. Nothing.
What was she even going to do with Jack’s body, if she found it? Give him a proper burial, she supposed. There were hunters who’d be happy to get there hands on a werewolf’s corpse, human form or not. Least she could do was not let that happen.
Fuck. Her eyes were starting to tear up again. She wiped at them with her sleeve, climbed down the other side of the boulder, and kept walking down the riverbank. Why hadn’t she thought to pack a flask? She could do with a different sort of burn in her throat right now.
She didn’t even know what Jack had been doing here, if finding the trio of killers had even been his original objective. Was he still travelling with Ted? Would she have to track the other monster down and tell him his friend had been brave and stupid and gotten himself killed? Were they even that close of friends, or had the night she’d met them been a one-time arrangement, a colliding of paths that rarely crossed?
Elsa stepped around another large boulder, then skirted just over top of the thin layer of water lapping at the shore of the river to pass by another. Still nothing. Of course she wasn’t going to find anything. Why would she? Why did she care? Why –
There was a shape on the shoreline, just up ahead. Elsa sprinted for it, mindful of the rocky shoreline. She didn’t care that she knew no one could have survived the fall. She didn’t care that she knew she was moving for a dead body. If that was Jack…
She fell to her knees on the hard rocks, barely noting the impact. It was only one body, and it was on the wrong side of the river for this to have been Jack’s impact sight. Because it was Jack, face down and eyes closed. There was blood on his forehead. Elsa resisted the urge to wipe it away, hands falling into her lap as she sat back on her knees.
What now? What had been her plan, what had she been hoping for? The cliff above her was a hundred feet up. Jack was… groaning – Jack was groaning, eyes fluttering open!
“Elsa?” he mumbled into the ground, far more aware than she expected for someone who should have been dead!
“Jack!” Elsa dove for him again, carefully but quickly rolling him onto his back. “You’re alive?!”
He groaned again as she moved him, then cracked one eye open, searching out her gaze. “You surprised?” he asked with the faintest of grins.
Elsa wasn’t in the mood for his humor, but she held herself back from smacking his shoulder. “That fall should have killed you!”
“’m tough to kill,” he said, blinking and opening both eyes now. “Plus, had a cushion.”
The third killer. He must have held on tight to him, and flipped them around so the other man had taken the brunt of the impact. Clever, clever Jack. Her experience of him had been colored by how helpless he’d seemed in the maze that she’d forgotten that he’d managed to get into the maze in the first place, without any of them the wiser. She never had discovered how he’d gotten that medallion.
“Are you alright?”
Stupid question, she knew he wasn’t, but he knew what she was asking.
“Eh,” he said, arms finally starting to move. “Help me up.”
Elsa wasn’t sure he should be moving, but she also didn’t really know him and questioning his decision felt a little too personal. She put a hand behind his shoulder and helped him up to a seated position. He grimaced the whole time but didn’t let out any shouts of pain or anything and, other than the blood on his face, she couldn’t see any visible injuries. Then he shivered, and she cursed herself internally, fear slipping back into her gut.
“You need to get out of those clothes,” she said quickly, while he was still getting his bearings.
“’s wool,” he replied.
“What?”
“Wool,” he said. “Keeps you warm, even wet.”
Right. She knew that. She’d taken plenty of survival courses over the years, some at her father’s behest and others on her own. Jack was, right now, literally a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That probably helped him some too.
“Still,” she countered. “I moved my car down here. Can you walk? Any broken bones?”
He looked up at her, as if seeing her for the first time, with a small frown on his face. “I’m alright,” he said, clearer than anything he’s said so far. “I’ll be alright.”
Did… did he think she was just going to walk away? “No you’re not,” she said. “And I don’t imagine you have a car anywhere nearby.”
Jack stared for a moment, just long enough that Elsa started to wonder if she was pressing too hard. Maybe he still didn’t trust her, or at least, not enough to trust her with this. Then, he nodded. “Don’t think anything’s broken,” he said. “But, help me up?”
Elsa got to her feet, offering him a hand. “Thanks,” she said, a little quick and embarrassed as she stood.
That got him to grin at her again, tired and weary, but genuine. “I should say the same.”
He had a point there. Elsa smiled back at him, finally feeling the exhaustion of having been up for nearly twenty-four hours now, killing two men and running for her life mixed in there as well.
“Let’s just call it even,” she said.
Jack took her hand, letting her do most of the work in pulling him to his feet. “I can live with that,” he agreed.
That was, Elsa thought, rather sort of the point, wasn’t it?