Work Text:
Donna always had more than a few irons in the fire when it came to work. According to the conversations she had with Jody, it was the same for her. Just part and parcel of working as a Sheriff based in a small town. Along with the regular cases, she’d started keeping on eye on things in the surrounding area that hit her weird-o-meter. There had been multiple cars abandoned on a specific stretch of highway recently, found in the morning with gas still in the tank and no sign of mechanical issues. Some of those cars still had purses or wallets in them, with cell phones and identification included, and all but one of them had at least a registration or insurance card inside upon a quick search. Donna didn’t have the authority to declare any of these people missing, so she’d had them listed as persons of interest and started taking a closer look at the surrounding area.
There were a handful of abandoned farms scattered between ones that were still operational, and Donna had just decided to do a few wellness checks for the operational ones when a man showed up at her station.
She clocked him as a potential hunter before he could pull out any kind of identification, but in the interest of caution just greeted him with a friendly smile. “Sheriff Hanscum, how can I help you?”
The man smiled, polite and professional and eerily like a combination of both Sam and Dean Winchester. The eyepatch over his left eye seemed like a liability in the hunting world, but Donna could admit that it leant him a rakish charm. Clean shaven, dressed in a fairly basic suit, and with a little grey in his hair that looked premature to his age, the guy ticked off a lot of different boxes both professionally and personally. “Nice to meet you, Sheriff, I’m Alexander Harris with the IWC, and I’m here looking for one of our employees that went silent last week on a trip through here.”
“Let me guess, out on State Route 95? Yeah, we’ve had a bunch of cars turn up abandoned over there. Do you know what they were driving? I can look through our list and see if it’s on there.”
“Black 2013 Ford Explorer, Ohio plates,” Harris said before digging for his phone and pulling up something. He rattled off a plate number before turning his phone around and showing her a picture of a serious-looking African-American man. “Being driven by Robin Woods, and believe me that man does not tend to go off-grid.”
Donna pulled up the list and scanned it. “Okey-dokey, that car was found on September 8th, no identification or registration in the car.”
Harris grimaced slightly. “I hate to ask, but was there any sign of struggle.”
“No signs of struggle in any of the cars, and no bodies so far,” she said sympathetically. Her gut instinct was vampires, luring people out of cars somehow and taking them back to whatever hole they’d dug out on one of the farms.
“Can you show me where on the map his car was found?”
Donna studied Harris for a moment before making up her mind. “Let’s grab some coffee and I’ll do a little better than that.”
Her truck was kitted out full hunter and had been for a while, but she had more than a few essentials in her shop and once they were there and away from prying eyes, she laid it out for the man. “We’ve had fourteen cars show up on this road over the last twenty days, no idea on how many people are missing. In this area, with no sign of bodies showing up, my money’s on vampires. Guessing you know something about that.”
The man barked out a startled laugh. “Competent cops in the know, huh? That’s a first for me.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” she said frankly. “There’s a few of us around, and we talk. Vampires and ghosts are usually the problem we see the most of around here, since the local werewolves usually keep to themselves.”
“The IWC mostly deals with vampires and demons,” he finally said. “I grew up in a town that was lousy with both, and the cops there were completely useless.”
“We’ll trade stories once we’ve settled this thing. I can call around, see about pulling in some backup.”
He shrugged. “Probably a good idea. Any idea where the vamps are holing up?”
“There’re a few farms along the road. We can start there and see where it takes us.” Donna grinned. “And hopefully we can start planning on how to behead some vampires. The best way to start the day, if you ask me.”