Chapter Text
Thunder shook the entire library as Callum skulked around the outskirts, drenched in rainwater and shivering and upset. The whole group had been travelling together as they all had gotten a mysterious invite to a five-star resort but were forced to take cover as a massive thunderstorm blew over the rural countryside they were driving through. The only building large enough to accommodate all twenty of them was a huge library, in which they now all shivered and grumbled about the poor weather. Callum sits against a wall, pulling his knees up to his chest and sighing heavily.
“Being all sad about it isn’t going to make the weather any better, you know,” someone says from afar, and he looks up, scowl melting into something softer as he realizes it’s his fiancee, Hudson.
Hudson pulls Callum in by wrapping an arm around slumped shoulders, and the blond man has no choice but to lean into him, sighing and breathing in his earthy scent, enhanced by the rainwater that soaked them both.
“It’s always things like this that happen to me,” Callum whines, his fiancée chuckling as he presses a kiss to the crown of his head. Callum relaxes. Something about Hudson had always relaxed him even when they first met. He’d always been a nervous wreck.
“Don’t be silly. There was no way any of us could have predicted this weather. It seemed to have come out of nowhere, almost,” Hudson replies, and Callum sighs again, getting up.
“Cmon.. Storm or not, this place is old.. and pretty cool. We might find some valuable stuff in here,” Callum says with a mischievous grin. Hudson rolls his eyes.
They walk around for a while, with Callum investigating every closet and drawer he came across. He found nothing except for a box of flashlights, a rusted pistol and two cartridges of ammunition. Despite Hudson’s protests, he clips it to his belt. Worst case scenario the thing didn’t work, it looked pretty old, but who knows what kinds of people lurked around in places like these. He pokes around for a few more minutes, then suddenly lighting cracked and the whole place went dark. Dark enough that he couldn’t even see Hudson, who was less that two feet away from him. Callum immediately feels around for his lover, grabbing his hand tightly and moving him to his estimate of where the door was. He pats around until he finds a door handle, then follows the sound of frightened murmurs until there was a shriek and a loud crack of flesh hitting unforgiving tile.
Callum freezes, hand already straying to his gun. Jesus fucking christ… Did someone just die?! Hudson places a hand on his waist, and Callum could already see his lover’s concerned look even in the pitch black. The lights flicker on, and immediately everyone makes a circle around the person who had fallen. A woman in a wine red dress, face eternally contorted with terror as her neck bent at an awkward angle… wasn’t her name Sylvie? She was fairly quiet on the trip. Another woman, pale with black hair, immediately kneels to check her pulse, then shakes her head, expression solemn.
Callum feels his heart racing, and he presses himself against Hudson again, who holds him steadily. His face was neutral.
“Did she.. did she just fall? Was anyone up there?” He asks, and everyone shakes their heads. He presses his lips together as one of the men, a guarded man by the name of Seb, carries her still warm body off.
“We need to find some sort of flashlight or something,” a younger blond woman says assertively, stepping in to draw an outline of where the body was with chalk. The group mumbles their agreement, then Callum freezes.
“Hey, Hudson,” he mumbles quietly, immediately getting his fiancees attention. “Where were those flashlights?”
Hudson hums, then directs for everyone to follow them into one of the side rooms, and they passed one out to everyone with exactly one left over. Strange.
They all stay grouped together, with Callum sticking closely to Hudson’s side. He was terrified, obviously this place wasn’t safe. The sun had set right when they first got here, so it was almost midnight at this point. The lights were unstable enough, and these flashlights weren’t the greatest, flickery and weak.
Hudson seems to sense the other man’s anxiety, and he breaks them away from the group, pulling Callum into a tight hug. Callum immediately sinks into his chest, shifting slightly so that the gun on his belt didn’t dig into his hip, flinching as the lights went dark, yet again. They both click their flashlights repeatedly, panicking. Of course they didn’t work. The group had agreed to stay off of the rafters because of the dangerous fall, so maybe no one else would get hurt. Callum immediately winces as a shriek echoes off the walls, and he makes his way out in the pitch black as quickly as he can, trying his flashlight and internally thanking whatever god was watching as it was able to work again. Right on the platform, there was that dark-haired woman, clutching her neck as blood spurted out, mouth opening and closing like a beached fish as the life was drained from her. Callum can’t avert his eyes, watching with a horrified expression as she slumps over, dead. Hudson swears softly behind him.
“Th-that was Mia.. the nurse we met, remember?” He says quietly, and Callum’s face goes even paler. Not only was this intentional, but whoever had done this had explicitly targeted her because of her medical knowledge.
“ Oh my God… Oh my God,” Callum whispers back, looking over at Hudson with wide green eyes. “We are going to die here, Hudson. We’re gonna die!” He continues shakily, whole body trembling. Many other people seemed to share that sentiment, everyone was either silent or sobbing, but Hudson pulls him close again, rubbing his back.
“Don’t say that, Cal. We’re going to find whoever did this, and you have that gun, right? You’ll be the one to avenge Mia. You have to focus, you have to do this,” He whispers right into the other man’s ear, and Callum straightens up. Hudson was right. Aside from the killer, he was probably the only other person who was armed. He would be the one to exact justice on whoever did this.
“Everyone, get over here!” A loud voice rings out from the middle of the library. It was that young woman, whose name Callum couldn’t remember. She had a pink fuzzy headband and gloves though, so she was probably one of the Sorority girls.
“There are killers among us,” she starts, and Callum furrows his brows. Killers?
“What do you mean, ‘killers’, Chanel? Only Mia and Sylvie have died, and Sylvie was an accident,” someone else asks, a reddish-brown haired woman with a shrewd expression.
“Because Sylvie wasn’t an accident, Fallon,” Chanel answers confidently, waiting for the group’s excited murmurs to die down before continuing to explain her reasoning.
“I work for the police department, and this isn’t the first of these scenarios. We’ve been following this for months now, and I can tell you. There are three killers among us, and a witch from the Outpost. So far every group has died because they were clueless, like lambs to the slaughter. But I’m here to tell you now, we can figure out who they are and turn them in for justice,” she says with an air of authority, arms crossed defiantly. Callum reaches down to finger the trigger of his gun. Should he say something..?
Hudson grabs his hand, shaking his head. Of course, he might get targeted if the killers found out he was armed.
Seb picks up Mia’s body as well. Earlier he had said he’d found a set of rusty keys, he was probably taking them somewhere then locking the doors so no one could tamper with their bodies. That was good.
Chanel directs them all to a huge round table in the other room, and everyone takes a seat, chattering quietly and all looking incredibly nervous. She stands, slamming her hands down and resting her intense blue gaze on everyone seated.
“So.. with that being said, who here is a mafia?”