Chapter Text
04:42 | August 23 - Laura
HACKETT WOODS
Werewolves, not people. Werewolves. Not people.
That was the distinction Laura had been clinging to all night.
It was a distinction that wasn’t so easy to make when the body before her was human again.
To think that this pale boy had been responsible for so many people getting hurt…
“Should we… I don’t know, bury him?” Ryan mumbled, staring pointedly at the ground near Silas instead of at him.
Travis – with his ever consistent negative levels of tact – hit Ryan with a look even more deadpan than most of the ones Laura and Max had been on the receiving end of. “Yeah. Sure. Go ahead and start digging a grave with your bare hands.”
As pissed as Laura was about everything Travis had done, it was still surprisingly easy to sympathize with him here. Burying Slias had to be pretty low on his priority list when he’d just watched nearly his entire family get ripped to shreds less than two hours ago. And by his own brother, no less.
Ryan scowled, looking like he was about to make some retort, but Travis pushed past him before he could, heading back the way they’d come.
Laura blinked, the action reminding her of her own motor control.
This was over, but it wasn’t… over.
They had places to be.
She had one place in particular to be.
Ryan just gave a ragged sigh as he followed along.
None of them said another word until they were close to the car.
The still running car. Travis had left the keys in.
His mistake.
Laura shoved ahead of him at the last second, tossing her gun into car and climbing into the driver’s seat.
“Uh, Laura?” Ryan questioned.
Travis stopped with his hands on his hips, his entire shoulder set slumping with exhaustion. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going to get Max,” she said firmly.
“I need to get Caleb,” Travis said through gritted teeth.
“And do you know where Caleb is?” Laura gestured to the forest.
“No. That’s why I need to go find him.”
“Um.” Ryan fake coughed loudly.
Travis glared at him. “What.”
“Caleb is my friend, and a few of my other friends are still missing, so… I’d like to help you look,” Ryan said. “If that’s cool.”
Surprised flickered over Travis’ face for a moment. “…Sure. That would be helpful.”
Laura drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I know where Max is. Right now. I am not waiting for you to check every ass-cracking inch of this hellhole forest before I go get him!” She could tell Travis was about to protest again, so she kept going before he could get a word in. “Look, the boathouse is closer than the lodge and the mansion. We can go get Max, and then we can all look for anyone else that’s still missing. Caleb would probably head for the lodge or the house anyway now that he’s human again, right?”
Honestly, the last thing Laura wanted was to spend more time in these woods, but her other option was driving off with probably the only working vehicle and stranding a bunch of people that potentially needed medical attention.
“…Fine,” Travis relented, stalking around to the passenger seat. He shut the door with definitely more force then he needed to once he was settled. “Where’s my other car that you stole?”
“…The lake.”
Travis sighed.
August 23 - Ryan
BOATHOUSE
To say the night had been miserable beyond all reason was the understatement of the century, and it was all finally starting to catch up with Ryan.
It hadn’t been so bad in the car.
Well, actually, it had been oppressively awkward to sit there and listen to Laura and Travis bicker, but at least that had been a distraction, and – although Ryan wouldn’t admit out loud to – downright entertainment when Laura had abandoned the road for a faster route. Ryan was pretty sure Travis was about to burst a blood vessel when Laura had insisted her deranged path into the trees was fine and she knew that because she’d taken it before when she’d dumped his other car into the lake. It didn’t escape Ryan’s notice that Travis had stolen the keys to the car back immediately once they’d stopped either.
Ryan snorted. She was definitely not getting those back.
But all that entertainment and distraction was gone now.
Laura had hopped in a boat to go get Max, leaving Ryan and Travis with nothing but the rippling of the lake to fill the silence between them while they waited in the boathouse.
Travis had wandered off to the side without a word and was staring out over the lake or something while Ryan had taken the first opportunity he’d gotten to slump into one of the many chairs around.
There was no more activity and adrenaline to distract him.
The night was catching up.
Everything ached.
Ryan’s head was still pounding from when Silas’ attack on the car had caused a lovely introduction between his temple and the window. His nose was constantly wanting to expel the putrid stench of the werewolf blood on his face. And his side was still throbbing from being stabbed since the wound hadn’t completely healed before he’d–
Ryan swallowed against the building lump in his throat.
Chris. He’d shot Chris.
All he’d wanted when he’d gone with Laura was to keep her from killing Chris – to prove her wrong.
Instead he’d watched Chris massacre three members of his family in less than thirty seconds and then shot him point blank with a shotgun.
Stay in the lodge. Keep the noise down. He’d made Ryan promise.
As twisted as everything the Hacketts had done was, Chris had just wanted to keep them safe.
Why hadn’t Ryan tried harder to keep the others at the lodge? He’d known something was wrong.
He just hadn’t realized the uncharacteristic aggression and frantic worrying about the time was because Chris was getting closer to turning into a damned horror movie monster every second the sun kept going down.
If what Laura had told them about Max’s experiences was true, Chris had probably blacked out as soon as he’d transformed. He probably spent his last conscious moments hoping they were all safe in the lodge.
And then Ryan had killed him.
Ryan blinked against the moisture trying to pool in his eyes. This wasn’t the time. Laura would be back any minute with Max, and they still had people to find.
Caleb. Emma. Jacob. Nick.
Hell, he wasn’t even positive Dylan, Kaitlyn, and Abi were okay.
Ryan really hoped they were. Enough people he cared about had already died tonight. Hopefully they’d gotten the van working and left this place in the dust. If not, then they were probably holding up in the lodge.
Movement in his peripheral drew Ryan’s attention, and he latched on to it as a way to escape his thoughts.
Now that he was really looking and the sky was starting to lighten, Ryan could see that Travis wasn’t actually looking out over the water – he’d been looking at a picture that was hanging on one of the boathouse support poles, and now he was taking that picture down to stare at it in his hands.
Ryan couldn’t see the photo from this distance, and Travis’ expression was unreadable, but Ryan couldn’t help but notice how tightly he was gripping the picture frame.
Of course, he didn’t need to see the photo now to know what it was. He’d been in the boathouse a thousand times before.
That picture was of two young boys. CHackett and THackett. Ryan had always known one of them was Chris, but he’d never given the other much thought until now.
“I’m sorry…” Ryan mumbled.
Travis glanced over at him. “What?”
“Chris.” Ryan pressed a hand to his side, the ache a dull but persistent pain at this point. “I never wanted to hurt him. I went with Laura to stop her from hurting him.”
Travis looked back at the photo. “…If you hadn’t fired, both of us would be dead on the floor in that room too. And Chris would have had to live with that.”
Ryan knew that. Logically, he’d made the right choice. He’d even told Abi that himself when she’d shot Nick.
But Chris hadn’t shrugged off his wound and run into the woods, and now the guilt was clinging to Ryan worse than the tacky blood that was still caked onto his skin.
He didn’t have a choice, he repeated to himself for the thousandth time that evening.
Not only would he and Travis be dead, but Silas would still be out there, and Laura would be stuck as a werewolf along with anyone else who’d been bitten–
Dylan.
Shit. Shit shit shit shit.
Everything else had gotten so out of hand with Kaylee and Nick and then Laura showing up and everything after that that he’d almost forgotten that Dylan had been bitten too.
If he’d turned around Kaitlyn and Abi…
No, no, no, they would have known what to expect after Nick and then Laura’s story. They would have found some way to get to safety, surely.
…Laura had given Abi a silver shell.
Maybe Kaitlyn and Abi weren’t the ones he needed to be worried about.
Ryan took a shaky breath. If he thought about this much longer with his pounding head he was gonna throw up.
They wouldn’t know anything for sure until they got back to the lodge.
He wished he could be as detached as Travis sounded right now, though he had to wonder when things would really start to hit him too…
Damn it all.
Why hadn’t they just stayed in the lodge?