They're Burning All of the Witches (Even if You aren't One)

by Storybelle

Summary:

The world is full of witches. But Billy Hargrove never cared until he matched with Steve Harrington on a dating app. The Hargroves don’t actively hunt anymore but Neil won’t take too kindly to his only son dating a male witch. They just need another year and then they’re out, away from this town and Neil’s grasp.

But then the bodies start dropping one warm night in September. Rot creeps in, the wells are poisoned, and Neil is convinced the witches are at fault. Something evil is at work in Hawkins and it’s a hard call whether it’s the ancient monster trying to break free or the witch hunt that threatens Steve’s life.

Now with art by Cronesfeetpics!

 

2023 Harringrove Big Bang Fic

Chapter 1: Prologue

Billy Hargrove was born with a witch-hunter’s mark on his wrist.

To Steve, this should have meant nothing. In any other world, he was a boy who swiped right on someone cute and the strange birthmark on Billy’s skin would have stayed just that.

When the door to the diner opens, Steve automatically jerks his head up. His date is late and he’s just starting to think that he’s been catfished or stood up and that maybe Tinder was the dumbest idea he’s ever had. No guy is that hot or has eyes that blue in real life.

But the guy in the door isn’t his date, just some guy in a baseball cap who waves at the waitress and takes a seat in a booth. Steve slumps back in his chair. He’ll wait ten more minutes, then he’ll go. He’ll grab a burger to take with him, because even disappointment isn’t enough to keep him from wanting one of Benny’s, and then he’ll go home and probably jerk off to the catfish guy’s long lashes and crooked grin.

“Alright, Steve?” Betty asks curiously, hovering by his table with her coffee pot. He smiles up at her and shrugs. She fills his mug anyway.

“You look like you could use it,” she advises. “Get stood up?”

“Yeah,” Steve mutters, and rips open a packet of sugar. “Dating apps.” She makes a pained face.

“The worst,” Betty agrees, and the fact that Betty has any knowledge of dating apps both amuses and disturbs him. Betty wears her graying ash blonde hair in a knot low at the base of her neck in a style that was probably popular back when she was a teenager. She has three grandkids and a penknife attached to her car keys.

“Cheer up,” she continues, as Steve swirls his spoon in his coffee. “Cute thing like you? I hear you have no shortage of dates.”

Steve stares at the churning black liquid. He doesn’t know why this one felt different. His mom would say that it’s part of the magic, how it can lead you to things that feel right. That years of feeling magic in their bones and being wary of who to trust has given them great instincts.

Steve thinks it’s all crap and that maybe he was just attached to this guy’s biceps.

“Plenty more fish in the sea,” he quips and gives her a weak smile. “Hey, if I'm still here in ten minutes, will you order me the usual?” She shakes her head and turns away to the couple at the next table over.

When the door jangles again, Steve doesn’t look up right away. He’s already half resigned to binge-eating Benny’s spectacular cheeseburgers and flicking lazily through Tinder. He half considers sending Billy a message - if that’s even his real name - but he knows that just seems kind of desperate.

The smell that wafts across his nose is a far cry from the grease and bitter cherry smells he’s used to at the diner. This is something soft and smoky, someone wearing a cheap brand of cologne. So when he lifts his gaze up, he’s not entirely shocked to find blue-eyed guy standing by his table.

“Hi,” Billy says nervously. He reaches out to rest his fingers gently on the table top, like he’s asking for permission. He’s even more gorgeous in real life: crystal cut blue eyes, dirty blonde curls grazing his leather jacket, and an ass you could bounce coins off of tucked into a tight pair of jeans.

Steve stares. Billy seems to notice this and flushes.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says and shifts his weight from foot to foot. “I couldn’t get my car started and I…” Steve finds his voice because he’s pretty certain that he’ll regret it if Billy walks out of that door. One hour, one night, it doesn’t matter how long it lasts but Steve has a burning desire to taste that mouth just once.

“No problem,” he says and uses his foot to kick out the chair opposite. Billy drops into it, without taking off his leather jacket.

Billy clears his throat and looks around the diner curiously, taking in the display cases on the counter, the burn mark above the kitchen door. To this day, Benny won’t tell Steve how it got there.

“Have you not been here before?” Steve asks and sips his coffee. His mouth is suddenly bone dry. Pictures don’t do this guy justice.

“No,” Billy says, watching a waitress collect plates from the serving hatch. “I haven’t lived here all that long. Transferred my last year of high school.”

“To here?” Steve asks skeptically, because no one willingly moves to Hawkins. The town is full of people trying to escape, unaware that small towns like this have quicksand roots. You’re born here, you die here. Steve’s classmates had talked about college and going to Nashville and New York. But Tammy Thompson slunk home after a year, totally broke, Beth Reagan got knocked up before her freshman orientation and Adam Harris took a job in his dad’s garage like the old man had always wanted.

Getting out wasn’t done but neither was moving here.

“My dad just…it was some family stuff,” Billy says quietly and his tone is enough to slam all sorts of doors in Steve’s face.

“That sucks, man,” Steve says and catches Betty peering curiously at them from behind the counter. He gestures her over, hoping that if she gets her leering out of the way she might leave them alone.

“What can I get you boys?” Betty says, appearing like magic by their table. Her eyes flick over Billy, even though her mouth is pursed with disapproval at his lack of punctuality. “This your date, Steve?”

“Yeah,” Steve replies, a little flustered for reasons he can’t explain. This is Betty, who’s seen more of his faults and indiscretions than his own mother. “This is Billy. Billy, Betty. Don’t listen to anything she says.”

“Why’s that?” Billy asks, his eyes lighting up with interest. Betty cackles, the sound as familiar as the hiss of the fryer.

“I can tell you stories,” she promises him, leaning over like a co-conspirator. “Steve’s been coming here since he was knee-high. I’ve seen dates with girls, dates with boys, post drunken nights out…”

“Oh?” Billy says, giving Steve that little half grin that makes him stomach dip.

“Please stop,” Steve protests, even though he’s got more chance of the local police turning down a box of free doughnuts. Betty just winks at Billy.

“If you’re nice to our boy here, I can tell you all the stories you want,” she says, digging out her pad and pencil from her apron pocket. “And if you’re not, I can deep-fry some body parts. Burger, Steve?”

“Thanks, Betty,” Steve says and really hopes that she won’t have to deep fry anything of Billy’s. Judging by the soft way he’s looking at Steve, maybe this one will be the real deal.

Chapter 2: Local Legends

The sound of the beer bottle exploding in the fire is the only thing that can make Steve look up.

“What was that?” Steve asks blearily, and Billy knows that he’s drunk and a little high. His hair is curling slightly in the warmth of the night, and there’s a leaf stuck just behind his ear. His mouth is red and raw, matched only by the flush to his cheeks. Billy hums and rests a finger on Steve’s cheek, gently turning his attention back to Billy.

“Nothing,” Billy says, already wanting Steve’s mouth again. He loves this, this strange haze where there’s nothing but Steve and ash floating on the wind. “Nothing important.”

“We’ll get in so much trouble if we burn the woods down,” Steve says, blinking at the flickering flames. There’s this one clearing in the woods behind Steve’s house that has been used as a party location ever since Steve was in high school. It’s spacious and flat, and years back Steve, Tommy, and some others spent a whole afternoon finding large gray stones to sketch out a fire pit. By now the large circle of stones is almost embedded into the ground and people usually add new ones every time there’s another party. Tonight, after their group had piled out of Benny’s it had seemed natural to duck into the woods, following the path along to the clearing. They’d built a fire, even though it’s warm for September, and for a while the flames at the center of the clearing were almost driving everyone to match its fierce flickering intensity. But now the fire has dimmed into something softer, and so have its disciples. People lie in heaps, letting the music wash over them, lazily draining what’s left of the alcohol.

“Don’t burn the woods down, Steve,” Carol says lazily, lounging against Tommy’s arm. Billy’s pretty sure she’s been watching them make out for the last ten minutes. There’s still a heated gleam in her eye and Billy doesn’t blame her. He knows what they look like.

“We’ll make sure that it’s out,” Chrissy pipes up. She has Jason’s jacket around her shoulders but she’s alone. Billy likes Chrissy, even though he doesn’t know her all that well, and he blames her dick of a boyfriend for that. Jason seems to think that his girlfriend shouldn’t be allowed near any men he hasn’t deemed appropriate which kind of makes Billy laugh. Billy’s the last person that’s going to be a threat to his girlfriend.

“Unless some asshole keeps chucking bottles into the damn thing,” Tommy notes, taking a swig from the beer that he’s holding with his other hand.

“That’s your dickhead boyfriend, I think, Chris,” Carol says, not without glee, and Chrissy winces.

“Jason sucks,” Steve whispers and Billy stifles a laugh. He thinks Jason and Chrissy aren’t long meant for this world - it’s a high school relationship that’s already outstayed its welcome. When Chrissy realizes how incredible she is, she’ll move on from Jason without looking back. She’s meant for better things. Jason hasn’t realised yet that his best years are already behind him.

“Yeah, he does,” he says pleasurably and pulls Steve back towards him. They can’t get away with this normally but their group tonight is small and no one is going to notice yet another entwined pair of bodies hidden in the shadows. He kisses Steve again, just because he can, sliding his hand into the waves at Steve’s nape.

“Steve,” Billy whispers, and the clouds move just in time to have Steve’s eyes flash gold in the full light of the moon. Billy swallows, hard.

“Watch the moon, sweetheart,” Billy says, checking over his shoulder to see if anyone has noticed. There’s enough cloud cover that it’s not a huge risk but only Carol and Tommy here know about Steve’s magic. The last thing Billy wants is a rumor getting out about Steve, the tell-tale glow of magic. But Steve just smirks and rubs a thumb against Billy’s jaw.

“Mind yourself,” he says in a low voice, reminding Billy that they both need to be watchful of the moon. But Billy doesn’t miss the way his eyes drop, the rapid beat of his pulse against Billy’s fingers. Steve gets off on the way Billy’s eyes reflect the moon - Steve had gotten really drunk one night and let it slip. Billy gets it. He can’t not when the gold turns Steve into something beautiful and otherworldly. It makes Steve all the more gorgeous. The flickers of light against the dark brown, the puffy curve of his well kissed bottom lip, the firelight dancing against his jaw.

But the indigo glow in his own signifies what flows in Billy’s blood. The ability to smell magic, the calling to hunt witches. Someone who should be dangerous to Steve.

The Hargroves haven’t hunted witches for decades. The last Hargrove to do so was his great-uncle, back in his youth, convinced that their bloodline meant something, that it was their duty to continue purging the world of witches.

But when Billy looks into Steve’s eyes, he can’t ever imagine hurting Steve.

He doesn’t encounter many witches. They hide themselves pretty well, some of them still taking precautions to hide their scents from witch-hunters. If he’d have to guess, the Harringtons don’t bother in a small town like Hawkins. He’d thought it was unusual at first, the big fish in a small pond, but it made sense. Less likely to have witches or hunters in a rural town, easier to hide away. Billy got a few faint whiffs of magic from time to time - in the hallways at the high school, just drifting past him at a party, in a crowd at the mall.

But one foot in the door at the diner and Billy knew. There were witches in Hawkins and he’d been smitten by that dark cascade of hair, the bright doe eyes, at first glance.

He’d sat in the Camaro, fingers on the steering wheel. He could see Steve inside, sitting at a table, anxiously checking the clock. Eventually he’d get bored and leave, and Billy’s chance would be gone.

Billy felt sick at the idea of Neil ever finding out that Billy was involved with a witch. He felt even sicker at the idea of not meeting Steve.

So he’d gone in, constantly tugging his sleeve down over the dark red mark on his wrist. He’d thought briefly that maybe the date wouldn’t work out, that they’d part ways and this would all be resolved so easily.

But Steve had eyes like molten chocolate. He had a wicked grin and long fingers and he flirted indiscriminately with every waitress at Benny's. He dressed like some guy at the country club because that was what his mom bought him and had hair that fell into his eyes in just the right way. He was funny and sarcastic and had a bottom lip that Billy couldn’t stop staring at.

He was the worst mistake a guy like Billy could make and Billy was totally gone on him by the time they left Benny’s.

There’s a sharp burst of laughter across the clearing and Billy instinctively curls his arm tighter around Steve. But it’s just Tammy and Eric, spinning around the fire. Tammy’s hair swings out behind her as Eric lifts her clean off her feet.

“They shouldn’t fuck around like that so close to the fire,” Heather says, her silhouette briefly blocking the light. She drops down to the ground near Chrissy, a half-full bottle in her fingers.

“They’re fine,” Carol says, rolling her head against Tommy’s neck. Heather skeptically eyes the twirling pair but leaves it.

Maybe it’s just that he’s spent so much time around Steve. Maybe it’s that it’s so rare in Hawkins. But the smell of magic wraps itself around Billy, unfamiliar and unwanted.

Billy presses his face into Steve’s hair, trying to not let it show. He knows Heather pretty well - they both worked at the pool their senior year - but she likely has no idea he’s a witch hunter. Unless she catches sight of his eyes under the moon, she has no way to know, and Billy always thought that the system was a little bit unfair. That witches can be so easily found and had it not been for a slip of Billy’s sleeve on their third date, Steve might never have known.

“Alright, Billy?” Heather asks and offers him the bottle. Billy hesitates and takes it.

“Yeah,” he says briefly and takes a few sips so he doesn’t have to talk.

“Don’t you have work tomorrow?” Carol asks, holding out a hand and Billy passes it over.

“Not until the afternoon,” Billy says, even though he’s going to feel like shit tomorrow. He should have gone home after Benny’s, instead of following the path out to the woods but the lure of an open flame and the dark trees had been too much. He’s young and sometimes he wants to remember that, instead of being lost in a world of shifts and bills. Turning up hungover when you work at a police station might be the stupidest thing he’s ever done though.

“Rather you than me,” Tommy says, with a raised eyebrow. But Billy just shrugs and tugs Steve even closer.

---

They kiss and kiss until Steve is so hard that it hurts, and he half thinks that he wouldn’t care if he and Billy fucked in front of everyone here. And there’s something in Billy’s eyes, that wild glint, that says he wouldn’t mind either.

Billy’s fingers have climbed under Steve’s shirt, a cool balm against Steve’s hot skin. They stroke down his back, skitter across his ribs and slide against the waistband of his jeans and it’s just all so Billy that Steve wants to laugh. Always a bit restless, a bit greedy, and when he does stifle a snort against Billy’s lips, his hand tweaks Steve’s nipple in response.

God, he loves this. He’s never been with anyone that he just wants to kiss before, just for the sake of it. Given half a chance he and Billy are going to fuck this evening but there’s no urgency to it. Before making out was a means to an end but with Billy it’s something that Steve can just sink into. The blonde curls at the nape of Billy’s neck, the thick line down the front of his jeans, the way he bites down on Steve’s lip.

“Hey,” Tommy whispers suddenly, reaching for Steve’s shoulder. He’s crouched down and his tone suggests that he’s been trying to get their attention for ages. Carol is holding his other hand, her hair tousled and her top few buttons undone. It reveals a flash of creamy skin, the red lace just brushing the top of her breast. They’ve been caught up in the heat of the party as well.

“What?” Steve asks, a little irritated. Tommy just rolls his eyes.

“We’re going out to the lake,” Tommy continues, and by the way that Carol tugs on his hand, impatient and jittery, Seve can guess why they’re splitting off from the group. “Thought you might like to come.”

The lake is a little further in the opposite direction to the way Steve wants to go. Which ideally would be the way back to his house, with a bed and lots of empty rooms. But it’s warm and he’s not all that sleepy yet, and the idea of finding a quiet spot to continue this with Billy sounds ideal.

“Okay,” Steve agrees and manages to pull himself and Billy up. Billy sways a little once upright and Steve has to wind an arm around his waist. He’s not sure what Billy has had, just something that the local dealer sells him. And not the milder stuff that the Munson kid brings to parties either. He’s going to regret that at work tomorrow.

Their leaving doesn’t go unnoticed. There’s a few shouts as they pass by, some of Steve’s old friends from the Basketball team thinking the worst. Steve wants to laugh at the idea. He’s kissed everyone - Tommy once on a dare where it did nothing for either of them, and Carol during a game of Spin the bottle in seventh grade - but that’s as far as it would ever go.

They stumble through the woods, their path lit only by the torch that Carol remembered to bring and the light from their phones. Steve’s lived near these woods his entire life, spent every day staring out at the dark mass of them from his window. But even so, they feel like a different beast now.

“We could have gone back to Steve’s!” Carol sensibly points out, as they duck under a low hanging branch.

“Then you would have had sex on my parents bed. Again,” Steve says, still clinging to Billy’s hand like a lifeline. Sex in the woods had felt exciting before, back by the fire, when the woods felt warm and familiar. Here, they feel a little wild, even to Steve, who is made of magic.

“Besides, I thought you said you wanted to do it outdoors!” Tommy hollers from up ahead. There’s just the faint bobbing glow of his phone, as he forges the way.

“That was before I realized that Steve’s parents’ huge bed was a way better option!” Carol shouts back and stumbles over a rock. Her platforms aren’t built for this excursion, only just sturdy enough to follow the path out to the clearing beyond Steve’s house.

“Are we gonna fuck in the woods?” Billy whispers in Steve’s ear, and the hot breath on the back of Steve’s neck is enough to remind him why he wanted to make this trip in the first place.

“Fuck yeah,” Steve returns, and Tommy’s excited whoop announces that they’ve arrived.

The lake is a deep, rippling black, still as glass. Billy stares across the water, ignoring Tommy skipping stones across the surface until the ripples begin to lap at the shore.

“Don’t be a prick,” Carol says, but she picks up a stone and lobs it as high as she can, until it disappears.

“Woah,” Tommy says and drops down to the ground by the endless black of the lake. They’re not dumb enough to go swimming this late while they’re so drunk, but the moon reflecting off the deep waters have them all captivated.

“We haven’t been out here since…” Carol settles herself down on the sand next to Tommy, the glow of the torch under her chin giving her face some strange shadows. “Since before Billy arrived.”

“Last year of high school,” Steve remembers. It was only a few years ago but already the finer details are hazy, even things he thought he’d never forget. “After the night we all went to Benny’s…why did we go to Benny’s?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy says, stretching himself out until his sneakers nearly brush the black water lapping at the shore. “Was it that god awful hayride?” Carol gives a sharp bark of laughter.

“That was it,” she says, and curls herself up against Tommy’s side once more. “We had burgers and we decided to swim.”

“It was fucking October,” Tommy grumbles, face scrunched up at the memory. “We were idiots.”

“You’re always idiots,” Carol points out lazily. Tommy’s hands find her hair again, gently sweeping the dark curls back and forth. Steve sits down on the shore with a sigh and lets Billy lean against his shoulder.

They stay there, staring up at the stars, even though Steve can feel the cold seeping through his thighs. Billy turns his head, his breath hot against Steve’s skin and presses a kiss against his throat. Steve shudders from head to toe from that simple gesture, want lapping at his fingertips.
Judging by the glint in Billy’s eyes, he knows what Steve is thinking, curling his hand along Steve’s thigh.

“You’re not helping,” Steve exhales, hoping his friends haven’t noticed. Billy huffs with laughter and doesn’t stop the journey of his hand. Steve closes his eyes, unable to help the stirring of his dick as Billy reaches his hip and squeezes.

“Can you not?” Tommy asks, sounding disgruntled, and Steve opens his eyes again to see Carol hide her laughter against Tommy’s shoulder.

“Sorry,” Billy says and slings his arm around Steve’s shoulder instead.

“Awww, remember when we were like that?” Carol coos and Steve sticks his tongue out at her.

“You are still fucking like that,” he mutters, because rarely does a party go by he doesn’t get a flash of Carol’s tits or Tommy’s ass in a deckchair or his parents’ room when he’s least expecting it.

“Speaking of, maybe we should do what we came out here to do?” Billy suggests, and his eyes catch the light of the moon at just the right angle.

Alright, so maybe Steve’s twisted. The gleam of indigo under moonlight is the sign of a witch hunter. It should not be so fucking hot.

“Who knew you were such deviants?” Carol says, dark lashes brushing her cheeks, and Tommy snorts.

“I did,” he says, raising his eyebrows at Billy. “Our Steve never falls that hard. Your ass must be magical, Hargrove.”

Steve scowls but Billy grins in delight. Whether it’s the not so subtle compliment to Billy’s skills in bed or the insinuation to Steve’s feelings, he doesn’t know.

“We should visit the stones,” Carol says suddenly, scrambling up off the ground. Steve groans, warm against Billy’s chest. He was promised outdoor sex and it doesn’t look like he’s getting it any time soon.

“I don’t want to visit the stones,” he mutters churlishly. He wants to find a quiet place where he can tug down Billy’s jeans and bend him over against the rough bark of a tree. It’s an image that crept into his head when they first curled up by the fire and he’s not willing to let it go.

“We should visit the stones,” Tommy agrees, joining his girlfriend in pulling himself up. Billy just lits his head and blinks in confusion.

“What the hell are the stones?” he asks, to Tommy’s amusement.

“You’ve lived here nearly three years and you haven’t heard of the stones?” he asks, sharing a slightly gleeful look with Carol. Steve sighs. Oh fuck. They’re going to go to the stones.

“It’s a local legend,” Steve says, before Carol and Tommy can tell Billy some bullshit. “They’re just a bunch of stones and there’s no demon, no murdered witch, no unmarked grave or whatever fucking story is going around these days.”

“Grave, huh?” Carol says with interest. She’s stolen Tommy’s jean jacket to wrap around herself, even though the night is warm for September. “That’s a new one. Not heard that one before.”

“Steve’s being a dick,” Tommy says, waiting less than impatiently. “There’s no actual monster hanging around the stones but they are haunted.”

“They are fucking not,” Steve counters, because Billy is already sitting up and that promise of sex is getting further and further away. “Fucking drunk kids go to the stones and think they see weird shit. It’s not real.”

“Is too!” Carol protests, flicking a dark curl of hair. “I went there with my cousin once. It was super creepy. The big stone started bleeding, no lie.” Steve rolls his eyes. But it’s too late and Billy has climbed to his feet.

“They did not,” Steve says, letting Billy offer him a hand to roughly pull him up. “It’s such crap. They’re a bunch of stones.”

“How would you know?” Billy asks, slyly, winding an arm around Steve’s waist.

“Witch,” Steve says pointedly, because they all seem to have forgotten. He’s lived here long enough to know what stories are true and what ones are fueled by a lot of liquor and dodgy wiring. “None of this shit is magic and I’m telling you now, ghosts aren’t real.”

Carol almost visibly pouts, sliding her hand into Tommy’s.

“Did you have to ruin that for me?” she says grumpily.

Steve sighs and lets Billy pull him closer. It’s far from freezing in the September air, but he’s happy enough to press himself up against Billy, a reminder of what’s on offer. But Billy just grins and kisses his nose.

“Come on,” he wheedles. “It’ll be fun.”

“I’ve been to the stones before,” Steve reminds him. “Tons of times. There’s nothing there.”

“Well, I haven’t,” Billy says, with just the faintest flash of teeth. “Let me see these creepy, not bleeding stones and I’ll let you do whatever you want to me.”

Something dips in Steve’s gut at the slow, suggestive smile that Billy’s giving him, the hand that’s stroking the bare skin just above his waistband.

“You swear?” Steve asks and Billy just laughs. There’s a soft kind of laughter, where Billy is all pretty eyes and warmth but this isn't like that. This sounds like a jackal.

“I think you wanna rut outdoors,” he says, pressing his lips to Steve’s, just the faintest brush to give Steve a taste. “Wouldn’t have expected it of you, Harrington.”

“Are you saying no?” Steve asks and Billy grabs a fistful of his hair as he pulls him in for a proper kiss, something intense, all teeth and tongue. It’s a little rough, with the grasp of Billy’s nails against his scalp and after the rush of the game, it just makes Steve’s blood fizz all that much more.

“I didn’t say no,” Billy murmurs against Steve’s mouth and gently nips his bottom lip before letting Steve go.

“Fucking hurry up!” Tommy hollers, already halfway up the path, swinging Carol’s hand from side to side. Billy turns to Steve and raises an eyebrow.

“Fine,” Steve relents, letting Billy take his hand. “But your ass is mine, Hargrove.”

---

Unsurprisingly, the stones haven’t changed much.

Steve stares miserably at the clearing, where his friends are wandering between the assortment of bright white stones. He gets why this place looks weird and out of place - somehow, in the darkness of Hawkins woods, where everything is mud brown and dank, the stones stick out like white gleaming jewels. It’s fucking weird.

“I see no blood, Perkins,” Billy says sternly, tugging at her ponytail. She shrieks indignantly and skips away.

“They don’t always bleed,” she says defensively. “Jason was here once and he said he was thrown out of the circle.” Steve scoffs and props himself up on a nearby tree. It’s a good solid tree, he notes. Billy could lean against it just fine while Steve buries his face in his ass.

“Jason’s a dick,” he says wearily. “And the stones aren’t magic. Billy, are they magic?”

This is where having a witch-hunter boyfriend comes in handy. Billy scrunches up his face, inhaling deep, before shaking his head.

“Just a lot of mud,” he says, kicking up a spray of fall-orange leaves. Carol frowns.

“Well, that sucks,” she mutters, dropping to her knees and prodding carefully at one of the stones. Steve wonders if it was the one she’d seen bleed before.

“What are the legends about this place anyway?” Billy asks curiously, standing roughly dead center in the configuration. There are nine stones, eight in a circle and one dead center, like an eye, each one roughly the size of Steve’s head. “And how come I never heard any of them?”

Tommy shrugs. Now that they’re here with a distinct lack of bleeding stones or acts of telekinesis, he seems to be losing interest.

“The one I hear most is it’s a summoning ground for a demon,” Tommy says and Steve snorts. He never believed that one. Anyone who knows anything about actual magic isn’t going to believe that.

“It’s definitely not,” Steve says to Billy quietly, when his boyfriend starts to look at the stones with unease.

“My sister told me it’s a burial for a witch,” Carol says, abandoning her inspection of the far left stone and stepping into the circle with Billy. “There’s a few variations on that story though.”

“Joyce Byers told me something like that once,” Steve adds and Billy looks up.

“Joyce Byers? You been seeing someone on the side, Steve?” he asks, mouth curling into a grin.

“She was Steve’s babysitter,” Tommy says, joining the other two in the circle, shining his torch across the space. “Back when he was too young for his parents to legally pull a Matilda.”

“They’d have tried if they could have,” Steve mutters. In all honesty, he’d liked hanging out with Mrs Byers. When he was a kid there weren’t too many other witches in town and the ones that were were even older than his parents. Mrs Byers had two boys, one of them about Steve’s age, and for a while, Steve could imagine what it was like to have a family that sat down to dinner together each night.

But then he got older and his parents stopped hiring Mrs Byers and Jonathan got weird. And that was the end of that.

“And then her kid fucked Steve’s girlfriend,” Carol says nastily, the one part of the story that Steve would like to forget. Tommy jabs her in the ribs.

“Wheeler was fucked in the head anyway,” he says to Steve, who’s still leaning against the tree, away from the circle. “And the Byers moved out of town a few years ago.”

“Wheeler?” Billy says, scrunching up his nose in disgust. Nancy had gone away to college over a year back and so far, she seems to be the exception to the rule of never making it out of Hawkins. But Billy had attended his final year of high school with her, long after Steve’s ill-advised romance. “Nancy Wheeler? How come I never knew you dated Miss Priss?”

“Because it’s history,” Steve says, shooting Carol a dirty look. He and Billy don’t really discuss former lovers - their relationship is still relatively new and both of them aren’t without insecurities. Billy hadn’t been fond of Nancy and Steve knew that he’d like it even less if he found out that Steve had dated her.

“From the sounds of it, you’re better in the sack anyways,” Carol adds, like that’s supposed to help and Steve groans.

“Look, we’ve seen the stones, nothing is here, can we just go?” he says in frustration, pushing himself up. His ass is getting numb and he came out without any gloves. At this time of night it’s settling into his bones and he tucks his hands under his armpits.

“Buzzkill,” Carol sighs, looking around the circle. But nothing is happening, the stones as quiet as ever. “Yeah, fine.”

She stomps out of the circle, with Tommy following her soon after. But Billy has stopped, shining the light from his phone onto the largest stone just beneath his feet.

“Hey, Steve?” he calls and his tone has Steve take the few steps necessary to join him.

“This stone is cracked,” he says, and Steve drops to a crouch to study it. There’s definitely a faint crack rippling across the clean white face of it, from end to end. But even as Steve looks, there’s no blood or flies or anything emerging so he doesn’t see the problem.

“So?” he asks, looking up at Billy. Billy chews his lip, like he’s unsure. Despite dating a witch, Billy is staunchly cynical or the mystical or the spooky. It’s probably the witch-hunter in him, the belief in science and the bright light of the flame.

“So it wasn’t here when we arrived,” Billy says, with a shrug. But the stone doesn’t move, doesn’t give any sign it’s anything more than a stone, so Steve takes Billy’s free hand and pulls them both up.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Steve says, pressing a gentle kiss to the corner of Billy’s mouth. “I told you, there’s nothing here.” Billy hums and stows his phone away in his pocket, choosing instead to pull Steve closer.

“It is kind of creepy out here, don’t you think?” Billy says, wrinkling up his nose.

“A little,” Steve admits, pressing his nose against the curve of Billy’s neck and inhaling smoke and cedarwood. The flicker of want in his belly comes roaring back with just that first inhale.

“Mrs Byers used to tell me a rhyme about this place,” Steve says, the memory dim and faint in the back of his head. The scratched wood of her kitchen table, the smell of crayons, the dog asleep in his basket. The raspy sound of Mrs Byer’s voice as she stood over the stove.

“I don’t really remember it though,” Steve says, because he doesn’t want to search for those distant words right now. He wants to pull Billy away from this place to make sure that he follows through on his promise.

Billy nips at his bottom lip, his hands gliding under Steve’s jacket to stroke at the soft skin above his waistband.

“Wanna ditch these two?” he suggests, pulling them hip to hip. Steve grins, relieved that finally this evening is going how he wanted.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he says.

---

They stumble through the woods away from the stones, in the opposite direction to Carol and Tommy. Judging by Tommy sliding a hand under Carol’s jacket they have their own ideas of where this night will lead.

“If we hear what sounds like a cat in heat, that’ll be Carol,” Steve says wickedly as he pulls Billy through the trees. Billy makes a face, a little grossed out.

“Do I want to know how you know that?” he asks and Steve laughs just as they pass under an opening in the trees. The moonlight illuminates his boyfriend briefly and Billy catches sight of Steve’s warm eyes before they plunge back into darkness.

“We’ve been friends a long time,” Steve says casually. “We’ve had a lot of parties together that usually end the same way.”

“Group sex?” Billy asks, because he’s had the thought before. Steve and his best friends are weirdly joined at the hip, which Billy found a bit weird to begin with. He’s never had friends like that, the kind you grow up with from birth.

“First of all, ew,” Steve says and steps over a fallen log. “We’re not like that. But they’ve stayed at my house and fucked enough in the guest room that I know what they sound like.”

“If that’s your excuse,” Billy says lazily as they come to a stop in a clearing. There’s enough light for Billy to see the glitter in Steve’s eyes, the press of his dick straining against the front of his jeans.

“They probably know what I sound like too,” Steve says, taking a step forward and pushing Billy back against the bark of a tree. Billy lets him. Steve doesn’t often get like this but there’s something animalistic in his blood today. Maybe it’s the party, or the alcohol or the feeling of being directly under the sky.

“You can be loud,” Billy agrees and tips his head back as Steve works the buttons on his jeans. “You gonna be loud, baby?” Steve carefully pulls down his zipper and tugs his jeans down just enough to reveal the dark blue cotton of Billy’s boxers.

“You’re the one getting fucked,” Steve reminds him and presses a hand against Billy’s dick. Billy gives in and wraps a hand around Steve’s neck, roughly pulling him in. Steve rubs him through his boxers while they kiss, the hand moving against his dick as sloppy and rough as the kiss.

It’s hot and it really fucking shouldn’t be. The air is just a little too cold, the tree bark is digging into his back and Steve is a little too drunk still for this to be anything other than what it is. His fingers are cold as he slides his hands inside, like ice against Billy’s bare skin and he hisses as Steve wraps his fingers around Billy’s dick. Steve presses his other hand against the muscles under Billy’s t-shirt and he bites Steve’s bottom lip in response.

“Ass,” Billy mumbles and Steve grins.

“You said we could fuck outdoors,” he says, pulling both his hands back and undoing his own zipper. He looks so fucking good doing it, it’s unbelieveable. Billy kind of wants to tell everyone but he suspects they already know. Steve gets this weird, like cocky confidence sometimes when he’s good at shit. Basketball, flirting, sex…it’s like he remembers when he was the king, even though high school is long over.

“So I did,” Billy says and drops his underwear down to his knees. His jeans and boxers clump awkwardly around his knees and it’s fucking freezing but it’s worth it to see Steve’s jaw drop, his fist closing around his dick as he hungrily looks Billy over. Billy deliberately licks his lips and turns around, offering Steve everything.

“You’re such a tease,” Steve groans, pressing himself close against Billy’s back and the hot line of his dick rubbing along Billy’s hole is enough to make him forget they’re in the woods in September.

“Uh huh,” Billy pants and if they ever actually make it to the fucking, they’re not going to last long. Steve’s still thrusting loosely against his ass and he’s wrapped himself around Billy like a scarf, fingers twisting and stroking and rubbing in all the right aways. “On that note, hurry the fuck up.”

It’s all a little sloppy and hazy, the press of Steve’s fingers into his mouth and he sucks on them hard despite the faint dirt-and-mustard taste of them because it makes Steve whimper when he does. It’s still not enough, because they always have fucking lube and it’s been ages since they did it like this. Billy gives a huff of laughter as Steve slides in the first finger, the memory pulling him away from the burn.

“What?” Steve asks, confused and Billy half turns over his shoulder.

“The last time you fucked me with spit,” he prompts and watches the same fond, satisfied grin flicker across Steve’s face.

“I remember,” he says, because that had been their first time, on a picnic blanket in the Harringtons’ backyard. They’d been a little unprepared.

“Our third date,” Steve reminisces and Billy snorts…which turns into a strangled moan as Steve inserts another finger.

“Second,” he corrects and Steve kisses his neck, an apology for the pain.

“Third,” he says and Billy has to thrust back on his fingers, because he’s fucking stopped.

“Second,” he says. “You coming to see me at work wasn’t a date.”

“Yeah but that makes me sound like a slut,” Steve quips, the asshole that’s slowly and deliciously fucking Billy. He stopped jerking Billy off a few minutes ago, which is probably wise or this would be over and the tree would have a nice facial by now.

“No comment,” Billy grunts and lets himself beg a little, voice low and raspy. “Baby, please.”

“I’m not done,” Steve says, sounding confused and when Billy looks back at him, his cheeks are flushed, eyes soft and huge in the dim light. He’s so gorgeous and Billy wonders how he ever got so lucky.

“Just do it,” Billy says, through gritted teeth because he’s going to come any second. He hears Steve spit, trying to slicken up his cock, and then Billy’s full, breathing carefully through the burn as Steve pushes in. It’s almost too much and his eyes sting but Steve goes slowly and it’s worth it when they’re pressed together, like they should be.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks and he sounds as fucked out as Billy feels. Good. Billy’s glad he’s not the only one feeling overwhelmed.

“Yeah,” Billy whispers and feels Steve’s hand slide across his chest. He covers it with his own, using it as an anchor. “God, I forget how thick you feel like this.” Steve kisses the back of his neck, like he’s embarrassed but Billy just breathes, feeling every inch of Steve until finally the want inside him takes over any pain or discomfort he has.

“Come on, baby,” Billy mutters, giving a tentative slide back and hearing Steve’s stifled little moan as clear as a bell. That’s really all it takes to have him raring to go again, his dick red and leaking against his t-shirt. He never pulled it up but stripping completely bare out here is just a little too far. If he gets spunk on it, he’ll borrow one of Steve’s tomorrow.

“Are you sure?” Steve pants but he’s giving stuttering little thrusts of his hips, like he can’t quite stop himself. Billy braces himself against the tree and pushes back. It’s going to be a little difficult like this - his legs are trapped together by his clothes or he’d encourage Steve to pull his leg up for a better angle but they can make do.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Billy breathes and twists over his shoulder to kiss Steve, messy and full of teeth. “Fuck me hard so I have to go back to your house, while your parents sleep, full of your come.” Steve groans weakly, dropping his head onto Billy’s shoulder.

“You can’t say shit like that,” he says, but Billy knows that the complaint isn’t about mentioning Steve’s parents, fast asleep in their king bed. It’s about how much that turns Steve on, sneaking his lover through the house, freshly fucked, jizz leaking down Billy’s thighs as they creep upstairs.

“I can,” Billy says ruthlessly and tilts his hips a little more. Steve’s still whimpering and juddering his hips but it’s not enough. If Billy pushes enough, he’ll get what he wants - for Steve to completely lose control. “You want it, you want this. You want to fuck me in the woods, where anyone might see. Don’t you, filthy little slut? Want me to scream? Want people to hear how good you’re fucking me?”

“God, yes,” Steve hisses and presses his mouth against the line between Billy’s neck and shoulder. It’s a far cry from the kisses he’d given Billy earlier and he soon realizes why - he sinks his teeth into the soft flesh, just this side of perfect and too hard, a deep mark that Billy will carry tomorrow.

“Fuck, fuck,” Billy curses because all he can do is hold on, letting Steve fuck him, curling his fingers into the tree for something to grip, because it’s almost too hard, with too little prep, and Steve is pounding him like it’s the last thing he might do on this Earth.

He winds a hand behind him to grab hold of a fistful of Steve’s gorgeous hair, because holding Steve is always preferable to anything else. The sharp grasp of his fingers in his hair makes Steve whimper just that bit more, apologetically licking at the teeth marks he’s left in Billy’s skin.

“More,” Billy demands, because it’s still not enough. Nothing with Steve is ever enough, and the hunger that he only just keeps at bay every fucking day is a beast climbing out of his chest, wanting nothing more than to devour him whole. He needs Steve to completely let go, fucking use him until he’s red raw and dripping liquids not his own, bloodied and sore and finally, finally sated. “Come on, baby, I know you’ve got it in you.”

Steve’s nails scrape against his bare hip, his breathing ragged and Billy lets him take what he wants. He’s so hard that every brush of his t-shirt against his sensitive skin feels like ecstasy and he thinks he could just come like this, with just Steve. He wants to. It’s been building to this all night and that little bite of pain just tips him closer to the edge.

Steve’s left hand suddenly slides along his arm and wraps loosely around Billy’s wrist and Billy knows what he’s looking for.

“Twisted,” Billy mutters as Steve’s fingers close over the red witch-hunter’s mark. He’s not sure why Steve even does that - whether he gets off on it or whether he wants to be the only mark on Billy’s skin.

“Yeah,” Steve says, just a breath on Billy’s ear. His other hand is like a vice on Billy’s hip, fingers digging half-moons into his bare skin. “Complaining?”

“Fuck, no,” Billy says sharply and Steve laughs.

“God, baby, you feel good,” Steve pants and Billy can tell from the harsh edge to his words that he’s losing it, that he’s not going to last. “Want me to touch you?”

But Billy doesn’t even need it. Steve slides a hand around, pressing his palm flat against Billy’s hip, and he comes before Steve can even wrap his fingers around Billy’s dick. Billy does cry out, body bowed as he comes untouched and he hears Steve sob into his hair as he comes too. It’s intense and Billy just rides the wave, utterly delirious at Steve being right there with him, pulse after pulse of heat into his body. He gets off on this more than he’d admit, Steve marking him inside and out.

“Shit,” Steve says finally, once they get their breathing back. “Look what you did to the tree.”

Billy looks down at the liquid gleaming in the faint light on the bark and stifles a laugh.

“Oops,” he says blithely. He got some of his t-shirt too and it clings against his skin, damp and cold.

He feels empty when Steve slides out, but he always does. He pulls up his boxers, very aware of Steve’s eyes on him, jizz currently leaking down his thighs, and grins even though he’s going to be sore tomorrow.

“Dick,” Steve murmurs, his eyes already gleaming as he pulls Billy in for a kiss. He’s been so busy watching Billy dress that he’s still got his jeans pushed down so Billy helpfully tucks him back in, does up his fly.

“You love it,” Billy says, without thinking, and even with his lascivious tone, the words still hang in the air. Steve kisses him again, even though it doesn’t fully calm the juddering of Billy’s heart, and then grabs hold of his hand.

“Let’s go the fuck to sleep,” Steve says and tugs them back towards the Harringtons.

---

That night, Steve dreams of the stones.

He never noticed how each one glows under the bright light of the moon, each one a perfect white globe. It takes him a minute to realize that it’s not just moonlight - it’s magic. They glow like his mother’s runes, the way any object imbued with magic does.

It’s warm, a balmy breeze ruffling Steve’s hair and he turns to look up at the surrounding trees. Earlier they’d been tinged with yellow, the beginning signs of fall but now they’re full and green.

The cloaked figures bent over, fingers buried in the dirt don’t notice him. The black fabric falls across their faces, hiding their identities from him. They work, silently, intently, with a strange sort of mania that sets Steve’s teeth on edge.

They’re digging, he realizes, digging under the light of the moon and a few flickering lanterns.
They’re scrabbling in the dirt with their bare hands, digging and clawing away at the earth until each one has a small hole in front of them.

When this is done, they each slice their palms, skin splitting open to reveal a well of blood. They all press their bloodied palms against an item before pressing it into the ground.

Steve squints his eyes but he can’t fully see what they’re burying. But whatever it is, whatever the reason, it must be important because they all work silently, never once looking up from their task.

Something rumbles beneath Steve’s feet, like an earthquake rolling in. The figures work even faster, pulling the piles of earth back over their offerings. The one closest to Steve, at the head of the circle, is mumbling something, the words too soft and fast for Steve to understand each individual one. But he knows a spell when he hears one and he pitches forward, desperately trying to hear.

The ground cracks open, a jagged open wound cut right through the center of the circle. The figures keep working, pulling dirt back into the holes with their fingers as fast as they can. Steve’s eyes are just focused on the split in the earth, as it grows and grows.

“Stop,” he whispers and his voice sounds strange even to him. “It’s coming out.”

Because there’s something moving in the open fission of the ground, some dark mass pulling itself free. Steve wants to run, doesn’t want to see what’s down there, but his feet are frozen to the ground. He has to watch and the figures wait and watch with him.

The delicate figure in front of him - and it has to be a woman - keeps muttering a spell, pressing the bloodied palm of her hand firmly against the ground as though her blood can be enough to push the beast back down. Steve can feel the ripples of power, the heartbeat thrum of magic as she pushes, her will fighting against whatever wants to rise up.

Steve digs his fingernails into the skin of his palm and hopes. She has to win. He doesn’t need to look too far down to see the jumble of teeth and claws and hunger that’s waiting just below the surface. She needs to be stronger, stronger than whatever is below them. Because whatever is beneath them wants to feed and Steve can feel the sheer force of that want from here.

But then the juddering stops, and like a single thread pulling a stitch closed, the open maw begins to close up again. There’s a furious shrieking from down below, the wretched scream of the beast as it’s swallowed again by the earth. Steve sucks in a breath and doesn’t let it go until there’s nothing left, the stones pale and gleaming over solid ground once more.

“What the fuck?” Steve breathes, and the figures in front of him seem just as on edge. They wait, staring down at where the opening had been, like they need to see if the spell took.

Steve has his own doubts. A spell like that needs a lot more power and more blood than they had given. If you ask something of the world, it requires - demands - something in return. More of a sacrifice. Steve isn’t sure that it was enough.

But nothing happens and the ground stays quiet and time ticks on.

Steve waits, digging his fingernails into the flesh of his palm. It’s not enough. It doesn’t feel like enough.

The figure in front of him pushes herself up, fingers shaking so much that her blood drips erratically down to the ground. She makes no move to stem the bleeding. She seems to be watching the ground with the same trepidation and doubt that Steve is. She knows. She can feel it too - the heartbeat beneath the earth, still there, a steady deep pulse. It pounds in Steve’s head like a drum and his stomach churns.

But the figure turns, and the dark cloak falling over her face makes it too hard to tell who it is. Steve catches a glimpse of a feature or two under the light - a strand of dark hair, a delicate jaw - but it’s too dark and too brief to make out a face.

Not that it matters. She opens her mouth and something strange comes out of it. It doesn’t sound like a human voice. It sounds like several, smooth and songlike, and Steve’s heart sinks a little at the words.

Nine little stones in a circle so round,
Bound by blood to the dark, dank ground
Nine stones keep the beast sealed away
Witchblood made a lock and so he’ll stay

Peel the flesh from your bones and pluck out your eyes
The beast whispers sweetly but tells naught but lies
He’ll drain you dry and devours the gray
When he wakes we all are prey

He’ll spoil your land and rot will fester
He’ll take a heart to keep him tethered
He won’t have a care for your frightened plea
Five to go and the beast is free

For the beast slumbers but never rests
He takes until you’ll have nothing left
Listen to the whispers of the watchful crow
To bind the beast back down below

Grave and feather, ash and stone
Wax, crystal, salt and bone
Eight to form a seal all around
Little witch in the middle to keep him bound

An iron nail to make him fall
And blood to bind it all

Chapter 3: Watch Out For Shadows

The sunlight trickling in the open curtains pulls Billy from a deep sleep far too early. He blinks against the bright light and wonders why the hell they didn’t remember to close them.

“Make it stop….” Steve moans from beside him, throwing one arm over his eyes against the light. Billy smiles, even though his head is pounding, even though he’s not had enough sleep and rolls over to pull Steve into his arms. Steve goes willingly, all warm and soft skin, deliciously bare of any clothing.

“You’re the fucking witch, asshole,” Billy points out and one brown eye pops open.

“Oh,” Steve says and throws an arm out at the curtains. Billy watches as they neatly slide closed, tugged along the railings by an invisible hand. He’s not sure what he’s more amazed by: the witch forgetting he has magic or that his incredible boyfriend has fucking magic.

“Cool,” Billy murmurs, buries his face in his sleeping boyfriend’s hair and drifts back to sleep.

When they wake again, it’s to the sharp alarm blaring out from Billy’s phone. Steve groans and shoves a pillow over his head while Billy pulls himself up.

“Fuck,” Billy hisses and scrambles around searching for it. He eventually finds it in his abandoned pants pocket, trilling away.

Billy rubs a hand over his face. His eyes feel gritty, his head is still pounding and he’s not sure what’s worse, the taste in his mouth or the ache between his legs. He vaguely remembers Steve pushing him down, the rough feel of bark against his skin as Steve had worked his fingers into him. It had been so good, that sort of raw desperation, the kind that feels completely separated from anything mortal and is fueled by something basic and animalistic.

“I have to go to work,” Billy says reluctantly and Steve finally emerges.

“Now?” he says incredulously and Billy shows him the time still blinking away on the phone screen. He wrinkles his nose as the digits sink in, the already late hour of the day. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Billy says. He fucked up a little and he never meant to get that high or that fucked up last night. He just so rarely gets time off like this, the chance to act like what he is. Young and stupid and in love.

“Can’t you call in sick?” Steve asks, and the idea is so appealing when Steve is lying there, all sleepy-eyed and smelling of sex and smoke. The day would be so much better put to use if he crawled back under the sheets with Steve, dozing for another few hours until the slide of Steve’s bare leg in between his became too much.

“No,” Billy says miserably, because he needs to keep this fucking job, he needs every cent he can get his hands on. It’s the only thing keeping him in his shitty apartment and away from Neil.

Steve’s hand winds loosely around his waist, pressing his chin into the crook of Billy’s neck.

“If you get through today, I’ll bring you pizza,” Steve promises. Billy thinks of the archives room, the dim lighting of the local police station, Flo’s disapproving stare when he sneaks in late with bloodshot eyes.

“A really big pizza,” Billy says and hunts around for his clothes.

He has to steal one of Steve’s shirts, because his is covered in mud and ash and spunk, and he furiously swirls his mouth out with pilfered mouthwash. He looks pale and tired, but he’s upright and he can make coffee and file shit without any serious use of his brain. He kisses Steve goodbye, burying his hands deep in Steve’s soft hair, ignoring the bite of Steve’s morning breath. When they part, Steve traces a gentle finger over Billy’s temple and something feather soft rustles through Billy’s hair.

“What was that?” Billy asks curiously, because Steve rarely casts magic on him. Steve grins and drops back onto the pillows.

“Just a little something to help your head,” he says smugly and sure enough, the distant thumping at the base of Billy’s skull is easing.

“Thanks,” Billy says, in surprise because today might actually be fucking bearable now. Magic aspirin.

“Go work,” Steve says sleepily. Unlike Billy, he doesn’t have to work today, and doesn't need the three different jobs to keep him afloat. Steve still lives at home, even though he’s not funded by his parents anymore. Billy’s only ever seen the Harringtons from a distance, often as he’s sneaking out of Steve’s bedroom window to climb down the trellis. He’s got no desire to meet his boyfriend’s rich, elitist parents. The kind who don’t want their son with anyone not a witch, and definitely not a witch-hunter. “I’ll come by around six.”

“Better make it seven,” Billy says regretfully, thinking of the work he has to catch up on. Hopper had been nice to take him on, but all he does is make coffee and do shit like sort the archive room and help Flo with the paperwork. Apparently, Hawkins was really late to digitize files which means that half of Billy’s job is helping out with the backlog. Fuck all happens in Hawkins. In 1983 one dude was arrested for sawing into his neighbor’s prize cherry tree. That apparently was the crime of the year.

He jams his feet into his shoes and kisses Steve once more for luck. Then he slips out of the house into the bright light of the day, keys to the Camaro dangling from his fingers.

---

Nothing ever really happens at the Hawkins Police station.

“Morning, Chief,” Billy says, placing a large cappuccino and a bagel on Hopper’s desk. The chief only just looks up from his newspaper, takes in the coffee and then up to Billy’s face before turning back with a grunt.

“You look like hell,” Hopper comments and Billy takes back the bagel.

“Hey!” Hopper protests, while Billy dangles the bag just out of his reach.

“I go through the effort of buying coffee - the good coffee, not the piss you guys have here - and you’re gonna speak to me like that?” Billy asks incredulously. It’s a fair assessment, he does look like shit, but he doesn’t feel like he should be called out about it when he’s brought food.

“Alright, alright, just give,” Hopper grumbles, hand outstretched. Billy hands him the bag and swans out.

“Speak to Flo about the petty cash!” Hopper shouts after him, just before the door swings shut.

Billy hands over coffee to the two officers on duty before he heads to the back office. Flo is already up to her neck in files and she just holds out a hand when Billy puts her coffee down on the table.

“Receipt?” she asks and Billy hands it over. She studies it for a moment before frowning.

“That’s not what the petty cash is for,” she says and Billy drops down into his seat.

“It would help if your coffee machine wasn’t a million years old,” he complains, turning on his computer. He has time to shove half a doughnut in his mouth before it even flickers to life. Another relic.

“I’ve worked here thirty years and I think that’s the same machine,” she comments, choosing to let his improper use of petty cash go. He doesn’t do it often but no one really complains when he does. The coffee here is swill.

“Tastes like it,” Billy says and blows on his coffee. This and the promise of eating pizza with Steve, fingers smeared with grease as they watch some sitcom on Billy’s old TV is the only thing that might get him through the day.

“Get on with your work,” Flo chides, raising an eyebrow at his unbrushed hair. “You think I don’t know what you were doing last night?”

“Everyone knows what we were doing last night,” Billy mutters, because nothing stays a secret in small towns.

Flo just purses her lips and Billy returns to his coffee. He has so much shit to input and not a damn word of it will be anything less than dull. But his other jobs aren’t exactly lucrative right now, although he has a good promise from Helen at the coffee house that he gets first dibs on shifts when the Christmas rush starts picking up.

Billy lets his eyes drift across the text on the screen, wrapping his hand around the warmth of his takeaway cup. Even with Steve’s magic aspirin he feels a little dizzy, like a band of pressure wrapping its invisible hands around his temple. He shuts his eyes just briefly, just for some respite from the harsh glare of the monitor. When he opens them again there’s a man standing in front of his desk.

“Sir?” Billy says, once the shock has faded from his veins. “You’re not meant to be in here.” But when he turns his head towards Flo, she’s gone, her desk chair still and empty.

The man tilts his head at Billy and something about it reminds Billy of the hawks he sees in the woods sometimes.

“I’ve not had one like you for a long time,” he says, finally, and something cold trickles down Billy’s spine.

“What do you mean, one like me?” Billy asks. The screen in front of him was black, although he swears that it was bright and active only a few seconds again.

But the man turns his head to look out of the window, the charming view of the parking lot lit up by the early fall sunshine. The sycamore tree just outside has started to turn, dropping a swirl of orange leaves down to the concrete below.

“Everything has changed,” he muses and Billy gets the vague feeling that he’s irrelevant to this conversation. It doesn’t help the feeling at the back of his neck that makes him feel like he’s a plaything.

“Yeah, it does that,” Billy says and wonders why the station is so quiet. There’s always some noise here - the trill of the phones, the sounds of the bullpen, the hiss of the coffee machine but now there’s no sound at all. It’s like Billy’s the only one left.

“It hasn’t been very long,” the man continues. “It hasn’t felt like very long.”

“Right,” Billy says slowly, but the man continues as though he hadn’t spoken, looking around the office with interest. There’s only the filing cabinets in a line along the back wall, the shelf of stationery, the printer that jams every other day. Billy’s desk sits by the window, while Flo’s, a matching twin, faces the door. The file room is next door, locked at all times, and the archives and evidence are all in the basement. Billy wouldn’t have thought there was much to look at but the man looks down at his pink post-it notes, his collection of shitty Happy Meal toys on top of his monitor, the pack of gum he keeps in his in-tray, like it’s the most interesting collection of items he’s ever seen.

“A few decades?” the man muses, more to himself than Billy. “Yes, I think so.”

“Can I help you?” Billy says finally and regrets it when the man turns those strange, cold eyes back to Billy’s.

“You already have,” the man says, sounding surprised. “Isn’t it strange, the things that affect the world? It’s always been about intent, you see. Power.”

“What is?” Billy asks suspiciously. There’s a trickle of fear in his gut and he can’t place why. Not until the man says that final word, like it’s something delicious on his tongue, and then he remembers.

Sometimes people think power is all that’s worth having. Even worse, when they think power over other people is the only way to get it.

“Everything,” the man says, like it’s the obvious answer. “But magic, most of all.”

He must see Billy’s stunned face because he chuckles, and smoothly tucks his hands in his pockets. He’s dressed a bit like Steve, Billy notices, that same country club chic from the smart slacks to the crisp shirt.

“It’s all the same. Power. Magic. Sex,” the man says wryly, half turning his head to look slyly at Billy. Like he knows.

“Sex isn’t magic,” Billy counters and the man just smiles.

“Sex is magic to people who don’t know any other kind,” the man corrects gently. “And sometimes it is even to those who do have it. Your friend, Steve, for example.”

“What about Steve?” Billy demands, stunned by this man’s casual use of his boyfriend’s name. The man shrugs.

“He has power,” the man says and there’s a hungry light in his eyes that Billy doesn’t like. “But he so easily gives it all to you.”

“I don’t understand,” Billy says slowly. He isn’t sure if the man is referring to Steve’s magic or something else.

“He could be so much more,” the man says and he’s still staring at Billy like he’s a curiosity behind panes of glass. “There’s so much more to take.”

“He wouldn’t,” Billy says instantly, because that’s not how Steve is. The man’s mouth just twists and he turns his head, allowing a few strands of gold to fall across his cheekbones. If this were any other time, any other place, maybe Billy would appreciate how gorgeous this man is - the depth of his eyes, the sharpness of his jaw. But sometimes the sun dips behind a cloud and something changes, like shadows under his skin.

“We’ll see,” the man vows. “If you think you’re strong enough to keep him, little witch-hunter.”

“Billy!” The word is sharp enough to jolt Billy awake and he realizes with some mortification that he must have drifted off. His coffee is still warm in his hand, and the screen is there waiting. All of the noise of the station rushes back in, jarring and familiar, a far cry from the strange empty stillness in his dream. When he turns he sees Flo right where he left her, her eyes a mix of concern and disapproval.

“What’s happening?” Billy asks and Flo’s frown only deepens.

“You fell asleep,” she says, rather obviously and Billy blinks.

“Yeah,” he says dumbly, a little stunned. He’s never done that before, no matter how tired he’s been. He doesn’t even remember it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.” Flo goes to answer him - and Billy’s just preparing himself for the stern lecture that is surely due - when noise from the hallway distracts her.

“You certainly pick your moments,” Flo says, watching a uniformed officer rush by. But there’s an unhappy twist to her mouth that Billy thinks it’s entirely to do with him.

“What did I miss?” Billy asks, rubbing grit from his eyes.

Flo just sighs.

---

When Steve wakes for the second time the dream hangs around him like a thick hazy fog. He can feel the sinking of the mud beneath his feet, the violent crack as the wound opens up. The faintest whisper of the song in his head but by the time that he’s stretched and pushed off the covers, it’s already fading away.

He rubs a hand across his face, his mouth feeling strange and dry. With a groan, he throws off the covers, feeling the lack of Billy in the wide empty space next to him.

He finds a relatively clean looking pair of sweats and tugs them on. There’s a pile of dirty clothing on the floor and Steve grins when he spots the stains.

He stumbles down the hall to the bathroom where he relieves himself, washes his face and gargles.

“Onion rings,” Steve mutters regretfully, staring at his gray face in the mirror. His hair looks limp and slick, dark circles under his eyes. He’s not working today, thank God - it’s Robin’s day for dealing with the little shits, ground in popcorn and gum. His head can’t take any noise and he wonders how Billy’s doing down at the station.

He decides to shower, dunking his head under the hot spray until the pounding in his head eases.

The house is empty when he wanders downstairs, rubbing a towel over his head. There’s the distant sound of birds, like a flock gathering in one of the nearby trees. Steve flicks on the coffee machine and yawns.

The sticky note on the fridge illuminates him about his parents' whereabouts. He peels it off and rolls it up into a ball, lobbing it at the open garbage can as the coffee maker finishes.

“Gone to lunch,” Steve mutters, as the sticky note bounces off the lid and rolls under the counter.

He leans against the counter and closes his eyes. He feels off this morning and normally he’d mark it down to last night but something isn’t quite right. It’s like an ache in his bones, like he’s chafing in his own skin. For a moment a flicker of his dream comes back to him, the sheer horror of the writhing shadow beneath the ground and a shudder runs down his spine.

The coffee machine hisses, pulling him out of his thoughts. He’s got time before he needs to head out to grab a pizza and go to Billy’s. There’s a good chance his parents will be out all day, leaving him with a few hours to fill in an empty house.

The shrieking of the birds grows louder as Steve pads towards the patio doors. When he pushes back the curtains he suddenly sees why the noise has become unbearable.

The Harringtons’ yard is filled with black birds. Crows litter every square inch of space, on the grass, on the patio, perched on his mother’s favorite deckchair. Steve stops with his hand on the door handle, heart dropping to the bottom of his ribcage.

“What the fuck?” he whispers, because this is some full on horror shit. But the birds don’t move, no matter how much he blinks. They’re just…standing there. Like they’re waiting.

Steve swallows and flicks the lock, vague memories of him locking it last night as he and Billy slipped in during the early hours of this morning. Back then, Steve had struggled to open the door with his cold fingers, Billy’s arm looped around his waist. Every sound was like a gunshot in the silence of the night, and even the click of the door sliding shut sounded deafening.

But now the door glides open silently and the air that drifts in has a bite to it. Steve shivers, the gooseflesh across his arms not entirely down to the breeze. The crows still haven’t moved.

This is fucked up. He’s never seen birds act like this. He’s never seen this many come down and as far as he knows his yard isn’t littered with bird seed.

The birds wait until he’s taken his first tentative step out onto the stone of the patio in his bare feet before taking to the air. Steve yelps as the air is soon filled with swirling, crying birds, spiraling up into the sky.

Steve stares open-mouthed at the black dots against the clear blue, until a feather drifting past his nose pulls his gaze back down again.

Only then does he see what the birds have been hiding.

The one crow that was left behind barely even looks like a crow anymore. The legs have been twisted and broken, the beak shattered, and the wings ripped clear of feathers. Steve drops to his knees, stomach churning with horror.

“What the fuck?” he repeats, feeling queasy at the sight of the poor creature. “What the hell happened to you?”

But the dead eyes stay blank and milky and there are no answers coming. Steve raises his head skywards again but the birds have all vanished, not a trace of the flock left in the sky.

Briefly, a flicker of a memory comes back to Steve’s mind. The group name for crows is a murder.

His ringtone breaks him out of his stupor and he tugs it out of his pocket, hoping it’s Billy.
But the name on the screen is of his best friend instead and he pulls himself up as he answers it. He’ll have to come back later with a shovel. He’s half tempted to get a garbage bag but some pull deep inside him says that he should bury it.

“Steve?” and Steve tugs the door shut behind him. For some reason, he doesn’t want to be outside anymore.

“Hey, Ro,” he says, grateful for a human voice. “You will not believe the shit that just happened to me…” But then he stops because Robin’s voice sounds all wrong.

“Robin?” he says again and the uneasy feeling he’d had earlier has returned. “What’s wrong?” Robin takes a deep breath and Steve can hear how thin and wet it sounds.

“Steve,” Robin starts again, an edge of impatience in her tone. “Haven’t you heard yet?”

“Heard what?” Steve demands. He flicks the lock for good measure, half wishing his parents were home for the first time. “I just woke up, like half an hour ago. What’s going on?”

“It’s Tammy,” Robin says, voice thick. She’s been crying, enough that it’s smothering her voice. “She’s missing.”

Steve stops dead.

“What do you mean, missing?” he asks, but his eyes flick towards the door and the dead crow anyway. “She can’t be missing. I just saw her last night.”

“Well, she is,” Robin says, sounding tired. She would have gotten up early to walk to work, to be at the desk for the Sunday rush. They’re busiest at the weekends but Keith and Samantha should both be there with her. “She never came home. Her bed is empty. Her parents were out searching and they finally called the station like an hour ago. I saw all the cars go by. When did you see her last night?”

“By the bonfire?” Steve says, struggling to remember. But then it’s there, the faint memory of Tammy backlit by flames, curls swinging out behind her. He hadn’t seen her after they all went to the lake and he doesn’t know what happened between then and now that would have led to this.

“Do you think she got too drunk and passed out somewhere?” Robin says but the tinge of hope in her voice is almost too much to bear. “She's probably just in the woods, asleep and hungover, right?”

But something in Steve’s chest aches, like the final toll of a bell letting him know that this won’t be the case.

---

Steve uses the shovel to scoop up the poor dead creature and carries it across to the back of the yard. Once Robin had rung off to deal with a booking, Steve had thrown on some clothes and dug around in the shed for a shovel to dig a grave with. He still feels watched as he does this, striking the sharp edge down into the ground until he has a pile of earth and a small hole. He doesn’t know what the fuck happened - whether the crows murdered one of their own or whether they were keeping watch over the body until Steve woke up. Either way, it’s fucking creepy.

Steve gently slides the corpse into the ground and carefully covers it over. He returns the shovel to where it belongs and heads back inside, unable to stop himself from anxiously looking over his shoulder as he closes the door behind him. But the yard is empty and Steve shakes himself as he kicks off his boots. He’s scaring himself over nothing.

But when there’s a furious pounding on Steve’s door an hour later Steve has to admit that maybe there’s no time for denial anymore.

“What the fuck, Harrington?” Tommy demands, pushing his way in before Steve even has a chance to open the door all the way. “What the hell is going on?”

Carol follows more sedately, her eyes suspiciously bloodshot. She just tugs her navy cardigan around herself and folds her arms impatiently.

“About what?” Steve snaps, because he’s spent the last hour scouring the local news and getting texts from everyone he saw last night. He hasn’t heard from Billy and it only serves to fray his nerves even more. He scrubs at the grit in the corner of his eyes, head pounding furiously.

“About all of this!” Tommy says, his voice echoing off the paneled wood. Steve’s parents still aren’t home, having gone straight from their lunch to help out at one of the volunteer stations. It’s all over the local news: Hawkins doesn’t have missing kids. Mrs Byer’s youngest son vanished for a day when he was little, slipped into a pit and couldn’t get out. Occasionally jocks from the high school go unseen for a day or two but they always turn up, half-drunk and asleep in a hayloft somewhere. “Tammy being missing, weird shit going on…this has to do with fucking magic, Steve.”

“What do you mean weird shit?” Steve asks suspiciously. The news so far has only been filled with news of Tammy, a plea for any information. Tammy’s legally an adult but the pretty blonde girl disappearing in the night never fails to make the news. “What weird shit?”

Tommy waves his hands, looking frustrated. Behind him, Carol quietly shuts the front door.

“Weird shit!” he repeats. “My mom opened the fridge this morning to find maggots in the leftover meatloaf. Yesterday’s meatloaf! My sister turned on the tap and oil came out. Carol found a gutted rabbit outside her back door when she got up this morning.”

“Weird shit,” Steve agrees, folding his arms across his bare chest. He doesn’t really give a shit about them seeing him in a loose pair of sweats and nothing else. He has marks all along his collarbone and he vaguely remembers Billy sucking them into his skin last night before they fell asleep. “I had a dead crow today too.”

“Okay and that doesn’t seem weird to you?” Tommy pushes. There’s an angry flush to his face, something that’s born out of fear and panic. Something that Steve isn’t used to. He told them about his magic back when they were kids, long before he knew he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. He’s never had…this but then again, Steve’s magic has never caused them to fear him before.

Steve chews on his lip as he turns and walks back to the kitchen. He doesn’t have to look back to see that they’re following him and he digs in the fridge for the pitcher of orange juice before he speaks again.

“I had a weird dream right after we went to the stones,” he says, pulling down a glass and then two more. He pours and pushes a glass across to each of them. “Like…probably not just in my head, a freaky magic-influenced kind of dream.”

Carol sits down at the breakfast bar, pulling a glass towards her. Her nails are bitten and jagged, flecks of red paint at each nail bed.

“So…it’s magic?” she asks, her voice raspy. She takes a few sips before she continues. “Tammy’s missing because of magic? Because of the fucking stones?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says, a little thrown. With a sigh, Tommy takes the seat next to his girlfriend and curls a hand around the nape of her neck. “It might be. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

“But Billy said the stones weren’t magic,” Tommy says, and there’s a coldness in his eyes that Steve’s never really seen directed his way before. “That there wasn’t anything there. So, was he lying or is there some bullshit I don’t understand going on here?”

“Billy wouldn’t lie,” Steve says instantly. “He just wouldn’t. And anyway, it’s not as simple as that. Magic can lie dormant or be sealed away. It’s far easier for hunters to smell magic on a living, breathing witch than it is on an object.”

“But they can,” Tommy says suspiciously. “If we took Billy back to the stones and have him try again?”

“He’s at work,” Steve says, because Billy is so often at work. Especially now, when the shitty second-hand fridge in Billy’s place doesn’t keep the right temperature and the Camaro needs new wheels. Steve has thought about offering to help but he’s swallowed down the words every time. Billy wouldn’t take it anyway, might even be offended. If they were further along in their relationship, Steve suggesting they move in together to share expenses wouldn’t be too absurd. But for now, only four months in, it’s too much.

“Then later,” Tommy snaps. “Shit, Steve I know all this freak witch shit is normal for you but it’s not for us, okay?”

Steve swipes his tongue across the rows of his teeth, trying to bite down whatever nasty retort comes to mind first. Carol holds her empty glass, her eyes huge and anxious.

Tommy doesn’t mean it. He knows that. But that fucking hurts anyway.

“Can we not?” Carol interrupts, scraping her nails up and down the side of the glass. “I’m really fucking tired and we had to bury that damn rabbit today. I don’t want to fight.”

“Fine,” Steve says shortly. He shelves the forgotten pitcher back into the fridge, shoves the glasses in the sink. “Whatever. We’ll go to the fucking stones again. Just us.”

“It’s not much good without the witch hunter,” Tommy mutters and Steve tries to not let the derision curdle the words coming out of his mouth.

“I’m still a witch,” he retorts. “I’m not entirely useless. And I know what I’m looking for this time, okay? Maybe I’m wrong and there’s nothing wrong with the stones.”

Tommy just shrugs, like he’s not sold and Steve wants to slam his hands down on the counter and ask what the fuck his problem is. Has Steve ever given them reason to doubt him?

“Fine,” Tommy says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Later. Just text me. Carol?”

Carol pushes herself up from the stool and it hurts that she looks no less distant.

“You said there wasn't anything at those stones, Steve,” she says. Steve just shrugs, helplessly. He doesn’t want to lie to her.

“I said that none of the legends were real,” he says, leaning his elbows on the cold marble. “But maybe I was wrong that there’s nothing there at all.”

Carol stares at him for a moment, her dark eyes heavy, before she turns and is gone too. Steve waits for the click of the front door behind them before he slumps over on the counter, wondering how everything went so wrong so quickly.

Chapter 4: Stripped Raw

“This is a pile of shit,” Carol complains. “It’s September. Why is it so cold?” Steve grits his teeth.

“I don’t know,” he lies, because it’s easier than explaining. Something is happening to the entire town, and not just them. The dead animals, the change in weather, the unexplained phenomena. Earlier Steve had watched Tommy and Carol leave, still half convinced that this was all just a coincidence. He’s not so sure anymore.

Robin’s been texting him all day. Her neighbor’s roses died overnight, the flowers all rotten and black in the bed beneath the withered, thorny stems. There was a red haired woman on the news, standing in front of an old stone well. Steve had recognised it at once as the Gilbert farm just off Randolph. The water was poisoned from the dead lamb that had fallen in, but where the animal had come from, no one knows. A girl was admitted to hospital bleeding from her eyes.

Steve knows these things for what they are. Omens. Portents. He’s not so stupid to think this is natural anymore. There’s something at those stones causing this. This is dark magic, even though his parents frequently told him that there is no such thing. Magic is about how you use it, the intent. But the natural order has been disturbed and the world is responding the only way it can.

Steve has forged out with a torch, a coat and hat, and a knife tucked into his pocket. He half thinks of giving Carol and Tommy the slip and dismisses the idea before it even really settles. He knows that it would be easier to get rid of leeches. Carol had been particularly grim-faced waiting outside of his door and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her it’s probably already too late.

He wishes he could explain why. He has no proof, nothing at all. But the blind hope that everyone else seems to be functioning by doesn’t exist in Steve. He’s a witch. He knows the signs and the ache in his bones hasn’t gone away all day.

Every so often they catch the bobbing light of a distant torch, a sign of another searcher out in the woods. Carol flinches every time they hear someone call for Tammy, the sound echoing off the dark trees.

“Maybe she fell in the Quarry,” Tommy suggests and Carol scoffs.

“Why would she be at the Quarry?” she retorts and Tommy shrugs.

“I don’t know. Maybe that’s why no one’s found her yet. Town’s not that big and everyone is looking for her. I figure she’s got to be some place where no one will find her.”

While the quarry is deeply unlikely - a girl like Tammy would only go to the quarry to park and if that’s the case, someone would have been with her if she fell in - there are chances that she is just stuck somewhere. Hawkins isn’t without its pockets of Rural Americana. The woods are wild, with deep lakes and unseen pits, hunters who leave traps where they really shouldn’t.

“Maybe she’s asleep in Aaron Bruck’s car again,” Carol says hopefully and Steve ducks under a tree branch.

“Yeah, maybe,” he mutters. Carol is silent for a moment.

“You don’t think that at all, do you, Steve?” she asks and her tone verges on accusing. Like anything magic is all Steve’s fault and Steve suddenly understands his ancestors vanishing into the woods when torchlights began appearing in the distance.

“No,” Steve says shortly and shifts the heavy flashlight to his other hand. It’s not even really dark yet but the thick clusters of trees and clouds overhead make it harder to see.

“Why not?” she demands, hurrying to keep up with Steve’s long legs. “Steve, why does this have to be some magic bullshit?”

“Because it is!” Steve shouts and whirls around. He’s startled Tommy too, along with a cluster of sparrows in a nearby tree, who scatter into the air as Steve’s voice echoes through the air. “Because this is what magic is! All you’ve ever seen is pretty lights and basic telekinesis and elemental manipulation. That’s party tricks, not magic! Actual magic requires blood and intent and sometimes it gets all fucked up and if those stones are magic, then I don’t know what’s happened to Tammy. Alright?”

They’re both silent when he keeps walking and it occurs to him that he’s never shouted at them like that before.

But he had to. They have to know.

They’ve walked another quarter of a mile before Carol speaks again.

“Steve?” she says hesitantly, like she’s afraid he’s gonna yell at her again. Steve doesn’t raise his voice, not like that. Carol and Tommy do all of the time. Maybe they never expected Steve to have the same edges. That he has to soften them or all they’d do is cut each other raw.

“Yeah,” Steve says shortly, because it’s getting late and he’s aware that he’s supposed to be meeting Billy soon. He’d tried texting Billy before he left the house but he never got a response. He looked at his phone when they first came into the woods but for some reason, he had no signal.

“Something bad has happened to her hasn’t it?” Carol asks in a small voice. But Steve doesn’t answer her. He’s just seen the crow.

It perches on a tree branch, watching them. It doesn’t move even when Steve turns the bright light of the torch on it.

The crow ruffles its feathers, tilting its little head from side to side. Steve swallows. He couldn’t tell you the meaning of every portent that’s been happening but he knows about the crows.

“Change, death, rebirth,” Steve murmurs and steps forward.

“Steve?” Carol hisses, and her fingers just brush his coat. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Steve’s not quite sure. But the crows this morning and the crow now don’t feel like a coincidence.

He inches closer, although he has no actual plan. It’s a goddamn bird, what is he going to do? Start squawking at it? Hey, feathers, wanna lead me to our friend like Lassie?

“Steve, it’s a fucking bird,” Tommy says, but even he sounds afraid. This is one of those moments in the horror movie that smart people live through if they start running before trees start bleeding. Steve just gestures for them to stay back with a hand.

“Just keep back!” he says, not taking his eyes off the crow. “I don’t know what it’s going to do.”

“Pluck out our fucking eyes,” Carol mutters anxiously and maybe she’s not wrong. But as Steve inches forward, just before he’s close enough to touch it, the crow takes flight and vanishes over the trees. Steve watches it go. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was just a freaking bird.

“Can we go now?” Carol asks. Steve picks up the lost feather off the ground and wonders.

Are the crows leading him towards danger or trying to steer him away from it?

He hurries in the direction of the crow, only to find another lost feather on the ground. He stoops to pick it up, ignoring the sounds of Tommy and Carol behind him.

Okay. Maybe a bit like Lassie after all.

Every so often he finds another feather until there’s a clump of them in his hands. He doesn’t know where he’s going, if Tommy and Carol are even still following him. He can still hear them, trying to keep up with him in the dark.

The crow is waiting for him on another branch, and its expression is almost expectant. Like it’s been waiting for him. Steve stashes the feathers in his pocket, a little apprehensive. There’s nothing here.

“Alright,” he says, shining the torch across the ground. But it’s all empty, still and undisturbed. “What is it then?”

The crow waits, black eyes gleaming in the glow of the torch. And then suddenly it dives low and Steve ducks underneath the storm of black feathers heading his way. It only just soars over the top of Steve’s head, outstretched claws just grazing his hair. Another feather falls in front of Steve’s eyes and he remembers that crows are meant to be messengers, able to travel between this world and the veil.

The body hanging from the tree doesn’t look human.

Steve stumbles back. The tree - previously empty - now has a rope tied around the very branch that the crow had sat on. Old and fraying, the rope hangs down several feet before it winds around into a loop. Maybe once it had been wrapped around what was a neck but now is little more than a bloody mass of muscle and tendons. The rest of the body is no better, stripped bare of skin, leaving raw, red flesh and Steve feels bile rise in the back of his throat as he stares at the muscle left exposed underneath, the cartilage visible in the nose, the faint gleam of bone where even the remaining flesh seems thin.

The matted hair on top of the head is a dirty blonde, the curls clumping with blood, and Steve gags as he realizes. The skirt, the remains of a peasant blouse, the leather boot lying a few feet from the body.

Steve spits, trying to remove the taste from his mouth before he realizes that it’s not the vomit. It’s the smell of her, the stench of rust and blood and decaying flesh, and he can’t escape it. Even when he breathes through his mouth, it lingers at the back of his throat and he retches again.

“Steve?” A voice breaks through his haze and he rubs at his mouth before shakily pulling himself up to his knees. The voices are growing louder, Tommy and Carol finally catching up to him. Without the feathers to follow, they clearly struggled to track his steps through the now dark woods.

“Don’t come this way!” he shouts and he has to repeat it when his voice comes out weak and croaky. “Carol, stay away!”

But it’s too late. Carol comes stomping through the trees, pushing branches roughly out of her way. Her eyes fall on Steve first - crouched on the ground, vomit soaking into the leaves, pale and bloodshot. But then her eyes drift up and Steve closes his eyes, just as the screaming starts.

---

It takes less than two hours after the body is found for the entire town to know.

Steve sits on the couch, while his mom pushes some cocoa into his limp hands. Hopper sits opposite, hands folded in front of him. The bag with Tammy’s bracelet has been hidden away again which Steve is grateful for. He doesn’t think he can see it again without wanting to be sick.

“Tell me again,” Hopper says, in that calm low voice of his. He’s in police chief mode now and there’s nothing of Hop in those eyes. Just Chief Hopper.

“I already told you everything,” Steve snaps and his fingers shake around the mug. Carol and Tommy sit silently next to him, their faces equally closed. Neither of them have touched their cocoa either. Steve doubts that any of them will want to eat for some time.

“I know,” Hopper says. Behind him, Steve can see their parents pace anxiously up and down in the hall. His mother looks pale and he can tell by the way that her fingers are grasping around air that she wants to sneak out back to find the packet of cigarettes that she keeps hidden in a fake garden gnome. But she can’t, because they have guests, because police officers are searching in the woods behind their house, because her son is being questioned about the last movements of a girl he’s known since he was chewing on crayons.

Tommy’s mom and Carol’s folks had come, even though they didn’t have to. None of them are minors and they’re only giving statements. But they all came anyway and when the room got too crowded, Hopper had politely shooed them out.

Steve’s old man has fucked off somewhere and Steve really couldn’t care less right now.

Tammy is dead. She’s dead, so dead that they need to get dental x-rays to be sure. The girl who ate Steve’s animal crackers, and liked bad horror movies, and red high heels is just…gone. There’s nothing left of her but meat.

Steve drops his head again. He can’t actually drink the cocoa, too afraid that he’ll gag on it. It smells rich and sweet and the idea of it on his tongue curdles his stomach. So he grips the mug in his hands, even though it feels like it’s burning his skin. Good. Let it.

“We were at a party,” Steve says, and the second time of telling it is no better. “We were hanging at Benny’s. Someone suggested we go to the woods, the clearing just behind us.”

“I know it,” Hopper says in a tone that suggests he’s found a few too many idiots lighting fires out there, where countless people have done what Steve and his friends did last night.. The pit is well-known to most high school kids, but Steve doubts that some of them are so careful or respectful of the woods.

“We’d been there for hours,” he says and feels Carol’s fingers on his arm.

“Doing what?” Hopper asks and Steve’s lip curls. He doesn’t want to do this. He knows how this has to go. He’d told Hopper about last night in a panicked, queasy rush and now he has to do it all over again. And Hopper will prod and probe and check facts. He’ll see if Steve’s account stays the same, and Steve can place bets on that he’ll fuck up somewhere because he was high and drunk and he can’t reveal the truth. Not now, not here, not where his parents are listening and might hear how their son had gotten on his knees in the middle of the woods to worship at the altar that is Billy Hargrove.

“Partying,” he bites out. “Dancing, drinking. There was a bonfire.” Hopper fixes him with a level stare.

“And?”

“And what?”

“Drugs? Sex?” Hopper pushes. “Was there a fight?”

“Yes,” Steve says, flicking his eyes up to the hallway. He knows that they’re listening. “And yes. And no. There wasn’t anyone fighting.” Hopper nods.

“So people were drunk and high around an open flame,” he says slowly and Steve feels like laughing. None of this is going to help Tammy. If he’s right, then nothing mortal killed Tammy. Nothing could.

“Yes,” he says wearily. “People were smoking too, if it helps add to the picture.” Hopper’s jaw tenses. Steve ignores it. He knows why Hopper is taking this seriously. Vicious murders don’t happen in Hawkins. They just fucking don’t. The last murder was an accident ten years ago, where a fight in the street got a little too heated and someone picked up a rock. This is a whole other level.

Which is why people will be baying for blood, demanding to know that their children are safe. The mayor will put pressure on the whole department and the newspapers will release increasingly frustrated articles that their inept police force haven’t yet found a suspect.

Steve knows all this. He still can’t find it in himself to care.

“Just want all the facts,” Hopper says mildly. “People’s frame of mind. So, you were at the party. Who with?” Steve shrugs.

“Carol and Tommy,” he says. “People I went to highschool with. Tina and Amy and Chrissy. People like that. Heather was there too. Billy. Jason, Patrick, and that lot. I think Amy invited some people from her work. I don’t know them, sorry.” He says Billy’s name quickly, lost in a flood of other names. But even so he catches the slight tension in Hopper’s jaw. Someone who works for him will now have to be interviewed.

“The usual suspects,” Hopper says dryly. “Alright, so, party starts at around seven. And Tammy was with you?” Steve nods. He remembers it clearly, the moon hanging high overhead, the crackle of wood in the flames.

“Yeah,” he says wearily. “And then a bunch of us went to the lake just before midnight. But Tammy wasn’t with us then. She stayed behind at the bonfire.”

“Why did you go to the lake?” Hopper asks and Steve wants to groan and ask if the chief ever remembers being twenty.

“I don’t know,” he says in irritation. “I don't remember. We sat and skipped stones for a bit. Talked.”

“The three of you?” Hopper asks. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimes the hour and it feels like it’s chiming for the end of something. What, Steve’s not quite sure yet.

“And Billy,” Carol says quietly. Her cheeks are streaked, pale tracks on her face from tears. She looks younger without the armor of her stark black eyeliner, her pink lipstick smudged. She’s stopped crying now but Steve isn’t sure that this strange, quiet Carol is an improvement.

“And then you separated,” Hopper continues the thread of the story and Tommy clears his throat.

“We went to the stones first,” he says and ignores Steve’s foot pressing down on his toes. He doesn’t want anyone to know about the stones. The last thing he needs is some curious bystander wandering across the stones.

“You went to the stones?” Hopper asks, tilting his head. There’s something that passes over his face but it’s gone before Steve can think about what it might be.

“Yeah,” Carol says in a small voice. “The circle just over from the firepit? The white ones?”

“I know the ones,” Hopper says tersely. “Why did you go there?”

“Billy had never been,” Carol says and her mother steps forward to interrupt.

“Sorry, why is this important?” she asks. Carol’s mom has always been a more severe copy of her daughter - sharper angles, harsher lines, bitter tongue. “They weren’t with the victim when she died. What does it matter that they went for a walk in the woods?”

“I have to get all of the facts, ma’am,” Hopper says politely. “If they were all together when Tammy died then I need to know that.”

Carol waits until her mother slinks back before she continues speaking.

“We walked around them for a bit. Talked. Then we left.”

“Together?” Hopper asks and Steve swallows. This is the bit he’s been afraid of. And judging by Carol's face, she knows it too.

But she can’t lie.

“No,” she says, her voice wavering a fraction. “Tommy and I went off together. Billy and Steve went in the other direction. Back to the party, I guess.”

“Did you?” Hopper asks Steve.

“No,” Steve says, because it would be too easy to find out if Steve lies. “We just walked a bit.”

He needs Hop to not pick at the threads too much. If his parents find out that he’s dating a guy, a witch-hunter, he’ll be sent to stay with his aunt and uncle in Connecticut. If it ever gets back to Neil, he’ll kill Billy.

“Do you know what time?”

“No,” Steve says, because he’d had Billy’s eyes and Billy’s mouth to contend with. “Sorry, I wasn’t looking at the clock.”

“Right,” Hopper says. “And then you came home? Alone?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, mouth dry. Also a lie. His pillows upstairs still smell like Billy’s cologne. But his parents hadn’t noticed him sneak Billy in and they’d been gone by the time Billy left for work. “We separated around two, I guess?

This much could be confirmed - Steve had woken up in bed alone. At least with Billy living alone, they can pretend that Billy also went home. There are no witnesses to say otherwise.

Hopper’s jaw moves a little, like he’s mulling something over. Finally he nods and pushes himself up off the couch.

“Are you done?” Steve’s mom asks, almost impatiently, and when Steve looks up she has her arms folded across her crisp white shirt.

Hopper retrieves his hat from the side table and puts it on. “For now,” he says easily. “Steve’s given me a good place to start, got a few names to check out. Ideally, I’ll have to speak to as many people at that party as possible but that might not be possible with these kinds of things.”

“It must be a drifter,” Rachel Hagan says, because to people like them that’s the only real answer. Things like this don’t happen here. Not in their world to their kind of people. “Someone transient.”

“We won’t know for sure until we complete our investigation,” Hopper says politely. He tips his hat at the ladies and shakes Steve’s dad’s hand. “Hugh. Sorry to disturb your evening like this.”

“Terrible bit of news,” Hugh agrees. Steve grits his teeth and wonders where his dad had gone, what phone calls he’d felt were so crucial to make while Steve absorbed the news that one of his friends was dead. “Sweet girl. We’ve had her around here more than I can remember.”

Steve tries to breathe. He doubts very much his dad could have ever picked Tammy out of a line up until this happened.

“Steve?” Hopper says, just before he leaves the room. “Can I have a quick word?”

Confused, Steve puts down his rapidly cooling mug and gets up. As he squeezes out, the parents all push in and Steve leaves them behind as he follows Hopper to the front door.

“How come you went out to the woods today?” Hopper asks, his hand resting on the door handle. Steve blinks and wonders why he wasn’t asked this question earlier.

“We were looking for Tammy,” Steve says defensively, because it wasn’t all that far from the truth. “Three years ago she got drunk and fell asleep in the bathtub at Kate Saunders’ house. We thought she might have just gotten lost in the woods.”

“Right,” Hopper says slowly but his hand still doesn’t move. “We had officers search that entire area. Volunteers too.”

“Right,” Steve says, confused. “So?”

“So they didn’t find anything. No one found anything in that area until you guys came along,” Hopper says and Steve remembers all too late the crow and the previously empty tree. He knows now that they’re not just regular crows but he’s not sure he trusts whether they’re warning him or manipulating him.

But the more Hopper looks at him the tighter his throat gets. Finally, Hopper just shakes his head and steps out of the door.

Chapter 5: No Rest For The Wicked

Billy doesn’t finish at seven.

At half six, he’s still at his desk and the text from Steve comes in. Billy stares at it. It’s brief - little more than an apology for canceling with no reason for why.

“Are you alright?” Flo says, fingers still in her stack of files. “You look like my sister’s cat when he falls in the bathtub.”

This is more personal - and bizarre - information than he ever gets from Flo but he’s too distracted to acknowledge it.

“My plans tonight got canceled,” he says briefly and drops the phone down onto the desk. “Guess something came up.”

“I’m sure the Chief won’t protest a little overtime for you, if you want to stay an extra hour,” Flo says crisply. Her fingers move at lightning speed across the files, flicking through them like dominos. “I could use the company. We may need to be here a little late today.”

“They just said it was a missing girl,” Billy says, swinging back and forth in his chair. He’s been in the back office for most of the day but even he hasn’t missed the chaos happening outside. There’s not often anything so urgent in Hawkins. “Did something happen?”

“There was a call this morning from some parents who were concerned that their daughter didn’t come home,” Flo says, very carefully not looking at Billy. “When she still hadn’t been heard from, Hopper dispatched some searchers out to the woods.” Billy brakes his chair abruptly.

“Wait,” he says, slightly annoyed he didn’t figure it out before. He’d thought that it was a kid, someone who had wandered off out of view of her parents. But now he realizes why he’s been deliberately kept in the dark. “Do you mean someone who was at the party last night? Someone didn’t come home? Who?” But Flo just sucks on her teeth.

“I can’t discuss that,” she says stiffly.

“You mean you don’t want to discuss it,” Billy counters, because adults acting like he needs to be protected when he’s fucking nineteen is bullshit. “God, is it someone that I know?”

“Billy,” Flo says in a tone that makes his stomach drop. “Don’t.” Billy stares at her in disbelief before he pushes his chair back and doesn’t even care when the wheels screech.

“I’m getting a coffee,” he mutters, unwilling to reveal the hurt that’s prickling at every pore. He ignores Flo’s heavy sigh, because it won’t change anything. He suspects the order to not tell him anything is from higher up and there’s no good arguing with her.

Billy stomps out of the office in frustration. He isn’t being fucking told anything and he wants to know why.

He also thinks that he doesn’t want to know why. If the person was at the party last night then it’s a chance it’s someone he knows - Carol, Heather, Tina, Chrissy.

The kitchen is empty when he lets himself in and starts scooping grounds into the machine. The pot is empty, because even crappy coffee never lasts long around here.

The coffee machine hisses and fills the cramped kitchen with the bitter smell of burning and Billy just leans against the counter. He’s tired and aching for reasons he can’t quite identify from the jumble currently working itself into a twisted mess in his brain. Steve’s sudden cancellation collides with worry for whoever didn’t make it home safely and not knowing doesn’t make it any easier. Perhaps Hopper thought he was being kind when he gave that order but it just means that Billy is sitting here, wondering who might be dead. Wondering if there’s layers and depths of grief.

The TV is on in the breakroom so he wanders down the hall. The lone officer inside has it turned to the local news and Billy watches with some disinterest for a moment. But then the scene changes to a reporter in a red suit standing in front of the woods.

“Pity this, isn’t it?” the officer says, startling Billy, who hadn’t realized he’d known he was there.

“Yeah,” Billy says and wets his lips, wondering if the reporter will say the name and put him out of his misery. But he realizes all too late what the officer is talking about. The black bag being carried out of the woods on the screen is unmistakable.

Horrified, Billy stumbles away. He almost goes to look for Hopper before he remembers that there’s no way the Chief will be here when a girl is dead.

But the kitchen is no longer empty when he returns and he finds Callahan and Powell helping themselves to the freshly made pot. They stop talking when he comes in and this rankles him even more.

“What?” Billy snaps, looking at each of them in turn. “What aren’t you guys telling me? I know it’s someone I know and now she’s dead.”

“Sorry, kid,” Powell says, and grabs another mug to pour coffee into.

“Who died?” Billy says immediately and watches Powell share a look with Callahan.

“I’m not sure that’s really the best…” Callahan starts to say and Billy scowls.

“I think the rule applied only when she was missing,” Powell says carefully, watching Billy as he hands over the mug like he expects to lose a finger. “He’s gonna find out eventually.”

“If the chief asks, I had nothing to do with this,” Callahan says and hides behind his coffee so Billy turns his gaze to Powell.

“Well?” he demands, and knowing that Hop deliberately kept it from him doesn’t make it any easier.

“There’s going to be an official announcement,” Callahan says, stalling, and Powell just frowns.

“I think half the town knows now,” he says heavily. “All he has to do is set foot outside and someone will tell him anyway.”

Billy waits, until Powell sighs and gives in.

“Tammy Thompson,” Powell says and his pitying expression doesn’t make it any easier. “She was found a couple of hours ago. It took us some time to…to identify her.”

Billy’s still nursing a hangover and he’s only got three doughnuts in his stomach but that’s not what’s making him feel sick right now. He pushes himself past them both and gets a glass, twists the tap until it spits out tepid water. He drains half the glass almost immediately, keeps going until the taste of bile is washed away.

“What happened?” he asks. “She was fine when I saw her, she was alive and fine and…”

“You were at the party too?” Callaghan asks with a raised eyebrow. “Explains the dragged out of a ditch look you got going on this morning.”

“I didn’t expect to stay out so late,” Billy says wearily. His head is pounding again but this time there’s no Steve to soothe it away. “Was…was it after the party?” Powell looks a little regretful to be telling Billy all of this. The man is usually short and sharp but even he seems to be aware he should have some care telling Billy how his friend died.

“Early hours of the morning,” he says, and Billy’s stomach lurches again. Shit. They’d been fucking around at the stones - and then just fucking - and Tammy had been murdered in the same woods.

“Was it…?” and then questions whether he even really wants to know. “Was it bad? The reporter said that it was….” He trails off. Their faces are enough.

“Oh,” Billy says and leans against the counter.

“I’m sorry, kid,” Powell says, looking truly regretful. “Nasty business.”

“Shouldn’t happen in a town like this,” Callahan agrees. “People used to leave their doors unlocked without fear of people just letting themselves in. Never mind wandering around at night by herself. She should have known better.”

“What do you mean ‘known better’?” Billy asks coldly, although he knows exactly what they’re implying. Powell just holds up his hands.

“Just saying that a pretty young thing wandering the woods alone…” and lets the rest of his sentence trail off. “Sometimes the most obvious answer is the right one.”

“What about when it’s not?” Billy asks. These assholes are insane if they think this is Tammy’s fault, like being alone in the woods is the only thing that led to her death. It’s stupid - if people are intent on hurting others, there’s not a lot that will get in their way. Billy knows.

Powell and Callaghan exchange a look, like they do when Mrs Andrews gets a bit hysterical about guide dogs being on the bus. Like Billy is being unreasonable.

“How about we cross that bridge when it comes to it?” Powell says, although to them there will be no such occasion. The obvious answer has presented itself, the easy answer, and it will take more than Billy to persuade them otherwise.

“Where’s the chief?” Billy demands because Hopper is usually the reasonable one. But Powell just shrugs.

“Out,” Powell says shortly and Billy is getting so fucking sick of that tone.

“Doing what?” Billy pushes but Powell just shakes his head.

“I can’t tell you information about an open case, kid. You know that.” Billy stares furiously between the two of them but neither one budges.

“I have work to finish,” Billy says churlishly. “I’ll head out when I’m done.”

“Night, kid,” Powell says, like the matter is closed, and Billy stalks out, quietly seething.

Out. He can guess where Hopper is and why Steve hasn’t messaged him. The Harrington house backs right onto the woods and it sounds like they already know that Tammy was at a party last night, the same one that they all attended.

But this creates new problems. He’s Steve’s alibi for the time of the murders. They definitely didn’t go back to the party and there’s very little that two people who want to be alone in the woods would be doing other than fucking. Even if Steve lies, it’s unlikely that Hopper will believe him. Those two idiots out front might take it at face value but Hopper won’t.

He loves Steve. But keeping the secret is paramount. Not living in Neil’s house won’t exempt him from living by some of Neil’s rules and he’s definitely breaking two of them: no men and no witches. If Neil finds out, he’d easily kill both of them.

“Are you off?” Flo asks, swiveling in her desk chair as Billy slips into the back office and drops back into his seat.

“Not yet,” he says shortly. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to focus now but he can’t leave yet. He has to work…and he can’t bear the thought of being in his empty apartment. “I need the money.”

He may as well work as late as he can - he needs the overtime and Hopper isn’t going to say no to the help when the phones are ringing like this. It’s not like he has anything better to do and without the promise of pizza, he’s not sure what he’s got to eat. He’s not great at keeping his cupboards stocked.

Flo watches him quietly for a moment and then rises from her chair.

“I could use a coffee,” she says casually - no doubt she noticed that he returned without a mug and he realizes that he left it undrunk and cooling in the kitchen. “How about you?” Billy just nods, unable to say anything more around the lump in his throat. It’s not until she’s gone and the tears start to slip down his cheeks that he realizes that she’s deliberately giving him privacy.

“Thanks,” he says quietly, ten minutes later when the tears have dried up and she returns with two steaming mugs. She puts it down in front of him and he pulls it towards him. Maybe it’s a good thing that warm drinks are required in this sort of situation, even when the only thing on offer is the coffee from the station’s rattling old machine. It gives everyone else something to do, some easy comfort to offer.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” she offers and Billy just nods. He’s not quite ready for the platitudes yet.

“They’re acting like it was her fault,” he says finally, once Flo has returned to her desk. “For being in the woods alone.” Flo just snorts, disbelief dripping from every pore.

“They’re stupid men,” she says. “If it had been anyone other than a pretty young thing, the thought wouldn’t even enter their minds.”

“They sure seem to think so,” he says, jerking his head out at the bullpen. With the discovery of the body, there are only a few people left behind and Billy wonders why Hopper’s chief idiots are still here. What made Hopper go to the Harrington house alone.

“They can’t find their way out of a paper bag without the chief’s instruction,” Flo says, sniffing disdainfully.

“Yeah,” Billy says and picks up his mug. The coffee tastes slightly burnt, as always, but Flo has added just enough sugar to take the worst of the taste away. “We need a new machine.”

“I’ve been telling you that since day one,” Flo says dryly. She puts down her coffee as the phone next to her begins to ring and she sighs heavily. “And so it begins.”

Billy nurses his coffee as she picks up the receiver, noting the way that her eyes become narrower as the other person talks.

“Sir, I don’t care who was loitering outside the 7-11, that is hardly a tip,” Flo says frostily, and Billy’s stomach sinks. He should have expected this.

“I can assure you that it’s not a lead. Well, do you have any actual evidence other than a strange man in a dark coat? No, I didn’t think so. No, I will not pass you over to a detective. I can assure you that I do have that authority. I’ve worked here for the past thirty-six years, that’s how and if the chief were here he’d tell you that the buck stops with me as well. Goodbye.”

She doesn’t quite slam the phone back into the receiver the way that most people would, but for Flo it’s as good as shouting. She shakes her head as she picks up her coffee cup.

“Should have known this would happen,” she says with a scowl.

“I guess people panic, huh?” Billy says and her mouth twists.

“We had a similar thing back in the nineties,” she says, just as the phones start to trill again. “From the murders back then. Can you get line two?”

“What?” Billy says sharply, because he’s typed up every case until the early part of the decade and he’s seen nothing about murders. The odd accidental death, manslaughter, and drunken disorderly but he’s never seen anything about murders.

But Flo has already picked up the phone so Billy presses the button to answer line two.

“Hawkins Police Department,” he says and spends the next ten minutes arguing with the woman on the other end. He’s even rattier and his coffee has gone cold by the time he’s hung up.

“Flo,” he says, the minute she’s off the phone. “What do you mean by murders?” Flo frowns, peering into her own coffee cup with disappointment.

“There were deaths, back in the nineties,” she says distantly. “Four of them, I think? Hopper would remember. He was an officer back then. He was pretty green but he was at some of the scenes.”

“Right,” Billy says slowly, tapping his nails on the scratched desk. “But I haven’t seen any files about it…”

“It must be around somewhere,” Flo says, because things don’t go missing on her watch. “Four murders back then was just as shocking as it is now. It was kept quiet, for the most part. There may be a few newspaper articles about them…Hello, Hawkins Police Department?”

Billy collects their mugs and leaves, mind spinning. He’s seen every report going. So who did what with the file?

---

It’s over an hour later by the time that Billy packs up his stuff and steps outside. It’s only at Flo’s urging that he leaves at all. By now he’s seen the full report, had trickles of messages through from people who have heard. Some know he works at the station and want to know if he’s heard anything. He ignores all of them.

But there’s a figure standing outside the front steps, horribly distinct under the streetlight. Billy takes a deep breath before he walks out of the door. Just when he thought this day couldn’t get any worse.

“Hi, Dad,” Billy says evenly. And even though they’re on a street in the fading daylight, with a police station at Billy’s back, he can’t help how his mouth immediately goes dry. He hasn’t seen Neil in weeks, not since they ran into each other at the supermarket. But Neil hadn’t been alone, accompanying Susan and Max for a Sunday morning shopping trip, playing at happy families. Their conversation had been brief and stilted, before Susan’s quest for asparagus had lured them away.

Neil flicks his eyes over Billy and there’s no doubt what he sees. Unbrushed hair, dark circles, the hickey on his neck. Sure enough, Neil’s lip curls.

“Does the Chief let you come to work like that?” he asks and Billy clenches his jaw.

“I work in the back,” he says. “No one sees me and I’m sure the Chief has looked worse.” Neil’s frown deepens and Billy kicks himself for letting the remark slip. He shouldn’t slip after all these years but somehow he still does.

“The Chief is allowed to look however he likes,” Neil insists. “He’s the Chief. And you don’t seem to be making much of yourself, especially looking like that.” Billy bites down on his lip. He doesn’t give a shit how he looks or what jobs he takes. He got out of Neil’s house and one day, he’s going to get out of Hawkins.

“It’s fine,” Billy says, and this is the wrong thing to say because Neil’s eyes grow dark and cool.

“You may think that you’re able to live your life however you want because you’re no longer under my roof,” Neil says in that same tone that used to have Billy’s blood run cold. The same tone that accompanied a backhand against his cheek. “But you’re still my son and your unkempt, improper appearance and bad attitude still reflects badly on me. I still hear things.”

Billy can only guess at what kind of things Neil hears. No doubt his buddies are feeding him information every time they spot Billy working a shift at the garage or just fucking living his life, like a group of bored housewives with nothing better to do.

“Why are you here, Dad?” Billy interrupts wearily and he should know better than to cut Neil off. But he’s tired and sticky and he doesn’t want to stand here and make small talk, when Tammy is dead.

“I heard about the girl,” Neil says, ‘girl’, just like that, like being dead strips her of her name.

“Tammy,” Billy says, which Neil promptly ignores.

“I wanted to speak to someone about it. There was an odd fellow near the gas station last night. Being so close to the woods I didn’t know if he might be a person of interest.”

“What do you mean odd?” Billy asks, because to Neil people in MCR t-shirts are odd. The man would have been ideal in the old witch-hunting days, pointing at every single woman who dared pick wildflowers by the side of the road.

“Why does that matter?” Neil retorts. “I wasn’t aware that you were a detective. Last time I checked, you filed paperwork. Your opinion doesn’t matter.”

“Because,” Billy says and slides his hands into his pockets. Neil won’t notice that way if he curls his hands into fists and lets his fingernails dig half-moons into his palms. It’s always been like this since Billy moved out, like Neil is desperate to rile him up to a fight. “I also answer phones and since the story broke, we’ve had over twenty phone calls of suspicious characters and old man Pickett swears up and down he saw a UFO in those woods only three days ago. I just don’t want you to waste your time if Powell is only going to thank you for your interest and to leave a note at the desk.”

Neil’s nostrils flare and this is normally where Billy would find himself shoved into whatever wall he was nearest. He still might be and just as he’s wondering if he’s pushed Neil too far, a familiar figure steps up onto the curb.

“Alright, kid?” Hopper asks. The Chief cautiously strides along the pavement, his eyes flicking in between Billy and Neil like he’s stumbled across two bucks locking horns in the street. Billy must have missed Hopper’s truck pulling in.

“Fine,” Billy says shortly, trying to not let his relief show on his face. “You remember my dad, Neil Hargrove. He just had some concerns about the murder.”

“Fully understandable,” Hopper says. He stands by Billy, folding his arms across his chest. “We’ll release more information as we get it but at the moment we believe this to be a single event. We don’t believe that the residents of Hawkins have cause for concern.”

“I think we should be concerned as you don’t currently have anyone in custody,” Neil says and that little tidbit is enough to make Billy wonder who Neil has been speaking to. Judging by the twitch in Hopper’s jaw, he’s caught it as well. “Billy has a sister, not that he ever seems to remember her, and if someone has attacked one young woman, who is to say that he won’t do it again?”

Billy bristles at the mention of Max but Hopper places a hand on his shoulder before he can say anything.

“Again, with all of the evidence we have, we’re just advising locals to keep their wits about them and avoid traveling through the woods alone. We’re looking into every possible scenario. I'm afraid that’s all I can say for now about an ongoing case. Billy. Do you mind if I walk you to your car? I need to discuss something with you.”

They leave Neil at the steps of the police station, Hopper’s firm hand on his shoulder keeping him swiftly moving to where he parked the Camaro.

“Is he giving you trouble?” Hopper asks in a low voice as they pass under an unlit street lamp and Billy snorts.

“Not currently,” he says bitterly. Despite the serious beating that ensured he spent the first night in his new place bloodied and bruised, Neil has since decided to pretend that he doesn’t exist. Billy knows which he prefers. “But I’d watch out for him.”

“He looks like the type,” Hopper says grimly. “Small town like this, people get it in their heads that they’re vigilantes and can do a better job than we can. I take it the phone calls have started?” When Billy nods, he sighs wearily.

“Had that even back in New York,” he says. “One big case would hit the news and then people would see monsters everywhere. They just never bothered to look for them before.”

“You probably don’t miss the brutal murders,” Billy says, digging in his pocket for his keys. The Camaro is the only car left in the lot, everyone else having the sense to head home early when the news of the murder broke. Despite the fact that it’s September and there’s still light in the sky, the streets have emptied.

“There’s a lot of things that I don’t miss,” Hopper says, his face unreadable. He puts a hand on the car door, preventing Billy from opening it and climbing in. “You got a second for a few questions?”

“Uh, sure,” Billy says, thrown. There’s a sinking feeling in his gut, and some sort of churning frustration that every time he thanks that this day can’t get any worse, it does. Hop has to know and Billy has no way of contacting Steve to find out what he said.

“About the party,” Hopper says, removing his hand. “You went, right?”

“Yeah,” Billy says, jangling his keys in his hand. “Started at Benny’s. Then we went to the woods.”

“A very old tradition,” Hopper says, with a tension in his jaw that Billy just doesn’t understand. “Do you know what time you went to the woods?” Billy shrugs. Most of the evening is a blur and he hadn’t known that he’d need timestamps. But they’d all piled in there about six and they hadn’t been quick to leave.

“Eight?” he guessed, because the sky had just turned dark. “Sometime past that, I think. I didn’t look.”

“And you stayed at the party the whole time?”

“No,” Billy says, wondering if he’s making a mistake. But if Steve told Hop then it’s a risk leaving it out now. “A bunch of us went out to the lake.”

“Who?” Hopper asks. “I need names, Billy.”

“Carol, Tommy. Steve,” Billy says hesitantly. “We went for a walk and then Carol wanted to go to the stones. I’d never seen them.”

“And?” Hopper says and Billy doesn’t know what he’s asking for.

“And what?” Billy snaps, because he’s tired and hungry and he misses Steve. “They were stones, we looked at them and then we left.” But Hopper doesn’t waver under this explanation, merely folding his arms.

“I find it a little odd,” he says, in the same voice that he uses when the doughnut box is suspiciously empty. “That you four are at the stones and then Steve and the others are the ones to find Tammy’s body.”

A punch from Neil would have been easier to take.

“What?” Billy croaks and Hopper’s shoulders slump.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he says, looking regretful. “You didn’t know. But Steve was the one who called us, while we were searching for Tammy. They’d gone out to the woods and found her.”

“You can’t think we hurt her!” Billy says, rage breaking through the wave of shock and hurt. He doesn’t know why the others went out without him, or why Steve never told him. If this is why Steve canceled on him.

“Of course not,” Hopper says sharply. “But this shit isn’t supposed to happen here, Billy. If you saw someone or heard something…”

“We didn’t,” Billy says helplessly. “The last time I saw her was at the bonfire. We didn’t see her after we left for the lake. I didn’t even know it was Tammy until a few hours ago.”

Hopper studies his face for a moment, like he wants to be sure that Billy isn’t hiding a lie there, before nodding.

“Alright,” he says and looks down at the still Camaro. “That’s what the others said too. Get home. I’ll see you for your shift tomorrow.”

Billy climbs into the driver’s seat but he doesn’t immediately pull off. Instead, he lets the engine idle, watching Hopper walk away and wonders if it’s all about to come crashing down.

Chapter 6: Don't Go Into The Woods Tonight

Steve can see the flickering lights of the police from his bedroom window.

“Steve?” His mom rests her hand on the doorframe, the soft waves of her hair tumbling around her face. She’s still dressed from the day, fingers tugging anxiously at the chain around her neck. His parents have left him alone so far, didn’t even question him disappearing upstairs without a word after Hopper had left. He heard Carol, Tommy, and their parents go a while back. He’s had countless messages on his phone but not from the people he wants. Even Robin hasn’t messaged him but he can’t blame her for that.

“Yeah?” Steve asks listlessly. He’s still in his clothes, mud dried to his sleeves and hems from where he’d fallen earlier. He should change but it’s not like he’s expecting to sleep.

“Are you okay?” she asks and Steve breathes. It’s just what people ask. It’s not her fault.

“Yeah,” he says again, because he’s so fucking not. He’s at a point where he can’t really feel anything because if he thinks about any of it - the stones, Tammy, Hopper - then it will all come crashing in until he drowns under it.

“Did the Chief say anything else?” Sophia asks. He can see the reflection of her in the window and at times like these he can see the similarities between them. Sometimes with his dad it’s hard to see anything there, but there’s no denying Sophia is his template.

“We might need to make an official statement,” Steve says listlessly, even though Hopper had said no such thing. Which is strange - surely they’d need to as they found the body? It must need to be written down, recorded somewhere, and it stings that Tammy will be reduced to a file and a box hidden in the police storage room. “At the station tomorrow. Maybe.”

“I don’t like this,” she says worriedly and her eyes move to the dark window as well. “What were you even thinking, going out into the woods like that?”

“We went looking for Tammy,” Steve says, tipping his head back against the headboard. “Other people were out searching so why shouldn’t we.”

“It was risky,” Sophia chides. “And then you found…I can’t even think about it.”

“Imagine how I feel,” Steve mutters and picks at a loose thread in his bedding. This morning he’d lain here, pressed against Billy, and hadn’t had a care in the world.

“You can’t keep going out to these parties in the woods,” Sophia insists. “Steve, you’re an adult now. You’re going to have to grow up at some point.”

“My friend is dead,” Steve says, feeling cold every time he says or even remembers it. There’s no magic that can fix this. None that he would want to use anyway. “Do you even remember that?”

She doesn’t answer and Steve just keeps staring out into the pitch black. But then the bed dips a little with her weight as she slides in next to him.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she says and rests her chin against his head. “Maybe you should try and get some sleep, okay? It might make you feel better.”

Steve nods because there’s not a lot else that he can do. He doubts that he’ll sleep tonight, he doubts that he’ll sleep at all ever again. He doesn’t know what to do with this feeling - the strange twisted grief of missing Tammy, desperation to find out what happened to her, and the faint lingering hope that they have this all wrong. That the body isn’t even her’s. After all, there was nothing to really identify her with, no face, no marks, and only scraps of clothing left.

It’s all connected, he knows that. He’s not stupid. But he just doesn’t know how or why. All of the stories about the stones have been bullshit so is there now something going on?

Sitting here is like poison ivy under his skin, a relentless painful itch. He wants Billy. But Billy has two separate shifts tomorrow and Steve can’t bring himself to be that selfish. He wonders if Billy knows yet.

“Yeah,” Steve says, listlessly. “Maybe I will.” Sophia kisses his head, letting her lips linger against his skin.

“Do you want me to bring you some ginger ale?” she asks but Steve shakes his head.

“Thanks,” he says. “But I’ll be fine. I’m just going to get into bed.”

He hears her get up, collect the laundry basket from the floor and slip out. He waits until he hears her heels clack across the floor and down the stairs. When he’s certain that she’s downstairs, he vaults himself across the bed, stripping off his sweater as quickly as he can. He grabs his jeans off the back of the chair, and finds one of Billy’s shirts in the chaos of his wardrobe. He breathes deep as he pulls it over his head, inhaling the smell of cologne and sweat and smoke. Billy’s clothes always get mixed in with his but somehow his parents never notice. The housekeeper probably has something to say about it though.

He grabs a jacket just in case, and digs around under his bed for the box that he keeps there. He chooses a few items - a penknife, a black candle, a pendulum. After a beat, he also takes the bottle of powdered bone, a yew branch and - with some hesitation - the crow feathers he’d brought home from the wood. He stows all of these things in a backpack and flings it over his shoulder.

He’s not going to just sit here. Most of the Hawkins police are useless and incapable of solving a crime that doesn’t involve who took the last jam doughnut. Hopper may be sharp but Steve still can’t quite trust him. Not with this. Not when he has no idea what he’s actually looking for.

He takes the bottle of powdered bone and tips some of it into an empty bowl. All he has to do is mix it with a little of his spit and tip the concoction over his empty bed, along the empty groove in the sheets where his body usually lies.

“Duplici,” Steve whispers quietly and steps back. Forming a duplicate body isn’t always neat and Steve hasn’t pulled this trick since he used to sneak out during high school. Sure enough, the bone begins to vibrate, the pale fragments rippling like a wave over Steve’s sheets. After a moment they swirl up, using Steve’s DNA to take form.

It’s a very basic copy, only capable of sleeping or sitting silently unless the caster is present to animate it. As Steve will be in the woods that’s not possible, but hopefully a peacefully sleeping Steve will be enough to satisfy his parents should they look in. They’d see past an illusion immediately and it would get weaker the longer Steve was away from the house anyway. Illusions are not Steve’s forte. He’s pretty good at summoning and telekinesis but anything that requires more finesse - illusions, glamors, transfigurations - usually turns out worse than if he hadn’t bothered at all.

The fake Steve doesn’t even move when the spell is complete and Steve has to flick the blankets over him. Hopefully it will be dark enough to hide the dust that is still spattered across the bed. He doesn’t have time to do much more.

The window pops open easily enough and Steve slips through it out onto the trellis. He clings on with one hand, so he can push the window closed again. Then he climbs down, carefully feeling for each step in the dark. The light off the pool flickers below, giving the night an eerie feel. But Steve keeps going until he drops down to the concrete below. He checks the patio doors for any movement before he dashes past them, across the boundaries of the property and into the woods.

---

Steve’s lived near the woods his entire life. He could walk to the lake blindfolded. He, Tommy and Carol made a fort once, before they got too cool for that kind of thing. It took them all day and they hid in it until it got too dark, unwilling to leave their hard work until fear chased them all the way back to Steve’s house. He’s been to parties out here, campfires, and late night swims, kissed Billy for the first time as the sun set back in May. His parents had decided against living in Loch Nora after they were married, preferring the soulless brick house with no neighbors, and it suited Steve just fine.

But today, these don’t feel like his woods.

It’s pitch black now and Steve has to watch every step, unwilling to use the full glow of his torch. He doesn’t want to be spotted, not when the woods are swarmed with well-meaning officials. They can’t know that what they’re looking for isn’t human.

He follows the path to the clearing. Even in the dark, his feet know every dip, every root. He’s taken this path more times than he can count, from his own house and from Benny’s.

He wanders over to stare at the circle of ash where the bonfire had been. Last night, it had been so easy to feel invincible, magical, like something untouchable as he’d stared at the glowing light, with Billy by his side. Now one of his friends is dead and something is stirring in Hawkins and he doesn’t know anything any more.

He’s not going to find anything here. This wasn’t where it happened. So he takes a deep breath and pushes on, down the dark path that he had taken only the day before. Even without the crows, he follows it easily like he’s being pulled by an invisible string.

This deep in the woods the only sounds that Steve can hear are his feet crunching over leaves and the jagged rasp of his breath. Occasionally something rustles in the undergrowth, but Steve ignores this every time it happens. Unless it’s about to eat him, he doesn’t have the time.

He hears the crime scene before he sees it. The shouting of the officers, the barking of the police dogs, and then the glow of the lamps that have been erected around it. Steve ducks behind a tree and waits.

He peers around, hoping that he hasn’t been spotted. But it’s getting late, and the police presence is dwindling. He has a chance.

He pulls out the blank candle and crouches down behind the tree, so that no one can see him flick open a lighter. The candle flares brilliantly and Steve cups it in his hands. He hates this part.

The wax that drips onto his open palm stings as it connects, before the pain fades and Steve is left with a cooling puddle of black on his skin. He blows out the candle and pinches the wick before he hides it away again.

“Obscurity,” Steve says quietly and fades from sight.

When he can stare at both of his hands and see nothing but the ground below, Steve slips out from his hiding place. He takes care to not disturb the scattered leaves or twigs on the ground, as the spell doesn’t cover noise. It also doesn’t cover scent so he has to take care around the tracker dogs. It’s only a very basic invisibility spell but Steve doesn’t have the time to craft anything more durable.

The clearing ahead of him has a wide circumference of garish yellow police tape, strung around five trees to keep it up. The large lamps are the only sources of light, save for the few bobbing torches in the distance. But there’s less now, the searchers all sent home and only the few remaining police officers are still out searching the area surrounding the crime scene.

There are a few figures ahead of him, all wearing official jackets. Steve recognises the black jacket immediately - the county coroner. But there’s no black bag, no gurney, and Steve is glad that he doesn’t have to see Tammy’s body again. The tree where she had hung is empty.

The coroner purses his lips as he picks up something to drop it into an evidence bag. Steve grits his teeth. He’s too far away to see what it is.

He waits until the coroner ducks under the police tape and out of the circle before he sneaks over, mindful of every footstep. This late at night, any snapped twig or heavy footfall would be instantly noticed, even by the generally useless Hawkins Police force.

There’s still blood on the ground, the smell strong enough that Steve has to cover his nose and mouth as he gets closer to the tree.

It's hard to believe the cops had missed Tammy's body - it had been right there in the open, No one could have missed her. But Hop had insisted the area had been cleared - by volunteer searchers and cops alike - hours before Steve's unfortunate discovery. And however bizarre it might be, Steve is inclined to believe Hop. The suspicion that's been lingering in Steve's mind works its way under his skin once more. Maybe Tammy hadn’t been found earlier because something didn’t want her to be found.

Steve casts a wary eye back over his shoulder to be sure that no one is heading back inside the tape and crouches down to the ground. But aside from the blood flecked leaves, there’s nothing here. No clues as to the culprit, no overwhelming sign of magic. Just a few stray threads from the rope that had tied Tammy to the tree - likely what the coroner put into an evidence bag.

Steve chews his lip in frustration. He doesn’t know what he thought he’d find out here, what he hadn’t already seen. Maybe he’d been hoping for something. Earlier all there had been in his head was blood and screaming and trying to get the words out to tell someone on the phone what had happened.

He needs to go back to the stones, he decides. He meant to earlier, with Carol and Tommy. If he’s going to find something, it’s going to be there.

He pushes himself upright. The stones are a fairly straight walk from here, maybe ten minutes or so through the woods. He can go over there, take a look, and be back before his parents ever figure out that the thing in his bed isn’t him.

But when he turns in the right direction for the stones he catches sight of something that doesn’t belong amongst the trees.

The man standing there smiles pleasantly. He looks like any regular guy - blonde hair pushed away from his face, sharp features and hands tucked in the pockets of his slacks like he’s anywhere else instead of standing in the woods at a crime scene at night.

But that’s not the thing that’s making Steve’s blood run cold.

He looks down just to check but he just finds muddied colors, red-brown-orange where his fingers should be. He’s still invisible.

But when he looks up again the man is still there smiling blandly.

Steve twists behind him but there’s nothing there, nothing that the man might be looking at instead of him. He’s looking at Steve.

This spell isn’t foolproof. It doesn’t hide smell, sound, or body weight. Someone could walk into Steve at any time. But that doesn’t change the fact that Steve is fucking invisible right now. No one should be able to see through that.

And then, as though he knows what’s going through Steve’s head, the man raises a hand and very obviously waves.

Steve flinches back, like he’s been struck. He may as well have been, because the movement of those long, elegant fingers was very clear. He can see Steve and he wants Steve to know.

But then someone shouts, the sound jarring enough to break the spell and when Steve looks again the man is gone. He searches, scanning the darkness, hoping to see that flash of blonde hair again. But there’s just tired people in official jackets, just hoping to go home and hug their loved ones.

He’s too focused on looking for the man to notice it right away - the strange tingling in the tips of his fingers. It’s only when he looks up that he realizes with a shock that the soft pink of his fingernails are becoming visible. The spell is fading, and when he checks his palm, the little puddle of wax has nearly entirely peeled off. He doesn’t have long before the police will find a fully visible Steve Harrington in the middle of their crime scene and they’ll spend too much time wondering how he got there. And if he does anything that threatens to reveal their community, he’ll find himself living in the gardener’s tool shed. Possibly as a toad.

The sound of heavy footsteps behind him jolts him out of his thoughts and he hurriedly slips back under the tape. His fingertips are now fully visible and he breaks into a run, keen to get out of sight.

But the fear follows him as he runs, pounding over and over with every beat of his heart.

---

When Billy’s phone buzzes, he abandons the pretense of sleep that he’d been keeping up and tugs his phone free of the charging cable in his haste.

But to his disappointment it’s not Steve. It’s a number he doesn’t keep saved to his phone but knows off by heart anyway.

11:32pm - how r u

Billy chews on his lip. He’s bitten it raw and ragged this evening, unable to focus. He showered, furiously scrubbing his hair under the tepid water, and forced himself to eat whatever he could find in the cupboards. Which ended up being ramen and Billy tries to not think of Steve’s favorite sausage pizza as he sucks on tasteless noodles.

He’d finally forced himself to bed, hoping that once the gunfire sound of the alley down below eased off for the night he’d be able to fall asleep. But he couldn’t do anymore than lie awake, staring at the ceiling.

11:32pm - Okay. When did you hear?

11:33pm - Today after school.

Billy stares at the screen for a moment before it lights up again with another message.

11:33pm - i think there’s a leak.

Billy frowns. He’d suspected as much today, with Neil outside of the station. People knew too much too quickly, before Tammy’s family could be properly told and an official announcement made. It isn’t shocking - Hawkins never has something like this. It would spread like wildfire before anyone might even think that they need to half the flow of information. But before he can respond another message comes in.

11:33pm - I know you saw Neil today.

Billy snorts and starts typing.

11:34pm - no doubt he blames me for not doing as he asks

11:34pm - he’s not happy

11:35pm - my friend’s dead. He can get fucked.

11:35pm - Just watch yourself. He’s on the phone a lot

11:35pm - i think he’s up to smt

11:36pm - like what

11:36pm - not sure. But he takes the phone into their bedroom so i can’t hear

11:37pm - saw him with a cop earlier

Billy pauses. Shit. He’s long suspected that Neil has friends down at the station but this is the worst time possible to have it confirmed.

He’s worried about his sister, in that house by herself. He has no idea if Neil’s rage extends to her. It hadn’t when they were younger but Max is a teenager now, all sharp edges and rage and defiance. He doesn’t know if Susan will speak out if Neil tries to hurt Max. She never had done when it had been him under Neil’s fists.

11:37pm - keep yourself safe. If you have to, go stay with a friend.

11:37pm - I will. Will u be okay?

Billy bites his lip. He doesn’t know the answer to that. Neil has already breached the boundaries of his work. He doesn’t know how long it will take for him to continue pushing now that the first step has been made. How long before Neil comes here.

11:38pm - I will. GO TO SLEEP.

Max responds with a flurry of emojis and Billy stifles a laugh as he drops the phone back down. She’s not related to him by blood but she’s the closest thing to family he has. Until last year, their relationship had been fractured and uneasy, neither willing to have more to do with the other than they had to. But Billy leaving had given them enough space to figure out that their problems had never been anything to do with each other.

She’s the one in that house with the psychopath but yet she’s still concerned about him. While nothing she’s told him is strictly a surprise, it’s confirmation enough that whatever is about to happen, Neil is about to make it worse.

Max may have meant well but her text ensures that sleep doesn’t come for a long while.

---

Steve runs until he’s clear of the crime scene, until he’s fully visible and his palm stings from where the wax was. He bends over, hands on his knees, breathing hard. He hates this part. He’s going to tingle for a good hour now, like the world’s most uncomfortable pins and needles.

This is why he doesn’t often do magic like this. The power almost isn’t worth what comes after.

He flexes his fingers carefully, wondering what the fuck just happened. That guy saw him. He saw Steve. Even witches shouldn’t be able to see through an invisibility spell like that. All except for old Mrs Miller who could see peoples’ auras, whether they were invisible or not. And it’s almost impossible to cover an aura signature.

He half thinks he should still go to the stones but he’s also pretty certain whatever is there has more power than he really wants to fuck with.

Maybe that man in the woods is a part of it. But it doesn’t make sense, unless one of those bullshit theories going around is actually true. For the first time in his life, Steve wishes he’d paid more attention to them. Myths all start the same way; spun by bored teenagers and townsfolk with nothing better to do. But among all those wild stories must be a grain of something true. Something real. Steve just needs to find it.

Steve digs into his bag again, pulling out his pendulum. He’s got no chance of finding that man - not without an anchor, or even a name - but he might be able to follow the magic.

Steve sits on a nearby rock, wincing a little as the sharp edges dig into his thighs. He lets the chain unfurl until the crystal drops down, swinging a little under it’s own weight. Steve takes a few deep breaths, ignoring the pitch black sky and the creaking of the trees and focuses. Left to its own devices a pendulum can find the closest source of magic. Mrs Byers taught him this one. It’s something witches used to use back in the days when they weren’t safe, and they needed to be sure of other witches nearby.

There’s a beat, while the pendulum attunes itself to his magic, his intent, and then searches out in the woods for what it requires. Like calls to like, and soon the pendulum is tugging furiously on its chain. At first, it pulls Steve in the direction he’s just been, angling towards the crime scene. Steve swallows and pulls it away. Other magic, he thinks. Find any other magic. The pendulum swings, once, twice, before looping in a circle and pulling him away.

This deep in the woods the only sounds that Steve can hear are his feet crunching over leaves and the jagged rasp of his breath.

It takes him a while to realize what direction he’s being led in by the impatient pull of the crystal. He followed this path only the other night, Billy at his heels.

The tree still looks the same in the moonlight when Steve rests a hand on the bark. His stomach unwillingly dips as he remembers - Billy bent over so willingly, his fingers grasping at Steve, urging him on, pulling him in deeper. The crushing wave of pleasure at Billy coming untouched.

Steve removes his hand and tries to clear his mind. The pendulum, confused by his thoughts, spins in a small circle.

“Sorry,” Steve says and keeps walking.

He’s not surprised when a crow lands above his head, just before he reaches the stones. Steve eyes it warily. He’s not forgotten the crows in his backyard, the milky dead eyes of the body he’d had to bury, the crow that led him to Tammy’s body. Crows represent illusions and tricksters, and he doesn’t know whether they mean to help or harm him.

The pendulum stops briefly to jerk towards the crow, a clear sign as any. Steve holds his breath, fumbling in his pocket for the lighter. Elemental control doesn't require much - they are forces that already exist in the world, so you don't have to create anything, just manipulate and shape what's already there. Summoning elements is a different matter but thankfully, Steve can twist a fireball from the lighter if he needs to.

The crow stares at Steve, a sharp-eyed sentry, but it doesn’t move.

“Do you not want me to go this way?” Steve asks, before he remembers that it’s a crow. When it doesn’t move, he takes a step forward and the pendulum resumes its pull.

Towards the stones. Of course it’s the stones.

But then the pendulum drops suddenly, hanging in Steve’s hand. Confused, Steve gives it a little push with his magic. The crystal shouldn’t stop until it finds its target.

But as it turns out, it has only paused, not stopped. The pendulum jerks up again, pulling away and Steve tracks its progress. It’s no longer pointing dead ahead, at the stones. Now it’s pointing at a right angle and Steve frowns in that direction. While searching for magic the pendulum should pull towards the closest source, and if there isn’t one, the strongest. The pendulum has found himself, the crow, and the stones. If he had to guess the stones are the strongest source of magic out here.

So why is the pendulum not leading him to them? What could be a stronger lure?

A scream rips through the woods, unmistakable. Steve freezes, heart pounding, and the pendulum chain slips a little through his clammy fingers.

God, he’s being so stupid. The stones themselves aren’t the source of strong magic. They have power but they’re not the most dominant.

Whatever killed Tammy is.

Steve runs.

He doesn’t need the pendulum anymore and he just remembers to shove it in a pocket before he drops it. He’s a little out of shape since school but he keeps pace, flying over roots and ducking under tree limbs.

He’s not going to make it in time. But even so, he can’t stop.

Steve walked this path only last night. But he’d not been alone and he hadn’t been running towards death. There’s the gleam of lights ahead through the trees, the familiar glow of security lights and Steve pushes himself, despite the burning in his lungs. He bursts through the trees, throat dry. The lot is empty, because it’s past midnight and Benny’s should have been closed an hour ago. But there’s a car parked out front and Steve’s blood runs cold at the sight of it.

There’s a small figure lying in front of Benny’s.

Steve sets off at a run, but he knows before he even gets close enough to see her mauled face. Only one person would be closing up Benny’s at this time - the same person who fed Steve doughnuts every day after school and yet still told him off about the too many sugar packets in his coffee.

“Betty?” Steve gasps and slides roughly to the ground. He pulls her over and his breath catches in his throat when he sees her.

Her eyes are gone. They’re just…empty black holes, bloodied and raw around the edges. There’s blood splattered across her cheeks, like a fine mist. Steve swallows a bubble of fear and panic and grabs hold of her searching hand. She’s terrified, and she cries out briefly when he touches her.

“I’m here,” Steve says, squeezing her hands tightly. “Betty, it’s me, I’m here.”

Her mouth opens in a terrified gasp, but there’s no real sound that comes out. Steve knows deep down that she won’t be able to tell him who did this but he has to try.

“Betty?” Steve asks, keeping his voice low. He doesn’t know if the thing that did this is still here, watching. The thought is horrifying and Steve instantly feels like there’s gleaming eyes waiting in the dark the moment he thinks of it. But he swallows it down. He has to help Betty.

“Betty, who did this to you?” he asks urgently, because her rasping has become something wet and sick-sounding. He brushes a finger over her forehead as gently as he can, trying to take away some of her pain, like he did for Billy earlier. It won’t be enough but maybe he can make her passing a little easier. No matter what healing spells he throws at her, there’s no undoing this.

“Betty, please!” Steve begs, because she’s fading too fast. She takes in a few sharp, panicked breaths but the shock and trauma, combined with blood loss is going to be too much for her. The light that is Betty - sarcastic, motherly, confident Betty - is already fading. Steve chokes back a sob. This can’t be happening. He can't be losing the second person that he loves in the space of a day.

“Betty, I can find who did this,” Steve pushes desperately, still tracing his fingers across her forehead. It’s not all magic - he just wants her to know that he’s here, that she doesn’t have to die alone. “If you can tell me something…anything, please, I need to know.”

There’s a light in the woods that wasn’t there before. Someone is coming this way and with Steve’s luck, it’s going to be a cop. Very soon, someone will find him crouched over Betty’s body and there will be even more questions, providing they don’t shoot him on sight. Frantic, Steve looks down again, knowing that it’s a lost cause. Betty can’t speak through the pain or the blood pooling in her mouth.

And then it happens, like a candle flickering out. Betty goes still and takes one last terrible rattling breath and Steve is left to stare at the corpse of the woman who had cared for him like a mother.

The light is drawing closer, the unmistakable glow of a torch. The search has finally spread this way. Steve bends his head, buckled by grief, wishing he’d arrived here a little sooner. If he had, maybe Betty would still be alive. Instead, she’d locked up Benny’s and stepped out into a dark parking lot at the wrong time.

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers and pushes himself shakily up from the ground. He has smears of her blood across his hands and he has no time to check what evidence he may have left behind. So he sets off at a run around the corner of Benny’s and disappears once again into the woods.

Chapter 7: Sins of the Father

The day that Billy’s been dreading comes the next day.

The pounding on the door pulls Billy out of a fitful sleep and he stumbles up off the mattress. He’s still half asleep, strange fractured dreams keeping him from any proper rest, which is why he doesn’t check who is outside before he opens it.

“Billy,” Neil says, flicking his eyes disdainfully over Billy’s borrowed t-shirt, fraying boxers and unbrushed hair. “Should you still be in bed?” Billy self consciously tugs the hem of the t-shirt down, mindful that he still has a hickey sucked bright red into his hip by Steve.

“I don’t start at the cafe until nine,” he says defensively. Neil sniffs and steps inside, moving Billy out of the doorway, like he’s been invited in. Taking a few deep breaths, Billy shuts the door behind him, fearful and resentful of whatever has brought Neil to push into his space. It was part of their unspoken agreement that they stay out of each other's lives. Billy has never returned to the rented house on Old Cherry, silently aware that he’s not welcome. In return, Neil doesn’t come to see him here. Ever. Billy’s house, his rules.

“I’m surprised the chief didn’t call you in early,” Neil says, standing in the center of the living room, and Billy tries to not feel ashamed of the small, dark little space. He’s tried his best and he has what he needs but it’s not ever a space he feels proud of. He doesn’t have the funds for new furniture or to even fix up what shit is here, because his landlord fucking won’t.

He’s only nineteen. He has time. Maybe next year, he and Steve can move in together and it’ll be a home rather than a place to sleep.

“He knows I have other commitments,” Billy says wearily, because Hopper’s always been good about fitting in shifts around Billy’s other jobs. At the moment, the job at the station takes more time, because Billy has it free. His work at the garage is usually a few hours here and then when someone is out sick or they need an extra hand and he’s not anticipating more at the cafe until the Christmas period starts. “He’ll see me this afternoon, anyway. I start at midday.”

“Well, given what’s going on you’d think he’d need you to answer phones or whatever crucial work it is you do,” Neil says pointedly and Billy just takes another deep breath. It’s the only thing to do when Neil is in this mood, trying to burrow under his skin.

“We have a tip line open,” Billy points out, even though the calls that came in yesterday were fucking useless. “Flo can handle the phones until later.”

“The girl is dead,” Neil says, and Billy’s stomach churns at the reminder. For a moment, when he’d seen Neil on his doorstep, he’d forgotten.

“I know,” Billy says, sitting down heavily in a chair. But Neil’s mouth twists and Billy looks down at the floor. He knows that look.

“She was found hanging from a tree,” Neil says, now just a pair of dark shoes in Billy’s eyeline. “There is no more search party. No tip line. And honestly, I don’t think there needs to be. The police can’t handle this. But we can.”

“What?” Billy asks blearily. Neil merely frowns, because a year ago Billy wouldn’t have been allowed to respond like that. He’s probably still not allowed but Neil wants something and that trumps everything.

“This murder was done by witches,” Neil says firmly. “The body was strung up in the woods at the same time the town started experiencing omens? It’s a ritualistic murder. I have a friend in the police department who gave me some information about the body itself and nothing human could have accomplished that.”

“You can’t be serious…” Billy starts and then closes his mouth hurriedly.

“I am,” Neil says grimly. “I’ve ignored the witches in this town so far. Old and feeble, or obsessed with what diamonds to wear to their country club. But this is too far. The police won’t be able to do anything about it, especially judging by Chief Hopper’s reaction last night.”

Billy’s desire to be sick returns, full force.

“Do you have any proof it’s any of the witches in this town?” he demands, fingers curling up against his bare knee. “Or do you just intend to hunt every last one of them? The Sinclairs have kids, for God’s sake!”

Neil turns around to face him fully and whatever defiance Billy had temporarily shrivels up. He’s seen that look before. He knows that look, lived it. Felt it beaten into his chest, his jaw, his back. Neil is never normally a man to be reasoned with but today this feels like the devil delivering an ultimatum, the contract just waiting to be signed in blood.

“It won’t matter,” Neil says coldly. “If they’ve murdered a human being, they will pay for it.”

“You’ll go to jail!” Billy says, fighting the urge to stand up in rage. If he does, it’s all over and his father will see it as a challenge. “The court won’t allow ‘thought this person was a murdering witch’ as a defense!”

“We can deal with that,” Neil says calmly and Billy shakes his head.

“How?” he asks. “What makes you think you can escape murder charges? This isn’t 1692, Dad! It doesn’t work that way anymore.”

Of course, Neil going to jail isn’t the worst outcome in the world. But Billy dreads to think who Neil might have murdered to end up there. The Sinclairs, quietly raising their children. Regina, the young woman who lives out by the Merritt farm. Steve and his folks, so close to the woods where Tammy died.

“We have ways,” Neil repeats and with a crushing moment of understanding, Billy realizes the meaning of the word ‘we.’

“Who else?” Billy asks, struggling to keep his tone even. “Who else is involved in this?” Neil’s mouth twitches.

“Just a few friends,” he says, folding his hands behind his back. “Not witch-hunters, but they’re alarmed by the violence in this town. And I’m sure you’ve seen all of the other things that have been happening. Portents, Billy.. Milk doesn’t spoil and whole fields of produce don’t just rot on their own. Something is happening and we have a plan to stop it. Stop them.”

“What?” Billy asks. “When?” Neil’s mouth just curls into a smile. Maybe he thinks that he has Billy in agreement…or maybe he knows better and wants Billy to know that he can’t be stopped.

“There’s a meeting tonight,” Neil says. “At the Hideout. Do you know it?” Billy nods. He’s heard of it. He’s never needed to go there - Benny’s is more popular with people his age.

“One of the bartenders is one of ours,” Neil continues. “An ally. He’s agreed to hold this meeting there. That is where we will start.”

Billy stares at his feet. Fuck. His father intends to start an honest-to-God witch-hunt. He means to drag people who don’t know any better into a fight against innocent people.

“I need you to be there,” Neil says and Billy jerks his head up.

“What?” he says, mouth dry. But he can see by Neil’s face that he shouldn’t argue, no matter how much he wants to.

“Ten o’ clock. Tonight. I expect you to be there.”

“Why?” Billy asks, because this is breaking all of the rules of their silent agreement. “Why do I have to be there?” Like a snake, Neil steps forward and strikes out with his arm, tightening his fingers around Billy’s wrist. Billy yelps as Neil’s nails dig into his bare flesh and he has to bite back down on the words in his throat. Shit he’s out of practice. It’s been so long that he’s almost forgotten how to act.

“Because of this,” Neil insists, turning Billy’s wrist over to reveal the mark to the morning sun. “Because you are my son and a Hargrove. This is a fight that you’re not going to sit back and ignore! I know you’re friends with the Harrington boy. I’ve allowed it so far but now it stops, do you hear me?”

Billy had briefly thought of spitting in Neil’s face, taking back his arm and pushing Neil out of his home. But at the mention of Steve, the fight in him dies. Even worse, Neil sees it.

“Did you think I didn’t know?” Neil hisses grimly. He raises Billy’s arm again so that there’s no escaping the mark. But then again, there never has been. “You bear this and yet I know you’re friends with him. I don’t know what was going through your mind but if I see you with him again, I’ll kill you both. Do you hear me?”

Staring into Neil’s cold blue eyes, this doesn’t feel like an empty threat. His father is too far gone, Billy can see that now. He thinks that he’s above the law, that the witches of this town have become an infestation meant to be eradicated. But Billy knows every one of them, that not a single one would be doing this.

Even worse is the people that Neil might have dragged into the cause. If he has contacts in the police department, who knows what Neil might be able to get away with? No wonder Neil seems so certain that he won’t face any punishment.

“Be there tonight,” Neil says, his voice enough for Billy to know that this is an order that must be obeyed. He must have taken Billy’s silence as agreement because Neil doesn’t know of any other option. “Ten on the dot. Don’t be late.”

“Yes, sir,” Billy says dully, staring down at the floor. He stays that way, until he hears Neil’s footsteps cross the floor and the door closes with a quiet click behind him. Only then does he push himself up so he can go and retch over the sink.

---

The station is a flurry of activity when Billy arrives several hours later, already tired and the smell of coffee grounds still on his skin. Helen had taken one look at him and banished him from dealing with customers. But she must have seen the news because she doesn’t call him out on his gray skin or unfocused eyes. Billy silently made drinks as the orders came in, grateful for the routine of it. He doesn’t want to think, not today.

There’s an officer keeping guard at the main doors, because Billy has to push through a crowd of people to even get in. The officer lets him slip by, clearly recognising him from the coffee runs. But inside is no better, people rushing back and forth, the phones ringing off the hook. Billy spots Flo at the main desk, receiver pressed against her ear.

“What’s happening?” Billy asks in a low voice to one of the uniformed officers in the reception area. Her mouth twists as she answers him.

“They found another body,” she says. “Out in the woods again.” Billy swallows hard. Oh God.

“Do they know who it was?” Billy asks and the officer shrugs.

“Yeah, some lady who worked at the burger joint. She was locking up by the looks of it.You know, this used to be a quiet town. What the hell is happening?” But Billy is already stumbling away from her, reeling from the news.

But the chances are that it’s still someone he knows. He’s been to Benny’s countless times, knows the faces of the waitresses there. Any one of them could have been gutted by the same culprit who killed Tammy.

He checks his phone again, even though he would have heard a message come in. He hasn’t heard from Steve since yesterday evening and he’s getting worried. Steve always messages him multiple times a day and now Billy has gone close to twelve hours without anything at all.

“Billy!” Flo says, her hand covering the mouth of the phone. “Chief wants to see you. In his office.” Billy drops his phone back into his pocket. Outside, the crowd seems to be growing in size and intensity.

He makes his way through to Hopper’s office, not even waiting after he knocks on the door to step inside. The chief is also on the phone, but he gestures for Billy to shut the door and take a seat. He looks like shit, tired and gray, and his fingers keep twitching like he wants a cigarette.

“Yeah, I get that,” Hopper says into the phone, looking frustrated. “But it’s only been twenty four hours. We’ve barely finished processing the first crime scene, never mind the second…yes, I do know that. Yes, I know how it looks.”

Billy slouches in the uncomfortable brown chair that usually victims and lawyers sit in. It’s hideous, a throwback from the seventies, like most of the shit still in use at the station.

“Well, mayor, I don’t think a serial killer chose this time to start murdering folks just to spite you,” Hopper bites out and now his obvious need for nicotine makes sense. Mayor Kline is an asshole. No doubt several violent deaths are affecting his family-friendly campaign slogans. Bring your family to Hawkins! Have grandma, the kids and even the dog butchered by some unknown assailant in the woods! Billy’s never actually encountered anyone quite as stupid as the mayor from Jaws before but Kline’s pretty damn close.

Hopper bends his head and rubs at his temple with his free hand. He must have barely slept, Billy realizes. He’d probably gone right back to the station after he’d spoken to Billy and if the body had been discovered early hours of the morning, he’d probably not even spent more than a few hours at home.

“We’re doing what we can,” Hopper says, in a low voice. “But it’s been a day, Larry, come on. Even the fancy precincts don’t get results this fast and I’ve got a computer at the front desk that probably used to make the AOL dialing tone back when it was new! Yep. Yep. Yeah.”

The tone of Hopper’s replies just gets tenser with every sharp ‘yep’ and Billy suspects that the short answers are just to stop Hopper from saying what he’s really thinking.

“Look, it’s on at the town hall in an hour. I don’t suppose you’re actually gonna make an appearance to this thing…of course not. Yeah, fine.” Hopper slams the phone down and pulls a lighter out of his drawer before he continues. “You useless, spineless jackass.”

“Good old Mayor Kline not pleased?” Billy asks, with a smirk and Hopper pulls out a cigarette from the pack that he’s cleverly hidden in his tray.

“Don’t get smart, kid,” Hopper advises, easily lighting the cigarette and taking a long drag in one fell swoop. “Don’t you dare tell Flo I’m smoking again.”

“She’s going to smell it,” Billy says, because Flo has the nose of a basset hound and he’s stopped having cigarettes on his break because Flo once lectured him on air quality and his young lungs for half an hour straight.

“I have a system,” Hopper says, twirling around in his chair and opening a window. With it open, the rabble of the crowd is audible.

“What are you going to do about them?” Billy asks and Hopper exhales a heavy plume of smoke.

“We’re having a press conference at the town hall,” Hopper says wearily. “Which dear old Larry won’t be attending but you can bet your bottom dollar when we’ve caught the guy he’ll be there with bells on, kissing babies and taking the credit. We’ve got to do something.”

“I saw the protestors outside,” Billy says and Hopper scowls.

“They have no patience either,” he grumbles. “Everyone expects us to have the killer by now. But all we have to go on is two blood-soaked crime scenes. And collecting evidence and processing it takes time, especially when you have to rely on the bigger labs, like we do.”

Hopper takes another deep drag and for a moment they both listen to the shouting outside. Billy gets it. One murder is shocking enough for this town. Two is unheard of and it feels like the killer isn’t going to slow down.

“Do you think it’s a serial?” Billy asks. Hopper shrugs.

“Fuck, I hope not,” he says. “But two victims barely a mile from each other? Might be.”

For a second, Billy worries about Steve, his house isolated on the edge of the woods like that. The woods must be the hunting grounds of whoever this is, as they killed Tammy not far off from the lake and then wound round all the way over to Benny’s. From there they can go up Randolph and cut across the old road or double back and loop around the trailer park. Hawkins is surrounded by wood, basically closing themselves in.

“So things might get worse,” Billy says, half wishing he could sneak a cigarette himself. But Hopper sees him looking and shoves the pack over.

“I won’t tell,” he says and Billy doesn’t hesitate to grab one. He’d slept badly, fragmented dreams of dark woods and monsters lurking behind trees. But in every one the monster had always been Neil and then he’d woken up to the real thing.

“I told Steve I’d stop,” Billy mutters, letting Hopper light it for him.

“How is Steve?” Hopper asks. Billy just shrugs and inhales. It’s no blowjobs and coffee but it’s a good enough method for the stress in his shoulders.

“Haven’t heard from him,” Billy says bluntly, like it doesn’t matter, and then sees Hopper’s face. “What?”

“You don’t know, do you?” Hopper asks and he’s hard to hear over the crowd outside. “The second victim was Betty Randall. She was a waitress at…”

“Benny’s,” Billy finishes, feeling cold all over. Fuck. Betty. “Yeah, I knew her. Shit.” Hopper sits back in his chair and roughly stubs out his cigarette in an ashtray. He looks no better for it…but there’s still someone out there slaughtering people. And they might not be done yet.

“I wouldn't think anything of it,” Hopper advises. “But he’s got a lot on right now. Give him time.”

Billy stares at the glow of his cigarette. He knows that Steve is grieving. He just never thought that Steve would want to do it alone.

“Flo’s watching the phones,” Hopper says suddenly. He’s hidden everything away again, carefully spraying breath freshener on his tongue. “I thought you might like to come.”

“To the press conference?” Billy hadn’t thought about it, just presumed that he’d be left behind with Flo.

“If you wanted,” Hopper says, leaving the offer out there for Billy to consider. It feels like there’s a purpose behind it but Billy isn’t quite sure of it yet. “Tammy and Betty were friends of your’s. I’d hate to be stuck behind a desk in that kind of situation.”

“I…sure. Thanks,” Billy says and stubs out his cigarette when Hopper offers him the ashtray. Hopper digs around in a drawer and offers him a mint.

“I’d avoid Flo until you can find some deodorant or something,” he advises. “Conference starts at one. You can sit up front. Keep an eye on the crowd.”

“Sure,” Billy says again. “Thanks.” But Hopper merely looks resigned.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he advises.

---

Billy has never seen the town hall so full.

There’s a screech of feedback as Hopper taps on the mike. Billy squirms in his chair as everyone quietens down.

“Good afternoon,” Hopper says and the final few whispers fade away. Hopper has always been able to command a room, even without shouting.

“You all know why we’re here. Two nights ago, at approximately one am, Tammy Thompson was found dead in the woods, near Lake Jordan. And this morning another body was found. We have informed the family and we can confirm that the second victim is Betty Randall. She was found early this morning outside of Benny’s Burgers, on Randolph. Now, while we cannot give too many details on an ongoing investigation, I understand that you’re all concerned about the safety of your families.”

Hopper has barely even finished speaking before the noise starts again, people shouting and asking questions all at once. Hopper just taps on the microphone and clears his throat.

“One at a time,” he says, looking as frustrated as he had this morning. “Mrs Nott, if you please?”

A woman in a crisp blue blouse that Billy vaguely recognises as one of the teachers from the middle school rises from her seat. She looks vaguely self-conscious as everyone turns to look at her.

“Thank you, Chief,” she starts, anxiously folding her hands in front of her. “First of all, how much danger are we in? Are these random attacks?”

“At the moment, it’s difficult to say,” Hopper says coolly. “However, at present there is no clear motive or link that connects the two so we’re advising everyone to keep clear of the woods and the surrounding areas.”

“I work at Benny’s,” someone interrupts and when Billy cranes his neck he recognises a curvy blonde woman who is a waitress there. Judging by her pale face and red eyes, Betty’s death has hit her hard. “How are we supposed to keep clear of our own workplace?”

“Benny’s is currently a crime scene and won’t be open for a few days,” Hopper answers smoothly. “It will be able to reopen after we’ve completed our investigation and hopefully by then, we would have apprehended the person responsible.”

“You don’t know who is responsible for this!” another voice shouts. Hopper scowls and holds up a hand.

“Might I remind you that it’s only just been twenty-four hours,” he says, dark eyes scanning the crowd, half daring any one of them to speak out of turn again. “We cannot get results that quickly. We will have evidence and leads but we need more time.”

“We’ll be dead by then!” a woman shrieks hysterically.

“We will take whatever precautions necessary to keep the town safe,” Hopper says, raising his voice to be heard. Billy twists a little in his seat to watch the crowd, the strange uneasy body of it, rippling like one dark mass. He doesn’t know how Hopper can face them down like this, just him against dozens of people, all breathing the same paranoia.

“We will implement a curfew if necessary, so don’t go out after dark and please avoid unpopulated areas…” Hopper continues before a man at the back of the hall stands up and Billy recognises him with a twist in his gut.

“What about everything else?” Neil says, his voice carrying calm and clear across the low murmur. “The rotting fields, the spoiled milk, the animals? Do you expect us to believe that this is all normal and there’s not something unnatural happening in our town, under our very noses?”

“Unless you’re referring to the two brutal murders of a young girl and an elderly woman, the answer is no,” Hopper says flatly, staring down Neil with a badly concealed snarl. “And no matter how much we’d like to think otherwise, human beings have an immense capacity for evil. We know murders happen - violent crime happens, every day, across America. Hell, across the whole globe. It just rarely happens here. There’s nothing spooky or unnatural happening here other than a sick twisted person doing twisted, terrible things..”

“There is something more at work here!” Neil insists, and maybe it says something for the paranoia and fear that the town is under that no one else shouts this accusation down. “People are spitting up cockroaches and bleeding from their eyes! What ‘natural’ explanation can there be for this other than some kind of curse?”

“Must I remind you that correlation does not mean causation? Just because events happen at the same time does not mean that they are related. Besides, Hawkins has seen similar things before.. In the ‘90s the central water supply became contaminated- crops died, animals died, people became seriously sick before we figured out what was happening. There were a few deaths.” Hopper says - all of this news to Billy. Another event in the town’s history that he’s never seen any record of. “The source of whatever is causing the disruption this time will be found but in the meantime we are recommending that people use bottled water where they can and avoid prolonged exposure to contaminated areas.”

“This is a cover up,” Neil says evenly. “I came to this town because I thought it would be a good place to raise my family - peaceful, free of corruption. But there’s something very wrong in this town and the rot reaches far beyond the fields.”

“That’s bullshit!” spits a furious, familiar voice and Billy’s heart dips a little when he spots Steve, pushing off his mother’s grasping hand so he can stand up and join the argument. Mrs Harrington looks irritated as Steve shoves her fingers off his sweater, and eventually she gives up, folding her hands in her lap.

“No one’s causing this,” Steve continues, staring down Neil with a curl in his lip. Billy curls his suddenly clammy hands in his lap, Neil’s phantom grip on his wrist suddenly stinging once more. “It’s not a curse, or a punishment or a reckoning.”

“And you’d know for certain, would you?” Neil spits back, a clear challenge in his eyes. “Or are you just covering up for your own kind?” His gaze travels over Steve’s parents and the Sinclairs just behind them, to the Holloways in the back row.

“How can you say that?” comes another furious voice and a man is leaping to his feet on the other side of the room. The woman next to him is frail, with curling dirty blonde hair and enough of her daughter in her face that Billy recognises them as Tammy’s parents instantly. “Steve was nothing but a good friend to Tammy! They played together as children.”

“You have no voice here, Neil Hargrove,” Tammy’s mother says coldly, her eyes like flint despite her pallor. “You’ve hardly been more than a few years and you dare come into our town and make these accusations.” Neil just extends his arms, like he’s pleased by this fight. Knowing him, he probably is.

“Maybe they need making,” Neil says, with all of the smugness of a snake with a suspiciously full belly. “Your daughter has been murdered - are you so naive to believe that it was some stranger passing through? It must be someone she knew, someone who walks among us.” He gestures to the room at large. “Someone here right now.”

“You’re insane!” Mr Hagan roars, starting towards Neil with his fists clenched before Hopper gives a sharp, shrill whistle.

“Alright,” he says coldly, as the hall quietens down. He gives everyone a cool, level stare until, one by one, they drop back down into their seats. “That’s enough. Any more disruption like that I’ll start putting people in cells for disturbing the peace. We do not want a witch hunt on our hands and I do not want people going off to be vigilantes when we don’t have all the facts.” He brings his right fist to his left palm, punctuating his words for emphasis as if he wishes he could punch his words through everyone’s thick skull. We don’t. Have all. The facts. Thump. Thump. Thump. “It has been only twenty four hours,” he reminds the crowd, “We will gather the evidence and we will find who’s responsible by following the correct procedure. So you’re all going to shut your mouths, go home and keep to curfew. Is that understood?”

There’s a few grumbles, a few people shifting in their seats but no one seems willing to challenge Hopper outright. Hopper stares around, looking for anyone who might incite another fight but when he finds none, he clears his throat.

“Alright,” he says. “Next question.”

Billy slumps in his seat.

---

People are reluctant to leave when Hopper ends the conference not long after. Steve can’t blame him. He has no real answers for them and it’s likely no one would listen to him even if he did. Steve stands out of the way, waiting while his mom talks to some other parents.

He couldn’t miss Billy at the front, curls sticking to his forehead, crumpled shirt tucked sloppily into his jeans. He’d been surprised that Billy had been allowed to come, since he’d had a shift. Steve’s supposed to be at the theater right now but he’d begged off to Keith. Not even his asshole manager had been able to argue against Steve needing the day off.

“Hey,” someone says softly and Steve whirls around before he even registers that the voice is female.

“Hey, Heather,” he says, catching his parents watching them as he hugs her. He’s long known that Heather Holloway is their idea of a perfect match for their son - there are no other suitable witches in town. Erica Sinclair is far too young, Regina Moffett is too old for him and Heather’s parents attend the same country club as Steve’s folks. Her credentials are, to their mind, impeccable.

Billy, of course, would never even be considered a remote possibility, which is why they have to get out.

“I’m sorry,” she says but Steve doesn’t miss the dark circles under her eyes. She’d known Tammy too.

“Thanks,” he says, folding his arms across his chest. The temperature is still lower than it should be this time of year and no one has really put the heating on yet.

“I’m sorry too,” Steve offers, remembering his manners. “I know you and Tammy were friends in school.” Heather shrugs, strands of dark hair falling across her face. It’s not as glossy as usual and lacking her usual ponytail. It makes her look younger.

“Yeah,” she says shortly. “We weren’t really close lately but…it’s still a shock.”

Steve just nods. Everyone he’s spoken to lately have all said the same things, like no one really knows what else to say. Steve can’t judge them - when Mary Baker’s dad died in the tenth grade, he hadn’t known what to say to her. Nothing was going to make it better so no one said anything really at all. Maybe cliches are just that for a reason - they’re safe.

“Your folks are calling a meeting,” she says suddenly, jerking her head at Heather’s mom, Janet, hend bent low next to Sophia’s. “They’re worried about everything that’s going on.”

Steve looks across the hall and catches sight of Neil Hargove, holding court on the other side of the room. He’d be lying if he wasn’t worried. Tammy and Betty’s deaths may come from magic but no witch did this. Not that matters at all to Neil.

“I can guess why,” he says flatly, because no doubt this will have them all scurrying like rats. There are only a dozen witches in Hawkins and very few would be equipped for whatever Neil is about to bring their way. Before the Hargroves arrived, Steve’s interactions with witch-hunters were limited.

Steve turns his head again and looks at Billy, longing twisting his gut almost painfully. It’s been two days and they’ve never gone this long without seeing each other. But all of Steve’s texts have gone unanswered and with Neil’s outburst earlier, maybe this is why.

He’s considered texting Billy about the stones, giving him a warning, but he doesn’t know whether Billy is already compromised. He doesn’t know whether the circles under Billy’s eyes are due to stress or guilt. He knows deep down that Billy isn’t like that…but Neil has power over him. There’s nothing Steve can do or say about it until they can leave Hawkins.

“So I’ll see you at your house later?” Heather says and Steve hurriedly pulls his attention back to her.

“My house?” he says and then remembers. “The meeting. Yeah. See you there.”

“We can keep each other company,” she says with a weak smile and drifts away. Steve watches her go before looking across the hall again, bypassing Neil, the cops, and Tammy’s parents before he finds Billy.

He’d tried to not look for his boyfriend during the meeting, unsure where they stand, unsure if it’s safe. For a moment when he catches Billy’s sharp blue eyes there’s a flicker of relief and affection that he’s sure is reflected in his own. But then Billy jerks his head sharply and turns away. Steve doesn’t have to look to feel Neil’s eyes on him. So they’re being watched then.

Sophia calls for him and he reluctantly turns away.

Chapter 8: Call To Arms

Steve remains tense for the rest of the evening until he opens his front door to the Holloways.

“Steven,” Tom says briskly, stepping in like it’s his house, not Steve’s. Steve lets him, because Heather is already giving him an apologetic look as she follows her parents inside.

“I didn’t know there were this many of us in the area,” Heather whispers, letting her parents go ahead of her, to follow the low sounds of chatter down the hallway. Steve shuts the door, after checking that no one else has followed the Holloways up the drive. Somehow Steve ended up on door duty, letting the local witch population in the door and straight past him, like he’s little more than the help.

“Me neither,” Steve says, because they’ve been arriving in trickles for an hour now. As far as he knows, there’s maybe five magical families in total in Hawkins and there are currently far more than that taking up residence in the family room.

“Is it that bad?” Heather asks, tugging her ponytail over her shoulder to play with her hair.

“What, you think they’ve told me anything?” Steve says flatly. Because his parents definitely tell him fuck all, whether he’s a fucking adult and full grown witch or not. They seem to think that he’s still a kid in high school, stealing beers and throwing pool parties every weekend. Steve wants to scream for them to catch up but he doubts they’ll listen anyway.

Sophia sticks her head around the corner and pointedly clears her throat.

“We’re starting, you two,” Sophia says, her dark brown eyes finding Steve’s and holding his gaze. “Come on through, please.”

The family room is filled to the brim with witches, chairs set up from corner to corner. Steve takes a spot by the door, not even bothering to sit down and is pleased by Heather’s ignoring her parents’ pointed looks to stay with him. Aside from the Holloways, he only recognises a few people: the Sinclairs have come without their children, holding hands on the Harrington’s loveseat. The Miller sisters wear matching pinched expressions, to go with their gray, shapeless dresses and young Regina anxiously spins her locket back and forth. Everyone else has come from further afield, beyond the town’s borders. Hugh stands center stage, his eyes flicking back and forth across the gathered attendees.

“Is that everyone?” he asks, turning to look at Sophia, perched on the corner of an armchair. “The Byers…”

“They moved,” Sophia informs him in a low voice. “To California, remember?”

Judging by Hugh’s face, he doesn't. So instead, he just clears his throat and the room grows quiet.

“Thank you all for coming,” he says and Steve just rolls his eyes. His dad has always liked the sound of his own voice. “I’m sure you’ve all heard about the recent murders. Unfortunately, these deaths have touched our family closely, with the murder of my son’s close friend…”

Steve closes his eyes. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck his dad for using Tammy’s death this way. His father hadn’t even known Tammy, had barely looked at any of Steve’s friends over the years. Steve clenches his eyes shut and breathes, until the roaring in his ears stops.

“Hey,” Heather whispers, her breath warm on his neck. She’s angled herself into his side so that it’s not obvious that they’re whispering, and that anyone looking might just presume that they’re a young couple pressed closely together. “Why haven’t you talked to Billy?”

But Steve just jerks his head, motioning for her to keep quiet. He doesn’t want to get into it here. Her mouth twists with displeasure at his brush off but she slumps back against the wall.

“I’m sure you all have concerns. The nature of these deaths have been…unusual. Violent. Sadistic. At present, we don’t know if the killer is one of our own or somebody abusing magic but we have become aware of another situation that directly threatens our community. There is a witch-hunter in Hawkins. There has been for several years and we have never engaged with him, or his son. We’ve never needed to, as it didn’t appear as though they are active hunters. However, a reliable source has informed us that these hunters have arranged a meeting tonight, with the intent of tracking down the witch or witches they perceive to be responsible for these crimes.”

Steve feels sick. Billy couldn’t…he would never.

But Neil absolutely would.

“We don’t know exactly where the meeting is being held, as that information is being kept very private amongst the invitees,” Hugh says, as the assembled witches nervously whisper to each other. There hasn’t been a witch hunter in these parts in nearly three decades - there are so few who actively follow their descendants these days and any active hunter would find somewhere more lucrative than a quiet Indiana town. Witches often share suitable, safe locations between each other. The Harringtons have been here since Steve’s grandparents and only the Miller sisters have been here as long. Regina moved into town a few years ago, and the Sinclairs came here after they were married, looking for a safe place to raise children.

None of them ever expected a witch hunter to suddenly appear in their midst and for the last two years, it hasn’t been a problem. Until the murders started and Neil decided that now was a perfect time to follow his family’s legacy.

“However, I advise all of you to stay indoors at night and cloak your scent as best you can. Do not set foot anywhere near the Hargroves…” Steve is pushing himself away from Heather, and taking a few steps forward before he can even think about what he’s doing.

“Billy isn’t involved in this!” he says furiously and Hugh turns to look at his son with a disgusted look. But Steve doesn’t care - he just wants everyone to know that his boyfriend would never be involved with something like this.

“Steve,” Hugh says coldly. “Don’t interrupt.”

“But I know Billy,” Steve pushes, ignoring how his mother is shaking her head. “He wouldn’t get involved with that stuff, even if Neil is. You can’t make him responsible for his dad’s actions.”

“I know he’s your friend,” Sophia says, sharing a look with her husband. Steve hates that look. It’s the ‘our son is a disappointment’ look. “But I think you’re letting that cloud your judgment…”

“It’s because he’s my friend that I know he wouldn’t do this!” Steve says in frustration. “We’ve been friends for months now and he has to know what I am. He wouldn’t do this!”

“You can’t know for certain,” Sophia says, before her husband can speak. “Neil was never a direct threat to us, until this presented an opportunity. They’re all the same, Steve.”

“I also find it hard to believe,” Mr Sinclair interrupts, in a calm voice that’s a far cry from the tense, raised ones the Harringtons have all used. Steve likes the Sinclairs. He’s babysat for their children on occasion, likes their warm atmosphere. “We know Billy. His sister, Max, is friends with Lucas.”

“Max is not Neil’s biological child so she doesn’t have the gene,” Hugh says dismissively. “Billy does and we have to presume that he is involved. It’s in his blood, like magic is in ours. We’ve allowed you to continue this friendship so far, but I think the time has come that you end it. Even if Billy is innocent, his father most certainly is not. Neil means to hunt us and we are on our own.”

Steve steps back, stung. Allowed the friendship? Like they think that they have over any say who Steve has in his life? He slinks back by the wall, ignoring Heather’s cool expression.

“Now,” Hugh continues, as though Steve was little more than a brief, unwanted interruption. “We have a few confirmed names of people attending this meeting. Most are close associates of Neil and we have whispers of a few more. Do not engage with these people. Don’t let them catch you alone…”

Heather digs her fingers into the flesh of Steve’s arm and jerks her head at the door. Steve takes one last look at his parents but neither one of them looks his way. So he follows Heather into the hall and isn’t surprised the way she turns to him when the door has been shut behind them.

“Were you ever going to mention that your boyfriend is a witch hunter?” she asks, and Steve nervously eyes the closed door.

“Come on,” he mutters and pulls her towards the stairs. He can’t risk anyone hearing but he feels that he owes her the truth.

“Is this why you won’t speak to Billy?” she pushes.

“It’s…some of it,” Steve says hesitantly. When he opens the door to his room, he can see her looking around at his posters, his unmade bed, the clothes flung over his desk chair. She’s never actually set foot in his room before.

“Because you think he might be involved with whatever shit his dad is trying to pull?” she asks, and her tone just verges on accusing. Steve shuts the door behind him and drops down onto his bed.

“No,” he says bluntly. “Not for a second. But his dad is…he’s a bully. He’s violent. He’d hurt Billy if he ever found out about us. I can’t risk involving him in this.”

The bed dips next to him as Heather sits down.

“So, you’ve always known?” she asks curiously. “That he’s a witch hunter?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, rubbing his face. His eyes feel tired and gritty - he’s not slept properly the last two nights, first out late at the party and then finding Betty this morning. He can’t believe that it was only today when he stumbled across her body. “Since about our third date. And he’s always known…he could smell me right away. That’s how I know. He wouldn’t get sucked into Neil’s shit. I know him.”

“Alright,” Heather says, after a beat. “I’ll trust you. But if his dad is a witch hunting piece of shit, we’re all in trouble. And Billy can’t do anything to stop it. This is how it starts.”

“I know,” Steve says and collapses back on the bed. He’s exhausted and he misses Billy, but he’s unwilling to take the risk. If Neil sees him and Billy together now, Neil won’t wait for any explanations.

“What do we do if he attacks us?” Heather asks, and her brow is creased with anxiety. This is something they’ve never truly had to deal with, and neither have the Sinclair’s children. But Lucas and Erica are a little too young to be casting magic and the scent on their skin will be barely traceable. Even so, they have witch-blood and their age may not be enough to save them.

“I don’t know,” Steve confesses. “I don’t know how far he’ll go.”

“I wish they could just catch whoever it is,” Heather says in frustration, lying down next to Steve on the mattress. Her dark hair spills across the sheets, blending into Steve’s own. “Even with the omens, how do we know for sure that there’s a witch doing this?”

Steve opens his eyes. Shit. After finding Betty’s body, he’d stumbled home, trying to hide the blood smeared across his fingers and clothes. He’d climbed up the trellis once more and banished the sleeping copy. He’d stayed up scrubbing at his fingers in the bathroom until his hands were raw and his eyes were bloodshot. This morning he’d slept late, his dreams fragmented and disturbing, and then he’d gone with his parents to the meeting. He forgot all about the stones.

“Heather,” he says slowly and she opens her eyes. “What do you know about the stones?”

---

The Hideaway is an old pub on Mulberry. Billy’s been here a few times, with guys from the garage who always snuck him beer even though he’s still not old enough to drink. It’s a decent enough place to have a burger and a drink, and Billy knows that Hopper occasionally frequents here after a shift, when he’s too tired to cook.

It seems like an odd place for a meeting like this, but as Billy pulls the Camaro into a free space there are more people flocking in through the doors than he’d expect at this time on a Monday night. His gut churns, wondering exactly how many people Neil persuaded to be here. How many fears and prejudices he preyed on to so easily sway them that there was some evil to be hunted in Hawkins.

And even if there is, it’s not down to them to find it.

Billy gets out of the car on shaking legs. He has no desire to be here, he doesn’t want his dad to think that he supports this. And while his last few interactions with Neil have been public enough to spare him a beating, the people here may not be so kind as to intervene.

But he has to. He has to know what Neil is planning, whether Steve is in danger. So he slips in amongst the next group of people walking towards the doors and follows them in.

He knows from the moment he steps in the door that it’s a bad idea.

“Billy!” A man with graying brown hair and a green jacket spots him immediately. Billy takes the slap on the back without showing the wince on his face. “Good to see you.”

“Yeah, man, you too,” Billy mutters and keeps moving. He vaguely recognises a few of these people - friends of Neil’s, a guy he knows works at the mayor’s office, the blonde waitress from Benny’s. Aaron, the owner of the pub, wipes down the counter and keeps a wary eye on his patrons. Billy has to wonder if he’s really a part of this or if he just wants the business.

He spots Neil at the end of the bar and he ducks behind a group of people. He doesn’t want to be pulled up to center stage. Best let Neil see him milling in the crowd during his speech…and he’s pretty certain that Neil will make a speech.

Sure enough, ten minutes later, Neil taps against a glass and waits for the crowd to quieten. Billy keeps himself in the shadows, stomach churning.

“Thank you, friends,” Neil says. “I know it’s difficult to leave your home in times like this but sometimes you must take action.”

Billy restrains from rolling his eyes. God, Neil must be loving this. For all of his complaining about Billy’s tight shirts and long hair and nail polish, his father’s as much of a fucking showboater as he is.

“There is evil stalking our streets,” Neil continues, his tone ringing of doom and fear. “As you know, there have been two brutal murders. But that is not all that concerns me. Despite what the Chief says, I don’t believe that the strange happenings in our town are so easily explained. People spitting out cockroaches! Snakes have come through the plumbing! Rotten crops, animals dying overnight without explanation. Do any of these sound like normal phenomena to you?”

There’s a chorus of angry shouts and cries and Billy presses himself even closer to the wall. It comes clear to him all too late that he’s willingly put himself in the center of a snake pit and his chances of getting out without suffering from any of the venom are slim.

“Of course not!” Neil shouts back. There’s a wildness to his eyes that Billy has seen before - the same fury that he sees through every punch, every slam against the wall. He listens to the cheering of the crowd, buoyed along by Neil’s words, and feels sick with fear. “None of this is natural, none of this is normal. You know what this is, what it sounds like. We all do.” He stares wildly around the room and people in the crowd are nodding and cheering, shouting back. Billy doesn’t catch what they say but Neil’s face takes on a look of righteous fury and vindication.

“That’s right! Witchcraft!” He screams in response to the crowd and the crowd hollers back. “Someone is behind this and I intend to find out who. If the police won’t guard our town, then we will! We must protect our families and defend ourselves against evil, against murderers, and against witches!”

Billy’s gasp of shock is swallowed by the noise, the drumming of feet. He hadn’t expected Neil to be so open with his accusations but here he is, openly decrying witchcraft. And right now, these people will believe him. There have been too many things straight out of a horror film for them to not. And Neil knows that.

Someone smashes a glass and the bartender tightens his jaw but doesn’t say a word.

“We can take back the town,” Neil vows, shouting over the cheers. “If the police won’t do what’s right, then we must! We can keep the streets safe. We can purge Hawkins of this wickedness! I will not let another day pass where the witches of this town think they can do as they please!”

Billy flinches. Like gasoline on a roaring fire, the crowd has been stoked into something wild and Billy listens, sickened as Neil encourages them to set out to the streets.

He needs to get to the station. He needs Hopper. He can’t trust anyone else, not when he can’t be sure that some of the police aren’t buying into Neil’s rhetoric. It’s only going to get more violent, because that’s how these things always go. These people have been drinking and will channel their fear into anger. There’s another sound of shattering glass and Billy looks up towards Neil on the stage. He’s never been proud to call Neil his father but today he doesn’t recognise the man at all.

He slips along the wall, everyone’s eyes on Neil. There’s a door near the kitchens, that’s meant to be an emergency door but Billy knows that the busboys unhook the alarm to sneak out to smoke on breaks. He has to hope that this is one day that the owner hasn’t decided to reconnect it. He slips down the pitch-black hallway and rests his fingers on the handle, waiting for a deafoning cheer. The door swings open with a small creak and Billy slips out into the night.

No one notices him leave.

---

Billy runs. He doesn’t even stop to get the Camaro, too afraid that someone will hear its distinctive rumble as he starts it up. He can get to the station from here, if he heads down Cornwallis for a few blocks.

There are only a few cars outside of the police station, the protesters having all gone home. This time of night, it’ll just be the night shift, the bare bones of an illusion of protection. The most they ever have to do is book a few idiots into the drunk tank. He’s not expecting any of them to be able to help him. He needs Hopper.

The front desk is manned by a girl he vaguely recognises from high school. She flicks through a magazine with bright pink fingernails, the desk phone pressed against her ear. She only gives him the briefest glance as he slams through the door, turning her attention back to her call by the time he’s reached the counter.

“I’m looking for Hopper,” he says, tapping his knuckles on the counter. Jenna just blinks at him, her eyelashes too long and dark to be genuine. She doesn’t answer and he can hear the tinny voice on the other end.

“Where’s Hopper?” he says again and fuck this, he’s so telling Flo that Jenna is using the phone for private calls again.

“I’m on the phone,” she says, pointedly covering the mouthpiece with her hand. Billy scowls and tries to resist yanking off her fake eyelashes.

“It’s an emergency,” he bites out. All he can see is Neil stirring up a crowd for a witch hunt and like the old trials, they won’t care who they hurt. “Stop yakking to Tina about who you had to fake an orgasm for and tell me where the fuck he is.” Jenna rolls her eyes.

“Hang on,” she says into the phone. “Billy’s here and he’s got a stick up his ass about something. Yeah, knowing him maybe that’s what’s wedged up there.” And the slow little smirk she gives Billy is enough to make his blood boil. He knows what she’s implying.

“I dunno, he wants Hopper or something,” she continues and as Hopper would give him shit for putting his hands on an employee, no matter how fucking annoying she is, Billy calmly reaches down and shuts off the call.

“We both know whether you get fired or not depends on how much I lie to Flo so let’s try that again,” he says in a low voice. He’s tired and afraid and he misses Steve like a limb. It also fucks him off that he turned down the night shift, even though it offered more money, because he’d never see Steve. “I need Hopper for an actual fucking emergency and I don’t have time for whatever homophobic garbage you feel like spewing today.”

“Are you always a dick because you like dick?” Jenna says, putting down the phone into the cradle. There’s a sour expression on her face, because he’s got her and she knows it. Flo will eat her alive if she finds out she’s holding up the line with personal calls again. “He’s next door at the fucking morgue. Asshole.”

Billy gives her the finger as he ducks back out into the night. Roane County Coroner is a squat little building just down the street, next to the hospital. It looks like any other building, save for the discreet lettering on the front door.

Billy hates the morgue.

He’s only been in twice since he started working for the department - once to get files from Patty and another to drop off a bottle of whiskey to Gary (something about a bet and a carp, Hopper wasn’t forthcoming with the whole story.) The police station may be outdated and crappy, with stained carpets and Billy has doubts that the walls actually started out that shade of brown.

But the morgue smells like death. And no matter what anyone tells him otherwise about it being in his head, that it’s not that bad, Billy can’t smell anything else from the moment he steps through those doors.

Maybe it’s a witch hunter thing. Because no one else recoils like he does when he walks into the lobby. It reeks of decay and pain and he wonders if this is retribution for what he is.

At this hour, Patty isn’t working. The desk is manned by some guy in scrubs, flicking casually through an old copy of Guns & Ammo. He barely even looks up as Billy strides past the front desk without stopping.

“Restricted area!” the guy calls out, like it’s an afterthought and Billy grinds his teeth. No one does their fucking jobs.

He knows his way down the corridor, taking a sharp right until he comes to the heavy door. Even so, he has to take a deep breath before he can go in.

The door slams behind him, closing off the bright light from the hallway. Down here everything is dim, the glow from the emergency lights an eerie green. It reflects off all of the metal in the room - the gurneys, the shelves, the drawers. Every single door is closed but Billy is mindful of what might lie behind them. The morgue is never that busy, not in a small town like Hawkins. He can’t escape the fact that Tammy and Betty are probably here, what remains of them covered by only a sheet.

The smell that works its way up his nose is subtle at first, just the faintest hint under the more overwhelming scents of blood and bleach. It smells like the time a stray cat hid under the house to die, where it wasn’t found for weeks. By then the rot had already seeped into the house, the decay taking over until it was all anyone could smell. Billy can still remember Max gagging as Neil had taken up the floorboards one by one to find the poor thing. The maggots had moved in by that point, what was left of the creature collapsed in on itself. The maggots had begun multiplying, using the remains as a breeding ground. The opening in the flesh was black and leaking insects, white squirming bodies crawling across what remained of the tabby fur. The ground beneath had been slick with liquid, putrefaction having long since set in.

Neil had made Billy help. He’d been twelve at the time.

The light is on in the office, the faint glow of a lamp. The door is open just a crack, just allowing the sound of Hopper’s voice to drift through.

“Look, I’m not calling because…it’s not because of that,” Hopper says and the frustration in his tone is obvious even to Billy. “I know I promised. Shit, I told you it has nothing to do with that. Listen…it’s happening again.”

Hopper drops his voice low as he says these words and something cold runs down Billy’s back.

“I’m not kidding,” Hopper insists. Billy skirts around the table and inches closer, keeping his footsteps light. “Two deaths so far. One per day. It’s the same pattern.”

Billy tries to slow his breathing, even though he longs to pull the door open and demand what Hopper means. Tammy and Betty…he wonders if this is what Flo meant by there being murders in Hawkins before. But exactly like them? And if so, why was any record of them buried?

“Skin and eyes, so far,” Hopper says, and there’s the sound of rustling paper. No wonder Hopper made this call, down here, in the depths of the morgue. Even his office in the station isn’t safe, where the walls all have ears. “Blood next, if the pattern holds. And I’m placing bets he will.”

Billy puts out a hand onto the nearest available surface, head spinning violently. Hopper knows who killed Tammy and Betty? If so, why hasn’t he told anyone? Why the fuck are they even running an investigation if that’s the case…or is Hopper covering something up?

And most horrifying of all, what does Hopper mean by all of those body parts? The news hadn’t said anything about skin or eyes. Billy turns an anxious eye towards the drawers feeling sickened even more than he had been before. If he tugs open a drawer, what will he see? Tammy, just sinew and muscle and bone? Or Betty, with gaping holes where her eyes should be?

“Not even three more days,” Hopper says and Billy struggles to work out what Hopper means by this. “Yeah, shit, Joyce. Can you come here? Get on the next fucking plane and just get here. I can’t do this without you. Honestly, I don’t even know what to do. The mayor is up my ass and Murray is probably in a drunken stupor in Chicago. That leaves me and Bob and we’re not exactly in the know with this stuff.”

Billy tries to think of who Hopper might be talking about - he thinks he knows Bob, Bob Newby. He was the Computer Science teacher at the high school. He and Hopper were in the same grade together. But the other names are a mystery, although something about the name Joyce is ringing a bell. He just can’t remember where.

“Then we’ll have to find some,” Hopper hisses suddenly. “Fucking hell, Joyce. It’s because we fucked up last time that this is happening again. And we can’t do it just the three of us. I doubt we have enough time for Murray to sober up. Bring Jon if you have to, just get here.”

Billy’s foot connects with the bottom of an empty gurney, and the clatter that it causes echoes around the room. Through the glass, Billy can see the outline of Hopper freeze, head jerked towards the door. Shit.

“I have to go,” Hopper says quietly. “Someone’s here. Text me your flight details.” There’s the sound of the receiver being slipped back into the cradle and Billy skitters back across the room as Hopper rises from his chair.

“Billy?” Hopper asks and Billy blinks against the sudden bright light as the door fully opens. “What are you doing here?”

Billy takes a deep breath, unsure of what to do - play off like he didn’t hear any of that or confront him head on.

But then he sees the file tucked under Hopper’s arm and his decision is made for him.

It’s funny how Neil had tried and tried to force it out of him, with split lips and locked doors and small, dead creatures. How he’d made Billy hold out his hands to handle the huge spiders from the garden shed even as his knees shook and how he’d shouted at Billy every time he’d stumbled during baseball games. How he’d tried to make Billy tougher, like every blow and hour spent locked out of the house could harden that part of Billy.

But he’d failed, because that’s not who Billy is.

“What was that?” Billy asks, pretending not to see Hopper tuck the file under his arm. The Chief had clearly come down here looking for some results, whatever it was that the coroner had been able to find out. Any actual testing of substances, fibers, or blood has to be sent out to another lab, Hawkins lacking the space or funding for anything that complicated. But Billy makes a note to look at the file if he can - Gary will have at least found out the time of death…and what was used to kill them.

“You shouldn’t be down here,” Hopper says wearily, shooting a concerned look at the main door.

“What was that?” Billy asks again, curling his fingers into a fist against his side.

“What was what?” Hopper asks and Billy flicks his eyes across to the still open office.

The same thought must have occurred to Hopper because the man just exhales and digs the office keys out of his pocket to lock up. Gary’s office is off-limits, boasting pictures of grandkids and fishing expeditions on top of locked drawers of confidential paperwork. Normally, it doesn’t mean much, most of the corpses passing through here from the hospital. Billy spares a thought for the people who not only had to collect the remains but stare at them for hours in the vague hopes that they can uncover what happened.

“It’s an open case, Billy,” Hopper says firmly, the keys jangling as he turns them in the lock. “You should go home.”

“But…” Billy starts and stops as Hopper turns. The file under his arm is older than Billy thought, fading yellow, with crinkled corners and a ripped label. If it was a file for Tammy and Betty, it would be crisp and new.

So what file is that?

“What?” Hopper asks, looking irritated and Billy drags his gaze up to meet him.

“Nothing,” Billy lies, because there’s only one thing the file can be. The missing one, from the murders several decades ago. The one that Billy couldn’t find.

“Right then,” Hopper says firmly. “Perhaps you should head back upstairs then and go home. I know you don’t work night shifts.”

“I know,” Billy says, cutting Hopper off without hearing a word he’s said. “I came to find you. My dad is holding some sort of witch-hunting mob downtown, in the Hideaway. I was just there. You guys have to do something, say that you got an anonymous tip!”

Hopper takes Billy’s shoulder and begins steering him back upstairs. Billy lets him, because he can’t really think for the stench and he came here for Hopper anyway.

“Your old man might be a crazy son of a bitch but surely he’s not stupid enough to go out in some sort of vigilante mob,” Hopper says, his palm a firm presence in the middle of Billy’s back.

“Then you really don’t know him,” Billy insists, as they emerge up the stairs into the flickering yellow lights of the main floor. “I’m not making it up! He’s got a load of people with guns and torches and they were planning on going out to ‘patrol’ or some shit.”

Hopper isn’t listening. No one ever fucking listens.

“Hoss!” Hopper shouts, and the guy at the desk hurriedly hides his magazine. “Are you actually doing anything? Do you understand the words ‘serious murder investigation?’” Hoss just blinks, eyes passing over Billy like he’s only just seeing him for the first time.

“I thought he worked for you?” he says and Hopper groans.

“When I say that no one is allowed downstairs, I do mean no one,” Hopper gripes. “Billy, go home. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“I told you, I’m not making it up,” Billy spits, yanking his shoulder away from Hopper’s grip. “You had protesters outside your door only this morning, why the hell do you think that it’s so unbelievable?”

“They’ve got nothing to go on,” Hopper says wearily. “We don’t even have any leads. What are they going to do, walk up and down main street with pitchforks and torches attacking anyone they think looks like a serial killer?”

Billy only just bites back the words that come to mind. Hopper can’t possibly know that Neil has what he thinks is a good motive and Billy can’t tell him without sounding even more insane. Hopper isn’t going to believe anything about magic or witches, not without some serious visible proof. Which Billy doesn’t have so he bites his tongue. Smelling magic on a person is a sentence that will just get him checked into Penhurst.

“I thought not,” Hopper grunts and gives Billy a small shove. “Go home. We need you tomorrow. I’ve even got overtime picking up the phones if you want it.” Billy breathes in deep through his nose. Thinks of paying rent. Thinks of the mystery file. Swallows his vitriol.

“Yeah,” he says instead. “Fine.” Hopper nods and gestures towards the door. Hoss’ eyes have already slid back down to his magazine.

“Alright. Go home. And if I catch you in a restricted area again, I’ll fire your ass, got it?” Billy holds Hopper’s gaze for a second, just long enough to work out whether it’s a bluff or not, before he nods.

“Fine. But I don’t think I should be blamed for the pieces of shit that you hire who read magazines and use the phones for personal calls!” he calls over his shoulder and catches Hoss’ dirty look as he lets the door slam behind him.

But his shoulders slump once he’s outside in the cooling august air, the street lit only by the morgue’s only streetlight. Fuck. He doesn’t have his car. He left the Camaro still sitting outside the Hideaway and he’s not sure he wants to risk going to get it. He’ll have to walk along Cornwallis and then along Oak to get home.

But before he can set off, a few police cars shoot by down the street, their lights reflecting red and blue off the morgue’s windows. Billy watches them go and knows with a sinking feeling what they’re heading for, before Hopper even has a chance to storm through the door.

“Let me guess,” Billy says, as he takes in the expression on Hopper’s face. “Riots downtown?”

Hopper just ignores him and walks by to his truck. The walkie is still crackling at his waist, some dispatcher still spitting out details.

“Get in the truck,” Hopper says, furiously yanking open the driver side door. He jabs a finger at the passenger side, even as another cruiser races past them, alarm blaring. “I’m taking you home.”

Billy hops in and has the presence of mind to keep his mouth with ‘I told you so' until Hopper has pulled the truck out onto the road and is following the flickering lights of the cruisers.

---

Billy’s apartment has peeling wallpaper, dripping faucets, and the constant noise of the Hawkins Bowl-o-rama! below it. What it does not have however, is Neil.

Billy drops his car keys into the bowl by the door and takes the few short steps to his couch. He drops down onto it, ignoring how the cushions immediately cave in under his body. Everything in here is shit, from the refrigerator with the busted light to the tiny TV set with missing pixels in the right hand corner. He’s thrifted almost every piece of furniture, scraped enough money together for a mattress and lifted his chairs out of garbage bins.

But it’s his. He can breathe here, can lie on the couch with his shoes on, eat cheese slices in his underwear, have his music as loud as he likes. It took him four days after he’d moved in for him to stop acting like he was still under Neil Hargrove’s roof.

Somewhere below he can hear the sounds of pins being knocked over but he closes his eyes anyway.

He’s not sure how much time has passed before Hopper knocks on the door. Billy opens his eyes and pushes himself up to open it. He thinks he must have dozed off, even if only for a few minutes.

“I don’t have long,” Hopper says, bending over to peer out of the window onto the darkened street below. Billy shrugs and pulls out one of his dining chairs, leaving Hopper the couch. There’s a brief flicker of surprise on his face as he visibly sinks down when he sits.

“You lived here long?” Hopper asks curiously and Billy wonders what the chief thinks when he sees the mold in the corners, the bare floorboards, the cupboard that is his tiny kitchen.

“A year,” Billy says shortly. He doesn’t really give a shit what people think. He’s away from Neil and this is really just a place to sleep. He’s either working or with Steve the rest of the time. With Steve’s parents gone so much, it’s just easier to stay there. “It’s just temporary.” Hopper nods and takes off his hat, turning it over in his hands like he doesn’t know where to start.

“I have to go deal with the shitshow downtown soon,” he says finally. “Got a few assholes getting carried away and smashing windows.”

“I heard,” Billy says, defensively folding his arms over his chest. He feels like crap and nothing is going to fix it this time.

“I’m really sorry, son,” Hopper says frankly. “But I didn’t think your old man would be that insane.” Billy stares down at his hands.

“Yeah, well,” he says bitterly. “Welcome to my world.” Hopper just sighs and places his hat down beside him.

“He’s not one of the ones that’s been arrested so far,” Hopper says, to Billy’s dismay. “The ones we have are idiots who saw an opportunity. But Billy, you have to tell me what you saw at the Hideaway.” Billy chews on his lip. He can’t mention witches. There’s a chance Hopper won’t believe him - who would? - that there’s a full witch hunt happening right here in Hawkins.

“It was just…” he says and pauses. None of it feels real. He’s been in the Hideaway before and now he doubts he’ll be able to look at it in the same way again, without associating the sharp smell of hops and onions with the tang of the crowd’s fury. “I don’t know. It’s easier when it’s in movies, right? You never expect it to actually be like that.”

“I know,” Hopper says, still watching Billy from the sag of the couch. Clearly, he’s not letting Billy off without an answer.

“He was just stirring them up,” Billy says weakly. “They’re probably all scared anyway and he just said what they wanted to hear.”

It’s all about power, Billy thinks, the man from his dream’s words coming back to him. Neil wants power, thinks he can have it through fear and control. Those people feel like they’ve lost their power because they’re scared and they’ll do things they wouldn’t normally do to feel like they’ve regained it. Worst of all, Billy worries that no one here actually has any power, not against whatever is in Hawkins.

“People do strange things when they’re scared,” Hopper agrees roughly. “Speaking of, how are you doing?”

“‘S okay,” Billy mumbles and Hopper gives him a sharp look.

“That’s bullshit,” he says frankly. “Your friends are dead and your dad is an asshole and you’re not talking to Steve. Why the hell aren’t you talking to Steve?” Billy blinks at him.

“How did you…?” he starts and Hopper leans back against the couch and promptly regrets it, sinking back like a slowing foundering ship.

“Your couch sucks ass,” he grumbles, struggling to pull himself upright again. “I saw you at the town hall. You two are normally as thick as thieves. So what gives?”

“Nothing,” Billy says defensively. He flexes his fingers - it’s starting to get cold and he doesn’t exactly keep the heating on in here until he absolutely has to. “He’s busy. And he knew Tammy and Betty better than I did. He’ll text me when he can.”

“Right,” Hopper says dryly. “Kid, are we going to go round and round here and pretend that you and Steve just ‘wandered around the woods’ for a good hour the night Tammy was killed or are we going to have the truth?’

“You know,” Billy says, stunned. He’s not sure when, whether it was just their terrible, uncoordinated lies that did it or if Hopper suspected before then. Maybe they’re not the most subtle. Steve visits him at work sometimes, brings him coffee and food and perhaps it feels more like a lover stopping by than just a friend. “Don’t you?”

“Kid,” Hopper says gruffly. “Yeah, I’ve known for a while now. You’re not exactly subtle about it.”

“You can’t tell my dad,” Billy says immediately. If Neil finds out, nowhere will be safe. Even having his own apartment won’t protect him. Neil knows where he lives and it’s only pride that keeps him out of Billy’s way. If Neil had any inkling about how Billy really lives his life, how he spreads his legs for Steve, had fallen in love…

Nothing could save Billy then.

“I won’t,” Hopper says and Billy believes him. “But Billy…is there something that you want to tell me?”

“No,” Billy says immediately. He’s been down this road before. Well meaning people who noticed his bruises, the teacher who was suspicious of his fractured arm. It never ends well for Billy. He has no reason to believe that Hopper will make it any different.

Hopper chews on his lip. He looks like he wants to say more and also knows that it won’t make any difference if he does.

“Fine,” he says finally. “I get it. But if you ever do…I’m around.”

“It’s fine,” Billy says and shrugs weakly. “He keeps his distance. It’s not a problem.”

“Was yesterday keeping his distance?” Hopper inquires sharply and then winces at his tone. It appears that Neil’s intensity hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“That was pretty good for him,” Billy says. He drags a hand across his face, feeling how dry and greasy his face feels, the grit in his eyes. “Look, Hop, can we finish this up? It’s been a long day.”

“Sure,” Hopper says, hesitantly rising from the couch. The sag in it doesn’t decrease after he’s gotten up. “We’ll talk tomorrow. You’ve got a shift, don’t you?” Billy flicks his mind over his schedule - he doesn’t have another shift at the coffee house until the weekend and the rest of his temp jobs have eased off a little for the summer.

“Yeah, I’m in,” Billy says. “Think Flo will staple my hands to the desk if I get coffee again?”

“I think I’ll do that if you don’t bring coffee,” Hopper says, dropping his hat back onto his head. “I’m going to need it with this shitshow.”

“Good luck,” Billy says and quietly wonders if it’s too much to hope to find Neil in a jail cell tomorrow.

Chapter 9: Strange and Terrible Things

Billy stares at his phone, as though he can will a text from Steve to appear. But the screen stays black and silent.

He’s called, he’s left voicemail, he’s texted Steve so many times he swears that the screen is smudgy from his fingerprints. This isn’t an accident anymore. Steve is choosing to ignore him.

The shitty thing is that he doesn’t know why. He can’t think of what he’s done to warrant this. The last he remembers of their time together was Steve swiping a thumb across his brow, chasing his headache away like a cool fresh breeze.

But that was before Tammy was dead and Betty was dead and his shitty father was stirring up witch hunts.

It has occurred to him that Steve is staying away because of Neil. Steve has his own problems with his parents, and their unexpected return last week may have had consequences that Billy knows nothing about. He doesn’t know whether the Harringtons were aware of any witch hunters in Hawkins and Steve may have had to tell them to warn them. Steve has always been open about the fact that his parents are elitist dicks…but he would still warn them if he felt that they were in danger. And with Neil, every witch in Hawkins is under threat.

Billy pushes himself up off the mattress, working out the cricks in his back as he goes. It’s a fairly shitty mattress that he got for cheap, and it fucks up your back if you lie on it at the wrong angle. But it’s better than sleeping on the floor.

He showers and throws on some clothes, more keen to get to the station than he is to do his normal primping routine.

There are still protestors outside, but fewer today and Billy eyes them warily as he skirts round them and past the officer on door duty. The station is crammed with people, not all of them cops. Flo sits at the front desk, arguing loudly with someone over the phone. Hopper is nowhere to be seen but that’s to be expected. Powell is commanding the room instead, listening to three guys in flannel as they talk over each other. There are a few guys sitting in the uncomfortable beige chairs wearing handcuffs that Billy recognises from the Hideaway, but no Neil.

He’s not surprised. Neil has a different agenda and it’s not one that involves looting and making an ass of himself. But somehow this isn’t reassuring. It just means that he won’t know what Neil is up to until it’s too late.

“Morning, Billy,” says the cop just inside the door. Billy nods, and lets the door slide shut, and the noise from outside immediately dims.

“Hey, Stevens,” he says. “What’s going on over there?” The cop purses her mouth.

“The jerks in the cuffs or the asses who think we can do something about this ridiculous rot infestation we have going on?” she asks. Stevens is a pretty young thing, with ash blonde hair cut to her chin and a dent in her nose from an accident. She’s more idealistic than the other cops, too young to have the endless desk duty and tiresome noise complaints dampen her spirit yet. But maybe even that is starting to fade.

“Either,” Billy says. He’d heard sirens as he’d fallen asleep last night but the lack of people in here today doesn’t seem promising. There had been at least forty people or so in that meeting last night and yet somehow only three got caught?

“Those idiots over there were arrested for destruction downtown,” Stevens says, gesturing towards the guys in handcuffs. “They had baseball bats, can you believe it?”

“Was that it though?” Billy pushes. “I mean, are there more of them?”

“I don’t know,” Stevens says, looking a little thrown by his intensity. “I wasn’t on shift last night. I think there’s a few more drying out in the drunk tank. But yeah, why?”

“No reason,” Billy lies. “Just heard a lot of noise last night. Thought it would be a whole gang, not three guys with bats and someone who’s had too much tequila.” Stevens snorts and leans against the wall.

“Tequila? In this town?” she asks, with a raised eyebrow. “Tequila doesn’t come in a blue can. I forgot you live on Oak Street. Probably kept you awake, huh?”

It had done no such thing - everything else was taking up too much space in Billy’s already crowded head.

“A bit,” Billy says and looks at the other guys still arguing with Powell. “What’s their story?”

“Their fields have rotted,” Stevens says, frowning a little. “All of them. Halloween next month and all of the pumpkins have rotted in the fields. Weird, huh?”

“Yeah,” Billy says, taking a closer look at the men. He thinks the one on the far left, tugging on the brim of his hat is Bernard Hess, the owner of the farm out near the power plant. “Weird shit.”

“No as weird as everything else that’s been going on,” Stevens says thoughtfully. “My cousin spat out a live cockroach the other day. She was eating and then out it came. And I heard someone over in the trailer park puked up a snake. A freaking snake? It’s like the end of days out here.”

“Yeah,” Billy agrees, privately thinking she might be closer to the truth than she thinks. “The Chief in?”

“No,” Stevens says, with a shrug. “He called and said he’d be in late this morning. He’ll be on his way though.”

Billy thanks her and slips through to the back, waving at Flo as he passes by. He turns his computer on and manages to work his way through a few files before he catches sight of Hopper passing by the door on the way to his office.

He’s leapt up from his desk before he can think about what he’s doing and follows Hopper down the hall to his office.

“Hop!” Billy says, just as Hopper moves to close the door behind him. Hopper takes one good look at his face and tugs the door open enough again to allow Billy to slip through.

“What’s up, kid?” Hopper asks. He drops into his chair rather than sits and the strain on his face makes it clear why.

“I wanted to ask…” Billy says and then hesitates. Any way he phrases it makes it sound like he thinks Hopper can’t do his job. But the man must see the unasked question in his face because he sighs and rubs a hand across his face.

“I didn’t see your old man last night,” Hopper says wearily and gestures for Billy to sit down. “Some drunken idiots with bats but nowhere near what you described at the Hideaway.” Billy frowns. Something isn’t adding up.

“Right,” he says slowly. “So you didn’t see him at all? Did you go to the Hideaway?”

“I sent someone,” Hopper says. “I told them to look around from the outside. They told me that everything looked normal. People having drinks.”

Billy sits back in the ugly brown chair, mind reeling. Either this is a test his father cooked up - one that he’s failed - or the officer that Hopper sent is one of Neil’s friends. If it’s the latter then he or she was instructed to lie to Hopper.

“Sorry, Billy, but is there anything else?” Hopper says, pulling Billy out of his thoughts. He gestures across the chaos on his desk, scattered files and papers. “I’ve got a lot to get on with.”

“Sure,” Billy mutters despondently. He’s pretty sure that all of this has just made him the boy who cried wolf, whether he likes it or not. He can’t trust that Hop will listen to him again…but after what he heard last night, maybe that’s not something he wants.

He pauses when something catches his eye - the faded file he’d seen Hopper carry last night. It stands out among the others that are bright and new, the sheets of paper inside summarizing Tammy and Betty down to a cause of death and a crime scene.

But his gaze lingers too long because Hopper sweeps everything off the desk and into a desk drawer. Billy flinches as the drawer slams shut. Hopper’s expression softens.

“Don’t get involved in this,” he says warningly. “Seriously, Billy. This is fucked up shit and I don’t want you involved. Stay away from this, stay away from your old man and let me do my job, alright?”

Billy nods and stumbles out, back to his desk

He’s going to have to look at that file.

---

Waiting for Hopper to go again is agonizing. It takes a good ninety minutes before he catches sight of Hopper walking back through the door and another five for Billy to be sure that Hopper has left and isn’t just getting himself coffee.

He swipes the spare key to the office from Flo’s desk - she always keeps a copy hidden in her pencil mug to go in to clean every few weeks. He waits until the hall is empty before he unlocks the door and slides inside. He won’t have long before Flo is off the front desk and if she notices that he’s gone, she’ll come looking for him. Thankfully, he knows where to look.

Hop’s drawers are all locked so Billy has to snoop around for the key. He’s half betting that Hop won’t have them on a keychain, because it’s a small town and no one is about to break into the Chief’s office. So when he finds a small set of keys under his illicit pack of cigarettes, Billy shakes his head. He has to try a few keys before he finds the one that opens his desk drawers.

The first drawer is stationery, the second an assortment of files. None of them are what Billy is looking for so he moves around to the other side. He finds a packet of juicy fruit, two old lighters, a pack of gum, a stapler and a rubber band ball in the top drawer.

“Why bother to lock that?” Billy mutters, flicking an anxious eye to the hallway. He doesn’t know how long he has before his absence is noticed and someone comes looking, or if someone just peers through the door and catches sight of his head behind the desk. Either way, he can’t risk it.

But the bottom drawer only has a half eaten pack of doughnuts and - Billy is intrigued to notice - a small bottle of whiskey. Presumably that last item was only added when people started turning up dead.

Billy sits back on his heels, feeling disappointed. He could have sworn that Hopper put the file in one of these drawers. Maybe he moved it after Billy was gone.

But then he slides the drawer back out again. Something isn’t right here. The drawer should be fairly large. The bottom drawers often are. Billy’s bottom drawer is huge, meant for hanging files. But the base of this drawer is too high up, so that the lid of the whiskey only just fits when the drawer is closed.

Billy gets powdered sugar on his fingers in his haste to pull everything out. He feels along the wood, heart pounding under his nail catches on something.

“A fucking false drawer,” Billy mutters, impressed despite himself. The panel comes away in his hands and he doubts that the desk came that way. Hopper had it made, for whatever reason, and Billy doubts that it’s to hide another bottle of whiskey.

The files sit right on top, like they’ve been waiting for him and Billy pulls them out with clammy hands. He has to take a breath before he opens them, but he’s still not prepared for the photographs inside.

Betty’s eyes are caved in black holes, blood trickling down the side of her face. Billy stares at it lost under another wave of grief. He hopes that he won’t remember her this way, that when he thinks of her, he’ll just see the grin she flashed him on his first date with Steve, the way she smelt of strawberries, the scrunchie she kept on her wrist.

He flicks his eyes over the information but to his disappointment very little of it is news. She died due to trauma and blood loss, caused by someone fucking gouging out her eyes. The coroner wasn’t able to find any sort of weapon marks on the body and Billy puts the file down, feeling slightly queasy.

Tammy’s file is even worse and Billy can’t bear to look at the picture. It doesn’t even resemble Tammy and maybe that should make it easier. It doesn’t.

The report on Tammy’s death was a little confusing and it took Billy a few minutes to work out why. The vague descriptions and drawings aren’t very clear as to cause of death, despite the obvious. After staring at it for a moment, Billy figures it out. The coroner isn’t totally sure how she died.

Flayed is the obvious answer. But that usually goes with other questions like when and why and how. Much like Betty’s, the person writing this report doesn’t know how Tammy was killed. There are no obvious knife marks. Flaying anything usually requires care and skill to do it correctly. Billy’s grandfather used to hunt - usually rabbits that needed to be skinned - and he’d cared about as much as Neil did when Billy had cried.

But the difference is that the rabbits were already dead. Tammy wouldn’t have been and death caused by flaying usually happens hours or even days after the event, depending on the severity. But Tammy was completely flayed, and there’s no way that she would have survived the whole thing.

Even so, the coroner isn’t sure when she died or what factors actually killed her.

Billy chews on his lip, ignoring the dry flaky skin there. He normally borrows Steve’s lip balms and he’s getting chapped without them.

The only way that this is possible is if the skin had been removed all at once. Which isn’t doable unless…

Well, unless you’re dealing with something that breaks all of the rules.

Until now, Billy had dismissed his dad’s claims that these deaths were done by magic. But looking at these, there’s an uncomfortable trickle down the back of his spine that suggests maybe Neil had a good reason for thinking that.

Sickened, Billy puts the file back where they were and notices a shoebox pushed back against the wall of the drawer. Somehow he doesn’t think it contains shoes.

It’s newspaper clippings. Clippings and photos and Billy’s stomach churns as he pulls them out, shaking fingers closing around yellowing pages.

BRUTAL KILLER STALKS HAWKINS screams one headline. MURDER IN THE WOODS proclaims another. Billy flicks through the pages but the remaining articles are all the same. Then he notices the date. 16th September 1995. These are from twenty-seven years ago. The murders from the nineties. The ones he couldn’t find the files for.

There’s no files in the box but there are photocopies and with a jolt of shock, Billy recognises the details. Skin completely flayed, never found. Eyes removed. Body completely drained of blood. Scalped.

Billy lets the pages slide through his fingers, horrified. The first two are the same as Tammy and Betty but the other two haven’t happened yet. Or maybe they have - it's day three since the murders started. No one found a body today but according to the previous murders they all happened one after the other.

So either the pattern is broken or there’s a missing person out there that no one has raised the alarm for yet.

Billy replaces these and looks at the photos. He doesn’t have long. Time is ticking by and he only has so much luck before someone notices.

The photos are crime scene photos for the most part until Billy gets to the end of the stack where he finds himself staring at a photograph of a pretty girl with dark eyes wearing an off the shoulder gray sweater under black suspenders. The next few photos are also of her and something about the dreamy light and framing makes Billy think that she’s something important to Hop.

The last photo is a group shot and he recognises Hopper right away. The intense dark eyes and strong jaw are the same. The girl is there too, in a black blazer and blue skirt, laughing and leaning against some guy in jeans and a wifebeater. Billy doesn’t recognise him, or another guy with wild hair and a cigarette but he does know the last guy. It’s nearly thirty years on but Bob Newby is still recognisable by the eyes, the shy smile.

It’s dated. It’s the same year as all the murders. 1995. Hopper and the others would have been about eighteen, nineteen. Not much more than Billy is now.

It’s like a murder board, Billy realizes. Condensed into a cardboard box meant for a pair of ladies heels, size five.

He can’t take the box. Hopper will notice. So Billy pulls his phone out and takes as many photos as he can, getting clear shots of the group picture and the old newspapers before he carefully puts everything back.

He’s back at his desk before Flo stomps in, two coffee cups clutched in her hands. He thanks her as she puts one down in front of him.

“Hey, will it be okay if I slip out for lunch when I’m done with these files?” Billy asks. “I just need to run an errand.” Flo looks at him and he can see the suspicion in her eyes.

“What errand?” she asks.

“Just have to drop something off at a friend’s,” he says easily, because the truth in part is always easier. “Is that okay?”

“Don’t be late,” she says finally and turns back to her work. Billy takes a victory swig of his coffee and plows through as much mind-numbing busywork as he can handle until it’s time to dash out of the door. He swings the Camaro around, narrowly avoiding clipping someone’s Volvo, and takes the turn for Cornwallis.

He completely misses Steve’s BMW flying in the opposite direction.

---

The four of them sit in a circle in Steve’s bedroom, and for a moment, Steve thinks that no one is going to say anything. He’d given in and called them late last night and while they’d complained about being here this morning, they’d still come. He’s grateful for it. He was getting tired of doing this alone.

“So we know fuck all basically,” Carol says bluntly, tapping one finger against her knee. Steve sighs.

“Yeah, kinda,” he admits. “All we’ve got are legends and none of them are true. Or if they are, we don't know which ones are. And we can’t really ask anyone.”

“I doubt they’ll know,” Heather counters, chewing anxiously on her thumbnail. She’s wearing dungarees today over a red t-shirt. She’d turned up at Steve’s house early this morning, much to the surprise of Steve’s mom. “If this thing is old…and I think it must be then no one alive is going to know.”

“That’s shit,” Tommy says and Steve has to agree with him.

“”Well, we can’t stop it if we don’t know what it is,” he says and looks around the circle. “Any ideas?”

Silence again.

“It’s making things happen?” Carol suggests finally, looking unsure. “Like all of the rot and stuff?”

“It’s the decay, right?” Heather agrees, looking at Steve. “This isn’t good and bountiful, blessed be your crops kind of omens. This is death and guts kind of end of the world shit.”

“How does that help us?” Tommy asks curiously. When Steve looks at him, Tommy has sprawled back on the floor, head very close to one of Steve’s tennis shoes.

“It’s a start,” Steve says. “There’s not a lot of things that can cause such a change like that. It’s like everything is reacting to what’s coming. That’s what the omens are.”

“It probably means that this isn’t being done by a witch,” Heather adds. Carol stretches suddenly, a delicate roll of her head and the long arch of her back as she twists her arms behind her. Steve catches Heather’s eyes flick over the curve of Carol’s chest, the strands of hair falling across her collarbone, before she jerks her head away again.

Huh. That’s interesting.

“So what is it?” Carol asks and Steve and Heather share an unhappy look.

“Big bad beastie,” Heather says reluctantly. “It’s not something…witches don’t often summon shit like that. There’s other dimensions besides ours and it takes a lot to pull something across.”

“So how did it get here?” Carol asks, eyes wide. Steve just shrugs.

“My guess?” he says, rubbing his nose with a finger. “It was summoned or came through a veil. A place where the gap between dimensions is thin,” he clarifies for Tommy and Carol’s stupefied looks. “There are some, in certain places of the world. Just didn’t expect Hawkins to be one of them.”

“We’ll probably never know,” Heather says quietly, playing with the silver bracelet on her wrist. “It was probably too long ago. But whatever it was, other witches sealed it away. I guess it worked until recently.”

“So the stones really are a seal?” Carol says in disbelief and then exhales. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He half thinks about saying something then - his dream, the four figures bent in the mud - but he dismisses it almost instantly. He doesn’t know whether that even really happened.

“My dad has some really old spell books,” Heather says, finally letting the chain slip from her fingers. “He collects them, though I swear he’s never opened them. Maybe they’ll be helpful?”

“It’s worth a shot,” Steve says, because they have fuck all else. “Library too perhaps? Old articles?”

“How the hell do you know that?” Carol asks in bemusement.

“Nancy was the editor at the school paper,” Steve says shortly. He pushes himself up from the floor and grabs his sweater from the back of his desk chair. He pointedly steps over Tommy for his shoes and ignores how Tommy grabs at his ankle when he does so. “She was always there. They’ve got really old articles and stuff. No one ever gets rid of that shit in this town.”

“My dad’s at work and my mom went to see my aunt,” Heather says, getting up too. “We can go now.”

“This is exactly what I wanted to do today,” Carol mutters, holding her hands up for Steve to pull her to her feet. “Reading a bunch of old books to find some nasty beast that takes people’s body parts.”

“Is he taking them or eating them?” Heather says aloud and Carol makes a face.

“Is that relevant?” she complains. Steve and Heather just share a look.

Heather grabs hold of his sleeve, forcing him to let Carol and Tommy go on ahead of them. She waits until they can hear their voices on the stairs before she dips her head close to his.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asks, obvious worry in her dark brown eyes. “I mean, they’re not witches. Should we be involving them?” Steve twists his head over his shoulder, making sure that the landing is empty.

“I think they’re involved now anyway,” he says. “We all knew Tammy and now she’s dead. I know they can be…but they want to help, okay? I know they do.” Heather searches his face for a moment, mouth pursed, before her shoulder slump.

“Okay,” she says, letting her fingers slide from his sleeve. “I’m trusting you a lot here, Harrington.”

Steve thinks of his dream, the rippling of the light and what moved beneath it, and doesn’t say a word.

---

Mrs Harrington answers the door.

“Hello?” she says cooly, as though she expects him to start peddling tupperware or preaching at her. Billy looks down at his jeans, the white singlet. His outfit doesn’t suggest that he might do either of those things.

“I’m looking for Steve?” he says and holds her gaze. Her eyes are the same deep brown that Steve’s are, right down to the thick, long lashes. The only thing missing from them is any sort of Steve’s warmth.

“He’s not here,” she says, folding her arms across her chest. She’s wearing a silk blouse that probably costs more than Billy’s rent and a neatly pressed skirt that flows down past her knees. She’s exactly what Billy thought she’d be like, a copy of some model out of a magazine. Pristine and photoshopped and sharp edges.

“Oh,” Billy says and shifts his weight. He knows Steve’s work schedule so he was expecting him to be here. “Is he at work?”

“No,” Mrs Harrington says, and every word out of her mouth sounds forced, like even standing here talking to him is a waste of her time. “He went out with Heather.”

Billy’s stomach drops.

“Oh,” he says again, because he doesn’t know how to respond to the fact that his boyfriend hasn’t talked to him in three days but is apparently spending all of his time with Heather. “I didn’t know he was…with Heather.”

“You can’t be very close friends then,” she says coolly and Billy chokes back a scream. This woman doesn’t know the first thing about her son and yet she’s standing here acting like he’s the stranger.

“Do you know where he went?” Billy asks instead and her mouth purses.

“To the Holloways’ house, I expect,” she says. “In Loch Nora. I don’t suppose you live there?”

Billy swallows. He doesn’t want to confess to this woman that he lives near a gas station on Oak road, in an apartment over a bowling alley. She’d be less than thrilled to know that Steve has spent more than a few nights there, when his parents are home, curled up next to Billy on a mattress on the floor.

“No,” Billy says finally, and there’s something like satisfaction on her face.

“Maybe you should call him instead,” she says and smartly closes the door in his face.

“He won’t answer me anyway,” Billy says helplessly to the wood, and then takes a few steps down the path. He’s at a loss for what to do now - he has no idea how to find the Holloways’ house, unless he wants to cruise around Loch Nora looking for Steve’s car.

He wants to believe that it’s not what he thinks and what Mrs Harrington seems fairly certain that it is. That Steve is with Heather, with Heather, in her room right now. He doesn’t want to believe that Steve has turned his back so easily.

But Heather is a witch. She can understand Steve more than Billy can, has the same upbringing and teachings. Being with Heather would only please the Harringtons and maybe Steve grew tired of having a relationship that can’t be anything other than secrets.

The idea of Steve being with anyone else makes bile rise in the back of his throat, sharp and acidic as jealousy. He thinks of how Steve presses his mouth against the salty lines of Billy’s neck, the feel of his breath on the back of Billy’s neck, how Steve pulls him close when they’re fucking, like Billy isn’t close enough. He doesn’t want to think of Steve doing all of these things to her but he does.

He’s alone. Hopper has told him to drop the case and even Steve won’t listen to him. He can’t even call Tommy and Carol. They were Steve’s friends first and if Steve has ditched him they’ll take his side, not Billy’s.

But something fucked up is going on and Billy won’t - can’t - leave it alone. If he wants to stop his dad then he has to do this. Speaking to him, or not, Steve’s life is in danger as long as Neil is on the warpath.

He needs Steve for this. He doesn’t know enough about magic to fight this, and all he can do is track it, which is fucking useless.

Except he can track it. If there’s magic in the woods, he can find it.

He heads back to his car and digs around in the trunk. He finds a map and a flashlight, checks his phone for any messages before he stows it away in a pocket.

He catches movement at one of the windows before he walks into the trees and the Harrington house disappears from sight.

Chapter 10: Old Things Have Strange Hungers

“Are you sure about this?” Steve asks, as Heather lets them all in the front door. They’d dropped Carol and Tommy at the library, with instructions to look for any similar deaths in the past. Steve even half thinks of texting Billy, asking him to look in the police records, before he lets it go. He can’t risk talking to Billy right now.

“Very,” she says with a shrug. “My parents are both out and they won’t be back until later. Come on, my dad’s study is this way.”

Steve’s been to the Holloway house before, parties and dinners and for Heather’s birthday party when they were thirteen. He made out with Amy Benson in one of the hallway closets when they were in high school and let Jack Tibbet jerk him off behind the stairs a few years back. He’s never been in it like this, when the house feels so obviously empty and the door creaks as they let themselves in.

Tom Holloway’s study is at the back of the house, just off the dining room, and despite the door not being locked there is a palpable air of seclusion and authority about it. Steve looks at the grand mahogany desk, the artwork on the walls, the thick rug over the hardwood flooring and thinks that this is a room meant for one man alone.

The bookshelf along the far wall looks as though it’s filled with old classics, each cover carefully embroidered and brightly colored. There’s something just a little off about each one as Steve stares at them, like an imperfect layering of an image over another one. When he figures it out, he smiles.

“A glamor,” he says. “Clever.” It’s a very basic one, which is why when Steve looked too closely he could see the flaws. Glamors are an incredibly difficult thing to hold, especially if you’re not always there to maintain the spell. Some people have more aptitude for it than others - Steve is not one of them.

“It’s not perfect but it keeps people from getting curious if they ever have to be in here,” Heather says, hunting along the shelves for something. “I think it’s around here somewhere.”

“What are you looking for?” Steve asks curiously, watching her fingers slide over Charlotte Bronte and Shakespeare and Hemingway. He has no idea how she can tell what she’s looking at.

“I can’t break the illusion,” Heather explains, her fingers still skimming over each book. After a beat, Steve realizes what she’s doing - she’s feeling the real covers underneath the illusion. “I can’t put it back the same way and he’ll notice. But I think I remember which one it is…oh, here.” She pulls out a book that holds onto the glamor for a second, until the cover flickers and fades, the careful embroidering and shades of blue morphing to faded leather. She heads over to Tom’s desk and drops into his chair, flicking open the book.

“Do you just sneak in here and steal your dad’s spellbooks?” Steve asks, a little impressed despite himself.

“Sometimes,” Heather says defensively. “He buys all these rare books and then shows off by hiding them in plain sight in front of humans. It was just pissing me off.”

She’s still turning pages, carefully moving each delicate, old page with the very tips of her fingers. The book looks like something ancient, a relic from when the world feared witches. Steve’s parents aren’t quite so big on such outdated spellbooks so Steve’s never even seen this particular book before.

“Learn anything good?” Steve asks, leaning against the desk while he waits. She flashes him a grin.

“I’ll teach you some of them sometime,” she promises. Steve leans over her shoulder, watching her flick through pages. The pages are fragile, almost too thin for Heather to be turning the ages that quickly.

“Why this book?” Steve asks curiously and Heather purses her lips.

“It’s basically a manual of big, bad beasties,” she says heavily. “The known ones anyway. There’s a lot of them. Some of them used to be summoned by witches back when we were being actively hunted. Hellhounds, wisps, guardians…shit like that.”

“Not something we do anymore,” Steve says, half wishing he had a hellhound to let loose on Neil.

“The spell’s in here, not that we have time,” Heather says, raising her eyebrows. “But I should warn you, Steve, that they often attack any witch hunters, not necessarily just the ones you want them to.”

“I got it,” Steve says miserably. Right. Even if he didn't summon a hellhound, there’s no guarantee he could protect Billy from it.

But then he gets a good look at the book and Steve whips out a hand to stop her from turning to another page.

If he hadn’t dreamt it, he wouldn’t have known. The image is of a wood, black trees against the clear sky, the moon shining down on a circle of witches. But beneath the ground, below their feet is something in the darkness of the earth. The illustration doesn’t make it clear. Steve thinks he can make out a claw, a pair of eyes, a twisted limb, but that’s all.

“That’s it,” Steve breathes and shoves Heather over so he can squish in the chair next to her. She grunts a little as he accidentally sits on part of her thigh. “What is it?”

“It’s called the Devourer,” Heather says, her voice grave as she runs her fingers across the faint pencil lines of the beast. “That’s one of its names anyway. It has a lot. If it ever really had a name it was lost to time.”

“So it’s old,” Steve says, feeling the skin prickle on the back of his neck. “Shit.” So old that there was no chance of them finding anyone who knew of the beast after all.

Unless you’re Tom Holloway and you happen to collect out of print spellbooks. Thank God Heather’s dad is such a pretentious dick.

“Is this what it does?” Steve asks. The writing on the page is too small, in that strange elegant font that makes an S look like an F. “The murders?”

“Yeah,” Heather says and then looks queasy. “It’s also called the Flayer and the Dreaded? It’s also been called the essence-thief. It takes body parts. It doesn’t really say why.”

“That’s it?” Steve murmurs, looking over the scarce text underneath the illustration. Heather shrugs.

“Just that it needs them,” she says simply. “But what does it need them for?” Steve taps his fingers against the desk as he thinks. Right now, he has no answer. Any normal beast would just need to feed, regardless of what or when. But this one is very specific about what it takes and currently he can’t really put his finger on why yet.

“Does it say anything about the seal?” he says finally and Heather moves her eyes across the page.

“Not a lot,” she says, with some obvious annoyance. “For an encyclopedia, it’s not big with the knowledge. But it’s like you thought - it came through a veil years and years ago. Centuries by the look of it. And it began killing people and it took nearly every witch they had to seal it again.”

“And now the seal is coming undone,” Steve says and Heather twists to look at him.

“Coming undone?” she says anxiously. “I think it’s fucking undone already, Steve!” Steve shakes his head but whatever thought he’d had was already fading away. For a moment, there’d been some memory right in front of him but it was gone before he could fully grasp it.

“I don’t think it is,” he says, wishing he could explain why he knows this. “I think that’s why it needs the body parts.”

“Great,” Heather quips and slams the book shut. Steve wonders if her disregard for the books is some sort of petty revenge against a man who must spend hundreds on them only to never read them. “We’ve got a beastie with the world’s most fucked up game of operation. What do we do now?”

Steve sits back, mind whirring away. He doesn’t quite have all of the pieces yet but he’s getting close.

The Devourer came through a veil, a place where the divide between worlds is thin. There’s not very many thankfully, but it looks like Hawkins is one of them. It came through and needed…what? To feed? So presumably it did, and they needed all the witches they could find to seal it. Which worked and then the spell faded over time, because it does, because even magic needs strengthening and replenishing and no one was around to do it.

But. Steve chews on his lips. Something about the four figures in the wood doesn’t feel like centuries ago witches sealing a beast. So…maybe the seal weakened before. They did a spell to bind the beast again but it wasn’t enough. Once more, it’s breaking through and taking what it needs. But it’s still not feeding. So why?

Either it feeds just on body parts - a different one each day - or there’s another reason why it needs them. What did Heather say it was called? The essence-thief? So it’s stealing them, taking parts of people that wander close enough to where it’s bound.

Skin first. It needs a shell. Then eyes to see. But Steve doesn’t know how many more it needs…and what happens when it has everything.

“I think we need to find Billy,” Steve says and Heather raises her eyebrows.

“I thought you weren’t involving him?” she says pointedly.

“We have to,” he says. Billy was there at the stones that night - it means he’s a part of this. “I think we need him. Can this thing be sealed away again?”

“I think so,” Heather says, scrunching up her nose. “Everything can be banished or sealed. But we don’t have the spell.”

“We can make one,” Steve says firmly and watches Heather’s mouth drop open with shock.

“Okay, you do know how hard that is, right?” she counters. “For something like this you can’t just throw some salt at it and wish hard enough. Sealing something you haven’t summoned is hard, Steve.”

“I know that,” Steve says in frustration. He doesn’t know how to explain it to her - why he thinks that this is even possible. To send away your own summon, it’s easy enough to engineer a spell for it. But for an ancient beast, where you have no idea what was used in the original spell? Reckless and impossible.

But he’s not about to start telling her he dreamt of what he thinks was the previous ritual.

“It’s a long story,” Steve says finally. “But we may need a plan B.”

“Then we’ll have to kill it,” Heather says bluntly, although this plan is only slightly easier than Steve’s. Things strong enough to break through a veil rather than be summoned are notoriously strong. “Fire might work.”

“Works on most things,” Steve agrees. It’s something basic that most young witches are taught - steel or fire are often the best methods in case you need to bring down a summoning. “It’s not quite a werewolf but maybe we should get both.”

“That’s silver,” Heather corrects him. “But we can get some knives or rods or something.”

“Will your dad notice if we take this?” Steve asks, gesturing towards the book. They might need it, if they’re gonna take this thing down. Heather shrugs and scoops the book up.

“Who cares?” she says bluntly. “I think this is a bit beyond asking for permission from our parents.”

“You don’t think we should involve them?” Steve asks, just as Heather pulls the door shut behind them. Hopefully Tom won’t notice that his bookshelf is missing one tome in particular. It sounds an awful lot like Heather is the only one who actually reads them.

“Yeah, that’ll end well for us,” she snorts. “They’ll spend so long shouting at us for everything they perceive to be our fault that the beast would have killed half the town by then.”

“Is that likely?” Steve asks, before he counts it all out in his head. So far there has only been two murders - one a day since they went to the stones. He relays this to Heather, who frowns.

“It’s day three,” she says, having done the same math that Steve had. “Where’s the next body?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says, as she checks the office before they slip out. “But the murders have been in the woods so far…or close to it.”

“Maybe they just haven’t been found yet,” Heather says, looking very much as though she doesn’t want to be the one to voice this thought. Steve remembers Hopper saying that they’d searched the woods where they’d found Tammy…and yet saw nothing.

And Steve had been the one to find Betty, struggling to take her last breaths.

“Maybe it’s by design,” he says. “Maybe we’re the ones finding the bodies for a reason.”

“Speak for yourself,” she says, as they exit the front door and hurry down the steps. “But none of you have been into the woods today. If you’re right, then the third body - if there is one - may go unfound for a while yet. Even worse, tomorrow there may be another body.”

“Good for us, less good for anyone who sets foot in there after dark,” Steve mutters, climbing into the driver’s seat of his car. Heather slams the passenger side door harder than Steve really likes, reaching for her seatbelt.

“What do we do if it starts killing outside of the woods?” she asks, looking fearful. “We don’t know how long that seal will hold for, if it hasn’t already failed. At any minute, it might be able to kill anyone anywhere.”

“We can find it,” Steve says grimly, turning the ignition. He swings the car around into the road before Heather can even get her bearings. They’re running out of time. “We need to pick up Billy. I think he’s still at work.”

---

The place where Tammy had died was still soaked in blood.

The police tape flutters pathetically in the breeze. It’s been left up around the clearing, even though there are no officers keeping watch anymore. Not with mobs and a fresher crime scene - Hawkins just doesn’t have the manpower.

Billy tries to ignore the taste of bile in his mouth as he stares at the red-soaked ground. But he’s not going to be able to smell anything from over here so he forces his feet right up to the line of fading yellow tape.

He thought that he could do this. He may have been wrong.

The smell hits him almost immediately. He’s sometimes wondered if being a witch-hunter makes his sense of smell stronger than everyone else’s, capable of detecting things other people can’t. The faintest smell of cinnamon in Chrissy’s cookies. Rotting leaves underneath the decking. The smell of sex lingering on someone’s skin hours after it should have faded. So the smell of blood and decay is almost overwhelming to him, forcing bile to his throat. He presses his hand over his nose and mouth and keeps looking.

He ducks under the tape and carefully steps over the ground. He knows from the report that Tammy was strung from the tree and he carefully avoids looking at it, and wondering which branch she hung from.

But when he gets closer to it, there’s something else under the smell of death. Like burnt, bitter ash, the smell of charcoal and brimstone clings to Billy’s nostrils and snakes down the back of his throat.

He knows instantly that it’s magic.

Magic smells differently depending on the source. It changes for everyone, based on who has cast it, how they use it. When he caught a whiff of Heather back at the town hall, she smelled like morning dew. Mrs Harrington smelled like fireworks, a harsher version of the crackle of a bonfire that her son gives off. Regular humans who cast spells smell of electricity, like the thrum of overhead power lines. Steve once said it’s because it’s not as easy for them, like trying to force opposing magnets together.

But this is overpowering, so much so that Billy can almost taste the crumbling ash at the back of his throat. This is dark magic…like the same kind of thing that could be causing the rot around town.

Why does the place where Tammy died smell of magic?

He’s walked in a straight line down from the Harringtons house, following the path that he’s taken countless times before. Normally, they follow it to the lake or veer off to the bonfire pit but today Billy follows it until something tells him to take a turn into the trees, pushing past branches and undergrowth until he finds the right place.

He should go back to his car. He’s going to be late back to work if he’s not careful.

But the urge is to take a detour back to Benny’s along the way, investigate the crime scene there for the same smell. The concrete in front of the diner has probably been hosed down by now but there’s a chance Billy will still be able to follow it.

But…if something came here to kill Tammy, wouldn’t he just be able to track it from here?

It takes a few loops of the area before he finds it - the same scent in the air, just barely clinging on, on a path away from the site. Like something walked this way through the trees, dripping blood and sulfur. He saw the report - skin missing, eyes gone. He’s not like Neil, doesn’t believe that everything witches do is to cause hurt and misery, but he does know enough to understand that this is deliberate. Those parts are being used and no good can come from it.

He pushes on through the trees, the stench growing stronger as he tracks it to the source. All too soon, he recognises where he’s heading…towards the stones.

Billy steps down on the black before he realizes what is underfoot. The thick, almost moss-like growth spreads across the ground, rippling across every rock, every weed, even climbing up the trees.

“What the fuck?” Billy whispers, because the wood has completely changed in only three days. Whatever…this is, it’s spilling out like a wave, covering the ground until nothing is left. Billy can’t even see a glimpse of the jewel-colored leaves underneath.

He doesn’t have to go any further to know - this has to rippling out from the stones. And if he had to place bets, he’d say that it’s not going to stop either. Whatever is at the stones - buried, sealed, bound, he doesn’t know - is causing this and it will only keep spreading the stronger it grows.

Without warning, the hair on Billy’s neck stands on end, some old instinct flaring to life. Maybe it’s the shadows from the trees but Billy can’t shake the feeling of eyes on him, watchful and malicious.

He spins around, but not fast enough. His leg collides with something solid and he’s knocked off balance. The ground comes up too fast for him to stop it and the breath is knocked out of him as he lands.

“Shit,” Billy curses, pain suddenly shooting up his wrist from where he landed on it. He rolls onto his back with a groan, wondering if anything is broken. His wrist twinges but it doesn’t feel too bad so he props himself up on his elbow.

“Thanks,” Billy says and tries to unhook his leg. Feeling rather stupid, the trees behind him are empty - no eyes, no beast, nothing. He’s fucking with his own head now.

When he looks down at what he caught his leg in, he has to blink just to be sure he’s not losing his mind. The ground was clear before. So where did this backpack come from?

Billy sits forward and tugs the strap off his leg. It’s a red bag, a proper camping one, with chest straps and a pocket for a water bottle. The material is a little dirty, presumably from where Billy kicked it, but it looks new enough. Like someone only just bought it. Billy undoes the zip and peeks inside, to find it stuffed full of clothes, a sleeping bag and other items. Billy catches sight of a torch, a bottle of sunscreen and some granola bars before he does it back up again, unnerved.

He really wants to get the fuck out of here.

He drops the backpack where he found it and pushes himself up carefully, avoiding putting any weight on his wrist. It twinges faintly but no serious damage seems to have been done.

But…he can’t ignore the fact that someone dropped this backpack. No one would willingly leave this behind and the fact that they have sat badly in Billy’s gut. And Hopper had been very clear that there should be a third body today. If someone is in trouble, can he really just walk away?

Billy pauses. He should go back to work. He shouldn’t even be thinking of doing this alone.

But he's no longer sure who to trust so he pushes aside a branch and steps forward.

---

They’re driving along Mulberry when Steve suddenly swings a sharp left down Old Cherry Road. Heather yelps and the book slides from her fingers onto the floor.

“What the hell, Steve?” she grumbles, reaching down to scoop it up. “Do you have any idea how old this thing is? This book is older than the fucking town.”

But when the book is safely in her lap once more she notices the street that they’re driving down, the familiar cracked road and yellowing grass.

“Steve, what are we doing?” she asks, turning her head to stare at the rusted kid’s bike leaning against some trash cans as they pass.

“Just checking on something,” Steve says. “Call it witches’ intuition.”

Actually, it was more about the familiar car that Steve had spotted pulling in ahead of them. Something about the old Chevy had set off bells inside his head and he’d followed it before he’d even stopped to think about what he was doing.

“You’re falling behind,” Heather points out, watching the car pull ahead of them. Steve lets it go, choosing to slow to a crawl.

“I don’t want them to see me,” he says and keeps his chosen pace until the sight of 4819 Old Cherry road comes into view. He hadn’t known Billy while he lived under Neil’s roof, as Billy moved out months before he and Steve even met. But he knows the address, has seen it in passing. Some of the houses along this street have life in: flowers in window boxes, toys in the yard, a plastic flamingo stuck into the dirt. The Hargrove-Mayfields’ house has none of that, like this isn’t meant to be a place for living at all.

There are cars in the driveway and lined up along the street. Steve’s heart sinks a little as he takes it in and Heather’s mouth twists. She too has seen the men head up the path to the front door.

“It’s a meeting,” she deduces, narrowing her eyes at the people gathered around the front door. Mostly men but there are a few women too, all knocking on the white door. “What, the riots last night weren’t enough?”

“I guess not,” Steve says, because clearly whatever arrests were made were not enough to stop them. Fuck. He hates when his parents are right. Neil Hargrove is a threat to their community...he just wishes they didn’t lump his boyfriend in with these psychos.

“Do you think he told the rest of them about witches?” Heather asks as Steve drives by the house as slow as he can get away with, without it being glaringly obvious that they’re watching the house.

“I don’t think he was explicit about it,” Steve says, just as the front door opens. Steve catches the faintest glimpse of sharp blue eyes and neatly trimmed hair before the occupant takes a step back to let his guests in. And that’s all Steve sees of Billy’s father before the man vanishes from view.

“I think they’d laugh him out of town if he led in with that,” Steve continues, as he reverses into someone’s empty drive. “But with all this shit going on, and the murders, would it really take so much to get them pointing in that direction? Neil’s always been the loud voice in a crowd. All he’d have to do is say the right word at the right time and they’d do whatever the hell he wanted.”

“That’s terrifying,” Heather says, her face pale. “We have to stop this before it gets any worse.” Steve moves the car forward, swinging it out into the road and back the way they came.

“We’re going to,” Steve says, even though he has no idea how. He doesn’t know what seems more impossible - the monster or the mob. He also doesn’t know which he fears more.

“Where are we going now?” Heather asks as they pass the Hargroves’ once more. The door is shut now, and Steve dreads what might be going on inside. “Can we even go to Billy’s?”

“I’ve got an idea,” Steve says grimly and presses down on the gas.

---

“What do you mean, he isn’t here?” Steve demands, resting his hands on the counter. The officer on duty - regrettably, Flo was nowhere to be found - just blinks at Steve.

“I mean, he isn’t here?” he says slowly, like he thinks Steve is stupid. “Not in the building?”

“But he has a shift,” Steve insists and then wonders if he’s wrong. He and Billy haven’t talked in a few days. Billy might have changed his schedule and Steve wouldn’t have known.

“Tell me about it,” the officer mutters, disgruntled. “He’s meant to be on the desk. He never came back after lunch.”

“Steve,” Heather says in a low voice but he shakes her off. He won’t believe it. Not unless someone has explicit proof. He wants to see it with his own eyes.

“Did he say where he was going?” The officer shrugs, unbothered.

“Out?” he says. “Lunch. He said he had to drop something at a friend’s house. Didn’t say much more than that.”

“Thanks,” Steve says shortly and grabs hold of Heather’s hand. She stays quiet until they hit the parking lot when her voice pipes up in Steve’s ear, thin and anxious.

“Steve, do you think he’s…?”

“No,” Steve snaps and digs in his pocket for his keys. Because there’s no way his fucking boyfriend is at that meeting with Neil. He can’t be.

But Heather is standing on the other side of the car, hand on the passenger door, her eyes full of pity.

“It’s his dad,” she offers. “I don’t think he can do much.” Steve rests his hands on the car roof and takes a few deep breaths.

“Get in the car,” he says, because there’s not a lot else they can do. They still have to find out what this thing is, if it can be killed. Carol and Tommy are waiting for them at the library.

“And go where?” Heather asks helplessly. “We don’t have anywhere safe to go.” Steve stares past her head, across the road, and catches sight of the church spire in the distance.

“I have an idea,” he says, because he’s used to staring out at that church from a different angle. “But you’re not going to like it.”

Chapter 11: There Will Be Blood

“This isn’t what I meant,” Heather says in disgust as they pull up in front of Family Video. Steve ignores her and climbs out of the car. The fact is that they don’t have anywhere else safe to go. Their houses are both out of the equation and Billy’s apartment can’t be risked with Neil’s current anti-witch crusade. Family Video has been temporarily closed with the recent events - most of their bookings got canceled anyway. It should be an ideal place to hide out.

“Bring the book,” he says and Heather rolls her eyes but does as he asks. Tommy cricks his neck as he climbs out of the back before he helps Carol out.

“Take these,” Carol says, shoving a folder at Steve while she reaches back in for her bag. They haven’t had time to discuss what she and Tommy found at the library yet but something is making her even sharper than usual. She’s also been clutching that folder to her chest like it’s her firstborn.

“Didn’t this used to be a video rental place?” Heather asks, warily eying the front of the building. Despite their best efforts, there’s usually some jerks who toss their rubbish on the sidewalk or spray graffiti on the walls after hours. Steve blames it on their clientele - which admittedly are mostly children.

“Back when VHS was a thing, yeah,” Steve snorts. Back in the Nineties, Family Video still functioned as an off-brand Blockbusters. But then DVDs and streaming started rolling in and the owner had the canny idea of creating a miniature movie theater instead. A few years after that they merged with the arcade next door and it became the birthday party hellscape that it is now.

But it pays well enough and Steve gets to work with his best friend. Also, free mozzarella sticks.

Steve lets them all in with his spare key and turns off the alarm system. He ducks under the counter while Heather stares around in disbelief at the pilfered movie cardboard cutouts they keep in their ‘lobby.’

“This is horrifying,” she says, taking in the candy bar, the popcorn cart, and the swing door that leads to the kitchen. They don’t offer much more than deep fried food that all comes out of the freezer but there’s something about crappy nachos and hot dogs eaten on a bean bag chair in front of a projected movie screen that kids go nuts for.

Which Steve can understand. His ideal evening involves blow jobs, take out pizza and watching TV in bed so either people will always like the basic things in life or Steve hasn’t grown up all that much.

“Welcome to my world,” Steve says dryly. “They drop cheese on the floor, smear sticky fingers over every surface and then go next door to play games until they’re sick.”

“Fantastic,” Heather says, wrinkling up her nose.

Steve closes the door behind them and leads them through the lobby to the backroom. Only once they’re inside with the door shut does he flick on the lights.

“What did you guys find?” Tommy asks, throwing himself down onto the sagging couch. Carol eyes the stained cushions with disdain before lowering herself down onto it.

“Something old,” Heather says, opening the book to the correct page and placing it down on the scratched coffee table. “It’s called the Devourer. It came here years ago, before Hawkins was really Hawkins. It took all of the witches they had to seal it up again.”

“When it says ‘took’,” Carol says, looking uneasy, and Heather winces.

“I’m trying to not think about that,” she says. Steve grabs a chair and drags it over.

“What have you guys got?” he asks and Carol and Tommy share a look.

“That thing, the Devourer…” Tommy says slowly. “By any chance does it take human body parts?” Steve and Heather both nod. Carol silently opens the folder and spreads an array of photocopied newspapers across the desk, a furl of black and white petals around Heather’s book.

“How the fuck did I not know about this?” Steve asks, staring down at the vivid headlines. Carol shrugs and slump back against the sofa cushions.

“Don’t know,” she says bluntly. “I was asking that myself. There’s no fucking way that people conveniently forgot to tell us that there were murders thirty years ago identical to the ones happening now.”

“Where did you get these?” Heather asks, picking one up.

“The library archives. There’s like every paper ever printed in this town,” Tommy says, waving a hand. “Even these. We asked Sally-Ann at the front desk and she got all shifty about it. Said she didn’t know anything about it and that someone must have put those there as a prank.”

“Something fucked up is going on here, Steve,” Carol says, tugging anxiously on a strand of her hair. “Why were there murders that no one remembers?”

“Because someone wanted it that way,” Steve says quietly and can see by Heather’s face that she’s come to the same conclusion.

“You couldn’t cast a spell over the whole town,” Heather says, dropping the paper down so she can pick up another one. “I don’t even know a spell to do something that huge.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” Steve counters. “It’s like…Boomer’s punch at parties.”

“You think someone emptied the liquor cabinet into a punch bowl and gave it to the whole town?” Heather asks, with a raised eyebrow but Tommy is sitting up, eyes bright.

“Yeah, yeah, you have no idea what’s in it and it makes you all hazy,” he says and Steve nods.

“Make them a little fuzzy, give them a hangover and let it slide right out of their heads,” he says, waving his fingers like he’s a cartoon witch. “If it was recent enough you wouldn’t need a full wipe. Something like this most people would want to forget anyway.”

“You are terrifying,” Heather tells him but she looks impressed. “But would that even work?” Steve shrugs. If he’s honest, he has no clue. He’s never tried it and he’s not sure he wants to. But it’s what he’d do if he needed to make something slip right out of the town’s collective memory. Making people forget something is really hard - even if it’s just one person and one specific memory. Removing something from someone’s head is a huge ask. And to do that to the entire town? Impossible.

But most people suppress the bad stuff anyway. All you’d have to do really was help it along.

“If you found the right distribution channels, yeah,” he says. “I think so. But the question is…why would someone want these murders to be forgotten and who cast the spell?”

“Maybe the person who did the murdering in the first place?” Tommy suggests, looking uneasy.

“Or maybe someone did it because there was no human culprit responsible,” Heather says, eyes focused on the page in her hand. “Steve, there are at least four murders here. One for each day.”

“Skin, eyes, blood and brain,” Carol says, dragging a hand across her gray face. “We’ve got two but we’re on day three. Why hasn’t the third one been found?”

“About that,” Steve says uneasily. He forgot until now that he hadn’t mentioned that detail to them and judging by Heather’s face she knows it too. “I think it can only be found by one of us.”

“What?” Carol says, sitting upright and looking furious. “Why just us?” Steve shrugs.

“Because we were at the stones?” he says, because he doesn’t have a better answer. “Because this thing likes to fuck with us? I’ve seen all sorts of weird shit since this went down. Haven’t you?” Carol opens her mouth before she stops, slumping like her strings have been cut.

“Yesterday I was in the kitchen,” she says wearily. There’s a glassy sheen to her eyes when she finally raises them. “I was getting some juice and my mom came in. But then she picks up a knife and just starts…cutting into her face. So I scream and drop the juice and she’s standing there looking at me like I was crazy. Her face was fine.”

“I think it’ll do that,” Steve says and thinks back to the man he saw at Tammy’s crime scene. It? He? He’s not sure. His kitchen that first day, the dead crow, how he was led to Betty too late to save her. It’s giving Carol hallucinations, and he wonders if his dreams are from the monster too. “I think it’ll screw with us because it can.”

“It wants to keep you off-kilter,” Heather says, her calm clear voice cutting through the heavy atmosphere like a knife. “It’s trying to keep you from doing anything about it. That’s all.”

“It’s fucking working,” Tommy gripes and Steve feels inclined to agree.

---

It’s only when the sun starts to dip below the line of trees that Billy starts to suspect that something is wrong and he is seriously, seriously lost.

He may not have grown up in these woods like Steve and the others but he still knows how not to get lost. The knot on the fallen log by the lake. The trails of smoke from the power plant stacks. The distant gleam of the trailer park.

He’s seen none of these markers and yet he’s still going in circles.

Exhausted, Billy slumps against a nearby tree. He’s going to get in so much shit at work. Somehow he doubts Flo will believe ‘got lost in the woods.’ He’s Goldilocks with a goddamn mullet.

“Magic,” Billy mutters furiously, rubbing at his eyes. He’s fucked.

He doesn’t know enough about magic to have any idea about what it is. An animal? A zombie? Fuck if he knows. He’s only ever seen Steve cast small magic, tiny, inconsequential spells that just make life easier. Moving curtains, reheating drinks, creating a cool breeze on a hot afternoon. Things that don’t ask much of the universe. To truly affect anything of substance - making yourself disappear, or create fire, or summoning something - that takes a lot more. Billy’s seen the boxes of strange stuff in Steve’s room, the endless vials of power and other strange substances, gilt-tipped pins, candles in every color. But he’s never seen Steve use any of that stuff. He doesn’t know whether Steve just doesn’t have any need for those kinds of spells or avoids casting them in Billy’s presence.

He pulls out the map and digs in his pockets for a pen. He finds a nub of a pencil but it’s just enough to make a mark roughly where he thinks he’s standing and then another over by Benny’s. Nothing makes sense, no matter how many times he looks at every piece. Tammy and Betty died vicious deaths, starting the same day that rot and decay began spreading around town. The day after they all went to the stones. And Hopper had a box of photos and old reports of deaths that happened nearly twenty-five years ago.

And the most he’s seen of his boyfriend over the past three days is the glimpse across the crowded town hall and Billy hadn’t even been able to really look at him for fear that his father would see.

He sighs and tips his head back against the bark. He doesn’t have a lot on him, save for what’s in his pockets, and he doubts any of that will matter very much if whatever is keeping him going in circles wants to keep him here.

“What do you want from me?” Billy hisses, wishing he’d never come into the woods in the first place.

He doesn’t expect an answer but he gets one anyway.

“What do you want?” Billy asks, eyeing the crow that’s just landed in front of him. It hops a few steps and caws curiously, clearly judging Billy to be the intruder here.

“Get fucked,” Billy mutters mutinously. But the crow just ruffles its feathers, unbothered.

“I’m talking to a bird,” Billy complains to the air. He pushes himself up, refusing to sit down and let this thing twist him in circles until he’s a skeleton overgrown by moss and lichen. He digs in his pocket for his phone and isn’t overly surprised to see the lack of signal, the low battery. There’s no messages anyway. He frowns at the screen for a moment, confused. He was pretty certain he must have missed multiple calls from Flo at least, someone wondering why he didn’t come back to work. But there’s nothing there so he puts it away again, ignoring the twinges of hurt. He hadn’t known he was so easy to forget about.

“Any ideas on how I can get out of here?” he asks, because the crow is at least a living thing to talk to, some comfort in not being alone…even if that creature is a corvid more interested in pecking at the ground.

“Fine then,” Billy says and pulls out his torch. The day has taken on that soft quality that comes with the setting sun, not yet tipped into the cooler shades that come with approaching night. As he does the beam falls across a stray black feather, dark as an oil spill. Billy picks it up, admiring the sheen of colors under the torchlight.

When he looks up again, the crow is gone and Billy spins the feather between his fingers.

“This shit is getting weird,” Billy mutters and tucks the feather into his pocket.

He sets off into the growing dark, irritation and worry fighting against each other in equal measure. He feels more isolated than he ever has, save for the night his mother left. He’d called her. He’d begged. He wanted her to come home, or to take him with her.

For reasons he still doesn’t understand, she’d done neither. Escaping Neil was one thing. Escaping her child wasn’t something Billy had expected.

Dusk is beginning to grow, lengthening shadows across the trees, as Billy pushes on. He’s not sure what’s going to happen if he can’t get out of here. He doesn’t know what the purpose of all of this is - keeping him going in circles, confused, directionless. If something wanted to eat him, then surely it would have done that by now.

The torch catches something out of place as he sweeps it across the ground and he’s passed the light over it before he realizes. Frowning, he moves it back to find a single perfect drop of jewel-red against the dirt.

It’s blood, without question. A solitary droplet and Billy checks his fingers and arms just to see if he’s bleeding. But he’s clean so he didn’t catch himself on a thorn or branch.

He moves the torch to see if there’s anymore but he doesn’t find any. The unease churning in his gut doesn’t settle. He’s not stupid. Everything in him is screaming to run, even though he can’t.

He hears a familiar sound, the chorus of crows circling overhead. He wasn’t aware of so many being in the woods so close by but something has spooked them, circling overhead, calling a warning for danger. He lifts up his chin and something wet drips down onto his face. He moves his hand to rub at it before he can think and somehow isn’t surprised by the thick red on his fingers.

There’s something above him, in the trees. Billy thinks of Tammy being strung up like a present for Steve to find. Thinks that whatever this is might be smarter than a beast. It manipulates, it mocks, it knows how to fuck with them.

The body might have been a hitchhiker once. Billy doesn’t recognise the face, although that’s not saying much. He thinks of the well-packed backpack, abandoned in the woods. There’s the remains of a sturdy jacket material hanging from the torso, what might have been a hiking boot on the shriveled foot. Billy remembers Tammy, Betty, and what was taken from them. There’s no doubt about what was taken from this poor soul. There’s only a few drops of it left. And it wouldn’t have been a mistake either.

Without blood the body looks old, cheeks and eyes sunken in, skin pale and waxy. He’s been hung in a way that reminds Billy of the webs that hang in his doorway: the fly caught in the center.

Another drop lands on Billy’s cheek and he stumbles backwards, even as he drags his hand across his skin, smearing the drop across his fingers. He stares at it in disbelief, unable to pull his eyes away from the bright red.

He thinks briefly that the man up there wasn’t the only prey. He’s been pulled round in circles until he was tired, disorientated, confused. This thing wanted him right here and it wanted him weak when it finally happened.

It must have happened early this morning, sometime after Billy fell asleep listening to sirens. Every day the clock ticks over and the monster takes something else. Billy scrubs furiously at his hand, trying to remove the stain but a few smears still cling to his skin.

Skin, eyes, blood…in only a matter of hours another day will begin and it will start all over again.

The question isn’t when or what the beast will take - it’s what will happen when it has everything that it needs.

---

There’s a sudden hammering at the front door, the sound ripping through to the back room.

“Who the fuck is that?” Carol hisses, eyes wide like she expects Neil and his band of merry men to have tracked them down. Steve jumps up and pokes his head around the door until he can see through the panes of glass.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Steve groan and goes to let them in before they bring any curious bystanders over. “What are you two doing here?”

“I work here?” Robin says, looking disgruntled and folding her arms across her chest. There’s a misshapen beanie pulled over her ears and her dad’s old jacket is almost drowning her. Even though she has to pull the sleeves up she likes wearing it because she can stick pins through the collar and sew badges across the back. “What the hell are you doing here? We’re closed. I only came by because your car was out there and Pippy Longstocking was trying to break down the door.”

Max looks unimpressed, heaving her skateboard through the door so Steve can shut it. She looks flushed and Steve’s slightly awed that she probably skated here from Old Cherry Road.

“I tried regular knocking,” she tells him. “You didn’t hear me.” Steve looks out onto the street and then anxiously ushers them towards the back room. He doesn’t want people seeing them here.

Robin’s eyebrows shoot up when she sees the occupants in the back room. She doesn’t look that surprised by Tommy and Carol but there’s a flicker of interest when she sees Heather.

“If you have an orgy back here, I’ll have to tell Keith,” she says flatly and stalks over to the fridge to grab one of the cans of coke she keeps there. Steve ignores her. She might be his best friend but he’s not sure it’s a good idea to bring her in on this. She doesn’t have to be. It’s already bad enough he dragged in Heather.

“Well, we can’t now that you’re here,” Tommy says but his heart isn’t in it. Carol looks Max up and down, taking in the red plaits, the piercing blue eyes, the scraped knees.

“Isn’t this Billy’s kid sis?” she asks, tilting her head up at Steve.

“Yeah,” Steve says shortly, but he’s too worried to go into it. He knew Max before he met Billy - she started hanging around Dustin and that crowd after she arrived in town. Steve used to get paid to watch the kids sometimes, take them to the public pool during the summer and the arrival of a red-headed kid with a mouth wasn’t the weirdest thing ever. It had been pretty funny watching Lucas and Dustin follow her around for a while. “Max, what are you doing here?”

“There are people at my house,” she says in a rush and Steve feels rather than sees Heather’s abrupt change of focus. Fuck. The witch hunters.

“We know,” Steve tells her. “Neil had some weird meeting last night.”

“He’s having another one now,” Max, dropping her skateboard on the ground. “Mom made me go to my room. She looked upset but she won’t fucking argue with him.”

“Did you hear what they said?” Steve pushes because he needs any advantage they have against Neil and his ilk. But Max purses her lips and shakes her head.

“Not enough. I tried slipping out but mom could hear me. So I went out the window instead.”

Billy and Max may not be related by blood but sometimes the similarities between them are startling.

“And?” Steve pushes and catches the way her eyes slide to the papers on the table. He neatly sidesteps to block her view. “Max? What did you hear?”

“Neil said they were going to find the source of the rot,” Max says unhappily. Everyone else has gone still, even Robin leaning against the counter, condensation dripping down her hand. “That there was evil in this town and they had to tear it out. Bit by bit if they had to.” Steve twists around to meet Heather’s terrified eyes. Bit by bit. To Neil that would mean every witch who lives in Hawkins. Every one from the old Miller sisters to Steve’s parents to little Erica with her My Little Pony backpack.

“Steve, there’s something else,” Max says, and he knows what it is before she even has to say it. It’s the reason why she skated over here. “They talked about Billy.”

“What did they say?” Steve asks desperately and it’s not until he hears Heather rise from her chair and Robin take a step forward that he realizes he’s advanced on Max to grip her by her shoulders. He’s not gonna hurt her, he’d never hurt her…but maybe he feels he needs to be holding onto something for this.

“Neil said that he wasn’t sure of Billy’s alliances,” Max whispers. Her eyes are glassy and Steve can’t imagine how terrified she must have been, crouched under the window listening to these men threaten her brother. “But if he wasn’t standing with them then he was part of the rot that needs to be cut out.”

Chapter 12: Cruel Men Never Change Their Minds

It’s dark by the time Billy spots the power plant looming over the trees and he exhales heavily. Thank fuck. If he can figure out where he is in relation to the plant, he might be able to get to a road.

But stumbling across the dark ground, his torch flickering is easier said than done. He’s growing tired and desperate and he can still see the body behind his eyelids. He doubts that it will ever go away.

On a ridge he catches sight of the dark gleam of water and relief floods through him. If Lake Jordan is to his left it means he can keep walking to a road. He’s got a long walk to get back to his car by the Harringtons but he doesn’t fucking care so long as he doesn’t have to walk back through those woods. He can even hitchhike, he’s just never setting foot in these trees again.

He’s half a mile from the road when he hears voices to his left, sharp and agitated. He stops, holding his breath, unsure after all this time whether this is real or an illusion. He thinks that nothing can be trusted in here - if anything in all of Hawkins can really be trusted anymore.

But the voices grow louder and closer and Billy tenses. He thinks about turning his torch off and disappearing into the thick branches ahead of him. This sounds nothing like the jangled voices of teenagers buzzed off stolen beer. Billy knows anger when he hears it and his stomach sinks when in amongst the male voices rings out one female scream.

He’s moving before he can even think about it, running towards the cry before it’s even finished echoing across the trees. He doesn’t think this is anything to do with whatever magical fuckery is at work here anymore and somehow that’s worse.

When he bursts through to a clearing, he’s not surprised by what he sees.

The men - nine or ten of them - all look up as one and Billy is reminded of deer, the herd all looking up as one as the torch light reflects off the whites of their eyes.

“What are you doing?” Billy asks, before he realizes that he knows them. He saw them only yesterday, at the Hideaway. He raises the torch over each of their faces, trying to memorize faces, remember their names. He knows Donnie Beasley from the feed store, and Gus Phelps drives the water delivery van.

“Billy,” Neil says evenly, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the torch. “Put that away.”

“No,” Billy says, because he’s seen the slumped figure in the circle of men, no matter how they try to hide her. He doesn’t know what they did that caused her to scream but he doesn’t like how she’s swaying, barely held upright by their hands. “Who’s that?”

“This is none of your business,” Neil says, coldly, stepping to block Billy’s line of sight. “You’ve made it clear you have no interest in following your birthright. Leave.”

But Billy’s always been nimble on his feet and he ducks past Neil before the old man can catch him. He’s met by resistance, of course, but he gets close enough to the girl to see her trembling shoulders. At least she’s alive.

“Are you insane?” Billy spits and shoves some guy he recognises from the bowling alley aside. “You can’t do this!”

“Billy,” Neil says, in a voice that Billy knows all too well, the kind that usually precludes a beating. “Go home.”

But Billy can’t. Going home will mean he’s safe, a get out of jail free pass…but that’s the thing that’s stopping him. Neil never gives him a choice. In his entire life Neil’s never given him the chance to rescind his words, make amends for any disrespect before beating him. The fact that he’s offering now makes his blood run cold.

The man clutching the girl’s right arm is digging in his fingers, and Billy doesn’t have to imagine how painful it is to have someone grip your skin like that. She whimpers and he jerks her up like a ragdoll.

“What are you doing?” Billy demands, tugging on the man’s arm, trying to push him off her. The girl is weeping heavily and when Billy gets a lungful of air he realizes why - she’s a witch.

Oh God. His dad has gone out and actually kidnapped a witch. And Billy knows her, at least by sight. Long dark hair, pale green eyes, a widow’s peak: this is Regina. She’s a good decade older than Billy, so unlike Heather, he’s never seen her at school or at parties. She’s one of the few that drifts by in the street or stops by the coffee shop. She probably never had any idea that the boy serving her was a witch hunter.

“She knows what she’s done,” Neil says, folding his arms across his chest.

“Done what?” Billy asks hotly, still trying to pry the man’s fingers from Regina’s arm. Her skin is red from where it's been pinched and twisted but the man won’t budge. She’s limp in their grip, almost unable to breathe she’s crying so hard. “You can’t possibly think she’s responsible for all of this!”

“She’s a witch,” Neil says calmly. “We found her in the woods, gathering ingredients…” Regina surges forward, struggling against the men holding her down.

“It’s for a protection spell!” she shrieks, tears dripping down her nose. For a second her eyes catch the moonlight and flash that unearthly gold, the clear sign of witchblood. “That’s all! I haven’t killed people!”

“A likely story,” Neil says and brandishes a black satchel at her. “Only witches are responsible for what’s happening to our town. There is no other explanation.”

“Are you shitting me?” Billy demands hotly before he remembers who he’s speaking to, where he is. “You can’t pin this on her because she’s the first witch you see!”

“She’s the first,” Neil says, coldly and brandishing the bag again. Billy can hear the faint clink of jars inside as it swings from Neil's fist. “We have proof enough here.”

“That’s not proof!” Billy counters, because Regina has gone limp and hunched over again, still sobbing. When Billy catches sight of the indigo flash in Neil’s eyes, he realizes why - she knows that there is no way out. “What are you going to do? Hang every witch in town? Old women and children too?” Neil levels him with such a blank look that Billy feels fear down to his fingertips. That’s not a look a father should give his son. Like he’s merely an obstacle in the way.

“If necessary,” Neil says, with barely a blink and Billy feels the men around him close in. He feels like he did back in the forest, being pushed against his will. He left one trap for another. “And if you get in my way, you will join them.”

---

“Steve,” Heather says quietly and he knows it’s not for the first time. He ignores her anyway. “Steve.”

He waits, desperately trying to focus. He has to find Billy. He has to before Neil does. He should have tried harder earlier but all of his calls went unanswered. There’s a bell ringing in the back of his head that says maybe he’s too late, that Billy can’t answer him.

“Steve!” Heather raises her voice and her hand closes over the pendulum.

“What?” Steve snaps at her and finally notices the concerned faces around him. But Heather’s fingers are soft as she gently pulls the pendulum from his grasp.

“Steve, it’s not working,” she says gently and Steve shakes his head.

“It can,” he insists, looking back down at the map. He still had the pendulum in his bag and the map is an old one pilfered from the office but it could work. “I know it’s not a proper location spell but we…” he trails off. It’s been ten minutes and the pendulum has just swung in circles.

“Heather, we have to find him,” he says desperately and she squeezes his shoulder.

“I know,” she says. “But it’s not gonna work like this. You need an anchor and you don’t have one.” Steve slumps. It’s nearly impossible to find someone without something of theirs and without it, they’re just wasting time here.

“I don’t have anything of his on me,” he says helplessly. If they were at his house, he’d have dozens of things that Billy left behind - lighters, rings, clothing, a stray hair. But here there’s nothing to help him find Billy and he feels useless.

“What the fuck is going on?” Robin asks pleasantly and Steve can recognise from the too-calm tone of her voice that she’s on the verge of freaking out. In the past ten minutes, she’s seen the book, the papers, heard more about Neil and monsters and bodies than she probably wanted to. Carol must see his face because she sighs and pulls herself up.

“Come on, band geek, I’ll fill you in,” she says. Max watches them from where she’s sat on the floor, on the other side of the map.

“He’s not wrong, is he?” she asks. “There’s something magical killing people.” Steve doesn’t need to ask who she means by ‘who.’

“It’s magic,” he confirms. “But it’s not a witch.”

“He’s not going to care,” Max says and he looks down at the worn edges of the map.

“Not even a little bit,” he says bitterly. Tommy looks over at them from the couch, where he’s been lying, feet dangling off the edge, while everyone else worked themselves into knots.

“Shouldn’t we tell someone?” he suggests. “The cops?” But Max shakes her head.

“I think Neil is in with the cops,” she says. “One or two of them at least.”

“Then a cop not aligned with a crazed witch-hunting psychopath,” Tommy says slowly and fuck, being in this room on edge is making them all too short-tempered.

They need a plan. They don’t even have the faintest hint of one and Steve is so out of his mind worrying about Billy he has no idea where to start. He knows he’s meant to step up, be a leader. It has to be him. He just can’t quite find it in himself to care.

“Hopper?” Heather asks. “He’d listen, right?”

“I think he knows more than he’s letting on,” Steve confesses, because he’s kept it in long enough. “I don’t mean…I don’t think he’s with Neil. But he knows something. When he came to my house after we found Tammy. He said how it was weird that we found her when there had been cops and searchers all over the woods. He said that area had been searched.”

“That’s not that weird, right?” Carol asks, dropping herself down on the couch, right over Tommy’s midsection. He groans as her weight settles but lets her perch on his stomach, resting a hand on her knee. “They’re not small. Maybe they missed them.”

“I don’t think so,” Steve says again. He unfolds his legs and pulls himself up off the ground. “When I first got to the…crime scene it looked normal. It’s got something to do with the fact that only us four can find the bodies. This thing is screwing with us.”

“I don’t really want to go out to the woods to look for other bodies,” Tommy pipes up from underneath Carol. It’s dark outside, which makes it even more dangerous to go fucking around in the woods but Steve doesn’t care. Billy might be in trouble and he’ll burn the whole damn wood down if he has to to get to him.

“But there are other bodies,” Heather insists. “At least another two by now. We’re running out of time.”

“Hey,” Robin says suddenly and it’s the first words she’s said since Carol filled her in. When Steve looks over to her, he finds her bent over the various papers that Carol and Tommy had brought with them. “Did you guys actually read these?” Carol and Tommy shrug in unison.

“We got the gist,” Tommy says airily and Heather snorts quietly.

“You mean, you read the headlines,” she says bluntly and Carol scowls. But before she can retort, Robin steps across the room and shoves the paper in Steve’s face.

“That picture down the bottom?” she says, tapping the image with a finger. “Look familiar?”

Steve looks. It’s blurry, the figure in the uniform standing at a distance, face angled away from the camera. But it’s enough and it fills in a link that Steve hadn’t known was missing.

He wants to find Billy. But they need to find Hopper and find out what the fuck he knows.

---

Billy can’t escape the hand of his father at his back as they walk. He couldn’t escape anyway, not without leaving Regina behind. She’s being dragged, rather than walking, and Billy still catches the faint sob from behind him. He wishes he could comfort her but there’s nothing to say. They might not make it out alive.

They walk across the dark woods for what feels like hours but he just knows that’s down to his aching legs. He’s already walked miles today, lost in that thing’s trap. They walk until Billy sees the lights of a road and he recognises where they are - Heraty bridge. They’re on the other side of Hawkins. Walk any further and you cross the town lines. There’s only farms and abandoned buildings out this way.

And with a jolt of horror, he realizes that’s why they’re heading this way.

Hess farm is owned by a man named Bernard, who lives here with a few dogs and farmhands. Billy can see the farm house in the distance, porch lights bright in the darkness. It’s pitch black out here, the stars hidden by thick clouds and even keeping the moonlight away. The only light comes from the torches, occasionally shining down on something scuttling across the ground: a thick black spider hurrying out of their path, a worm poking out of the dirt.

The building in front of them looks like an old barn, still standing but with obvious signs of disuse. The paint is fading, the ground around it is overgrown and the lock on the door is just barely hanging on, speckled with flecks of rust.

Regina is thrown to the ground and she cries out with pain. Billy rushes forward before anyone can stop him, resting a hand against her shoulder.

“Are you okay?” he asks, but she curls into a ball, almost unable to answer him.

“Billy,” Neil says cooly, looking in disgust at his son crouched by the witch. “Leave her.”

“You can’t just treat her like an animal,” Billy counters, trying in vain to see if Regina is injured. But she flinches away from his touch.

“I’m not like him,” Billy whispers to her desperately and he doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince.

“She’s something worse,” Neil says, sounding almost bored. “Leave her be. I won’t tell you again.” Billy rises but he doesn’t step away.

“What are you going to do?” he asks, and it takes everything he has to keep his voice from trembling. He’s vastly outnumbered, even if he weren’t scared shitless of his own father, with at least nine or ten men in front of him. He realizes now why some people at the bar were only caught for vandalism and looting. Neil never intended on using all of them in his war against the witches. The men in front of him are already friends of his father’s, already trusted, already too far gone to reason with. The people in that bar were scared and could easily be persuaded to riot. It would take more to convince them to kill.

He sees the items in Neil’s hands first.

“No!” Billy insists and Regina whimpers behind him, even though her head is surely still buried in her hands. Let her stay there. She doesn’t need to see the thick black nails hanging from Neil’s fingers.

“She’ll talk,” Neil says firmly. “The witches will undo the curse they have put on this town.”

“They haven’t cursed us!” Billy shouts, panic making his voice rise. “There’s something else here in Hawkins, the witches had nothing to do with it!”

But he can see by his father’s eyes that there’s no reason to be had here. Neil never accepted any that wasn’t his own.

Billy’s wrist - the sore one - is clenched in tight fingers as Neil surges forward and Billy bites back a cry as it twinges with pain. But Neil hasn’t noticed, pulling his arm up to place a single iron nail in his palm.

“No more of this, Billy,” Neil says in a low voice, fingernails digging half-moons into Billy’s skin. “I said it before. You are a Hargrove. Your idiotic, flighty mother’s influence aside, you are my son. And you will do this.”

Billy stares at the nail, long and jagged. He knows about iron nails. All witch hunters are taught about the weaknesses of witches and they’ve been using iron nails for centuries… A knife buried under the door to keep witches from entering. An iron fence around a cemetery to contain the restless dead. Scissors above a baby’s crib to guard against evil.

“What do you want me to do with it?” he croaks, mouth suddenly dry. He doesn’t need an answer, because one of the men is pulling a struggling Regina up. She’d laid on the ground so quietly and so still that Billy had started to worry but the fight came back into her, a wounded animal thrashing against the cage. But she can’t outmatch them in this number, no more than Billy can. Few witches can fight back, without their knives, their jars, their trinkets. An unprepared witch is as good as dead.

Neil’s face is enough of an answer.

Regina has been pulled up, her body shaking from head to toe. Billy curls his fingers around the nail. He can only guess at what Neil wants him to do with it.

“If you don’t, that boy will be next,” Neil says coldly and Billy jerks. When he turns, his father is holding out the hammer, waiting. A trade. A life for a life. But it’s not just Regina’s life Neil wants - it’s Billy’s too.

“He’ll be next anyway,” Billy whispers, because he can see it in Neil’s eyes. If he hurts Regina now all he’ll have is bile and guilt for the rest of his days. Neil is full of lies, Billy knows that. Steve won’t be spared from this.

Neil’s mouth twists but there’s something resigned about it. Like he never expects Billy to be anything other than a disappointment.

“You have too much of your mother in you,” Neil says coldly and Billy squeezes his fist so tightly that the nail cuts into his palm.

“She fucking hated you too,” Billy spits, because this resentment festering between them goes both ways. Abigail raised a son that Neil didn’t want, kind and gentle, and Neil hated what was left behind when she abandoned them.

But Neil had driven her away and tried to scrape out what she’d left behind, not even caring that it was already a child. Billy can’t change who he is more than Steve can change being a witch. And he doesn’t want to. He hates his mother for leaving but he’s all the best parts of her. He’s none of Neil and everything that Steve loves.

The blow to his face isn’t the first he’s taken. It won’t be the last. Billy buckles with the force of it and barely keeps himself upright, pressing a hand to his jaw. He’s lucky that Neil didn’t use the hammer…but then again, he probably has other uses for it.

Neil watches Billy spit blood onto the ground, almost dispassionately. It should hurt but Billy’s always known that Neil wanted a soldier more than a son.

“Take her away,” Neil commands and the waiting sentries pull Regina back towards the dark of the barn. Billy lunges for her but he’s met by resistance, rough hands twisting his arms painfully behind his back and forcing him down to the ground.

“And you,” Neil says, undoing his belt in a motion Billy knows so well. Billy spits, blood trickling down his chin, as Regina shrieks from inside the barn, the witch pulled away to her execution. “I am going to teach you some respect, if it’s the last thing I do.”

Chapter 13: Courage, Dear Heart

“Steve?”

The whisper breaks through the darkness and Steve opens his eyes to see the gleam of Heather’s eyes in the faint glow of the safety lights.

“Yeah?” he says and wriggles a little because he’s clearly getting too old for beanbags.

“Can’t sleep?” she asks, voice low, because all around them their friends are slumped against sofa cushions or oversized pillows. It didn’t make for the best’s night sleep, squashed together in the back room of Family Video but they’d had to make do. No one had been willing to go home in the end.

Steve chooses to stare at the ceiling for a moment rather than answer her.

Hopper had never returned to the station, and to Steve’s complete confusion, no one seemed to have any idea when he was due to return. The sudden disappearance of the police chief didn’t appear to cause much upset, and it all became clear when Flo finally stomped out of the office to tell them all to get lost and go home, the chief had gone to Indianapolis. She wasn’t willing to tell them why but it had been enough to send them all packing.

They’re stuck. They can’t find Hopper, they don’t know where Billy is, and worse of all, when Max had phoned home to lie to her mother it appears that Neil is still wandering Hawkins, up to God knows what.

Unease has settled heavily over Steve’s gut, keeping him awake and preventing him from eating much more than a few bites of pretzel for dinner. He also has to deal with feeling like shit because his friends are all crammed into this stale-smelling room with him, instead of home safe in their beds. Tommy and Carol are bad enough but Max, Robin, and Heather have no real reason to be here. But they’re dozing fitfully on the cheeto-dust caked bean bags from one of the theaters anyway.

“We’ll look for him tomorrow,” Heather whispers softly, perhaps thinking that Steve was ignoring her. He’d been ready to run out into the night to look for Billy himself and he’d been furiously shouted down. It’s dark and there’s a monster and a witch-hunting mob on the loose, and not one of them had been willing to risk letting Steve go alone into the night. “First thing. We’ll find him.”

“How?” Steve asks and hates the way his voice cracks. He’s been worried about Billy countless times before. Worried that Neil might find out about them, that Billy won’t make rent, always a little unable to shake the fear that Billy will leave him. But now Billy’s just gone and Steve doesn’t know what to call this feeling.

“We…we just will,” Heather says, and she only pauses for a second. “We’ll get something of his to track him with. And Hopper will have to be back tomorrow.”

“He might not,” Steve mumbles but he knows that she’s probably correct. The fact that none of the officers or Flo had been remotely concerned probably suggests that Hopper gave them a reason and a timeframe. Just not one that could be shared with his temp’s boyfriend.

“He will,” Heather repeats and he feels her hand drop down to squeeze his arm.

“We haven’t spoken in days,” Steve confesses and if it were daylight he wouldn't even dream of being able to tell her this. “I keep messaging him but he’s not answering.”

“He’s probably staying away,” Heather suggests. “Because of his dad.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Steve says and somewhere in the darkness someone snores, before roughly rolling over. “I just thought he’d…I don’t know. Give me a heads up.” Because there’s no reason why Billy can’t text Steve, unless even his phone is being monitored. Steve shifts against the bean bag and groans a little when it squeaks loudly.

“God, Steve, go to sleep,” Carol complains from the armchair.

“Sorry,” Steve mumbles and gets a pitying look from Heather before she rolls away and settles down with a sigh.

Steve waits for the room to grow still again, Max curled up under a coat, Tommy with his mouth open, Heather’s chest moving in deep, even breathing. But it’s no good - sleep seems impossible with all of the noise in his head.

---

Billy’s eyes won’t open when he wakes up. That alone is scary enough but there’s someone kneeling down in the dirt next to him, a rough hand against his neck.

“Easy, tiger,” someone hisses as he wildly swings out with his one working arm. The other one doesn’t feel right, like it’s been disconnected.

“He’s alive,” comes a second voice, someone male and younger. “Jesus, they did a fucking number on him.”

“Bastards,” the first voice hisses furiously and it’s only then it becomes familiar. “Those assholes.”

“Hop?” Billy croaks, mouth tasting like sandpaper and dirt, and Hopper gently squeezes his good shoulder.

“I’m here, kid,” he says and while Billy’s eyes are too swollen to see, it’s the softest he’s ever heard Hopper sound.

“My dad,” Billy rasps and he hears Hopper sigh and speak to whoever else is with him.

“Can you do anything?” he asks and a third voice speaks, female and hesitant.

“I can try,” and there’s someone kneeling down at his other side. To his shock she smells of magic, something soft like new grass and burnt sage. She rests a small, delicate hand on the side of his face and Billy gasps as something runs through him. If Steve’s hangover cure was a whisper this is like a brutal slap, sharp and sudden. But when it’s over and he’s panting from the pain he finds he can open his eyes and stare up into the face of an anxious woman with thick dark hair.

“Thanks, Joyce” Hopper says gruffly, sounding relieved. But she just shakes her head.

“I can’t fix all of it,” she says and she looks concerned enough that Billy knows the damage must be worse than he realizes. “The arm…”

“I can do that,” Hopper says. “Jonathan, help me get him up.”

The boy standing a few feet away is about Billy’s age, long and gangly, and shares enough features with the dark haired woman that he must be her son. He also smells of magic, the same earthy tones as his mother. Peat and moss, sweet and dense.

It’s an effort to get him up, even with support and everything hurts the moment he moves. Ribs, arm, face, even his legs ache. The younger witch is clearly less adept at healing magic but he tries and it eases the pain in Billy’s chest. Some asshole must have broken one of his ribs. His arm hangs in a way that it probably shouldn’t and he knows from experience that it’s probably dislocated. There’s a few brief strained minutes as Hopper puts it back in place and Billy’s head spins from the pain at first.

“Thanks,” Billy says breathlessly, leaning against the side of the barn and flexing his fingers. “How did you find me?”

“We weren’t really looking for you,” Hopper says apologetically. “Caught sight of a few cars hightailing it across the fields from the main road. Came to check it out.”

“Even so,” Billy says and spits onto the ground. His mouth tastes strange, like ash and iron, and he grimaces. “It’s my dad. You have to stop him. He’s got this mob and they had this girl. She’s a witch and I don’t know what they’re going to do to her but…” He trails off. He has to. There’s something too awful about their faces, like they know something that they don’t want to tell him.

“I’m too late, aren’t I?” Billy asks quietly, because there was no other end to this. He failed. He tried to save her and if he can’t even do that then how is he going to be able to protect Steve.

There’s a beat. Jonathan turns his head away while Joyce stares into the dirt beneath their feet. Finally Hopper exhales heavily.

“Yeah,” he says and the confirmation is almost worse than the pain in Billy’s chest. “I’m sorry.”

“Is she dead?” Billy asks even though he knows in his bones. He doesn’t know if he’s stupid or naive or both for thinking that maybe his dad would never cross that line. But all it took was the right set of circumstances and Neil probably never looked back.

“Billy,” Hopper says warningly. Billy manages to push himself up away from the barn wall, even though every bone in his body screams to do so.

“She is, isn’t she?” he asks and then raises his voice when Hopper starts to speak. “If my dad’s a fucking murderer, I deserve to know!”

It’s a tiny motion, barely a flicker of Hopper’s eyes as they move but it’s enough. Billy’s on the move before anyone can grab him and he skids a little in the dry dirt.

The barn door is open. Hess only uses this barn for storage now. He doesn’t have as many cattle as he used to and this one is too out of the way. That girl probably screamed and screamed and no one would have been able to hear her. Billy barely remembers hearing her, not over the roaring in his ears, the grunts of the men as they bruised and broke what they could, and they left him unconscious in the dirt when they were sure he was in no shape to help her.

The barn is dark when Billy steps through the door, a few stray beams of early morning sunlight filtering through from a broken slat or two. Judging by the rustling sounds overhead, some birds have taken up residence in the rafters. For a minute Billy takes in the stacks of boxes, the old farm equipment, and broken crates. He almost doesn’t see her right away.

But he wouldn’t have. He was looking at the ground. He never expected her to be nailed to the wall.

---

“Did we have to leave her there?” Joyce asks in a whisper from the front seat, like she thinks Billy can’t hear her. Billy just slumps against the window and ignores the other occupants of the car. His shoulder still hurts like a bitch from Hopper jamming it back into place.

“For now,” Hopper says, sounding apologetic. Billy can see the tension in his shoulders from here, knows the guilt that Hopper must be feeling. What Neil did wasn’t Hop’s fault but he’ll feel responsible anyway. “We’re running out of time and the witch hunting mob can wait.”

Billy doesn’t ask what exactly they're running out of time for. He’s having enough trouble keeping his stomach where it should be. Every time he closes his eyes he can see her.

He hadn’t really known her before. But now all he’ll see is her terrified face before she’d been dragged away, the milky white of her eyes, the way her head hangs at a funny angle because of the nails driven through her throat.

It shouldn’t have happened.

His dad never liked witches but he knew they lived in Hawkins. He refused to have anything to do with them, even tried to stop Max from going to visit her friends because one of her gang was a witch. Lucas is far more interested in his tabletop games, Ghostbusters, and the color of Max’s hair than magic but that meant little to Neil.

But Billy had always thought that had been it. Avoiding any interaction with them, keeping clear of any magic, not…this.

“You alright, Billy?” Hopper asks, carefully eying him in the rearview mirror. Billy just nods. He’s a bit worried he’s going to puke again.

“Where are we going?” Jonathan asks from the seat next to Billy and he’s also been watching Billy like he’s a time bomb waiting to go off. But to be fair, he is in the potential splash zone.

“If I’m right, somewhere along Kerley,” Hopper grunts to Billy’s confusion. “We couldn’t do it before, not without Billy.”

“Hop,” Billy says, remembering. “Hop, there’s another body. By the power plant, there’s some guy…” Hopper just meets his eyes in the rearview until Billy stops talking.

“You knew there would be already, didn’t you?” Billy says, stunned. Hopper pulls his eyes away to glance briefly at the road before he flicks his eyes towards Joyce. They share a look - that feels like a whole lot more, like chemistry, like history, like secrets - and then Hopper keeps driving like nothing happened.

“Yeah,” Hopper says, sounding far older all of a sudden. Joyce just rests her face against her palm and Billy can see her distant expression in the reflection of the window. “Yeah, kid, I knew.”

“There was something like this before,” Billy says, forgetting about the pain and the bruises in favor of leaning forward in his seat. “No one seems to remember and there’s fuck all records of it. Why is that?”

“We hid it,” Joyce pipes up. “We had to. All of us. I made a spell that made everyone forget and the others hid as much evidence as they could. Even back then it was a struggle to remove it entirely - that’s impossible - but we could numb it.”

“Even Flo,” Billy says slowly. “She couldn’t remember much when I asked her. She knew there had been murders…but there was no file and I didn’t have any details or dates to try to find it.” Hopper just shrugs, hands clenched firmly on the wheel.

“It’s no surprise she couldn’t forget it entirely,” he says ruefully. “Woman has a mind like a steel trap.”

“So these murders have happened before,” Billy says, still unable to believe it. “You knew this whole time what was happening?”

“Yeah,” Hopper says and he sounds guilty. “Yeah, I knew. I called Joyce. Murray is still in Chicago and Bob’s trying his best but this magic thing isn’t really our expertise. And last time we didn’t have witch hunters nailing girls to walls.”

“Fuck, you have witch hunters?” Jonathan blurts out, before his mother chastises him for swearing.

“Just the two,” Hopper says deliberately and Jonathan turns to Billy, shock and revulsion on his face.

“Wait, you’re a witch hunter?” he says and Billy can’t blame him for the disgust that’s dripping from every syllable.

“Don’t lump me in with my dad,” Billy says wearily. “I may have been born one but I didn’t ask for it.”

“You don’t need to worry about Billy,” Hopper says, raising his voice to cut over whatever Jonathan had been about to say. “He’s a good kid. And his boyfriend is a witch.”

“There can’t be many other witches our age around town,” Jonathan says, and Joyce cranes her head around the seat to look at Billy.

“I think there’s probably just one,” she says with a strange little half-smile and Billy flushes.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Jonathan says, apparently catching on too late. “Steve Harrington? You’re dating Steve Harrington?”

“Can we do this another time?” Hopper interrupts and when Billy looks out of the window, he can see the line of the wood passing by. They’re driving up Kerley, and if he looks to the left he’ll be able to see the trailer park.

“What are we doing here?” Billy asks, forgetting the pain in his chest for the time being as Hopper pulls the car over to the side of the road.

“This thing kills once a day,” he says, sharing another look with Joyce and throwing the car into park. “You’ve found three bodies. We’re going to find number four.”

---

“This isn’t really what I imagined happening when I said I’d come to Hawkins with you,” Jonathan grumbles, prodding around in the undergrowth. They’d gotten out of the car and trekked into the woods, Hopper tucking an extra gun into his jacket, although at this point Billy doubts it would do much to save them. He lends Billy an extra jacket from the trunk and off they go.

“I could have stayed home with Will and El,” Jonathan continues. Joyce steps over a log and smiles.

“I did offer,” she says mildly. “But you insisted on coming.”

“Remind me not to next time,” Jonathan says and slings an arm around her shoulder.

Something about their easy relationship hurts. He’s never had that with Neil. He never got old enough to have it with his mother while she was still around.

But then Hopper taps him on the shoulder and he twists to find his concerned face.

“Keep an eye out,” Hopper says warningly and Billy nods. He understands in theory why he has to be the one to find the newest body. But the reality of it is very different.

“How can you be sure it’s here?” Jonathan asks, twisting his head around to look at them.

“Because it’s surrounding the stones, right?” Billy asks and Hopper nods.

“If Billy found a body drained of blood by the power plant, it has to be here,” Hopper says, looking up in the branches of the trees, like he expects to find a different kind of red in their leaves. “The last murder is at the stones themselves and we’re not there yet. That’s tomorrow.”

Billy chooses to not ask. He’s had enough of death and he suspects they’re far from done.

“Do we just wander around until a body drops from the sky?” Jonathan asks, and it says something about the situation that his tone is only slightly sarcastic.

“Well, Steve and the others stumbled across Tammy by accident,” Hopper says, blinking against the glare from sunlight escaping through the canopy of leaves. “And I suspect he found Betty too. He had to have done, otherwise the thing that’s doing this wouldn’t have revealed the body. And Billy found the third one.”

“I was led to it,” Billy says bitterly, because there’s no other way to describe it. He was baited and pushed and everything happened by design. Hopper nods grimly.

“It’ll do that,” he agrees softly. “It’ll probably try it now. We’re in it’s territory.”

“Why are we doing that again?” Billy asks, because it’s a valid question.

“Because it won’t harm you,” Hopper says and then pauses. “Yet.”

“Thanks,” Billy says dryly. The woods don’t feel like the home of a terrifying beast. The morning sun sets the leaves aglow and there’s the odd glimpse of a blue sky overhead. There’s a spiderweb still shimmering with early dew and Billy stops to stare at it for a moment.

Insects in a web again. It’s still an appropriate metaphor.

That’s when he sees it.

“Hopper,” Billy says, feeling cold and waits for Hopper to turn around. He doesn’t see it right away and for a terrifying moment, Billy wonders if he’s the only one, if this is some new sick twist in the game. But then Hopper’s jaw goes slack.

“Is that…?” Jonathan asks, sounding slightly sick and Billy takes a deep breath, trying to push down yet another wave of nausea. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday, doubts there’s anything left in his belly at all and yet bile keeps rising in his throat.

“I think,” Billy says, carefully, measuring every word. “That is the top of someone’s head.”

“Devour the gray,” Joyce whispers from behind them and Billy doesn’t quite get the meaning of it right away.

“Where’s the rest?” Hopper asks and steps past the branches for a closer look. He’s braver than Billy, who can’t really look at the mess of blood and dark hair without the world spinning.

“Why is this happening?” Jonathan asks, and Joyce sighs. She hasn’t really spoken much since they set foot in the woods and Billy has to wonder how much it took for her to come back here. To deal with this all over again.

“It’s not just a beast,” she says wearily. “If it was, it wouldn’t play with us like this.”

“We’re amusing it,” Billy says in disgust, before Hopper’s shout echoes through the trees.

It takes a beat or two for the crumbled body lying in the grass, skin caked in blood, to become recognisable. Billy drops down to the grass, pressing his fingers in the damp ground while he can hear Jonathan retching. They both know the face.

“It’s Fred,” Billy says, once the roaring in his ears has stopped. He knew Tammy, knew Betty…but he didn’t see them like this. Even the crime scene photos weren’t enough and he suddenly hates this thing, whatever it is, for its cruelty.

“He was on the school paper,” Jonathan chimes in, wiping his mouth. Joyce stands by him, picking at her fingernails, face completely white. “I didn’t know him all that well…Jesus.”

The shoulders down all looks the same - shirt and sweater vest, slacks, sneakers. There’s a bag lying abandoned nearby and Billy wonders what had Fred pass so close by to the wood so late. Had he been walking along Kerley and was lured in? Had he been curious about the murders and had set out to investigate the scenes himself?

Either way, it had ended the same - the empty crater of his head spilling blood and fragments of bone out onto the grass, completely empty of anything else. The top had been left lying in the grass a few feet back and Billy chokes back vomit as he catches sight of the clotting blood pooling around Fred’s ears. There’s no way this death was quick or painless. Judging by the anguished look still frozen on Fred’s face he’d felt every cut into his scalp until he couldn’t feel anything anymore.

“It’s right on track,” Hopper says grimly. He’s crouched over the body, pressing his sleeve to his nose. “Four for four.”

“Do we call someone?” Billy asks but Hopper shakes his head.

“Not yet,” he says and rises from the ground. “We only have until tomorrow. Supernatural shit first. We can deal with everything else after.”

“How?” Jonathan protests, and he looks as sheet-white as his mother. “I get why you called mom to come back but there’s still not enough of us to do something.”

“I have an idea about that,” Hopper says thoughtfully and flicks his eyes to Billy. “Can you call Steve?”

“He might not pick up,” Billy says miserably, ashamed to admit it out in the open. He’s thought in the last few days that maybe this is the end for him and Steve and he’s delayed saying it out loud. “We haven’t spoken for days. I saw him at the town hall but my dad…”

“Did he threaten him?” Joyce asks and there’s a ripple of fury in her dark eyes. Billy nods.

“That was when he thought we were just friends,” he says. The damp from the grass is soaking into his jeans, cold against his skin. “If he ever found out we were anything more…”

He leaves the rest unsaid but he can tell by their faces they know anyway. What happened to Regina would look mild compared to what Neil would do to Steve.

“I’m sure he knows,” Joyce offers sympathetically. “But we need him. And your other friends, Hopper said they were involved too? Carol and…Tommy?” Jonathan snorts distastefully at their names. They’d been in the same year as Steve but Jonathan had grown up with them.

“Those idiots?” he says, raising an eyebrow. “They might be useful as bait.”

“Jonathan!” Joyce scolds him but Billy shrugs. He can’t imagine that either of them have willingly been dragged into this mess

“Steve was with another witch,” he says, because they need all the power they can get. Even if the thought of Steve and Heather curdles like milk inside his chest. “Heather Holloway. Maybe she can help too.”

“Good,” Hopper says before he looks regretfully down at the remains of Fred. “We need to hide this poor soul.”

The meaning behind Joyce’s backpack becomes clear as she pulls out a few jars and crouches, dust falling from her fingers while she mutters rapidly under her breath. When she’s done, the bloodied grass and corpse have vanished, faded away like mist. Billy exhales and finds a hand in front of his face. After a beat, Billy takes it, and lets Jonathan pull him up.

“Thanks,” Billy says roughly. He still aches all over but he’s a long way off being able to crawl into bed. Fred’s parents probably know he’s missing by now and he feels a pang at them being left to wonder for a while longer. If they die facing this thing will the spell wear off? Will someone else find his remains in the woods?

The trek back to the car is silent, every member of their group sobered. They’re running out of time…but exactly for what, Billy doesn’t know.

“We should try the Harrington house,” Hopper says finally, as their shoes crunch through the undergrowth. Billy just shakes his head.

“Tried that already,” he says, lifting a branch for Joyce and Jonathan to duck under. “Just found his mom. She said he’d gone to the Holloways.”

He thinks of the Camaro still in Harringtons’ driveway. Maybe Steve hasn’t even been home yet to see it.

“Well, we can’t turn up to the Holloways,” Hopper grumbles. The truck is in sight, right where they left it. Not that it helps, when they don’t know where to go.

They take off again down Kerley and Billy anxiously tracks the rising sun in the sky. They have one more day, one more death.

“You need to try calling Steve,” Hopper insists and Billy reluctantly pulls out his phone. He feels a squeeze in his chest at the sight of Steve’s picture - lounging in a deckchair back in July, soaked to the bone, giving a huge thumbs up - but he ignores it and presses the call button anyway.

“He’s not answering,” he says in frustration, as the dialing tone trills away. Hopper grips the wheel, like the crumbling of Billy’s relationship is little more than a high school drama.

“Then keep trying,” he bites out. Joyce rests a hand on his arm, her face reproachful.

But Steve doesn’t answer. Billy presses call over and over until eventually his phone dies in his hand.

“Shit,” Billy mutters, staring at it. He hasn’t charged it since yesterday and the battery isn’t good enough to have more than a bit of power left. Jonathan digs around in his pockets.

“Do you know his number?” he asks and Billy gives it to him. This time, someone picks up.

It hurts. Billy digs his nails into his bare skin as Jonathan’s eyebrows shoot up.

“It’s a girl,” he mouths but Billy can already hear the voice on the other end of the line. It’s not Heather.

“Robin Buckley,” Billy tells him and the confusion on Jonathan’s face clears.

“Hey, don’t hang up!” Jonathan says in a hurry, because clearly Robin is foisting him off. “My name is Jonathan Byers, I don’t know if you remember me? Yeah. Yeah. Look, I need to talk to Steve. Yes, right now. Look, I can’t explain what’s going on right now but Billy’s been trying to call him and he won’t answer so…” Shame burns through Billy, hot and all-consuming, but before he can throw himself out of the moving vehicle in despair, Jonathan’s jaw drops.

“No, he definitely has,” Jonathan says slowly, looking at Billy. “I just sat here and watched him try like six times. His phone died. Yeah. No shit, I really did. Wait, I’ll ask him.”

“By any chance, did Steve call you at all?” Jonathan asks, with a vaguely frustrated tone and Billy looks at the dead phone in his hands.

“No,” he says, and then a little defensively “He didn’t answer any of my texts either.” Jonathan sighs heavily and looks at the front seat.

“Mom?” he asks and Hopper groans loudly before she can answer.

“For fuck’s sake,” he shouts, slapping a hand on the wheel. “Shit. I should have known.”

“Sorry, Robin, we’re having technical difficulties, please stand by,” Jonathan quips and covers the phone with his hand. “The beast has been fucking with them, hasn’t he?”

“I would expect so,” Joyce says apologetically. “Billy, I don’t think Steve has been ignoring you.”

Relief trickles through Billy, instant and cool. Jonathan offers him a small smile.

“Guess Harrington isn’t as much of a shit as I thought,” he says and Billy bites back the retort on his tongue about Wheeler because he can hear another voice coming through the phone. He snatched it out of Jonathan’s hand, pressing it to his ear with shaking fingers to hear Steve’s voice for the first time in days.

“Baby?” Billy says, and Steve stops talking, stunned.

“Billy?” Steve says in a rush. “Oh my God…are you okay? What the fuck is up with your dad?”

“I’m okay,” Billy says, choosing to ignore the topic of Neil. That will have to wait. “Where the fuck are you?” Steve makes a sheepish sound, sucking on his teeth.

“Sort of driving,” he admits. “But Robin’s holding the phone to my ear. We’ve been looking for Hopper. Billy, this thing in the woods…”

“I know,” Billy says. “Christ, I know. We found two more bodies in the woods. Hop says we’re running out of time so tell me where you are.”

“Driving down Cornwallis,” Steve says, sounding confused. “Where are you?”

“Cornwallis,” Billy says. “Near Mount Sinai. I’ll have Hop pull over at the motel car park, okay?”

When he shuts off the phone and hands it back to Jonathan, there must be something in his face that wasn’t there before because Jonathan looks at him and asks “Better?”

But Billy still can’t breathe until he sees the BMW pull into the car park.

Robin sits up front, beanie pulled low over her forehead, but the backseat is full, with far more people than it can really comfortably fit. But Billy’s eyes go towards the long figure climbing out of the driver’s seat and Billy has thrown open the door and is out before anyone can say a word.

Steve is warm, and smells like sweat and deodorant. Billy clings to him and doesn’t want to let go, pressing his face in the slightly limp strands of Steve’s hair.

“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” Steve confesses, breath hot against Billy’s neck. Billy slides a hand up to cradle Steve’s head and holds on.

“Thought you weren’t talking to me,” Billy returns, clumsily kissing Steve’s ear. Until ten minutes ago, he didn’t think he’d get to do this again.

“Yes, yes, your big gay love continues,” Tommy shouts, sticking his head out of the window. “Max’s foot is in my fucking crotch, so can we go?”

“Max is here?” Billy says, and sure enough, his sister’s red plaits are visible in the backseat. “Why the fuck is she here?”

“She was worried about you,” Steve says, anxiously rubbing a thumb over the bruises still covering Billy’s jaw. “And I think she was right to. What the fuck happened?”

“Neil,” Billy says shortly. “But I think Tommy’s right. We need to talk somewhere safe.”

“Where?” Steve asks, while a brief but intense scuffle breaks out in his car. “My house isn’t safe, nor is Heather’s. We were at Family Video…”

“I have a place we can go,” Hopper says and Billy didn’t even notice him getting out of his car. “It’s in the woods but it should be far enough away from the stones. Hi, Steve.”

“Hi, Hop,” Steve says before he catches sight of the woman in the passenger seat. “Is that…?”

Billy just laughs and kisses him.

Chapter 14: Drive the Devil out

Billy’s never been to Hopper’s cabin before. It had been his grandfather’s apparently and it still smells musty, like dust and old tobacco. They all struggle to fit in, crowded on the couch, Hopper taking center stage on the armchair. Robin and the others pull out every folding chair they can find but Steve pulls Billy down onto the floor, pressing in close and resting a hand over his knee. Billy lets him, soothed for the first time in days.

“We were young and stupid,” Hopper begins quietly. The Chief has his hands clasped in front of him, staring down at his interlocked fingers like he can’t bear to face anyone head on. “We didn’t know what we were getting into. We went to the stones, like you did. And Lonnie…Lonnie moved one of the stones.”

Jonathan makes a noise that Billy has heard Steve make sometimes. It’s the ‘my dad is such a fucking prick’ noise.

“He didn’t believe any of the magic stuff I told him about,” Joyce interrupts, reaching out with one delicate hand to softly stroke Jonathan’s head. “I couldn’t show him, not back then. We weren’t married and my parents would have been furious. But I was reckless and I told him all sorts of things. Even when I told him about the stones, he didn’t believe me.”

“So the seal broke?” Steve asks and when Billy looks up, Steve looks like he wants to climb out of his skin. Joyce nods.

“Essentially yes. The spell that was cast to keep him in was built specifically for him. Because the stone was removed, not cracked, he had more freedom then. His realm of influence was wider, rather than being bound to the woods to kill. The first victim was a man who worked at the Hawkins Lab. He was flayed, like Tammy was.” Billy doesn’t miss the way that Robin swallows heavily at Tammy’s name, the reminder of her brutal death. He also doesn’t miss the way Heather rests a hand on her knee.

Billy digs out his map, where he’d marked the locations of the deaths. He looks for a pen and Heather tosses him a sharpie. He makes a mark by the lab, miles away from where Tammy had been killed. Shit. They got lucky this time that the beast is only bound to the woods.

“We didn’t realize right away,” Joyce says. “Hopper was only a patrol officer back then. He’d been out, blowing off some steam and we stumbled across the stones. Benny’s didn’t exist back then - the building was owned by a couple named the Carsons, although it was still a diner.”

“But the next day it was everywhere,” Hopper continues. “The flayed body of a man had been found, and his skin was completely missing. We hunted in the woods but it was never found. It wasn't until later we realized why.”

“He needed it,” Heather fills in, her face pale. Hopper nods grimly.

“Nobody really knows what the beast looks like,” he says. “Not his real body anyway. The seal may have been broken but the spell they’d used on him originally was still at work. He needed something to ground him in this world and unfortunately he figured out a way to do it. His own sort of spell with the right ingredients.”

“And the omens?” Robin asks, arms folded across her chest. She looks very much as though she regrets getting involved in this and she’s probably only stayed as Steve’s best friend. The rest of them have some sort of stake in this fight but she has no real reason to be here. But maybe she feels like she owes Tammy. “Did you have them?”

“Yes, same as now,” Joyce says. “Spoiled milk, dead animals, rot everywhere. Close to the stones began to decay almost immediately and the more people he killed the more it grew. It’s taken years for it to grow back.”

“It’s started to die off again,” Billy says quietly and then raises his head to look at the assembled group. He’s the only one who has actually been to the stones since this started - Steve and the others never made it that far, not after they found Tammy. “I was there yesterday. It’s black. The whole surrounding area has just started to rot.”

“We didn’t have any witch hunters in this town back then,” Joyce says softly. “But everyone was freaked. People nailed crosses to their doors, some just camped out in the churches and refused to leave…it was chaos.”

“Good old dad has taken it one step further,” Billy says bitterly and Steve slides a hand around the back of his neck, his fingers cool against Billy’s skin.

“They’ve killed now,” Hopper says, fury making his voice shake. “When we’ve dealt with this bastard they’re next. They don’t get to launch a witch hunt in my town and get away with it.”

“What happened next?” Carol prods, looking from Joyce to Hopper. “Where did you find the next body?”

“Out by the 7-11. Eyes gouged out. I was pretty certain it was happening again when Tammy was found - the coroner said she looked as though her skin had been removed all in one piece. Like peeling the plastic off a new phone, one smooth motion. No human could do that and when Betty was found that was when I knew for certain.”

“But back then?” Steve asks. Because they’ve had no information to go on, save for what Heather had been able to find in her dad’s book. “When did you figure out what it was?”

“Almost too late,” Joyce says, shaking her head. The waves in her hair look almost flat, lacking any glossy sheen. But getting on a plane at the last minute will do that to you. “Back then the Millers sisters’ mother was still alive. She couldn’t quite tell us exactly what was below ground but it gave us an idea. There were some records, if you know where to look. All of the witches died when they sealed the beast away originally but a few people wrote it all down.”

“Ye olde rot came to poison our town and the devil rose and all those nasty witches did some wicked rite around him?” Carol asks, with a bitter twist to her mouth. Joyce sighs.

“Something like that,” she admits. “It was vague but it was enough. After that there were no witches here for a while. Maybe if there had been there would be more detail about what had happened.”

“The body missing all its blood was found past the trailer park,” Hopper says. “Although back then Forest Hills didn’t exist. Some guy was walking his dog in the woods. The dog came home by itself. We found him a few hours later, completely sucked dry. That was when we figured there was a deadline of sorts. One murder a day. And that eventually he would run out of body parts that he needed.”

“I was the only witch in the group,” Joyce says and Jonathan reaches up to take his mother’s hand. She looks anxious talking about the spell, as though it’s her fault instead of her ex-husband’s. “I had to make something quick, something to seal him away again. But it wasn’t enough, we didn’t have enough time…”

“You did the best you could, mom,” Jonathan insists fiercely and she smiles sadly at him.

“It clearly wasn’t enough,” she says regretfully. “Because here we are again, not even thirty years later. We didn’t have enough people to cast the spell. We only had four…”

“And you needed nine,” Steve finishes and everyone turns to look at him.

“Well, yes,” Joyce says slowly. Her dark eyes are full of confusion and she’s looking at Steve like she barely knows him. But then again, she doesn’t. The boy she’d known had been lonely and angry, a lost little boy at her kitchen table, barely able to call himself a witch. But Billy has only ever known this Steve, the fighter, the leader. “How did you know that?”

Steve scrubs at his face with his hand, and he looks tired and grey.

“I had a dream the night we went to the stones,” he confesses and Joyce raises her eyebrows. “I think I dreamt of when you sealed him before. Four of you, burying things in the dirt?”

“Yes,” Joyce says and while she doesn’t look particularly surprised, Hopper is staring at Steve as though he’s grown a second head. “I couldn’t find much about the original ritual that bound him before. Blood was an important part and a fragment of bone - we had to steal that from the morgue and we felt terrible about it. Lonnie wouldn’t…Lonnie refused to help us so we just had me, Hopper, Murray and Bob. After the fourth victim - a woman was scalped out by Hegarty bridge - we went to the stones at midnight. It was a risk, because he was getting stronger.”

“Iron?” Steve guesses. “No, you used steel. A gun?” Joyce nods again, no longer looking surprised. Judging by everyone’s faces, only she and Billy don’t seem shocked by Steve’s knowledge and intuition of the spell.

“Hopper put him down with bullets,” she says and stops, her face suddenly horrified. “It was terrible. He looked almost human then you see. But we knew he wasn’t and thank God we had Hopper because I don’t know if the rest of us would have been able to do it. So Hopper shot him and while he was down, we dug out holes with our hands and buried what we had. We each cut our palms and bled on the ground. Blood is always binding, it is the most powerful thing you can use to bind a spell. Not only because of the iron but because it’s life force itself.”

Steve nods, looking thoughtful.

“Did he need any more parts?” he asks finally. “How strong was he when you sealed him?” Joyce’s mouth twists unhappily. They’re at the same stage that she and the others had been when they’d sealed the beast twenty years ago. Skin, eyes, blood, brain. Fred was killed only today. Which means after midnight tonight, if the beast has managed it, he can break free.

“Strong,” she admits. “He was close to breaking free entirely. As I said he nearly looked human. But he had to take the most important piece and without it, we had a chance.”

Steve nods and there’s something distant about his face. Billy looks down at his map and makes a few more crosses for the final few murders. Then he takes his pen and draws one continuous line to bring them all together. He does this twice, two smooth circles across the map. Eight murders, thirty years apart.

“He wants us to come to the stones, doesn’t he?” Steve asks, his voice so soft that even Billy next to him struggles to hear him. “That’s the final place, for the final ingredient. We have to seal him there but it also means he has a chance to kill one of us.”

“What’s the last part?” Robin says, blinking her blue eyes in confusion. There’s silence and for a moment, Billy thinks that maybe no one is going to answer her. That no one wants to.

“It’s a heart,” Steve says grimly. “He’ll need to take a heart.”

---

They don’t have a lot of time. Steve knows it, he can feel it. The longer they sit here, the more anxious he becomes. There’s a strange pull in his chest that makes him itch, adrenaline thrumming in his veins and nothing he does will soothe it.

He has to fight. He’s known that all along. The dreams, the strange tension in his chest, the crackle of magic in his blood. This is his fight.

Billy cradles his face with his hand, sliding the tips of his fingers into Steve’s hair. Normally, this would be enough to calm Steve’s racing heart but not today.

“Babe?” Billy says, rough fingertips rubbing gently at Steve’s scalp. “What’s wrong?”

Steve pulls his head up, mind whirring furiously. They don’t have long but they might have a chance. He flicks his eyes around the room and carefully counts. They have ten, including Max. And the rest of it is taking shape too. Iron, blood, bone…and a few other things besides.

“We only have nine hours,” Steve says and he doesn’t even need to look at a clock. He can feel every second slipping away. “Nine hours before we have to face him. We’ve got a lot to do in that time so we’ve got to move fast.” Tommy hesitantly raises a hand.

“I’m sorry, we’re doing what?” he asks incredulously. “I’m sorry, Steve but you’ve got to be shitting me. We can’t fight this thing.”

“We can,” Steve says firmly. “We have to. Or it’ll get free and kill everyone. Not just in Hawkins but everywhere. And we have enough. There’s ten of us and we need nine for the spell.” Tommy raises his hand again, looking no more soothed.

“That’s great but most of us aren’t witches?” he points out. Steve shakes his head.

“That’s alright,” he says. “You don’t need to be. Hopper and the others weren’t when they sealed him before. You just have to bury what I tell you where and when I tell you. I can do the rest.”

Billy snaps his head sharply to look at Steve. “Steve!” he says, horror dawning on his face. “You can’t.”

Steve turns to look at him. Billy looks crushed and Steve doesn’t blame him. All Billy’s done in the last three days is try to make sure that Steve is safe from Neil…only for him to turn around and declare that he’s going to fight a monster instead.

“Steve!” Billy pushes anxiously. No one else speaks. Not even Robin or Heather…maybe they all know what Billy has tried to ignore. Everything has been leading Steve to this point.

Steve just leans forward to kiss Billy and when their lips meet, Steve briefly thinks that they’ve never done this before. They’ve always been wary of witnesses, keeping all of their moments private. But Billy needs reassuring more than anything right now and while Hopper discreetly coughs and looks away, no one really says a word.

Billy pushes his fingers back into Steve’s hair and gives a muffled sob against his mouth. When Steve pulls back, he lifts Billy’s chin with his fingers, making his boyfriend look him in the eye.

“Billy, I have to,” Steve says quietly. “No one else can.”

“There are other witches…!” Billy starts hotly but Joyce steps in, her voice soft. Steve can’t blame her for that. Billy is a little wild when he’s like this, a remnant of Neil that he hates.

“There might be other witches,” she says, gesturing to herself, Jonathan and Heather. “But magic has always been about force of will. Intent. Strength. I barely managed to seal him away all those years ago and the spell weakened over time. Steve’s the only one who has a chance.”

“That’s why the rest of you can help, even with only three other witches,” Steve says. Before Joyce and the others had been around the circle - not one of them had set foot in it. It meant the beast didn’t have a chance to get what he needed but it meant the spell wasn’t as strong as it could have been either. “If you have enough strength and intent, it will work. We just need the eight around him. That might provide enough of a seal to allow me to do what I need to do.”

“And you dreamt all of this?” Robin says in disbelief, looking from Steve to Joyce. “Is that normal?” Joyce shrugs.

“It’s not unheard of,” she says, considering. “We’re more in tune with the magic in the world than just casting it. We dream it, have instincts others don’t…Steve, did you have sex before you had this dream?”

“Mom!” Jonathan shrieks while Steve wants to sink into the floor. Joyce just raises an eyebrow, unbothered by the shocked faces around her.

“Sex and magic have been intertwined since the start of creation,” she says patiently. “If Steve and Billy…and for that matter, Carol and Tommy at the same time, had sex close enough to the stones, an already incredibly magical place, it may have some strange effects that we may not expect. And then Steve, a witch, would feel the full force of that magic. You’ve had things other than the dreams, haven’t you? Like you’re being pulled?”

Steve thinks of the crows, the constant hum in his veins, and nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Joyce sits back, looking pleased. “So, there you have it. Sex magic, witch, site of magical importance,” she says. “Tommy and Carol have had a long relationship and while you and Billy have only been together for a little while, it’s certainly intense. You’d be surprised how that has an effect on the universe.”

“I’ll say it again, your ass must be magical,” Tommy says, looking gobsmacked. Billy flushes an even deeper red and slides down in his seat. Steve squeezes his knee and grins.

“I was thinking that too,” he says in a low voice to make Billy smile.

“Oh God,” Jonathan groans, covering his face with his hands. His mother pats his knee.

“Can we move on, please?” Hopper asks in a slightly strangled voice. Joyce shrugs, clearly bemused.

“Alright,” she says. “Steve, have you thought about this spell?”

“I have a few ideas,” Steve says, playing with the inseam on Billy’s thigh. “I think I know what we should have. Something for four elements. Some binding element. Wax maybe?” Joyce nods.

“Bone,” she says. “And salt, that’s purifying. We had both of those in our original spell.”

“Does it have to be human?” Steve asks. “I mean…if so where do we get it?” Joyce purses her lips.

“It would help,” she hedges. “Unfortunately. And the older the better.”

“Great,” Steve says miserably but Heather just raises her hand, looking slightly uncomfortable when everyone turns to look at her.

“I might be able to help with that,” she says. “My dad has some obscure…less than legal items. Sorry,” she says to Hopper who just pinches the bridge of his nose.

“If I don’t hear it, I can’t know about them,” he tells her.

“Okay, great,” Steve says, counting everything out in his head. “I have a plan and we have to move fast. Hop, we need weapons. And maybe chains and whatever guns you have. Steel isn’t great for this but it’s better than nothing. Everyone else, I need you to get spell ingredients.”

“Are we just using bullets?” Jonathan asks with a frown. “Because, no offense, Steve, that didn’t work too great last time. That’s not the most effective.”

“I know,” Steve says in frustration, because that’s the one part of this that may prove to be too hard to get. Luckily for witches, iron nails aren’t common these days, falling out of use in favor of the more modern cut steel nails instead. “Steel is used for killing summons but I think this thing is too powerful. We need something to negate the magic. But I don’t know where to get iron.”

Which is fine, until you have some demon that needs holding down.

But Billy awkwardly clears his throat, looking no happier about speaking up than Heather had been.

“I might know where to find some,” he says unhappily.

---

The corpse is where they left it and Steve and Billy stare at the mangled remains of Regina. They’ve borrowed Hopper’s spare truck for this, with Jonathan and Heather taking the Beemer and the Camaro respectively.

“I’m sorry,” Billy says, unable to tear his eyes away from the nails embedding Regina’s hands into the wood. The blood has long since become a muddy brown, staining the skin of her palms. “I know you knew her.”

“Yeah,” Steve says distantly. “Fuck, I bet my parents don’t know.”

“Do they even know she’s missing yet?” Billy asks and Steve just shrugs.

“Maybe,” he says and he looks so bone tired that Billy wants to just pull them far away from here and sleep for a hundred days. “I haven’t spoken to them since yesterday. But they told us all to be careful and they got her anyway.”

“Your parents are really going to fucking hate me now,” Billy says hollowly and Steve barks.

“I don’t give a shit after this,” he says bluntly. The hammer hanging from his fist is similar to the one in Billy’s own grip, a small claw hammer. Regina’s corpse is littered with nails and they’re just going to have to keep going until they have enough.

Pulling nails out of a dead woman is probably the weirdest date idea that Billy can think of and yet here they are.

Hopper has taken his truck to gather whatever he can get without looking like some survivalist Burt Gummer type. Heather went back to her house with Robin and Max to get the bone and they’ll stop at the graveyard on the way to get grave dirt. Joyce and Jonathan are in charge of the wax, crystal, and ash while Carol and Tommy have to get salt and a stone from the riverbed.

That leaves Billy and Steve to get the nails.

“Where did your dad even get iron nails?” Steve asks curiously and neither one of them takes a step further into the barn. They're delaying their task, and they don’t have a lot of time.

“He’s a witch hunter,” Billy says, remembering the box of nails that his dad used to keep in the house. As a kid he used to pull them out and run his finger over them, before he knew what they were for. They were a collector’s item, proper handwrought iron nails that must have cost a fortune from someone who knew what they were intended for. “A lot of that shit gets passed down, even though we don’t use it anymore. This shit all started to go down and he probably thought ‘hey, what a perfect time for the creepy ass fucking nails.” Steve scrunches up his face.

“I don’t really want to be grateful to your dad for anything but we’d be fucked without it,” he says, twirling the hammer like a baton.

“Yeah,” Billy agrees and they just keep staring. Neither of them wants to make the first move.

“Shit,” Steve says finally, scuffing at the dirt with his boot. “Come on. We’re running out of time.”

Getting Regina down is no easy task. Billy has to find something to stand on so he can pry out the nails keeping her pinned to the wood, while Steve carefully supports her from below. Once enough have been removed, her body sags, the nails not enough to support her weight, and Billy can cut the rope. They look over the nails they’ve already removed but most of these are no good and are immediately tossed aside.

After a good half an hour, Regina’s body is lying on the floor of the barn and Billy has to force back the bile that rises his throat at the sight of her.

“Shit,” Steve says aloud, the exact same thought going through Billy’s head. Steve drops to his knees and brushes aside her dark hair, revealing a bare strip of throat. Steve frowns, clearly seeing something that Billy hasn’t.

“What’s wrong?” Billy asks. Steve gestures to her bare neck…as bare as it can get with a nail piercing her throat.

“Her pendant’s gone,” Steve says in disgust. He pushes himself back up and brushes off his hands. “She always wore it. It was an heirloom. It either came off in the struggle or those fucks took it.”

“Those assholes were probably stupid enough to take it,” Billy says, trying to avoid the dark hollows of her eyes. “Was it valuable?” Steve shrugs a little.

“Probably?” he guesses. “It looked like it, if it was real. Gold, emeralds. If it had been passed down in her family for a while, yeah, it might be worth a lot.”

“We’ll tell Hop,” Billy says grimly. “If we survive this he might be able to find it and get it back before those assholes sell it.”

“Her sister should have it,” Steve agrees, retrieving his hammer from where he’d left it. He’d volunteered to be the one to hold Regina, perhaps knowing that Billy doesn’t have the stomach for it. But they both have to work at this now, their gruesome, meticulous task and Billy can’t stop staring at the nail embedded right in her heart.

“What is it?” Billy can hear Steve say suddenly.

“I just…” Billy says and then exhales in frustration. Coming back here to look at her was harder than he expected, guilt and regret and anger that he’s struggling to keep back. “Just look at her, Steve. Look at the amount of fucking nails they put in her. It wasn’t enough that they strung her up and burned her feet and half fucking drowned her, but they had to drive a bunch of nails in her. There’s too many. It’s just - it’s like that means they did it…”

“Like they did it for fun?” Steve finishes his sentence quietly and when Billy looks up, his boyfriend’s gaze is a little empty, a little bit broken. “Yeah. I know.”

“I knew my dad was fucked up,” Billy says, because Neil has never been right. Billy has never found out what made him that way, that cruel, that cold, that wrong. “But she’s a human being and he did that to her.”

“Hey,” Steve says hurriedly, stepping around Regina to stand by Billy. He wraps his free hand around the back of Billy’s neck, a soothing warm weight. “Hey, this isn’t on you, okay?”

“I should have done better to stop him,” Billy says miserably, because he feels like he failed.

“There wasn’t anything else you could do,” Steve says. “Fucking hell, he would have killed you. You know that.”

Steve doesn’t say ‘could.’ There’s not really any doubt about it - if Billy had fought them any more, Neil would have killed Billy. It was only luck that he didn’t.

Billy steps a little closer, resting his forehead against Steve’s. They can’t kiss, not here, but Billy needs some comfort, listening to the soft rasp of Steve’s breathing.

“Okay,” Billy says finally. “Fuck. Let’s do this.”

It’s slow going. Every nail has to be pulled out slowly and it brings out dried blood and skin with each one. Some are too badly damaged, bent from where they entered her body and hit bone and they discard these. Billy gags and has to stop to breathe into the fabric of his t-shirt as he tries to extract one from her stomach and brings up more than he intended with it.

“Jesus,” Steve whispers, staring at the pink ribbons attached to the nail. “Is that…?”

“I’m really trying to not think about it,” Billy rasps and takes a few deep breaths through his mouth. “How many left?” Steve scrunches his nose as he looks over what’s left to do. They’ve been as quick as they could be, but this isn’t a task that will be helped along by haste. As it is, they only really have a handful of usable nails.

“Couple in her legs,” Steve says. “But I don’t think those will be much good. They’re in too deep and they’re probably damaged. I’ve got a few left on this side. Do you think there are any in her back?”

“Didn’t see any,” Billy says, finally tugging down his t-shirt and breathing normally. The nail has fallen to the floor and they’ll have to wash them all and bag them up. His fingers are covered in rust and blood stains and some other substances that he doesn’t want to think about. Thankfully, with Regina being so recently dead there’s not much decay yet that’s visible. She’s stiff and cold, her skin turning pale and waxy, but Billy’s still grateful she’s not had a chance to get further along.

“The nails only go to her knees,” Steve says suddenly and brushes the bottom of Regina’s dress with the handle of his hammer. But the same thought occurs to Billy and Steve at the same time and Steve pulls back with a jerk.

“Do you think…?” Steve asks, looking down at Regina’s legs with a sick expression. Billy just shakes his head.

“We don’t look,” he advises, because this day has been hell and he’s already going to dream of Regina, a nail embedded into her throat, her eyes caved in and milky for years to come. He can’t…if he knows for certain, he’ll never sleep again.

But it’s too much for Steve and he staggers outside, where Billy can hear him retching. Billy closes his eyes so that he doesn’t do the same.

When Steve comes back in, he’s wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve. He stops just short of the body and fixes Billy with a stare.

“I need you to be honest with me,” Steve says evenly. “Do you really think that…would Neil…?” But Billy just shakes his head. He wishes that he could say something, that Regina wasn’t violated like that. But he doesn’t know for sure and he has a terrible ache in his chest that he has to choose to believe.

“I think that my dad is too far gone to have any standards,” Billy says grimly and looks down at the pile of nails. “Is that enough?” Steve swallows and whatever has pushed him to lead them all so far seems to fail him now.

“It’ll have to be,” he says and looks around the barn. “We can't take her with us yet. We’ll have to hide her. Hopper can handle this after. She needs to have a proper burial.”

They lift Regina as carefully as they can over to the wall of the barn and cover her with an old tarp. They even move a few old boxes in front of her as an extra precaution, although it looks like this barn isn’t used anymore judging by the state of its disrepair.

“I’m sorry,” Billy hears Steve murmur to her, as he drags an old crate across the floor. “We’ll come back for you.”

They gather the nails and drop them into a paper bag they find in the footwell of Hopper’s truck. They’ll need a hose or something to rinse them off later but for now they have six or seven nails in good enough condition. Billy thinks briefly about driving them into something that looks human and feels sick.

When they get back to the truck, Steve’s phone gives a sharp trill and he hurries to answer it.

“Hi, Heather,” he says, climbing into the driver’s seat. Billy slams the passenger door shut and drops the bag of nails down at his feet. “What’s up?”

“My dad is going to kill me if he ever finds out what I’ve done,” Heather says frantically into the phone. “I took his gun out of the safe, three of our kitchen knives and a large very old piece of bone from the sixteenth century. I am so fucked.”

“Well, look at it this way. We save the world tonight, or we all die. Either way, it’s not your problem.”

“Thanks,” Heather says crossly. “So reassuring, Harrington. Carol and Tommy got what they needed, but Carol fell in the river and she won’t stop bitching.”

“Great,” Steve says and looks down at the crumpled Menards bag at Billy’s feet. “We got what we needed too. Mostly.” There’s silence on the other end of the phone and Steve waits. He’s not the only one who knew Regina.

“Was it…I mean, how bad…?” Heather stops, her voice too thick to keep talking and Steve can hear her swallow heavily before she can continue. “No, I don’t want to know.”

“You really don’t,” Steve says and feels Billy reach across the gearshift to take his hand. “No shit, Heather, that was the worst thing I’ve ever done.” Heather takes a shaky breath that sounds weak and raspy even across the line.

“Even worse than what we’re about to do?” she asks and Steve clenches his jaw.

“Don’t know,” he says honestly. “Ask me again if we survive it. But Regina is dead and I may be about to get a load of people I love killed if I can’t pull this off.” Billy suddenly jerks on Steve’s hands and gestures to the rearview mirror. Steve moves his gaze so he can see the glint of another truck in the distance behind them. It’s just rolling slowly across the field, far enough away down the track that it might not have noticed them yet. Steve puts the phone on speaker and hands it to Billy, searching for the keys.

“Well, as one of those people, I’d really prefer you don’t do that,” Heather says dryly. “Look, we’re heading back now. Are you sure your house is going to be empty?” Steve jams the key into the ignition and the car starts with a deep rumble. He shifts it into drive and lets the car pull itself forward, hesitant to go any faster than a few miles an hour until they’ve crept off the farm boundaries.

He doesn’t know who might be in that truck behind them but they can’t risk being seen, whoever it might be.

“Pretty sure,” he says. “My mom sent me a text telling me to stay home and lock the doors because they won’t be home. We should have enough time to set everything up there.”

“Mine asked me where I was and I just said at your’s,” she says. “Robin told her mom the same, I think. What do we do about Max?”

“I’m coming with you!” Max shouts to be heard down the line and Billy tugs Steve’s phone up to his face instantly.

“No, you are not,” he spits. “Steve, tell her.”

“We have nine, Max,” Steve says because thank God he doesn’t have to risk the life of a child on top of everything else. “I’m not risking you getting tangled up in this. You’re staying put.”

“Steve!” Max starts hotly, before Steve cuts her off.

“Not happening,” he says firmly. “If it all goes wrong, you have to tell people. If we don’t come back, you have to be the one to warn them. Got it?” There’s a sullen silence on the end of the line.

“Fine,” Max concedes finally. “They probably won’t believe me.”

No one argues with this. No one really can.

Chapter 15: Hold the Line

Steve had planned it all out.

The four non-witches all had the elements. It made sense - even the most non-magical human being knew the feel of an element, something familiar, something grounded. Carol is the burning intensity of fire, Tommy the flightiness of air, Robin has the easy-going nature of water and Hopper is the solid depth of earth.

He gives Heather the salt - clean, purifying, a barrier against darkness - and Jonathan the crystal - good energy and meant for balance.

He gives Joyce the wax because she cast the spell before. She was the binding element and he hopes that it will add to his intent.

Finally, he gives Billy the bone. Billy only looks resigned when he takes it, callused fingers closing over the brittle, bleached-white fragment like he’d been expecting this. But he has to have it - he’s a witch-hunter. He’s cloaked in death, first and foremost.

And Steve, the one casting the spell, the person with the intent, will supply the blood.

He just has to hope that it’s not all of it.

“Everyone ready?” Steve asks anxiously. It doesn’t look much like an army. Max sits on one of the stools at the breakfast bar, swinging her legs and trying to get a good look at some of the ingredients. Carol and Tommy are slumped into each other, their faces taut with fear. Hopper looks kind of terrifying, carrying a bag of chains and armed with more bullets and gun power than someone really should have. Joyce is a pale face under all of her dark hair but her jaw is set. Jonathan, Heather and Robin look no more like soldiers but he knows that they’re armed.

Billy still has the faintest ripple of bruises across his face, darkness underneath his skin from Neil’s attack. But he’s got the nails and the hammer and he looks so furious that Steve isn’t about to say anything to him.

“No,” Robin says unhappily and subconsciously rests her hand over the pocket in her jacket where the river stone resides. It was hard to find elements that can be buried, something more permanent than water that will trickle away or fade like a breath. The stone, ash, feather and dirt should be enough to hold.

“Okay then,” Steve says, because it’s too late to back out now. Max frowns and then impulsively throws her arms around Billy.

“Don’t die, assface,” she mumbles into his jean jacket and Billy ruffles her hair.

“Stay put, shitbird,” he says firmly. “Do not leave this house. Got it?”

“I got it,” she agrees reluctantly. She lets her arms fall free and takes a step back. “Steve, what do I do if your parents come back?”

“They won’t,” Steve says, because he’s had plenty of messages in the last hour, each one sounding high-pitched and frayed. His dad hasn’t tried at all but that’s no different than usual. “They know Regina has gone missing. They don’t know she’s dead yet but it’s put everyone on edge. Hopefully we’ll be back before they are.”

“And if you’re not?” Max asks suspiciously and Steve slings his backpack over his shoulder, considering.

“Well, I’ll probably be dead so it doesn’t really matter what you tell them,” he says and Robin stands on his toes.

“That’s not funny,” she hisses. Apparently everyone else is a little less thrilled about the risks he has to take with this spell. Even the humans, with very little knowledge of how magic works, seem to know that this is a wild risk.

He’s the one that has to stand in the center of the stones. The beast has to be trapped there, pinned down. Steve is essentially offering himself as bait to make sure that this happens. He has to trust that everything else will fall into line, that they can nail it down before it has a chance to rip out Steve’s heart.

He’d prefer that not to happen, Steve thinks, watching Billy use a borrowed hair tie to pull back his curls. He still has a need for it.

“It’s time to go,” Hopper says, checking the clock on the wall. Everyone is equipped with torches and Joyce had made them all charms, hastily made with some herbs and ground dragonfly wings, designed to protect them against whatever tricks the beast might use. “Max, if we’re not back in a few hours, use the number I gave you. Bob knows what to do in that situation.”

It may be too late for them, too late for the town, is what he doesn’t say. If they fail, the beast is free and it might start to feed on who it pleases the moment it’s able to. But Max nods anyway, the set of her jaw determined. She watches them file out, and Steve can tell from the way that she stands in the doorway, eyes following them across the yard, that she still wishes she could go with them. But she stays put and Steve catches one last glimpse of her pale face before they vanish into the line of trees and she’s gone.

---

The walk through the woods is silent, save for the crunching of leaves and shallow breaths. Steve finds Robin by his side so he takes her stiff fingers in his. She shouldn’t have been dragged into this but she’d refused to stay behind. They needed nine, she argued. Not eight. And so she came.

Steve isn’t sure if the walk takes minutes or hours. There’s no time as they file through the trees, Hopper at the lead, Billy and Jonathan at the rear. Carol gives a frightened whimper when a bird flies out of the trees but she keeps walking. Steve searches the branches for a crow, wondering if they’re doing the right thing. He wants there to be a sign, something that tells him that his dream and the pull in his bones aren’t more of the beast’s machinations.

The black creeping across the ground almost gives them pause. But Hopper steps across the line, putting one boot down onto the rot and keeps going, so they all follow. Steve stares around at the growing decay - the wilting flowers, the dark moss climbing up the withered trees - and wonders if it will ever grow back.

“Is he going to let us get to the stones?” Carol asks quietly and Steve can only imagine the terror churning in her belly. He has real power and he’s still petrified. All she has is a knife, a charm, and some ash in a jar.

“He will,” Steve says confidently and Carol looks up at a bird's nest above their heads. Maybe it had birds in it once. Steve hopes that they flew away because the carefully entwined twigs and vine are slowly leaking pus, some thick viscous material that seeps out and drops wetly to the ground.

Steve seriously hopes that it’s not what’s left of the birds.

“How can you be so sure?” she asks in a small voice and Steve stares at the ground.

“Because he needs us there,” Jonathan answers, when it becomes clear that Steve can’t. “He wants a heart.”

“Which is why we have to do this before the clock ticks over,” Hopper says, and maybe it’s because they’ve all been whispering that the sound of his voice seems so jarring. “He devours in the early morning so if we do it now, right before he’s due to feed again, he’ll be at his weakest. It’s what we used against him last time.”

Steve silently thinks of the struggle against the beast, how close it came to clawing it’s way out of the earth. It’s a risk and this time Steve will be at the center, right over the beast itself.

“Hey,” Billy says, catching Steve’s hand with his stiff, cold fingers. Steve lets him press their palms together, just in case it’s the last time. “I’ve got you, okay?”

“You can’t break the circle,” Steve says immediately, because this is his fear. Anyone here might break it if they thought Steve was in danger. But doing so will remove the magic that keeps the beast in place once they start.

“I know,” Billy says with a frown. “I won’t. But Steve…” Steve squeezes his hand. It’s going to be hardest for Billy, left to wait and watch. Steve’s part is the hardest with the most risk.

“I’ve told Joyce what to do just in case,” Steve says, because he had to plan for this. If something goes wrong and the beast kills him in theory it shouldn’t be able to move so long as the circle holds. The spell won’t be as effective if they don’t have nine but Joyce sealed him before. She should be able to do it again. “If something happens…you all will need to give blood. That’s why you all have knives.”

“Steve, I said I know,” Billy says in frustration. They’re still walking, they have to keep going, otherwise Steve suspects that Billy would have pulled him to a stop to shake him. “Stop talking like you’re fucking dying tonight.”

“You have to be prepared for that,” Steve says in a low voice, because he’s very aware of the people around them, the flush on Robin’s neck that says she can definitely hear them. “It might happen. I need you to promise me you won't do anything reckless.”

“I won’t,” Billy insists but there’s a tremor in his hand that says Steve can’t quite trust that. He gets it. If this were reversed he’d hate it too. He’s certain that nothing could keep him from Billy if he was in danger. “We’re getting out of this and we’re going to leave because I have had enough of this shitting town.”

“Hey,” Hopper says mildly from the front. “Can we not?”

They have to stop talking anyway because the glint of white between the trees is becoming too hard to ignore. Steve feels Billy squeeze his hand once more, trying to convey everything they never got a chance to say, and hopes that they’ll have time after this.

They’ve arrived.

---

Steve directs them all - the elements stand at the points of the compass and he fills the others in between. He has Joyce face him - in case this all goes wrong and she has to finish the ritual and he puts Billy at his back. If he could, he’d have it the other way, would want Billy to be the last thing he sees, but he can’t be selfish. Besides, Billy is armed and Steve trusts him to have his back.

Steve waits for them all to be positioned and ready, weapons to hand, torches set up, and offerings on the ground by their feet. There’s been no movement from beneath the stones, no rustling from the trees, that suggest the beast is defending his territory. Steve grips the hammer in his hand, fully aware of why the beast might be waiting.

“Are we ready?” Hopper asks, hand already drifting to the gun at his belt. He must feel it too - the sensation of being watched, the inevitable attack.

“No,” a few people chorus but Hopper ignores them. He just stares with resignation at the stone before raising his eyes to Steve’s.

“Then we need to get started,” he says with more authority than Steve would have expected…but he’s been through this before. “We can’t risk him being able to take the final piece.”

Steve exhales, almost unwilling to leave Billy’s side now that the moment is here. Billy takes the matter into his own hands, tugging on their joined hands until Steve stumbles towards him, until Billy can catch him with one firm arm around his waist. The kiss is brief but firm, Billy’s hand an anchor at his hip.

“Don’t die,” Billy says and presses something strange into Steve’s open palm. When he looks down he finds a crow feather, glistening and black. It seems like an odd gift but Steve doesn’t question it.

“I’ll try,” he says dryly and leans forward to press his mouth against Billy’s again. “And that goes for the rest of you. Don’t move once the ritual starts, not for anything. Joyce knows what to do if…” He finds himself unable to finish that sentence - before it seemed easy enough but now, faced with the stones in front of him it’s all too real. So he tucks the feather away in a pocket and takes a breath.

He has the hammer hooked off his belt, and the iron nails in his pocket. With no one else able to move it will be down to him to pin the beast, but they should hopefully have time and means to shoot it. It worked before, even with steel.

“Ready?” Joyce asks, a long black candle clutched in her hand. Steve looks around the circle and pushes his reservations back down. There’s no time, and they’re all looking at him like they know he can do this.

“Yes,” Steve says and steps past the line of stones.

There’s no rumble, no scream of the beast, no sign at all and Steve was half expecting one. But he makes his way to the center of the circle, standing over the stone as Billy had only days before and licks his lips.

“Is something meant to happen?” Carol whispers, a look of fear across her face as she twists her head around. Robin shrugs.

“Maybe it’s a good sign?”

“It’s definitely not,” Hopper says grimly and Steve is inclined to agree.

“Let’s start,” Steve says and feels for the blade in his pocket. It’s a small ceremonial knife that he took from home. He’ll be the last to give his offering, dripping blood onto the stone as the final act. The others will move their stones, one by one, to bury their offerings underneath but Steve doesn’t have to do that. He has to sacrifice to the stone itself, closing up the crack that marrs its gleaming surface.

Earth is the first element called so he turns north and finds Hopper’s solemn eyes.

“Dirt from the dead,” Steve says, and surely no one notices the trembling of his fingers. “Pull this creature down and hold him below.”

Hopper bends down at Steve’s nod and digs, scraping out mud and leaves with his bare hands. He pulls out the jar and pops the lid off, the gravedirt barely visible in the dark.

Hopper tips the jar and the gravedirt cascades into the hole below. It feels strange to be burying different dirt but Steve’s thought long and hard about what he wanted to use. The offering of each element didn’t have to be literal and Steve wanted them to be enduring. Gravedirt has many uses in magic and Steve is channeling these now - protection, a barrier, spiritual energy.

Hopper closes over the hole and as he scrapes the mud back over the wind picks up a little, tree branches creaking at the sudden onslaught.

“Is this bad weather or is it him?” Carol shouts, pressing a hand against her forehead to keep her hair out of her eyes.

“I think it’s him!” Steve calls back. He’s not worried, not now. A bit of wind isn’t the worst that can happen, he can feel it. The beast is testing them, thrashing against the walls of its cage. “Tommy, you’re next!”

Steve summons air and Tommy buries the long raven’s feather in the ground, forearms caked with dirt by the time that he’s done. Carol makes a face as she digs but she does it without complaint, tipping the ash carefully so none of it is lost to the wind. Robin is last, cradling the river stone in one hand and placing it below. When she scrapes the mud back over, something rumbles furiously from beneath their feet and everyone freezes.

“It’s fine,” Steve says, because they’re all looking at him. “It’s working. We keep going.”

“The elements will ensure he can’t leave,” Joyce says, raising her voice to be heard over the wind. “But it’s not permanent! We have to finish it!”

“Jonathan!” Steve calls and turns. Jonathan is grim-faced but there’s no hesitation when Steve looks at him.

Jonathan buries the crystal and Steve watches the glimmer of white quartz being buried by Jonathan’s long fingers. Purification, amplification of intent…and Heather’s rock salt follows after. They’re to balance the next two offerings - wax and bone.

The ground rumbles between Steve’s feet and to his horror the faintest crack appears just under his boots. It’s little more than a hairline fracture but Steve can see the light underneath, the distant writhing of something just below the surface.

“Steve!” Billy shouts and he sounds panicked. Steve thrusts out a hand behind him, urging him to stay still.

“It’s fine!” he says, because he’s pretty sure he’s not about to get pulled feet first into the pit below. Intimidation tactics again, mind games. They have the upper hand here. They’re six talismans down and they only have two to go. Once all eight have been buried, the seal is essentially as good as in place and Steve just has to bind it, like turning the key in a door that has multiple locks.

“Joyce!” he shouts and then his gut clenches. She’s realised the same problem - the wind might be too much to light the candle and drip wax into the earth.

“Shit,” Steve mutters but Joyce has already dropped to the ground, shielding the candle as best she can. She’s muttering under her breath, fingers clenching the candle and lighter and it takes a beat for Steve to see what she’s doing.

She can’t summon fire to the candle, she can’t stop the wind, but she can make a barrier long enough to keep the flame lit.

“It’s a shield spell!” Steve shouts with relief to the others. It’s a basic incantation that even children can use, one that doesn’t even hold up against physical attacks. But Steve is grateful that Joyce has kept her head and the wick suddenly flares to life. “Billy, hold tight.”

“What’s the time?” Robin asks, nervously eyeing the moon hanging overheard. Hopper just shakes his head.

“Don’t worry about it,” he calls back. “Just keep going!”

Something cold trickles down Steve’s spine. They must have lost too much time already, judging by Hopper’s furrowed brow. They wanted to have the ritual complete before the day ticked over, before the beast could try and take Steve’s heart. But if they bury the wax and bone, the circle is complete. He won’t be able to leave it. That’s all that matters.

Joyce drips wax, thick and black, into the ground below and Steve grits his teeth around the incantation. If they can at least seal up the circle, it won’t matter if the beast kills Steve - there will be nowhere for him to go.

“Billy,” Steve says and turns. Billy is already crouched in front of his stone, waiting and the trust and fear in his face makes Steve’s stomach clench.

Billy places the fragment into the earth and carefully scrapes it back over until the brittle white has vanished. Billy drags the stone back to it’s rightful place, just over the buried offering, the final piece in place.

“What the fuck?” Tommy shouts suddenly and Steve drags his gaze to the white stone just in front of Billy now glowing a bright white and when he turns he finds every stone, save for the center one, as bright as when he saw them in his dream.

“It’s working,” Steve says in disbelief, because they finished the seal. No matter what happens now, the beast can’t escape. But then he meets Billy’s wide eyes and remembers that he’s the only one still in danger now.

“It’s time,” Joyce says firmly and Steve holds Billy’s gaze for just a little longer before turning around. He has to take his place by the stone, the one he needs to bleed over, and he tries to avoid the light still faintly glowing beneath his feet. It’s brighter than before, he notices, drowning out the writhing of the beast below.

He has to finish it, he thinks and takes a deep breath. He can already feel the threads of magic around him, each stone like a beacon and all he has to do is push the beast back down and offer his blood to seal up the crack. Pandora putting the lid back on the box,

Steve closes his eyes and pulls. Everything responds at once, like it’s been waiting for him - the well of power in his own chest and the magic held by the circle. He can feel the power of the other witches around him, soft and familiar. And underneath it all, he can feel the beast fighting to get out. So long as he holds the line, the beast can’t get free. The minute he loses focus is when the beast will try to take his heart. If he succeeds now, it’s all over.

He finds each point, every well of power under the stones. They’re strong and he chose his talismans well. This circle will hold. He just needs to keep the monster down until the ritual is complete.

He holds everything still for a moment, a wave frozen in time, before he gathers it and pushes it back out until all he feels is just magic.

The beast screams and Steve can feel the dark mass underneath, ancient and furious. It was a gamble on both of their parts - facing off against each other in the circle. If Steve had been a weaker witch, the beast could break free and take his heart. It was a risk both of them had to take. For Steve, at least, it’s paid off.

“Just a little more,” he hears Joyce murmur but it washes over him like a wave. He’s never had a spell like this before, where he just feels like he’s drowning in magic. The light he can feel beneath him, glittering gently in the crack of the earth, is something soft and he wonders if it’s the power of the witches that came before. If they gave their lifeforce to keep the monster down, to ensure it could be pulled back if it was ever needed.

The beast that steps through the trees isn’t the one that they expect.

---

The shot that rings out misses Steve by inches and it takes every ounce of his will and strength to maintain the spell. The beast writhes against the restraints, trying to push back against the binds of the spell and Steve’s magic. Steve grits his teeth and forces himself to focus but it’s impossible to ignore what’s happening around him.

“Get out of here, Neil,” Hopper says, fingers already curling around the handle of his gun. It’s not what they intended it for but Steve won’t blame Hopper for using it. “This doesn’t concern you.” But the cold blue eyes are already flicking across the circle, taking in the knives, the stones, the witches. His nostrils flare and he steps forward. He hasn’t seen Billy yet, hidden as he is behind Steve.

“Didn’t expect you to be a part of this, Chief,” he says, taking careful steps across the clearing. No one else moves - they can’t, not now, and Steve hopes briefly that Hopper will shoot Neil before he can ruin everything. “But I suppose it all makes sense now.”

“As usual, you couldn’t tip water out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel,” Hopper gripes. Steve looks up and meets Joyce’s panicked eyes. If Neil shoots him - and Steve fully expects him to - it will all be over. “You don’t know anything that’s going on here so get the fuck out, Hargrove.”

“What are you summoning?” Neil breathes, as though he hasn’t heard Hopper at all. Steve doesn’t look back at Billy, even though he can hear the frightened rasp of his breathing.

“Nothing,” Hopper insists. “I won’t tell you again, Neil.” It’s possibly the worst thing he could say because Neil just laughs and there’s a delighted glitter in his eyes, like this is all the proof he needs. He doesn't know enough about magic - real magic - to distinguish between something dangerous or benign, a summoning or a sealing. He sees what he wants to - people in a clearing, the white stones shining like beacons against the growing decay, and the distinct smell of four witches.

“You call this nothing?” he challenges, striding forward more confidently now. He’s mere feet from Joyce and his lip curls as he catches her scent. “You’re consorting with witches, Chief. People have been dying and you’ve known why all along.” Hopper’s jaw tightens. It’s unfortunately the truth, although not the way that Neil thinks.

“Witches haven’t been doing anything,” Joyce interrupts desperately. She’s not even turned to face Neil but her eyes are narrowed. She’s watching Steve instead, and what glimpses of Billy she can see behind him. “Don’t be so foolish.”

“I’m being foolish?” Neil asks, looking astounded by the suggestion. He’s still at the wrong angle to see Billy but if he takes another few steps they’ll be staring face-to-face. “I said all along that there were supernatural forces at work here. And the Chief over there lied straight to my face. Lied to all of us.”

“I had to,” Hopper spits. “Just look at what you’ve done, Neil!” But Neil’s lip just curls as he stares Hopper down.

“What I’ve done?” Neil asks slowly. “I have protected this town from evil which is more than I can say for you.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Joyce starts but Neil abruptly turns on her.

“You shut your mouth!” he barks and Joyce falls silent, even though Steve can see how she’s curled her hands into fists at her side. Neil is the powderkeg in all this and they’re just waiting for him to go off. Even worse, Steve doesn’t know a way out of this that doesn’t end with a bullet to Neil’s heart. If he moves one of them, shoots one of them, steps into the circle…

“You’re going to stop this,” Neil says firmly, the voice of someone who cannot imagine being disobeyed. “And you’re all going to come back to town with me to face the consequences…”

“What’s that, a pyre outside of the town hall?” Tommy gripes, even though he’s shaking from head to toe. “Use all of your nails already?”

Neil just smiles grimly and it becomes apparent in that moment that he truly believes he’s above the laws of mortal men. Regina was just the start - this is the face of a man who would burn the rot out of Hawkins, if it meant every witch in town burned with it.

The smile slides off Neil’s face when he sees Billy.

“What are you doing here?” Neil says and Steve spots his finger moving to the trigger. Before he can think about it Steve’s shifting himself over as much as he can to put himself in front of Billy again and something cold moves across Neil’s face.

“So it’s like that, is it?” he says and the accompanying smile has no humor in it. “I always suspected you were a limp-wristed, cock-sucking faggot, but a witch-fucker as well?” He spits on the ground as if the very words leave a sour taste in his mouth. “You make me sick.”

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Hopper says, eyes tracking Neil and Steve isn’t sure who’s the predator here. “Don’t you fucking dare, Hargrove. Shut your mouth and leave now. I know what you did to the Moffet woman.”

“What we did to the witch was necessary,” Neil hisses, and Joyce’s face twists into hatred like Steve has never seen on her face before. “And you’re out here, doing God knows what, so I won’t be told by the likes of you.” He’s moving the hand holding the gun too much and Steve can’t track it and keep focus on the spell at the same time.

“You killed a person!” Hopper says, his voice loud enough to be heard over the wind now howling through the clearing.

“I did what was needed!” Neil roars back. “You might excuse this…this deviancy, this violation of the laws of nature but I won’t! Do you think all this would have happened if it weren’t for all the goddamned witches in this town?”

Yes, Steve thinks vaguely. Anyone fucking around near the stones probably would have fractured to seal sooner or later. That exchange of spit and fluid is just as strong as spilling blood; stronger even. It’s just unfortunate that he’s a witch, attuned to the magic there. Unlucky to catch the beast’s attention. Perhaps though it wouldn’t be happening right now, like this, if Steve and Billy had taken a different path that night. Perhaps if they’d slipped off down by the lake or gone back to tumble into Steve’s bed, perhaps none of this would have happened. All that blood would have gone unspilled. But even if Steve hadn’t been so keen to fuck under the moonlight, if Billy hadn’t wanted to party in the woods, would it have even mattered? Carol and Tommy alone slipping off to fool around at the circle of stones could have been enough. Or was it the witch and the witch hunter, standing above the center stone in a facsimile of a ritual as old as humanity itself, that forced the levee beyond breaking?

Billy’s yell shakes Steve from his reverie.

Suddenly coming alive, Billy spits his words into Neil’s face like they’re venom.“You killed her!” He’s been stock still since Neil appeared but the mention of Regina has reignited the fire in him. “I saw her body, I saw what you did to her. She never hurt anyone and you tortured her. She didn’t deserve that! If anyone’s the monster here it’s you. You’re a twisted, fucked up old man!”

Neil’s eyes narrow further with irritation, as though turning his attention upon a fly that refuses to be swatted.

“I should have purged you from my bloodline the first chance I had,” he spits. “It was a mistake to keep you after your mother left, and it was a graver one still to have given you so much free rein. I suppose I only have myself to blame, now, for not finishing what I started earlier.”

“Neil, stop!” Hopper shouts urgently and goes for his gun but he’s too late. They can only watch as Neil’s foot crosses the line of stones.

The ground cracks beneath Steve’s feet and he only just throws himself to the side in time. The beast has sensed fresh blood and while he’s been bound to the circle anyone who steps in it is fair game. Steve has the power to push back - Neil does not.

Neil’s eyes grow wide as he takes in the chasm growing in the circle, splitting clean down the center. The light coming from inside it is all wrong and Steve scrabbles for purchase to push himself up. The circle is only ten feet or so and it’s only just enough to keep himself away from the growing opening. He doesn’t want to risk sliding down into the pit, doesn’t want to chance tipping himself right into an open maw.

The center stone is still there, the crack gleaming in the unearthly light. But it’s going to be swallowed and Steve has to dive for it before it’s lost. They still have a chance of completing this but they can’t do it without all nine stones.

“What have you done?” Neil breathes, almost unable to take his eyes off of the light. Steve struggles with the heavy stone in his arms but he thinks he sees a shadow shifting in the gap, something moving against the light.

“What have you done?” Steve screams and he’s not sure he’s even been heard because there’s so much noise now. The wind is howling and the ground is groaning, like it’s fighting back against its prisoner. He’s pretty certain someone is crying and Hopper and Joyce are both shouting but he can’t make out the words. “Get out of the circle! You can’t fight him!”

“What is that?” Neil asks and the brief look of horror is once again washed away by suspicion. “Oh God. Is that what’s been killing people?”

Steve twists behind him just long enough to share a terrified look with Billy before Steve looks back down again, trying his best to fight it. But it’s all too late, because he knows without even needing to look that it’s a new day. They couldn’t complete the ritual in time and now there are two hearts for the taking.

Steve places the stone as far away from the chasm as he can. “Keep an eye on it,” he says to Heather before pulling himself to his feet.

“Neil, get out!” Hopper shouts and Steve scrabbles in his pocket for the knife. Maybe if he finishes the ritual now, they might have a chance.

But Neil is still staring into the gap, frozen with horror at whatever lies down below. Steve resists the urge to look - whatever glimpses he’s already had is enough to ensure the image will appear behind his closed eyelids for many years to come.

But the darkness overtakes the light before Steve can bring the blade across his palm. It spills over the opening and snakes across the ground, lapping against the edges of Neil’s boots.

It happens so fast that Steve almost doesn’t see it. There’s a sudden crack that rips through the air and the only thing that has changed is that Neil was whole and then he wasn’t.

He can hear Billy screaming but it barely even registers. The pained sound of his boyfriend just washes over him as Steve stares blankly at the gaping crater in Neil’s chest.

Someone screams as Neil slumps to the ground, eyes blank and Steve wonders if he’d even known what was happening. If it had been that quick for all of them and he hopes that maybe it was. He doesn’t want to think of Tammy living through every inch of her skin being peeled from her, Betty feeling long fingers plucking out her eyes.

“Steve, get out of there!” Robin screams at him but it’s too late. The darkness in the crack bubbles and froths, shadows spilling over the edges. When the shadows touch the bare ground they thicken, taking shape, and Steve can only watch as it forms long, misshapen limbs, a narrow face and dull white eyes. Fear makes his stomach roll and his feet freeze to the ground, no matter the noise around him. He doesn’t know what he expected but it wasn’t this.

“Hello, little witch,” the beast breathes and sinks its claws into Steve’s chest.

Chapter 16: Blood to Bind it All

Steve screams and screams and he’s pretty sure he’s not the only one. There’s a chorus, high and jarring, and it rings on and on in his ears.

He thinks that blood is starting to seep out past the talons, and Steve is almost breathless from the pain. The claws can’t be too deep, unlike Neil, otherwise he’d be dead. But they’re digging into his flesh and putting the scent of blood into the air.

“You have a heart,” Steve spits, his words coming out faint and broken but the beast hears him anyway. It smiles - or what Steve thinks is one, the mouth opening into a horrifying split - and pushes down a little harder. Steve struggles and hopes dearly that no one will move. They still have the upper hand. The beast is bound, he can’t get out of the circle. Joyce can finish this even if Steve is dead.

“What use is it if I can’t leave?” the beast hisses, rank breath hot against Steve’s ear. “You will tell your friends to break the circle and let me go.” Steve struggles for air, the weight against his chest and the pain making it difficult to breathe. But there’s an edge of relief to it when he does- they've obeyed him, all of them. They’ve held the circle and the beast is trapped.

“No,” he rasps and the empty, milky eyes narrow.

“I will kill you, witch!” the beast insists, with a snarl, and Steve just shakes his head.

“No,” he repeats, as forcefully as he can. “Kill me. They’ll never let you go.”

“They can be made to,” the beast says and raises it’s head. It takes a moment for Steve to realize, to locate the source of it’s glee. Billy.

“He won’t break the circle!” Steve says, hoping against hope that Billy will stay where he is. That he’ll hear Steve and remember what he has to do. “He won’t let you kill anyone else.”

“The witch hunter cares for you,” the beast murmurs, still watching Billy with that strange, pensive look. “Perhaps more than he wants to keep me sealed away?”

“Billy loves me,” Steve chokes out, even though he has no guarantee that the words are true. He thinks it is…he knows he loves Billy. He also knows that if the roles were reversed it would take everything he had to keep his feet outside of the circle. If Billy even takes one step before the beast is cast back down below, this is all for nothing. “But he won’t risk everyone else. He’s not like his dad.”

“Shall we find out?” the beast says sweetly and digs into Steve’s flesh until his throat is hoarse from screaming.

“Call them off!” the beast howls, fury glimmering in his blank eyes. Steve blinks tears from his eyes, vision wavering with the pain. He’s not going to survive this anyway but he can buy Joyce enough time to finish the ritual. And she has to now - his right arm is pinned by the weight of the creature, ensuring that he can’t pull the penknife from his pocket. He needs to bleed to finish the ritual.

And then it hits him.

“You can’t kill me, can you?” Steve spits, from around as much of a grin as he can manage. There’s a flicker of panic in the monster’s eyes, brief but there, and it makes Steve laugh even harder. “Blood to bind it all. My blood will finish it and Joyce can seal you back where you belong.”

The beast screams and unlike Steve’s, or Robin’s, or Joyce’s, it isn’t filled with pain, fear or panic. This is unbridled rage, fury at being stuck in a trap with no way out. Because Steve is right - Steve needs to spill blood to complete the ritual. The beast delayed too long waiting for a heart and now that it has one, it can’t escape.

“I don’t care if I have to rip you apart piece by piece and drink every drop,” the beast threatens, baring its teeth inches from Steve’s face. It smells like mold and blood and something spoiled and Steve fights the urge to gag. “This can be undone. Break the circle.”

But Steve won’t. He still doesn’t know the full extent of what the beast will do when free but he won’t take that chance.

“Get fucked,” Steve hisses and risks sliding his eyes across the circle. He can’t see Billy or Joyce from here but he can see Robin, face white and tear-streaked, hunched over her stone. She meets Steve’s eyes and he can see the struggle in there. They all want to move to help him. They also know that they can’t.

“You will not be the first witch I have slaughtered across these stones,” the beast says, voice low, and there’s another waft of that stale breath across Steve’s face. He tries not to think about what lies behind it - whether the smell of death has been caused by this thing taking pieces of Steve’s friends. “Magic can be undone. Until the final piece is spilt across the ground, it can be broken. Call one of your friends in, break the circle.”

Steve freezes. Something horrid has just trickled down his spine, a stray thought clinging to him like a leech.

He never quite fully settled on the idea earlier - that the beast feels like more than a creature. It plots, it plans, it has the patience to just wait. It lured the victims to where it needed them, it knew how to fuck with Steve and Billy’s heads. There’s as much cleverness as there is hunger, cunning and brutality in equal measure.

“How do you know about magic?” Steve asks suspiciously and that filthy maw of a grin only widens.

“Do you want to see?” the beast breathes and for a split second there’s something else in those milky-white eyes.

Steve opens his mouth to scream but it’s too late.

---

Steve dreams of the stones.

It all feels the same - the soft glow of the full moon, the creak of the tree branches overhead, the smell of damp grass. Steve looks overhead and sees the night sky blazing with stars and when he turns there’s no familiar glow of Hawkins. It’s pitch black, as far as the eye can see - no lights on the trailer park, no brightly lit billboards, no street lamps. The only light comes from the lanterns at the feet of the robed figures, and their faces are all shadows.

The figures around the stones have doubled and Steve has to blink before he realizes why. This is the first time the beast was sealed, before Hawkins was really Hawkins. Before the grease smell of Benny’s, the roar of games at the high school, the jingle of the local radio station. Hundreds of years ago when the scant few witches in Hawkins all perished. They’d all given their lives to seal away the beast that had slipped into their town from another world to feast.

Or so the records say, and Steve is starting to think that maybe sometimes a lie is easier than the truth. Because the figure at the very center isn’t the same disfigured creature that Steve expected.

The man in the center of the circle is on his knees, golden head bent over so low that it practically drags in the dirt. He’s bound, hands wrapped behind his back and he shudders with every breath. Steve realizes all too late that he’s laughing.

And then, with another sickening lurch, a jolt of recognition.

“Do you see now, little witch?” the man says and raises his head. Steve stares blankly at the man’s bright blue eyes and now knows.

The beast hadn’t come through a veil after all.

No wonder the man in the woods had seen through his spell. No wonder the beast needed body parts, tearing and shredding with greedy fingers.

“What did you do that was so bad they felt the need to seal you away?” Steve asks dully, staring at the witch - because that’s what the man is, Steve knows that now - that the beast used to be. “What happened so that all of the records described a monster?”

The man’s smile isn’t too different from the beast’s - all edges and hunger, but prettily wrapped with red lips and gleaming white teeth.

“That’s not my fault,” the man says, in that slow, patronizing kind of voice that Steve hates. He hears it a lot from his dad, from teachers, from Nancy. “I tried to tell them that there was more power to be had…” Steve snorts.

“And what did you have to sacrifice for that power?” Steve asks, because that’s how it always is. Checks and balances. There’s a whole other realm of magic that Steve has only ever heard of, the kind he’d never consider using. The price is always too high.

Steve’s a witch. He’s given blood, spit, and hair to countless spells. He’s sliced knives across his skin, dropped hot wax onto his palms and jabbed more needles into his fingers than he can remember. He’s had to gut frogs, scoop up eyeballs and detach legs from arachnids; tip hearts and livers and intestines into cauldrons; collect cobwebs and bile and venom…he’s done all of these things and more. That’s the nature of witchcraft - at its core it requires an element of death and pain as a sacrifice. Steve has spent his life enmeshed in it.

But the kind of magic the beast used, and the kind of power that it gives takes so much more. It’s the blood of a newborn, twelve adult human molars, the womb of a fertile woman…the price climbs and climbs until you forget that you’re not above deciding who lives and who dies. Steve can guess at what destruction and death was wrought before the other witches of the town decided he had to be stopped.

“They were humans and they mean nothing,” the man says derisively. “What are they for if not to sacrifice? You’ve never had that kind of power, little witch, you can only dream of what it brings you…”

“I know what it does!” Steve says, sickened. The cloaked figures are stock still, watching sentries, and it occurs to Steve now that the dream he had mere days ago was a strange amalgamation of both rituals. “Fuck, no wonder they banished you. They couldn’t kill you, could they? They knew you were too strong so they tricked you into the woods. The stones are where you were sealed.” The man’s lip curls slightly, as if reminded of something he’d rather forget.

“They feared me,” he says coldly. “They lured me here and pinned me down.” There’s something off about his tone, the way that he’s kneeling in the dirt so Steve looks down and catches sight of the familiar gleam of dark nails in the moonlight.

“They had no other choice,” Steve insists, because as horrified as he is by the idea of using nails on another witch it was one of the few things that would have held him. “They needed to bury you deep. But it wasn’t quite strong enough, was it? And then Lonnie moved one of the stones.” The grin widens.

“It didn’t take much,” the man agrees. “I was strong enough to lure, able to kill. A few centuries is a long time and I didn’t spend all of it sleeping.”

No wonder the murders felt like gathering parts for a spell. Because it had been the careful planning of a creature who’d once had magic and would take his chance the moment it presented itself. Lonnie moving the stone hadn’t fully released the creature but it had removed the protections that kept it bound to the circle that the witches had so carefully put into place. With it’s power he probably hadn’t even needed physical form to kill. The cracking of the center stone had probably had the same effect.

“Why do you look…like that?” Steve asks, because he doesn’t doubt that the man still looked like this when the witches bound him to the circle. It’s so obvious and he should have seen it - the nails, the blood, the use of elements to a circle. It was always, always tailored for a witch not a beast.

“I was changed,” the man says in a low voice, sharp blue eyes fixed on Steve. “One of them…she said if I was going to be a monster I should resemble one. But it didn’t matter so much, because I had teeth and claws and that was more power, do you see?”

“But these pieces,” Steve continues, because this too has bothered him ever since he found out what all of the body parts were for. Why would a beast need to kill in such a ritualistic way? Why would it need such precise parts rather than feeding? Because a witch would need to harvest at the correct time of day. Because a witch requires specific parts for a spell. And the beast would have had a long time to think about such things. Most spells are old, passed down to the next generation, but that doesn’t mean new spells can’t be created.

The spell the creature was going to cast wasn’t to escape the circle. It was to transform.

“You needed all of the pieces to look human again,” Steve continues, bile thick and acidic in the back of his throat. “The price for the spell.”

“Indeed,” the creature agrees. “Once I look human again, I can continue my previous work. The things I could do, little witch. This world is more monstrous and wretched than it ever was. Witch hunters still roam in pursuit of us. That man was going to kill you. Did you honestly not wish him dead? Wish for every witch-hunter to be wiped from this plane of existence?”

“No,” Steve spits instantly.

“Of course not,” the beast says, as though remembering. “Your lover. I can spare him. You can be together. You won’t need to fear anymore with his father dead. Do you see what I can do for you? With my power, nothing is impossible. Let me go and you can have anything you desire.”

“I won’t,” Steve says, curling his trembling fingers by his side. “Kill me or not, you can’t stop my blood completing the ritual. That was the bit that was missing from when they sealed you, isn’t it? They had the other offerings but no blood and Joyce and the others didn’t have the elements and combined all of their blood. Neither was enough, was it?”

But this ritual can be. They have every element needed to make a strong circle and the beast will bribe and lie and cut if it thinks that it can escape it.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” the man says, tilting his eyes and there’s that familiar golden flash against the moon. It turns Steve’s stomach a bit, that they’re more alike than he wants to admit. No wonder they need the blood of a witch, a strong witch, to keep him down. “Do you think I don’t see some of myself in you? This stupid, worthless little town will keep you here. I know you want more and you can have it…” But Steve shakes his head.

“I have what I want,” Steve says, gooseflesh prickling the back of his neck and down his arms. This is all a dream, or an illusion, and all of it lies. He has to end this, one way or the other. The beast will break it soon, and take them back to the clearing and Steve really needs a plan before then.

“He’ll leave you,” the beast promises, the thought at the darkest part of Steve. “I can make sure that never happens, that he loves you always.” But Steve just shakes his head. Billy forced to love him is even worse than Billy not loving him at all.

“He won’t,” Steve says, mouth dry. The man grins, unconcerned, and his skin burns until it’s pitch black, flaking ash, and taking whatever might have been left of his humanity with it. There are suddenly too many teeth for his mouth and each one grows to a sharp point. The irises sink back into the whites of his eyes, leaving that terrifying blank look, and Steve is so busy staring at them that he almost doesn’t hear the howl of anguish as the man’s every limb rips apart - bones cracking, skin splitting and stretching to form the familiar ghoulish too-long limbs of the beast.

“Would you bet your life on it?” the beast asks and all at once Steve slams back into his body. He’s left breathless, and there’s a constant ringing in his ears. For a moment all he can feel is the cold ground beneath him, the stinging pain and the milky-white eyes above him.

And then the world comes flooding back in, high-pitched and brutal. He can hear the cries of his friends and the dreaded sound of the beast’s wet breathing in his ear.

“Steve!” Hopper shouts and Steve can see the gleam of his gun. He’s been waiting, unwilling to risk shooting Steve.

“I’ll ask once more,” the beast says softly and it's so close to Steve that saliva drips from its open mouth into the curve of Steve’s ear. “I can give you anything you’ve ever wanted. Would you willingly sacrifice such an offer?”

Steve recoils and stupidly, a small part of him is tempted. He knows about that kind of power, he’s heard before of witches dabbling with something darker. It’s the problem with power - enough is never enough. There’s always something more just out of reach. Maybe that’s why people like Neil think that magic is evil, how people can be lost to the lure of it.

But Steve isn’t one of them. And he’s not about to let the people of Hawkins suffer the cost as this monster shreds and guts and sacrifices for his own gain.

Steve’s right arm is still trapped. But he can still move his left, just enough to slide it into his pocket. He’s hoping for a weapon - the hammer still lying where he dropped it - but he can hear the nails clinking together. He’ll use one if he has to but they only have so many. But his fingers brush against something else instead, the distinct lines of the crow’s feather.

Steve doesn’t think. He pulls it free and drives it into the beast’s eye as hard as he can.

The scream is ungodly. But Steve holds on, even as liquid starts to stream down his fingers. He can feel the feather push through, the eyeball giving way to the force, and the beast howls. But then the weight is gone from Steve and he’s left gasping on the ground.

“Shoot it!” someone screams and Steve throws himself into a ball to avoid the bullets being fired over his head. In the end they’d managed to find four guns - three from Hopper’s personal collection and Heather had lifted her dad’s from the safe. That’s three more guns than Hop and the others had had last time. It’s only steel but few things can be shot and keep going. Tommy had made a quip about silver but they hadn’t had the time or any idea if it would help. The witch hunter having the iron nails had been bad enough.

“Steve, stay down!” Hopper shouts and Steve keeps himself pressed low. The chasm is still an open rip in the ground, which gives Steve hope.

The hammer is only a few feet away and Steve has to drag himself across it, ignoring the agony in his chest as he does so. The beast hadn’t gone deep enough to properly draw blood - the beast wanted to cause pain and fear, not risk spilling any blood - but it hurts like a bitch. Steve grabs the hammer and fumbles in his pocket. Someone, probably Hopper, is still shooting, trying to make sure that the beast will be unable to fight Steve again. Steve’s got the hard part now and he clenches his hand tight around the nails.

“Now!” Joyce screams and when Steve looks at her, her eyes are wide, hands caked in dirt. When he turns to look at Billy he finds his boyfriend crouched over the stone, face wet but resolute.

The beast and Neil lie together at the other end of the circle, and it’s hard to say who is in worse shape. Neil’s chest is a gaping hole, his clothes flecked with blood and bone. The beast is panting, each breath a strain and Steve soon sees why: he’s been riddled with bullets and thank fuck they gave the guns to their best marksmen. Tommy and Heather are no Nancy but it looks like they kept up with Hopper and Joyce in finding their mark.

Bile rises at the back of Steve’s throat as he grips the nail in his hand and he wonders if Neil had any reservations about driving it through someone’s skin. But Regina had never brought harm to anyone and this beast has done nothing but take and yet Steve still has to take a breath before he brings the hammer down.

Maybe after this Steve will still hear the screaming in his dreams. He wonders if Max can hear it across the woods at his house, whether the constant cries from this night have carried across Hawkins. But he keeps going, nail after nail, until his fingers are sore and there’s oil-slick black blood spilling across the ground.

Steve drops the hammer and fumbles for the knife. He needs to slice his blood across the stone, the final piece. But the beast’s chest is moving, a heartbeat quick up and down. When Steve meets it’s one remaining eye the beast raises its head and gives Steve a weak, bloody grin.

“There’s a price for all magic,” it rasps. “There will be a price for this too.”

“I know,” Steve says, but his hand pauses in midair, the blade mere inches from his palm.

“Did you think spilling a little blood would be all?” the beast asks and it sounds genuinely curious. “You have to give something in return.”

No. Maybe he’d been naive in thinking that blood will be all, the only price for a favor this big. But it’s too late now to wonder what the magic might demand, what toll will be taken.

Steve drags the knife across his palm before he can stop to think about it, the unknown cost of something this huge. The pain is no worse than everything else he’s experienced today and he presses it against the white surface of the remaining stone.

“And blood to bind it all,” Steve whispers. Overhead a crow cries and Steve almost feels relieved when he hears it.

For a second, nothing happens. But then as Steve watches the crack in the stone closes over, like a wound healed. It pulls Steve’s blood down into the gap, accepting what Steve is offering. Blood…and whatever price it requires. It’s too late now and Steve will have to pay it when the time comes.

There’s a rumble beneath them and Steve turns to see the chasm. But rather than closing, it’s growing wider. For a second Steve thinks that they’ve lost. But then the strange, unearthly light inside the earth returns and Steve exhales. It’s just been waiting to take back what belongs to it.

The beast struggles and Steve sees now why they needed nails. There’s no knowing what an animal trapped in a corner might do. But the iron nullifies the magic, and whatever strength the beast had left, keeping him pinned to the ground.

There’s a feeling in the back of Steve’s mind, some dark push brushing against his magic. Steve presses his palm down, ignoring the sting, and shoves back as hard as he can. This is what he was needed for, what he can do that no one else can.

The beast fights, because it’s a losing battle. It’s been wounded, shot, pinned down with iron nails and the light from below is lapping at his clawed hands. He was only ever willing to sacrifice others but Steve would have died to keep him here.

The hole rips open and for a moment Steve can see what the previous witches had done: how they’d changed this small corner of Hawkins, left parts of themselves imbued in the earth and the stones, made the crows their eyes to keep watch. He can hear the shriek as the beast is pulled back down below and Neil’s body hangs dangerously close to the edge. Steve half hopes that the chasm will take him too but the circle only takes what it is owed, no more, no less.

Steve is scrabbling to pick up the stone before the hole is even finished closing. He’s ready when it seals over to place it where it belongs, the eye in the very center. It turns that same bright blinding light, the final piece locked into place and for a second it’s hard to tell what shines brighter, the stones or the moon. But then Steve is left staring at a stone that looks no different than it did a few days ago, the twin fractures in both the ground and the stone sealed over.

Steve collapses back on the ground, chest heaving, blood still soaked to his palm. He opens his eyes to look at the moon overhead, crisp and clear. There are no crows anywhere in sight and maybe that’s proof enough that the fight is over.

“Have we won?” Tommy asks, staring around in disbelief. No one else seems able to move, aside from Billy, who drops down to his knees, curled over in the grass. “Did we do it?”

“I think it worked,” Heather says, pushing back a slick strand of hair. Everyone looks worse for wear, with drawn faces and shadows under their eyes, mud clinging to their palms. “I just…I mean, did it?”

“I fucking hope so,” Hopper says, staring down at Steve, at the center stone still smeared with red and where the chasm once was.

“I’m not testing it,” Tommy says immediately. Everyone else seems to share this sentiment - they held the line through everything, like Steve told them to, and now they’re afraid to move.

“He’s gone,” Steve gasps, because the adrenaline is fading and the pain is becoming unbearable. “I can feel it. Can someone help me up?”

“Steve?” Joyce says and hesitantly steps across the stones. Everyone takes a breath, waiting for the inevitable. But nothing happens so she takes the final few steps across to Steve, dropping down by his side. “Sweetheart, where are you hurt?”

“Everywhere?” Steve says, wincing. He’s in more pain than he’s ever experienced in his life, which includes the time Tommy ran into him with his bike, when he slipped by the pool and broke his arm and when Amy Farber wasn’t careful enough with her teeth while sucking him off. His shoulder aches from having the beast’s weight on it, his right hand is still gushing blood and that’s not even starting on the holes in his chest. “How the fuck do I explain this to a hospital? To my parents?”

“We’ll worry about that later,” Joyce says firmly. “Jon, help me.” Jonathan follows his mother into the circle and supports Steve’s other side and together they pull him up to a sitting position. Jonathan props up Steve’s shoulder while Joyce carefully tugs up his shirt.

“That’s kind of sick,” Tommy says, peering around Joyce’s head. “Will he have scars?”

“Thanks,” Steve groans, leaning on Jonathan as much as he dares. Joyce probably doesn’t have the energy to heal him completely right now but he can feel the magic against his skin, a soothing balm that brushes over each of the five holes in his chest.

“It’s kind of like a large cat used you as a pin cushion,” Carol quips and when Steve looks at her, she smiles wearily. He gets it. They’re freaked out and his friends have always had some weird gallows humor.

Steve stares down at Neil, the open crater of his chest and the frozen look on his face, the look of terror in his blank, dead eyes. He wishes he could feel something - some sadness, or pity - but then he thinks of Regina. How terrified she would have been in that barn as they tortured her, abused her. He can’t be sorry the man is dead.

But a horrible gasping noise behind him pulls his attention away and he turns.

Heather has left her place to go to Billy, and Steve immediately feels like shit because that should have been him. Billy has his head pressed to the dirt, his shoulders shaking with every juddering breath. Heather presses an arm around Billy’s back, whispering soft and low into his ear.

“Baby?” Steve says, and he can’t move because Joyce and Jonathan still have hold of him, because he’ll fall over without them.

He can’t imagine what Billy is feeling. Billy had hated Neil, hated everything he stood for, but in the end, he’d still been Billy’s dad.

“Come on,” Jonathan says and gently pulls Steve to his feet. His chest stings like a bitch but it’s no longer agony, thanks to Joyce. He’s still going to need a doctor and a good cover story but at least he no longer feels like a colander.

When Jonathan helps Steve down next to Billy, his boyfriend needs no encouragement to press his head into the curve of Steve’s neck. Tears, hot and wet, drip down Steve’s collarbones but he just holds onto Billy.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Steve says thickly but Billy just shakes his head.

“Don’t be,” Billy says, voice heavy from crying. “It was him or you.”

But it’s not always that easy, Steve thinks, looking at the sad, sorry corpse of Neil lying mere feet away. Maybe if they’d been quicker, better, it wouldn’t have needed to be anyone at all.

“What do we do now?” Heather asks, and while her eyes are also looking at Neil, she has her arms around Robin. They’re holding each other up and Steve can’t blame them. He feels like he has no energy left but the job’s far from done.

“I’ll deal with Neil,” Hopper says roughly. He’s collecting bullet casings from the circle, carefully stepping over the stones. “But we’ve still got a crazed mob that will only get crazier now their leader is dead.”

“Will the omens stop?” Carol asks anxiously and Joyce nods.

“They should,” she says, tilting her head skywards. For the first time in the past few days there are no crows and Steve wonders how long before he stops being suspicious of the ones he sees in the trees. “But we’ll have to make them forget like we did last time, and it’ll be harder now.”

This won’t be so easily shaken off, Steve knows. It’s only been nearly thirty years since the last time Joyce made everyone forget and it’s not actually that much time. Maybe in a few more generations it’ll fade, changed into another story that’s easier to take. They’ll have to repeat the spell and hope that people want to forget.

Steve wishes this could be wiped from his mind so easily.

Billy pulls Steve back to his feet, supporting him on his shoulder and the nine of them stand there, almost too bone-weary and heart-sore to move.

“Come on,” Steve says wearily, because if he stops for much longer, let himself sink into the exhaustion and shock, then he won’t be able to get going again. “We’ve got work to do.”

Chapter 17: Epilogue

Steve is standing by the town line when he hears the rumble of the Camaro pull up behind him. He waits for the engine to cut out and the slam of the car door. He knew Billy would come out here eventually. It’s where he’s been countless times since that night in the woods.

“Thought I might find you here,” Billy says and Steve finally turns around.

“Hop will be pissed if you block the road like that,” Steve says because Billy has just pulled to a stop on the tarmac. At least Steve parked his car at a layby a while back.

“He’ll understand,” Billy says shortly. He’s dressed in jeans and a heavy jacket, a misshapen woolen hat pulled over his ears. Steve didn’t quite come prepared for the weather and he’s got gooseflesh up and down his arms. “Besides, people aren’t fleeing the town anymore. I think we’ll be fine for a bit.”

They stand by the WELCOME TO HAWKINS sign for a few minutes before Billy coughs and discreetly slides his cold fingers into Steve’s.

“Joyce is going to get really worried if you keep coming out here,” Billy says and Steve just stares out down the road. No one really gets what he’s going through - even Billy- and for the most part, that’s okay. But there are days like today when he feels like crawling out of his skin. Coming here barely helps, toes pressed against the invisible lines of the town.

“I know,” Steve says, because the last thing he wants to do is upset Joyce. She’d looked after him after the ritual, patched up his wounds, helped Jonathan and Heather make the same dust to scatter in the winds that she used before to numb the memories of the murders.

“Why are you coming out here?” Billy asks, rubbing his thumb along Steve’s wrist. His boyfriend is worried about him, Steve knows that, and he’s trying his best to not shut him out. The beast nearly got between them all too easily and they won’t let it happen again.

“It’s stupid,” Steve says, with a shrug. He knows that but Billy’s mouth twists unhappily when he says it.

“It’s not stupid,” Billy says quietly. “Tell me.”

“I think we should move in together,” Steve says instead. It’s not where he meant to start but it’s the thing he most wanted to say. He’s been thinking about it for a while. It’s one of the things that keeps him awake at night and the only thing that keeps him up with excitement rather than fear.

“What?” Billy blurts out and Steve turns to face him.

“I want to,” he says simply, squeezing Billy’s fingers. “We can get another place. I want to see you all of the time and I’m fed up with people telling me it’s too soon.” Billy chews on his lip for a moment and it’s the most agonizing few seconds of Steve’s life.

“Flo was telling me her nephew might have some place to rent,” Billy offers finally. “One bedroom, clean, shower unit that actually runs hot. I could ask?” Steve grins and kisses him. His parents may be pissed about the whole thing and he’s probably looking at getting cut off when they find out who he’s moved in with. He suspects that his mom kind of knows anyway.

“Good,” Steve says some time later when their noses are cold and Billy’s hands have slid down the back of his jeans. “I want something good out of all of this.”

Billy is quiet, fingers stroking the skin above Steve’s jeans, and Steve just waits.

“You don’t have to…” Billy starts and Steve shakes his head.

“I want to,” he says firmly. “This isn’t…this is about us. This is it for me, okay? I know that and you know that and fuck everyone else.” But Billy isn’t soothed and Steve knows what’s coming before he even opens his mouth.

“If you’re trying to make up for California…” he says and Steve bristles.

“It’s not,” he insists, because he hates that Billy might feel like he’s second best. “We can still go. Some day. Joyce said it might fade and when it does then we can go. But in the meantime, I want to be together. I always want to be together.”

He knows the minute he’s said it that he’s revealed what he’s really afraid of, can see by the look on Billy’s face.

“Did you think I’d go without you?” Billy asks and Steve swallows around the lump of fear in his throat. Of course he’s thought of it. He dreams of it every night, standing right here at this line, watching the Camaro and Billy leave him behind. Because they can. Because he can’t follow.

“You can,” Steve says, smiling weakly. He’s clinging onto Billy’s jacket, fingers digging into the material like he can physically keep Billy here. “We always talked about it and I don’t want you to change that because of me.”

“Of course it changes!” Billy says immediately. “Fucking hell, Steve…I’m not going anywhere without you.” Steve turns his head to look at the long road out of Hawkins…a place he can no longer go.

Magic always has a cost. And leaving Hawkins is the price for Steve.

Joyce said that it was the price for binding the beast back to the earth with blood. Steve’s blood, so Steve is now bound to that earth too. The four corners of Hawkins are as far as he can go. He and Billy can’t move to California, where Billy longs to return to. They’ll never travel, or have a honeymoon, or set foot outside of this town.

Steve hates it. What he hates even more is that Billy might leave him behind. This fate is terrible enough. Being trapped here without Billy would be unthinkable.

The beast had promised that Steve would have to sacrifice something more than blood and while it couldn’t truly have known the words still ring inside Steve’s head.

“We’re going to be stuck here,” Steve says desperately, because he’s had a long time to think about it in the five weeks since they did the ritual. “I can’t leave. We could spend the rest of our lives here.”

“Good,” Billy says roughly, his hands tight around Steve’s waist. “Then let’s. And if the bloodbind ever fades we’ll deal with it then.” Steve rests his chin on Billy’s shoulder, presses his nose into the golden curls and tries to breathe.

“I just thought you’d hate it,” he says, suddenly bone-tired. He feels like he’s barely slept - funerals and spells and worrying about this strange new way of life. He’s never thought much of leaving Hawkins before - didn’t really until Billy came along and getting him away from Neil became Steve’s new purpose - but now that he can’t, it has a whole new meaning. “That it would remind you of Neil.” Billy shrugs, keeping Steve pressed against his body. Steve’s glad for it, because it’s cold as balls out here.

“It does,” he says honestly. “But California does too. I think it’s gonna be a while before anything doesn’t.”

“Do you regret not going?” Steve asks, because Neil’s funeral came and went without Billy attending. Max hadn’t either, out of solidarity. It was the only funeral out of many that Billy and Steve hadn’t attended recently.

“No,” Billy says and then considers. “Yeah, maybe. Think it’s too soon to tell.”

“Too soon for a lot of things,” Steve sighs and kisses Billy’s jaw. Too soon to tell if the dust they scattered to the winds over Hawkins will take, too soon to see if the Beast will stay quiet, too soon to know if he and Billy will last. He has more confidence in that last one though.

“Joyce offered me a place for a while,” Billy says, not that Steve is at all surprised. “I can stay there while we sort out somewhere to live.”

“Good,” Steve says, and watches a car pass them by on the way into Hawkins. Someone in the backseat makes a rude gesture at them, but to be fair they are pressed together pretty intimately for a public road. “Hopper-Byers-Hargrove. Has a nice ring to it. Bit long for the mailbox though.” Billy pinches the flesh at his sides but he doesn’t look too put out. Joyce deciding to return to Hawkins with her three children also wasn’t a surprise. Steve’s not in a good place with Jonathan but they’re managing. They’re some of the few young witches left in Hawkins. It’s probably time to put bad blood behind them.

“Your parents out?” Billy asks and Steve regretfully shakes his head.

“Your place will have to do for the time being,” he says, because they may be limited for a few weeks - Steve’s sex life may take a hit with varying parents and Joyce around. “I’m not fucking in the woods again.”

“But you were so keen on it last time,” Billy says wickedly, copping a quick squeeze of Steve’s rear before he slides his hands free. They leave the town line behind, and Steve doesn’t look back. He thinks he’ll come out here a few more times to test the push of the bind yet. He hates the feel of his feet refusing to obey him, the sickening feeling in his stomach the closer he gets to the boundaries. The beast is a part of Hawkins. And Steve, unwillingly, is a part of both.

“That was before us fucking caught the interest of a terrying ancient beast,” Steve says dryly, digging in his pockets for his keys. “Beds only from now on. Maybe floors. And chairs.”

“You’re on,” Billy says and kisses him before bounding away to his own car.

Steve stops to take one last look. He can’t help it. He doesn’t need to leave right now, not with the town safe again and Billy free from Neil. But he can still feel the pull of the beast, like something alive and squirming under his skin. He’s not fooled - he just put it back to sleep, fitful and dreamless, waiting for another day, another chance. The moment Steve slips, his resolve wavers, is the day that just might happen.

In the end, no one ever leaves Hawkins.

Notes:

And with that, the thing I've spent the last eight months of my life working on is done. Wow. I signed up on a whim, stressed about outlines and claims, changed an element of the story in October and worked like hell to catch up with rewrites and it's also double my original estimated word count. And it was worth it because I'm really fucking proud of it.

Artwork by @cronesfeetpics to be uploaded later!

Chapter 18: Art by Cronesfeetpics - The Lovers

Notes:

I got permission from the amazing @cronesfeetpics to post the artwork that accompanies this fic! Please bear with me as I've never uploaded art to AO3 before!

The Tarot cards were just perfect for the fic - they kept the tone and theme of the magic, lust and hunger that I wanted the fic to have. I had such a great time working with a wonderful human being and I am just giddy every time I look at these cards.

Second tarot card to come!

Chapter 19: Art by Cronesfeetpics - The Devil

Notes:

And this is the last part of this fic! The second tarot card created by @cronesfeetpics, the wonderful Devil card.

I meant to upload this not so long after the first but we had a death in the family. The worst is over but kinda burying myself in fandom until the funeral.