Chapter Text
Bang! The kickback of the shotgun rocketed through Laura’s arms and made her flinch, still she held on tightly to it. The limp body in front of her was already covered in blood so it would have been hard to see where or if she actually hit it, if not for the fact that the flesh on its back started sizzling around the entry points of the silver shrapnel.
“Silaaaas! Oh, my poor boy… What have they done?” The shrill voice reverberating through the dark night sent a chill down her spine, though she was too high on the adrenaline cursing through her body to notice.
Laura’s gaze was so transfixed on the werewolf laying in the grass in front of her, that she didn’t notice the collection of people accumulating at her back. When the body exploded in a shroud of blood and transformed into that of a young boy, her gaze went to the weapon in her hands. Aghast, she watched her hands as they trembled around the trigger, then lowered the gun to her side.
“Is it dead?” said a timid voice behind her.
Laura, having found her bearings again, whirled around and stared at the group of people behind her. “What the fuck?”
In her defence, everyone looked as dumbfounded as her in that moment. They seemed to be around Laura’s age as well, and she had a sickening realisation. “You’re the other camp counsellors, right? What are you still doing here?”
“Who are you?” A dark-skinned boy seemed to have found his voice first and asserted his leadership of the group, while the others still stared in varied levels of shock and apprehension at Laura’s face. The eyepatch is kind of badass, I guess, she thought self-deprecatingly.
“Is she, like, one of those hunter dudes?” Another one of the counsellors chimed into the not-conversation.
Mentally shaking herself out of her apparent stupor, Laura assessed the situation before her. Whatever werewolf she had killed, it hadn’t been Chris Hackett. At least it couldn’t have been, because unless the camp had been run by a kid all along, there was no way that the boy lying face down in the mud in front of her was camp leader Chris Hackett. Brother of Travis Hackett, sheriff of North Kill, who was 56 for god’s sake.
Which meant, there had to be more than one werewolf. What a mindfuck.
Laura addressed the group of counsellors, “Where is Chris Hackett?”
Before anybody could attempt an answer, there was a rustling in the trees and a dark figure burst through the dark underbrush and into the clearing. “Nobody moves!” a deep voice shouted with an authoritarian tone that brooked no argument.
Speak of the devil, Laura thought and rolled her eyes.
The sheriff strode past the group of counsellors and placed himself in the middle of the small gathering. His face set into a grim expression that depicted the underlying anger, frustration, and annoyance at the current situation. The flashlight of his shotgun travelled over each person individually, resting on the dark-skinned boy for a while who, as Laura only then realised, had an own shotgun trained on her.
He lowered it hastily which seemed to appease the sheriff, who then proceeded to fix his sights on Laura. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!”
“What does it look like, dumbass?” Laura replied angrily. “I’m cleaning up the mess you left us with!”
While her brain was still working overtime to figure out what was going on, the counsellors observed the exchange with rapt fascination. They didn’t understand what was going on either, because they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Nobody seemed inclined to move or speak, as the tension in the air was palpable.
Then an eerie quietness overcame the camp as the sheriff’s gaze settled onto the body behind Laura. His eyes went wide and his face paled as he stared at the blood-covered corpse of the young boy, then he immediately returned his gaze to Laura. He seemed flabbergasted.
A pained grunt followed by a dull thud broke the silence as one of the counsellors fainted. The sheriff and Laura looked over to him and saw the inky blackness in his veins blossoming outwards before fading completely.
“Nick!” The resulting chaos between the counsellors spurred Laura into action. She used the distraction of the sheriff to bolt into the trees and in the general direction of the lake. If that guy had been infected and was cured now, there was a slight possibility that Max could be as well.
Or the person she had just killed was actually a kid from the summer camp who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, got bitten and bit the counsellor in return. Which would still leave Chris Hackett as the first werewolf. Either way, her immediate priority was to get away from Travis, because she couldn’t help Max if he locked her up again.
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Sprinting through a dense forest in the dark with only half her field of vision and no depth perception was harder than she imagined. She had difficulties judging the height and length of the tree branches sticking out into her chosen path, which caused her to run into most of them or barge into a tree while dodging instead.
But it didn’t matter. She had to get as far away from the cop as she could.
Only when the muscles in her legs trembled and were close to giving out did she stop. Catching her breath, she let herself fall back onto her ass and rested her arms on her knees, the shotgun cradled loosely in her hands.
Her breaths still came in deep and quick succession, and she used the time to look around. She didn’t know for how long she had been running, but it had to have been a while. Still, she was nowhere near the lake and she didn’t even know where to start looking for Chris Hackett.
Fuck, she thought. How the hell was she supposed to know where she was going? There wasn’t anything she could use to guide herself if she didn’t follow the normal paths. All trees looked the damn same!
She perked her ears to gauge if anyone was following her. She could hear some faint rustling and snapping branches, but it sounded like it came from the direction she was going in, not where she came from.
Warily, she looked ahead but couldn’t see anything. Probably just an animal, she calmed herself. Hopefully just an animal.
Then it started raining, and the pattering of the thick droplets of water hitting the leaves drowned out all other sounds. In addition to being half-blind, her sense of hearing was now compromised as well.
But she couldn’t sit around moping all night. She had to check on Max. If the counsellors were still here, and had apparently found a shotgun, she had to make sure that Max was alright. With the weird Hackett family, there was no telling whether that shotgun could have been loaded with silver.
Mentally backing up her decision, she stood and adjusted her grip on the gun. With a glance left and right, she continued forward in a jog.
After a few minutes, a thick branch in her way forced her to dodge to the right again. Her pace had picked up again as well, and by now she didn’t even flinch when she yet again collided with a tree on her blind side. Only that tree was oddly… soft?
She grunted as she toppled over. Trees weren’t supposed to give in to my weight, she thought right as she heard a soft “Ugh,” beneath her. And they definitely weren’t supposed to make human noises.
Realising that she actually collided with another human being, she scrambled backwards and fixed her shotgun on the man in front of her.
“Stay back,” she demanded. “Who are you?”
The man, still bewildered by her presence, replied with a counterquestion, “Who are you?”
“Answer the damn question!”
Obviously intimidated by her, or more precisely the shotgun aimed at his face, he relented. “Name’s Chris Hackett. I’m the owner of the summer camp. Now what are you doing out here in the woods?”
“Wait, you’re Chris Hackett? Aren’t you supposed to be a werewolf?” Laura couldn’t wrap her mind around the events unfurling in front of her.
“I- err… How- …WHAT?” The man seemed at a loss for words. Laura couldn’t blame him though; she wasn’t much better off.
Chris’ face shifted from several emotions at once, then settled into a surprised frown as understanding dawned on him. “You must be Laura Kearney, one of the counsellors my brother had locked up for the summer. But why are you here?”
Laura, deciding that the man in front of her wasn’t going to be a threat to her in his current state, lowered her weapon to the ground.
And should you yourself be cursed, armed with silver, end the first. The poem Travis had let her read revolved around inside her mind. Now she had solid proof. If Chris Hackett was cured, then so was Max.
She decided that honesty was the best policy. Maybe this Hackett would be more forthcoming with information than the last and only one she encountered. “I actually came to kill you, but seeing that you are cured, whoever it was I killed back there, must have actually been the first. Which means, Max is cured as well, isn’t he?”
“Yeah… wait. Whoever you killed? Who did you kill?” He was sounding desperate now and it was further solidified as he stood up and yanked her with him. “No-, Kaylee, Caleb…” he whimpered.
“I obviously don’t know who it was, but it was a boy. Don’t tell me your whole family consists of werewolves.” Laura couldn’t look at the shell of a man in front of her and averted her eyes while speaking.
Chris grabbed her shoulders and shook her, rage now clouding his vision. “Caleb?” he screamed at her, spittle flying onto her shirt. Shit, and I just had to rub it in his face.
He crumpled back to the ground, sobbing. Laura didn’t know what to do, but she had to know more. She tried again with a bit more tact and hoped that she didn’t put her foot further in her mouth, “if it’s any consolation- I’m guessing Caleb is your son. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill a kid. But I thought-,“ she rambled. “Whatever. Please tell me my boyfriend is cured now, too.”
He bristled at her words, and she had the sickening feeling he was going to lash out again. But then he raised his head and stared at her, “Did you say a kid? How old was the boy you… killed?”
“I don’t know, I thought he was a camper from the summer camp. He couldn’t have been more than twelve, but it was dark.”
“But that can’t be… Did he have dark hair?” Chris obviously wasn’t going to be more forthcoming with information until he had his own questions answered. Laura felt like she owed him as much though.
“I don’t know, he was covered in blood, and it was dark.” Thinking back to the body laying in the dirt she tried to make out his complexion. “I couldn’t really see his hair colour, but it he had to have had fair hair, definitely not black.” Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to see the blood in it, she supposed.
Chris Hackett’s eyes widened in shock as he continued to stare at her. “That can’t be,” he repeated. Seemingly coming to a decision, he stood up. His face set into an unreadable expression as he levelled his gaze with hers again. Resting a hand on Laura’s shoulder he pressed on, “Where was it?”
Something in his eyes told her that he meant no harm. Kind of like the impression she got from his brother Travis, but different. More paternal. She felt compelled to be honest with him. “At the camp. The other counsellors are there as well.”
He purposefully strode in the direction of the cabins. She followed him because she didn’t have much choice, all sense of direction had been lost while running through the woods. She would figure out a way to get to Max in time, she told herself.
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She could hear the commotion at the cabins even before Chris and her made it through the treeline into the clearing. Everybody seemed to speak at once, yet nobody said anything.
And amidst the group of counsellors stood Travis, desperately trying to gauge how much they had seen. Judging by the grim expression on his face, that endeavour proved to be more difficult than he had anticipated.
Laura was surprised that he was still there. Shouldn’t he have gone after her? Maybe she had outrun him, and he had decided to go back instead. Whatever the case, he was here but hadn’t seen her yet. She could still run away again, but the tense man beside her compelled her to stay.
“Chris?!”
All eyes turned towards Laura and Mr. Hackett, who still stared at the corpse of the boy in front of them, dumbfounded and at a loss for words. He didn’t seem to notice the other people around them. Time seemed at a stand-still as his brothers’ exclamation fell on deaf ears.
Laura risked a glance at Travis and couldn’t believe the expression she saw in his face. Even though it was only illuminated by the faint glow of the moon, he looked younger. As if an invisible weight had been lifted off his shoulders and he was finally free again.
Then Chris turned towards her. She saw the expression from Travis’ face mirrored in his own before tears spilled out of his eyes again. He wrapped her in a giant bear-hug. Through his sobs, he chanted “Thank you, thank you,” over and over.
Her own face was a mixture of bewilderment and shock. There was a grown man crying in her arms. Not out of grief, but rather out of joy. Even though she just killed someone. A child.
“Could someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” Laura yelled at no one in particular while she wrapped her arms around Mr. Hackett’s body and patted him awkwardly on the back.
The Sheriff composed himself first. “You just killed Silas, the Dog Boy. The one who cursed my whole family. You did in one night, what I didn’t manage in six years.” He said in a flat tone.
“That is great and all, but does it mean that Max is cured as well? That we can leave?” She couldn’t help being snippy with the cop.
“You broke the curse. Everyone can finally go on now,” whispered Chris in awe. He loosened his grip of her and addressed his brother. “Travis, I’m sorry for doubting you. Whatever you saw in her, now I see it too.”
Laura could feel a moment forming between the brothers there, so she decided to stay silent and observe them. It also gave her time to digest the words that were said. Whatever Travis saw in me? She actually had to be careful not to burst out laughing at that. She was sure he saw her as nothing but a brat and would it have been her laying dead in the grass between them, the only thing he would think would be good riddance.
He held you captive for two months, why would it matter what his thoughts would be? Deciding she needed to stop that train of thought before it derailed, she pushed it down and focused on the here and now.
She looked down at herself and noticed that she was still holding tightly onto the shotgun. She also noticed that her arms were covered with scrapes and bruises where she had her sleeves rolled up. Briefly, she wondered what her face looked like, but that wasn’t important at the moment. She had to know if Max was alright, her own wellbeing wasn’t her priority.
The idea of simply running off crossed her mind, but she wasn’t one to run away from the consequences of her actions. Never could it be said that Laura Kearney was a coward.
“Hate to break your moment there, but I really gotta check on Max.”
“You didn’t run off to check on him in the first place?” Travis Hackett actually had the gall to look offended at her interruption.
“Well, no. I came to kill Chris, and seeing that it wasn’t him I shot, I went in search for him. I never expected to encounter him in his human form, though. Why didn’t you tell me that I ended the whole curse in the first place?” She didn’t know why she felt the need to defend herself and talk back to the sheriff.
His eyebrows rose and if he’d still had a hairline they could disappear in, they would. “Because you bolted before I could say anything,” he deadpanned.
Fair point, she had to concede.