Chapter Text
“Fuck!” Jason groaned as he sprinted down the cereal aisle, grasping onto the shallow, but bleeding, cut on his side. He was so utterly fucked.
Jason was currently in upstate New York; he wasn’t exactly sure where. The town, if it could even be called that, only had one grocery store, one gas station, one motel, and a population of 5,000. He didn’t even know the name of the town. He'd been so concentrated on diving into a bed that he’d blown right past the welcome sign to park in the motel lot.
He hadn’t originally planned on stopping for the night, but he’d forced his hand after nearly falling asleep at the wheel and taking out a woman jogging with her dog. It was only then that he’d realized he was exhausted, driving nearly nonstop from Maryland's eastern shore to upstate New York wearing him paper-thin. Ultimately, he’d crunched the numbers and decided that there was enough time in his schedule to make a stopover before arriving at his real destination: Buffalo, New York.
Jason needed to be in Buffalo by tomorrow night or the ankle monitor he had shackled to his leg like a modernized ball-and-chain would start screaming bloody murder. He’d made the mistake of missing his deadline once before, and he would prefer for it to never happen again.
After he’d checked into his farm-themed motel room (which came furnished with a rooster shaped alarm clock and cow-printed sheets), Jason had walked across the street to the grocery store. Exhaustion had pulled at him the entire way, but the aisles full of fructose-corn syrup and red dye 40 couldn’t be ignored, calling to him like the sea’s most alluring siren. A few mini brownies wouldn’t kill him.
It was just Jason’s luck that he happened to stumble across a supernatural creature while making said late night snack run.
Jason had turned the corner in the grocery store, mini brownies and Mexican coke in hand, when a man that barely passed the 5’6 mark had collapsed, convulsing on the ground in pain. Jason had rushed over, prepared to use his shoddy medical skills to administer whatever help he could, but, before he’d even gotten the chance to, the man had abruptly stopped shaking and began to grow in size, his limbs extending, back arching, and dark, coarse fur covering what used to be pale skin. Jason hadn’t been quick enough to jump away before the man fully transformed, the beast getting a clean swipe at his abdomen.
He might’ve still been new to this whole supernatural hunting business thing, but the large, furry, wolf-shaped creature that had howled after Jason had regained enough of his senses to kick it into a produce display full of corn was easy enough to identify. It was a werewolf.
Jason hadn’t fought a werewolf in the two months that he had been on the road, but he knew enough (thank you The Werewolf of Paris) that he remembered what was deadly to the creatures: silver and wolfsbane. He had silver bullets in the glove compartment of his car, produced and supplied by the FBI task force overseeing his parole.
Jason still couldn’t quite wrap his head around the fact that the government was aware of supernatural threats to greater society and were able to keep it so well hidden from the public, but who was he to question that feasibility; his adoptive father ran around in a batsuit every night, and very few people had a clue that the man under the cowl was the same billionaire that graced the gossip column of The Gotham Gazette. If people couldn’t figure out that Bruce Wayne and Batman were one and the same, then it couldn’t be all that hard to convince John Smith and Betty Sue that vampires and ghouls were merely myths.
Jason knew better now though. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies, shapeshifters. They were all real. And he was being tasked to hunt them down, one by one. If he didn’t… well, he would be serving a life sentence in Arkham. With his luck, he’d probably end up cellmates with the Joker. Hunting down supernatural creatures had seemed like the better option at the time. Jason wasn’t so sure now that he had a werewolf breathing down his neck.
The ear-splintering shriek of his shoes sliding against the grocery store’s linoleum floor brought Jason out of his thoughts, and he used the momentum to fling himself toward the door to the grocery store’s backroom. Hopefully, it would lead him to the loading dock.
Once he was in the backroom, Jason paused to take in his surroundings. He was no longer Robin or the Red Hood, but he could never forget the training that he had received from Batman and the League of Assassins. It wouldn’t be wise of him to make any more decisions without a plan, regardless of how badly he wanted to make a beeline for his car.
Jason spotted an emergency exit map on the wall and moved closer to inspect it: the loading dock was across the entire warehouse. Great. He couldn’t hear any telltale signs of the massive, probably furious, werewolf lumbering around, but he knew that meant nothing. Werewolves were bound to have an incredible sense of smell and Jason’s blood was on the claws of the creature. He wouldn’t be able to escape with his life unless he ended the beast’s.
Jason decided that his best course of action was to move quickly. The longer he waited around, the more likely it was that the werewolf would pin down his exact location. He pulled one arm out of his jacket, ripping the long sleeve off of his undershirt with his teeth. He secured the sleeve around the cut in his side as best as he could, stopping the bleeding. He didn’t want to leave a blood trail in his wake to make it even easier for the werewolf to track his scent.
Grabbing his gun, Jason removed the safety and cautiously began jogging in the direction of the loading dock. He still didn’t hear anything. That was weird, but maybe the creature had already figured out Jason’s plan and was waiting in the parking lot to greet him. God, he sure hoped that wasn’t the case. He didn’t like his current odds. Not with only one pistol loaded with standard bullets on him.
Jason did always have the option of calling upon the all-blades, but he saw those as a last resort. The blades didn’t come without a price: every time he wielded them, they siphoned off a part of his soul. It was painless, but the fact that he knew it was happening was enough for him to rarely use them.
Plus, they didn’t work if his opponent wasn’t evil. More often than not, the monsters he ran into weren’t even close to being at the same level of evil as the Untitled. A lot of them were confused or unaware of their monster status while others had fully embraced their monstrous identity and were harming humans for sport rather than survival. Jason didn’t like to dwell on his meetings with the monsters that were more human than anything. It felt like looking in a mirror, but specifically the kind of mirror found in a circus tent. A funhouse mirror whose shiny surface provided a warped and wonky version of the beholder, yet, despite the twisted changes, the mirror offered a reflection all the same however truthful it might be.
Without any problems, Jason made it to the loading dock. He peeked outside. Nothing. He even pressed his ear to the door to listen, but heard nothing strange, simply the normal sounds of small town traffic and the brief hoot of an owl.
It was only now that Jason truly began to feel concerned; he hadn’t been the only person in the grocery store when the werewolf and him had gotten into their brief scuffle. He at least expected to hear a police siren or the screams of panicked civilians as they ran for their lives in fear.
As he stepped out onto the dock, Jason had to stifle the laugh of disbelief that worked its way up his throat when the clouds parted to reveal a full moon glaring back at him. He would’ve stopped to admire how beautiful it was if the sight wasn’t mocking him. Jason had no idea how he’d been careless enough to miss that today was the full moon; he even had the moon phases programmed into his phone’s calendar.
The agents monitoring him had given him three tips before releasing him from federal lock-up:
- Keep a gun on you at all times (Jason could get down with that. He preferred two, which was even better).
- Don’t try to remove the ankle monitor for any reason (he’d attempted that the first chance he was without agent supervision, but woke up hours later after being knocked unconscious by the absurd amount of voltage the monitor shot out when it felt the device being tampered with).
- Don’t go outside on a full moon.
Jason should’ve learned to heed the agents’ advice after refusing to follow tip number 2. Arguably, tip number 3 was even more important to follow if the grizzly-bear-sized werewolf Jason had run into tonight was anything to go by.
Even though the beast was nowhere to be seen at the moment, Jason wasn’t stupid. He would love to think that the werewolf had decided to abandon his prey, but the beast was purely functioning on its most basic of instincts thanks to the full moon: stay alive and kill anything that posed a threat to its survival. Jason was a threat.
He needed to get to his car immediately.
Jason made a mad dash for it, caution be damned. He could see his car in the distance. He didn’t know what it was that made him abruptly stop running to hide behind a row of hedges lining the motel parking lot, instinct maybe, but it saved him from becoming a chew-toy to the world’s largest mutt.
The werewolf had jumped out of the shadows onto the roof of Jason’s car, leaving a humungous dent. Jason had to muffle a groan of despair. The repair cost to have that fixed would be coming out of what little monthly stipend the task force provided to him. Jason was so going to have to cut Mexican coke out of his budget for the foreseeable future. That is, if he survived until dawn.
With the beast currently sniffing around Jason’s car, there was no way for him to get to his stash of silver bullets. That left him with only two options: barricade himself in his motel room for the night or find silver somewhere else. Neither were ideal.
There had to be other ways to kill a werewolf besides silver and wolfsbane. There were limits to what any living creature could survive. Jason just had to think, or, better yet, pull out his smartphone and do a little research.
He’d prefer not to do any research within thirty feet of the predator that was feigning to tear him apart limb from limb, so Jason opened up his maps app and looked for a 24 hour diner. Small towns always had at least one, even ones with a population of 4,999 and 1 werewolf. Jason nearly sighed in relief as a singular pin appeared on the map: an open diner was a 7 minute walk from the motel.
Jason chanced a look over the hedge he was hiding behind, checking to make sure the werewolf was still on his car. In what might be his only lucky break of the night, Jason could see that the beast was entranced by something. It had its large maw open, nearly drooling, and was trying to claw through his car’s front window.
Ah, right. Jason had left a half eaten burger there. He nearly patted himself on the back for being too tired earlier to clean out his car.
With the burger acting as a distraction, Jason crept along the hedgeline until he was far enough away from his car to no longer believe that the werewolf could easily reach him. Confident that he could safely turn his back on the beast, Jason picked up the pace and jogged to the diner.
He took a seat at the diner’s bar, facing the window that overlooked the main street, and turned on his phone. He typed into the search bar: “ways to kill a werewolf.” Why sugarcoat it? He needed answers. He was already on every government watchlist known to man, there was no longer any reason to care about being surveilled when he had an ankle monitor weighing down one of his legs for Christ’s sake.
The results of Jason’s search weren’t much, but they were better than nothing. He clicked on a hobbyist’s blog dedicated to all things supernatural that looked like it hadn’t been updated since 2009. Perfect. Jason had learned over the last few months that anything dated pre-modern social media tended to be the most accurate for monster hunting purposes. This particular blogger cited that silver and wolfsbane were the most commonly known threats to werewolves, which Jason already knew about, but fire and beheading were just as deadly.
Jason was strong, but beheading a creature that big in a traditional manner would take a serious amount of force. He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to find an axe or machete laying around that could do the job since he currently had no access to the stash of weapons he kept in his car’s trunk. The all-blades were an option, but he couldn’t be certain this particular werewolf was evil enough for the blades to harm it.
So that left him with fire. He’d need gasoline and a lot of it. Blessedly, the town was big enough to have one functioning gas station. Jason just needed a way to lure the beast there.
A woman in a 1960s themed baby-blue waitress uniform approached Jason to ask him for his order, tapping her pen against her lips as she waited on his response. Jason’s stomach rumbled, forlornly remembering the mini brownies he’d dropped on the grocery store’s floor in his haste to escape from the werewolf, but there wasn’t much time for him to eat. He needed to deal with the werewolf before there were any casualties. The smell of frying oil and grease wafting from the kitchen reminded Jason of the werewolf pawing at his car window, and his lips curled in the faintest hint of a smile as he asked the waitress for one burger to go.
While he waited for his takeout, Jason worked out his plan. It was admittedly insane, but it would have to do. He was never one to shy away from risky or elaborate schemes anyway.
The waitress brought Jason his order and slid him an extra serving of fries. He looked up at her in confusion, but she shoved the fries into his hands and mentioned something about the kid in the back overcooking them. Jason left a $10 tip on the countertop, the taste of slightly burnt fries lingering on his tongue, and offered the woman a grateful nod before heading in the direction of the gas station.
The gas station was tiny. It only had 4 pumps, but that was enough for Jason to douse the ground in gasoline. To make sure nobody else would pull up to the station in the time that Jason needed to lure the werewolf there, Jason had asked (more like told) the attendant with a loaded gun held in his face to turn off all the lights at the station and to line traffic cones up at all the entrances to block any cars from entering. He’d then promptly threatened the attendant to leave the premises and to lock himself up in his home for the night unless he’d like a few new bullet shaped holes in his body.
Satisfied with his work, Jason grabbed the rapidly cooling burger in its soggy to-go bag and made his way back to his parked car. Jason could only hope that the werewolf was still where he’d last seen it and that it hadn’t run off to dismember any innocent townspeople.
Jason slowed as he approached the motel hedgeline, listening carefully. He heard a low keen that was more bass booming than any average dog could ever hope to achieve. Steeling himself, Jason stood to his full height above the hedges, waving the burger in the air.
“I got a delivery for one hungry werewolf?”
The werewolf heaved itself to its feet from where it was laying on the hood of Jason’s car, hackles raised, and its responding growl reverberated the ground Jason was standing on with its strength. The beast’s hind legs visibly tensed as it prepared to jump claws first at Jason.
Not wanting his face to get torn off, Jason sucked in a lungful of air and promptly took off at a full sprint. He didn’t need to look behind himself to know the werewolf was close behind, the beast’s teeth nipping at his heels.
He knew that he’d only have one shot at achieving his plan as he saw the gas station appear in his line of sight. Jason fumbled for the lighter in his pocket and spun around in front of the traffic cones blocking one of the entrances to the gas station. He hoped the smell of the burger was enough for the werewolf to ignore the almost overpowering scent of gasoline radiating off the station’s concrete lot. He tossed the burger into the center of the lot and dove into the bushes to the left of the gas station but not before throwing his lit lighter along with it.
The werewolf leaped over the traffic cones and into the center of the station. Triumphantly, it turned to look in Jason’s direction, the burger hanging from its jaws.
Where the fuck was the explosion?!
Jason was about to start panicking when he saw his lighter sputter back to life in one of the gasoline puddles he had created earlier, the flame growing stronger as the wind threatening to extinguish it died down.
Jason ducked and covered, rolling further into the bushes as an explosion shook the dirt he was laying on.
An earth-shattering howl erupted into the night air as the werewolf’s coat caught on fire, the acrid stench of burning hair making its way into Jason’s nose.
The beast turned in frantic circles, looking for a means of escape, but rapidly realized it was surrounded on all sides by a sea of flames. The werewolf made one final turn before looking directly at Jason, its hauntingly blue eyes piercing against the red-orange glow of the fire.
Despite not being able to speak in its animal form, that didn’t seem to stop the beast from conveying its thoughts through its eyes. Jason swore he could read every emotion swirling in their blue depths. He watched as rage turned into fear and then eventually settled upon resignation, as if the werewolf knew its time on Earth had come to an end.
Jason shuddered. He might not have died from flames, but he certainly knew what it was like to die in an explosion. It was agonizing. Made worse when you were conscious and actively struggling to fill your lungs with smoke-free air. Made worse still when you realized your death was inescapable and that, beyond all reasoning, no one was going to save you. Not in time anyway.
After what felt like hours, but only really could’ve been minutes, the beast collapsed and its pained whimpering died out. The werewolf took one last breath before morphing back into its human form, flesh searing from the man’s bones due to the heat emitting off of the roaring flames.
A singular tear slipped out of Jason’s eye, and he quickly wiped it away. He couldn’t let himself feel sorry for every creature that he killed. He couldn’t let himself care. Empathy would get him nowhere. He knew because it had gotten him locked up in federal prison where his only options were to become a monster hunter contracted by the government or to spend life in a 6’ x 8’ asylum cell.
Choosing to become a monster hunter didn’t stop Jason from hating this part of the job however. He had no idea if that werewolf was actually a danger to society or not, but he also knew that he couldn’t let it live either. It made things a whole lot easier to stomach if he believed that every monster had lost their humanity or never had any to begin with. That the only good monster was a dead monster.
He was sure that there were people who thought the same about him. That there was nothing natural about his resurrection. That there was something monstrous about him. That he shouldn’t be alive. Some days, Jason found himself agreeing.
But, Jason was alive, and now he had to live with that.
Jason steadied his breathing and pulled out his phone, dialing 911. He let the dispatcher know that an explosion had occurred at the gas station as he was driving through town and that there seemed to be someone trapped in the inferno. He promptly hung up once the dispatcher started asking too many questions and trudged towards the motel at last.
~~~~~~
Jason closed the door to his motel room and laughed tiredly at the theme. He’d forgotten in the chaos of everything that he’d be sleeping on cow-printed sheets soon. He might not sleep well, but a few hours of restlessly shifting and turning with his eyes closed was better than nothing.
Before he could jump under the covers, he needed to send a status update to his supervisors. Handlers. Jailers. It was all the same thing to him. He pulled up the encrypted messaging app on his laptop and typed in his username and password.
[clitlover85 is now online]
clitlover85: ran into a furry friend tonight
clitlover85: everything was taken care of
user0101: How many times have we asked you to change your username?
Jason hummed. Of course they didn’t care to ask what had happened to him or if he was ok. Him messaging them was a clear enough sign that he was alive. He was also pretty positive the ankle monitor he wore had a means of tracking his heart rate so they’d know if he kicked the bucket.
clitlover85: not a fan of classic literature I see
clitlover85: still on track for tomorrow
user0101: Message us upon your arrival.
[user0101 is now offline]
Well, that was that. They never spent long messaging Jason. At most it was coordinates or links to encrypted files on his assigned cases. Jason’s chat username was the only thing that ever got a rise out of whichever agent was in charge of chatting with him for the day and he refused to change it as a result. He was shocked that they hadn’t put in an IT request to override it already. Small victories.
With his daily check-in completed, Jason could finally get ready for bed. He shuffled to the bathroom and turned on the shower, trying to relax as steam filled the air. He took a moment to more closely examine the slash the werewolf had given him earlier that night and found that the wound had already stopped bleeding. More confident that he didn’t need to do too much to address it first-aid wise, Jason clambered into the shower and hissed as the warm water pelted against the gash, cleaning it.
Jason reached for the motel’s shitty shampoo and lathered it through his curls. It’d been a few months since he’d gotten out of prison and wasn’t required to keep his hair close-cropped anymore, which meant it had grown long enough to curl against his ears. It also meant that he would need to redye his hair soon, the white streak starting to appear at his roots.
His handlers had said he could do whatever he wanted with his appearance; their only caveat being that the white streak had to go. It was far too recognizable to people who kept up with Gotham's criminal night life and vigilantes. To public knowledge, Jason (aka the Red Hood) was still locked up in prison, and the task force would like to maintain that ruse for as long as possible. So bye-bye platinum bangs.
Rinsing the shampoo out, Jason scrubbed his body down with soap that smelled suspiciously like hay until he no longer reeked of gasoline and turned the water off, grabbing a towel. Once he felt like he wasn’t dripping water everywhere, Jason brushed his teeth and allowed himself to yawn.
He’d been unimaginably tired hours ago, so fighting with a werewolf for the better part of the night practically left him dead on his feet. His eyes barely opened after every heavy blink and the thought of sleep sounded so appealing that Jason almost forgot that he was prone to nightmares. Nightmares that felt so lifelike that he often woke up heart pounding, breath caught in his throat, and hand halfway to the gun he kept stashed under his mattress. He knew tonight would probably be no different, but he’d try anyway.
Head resting on a cow-printed pillow, Jason blearily closed his eyes. He started counting down from 100 by 7 and repeated the process until he felt his consciousness slip away.
He dreamed of blue eyes and flames. Of lighters that morphed into timers counting down to 00:00. Of howling that transformed into maniacal laughter.
Jason tossed and turned but didn’t wake. At least not until the rooster alarm clock crowed out at ten, which shocked Jason into sitting upright. He rubbed at his eyes as he willed his heart to calm, slowly remembering where he was and what he’d been tasked with.
He was in upstate New York. He’d killed a werewolf last night and set the town’s only gas station on fire. He needed to get out of said town and be on the road towards Buffalo before any witnesses could link him to last night’s events, yet he couldn’t quite stop himself from being curious as to what the town’s versions of events were. So, with that in mind, Jason gathered up his meager belongings and made his way to the front desk to check out. And to gossip a little.
The teenager manning the motel front desk put down their phone as Jason approached, blowing a bubble with the gum they were loudly chewing on. “How may I help you?”
“Checking out. Heard I slept through a lot last night.”
“Room number?” They asked, taking Jason’s keycard and typing something on the computer. “And yeah, you could say that.”
“Room 11,” Jason responded. “What are they saying happened?”
“Total freak accident. Something about the pumps at the gas station leaking, probably why no attendants were there. Sucks for Thomas though. What a horrible way to die.”
“Thomas…?”
The teen looked up at Jason then, done with whatever they needed to do on the computer. “He's the guy who died in the fire. He was new to town. A bit of a lone wolf but he never bothered anybody.”
A lone wolf, right. Jason nearly laughed at the irony. “That’s awful. Nothing else like that has happened in town recently? No animal attacks or anything?”
The teen shook their head. “Nothing major. Some cattle have been turning up dead, so people thought a cougar or bear might be hanging around. Why do you ask?”
“I work for Fish and Wildlife. Just curious.”
Great. Of course Jason had run into the one werewolf that might be able to make a case for being on a non-human diet. That didn’t mean he shouldn’t have done what he did. The werewolf, Thomas, had gotten a taste of Jason’s blood and it was only a matter of time before he switched from cows to resurrected ex-vigilantes and then to innocent townspeople. Killing the werewolf was harm reduction in the grand scheme of things.
Not wanting to take up anymore of the teen’s time, Jason waved in goodbye and left the motel.
He nearly fell to his knees at the sight of his car in broad daylight rather than the muted moonlight from last night. It looked like it’d been rammed full speed into a massive deer, dents covering the roof and hood. Wiry fur was stuck to the bumper and what looked like dried slobber was caked to the windshield. Patting his car solemnly, Jason opened the driver’s side door and started the engine. Everything sounded fine and no warning signs lit up on his dash, which was a relief. It meant he should be able to finish his drive to Buffalo with no car-related problems.
Jason loaded the coordinates he’d been given for his mission in Buffalo onto his phone, pulling out of the motel parking lot.
He had a yeti to kill.