Chapter Text
Laurel is not fond of the memory of her first kill. It had been a rainy evening, and puddles had leaked into her sneakers as she dragged the body to the river. Drying blood had stained her fingers and her shirt, and her heart had thumped in rapid beats again her chest. She had to swim into the Mississippi with the body before it would float away and then swim, gasping and sobbing, back to shore.
Fear, she learned, her fingers cramping as she dug a shallow hole with her hands, was a far better motivator than adrenaline.
That was the first and only time she ever had to burn her clothes to get rid of the evidence. Laurel Castillo does not like to make the same mistakes twice.
*
The night Brandon Smith grabs Jamie Simon by her shoulders and pushes her onto a bed is the night Laurel realizes she has a pattern.
She's rummaging around Brandon's left kidney when the revelation comes and the thought alone is enough to send her heart back into its rabbit beat of her first few kills- patterns get people caught, patterns breed recklessness. Laurel has an affinity for water, it seems, and this terrifies her. The entire ride out to Jamie Simone's grandparents' farm, Laurel can't stop clenching her fingers against the steering wheel and doesn't stop thinking about sirens until Jamie takes the shovel from her, coldly calm, and finishes piling dirt on Brandon.
"What are you going to do with that?" Jamie asks her on the ride back home, pointing to the saran-wrapped liver sitting between them.
Laurel shrugs as she pulls into Jamie's driveway. "I'll get rid of it."
Jamie pauses in the half space between the car and the car door, stares at Laurel with blue eyes that know too much. Laurel- she hadn't known Jamie's name until this party. They're not friends, and if even if they were, she wouldn't trust her. "You're good at this," Jamie says, like this is something that Laurel does because she can.
Laurel shrugs again.
Jamie looks up- at the stars, the black night, the sliver of a moon dangling in the sky. "There's this guy," she starts, and Laurel knows Jamie won't wake up in the morning scrubbing at her fingernails and dashing to inform the police.
Laurel drives off two minutes later; she sees Jamie watch her leave.
Laurel drives for hours, miles turning to dust under her tires. Her car finally runs out of gas on an old stone bridge just as the sun is just beginning to creep over the horizon.
She gets out, Brandon's liver cradled in her hands.
She walks to the edge of the bridge and looks down. Underneath runs a river, and even at this hour she can see it runs fast and deep, cold water wearing a groove deep into the skin of the earth.
Laurel unwraps Brandon Smith's liver, holds it out it offering, and watches the water swallow it whole.
Her hunger is satisfied; her pattern broken- livers decompose more easily than whole bodies.
She returns to her car, quite content until she looks in the backseat at her backpack and realizes she has the final draft of her AP Euro paper due in two hours.
*
Laurel can't hold back the gasps that well up in her throat as he stabs Connor and again and again, merciless and terrifying and more of a monster than she's ever seen in the mirror. Connor jerks at each pen thrust and she can do nothing but cover her mouth with her hands and be grateful she's not the one lying on that bed. She sees something of herself in Connor's loud exhales and frightened deer gaze after the client gets off him, smiling jovially; but she sees more of herself in the client and his bloodstains and his stuffed trophies. They are kin, the two of them, hunters to the marrow of their bones. Their hearts sing for blood. Laurel used to share Connor's fear (still does sometimes) but now she is stronger than that: smarter than that. Better than that.
That is what Laurel tells herself until, unbidden, comes the thought that Connor looked ready to drink down the man's blood like hot wine before the stabbing started.
After that incident, she watches Connor with eagle eyes- because he's shaken, but recovers remarkably well. Because he doesn't do boyfriends. Because his hands are dark with the sin he carves and Laurel has lived long enough to know the signs.
But mostly, Laurel watches Connor Walsh (the line of his back as he bends to pick up a paper, the soft hollows under his jaw, the way he watches Wes and Michaela, the way he completely dismisses her) she watches him because she doesn't like him, but she doesn't want to cut him open and gift his river to the water, either. It's a novel feeling, and she doesn't know if she likes it.
*
She's scouting the woods several towns over when she has her first encounter with someone like her. She nearly trips over them, in fact. They sit on a tree stump, motionless and staring. A wilting purple flower is tucked behind one ear. Their clothes are brown and cracked, worn down by the cruel forces of nature. "Sorry," she says, once she's regained her footing. "I didn't see you there."
They look up at her with yellow eyes, the irises spilling over into the whites like blood, and she realizes she may have cause to fear. She takes a step back. But they merely nod slowly at her. "Young one," they say slowly. They reach up and remove their hat. "You smell like souls."
"Oh," she says, and considers running.
They return their hat to their head. "Forth with care and good fate," they say, and return to staring at some distant horizon.
Laurel does not return to that wood. Not out of fear, she thinks, but rather something like respect.
*
Aiden remembers Connor very vividly. Very vividly, then gray fuzzy space, then very vividly again. He drives down to see Michaela and can't stop remembering Connor- Connor's eager hands, Connor's fast grin and wild eyes, Connor's mouth catching Aiden's breath in a janitor's closet.
He remembers fading, his mind filling with a grey haze that still terrifies him.
He nearly drowned when he was five - unable to swim -but his sister dragged him to the surface and hit his back until he had coughed all the water out.
That time- the last time - Connor below him, his tie and jacket gone, his eyes so, so dark-
The next time, he brushed Connor off. Connor had flashed a smile at him and moved away, unconcerned. For three weeks after that, they didn't speak, and that's something Aiden has never regretted.
*
"You," Michaela snarls, pushing her unconscious victim down and away and turning to face Laurel head on. She spies the axe, her red eyes snapping to the gore covered head with uncanny quickness.
Laurel brings the axe up in front of her. Not everyone who travels the roads in their dark underworld is friendly. Michaela licks blood off her lips and spits at Laurel's face. "I have no mercy for the likes of you."
Laurel blinks quickly, once, twice, and wipes away little dots of blood on her face with her sleeve. "Don't get DNA on me," she says, far calmer than she feels. "I'm not going to go to prison for cannibalism."
Michaela freaks out, lunges for Laurel, claw-like naisl reaching for Laurel's face, crackling Taser in one hand, a mouth full of sharp teeth seeking her neck. Laurel bats her away with the axe and darts away.
Michaela rubs her bruised cheeks and lunges a second time, only to feint and grab the axe, yanking it away from her. Smart, because Laurel is now weaponless and more interested in protecting the liver tucked in her front coat pocket than tangling with - whatever Michaela is, with her teeth and nails like claws, her elegant posture and her light feet, but mostly - the black feathers that peek out from her disheveled hair, shining under the dim streetlight.
Her enemy freezes, staring at the blade of the old axe. She sniffs delicately and scrunches her nose. She stares at Laurel with open wonder and disgust and takes a half step forward. "Is this… someone's frontal lobe?"
"Hippocampus, actually." The joke falls short.
Michaela's gaze runs up and down Laurel, over her stained coat, the odd bulge the liver creates in her pocket, her skirt and her scuffed boots. She seems to pick out all the littler things- the Target skirt, the scrape on Laurel's lower thigh where tonight's prey fought too much, the blood spray across her cheek that Laurel (mostly) succeeded in wiping away.
Michaela's eyes keep darting to the pocket where she put the liver. Laurel shifts uncomfortably.
Michaela grins, wild eyed - though the red is fading - and triumphant. "Rough night," she asks. The panic is still fading from her voice.
"Messy."
Michaela holds out the axe to her, face split wide in a genuine blood-soaked smile. They walk lonely paths - kin are hard to find, and more so and those that don't eat their fellow. "Happy hunting."
As Laurel continues heading toward the lake, leaving the stench of electricity behind, Michaela reaches out for her victim once more.
*
Is everyone she knows secretly a serial killer?
When she notices that Asher never uses railings while walking down stairs and one night she tracks him to a small club whose name is written in a language she's never seen before and has lots of convenient dumpsters, she starts to think she might be right.
*
Except Connor. He may have killed before (she can't be sure) but all he does now is feed, sucking away minutes and days and months from attractive young men.
(Pun intended, of course).
*
And except Wes, of course. Because Wes is a real life puppy with a trophy and a heart of gold.
(She might adore him, a little bit).
*
Tonight is a bad night for hunting - the moon hangs full and heavy in the dark sky, casting soft trembling reflections on the lake.
Off goes her coat, folded a neat pile on a rock, then her boots, her socks. She rolls up her pants and walks into the lake. First she washes the axe, lazily cutting it through the water and creating little waves that push cold water against her calves. She'll have to wash the lake water out later, but, for now, she lets her skirt get wet.
She rests the axe against a rock.
She walks in, her numb feet gripping slippery stones, until the water comes up to her thighs. She takes a sideways stance and throws the liver as hard as she can. It enters the lake with a splash but bobs back to the surface and floats, tugged along by an unseen string.
In between one blink and the next, it sinks.
Laurel walks out of the lake and uses the unbloodied parts of her coat to dry her legs before she puts on her socks, ties her coat around a rock, and heaves it into the lake. Pollution, but necessary.
*
Asher howls.
Laurel runs inside, bursts through the doors, and sees Asher leaning against the sofa where Laurel fell asleep last night on top of a pile of textbooks. He stands on one leg, clutching the other with his free hand. Michaela is next to him, peeking up from behind the couch; her back to Laurel. Connor is startled, unmoving, gripping the armchair on which he sits with white-knuckled hands.
And on the living room carpet stands Wes in all his noble glory, a stake shining silver in one hand and a gun breathing justice in the other.
Michaela has whirled around. "Laurel!" she and Wes say at the same time, in the same relieved tone. "He's-" Michaela continues, then trails off.
Laurel doesn't need to be told Wes is a hunter: the silver stake speaks volumes.
He stares at her and swallows. His eyes are wide; the gun steady. Asher's hisses fill the silence and steam rises from his thigh. Iron bullets: Wes is no amateur.
Laurel takes a slow step forward but no gunshot comes.
"You too," Wes says flatly, but still he does not shoot.
Laurel takes another step forward. "Me too what?" she asks, trying to find some way to diffuse the situation, but it's too late. Michaela's and Laurel's own hesitation have already given her away. He is Daniel in a den of lions, and the lions are sharp-toothed indeed.
"There are four of us." Connor looks up at Wes to speak. The gun shifts. "There is one of you." He looks up calmly at the gun aimed between his eyes. "You can't win."
Michaela too has gained confidence from Laurel's entrance. She stands and delivers her sentence with flashing teeth: "Leave, Gibbins, or there won't be enough of you left to mop pff the floor."
Wes looks at Laurel again, then to Connor and Michaela. "There are three of you worth anything right now," he says, licking his lips, "and I've got more bullets than that."
Michaela shrugs. "That doesn't mean anything. I'm faster than you, hunter."
Wes motions to Connor with the stake. "Are you fast enough to stop an iron bullet through his brain?" Because I've never met something that could recover from that."
Michaela makes an aborted shrug; Connor goes tightlipped and tense, his hands gripping the leather chair so tightly he might rip it. "We can't always get everything we want. Besides, he's not even really like us." Laurel would believe her clever little lies if it weren't for Michael's fingers drifting towards her purse on the couch - she keeps her taser there.
"Yeah," Wes says, shifting his aim to them, but angling the sharp end of the stake towards Connor. "You're not like him."
Asher huffs. "You're an idiot if you think we're not all exactly the same." Already, the steam from his leg has lessened and he stands straighter.
"Really," Wes asks calmly. "He hasn't killed anyone since I've met him and I certainly can't say the same of you."
"You're wrong," Connor says, hoarsely and in the moment that Wes stares at him with wide eyes Michaela's hand darts into her purse and steals out her taser before hiding it behind her back. Connor shuts his eyes tightly. He's one of the guilty ones, then. He fears his own true nature. "You're wrong," he repeats. Wes shifts his gun back to Connor's forehead, only inches away. "It was-" Connor starts, tears leaking out of his eyes. "Seven weeks ago, when we-"
Laurel doesn't notice that Michaela is launching herself at Wes until she's halfway over the couch and it's too late. "Stop!" Laurel screams at them, at all of them. "Stop!"
And everyone does. Stop. Freeze.
Wes steps back from Connor. Michaela is frozen, standing on the coffee table. But her taser is no longer crackling. She is straining to move forward. Connor opens his eyes. "Don't move," Laurel says breathlessly - oh god what is this she's never been able to do something like this before all she's ever done is give up the liver to the water and she's never been able to - to compel people before - oh god, oh god -
Michaela is the first to fall. She crumples like a rag doll onto the floor. Papers fly everywhere. Across the room, Wes's eyes meet hers, but he's just as dumbfounded as she is.
Not two seconds later, Connor falls back against the chair, a black dart stuck deep into his neck.
She turns toward the kitchen. "Yeah," Sam says, sighting down the gun and stepping into the living room, every muscle in his body smooth and tense as a cat's before a kill. "Don't move."
Laurel feels the sting, then falls.