Fuel

Morrigan pulled out her phone as it buzzed from her jean pocket.

"Hello?" she asked, unsure who it was but hoping it would be Shane.

"Hey, sis," the voice responded. "I'm at the school. Sorry I missed you at the diner earlier."

"You're a jerk," Morrigan chastised. "I thought you were dead."

Shane cleared his throat. "Hey, look, I'm sorry if I scared you."

Morrigan looked out the window of her motel room. Just last year he'd disappeared on a hunt only to show up months later with a broken leg and bloody scrapes all down his back. "Just don't do that again, Shane. I'm serious. Last time you took off like this, Mom and Dad planned your funeral."

The phone was quiet on the other end. "Look, I'm going up to the school to stake it out tonight. There's supposed to be a job here and I've hit a dead end. Maybe I'm missing something. Not like I'm asking for my little sister's help, though, so don't you dare tell Kyler, or Mom and Dad or I swear... Hey, and Mor? Don't go anywhere tonight. I'll meet you in a few hours, try to get some sleep."

Morrigan closed the phone and put it back in her pocket. She hated Shane for dragging her here. She would rather be heading back to school at Colorado State like the rest of her friends- but one thing she'd known for quite a while: nothing in her family was simple, and nowhere was truly safe.

"Hey, and Mor? Don't go anywhere tonight. I'll meet you in a few hours, try to get some sleep."

“Oh so you have her back? Right. Where shall I start? Let’s start with the stranger she pick up on a lonely street, and when you threw her through a wall, when you where sitting safe in this car while she nearly got killed from a crazy mermaid. You bring her more into danger then you ever helped her. You don’t have her back, you are not here, and you don’t listen. As soon a hot girl or any girl passes you, you let her down. You always do that. So shut the hell up. You are not her brother! Do you hear me? I am her brother, me not you!”

He touched Lenna’s shoulder careful.

“I’m here for you Elle, you know I am. I’m your big brother and I’ll always, always look out for you!”

Lenna looked at Rome.

“Are you really having my back? Sorry. I know you do. It’s just sometimes not fair that you seem to forget me, and that I’m silly that I think of you like... I dunno like a big brother and that makes me sad. He never looked at me like you do, you see me mostly.”

“Remember in all the dangers he put you. All the lonely night when he was out, he is not a brother!”

Lenna looked again confused in the rear-view mirror to check if someone or something was on the backseat, but it was still empty. What was wrong with her, she felt like yelling at Rome and then apologizing again for yelling. She felt weird.

“Let’s just hurry to check out the School and then have a break or maybe it’s time to move on. After all you can take care of yourself, you can hunt on your own. Maybe I go back to hunting alone. I was good at it.”

Rome was confused. And a little hurt. So he decided to skip the big brother speech, which was going to be awkward anyway, and focused on what really bugged him:

"Whoa, okay, what? You're not hunting alone, chica. We decided that a long time ago, when we realized that I need a brain and you need someone to look after you. We're in this together, end of discussion."

Rome wasn't sure how to voice this out loud, but what little instincts he possessed (that weren't directly tied to women or his weird psychic crap, which were highly acute) were raising all the alarms. Something was wrong. With Elenna, sort of, but around her. Something that--well, it sounded stupid, okay, but was angry at him and had bad intentions for her.

Whatever it was, it only made him defensive. And all the more determined not to let her out of his sight. He wasn't going to tell her that--she'd probably throw a tantrum and insist she was a big girl who could take care of herself--which was so clearly the case--but he was going to watch her like a hawk. He had never had a little sister, but he imagined dealing with Elenna for the next few days was about how annoying that would be.

And on zero sleep. This was going to be fun.

Aly cringed down the last of her third cup of coffee in as many hours. She was still sore but the added leg room helped. It also helped that at the last rest stop her and Georgie had figured out they were the same size and now she wore a very comfortable pair of stylish jeans. She'd also managed to score some better shoes at a store they passed with the last of her cash.

The town of Chesterton, New York looked like most sleepy New England towns. The main street was lined with middle income sedans and colorful shops--or they would be colorful were it not damp and drizzling. It had the sweet scent of wet trees though. She took in a deep breath letting the soggy air cleanse her mind like the coffee couldn't. Then they pulled over. Aly didn't want to get out of the car and join the others. She wanted to grab a cab and see if her apartment in the city was already cleaned out by CSU--of course it had. Shame too--an apartment overlooking Central Park under a million dollars was a rare occurrence.

Aly hung back from the group nibbling on her lower lip in the muggy afternoon. She averted her eyes whenever Caleb looked her way. This was torture.

You did it to yourself. You always do it to yourself.

When they got out of the car to join the others Georgina couldn't help but briefly scrutinize Aly's tense face expression. She didn't want to ask her directly because her female intuition alarmed her to leave Aly alone, so instead she quickly smiled in her direction, then took a deep breath and looked around.
"Gosh, east coast, how much I missed you!" Since she grew up in New England and considered herself a truly proud Bostonian she always looked forward to return 'home' after hunting trips. She didn't like the hot climate they had to endure in New Mexico, but now inhaling this familiar east coast air lifted up her spirit.
Okay, but don't forget- you're here for a job!

The drive didn’t get less awkward. She didn’t answered Rome about her leaving, she knew that there no way she could make him understand. She had to wait for the right moment, and then not ask for permission she would just go. And even though she said the brother thing, she didn’t tell him everything. She couldn’t remember how it was to have a big brother. It was so long ago she had one and she was just a kid. For Lenna it was as if she had lost the one winter night everyone.

He can’t keep an eye on me forever. At some point he has to look in another direction and that is when I’ll leave everything behind.

They checked in the hotel, Rome paid the rooms, and since they had a long day on the road it didn’t look like that anyone was up to much. Lenna got back to the car, but she felt weird. She felt suddenly alone, as something was missing. For once the normal so chatty Lenna was quiet, she avoided all her friends. All she wanted was to be left alone.

“I just don’t wanna be lonely anymore; I wanna be use for anyone.” Lenna whispered into the wind. Lenna snuggled into the driver’s seat. She was hoping to feel safer in her as she usually did, but for now something wasn’t right.

“I don’t wanna be alone.”

She closed her eyes and fell into an unsettled sleep.

She walked through the backyard of her family’s house. She looked happy, she felt happy. Nick was standing at the backdoor.
“Hey Elle, where have you been? I was waiting for you. Come on in, dinner is ready. Hey what’s wrong you looked as if you have seen a ghost.”
“Nick? How can you be here?”
“Did you have your nightmare again? I am not dead, Elle. There are no such things as monsters. I’m trying to tell you this for years now. I would never leave you! I love you, Elle.”
Elenna looked at her brother, she missed him so much. All she could do was go and hug him, and never let go of him.
“I know you are always there for me.”

All went black and nothing was left, nothing then the cold emptiness of her lonely heart.

It was dark, and he had plans. For the first time in years, he got out and felt great.

“I can’t believe I can move free around. I gonna show Elle, that her so called friends does not care what she is doing. She will listen to me, I know she will. She always does!”

He walked through the small street, when he found it. He had sharp teeth and claws, and his vision was 20 times better then a normal human. He waited in the shadow for the right moment, when he jumped at the guy in the alley. He was quick and the guy didn't have a chance. He easily broke the neck before he ripped the heart out of his victim. He was covered in blood but he didn’t care. All he wanted was the heart. Without a second thought he left the alley, he left the now bloody corpse behind and walked away.

Rome wandered the halls of the extravagant hotel. This was apparently some sort of tourist town (like all small towns seemed to be on the East Coast), so hotels were plenty and vacant in the off-season.

Nearly 48 hours of sleeplessness. Cool. He was fine, though clutching his third Amp in six hours a little desperately in his hand.

But I mean, who wasn't? Caleb definitely hadn't slept, judging by how much more irritable than usual he was. The girls all seemed to have gone to bed, but just barely, as no one had yet come out to tell him to stop pacing outside their doors like a creep.

It was time to check on Elenna again, who had taken to sleeping in her freaky car. From the warmth of the lobby he could see her in the driver's seat, looking as comfortable as one can be sleeping in a car. But safe, anyway.

There was a growling sound behind him: low, which made the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention.

He wheeled around, drawing Rawson's Desert Eagle loaded with alternatinvg silver and steel rounds, but saw nothing. He waited, listening. Nope, definitely nothing there.

Okay, so now he was hallucinating? He'd had enough caffiene to be tripping balls right now, so it didn't surprise him.

It wasn't that he was scared of sleeping. It certainly wasn't that he was going to admit that he was scared of sleeping. It wasn't just the djinn thing, either. He wasn't keen on his sleeping brain calling up images of his zombified family--which he was almost high enough to laugh at now, maybe--but even on a good day, for Rome, sleeping meant dreaming, and dreaming meant visions, and visions meant headaches and levels of mind-fracking he really wasn't in the mood to deal with now.

But did he want to deal with the alternative?

Staring down at his shaking hands he decided: maybe not so much.

So Rome retired to his room and sat on his neglected bed. Then he stood up. He took a hot shower. Then he got out his laptop, surfed a few of his favorite sites, and then settled down to do something he knew would put him to sleep:

Research. He started flicking through the local headlines for anything that was weird, connected oddly, or was blatantly supernatural.

He didn't know he had fallen asleep until he was dreaming:

He recognized the person, first of all. Well, sort of. He'd definitely seen the kid before--maybe 17 years old, brown hair, a ballcap.

"Leave her alone," the boy snarled at him.

"What?" Rome asked. "Who the hell are you."

"You're not her brother. Stop acting like it."

"Listen, buddy, I don't know what you're talking--"

"She hates you. She'd leave if she could. You better let her go!"

Rome laughed, although there was nothing funny about this. "Or what?"

The kid was suddenly holding a baseball bat, and, even more suddenly, the bat was swinging at his face.

Rome woke with a start, having fallen off the bed into an undignified heap. His laptop lay on it's side, having gone to sleep itself. Rome checked the clock: he hadn't been asleep more than an hour. Well, that went well. It looked like sleeping was back to being a bad idea.

Rome didn't notice the bright blueing shiner forming around his left eye.

It wasn't easy knowing that he'd dragged his little sister into this hunt, but Shane really didn't see any other way. He wasn't like Morrigan, she was different, she could see things, sense things in ways he never could. For Shane Beretta, there was no backing out of a fight, and he knew there was something awry in this little New York town.

He pulled up in the hotel parking lot, not sure what room Morrigan had booked. There were few other cars in the lot, but he'd always preferred to keep his shiny red Firebird away from danger by parking in what his family always referred to as "the boonies."

The lights in the lot were out, leaving a spooky air around him. "Damn, it's cold out here," he said with a groan. He made sure his trunk was locked, and started the trek across the asphalt toward the neon lights of the motel. It was just after 4:00 AM. He was dead tired.

The neon lights glared as Shane breathed on his hands and covered his ears. His dark hair was lost to the blackness. "Hey, Mor, that's not funny," he said as he felt something behind him. "I told you to go to sleep..."

Shane turned around. The last thing he saw was the fear in his blue eyes in the reflection in the wolf's eyes.


~~~~~~~~~


He walked through his little town, enjoying the freedom and planning how he could get what he wanted. When he passed the hotel, it was early in the morning and not yet time to go back to her. And there was another guy on the other side of the parking lot. This guy was one of them, not the people that hang out with his girl, but clearly the same type of guy. With his wolf like speed he appeared out of nowhere behind the guy

"Hey, Mor, that's not funny, I told you to go to sleep..." It was one of them, but that didn't matter it wasn't Mor growling in a deep voice at the guy.

Oh how lovely true fear smells.

This time he didn’t bother to break the guys neck first. He ripped his chest open and his heart out. He didn’t even have time to scream, or in this guy's case, fight back. Did he feel that he got attacked by a lunatic?

He left the guy on the parking lot between some cars and went back to the one place he spent the last years. He had a mission and he would succeed.

Rome was literally living off of coke by the time a semblance of morning appeared through his open curtains, signalling he had made it through another night. He blinked at the cans of caffeine scattered around his room like a frat house. The laptop laying open on bustyasianbeauties.com only served to facilitate the overall sleazy appearance of what had once been a nice-looking room, as did his general disheveledness and the fact that he was lounging around in his underwear.

Rome staggered to the bathroom to get dressed. But before he got there he passed by the open window and saw the red and blue flashing lights that signaled Panic Time. His senses sharpened by adrenaline even as lack of sleep dulled them, he ducked down by the side of the window and peered out, reaching with one hand for the duffel with the gun in it.

Had they tracked the false name on the credit card to him?

Elenna was out there! Did they have her?

But the commotion was on the edge of the parking lot. And there was an ambulance there. It didn't look like they were making a bust. It looked like a crime scene. Rome tugged on jeans and a sweatshirt, and shoes without socks as he rushed outside to investigate.

Yep. Coroner. Definitely not after him--not yet, anyway. A friendly but tired-looking cop held up his hands as Rome approached.

"Hang on, kid, this is a crime scene, stay back."

"What's goin' on, Officer? What happened?" Rome asked innocently, watching his breath fog in front of him in the cool of the morning.

"Man killed by a wild animal attack. Get back inside and see it on the news."

Behind him, Rome caught a glimpse of a splash of red being zipped up in a bodybag. And Rome had been in this business long enough to know that 99% of the "wild animal attacks" that happened in this world were nothing of the sort.

"What're you still doin' here, kid, you don't need to see this."

"Uh. Right. Sorry, sir, I was just leaving."

"Where'd you get that shiner, by the way?" the cop pointed at his eye. "You causin' trouble in my town I should know about?"

Rome's hand flew to his cheek, where the skin was warm and puffed. "No, sir. Girlfriend kicked me outta bed this morning," he grinned, the lie falling effortlessly off his tongue even as his brain asked What the hell is this old man talking about?

The cop laughed, nodded sympathetically, and turned away as Rome jogged back toward the hotel. He stopped at the Mustang to knock on the window. "Lennie?" he called as loud as he dared. "Lennie, baby, chica. Wake up. The game's afoot!" he said in a really bad British accent.

For the first time he caught a glimpse of his face in the reflection of the Mustang's window. He did indeed have a huge black eye forming across the left side of his face, from nose to temple. What the frack? But this merited only a brief confusion before Elenna began to stir, looking about as well-rested as he felt. "Come on, kiddo. How did this not wake you up? Someone was murdered in the parking lot and it's probably our kind of gig. Come on, we gotta go tell the others."

Lenna felt as she hadn’t slept in weeks and there was this constant voice in her head. Maybe she should ask Rome if he knew what this was about; after all he was the psychic. She opened the unlocked door. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, while Rome said shocked. "Oh! It wasn't locked? Why didn't you lock the friggen door?"

“I’m fine. Since when are you British? You are so not like Sherlock Holmes, so safe the act for someone who wants to see it.” Lenna climbed out of the Mustang and pushed him aside to have a look at the crime scene.

Why didn’t I wake up from this noise?
“Because I made sure you get your sleep, unlike some jerk I know you need your sleep. Tell him to leave you alone. He should just piss off!”

Lenna shook her heard again. It started to be a habit of her, whenever she heard the voice; she tried to shake it off. Maybe at some point the voice would fell out of her head and would leave her alone.

“Okay, I’m all ears. You said a hunt? Another one? Are they somehow connected?”

Lenna locked this time the Mustang and looked at Rome, he found his hunt then should he tell her what to do next.

“Stop worrying, Elle.”
Go away, and leave me alone.
“You need me, and you search for me.”

Lenna stared into the distance without really seeing anything.

Morrigan woke up, hating herself for falling asleep. She should have gone after Shane no matter what he said. She turned and looked at the clock. He should have been there already, she though somewhat groggily. She sat up on the edge of the bed and looked at herself in the mirror. She obviously hadn't slept as well as she'd thought by the look of her.

Rome ran through their section of the hallway, banging on the appropriate doors and calling. "Rise and shine, boys and girls, we got work to do!"

A few berobed, grumpy faces opened doors to peer at him.

"Rome, you do know it's five in the morning, right?" Aly told him.

"Yeah!" he grinned widely, then turned serious. "Quick, c'mere, it's on the news!"

Rome darted into his room, leaving the door wide open. He kicked off his shoes and jumped into his bed, grabbing his laptop and searching local news streams. As people began filtering in, Rome kept talking--probably due to the caffeine. "Some guy out in the parking lot died last night--animal attack, the cop said, but we all know better than that, right? They're still out there, Aly, if you wanna work that FBI magic. Hey, look! Apparently there was another one last night in another part of town! Big-time weird! Look, here's the news report," he shoved the laptop into Lily's hands, leaving her to do the deucing as he attacked the coffee pot in his room in between getting properly dressed. "So when do we leave?" he asked, pulling on a t-shirt, making sure everyone had a nice view of his abs as he did so.

He ran to the coffee pot. She followed. She was just about to ask him to calm down and explain to her just why he thought an animal attack to be their kind of thing when the light hit his face in an angle that highlighted what she had thought to be a shadow in her grogginess.

Without thinking she ran her fingers lightly over his swollen face. The action got his attention as he finished putting on his shirt. She rolled her eyes at the design then returned to her concern. Her hand rested on his arm and his rested on her hip. Even in a room full of people--one person in particular--she felt their earlier passion start to rekindle. She pulled him into the bathroom under the pretense of looking at his eye.

"Rome, what happened to..." His lips cut her off as she felt herself being pushed against the sink, his hands under her sweat shirt caressing her sides. He allowed their tongues a moment to wrestle before pulling away and leaving her breathless. This wasn't the place or the time.

"Baby, I needed that." He groaned and looked at his eye in the mirror.

"Me too--now what the frack happened?"

He looked at her with a grin and shrugged.

"No fracking clue." Then opened the door and rejoined the others. She sighed and went back to her room returning in her FBI suit, tied up hair, and affixing her badge to her belt.

"I'm going down to the authorities to see if they'll let me in on this. If they do, I will contact you--no one is to come near me. We don't know each other. You will also stay as far from the actual investigation as possible--am I understood? It's dangerous enough me flashing my badge around without any involvement from more fugitives. Do whatever hocus-pocus you do away from the cops, the vics, or the crime scenes. I'll provide you with all the information you need."

She winced as the thought hit her.

"FBI agents don't normally travel alone. I need a partner with credentials and who looks the part. Caleb, get your suit on and grab your badge. Meet me in the lobby in fifteen minutes."

Aly cursed herself not for the last time as she waited for their responses.

Lenna watched Aly. She did plan to apologize but something, well the voice in her head, stopped her and the fact that Lenna is scared of Aly in FBI-mode.

“She needs to go, they all need to. Since when does Romulus knows what a hunt is? Don’t believe him!”

“It’s an animal attack, guys. I was out there and I would have woken up if it was anything else then a mad dog. We have a job. We need to go to the High School. We should have gone yesterday.”

Lenna looked around. Why did everyone look at her?

“You know what? Whatever, you hunt your stray dog, and I’ll hunt the real monster. I don’t care what you think, I hunted alone before and I stayed with the Remingtons for them and since you are so great Rome and find your own hunts. I’m in your way anyway, right? I’m the stupid thing that doesn’t touch a gun if all your lives would depend on it. To hell with all of you, I’m out of here.”

“Way to go girl!”
Shut up!

Lenna turned around to leave Rome’s room.

Did Rome had a black eye?
“Why should sunny-boy have a black eye?”
I don’t know, angry boyfriend from the girl of this night?
“You see ghosts where none are!”

She didn’t know why but she was suddenly close to tears.

Oh Nick I need you, I don’t know what to do.

Everybody gasped in shock as Elenna turned away from them. Although Georgie didn't know her for that long, she knew that Elenna would never act the way she just did. Her eyes had been so cold that Georgie felt goosebumps on her back. She looked at Rome who seemed equally shocked. Elenna was so close to him, since when did she treat him like that?
Something is not quite right here...

Rome was suddenly serious, suddenly calm, like nothing anyone else could have said or done to make him so.

This was getting out of hand. She was getting out of hand.

He straightened up. "Okay, I'll go with Elenna. You guys check this other thing out. Aly, Caleb, try the Fed angle, Caleb you can borrow my badge if oh, wait, that's right, you have one, don't you, you sly dog?" He began rummaging around the messy room--finding a belt, putting it on, pulling on one of Rawson's old Semper Fi sweatshirts and slinging on his leather jacket over that, locating an extra mag for the Desert Eagle, making sure he had Mom's rosary in his pocket--as he continued talking. "I got my phone, so stay in contact. I'll, um, hey, anyone seen my sawed-off? Wait, there it is."

After grabbing a canteen of holy water and stuffing his pockets full of salt rounds for the shotgun, and finally feeling prepared for anything, Rome turned to Elenna, who was glowering at him. He glared right back, ready to throw down if she so much as twitched in the direction of wanting to go this alone, daring her. The others were needed hunting the real threat, but whatever Elenna was freaking out about was bugging her big time, and he needed to make sure she didn't do anything stupid.

He looked around the room.

...Okay, like disappearing on him.

"Jesus H. Christ. Okay, I'll keep track of her if I can. So keep in contact. I'll be texting you guys."

On his way rushing out of the hotel room, Rome almost collided with a very attractive brunette who was just coming out to see what all the ambulances were doing outside. He flashed her the silent how-you-doin' smile before following Elenna out to the Mustang.

Lenna was sitting in the Mustang, she knew there was no point in her driving alone, Rome would find her and cuff her to a pipe in her hotel room. So she waited for him. Did she catch a cold or the flu that causes her behavior changes, but something was different but maybe not obvious for everyone?

“I don’t know what to do Nick. They don’t take me serious, all of them just think of me as a little girl or as one of the guys. It is driving me nuts when Rome calls me Lennie. I am not five anymore. Why can’t they see that I am as much a hunter as they are? Yes maybe I am not so strong and younger but I am still a hunter. I mean Georgie is so much of a girl and they still see a hunter in her. Gosh I am jealous on Aly because Rome hits on her so badly that a blind man can see it. Caleb is everything I fear and hate. They don’t need me anymore they have Lily and. They have their new encyclopedia. I can leave them and they won’t miss me. I don’t know, I ... I need you Nick, I need to look at you and know that I am someone. I wish you were here, Rome is annoyingly making me his little sister and he is ridiculous over protective. I am sorry I never wanted to replace you.”

Elenna was leaning her head against the steering wheel of the Mustang breathing in, smelling the leather of the old car. She was wearing one of Nick’s Metallica shirts.

“Do you remember when I was so little and you told mom that you want to become a rock star just like Metallica? Gosh I miss you so much every second of the day. And then I see the twins and, and I need you Nick, I really do! I mean look at me; I hunt monsters with a team of weirdo’s, who does that? Us! Right! And that is exactly why our lives suck! I mean c'mon, we hunt monsters! What the hell?! I mean normal people when they see a monster they run, but not us. No, no, no! We... We search out things that want to kill us. Yeah. Or eat us! You know who does that? Crazy people! We are insane!”

She started shivering and silent tears run down her face. Elenna let her mind fly, fly in a so long ago past. Her heart was beating fast as she run through the house to catch her brother. Her smile was huge when she climbed the first time on the apple tree. The crash, she didn’t understand why she couldn’t stay with Nick, where her parents went.

Why would parents leave their children? They loved us, we were a family. It is my fault that I am alone, I shot him! Why is everyone I love leaving me? What is it that no one can stay with me? They are always leaving me. Don’t go away, please!

It was a whisper, maybe not even a real one; but Elenna heard it clearly as a bell.

“You are never alone, I am here. We are together forever. I never gonna leave you, Elle!”

“No. No, that is not possible. You can’t be here. You just can’t.”

Allison tapped her fingers on the reception desk and checked her watch. Caleb came out of the elevator a moment later looking more like an FBI agent than she felt. He was tall, dark, and handsome in every sense of the phrase--the suit just made him more so.

She shut herself off as he approached. This was business, dangerous business, which required her full attention. She couldn't concern herself with what she'd shoved away.

"I know you know what you're doing, so I won't give any pointers." She checked the name on his badge and tried not to laugh.

Aly buttoned her coat before stepping out of the hotel into the pre-dawn New England drizzle. She strode with purpose toward the flashing lights. Part of her felt good to be on the job again--even if it wasn't for real. She just hoped these small town cops didn't care about procedure.

"I'm sorry ma'am, this is a crime scene..." She flashed her badge at the officer who immediately let them through the yellow tape.

"I'm Special Agent Wesson, this is my partner Special Agent Gracie, FBI. We are staying in the hotel."

"Well, FBI--this is just an animal attack--no need to involve the Feds." An officer came up to him and his eyes darkened in thought. "On second thought, I'm Sheriff Cummings--turns out there's a connection between two attacks. This is looking like less of an accident--we would be grateful for any help the FBI might be willing to offer--that is if you aren't busy with a case."

"Not at all, Sheriff. Our case was closed in Albany. We're just headed home. May we see the body?"

The Sheriff nodded and led them over to the body bag and motioned for the coroner open it again.

The woman started her speech anew for the new audience.

"Time of death is three hours ago. At first I was thinking animal attack but, this is the strangest one I've ever seen. The beast didn't go for his throat and I see no signs of struggle--but the heart has been ripped from his chest premortem. It took him another minute or two to die. There's no ID. We'll run his prints through missing persons."

She glanced over at Caleb who looked actually pale. Aly was about to have them close the body bag when a gut wrenching shriek echoed across the parking lot.

"Oh god, Shane?!" A brunette woman stood with her hand pressed to her mouth shaking her head.

They had an ID now. Aly hated this part of the job. She left Caleb and walked over to the woman signaling to the police to let her through.

Sometimes words were not the best greeting. She turned the woman away from the scene and wrapped her in her arms. They would talk when she was ready.

Morrigan took one look at her brother and felt her whole world start to spin. She ran past the police tape, past the coroners, past the FBI. She didn't care who was yelling. She collapsed on the ground next to him, holding his head in her lap, not caring that his coagulated blood was staining her white and blue blouse.

"No, Shane, please..." she couldn't feel her legs, every part of her was numb. His eyes were closed, his skin a sick ivory. She couldn't bear to look at the empty hole in his chest. His heart was ripped out of his chest like someone had opened a can and pulled out the contents.

She'd known something was terribly wrong when he hadn't come in that morning. She'd known in her heart, but she'd hoped to God the sirens weren't for him.

"Shane," she whispered again, rocking back and forth with his body.

"You need to vacate the crime scene, mam," the sheriff told her, taking her shoulder. "Please come with me."

She looked up at him coldly. Her eyes blazed with fury. "No, no you can't make me leave."

The sheriff stood back, stunned as ravens, six or seven, came flying toward him from atop the nearest phone poles. He could have sworn her eyes were glowing as the birds shooed him away with their claws outstretched.

Morrigan closed her eyes, confused and scared. Did I just do that? she wondered, digging her nails into Shane's blood matted hair. She leaned into his shoulder and continued to cry, oblivious to the world around her until a woman who claimed to be FBI reached down and hugged her, holding her and telling her it was going to be all right. She didn't believe her.

Aly waited until the woman had stopped shaking as much and knelled down next to her.

"You need to let them take him now. I'm sorry." She brushed the stunned woman's hair out of her face. It clung to her cheek where his blood had transferred to her. Aly remained calm, rubbing the woman's back as if she were family.

"I know this is hard for you--but I need to ask you a few questions--when you're ready."

The woman seemed to tremble with a barely contained rage. She could relate. Had she been old enough to kill someone when Jenna died she would have had that same fury in her eyes.

Morrigan looked up at Aly and wiped her eyes. Her makeup had smeared all down her cheeks. She wiped it away on her already stained shirt and tried to stand.

"Tell me this isn't really happening."

She looked back down at Shane's body one last time before the bag was zipped over his face. She knew it really was- Shane was dead because something in this town was out for blood and it wasn't human, or at least a part of it wasn't.

"What do you want to know?" she asked, standing with Alyson's help and coming to sit on the bench outside the hotel lobby. For some reason she knew this woman could be trusted, that she wasn't just a Federal Agent. She could tell somehow that this woman knew Shane hadn't been killed by a normal animal. She just might be another hunter. If anyone could help her find out what did this, she would take the chance.

Rome found Elenna exactly where he expected he would: in the stupid Mustang. She hadn't actually left him yet, and that was something. Not much, but something. It made him relax a bit.

A very little bit.

"Okay, chica, what's the plan?" Rome said jovially, sounding genuine but feeling fake: like everything was perfectly normal when it clearly wasn't. It was the same tone people in the movies used to talk their friends out of jumping off a roof or robbing a bank, the voice where you pretended everything was normal so as not to agitate the unstable person holding an automatic weapon. Like Han Solo: Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?

Elenna didn't say anything to him, just put the vehicle into gear and started driving. She had been crying.

Which broke his heart, a very little bit, and all he wanted to do was wrap her up in his arms and make her cry it all out until his hoodie was soaked. But that probably wouldn't help right now. Maybe it was some unfinished business thing, and she'd be better once she saw the school?

He could almost hear a voice laugh-whispering in his ear at that:

Yeah. Unfinished business, all right.

Aly brought her into the hotel and grabbed her some coffee before sitting down with her.

"I'm Special Agent Wesson--but call me Aly."

She nodded slowly and took the coffee.

"Well, we could start with your relation to Shane and why you're both here?"