Chapter Text
The Harbinger Motel really is a creep-ass motel in the middle of creep-ass nowhere, and if Laura didn’t know any better she’d think Travis is mocking her. He’s not – of course he’s not, this isn’t some sort of underhanded ‘fuck you’ or ‘told you so’, he can be short with her and unexpectedly sassy at times but he’s not cruel – but staring at the run-down backwater shack that passes for a motel and its grotty, flickering neon VACANCY sign as Travis pulls up in the parking lot well after midnight and kills the spluttering engine stirs something bitter and sharp in her chest, metal and poison rising at the back of her throat.
We should’ve gone to the motel. That’s what she’d thought every single day of those long two months in a dank prison cell; she should’ve just told Max to go to the motel. They’d have spent the night curled up in a small, shitty bed with broken springs together and laughed about how creepy the cop was with that smear of blood on his neck, like something out of a slasher movie; maybe snuck in a quick round of lovemaking (“Oh my god, Max, just call it sex –”) before hitting the road again and arriving at the camp on the right day, greeting their fellow counsellors and enjoying two months of sunlight and summer air and roasting marshmallows over campfires, before dying horribly in a slaughter with the others without ever knowing what hell hit them. Why didn’t they go to the goddamned Harbinger Motel? Why didn’t Max stay on the fucking island –
“You okay?” Travis asks.
Laura inhales sharply. “No,” she replies. “You?”
Travis breathes out through his nose. “No.”
“Okay then,” she says, and gets out of the car.
The motel itself is exactly as creepy as she and Max feared it would be and then some; mildew and rot in the corners of the ceiling of what passes for the concierge office, a computer about as old as the one in Travis’s precinct, several worn and decades-old copies of National Geographic used to stub out cigarettes strewn across the stained and sticky counter, a half-crushed cockroach twitching on the thin and grotty carpet. That’s not the worst part – the worst part is that there’s only one room (with only one bed – just their goddamn luck) available, the others all booked out by the cops staying overnight to finish documenting the Hackett’s Quarry massacre the next morning and some opportunistic journalists hoping the slaughter will be a big break for them in their local newspapers or radio stations.
Travis mutters something about sleeping in his car to which Laura snaps “Don’t be stupid –” because the car’s roof has been shredded and the back seats are drenched with Ryan’s blood; maybe sleeping in his car is second nature to him but his eyes are already haunted enough. So he sighs and follows her to the room that’s somehow even worse than the concierge office, but at least it’s a room, with a bed and a toilet with a locking door. She’s almost surprised when he doesn’t attempt to grab a pillow to claim the moth-chewed couch in the corner of the room, because he knows as well as she does it’d be nothing more than a formality and one at that that they’re far beyond now. Neither of them wants to spend the night alone, him shivering in his ruined car and staring at his gun, her curled up in the aged sheets of a bed with broken springs longing for Max’s arms around her. Sharing a bed is the least of their crimes.
“I meant to say thank you,” Laura says, an hour of silence later when it’s clear neither of them will find sleep tonight, lying side by side, on the too-small creaking bed with the too-thin scratchy covers shared between them.
“For what.”
For not killing her, or worse. Yeah… likewise. “You could’ve handed me over to the police,” she points out. “It’s not as though there wasn’t enough evidence to just… pin the whole massacre on me.”
Travis stares up at the water-stained ceiling, his eyes following the slowly rotating fan that does more to stir up the dust Laura hopes isn’t asbestos than it does to cool the warm, sticky air. “What good would that have done?” he murmurs. “You’re the only one left who understands.”
Just ‘cause you know, doesn’t mean you know. You know?
Yeah. She does know. And she wouldn’t wish this knowledge on anyone.
“Is this what it’s going to be like now?” she whispers. “Claws and teeth at the edges of my dreams, seeing shadows in every corner –”
“No,” he says quickly, turning his face towards hers; they’re close enough that she can feel the puffs of breath of his words on her skin. “No. Only if you let it.”
“Got experience in letting it, huh.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “A little.”
You think this is over? This isn’t over.
She presses her mouth to his.
She should hate him. She doesn’t forgive him for holding her hostage for two months, she won’t be forgiven for slaughtering his entire family, but what’s the point of forgiveness when she already trusts him with her life? God – when did that even start? Was it when he handed her the shotgun loaded with silver bullets and he’d said I won’t stop you as she contemplated blowing his head off? But no, before that – before that, it was them in the car, Ryan unconscious and quietly bleeding out in the back seat while she curved her hand around the back of Travis’s neck to draw him down and out of reach as the beast’s claws shredded the roof and tried to rip his tear his head from his shoulders because he’d sounded so desperate when he called her name to wake her up, because he needed her help, because he’d begged for it even though he’d just witnessed her murder half of his family and the only reason she was still alive was because he tossed aside the silver-backed mirror shard in his hand when he’d have been completely within his rights to surge forward and drive it through her chest over and over until she died.
But before that: the taste of his blood on her teeth that should have made her gag but the wolf hadn’t left her yet because the heady, rich iron taste of him ignited her entire body, she felt like she was burning and she wanted more, wanted him, wanted to throw him down and take him and that’s why she drew backwards when he found herself human again with her teeth around his arm, not out of fear of him and the silver shard in his hand but horror at herself and the hunger pulsing in time with her heartbeat –
But before that: the way he’d looked at her when he saw his father’s corpse with that quiet devastation on his face, yet all he’d done was plead wait and he’d refused to fill her with silver; his blank horror at the sight of his mother’s face blown off yet he hadn’t even tried to stop Laura from escaping; the way he’d only moments beforehand begged everyone to just stop, to calm down, because he didn’t want to hurt or kill anyone, he’d never wanted that, he’d even tried to find a fucking scientific solution to cure everyone because he didn’t want any more blood on his hands because the uniform meant something to him, because he still tried to do right by the badge he wore while his family dragged him down further and further into that well.
No. Before that. It was when he’d woken her in her cell with a soft touch to the side of her torn face, blood all over his and his expression heavy with concern and regret; the way he asked her why didn’t you run because she could have, she should have, and because she didn’t, he trusted her first.
She presses her mouth to his and finds his lips soft and warm; inhales the masculine scent of him, his body firm and his heart pulsing under the palm of her hand where it rests against his chest.
“Laura,” Travis murmurs against her lips, “stop.”
She pauses, draws back. “Why?”
He swallows hard, his eyes raking her face. “This isn’t…” he says, frowning deeply with uncertainty, or doubt, or fear, or all of it. “I’m not what you want.”
They ended a years-long curse together and were meant to watch the sun rise with peace in their hearts but instead faced the carnage they caused and tasted nothing but despair. They have killed each other in a thousand other lifetimes and laid their souls and bodies bare to each other in this one. Want has nothing to do with it.
“Like you said,” she says, “we’re the only ones left who understand,” and seals her lips over his again. Her boyfriend is dead and his corpse isn’t even cold yet, but the Laura Kearney who was going to start her post-graduate studies in veterinary science, the Laura who hadn’t had to patch up her own ripped-out eye and scarred face, the Laura who hadn’t held a gun to a cop then went on a werewolf-fuelled rampage through his house and shot the face off an old woman – that Laura Kearney died with Max.
The wolf in this Laura Kearney, reborn in blood and silver under the full moon, surges within her when Travis kisses back; she bites his lip to sate her hunger for the intoxicating taste of his blood but all it does is run her veins hot and her cunt dripping wet. He grunts at the pain and moves one hand to her waist, holding her firm against him; she runs her other hand through his hair and grips the strands, surges upwards and swings one leg over him until she’s astride him in the creaking bed.
“Wait,” he says, voice hoarse and his dark eyes a mirror of hers once she’s made short work of his trousers and his length rests hot and urgent between her thighs, “I don’t have – there’s no –”
Laura snorts. “I can’t fall pregnant,” she says. There’s no way to know the exact science behind it, but she’s pretty sure there is no supernatural healing option for this: the werewolf bite might have healed her scarred face and missing eye, but those were injuries, not a condition she was born with. “Didn’t you think it was strange that you didn’t have to go out and buy me tampons in all that time you had me locked up?”
Travis’s jaw clenches because no, of course he didn’t, typical male that he is. There are other reasons to need protection, of course, but she’s clean and Travis clearly hasn’t been with anyone in far too many years. The benefit to him being more than twice her age is that he doesn’t come at the slightest touch – poor, sweet Max sometimes wouldn’t let her go near his dick until he’d made her come at least twice with his hands and mouth, because the second he filled her was usually the second he came. Travis’s hands tighten on her waist as she lowers herself down on to his length in a single, steady glide, his Adam’s apple bobbing when she fills herself with him to the hilt.
It’s slow and urgent. It’s violent and surprisingly tender. It’s the worst and best sex she’s ever had. Travis needs this as much as she does, a reminder that they’re here, they survived, they’re alive. In a thousand other lifetimes they probably killed each other and died together, but in this one, they are the first to truly know one another. She doesn’t need to come but is surprised when it happens anyway, a quick build and a soft release, not earth-shattering or mind-blowing but a pleasant enough rush of warmth and endorphins. She shudders through it, her fingers dragging in his hair, and Travis follows, pulsing within her and groaning low against her collarbone.
Afterwards, they hold each other, her hand stroking down his back across the diagonal swipe of clawed scar marks that stretch from armpit to waist – which one of his cursed family members did this to him, she wonders, the brother or the nephew or niece, the only three he seemed to truly care about – and he touches his right hand to the left side of her face, thumb grazing the skin where her missing eye and shredded scar used to be.
“You should change the password on your computer, by the way,” Laura says, apropos of pillow talk.
Travis frowns. “What? Why?”
“Because you’re not supposed to use your birthday,” she points out. “That’s the worst possible password you could’ve chosen, it’s too easy to figure out. You’re not even a Boomer, you have no excuse to be so careless about cyber security.”
He sighs, but the corner of his mouth twitches upwards.
They fall asleep in that embrace. She aches pleasantly in his arms, and his muscles seem softer, like years of tension have been allowed to ease just for a night, no claws and teeth at the edges of her dreamless slumber; by the time she awakes the sun has risen and there are no more shadows in every corner of the room.
They don’t talk – what do they need words for now? They dress and check out of the motel in synchronised silence, drink bad gas station coffee, and listen to the static radio as he drives in the direction of the place she doesn’t know she can call “home” anymore because everything is different now.
It’s a long trip. She entertains herself by rifling through his car, opening as many hatches as she can reach, to his non-verbal irritation. In the passenger side glove department there’s a file, filled with newspaper clippings and handwritten notes about everything from vampire rumours to Big Foot sightings, from ghouls and haunted villages to ghost ships and a massacre that happened several years ago on Blackwood Mountain to which he’s written “Wendigo?” in pencil beside the article cutting. She remembers what he said to her that night in the cells – his back to her while he talked about the curse and his family, how he’d been hunting for some way to end it. He was trying to trace the origin of the curse – who bit Silas? And not just that – he’s been looking into all this crazy shit, as if he didn’t have enough on his plate with his family.
“Coming up on the exit,” Travis tells her. She glances up and sees the crossroads – right up the exit ramp and an hour later she’ll be back in the tiny apartment she shared with Max, without Max.
“Pull over,” she says instead.
Travis frowns, his eyes flicking from the road towards her briefly. “Why?”
“Just pull over.”
He pulls over and kills the engine. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says, nodding towards the file in her hands. “It’s not worth it, Laura. Trust me. It ain’t. You’re still young, you got your whole life ahead of you. You don’t have to let this consume you.”
Is this why he wants her to let it go? So she doesn’t become like him? She tries to imagine returning to her normal life, before all this happened – going to grad school like she planned, studying veterinary science and helping beloved pets and zoo animals and endangered species, a boyfriend-shaped space in her life where Max would have been that maybe she’ll be able to fill one day with a new love who’ll never really be able to understand what she went through. Marriage, a pet dog, a mortgage, adopted kids, a stagnated career, an ugly divorce when her partner gets frustrated with not being able to understand her and angry estranged teenagers who resent that their mother never went to therapy – it makes her sick just thinking about it.
“Yeah?” she pushes back. “And what about you, what are you going to do? Slink back to your abandoned precinct and stare at your gun every night until you get restless and either pull the trigger or go back out on patrol every full moon because you can’t let it go?”
Travis’s lips press together tightly.
Laura shakes her head. “I can’t go back to what I once was, Travis. You know I can’t.”
“You’re not even going to try?”
Sure, she could try. Maybe it won’t end in tears. But Laura knows, deep in her bones, her life won’t ever be the same. What she’s been through – what Travis has lived with for six years – it’s the sort of thing that never lets you go. She taps the folder. “This isn’t over.”
He closes his eyes and shakes his head, then starts the engine and re-joins the main road. “Been meaning to check out that village,” he says, gesturing towards the article she has open, the one about a fire and ghosts and a bus of missing tourists. “It’s straight ahead, if we don’t take the next exit.”
In other words, last chance for a normal life. But his eyes – they’re saying something else. Help me, he’d begged of her. Help me. We can help those who are still alive.
What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger or what-fucking-ever. They survived for a reason. It can’t have all have been for nothing.
“Well, then, Officer Hackett,” Laura says. “Let’s go check out that village.”
Travis doesn’t smile, exactly, and she doesn’t exactly smile back when they share a glance.
“Yes,” he says. “Ma’am.”