Raven (black_raven) wrote in crsvr_fics, @ 2009-07-22 22:36:00 |
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~^ Chapter 2 ~^
Pain. That was the first thing that registered in Harry's mind. Pain, and nausea. He quickly rolled to his side and expelled the contents of his stomach. He groaned as his head throbbed and he let out a strangled gasp as a cold wave rolled over him and threatened to pull him out into the depths. He dug his fingers into the wet sand and with painful effort, dragged himself back onto the beach.
It was still night, though something told Harry that something wasn't right. Everything looked the same, but he had a nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach. Pulling in a ragged breath, he pushed himself up into a sitting position and glanced around for the necklace.
The jewel glittered innocently up at him from a few feet away. Harry scowled at it, angry at himself for completely disregarding his training and experience with magical objects, never mind the fact that he could not have possibly known that an abandoned necklace in a muggle town would be enchanted. He contemplated just leaving it there, but then his mind caught up with him and he realized that until he found out what it did, he would have to keep it with him just in case it could also reverse whatever it did.
He leaned forward and with slight misgivings, prodded at the chain as if it were a vicious animal that he wanted to make sure was really dead. When nothing happened he pressed his fingers lightly to the chain again, this time holding them there. Still nothing happened and so he hesitantly hooked his fingers around it and picked it up, though holding it slightly away from his body.
Now that he could look closer at the jewel, he noted that it was not a single stone as he had previously thought, but a beautiful twining of green calcite and black pearl so skillfully crafted that it looked like a single gemstone. The stone was set into an oval copper plate surrounded by runes and symbols that, while Harry knew them by sight and more than likely knew their meanings, his head still hurt too much for him to attempt to decipher them. The chain was made of a mix of wires woven into a single thin rope, he picked out three different metals: Gold, Silver, and copper.
All in all, a beautiful find. The gem fit perfectly into the palm of his hand and he ran a skilled finger over the facets, searching for imperfections. Surprisingly he found several cracks and chips in both the stone and the copper plate. He knew that those cracks were new as there were still loose flecks in said cracks, if they were old then there would not be any left over residue still on it from when it first cracked.
Sighing in frustration, Harry shoved the necklace into his pocket and decided that he may as well go back to the motel.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
The first indication that there was something wrong was the fact that all the people of the boardwalk were dressed in fashions not adding up to the current era. The second was that there were shops that were not there when he first passed through on his way to the beach, for instance, in place of the old comic book shop was a diet frozen yogurt bar and there was an arcade where a restaurant should have been.
Not knowing quite what he was doing, he ducked into a souvenir shop and looked around for anything that would clue him in as to what was going on. He had a suspicion but he wanted to confirm it before he started consciously considering it. He got his confirmation. Behind the counter was a new looking calendar that clearly proclaimed the day to be 'Friday, June 20, 1986'.
Harry felt faint. How could that calendar possibly be right? It was supposed to be June 20, 1998... wasn't it? Harry had most definitely heard of time travel, had experienced it in third year, but he knew that there was no way that anyone could go back in time more than a couple of hours at a time.
Maybe the calendar is just there for show, Harry reasoned to himself as he approached the woman behind the counter.
"Excuse me, miss, I was wondering if that calendar is correct in the date and year."
The woman looked at him strangely, which wasn't unusual as he was still dripping wet from his foray on the beach, but she answered him with brusque 'yes' and a brief nod before she rushed off to help a customer. For a moment, Harry felt as if he were actually going to faint, but the feeling passed and was replaced by the urge to vomit. He rushed out of the store and dashed to a side street where he proceeded to evacuate what little was left over from his sickness on the beach.
When he was finally rid of the dry heaves he wiped his mouth with a handkerchief he kept tucked in the back pocket of his jeans and sat wearily on a bench nearby. He was by now use to all of the weirdness that was his life, but he couldn't seem to wrap his mind around the fact that he was twelve years in the past with no way of knowing how to get back.
He of course knew how he got there, that damned necklace, but he didn't know how it was able to. In his own time the Ministry had been experimenting with time travel; seeing what objects could be used and how far they could go backwards at a time, but as far as he knew, the research for that was new, in fact, the time turner wasn't even invented until 1991, before which there was no official way of traveling through time.
Which meant that it would do him no good going to the magical world for help. Not only would it cause a paradox if he met someone he knew, but at best the Ministry would tell him that they couldn't help him and that he would have to take care of the situation on his own. And at worst, they would want to keep him as some sort of test subject, using him to test their barbaric new theories of time travel.
So, that left him with absolutely nothing. He knew that it wasn't even worth trying to find the motel, he remembered that in the lobby there had been a plaque that told about how the motel was built from scratch in 1989, there would be nothing there now but an empty lot or pile of burned rubble.
He didn't have much money with him and he had left his wand at the motel, which essentially meant that he would have one hell of a problem once his money ran out. Another thing that made his skin crawl about the situation was that he could not get a motel room and still have money for food, which meant that he would have to find some place on the streets to sleep.
It wasn't actually the thought of sleeping outside that he was so against, he had done it several times before after all. It was the fact that anyone could sneak up on him while he was sleeping, a fear that was left over from both the war and his time at the Dursleys when his uncle was prone to random fits of violence at odd times during the day and night.
Sighing, knowing that he had no choice, Harry got to his feet and proceeded to wander the streets of Santa Carla, hoping to find a relatively clean place to bed down for the rest of the night.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
By the time he found himself back on the boardwalk, it was well past midnight and all of the shops and rides were closed and the entire street was dark aside from the faint glow of the moon.
He had been unsuccessful in finding any place to sleep elsewhere in the town that was not completely horrid or already occupied and so he had decided that the best place to stay, for that night anyway, was beneath the boardwalk where he would be able to at least find a secluded corner to curl up in.
As he lay there under the boardwalk, unable to relax in such a public place, he decided that in the morning he would start searching for a place to sleep that was outside of town. After all, animals were easier to deal with than humans when it came down to a fight. Plus, there would be plenty of hidden places out in the woods at the edge of the beach that would make him feel secure enough to let down his guard long enough to sleep.
It wasn't until dawn that Harry became too tired to keep his eyes open and he drifted off into a nightmare filled sleep.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
When he woke up, Harry was startled to find himself staring up into the face of an overweight security guard that reminded him uncomfortably of Uncle Vernon. The man was scowling at him and his hand was placed firmly on the butt of his gun, as if he fully expected -and wanted- to use it on Harry.
He had to stop himself from pulling a small knife he kept tucked into his boot as the man roughly nudged him with the toe of his shoe and sharply ordered him to get up. As he climbed slowly to his feet, Harry scanned the area with his eyes and was surprised to note that it was dusk and the beach, and the boardwalk by the sounds of it, was crawling with people.
When he finally straightened up to his full height the guard glared at him.
"This is not a shelter for runaways or beggars, if you can't pay for a motel then you should have stayed in whatever cesspool you crawled out of. Now get out of here, and I don't want to see you anywhere near the boardwalk again. If you don't stay away then I'll haul you into jail for disturbing the peace."
With that the man waddled off and Harry, irritated and angry, relieved some of his feelings by gesturing rudely at the guard's back. Some of the beach go-ers who saw what he was doing laughed and some of them even joined in, making lewd motions as the man passed; obviously Harry wasn't the only one who disliked him.
Forcing himself to calm down, Harry made his way up onto the boardwalk, first making sure that the guard was no where in sight, and made his way into the first cafe he saw. He was famished. He had not eaten at all the day before, what with his eagerness to reach Santa Carla and then the situation with the necklace. He was given quite a few strange looks when he ordered three cheeseburgers, a large order of fries, and a large cup of coffee, but he ignored them as he made his way to a corner table next to the window and began eating.
From where he sat he could see everyone in the cafe as well as the people walking along the street outside, a perfect setting for one of his favorite paranoid habits, people watching. At first people watching had been just an entertainment to pass the time between classes or to tell when something was bothering a friend, but as the war heated up and assassination attempts became more common, Harry had to use all of his people skills to tell who was friend and who was plotting to kill him behind his back.
All the while he had been eating, he had also been watching the people inside the cafe and had already profiled half of them when a commotion outside caught his attention. Four boys on motorcycles were taunting a small group of older teens and young adults. At first glance Harry could tell that the two groups held a long standing rivalry; they had the same mannerisms about them that the Gryffindors and Slytherins had when they were itching for a fight with each other. The question was, which group was which?
The two leaders of the fight, an older man dressed in a denim jacket with a white streak dyed in his hair, and a white-blonde haired man that looked to be in his late teens or early twenties were eying each other with contempt. Though, Harry was interested to note that the blonde's eyes also held amusement, as if he regarded the other man as nothing more than idle entertainment.
The argument would have escalated to an all out brawl had it not been for the security guard from earlier waddling by. Upon seeing the guard, the group led by the older man quickly made themselves scarce. The other group didn't seem concerned, one of them, a tall, long haired blonde dressed in an old tuxedo jacket even had the nerve to grin and give him a jaunty salute before he rushed to followed his friends into the video store a couple shops down from the cafe, not giving the guard a chance to chase him.
Harry was not so lucky. It seemed that the guard was not in a very forgiving mood that day. As he turned to continue his patrol, the guard caught sight of him through the window of the cafe and with a scowl the man started in Harry's direction. Knowing that he could not afford to be arrested, with some regret Harry took one last bite of his second hamburger and bolted out the back door of the cafe.
He found himself in a back alley behind the row of stores on the boardwalk, he hesitated for a moment, unsure of which way to run. The sound of the security guard getting closer prompted him to dart down the alleyway to the right. Now he could hear the security guard banging open the door to the cafe and yelling at him to stop. Obviously Harry didn't listen. So intent was he on getting away from the guard, that he ran right smack dab into a door that had opened suddenly in front of him.
With a yelp of pain and surprise Harry fell to the ground with a wince. The feel of blood running down his chin broke him from his daze and he looked up in surprise when a hand entered his line of sight. It was one of the four boys from earlier; this one had long dark hair and dark eyes, his face was blank but Harry saw a slight glimmer of concern in his eyes as he allowed the boy to help him up off the ground.
A shout a ways down the alley caused the boy's eyes to flicker from Harry to the guard, and for a brief moment Harry was afraid that the boy would try holding him there until the guard caught up. But to his surprise, the boy jerked him in through the doorway and closed and locked the door before the guard could reach them. They stood there for a few minutes, listening to the guard cursing and banging on the door until finally he seemed to give up and leave.
It was then that Harry was finally able to take in his surroundings. He was in what looked to be the back room of the video store, as there were several movie boxes stacked on random shelves as well as a few movie posters tacked to the walls. The other three boys were huddled around a large box, doing what, Harry couldn't see.
The long haired blonde looked up and surprise registered on his face, which, Harry couldn't blame him. If one of his own friends had returned from a grubby back alley trailing a bloody nosed stranger, he would be surprised too. The look on their friend's face caused the other two to turn as well and Harry shifted, uncomfortable under their scrutiny.
The older blonde looked at his dark haired friend in askance. When he received only a shrug the man turned his piercing blue eyes to Harry, making his insides knot up and he had the suppress the urge to blush like a school girl. After a brief assessing look, the boy stepped forward and extended his hand to Harry.
"Hi, I'm David. That's Paul over there, and Marko. I must say, I'm a bit surprised; Dwayne here isn't the type to just randomly help strangers, unless there's a free meal involved."
This seemed to amuse the others for reasons unknown to Harry. He was slightly nervous as he detected a predatory gleam in the eyes of the other two blondes, though that nervousness was slightly negated by the fact that he could detect no malice or deceit from the one who had helped him-Dwayne- and David, who was obviously the leader of the group. He nibbled his lip lightly, demeanor tense as he swiftly assessed the situation, but he could see or sense no reason not to at least introduce himself.
"Nice to meet you. I'm Fenrir, Fenrir Autolycus."
"Your names are contradictory to each other."
Marko blushed when everyone turned to stare at him but he kept his lips firmly closed when Paul prodded him to explain. Harry answered for him instead, understanding what the curly haired blonde meant.
"He means that the people I was named after are completely different, along with what they represent. You see, Fenrir is a monstrous wolf from Norse mythology; pure evil, supposed to help kill all the gods when the end of the world comes. Autolycus on the other hand, is the Greek Prince of Thieves, cunning, sly, but generally a gentleman; he taught Hercules wrestling and boxing."
David and Dwayne nodded in understanding but Paul still looked confused and had opened his mouth to express just that, but Marko clapped a hand over it and whispered an explanation to him. In the mean time David had turned back to his scrutiny of Harry.
"Tell me, why is it that you were in the alley in the first place? The only people who hang out back there are runaways and junkies."
It was Dwayne who spoke up instead of Harry, for which he was incredibly grateful. Though he was good at lying and making up stories on the spot, he was amazingly hopeless when it came to actually telling the truth to strangers.
"Fenrir here seems to have been pig-baiting and said pig chased him down the back alley. I had a bit of bad timing though, opened the door just as Fenrir was about to run past, smacked him a good one. We're gonna have to watch out for Fat Fred, he saw it was me helping him."
The others nodded in understanding and gave Harry sympathetic looks, obviously they knew that particular guard well. Marko's gaze wandered down Harry's face and his eyes widened as the youth caught sight of the blood on his face. He ducked out through a door on the opposite side of the room and returned a few moments later with a damp cloth. Harry nodded in thanks as the boy handed it to him and dabbed up the blood that had leaked from his abused nose.
An uncomfortable silence filled the room as Harry continued to stem the flow of the blood. So uncomfortable in fact that Harry, Paul, and Marko about jumped out of their skins when a previously unnoticed door banged open and a middle aged man in over sized glasses entered.
"Boys! What are you doing back here, I need those videos out front now, the customers are complaining an-" He stopped abruptly when he caught sight of Harry.
"Oh, hello! Boys, you didn't tell me that you had made a new friend, or that he was going to be coming over to help for that matter. You know how much I don't like not knowing who you're hanging out with, there are some bad elements out there after all."
He gave Harry a strange smile that did not sit at all well with the time traveler. This man gave off an air of danger that didn't add up to his scarecrow appearance, something about the man urged Harry to either kill the guy or run as fast as he could in the opposite direction. Though now that he thought about it, the four boys had a similar feeling about them, the same yet different. They didn't feel harmless, oh goodness no, definitely not harmless; but he didn't think that they were liable to kill him or cause him immediate harm. Not giving any outward indication of his thoughts, Harry returned the smile with a guarded one of his own.
"Hello sir, I'm afraid that they don't know me. You see, I ran into a bit of trouble and found it necessary to seek shelter in the alley, Dwayne found me and was kind enough to invite me to wait in here until the danger had passed, which it did several minutes ago, I was just about to take my leave when you came in. I'm sorry that I distracted them from what ever task you had set to them."
"Oh no, that's alright, you can stay if you feel that you would still be in danger going out there. You could even help them if you feel badly about distracting them, it would definitely be appreciated."
The air was unbelievably thick with tension as the four boys waited with baited breath to see how Fenrir would take the man's forcefulness. Or how the man would react if he were refused. Frankly Harry was a bit worried himself, with the vibes he was getting off the guy he was unsure if he should risk offending him, but then, when had Harry ever played anything safe.
"Actually sir, I am afraid that I am terribly late in getting home and my parents wouldn't take too kindly if they found out that I was hanging out in a video store when I should have been home watching my little brothers, never mind if it were to help make up for my distracting qualities. I seem to make it a habit of getting into trouble on the nights I'm supposed to be home early." That last part was said ruefully and with such embarrassed conviction that it fooled all but David, who narrowed his eyes contemplatively as he listened to the man's reply.
"Ah well, such a shame, though I do admire that you would give up your Saturday night in order to take care of younger siblings, not many kids these days who would do that as willingly as you seem to. Very well, why don't you leave out the front, who ever is after you might miss you in the crowd."
Nodding his head to show his liking to the idea, Harry gave the boys a half smile and a small wave before following the man to the front of the store and out to the street. Briefly Harry wondered what would have happened had he stayed, but he dismissed the thought as being irrelevant as he came to the very important question of where exactly it was he was going to sleep that night.
0o0o0o0o0o0
Back in the video store the four friends stood staring at the now closed door that led to the front of the store. None of them were quite sure what to make of the situation, though it seemed that only David and Dwayne had caught the look that Max had given Fenrir just as they left the room. Normally they wouldn't care if Max had a grudge against someone, but for some reason they didn't like the thought of Fenrir being killed by the Head Vampire, he just seemed too interesting.
Later that night back at the cave they all sat down in their usual spots around the main room and allowed themselves to be vocal in their speculation about the incident. They had been unwilling to say anything where Max might hear them, the older vampire might think they were being insubordinate with their comments and punish them, not that he needed a reason to punish them in the first place.
"Well," Remarked Paul, "that was interesting. Never seen anyone who could refuse Max without actually seeming to refuse him. Except pro'bly you, David. Fenrir is good."
"Yeah, 'specially since he convinced Max he was telling the truth. About being late I mean."
"So you caught that too. It's not often someone pulls one over on Max, look at all the trouble we have doing it and we're not even human."
"I think," David interrupted, "that we need to keep an eye on this Fenrir. I've never seen him around here before, we can't trust him. And the look Max gave him makes me wonder if our 'esteemed' ruler doesn't know something about him that we don't."
"Well of course we don't know him, David." Commented Paul. "He's probably here on vacation or somethin'. And Max, he glares like that at everyone who refuses his charms, just look at what happened to that last girl who worked at the store; what was her name, Linda or Lindsey or something, the short blonde with the big boo-"
"Paul, focus." Interrupted Dwayne smoothly.
"Oh, I'm focusing." Paul gave a lecherous grin and jumped out of the way as Dwayne moved to swat the back of his head. The wild blonde stuck his tongue out at his friend challengingly, causing the dark haired vampire to growl and charge after Paul who gave a battle cry and met him half way. Marko laughed as the two mock battled and David smiled slightly. Though, after about ten minutes he yelled for them to sit back down. They did so reluctantly, but remembering their previous topic of conversation, they didn't complain.
David brought every ones attention back to the topic at hand.
"It's exactly what happened to Lianne that I'm worried about. Didn't you guys hear the news? A few days after she 'disappeared' they found her mutilated, skinless corpse out in Jolli Lagoon. They wrote it off as a rabid cougar, but...." Here David shrugged as if he didn't know what to say, but the others understood. It hadn't been the first time a 'rabid cougar' had killed a female employee of Max's, or someone who Max didn't like, it probably wouldn't be the last.
Most people would think that vampires would like the reckless killing of innocent people, but the Santa Carla pack, and every other pack with half a brain between them, knew that it only brought unwanted attention to them if there was too high a head count that could be traced to any member of the pack, individually or as a whole. It was only blind luck that the police hadn't connected the murders to Max and by extension them.
Max was what you would call a problem; he had shown up in Santa Carla about four years ago, the boys had known he was there, scenting him every so often or catching glimpses of him in the crowd, but they weren't territorial compared to most vampires and they didn't mind other creatures moving in to town just so long as they didn't pose a threat to them or their way of life. They treated other vampires with more caution than they would with say, a werewolf pack, as most other night creatures were content to share territories with other species. However, this was where they made their first mistake.
After only a few days of observing Max, they came to the conclusion that he was alone, and that while older than them by a few centuries, he was not a threat. Their second mistake came when they accepted an invitation to 'dine' with one Archibald Marmax Frederick Gustaf von Vasaborg. Their third and most costly mistake happened when they underestimated their host. Back then they had thought themselves invincible, incapable of being bested.
They learned the hard way that no one is ever unconquerable, no matter how immortal and powerful they seem. Max had drugged the humans that Marko, Paul, and Dwayne fed off of with a powerful herb that paralyzed vampires -thankfully the only herb able to do so- and then proceeded to challenge David.
Back before Max, the Lost Boys had never had a Head Vampire to control them, which was just the way they liked it. However, one crucial fact about Head Vampires that David had forgotten was that only a vampire who had lived for at least five centuries could become a Head Vampire -one of the reasons there were so few of them in the world- and as such, they had far more experience than the average one-hundred year old. Needless to say, before the sun rose there was a new Head Vampire in Santa Carla.