Who: Carter.
Where: The Budget Lodge; his room.
When: Morning.
When he woke it was with soreness radiating through his back and joints that spoke of strain and for a few moments that was enough to give him pause, remaining still in the bed that didn’t feel as comfortable as a decent mattress ought to. It was only when he slowly and carefully pushed himself up and into a sitting position that he realised why it felt the way it did, why there was a slightly peculiar smell coming from all direction and a strange feel to the carpet that spoke of too much use and too little care and maintenance. The room was a cheap one, budget in every way imaginable, dingy decor and unpleasant scars on the walls and stains in the corners that had Carter’s features shifting into a look of displeasure before it passed as quickly as it had come over him.
There was a good reason for him being here despite the fact that he could do better, why spend money on a roof and four walls when the basics would do the same job and leave funds for other essentials?
It was as he was digging around for the twin to the sock he had in his hand that he felt a shape beneath the bed that had nothing to do with the structure of the frame itself, making him step back and tilt his head to try and see what it was down there, his dark hair briefly falling across his field of vision before he swept it back with his free hand. The sock was tossed onto the bed as he lowered to a crouch and reached with both hands to the dark shape, clearly a bag or a case of some kind, ( more likely the former as he made contact with it and felt the material shift beneath his touch. )
Who: Nico.
Where: His and Gerlinde’s house.
When: Morning.
When he awoke it was with a start, sucking in a lungful of air that felt at the same time too little and too much, his chest heaving for the first few seconds before the rhythm eased and returned to something akin to normal. It was like coming up for air after being held underwater. Disorienting and a little overwhelming, a relief in the purest sense. With dark eyes he scanned the room to find the threat where there was none, the sense of vague foreboding hanging over his head like an ominous storm cloud. There was something nearby that could harm him, something at an uncomfortable proximity that he would do better to have greater distance from, but nothing in the room indicated what. Alone as he was in the room it was impossible to figure out why he felt the tightness of anxiety at the top of his abdomen, a tense discomfort that had him pulling himself from the bed and up onto his feet.
Nico pushed his hair from his face as he moved from the room, his footfalls so quiet they were almost silent. The house was hushed, gloomy for the dark shades closed over every window, his eyes narrowing at the sight of them. Had they always been like that? Was that what was making him feel so disoriented? The clock on his nightstand had said it was morning but there was next to no light in the house. It wasn’t natural for a person to wake up when it was dark, that went against what most people called a body clock, but before he could reach the window and open the dark shutter to let in some light he noticed the door that was ajar, alongside the same side of the house as his own room.
There was someone in there. Though there was no sound coming from within Nico knew there was someone else in there.
With one hand he gingerly eased the door open a little more to look through, his body poised to jump back and away. When the door was wide enough so that he could see through the gap it was easy enough to pick out the shape of someone beneath the sheets of a bed within. A woman, small and light.
Gerlinde. The name was provided in a whisper from the back of his brain along with a low humming sense of biting disapproval. Dislike. Distaste. Nico felt his expression shift accordingly and stepped back from the door just as silently as he had approached it, looking around at the house's interior. Gerlinde was someone he didn’t like, didn’t trust. How long had they been sharing a house? Why? ( Had she done something to make up for the mistakes of the past? )
Who: Savvy.
Where: Her apartment.
When: Late morning.
Sleeping in was one of Savvy’s specialties, if there was no need for her to get up then she saw no point in doing so. It was the sound of a loud discussion in the apartment next door that had her stirring more than anything, a disruption she couldn’t just ignore by burying her head under one of her pillows because they were being so loud about it. Whatever it was, and she could only get snippets here and there, they weren’t happy, that much was for sure. Savvy was all for people getting things off their chest but not at the expense of their neighbours, because come on, some people hadn’t gone to sleep until--
What time had she gone to sleep?
Opening her eyes and pulling her head from beneath the pillow that was a crappy sound muffler she looked around the room, her red hair a tangled mess around her head, momentarily obstructing her field of vision. There were a couple of sketchbooks at the foot of the bed that she thankfully hadn’t managed to send sprawling in her sleep and a laptop computer was hibernating on the floor down beside the frame within reach if she leant over to grab it. She didn’t. What had she been doing anyway?
Sitting up and rubbing her hand through her hair and then over her face she yawned and tried to stretch the sleepiness away, making a few choice silly noises as she did so because nothing felt better than a good long stretch in the morning.
The flutter of wings had her pulling up short with a yelp. ( Pigeon? )
Who: Carter (and NPCs).
Where: Outside town, about a twenty minute drive from Scarlet Oak.
When: Late night.
When Carter had been younger his family had spent a lot of time together. Training, practising, sharpening skills that would save not only their own lives but those of any number of potential victims. They hadn’t taken holidays together in the traditional sense but they had gone camping. Knowing how to fend for yourself when you didn’t have a lot to work with was a vital part of being a hunter and Carter had gone on to become an incredibly resourceful individual, not only when it came to fending for himself in the day to day but in a fight. That resourcefulness had saved his life more times than he could count, it had saved countless others as well, and he was thankful for it. The memories of those trips, unconventional as family trips as they might have seemed to everyone else in the world, were some of his fondest. With so many of them all gathered together it had not only helped to bond them as a family but it had highlighted habits and individual traits in every single one of them.
Lainey had liked to stay close to the fire, illuminated by the flames. Colin and Andrew would stay back from it, exploring their surroundings with the kind of inquisitiveness their parents had tried to warn them might one day lead them right into trouble. For his part, Carter had come to enjoy seeking higher ground, namely the bonnet or roof of one of the vehicles they had taken on the trip. Every now and then, well into his adult life, he caught himself mimicking that behaviour from his youth, especially when he was making contact with those still living.
As he agilely made his way first up onto the bonnet of his vehicle and then the roof, sitting himself down on the top of the SUV, Carter withdrew the phone from its place in his pocket. It was a burner, disposable, meant for one use only. The number he called would redirect several times before connecting directly with the source he intended to reach. They couldn’t be too careful. They never knew how many of the monsters they hunted might be looking for any one of them and Rebecca Bennett was close to the top of most of those lists if she didn’t outright claim the number one slot. Carter wasn’t going to take chances with the lives of any of his family but his mother had done what so few Bennetts had managed to do. She had survived. Not only that she had done so with grace and dignity, with a sense of deeply-rooted responsibility that had seen her taking in all of those children whose parents had been slaughtered or stolen away by the vampires and demons they had sought to destroy. Those children, Carter’s nephews and nieces, were in Rebecca’s care now, they would receive her tutelage just as he and all of his siblings had. The next generation of the Bennett family were in her hands. ( Carter would not take that lightly. )
Who: Sam.
Where: Summers territory; the woods behind the house.
When: Early evening.
Curiosity was a dangerous thing, contagious and unstoppable, it flowed and it spread and if left unchecked it could lead to dark places. Sam had learned that early in life but the wolf in him was so conscious, so strong at the fore at all times, that that curiosity never really went away, not fully, never permanently. It pulled him out of his comfort zone and into the unknown. Time and time again it drew him from the places he knew were safest and out into the world where anything could happen. Like this morning.
The house was the safest place for him, increasingly familiar and comforting because of that fact, but there was something out there. Something he knew he should fear. Something he needed to identify because uncertainty was the worst thing to feel and if he knew what he was supposed to be afraid of maybe that would make things easier. Sam was probably lying to himself on that front but he was so good at that, convincing himself of things most others would deny outright. It was one of the reasons he had become an Omega so completely, in every way a person could embody such a thing.
His paws covered the ground easily at a gentle, cautious lope, taking him closer to the edge of the Summer’s Pack’s territory where he had told himself he would stop, and stop he did, standing on the proverbial line between one patch of line and the next, picking out the scents of wolves he knew and others he didn’t. There was another pack nearby, he knew that, had come to learn that very quickly after being brought to the house and encouraged to explore. But there was something else, something that he knew deep down in the pit of his being, something that had a cold creeping sense of dread and icy fear rising from within. It laced down the length of his spine as he stood there, staring with alert golden eyes into the shadows that clung to the trees and bushes and ground in the early evening, day losing its grip to the approaching dusk, the sun setting below the horizon.
Sam didn’t notice any of that, too caught up in that scent -- those scents, he realised with a shudder of approaching panic -- to take it in. Instead he stood there staring into the distance, ears twitching and pivoting on top of his wolfen head as he finally took his gaze from that fixed point dead ahead, scanning the surrounding area. Left, right, and then each again, checking each of the compass points in between. Nothing. Nothing to see or hear.
That didn’t mean there hadn’t been anything there, though. Sam knew that as certainly as he knew his own name. That cold sense of dread was rising ever higher until he couldn’t stand it any longer and with a wave of nausea sweeping and rolling like a lazy wave through his stomach he moved, suddenly swinging his agile body around and turning himself back towards the house.
When he moved back for its welcome familiarity and sense of comfort and safety it was no longer at an easy lope that he did so. Sam ran, as hard and fast as he could..
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