Log: Claire and Rory Who: Claire and Rory What: A trail of blood was left to follow. Where: Woods to the Motel When: After Meredith fuzzy Warnings/Rating: Rory is so naked, guys.
It was the middle of the day, and he was never the dog during the day. The dog preferred his nights, moonlit and empty. Most dogs might have been sniffing around the diner dumpsters for leftover steak specials, but the hellhound wasn't just any dog. He had his nightly routine. Almost every night like clockwork, he would make his rounds. It used to be that the music store had been a point of obsession for him, and he'd made it a priority then. But after all this time with no sign of his candy haired girlfriend, and new awareness of the vampire that lived upstairs, the dog avoided that place. It smelled dead, like the man inside.
The B&B was a favorite of his too, where the desk girl set out food by the back door. The structure was overcrowded with spirits, all things that the dog could sense even if Rory could not. But hauntings weren't something that the hound worried about, as he was half-dead himself. Or undead, even Rory wasn't fucking sure at this point.
But none of these places were on the dog's itinerary on this afternoon. There'd been only one reason for his daytime transformation, and it had overwhelmed him while he'd been in his motel room. This change was rushed, excited, different from what happened with the moon. It was agony bursting from his flesh, like a dog has always been inside of him, but now wanted out. It wanted out because it was time to take what was theirs, and the hound was as possessive as any bad dog could be.
So it happened, the girl killed herself, and the dog was there to claim her. By the neck, he dragged her limp body through the street and into the woods. One really only need follow the trail of blood to see the direction, but as feet stretched to miles and the blood was long drained from the girl's busted skull, it became too difficult to follow for the average hunter.
It was getting late now, and the sun was down by the time that the dog buried the girl. A pit dug by his own paws, and her body tipped in before he covered it with loose soil. Job done, and he howled a sickening sound. It was a long drawn sound, like a howl should be, but the tone was all wrong. It was higher, sharper, like the shriek of a bat.
Now, it was time to revert into the boned constellation of a man. The transformation was easier than the change into hound had been. Rory, as more human consciousness returned, supposed that his motel room was going to be a ripe fucking mess by the time he got back. This was just a few painful pops of connective tissue while fur slid off of tattooed skin in matted clumps. There were no clothes, of course, as his change hadn't been planned. He has a rich fucking headache too, and wished for a cigarette with more longing than he wished for a pair of pants.
He shifted on bare heels, determining the direction back to town while gauging the probability of being stark fucking naked. But then there was a sound, something small like fallen leaves misplaced, significant enough to have not been caused by the wind. There was also that feeling, hackles risen on the back of neck. It felt like being watched, and he was too human to scent the air with any margin of success. He had the foresight to cover his junk with both hands. Talk about being at a fucking disadvantage.
"Something there?" Something, not somebody. A body he could handle, it was the less tangible shit that he thought might fuck him up one day.
Claire hadn't forgotten about the dog that had been spotted around town. The one that bothered Daniel by hanging around the music store. The one that people spoke of on the forums. The one that watched. But there was a shift in aura of town, a heaviness to the air that betrayed the usual normality of life here. Danger. It tasted like pain and coated the back of her tongue with every breath she took.
The trail of blood started at Sonrisa. It was far from difficult to follow, but the last time Claire had gone into the woods it had been to keep Daniel from succumbing to the sunlight. The memories of her failure, not being there fast enough, were overwhelming. She wasn’t tracking the hellhound for herself anymore. Now it was to vindicate her for one of the few friends she had. To prove she wasn’t worthless. For the first time since she got to Repose, she honestly believed she was going to catch up to the hound. When the trail led deeper into the woods, her steps were assassin silent, deftly avoiding leaf and twig with every careful motion as she closed in on her prey. Even when the blood faded out she could pick up the small tells of where the creature had gone; flattened grass, broken twigs, soft ground that saved prints with ease.
The howl tore through her soul and Claire stumbled against a tree as visions of Hell pierced through her mind. Her gloved hands curled tight against sharp bark, and the breath was stolen from her body, only a soft whimper slipping from her lips as the baleful wave of energy wracked her. The problem? She didn't actually want to kill anyone anymore. There was a duty to be done, but couldn't she decide between right and wrong for herself? What had he done to necessitate death beyond his duty no matter how terrible it was? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.
Of course, while she was debating against her warrior soul, she had neglected to keep her silence. The shift of pushing up from the tree knocked splintered bark free to tumble down onto the ground, which was just enough to get his attention. Shit. He knew she was there. So much for the element of surprise.
Beams of moonlight cracked through overhead limbs, following Claire as she made her way towards the man. The very naked man. Silver light speared downwards and cut across her face, tempest grey eyes flashing with predatory intent as the moon played tricks of glitter and glow the closer she got. Her motley apparel screamed thrift store, but the army style jacket was a bit too heavy for the warm weather, and that made her gloved hands even doubly out of place.
“Someone,” Claire answered, keeping her gaze on his face in a show of trying to respect his modesty. “You have had quite an evening,” she commented with a flick of glance up and down his body. Nothing lecherous, but there was a point to be made. After all, she may have looked out of place, but she wasn’t the naked one. “Nothing to wear?”
This one had grey eyes, and he thought of doves. One dove in particular. Rory subconsciously licked the edge of more human teeth found in the recession of fangs. He was resuming his humanity like an after dinner mint, the taste dissolved slowly on the tongue. Supernatural awareness bled away from his mind, leaky as a gunshot, and he was just a man. Tattooed and scarred and naked as a newborn, but just a man. No killer dog here, none of that nonsense to be seen. Just ignore the nearby unmarked grave.
She asked if he had nothing to wear, although he figured that it was more of a statement than question, considering the way he had his bollocks in both hands. His expression wasn't exactly giddy when he tongued the picket line of his teeth and shifted, uncomfortable and bootless. For some reason, the lack of shoes felt more problematic than the lack of clothes. There was a certain kind of defenseless that came with being naked as a lima bean. "Did you follow me?" There were quite a few reasons that this was going to become an even more awkward situation if she had.
Followed implied that he had been in her sights the entire time. That was not true, and so she felt compelled to correct him, "No. I tracked you." Claire kept a reasonable distance, but she was bathed in the moonlight that cast an ethereal aura around her that suggested less danger than she was capable of, "You're very elusive." There was no question as to what brought her out here into the woods at this time. She was lazy in tone, but her accent leaned more towards her Italian birth than the generic American she used around town.
Claire backed off in show that she wasn't a threat, lackadaisical in her lean against the trunk of a nearby tree, "At first I wasn't sure. Could have been anything. Paranoia. Neurosis. Urban legend. Small town imagination. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. I couldn't do that any more. Not after what happened." Her eyebrows raised pointedly. He had to do his job. She couldn't fault him that. Which meant that she had to do her job. But maybe she didn't have to kill this demon. Maybe she could help.
"I'm not here to hurt you." Reassurance, as if he simply had to know who she was. "But we do need to talk. What's your name? Or what do you want me to call you?" Even as she asked, she started to pull necessities from her hunter jacket. Two silver blades, long and lethal, were removed from the interior and tucked into the leather belt that kept her jean shorts from tumbling off her hips, and then a small bottle of holy water was also yanked from one of the many pockets inside and Claire shoved it into her pocket. Everything else inside the jacket was mostly ritual components and therefore harmless, so she shrugged out of it to make the silent offer for him to put it on as her eyes respectfully averted.
It wasn’t the longest coat, (A trench coat would have done much better for her) but he wouldn’t have to sit around and hold himself to keep his modesty.
Tracked him. Didn't that sound ominous and leading? Didn't that sound like just the sort of thing that one did to an animal and not a man? Distrust flooded his heart, which was usually wide open and yawning where women were concerned, but not now. Maybe it was some latent survival instinct spur-kicked into being by his own nudity, but the girl did not look soft like doves. She wasn't rusted over danger either, and Rory wasn't sure what to quantify her as other than human… he was fairly sure. He hadn't smelled anything to suggest otherwise. Tracked him, fucking lovely. When she commented on him being elusive, Rory lifted his chin. "Aye, its often the idea."
He was cagey now, there was a tension in him that radiated through the pale constellation of his body as the woman continued to speak, exposing her knowledge with every word that developed in the night air between them. She knew what he was, or at the very least suspected strongly the sort of creature he was. He didn't imagine that she could know much more beyond that, if she had any established proof or inherent knowledge of Hell and demons, it would have been a shocker.
He watched her take the knives from her jacket with a new degree of fascination, because he hadn't been expecting that. "I'm Rory," he told her while venturing just a little closer to take the jacket when she offered it. "Who the fuck are you?" Although profane, there wasn't any hostility in the question. It was a casual style of cursing earned in a Southie neighborhood where every other word in a sentence only had four letters. He was much taller than her, so the best thing he found to do with the jacket was to tie its sleeves at the hatchet blades of his hips like some semi-functional loincloth.
Even without the jacket, every inch of skin except for her face was covered. Leggings under the shorts, and a long sleeved shirt under the used gas station work shirt that seamlessly melted into the gloves to hide her hands. They were a strange yin and yang in that fashion, empathy of naked vulnerability the only thing that made her give him her precious coat. Still, there should have been wariness at the inherent danger that was present, but the girl that stood before him showed no evidence of fear.
Profanity didn't bother her, and there was a hint of a smile until the gravity of the question came crashing down, "You don't know?" Claire sounded genuinely confused, and the furrow of her brow visually cemented her tonal bewilderment. There was a pause, a moment where Claire debated whether to inform him of her name around town or to give him the full spiel of granted titles. "Well, Rory, most of your kind know me as Sister Temperance." She wasn't entirely certain how well he knew the legend of the Bellatora, but Claire thought it was only fair to give him her real name. If he knew? Then they could be on equal footing. If he didn't? This was going to be an awkward conversation before her line of questioning. Almost as awkward as him being mostly naked.
"There are other people looking for you." A beat. Clarification. "Well... The 'rabid dog.' There's a whole group hunting tonight. Law enforcement included." As though that should help convince him to leave the side of the unmarked grave, "We should get moving. The town, and your clothes I will assume, is that way."
He thought that she seemed confused for a moment, bewildered by his inquiry toward her name, and Rory wondered briefly if he was supposed to remember her. That was what he mistook her expression for until she spoke of his kind and the namesake she was known as. Rory didn't liken himself to a demon, he didn't even consider himself a shapeshifter. The mystical afterlife and all of the hell that came with it was still fresh enough that he thought of himself, mostly, as a man. He didn't know any other hounds aside from that brief residence in Hell. He didn't keep company with demons, and he generally avoided other supernatural creatures when it could be helped. So if he was supposed to be up on the lore, gossiping over the water cooler with others of his kind, Rory was sorely misinformed. Raised devout, suffering Catholic and all, but he had no bleeding idea what she was on about.
"You a fuckin nun?" That Sister title made him think so, although she didn't look like no nun he'd ever crossed as a boy. Besides, the knives seemed real out of character for that sort of thing. Although any explanation or discussion on their histories might be better saved for another time, he realized this when she told him that a whole group of people were out hunting for the hound. Normally, being crossed in the woods might not have been such a worry… after all, who could believe that a hound could also be a man? But tonight, he wasn't feeling so sure of himself, which might have been due to the lack of pants.
"Yeah… motels this way." Rory allowed for a couple meters of distance between them as he began the trek back toward the section of town where he resided. He didn't like putting his back to her, and he didn't suspect her to like it the other way around, so rather he just kind of kept an even pace with her as they made their way through the brush and back toward civilization.
The girl had little in the way of tact when it came to differentiating between humans and the supernatural. For quite some time it had always been 'us versus them'. Had Claire known that Rory was relatively new at this, things probably would have gone differently. As it was, there was little reason for her to believe otherwise. After all, this was the girl that had stormed the gates of Hell, sliced through legions of demons to get to General Balam, and then tore his heart out with her bare hands. She assumed it gave her a touch of notoriety beyond her bloodline. That was years ago, though. And a lot had changed.
Claire laughed light and shook her head, honey brown tendrils of hair tumbling around her face that fell out of the messy bun she had put it up in. "Not exactly. I've not taken the solemn vows. Only the simple ones." Because that explained everything. Sometimes she didn't recognize that not everyone got the same education that she did growing up entrenched in the Vatican. "I'm just a Sister. Among the other titles. The Church loves their titles."
Her hands rested on the handles of her daggers the way some people would hook thumbs in their belt loops; it was easy and comfortable, natural for a warrior and the closest to a security blanket she would ever know. Claire understood the distant strategic stroll to her side, and she respected that he wasn't trying to get into advantageous positioning. A sign they'd not be fighting. Of course, that could also be due to the fact that he was naked. "So let's start easy, Rory. What are you doing in Repose?" The motel. Of course. She'd heard the dog had been seen around there.
"Aye," he supposed aloud at mention of the Church, a capitalized entity just as large as the Holy Ghost. Even a sacrament as bottom tier as Confirmation had bestowed an additional title, a second name onto Rory's. With old religions, it was all part of the package. Patron saints were a grab bag in the dark, dime a dozen, nickel and knock off idols painted on all the colorful candles in Hispanic bodegas. He thought of Dymphna, Lily of the Éire, patron of the nervous, Demon Slayer, and saint of spotless virtue. Somehow though, this didn't seem like the time to get into a theological discussion, even if she was right and the Church really did like their titles.
"Came here for a girl," he told her with resolute honesty. He didn't see anything wrong with that, even if he was now beginning to understand that the girl hadn't been who he'd thought she was. But thats okay because he knows that everyone is hiding something, he wasn't any exception. "True love and all that rubbish." He wasn't sure that he liked the feeling of interrogation, even if this one was more genial than some of the ones he'd participated in during his more human life.
Just ahead, the trees began to thin, the line opening up to view of a street. Across, there was the back end of the motel, a sad dumpster beneath a streetlight, and nobody in sight. Rory straightened up and looked at her.
"Are you coming along? Because look, I don't know what you want, what kind of answer you're looking for. You're in some deep shit if you know the sorts of things that you know, but that is your business. I'm set to get dressed and rinse the taste of blood out of my teeth, so if you don't mind..."
Not the answer Claire was expecting, and it showed. The trees were clearing and the moonlight found her easier without slicing through leaves and branches that scratched at the sky. She'd been just as surprised as when she found a vampire back in Rome that hadn't killed their prey. "Rubbish?" She shook her head and smiled over at Rory, true belief behind the words that followed, "Love is one of the greatest gifts He gave to us. You are lucky to have found it." There was still a part of her that believed she was never intended for companionship in the romantic sense, and she understood the absurdity of being envious of this man and the gift he'd been granted.
She was not so envious of his other situation. And she wasn't referring to his lack of clothing.
"The answers I'm looking for." Claire repeated the words in spite of the fact that they rang empty. She huffed an incredulous laugh under her breath, "I wasn't sent here for you. I'm supposed to hunt down the others. You can make my job easier, or you can warn them that I will find them no matter where they hide." An excellent bluff considering Claire wasn't entirely sure there were other demons in town. She had her suspicions, of course, especially when the blind woman had gotten her sight back, but proof? She had none.
"I am happy to answer any questions you may have, but I will not join you unless you want me to." Claire was only human, and slate gaze wandered without thinking. She blinked a few times and had to avert her eyes from his bare chest. The young woman was lucky she didn't get flustered easily or let her inexperienced curiosity get the better of her. He was very striking, though, and keeping her gaze to respect his modesty was proving to be a lesson in chastity. "I will need my jacket back, however. Either here or in the room if you'd rather."
The strange girl spoke of love as a gift and He as the all-powerful entity of childhood dreams and older, criminal nightmares. Despite his current operation, Rory wasn't entirely convinced that God existed. It was a nice idea, and sometimes he entertained it for its comfort and familiarity as a concept and vast explainer for the world's beauty, but… entertaining ideas and believing them weren't the same thing. He experienced moments of wishful, distended belief, which inevitably plummeted back into the truest form of Catholic guilt-fueled atheism. Sure there was a Devil, he'd met the guy, but that didn't mean that he was still buying stock in the rest of it. If anything, his own damnation had pretty much reserved Rory to the opinion that if there was a He, his benevolence was one of fairytale.
His suspicions came to the surface as something entirely worse than what he expected. This demon hunter wasn't here for him, but the others. It would have been a hollow concern if he didn't have express knowledge of others actually being in town. Not only were there lackeys like himself, but the Big Guy was currently making the rounds in this little spot on the map, and somehow, Rory didn't think the Sister was in on that degree of gossip. He figured she would have either been more vigilant or nervous if that had been the case. He knew that the Church of old was keen on their relics, half-deep in magic as much as a religion, and he didn't think it would take much investigation to unearth the dark tide rising in Repose. He thought that the best thing this Sister could do was skip town without ever knowing.
So he shrugged a little, edging into his doorway and unknotting her jacket from around his waist with most casual ease, like he wasn't naked as an elderberry underneath. He passed it back to her, turning his hips into the edge of the doorjamb so that she got the battle carved line of his side instead of any full frontal. After all, she was sort of a nun. A tattoo on his shoulder was old ink, faded black in the ornate shape of a Celtic cross. "I don't know anybody in this town like that except for me, I can't help you, kid." He shut the door before she could question him further.
Gloved fingers took the jacket while trying to keep her eyes trained elsewhere except for the naked man. Gaze glanced over his tattoo, and she thought to ask him if it hurt very much. There was no chance to as he suddenly cut off their conversation with the physical barrier that swung on hinges to keep the two apart. Her eyes shut as the sound of the door closing rang loud in her ears, like a gunshot in the silence of the night.
Kid?
Claire held the jacket to her for a moment, not expecting the abrupt exit, but not precisely surprised. They weren't ever going to be fast friends, that much was apparent just from blood. That did not mean she was going to give up on him. There had to be some way to free him. Slate eyes narrowed as she took in the motel, a mental picture to file away. She knew where he was. She knew how to find him. If anything happened, he would not be able to hide from her. Not for long.
The jacket was thrown over her shoulders, and silver blades replaced in their special pockets. Claire moseyed into the darkness, a slow swagger to her steps that obfuscated the instinctual warrior march she had been raised into. The moonlight cracked through night sky and illuminated her path home, pale silver that held the shadows at bay. Rory. Another name to add in her list of prayers.