OC_BigBang Fanfic- Blackwood Creek 6/12
Title- Blackwood Creek 6/12
Fandom- Supernatural, focusing on OCs
Ship- Logan(OMC)/Jake(OMC)
Rating- PG-13
Genre- slash, action, drama, romance, plotty
Warnings- violence, m/m kissing
Wordcount- 5,600
Summary- The boys meet up with some old friends of Logan's hoping to find out where and what Logan's father was hunting.
A/N- written for 2011 oc_bigbang
Disclaimer- I did not come up with this world, but the idea of a hunters’ summer camp is mine. I did not create the Winchesters or Elkins, but all the rest of the characters mentioned in here are mine.
Beta- skylar_matthews
*** Previous Chapter *** Master Post *** Next Chapter ***
The second day of their journey was somewhat more comfortable than the first. Several times Jake fell into silent thought, remembering the things he had said and felt the previous night and wondering whether or not he really did feel something for Logan. But Logan himself never brought it up, and seemed to have put it out of his mind. He was much less hostile to Jake; the silences between them were companionable, and the few times they did speak it was with less antagonism than the previous day. Whenever they stopped to eat or relieve themselves Logan handed Jake they keys without being prompted. Jake was beginning to think that he might have trusted Logan to keep the keys to the car, but since Logan seemed content to give them to him he didn’t comment on it.
As they went back to the car after stopping for a late lunch at a roadside diner, Jake handed the keys back to Logan. He was carrying a takeout box that held the remainder of a pizza they’d split- sausage and ham, their mutual favorite. Jake slid into his seat and pulled the door closed as Logan started the car. “You know,” Jake said, “if you get tired of driving, I can do it.”
“I like driving,” Logan replied simply. The car rumbled to life and warm air began to pour from the vents as the radio started up in the middle of a twanging country song.
“Do you like country music?” Jake asked.
“I don’t mind it,” Logan said, “and it’s the only thing you can get outside of the big towns. You can flip through the stations if you like; I guarantee you won’t find anything else. Besides, I can identify with some of them.” Logan turned up the radio just as the artist sang something about a wanderer getting back on the road again. He glanced over at Jake with a little smile, and Jake grinned in return.
“So,” Jake said, figuring that things were going fairly well and he had a good chance of getting Logan to keep talking. “Other than ‘west,’ you still don’t know where your father was going. What’s the plan now?”
“Travis said my dad was going to stop at the roadhouse and he’d probably told them more. So that’s where we’re headed.”
“Roadhouse?” Jake repeated. Logan said the word like it meant something, but the only thing that came to mind for Jake was the Patrick Swayze movie and he didn’t think Logan would be too pleased with him if he said as much.
“You don’t even know about the roadhouses?” Logan asked, giving Jake a look of disbelief.
“What, now there’s more than one?” Logan rolled his eyes. His fingers drummed on the wheel and he frowned thoughtfully at the road ahead. Jake got the impression that he was exasperatedly trying to find a way to explain something he thought should be common knowledge, and couldn’t help but feel a little insulted.
“’Roadhouse’ is code for hunters,” Logan said after a moment. “If you find a bar or restaurant or something with ‘roadhouse’ in its name, nine times out of ten the owner is someone who knows about hunters and what they do. They might be a hunter or retired hunter themselves, they might stock weapons to sell to hunters, they might collect information from the area that could interest a hunter, and they might just give discounts for hunters on beer. Either way, roadhouses are places where hunters can go and know that at least one other person in the bar knows about what it is that they do. And for hunters, that’s usually a pretty good feeling. Better than feeling like you’re a freak in a room full of normal people.”
Logan muttered the last bitterly and Jake looked over at him in surprise. Logan was silent for a minute, staring gravely out the windshield. Jake wondered if Logan would continue speaking, and if he ought to ask another question or simply let the conversation end there. Just as he was starting to think it was over, though, Logan spoke again.
“The one I’m talking about,” Logan said, the vitriol gone from his tone, “the one I called the roadhouse, is owned by a guy named Harvey Ross. He’s a retired hunter, and a good friend of my dad’s. We stop there a lot, every time we’re going through the area, so to me if I hear ‘roadhouse,’ that’s the one I think of. That’s the roadhouse for me.”
“So we’re headed to the roadhouse to meet this Harvey Ross?” Jake asked.
“Yes. Ross’ Roadhouse -that’s its full name- is in Charlotte Hills, Illinois, just outside of the east half of St. Louis.”
“Is St. Louis important?” Jake asked.
“There are a lot of highways that come together around St. Louis,” Logan explained. “From there you can go in any direction, and get to any part of the country. So it’s a good central location with a lot of traffic. Plenty of hunters pass through there when they’re traveling, so it’s a good spot to get business. It’s also good for us, because no matter which part of the west my dad was going to we can get a pretty direct road to it from St. Louis.”
Jake nodded thoughtfully. “So how far away are we from Charlotte Hills?”
“Right now?” Logan glanced at a green sign as they passed it. “About two more hours. That’s good; we might be able to keep driving after we figure out which way we need to go.” Jake groaned at the prospect of more time in the car.
“Can’t we just stop there?”
Logan grinned. “If you want to be a hunter, kid, you’re gonna have to get used to long days on the road. That’s most of what this life is: you spend at least three days driving for every one of hunting. And if you’re alone, you don’t have anyone to switch out with.” He looked at Jake, his smile gently mocking. “It’s not so glamorous now, is it?”
Jake just groaned and slumped down in his seat, and Logan laughed.
It was still light out when they pulled off the highway at the little town of Charlotte Hills and parked in the lot of a bar called Ross’ Roadhouse. Logan tossed Jake the keys as he climbed out and started towards the bar. Jake smiled and tucked them into his pocket before hurrying after Logan. He thought that Logan was in a pretty good mood; or at least, the best mood possible with his father missing. Certainly it was the best mood Jake had seen him in so far. He seemed to be smiling just a little, and there was a slight spring in his step as he made his way to the bar.
Jake followed Logan to the door of the bar and stepped inside. He looked around eagerly, hoping to spot some tangible indication that this bar catered to hunters. To Jake’s disappointment, it wasn’t very different from the bar they’d stopped at the previous night: dim, with the faint smell of smoke coming from the walls, a pool table and dart board in one corner, and a deer’s head mounted on the wall. There were a few people at the bar, but Jake thought it was probably too early for a big crowd. Logan went up to an empty part of the counter and slid onto a barstool, and Jake came over to sit next to him. He was wondering if he could talk Logan into a game of pool before they left, one that neither of them would hold back on.
The man at the bar turned around, and Jake’s jaw fell open when he recognized him. “Mr. Ross!” he said in surprise, and Logan glared at him for the outburst.
“Jake!” Ross greeted, seeming equally surprised. “What’re you doing here, boy? Weren’t you still going to Blackwood Creek? Nothing’s happened there, has it? Is Megan okay?”
“Megan’s fine, sir,” Jake assured her worried father. He’d met the man a few times when he came to pick Megan up from camp, though like Jake the little girl took a series of trains and buses on her own in order to get there.
So Harvey Ross, owner of the hunters’ bar Ross’ Roadhouse, was Megan’s father. Jake didn’t know why he hadn’t made the connection earlier; he knew that Megan Ross’ father was a retired hunter who owned a bar, and Logan had told him that a retired hunter ran Ross’ Roadhouse. Perhaps it was because Logan had called the man by his first name, which Jake had never known.
“And Logan!” Ross said, noticing the other teen for the first time. “What’re you boys doing here?”
“My dad,” Logan said quickly, before Jake could start to explain. “He left me behind at Blackwood Creek to go on his latest hunt, and I haven’t been able to get a hold of him for four days. I need to find out where he was headed.” Ross frowned thoughtfully.
“And Vince Barrett just let the two of you leave, did he?”
Logan’s expression became guarded. “Not exactly,” he said tersely, and offered no further explanation. Ross rubbed the stubble on his chin, seeming to think about what he ought to do. Finally he sighed and nodded.
“Luke was in here morning of the fifth, for a few hours. He wanted to know if I’d heard anything about some murders out in Montana. I told him I hadn’t; too far away. He borrowed Holly’s laptop to do some research and then he got back on the road.”
“Montana?” Logan repeated. He seemed to be trying to restrain his eagerness, but his tone betrayed him. “Where in Montana? Do you know what he was hunting?”
“Western part, was all he told me. And I don’t know what he was going after. Maybe you can ask Holly; I think he asked her to help him with his research. She’s home for a few days and she went to the firing range in town. She’ll be back soon, before business picks up. Can I get you boys anything to eat? On the house, of course.”
“Thanks, that’d be great. Could we have a couple burgers and sodas? I need to watch this one; he keeps trying to sneak alcohol.” Logan glared at Jake as he said it and Jake glared back, offended. Ross just laughed.
“Well, most boys his age do,” Ross said, sounding amused by Logan’s disapproval. “They aren’t as serious about staying sharp as you are, Logan. But then, most boys don’t live as dangerously as you do.” He chuckled and disappeared into the kitchen, presumably to get their food.
Logan sighed and turned around on his barstool, leaning back against the counter and resting his elbows on it. “So,” he said thoughtfully, “that little girl Megan is Ross’ daughter? No wonder; she seems pretty sharp, just like Holly.”
“You hadn’t met her before?” Jake asked, and Logan shook his head.
“I knew Ross had another daughter, but we never met.”
“Holly is Megan’s older sister, right?” Jake asked curiously. He’d heard a little about her from Megan, but not much, and he’d never met her.
“Yeah,” Logan said with a nod. “She must be maybe ten years older than Megan, though; she’s two years older than me. She’s a hunter; been traveling on her own most of these past two years, comes home for a few days every now and then.”
“You know her well?” Jake asked. Logan shrugged.
“I guess you could say that. There are only so many hunters out there, and only so many with kids. I haven’t met many people my age who know what my life has been like; Holly’s one of the few. So yeah, I guess we’re close.”
Jake nodded thoughtfully. He’d never actually given much thought to what kids like Logan or Rae might experience, spending their lives traveling with their parents. He’d always been so jealous of them for having an exciting life so close to the hunt -in Logan’s case, even taking part in it- that he’d never considered how few friends they must have, never staying in one place for very long. This Holly, Jake suspected, must be to Logan something like what he was to Rae: a friend he saw maybe once a year but who could understand his circumstances to some extent, and whom he could be assured of seeing again sometime in the future. In other words, the only real friend available to him and the closest by default.
Jake had friends at his mother’s home in Indianapolis, friends from school and from the neighborhood. He was very close to some of the boys on his soccer team, and there were a few who would probably refer to him as their best friend. All the same, Jake had never had any second thoughts about leaving home for the life of a traveling hunter and never seeing them again. He had always considered the people he knew from camp, Rae, Jeremy, and some others a few years older than him who had already left, to be his only true friends. He’d never considered the civilians he knew to be ‘real’ friends because they didn’t have his knowledge of the supernatural, which had become a huge part of his life. Maybe he had been taking for granted something Logan, at least, put a high value on.
After they finished their food and drinks -soda for them both, of course- Jake managed to talk Logan into a game of pool. He let Logan break, and watched in awe as Logan got in a stripe while breaking, two stripes with his second shot, and then just kept going, not missing a single stripe, until all seven were down and he was taking aim at the eight ball. This, too, he hit perfectly into the pocket he’d called. Jake had lost without ever getting to hit the cue ball.
Jake laughed. There was nothing else to do. Like he’d suspected, Logan was a superior pool player. “Alright,” Jake sighed. “Let’s play again. This time I’ll break.”
“You think you can get all of them in without missing?” Logan asked, a little smile playing on his lips. The second half of the sentence, “because if you don’t, I’ll sink all of mine without giving you a second chance,” remained unspoken but clearly implied.
“Maybe,” Jake said, but he doubted it. He wasn’t that good. He wasn’t as good as Logan. Jake broke and got in a solid. At the top of his game and giving it his all, he got five solids in before missing, and then Logan took all of the stripes and the eight, as Jake had known he would.
“Why didn’t you play pool with us at camp?” Jake asked, taking aim at one of his last solids even though the game was over. “Or when we were in town after going to the lake?” Logan shrugged.
“I don’t like to show off,” he said. Jake looked at him and raised an eyebrow, and Logan just smiled and shrugged again.
The bar was starting to get busy now so the two of them backed off to let other customers use the pool table. As they were going back to the bar, a young woman came up to them. Jake assumed she must be Holly Ross; she looked about the right age, maybe twenty, and had Megan’s brown hair and eyes. She was tall, not much shorter than Jake, and carried herself with a gracefulness that implied power.
She was strikingly beautiful, and Jake couldn’t help but remember Logan’s comment the previous night about finding Jake a pretty girl to flirt with so he would remember that he liked girls, not boys. This girl, or woman, really, definitely qualified as pretty: a perfect hourglass figure, large at the top and bottom and slender in the middle, with a face like that of a runway model and long, silky-looking dark hair. The pistol on her hip and knife strapped to her bicep, which no doubt kept other men away, only raised Jake’s estimation of her: this woman could handle herself.
But in spite of all that, Jake still wasn’t certain if he was attracted to her. He didn’t know if he himself thought she was beautiful, or if he simply recognized that she was what other men would consider beautiful. It brought all of the doubt from the previous night flooding back, and Jake was at a loss as to what he should say or do around her.
The woman, however, ignored Jake altogether, her focus centered on his traveling partner. “Logan,” she greeted him. Her eyes swept up and down Logan’s body admiringly, and Jake felt a stab of jealousy. He wasn’t sure whom he was jealous of, though: her for looking at Logan like she was, or Logan for being the center of her attention.
“Holly,” Logan said in return, giving her the same once-over. His lips twisted in a smile that was almost a smirk. “You’re looking good.”
“I could say the same about you,” she replied. Jake glanced between them, the obvious sexual tension making him feel incredibly awkward. Clearly Logan hadn’t been giving the whole story when he’d said they were close; it was obvious that there had been something between them at some point, and maybe still was.
“Not so good,” Logan replied, his expression and tone turning serious. “I’m looking for my dad. Yours said you might know something about where he was headed and what he’s after.”
“Oh,” Holly murmured, her smile fading. “He had some newspaper clippings about some strange deaths that he wanted my help looking into.” She glanced around almost suspiciously, then said in a softer tone, “Here, let’s go to the back; we can talk there without being overheard.” She led the way through a door to one side of the bar, into what looked like a living room. It seemed that the family lived in the back of the bar, behind the kitchen.
“The newspaper articles were from a town called Blue Ridge in western Montana,” Holly explained as she sank onto the couch. Logan and Jake followed her lead and sat, Logan next to her and Jake separately in a recliner. “Different articles. One was from a cattle mutilation. Its throat had been torn out, but there was no blood around. There were seven from missing persons and five from murders, with dates ranging from last month to about three years ago. I asked him if he really thought one monster could be responsible for so many different things, and he said no: he thought it was more than one.”
“More than one?” Logan echoed thoughtfully. “Not many things live in groups. What did he think they were?” Holly shook her head.
“You won’t believe me,” she said. “I hardly believed him. Luke thought…” She trailed off and glanced away, then looked up and met Logan’s eyes, her expression grave. “Luke said he thought it was vampires.”
“Vampires?” Jake asked incredulously. “There’s no such thing, right? I mean, they’re just a legend, a stupid media fad lately. They don’t exist, do they?” He looked at Logan, expecting the other teen to tell him this was some kind of joke, but Logan just frowned contemplatively.
“Vampire exist,” Logan said slowly. “Or at least, they did at one point.” He turned back to Holly. “But I thought Elkins and the Winchesters wiped out the last of them.”
“That’s what most people believe nowadays,” Holly confirmed with a nod. “But it seemed like Luke was already pretty sure of what he’d found; he just wanted a little more information. Every article I managed to find said that the five bodies of the murder victims had been drained of blood. Luke said he thought the seven missings had been killed but never found. All twelve disappeared from the same stretch of road. Their cars were found empty with no sign of a struggle, and the five bodies that were recovered were found in the woods on the opposite side of the town. They all had strange bite marks on them that some people said might be from a dog, although others were pretty sure they weren’t.”
Holly shrugged. “It fits the bill,” she admitted. “I mean, if it were some psycho trying to make it look like a vampire killing, they’d put two puncture marks, like long canine teeth. But real vampires have all regular teeth and then whole rows on the top and bottom of retractable fangs. Some people might call that a dog, if they didn’t know what they were dealing with. And whatever it is, if it can take people from their cars without a struggle and it dumps their bodies in a separate location it must be fairly intelligent. Vampires used to be people, so they’re not dumb animals.”
“Vampires,” Jake said skeptically. “What, do we need to stock up on garlic and make some holy water?” Both Holly and Logan shot him withering looks, and he closed his mouth and looked away. Logan was the first to take pity on Jake and explain it to him.
“Vampires can’t be killed by that type of thing. Pretty much everything you’ve heard about them from books and movies is wrong: no coffin, no cape, no east European accent. They definitely don’t sparkle. Garlic, holy water, and stakes don’t do any good. Sunlight it only a minor annoyance to them at best; basically they just get sunburned easily. They don’t like to go out in the sun, but it’s not like you can bust open the roof of whatever building they hide in during the day and expect them to die. They’d live, and they’d still come out after you, even in the sun.”
“The only way to kill a vampire,” Holly finished for Logan, “is by cutting off its head.”
Jake looked between them curiously. Logan’s expression was serious; Jake could see in his eyes that he was committed to finding and trying to save his father, no matter how dangerous it proved to be. Holly’s expression was one of disapproval and worry; no doubt she thought Logan was being foolish to go after vampires, even to save his father. “So what does the mean for us?” Jake asked.
Logan sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose. “It means that most of our weapons and all of the ammo we just bought are useless,” Logan said. “What we need are machetes, and between us there’s only one.” He glanced over at Holly. “Do you think your dad might sell me a machete?” Holly frowned.
“It’s stupid to go after vampires,” she said. Her disapproval of the entire enterprise was clear in her tone, as was the concern she was trying to mask. “The books and movies aren’t wrong about them being fast and powerful. And you have to get pretty damn close to be able to cut off their heads. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to get so close to something that could kill me with a single blow.”
Logan nodded in acknowledgment, but gave no answer to her statement. He sat wordlessly staring at the floor and rolling his lower lip between his teeth, and Jake knew he must have been thinking how he could fight multiple creatures that were inhumanely strong and could only be killed at close range. At length Logan spoke again.
“That might be the only way to kill them,” Logan said slowly. “But it isn’t the only way to fight them.”
“What do you mean?” Jake asked. Logan ignored him and instead turned to Holly.
“Where’s the nearest funeral home?” Logan asked her, and a slow grin spread across Holly’s face as she realized what Logan was planning. Jake, much to his annoyance, had no idea what Logan had planned, and no one was bothering to explain it to him.
*** Previous Chapter *** Master Post *** Next Chapter ***
Fandom- Supernatural, focusing on OCs
Ship- Logan(OMC)/Jake(OMC)
Rating- PG-13
Genre- slash, action, drama, romance, plotty
Warnings- violence, m/m kissing
Wordcount- 5,600
Summary- The boys meet up with some old friends of Logan's hoping to find out where and what Logan's father was hunting.
A/N- written for 2011 oc_bigbang
Disclaimer- I did not come up with this world, but the idea of a hunters’ summer camp is mine. I did not create the Winchesters or Elkins, but all the rest of the characters mentioned in here are mine.
Beta- skylar_matthews
*** Previous Chapter *** Master Post *** Next Chapter ***
The second day of their journey was somewhat more comfortable than the first. Several times Jake fell into silent thought, remembering the things he had said and felt the previous night and wondering whether or not he really did feel something for Logan. But Logan himself never brought it up, and seemed to have put it out of his mind. He was much less hostile to Jake; the silences between them were companionable, and the few times they did speak it was with less antagonism than the previous day. Whenever they stopped to eat or relieve themselves Logan handed Jake they keys without being prompted. Jake was beginning to think that he might have trusted Logan to keep the keys to the car, but since Logan seemed content to give them to him he didn’t comment on it.
As they went back to the car after stopping for a late lunch at a roadside diner, Jake handed the keys back to Logan. He was carrying a takeout box that held the remainder of a pizza they’d split- sausage and ham, their mutual favorite. Jake slid into his seat and pulled the door closed as Logan started the car. “You know,” Jake said, “if you get tired of driving, I can do it.”
“I like driving,” Logan replied simply. The car rumbled to life and warm air began to pour from the vents as the radio started up in the middle of a twanging country song.
“Do you like country music?” Jake asked.
“I don’t mind it,” Logan said, “and it’s the only thing you can get outside of the big towns. You can flip through the stations if you like; I guarantee you won’t find anything else. Besides, I can identify with some of them.” Logan turned up the radio just as the artist sang something about a wanderer getting back on the road again. He glanced over at Jake with a little smile, and Jake grinned in return.
“So,” Jake said, figuring that things were going fairly well and he had a good chance of getting Logan to keep talking. “Other than ‘west,’ you still don’t know where your father was going. What’s the plan now?”
“Travis said my dad was going to stop at the roadhouse and he’d probably told them more. So that’s where we’re headed.”
“Roadhouse?” Jake repeated. Logan said the word like it meant something, but the only thing that came to mind for Jake was the Patrick Swayze movie and he didn’t think Logan would be too pleased with him if he said as much.
“You don’t even know about the roadhouses?” Logan asked, giving Jake a look of disbelief.
“What, now there’s more than one?” Logan rolled his eyes. His fingers drummed on the wheel and he frowned thoughtfully at the road ahead. Jake got the impression that he was exasperatedly trying to find a way to explain something he thought should be common knowledge, and couldn’t help but feel a little insulted.
“’Roadhouse’ is code for hunters,” Logan said after a moment. “If you find a bar or restaurant or something with ‘roadhouse’ in its name, nine times out of ten the owner is someone who knows about hunters and what they do. They might be a hunter or retired hunter themselves, they might stock weapons to sell to hunters, they might collect information from the area that could interest a hunter, and they might just give discounts for hunters on beer. Either way, roadhouses are places where hunters can go and know that at least one other person in the bar knows about what it is that they do. And for hunters, that’s usually a pretty good feeling. Better than feeling like you’re a freak in a room full of normal people.”
Logan muttered the last bitterly and Jake looked over at him in surprise. Logan was silent for a minute, staring gravely out the windshield. Jake wondered if Logan would continue speaking, and if he ought to ask another question or simply let the conversation end there. Just as he was starting to think it was over, though, Logan spoke again.
“The one I’m talking about,” Logan said, the vitriol gone from his tone, “the one I called the roadhouse, is owned by a guy named Harvey Ross. He’s a retired hunter, and a good friend of my dad’s. We stop there a lot, every time we’re going through the area, so to me if I hear ‘roadhouse,’ that’s the one I think of. That’s the roadhouse for me.”
“So we’re headed to the roadhouse to meet this Harvey Ross?” Jake asked.
“Yes. Ross’ Roadhouse -that’s its full name- is in Charlotte Hills, Illinois, just outside of the east half of St. Louis.”
“Is St. Louis important?” Jake asked.
“There are a lot of highways that come together around St. Louis,” Logan explained. “From there you can go in any direction, and get to any part of the country. So it’s a good central location with a lot of traffic. Plenty of hunters pass through there when they’re traveling, so it’s a good spot to get business. It’s also good for us, because no matter which part of the west my dad was going to we can get a pretty direct road to it from St. Louis.”
Jake nodded thoughtfully. “So how far away are we from Charlotte Hills?”
“Right now?” Logan glanced at a green sign as they passed it. “About two more hours. That’s good; we might be able to keep driving after we figure out which way we need to go.” Jake groaned at the prospect of more time in the car.
“Can’t we just stop there?”
Logan grinned. “If you want to be a hunter, kid, you’re gonna have to get used to long days on the road. That’s most of what this life is: you spend at least three days driving for every one of hunting. And if you’re alone, you don’t have anyone to switch out with.” He looked at Jake, his smile gently mocking. “It’s not so glamorous now, is it?”
Jake just groaned and slumped down in his seat, and Logan laughed.
It was still light out when they pulled off the highway at the little town of Charlotte Hills and parked in the lot of a bar called Ross’ Roadhouse. Logan tossed Jake the keys as he climbed out and started towards the bar. Jake smiled and tucked them into his pocket before hurrying after Logan. He thought that Logan was in a pretty good mood; or at least, the best mood possible with his father missing. Certainly it was the best mood Jake had seen him in so far. He seemed to be smiling just a little, and there was a slight spring in his step as he made his way to the bar.
Jake followed Logan to the door of the bar and stepped inside. He looked around eagerly, hoping to spot some tangible indication that this bar catered to hunters. To Jake’s disappointment, it wasn’t very different from the bar they’d stopped at the previous night: dim, with the faint smell of smoke coming from the walls, a pool table and dart board in one corner, and a deer’s head mounted on the wall. There were a few people at the bar, but Jake thought it was probably too early for a big crowd. Logan went up to an empty part of the counter and slid onto a barstool, and Jake came over to sit next to him. He was wondering if he could talk Logan into a game of pool before they left, one that neither of them would hold back on.
The man at the bar turned around, and Jake’s jaw fell open when he recognized him. “Mr. Ross!” he said in surprise, and Logan glared at him for the outburst.
“Jake!” Ross greeted, seeming equally surprised. “What’re you doing here, boy? Weren’t you still going to Blackwood Creek? Nothing’s happened there, has it? Is Megan okay?”
“Megan’s fine, sir,” Jake assured her worried father. He’d met the man a few times when he came to pick Megan up from camp, though like Jake the little girl took a series of trains and buses on her own in order to get there.
So Harvey Ross, owner of the hunters’ bar Ross’ Roadhouse, was Megan’s father. Jake didn’t know why he hadn’t made the connection earlier; he knew that Megan Ross’ father was a retired hunter who owned a bar, and Logan had told him that a retired hunter ran Ross’ Roadhouse. Perhaps it was because Logan had called the man by his first name, which Jake had never known.
“And Logan!” Ross said, noticing the other teen for the first time. “What’re you boys doing here?”
“My dad,” Logan said quickly, before Jake could start to explain. “He left me behind at Blackwood Creek to go on his latest hunt, and I haven’t been able to get a hold of him for four days. I need to find out where he was headed.” Ross frowned thoughtfully.
“And Vince Barrett just let the two of you leave, did he?”
Logan’s expression became guarded. “Not exactly,” he said tersely, and offered no further explanation. Ross rubbed the stubble on his chin, seeming to think about what he ought to do. Finally he sighed and nodded.
“Luke was in here morning of the fifth, for a few hours. He wanted to know if I’d heard anything about some murders out in Montana. I told him I hadn’t; too far away. He borrowed Holly’s laptop to do some research and then he got back on the road.”
“Montana?” Logan repeated. He seemed to be trying to restrain his eagerness, but his tone betrayed him. “Where in Montana? Do you know what he was hunting?”
“Western part, was all he told me. And I don’t know what he was going after. Maybe you can ask Holly; I think he asked her to help him with his research. She’s home for a few days and she went to the firing range in town. She’ll be back soon, before business picks up. Can I get you boys anything to eat? On the house, of course.”
“Thanks, that’d be great. Could we have a couple burgers and sodas? I need to watch this one; he keeps trying to sneak alcohol.” Logan glared at Jake as he said it and Jake glared back, offended. Ross just laughed.
“Well, most boys his age do,” Ross said, sounding amused by Logan’s disapproval. “They aren’t as serious about staying sharp as you are, Logan. But then, most boys don’t live as dangerously as you do.” He chuckled and disappeared into the kitchen, presumably to get their food.
Logan sighed and turned around on his barstool, leaning back against the counter and resting his elbows on it. “So,” he said thoughtfully, “that little girl Megan is Ross’ daughter? No wonder; she seems pretty sharp, just like Holly.”
“You hadn’t met her before?” Jake asked, and Logan shook his head.
“I knew Ross had another daughter, but we never met.”
“Holly is Megan’s older sister, right?” Jake asked curiously. He’d heard a little about her from Megan, but not much, and he’d never met her.
“Yeah,” Logan said with a nod. “She must be maybe ten years older than Megan, though; she’s two years older than me. She’s a hunter; been traveling on her own most of these past two years, comes home for a few days every now and then.”
“You know her well?” Jake asked. Logan shrugged.
“I guess you could say that. There are only so many hunters out there, and only so many with kids. I haven’t met many people my age who know what my life has been like; Holly’s one of the few. So yeah, I guess we’re close.”
Jake nodded thoughtfully. He’d never actually given much thought to what kids like Logan or Rae might experience, spending their lives traveling with their parents. He’d always been so jealous of them for having an exciting life so close to the hunt -in Logan’s case, even taking part in it- that he’d never considered how few friends they must have, never staying in one place for very long. This Holly, Jake suspected, must be to Logan something like what he was to Rae: a friend he saw maybe once a year but who could understand his circumstances to some extent, and whom he could be assured of seeing again sometime in the future. In other words, the only real friend available to him and the closest by default.
Jake had friends at his mother’s home in Indianapolis, friends from school and from the neighborhood. He was very close to some of the boys on his soccer team, and there were a few who would probably refer to him as their best friend. All the same, Jake had never had any second thoughts about leaving home for the life of a traveling hunter and never seeing them again. He had always considered the people he knew from camp, Rae, Jeremy, and some others a few years older than him who had already left, to be his only true friends. He’d never considered the civilians he knew to be ‘real’ friends because they didn’t have his knowledge of the supernatural, which had become a huge part of his life. Maybe he had been taking for granted something Logan, at least, put a high value on.
After they finished their food and drinks -soda for them both, of course- Jake managed to talk Logan into a game of pool. He let Logan break, and watched in awe as Logan got in a stripe while breaking, two stripes with his second shot, and then just kept going, not missing a single stripe, until all seven were down and he was taking aim at the eight ball. This, too, he hit perfectly into the pocket he’d called. Jake had lost without ever getting to hit the cue ball.
Jake laughed. There was nothing else to do. Like he’d suspected, Logan was a superior pool player. “Alright,” Jake sighed. “Let’s play again. This time I’ll break.”
“You think you can get all of them in without missing?” Logan asked, a little smile playing on his lips. The second half of the sentence, “because if you don’t, I’ll sink all of mine without giving you a second chance,” remained unspoken but clearly implied.
“Maybe,” Jake said, but he doubted it. He wasn’t that good. He wasn’t as good as Logan. Jake broke and got in a solid. At the top of his game and giving it his all, he got five solids in before missing, and then Logan took all of the stripes and the eight, as Jake had known he would.
“Why didn’t you play pool with us at camp?” Jake asked, taking aim at one of his last solids even though the game was over. “Or when we were in town after going to the lake?” Logan shrugged.
“I don’t like to show off,” he said. Jake looked at him and raised an eyebrow, and Logan just smiled and shrugged again.
The bar was starting to get busy now so the two of them backed off to let other customers use the pool table. As they were going back to the bar, a young woman came up to them. Jake assumed she must be Holly Ross; she looked about the right age, maybe twenty, and had Megan’s brown hair and eyes. She was tall, not much shorter than Jake, and carried herself with a gracefulness that implied power.
She was strikingly beautiful, and Jake couldn’t help but remember Logan’s comment the previous night about finding Jake a pretty girl to flirt with so he would remember that he liked girls, not boys. This girl, or woman, really, definitely qualified as pretty: a perfect hourglass figure, large at the top and bottom and slender in the middle, with a face like that of a runway model and long, silky-looking dark hair. The pistol on her hip and knife strapped to her bicep, which no doubt kept other men away, only raised Jake’s estimation of her: this woman could handle herself.
But in spite of all that, Jake still wasn’t certain if he was attracted to her. He didn’t know if he himself thought she was beautiful, or if he simply recognized that she was what other men would consider beautiful. It brought all of the doubt from the previous night flooding back, and Jake was at a loss as to what he should say or do around her.
The woman, however, ignored Jake altogether, her focus centered on his traveling partner. “Logan,” she greeted him. Her eyes swept up and down Logan’s body admiringly, and Jake felt a stab of jealousy. He wasn’t sure whom he was jealous of, though: her for looking at Logan like she was, or Logan for being the center of her attention.
“Holly,” Logan said in return, giving her the same once-over. His lips twisted in a smile that was almost a smirk. “You’re looking good.”
“I could say the same about you,” she replied. Jake glanced between them, the obvious sexual tension making him feel incredibly awkward. Clearly Logan hadn’t been giving the whole story when he’d said they were close; it was obvious that there had been something between them at some point, and maybe still was.
“Not so good,” Logan replied, his expression and tone turning serious. “I’m looking for my dad. Yours said you might know something about where he was headed and what he’s after.”
“Oh,” Holly murmured, her smile fading. “He had some newspaper clippings about some strange deaths that he wanted my help looking into.” She glanced around almost suspiciously, then said in a softer tone, “Here, let’s go to the back; we can talk there without being overheard.” She led the way through a door to one side of the bar, into what looked like a living room. It seemed that the family lived in the back of the bar, behind the kitchen.
“The newspaper articles were from a town called Blue Ridge in western Montana,” Holly explained as she sank onto the couch. Logan and Jake followed her lead and sat, Logan next to her and Jake separately in a recliner. “Different articles. One was from a cattle mutilation. Its throat had been torn out, but there was no blood around. There were seven from missing persons and five from murders, with dates ranging from last month to about three years ago. I asked him if he really thought one monster could be responsible for so many different things, and he said no: he thought it was more than one.”
“More than one?” Logan echoed thoughtfully. “Not many things live in groups. What did he think they were?” Holly shook her head.
“You won’t believe me,” she said. “I hardly believed him. Luke thought…” She trailed off and glanced away, then looked up and met Logan’s eyes, her expression grave. “Luke said he thought it was vampires.”
“Vampires?” Jake asked incredulously. “There’s no such thing, right? I mean, they’re just a legend, a stupid media fad lately. They don’t exist, do they?” He looked at Logan, expecting the other teen to tell him this was some kind of joke, but Logan just frowned contemplatively.
“Vampire exist,” Logan said slowly. “Or at least, they did at one point.” He turned back to Holly. “But I thought Elkins and the Winchesters wiped out the last of them.”
“That’s what most people believe nowadays,” Holly confirmed with a nod. “But it seemed like Luke was already pretty sure of what he’d found; he just wanted a little more information. Every article I managed to find said that the five bodies of the murder victims had been drained of blood. Luke said he thought the seven missings had been killed but never found. All twelve disappeared from the same stretch of road. Their cars were found empty with no sign of a struggle, and the five bodies that were recovered were found in the woods on the opposite side of the town. They all had strange bite marks on them that some people said might be from a dog, although others were pretty sure they weren’t.”
Holly shrugged. “It fits the bill,” she admitted. “I mean, if it were some psycho trying to make it look like a vampire killing, they’d put two puncture marks, like long canine teeth. But real vampires have all regular teeth and then whole rows on the top and bottom of retractable fangs. Some people might call that a dog, if they didn’t know what they were dealing with. And whatever it is, if it can take people from their cars without a struggle and it dumps their bodies in a separate location it must be fairly intelligent. Vampires used to be people, so they’re not dumb animals.”
“Vampires,” Jake said skeptically. “What, do we need to stock up on garlic and make some holy water?” Both Holly and Logan shot him withering looks, and he closed his mouth and looked away. Logan was the first to take pity on Jake and explain it to him.
“Vampires can’t be killed by that type of thing. Pretty much everything you’ve heard about them from books and movies is wrong: no coffin, no cape, no east European accent. They definitely don’t sparkle. Garlic, holy water, and stakes don’t do any good. Sunlight it only a minor annoyance to them at best; basically they just get sunburned easily. They don’t like to go out in the sun, but it’s not like you can bust open the roof of whatever building they hide in during the day and expect them to die. They’d live, and they’d still come out after you, even in the sun.”
“The only way to kill a vampire,” Holly finished for Logan, “is by cutting off its head.”
Jake looked between them curiously. Logan’s expression was serious; Jake could see in his eyes that he was committed to finding and trying to save his father, no matter how dangerous it proved to be. Holly’s expression was one of disapproval and worry; no doubt she thought Logan was being foolish to go after vampires, even to save his father. “So what does the mean for us?” Jake asked.
Logan sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose. “It means that most of our weapons and all of the ammo we just bought are useless,” Logan said. “What we need are machetes, and between us there’s only one.” He glanced over at Holly. “Do you think your dad might sell me a machete?” Holly frowned.
“It’s stupid to go after vampires,” she said. Her disapproval of the entire enterprise was clear in her tone, as was the concern she was trying to mask. “The books and movies aren’t wrong about them being fast and powerful. And you have to get pretty damn close to be able to cut off their heads. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to get so close to something that could kill me with a single blow.”
Logan nodded in acknowledgment, but gave no answer to her statement. He sat wordlessly staring at the floor and rolling his lower lip between his teeth, and Jake knew he must have been thinking how he could fight multiple creatures that were inhumanely strong and could only be killed at close range. At length Logan spoke again.
“That might be the only way to kill them,” Logan said slowly. “But it isn’t the only way to fight them.”
“What do you mean?” Jake asked. Logan ignored him and instead turned to Holly.
“Where’s the nearest funeral home?” Logan asked her, and a slow grin spread across Holly’s face as she realized what Logan was planning. Jake, much to his annoyance, had no idea what Logan had planned, and no one was bothering to explain it to him.
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