Into the Woods (SG1/SPN, Jack/Mary) - Part 2
Title: Into the Woods
Fandoms: Stargate SG1/Supernatural
Type: het, crossover
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairings: Jack O'Neill/Mary Winchester
Warnings violence, strong language, sexual content
Summary: After his son died, after his wife left him, and after he visited his first alien planet and lived to tell the tale, a retired Jack O'Neill just wants to fish and drink beer. Unfortunately for him, he;s stuck in a vanishing forest with mythical creatures and the not-so-cute-and-fluffy Mary Winchester. She wants to get home to her sons. He just wants to get back to his retirement. To do that, the colonel and the hunter have to work together and get the hell out.
Master Post: mute90.livejournal.com/42381.html
They scouted the woods around the cave. Jack knew scouting like he knew knives which gave him plenty of time to suss out the fact that so did his unexpected partner. “Not too far out,” Mary told him as she crept carefully around trees and over roots. “What we need is close by.”
“What would that be?”
“The center,” she muttered, putting up one hand to stop him. There was a scuttling sound that got closer and then farther away as the owner passed them by. Mary dropped her hand and continued, “Someone - a witch, maybe a gypsy - set up an altar in the forest to act as a magnetic tug for supernatural creatures. They came, they saw - .”
“They vanished?”
“Maybe. Nobody really knows why it vanishes. There are hints that it might’ve been stationary at some point. There are hints that it’s been moving forever. It doesn’t matter. People die in this place every year. It’s time it vanishes for good.”
“Why hasn’t anyone gotten rid of this place before?”
“They tried.”
“Oh. Let me guess,” she stopped and he took the opportunity to lean in for extra flair, “they vanished.”
He got a dry look for his flair. “You like that word.”
“It’s a nice word. So, people come in here and vanish and you think it’s a good idea to come in here and possibly vanish.”
“It needs to stop. That’s what I’m here for,” she repeated and wasn’t that just a big pile of nothing in the explanation department? She raised her hand again. He stopped and considered her. Blonde, pretty face, nice eyes, nice figure, nice gun strapped to her hip: three guesses what didn’t fit.
He took the first opportunity to talk again. “You came in here alone? That kind of strikes me as a bad idea.”
“Yeah, someone told me that. I didn’t listen.”
“Bet you’re regretting that now,” he pointed out, “what with you being stuck in here with a civilian.”
She ignored that but the tightening of her jaw suggested he was right. She made a bad call. “What about you, colonel?” Mary asked, taking it to the offensive. “Why did you come?”
“I thought I saw a sweet, helpless woman getting attacked by a big, ugly monkey.”
She smirked. “And now?”
“And now I’m stuck in the forest with a not-so-sweet woman and a big, ugly monkey.”
She shook her head. “Sometimes, you just wake up to days like this.”
“Only me.”
“Funny. I would’ve said that about me this morning.”
“How long have you been in here?”
“Going on a week now, far as I know.” She moved on.
Jack was sure he didn’t want to be stuck in there day more-or-less a week. She shrugged it right off though. Week and counting…
“Don’t you got something -?”
She stopped abruptly and up went her hand, this time so close that her flicked his nose on the way up. There was no acknowledgement of his - admittedly minor - discomfort. Instead, she used that same hand to wave him forward.
He moved carefully behind the nearest tree and she crowded behind him, gesturing again for him to take a look.
There was a guy in the woods. Jack was pretty sure this one was a guy. He had a helmet almost fused onto his head but there were two legs, two hands, and two feet. Then again, the aliens had two legs, two hands, and two feet.
You never knew these days.
“I’m betting you’ve never seen anything like that before,” Mary murmured in his ear.
“Not exactly like that. Uglier. Meaner. Bigger weapons.” She cocked and eyebrow at him and he admitted, “Okay, I may be lying about the uglier and meaner parts - maybe, but I’m telling the truth about weapons. That…thing - is stuck in the middle ages.”
“That makes sense. It’s not a modern warrior.”
“What?”
“It’s a warrior’s soul,” she said. He looked over his shoulder and caught her intense gaze. “Kind of like a ghost. Died a long time ago, probably in a war, cursed to wander in no-man’s land forever.”
“Ah.”
That’s could’ve been Jack. When he escaped in Iraq, he could’ve died. He didn’t think about it before - because warrior soul’s roaming the land wasn’t anything but a movie before - but he could’ve been another warrior’s soul. Cursed to never go home.
That would’ve been mighty depressing.
Then again, Charlie might have lived if he never came home, never brought his service revolver into the house and forget to lock it up. Sarah could’ve gotten remarried. Then again, that would probably already happen. It just cost them time and Charlie.
However, now there was Mary staring at him, making it clear that could be the two of them in the near future. There was no Charlie to save with his death. He’d come to terms with whole too-late deal.
“How do we get rid of it?” he asked.
“Iron works a temporary charm,” Mary answered.
Jack nodded and moved quietly away from her. He could feel Mary’s eyes on him, judging him, seeing if he could help or if it was best to knock him out and leave him buried under a bunch of leaves ‘till she got back. He had this odd feeling she’d do that.
She wasn’t gonna have to though. Jack hadn’t been retired all that long.
He moved behind a tree a few feet away and to the left of the spirit, readying his borrowed knife. He then moved swiftly out into the open.
The spirit turned. It lifted its sword and charged at him. A foot away, Jack twisted sideways. He could hear the blade whistle past him and the crackling of leave as it hit the ground. He swung the knife in an arc, bringing it toward the neck. The knife went straight through, leaving the spirit nothing but a wisp of smoke in its wake. The smoke disappeared too.
And then there was a high screaming, growling thing coming up from behind him. He spun and saw a lizard or a pig or - he really was just gonna stop guessing. Whatever it was lunged at him.
Before it could touch him, a knife flew out from behind the trees and embedded itself in its back.
Following that came Mary. She gave him a brief nod before bending over and yanking the knife out of the dead creature. “Not bad, colonel.”
“I’m the best.”
“I didn’t say that.” She jerked her head to the side. “Let’s go. It’s temporary, remember?”
“So - uh - that thing?” he said as they passed.
“Chupacabra.”
“Ah.”
They creeped through the woods, him following quietly in her footsteps and her leading the way with light, quick steps. She had someone kind of training, he could see. He wasn’t sure what kind. It probably wasn’t anything official but you could tell this wasn’t her first run in…the forest.
Chasing down monsters.
He’d officially fulfilled his weird quotient for his entire life.
“I fought aliens, you know?” he said aloud. Not quite sure why but she was toting around a special weapons and telling him how to fight spirits. He had to give something.
“Yeah? What level did you get to?” She looked back at him.
“You think I’m talking about a video game.” She tossed him a look over her shoulder. Okay, so he played one of those games before. With Charlie. “Level 2. My kid could get all the way to the top, beat the thing with the five heads.”
“Let’s hope you’re that good.”
“I’m not nearly as good as my boy,” he muttered.
Up ahead of them, the trees stopped. The ground rose just beyond that. Mary and Jack bent down and climbed the few feet upward until they could peek over the edge.
The woods opened up to a perfectly circular clearing beneath them. Most of it was just grass. However, in the middle was a big rock surrounded by flower petals, green vines, and a thin moat of red stuff that actually seemed to move in a circular motion around the rock.
“In the movies where people do stuff like this, the red stuff is usually blood,” said Jack.
“Guess what?”
“What?”
“It’s probably blood,” Mary informed him.
“Of course.”
“Blood is powerful. Unless it’s specifically a protection spell, it’s pretty easily broken though. We just got to burn it all.”
“The rock, too?”
“That’s not a rock.”
Jack looked closer. On the side of the rock - still looked like a rock to him - there was righting in harsh, choppy letters. Blood. Rock with words on it. “It’s a gravestone?” He paused. “I’ve seen this in a movie, too. Human sacrifice. Do you have to move that rock? ‘Cause I should warn you my knees aren’t at their best.”
“We dig,” she said. “A circle in a circle. The bodies should be between the blood and the rock.”
Jack nodded. “Huh. So, we have to dig and watch out for all the things that are in here? In one big, open space.”
Mary moved onto her knees. “Easy, isn’t it?”
Jack moved with her. “Oh, yeah, let’s go take a walk in the park.”
“You could always stay here.”
“That’s not happening.”
“Okay.”
His head snapped to the side. “Okay?” He didn’t expect it to be that easy.
“I need someone to distract the werewolf.”
“Ah, Christ.” Bait. He was bait. He hated being bait. Bait usually ended up like fish bait in a body of water where there were actual fish. “Where?”
“It’s the thing that’s creeping around the other side.”
He looked to the other side of the clearing and, sure enough, there was a big skulking thing just waiting for them to make their move. “How about I do what you’re going to do and you distract the werewolf.”
“Come on. Be a man.”
“I’m getting the feeling you only say that when you want a man to do something he doesn’t want to do.”
She pulled her own knife, reached out and plucked his from his hand, and then replaced it. “Silver. I wouldn’t get into a hand to hand with it. Run. Hide. Use the gun if you have to but it’ll only stall it. If it all goes to shit, get back to the cave. I’ve got protection around it.”
“That was my plan.”
“Hurry,” she said, something that seemed to be her favorite word for him: hurry and run.
Just when he was starting to like her. (Scarily enough, he was pretty sure this meant she liked him well enough.)
Jack went back into the forest and then followed the circular edge until he was a good distance from Mary. Then, he ran out into the open, jumping and waving and shouting like a suicidal person otherwise known as distracting bait. The werewolf took off after him. It bounded off the woods with slick fur and glistening teeth and Jack spun and ran.
He bounded over roots and around trees as fast as his legs could carry him, staying better than the werewolf just by virtue of being smaller and more agile. It crashed behind him, smacking into trees and stomping on bushes with abandon. A good mile away, Jack fell into a hole and burrowed himself into the ground there. His arms worked overtime and he tried hard not to swallow dirt.
The werewolf passed him by, not even bothering to sniff around in its rampage.
Jack came up for air. He brushed leaves out of his hair and dirt off his arms. That was damn good work if he did say so himself.
He headed back toward the clearing where the non-bait was, hopefully almost done.
Of course, Jack and, it seemed, Mary, could not be that lucky cause he didn’t return to a fully open and burning grave. Instead, he returned to a naked guy chasing Mary.
Jack stopped.
The naked man was twice the size of a normal man and there were eyes all over his body, even in places Jack thought they’d be slightly…uncomfortable in. He had a long sword in one hand and a short sword in the other and he was swinging both with such force that Jack could hear them whistling in the air from where he stood.
Mary was twisting her foot-long knife in her hand like she was going to - he didn’t know - cut a finger off maybe.
Jack abandoned his position and ran out like the good distracting bait he was.
“Hello! Over here!”
The eyes going down his back, over his butt, and straight down to the heels of his feet all focused on him.
Jack attacked him with his own foot-long knife, went right for the back of the head.
The thing swiped at him, preventing the blow and sending Jack flying until he collided into a tree and slid pathetically down the trunk. It then charged at him as things in the big bad woods liked to do.
Unlike the werewolf, he was focused, all eyes on Jack as he brought up both swords. He brought them both down, flying straight at Jack’s head in what would have been a killing blow if Mary hadn’t been chasing him down while he beared down on Jack.
She threw herself at one shoulder. The large man spun, sending both his weapons off their mark. However, it used the spin to its advantage, continuing its movements, the swords swinging lower but still with a tremendous amount of force. Mary’s eyes widened and she stumbled backward. It wasn’t fast enough to avoid the longer sword.
She cried out as it sliced into her leg. She fell backward onto the ground beside Jack.
Jack pulled out his gun and used three more of his emergency bullets to send the thing backward, taking out eyes and just something big, bad, and ugly.
Before the Many-Eyed Man could recover from the shock, Jack scooped Mary up and ran.
Behind him the thing let out a surprisingly high-pitched screech that became a crack of thunder in the air. “Hurry,” she said - again but, as usual, he couldn’t argue with her. Rain followed quickly, torrents of water that made the ground beneath his feet slippery and his way unclear.
“God damn it!”
They got to the edge of the hill and Mary pushed away from him. “Down!”
They couldn’t climb up the slippery slope with him holding her. He let her push away from him and stand on an unsteady leg. They then climbed, him keeping one hand on her upper arm to steady as he clawed at the mud to get up and into the cave.
“You said its safe here.” He pulled off his jacket, made a ball of it, and dropped into onto the floor.
She limped over to the corner with her bag and then dropped heavily to her butt. “As safe as it can get.” She reached for the bag but Jack grabbed it first.
“What do you need?” he asked.
She paused, hand still out and reaching for her supplies. Jack kept them out of her reach. After a few more moments, she dropped her hand. “Open the second zipper back,” she said. He followed her directions and found a first aid kit and two bottles of whiskey. Everything an injured woman needed. “Cheers,” she said. She lay back on his jacket. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Colonel.”
Mary stored two large bottles of alcohol in her bag. It was passed back and forth between them as he used it to sterilize the gash on her leg and she drank liberal amounts to dull the pain as he stitched her up.
“I told you not to get me killed,” she said when she was finally done bleeding.
“My distracting plan went a little bad.”
“It went really bad. Don’t do it again.”
“If I didn’t do it, you’d probably be chopped up more than this.”
“Mmm...” She closed her eyes, in that mildly pleasant tipsy state.
Jack sat back, pulled the bag toward him and started pulling open zippers randomly. There were knives, a tiny box with color-coded compartments that held a few bullets, and little bags of incense in one zippered area. He opened up one of the bags, sniffed, and jerked back in disgust.
He moved onto the next zipper. That one only held one thing: a fine, worn leather notebook, black with a symbol cut into the front cover.
Jack pulled it out.
He flicked through the book. There were monsters on every page, newspaper clippings stuffed in the pages, notes scribbled across the edges. The locations weren’t just ‘vanishing forest’. There was a hospital in Texas, a hotel in Vegas, and a nursing home in Kansas among way too many others.
“That’s our life.” Jack looked up to find Mary watching him, her head still pillowed on his jacket. “Hunters.”
“Hunters?”
“Figure I can count on you not breakdown and cry at the truth. Those things aren’t just in here. The scary things you hear about when you’re a little kid, the ones your parents probably told you weren’t real? Monsters under your bed? Scratching at your door? It’s all true. It all happens.”
Jack looked down at the book, at how thick it was even with the incredibly small handwriting. “I feel like I should be making a dun, dun, dun sound.”
“I feel like I should smack you,” she said, seriously.
There was howling outside, long low howls that made the hair on Jack’s arms stand up. “Let me guess: other werewolves.” She nodded. Jack shut the book and placed back in its zipper. Not the problem right now. “Are we going to be dodging them in the morning?”
“We can’t take a pack with what we have,” she said. “Lucky for us, the packs only come out at night.”
“That other one...”
“- was out during the day and night on the full moon. The timing rules of the outside don’t apply in a place that can go anywhere. Time differences and all that.”
“Great. Tell me something; how did you stay alive this long with crazy werewolves, overgrown monkeys, and a man with a crap load of eyes? Super powers?”
She snorted. “That would make things easier. No, I just have two men waiting for me at home,” she explained. “I’ve got to get back.”
“Two?” Jack asked.
She looked at him, her eyes a little glazed. “That’s right.” She got a ridiculously smitten look on her face, began to tease him with…he guessed it was her sex life which, granted, sounded better than his. Then again, the sex life for a nun probably sounded better than his these days. “They’re handsome, smart, and crazy about me.”
“Well…that’s good.”
She laughed before taking another swig of her alcohol. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.
He froze. “You’re not really a two-man woman, are you?”
“They’re ten and fourteen, Jack,” she said.
“They’re…” Jack began to work it all out.
Mary nodded. “They’re my kids, my little men.”
“Oh. Not quite like big men, then?”
She fell back and laughed. “They are if you ask them.”
“What about they’re dad? Is there a third man you didn’t mention?”
Mary’s eyes narrowed. “I kiss you and you start playing twenty questions?” When he didn’t relent, she looked away. “Their dad’s dead.” She pulled at the chain around her neck until a ring came into view, a wedding ring that lay over her heart.
She rubbed the ring between her thumb and forefinger. “What about you, Jack? Why are we fighting so hard to get out of here? Fishing and beer?”
He opened his mouth, wanted say ‘retirement’, maybe ‘fish’, maybe ‘beer’. It all sucked, wasn’t worth a damn thing when he compared it to what he used to have: his wife, his son, barbecues in the backyard and career day with Charlie begging him to wear his uniform because it would mark him as the coolest person ever.
Jack bent down and caught her lips with his own but she stopped him with a hand on his lips. “You just brought up my dead husband, Jack. I don’t feel like kissing another man right now.”
“My wife just left me and I don’t feel like kissing another woman right now.”
“What happened?”
The words slipped out of Jack’s mouth easily. “Our kid died. He accidentally shot himself with my service revolver.” It got easier to say it every time. Too bad that was the only thing that got easier.
Mary’s eyes widened. He knew what she was thinking, knew what every parent had to feel when hearing that: horror. What if it were my kid? “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. I’m sorry every damn day. I can’t tell you why I want to live because I don’t know. Maybe it’s for my kid. Maybe it’s to prove something. Hell, maybe I’m just a stubborn ass who can’t take losing.”
“Think it’s that last one.”
“Probably.”
She removed her hand and he kissed her, softly. It was one soft bedtime kiss that ended with Jack pulling backwards and Mary turning her head to the side.
“You should get some rest.”
“Yes, sir.”
He pointed a finger. “Oooh. You should try that more often.”
“That’ll only happen in your dreams, Jack.”
Part 3
Fandoms: Stargate SG1/Supernatural
Type: het, crossover
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairings: Jack O'Neill/Mary Winchester
Warnings violence, strong language, sexual content
Summary: After his son died, after his wife left him, and after he visited his first alien planet and lived to tell the tale, a retired Jack O'Neill just wants to fish and drink beer. Unfortunately for him, he;s stuck in a vanishing forest with mythical creatures and the not-so-cute-and-fluffy Mary Winchester. She wants to get home to her sons. He just wants to get back to his retirement. To do that, the colonel and the hunter have to work together and get the hell out.
Master Post: mute90.livejournal.com/42381.html
They scouted the woods around the cave. Jack knew scouting like he knew knives which gave him plenty of time to suss out the fact that so did his unexpected partner. “Not too far out,” Mary told him as she crept carefully around trees and over roots. “What we need is close by.”
“What would that be?”
“The center,” she muttered, putting up one hand to stop him. There was a scuttling sound that got closer and then farther away as the owner passed them by. Mary dropped her hand and continued, “Someone - a witch, maybe a gypsy - set up an altar in the forest to act as a magnetic tug for supernatural creatures. They came, they saw - .”
“They vanished?”
“Maybe. Nobody really knows why it vanishes. There are hints that it might’ve been stationary at some point. There are hints that it’s been moving forever. It doesn’t matter. People die in this place every year. It’s time it vanishes for good.”
“Why hasn’t anyone gotten rid of this place before?”
“They tried.”
“Oh. Let me guess,” she stopped and he took the opportunity to lean in for extra flair, “they vanished.”
He got a dry look for his flair. “You like that word.”
“It’s a nice word. So, people come in here and vanish and you think it’s a good idea to come in here and possibly vanish.”
“It needs to stop. That’s what I’m here for,” she repeated and wasn’t that just a big pile of nothing in the explanation department? She raised her hand again. He stopped and considered her. Blonde, pretty face, nice eyes, nice figure, nice gun strapped to her hip: three guesses what didn’t fit.
He took the first opportunity to talk again. “You came in here alone? That kind of strikes me as a bad idea.”
“Yeah, someone told me that. I didn’t listen.”
“Bet you’re regretting that now,” he pointed out, “what with you being stuck in here with a civilian.”
She ignored that but the tightening of her jaw suggested he was right. She made a bad call. “What about you, colonel?” Mary asked, taking it to the offensive. “Why did you come?”
“I thought I saw a sweet, helpless woman getting attacked by a big, ugly monkey.”
She smirked. “And now?”
“And now I’m stuck in the forest with a not-so-sweet woman and a big, ugly monkey.”
She shook her head. “Sometimes, you just wake up to days like this.”
“Only me.”
“Funny. I would’ve said that about me this morning.”
“How long have you been in here?”
“Going on a week now, far as I know.” She moved on.
Jack was sure he didn’t want to be stuck in there day more-or-less a week. She shrugged it right off though. Week and counting…
“Don’t you got something -?”
She stopped abruptly and up went her hand, this time so close that her flicked his nose on the way up. There was no acknowledgement of his - admittedly minor - discomfort. Instead, she used that same hand to wave him forward.
He moved carefully behind the nearest tree and she crowded behind him, gesturing again for him to take a look.
There was a guy in the woods. Jack was pretty sure this one was a guy. He had a helmet almost fused onto his head but there were two legs, two hands, and two feet. Then again, the aliens had two legs, two hands, and two feet.
You never knew these days.
“I’m betting you’ve never seen anything like that before,” Mary murmured in his ear.
“Not exactly like that. Uglier. Meaner. Bigger weapons.” She cocked and eyebrow at him and he admitted, “Okay, I may be lying about the uglier and meaner parts - maybe, but I’m telling the truth about weapons. That…thing - is stuck in the middle ages.”
“That makes sense. It’s not a modern warrior.”
“What?”
“It’s a warrior’s soul,” she said. He looked over his shoulder and caught her intense gaze. “Kind of like a ghost. Died a long time ago, probably in a war, cursed to wander in no-man’s land forever.”
“Ah.”
That’s could’ve been Jack. When he escaped in Iraq, he could’ve died. He didn’t think about it before - because warrior soul’s roaming the land wasn’t anything but a movie before - but he could’ve been another warrior’s soul. Cursed to never go home.
That would’ve been mighty depressing.
Then again, Charlie might have lived if he never came home, never brought his service revolver into the house and forget to lock it up. Sarah could’ve gotten remarried. Then again, that would probably already happen. It just cost them time and Charlie.
However, now there was Mary staring at him, making it clear that could be the two of them in the near future. There was no Charlie to save with his death. He’d come to terms with whole too-late deal.
“How do we get rid of it?” he asked.
“Iron works a temporary charm,” Mary answered.
Jack nodded and moved quietly away from her. He could feel Mary’s eyes on him, judging him, seeing if he could help or if it was best to knock him out and leave him buried under a bunch of leaves ‘till she got back. He had this odd feeling she’d do that.
She wasn’t gonna have to though. Jack hadn’t been retired all that long.
He moved behind a tree a few feet away and to the left of the spirit, readying his borrowed knife. He then moved swiftly out into the open.
The spirit turned. It lifted its sword and charged at him. A foot away, Jack twisted sideways. He could hear the blade whistle past him and the crackling of leave as it hit the ground. He swung the knife in an arc, bringing it toward the neck. The knife went straight through, leaving the spirit nothing but a wisp of smoke in its wake. The smoke disappeared too.
And then there was a high screaming, growling thing coming up from behind him. He spun and saw a lizard or a pig or - he really was just gonna stop guessing. Whatever it was lunged at him.
Before it could touch him, a knife flew out from behind the trees and embedded itself in its back.
Following that came Mary. She gave him a brief nod before bending over and yanking the knife out of the dead creature. “Not bad, colonel.”
“I’m the best.”
“I didn’t say that.” She jerked her head to the side. “Let’s go. It’s temporary, remember?”
“So - uh - that thing?” he said as they passed.
“Chupacabra.”
“Ah.”
They creeped through the woods, him following quietly in her footsteps and her leading the way with light, quick steps. She had someone kind of training, he could see. He wasn’t sure what kind. It probably wasn’t anything official but you could tell this wasn’t her first run in…the forest.
Chasing down monsters.
He’d officially fulfilled his weird quotient for his entire life.
“I fought aliens, you know?” he said aloud. Not quite sure why but she was toting around a special weapons and telling him how to fight spirits. He had to give something.
“Yeah? What level did you get to?” She looked back at him.
“You think I’m talking about a video game.” She tossed him a look over her shoulder. Okay, so he played one of those games before. With Charlie. “Level 2. My kid could get all the way to the top, beat the thing with the five heads.”
“Let’s hope you’re that good.”
“I’m not nearly as good as my boy,” he muttered.
Up ahead of them, the trees stopped. The ground rose just beyond that. Mary and Jack bent down and climbed the few feet upward until they could peek over the edge.
The woods opened up to a perfectly circular clearing beneath them. Most of it was just grass. However, in the middle was a big rock surrounded by flower petals, green vines, and a thin moat of red stuff that actually seemed to move in a circular motion around the rock.
“In the movies where people do stuff like this, the red stuff is usually blood,” said Jack.
“Guess what?”
“What?”
“It’s probably blood,” Mary informed him.
“Of course.”
“Blood is powerful. Unless it’s specifically a protection spell, it’s pretty easily broken though. We just got to burn it all.”
“The rock, too?”
“That’s not a rock.”
Jack looked closer. On the side of the rock - still looked like a rock to him - there was righting in harsh, choppy letters. Blood. Rock with words on it. “It’s a gravestone?” He paused. “I’ve seen this in a movie, too. Human sacrifice. Do you have to move that rock? ‘Cause I should warn you my knees aren’t at their best.”
“We dig,” she said. “A circle in a circle. The bodies should be between the blood and the rock.”
Jack nodded. “Huh. So, we have to dig and watch out for all the things that are in here? In one big, open space.”
Mary moved onto her knees. “Easy, isn’t it?”
Jack moved with her. “Oh, yeah, let’s go take a walk in the park.”
“You could always stay here.”
“That’s not happening.”
“Okay.”
His head snapped to the side. “Okay?” He didn’t expect it to be that easy.
“I need someone to distract the werewolf.”
“Ah, Christ.” Bait. He was bait. He hated being bait. Bait usually ended up like fish bait in a body of water where there were actual fish. “Where?”
“It’s the thing that’s creeping around the other side.”
He looked to the other side of the clearing and, sure enough, there was a big skulking thing just waiting for them to make their move. “How about I do what you’re going to do and you distract the werewolf.”
“Come on. Be a man.”
“I’m getting the feeling you only say that when you want a man to do something he doesn’t want to do.”
She pulled her own knife, reached out and plucked his from his hand, and then replaced it. “Silver. I wouldn’t get into a hand to hand with it. Run. Hide. Use the gun if you have to but it’ll only stall it. If it all goes to shit, get back to the cave. I’ve got protection around it.”
“That was my plan.”
“Hurry,” she said, something that seemed to be her favorite word for him: hurry and run.
Just when he was starting to like her. (Scarily enough, he was pretty sure this meant she liked him well enough.)
Jack went back into the forest and then followed the circular edge until he was a good distance from Mary. Then, he ran out into the open, jumping and waving and shouting like a suicidal person otherwise known as distracting bait. The werewolf took off after him. It bounded off the woods with slick fur and glistening teeth and Jack spun and ran.
He bounded over roots and around trees as fast as his legs could carry him, staying better than the werewolf just by virtue of being smaller and more agile. It crashed behind him, smacking into trees and stomping on bushes with abandon. A good mile away, Jack fell into a hole and burrowed himself into the ground there. His arms worked overtime and he tried hard not to swallow dirt.
The werewolf passed him by, not even bothering to sniff around in its rampage.
Jack came up for air. He brushed leaves out of his hair and dirt off his arms. That was damn good work if he did say so himself.
He headed back toward the clearing where the non-bait was, hopefully almost done.
Of course, Jack and, it seemed, Mary, could not be that lucky cause he didn’t return to a fully open and burning grave. Instead, he returned to a naked guy chasing Mary.
Jack stopped.
The naked man was twice the size of a normal man and there were eyes all over his body, even in places Jack thought they’d be slightly…uncomfortable in. He had a long sword in one hand and a short sword in the other and he was swinging both with such force that Jack could hear them whistling in the air from where he stood.
Mary was twisting her foot-long knife in her hand like she was going to - he didn’t know - cut a finger off maybe.
Jack abandoned his position and ran out like the good distracting bait he was.
“Hello! Over here!”
The eyes going down his back, over his butt, and straight down to the heels of his feet all focused on him.
Jack attacked him with his own foot-long knife, went right for the back of the head.
The thing swiped at him, preventing the blow and sending Jack flying until he collided into a tree and slid pathetically down the trunk. It then charged at him as things in the big bad woods liked to do.
Unlike the werewolf, he was focused, all eyes on Jack as he brought up both swords. He brought them both down, flying straight at Jack’s head in what would have been a killing blow if Mary hadn’t been chasing him down while he beared down on Jack.
She threw herself at one shoulder. The large man spun, sending both his weapons off their mark. However, it used the spin to its advantage, continuing its movements, the swords swinging lower but still with a tremendous amount of force. Mary’s eyes widened and she stumbled backward. It wasn’t fast enough to avoid the longer sword.
She cried out as it sliced into her leg. She fell backward onto the ground beside Jack.
Jack pulled out his gun and used three more of his emergency bullets to send the thing backward, taking out eyes and just something big, bad, and ugly.
Before the Many-Eyed Man could recover from the shock, Jack scooped Mary up and ran.
Behind him the thing let out a surprisingly high-pitched screech that became a crack of thunder in the air. “Hurry,” she said - again but, as usual, he couldn’t argue with her. Rain followed quickly, torrents of water that made the ground beneath his feet slippery and his way unclear.
“God damn it!”
They got to the edge of the hill and Mary pushed away from him. “Down!”
They couldn’t climb up the slippery slope with him holding her. He let her push away from him and stand on an unsteady leg. They then climbed, him keeping one hand on her upper arm to steady as he clawed at the mud to get up and into the cave.
“You said its safe here.” He pulled off his jacket, made a ball of it, and dropped into onto the floor.
She limped over to the corner with her bag and then dropped heavily to her butt. “As safe as it can get.” She reached for the bag but Jack grabbed it first.
“What do you need?” he asked.
She paused, hand still out and reaching for her supplies. Jack kept them out of her reach. After a few more moments, she dropped her hand. “Open the second zipper back,” she said. He followed her directions and found a first aid kit and two bottles of whiskey. Everything an injured woman needed. “Cheers,” she said. She lay back on his jacket. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Colonel.”
Mary stored two large bottles of alcohol in her bag. It was passed back and forth between them as he used it to sterilize the gash on her leg and she drank liberal amounts to dull the pain as he stitched her up.
“I told you not to get me killed,” she said when she was finally done bleeding.
“My distracting plan went a little bad.”
“It went really bad. Don’t do it again.”
“If I didn’t do it, you’d probably be chopped up more than this.”
“Mmm...” She closed her eyes, in that mildly pleasant tipsy state.
Jack sat back, pulled the bag toward him and started pulling open zippers randomly. There were knives, a tiny box with color-coded compartments that held a few bullets, and little bags of incense in one zippered area. He opened up one of the bags, sniffed, and jerked back in disgust.
He moved onto the next zipper. That one only held one thing: a fine, worn leather notebook, black with a symbol cut into the front cover.
Jack pulled it out.
He flicked through the book. There were monsters on every page, newspaper clippings stuffed in the pages, notes scribbled across the edges. The locations weren’t just ‘vanishing forest’. There was a hospital in Texas, a hotel in Vegas, and a nursing home in Kansas among way too many others.
“That’s our life.” Jack looked up to find Mary watching him, her head still pillowed on his jacket. “Hunters.”
“Hunters?”
“Figure I can count on you not breakdown and cry at the truth. Those things aren’t just in here. The scary things you hear about when you’re a little kid, the ones your parents probably told you weren’t real? Monsters under your bed? Scratching at your door? It’s all true. It all happens.”
Jack looked down at the book, at how thick it was even with the incredibly small handwriting. “I feel like I should be making a dun, dun, dun sound.”
“I feel like I should smack you,” she said, seriously.
There was howling outside, long low howls that made the hair on Jack’s arms stand up. “Let me guess: other werewolves.” She nodded. Jack shut the book and placed back in its zipper. Not the problem right now. “Are we going to be dodging them in the morning?”
“We can’t take a pack with what we have,” she said. “Lucky for us, the packs only come out at night.”
“That other one...”
“- was out during the day and night on the full moon. The timing rules of the outside don’t apply in a place that can go anywhere. Time differences and all that.”
“Great. Tell me something; how did you stay alive this long with crazy werewolves, overgrown monkeys, and a man with a crap load of eyes? Super powers?”
She snorted. “That would make things easier. No, I just have two men waiting for me at home,” she explained. “I’ve got to get back.”
“Two?” Jack asked.
She looked at him, her eyes a little glazed. “That’s right.” She got a ridiculously smitten look on her face, began to tease him with…he guessed it was her sex life which, granted, sounded better than his. Then again, the sex life for a nun probably sounded better than his these days. “They’re handsome, smart, and crazy about me.”
“Well…that’s good.”
She laughed before taking another swig of her alcohol. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.
He froze. “You’re not really a two-man woman, are you?”
“They’re ten and fourteen, Jack,” she said.
“They’re…” Jack began to work it all out.
Mary nodded. “They’re my kids, my little men.”
“Oh. Not quite like big men, then?”
She fell back and laughed. “They are if you ask them.”
“What about they’re dad? Is there a third man you didn’t mention?”
Mary’s eyes narrowed. “I kiss you and you start playing twenty questions?” When he didn’t relent, she looked away. “Their dad’s dead.” She pulled at the chain around her neck until a ring came into view, a wedding ring that lay over her heart.
She rubbed the ring between her thumb and forefinger. “What about you, Jack? Why are we fighting so hard to get out of here? Fishing and beer?”
He opened his mouth, wanted say ‘retirement’, maybe ‘fish’, maybe ‘beer’. It all sucked, wasn’t worth a damn thing when he compared it to what he used to have: his wife, his son, barbecues in the backyard and career day with Charlie begging him to wear his uniform because it would mark him as the coolest person ever.
Jack bent down and caught her lips with his own but she stopped him with a hand on his lips. “You just brought up my dead husband, Jack. I don’t feel like kissing another man right now.”
“My wife just left me and I don’t feel like kissing another woman right now.”
“What happened?”
The words slipped out of Jack’s mouth easily. “Our kid died. He accidentally shot himself with my service revolver.” It got easier to say it every time. Too bad that was the only thing that got easier.
Mary’s eyes widened. He knew what she was thinking, knew what every parent had to feel when hearing that: horror. What if it were my kid? “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. I’m sorry every damn day. I can’t tell you why I want to live because I don’t know. Maybe it’s for my kid. Maybe it’s to prove something. Hell, maybe I’m just a stubborn ass who can’t take losing.”
“Think it’s that last one.”
“Probably.”
She removed her hand and he kissed her, softly. It was one soft bedtime kiss that ended with Jack pulling backwards and Mary turning her head to the side.
“You should get some rest.”
“Yes, sir.”
He pointed a finger. “Oooh. You should try that more often.”
“That’ll only happen in your dreams, Jack.”
Part 3