SGA Fanfic: Hunting Season (AU, PG-13) Part 3/4
Title: Hunting Season, Part 3
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Untamed AU
Length: 22,000
Warnings: some bad language and mild violence
Disclaimer: Don't own them, not for profit, blah blah blah copywrite cakes
Summary: After a camping trip John and Rodney have an accident and wind up stranded in a picturesque little town in the BC Rockies that isn't quite the Rockwellian place it seems. They have to survive until dawn, but the big question is who will kill them first - the townspeople or their new allies?
“Ow ow ow ow ow,” Rodney chanted with every pounding step, his untied boots flopping as they ran headlong down a street and his left ankle twanging from lack of proper support. His companions charged along on bare feet without any apparent problems, but he - he needed to tie his damn shoes, for crap’s sake, or else he was going to seriously injure something.
“Oh, sack up, pussy,” Larrin said from his right.
“He’s the pussy, I’m the, the, the … ursi,” Rodney snapped back between gasps.
From the rear of the group Devin snorted in actual amusement.
“Both of you, zip it!” John hissed. He was in the lead by half a dozen strides, his head constantly swinging back and forth as he scanned the darkened streets and homes they passed. Suddenly he stopped and Rodney barreled into him.
For a wiry guy, it was like running into a fur covered brick wall, and Rodney had no idea how they both managed to stay upright.
“Tie your shoes,” John said as soon as he untangled himself, and Rodney immediately dropped down to a knee to do just that. John had his head up as he sniffed at the air. “I have an idea.”
Hiking boots laced in record time, Rodney popped back up to his feet. “I hope it’s better than running down the middle of the damn str….” He was grabbed and shoved forward. A moment later they were charging their way down a narrow and very dark alley that cut through the middle of a residential block. “Oh, this is such an improvement,” he grumbled as best as he could.
“Do you ever quit bitching?” Larrin asked.
Rodney glanced at her bouncing along in relative silence and wondered how she wasn’t injuring something herself. “No.” He focused on the uneven ground and concentrated on not tripping and breaking his neck. “It helps me think.”
“Wow, you think a lot.”
“You’re saving her why?” Rodney shot at John’s back.
They darted left down another paved street and then were back in another narrow alley. Rodney suddenly sneezed, and while he was wondering how in the hell a person running for their life and gasping for breath could honestly have time to sneeze his inner scientist recognized the odor.
Turpentine.
The air was heavy with the scent of it, and as they ran down the alley Rodney was certain he could even taste it. They paused briefly at the end and caught their breath as they surveyed the back storage lot of the lumber mill and the pile upon pile of stacked logs ready for processing. But there was at least a half a block of wide open, weed filled space between them and it.
“Clever,” Larrin said. “Gonna have a bitch of a time following our scents through there.”
“That’s what I thought,” John said.
“Hide in there? Until dawn?” Rodney squeaked out.
“We just need to throw them off, get into the woods.”
“Or hotwire a truck and vamoose,” Larrin added.
“Or that,” John said with a smug cat grin.
“Okay, for argument’s sake, let’s say we do make it until dawn - what makes you so sure Dudley Do Wrong of the Furry Patrol is really going to keep his word and let us just walk away?” Rodney asked.
John turned his head and looked at Rodney. “He will.”
“It’s one of those lame-ass alpha honor hang-ups,” Larrin said. She shrugged a shoulder at John apologetically.
He shrugged back. “Exactly. It’s almost worse to lose face than to lose your throat….”
A howl split the night.
“Hey! It hasn’t even been ten minutes!” Rodney blurted out. “They’re cheating!” Then he was being shoved forward again.
“Go!” John hissed. “I have the six.”
“Now wait one….” Rodney’s protest was cut short as a very hot hand wrapped around his left bicep and he was practically yanked off his feet as Devin pulled him along. A smaller, cooler hand clamped around his right wrist and he found himself being dragged along at break neck speed across the vacant lot by the demonic siblings. “Hey, not a pull toy here!” He was ignored as they cleared the lot in record time, and before they darted around the first pile of logs he was able to glance back.
John was nowhere in sight.
-oOo-
Halfway back down the alley John ducked into the shadows formed between someone’s garage and their tall fence and crouched down low. They were constantly giving him crap about all the black he wore, but right now, with it combined with his black fur, he all but disappeared. He’d caught movement at the head of the alley, and a second later Whiskey came into view, head swiveling as she tested the air. Yeah, didn’t really surprise him she was the one to jump the gun - she was practically drooling back at the motel with the need to hunt. He adjusted his feet, his claws digging in for purchase, and the second she was within range he leapt. He came down on her, his fist connecting with her jaw before the rest of him did, and her head bounced off the hard packed dirt of the alley. He stayed crouched over her body for a moment as he watched the end of the alley for any movement, then quickly dragged her back to his hiding place. He shredded the sleeves to her shirt with his claws and used them to bind her hands and feet, and as a precaution tore another chunk out of the back and shoved it in her mouth.
Not that they’d have any problem finding her if they wanted - all they needed to do was follow the miasmic cloud of Canadian Mist she left behind.
He watched the alley again for a few seconds, then quickly went back the way he’d come, a fluid shadow in the still night. He dashed across the vacant lot, and for that brief amount of time felt more exposed that he did the night he ran for his life on Atlantis wearing nothing but his fur and blood. Then he was ducking behind a pile of logs. He spun and watched, but nothing moved.
John glanced at his watch - not quite four hours to sunrise. Okay, they could do this. Martin seemed pretty damn confident, but then this was probably the first time he’d chased prey that had been in Black Ops for three years. The bastard had no idea what he was up against.
The scent of pitch and turpentine was so strong in the air it was actually making his nose run. He studied the ground and it wasn’t too difficult to make out Rodney’s boot marks in the blow dirt and sawdust. Crap. That could be a problem. He found a branch still attached to one of the logs - it wasn’t very big and the dried out needles cascaded from it as he pulled it free - but it was enough to scuff out the more obvious foot prints. He could barely make out Larrin and Devin’s tracks, and when he’d cleared a good hundred feet he tossed the branch away and went in search of his fellow prey.
-oOo-
The ground passed by underneath and Rodney would have yelled if he’d had the breath to do it - he was flopped over Devin’s shoulder like so much wet laundry and the demon spawn was leaping from log pile to log pile like he thought he was Spider-Man. They landed hard after a dizzying second and Rodney was surprised he did have enough air to let out a tiny grunt. He was seriously starting to have flashbacks to a Thanksgiving when he was four. His Uncle Bernard, whose idea of high comedy was flopping his nephew over a shoulder, spinning around a dozen times, then setting the kid down to stumble around like a drunk, had ambushed him that year after dinner, a dinner with Gramma’s not so successful attempt at oyster stuffing, and he, who wasn’t feeling all that well from said attempt anyway, power vomited down Bernard’s back, and also in a wide arc around the living room.
There wasn’t any spinning involved right now, but the fear induced nausea was similar, and one more leap was going to make him hurl.
Thankfully Kangaroo Jack didn’t launch into space again, but instead Rodney found himself being dumped none too gently onto the top of a stack of logs. The pile was swaybacked and made a perfect hiding place for the moment, and while Rodney just laid there and gasped for air - really, a compressed diaphragm on top of seat belt bites after running for his life was so not conducive to, well, breathing - Devin crouched low and peered over the higher logs back towards town. They had barely entered the mill’s storage lot when the Demonic Duo decided he was leaving too much evidence behind, hence the hundred meter scientist carry and long jump routine from stack to stack.
Rodney was finally getting enough oxygen to vanquish the little sparklies that threatened his vision, and he struggled to get rolled over and his hand and knees under him. “Do … you … see them?” he managed to gasp out.
“No.”
The panic ratcheted up a notch and he started to get up to look over the logs himself. “How’re they … gonna find ….” Rodney found himself shoved back down onto his stomach, hard. “Ow!”
“Shh!”
Rodney glared up at Devin and found the young man meeting his gaze and went from wheezing to locked lungs in a nanosecond. The eyes he looked into weren’t smooth - they were faceted and reminded him of hematite the way they reflected the moonlight with their dark metallic glint. Then he breathed and wasn’t aware he whimpered.
“Sis knows where I am,” Devin said happily. “Stay,” he added, then leapt up and was gone.
“Wait!” Rodney blurted out, but it was too late. He was alone. He crawled carefully up to the higher layer of logs and cautiously peered over the edge. Absolutely nothing moved in his field of vision. “Oh, crap,” he groaned out as he ducked back down. “Stay. Yeah, right.” He glanced around nervously. “But do they know where I am?” he asked out loud. “Crap crap crap crap crap.”
Rodney waited until his breathing was just down to a mere panicky pace before he peeked up over the top again. Still nothing. He glanced back towards the mill and saw his position wasn’t too far from the more civilized stacks of finished boards and pallets and fence posts ready for shipping. “Stay,” he repeated and set his mouth in a crooked grimace. He carefully got to his hands and knees are started crawling towards the end of the log pile, cursing quietly every time he encountered a sharp broken branch end with a knee or sticking his hand in pine pitch. When he got to the end, he looked over and groaned. It had to be ten meters to the ground. Okay, not ten, but it sure looked like it. The logs stuck out at all levels and would make an easy climb down. Rodney turned around and back over the edge, butt out, until he could get his feet settled on easy footholds. “Just like a ladder,” he muttered as he started down, then hissed when he found a particularly large glob of pitch. “A really sticky ladder,” he added as he shook his hand to no avail. When he got to the ground he’d just head for the mill - that was the plan anyway. Just find a nice cozy hiding place and keep an eye out for the rest.
And hope there aren’t any security guards.
Rodney froze, poised halfway to the ground, and glanced towards the mill. The brightly lit up mill. “I, I, I could just wait a few,” he muttered to himself. “Good look out position, no one would expect me to be up here, I’ll see them before they’d ever spot me. Yeah, that’d work.”
He crawled back up.
-oOo-
John lost the tracks he was following barely three rows in and started to panic. He stopped dead in his own tracks and tried desperately to catch any kind of scent in the sharp air. A moment later he saw a pale hand waving at him from behind a stack, and when he dashed over he found Larrin hiding behind the pile of logs. “Where the hell is Rodney?” he snapped.
“Chill, fuzzy,” Larrin hissed back. “He was being too obvious - Devin took him somewhere safe for the moment.”
She turned away from him but John reached out and caught her arm. “How do you know?” Not that he didn’t trust the crazy bastard, but … no, he didn’t trust the crazy bastard. Period. Ally or not, there was something about the kid that just wasn’t right, and with the knack Rodney had for rubbing people the wrong way…. Yeah, concern for his friend didn’t quite cover what he was feeling at the moment. Pure blind, scrotum shriveling panic was more like it.
Larrin glanced back over her shoulder, and in the bright moonlight her eyes were black and faceted like an insect’s. John drew back a fraction. She smirked at him and tapped her temple. “I can hear baby bro fine.” She pulled her arm free and started trotting backwards. “So, come on - shake that nice ass of yours.” She turned and jogged off.
John scowled at her and followed.
They took advantage of the maze of stacks and darkness - this section of the yard didn’t have lights, but from what they could see ahead there would be once they got closer to the mill and the more evenly stacked finished products. For now they snaked through the shadows, the smell of pitch and fresh cut timber masking them. They were starting to hear the occasional howl or yelp or bellow now from back towards town as their pursuers got into their little game, but they kept their pace steady.
“Confident assholes,” Larrin muttered as they crouched in the last decent shadow and surveyed the lighted yard ahead.
John chuffed. “Just assholes,” he growled. “Wonder what the normals think of Martin’s little domain.”
“Probably too fucking scared to do anything, keep their heads down or get hunted, too,” Larrin replied disgustedly. “And they despise us.” She let out a snort that would have made Rodney jealous. Or flinch, one of the two.
John just grunted in reply. He studied the way ahead silently for a few more seconds, then nodded towards some plastic wrapped stacks of plywood. “Less light in that section. I’ll go first.”
Larrin gave him a jaunty salute. “Aye aye, sir.”
John rolled his eyes and darted out. He was halfway to his goal when he heard Larrin shout, “Duck!” But before he could even react it felt like a giant hand came down and smacked him flat to the ground. He barely turned his head in time to keep from getting a nose full of dirt and losing his front teeth, and his breath whooshed out hard enough to raise a tiny dust cloud. In that silent few second stretch that always feels like minutes where his diaphragm absolutely positively refused to obey his brain John heard something whistle overhead. Two meaty thwacks followed by the sound of a body hitting the ground filled the rest of the gap before his first strangled in breath. Then a hand wrapped in the fur at the base of his neck and Larrin was trying to lift him by his scruff. And succeeding. And since the skin didn’t have the give like it did when he was five - holy crap did it hurt. He barely got a second breath in before he was yanked forward. John glanced to the side and saw the werecougar from earlier laying sprawled in the dirt, and he wasn’t sure but it looked like the vargyr’s skull was pulped.
“I told you to duck!” Larrin said angrily as she dragged him behind the stack of plywood.
“Didn’t … give me … time!” John still wasn’t breathing all that smoothly, and he was pretty much running on all fours. It was awkward but doable thanks to his vargyr anatomy.
“Not my fault you have shitty reflexes!”
John finally got in enough of a breath to growl. He shoved away from the ground with his arms and it knocked Larrin’s painful grip free. Now that he was on his feet he risked another glance back and saw some shadows following. “Shit! Got company.”
“I know, I sense them. This way!” She darted to the left. John followed right on her heels. They zigged and zagged amongst the stacks until a handful of turns later found them stuck in a dead end cul-de-sac of sharpened fence posts a dozen feet high.
“Dammit!” John scanned the pointy walls around them. He could probably jump up, no problem, but she’d have to climb. Well, maybe he could just toss her up…. He couldn’t help it - the mental image of her sailing through the air, cussing, made him grin briefly. But the sound of growling laughter and excited yips from behind wiped it from his face a second later. He spun and saw Martin, Bill, and some other shifters he hadn’t seen before filling the entrance to their trap. John crouched, claws fully extended and fur bristling. “Stay behind me,” he growled, the words barely recognizable. He might have a chance to get into a berserker state before they attacked and started to hyperventilate to get the blood oxygenated for the first step. Then he caught a flash of pale movement to his left, and when he turned his head found Larrin standing right next to him and his panting stopped dead.
She was smiling.
-oOo-
Rodney did good until he heard the howling. And then he panicked. He crawled down from his hidey hole in record time and started heading towards the mill. He found a good heavy branch a little bit longer than a baseball bat and had it clenched in a killer two-handed grip. He kept to the shadows as best he could, impromptu weapon raised, but James Bond he wasn’t, and a running whispered monologue wasn’t helping the stealth factor any. “I am never going camping again. Ever! Yogi can just get the hell used to being trapped in this pasty-assed, caffeine swilling, sleep deprived geek body for the rest of eternity! Screw him! No more great outdoors and banjo playing shape-shifting rednecks hunting us down in the woods like, like, like … something!” He glanced around the edge of a stack then shot across the gap to the next. “Okay, okay - so they’re not playing banjos. Or in the woods. But I can probably bet they’re one step away from yelling, ‘Bend over and squeal like a pig, boy’. Crap crap crap crap crap. Sheppard, if I make it out of this alive, I am so killing you!”
He was to the pallets of two-by-fours when they caught up to him.
Rodney put his back to the plastic wrapped wood and swallowed. There were five of them forming a semi-circle around him - two true born wolves and three humans. This was the first time he’d seen a werewolf, and a strange little part of him was oddly disappointed that they didn’t look anything like the rampaging muscle-bound snarling destruction machines from those movies with the hot vampire chick in the leather body suit. If anything, they looked kinda like something from SyFy Saturdays, only less cheesy. Their teeth and claws, however, looked anything but cheesy. They looked sharp - very very sharp. “Say, um, I think you better know that killing me would be a, ah, horrifically bad idea,” Rodney squeaked out. “We’re talking international incident causing bad idea, here.” He held the branch straight out and didn’t really give a damn it was shaking in his grip.
One of the humans sneered and spat. “Fucking pussy,” he said.
“No, so not a pussy,” Rodney muttered. There was a spark of anger starting to grow and drown out some of the fear, and he honestly couldn’t tell if it was from him or Yogi. The branch quit shaking. “You think I’m joking? You kill me or my friend and there will be so many military and SGC personnel swarming this place you’ll think you’ve been teleported to a very wet and green Iraq!”
“You liar,” one of the wolves growled. “To think Martin offered a place with us to a lying coward like you.” He stepped forward.
Rodney was about to take his chances and dart to the side when something dropped down out of the sky between him and the advancing wolf and landed on the ground hard enough he felt the shock through his feet. He stared at the figure crouched in the dirt, blinked, and blinked again. It had black metallic skin - no, an exoskeleton, actually - that had both smooth reflective sections and corrugated ridges. Four spikes rose up from its back and the tattered remains of a t-shirt fluttered from them, and a long serrated tail poked from a torn hole in the back of a pair of faded jeans. It lashed back and forth like an angry cat’s, kicking up more dust. The head was about half the length of the celluloid monster’s, but the shape was unmistakable….
“You have got to be kidding me,” Rodney said as he stared at an Alien. A. Freaking. Alien.
The tail suddenly stopped whipping around and pointed right at him. “I told you to stay put,” Devin hissed without looking back. Metallic claws flashed in the moonlight and he attacked.
One of the humans charged Rodney with the speed only a cursed vargyr could possess, and for a split second the weirdest thing happened - Rodney didn’t see a stocky guy in a Blue Jays t-shirt with a big hunting knife charging him but a stocky guy in leather and chain mail holding a round shield and a long broad bladed sword. Something inside of Rodney’s head seemed to just click, and the long weight in his hands felt as natural as could be as stepped forward to meet the man, batted the knife aside, used the momentum to pivot gracefully, and swing the branch with all his strength right into the back of the vargyr’s head. The crunch snapped him out of his vision in time for him to see the man hit the wrapped pallet and leave a red smear as he bounced off and fell boneless to the ground. Rodney dropped the branch and held his hands over his mouth while Yogi roared in triumph in his head. Then the smell of blood and other nasty things temporarily overpowered the turpentine in the air and he staggered forward a few steps before dropping to his hands and knees and puked.
Rodney didn’t really notice there were some awful sounds going on around him until they stopped, and then he made the mistake of glancing around. Devin had been busy. And very messy. He was puking again in short order. When he was scooped up a minute later like the sack of wet suet he felt like and their leaping journey across the lumber yard commenced, he didn’t care all that much. At least this time he wasn’t draped over a shoulder and watching the ground yo-yoing by.
But staring up into that gore smeared toothy face was infinitely worse.
-oOo-
“Well, hello boys,” Larrin purred. Her smile didn’t falter one millimeter.
John stared at her. Her skin had gone pearlescent in the moonlight, and he could even see fine scales around her eyes, along her jaw line, and running down her throat and disappearing into the torn scooped neckline of her t-shirt. He couldn’t feel any worry coming off of her at all - in fact, she seemed really really happy. And that was scaring the shit out of him. He looked back to their pursuers and saw the way out completely blocked.
Martin grinned back at them. “Vargyrs are so predictable. This is the first place they always come - they’re so certain the stink will mask their scent. It does, so we play cat and mouse for awhile. But look at you two.” He raised he hands at that stacks of sharpened fence posts surrounding then on three sides. “Put yourself smack dab into a trap. And so quickly.” He shook his head sadly. “Wasted your head start and ruined our sport.”
“You arrogant bastard,” Larrin said. She put her hands on her hips and arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure we’re the ones who are trapped?”
Martin blinked at her, then he and several of his men started laughing.
John felt the air begin to hum, the minute vibrations first felt in his sensitive whiskers, then along his raised fur, then finally along his skin. It was uncomfortable, like standing too close to the force field in that damn cell he was stuck in back in the basement in Atlantis. The others must not have been able to feel it yet where they stood - they were still laughing. When he heard several snaps then wood rattling behind him the laughter stopped. He glanced over his shoulder to see the first three rows of fence posts rise into the air. They quivered in place, and the hum in the air grew heavier. He faced forward and this time couldn’t stop his own smile from forming. Their pursuers had fallen silent, and he could see the whites of several sets of eyes. “Yeah,” he drawled out. “What was that about being trapped?”
Martin was in a semi-crouch, fur bristling with barely controlled fury. “Kill that fucking abomination!” he bellowed.
Bill roared and was the first to surge forward. He dropped down onto all fours and was closely followed by another true born bear and a human.
“Idiots,” Larrin said and casually flicked a hand their way.
John kept the urge to duck down to a mere flinch as a half dozen fence posts shot overhead and met the oncoming charge. And stopped it. Messily. Four posts hit Bill alone, and his practically dismembered body was flung from the impact almost all the way back to Martin’s feet.
“I have enough for everyone,” Larrin said huskily.
John looked at her - he was close enough he could hear a hint of shake in her voice. Sweat was starting to bead on her face and neck and he heard a few fence posts clatter back into place behind them. “You able to do that again?” he whispered as he smelled the strain rolling off of her.
“Yeah. Barely,” she whispered back. A few more posts clattered. “But don’t worry - backup is here.”
John sensed the whirling mass of insanity a second later coming up fast on his right, and from above for some weird reason. Then Rodney was dropped unceremoniously at his feet as Devin landed in front of them. John’s mouth dropped open as the half-demon turned around and settled down onto his haunches between them and Martin’s crew, his tail switching angrily back and forth. “Is that … a ….”
“Alien?” Larrin said as she stepped up next to her brother and patted his head affectionately. “Yes. His form was in flux until he saw that movie, and he fell in love.”
“Holy shit,” John muttered, and part of him had to admit - that was pretty fucking cool. Then a pained groan from Rodney snapped him out of the moment and he was helping his friend to his feet. And grew alarmed at the splattered blood across his friend’s arms and face. “Shit! Are you hurt?” he asked as he frantically started checking him for injuries.
Rodney pushed him away. “I’m fine,” he replied weakly. “Not mine.” Then he took in Larrin’s changed appearance, the dozen floating posts behind them, the skewered bodies and hunting party in front them, and just kind of slumped in place. “Great. Just … just great. Please tell me why we went camping?”
John chuffed.
Martin and the others hadn’t moved, but then the self proclaimed alpha just went berserk. “Kill them! Kill them all!” he screamed. But no one followed his order. He turned on his House and found them all fidgeting. “You fucking cowards!” A handful of wolves rallied and started to stalk forward cautiously, claws and teeth bared, fur bristling. It only took one well placed post in the leader to halt that advance. Martin roared.
John stepped forward. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said as he flexed his claws. Just in his peripheral he saw Larrin sway a bit and heard the last of the fence posts drop back into place behind him. “Let us leave.”
Martin stalked forward a few steps, head down, teeth bared. “Never.”
“Fucking alpha bullshit,” John growled under his breath. He glanced quickly at Larrin and Devin. “He’s mine.”
Larrin nodded. “Understood.” Devin’s shoulders slumped in an almost Rodney-like manner.
Speaking of which…. He glanced at Rodney and saw his friend rolling his eyes and shaking his head.
“Yeah, yeah, I know - alpha crap,” Rodney sighed. “Just, just kick his fucking ass.”
John nodded, then faced Martin. His challenge roar echoed in the night.
Part 4
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Untamed AU
Length: 22,000
Warnings: some bad language and mild violence
Disclaimer: Don't own them, not for profit, blah blah blah copywrite cakes
Summary: After a camping trip John and Rodney have an accident and wind up stranded in a picturesque little town in the BC Rockies that isn't quite the Rockwellian place it seems. They have to survive until dawn, but the big question is who will kill them first - the townspeople or their new allies?
“Ow ow ow ow ow,” Rodney chanted with every pounding step, his untied boots flopping as they ran headlong down a street and his left ankle twanging from lack of proper support. His companions charged along on bare feet without any apparent problems, but he - he needed to tie his damn shoes, for crap’s sake, or else he was going to seriously injure something.
“Oh, sack up, pussy,” Larrin said from his right.
“He’s the pussy, I’m the, the, the … ursi,” Rodney snapped back between gasps.
From the rear of the group Devin snorted in actual amusement.
“Both of you, zip it!” John hissed. He was in the lead by half a dozen strides, his head constantly swinging back and forth as he scanned the darkened streets and homes they passed. Suddenly he stopped and Rodney barreled into him.
For a wiry guy, it was like running into a fur covered brick wall, and Rodney had no idea how they both managed to stay upright.
“Tie your shoes,” John said as soon as he untangled himself, and Rodney immediately dropped down to a knee to do just that. John had his head up as he sniffed at the air. “I have an idea.”
Hiking boots laced in record time, Rodney popped back up to his feet. “I hope it’s better than running down the middle of the damn str….” He was grabbed and shoved forward. A moment later they were charging their way down a narrow and very dark alley that cut through the middle of a residential block. “Oh, this is such an improvement,” he grumbled as best as he could.
“Do you ever quit bitching?” Larrin asked.
Rodney glanced at her bouncing along in relative silence and wondered how she wasn’t injuring something herself. “No.” He focused on the uneven ground and concentrated on not tripping and breaking his neck. “It helps me think.”
“Wow, you think a lot.”
“You’re saving her why?” Rodney shot at John’s back.
They darted left down another paved street and then were back in another narrow alley. Rodney suddenly sneezed, and while he was wondering how in the hell a person running for their life and gasping for breath could honestly have time to sneeze his inner scientist recognized the odor.
Turpentine.
The air was heavy with the scent of it, and as they ran down the alley Rodney was certain he could even taste it. They paused briefly at the end and caught their breath as they surveyed the back storage lot of the lumber mill and the pile upon pile of stacked logs ready for processing. But there was at least a half a block of wide open, weed filled space between them and it.
“Clever,” Larrin said. “Gonna have a bitch of a time following our scents through there.”
“That’s what I thought,” John said.
“Hide in there? Until dawn?” Rodney squeaked out.
“We just need to throw them off, get into the woods.”
“Or hotwire a truck and vamoose,” Larrin added.
“Or that,” John said with a smug cat grin.
“Okay, for argument’s sake, let’s say we do make it until dawn - what makes you so sure Dudley Do Wrong of the Furry Patrol is really going to keep his word and let us just walk away?” Rodney asked.
John turned his head and looked at Rodney. “He will.”
“It’s one of those lame-ass alpha honor hang-ups,” Larrin said. She shrugged a shoulder at John apologetically.
He shrugged back. “Exactly. It’s almost worse to lose face than to lose your throat….”
A howl split the night.
“Hey! It hasn’t even been ten minutes!” Rodney blurted out. “They’re cheating!” Then he was being shoved forward again.
“Go!” John hissed. “I have the six.”
“Now wait one….” Rodney’s protest was cut short as a very hot hand wrapped around his left bicep and he was practically yanked off his feet as Devin pulled him along. A smaller, cooler hand clamped around his right wrist and he found himself being dragged along at break neck speed across the vacant lot by the demonic siblings. “Hey, not a pull toy here!” He was ignored as they cleared the lot in record time, and before they darted around the first pile of logs he was able to glance back.
John was nowhere in sight.
-oOo-
Halfway back down the alley John ducked into the shadows formed between someone’s garage and their tall fence and crouched down low. They were constantly giving him crap about all the black he wore, but right now, with it combined with his black fur, he all but disappeared. He’d caught movement at the head of the alley, and a second later Whiskey came into view, head swiveling as she tested the air. Yeah, didn’t really surprise him she was the one to jump the gun - she was practically drooling back at the motel with the need to hunt. He adjusted his feet, his claws digging in for purchase, and the second she was within range he leapt. He came down on her, his fist connecting with her jaw before the rest of him did, and her head bounced off the hard packed dirt of the alley. He stayed crouched over her body for a moment as he watched the end of the alley for any movement, then quickly dragged her back to his hiding place. He shredded the sleeves to her shirt with his claws and used them to bind her hands and feet, and as a precaution tore another chunk out of the back and shoved it in her mouth.
Not that they’d have any problem finding her if they wanted - all they needed to do was follow the miasmic cloud of Canadian Mist she left behind.
He watched the alley again for a few seconds, then quickly went back the way he’d come, a fluid shadow in the still night. He dashed across the vacant lot, and for that brief amount of time felt more exposed that he did the night he ran for his life on Atlantis wearing nothing but his fur and blood. Then he was ducking behind a pile of logs. He spun and watched, but nothing moved.
John glanced at his watch - not quite four hours to sunrise. Okay, they could do this. Martin seemed pretty damn confident, but then this was probably the first time he’d chased prey that had been in Black Ops for three years. The bastard had no idea what he was up against.
The scent of pitch and turpentine was so strong in the air it was actually making his nose run. He studied the ground and it wasn’t too difficult to make out Rodney’s boot marks in the blow dirt and sawdust. Crap. That could be a problem. He found a branch still attached to one of the logs - it wasn’t very big and the dried out needles cascaded from it as he pulled it free - but it was enough to scuff out the more obvious foot prints. He could barely make out Larrin and Devin’s tracks, and when he’d cleared a good hundred feet he tossed the branch away and went in search of his fellow prey.
-oOo-
The ground passed by underneath and Rodney would have yelled if he’d had the breath to do it - he was flopped over Devin’s shoulder like so much wet laundry and the demon spawn was leaping from log pile to log pile like he thought he was Spider-Man. They landed hard after a dizzying second and Rodney was surprised he did have enough air to let out a tiny grunt. He was seriously starting to have flashbacks to a Thanksgiving when he was four. His Uncle Bernard, whose idea of high comedy was flopping his nephew over a shoulder, spinning around a dozen times, then setting the kid down to stumble around like a drunk, had ambushed him that year after dinner, a dinner with Gramma’s not so successful attempt at oyster stuffing, and he, who wasn’t feeling all that well from said attempt anyway, power vomited down Bernard’s back, and also in a wide arc around the living room.
There wasn’t any spinning involved right now, but the fear induced nausea was similar, and one more leap was going to make him hurl.
Thankfully Kangaroo Jack didn’t launch into space again, but instead Rodney found himself being dumped none too gently onto the top of a stack of logs. The pile was swaybacked and made a perfect hiding place for the moment, and while Rodney just laid there and gasped for air - really, a compressed diaphragm on top of seat belt bites after running for his life was so not conducive to, well, breathing - Devin crouched low and peered over the higher logs back towards town. They had barely entered the mill’s storage lot when the Demonic Duo decided he was leaving too much evidence behind, hence the hundred meter scientist carry and long jump routine from stack to stack.
Rodney was finally getting enough oxygen to vanquish the little sparklies that threatened his vision, and he struggled to get rolled over and his hand and knees under him. “Do … you … see them?” he managed to gasp out.
“No.”
The panic ratcheted up a notch and he started to get up to look over the logs himself. “How’re they … gonna find ….” Rodney found himself shoved back down onto his stomach, hard. “Ow!”
“Shh!”
Rodney glared up at Devin and found the young man meeting his gaze and went from wheezing to locked lungs in a nanosecond. The eyes he looked into weren’t smooth - they were faceted and reminded him of hematite the way they reflected the moonlight with their dark metallic glint. Then he breathed and wasn’t aware he whimpered.
“Sis knows where I am,” Devin said happily. “Stay,” he added, then leapt up and was gone.
“Wait!” Rodney blurted out, but it was too late. He was alone. He crawled carefully up to the higher layer of logs and cautiously peered over the edge. Absolutely nothing moved in his field of vision. “Oh, crap,” he groaned out as he ducked back down. “Stay. Yeah, right.” He glanced around nervously. “But do they know where I am?” he asked out loud. “Crap crap crap crap crap.”
Rodney waited until his breathing was just down to a mere panicky pace before he peeked up over the top again. Still nothing. He glanced back towards the mill and saw his position wasn’t too far from the more civilized stacks of finished boards and pallets and fence posts ready for shipping. “Stay,” he repeated and set his mouth in a crooked grimace. He carefully got to his hands and knees are started crawling towards the end of the log pile, cursing quietly every time he encountered a sharp broken branch end with a knee or sticking his hand in pine pitch. When he got to the end, he looked over and groaned. It had to be ten meters to the ground. Okay, not ten, but it sure looked like it. The logs stuck out at all levels and would make an easy climb down. Rodney turned around and back over the edge, butt out, until he could get his feet settled on easy footholds. “Just like a ladder,” he muttered as he started down, then hissed when he found a particularly large glob of pitch. “A really sticky ladder,” he added as he shook his hand to no avail. When he got to the ground he’d just head for the mill - that was the plan anyway. Just find a nice cozy hiding place and keep an eye out for the rest.
And hope there aren’t any security guards.
Rodney froze, poised halfway to the ground, and glanced towards the mill. The brightly lit up mill. “I, I, I could just wait a few,” he muttered to himself. “Good look out position, no one would expect me to be up here, I’ll see them before they’d ever spot me. Yeah, that’d work.”
He crawled back up.
-oOo-
John lost the tracks he was following barely three rows in and started to panic. He stopped dead in his own tracks and tried desperately to catch any kind of scent in the sharp air. A moment later he saw a pale hand waving at him from behind a stack, and when he dashed over he found Larrin hiding behind the pile of logs. “Where the hell is Rodney?” he snapped.
“Chill, fuzzy,” Larrin hissed back. “He was being too obvious - Devin took him somewhere safe for the moment.”
She turned away from him but John reached out and caught her arm. “How do you know?” Not that he didn’t trust the crazy bastard, but … no, he didn’t trust the crazy bastard. Period. Ally or not, there was something about the kid that just wasn’t right, and with the knack Rodney had for rubbing people the wrong way…. Yeah, concern for his friend didn’t quite cover what he was feeling at the moment. Pure blind, scrotum shriveling panic was more like it.
Larrin glanced back over her shoulder, and in the bright moonlight her eyes were black and faceted like an insect’s. John drew back a fraction. She smirked at him and tapped her temple. “I can hear baby bro fine.” She pulled her arm free and started trotting backwards. “So, come on - shake that nice ass of yours.” She turned and jogged off.
John scowled at her and followed.
They took advantage of the maze of stacks and darkness - this section of the yard didn’t have lights, but from what they could see ahead there would be once they got closer to the mill and the more evenly stacked finished products. For now they snaked through the shadows, the smell of pitch and fresh cut timber masking them. They were starting to hear the occasional howl or yelp or bellow now from back towards town as their pursuers got into their little game, but they kept their pace steady.
“Confident assholes,” Larrin muttered as they crouched in the last decent shadow and surveyed the lighted yard ahead.
John chuffed. “Just assholes,” he growled. “Wonder what the normals think of Martin’s little domain.”
“Probably too fucking scared to do anything, keep their heads down or get hunted, too,” Larrin replied disgustedly. “And they despise us.” She let out a snort that would have made Rodney jealous. Or flinch, one of the two.
John just grunted in reply. He studied the way ahead silently for a few more seconds, then nodded towards some plastic wrapped stacks of plywood. “Less light in that section. I’ll go first.”
Larrin gave him a jaunty salute. “Aye aye, sir.”
John rolled his eyes and darted out. He was halfway to his goal when he heard Larrin shout, “Duck!” But before he could even react it felt like a giant hand came down and smacked him flat to the ground. He barely turned his head in time to keep from getting a nose full of dirt and losing his front teeth, and his breath whooshed out hard enough to raise a tiny dust cloud. In that silent few second stretch that always feels like minutes where his diaphragm absolutely positively refused to obey his brain John heard something whistle overhead. Two meaty thwacks followed by the sound of a body hitting the ground filled the rest of the gap before his first strangled in breath. Then a hand wrapped in the fur at the base of his neck and Larrin was trying to lift him by his scruff. And succeeding. And since the skin didn’t have the give like it did when he was five - holy crap did it hurt. He barely got a second breath in before he was yanked forward. John glanced to the side and saw the werecougar from earlier laying sprawled in the dirt, and he wasn’t sure but it looked like the vargyr’s skull was pulped.
“I told you to duck!” Larrin said angrily as she dragged him behind the stack of plywood.
“Didn’t … give me … time!” John still wasn’t breathing all that smoothly, and he was pretty much running on all fours. It was awkward but doable thanks to his vargyr anatomy.
“Not my fault you have shitty reflexes!”
John finally got in enough of a breath to growl. He shoved away from the ground with his arms and it knocked Larrin’s painful grip free. Now that he was on his feet he risked another glance back and saw some shadows following. “Shit! Got company.”
“I know, I sense them. This way!” She darted to the left. John followed right on her heels. They zigged and zagged amongst the stacks until a handful of turns later found them stuck in a dead end cul-de-sac of sharpened fence posts a dozen feet high.
“Dammit!” John scanned the pointy walls around them. He could probably jump up, no problem, but she’d have to climb. Well, maybe he could just toss her up…. He couldn’t help it - the mental image of her sailing through the air, cussing, made him grin briefly. But the sound of growling laughter and excited yips from behind wiped it from his face a second later. He spun and saw Martin, Bill, and some other shifters he hadn’t seen before filling the entrance to their trap. John crouched, claws fully extended and fur bristling. “Stay behind me,” he growled, the words barely recognizable. He might have a chance to get into a berserker state before they attacked and started to hyperventilate to get the blood oxygenated for the first step. Then he caught a flash of pale movement to his left, and when he turned his head found Larrin standing right next to him and his panting stopped dead.
She was smiling.
-oOo-
Rodney did good until he heard the howling. And then he panicked. He crawled down from his hidey hole in record time and started heading towards the mill. He found a good heavy branch a little bit longer than a baseball bat and had it clenched in a killer two-handed grip. He kept to the shadows as best he could, impromptu weapon raised, but James Bond he wasn’t, and a running whispered monologue wasn’t helping the stealth factor any. “I am never going camping again. Ever! Yogi can just get the hell used to being trapped in this pasty-assed, caffeine swilling, sleep deprived geek body for the rest of eternity! Screw him! No more great outdoors and banjo playing shape-shifting rednecks hunting us down in the woods like, like, like … something!” He glanced around the edge of a stack then shot across the gap to the next. “Okay, okay - so they’re not playing banjos. Or in the woods. But I can probably bet they’re one step away from yelling, ‘Bend over and squeal like a pig, boy’. Crap crap crap crap crap. Sheppard, if I make it out of this alive, I am so killing you!”
He was to the pallets of two-by-fours when they caught up to him.
Rodney put his back to the plastic wrapped wood and swallowed. There were five of them forming a semi-circle around him - two true born wolves and three humans. This was the first time he’d seen a werewolf, and a strange little part of him was oddly disappointed that they didn’t look anything like the rampaging muscle-bound snarling destruction machines from those movies with the hot vampire chick in the leather body suit. If anything, they looked kinda like something from SyFy Saturdays, only less cheesy. Their teeth and claws, however, looked anything but cheesy. They looked sharp - very very sharp. “Say, um, I think you better know that killing me would be a, ah, horrifically bad idea,” Rodney squeaked out. “We’re talking international incident causing bad idea, here.” He held the branch straight out and didn’t really give a damn it was shaking in his grip.
One of the humans sneered and spat. “Fucking pussy,” he said.
“No, so not a pussy,” Rodney muttered. There was a spark of anger starting to grow and drown out some of the fear, and he honestly couldn’t tell if it was from him or Yogi. The branch quit shaking. “You think I’m joking? You kill me or my friend and there will be so many military and SGC personnel swarming this place you’ll think you’ve been teleported to a very wet and green Iraq!”
“You liar,” one of the wolves growled. “To think Martin offered a place with us to a lying coward like you.” He stepped forward.
Rodney was about to take his chances and dart to the side when something dropped down out of the sky between him and the advancing wolf and landed on the ground hard enough he felt the shock through his feet. He stared at the figure crouched in the dirt, blinked, and blinked again. It had black metallic skin - no, an exoskeleton, actually - that had both smooth reflective sections and corrugated ridges. Four spikes rose up from its back and the tattered remains of a t-shirt fluttered from them, and a long serrated tail poked from a torn hole in the back of a pair of faded jeans. It lashed back and forth like an angry cat’s, kicking up more dust. The head was about half the length of the celluloid monster’s, but the shape was unmistakable….
“You have got to be kidding me,” Rodney said as he stared at an Alien. A. Freaking. Alien.
The tail suddenly stopped whipping around and pointed right at him. “I told you to stay put,” Devin hissed without looking back. Metallic claws flashed in the moonlight and he attacked.
One of the humans charged Rodney with the speed only a cursed vargyr could possess, and for a split second the weirdest thing happened - Rodney didn’t see a stocky guy in a Blue Jays t-shirt with a big hunting knife charging him but a stocky guy in leather and chain mail holding a round shield and a long broad bladed sword. Something inside of Rodney’s head seemed to just click, and the long weight in his hands felt as natural as could be as stepped forward to meet the man, batted the knife aside, used the momentum to pivot gracefully, and swing the branch with all his strength right into the back of the vargyr’s head. The crunch snapped him out of his vision in time for him to see the man hit the wrapped pallet and leave a red smear as he bounced off and fell boneless to the ground. Rodney dropped the branch and held his hands over his mouth while Yogi roared in triumph in his head. Then the smell of blood and other nasty things temporarily overpowered the turpentine in the air and he staggered forward a few steps before dropping to his hands and knees and puked.
Rodney didn’t really notice there were some awful sounds going on around him until they stopped, and then he made the mistake of glancing around. Devin had been busy. And very messy. He was puking again in short order. When he was scooped up a minute later like the sack of wet suet he felt like and their leaping journey across the lumber yard commenced, he didn’t care all that much. At least this time he wasn’t draped over a shoulder and watching the ground yo-yoing by.
But staring up into that gore smeared toothy face was infinitely worse.
-oOo-
“Well, hello boys,” Larrin purred. Her smile didn’t falter one millimeter.
John stared at her. Her skin had gone pearlescent in the moonlight, and he could even see fine scales around her eyes, along her jaw line, and running down her throat and disappearing into the torn scooped neckline of her t-shirt. He couldn’t feel any worry coming off of her at all - in fact, she seemed really really happy. And that was scaring the shit out of him. He looked back to their pursuers and saw the way out completely blocked.
Martin grinned back at them. “Vargyrs are so predictable. This is the first place they always come - they’re so certain the stink will mask their scent. It does, so we play cat and mouse for awhile. But look at you two.” He raised he hands at that stacks of sharpened fence posts surrounding then on three sides. “Put yourself smack dab into a trap. And so quickly.” He shook his head sadly. “Wasted your head start and ruined our sport.”
“You arrogant bastard,” Larrin said. She put her hands on her hips and arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure we’re the ones who are trapped?”
Martin blinked at her, then he and several of his men started laughing.
John felt the air begin to hum, the minute vibrations first felt in his sensitive whiskers, then along his raised fur, then finally along his skin. It was uncomfortable, like standing too close to the force field in that damn cell he was stuck in back in the basement in Atlantis. The others must not have been able to feel it yet where they stood - they were still laughing. When he heard several snaps then wood rattling behind him the laughter stopped. He glanced over his shoulder to see the first three rows of fence posts rise into the air. They quivered in place, and the hum in the air grew heavier. He faced forward and this time couldn’t stop his own smile from forming. Their pursuers had fallen silent, and he could see the whites of several sets of eyes. “Yeah,” he drawled out. “What was that about being trapped?”
Martin was in a semi-crouch, fur bristling with barely controlled fury. “Kill that fucking abomination!” he bellowed.
Bill roared and was the first to surge forward. He dropped down onto all fours and was closely followed by another true born bear and a human.
“Idiots,” Larrin said and casually flicked a hand their way.
John kept the urge to duck down to a mere flinch as a half dozen fence posts shot overhead and met the oncoming charge. And stopped it. Messily. Four posts hit Bill alone, and his practically dismembered body was flung from the impact almost all the way back to Martin’s feet.
“I have enough for everyone,” Larrin said huskily.
John looked at her - he was close enough he could hear a hint of shake in her voice. Sweat was starting to bead on her face and neck and he heard a few fence posts clatter back into place behind them. “You able to do that again?” he whispered as he smelled the strain rolling off of her.
“Yeah. Barely,” she whispered back. A few more posts clattered. “But don’t worry - backup is here.”
John sensed the whirling mass of insanity a second later coming up fast on his right, and from above for some weird reason. Then Rodney was dropped unceremoniously at his feet as Devin landed in front of them. John’s mouth dropped open as the half-demon turned around and settled down onto his haunches between them and Martin’s crew, his tail switching angrily back and forth. “Is that … a ….”
“Alien?” Larrin said as she stepped up next to her brother and patted his head affectionately. “Yes. His form was in flux until he saw that movie, and he fell in love.”
“Holy shit,” John muttered, and part of him had to admit - that was pretty fucking cool. Then a pained groan from Rodney snapped him out of the moment and he was helping his friend to his feet. And grew alarmed at the splattered blood across his friend’s arms and face. “Shit! Are you hurt?” he asked as he frantically started checking him for injuries.
Rodney pushed him away. “I’m fine,” he replied weakly. “Not mine.” Then he took in Larrin’s changed appearance, the dozen floating posts behind them, the skewered bodies and hunting party in front them, and just kind of slumped in place. “Great. Just … just great. Please tell me why we went camping?”
John chuffed.
Martin and the others hadn’t moved, but then the self proclaimed alpha just went berserk. “Kill them! Kill them all!” he screamed. But no one followed his order. He turned on his House and found them all fidgeting. “You fucking cowards!” A handful of wolves rallied and started to stalk forward cautiously, claws and teeth bared, fur bristling. It only took one well placed post in the leader to halt that advance. Martin roared.
John stepped forward. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said as he flexed his claws. Just in his peripheral he saw Larrin sway a bit and heard the last of the fence posts drop back into place behind him. “Let us leave.”
Martin stalked forward a few steps, head down, teeth bared. “Never.”
“Fucking alpha bullshit,” John growled under his breath. He glanced quickly at Larrin and Devin. “He’s mine.”
Larrin nodded. “Understood.” Devin’s shoulders slumped in an almost Rodney-like manner.
Speaking of which…. He glanced at Rodney and saw his friend rolling his eyes and shaking his head.
“Yeah, yeah, I know - alpha crap,” Rodney sighed. “Just, just kick his fucking ass.”
John nodded, then faced Martin. His challenge roar echoed in the night.
Part 4