The Hunted - Chapter 9/? - PSoH
Feb. 18th, 2008 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yellowhordeDisclaimer: I don’t own Petshop of Horrors and I make no money from this or any other fanfic I write.
Pairing: Leon x D
Category: Supernatural/Alternate Universe
Rating: R
Warning: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations and Hermaphrodite!D
Title: The Hunted
Author: yellowhorde
Notes: This was written for NaNoWriMo 2007
Joshua Fletcher jerked awake with a startled cry, torn from his restless dreams by the roar of a low-flying helicopter.
He knew that whoever was flying the helicopter wouldn’t be able to see him as he crouched under the low hanging branches of the scrub oak, but that didn’t stop his heart from sledge-hammering in his chest. Sweat prickled his brow and he thanked his lucky stars that he had been smart enough to seek out the shelter of the trees.
Craning his head, he scanned the sky through the overhead branches, but it was still too early and the lingering darkness and the leaves made it almost impossible for him to track its movements. His highly sensitive ears, however, told him that the helicopter was moving steadily north, toward the Edwards Air Force Base.
Or the California State Hospital for Werewolves.
Nervously, he chewed on his lower lip, and ran his hands through his black, unruly hair, unable to decide what he should do for a moment. He had heard of helicopters being used to track down werewolves in the wild, but it was still dark, and unless they were using special infrared lights, which could detect the body heat of any living creatures, there was no way the pilot or passengers could have even seen him.
If they were using infrared, he theorized, then the helicopter would be traveling at a slower pace so the pilot wouldn’t accidentally pass over its target. Since it had been moving at a fairly steady clip, and he couldn’t hear any indication that it was coming around for another sweep, for now, at least, he was safe.
In the last three years Joshua had spent in confinement within the walls of the State Hospital, he had gotten used to the comings and goings of aircrafts. The roar of their engines had often been the only sound to break the monotonous silence of the barren land that surrounded the thirty-year old building. Late night flights, or pre-dawn ones for that matter, though unusual, weren’t entirely unheard of.
As the roar faded in the distance, he was actually kind of glad for the rude awakening - he hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the first place, just rest for a few moments. It was fortuitous that the helicopter had buzzed by when it had otherwise he might very well have slept all night long, which would have been dangerous for someone on the run. He couldn’t afford to waste the hours of darkness because moving around in the middle of the day meant risking discovery. And that was the last thing he wanted.
Cold and stiff from curling up in the fallen leaves at the base of the trunk, Josh patted his sweatshirt pockets futilely. The Snickers he had bought at the gas station was long gone as were the bottles of Mountain Dew. All that was left was the water, which he had drunk as sparingly as possible. Even so, the bottle was almost empty. It had been over twenty-four hours since he had eaten anything and his stomach grumbled a noisy complaint. He yearned for breakfast – pancakes and eggs, sausage and buttered toast. Hell, he’d even take some oatmeal right about now. It would certainly be better than slowly starving.
Doing his best to ignore his stomach, Josh spread the map out along the ground and peered at it under the light of the setting moon. His werewolf-enhanced vision picked out the marked roads and cities almost as easily as if he were reading by the light of the sun instead of the waning light of the moon. At his best guess, he had traveled some twenty miles since leaving the gas station. Not bad for a city boy. But he needed to make better time. At this rate it would take days to reach Los Angeles.
A cold breeze rustled the leaves and plucked at his red sweatshirt. Josh shivered and sank his hands deep into his pockets to keep them warm. The clouds had welled up around the mountains in the short time he had been asleep and cold moist air was being carried up over the mountain on the growing wind. He sighed heavily and wished like mad that he had something – anything – to eat.
After determining which landmarks he had already passed and taking one last look to make sure he was heading in the right direction, he scooped up the map, neatly folded it and stuffed it into his pockets for safe keeping. Then he began to walk.
As he trudged on, the sky along the eastern horizon began to lighten. Because of the dense cloud cover, he didn’t expect to see much in the way of beautiful sunrises, but he did find a certain comfort in the strengthening light despite the fact that the clouds and haze gave such a forlorn look to the Dunn-and-brown landscape.
The going was tediously slow. As Josh climbed up yet another canyon, he gazed down into dry streambeds and stands of sycamore and maple, the former turning brown, the latter lemon yellow with autumn chill. Despite the ache in his legs, the hunger and increasing thirst, he was glad for the opportunity to really stretch his legs, to breathe in the cool, clean mountain air. It had been so long since he had been outdoors unsupervised and unchained. The State Hospital, as a rule, didn’t believe in giving their wards too much freedom and he was glad to finally be out of there.
The California State Hospital for Werewolves, or Full Moon Manor as it was joking referred to by employees and ‘patients’ alike, was a sprawling four story building consisting entirely of severe right angles and uninviting straight lines. It crouched at the base of Soledad Mountain, just north of Rosamond. From its windows to the black and white checkered tile in the reception area, the entire building screamed ‘Institution’. No crown molding or other decorative flares or styles softened the severe attitude of the building. There had been no attempt to produce a gracefully sculpted landscaping that might lend a pleasant feel to its courtyards.
Full Moon Manor looked like a prison, lacking only an encircling tall fences topped in razor wire and various kiosks manned with armed guards. But, to those unfortunate enough to dwell within its walls, a prison was exactly what it was.
Escaping, though, had been a lot easier than Josh would have thought possible, thanks in large part to recent budget cuts.
Due to the sever employee shortages, security had been lax the last couple of months. Josh didn’t know if any of his fellow lycanthropes realized this or not and he hadn’t been willing to share the information with anyone for while he was cordial and helpful to patients and staff alike, he had formed no close friendships and instead kept pretty much to himself. He knew from talking with several of the nurses that three of staff members working the night shifts were unlicensed, temporary workers. As such, they were unfamiliar with the forty-seven patients they were responsible for, their routines, or the individual problems each might pose.
Josh had also overheard several daytime nurses complaining that the temporary workers often failed to lock the activity rooms after lights-out and that the night crew seldom, if ever, made the required bed checks every thirty minutes. All of this and more had been reported to the hospital supervisor, Jack Redding and yet nothing had been ever been done about it.
Full Moon Manor was the largest facility of its kind and while it was less than fifty percent occupied, it was understaffed, almost dangerously so. The hospital had dozens of vacant positions for nurses and psychiatric technicians, housekeepers and orderlies and three vacant slots for police officers. This represented a considerable percent of the hospital workforce.
Though it was supposed to be a state of the art Institute for the long-time detention of individuals who suffered from Lycanthrope Disorder, most of the staff members employed had only had rudimentary training on how to actually deal with werewolves and the unique problems and challenges they might pose. Doctors, nurses, and the rest of the staff frequently carried stun guns for their protection and for the protection of the almost exclusively male patients, but such measures seldom proved a successful deterrent.
The existing atmosphere of negligence had lent itself to the perfect opportunity to attempt a break out. But Josh had to time his escape just right. And so he had made his plans… and waited.
Due to the nature of the disease, the patients naturally became more restless and violent in the days and nights right before the full moon. The patients, already angry and restless due to their confinement, routinely became hostile and were prone to fits of violence. Even Joshua felt the monthly stirrings of animalistic rage, but unlike his werewolf counterparts, he was able to restrain himself from completely reverting to animal instincts. He wasn’t sure if this was because he had been born with the curse or not. All he did know was that he was still capable of rational thought while under the full moon’s influence while the others reverted wholly to their most base, animalistic instincts.
To counteract the problem of escalating violence, five days before the full moon, all the security guards and male employees would gear up in protective riot gear and escort the patients, at gun point if necessary, to the west wing. There they were separated and placed in prison-like rooms complete with bars on the windows and a stainless steel combination toilets and sinks attached to the walls. The beds, the only furniture in the rooms, were bolted to the ground. In addition to this, the werewolves were shackled with heavy-duty restraints and administer powerful sedatives to keep them docile. The drugs weren’t strong enough to stop the transformation from human to werewolf – Josh suspected that only death itself would halt that transformation- but it did effectively render them more or less harmless.
It was a wonder that the staff didn’t employ such tactics throughout the rest of the month considering how many problems the population could cause on any given day. If the cost of such a plan hadn’t been so prohibitively expensive, Josh had no doubt that he and the rest of the werewolves would have been doped out of their collective minds twenty-four hours, seven days a week.
Despite these security measures, Full Moon Manor was a dangerous place to live or work. Since Josh had been interned three years ago, there had been an increasing number of reports of suspicious deaths, assaults, rapes and evidence of patient abuse. Patient on patient assaults were generally swept under the rug, while assaults on staff members were dealt with in-house as much as possible.
The problems weren’t uncommon for similar containment facilities across the country. It wasn’t that people who suffered from Lycanthrope Disorder were more violent than so-called normal individuals. In fact, similar prison statistics would just as likely show the same problems, at least amongst the prison population. Most of the patients currently staying at Full Moon weren’t any more dangerous than the average Joe on the street. The only difference that Josh could readily see in most cases was that Average Joe was free to come and go as he pleased, free to live a normal existence. That option was simply no longer available for the patients at Full Moon and facing a lifetime of involuntary imprisonment when they hadn’t committed any crime to warrant such heavy handed punishments made many of them understandably bitter and angry.
In many cases that anger drove even the most passive individuals to commit acts of violence, either against the staff or, more often, fellow patients. Suicide was also a big problem, but none of the staff raised a fuss when one of the wolves decided to off themselves. As far as they were concerned, it meant one less freak to have to deal with.
During his first six months at Full Moon, Josh himself had gotten into more scuffles than he cared to admit, the most serious leaving him with a few broken ribs.
Once, a man in his late twenties with white-blond hair and washed out blue eyes had attacked him during a disagreement over the results of a friendly chess game. He had just lost control and leapt across the top of the folding table in one of the activity centers. His wild, glaring eyes burned with intense rage and saliva dripped from his snapping jaws. The transformation had been so sudden, one minute he was fine, the next he was out for blood. Using werewolf strength, he had snapped the bones in Josh’s forearm as easily as a normal human might break a pencil. The scuffle had only lasted a few moments, but it had taken all of Josh’s strength coupled with that of three other orderlies with stun guns and Billy clubs to get the madman off of him.
None of the incidents, including the one with the chess player, had been reported to the authorities. The perpetrators were not detained or punished in any way. This, he discovered, was more the rule than the exception. He learned to make special efforts to keep the cuts and bruises hidden from his mother when she came for her bi-weekly visits so as not to worry her too much. Having her eldest child in an Institution was stressful enough as it was without adding the concern of bodily harm. Unfortunately, the broken arm had been impossible to hide even with his supernatural healing abilities.
When his mother had grilled him about his injuries using the same sharp tone she used when questioning her opponents in court, he had just played it off as the result of some overly enthusiastic roughhousing on the basketball court and left it at that.
On the night before they were to be locked up, Josh had slipped through the unmonitored hallways, silent as a ghost, his keen senses straining to catch the sight, sound or scent of an approaching security guard. As he had hoped, the night workers had barricaded themselves into the main nursing headquarters to drink strong coffee and gossip about the day’s events. No one had seen him as he darted out a little-used side entrance and he had made his way to the nearest highway with anyone sounding the alarm.
Less than a half-mile down the road from the Institute, he had been fortunate enough to get a ride from an old man named Carl something-or-other. While he had hoped for a ride all the way to Los Angeles, he had been grateful to be dropped off at the Acton Plaza Liquor & Market in Acton, half an hour later and thirty miles closer to his final destination.
Now, though it was a Saturday morning and the trails were soon going to be crawling with weekend warriors and nature lovers from all over the Los Angeles Basin, Josh decided to keep to the trails just a little while longer. It was still very early and if there was anyone using the various walking and biking trails that meandered through the mountains, canyons and valleys, he’d be able to detect them with his sharp sense of smell long before they got close enough to spot him.
He walked for a few more hours, through Jeffrey pines which eventually gave way to a broad slope of chaparral. The first few miles of road traversed a densely forested mountainside. Now that the wind had died down, the air was cold and still. Before long the forest shrank to scrubby oak trees about head-high.
After a while, he began to search for a secure place to rest, preferably away from the main trails. Since he was currently traversing a steep mountainside, there weren’t any likely spots readily available so he kept walking, all his senses on the alert for unwanted intruders. As the sun rose steadily higher in the sky, he reached a stretch of dirt road. Cautiously, he hiked a few yards down-ridge from the road, until he found a nice spot in a stand of yucca and chaparral near a small stream.
Josh hurried over to the pebbly edge of the water and went to his knees. He unscrewed the cap of his liter bottle and submerged the bottle under the water’s surface. For a moment his mind conjured up all sorts of visions of bacteria and pollution one might find in the waterways of the wild, but he was too thirsty to give the matter serious thought. Human beings could die from dehydration in as little as three days, he knew, and he didn’t plan on kicking the bucket anytime soon.
When his time came, he wanted to go down fighting, not weak and dehydrated because he’d been too much of a chicken shit to drink unfiltered water.
Humming tunelessly under his breath, he scraped some gravel from a relatively flat beneath the trees then lined it with a thick layer of dried leaves and grasses before sitting down. In the peaceful shade, with pines and oaks and maples all around, he enjoyed the quiet morning for a few moments as he gulped his water.
I could survive out here, he thought sleepily, if I just let the wolf in me take control.
With an amused snort, he pushed that idea away. He didn’t want to live out here in the wild like some sort of half-human Lost Boy. He wanted normal human interactions, pizza, video games and pretty girls. Not that any girl would give him the time of day if she knew what he really was. In fact, she’d probably head for the hills as fast as her legs could take her.
Sadly, Josh lay down and pulled himself into a tight ball in order to conserve body heat. Even so, he shivered and shook in the autumn chill, feeling miserable and alone.
Being out here, in the wild, he thought, isn’t so bad. God knows I’ve been through worse. But once I’m back with my family, things will definitely get better… then maybe all of this will seem like some really fucked up dream…
The transition from normal teenager to prisoner in the State Institute hadn’t been an easy one for Josh. He had survived his first year by being tough and cagey and by showing everyone who challenged him that he was nobody’s bitch. When his fellow patients got rough with him, he got rough right back. But, as a relatively gentle soul, he never instigated a fight and often stood up for the rights of his less powerful werewolves. In time, the trouble makers learned to keep their distance from him and if a new werewolf wanted to get frisky, Josh quickly put the offender in his place. As the months passed, things calmed down somewhat and, for the most part, he was civil, even helpful and was on friendly terms with most of the nursing and janitorial staff.
It didn’t hurt that the most werewolves seemed to sense that there was something, well, different about him. And they would be correct in this assumption. While the other patients in Full Moon were werewolf attack survivors, Josh was an honest-to-God naturally born werewolf. He had his mother to thank – or curse - for that. Though she didn’t know it while she was pregnant with him, she carried the hereditary genetic disorder and had passed it on to her first born son. The disorder affected more than eighty-five percent of the male children born to carrying mothers and it was something of a medical miracle that his younger brother, Ian, who had just started college that fall, hadn’t yet showed any indications that he carried the werewolf genes.
Josh got down on his knees and thanked God for that blessing each and every night. He wouldn’t inflict the sort of misery he had suffered on anybody, not even his worst enemy. And he was glad that his younger brother would grow up and live a normal, All-American life free of the werewolf taint.
Like most werewolves, the disease first manifested itself to Josh as a heightened sensual awareness accompanied by debilitating headaches. His hearing and sense of smell were particularly affected. In those first few weeks, the heightened sensual awareness came and went without rhyme or reason and the pain that followed in their aftermath was unlike anything he had ever experienced before in his young life.
At first he had thought he was suffering from migraines, but when all attempts at preventing or treating them failed to provide relief, his mother became worried. It was the headaches that prompted her to seek professional medical advice. She feared that the headaches might have been caused by a brain tumor so something. After all, normal migraines weren’t usually preceded by heightened sensual awareness.
After a short search, she had been able to make arrangements for him to see a specialist by the name of James Crocker. Dr. Crocker poked and prodded him, drew liters of blood, and ran almost every test imaginable to human kind. But all of the tests results told the same story – that Joshua was a perfectly healthy young man and that there was nothing wrong with him aside from the fact that he frequently suffered sever headaches.
Nothing in his or the Doctor’s experience even remotely suggested that he was on the cusps of transforming into a monster.
Less than three weeks after the headaches started, Joshua went into convulsions in the parking lot of a local McDonalds. Paramedics were called, and while being transported to the nearest emergency room, he transformed into a full-fledged werewolf for the first time. Though he didn’t remember the events that took place after the first convulsions began, he knew it was a miracle that he had survived. Very few werewolves, whether they be naturally born or survivors of attack, survived their first transformation from human to werewolf. That was one of the reasons why there were so few werewolves to begin with.
It wasn’t until he was confined to Full Moon Manor after his first Change that he found out that heightened senses and headaches were common signs that indicated that a person, either one that had survived an attack or had been born with the disease, was about to undergo their first transformation. He wasn’t surprised that the doctors hadn’t been able to figure out what had been wrong with him. After all, they confined the fields of their study to normal human beings, not genetic mutants. And no one, not even his mother, had known that he had carried the rare disorder.
As he huddled amongst his bed of leaves and grasses, Josh didn’t dare contemplate how his family would react to his escape from the Institute and sudden reappearance at their Los Angeles home. His mother, at least, would welcome him with open arms. On her frequent visits she often said how much she wanted him to come home. But how would Ian react?
He hadn’t seen his younger brother since right before his first transformation. His mother hadn’t allowed the then fifteen-year-old to visit him in the hospital on those days before he was transferred to Full Moon Manor. She thought it would be too difficult for the younger boy to see his brother going through such a horrible ordeal. And she had never once brought him with her on her bi-weekly visits, though she often brought photographs and exclaimed at how tall he was getting.
How will Ian react when he sees me? Josh wondered. Will he be glad to see me? Or will he call the cops and turn me in?
Josh didn’t know what he’d do if he finally came face to face with his younger brother only to see hate and disgust in his eyes. Will he see me as his brother… or a monster?
Only time would tell.
*****
Leon hung up the phone after making arrangements for Jill to pick him up at the hotel. There really wasn’t any point in them taking separate cars if they were both going to be heading out to Acton. Jill hadn’t complained, after all, she was a woman who knew the value of a dollar. Plus, she knew that the fifty minute drive would give her plenty of time to grill him on the recent developments in his social life.
She didn’t know about the contract with D’s grandfather or about the conditions of said contract – he didn’t really want to go into details with her anyway - but she would probably know all the important bits before they reached their destination and what she didn’t know, she would probably be able to guess at.
Digging into his pocket, he dug out a worn leather wallet and rummaged through its contents until he found a battered off-white business card tucked in the very back. The card belonged to Robert ‘Just-call-me-Bobby’ Keller, one of the finest breeders of scent hounds in the Los Angeles area. The popular consensus was that there wasn’t a better breeder in the whole country, perhaps even the world.
Most, if not all werewolf hunters in the United States depended on Bobby’s dogs at one point or another. As far as Leon was concerned, they were just as essential to a successful werewolf hunt as a good rifle and silver bullets. All scent dogs could track, but not all of them were willing to give chase to a lycanthrope. Bobby’s dogs had been meticulously bred to be bigger, stronger and fiercer than the average hunting dog. Over the years, selective breeding of hounds in general had resulted in some of the gentlest and most laid back personalities of the canine world. Bobby, on the other hand, bred his hounds to be fierce and independent and they were more than capable of contending with wild boar, mountain lions… and werewolves.
These dogs didn’t just track their prey, corner it and wait for the hunters to show up and finish the job like lesser hounds might. They were perfectly capable of taking down their quarry, often before the hunters had a chance to catch up with them. And in hunting a creature as potentially contagious as a werewolf, that inbred viciousness was an extremely important quality, especially since dogs weren’t affected by the Lycanthrope disease and weren’t capable of spreading it to humans. Many a hunter’s life had been saved by those dogs and every one of them was worth their weight in gold.
Picking up the phone again, he dialed the number and then waited while the phone on the other end rang and rang. Impatiently, Leon stuffed the card back in his wallet and slid the wallet into his back pocket. Just when he had almost given up on getting hold of the dog breeder, the phone was picked up and answered by a slightly out of breath, “Hello?”
“Bobby?” He wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder and sat down on the couch, relieved to have gotten through. “It’s me, Leon.”
“Hey, how you doing, man?” Leon could actually hear the grin in the other man’s voice and before he knew it, he was grinning himself. Bobby was one of the friendliest people he had ever met – the man just didn’t know how not to smile. “I almost missed you there, Bobby. You really need to get yourself an answering machine.”
“Nah,” Came the laughing reply, “I can’t stand the things. But I got caller ID so if I miss something important, I can always call back. What can I do you for?”
Leon smiled, calling a mental image of the other man up in his head. He wasn’t an especially tall man, but he had the most cheerful disposition of any man he had ever encountered. His round face, burned a perpetual red from a long life of working in the sun, was creased with laugh lines and his washed out blue eyes were always twinkling. If he knew Bobby – and he did – he’d be wearing a faded plaid shirt and his favorite pair of denim coveralls which had more patches than denim. Bobby was a simple man with simple wants and needs. Raising dogs was his pride and joy and outside of his dogs he loved only two things, a good pipe of tobacco and an excellent scotch, always in moderation.
“I need to borrow some of your dogs,” Leon replied, then added, “Today, if possible.”
“You hunting down the wolf that escaped?”
Leave it to Bobby to keep in the loop, Leon silently marveled. But it wouldn’t have been hard for him to guess, after all, the escape had been all the media was talking about right now. He didn’t like the media whipping people into a frenzy of fear over this, but the more people who knew about the escape and the dangers, the better chances they had a chance of catching this man before he did some damage.
Of course, it also meant that there would be a bunch of dumb-ass hunters out there thinking how prestigious it would be to bag a werewolf. That put Fletcher at a distinct disadvantage because everyone would be on the lookout for him and, as far as he knew, he wasn’t carrying any weapons. And until the full moon in three days, he’d be a sitting duck.
Leon didn’t like werewolves – hell, he’d be the first person to admit to that little understatement– but he didn’t want the kid to get killed if there was any way for him to prevent it.
“We’re going to try.” Leon said with a sigh, “But he has a good thirty-six hours on us and the last place he was spotted was at some gas station in Acton. He bought some maps and stuff. My guess is that he’ll be taking the back roads through the Sierra Pelonas, but there has to be at least a dozen hiking and biking trails through those mountains.”
“At least that many,” Bobby agreed sagely. “Lots of chaparral out there, scrub oak and scraggly shit like that, not a whole lot of cover if he’s thinking of hiding out.”
“Yeah, which would work out in our favor, I’m sure. If we can get some of your dogs we might get him back to the Institute before anything serious happens.”
Bobby was silent for a few seconds, thinking. Leon could hear the faint distant barking of dogs in the background. “You got anything with his scent on it?” he finally asked.
“No,” Leon admitted, “But Jill said she was going to have someone high-tail it to the Institute. They’re sure to have dirty clothes, his bedding and linen, something the dogs could use.”
“Okay, yeah, that’d work. So, what’s the game plan?”
“I was thinking about taking some of your dogs out to Acton and tracking Fletcher down from there. With all the news coverage, it seems doubtful that he’d be foolish enough to hitchhike again. So I’m betting he’s on foot. With any luck, we’ll have him in custody before the end of the day.”
“There’s only one problem,” Bobby said, regretfully, “I only have three trained hunting dogs on the premise. The rest are out on loan up in Washington.”
“Yeah, I heard something about that – werewolves raiding farms, wasn’t it?”
“Something along those lines, yeah.”
“I’ll take anything you could give me, Bobby,” he, speaking quickly, urgently “And if you’re worried about the fees, well, you know I’m good for them.” And he was.
Being a police detective wouldn’t ever make him a rich man, farthest thing from it, but there weren’t a lot of hunters in the country that specialized in werewolves and his service fees were pretty stiff. After all, every time a hunter went after a werewolf, he was risking more than just his life – one bite and he’d become the monster that he was hunting. It was risky business, but a necessary one that paid fairly well.
Bobby actually laughed at that, but not in a mean way. “Yeah, I know you are, kid. Your dad and me, we go way back and I’ve known you since what? You were thirteen? You’re a good boy, a bit hot headed and reckless sometimes, but a good hunter. I know you wouldn’t try to stiff me or nothing like that. Just tell me when and where you want to meet and I’ll be there.”
As Leon gave Bobby an approximate meeting place and time, he caught movement from the corner of his eye. Glancing up, he saw D standing a few feet away wearing a black outfit with what looked like peacock feathers embroidered into the rich fabric. He caught his colorful eyes and gave him a small smile while raising his hand in silent greeting. To his relief, D’s lips twitched in return. He wouldn’t necessarily call it a smile, but it was a better response than he felt he had any right to expect so soon after their little altercation.
No sooner had he hung up then the phone rang again. Leon gave D an apologetic smile and scooped up the phone, already knowing who would be on the other end.
“Hey, Leon, I’m down in the lobby,” Jill said, in lieu of greeting. “Are you coming down or what?”
“I’m on my way.”
Slowly, he hung up the phone then turned to face D, who was looking at him with a carefully blank expression.
“Look, D…” He didn’t know what to say and he didn’t want to make excuses. This was his job for Christ’s sake and it was important to him. And no matter how much he might want to, he couldn’t just drop everything for a luxurious sex romp in a fancy hotel, no matter who his partner was. If things were going to work out between them, D would have to understand that his job often took priority in his life.
He was about to say as much when he saw the resignation in D’s eyes and realized that the other man already knew that his job meant everything to him, despite the dangers. Already knew that everything in his life would play second fiddle to that demanding mistress. He knew all this, yet was still gracious enough to stand aside. Somehow that made it a bit easier to go.
“That was Jill. Something’s come up and I’ve got to go.” When D nodded his understanding, he turned and started toward the door. Something made him stop and turn to face D. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Of course, Detective,” D murmured, “And please be careful.”
Leon grinned in that supremely confident manner of his. “I always am.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
CHAPTER 10
There isn't a lot of Leon/D interaction in this chapter and I can't say that I'm 100% happy with it - the first part reads like an information dump. *sigh* Nonetheless, the Fletcher family, espcially the two sons, Ian and Joshua, play important roles in the story and I need to start introducing them. Unfortunately, I suck at writing original characters.
Pairing: Leon x D
Category: Supernatural/Alternate Universe
Rating: R
Warning: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations and Hermaphrodite!D
Title: The Hunted
Author: yellowhorde
Notes: This was written for NaNoWriMo 2007
Joshua Fletcher jerked awake with a startled cry, torn from his restless dreams by the roar of a low-flying helicopter.
He knew that whoever was flying the helicopter wouldn’t be able to see him as he crouched under the low hanging branches of the scrub oak, but that didn’t stop his heart from sledge-hammering in his chest. Sweat prickled his brow and he thanked his lucky stars that he had been smart enough to seek out the shelter of the trees.
Craning his head, he scanned the sky through the overhead branches, but it was still too early and the lingering darkness and the leaves made it almost impossible for him to track its movements. His highly sensitive ears, however, told him that the helicopter was moving steadily north, toward the Edwards Air Force Base.
Or the California State Hospital for Werewolves.
Nervously, he chewed on his lower lip, and ran his hands through his black, unruly hair, unable to decide what he should do for a moment. He had heard of helicopters being used to track down werewolves in the wild, but it was still dark, and unless they were using special infrared lights, which could detect the body heat of any living creatures, there was no way the pilot or passengers could have even seen him.
If they were using infrared, he theorized, then the helicopter would be traveling at a slower pace so the pilot wouldn’t accidentally pass over its target. Since it had been moving at a fairly steady clip, and he couldn’t hear any indication that it was coming around for another sweep, for now, at least, he was safe.
In the last three years Joshua had spent in confinement within the walls of the State Hospital, he had gotten used to the comings and goings of aircrafts. The roar of their engines had often been the only sound to break the monotonous silence of the barren land that surrounded the thirty-year old building. Late night flights, or pre-dawn ones for that matter, though unusual, weren’t entirely unheard of.
As the roar faded in the distance, he was actually kind of glad for the rude awakening - he hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the first place, just rest for a few moments. It was fortuitous that the helicopter had buzzed by when it had otherwise he might very well have slept all night long, which would have been dangerous for someone on the run. He couldn’t afford to waste the hours of darkness because moving around in the middle of the day meant risking discovery. And that was the last thing he wanted.
Cold and stiff from curling up in the fallen leaves at the base of the trunk, Josh patted his sweatshirt pockets futilely. The Snickers he had bought at the gas station was long gone as were the bottles of Mountain Dew. All that was left was the water, which he had drunk as sparingly as possible. Even so, the bottle was almost empty. It had been over twenty-four hours since he had eaten anything and his stomach grumbled a noisy complaint. He yearned for breakfast – pancakes and eggs, sausage and buttered toast. Hell, he’d even take some oatmeal right about now. It would certainly be better than slowly starving.
Doing his best to ignore his stomach, Josh spread the map out along the ground and peered at it under the light of the setting moon. His werewolf-enhanced vision picked out the marked roads and cities almost as easily as if he were reading by the light of the sun instead of the waning light of the moon. At his best guess, he had traveled some twenty miles since leaving the gas station. Not bad for a city boy. But he needed to make better time. At this rate it would take days to reach Los Angeles.
A cold breeze rustled the leaves and plucked at his red sweatshirt. Josh shivered and sank his hands deep into his pockets to keep them warm. The clouds had welled up around the mountains in the short time he had been asleep and cold moist air was being carried up over the mountain on the growing wind. He sighed heavily and wished like mad that he had something – anything – to eat.
After determining which landmarks he had already passed and taking one last look to make sure he was heading in the right direction, he scooped up the map, neatly folded it and stuffed it into his pockets for safe keeping. Then he began to walk.
As he trudged on, the sky along the eastern horizon began to lighten. Because of the dense cloud cover, he didn’t expect to see much in the way of beautiful sunrises, but he did find a certain comfort in the strengthening light despite the fact that the clouds and haze gave such a forlorn look to the Dunn-and-brown landscape.
The going was tediously slow. As Josh climbed up yet another canyon, he gazed down into dry streambeds and stands of sycamore and maple, the former turning brown, the latter lemon yellow with autumn chill. Despite the ache in his legs, the hunger and increasing thirst, he was glad for the opportunity to really stretch his legs, to breathe in the cool, clean mountain air. It had been so long since he had been outdoors unsupervised and unchained. The State Hospital, as a rule, didn’t believe in giving their wards too much freedom and he was glad to finally be out of there.
The California State Hospital for Werewolves, or Full Moon Manor as it was joking referred to by employees and ‘patients’ alike, was a sprawling four story building consisting entirely of severe right angles and uninviting straight lines. It crouched at the base of Soledad Mountain, just north of Rosamond. From its windows to the black and white checkered tile in the reception area, the entire building screamed ‘Institution’. No crown molding or other decorative flares or styles softened the severe attitude of the building. There had been no attempt to produce a gracefully sculpted landscaping that might lend a pleasant feel to its courtyards.
Full Moon Manor looked like a prison, lacking only an encircling tall fences topped in razor wire and various kiosks manned with armed guards. But, to those unfortunate enough to dwell within its walls, a prison was exactly what it was.
Escaping, though, had been a lot easier than Josh would have thought possible, thanks in large part to recent budget cuts.
Due to the sever employee shortages, security had been lax the last couple of months. Josh didn’t know if any of his fellow lycanthropes realized this or not and he hadn’t been willing to share the information with anyone for while he was cordial and helpful to patients and staff alike, he had formed no close friendships and instead kept pretty much to himself. He knew from talking with several of the nurses that three of staff members working the night shifts were unlicensed, temporary workers. As such, they were unfamiliar with the forty-seven patients they were responsible for, their routines, or the individual problems each might pose.
Josh had also overheard several daytime nurses complaining that the temporary workers often failed to lock the activity rooms after lights-out and that the night crew seldom, if ever, made the required bed checks every thirty minutes. All of this and more had been reported to the hospital supervisor, Jack Redding and yet nothing had been ever been done about it.
Full Moon Manor was the largest facility of its kind and while it was less than fifty percent occupied, it was understaffed, almost dangerously so. The hospital had dozens of vacant positions for nurses and psychiatric technicians, housekeepers and orderlies and three vacant slots for police officers. This represented a considerable percent of the hospital workforce.
Though it was supposed to be a state of the art Institute for the long-time detention of individuals who suffered from Lycanthrope Disorder, most of the staff members employed had only had rudimentary training on how to actually deal with werewolves and the unique problems and challenges they might pose. Doctors, nurses, and the rest of the staff frequently carried stun guns for their protection and for the protection of the almost exclusively male patients, but such measures seldom proved a successful deterrent.
The existing atmosphere of negligence had lent itself to the perfect opportunity to attempt a break out. But Josh had to time his escape just right. And so he had made his plans… and waited.
Due to the nature of the disease, the patients naturally became more restless and violent in the days and nights right before the full moon. The patients, already angry and restless due to their confinement, routinely became hostile and were prone to fits of violence. Even Joshua felt the monthly stirrings of animalistic rage, but unlike his werewolf counterparts, he was able to restrain himself from completely reverting to animal instincts. He wasn’t sure if this was because he had been born with the curse or not. All he did know was that he was still capable of rational thought while under the full moon’s influence while the others reverted wholly to their most base, animalistic instincts.
To counteract the problem of escalating violence, five days before the full moon, all the security guards and male employees would gear up in protective riot gear and escort the patients, at gun point if necessary, to the west wing. There they were separated and placed in prison-like rooms complete with bars on the windows and a stainless steel combination toilets and sinks attached to the walls. The beds, the only furniture in the rooms, were bolted to the ground. In addition to this, the werewolves were shackled with heavy-duty restraints and administer powerful sedatives to keep them docile. The drugs weren’t strong enough to stop the transformation from human to werewolf – Josh suspected that only death itself would halt that transformation- but it did effectively render them more or less harmless.
It was a wonder that the staff didn’t employ such tactics throughout the rest of the month considering how many problems the population could cause on any given day. If the cost of such a plan hadn’t been so prohibitively expensive, Josh had no doubt that he and the rest of the werewolves would have been doped out of their collective minds twenty-four hours, seven days a week.
Despite these security measures, Full Moon Manor was a dangerous place to live or work. Since Josh had been interned three years ago, there had been an increasing number of reports of suspicious deaths, assaults, rapes and evidence of patient abuse. Patient on patient assaults were generally swept under the rug, while assaults on staff members were dealt with in-house as much as possible.
The problems weren’t uncommon for similar containment facilities across the country. It wasn’t that people who suffered from Lycanthrope Disorder were more violent than so-called normal individuals. In fact, similar prison statistics would just as likely show the same problems, at least amongst the prison population. Most of the patients currently staying at Full Moon weren’t any more dangerous than the average Joe on the street. The only difference that Josh could readily see in most cases was that Average Joe was free to come and go as he pleased, free to live a normal existence. That option was simply no longer available for the patients at Full Moon and facing a lifetime of involuntary imprisonment when they hadn’t committed any crime to warrant such heavy handed punishments made many of them understandably bitter and angry.
In many cases that anger drove even the most passive individuals to commit acts of violence, either against the staff or, more often, fellow patients. Suicide was also a big problem, but none of the staff raised a fuss when one of the wolves decided to off themselves. As far as they were concerned, it meant one less freak to have to deal with.
During his first six months at Full Moon, Josh himself had gotten into more scuffles than he cared to admit, the most serious leaving him with a few broken ribs.
Once, a man in his late twenties with white-blond hair and washed out blue eyes had attacked him during a disagreement over the results of a friendly chess game. He had just lost control and leapt across the top of the folding table in one of the activity centers. His wild, glaring eyes burned with intense rage and saliva dripped from his snapping jaws. The transformation had been so sudden, one minute he was fine, the next he was out for blood. Using werewolf strength, he had snapped the bones in Josh’s forearm as easily as a normal human might break a pencil. The scuffle had only lasted a few moments, but it had taken all of Josh’s strength coupled with that of three other orderlies with stun guns and Billy clubs to get the madman off of him.
None of the incidents, including the one with the chess player, had been reported to the authorities. The perpetrators were not detained or punished in any way. This, he discovered, was more the rule than the exception. He learned to make special efforts to keep the cuts and bruises hidden from his mother when she came for her bi-weekly visits so as not to worry her too much. Having her eldest child in an Institution was stressful enough as it was without adding the concern of bodily harm. Unfortunately, the broken arm had been impossible to hide even with his supernatural healing abilities.
When his mother had grilled him about his injuries using the same sharp tone she used when questioning her opponents in court, he had just played it off as the result of some overly enthusiastic roughhousing on the basketball court and left it at that.
On the night before they were to be locked up, Josh had slipped through the unmonitored hallways, silent as a ghost, his keen senses straining to catch the sight, sound or scent of an approaching security guard. As he had hoped, the night workers had barricaded themselves into the main nursing headquarters to drink strong coffee and gossip about the day’s events. No one had seen him as he darted out a little-used side entrance and he had made his way to the nearest highway with anyone sounding the alarm.
Less than a half-mile down the road from the Institute, he had been fortunate enough to get a ride from an old man named Carl something-or-other. While he had hoped for a ride all the way to Los Angeles, he had been grateful to be dropped off at the Acton Plaza Liquor & Market in Acton, half an hour later and thirty miles closer to his final destination.
Now, though it was a Saturday morning and the trails were soon going to be crawling with weekend warriors and nature lovers from all over the Los Angeles Basin, Josh decided to keep to the trails just a little while longer. It was still very early and if there was anyone using the various walking and biking trails that meandered through the mountains, canyons and valleys, he’d be able to detect them with his sharp sense of smell long before they got close enough to spot him.
He walked for a few more hours, through Jeffrey pines which eventually gave way to a broad slope of chaparral. The first few miles of road traversed a densely forested mountainside. Now that the wind had died down, the air was cold and still. Before long the forest shrank to scrubby oak trees about head-high.
After a while, he began to search for a secure place to rest, preferably away from the main trails. Since he was currently traversing a steep mountainside, there weren’t any likely spots readily available so he kept walking, all his senses on the alert for unwanted intruders. As the sun rose steadily higher in the sky, he reached a stretch of dirt road. Cautiously, he hiked a few yards down-ridge from the road, until he found a nice spot in a stand of yucca and chaparral near a small stream.
Josh hurried over to the pebbly edge of the water and went to his knees. He unscrewed the cap of his liter bottle and submerged the bottle under the water’s surface. For a moment his mind conjured up all sorts of visions of bacteria and pollution one might find in the waterways of the wild, but he was too thirsty to give the matter serious thought. Human beings could die from dehydration in as little as three days, he knew, and he didn’t plan on kicking the bucket anytime soon.
When his time came, he wanted to go down fighting, not weak and dehydrated because he’d been too much of a chicken shit to drink unfiltered water.
Humming tunelessly under his breath, he scraped some gravel from a relatively flat beneath the trees then lined it with a thick layer of dried leaves and grasses before sitting down. In the peaceful shade, with pines and oaks and maples all around, he enjoyed the quiet morning for a few moments as he gulped his water.
I could survive out here, he thought sleepily, if I just let the wolf in me take control.
With an amused snort, he pushed that idea away. He didn’t want to live out here in the wild like some sort of half-human Lost Boy. He wanted normal human interactions, pizza, video games and pretty girls. Not that any girl would give him the time of day if she knew what he really was. In fact, she’d probably head for the hills as fast as her legs could take her.
Sadly, Josh lay down and pulled himself into a tight ball in order to conserve body heat. Even so, he shivered and shook in the autumn chill, feeling miserable and alone.
Being out here, in the wild, he thought, isn’t so bad. God knows I’ve been through worse. But once I’m back with my family, things will definitely get better… then maybe all of this will seem like some really fucked up dream…
The transition from normal teenager to prisoner in the State Institute hadn’t been an easy one for Josh. He had survived his first year by being tough and cagey and by showing everyone who challenged him that he was nobody’s bitch. When his fellow patients got rough with him, he got rough right back. But, as a relatively gentle soul, he never instigated a fight and often stood up for the rights of his less powerful werewolves. In time, the trouble makers learned to keep their distance from him and if a new werewolf wanted to get frisky, Josh quickly put the offender in his place. As the months passed, things calmed down somewhat and, for the most part, he was civil, even helpful and was on friendly terms with most of the nursing and janitorial staff.
It didn’t hurt that the most werewolves seemed to sense that there was something, well, different about him. And they would be correct in this assumption. While the other patients in Full Moon were werewolf attack survivors, Josh was an honest-to-God naturally born werewolf. He had his mother to thank – or curse - for that. Though she didn’t know it while she was pregnant with him, she carried the hereditary genetic disorder and had passed it on to her first born son. The disorder affected more than eighty-five percent of the male children born to carrying mothers and it was something of a medical miracle that his younger brother, Ian, who had just started college that fall, hadn’t yet showed any indications that he carried the werewolf genes.
Josh got down on his knees and thanked God for that blessing each and every night. He wouldn’t inflict the sort of misery he had suffered on anybody, not even his worst enemy. And he was glad that his younger brother would grow up and live a normal, All-American life free of the werewolf taint.
Like most werewolves, the disease first manifested itself to Josh as a heightened sensual awareness accompanied by debilitating headaches. His hearing and sense of smell were particularly affected. In those first few weeks, the heightened sensual awareness came and went without rhyme or reason and the pain that followed in their aftermath was unlike anything he had ever experienced before in his young life.
At first he had thought he was suffering from migraines, but when all attempts at preventing or treating them failed to provide relief, his mother became worried. It was the headaches that prompted her to seek professional medical advice. She feared that the headaches might have been caused by a brain tumor so something. After all, normal migraines weren’t usually preceded by heightened sensual awareness.
After a short search, she had been able to make arrangements for him to see a specialist by the name of James Crocker. Dr. Crocker poked and prodded him, drew liters of blood, and ran almost every test imaginable to human kind. But all of the tests results told the same story – that Joshua was a perfectly healthy young man and that there was nothing wrong with him aside from the fact that he frequently suffered sever headaches.
Nothing in his or the Doctor’s experience even remotely suggested that he was on the cusps of transforming into a monster.
Less than three weeks after the headaches started, Joshua went into convulsions in the parking lot of a local McDonalds. Paramedics were called, and while being transported to the nearest emergency room, he transformed into a full-fledged werewolf for the first time. Though he didn’t remember the events that took place after the first convulsions began, he knew it was a miracle that he had survived. Very few werewolves, whether they be naturally born or survivors of attack, survived their first transformation from human to werewolf. That was one of the reasons why there were so few werewolves to begin with.
It wasn’t until he was confined to Full Moon Manor after his first Change that he found out that heightened senses and headaches were common signs that indicated that a person, either one that had survived an attack or had been born with the disease, was about to undergo their first transformation. He wasn’t surprised that the doctors hadn’t been able to figure out what had been wrong with him. After all, they confined the fields of their study to normal human beings, not genetic mutants. And no one, not even his mother, had known that he had carried the rare disorder.
As he huddled amongst his bed of leaves and grasses, Josh didn’t dare contemplate how his family would react to his escape from the Institute and sudden reappearance at their Los Angeles home. His mother, at least, would welcome him with open arms. On her frequent visits she often said how much she wanted him to come home. But how would Ian react?
He hadn’t seen his younger brother since right before his first transformation. His mother hadn’t allowed the then fifteen-year-old to visit him in the hospital on those days before he was transferred to Full Moon Manor. She thought it would be too difficult for the younger boy to see his brother going through such a horrible ordeal. And she had never once brought him with her on her bi-weekly visits, though she often brought photographs and exclaimed at how tall he was getting.
How will Ian react when he sees me? Josh wondered. Will he be glad to see me? Or will he call the cops and turn me in?
Josh didn’t know what he’d do if he finally came face to face with his younger brother only to see hate and disgust in his eyes. Will he see me as his brother… or a monster?
Only time would tell.
*****
Leon hung up the phone after making arrangements for Jill to pick him up at the hotel. There really wasn’t any point in them taking separate cars if they were both going to be heading out to Acton. Jill hadn’t complained, after all, she was a woman who knew the value of a dollar. Plus, she knew that the fifty minute drive would give her plenty of time to grill him on the recent developments in his social life.
She didn’t know about the contract with D’s grandfather or about the conditions of said contract – he didn’t really want to go into details with her anyway - but she would probably know all the important bits before they reached their destination and what she didn’t know, she would probably be able to guess at.
Digging into his pocket, he dug out a worn leather wallet and rummaged through its contents until he found a battered off-white business card tucked in the very back. The card belonged to Robert ‘Just-call-me-Bobby’ Keller, one of the finest breeders of scent hounds in the Los Angeles area. The popular consensus was that there wasn’t a better breeder in the whole country, perhaps even the world.
Most, if not all werewolf hunters in the United States depended on Bobby’s dogs at one point or another. As far as Leon was concerned, they were just as essential to a successful werewolf hunt as a good rifle and silver bullets. All scent dogs could track, but not all of them were willing to give chase to a lycanthrope. Bobby’s dogs had been meticulously bred to be bigger, stronger and fiercer than the average hunting dog. Over the years, selective breeding of hounds in general had resulted in some of the gentlest and most laid back personalities of the canine world. Bobby, on the other hand, bred his hounds to be fierce and independent and they were more than capable of contending with wild boar, mountain lions… and werewolves.
These dogs didn’t just track their prey, corner it and wait for the hunters to show up and finish the job like lesser hounds might. They were perfectly capable of taking down their quarry, often before the hunters had a chance to catch up with them. And in hunting a creature as potentially contagious as a werewolf, that inbred viciousness was an extremely important quality, especially since dogs weren’t affected by the Lycanthrope disease and weren’t capable of spreading it to humans. Many a hunter’s life had been saved by those dogs and every one of them was worth their weight in gold.
Picking up the phone again, he dialed the number and then waited while the phone on the other end rang and rang. Impatiently, Leon stuffed the card back in his wallet and slid the wallet into his back pocket. Just when he had almost given up on getting hold of the dog breeder, the phone was picked up and answered by a slightly out of breath, “Hello?”
“Bobby?” He wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder and sat down on the couch, relieved to have gotten through. “It’s me, Leon.”
“Hey, how you doing, man?” Leon could actually hear the grin in the other man’s voice and before he knew it, he was grinning himself. Bobby was one of the friendliest people he had ever met – the man just didn’t know how not to smile. “I almost missed you there, Bobby. You really need to get yourself an answering machine.”
“Nah,” Came the laughing reply, “I can’t stand the things. But I got caller ID so if I miss something important, I can always call back. What can I do you for?”
Leon smiled, calling a mental image of the other man up in his head. He wasn’t an especially tall man, but he had the most cheerful disposition of any man he had ever encountered. His round face, burned a perpetual red from a long life of working in the sun, was creased with laugh lines and his washed out blue eyes were always twinkling. If he knew Bobby – and he did – he’d be wearing a faded plaid shirt and his favorite pair of denim coveralls which had more patches than denim. Bobby was a simple man with simple wants and needs. Raising dogs was his pride and joy and outside of his dogs he loved only two things, a good pipe of tobacco and an excellent scotch, always in moderation.
“I need to borrow some of your dogs,” Leon replied, then added, “Today, if possible.”
“You hunting down the wolf that escaped?”
Leave it to Bobby to keep in the loop, Leon silently marveled. But it wouldn’t have been hard for him to guess, after all, the escape had been all the media was talking about right now. He didn’t like the media whipping people into a frenzy of fear over this, but the more people who knew about the escape and the dangers, the better chances they had a chance of catching this man before he did some damage.
Of course, it also meant that there would be a bunch of dumb-ass hunters out there thinking how prestigious it would be to bag a werewolf. That put Fletcher at a distinct disadvantage because everyone would be on the lookout for him and, as far as he knew, he wasn’t carrying any weapons. And until the full moon in three days, he’d be a sitting duck.
Leon didn’t like werewolves – hell, he’d be the first person to admit to that little understatement– but he didn’t want the kid to get killed if there was any way for him to prevent it.
“We’re going to try.” Leon said with a sigh, “But he has a good thirty-six hours on us and the last place he was spotted was at some gas station in Acton. He bought some maps and stuff. My guess is that he’ll be taking the back roads through the Sierra Pelonas, but there has to be at least a dozen hiking and biking trails through those mountains.”
“At least that many,” Bobby agreed sagely. “Lots of chaparral out there, scrub oak and scraggly shit like that, not a whole lot of cover if he’s thinking of hiding out.”
“Yeah, which would work out in our favor, I’m sure. If we can get some of your dogs we might get him back to the Institute before anything serious happens.”
Bobby was silent for a few seconds, thinking. Leon could hear the faint distant barking of dogs in the background. “You got anything with his scent on it?” he finally asked.
“No,” Leon admitted, “But Jill said she was going to have someone high-tail it to the Institute. They’re sure to have dirty clothes, his bedding and linen, something the dogs could use.”
“Okay, yeah, that’d work. So, what’s the game plan?”
“I was thinking about taking some of your dogs out to Acton and tracking Fletcher down from there. With all the news coverage, it seems doubtful that he’d be foolish enough to hitchhike again. So I’m betting he’s on foot. With any luck, we’ll have him in custody before the end of the day.”
“There’s only one problem,” Bobby said, regretfully, “I only have three trained hunting dogs on the premise. The rest are out on loan up in Washington.”
“Yeah, I heard something about that – werewolves raiding farms, wasn’t it?”
“Something along those lines, yeah.”
“I’ll take anything you could give me, Bobby,” he, speaking quickly, urgently “And if you’re worried about the fees, well, you know I’m good for them.” And he was.
Being a police detective wouldn’t ever make him a rich man, farthest thing from it, but there weren’t a lot of hunters in the country that specialized in werewolves and his service fees were pretty stiff. After all, every time a hunter went after a werewolf, he was risking more than just his life – one bite and he’d become the monster that he was hunting. It was risky business, but a necessary one that paid fairly well.
Bobby actually laughed at that, but not in a mean way. “Yeah, I know you are, kid. Your dad and me, we go way back and I’ve known you since what? You were thirteen? You’re a good boy, a bit hot headed and reckless sometimes, but a good hunter. I know you wouldn’t try to stiff me or nothing like that. Just tell me when and where you want to meet and I’ll be there.”
As Leon gave Bobby an approximate meeting place and time, he caught movement from the corner of his eye. Glancing up, he saw D standing a few feet away wearing a black outfit with what looked like peacock feathers embroidered into the rich fabric. He caught his colorful eyes and gave him a small smile while raising his hand in silent greeting. To his relief, D’s lips twitched in return. He wouldn’t necessarily call it a smile, but it was a better response than he felt he had any right to expect so soon after their little altercation.
No sooner had he hung up then the phone rang again. Leon gave D an apologetic smile and scooped up the phone, already knowing who would be on the other end.
“Hey, Leon, I’m down in the lobby,” Jill said, in lieu of greeting. “Are you coming down or what?”
“I’m on my way.”
Slowly, he hung up the phone then turned to face D, who was looking at him with a carefully blank expression.
“Look, D…” He didn’t know what to say and he didn’t want to make excuses. This was his job for Christ’s sake and it was important to him. And no matter how much he might want to, he couldn’t just drop everything for a luxurious sex romp in a fancy hotel, no matter who his partner was. If things were going to work out between them, D would have to understand that his job often took priority in his life.
He was about to say as much when he saw the resignation in D’s eyes and realized that the other man already knew that his job meant everything to him, despite the dangers. Already knew that everything in his life would play second fiddle to that demanding mistress. He knew all this, yet was still gracious enough to stand aside. Somehow that made it a bit easier to go.
“That was Jill. Something’s come up and I’ve got to go.” When D nodded his understanding, he turned and started toward the door. Something made him stop and turn to face D. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Of course, Detective,” D murmured, “And please be careful.”
Leon grinned in that supremely confident manner of his. “I always am.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
CHAPTER 10
There isn't a lot of Leon/D interaction in this chapter and I can't say that I'm 100% happy with it - the first part reads like an information dump. *sigh* Nonetheless, the Fletcher family, espcially the two sons, Ian and Joshua, play important roles in the story and I need to start introducing them. Unfortunately, I suck at writing original characters.
