AN: Written for the fifth Jupiter Ascending Fic Challenge. I had this idea waiting around to be written, and the fic challenge provided the perfect opportunity.
"Hey there Little Red Riding Hood, You sure are looking good, You're everything that a big bad wolf could want, Owoooooooo."
From his hiding place in the back of Vladie's beat up old pickup truck, Caine listened as the song wound down and asked himself again just how Jupiter had talked him into this.
She parked in a field not far from a barn and she and her cousin Mikka piled out of the pickup.
"Jupiter, thank you so much for doing this!" gushed Mikka. "Daddy was being so unreasonable, but you saved the day."
"You badgered me into it would be more accurate," Jupiter commented, pulling the mask from her forehead down to cover her eyes and nose. She twirled, a red cape swishing around her knees. "How do I look?"
"Very enticing," Mikka joked. "Let's hope there aren't any big, bad wolves here tonight."
Caine was pretty sure he counted as one tonight, given the costume Jupiter had forced him to wear. He now sported hairy arms, a hairy neck, and a mask with a wolf nose.
What would Mikka say if she knew that her cousin had brought the wolf with them? Caine slipped from the back of the truck into the shadows.
"Where to first?" Jupiter asked.
Mikka glanced around taking in the possibilities. "Wow. Andrew's family really does Halloween up big. Haunted barn, I guess."
Caine followed the two girls as they entered the dimly lit barn. Temporary walls constructed from hay bales forced visitors to follow a fixed path. Fake skeletons, spider webs and very strange looking humanoid creatures decorated the hay bales. Screams echoed off the high ceiling. His sensitive ears easily detected that the majority of them were recorded rather than real.
To him, it was more bizarre than scary. Terrsies could be so strange sometimes.
He stepped around a corner quickly, keeping Jupiter in sight. A large body jumped out at him. Immediately, he dropped into a defensive stance and reached for his weapon, a smooth movement born out of hours of practice and years of use. A moment later he realized it was a mechanical dummy. It smelled of plastic.
How was he supposed to protect Jupiter in a place like this? He swore softly under his breath. The whole setup would easily hide an assassin. In the moment it took Caine to figure out whether a threat was real or not, she'd be dead. She was never doing one of these "haunted barn" things again. The security risks were just too great.
He trailed them through the maze, relying heavily on his ears and nose to assess potential threats. A sigh of relief escaped his lips as they exited the barn a few minutes later.
"Look, there's Jackie and Andrew. Let's go." Mikka took off in the direction of her friends. Jupiter followed a few seconds later, hurrying to catch up.
With his longer stride, Caine had no trouble following at an appropriately discreet distance. His eyes constantly scanned the surroundings. This area of the farm was lit with floodlights. Tables of refreshments stretched down one side. The other side had stalls with various activities and the far end faded into the night.
Caine listened disinterestedly as Mikka introduced her cousin as "Red" to their host and her friend. They spent a few minutes on small talk and then Mikka went off with Jackie, the two of them discussing the various costumes they'd seen.
Jupiter headed to a table with piles of orange squash at one end. She selected one and moved to the other end of the table. Picking up a knife, she cut a circle around the stem and pulled it out. She grabbed a spoon and started scraping out the interior. It looked like a slimy task, he decided, after watching for a few minutes.
"If you stand there and watch me for too long, people will think you're stalking me." Jupiter spoke softly, but he heard her clearly. "You carve this one and I'll do another."
She pushed the squash to her right and plucked another pumpkin from the pile.
Caine considered for a moment. Wasn't the wolf supposed to stalk Red Riding Hood? Mabye that was too real for this kind of event?
He shrugged mentally and stepped up next to her. "What am I supposed to do with this vegetable?"
"Carve a scary face into it," Jupiter answered as she pulled the top out of her new one.
He looked over the available knives and then pulled out his combat knife and started carving.
While they worked she explained. "October 31st was day when the people of Ireland and Britian thought veil between life and the afterlife wore thin and ghosts walked the land. They carved hideous faces into turnips or beets, put a lit candle inside them, and placed them on a doorstep or windowsill to scare away the spirits. When their descendents immigrated to the United States, they brought the tradition with them, although here pumpkins are more suitable for carving."
Jupiter looked down at her clumsily carved pumpkin and Caine did too. One of the teeth she'd tried to make had been cut off by accident leaving a gaping hole and one eye was horribly lopsided. Her talents were definitely in other areas.
"I never was much good at this," she commented. Then she glanced over at his pumpkin and laughed incredulously. "Is that Stinger?"
"He can be very scary," Caine assured her, thinking of a time he'd botched a training exercise and gotten his whole team "killed." Just thinking of the post exercise review still made him shudder all these years later.
They wandered the tables, sharing a caramel apple and playing Halloween-themed carnival games. Caine hit every target at the shooting gallery the first time, even with the unfamiliar air gun. The bemused operator shook his hand heartily and then told him not to come back because he made it look too easy.
While they sat on a bench eating a sugary confection Jupiter called "cotton candy," a person dressed in a black cape with long pointy teeth (obviously a prosthetic) approached them. Caine tensed, preparing for action.
The person glanced nervously at Caine and addressed Jupiter. "There's a campfire starting down in the fire pit. Take the path between the tables over there. It's not far."
With nothing better to do, they ambled down the path. "I'll show you how to roast marshmallows," Jupiter promised.
Caine smelled smoke from the fire and heard the low hum of conversation long before they arrived.
Just before they entered the circle of its light, Caine pulled her into the shadows. "I've indulged you all evening. Now it's your turn to keep your end of the bargain, your Majesty."
"Gladly."
His eyes darkened in anticipation and his pulse raced as he moved toward her. She skipped away lightly, circling to the other side of the tree. He growled. This was not part of their bargain. But if she wanted to play hard to get… he'd let her, for a little while.
He padded softly around the tree, even as his nose informed him that she had moved laterally to hide behind another tree. He stalked her half way around the campfire, before pinning her to a tree.
"I've caught you, your Majesty." His voice rumbled low in his chest and he admitted to himself that her game had heightened his anticipation. His mouth descended to hers possessively. His kiss started out soft, but her enthusiastic response overrode his caution. He deepened the kiss into a languid exploration of her mouth, loving the smell, feel and taste of her.
She pulled back for a moment catch her breath and smirked at him. "My, what soft lips you have."
"All the better to kiss you with," he quipped, pressing his lips again to hers.
She twined her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him. Her scent changed as her arousal grew and the spark in low in his abdomen flamed into a raging bonfire. He devoured her lips, pressing her back against the tree.
Awareness of their surroundings faded to the merest wisp. Perhaps that was why Mikka's gasp of shock startled him into taking Jupiter down to the ground, protecting her with his body. Their surroundings came into sharp focus.
Jupiter pushed at his chest. "It's just Mikka. Let me up."
He sensed no threat, so he stood and offered her a hand. "I'm sorry, yo… Red."
"I see the big bad wolf found you," Mikka commented drily.
She brushed herself off, ignoring Mikka for the moment. Then she looked up and realized that everyone around the campfire was staring at them.
"Let me tell you the real story of Little Red Riding Hood," she told her audience, settling down on a log bench near the campfire. She leaned in. "Once upon a time, there lived a wicked witch. The witch lived in an old forest with her three children, each as wicked as she. In the clearing behind her house, there was a large cauldron. Every day she sent her children into the forest to find the old, the lost and the poor, and bring them back to her. She put them into the cauldron, added a secret ingredient and boiled them into a special drink that kept her and her children looking young and beautiful. When there was extra, she sold it at a steep price to the kings and nobles in the neighboring kingdoms."
Caine winced as he realized where the story was going. But a quick glance around told him that everyone else was enthralled.
"Long years passed and the wicked old witch (old in years but not in looks), wearied of her trade, stopped sending her children into the forest. When it was clear that she intended to stop making the youth serum altogether, her oldest son became infuriated with her and they fought violently. In the end, she died and he took over the cauldron work, sending his siblings back into the forest to hunt for the unwary, the destitute, and the desperate.
"One day, he heard a rumor that the ghost of his mother had been seen walking on the far side of the forest. He didn't believe in ghosts, but the rumors persisted. So he hired some hunters to find the supposed ghost and kill it if they could. The youngest brother also hired a hunter, but he told his hunter to capture the ghost.
"The hunters discovered not a ghost, but a young woman who looked exactly like the wicked witch. The hunter hired by the youngest brother immediately fell in love with the beautiful young woman. When the oldest brother's hunters tried to kill her, he protected her. He took her to the younger brother."
She glanced back at him over her shoulder, apologizing with her eyes. He blinked once in acknowledgement. Their real story was too complicated to adapt well to this audience and her version held them spellbound.
"The younger brother, tired of doing the most work and getting the least share of the profits, decided to marry the young woman, claim she was the wicked witch and take over the business. He dressed her in a red robe and tried to force her to marry him. The hunter couldn't let the woman he loved marry another, so he killed the younger brother.
"Meanwhile, the older brother's hunters told him that the ghost was a real person, but that she had escaped them. The sent them to kidnap her family. He hung her family over the cauldron and demanded she meet with him alone. He told her that he wouldn't let her take the cauldron business away from him and that she would have to sacrifice herself to save her family from being turned into youth serum.
"The hunter who loved the young woman tracked her to the meeting place and rescued her family. The young woman in the red robe fought the oldest brother and pushed him into the cauldron. When it was over, she kissed the hunter for saving her family and fell in love with him too. Unable to lie to his one true love, the hunter took off his hood and revealed that he was part wolf. After saving her life and her family, Red knew the wolf would never hurt her and they lived happily ever after."
Applause broke out as she ended her story. Caine stepped out of the shadows and stood next to her, knowing that people would be coming to talk to her and needing to be close. She stood and kissed him once, then pulled him down to sit on the bench next to her.
"In a few minutes, I'll show you the best way to toast a marshmallow. You're gonna love s'mores."
He nodded and considered telling her that wolves preferred meat to sweets.
Mikka rushed up. "That was amazing! I love how you made the wolf the hero of the story instead of the villian. I've got to tell Vladie and Moltka."
She pulled out her phone and started taping away while others came to speak to Jupiter.
Caine kept a close eye on all of them, but a happy glow settled into his chest and a smile played around the edges of his lips. This wolf was going to demand a reward for being the hero of the story, one involving more kisses and fewer interruptions.