Fire In My Soul.
Fandom: Wizards Vs Aliens
Rating: T
Genre: Supernatural, Romance
Pairing: Tom/Lexi
Summary: [Tom/Lexi] "I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition."/She frowns. "Huh?"/The boy rolled his eyes. "I'm the one who pulled your sorry self out of Hell," he repeats in simpler terms, a patronising tone to his words.
AN: So...yeah. This is happening. A Supernatural!AU. Let's go. It was a oneshot, now it is decidedly not.
Spoilers for Supernatural throughout.
Title comes from the song Me, Myself & I, by G-Eazy and Bebe Rexha.
DISCLAIMER. WvA is owned by the BBC, and Supernatural is owned by the CW network.
University isn't what Lexi expects at all.
She had never gotten fully settled into the usual British education system - who would, when you moved schools every week, every two weeks? She never felt the need to care about higher education, until about a year ago. A year ago, it became all that she could think about. Not the hunts she went on, not demons she fought, not the monsters that ordinary people didn't believe in. Suddenly, the idea of the apple pie life, the one that she and Varg had always abhorred, particularly when their father made one of his re-appearances, was highly appealing.
Of course, when her acceptance letter to the small London university had arrived at the cheap hotel that they were staying in, no one else had been as happy as she. Varg had sat in the corner, and said virtually nothing throughout the entire ordeal, whilst their father ranted and raged at her for what seemed to be hours and hours, with Lexi raging back.
Why should I give up my dream? She'd yelled, arms folded, letter clutched to her chest, like a lifeline.
You know why. Her father had reached for the glass of water on the table and downed it in one. Our family are hunters, and that's what we've always been. If you suddenly think that you're too good for us, for this, then you can see yourself out, close the door behind you, and never darken my doorstep again.
Maybe I will!
That had startled her father and brother, both of them looking at her with slightly wide eyes, her father's lips pressed together in a tight line that left no room for discussion or apology, and there was no going back after that. She'd packed up her things almost immediately, caught the next bus to the university, and lived on campus ever since.
It isn't perfect. Lexi would be lying if she said that. But she has something that's hers, finally, hers to cherish, and she won't ever let it go.
Even if all everybody else wants to do is drink themselves into a early grave.
"Lexi!" There's a tapping on her door, making her look up from her current analysis task, the one that's due in tomorrow. Her housemate, Alicia, is peering around the door, dressed in some kind of elaborate zombie costume.
Ah. Of course. Halloween. Her most hated time of the year. How could she forget?
Lexi raises an eyebrow, but doesn't comment on the outfit. "What can I do for you?"
"You know what." The shorter blonde fixes her with a pointed look. "The party started, like, fifteen minutes ago. We're missing karaoke right now."
"Karaoke, huh?" Lexi shakes her head with a smirk. "I, er, I think I'm good, thanks."
"Lexi -" Alicia's voice takes on a petulant whine. "C'mon. Come out and have some fun with us."
"I have plenty of fun. And you know how I feel about Halloween."
"I know. But you could just come out for a drink with us! I know for a fact that Adam really wants you there."
Lexi snorts. "Well Adam is going to have to be disappointed. I've got a lot of assignment stuff to work on, anyway. I don't want to fail."
"You? Fail?" Alicia shakes her head. "As if. You're one of the smartest people I know."
"I wouldn't say that."
"I would." She eyes the book on her desk - Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut. "You sure that you don't want to come?"
"Sure." Lexi waves her away with a free hand. "But have fun, though. Tell Adam to lay off the rum and coke."
"Not sure that's a feat I can accomplish."
The two share a chuckle, before Alicia disappears from the doorway; Lexi waits until she hears the front door of their building slam shut, before letting out a sigh, letting her reading glasses slide down her nose and land on the desk with a clatter.
The sound of the window slamming from downstairs jolts Lexi from sleep.
She's fallen asleep at her desk again; her notes are scattered everywhere from her tossing and turning, Slaughterhouse Five lying on the floor beside her chair, the spine now bent. She ducks to retrieve the book, closing it and lying it on top of her essay, before rising from her seat and tiptoeing towards the door of her room. There are three other students in her block - two girls and a boy - and, from the sounds that she can hear from outside the window, the Halloween celebrations are still in full swing. None of her housemates would ever leave a party that hasn't wrapped up, and certainly wouldn't enter through the downstairs window, no matter how drunk they were.
The hallway and kitchen are still in darkness as she edges her way down the stairs, half wishing that she had brought her book with her after all, just in case she needs to use it as a weapon of self-defence from any possible drunken burglars that may or may not have broken into her accommodation.
She doesn't get very far, however. A snap from behind makes her whirl around, only to have someone take advantage of her distraction and grab her from behind, throwing her onto the ground and keeping her pinned.
"You're getting slow."
She freezes at the familiar voice, all the fight leaving her body as she stares up at the face above hers, recognisable now, even in the dim light.
"Varg?"
Varg chuckles at the incredulous tone of her voice. "Hello, sister."
"You scared the heck out of me!"
"I'm just keeping you on your toes." He relaxes his grip on her, holding out a hand instead. Lexi smirks, grabbing it, before using her weight to flip them over, so that her brother is now sprawled across the floor and she is stood over him.
"Yeah," she says, looking down at him now, eyebrow raised. "I've noticed."
"Ah." Varg recovers after his momentary surprise. "Not entirely a lost cause, I see." He gets to his feet himself when Lexi doesn't offer him a hand up, instead moving across the room to flip the light on. Varg looks the same as he always has - dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, rumpled clothes, leather jacket.
"What are you doing here?"
"Well, actually, just now, I was looking for a drink -"
"Varg." She narrows her eyes at him. "What are you doing here?"
"Okay, okay. I needed to contact you."
"Contact me?" Lexi raises an eyebrow. "You, uh, you are aware that phones have been invented, aren't you?"
"If I had phoned you, sister -" Varg fixes her with a pointed look. "- would you have picked up?"
"Fair point," she concedes. "But that still doesn't explain what you're doing here."
"It's about Father."
"Father?" From the look on his face, he can tell that her entire posture has tensed. "I don't particularly want to talk about him."
"Well, I'm sorry to break it to you, but the world doesn't revolve around what you want, Lexi." Varg's reply is sharp, before he sucks in a deep breath, composing himself. "Father hasn't come home for a few days."
"Is that all? What's that got to do with me?"
"Okay - I'll rephrase. Clearly your time amongst normal people has stunted your ability to read subtlety." Varg rolls his eyes, catching hold of her arm in order to look her in the eye, to make sure that his next words have the full impact.
"Father is on a hunting trip - and he hasn't come home for a few days."
"No."
"Sister -"
"No, Varg, I mean it." Lexi glances back at him over her shoulder. She's pulled on her jacket, and is leading him back to his car, the battered Ford truck with peeling blue paint, parked on the kerb, the one that their father had driven in his teenage years. "You can't just break in, during the middle of the night, and expect me to drop everything and hit the road with you."
"You're clearly not understanding me, Lexi. Father is missing. I need you to help me find him."
"Do you remember the poltergeist in Cornwall? Or the Devil's Gates in Brixton? He was missing then too. He's always missing, Varg, and he's always fine."
"Not for this long. Never for this long." Varg lets out an exasperated noise. "Are you going to come with me, or not?"
"For the last time, no."
"Lexi -"
"I swore that I was finished with hunting. For good."
"I haven't forgotten. I'm surprised that the whole hotel didn't hear you, in fact," Varg replies, but his voice sounds overly patronising. "Hunting isn't an easy life, Lexi, but it isn't that bad."
"Oh? You think so? Do you remember what happened when I told Father that I was scared of the monster under my bed?"
"Of course I remember that. What is your point?"
Lexi throws her arms up in the air, frustration finally leaking into her tone. "I was nine years old! He was supposed to, I don't know, give me a hug, say, Don't be afraid of the dark, Lexi - he wasn't supposed to hand me a loaded weapon!"
"Don't be afraid of -? You must be joking!" Varg grabs her by the shoulder and pulls her around, so that she can see the true extent of his incredulous expression. "Of course you should be afraid of the dark! You know what's out there."
"Yes, I know, but that's not the point. The way we grew up, after Mother -" Her voice catches a little, and she hopes that Varg doesn't notice. " - died, and Father's obsession to find the thing that killed her. But we still haven't found it. So we kill everything we can find."
"We save many lives doing it."
Lexi shakes her head. "You can try to justify it to yourself all you want. It doesn't change anything. Do you honestly think Mother would have wanted this for us?"
Varg merely rolls his eyes at the comment. "Why waste time dwelling on that? It's not as if we're ever going to find out. And, what about you? You're just going live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?"
"No. Not normal. Just...I don't know. Safe."
"And that's why you ran away."
"I was just going to get my degree. It was Father who said that, if I was going, I should stay gone. And that's what I'm doing, Varg." She raises her chin defiantly. "I'm staying gone."
"And now Father is in real trouble. If he's not dead already." The words hang in the air between them. Lexi looks down at her trainers, the tatty pink ones that she's had for years, not wanting to look at her brother and see the devotion in his face. Varg has always been loyal to their father - stupidly, loyal, in Lexi's opinion. The kind of loyal that can get you killed.
"I can't do this alone, sister," Varg says suddenly, causing her to look up.
"Yes, you can. You're as good of a hunter as Father is."
Varg inhales slowly, as if considering his next words. "Maybe I don't want to do it alone. Look, Lexi, all this time, all these months, I've never bothered you. I've never asked you for anything - except this."
He has a point. A very good one, in fact. And, besides that, she knows what type of hunter Varg is - he'll end up getting himself into real trouble if she isn't there to keep him in check, won't he? She can't let that happen.
"Alright," she replies finally, after a long pause of heavy silence. "Fine. I'll...I'll get someone to cover for me tomorrow - but I have to be back by Monday, yes?"
Varg smirks now, all the arrogance back in its usual place. "Yes, ma'am."
"Staring at it won't make it turn on any faster."
Lexi rolls her eyes at the remark, rescuing her phone from the dashboard as Varg opens the door to the driver's seat and climbs in, a carrier bag of junk food in one of his hands. She switched her phone off as soon as she'd left campus, in order to avoid the inevitable texts from Alicia in response to her sudden disappearance and cryptic note left on the kitchen table.
"It's fine," she says, leaning against the open window, elbow crooked. "I just hope I'm not missing anything important."
"In that place? I doubt it." Varg rummages in the bag, fishes out a packet of crisps, and chucks it into her lap. The action makes her raise an eyebrow.
"Are you and Father still using fake IDs and credit cards to get by?"
"I'm sorry if that offends you," Varg replies, rather insincerely. "But hunting isn't exactly a well-paid career."
"That's not what I meant, and you know it." She raises an eyebrow at his pocket, where his wallet is kept. "What name did you use this time?"
"Uh -" Varg checks. "Rich Towers."
Lexi snorts, but doesn't comment on the name choice. "What are we actually doing here, Varg? What was Father investigating?"
"Disappearances." Varg leans over, retrieving a stack of paperwork from the front compartment and dumping it in the small gap between their seats. "This is all of the documents I found in his folder."
Lexi pulls a sheet of paper out of the stack, and looks at it: it's a missing poster, some eighteen year old boy from Exeter, dated from roughly a month ago.
"So, why didn't you go with him?" She asks. "Father, I mean."
"I was already working on my own case. A voodoo incident in Greenwich."
"He let you go on cases on your own?"
Varg rolls his eyes. "In case you've forgotten, I'm twenty one now, Lexi. But, yes, this is what Father was investigating. About a month ago, this boy disappeared; they found his car, but he himself had vanished."
"Maybe he was kidnapped."
"Logical assumption - except, here's another one in April." He begins to pass her more papers, more missing posters. "One in December last year, the year before that, 'ninety-eight, 'ninety-two...ten of them over the past twenty years. All men, all on the same stretch of road. It started happening more and more, so Father went to look into it. That was about three weeks ago. I haven't heard from him since."
"Okay..." Lexi chews her way through the taste of salt and vinegar. "Where do we start? I want to get this over with; Monday is only a couple of days away, and I have a big assignment to - Are you even listening to me?"
"Hm? Oh. Yes. Of course." Varg suddenly finds himself fascinated by the collection of cassette tapes, inserting one into the player in the dashboard.
"So you heard me when I said about Monday only being a couple of day -" She's cut off by the opening chords of a song. "Varg!"
"Sorry, I can't hear you, sister!" Varg shakes his head, before smirking. "The music's too loud!"
Lexi lets out a huff, before leaning back in her seat, as the car pulls away from the pavement.
"Marilyn Manson?" She says, after a moment of silence. "Really?"
"House rules, Lexi," Varg replies, swerving around a corner. "Driver picks the music, passenger keeps her mouth shut."
"Anything?"
"No." Lexi jumps down off the last step in front of the hospital. "No one matching Father's many aliases in A&E, or the morgue. That's something, at least, right? He's not dead."
"As far as we know," Varg says, grimly, as they both get back into the truck, and quickly reverse out of the parking spot.
"Have a little bit of faith, Varg. Father's come back from worse than this."
"I'm trying. Believe me, I am." They're back on the road now, sailing forward into Exeter. It's been three hours since they left London; they've been on longer journeys in the past, but Lexi is a little out of practise. She finds herself wishing now that she'd brought some of her assignment to work on during that time, instead of being forced to listen to the same seven cassette albums that Varg keeps in the car, the majority of it classic rock. Lexi wonders if Varg knows that an acoustic guitar actually exists.
"Lexi," Varg says suddenly, nodding out of the window. "Look at that."
Lexi leans forward in her seat to get a closer look. There's a collection of police cars gathered by the side of the road, at the other end of the bridge up ahead. A car is situated a few feet away, the windows shattered, the bonnet dented with the impact of some kind of crash.
"Looks like there's been an accident," she muses. "They're not letting any traffic through this way."
"That doesn't matter." Varg pulls over, and puts the car into park.
"What are you doing?" Lexi looks surprised.
"My job." He rummages in his pocket, pulling out two IDs, handing one to her. "Here."
"What's this?" She looks at it cautiously, recognising the picture of her fifteen year old self.
"Fake ID. You'll need it." Without another word, Varg gets out of the car, ignoring Lexi's attempts at protesting. She waits another moment, judging whether or not her brother is being serious (a pointless exercise, really, for Varg is nearly always being serious), before climbing out of the car too and following him.
"What are we doing?"
"It's alright. Just follow my lead." Varg gives her shoulder a single tap, his attempt at being reassuring, before striding off in the direction of one of the policemen, looking as though he belongs there. Lexi trails along behind him, unsure of what she's actually doing.
"...sign of struggle, no footprints, no fingerprints. Nothing." The man stuffs his hands into his pockets as he talks to another officer. Detective Inspector, Lexi guesses, from the snippet of conversation she's picked up. "I don't like it. It's almost too clean."
"You had another one like this just last month, didn't you?" Varg says, interrupting smoothly.
The man turns, surprised, before raising an eyebrow, suspicious. "And who are you?"
"MI5." Varg holds his ID up, nudging Lexi to get her to do the same. "Investigating the sudden disappearances."
The DI narrows his eyes. "You two are a little..."
"What?"
"...young, aren't you?"
Varg merely smiles, still looking rather insincere. "Thank you. That's awfully kind of you. But, back to business. You did have another incident just like this, correct?"
The other man relaxes a little, after a moment of staring at the two of them. "Yeah, that's right. About a mile up the road. There have been others before that."
"Did you know the victim?" Lexi asks.
"Vaguely. He went to school with one of my kids. I think they were friends."
"That must be hard for them."
Varg clears his throat, clearly not interested in any back story. "Any connection between the victims, besides that they're all male?"
"No. Not so far as we can tell."
"So, what do you think happened?"
"Honestly, we don't know. Serial murder, perhaps?"
"Well, that is exactly the kind of shoddy police work I would expect," Varg says, causing Lexi to stomp on his foot. If he feels the pain, he doesn't show it.
"Thank you for your time, sir," Lexi says aloud, putting a hand on Varg's shoulder, using it to steer him away.
"What was that about?" She hisses, as soon as they are relatively out of earshot. "You can't go around talking to police like that!"
"Come on, sister. They don't really know what's going on."
"Neither do we!"
"We know more than what they do. If we're going to find Father, then we've got to get to the bottom of this ourselves."
"And how do you suggest that we do that?"
"Look at this."
Varg raises an eyebrow at the paper that Lexi has just dropped onto the table in front of him. They had chosen to head to the library after their conversation with the police, much to the elder sibling's chagrin. Research has always been Lexi's area of expertise.
"What is it?"
"It's kind of this local legend. The Woman In White. She was apparently murdered, decades ago, out by the bridge, where that kid went missing earlier."
"And?"
"And, supposedly, she's still out there. She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up disappears forever."
"Do you think that this is what we're looking for?"
"Not exactly." Lexi pulls up a chair next to him. "See, I did some googling when I found out about this, but I didn't find anything. But, then I though, well, angry spirits are born out of violent death, aren't they? So -"
" - Maybe it's not murder," Varg finishes, realisation dawning in his expression.
"Exactly. So I changed the search - and found this -" She hands him another sheet of A4, a print-out of an article from the early 1980s. "In 1981, a local woman, Elizabeth, committed suicide by jumping off the bridge and drowning."
Varg skims the article. "Why?"
"There." Lexi points to a certain paragraph with her index finger, reading aloud. "Hours before her death, Ms Hatcher had called 999 for an ambulance after she found her young child in the bath, struggling to breathe. The child, aged five, was later pronounced dead due to asphyxiation."
"Hm." Is all Varg says on that, but there's a slight sense of sympathy about him for a moment, before he clears his throat. "So she jumped off the bridge."
"Yep. The same one that we passed earlier."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, sister?"
"This wasn't quite what I was thinking, Varg."
"Stop complaining." Varg braces himself against the cold, as he joins Lexi at the side of the bridge, and the two of them lean over, looking down at the murky water below. "We would have ended up coming here anyway, even if we had followed your plan; I was just cutting corners."
"Of course you were," Lexi mutters, before raising her voice to normal volume. "Do you think Father would have been here?"
"He was chasing the same story, and now we're chasing him." Varg shrugs his shoulders. "So, yes, it's rather likely."
"He's not here now, though, is he? What are we supposed to do?"
"We keep looking, until we find him."
"For how long? It could take months and months to track him down - and I told you, I've got to be back at school by Monday -"
"Monday. Yes, I know." Varg looks irritated at being reminded of it, yet again. "You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just going to go to university, finish your degree, meet some nice normal man, get married, have your own children? Really?"
"Maybe. Some day. Why shouldn't I think about that?"
"Uh hu." Her brother looks unconvinced. "Do your friends know the truth about you? Do they know about the things you, me, our family, have done?"
"No, and they're not going to know."
Varg snorts. "Well, that doesn't sound very loyal. Lying to them. What happens if you meet someone that you fall in love with? Aren't relationships based on loyalty, rather than lies?"
"I'm not lying to them."
"But you're not being entirely truthful, though, are you? That's still lying. You can pretend all you want, Lexi, I won't stop you - but, sooner or later, you're going to have to face up to who you really are."
He moves back from the edge of the bridge, and begins to walk back towards the car. Lexi lingers for a moment, digesting his words, before following him, striding to catch up.
"And who's that? Who am I, really?"
"You're a hunter, sister, plain and simple. You're one of us."
"No." She glares at him. "I'm not like you and Father. This is not going to be my life."
"You have a responsibility to -"
"To what? Father, and his...crusade? If it wasn't for pictures, I wouldn't even remember what our mother looked like."
"That is not the point."
"What difference would it make, Varg? Really? If we do find whatever killed her, Mother is still gone. She isn't coming back, whatever we do."
"Don't talk about her like that," Varg says sharply, before inhaling deeply. "Okay, Lexi."
"Okay, what?"
"If you're such a genius university student now, where would you look next?"
"Was this really your great plan?"
"It's worth a try, isn't it?"
Varg slams the door to the truck, a few paces behind his sister as they head in the direction of the hotel up ahead. "There are over twenty hotels in Exeter, Lexi. I thought you said that you had to be back by Monday."
"Trust me, it'll work. I've thought this through."
"Have you? That will make a change." He grins at the look on her face. "Do enlighten me."
"Think about it." She holds the door open for Varg, as the two of them step inside the hotel reception. "If Father was investigating around this area, he'd stay close to the bridge. That narrows it down; these are the closest hotels in the area that he could realistically afford to stay in without attracting attention." She turns to smile at the person on the front desk - a bored-looking man with a three-day stubble, a hint of irritation in his eyes at the fact that they interrupted his reading of the local paper.
"Excuse me," she says brightly, rummaging in her pocket for the fake ID Varg had given her previously. "MI5. We're currently in the middle of an investigation, and we're looking for someone who we think could be a possible witness."
"Yes." Varg digs a photograph out of his pocket, one of their father, sliding it across the counter. "Have you seen this man?"
The receptionist glances at it for a second, before nodding. "Yeah. He booked a room for the month about three weeks ago."
"Really?" Lexi exchanges a look with Varg, who rolls his eyes. "Could you tell me which room?"
"Wow." Varg raises an eyebrow at the state of the hotel room. "Father was busy."
"It would seem so." Lexi begins to sift through the papers on the desk; almost every available surface is covered in some kind of document. There's a half eaten burger there too, along with a portion of chips, barely touched. She checks it, before dropping it back on the desk in disgust. "Ugh. The food's starting to go off. He hasn't been here for a couple of days, at least."
"No," Varg agrees, swiping a finger through the thick lines of salt spread along the window pane . "Salt, cats-eye shells...he was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in, by the looks of it."
"Indeed." Lexi has wandered over to look at the paper covering the walls. "The victims. Father found records of all of them."
Varg rises to his feet and joins her. "I don't understand. Different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection to be found. What do these men have in common? What about the Woman in White legend?"
"Not sure. I'll have a look. There's bound to be something on it somewhere - see, Father found the same article we did." She taps it on the wall. "But, if we're dealing with an angry spirit, he would have found the corpse and destroyed it."
"Does the article say where she's buried?"
"No, not that I can tell. If I were Father, though, I would ask her husband." She taps the article again. "Joseph. He should be around sixty four now, if he's still alive."
"All right." Varg looks thoughtful for a moment. "See if you can find anything on the Woman In White; call me if you do. I won't be long."
"Why? Where are you going?"
"I -" He rips the article from the wall and tucks it into his pocket. "- am going to go and find an address for Mr Hatcher."
"You'll never guess what I found."
She can practically hear Varg smirking from the other end of the phone line, over the growl of the truck engine in the background. "I can barely contain myself, sister. Do go on."
"Okay, so, basically, the Woman In White isn't just a local myth. It's been going on for hundreds of years, all sorts of different places, all across the world. They're often called Weeping Women."
"What's your point?"
"My point is, despite them all being different women, they all share the same story. When they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them, and these women, suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children, taking their own lives when they realised what they had done. Now, according to this -" She checks the research in front of her, the information that their father had found. "- their spirits are therefore cursed, stalking backstreets and waterways, and if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him."
"Well, that would explain a lot," Varg concedes.
"Did you get in touch with the husband?"
"He didn't seem too pleased about it. Father had already been to see him, about a month ago, asking about where Elizabeth was buried. She's buried behind the old house, the one in Exeter where they lived before all of this happened."
"Why hasn't he destroyed the corpse, then?" Lexi wonders aloud. "That isn't like him."
"Well, that's just it. He's gone."
"What do you mean he's gone?"
"He left Exeter. Mr Hatcher gave me these co-ordinates; Father knew that we would investigate and eventually make our way to him."
"Co-ordinates?" Lexi asks, ignoring the way Varg refers to them as a collective. There is no way their father would expect her to be looking into his whereabouts, especially not after their conversation the last time that they had seen each other. "Where to?"
"Not sure yet. I'll track them when I get back."
"I don't understand. What could be so important that Father would leave in the middle of a job? He's never done that."
"Well, if we can work out where he's going, maybe we can get some idea of what's going on -"
His voice suddenly vanishes; there's a muted thud, before she can hear the low hum of static from the other end.
"Varg?" She pulls the phone away from her ear, only to stare at it in confusion. "Are you still there? Varg?"
No reply.
"Are you alright? Can you hear me?"
Nothing.
"Varg!"
Obviously, her brother had taken the truck with him, so that isn't an option in terms of reaching him. There isn't time to find another vehicle either, and so Lexi merely takes off into a run, one of her father's weapons tucked into the waistband of her jeans, not entirely sure where exactly she's going. She's unfit and out of practise at the whole hunting thing; the muscles in her legs are burning after only ten minutes of running, but she pushes on.
She doesn't realise that she's automatically heading for the bridge until she eventually sees it up ahead and charges towards it, footsteps echoing noisily as she charges over the surface, her reflection running alongside, disappearing once she gets back onto the stretch of road. A car whizzes past her, the driver craning his head in order to get a look at her, but she barely registers it.
She's pretty sure that her legs are going to give out by the time she sees the truck, by chance, parked in front of the house up ahead. There's blood across the windscreen, running down it like droplets of rain, and she barely fights back a scream, before her hand is around the gun and she's firing through the window. The creature, what had once been Mrs Hatcher, distracted, turns and snarls at her, but suddenly she vanishes, and Varg fights his way into a sitting position, trying to keep her in place as he struggles to operate something.
Shouldn't he be escaping by now?
"Varg, what are you doing?"
"I'm taking her home!" Comes the reply, as Varg slams his foot down on the accelerator, sending the truck hurtling forward; it sails through the front wall of the house, and skids to a stop somewhere inside.
"Varg?" Lexi wastes no time in sprinting towards the house, scrambling her way through the truck-shaped hall in the wall, fighting her way through the rubble until she reaches the vehicle. Varg is slumped over the wheel, bleeding heavily from a cut, but very much alive, going by the rapid breathing.
Lexi yanks the passenger door open, scrambling in beside him. "Varg!"
"Back there..." Her brother only nods over his shoulder. "First aid -"
"Oh, G - Yes, okay, hang on -" Lexi does as she's told, fumbling for the anti-septic wipes, and cleaning up the blood as best she can. "The wounds don't look as deep as they did before. I don't think you'll need stitches. Here - I'll put this bandage over this cut - It should stop the most of the bleeding." She works quickly, patching him up. "What on earth prompted you to do that?"
"She kept saying to me - when she took control of the truck -" Varg pats the dashboard affectionately. "She said "I can never go home". Yet she brought me here anyway. I merely realised that it was connected to the Woman in White legend, the part about children -"
"She was afraid to come back, face what she had done to her child. When you brought her inside, her soul was laid to rest in the house where they had died." Lexi grins at her brother. "I'm starting to think you're the genius here, Varg."
"Clearly I am." He weakly aims a friendly punch on the shoulder in her direction. "I mean, why the heck did you shoot her?"
"Hey." She sends him a warning look, before sticking her tongue out. "Saved your helpless sorry self, didn't I?"
"Brighton."
"What?"
"Brighton. That's where the co-ordinates lead." Lexi looks up from the map resting on the dashboard in front of her, glancing ahead at the dark road, lit only by the headlights on the front of the truck.
"How far away is that?" Varg asks casually.
"Far."
"Hey, if I put my foot down now, I bet that we could make it by morning."
"I wouldn't recommend that you try," Lexi replies with a snort, but the snort is humourless. "Besides -"
"Yes, I know." Varg's tone is suddenly blunt, so different from his relaxed features from a moment ago. Lexi is starting to regret ever bringing it up again - in fact, she's starting to regret ever agreeing to leave university in the first place, but she quickly squashes that. Varg might not have been able to get out alive without her there. "You're not coming."
"I have a lecture in the morning. Less than twelve hours away, and I still have that assignment to finish before then. I doubt I'm going to get any sleep tonight anyway - I've got to catch up on what I've missed."
"Whatever you say, sister." Varg isn't even looking at her now, but she can read the disappointment that he's trying to hide. She wonders if she should try to say something else, make him feel better, but then he leans over, and turns up the AC/DC track currently playing, cutting off any opportunity for further conversation.
They don't speak again until the truck pulls up on the outskirts of campus, by the gates. They're closed now, locked due to the late hour, but they don't look difficult to climb over, so Lexi isn't worried about being locked out all night and having to sleep on the pavement.
"Give me a call when you find Father," she says, just as she's about to climb out of the passenger side.
"I will," Varg replies, but Lexi is pretty sure that he won't.
"Maybe I can meet up with you later?" She offers.
"Yeah." Varg still isn't looking at her, and doesn't look like he's about to anytime soon; she gets out of the truck and lets the door swing shut behind her. It's not until she's jumped down onto the other side of the gates that Varg actually starts the engine, and pulls away from the kerb, driving off into the night. Lexi watches him go for a moment, wondering whether or not she's just made the best decision of her life or the worst, before she shakes her head, stuffs her hands into the pockets of her hoodie, and starts the walk across campus. It feels different this time, though; she's passed these buildings, these classrooms, the trees hundreds, maybe even thousands of times now, but tonight she's on edge. Every shadow looks threatening, every dark shape - a bird, the leaves, a lone drunk student stumbling back from the bar - morphs into demons, or vampires, or vengeful spirits. This, she thinks, is why she never should have left. This is what hunting does to a person; it changes the way you see the world forever. She needs to be back amongst her usual surroundings, amongst her flatmates - Alicia, Adam, Meg - and their chatter over the breakfast table, and their late night jam sessions (they've been trying to get Lexi to play an instrument too, despite her telling them that she's tone deaf when it comes to anything musical).
Everything is dark and quiet when she lets herself into the flat, which comes as a surprise. It's not too late into the evening; it's very rare that any of her friends are in bed before midnight, especially Adam, who spends as little time sleeping as he possibly can.
He's probably just sitting in his room, Lexi reasons, moving to the kitchen unit in order to make herself a mug of coffee. Maybe she'll join him before she makes a start on that assignment, just to let him know that she's actually still alive.
Something drops onto her forehead, once, twice. She reaches up to swipe it away; the substances stains her hand. Even in the dim light, she knows that the colour is red.
And then the entire ceiling explodes.
The impact knocks her backwards to the floor; her spine slams against the kitchen table, and she crumples as she hits the ground, letting out a whine from the painful sensation. The light from the flames is bright, but the thick black smoke joining it clouds her vision, making her unable to see barely anything when her brain has stopped rattling around in her skull. The hot air surrounding her clogs up her throat, making her cough and choke as she tries to call for some kind of help.
"Lexi!" There's a shout from somewhere in the hallway. It doesn't sound like any of her flatmates, in the hazy part of her mind that's still working, and not taken over by basic survival instinct. The sound of her name comes closer, as she tries to crawl towards the door, keeping low to avoid the smoke that threatening to overtake her lungs.
"Lexi." She's suddenly out in the hallway, dragged roughly to her feet and out of the burning building, stumbling along, but safe in Varg's arms. "Are you hurt? Are you alright?"
"Where -" She descends into a coughing fit as she tries to speak, sucking in as much of the cold night air as she possibly can. By now, people are swarming towards the building - fire crews, concerned lecturers, students with hands clapped over their mouths.
"Where are they?" She manages to say finally, as Varg sits her down on the grass, motioning for someone official - Lexi can't see who exactly - to come over and give him a hand.
"Where are who?"
"Alicia, Adam, Meg - Where -?" She stops, catching the look on his face - guilty. "They're -"
"I'm sorry."
"Lexi. Say something."
"What do you want me to say?" Lexi's tone is sharp, as she keeps her eyes on the ruined building, the rubble that she had, only hours before, called her home. The fire crews are still tending to it, but, from the size of the explosion and the fire, it's already been made pretty clear that there are no survivors apart from herself. "Three people have just died, on the ceiling - Just like -" She stops, the words catching in her throat. "Just like Mother." She sucks in a breath before Varg can comment. Now she knows what her father felt like all those years ago, when he watched their home burn down around them, and his wife and mother of his children perish. Alicia and the others may not have been her housemates for long, but they had all grown close in the past months. They are - were - like an extension of the family.
She pushes herself off from the side of the truck, yanking the passenger door open.
"Let's go, Varg."
The comment takes him off-guard. "Go?"
"Yes, go." She sends him a hard look. "We've got work to do."
Chapter playlist:
- Me, Myself and I, G-Eazy and Bebe Rexha
- The Gardener, Marilyn Manson
- Dean's Dirty Organ (Brother's Gtr Theme), Christopher Lennertz
- Ramblin' Man, The Allman Brothers Band
- Highway to Hell, AC/DC
- And So It Begins..., Christopher Lennertz
- Female Robbery, The Neighbourhood