Turn again

Summary:Druitt has been living in the Old City Sanctuary for months (to Ashley's frustration) when the team hears reports of a large, carnivorous abnormal roaming the wilds. While trying to capture it, the team is separated and stranded by a storm, all fearing for the others.

Rating:T for threat, mild violence with reference to strong violence (I've written far worse in this series) and leaning more towards romance

Spoilers: Assume all of season 1, End of Nights, Eulogy and three of my previous fics: Monster, Freedom, Sleeping Bear (in that order). I will post a summary if anybody asks me to.

Set: After my three fics listed above

Genre: Basically adventure.

Disclaimer: This world belongs to Amanda Tapping, Martin Wood and Damian Kindler.

"Ashley, take charge." Magnus said, loading her stunner. Ashley nodded.

"OK. Let's split up to search. Mum, with me, Kate, take the guys." Kate nodded and signalled Will and John to move out down the right passage after her. John was semi-competent with a stunner now, though still the worst of the five of them. Ashley signalled left. Magnus followed her.

Ashley kicked the first door they came to open. They swept the room behind it in seconds, synchronised without needing to speak.

"Just like old time." Ashley said, grinning at Magnus. Magnus smiled back. Between Barney's death and Will being competent enough to join them, she and Ashley had done field work alone, coping with whatever the abnormal world threw at them. The next two rooms were clear, and the two after that. They were nearly at the end of their run and there was still no sign of their quarry.

Two cries from ahead, from where their path met the other. Will's voice and Kate's voice.

"Go!" Ashley shouted, bolting for the sound, stunner levelled. Kate and John standing, Will and a large furred form on the floor. Ashley skidded to a halt beside them.

"He didn't tell us Erica was joining in." Kate said, scowling. The HAP on the floor twitched her tail. "They came at us from both sides"

"I'm a casualty." Will put in. "Head-butt counts as a bite and he head-butted me in the shoulder. Would've been a bad bite." Ashley nodded.

"Hold position." She said to John. "Mum, Kate." She signalled the to follow her.

The three of them went fast, room by room, speaking barely a word, following the path Henry must have run. Kate kicked the door of the second to last room, the three of them fanned in. Henry flew at their left flank. All three of them fired. He crumpled

"Are you alright Henry?" Magnus asked. He nodded, but didn't try to get up.

"Setting Erica up as decoy and telling us she wasn't playing." Kate said. "Low Hank. Really low." Ashley shrugged

"It's happened for real before. We've thought there was only one of them, another one jumped on us. Good call Henry."

"Agreed." Magnus said. "Ashley, Kate, go and meet the source regarding those tracks we discussed earlier. Where is he again?"

"Claresholm." Kate sniggered.

"I love having a best friend who can teleport." Ashley smiled. She and Kate set off at a jog. Magnus went to get Will and John. They had lab work to do.

o0o0o0o

"When did you see it?" Ashley asked, falling in to step beside the old farmer.

"With ma own eyes, Lady." He answered. "Twice now, a week back and two nights ago. But there were things before that."

"What did it look like?"

"It were dark, Lady, I couldn't right see it, but it were big."

"Walking on… two legs?"

"Four."

"How big? Bigger than a cow?"

"It weren't much longer, Lady, but it were tall, eight foot in the shoulder and thick. Thicker than the biggest bull I ever saw. Even bigger'n those European Blue things."

"What was its skin like? Scales? Fur?"

"It were too dark to see proper, but if it had fur, it didn't have much." Ashley nodded. Not much to go on.

"The 'things' before..?"

"One o' ma steers dead. And tracks."

"The dead steer?"

"His back end were smashed up like a truck'd gone over it. No guts left at all, blood everywhere."

"Can you show us the tracks?"

"These aren't mammalian tracks." Ashley said, sitting by the tracks twenty minutes later, the farmer had gone back to his work. Kate shook her head in agreement.

"There's not enough water near here for amphibians to breed really."

"So it's a reptile or it's a long way from home."

"Can you think of any species it could be?"

"A few: Redellian, Sêcherest, Baneiren, or something we haven't seen before. But is definitely an abnormal."

"Oh yeah. No way this is a bear."

"So we get this guy's permission to hunt on his land, then go home."

o0o0o0o

"I think we're ready for venom." Magnus said, looking up at John. He looked back at her. The microscopes were ready, the preserved antivenom solutions were a week old, the drexmir venom was waiting in the fridge. Drexmir venom was a strong hallucinogen and it occasionally caused cardiac arrest. Antivenom could be made, but it took too long to be made when someone was bitten and deteriorated very quickly. She and John had been working on a means to preserve it. The only thing they'd found so far was a ketone based mixture, but the vital ketones tended to oxidise the antivenom after a few days. She hoped the Alkaline earth metal salts might save it.

"How hopeful are you?" He asked, handing the vials to her, with a pipette.

"It's hard to say, which salt to use was little more than a guess."

"Onwards blindly then." Magnus smiled, drawing venom in to the pipette.

"Has that ever stopped us before?" John smiled. "Timers ready?" He nodded. "Timer one, go." She dropped the venom in to the first vial and refilled the pipette. They had nine samples to test.

"Five minutes on timer one." John read. "If they're going to coagulate…" Magnus nodded and started to set up a microscope slide of vial one. John waited a few seconds, then copied her for the second sample. Magnus clipped the slide in to place and looked down the lens at it.

"John, what can you see here?" She asked after a moment, stepping aside. John put down his slide and peered down the microscope.

"I see clots, Helen." Magnus nodded, smiling.

"So do I." John looked up and smiled broadly at her.

"Epsom salts and ethanone. An excellent guess." Magnus smiled. Epsom salts. Bits of John's chemistry were a century out of date or more, but he was catching up. He was a fast learner, always had been.

"Magnesium sulphate, John, or no one under the age of seventy will have the faintest idea what you're talking about. Let's see how many other guesses were right."

Three out of nine, as it turned out, were right. Magnus and John were starting to tidy up when Magnus phone rang.

"Mum."

"Ashley, what've you found?"

"Tracks, a half eaten cow… Nothing accurate, but it is an abnormal. Where can we land?"

"Main lab, anywhere outside the robotic assist."

"OK. See you in a sec."

o0o0o0o

Kate followed Ashley down to the armoury in silence, nervous silence. All the time in the lab, briefing Magnus, Ashley'd been wound up and refusing to turn her back to Druitt. Being pissed about him being around hit Ashley like epileptic seizures, randomly and hard. Ashley picked up her radio.

"Henry, get down to the armoury. We've got a hunt."

"Sure, coming."

"He's still here." Ashley said quietly. She wasn't talking about Henry anymore. "He's been clear for two and a half months and he's still here." Kate kept her mouth shut. Ashley grabbed four nine mil pistols off the rack. "He just won't go away. No one's even trying to place him anywhere. He's just… here. And the way he looks at Mum… It's like she could ask him for anything and he'd do it."

"Better that than the other way around, I guess."

"Yeah, but some day he's gonna realise she doesn't love him back and he can't make her by being all chivalrous and docile. When that happens, he's gonna be dangerous." Footsteps outside. Henry entered.

"OK, who's going?"

"The five best shots and Druitt."

"Druitt?" Henry raised his eyebrows.

"Mum wants him for logistics."

"So six of us."

"Yeah."

"Six of us, four pistols."

"I'm using mine."

"No, hold on." Henry raised his hands, six fingers extended. "Your Desert Eagle," He folded one. "Four nine mils." He folded another four and wiggled the remaining one. "Who's this?"

"Druitt's not getting live ammunition."