Audrey's first words were "Any luck?" when he called her back.

"No, but I'm fine without him," he said in what he hoped was a convincing tone.

Audrey didn't say anything in reply.

Rain streaked down Nathan's windshield, reminding him of tears for some reason. Maybe it was because his grandmother Wournos had once told him that rain was angel tears. That had been when he'd been very young, back before he'd ever been touched by the Troubles. He'd innocently mentioned his grandmother's claim to his mother, and that had led to a row between the two women, which had left him both confused and a little afraid. Duke, who had been in his first grade class too at the time, could have told him that telling someone what someone else had said could spark a fight, but at six Nathan still hadn't witnessed that before.

After all the scathing remarks between wife and mother-in-law had been said, Nathan's mother had calmly put him in the car and driven to Haven's library. There she had located simple books about how weather works, and had set about reading them with him. Which is how Nathan learned another valuable life lesson: sometimes what's meant as an offhand remark can lead to lectures and point belaboring when you'd least expect it.

Nathan snorted as he cruised down the road. The next time Audrey or Duke told him to talk more, he'd share that story with him.

"What's funny?" Audrey's voice asked from his seat, making him jump. It had been so long since she'd said anything that he'd almost forgotten that she could hear him.

He shrugged. "Just thought about a time my mother over reacted to something Dad's mother told me."

"Ah. Guess that's something I don't have to worry about."

"Because you have no use for a mother-in-law?" he asked, intentionally needling her a little.

"Nathan..." she sighed. "No. If I marry him or not, he himself has little use for his mother. So my children won't be subjected to her pearls of wisdom."

Unseen by her, he grinned in amusement. As vehemently as she complained about how irritated she was by the presumption that she'd have more kids, she did use the phrase 'my children' instead of 'child' often enough when waxing hypothetical about the future. "If you ever met her, you wouldn't have much use for her either," he remarked.

"She's that bad?" Audrey asked in an uncharacteristically small voice.

He thought about being polite, but decided that Duke's mother didn't deserve that. "I don't like the woman."

"Why?" Audrey persisted.

Nathan stopped at a stop sign. "She wasn't so bad before Simon disappeared. And not so bad before Simon's body was recovered-"

"Just neglectful, right?" her tone was surprisingly bitter. Or surprising until he realized that Duke must have spoken to her about his childhood more than he would have guessed he would.

"Sure. But once Simon was in the ground and she took up with Duke's stepfather..." He trailed off, looking both ways before he continued down the road. "I lucked out when it came to good step-fathers. Duke... didn't."

Once he learned that Garland wasn't his biological father he began to realize that he'd been very lucky indeed. They'd clashed, of course, but so had all of his friends growing up and their fathers. Despite butting heads, he had always been sure that Garland cared about him. That was a gift Duke hadn't gotten.

"Duke almost never talks about him."

"Not a lot to say. The man might've loved Duke's mother after a fashion, but he made it abundantly clear that no morsel of his affection extended to Duke."

"He beat him, didn't he?" Audrey asked quietly.

"Yeah. And his mother never did anything to stop him, hence I consider her a waste of oxygen too." Duke had often come to school bruised, and when his stepfather had forgotten himself and left visible marks instead of those that only showed when they changed for gym Duke told nervous stories about how he'd bumped his head on a cabinet, or walked into a door.

"A lot of the nights Duke spent at our house were because of that. Happened so often there were always a few changes of clothes at our house for him. As a kid I used to wonder how Dad just knew to pick us both up from school. When I became a cop myself it finally occurred to me that he 'just knew' because Duke's neighbors let Dad know when there'd been rough nights. Of course some nights were so rough that Duke would walk all the way to our house. Didn't matter what hour it was, Dad never turned him away."

"Your dad's a good man."

"I know. But I think he regretted not being able to do more. I found a file in his desk last year. He'd brought Duke's step-father in a few times, but could never get charges to stick. Kind of explains why he's complained about crooked judges for twenty-five years..." He parked in front of a nice middle class home. "Hey Audrey, I'm here."

"Oh."

"You should probably just listen until I talk to you from this point on," he suggested. "Not sure what the family would think of remote police work."

"Gotcha," she agreed more readily than he expected she would.

"Thanks."

Nathan shoved the phone into a pocket of his raincoat, wondering how muffled it'd sound to her. Can't be helped, he told himself as he made his way to the front door.

He was only halfway to the door when it opened. An ashen-faced man carried a dark haired little boy out into the rain. Even with the kid bundled up in what was obviously an adult's coat, Nathan could see some of his injuries: long slashes marked the boy's neck and collarbones, as well as the shin that stuck out of the coat.

"Sir?" Nathan asked when he realized that the man didn't seem to see him.

The man blinked, startled. "Officer. It's in there, you better call animal control."

When the man began to turn away, Nathan gently took his arm to stop him. "Where are you going?"

"Hospital," he said shortly. "Hunter needs stitches."

"Don't you want me to get you an ambulance?"

"And pay $500? No."

"Uh... okay." He hadn't realized that the fee was quite so high because his health insurance had covered 100% of all his medical bills. It had to be rough if your insurance didn't cover it, or you had no insurance at all.

"I think it's not as bad as it looks," the man said defensively.

"Do I have permission to enter your house, mister...?"

"What? Of course. Cooper. Jason Cooper."

"Thanks, I won't keep you."

After delaying the man two full minutes, Nathan expected Cooper to make a mad dash to his car, but he hesitated. Pointing across the road, he said, "If it gets away from you, go look for it at Silas Adler's house. George and Amy both thought it might come from there."

"The old Victorian?" Nathan asked, having long ago learned not to assume that he'd correctly guessed where an upset person was pointing.

"Dad, it hurts," Hunter whimpered suddenly. "I want Mom."

"I know, buddy. Mom's gonna meet us at the hospital."

Nathan pointed across the road. "The Victorian?"

"Right," Cooper said quickly before abandoning Nathan.

He didn't even wait for Jason Cooper to drive off before drawing his gun and cautiously entering the house. Remembering Audrey, he pulled out his phone too. "You can talk again now."

"Hunter Cooper?" Audrey asked with a slight laugh. "Hopefully Duke and I will come up with a better choice than that."

"You could borrow it. Hunter is used for girls occasionally," Nathan pointed out.

"Hunter Crocker or Hunter Parker, both sound terrible!" she groaned on cue.

"Yeah, okay. That's pretty bad. Got better contenders?" If he asked her which last name they were going to use he'd probably end up with a bruised shoulder the next time he saw her, so he held that one back.

"At the moment, no," she admitted. "We've promised each other that we'll spend a couple days cracking those baby name books as soon as Duke gets home."

If not for the wistful tone to her voice, he might have asked if she regretted being so eager for Duke to take the Tall Ships job. Since she was clearly missing him, it'd be needlessly cruel to harp on the mistake.

"Those books didn't lead you to Eric, did they?"

"No. It just sort of came to us when we were throwing out possibilities."

"Well," he said. "You still have some time, anyway."

"I appreciate your confidence in our ability to figure it out in three weeks," she said, laughing. "Truly."

"Someone's got to believe in you."

"Thank-" she cut herself off. "Is there a bet?" she asked suspiciously.

"No." At least not one he was participating in, anyway. Dave kept asking him to, though. That man can be like a terrier with a bone, Nathan thought irritably.

"Oh. Good."

He was about to reply when he realized he could hear something, faintly. "Shh," he told the phone. As talkative as Audrey was, she was a good cop, which meant she went silent where another person might have demanded to know why. Even Jess probably would have, he decided.

Moving as quietly as he could, Nathan headed in the direction he thought the sound had come from. It seemed to take half of forever to get there, but eventually he reached the room in question, and unsurprisingly, it was Hunter's bedroom.

He didn't see it at first in the rain-induced gloom, but when he did he couldn't believe he hadn't noticed it sooner. Its appearance was so startling that he'd had to hold his breath to keep from voicing his shock.

The Wolfe children had debated if the "monster" was more cat-like or dog-like, but Nathan felt that it was little like either. Instead it seemed more like something out of a Sci-Fi movie. It was the size of a German Shepard, but not shaped like one. The torso was muscular, but its limbs were long and thin. Gray-brown for bristled from it, like a cat puffed up in fear even though it was calmly nosing at an item of clothing. The head was the shape of an inverted triangle, ending in an angular muzzle and it had large slanted eyes.

And it immediately became angry when it noticed him.

A growl unlike any he'd ever heard before was his only warning before it abandoned the child's pants and charging right at him. "Oh crap!" he yelled and side-stepped the irate creature. Watching it run past him, he began to find himself wondering if the reports of what had happened in Bridgton back when he was little had some truth to them after all. He and Duke and all their classmates had been told repeatedly that the story about what had gone on during an unusually thick fog was only the product of the Bangor author's overheated imagination, but now he wondered...

"Nathan! You okay?"

"Yes!" he practically yelled, surprised to be yanked so suddenly out of his musings. To his shock the thing didn't attempt another pass at him when it missed. Instead it ran out of the room, full steam ahead. "What the hell is it doing?" he asked rhetorically.

Audrey didn't pick up on that nuance. "I don't know. What is it doing?"

"I think..." He realized that it was headed towards the house's open front door, the one that he hadn't thought to shut. Although he wasn't sure how wise it would have been to shut himself in the house with the thing. "... It's trying to get away from me."

"Away from..? Nathan, are you chasing it?!" his phone yelled at him.

"Yeah. My turn to chase, apparently."

"Are you sure that chasing it is a good idea?"

He was actually pretty sure that it wasn't. "It's fine."

"It doesn't sound fine," she returned doubtfully.

It quickly turned out that her doubt was well-founded. The thing reached the open door several beats before he did and it didn't hesitate before bounding outside. "No. Dammit!" He panted a second before regarding the phone. "It's outside."

"Now what?"

Being thoroughly, completely sick of getting to a house in order to see an injured child he reached too late prompted his next action. "Hey!" he shouted at it. "Stop!"

It hardly surprised him when this demand went unheeded. Instead it completely ignored him and ran towards the road. After he began to run towards him, he asked himself why he was chasing it instead of the other way around. A couple of minutes earlier he'd compared its fur to that of a frightened cat's: what if its fur wasn't like that naturally, either? What if it was puffed up because it was afraid of him?

"I think it's scared of me," he informed the phone. "And that it's afraid enough to run home."

"Good, then you'll know where to have Dwight meet you," she said, her tone hopeful and coaxing, like she thought that being reasonable would temper his actions

"I'm not waiting around for Dwight," he said stubbornly. "It'll get away."

"But-" she squeaked.

"It's already hurt enough people," he insisted. "I'm not letting it get away again." She continued to try to reason with him, but he stopped responding to her. Cooper had thought that the beast had come from the Adler house, so that's where he fully expected it to run, but once it hit the miraculously empty street it bolted in another direction. "Oh!" he yelled, tracking it with his eyes.

"What's going on?" Audrey demanded to know, probably not for the first time since he'd foolishly dashed across the street without checking for cars.

Rather than admit he'd been upset enough to forget how to safely cross a street, he said, "It's not going to the Adler house."

"Where then?" Her voice sounded wobbly, but he assumed it was due to his jogging rather than overwrought feelings on her end. But maybe not. "Damn it, Nathan, someone needs to know your twenty in case you need backup."

"I won't," he insisted. But after a beat he was able to figure out the monster's destination. "It's running towards the Winchester house."

"I thought the Winchester house was in California," she said, sounding, confused.

"What?" he asked, then remembered the story of the Winchester creator's widow building a mansion for ghosts. "Different Winchesters. No ghosts." He thought for a moment. "No Sam or Dean, either."

"Too bad. At least they'd make sure they had your back."

He kind of wished that there was someone was with him. Going it alone, without any backup, no longer seemed like a wise idea. "I'm all right." Besides the stitch beginning to burn in his side, that was. Maybe he should go on some of the jogs he knew Audrey would take up again after she had the baby.

"Oh, yeah, you're great," she said sarcastically." I can hear how out of breath you are, you know."

Nathan stopped running when he saw the monster leap at an open window in the basement of the Winchester house. He sprinted to the window and carefully placed his palms on the glass he could barely feel and forced the window to slide along the track so the opening no longer afford it a means of egress.

a/n: getting worried yet?