Chapter Five:
Pick Up The Dagger Or Pick A Grave.
Harriet Uley's P.O.V
Her warm breath fogged in the chill air. There was snow on the forest floor, a thick blanket of white reaching out as far as the eye could see. The path through the woods glistened underneath Harry's bare feet, crunching with each step like raw cotton underfoot. The branches of the trees were barren, like spindly bone-silver fingers tipped to the bleak grey sky, and Harry slipped between the bark and bone.
She was dreaming, Harry thought, in the misty way one typically did when dreaming. She was dreaming, and she was walking through a forest alone, bare foot, with a dagger in her unsteady hand.
It was the dagger from before, the one from the parking lot and the storage locker, and somewhere else long, long, long ago, and the beast that could steal voices. Dark blade serrated, as thin and sharp as a shard of glass. The beads of the handle pressed against her palm, droplets of valour and bravery and loyalty, woven together for shelter.
The same string of beads in her father's shoe box.
She was dressed in the fleeces of her ancestors, the same tanned deerskin they too once donned, long dress and beads and poncho and leggings and petticoats woven from nettle and thistle fibres, and it made her feel safe, warm, protected. She wasn't alone out here in the winter dark. Not really.
Her ancestors were there every step she took.
The thought calmed the trembling in her hand.
Her hair was long, longer than it should have been, braided down her back in two, whipping at her waist like a horse's tail. She doesn't wear the headdress. The one that had been taken and caricatured, stolen by people who had never earned a single feather, pulled out for laughs on Halloween.
That isn't her people, her tribe, her history. That's the Sioux, the Great Plain tribes, not the Ojibwe, not the Quileute, and she's not a chief. Around her head instead is wrapped a leather band of buckskin, decorated with megis shells and porcupine quills sewn into the shapes of flowers.
She could feel the paint on her face pull tight as she frowned into the forest, peering through the spindle trees. A single line of red across her forehead swathed in black, black smudged down to the slope of her nose.
A zig-zag.
A lightening bolt.
It gives her strength. It gives her speed.
She was going to need it.
That was when she saw the woman.
How had Harriet not spotted her before?
She was right before her, between the opening of trees, dressed very much the same as Harry was, a black handprint etched on right cheek, but her hands, those left to dangle at her side, Merlin, her hands were bloody.
The fog carried Harry's voice.
"Where am I?"
The woman smiled against the white and red and black, and although she spoke in a different language, flowing and ebbing prose, Harriet understood every single word.
"That's the wrong question to ask. It does not matter where you have been or where you are now but where your feet will carry you. Hope they are swift and sure, young one. Hope for all of us."
Harry blinked, dazed, cold, lost.
"I… I don't understand."
The woman's smile was soft, almost maternal. Around them, in the dark of the forest, little lights flickered awake dancing like fireflies.
A shiver ran down Harry's back.
"You don't but you will. For that I am sorry. You have a long and hard path before you, and these lands have grown so dark."
The woman lifted her hands, those bloody fingers spread open, welcoming. Laid across her palms was a dagger.
The dagger.
Harry glanced down to her own hands, her own hands that were empty now.
The fireflies of the forest buzzed with a sudden and sharp gnawing hunger.
"It is all in your hands now, as it was once in mine, and once in your fathers. Pick up the dagger or pick a grave. They are stirring."
Harry stumbled forward in the frost and snow and bare branches.
"I don't understand what's happening. I don't know where I am, what's going on or-"
The woman's hands clenched around the dagger, so hard she must have cut her bloody hands to ribbons, and more fireflies winked alert, skirting on the edges of the forest, a blinking swell of sickly yellow light.
"Who are you, Harriet Uley? Answer that question and find your way. Refuse, and be lost."
The woman took a lone step forward. The buzzing grew so loud, deafening, yawning out into the night.
Something was waking up.
"You are not alone. You carry us with you. Our wounds are your wounds. Our hopes are your hopes. Our dreams are your dreams."
The woman looked away, into the dark, to the dancing fireflies.
Her smile fell like snowfall.
"They are waking up. They smell fresh blood. You must burn the body, it is where the rot of greed grows, or it will awaken anew come moonrise. Pick up the dagger or be picked apart. Break the cycle."
Harry heard it then.
Not a buzz.
Not the flap of firefly wings.
A tat-tat-tattering.
No…. No…
She went to jump, to leap, but it was too late.
The woman-
Bineshii.
Her name was Bineshii Harriet somehow knew, threw the dagger, beaded handle spinning, whirling through the crisp air, just as a pair of stinking antlers speared her through the middle, catching like fishhooks, dragging her into the dark, dark forest.
Harriet dived just as the things came skittering out the forest, ten, fifteen, fifty, hundreds.
One vast, squirming sea of bone and teeth and gluttony.
It had never been fireflies, just an ocean of yellow Wendigo eyes waking up from their long slumber, their long hibernation.
Wendigo.
They were Wendigo, just as the woman had been Bineshii, just as Harriet knew she was dreaming but could still feel the claws stretching for her as she jumped, teeth snapping at the soles of her bare, frost bitten feet and the dip of her ankle, antlers swinging and mouths chomping.
For a glorious second, she was weightless. Aerial. A baby bird on its first flight, unsure of the unforgiving ground that could break it down below. A girl first learning to fight back.
The Wendigo clamoured for her, snapping and snatching and Harriet jumped, she reached, she stretched her hand out as far as she could, and-
And she grabbed the dagger before it could fall.
Sam Uley's P.O.V
Sam stood at the edge of the living room; hands stained with his sisters' blood. Paul stood not far away, back pressed to the corner, dark gaze watching the slightest bit of movement. Emily sat in the chair by the fireplace, face in hands, slumped, as if she couldn't bear to look. Embry was pacing by the window, three steps left, a swift turn on heel, three steps right, rinse, repeat.
Sue rose from kneeling beside the slumped figure sprawled on his sofa, Sam hearing the sigh of relief that fled her lips.
"Her fever is breaking, and her pulse is returning to normal. I think we may be over the worst of it."
The worst of it?
The worst of it had been three hours ago, when Harriet's heart had stopped beating for a full two minutes. Those had felt like the longest seconds of Sam Uley's life, as Paul was forced to preform CPR as Sue tried frantically to close the wound and Sam could only watch on.
Who knew hearing someone gasp could feel so incredible?
Sam heard Sue swallow around something lodged in her throat, even from the other side of the room.
"The wound doesn't appear to be… to be… to be rotting anymore, so I believe that is a good sign, and what is poisoned is retreating, turning pink and healthy again. Perhaps her shifter healing is finally kicking into gear-"
Sue glanced his way from over her shoulder, never looking more than her forty-three years of age.
Sam couldn't say much. They weren't fairing any better. Red eyed, ashen faced, trembling handed the lot of them. That's what six hours of none-stop battling death did to a person, he supposed.
And what a fight it had been.
Thankfully, for small mercies, Harriet had passed out for around four of those torturous hours.
"Whatever bit her, Samuel Uley… Whatever caused this, she is lucky to be alive. I've never seen a bite that could… That could…"
That spread so fast? That decomposed someone from the inside out? That couldn't be stitched or cartelized or cleaned or treated?
Yeah, neither had he, and Sam had run with Leeches before.
Sam swallowed around his own lump lodging in the hollow of his throat.
"But Harriet's alright? She'll live? It's over?"
Sue winced.
"I think so."
Not exactly what anyone wanted to hear, but it was clearly all they had. Sue, however, coughed and squared her shoulders.
"The black tinge to the infected area is gone now, and she's breathing properly. Bleeding has stopped. Heart rate is weak but acceptable giving how much blood she has lost and the trauma to her nervous system. To be honest with you Sam, I don't think we had anything to do with it. Everything I tried failed. I think Harriet fought it off herself, and her shifter healing is finishing the job of purging the toxins from her system."
Sue staggered to the table, plucking up her supply backpack on the way, spilling out bandages and creams and surgical tape across the polished top.
"Even so, it's going to be a long road. With her shifter healing in full throttle, she's not healing as fast as she should be which must be due to the nature of the bite itself. If her healing stays this slow, she'll need to be bed bound for the next couple of days so she doesn't open the cavity to her stomach again. She'll also need fresh dressings daily, twice daily in the first week, as the wound seeps out the rest of the venom. Antibiotics for any secondary infections, her immune system will be busy fighting that bite wound, and I'll leave you some painkillers, iodine, stitches, in case one pops out, and-"
Sam crossed the distance and braced a hand upon Sue Clearwater's shuddering shoulder.
"Thank you. I mean it Sue. Thank you."
Sue smiled softly and patted his hand upon her shoulder.
"What is a tribe for if not this? You never have to say thank you to me for doing what I can for family, Sam."
The touching moment was spoiled by the sound of the front door lurching open.
Sam's gaze fled over to the culprit.
"Paul, where are you going?"
The towering man hesitated at the cusp, but he did not turn.
"You want to know what could do this? Then come look."
Emily left with Sue not long after, to see the older woman home safe, and Sam was left trailing after Paul to his car boot with Embry in tow.
Embry Call's P.O.V
Embry stood at the far edge of the corridor and stared at the thing long and hard. It had taken Sam, Paul and Embry to carry the thing from boot to kitchen floor, three shifters for one putrid carcass, the only place in the Uley household large enough to spread it out from top to bottom, and even then, the three men had to stand out in the hallway to get a look without treading on its extremities.
Eight-foot, nine-foot at least, the thing was bone and blood and unnatural twists. Its grey skin sagged and knotted, fingers elongated and knobbed, and-
By Taha Aki, a nightmare brought to flesh.
That's what the antlered thing was. A nightmare that had somehow slipped into the waking world.
"This is what bit Harriet?"
Paul, standing by the counter, dazedly rubbed at his bandaged shoulder.
"Skewered me too. It… Nothing worked, Sam. Nothing. That light… Harriet's… Abilities, did nothing. It batted away my hits like I was an irritating fly. And it…"
Sam cocked a brow. Paul winced.
"It mimicked voices. Dead voices too."
Embry's eye bolted from the thing on the floor.
"Dead voices? As in people who are dead?"
Now it was Paul and Sam's turn to face Embry.
Paul scoffed.
"Unless my fucking father has come crawling out of his two by six grave, yeah, dead voices."
Sam edged closer.
"Embry, what's wrong?"
Embry spluttered.
"You really don't know? You two never listen to the stories, do you? Not one. Fucking hell-"
Sam grasped him by the shoulders.
"Embry, calm down. What-"
"It's a motherfucking W-"
"Wendigo."
The voice came echoing up from down the hallway into the living room, raspy and harsh, and Embry swivelled. Harriet stood leaning heavy against the wall, hand braced on wood and plaster to keep herself upright, lurching forward with slow, staggering steps.
Sam made a move towards her before she could make her own move and face plant the floor.
"Harriet, you should be resting-"
Harriet shook him off, wincing as her bandaged side pulled too tight on a step.
"We need to burn it or it's going to come back come nightfall."
Embry squinted to the kitchen, to the horrendous malformed thing, and grimaced.
Yeah… They better burn it.
"Have you… Run into one of these before?"
Sam slipped an arm around Harriet's hip, shouldering the weight, helping her closer to the Wendigo.
"No, but that's what the dream lady told me."
Sam faltered.
"Dream lady? What dream lady?"
The brother and sister came to a rest close to the door, close to Paul and Embry and the currently still Wendigo.
"Bineshii… The woman I dreamt about when I got knocked out-… It's… We need to burn it or it's going to come back, and we don't want one of these things running about the Res."
Sam stiffened, and Embry lifted a probing brow.
"Sam?"
Sam met his curious gaze with his own dark eye.
"Bineshii was the name of our great grandmother. It's been years since I even heard the name… Dad never really spoke about his family, not the half that came from the Leech Lake Band any way."
Well… Shit.
There was a Wendigo in the kitchen, their sister had just shifted, which on its own was meant to be impossible, could, apparently, do magic, and now, cherry on top, was talking to their dead ancestors in her dreams. What was next?
Were they going to stumble across Elvis Presley living on the edges of the reservation?
Harriet chuckled dryly.
"All the more reason to listen to her then, yeah, and burn the fuckin' thing to ashes."
Sam, eventually, nodded, and Embry felt that same sinking feeling he felt back at the storage facility.
"I have a feeling this isn't going to be the last time we see one of these things."
Unfortunately, as Sam well knew, Embry was hardly ever wrong with his feelings.
Harriet's jaw rolled.
"Yeah… Me neither. Which gets me thinking… Why now?"
She regarded them with a sweep.
"Paul was right. Nothing worked on that bloody thing but the dagger I nabbed from the storage locker. Magic, brute strength… Funny, isn't it? The coincidence."
Sam whistled long and low.
"That one would appear where our father was last seen? Around the only weapons that, seemingly, could kill it? Or at least, keep it down and out long enough for us to burn it before night comes."
Embry glared at the beast on the floor.
"You think it was after the storage locker, and you two were just caught in the crossfire? That would say it's got brains somewhere in that decomposing head."
Paul grunted.
"I'd say if it's intelligent enough to somehow pick up on our dead relatives and throw their voices in our face to make us stumble, it's intelligent enough to go after the things that can harm it."
Sam ran a tired hand down his face.
"And if Embry's right, and there's more than one-"
"A lot more than one."
Sam peeked over to Harriet.
Harriet who had gone startlingly pale.
"In my dream I saw… There were lots, Sam. As far as the eye could see and they were…"
She grimaced.
"Waking up."
Sam cursed, a beat of silence, and then his face fell to pitiless determination.
"Embry, find Jared and take him off patrol. I want you two to head to the storage locker and scope it out. You see one of those things hanging around, you get the hell out of there. If the coast is clear, take as many of the weapons as you can and bring them back here. Don't take any unnecessary risks until we can figure out exactly what we are dealing with. I'll head to Chief Black's place and notify the Elders of what's happened. Maybe they know a thing or two, after I take this thing out back and set it on fire."
Sam hustled down the hall, and Harriet huffed.
"And what about me? Should I go-"
Sam didn't glance back.
"You stay right here and rest. You can barely stand as it is."
Harriet looked as if she were about to stomp her foot in frustration if she wasn't trying so hard to keep herself upright.
"I'll be fine in a couple of hours, I just need-"
"And you can take those couple of hours and rest. Paul, stay here and keep an eye on the place. You see a single antler in the treeline, grab Harriet and get the hell out."
Harriet Uley's P.O.V
As begrudging as it was to do so, Sam was right she would admit. Harriet could hardly walk at the moment, could scarcely get five steps across a room without searing pain and shallow breathing. Right now, it was a toss up between which was worse.
The Basilisk venom or the Wendigo bite.
Harriet, huddled on the sofa, bandaged and bruised from hipbone to armpit, and hopelessly on edge from doing nothing while there was so much to do, while everyone else was out there trying to fix this, risking themselves, would say it was the latter.
She detested feeling useless.
"How's the wound?"
The voice came from the doorway, and as Harriet glanced over from staring at the ceiling, she spotted Paul there, leaning against the frame, decked out in black jeans and a black T-shirt, slightly too tight from Sam's thinner frame.
All James Dean meets young Al Pacino and entirely mouthwate-
And entirely off point.
Since helping her brother carry out the Wendigo to the backyard where it was burned in a narrow-dug pit, she hadn't seen the other shifter, although there had been a weird…
Sense of him somewhere. As if there was a compass in her gut, and now the arrow inside didn't point north but Paul. A prickling that told her whether he was left or right of her, further away by the trees or closer by the porch.
He had mainly stayed close, and Harriet didn't want to look too deep into that.
"Better now."
And she was feeling better, more so in the last twenty minutes than the hour since Sam and Embry had left. Hopefully, she thought, her healing was picking up speed, faster and faster as the… Whatever that was in the Wendigo's bite was purged from her system.
Paul took a step into the room, stealing the chair across the way, far enough that his presence didn't feel quite so smothering. Maybe that was the Paul compass she had now, or maybe it was because he was a giant, having to bend down to mind the ceiling fan but he felt close. Too close.
Not quite close enough.
"So… You're a witch."
It was a statement, not a question, and so Harriet batted back something similarly as evident.
"And you turn furry sometimes."
There was a twitch to the corner of his mouth, a suppressed smile.
"If it didn't escape your notice, you do too now. Which is new by the way. I bet it's going to send the Elders into a fright. I wish I were there to see how red Ol' Quil's face gets."
Harriet frowned.
"Panic? Why would they panic? Because I'm not registered at this tribe?"
Paul shook his head.
"Because you're a woman."
Harriet scowled fiercely, voice dropping to something dark and dangerous.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
This better not be some macho boys club bullshit.
Paul huffed, running a hand through his short raven feathered locks.
"This tribe has been shifting for generations, long before the white man came. That's a long history, and no woman has ever joined those ranks."
Ah.
Not misogyny then… Just plain ol' being the odd one out. Harriet, seemingly, was good at that.
Her frown dropped, neck rolling on the arm of the sofa so she could gaze back up to the ceiling, voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Surprise."
Paul did laugh then, husky, pitched low, and somehow impossibly soft. Perhaps as soft as his hair looked-
No. She was not going there. Not when she had, currently, a fist sized hole in her side and a missing piece of spleen.
They had bigger problems than her, abruptly, very awake libido.
"Yeah, you could say that-"
His voice dipped to something quiet.
"In more ways than one."
Silence came, drawling, prolonged. It wasn't unpleasant though, not awkward as it typically was, but something… Relaxed. That was strange, Harriet thought. Normally, she tried to fill in silences, tried to stop the emptiness, didn't like the way silence could make everything so… Loud.
But it wasn't loud here, not awkward, just… Soft.
Harriet needed that right then.
Eventually, seconds, minutes, perhaps a whole half hour later, Paul broke it.
"When you saw me in the carpark, did you… Did you imprint?"
Harriet pulled her gaze away from the ceiling fan.
"You mean leave a shoe print behind? Do you think the police will get involved and find it, and-"
Again, Paul laughed, and, Harriet could see, it was the best thing for it.
Before then he looked… Bunched. A big thing trying to make himself seem like a small thing, trying to make his words seem unimportant, nonplussed, which only made it all seem more critical.
"No… Imprinting it's… Imprinting on someone is like... Like when you see her... Everything changes. All of a sudden, it's not gravity holding you to the planet. It's her... Nothing else matters. At least that's how Sam described it."
Harriet shook her head.
"No. I didn't feel any of that."
Harriet was quick to cut off his grimace.
"But I felt… Something. I don't know. It was like I… Saw you. There was no shifting of gravity or any of the nothing else matters thing… My friends are still important. My family too… But it was like I saw you, saw what could be and-"
"And everything else just made room for you. Not more important, not less, just… There."
Harriet nodded.
"There. I exist outside of you, but that doesn't mean you aren't… There. Is that normal?"
Paul shook his head.
"Not by the legends."
And then he shrugged.
"Maybe Taha Aki knows we're both too stubborn to be pushed into anything, even by him. At least I don't feel the overwhelming urge to be attached to your hip like Sam does with Emily. That would have driven me crazy."
So Sam and Emily were this 'imprinted' thing too? Good.
Good.
Being the first female shifter in this tribe was enough of an opening act for Harriet for the time being, without adding this, to her, claustrophobic sounding bond to it too.
She chuckled.
"And me. I don't do well with people who hover. Makes me feel… Antsy. So… Not normal… But maybe better? This way, whatever… Comes will be our choice, right? Not magic or ancestors or whatever causes this but… Years down the line, if something does come out of it, we're not going to secretly resent the other for pushing us into a corner beyond both our control."
Paul shuffled in his seat, stretching his long legs out across the table, relaxed now that this was out in the open.
"The way Sam speaks of it, there wouldn't be a choice to be resentful either."
Harriet swallowed down the bile rising in her throat.
Yeah, thank Circe she didn't get that. She just might have tried to kill Paul, no matter his dimples and scent, to get out of it.
She didn't need to be another Horcrux. One stint as one was enough for her, thank you. No more soul-tying bullocks.
"How many people here are imprinted? Is Embry?"
Paul kicked a foot over the other.
"No. Just us and Sam and Emily. It's meant to be rare."
Harriet sighed, nodding.
"Then maybe it's… Personal? The bond I mean. Maybe Sam needed to be… Needed, and Emily needed someone there for her, and we just… Don't? Not in the smothering way, at least. Can you honestly tell you me you would have been happy if you were in Sam's position?"
Paul snorted.
"Fuck no. Imprint or not, I would have hated you from the get-go."
Harriet smiled, flashing her pearly teeth.
"Exactly."
Paul met her eye, and she finally got a good look at them. It was hard to say what colour they were apart from dark and intense.
"Our choice, then? What happens, happens, what doesn't, doesn't."
Harriet gave a firm nod.
"Our choice."
Paul chuckled.
"Wait until Sam has time to settle and remember that I imprinted on his baby sister. He's going to skin me and use my blood to finish repairing his truck."
Harriet smirked.
"Not if we-"
Blood.
Harriet's eyes grew wide, and before Paul could pull his feet of the table and stop her from fighting to a sit, she was up and moving.
"Shifters of this tribe… Shifters run in certain families, don't they?"
Paul stood and grasped her elbow, helping her to a stand.
"Yeah, the same generations from before carry the gene. What's cooking in that pretty little head of yours?"
Harriet hobbled for the front door, Paul there to keep her balanced.
"Sam said Bineshii was our grandmother… That she was from the Leech Lake band. I'm guessing that's a different tribe?"
Paul nodded, reaching to open the door.
"The Ojibwe over in Minnesota. Joshua grew up there from what I know. His dad was from here however, and when he was old enough he decided to register Quileute and moved to La Push."
Harriet braced herself by the door, eyes heated.
"If the shifter gene is in Quileute blood, but it was my great grandmother I saw in my dream then-"
Something bright sparked in Paul's face.
"Joshua was possibly being followed before he disappeared, hence his hard to track trail, or attacked by one of these things… And how the Wendigo chiefly went after you even when I was down on the ground open-"
"Then this all started with the Leech Lake Band… With our Ojibwe blood. The answers we need are going to be-"
"With them."
Harriet slipped through the open door, as Paul plucked up his car keys from the table.
"I saw my grandmother for a reason. I must have… Winter. It was winter in my dream."
Paul followed suit out the door, frowning curiously.
"They're waking up she said… But in my dream it was winter… We have till winter before they all wake up, possibly that one from the carpark was an early riser like how some bear cubs wake up before their mothers in the den, or maybe one wakes up before the others to scope out possible food sources, which means they've been sleeping, maybe even hibernating, and once they do wake up, it's-"
"Hunting season."
Paul finished for her grimly.
Harriet took a deep breath.
"I have a plan, but I don't think Sam is going to like it."
Sam Uley's P.O.V
Standing outside Billy Black's house, his son, Jacob, peeping out his bedroom window every now and again to peer at the three on his doorstep, Sam Uley sputtered.
"No. No. You can't be serious. You want to go to Minnesota?"
Harriet, leaning on the railing, huffed.
"Do you have a better plan?"
Sam nodded violently.
"Anything's better than sending my significantly injured sister into a strange territory to go Wendigo hunting."
He hissed, and Harriet merely rolled her eyes.
"I'm not going Wendigo hunting; I'll be looking to see if I can find anything of our family's stuff there. Maybe a few journals… More weapons… Something to help us with what's coming."
Sam shook his head.
"But-"
"And I won't be going alone. Paul will be coming with me."
Now it was Sam's turn to roll his eyes.
"Yeah, let me not just endanger my sister, but our best fighter too while I'm at it. Brilliant idea, Harry."
Taking a calming breath, he tried ease the tension.
Harry was having none of it.
"Embry's gone to get the weapons, and Billy has just given me his word that after he meets with the rest of the Elders this evening, they will be look into legends to see if there's any mention of Wendigos. You can barely make it up the porch steps, let alone across states. No."
Harriet's face softened, but the rigidity to her shoulders did not.
Stubborn.
So stubborn.
"It'll take us a few days to drive over there. That will give me plenty of time to heal. And if we get there and run into trouble, I'll be well enough to snatch Paul and apparate back in a blink of an eye."
Sam cocked a brow.
"Apparate? What's apparate?"
Harriet grinned and snapped her fingers.
"Basically teleporting."
Sam nearly swallowed his tongue.
"You can teleport?!"
Harriet chuckled, opened her mouth to reply and-
A buzz from his back pocket.
Sam groaned, reached in, plucked out his phone, and answered the call without even glancing to the name on screen.
Embry's voice travelled over the line.
"Sam, the storage locker… It's ugh… On fire. A whole heap of firemen are here with their trucks, but it's pretty hopeless. The weapons are gone. From the looks of it, the fire started from there. I don't think this is a fluke."
Sam groaned.
Harriet smirked over at him.
"You were saying about the weapons?"
"Look, Embry, leave it and come back. We'll… Figure something out."
He hung up.
Inhale.
Exhale.
"I'll go to Minnesota and you-"
Harriet cut him off sharply.
"You and Embry need to stay here. If the storage locker's been destroyed, it means there's more than one Wendigo prowling around these woods, and by the sounds of it, they're… Prepping for something. Embry clearly has some sort of sense for this sort of thing. He plainly felt something wrong before you guys left dad's locker. He can be the early warning system."
"Then I'll take-"
"You need to stay here because you know this place better than anyone. Paul said you were the Alpha, right? You were the first Shifter… You know the ins and outs of this Reservation. You know where the weak defence spots are. If a Wendigo comes skulking about, you'll know where and how they'll get in."
Harriet held her hands out from her side.
"Look, if I'm good for one thing, it's finding things. I'm also a damn good fighter when my backs against the wall, and you said, yourself, Paul was your best. Me and him are obviously the offensive part of the Pack here. It makes sense to send us out while you guys hang back and guard."
Sam ran his tongue over his teeth behind a pursed lip.
"Then Jared can-"
This time, it was Paul who intervened.
"Jared doesn't know what he's looking for. Neither do I. Sending us two out would be pointless. Plus, we have an advantage. Green-eyes here said she could sense magic on the weapons at the storage locker. It's how she knew to run and grab one. Which means-"
Sam sighed deeply.
"If there is anything at the Leech Lake reservation like the weapons at the storage locker, Harriet can trace and find it."
Paul cocked his head.
"You got to admit… It's a solid plan and, currently, the only one we have."
Sam folded his arms, tapping at his bicep, gaze swinging between the two before him.
Harriet stole a lone step closer.
"Sam, look... These things are going to wake up. We only have a few weeks till winter and then-... We need to stop this before it begins, before people are killed. When something comes out of hibernation, it's typically very fuckin' hungry. I can't stand by and watch innocent people be hurt. Don't ask me to."
Sam thought as much as he wanted to strangle her in that moment, he loved his sister dearly too.
Finally, he folded.
"Alright. Yeah. It's all we've got at the moment. But you're not leaving tonight. You can head out in the morning after some rest. And I swear to the Creators, Harry, if you don't ring me every three hours I'll hunt you down."
A.N: Did someone say road trip? Knowing Harriet's particular brand of luck, it's not going to go smoothly, or be boring lol.
I also could not stop myself from falling into that trope of sneaking the title of the fic/film into the actual plot and having someone say it rather dramatically. Yeah, it's cheesy, but it feels good lmao.
THANK YOU all for the follows and favourites and reviews! You guys really have kept this fic alive, and made me smile more than once this trying year, and I hope in return this fic has done the same for you. Honestly, every time I update this fic, I'm happily surprised by all the kind words, and I really am grateful, so this one's for all you lovely readers!
Once again, if you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a review! I love hearing from you all, and hopefully I will see you all again soon.