Chapter 3: Lost and Found

He was listening to the stereo; cassette tapes that played Rock n Roll from the 70's. Styx was his default on nights like this. He tapped the steering wheel in rhythm with the drums, quietly singing along.

He never sang too loud, not on nights of the full moon, his ear open for any changes on his radio while his careful eye skimmed the line of trees for any indication someone was out when they shouldn't be. With it being winter, his father and brother didn't patrol much; they didn't need to since they got those cages installed -a hefty 5k he was still paying off. Usually, in the summer, Caleb locked himself in a shipping container until morning when Bobby came into work at the scrapyard and Kaylee tended to stay roughly around the house.

But since it was winter and they had the space, Constance insisted they use the cages to keep track of her Grandbabies while Chris used the storm cellar of the lodge. Unfortunately, as he stopped in to check on his little brother, he found that Chris wasn't in the cellar anymore, which meant he was out and about. That was why he patrolled tonight.

Grabbing his coffee he purchased from the gas station not too far from the quarry, he took a sip. Winter, luckily, wasn't just hard on them but it seemed hard on the werewolves too. They slowed right down, took to the trees instead of traveling the ground. They normally didn't move much unless there was something they could eat; there wasn't a lot on their menu when the snow fell. Occasionally maybe a rabbit, or squirrels, but even deer were scarce in the colder months. That meant that Chris was tempted by something and the big asshole broke out.

It was whatever -a few dead deer were preferable to another dead body he had to dump in the lake- but he still needed to keep tabs on him. Make sure he didn't extend his reach past the borders of the quarry; they would be utterly fucked if one of the three managed to wander into town.

The jig is up

The news is out

They finally found me.

The renegade

Who had it made,

Retrieved for a bounty.

He lipped, taking another sip from his coffee until his eyes landed on it, his jaw slacking. There was an entire bank of snow, drenched in blood and smeared for nearly 13 or 14 feet. He slowed down, looking at it closely, hoping that whatever carnage caused the mess came from something with 4 legs and not two. However, there was nothing nearby, no chunks of meat, no bones or organ trails, just a trail of blood he followed with his eyes, seeing if it led down the road or into the woods.

Just as the answer was concluding that it traveled back into the trees, a body jumped out in front of him, too close to the car. "Shit!" He slammed the brakes, turning the wheel, the squad car fishtailing until it turned, throwing a half donut around her and skidding to a stop. His heart pounded in his chest, mouth gaping as he looked up at a bloodied, mangled woman, desperately reaching out to him. Dragging a coffee drenched hand down his face, he cussed; lucky for him the coffee had lost most of its heat thanks to the hour or two he'd already put in, or else he'd be in a world of hurt.

Unbuckling, he shoved the door open and got out. "What the hell are you doing out here?" He barked, but she ignored him, curling up in the headlights, touching the plastic with dark purple fingers, her blue lips looking unnatural. She had frost on her face, hair frozen solid with small beads of ice on them. She wasn't listening to him, she was just desperate for warmth. Hesitating, he looked at the mess on her legs; tattered skirt, blood everywhere. It was nearly impossible to tell if she'd just been scratched or bitten an

Hzzjjjzfmd he was left with the option to shoot her and play it safe, or chance putting her in the car and her turning on him.

His eyes flickered, looking across the road towards the trees reminding himself that he didn't have a lot of time to dwell on it; if she was here, Chris would be here soon. "Get in the car," he demanded, stepping forward, reaching out to grab her arm and pull her up, his hand on his gun. The coffee was already freezing on his lap, stinging his thighs, he could only imagine what she was feeling right now. "Come on, get in the car." He yanked her to her feet, arm shooting out to her waist as her legs shook and threatened to give out.

Putting her in the passenger seat, he shut the door and ran around to the other side, wanting to get to some cover before shit hit the fan. Grabbing the now empty coffee cup he gave it a sour frown and tossed it to the back seat -littering was a 75 dollar fine. He was going to have to get the car cleaned out before the seats stained, but there were more important matters to deal with first.

Climbing in, he shut the door and reached over. Cranking the heat up, he turned the vents, letting the hot air blow against her. "There we go," he hummed, listening to her teeth chatter as she visibly shook. His heart ached a little; poor girl, he always felt a little worse for the girls than the guys who got caught out here. Judging by how she was dressed, she wasn't out here hiking or trying to break in anywhere. Dropping his hands to her skirt, he grabbed a couple pieces, breaking the ice around the frozen cloth, carefully pulling it away from her skin and wincing when it caught in certain spots. Once it was separated from her skin, he pushed it up her legs to look at the damage.

Deep gouges from her mid thighs down, a couple reaching farther; she was going to need stitches. A lot of stitches. But from the look of it, no bites which was both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, she would remain human, on the other she was going to have a hard time explaining those scars. But for now, he needed to get her somewhere safe.

Sitting up, he idly gave her thigh a brisk rub to warm it up, straightening the car around and heading back the way he came, eyes alert and looking for Chris actively now. With the damage he did to her legs, she should have a bite somewhere on her body; they didn't just claw a victim to death, they rarely left more than a couple scratches before they bit them. Something must have happened to distract him from making the kill, but he wasn't going to ask a million questions right now. Or at least he wasn't until the girl beside him slowly slumped forward, forehead resting on the dashboard. "Hey, hey!" He jostled her, pulling her up so she was sitting up. "Don't you die in my fucking car." He barked, looking at her, eyes darting from the road back to her as he held her up. Her head rolled back, eyes slightly open but overall, she looked like she was unconscious. "Shit," he huffed, looking up at the road.

Removing his hand from her shoulder, he dropped it to her chest, fingers plucking at the buttons on her peacoat, undoing them one by one. Her choice of attire wasn't what he'd seen on a lot of girls her age -the lack of skin showing was new. Even in winter, half of the girls he got speeding wore something that showcased their cleavage; although he was sure that was their bargaining chip to get out of a ticket. The amount of times he was insincerely flirted with in an attempt to get out of trouble made him numb to pretty much most advances. When he was feeling like an asshole, he'd slap them with an additional charge for indecent exposure and sexual harassment. Suddenly, what was a one hundred dollar ticket was anywhere from 500 to a grand and body cam footage usually supported his claims.

Turning his hand around, he laid it over her chest, feeling for her breathing. As long as she kept breathing, that's all that mattered until he got to the station.

After 15 minutes, he pulled into the parking lot and shut the car off. He pushed the door open and came around to her side and yanked open her door. He wasted no time, leaning down he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her up and against his body. His other hand grasped at her legs, pulling both onto his right hip. She remained limp, head rolled back, coat sliding off her shoulder. It might be the onset of hypothermia, blood loss or shock -or all of the above.

Using his hip, he shut the door, carrying her into the station. He took her directly to the bathroom, putting her feet on the floor but supporting her back still, he shrugged the oversized peacoat she wore off her shoulders and down her arms. She wore a dress that was a spaghetti strap and a sunflower yellow. The bodice had boning in the bust, making it form fit to the bottom of her ribs where it fanned out. The skirt was ankle length, cotton like fabric on the under most layer, hidden by flowing layers of sheer chiffon.

Underneath the dress, she wore a satin blouse, sporting an inch or two of a high neck and a puffy sleeve that buttoned around the wrists. It was yellow as well, but more of a golden color. It was a shame, it was very pretty, but he had work to do.

Shifting his hand up, he felt around for a clasp or something to unbutton her golden blouse, then unbuttoned the cuffs. He could only go so far within the confines of the law; would it be easier to strip her down and look her over? Yes, but he couldn't, not unless she had an injury under her clothes he needed to get to. So instead, he pulled the straps down, pulling her arms out of the spaghetti straps, then shimmied the soaked, frozen satin off her body, tossing it across the bathroom floor. Stepping in, he turned the shower on, keeping it cool but introducing a little warmth to it. He stepped in, trying to submerge only her under the water, but with her unconscious she couldn't stand on her own.

Grabbing his radio off his chest, he tossed it to her coat across the room before pulling his own jacket off; the arm of it was wet, but that was alright, it was weather resistant and would dry relatively quickly. Pulling his keys and important bits out of his pockets, he tossed them, wincing as his walkie-talkie bounced, the back flying off of it and sending the battery skidding. He closed his eyes, huffing a bit then turned his attention back to the girl he held.

Stepping in, he held her close, scooping water onto her as it rushed off of her and soaked him. There were other options for this -conventional ones- but he didn't have the time to prepare them. The station was drafty at best; the cells weren't the warmest of places thanks to the windows, but a person wouldn't freeze or get sick. They wouldn't get warm either. This was the quickest solution he could think of to both wash her legs of blood, assess the wounds, and warm her up.

Reaching forward, he turned the heat up a little, ignoring the need to shiver because of the cold; to her, it would feel like fire no doubt, and warming her up too quickly would put her into shock even more than she probably already was. He rubbed her arm, using the friction to help, taking a moment to bring his hand to her face and look at it.

She was a cute girl, very pretty; her fair skin purple because of the cold, cheeks splotted with wind burn, ice thawing on her eyelashes. Her hair was pale blonde, so much that her eyebrows were hard to see, but not with the frosted layering over them. He used the heat from his hands to warm her cheeks, first the left, then the right.

He turned the heat up a little more.

His hand dropped to her side, rubbing it, stepping under the water more so the lukewarm water showered over her from her throat down, mixing with blood as it hit the floor, swirled and was washed away. "Alright kid, I need to see what we're working with here." He grunted. Bending down, he grabbed her skirt and paused for a moment, thinking of how he would never do this -without permission- any other time. Shaking that thought away, he began to bunch up the fabric, still stiff from the outside. It must have been frozen thick to be exposed to heat and still not be thawed out enough to move freely.

He looked down at her legs, moving her back to focus on rinsing the blood off her wounds. Hooking the tattered cloth in the elastic leg hole of her underwear, he dropped his hand to her thigh, rubbing warmth in it, watching the water wash blood down into her boots. "Damn it." He grunted, looking around for a place to put her so he could remove her boots and socks, he decided there was no avoiding it. Pulling her out from under the stream, he sat her on the floor, leaning her against the wall. Grabbing her boots, he pulled one off, then the other, tossing them aside.

The socks she wore were fuzzy, originally pulled up mid calf and striped in three colors; gold, brown and orange. They were very fall themed and didn't match the rest of her clothes, so he began to question exactly why she was out there. Not that it was all that late, but still, to be out there on a night like tonight with the weather how it was…

Grabbing her socks he pulled them off and stared at her feet, dragging his hand down across his mouth in worry. Her toes were dark purple that stretched halfway up her foot. If he couldn't get warmth back to them, she'd be losing half of her foot -and he'd feel guilty for sure if he had to escort her to the hospital where they amputated half of her feet. Reaching down, he grabbed her right foot first, running his palm along the arch of her foot from her heel to her toes, wrapping his palm around them. He massaged small circles along the borders of the discoloration, leaning his head down to breath heat onto them; warmth would help return her feet to normal temperature and the massaging would help stimulate blood flow as they warmed up.

He turned his head, looking up her legs at the gouges, wincing at how deep some of them seemed to go. Most of them seemed to have stopped bleeding, but there was one…he stopped, eyes wide as he lowered her foot to the floor and spread her legs, looking at a gash from the back of her knees up around to the inside of her thigh. It actively bled, which was an indication the gouge was deeper than it should be; it hit a vein or even worse, an artery. "Shit," he stood, turning to make his way out of the bathroom, ignoring the water he dripped through the station.

Making his way up the stairs to the top floor, he pushed the door open to his office, pulling a desk drawer open. He wasn't a medical professional; he wasn't trained to do stitches or sutures when he was trained to be a cop, but his Ma knew a thing or two. She was a nurse at one point when she was younger, before she met his dad. She was aiming to become a surgical nurse and even got the position thanks to a steady hand, but when she met his dad and got pregnant with him…

Well, he was a wrecker of dreams. Any injuries him or his siblings got were taken care of by their Ma; cuts to the hand while fishing, severed fingers due to axe mishaps…suicide attempts. He was her helper, a sturdy hand at least so when she became too old to do it he took over. It proved helpful during accidents with Chris or Caleb, Kaylee never seemed to go after him. She tended to keep her distance from family; maybe wishful thinking, but perhaps something in her recognized him as being her Uncle Travis.

Waving those thoughts away, he grabbed the kit and shut the drawer, leaving his office again. His shoes squeaked as he made his way down the steps, being careful not to slip and bust his ass on the stairs as he returned to the bathroom. However, when he stepped in he saw that not only was the girl awake, but had desperately attempted to crawl towards the handle of the shower, smearing blood across the floor. She laid face down in the water, arms outstretched above her head, palms and fingertips against the wall. Along her back, across her shoulders, there was a massive bruise, leading up her neck and down under her dress, a bloodied tear in the back of her clothes.

"Shit." He rushed forward, looking at the blood; this brought a whole new level of difficulty. He didn't have a way to numb the pain, and discovering this new wound might be problematic. If it was a bite, she should be healing herself, so it wasn't an issue of whether she was bit or not, but more of an issue of there was another injury he didn't know the severity of. "Ok, ok, can you hear me?" He spoke, voice raised a little to be heard over the rushing water. She didn't respond right away, keeping herself still in one spot, face cradled in her arms. "Ma'am." He tried again.

"Ow." She squeaked, a soft, timid sounding voice, and a good sign. "Ma'am, my name is Officer Hackett, Sheriff of the Northkill police. I found you on the road." He looked up across the room, filtering through things to say next, things that weren't suspicious. He'd gotten good at gaslighting people, even if he didn't want to; if he could keep as many people out of this mess he would. "The nearest hospital isn't for a few towns over and your wounds needed looking after-" her arms dropped, reaching back to pull the zipper down in the back of her dress. His mouth hung open as she shoved it down her body, weakly kicking it away, leaving herself in a pair of panties only. "I've never gotten a dress to come down that quick in my life." He gave an exasperated chuckle.

Reaching up, he shut the water off. Grabbing the kit he'd brought down, he rested it on her ass, leaning in to observe the wound on her back. It was deep. It, too, would need stitches.

Standing, he made his way to the medicine cabinet, pulling out peroxide and a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a couple rolls of gauze and a hand towel to place the instruments on. It wasn't the most sterile of setups, but it would have to do. Returning, he set the towel on a spot of the floor that wasn't as wet as the others -kind of hard to do but he tried. Pulling a pair of gloves from the kit, he pulled them on. Leaning down, he gently spread the deepest gouge on her leg open, grabbing a piece of gauze to dab away the extra blood. "Alright, spread your legs for me." He instructed, gently guiding her leg up so he could get to it.

Most of the gouge looked only meat deep, he couldn't see-

There it was. A single spot on the inside of her thigh, he saw a single, thick vein, sliced open. He ran through the anatomy in his head; which vein was this? This wasn't an artery, right? It didn't matter, the patch job wouldn't be too difficult since it wasn't severed through completely. Grabbing a small needle and a couple of forceps from the kit, he crossed his legs, settling in for a long stitch session. "Alright kid, this is going to hurt like a bitch. If you can't handle it, tell me." He instructed, and with that, he began.

His hands were steady despite the strangled cries. It took him a minute or two to suture the vein, putting an end to the endless bleeding. From there, he worked on stitching the rest of the gouges, stitching in layers, from inside out. That was the time consuming part, all of the gouges that took stitches took his skill and steady hand, and it was something he had to ignore the pain in his spine and ass for. 3 hours, it took. 3 hours and a pile of gauze and an empty bottle of alcohol later and she was stitched up, the ones that didn't need stitches got gauze and medical tape to hold the walls of the wound together. Somewhere along the way, she must have passed out, the upper part of her body curled, teeth sunk into his calf.

That was a nasty surprise, halfway through a stitch and suddenly a pair of teeth were sinking into his leg. It gave him a moment to look up and realize just how much pain she must have been in, her arms shaking, nails digging in between the cracks in the tile.

Reaching down, he pried her teeth out of his leg, rubbing the spot -she was still alive, the way she clenched her jaw shut told him that. Lifting his pant leg, he looked at the bruising set of deep bite marks, but there wasn't any broken skin. Good. He wouldn't be able to do shit if she was infected and he got bit.

Grabbing her, he rolled her over onto her back, eyes reflexively looking at her chest before rolling up and away from her. "Let me see your fingers." He muttered, more to himself, lifting her hand to look at her fingers and fingertips. The purple was faded, fingers a beet red now. Lowering her hand to the floor, he looked over his work on her legs once more, gently touching the swollen, horribly bruising marks on her body before looking down at her feet. He'd been worried about that since he took her boots off, but they looked like they were starting to return to normal.

She'd be ok.

Standing, he scooped her up in his arms, careful not to tug anything as he brought her out into the hall. The only place he could put her was a cell, so that's what he did, laying her down before heading to the supplies, grabbing a couple of blankets. They were thin, but they were better than nothing…unless…

Taking the 2 blankets, he snatched his keys and radio off the bathroom floor where he tossed it, then made his way across the office and unlocked another door. Inside was a washing machine and dryer, a bar with a few of his outfits on it. He grabbed an extra change of clothes; an extra uniform was necessary for the job, even if not because of the job itself. Tossing the blankets in the dryer, he turned it on, proceeding to unfasten his tie, undo his buttons and remove the wet articles of clothes that felt horrid mid dry.

He kicked off his shoes, pulling off his socks and tossed them in the wash. Pulling his badge and pins off his uniform, he tossed the shirt, then undershirt in. He kept his mind clear as he hooked his finger in the clasp of his belt, pulling it open, then in a smooth motion, he pulled it through the loops of his pants, folding it in half.

He was lost in thought, mind wandering back to the last time he had time for himself. The last time he saw a woman naked that wasn't his niece, covered in blood after the full moon. Not that he was thinking anything about the poor girl in the other room! But it made him reflect.

He was somewhere in his 30's, if he remembered right. Late 30's when he found out his parents couldn't keep up with the house and he moved back in, slowly sinking his money into keeping the taxes on the land paid and the electricity on. Nearly 30 years have passed since he touched a woman.

Nothing was going to change anytime soon. Not until the curse with Chris was dealt with. The moment he was cured, he was going to get laid. For a month. Pushing his pants and boxers down he tossed them in the wash and shut the lid.

First things first, he had to get through tonight.