Disclaimer: I don't own Until Dawn.

A/N: Hey guys, thanks for all your lovely comments! ^_^ It's greatly appreciated.

An Inextinguishable Light

Chapter Six: And the Spirit Shall Be Released

It didn't take Beth long to find the source of the explosion – namely, one Michael Munroe, soot-stained and clutching a revolver, sprawled on the floor and watching the burning wreckage of one of the subterranean corridors with a dazed (and slightly concussed) expression.

"Mike!" Beth barked, fully out of patience at this point. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Mike looked around in confusion at the sound of her voice and upon seeing her ghostly form, blanched so white that it would have been funny if she weren't so pissed off. "W-w-what the fuck," he stuttered, scrambling backwards along the floor. "Beth, y-you're –"

"Dead, yes, I fucking know," Beth said acidly. "Thank you for bringing it to my fucking attention, Michael. Which is also thanks, in no small part, to the role you played in that stupid prank last year, but you'll be glad to hear that your verbal beatdown for that will be delayed until further notice; namely until we sort out all the fucking problems going on. Like, for example, why have you set fire to this fucking building?"

Mike was still staring at her, chalk-white and stunned, but he seemed to respond almost automatically to her tone. "It was an accident! I was just trying to shoot the lock off the door and it sparked and some barrels of fuel caught fire –"

"So you're still a moron then." Beth rolled her eyes. "Good tosee some things never change. How did you even end up down here, doing stupid shit? Weren't you and Jessica going off to indulge in marathon sex?"

"Jess – I – she –" Mike slumped a little further down, and Beth was shocked at the expression of aching grief and miserable anger that crossed his face. "I – I – don't know what happened. One minute we were fooling around, the next some psycho smashed the window and grabbed Jess, and I was running after them in the snow – and we ended up at these like dilapidated buildings that led into old mine tunnels and Jess – she fell –she fell into one of the mine shafts, and a bunch of beams and rubble fell down after her. I couldn't find a way down to look, but I think – I think she's dead." His voice broke on the last word, and he took a deep breath, looking away as he rubbed roughly at his eyes.

"…Shit, I'm sorry Mike," Beth murmured, stunned. Then her mind almost immediately flew to fate of dead or dying people on Blackwood Mountain and grimaced at the thought. Fuck, we're going to have to go looking for her right away, body and spirit both if necessary. Actually…

"Did you see anyone else at all? In particular, an old guy with a scarf, goggles and a flamethrower tank?"

"What?" Mike looked up and frowned a little, distracted from his grief. "No – I mean, yes, I saw a guy, didn't get a clear view of him – but who carries a freaking flamethrower? I chased after him, because I thought he was the one who kidnapped Jess – who else could have? I lost him somewhere in the maze of tunnels though, and when I finally got outside, I saw this place and thought it was my best bet for where the guy had gone – so I came here, looking for answers."

"And did you find them?" Beth arched an eyebrow at him. "Because I'm pretty sure it's not so much a who that killed Jess, but a what."

"What? What do you mean?" Mike surged to his feet, still a little unsteady, but with a blazing fire in his eyes. Beth was momentarily taken aback; she was completely unused to Mike as anything other the charming, well-groomed and easy-going womaniser she had always known. This Mike, standing in front of her in only a filthy tank top and jeans, covered in dirt and blood and scratches, the mangled fingers of his left hand clutching a worn revolver, grief and rage in equal measure etched on his face – this Mike was almost completely foreign to her. And she kind of approved. With the layers of charming bullshit and deflection stripped away, he was raw and honest in a way suited him infinitely better.

He actually seems like a decent human being like this. Shame it apparently takes trauma to bring it out in him.

"I can show you," Beth replied slowly, eyeing him as she did so. "But first, let's make a quick detour upstairs. I need to tell the others that it was only dear old Mike blowing up the building. After the evening they've had, such a mundane explanation is bound to be almost reassuring."

"The others are here?" Mike looked startled as he glanced reflexively upwards.

Beth rolled her eyes and began leading him on the quickest route upstairs, explaining as she went and listening to his own description of exactly what had happened to him and Jess that night. It didn't take them long to reach the chapel and there was a surge of exclamations, shouts of surprise as the group caught sight of Beth with Mike in tow.

"Fuck, Mike, what happened?" Matt gripped him by the shoulders, giving him a horrified once-over as the rest of the group crowded around.

"He lost a fight with a beartrap. And tried to blow up the building," Beth deadpanned, unable to help herself.

Several voices rose in question at the same time, but before Mike could even begin to answer them, the doors to the chapel swung open, crashing into the walls with an echoing boom.

Beth turned to see Jack striding into the room, the wolves trotting at his heels, and a sarcastic comment about dramatic entrances was on the tip of her tongue – and then his grim, furious expression registered, along with the way the wolves were bristling and snarling, and most of all, the fact that the limp and bloodied form of Jessica lay cradled in his arms.

"Jessica!" Mike's cry echoed across the room and he surged forwards, his expression and tone a complicated snarl of aggression and accusation and grief all at the same time – before he was halted by Jack's angry growl.

"Which one of you stupid children set off a goddamn explosion in the basement?! Part of the outer wall's caved in, and the line of talismans is broken –"

A screaming, shrieking cry rang out from somewhere uncomfortably close by; everyone blanched, turning chalk white, apart from Jack and Beth who swore in unison. The high whining screech of claws scraping on glass made them all look up at the same time – and then then they all scattered with cries of panic as the skylight burst inwards, dropping a hail of glass and an undead monster into their midst.

Beth didn't waste time, lunging forward towards the wendigo – her thoughts were a jagged tumble of buy Jack time and oh God don't let anyone else die fuck please, but her body seemed to react almost on autopilot to the threat.

"Hey asshole!" she roared, as Jack all but shoved Jessica into Mike's arms. The thing-that-was-once-Hannah screamed, skittering around to face her, just as Jack unhooked the flamethrower and swung the barrel up to point at the creature. It had barely taken a step towards her before a brilliant wave of fire burst across the room, engulfing it – it shrieked in fury and pain, ear-shatteringly loud, and tried to retreat, scuttling backwards, but Jack advanced relentlessly in its wake, keeping up a steady stream of fire.

The pain seemed to both madden and confuse it, and it twisted desperately, trying to escape the intense flames – but slowly, its movements seemed to grow weaker. Beth saw the exact moment when it finally succumbed, the blackened body collapsing to the floor, and a few moments later, Jack eased his finger off the trigger, allowing the fire to die away.

For a second the only sound was the frightened, ragged breathing of eight teenagers. Beth stared silently at the corpse, unsure what she was feeling. She'd never seen Jack kill a wendigo before – containment was his preferred method, because of the slight problem that killing the host body meant freeing the wendigo spirit to possess again – but this was Hannah's body. Or it had once been.

Her final death, Beth thought grimly, closing her eyes for a moment. God, Hannah. Will this ever stop hurting?

And then –

Hold on. The spirit will be released –

Beth opened her eyes, in time to see the omnipresent red light rising from beneath the charred corpse's skin, and coalescing into the burning crimson outline of a wendigo, with eyes like empty black holes. It shrieked and juddered and writhed in place, and to Beth's eyes, it looked as though it were resisting some kind of immense pull – she could see odd little threads of ghostly blue fire all of a sudden, glinting in the moonlight as they shimmered into being around the wendigo spirit.

The cries of shock from her friends and the curse from Jack told her she wasn't the only one seeing the spirit, but as the Makkapitew turned its void-black eyes on her, she was suddenly struck with the realisation that, unlike the others, she was still in danger.

"Fuck," Beth swore, starting to back away.

"Run, girl!" Jack shouted as the wendigo spirit shifted, fiery limbs shuddering jaggedly as it fought the pull of the blue fire in order to skitter towards her –

A flash of silver caught her eye.

Despite herself, despite the danger, some instinct made Beth follow the movement, and she looked over in time to see a silvery incorporeal form rising from the corpse of the wendigo.

Battered and bruised, but blessedly whole, the spirit of Hannah Washington glanced up and met the eyes of her sister for the first time in just under a year.

A/N: …Surprise? xD

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