a/n: See? I told you!
Chapter 11: The Watcher
beta'd by chiroho
"[T]here could be other places, where ... the land waited, bitter and granite, and a thousand years was an eyeblink to the hills..."
-Neil Gaiman, "The Monarch of the Glen"
Something watched them from the darkness. Had one of them—JJ, perhaps, on a routine assessment of the clearing; or Prentiss in her paranoia—swept a flashlight in just the right direction, the beam would've caught the gleam of eyes in the night. But no one did, and the silent observer was unmolested and undiscovered.
The watcher sniffed the air and sorted through a multitude of scents that all added up to one thing: human. They spoke in hushed voices and moved on quiet feet. Huddled around their fire, cowering away from the wild woods that encircled them and seeking the warmth and light the flames offered; the trappings of civilization; the illusion of safety.
The watcher was nervous. People meant noise. They meant violence and shouting and pain. Frightened humans were the worst, the most dangerous, and these humans positively reeked of fear. They tried to hide it, but scent didn't lie. The watcher hunched closer to the ground, as though trying to disappear into it, and sniffed again. Something new had joined the mingling odors of human being, and the watcher went stiff with terror.
People made the watcher nervous, but this scent—and the creature that went with it—caused a whimper to catch in the watcher's throat. The acrid odor of its own urine suddenly blotted out everything else. Baring razor-like teeth in an impotent snarl, it retreated back into the safety of the woods and left the humans to their fate.
"Last one," Prentiss said as she speared a marshmallow with a stick. "Who wants it?"
No one spoke. Prentiss' attempts to inject a bit of levity into their situation were falling flat, but she wasn't going to let a perfectly good marshmallow go to waste. With a shrug, she stuck it into the heart of a flame and watched it catch fire.
"I like it when they get all black and crispy."
JJ stirred. "Me, too. I'll split it with you."
Prentiss smiled, appreciating the effort, and blew on the blazing marshmallow to extinguish it. "I bet you were a Girl Scout, weren't you?"
"You say that like it's a bad thing. Scouting teaches girls to be independent and resourceful, and it encourages them to take leadership roles when society in general would rather women be passive and genteel."
"The cookies ain't bad, either," Morgan said.
That broke the tension of the moment, and they all laughed softly. "What's your favorite Girl Scout cookie?" Prentiss asked him as she carefully pulled the molten marshmallow apart and offered half to JJ.
"Thin Mints. They're the best. That's an easy one, Prentiss."
"Tagalongs," Hotch said with a slight smile. "I love peanut butter."
"Trefoils," JJ said. "What?" she asked as everyone stared at her. "They're simple, but delicious."
"Hhmm," Morgan muttered. "It's all about the Thin Mints. Damn, I could go for a Thin Mint right about now."
"I have some in my freezer at home," JJ told him.
"There's a reason to get back to civilization if I ever heard one."
"I guess," Prentiss said, "if you can call Walter's Gap 'civilization,' and I have doubts."
The Ranger offered her disagreement, and the two women launched into a discussion about the merits of small-town versus big-city life, with Morgan chiming in from time to time in support of one or the other. Hotch, meanwhile, leaned away from the flames and scanned the edges of the clearing. The fire dulled his night vision, and he wasn't sure if the rustling he'd just heard had come from the trees around them, or was just the settling of a log on the fire.
JJ watched him from the corner of her eye as she chatted, and his body language alarmed her. Her hand moved almost casually to rest on the weapon at her hip. Morgan and Prentiss caught the gesture, and though the conversation kept flowing, all four of them were now alert for the slightest sound or movement from outside their circle.
"I gotta take a leak," Morgan announced.
"Geez, Morgan, could you be a little more uncouth?" Prentiss said with a roll of her eyes.
"Sure. I coulda said I have to take a piss, but there's a lady present." He waggled his brows at JJ, and, gun in hand, he stepped away to see a fictional man about a metaphorical horse.
"Think it'll work?" Prentiss said, sotto voce.
"If there's someone out there, he would want to split us up," Hotch said.
"I'm just glad it's not me," she said. "I'm sick of having the living shit scared out of me by the local wildlife."
A gunshot suddenly ripped through the night, and Prentiss almost got the living shit scared out of her anyway. They were on their feet and moving across the clearing in a stooped run before any one of them could consider doing anything else.
"It came from this way!" Hotch said over his shoulder.
Prentiss paused to grab one of the rifles. She checked to make sure it was loaded and hurried after JJ to bring up the rear, covering their backs with her finger tense on the trigger. The blood was roaring in her ears, and her numb lips formed one word over and over: Please, please, please.
Fucking woods. Fucking nature. Give her a good dark alley any day of the week.
Hotch and JJ scanned the tree line with their flashlights, but nothing moved. Had Morgan left the clearing? Hotch glanced back at the Ranger, and she shook her head: she wasn't sure; it had all happened too fast.
"Morgan!" Prentiss called. "Say something! What the fuck did you shoot? A chipmunk?"
Silence was her only answer.
"Here," Hotch called. He lowered his weapon, trusting JJ and Prentiss to cover him, and knelt to read the signs in the leaves. "How did we not hear the struggle?" he said. The area was a mess.
"Where's Morgan?" Prentiss said. "I don't see any blood."
"Look at that," JJ said. A nearby tree had a strip of bark missing; the wound was fresh and oozing sluggish sap.
"Shooting at trees. Fucking city boy."
"How did someone disable a man his size without making a sound? And how did he get away with him so fast?"
"I guess the whole splitting us up thing really worked out," Prentiss remarked. "We shouldn't have let him go."
Hotch gave a grim nod. "It should've been me. I know the woods better; he might not have gotten a jump on me."
Prentiss lowered the rifle with a sigh. There was no point in worrying about that part of it now. Her partner, in typical Derek Morgan style, had put himself on the line for them, and now they had one job: find him. Find him before he ended up like the owner of that bone by the still.
"Any tracks?" she asked JJ in a clipped tone.
Hotch watched in appreciation as a cool, professional mask replaced Prentiss' stricken expression. A missing person, whether in the city or the woods, was familiar territory, and the tough PI would set aside her own fear and worry to focus on finding her partner.
"We'll find him, Prentiss," he told her.
She met his gaze squarely and the corner of her mouth lifted. "I know we will," she said. "And I'm not fucking around with any skunk ape, either."
He lifted a brow and gave the rifle in her hand a pointed look. "Understood" was all he said.
"I've got something!" JJ called.
She cast a glance over her shoulder at Hotch and Prentiss, and they caught the impression of huge dark eyes in a pale face.
"It's blood," she said. "Fresh blood."
An unearthly howl, eerily like the sound they'd heard on Garcia's tape, drifted on the night air. Prentiss clenched the rifle's stock and gritted her teeth.
"The trail leads that way," JJ told them. Their eyes followed the line her pointing finger made, and dread filled them as they realized they'd be heading straight toward whatever was making that unsettling, mournful cry.
Reviews would be lovely, dear readers. :)
Expect chapter 12 very soon, as it's written and beta'd.