Walker leaves him at the door to his room, and Austin barely manages a “thanks” before he stumbles inside, throwing himself down on the bed so that he doesn’t have to keep standing up for another second longer. He groans into the comforter, feeling every muscle in his body violently protest every movement he makes. He desperately wants to go back to sleep, but he’s vibrating with adrenaline now, and he doubts he’ll be able to.
“Austin,” Richard says sharply, drifting over towards the bed. “You can’t just run off like that -”
Austin runs his fingers through his hair, combing out bits of dirt and gravel. He sits up on the bed laboriously. “You can spare the lecture. It got away.”
“Did you see what it was?” Richard asks, his tone switching quickly from stern to curious. Apparently a good mystery is all it takes for him to forget about being a disciplinarian - though, to be fair, Austin can’t blame him.
“Not really.” Austin shakes his head. “But I don’t think it was a wild dog. Or if it was, it was the biggest dog I’ve ever seen. Taller than me. And it was standing on its hind legs, when it was outside the door.”
Richard chews his bottom lip. “You think it was a werewolf?”
“I guess it could be,” Austin says, collapsing back against his pillows and rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. He tries to conjure up the image of the hulking, furry thing in his mind, to compare it with anything he’s seen before this. The dog-thing was definitely intelligent enough to know what room he was in, which could mean a werewolf. But… “That still doesn’t explain the deer and birds attacking people, though. Or the smell.”
“It smelled? What did it smell like?”
“I dunno. Gross. Like roadkill.”
Richard is quiet for a long time, so long that Austin starts to wonder if they’re done with this discussion and he can finally start trying to sleep again. He cracks an eye open to make sure, and Richard is floating rapidly from one end of the room to the other, back and forth, an approximation of how any living human would pace. He looks deep in thought. Austin has seen him this way a couple times before - it usually means he’s digging through old memories, trying to find some useful bit of information that’s just on the tip of his tongue.
“Maybe it’s not a werewolf,” Richard says finally. Austin’s other eye pops open.
“I don’t think it is, either.”
Richard slows down his manic floating, eventually coming to rest at the foot of the bed. “I think I remember reading about something like this in your grandfather’s old case files from the Department. You could call your brother and-”
Austin cringes visibly. He wants little to do with the Department of Paranormal Research, the top secret government-funded agency passed from member to member of the Jones family like an unfortunate baton, and even less to do with his brother Jacob, the current Department president. And it’s not just because Jacob cut him off from the family money. But the money situation does have a lot to do with it.
“Why can’t you just tell me?” Austin asks, hoping his exasperation is only audible enough to pass as simple exhaustion. He squeezes his eyes shut again so he can’t glare at Richard. “You sound like you have a hunch. And I’m not calling Jacob.”
“I don’t see why you won’t,” Richard says, doing an even worse job at hiding his own exasperation. “He’s probably worried sick about you. You haven’t called, or written a word to him-”
Austin groans loudly and rolls over, face-down into his pillow. “I heard the spiel this morning, okay? I don’t want to fight you about Jacob again.”
“I’m not trying to fight with you! I just think - I think he’d like to hear from you so he knows you’re okay. Even if it’s a few words on the back of a postcard.”
“Whatever,” Austin grumbles, muffled. “Will you just tell me what you’re thinking? I’m kind of on a deadline, here. That thing could be out chewing on someone in town right now and it’d be great to know what the hell it is.”
Richard sighs like he wants to give one of his rare “I’m your dad, not your friend, and I’m disappointed in you” lectures, but he doesn’t, and Austin’s glad for it. It’s too late at night for that kind of thing, anyway, and he isn’t sure he could stay awake to listen. But what comes out of Richard’s mouth next makes Austin’s ears perk up in interest.
“Otter said this morning that a construction worker was hurt here a few weeks ago, didn’t he? Something about a rebar and a lot of blood?”
“Uh, yeah,” Austin says, vaguely remembering something of the sort. He could always call Otter to confirm, but it’s late, and Otter might already be asleep.
“It sounds like all the attacks that have happened started after that,” Richard goes on. “Now, I’m not a betting man, but it seems to me like that amount of blood being spilled might have woken up something.”
Austin arches his eyebrows. “You think it counted as a sacrifice?”
He’s never heard of an accidental blood sacrifice before, but anything’s possible. Most summonings require some amount of blood to be spilled, from what Austin knows, but they also generally require some kind of magic circle or sigil. Unless there’s already something lying dormant under the earth, waiting for someone to draw it back out. Like sharks converging on a bleeding swimmer.
“I don’t know for sure. But that big of an injury, right before all these attacks…” Richard trails off, looking pensive. “It sure sounds like those construction workers woke up something in the woods that doesn’t want them here. Or anyone here, for that matter.”
“Could it manifest as a human, you think?” Austin asks, thinking of Walker, in the next room over. He wonders for the first time how thin the walls of the motel are, if Walker could hear all this - or at least Austin’s side of the conversation - if he tried hard enough.
“Possibly. Like I said, I can’t be sure about any of this,” Richard says. “There’s a chance that even if it could, only you would be able to see it. And other mediums, of course.”
Interesting. It’s true that Austin hasn’t seen anyone besides himself interact with Walker - though Nate at the front desk did say there was another man staying in the hotel, so he clearly checked someone in. Still, food for thought.
“Huh,” Austin says. He wonders how he’s going to explain all of this to Mac and Monty without sounding crazy, and decides that’s an issue he can table for tomorrow. “How do I prove what’s going on?” He pauses, thinking for a moment. “How do I get rid of it?”
“Trying to kill it might make things worse,” Richard says, sounding very much like he knows from experience. He probably does. “So you’ll have to find a way around that. Maybe some way to appease it. As far as proving it goes, you’re going to have to do some research first. See if anything else has happened in the woods here, in the past. Any unexplained deaths, any more animal attacks. Someone or something that might be angry and out for revenge.”
Austin makes a noise of assent into his pillow. He’s pretty sure he saw a library in town, and everything here is within walking distance, so that’s where he’ll go tomorrow. He’s still thinking about it, trying to line up his schedule in his mind, when he falls asleep again.
i think it’s time for austin to go to the most exciting treasure trove of information....TO THE LIBRARY