TIMING: Current-ish LOCATION: The woods PARTIES: Regan and Daniel SUMMARY: Regan is trying to see the Dullahan again, but in the meantime she and Daniel are "birdwatching". They find more than just birds.
Birdwatching, as Daniel learned, did not mean the same thing to Regan as it did him. He often found himself watching living birds in the trees during his walks through the woods. The birdsongs relaxed him in his solitude, and he often found himself watching the same bird for as long as it stayed in his sight. But birdwatching to Regan meant finding dead birds. Not at all the same thing.
He wasn’t opposed to the idea of wandering through the woods to find dead animals. In his youth, he and a friend sometimes drove around the rural backroads looking for roadkill to scrape off the pavement. His friend collected animal bones for display and art projects, which Daniel never really understood, but he was down for the strange vibe. He learned quickly to rub a bit of tiger balm under his nose to block out the smell of decomposing carcasses (which he did for today too, since he really didn’t want to smell decomposing birds). After he and his friend gathered a couple carcasses, he helped with skinning the carcass to get to the bones—his friend assumed Daniel knew all about skinning and cutting animals from hunting deer and preserving their meat for cooking (all of his family and friends knew that he made some real good deer jerky). Of course, Daniel couldn’t tell the other guy that he knew all about cutting up a carcass from his many nights hunting supernatural creatures. That wasn’t something he could just talk about with anyone. Easier to go with the deer story.
So, no, searching for dead animals was not a new hobby for Daniel. Doing this with Regan wouldn’t be the first time he did this in Wicked’s Rest either, as he and Talia searched the bog for dead animals and bones a few months earlier. What made Regan’s offer strange was that she was so obsessed with his spine and bones. He also knew that her heart beat slower than the average human’s, and he recalled seeing her dark eyes and blackened fingertips that night they met the Dullahan. He knew that something was up with her, but he was not sure what. Maybe she wanted to kill him, maybe she didn’t. He wasn’t sure what her deal was.
Even so, he really couldn’t find it in himself to turn down an offer to go look at some dead birds and perhaps put a few in garbage bags for whatever purpose Regan had.
“Found one over here,” Daniel announced as he squatted down next to a little brown bird—a winter wren he noted on closer inspection.
—
Regan was beginning to think they were not going to see the Dullahan again. She should have been satisfied with the last encounter; she knew it. But once all of that oxytocin and epinephrine had been doused from her blood, she was left questioning whether the Dullahan’s approval had been conditional. Approval usually was. And in this case, she wasn’t sure if the Dullahan thought Regan could serve within her current lifestyle, or if she was holding out a decade, or a century, waiting to see if Regan could someday carve herself into a proper instrument once more.
So she needed to find the Dullahan again. This time, she would ask. She might lose her head for it, but the alternative—not knowing if she was feeding failure or fealty for perhaps the rest of her life—was unbearable.
Tonight’s reagents were not right. The humidity was too low, sky too clear, hour too early, location too crowded with thin new growth trees. Even Daniel’s presence could not entirely recreate the right conditions. The sun would set and there would be no Dullahan and Regan would be left without directive and direction.
She was trying to make the best of it. She cradled a crow with a bloodied head, legs and wings hanging limply from her arms. Its body was cold, but based on the decomposition and insect activity, she thought it had died earlier today. Dead animals rarely lasted long in this town. There was always something hungry, waiting to pick them off—Regan’s competition.
She snapped through the winter-dry brush back to Daniel and the dark plastic bags. “That’s eight!” Regan said, carefully wrapping the crow up with the other seven of its kind. All under half an hour. “I think there’s something bigger over there, too… I don’t have any eagles yet.” Oh, that was definitely a crime worse than just a breach of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. “I mean, not that I—a deer! It’s probably a deer. I think we could carry it if we each support an end, but we must figure out the other bags.” Jade was so good at carrying dead deer, Regan’s heart liquified at the thought; Daniel would need to suffice for now. (Also, she still hoped for an eagle.) “You said you found something, though. What is it?”
Regan peered over his shoulder, then crouched down next to him. Her eyes softened when she looked at the bird. The bones of its wing were bent incongruously. Broken. Tiny enough that she could roll them between her fingertips and feel the brittle tension. “What is the species? A wren of some variety?” Its feathers were almost red, still flush with the pigment of life. She picked it up in her gloved hands, splaying the wing out between thumb and forefinger. Yes, broken. The bird was calling for her attention, tempting her sight, but Regan wasn’t going to risk that in front of Daniel—not while there was still light. “Good find. You are not a disappointment. I will allow you to keep this one, should you so choose.” She nodded, approving her own gesture of kindness to Daniel. There was probably a smile under that mustache, right?
The two of them were… well, there was a particular word she disliked, but Daniel was, at the least, among her favorite associates. And Jade trusted him. The experience they shared had forged a bond to the death, Regan thought. No one else would ever grovel in such holiness with her. Their connective tissue was thick. So, she figured, she should really learn more about him. So far, all she really knew was his evasiveness, his profession, and his accent. She respected those who were careful with their words and the information they shared, but after the Dullahan, she needed more, and she wanted to hear it from Daniel instead of Jade. Regan handed Daniel the wren and watched his gentle hands. What questions did you ask to get to know someone better? She fell back on the one that almost always yielded a result of some kind. “When did you first know death?”
—
Regan inspected the wren with closer inspection, and Daniel answered, “I think it’s a winter wren.” He spent his life memorizing characteristics of animals—whether or not they were supernatural—and he guessed based on the bird’s size, coloring, and appearance. If he had one of his field guides, he would doublecheck, but he didn’t want to flip through a book with all this birdwatching.
He placed the wren in a garbage bag but shook his head at her. “Thanks for the offer, but I ain’t in need of no birds.” He paused for a moment. “My place is a little small. Not enough room at the moment. You can have it.” He was not opposed to the idea of keeping the bird for himself—cleaning its bones and putting some of its bones on display in his camper. But he already had enough things in the cramped space. He couldn’t go around keeping everything—what, with moving from town to town over the last few years. He had a few animal bones in his camper, but most of those were given to him by friends. Not ones he found on his own.
Daniel glanced towards the area she had pointed at earlier, where she hoped to find an eagle or a deer. He knew better than to help someone take an eagle body, but he decided to ignore that thought for now. If they found an eagle, he’d decide what to do from there.
Still, he wondered how she knew how to quickly find dead animals. He spent enough time in the wilderness to know that carcasses could be found all over the place, but it was almost as if she inherently knew. He thought back to when she first pointed out a carcass to him, and he found the raccoon. Today, she seemed like an expert at knowing where to find dead birds—and potentially a deer. Maybe it was just good guesses because death was everywhere. Yet a pestering thought jumped into his mind—could she sense dead animals similarly to how he sensed shapeshifters and beasts? No, that didn’t make any sense to him. It was just a coincidence. She probably guessed a dead animal was in certain spots because of course one was.
He placed the bird in one of the garbage bags, the first of his find tonight (maybe he was right about her?). And as typical with Regan, she asked him a question that almost threw him off. Almost, as he came to expect such odd things from her. He maintained a neutral face as he stood up, garbage bag in hand. “Know death?” he asked, slightly raising a brow at her. He felt intimate with death—almost too intimate sometimes—but he couldn’t exactly go around telling her about all the death on his hands. He shrugged as he walked in the direction she pointed towards earlier, towards where he kind of hoped to find a deer (maybe that would confirm something about her?). “I guess when I was a kid. My dad hunts—deer, bear, turkeys, sometimes squirrels. He took me with him, taught me all about guns and crossbows.” Not a lie, not at all. His dad did teach him those things, but his mother taught him even more about weapons and killing. “Learned all the steps of turning a dead deer into a piece of jerky.”
Daniel stepped through the wooded area, his eyes searching everywhere in hope of spotting a deer carcass. “What about you? When did you first know death?”
—
Daniel’s rejection of the winter wren was not unexpected—Regan was used to others flinching away from her gifts—but his reasoning was unusual. No, for Daniel, it was a space issue. He had wanted to afford more space for something so precious, and the sheer thoughtfulness of it bumped against sternum. Regan nodded enthusiastically. “I understand. In that case, it’s better if it comes with me. I have just the spot.” Though the space in her new house was filling like a grave packed tight. Jade was perhaps a hair too permissive, and only drew a line at dead things on the bed (but not hanging above it!).
She sealed off the bags she carried and set them gently on the ground. Then she shrugged her hiking bag off, too; they weren’t going far and she suspected she might need both hands. Hopefully. She flexed them. Ready for eagle wings.
Regan walked by Daniel, nose in the air. She couldn’t actually smell decomposition right now—the wind was stealing it from her—but death brushed against her skin when she faced north. Northwest? She turned slightly, testing. No, due north. It made her face leak into what might have been a smile. She smoothed her sweater out, then ran her nitrile fingers through her hair, combing it into something more presentable. The greasy death on her gloves didn’t bother her. “This way! Not far.”
Daniel being introduced to death as a child probably accounted for how well-adjusted he was. It all made sense. No wonder the Dullahan had permitted him to continue living. (She was still unsure why her own head was allowed to remain on her body.) “Hunting can be educational,” Regan agreed, marching slightly ahead, “not for sport, mind you, but it builds the intestinal fortitude; it teaches. You cannot know skin without skinning, and you cannot appreciate life without death. Your father did you a kindness. Do you agree?” Regan had never been allowed to go hunting—not when her dad took her brothers out for birds. Only once Liam was old enough to go without parental supervision, was Regan able to worm her way in. Once was enough. She did not desire to feel animals die, but what she wanted hadn’t mattered in the end.
“I have always known death,” Regan said simply. Sometimes she wondered how quickly her dad knew what she was. Had she been born screaming from too-swollen lungs? Had her first steps been toward the mousetraps instead of his legs? It had to have been early. The only thing Regan had felt more than death was her dad’s distance. “Death is the only foregone conclusion there is. Why not meet it young? Society would be better for the acknowledgement. Children are delighted by roadkill—parents should permit them to have it.” Regan continued toward the pull she’d felt earlier. “Death is right. Grief is painful. I find humans are poor at separating the two.”
Ahead, death welcomed her.
Not an eagle (there was always next time), but the doe sprawled across the dirt possessed its own beauty. “I knew it!” Its coat was thin and dry, and it lay on its side, gas-bloated abdomen distending. Its legs were tangled in the way of a body that no longer heeded its limits, rather than evidence of injury. “A few days… Yes, three, maybe four.” Regan spoke as she hovered over the animal’s side. Daniel hadn’t asked, but she also wasn’t really speaking for an audience. “The cool weather slowed the flies, but they always find where they are needed.” Regan could see a layer of eggs obscuring what remained of the doe’s eyes, dusting the lashes, and the skin around the mouth was growing crowded, too. The scent of putrescine flooded her when she knelt, and she breathed in a lungful, closing her eyes for a moment. She ran her gloved hand over its flank.
She remembered Daniel existed and glanced over toward him. “Hm. I should have brought the wheelbarrow.” No one could wheel a barrow like Jade, though; in her partner’s absence, it had not occurred to Regan to roll it into the trunk. So that was out. Lifting the deer? Regan couldn’t. Daniel, then. His arms were also far inferior to Jade’s (Regan would eagerly remind her bone partner later if jealousy struck), but… she didn’t want to miss out on the bloat stage by waiting. She could smell the gathering gases. Time waited for no carcass.
This was a large deer.
The command—the honor waiting to be bestowed—was on the tip of her tongue. Carry it. But if Daniel said no, Regan would be unable to do it on her own, and there’d be a scar across the evening. Across… something she might care about, Dullahan or not, because humans did not always appreciate direction. So Regan exchanged those first, intended words for others, and a question mark.
“This one will have to wait until I come back… unless you would carry it to my car?” Regan looked up at Daniel. “Would you?” She was not above wielding her big eyes and a calculated pout as deftly as a rib spreader. Her hands never left the deer’s side. Hairs fell from dead follicles as she stroked its fur.
—
The way Regan spoke about death piqued Daniel’s curiosity. She seemingly knew exactly which direction to find dead animals, and he watched closely as she switched between north to northwest, then back to north, as if following a path to a dead animal. Part of him wondered if she was undead, but her heartbeat led him to think she was alive—no matter how slow her heart thumped in her chest.
He followed her through the trees. “Yeah, I agree,” he said with a quick nod of his head, even if she couldn’t see the nod as he trailed slightly behind her. “I dislike trophy hunters or hunting as merely a sport.” Although, maybe it depended upon what she considered sportsman hunting. He had met people who viewed any hunting as a sport. “I still hunt, but always for food, you know? Never more than I need in a season.” Daniel enjoyed making his deer jerky recipe, but also other types of meals: steaks, burgers, meatballs, all sorts of things. “Think it gave me an appreciation for life and death, in some sort of way. An understanding of the world at a young age.” And an even deeper understanding of death once he learned how to hunt shifters. How to take the life of another … person. His first kill of a shifter—a werewolf—would always remain in his memory.
Daniel chuckled at the idea of children liking roadkill. Maybe some children, but he was certain others were disgusted by the sight of dead animals squashed into pulps by the tires running over them again and again. “Maybe parents could do a better job at explaining death,” he said instead. “None of that nonsense of a dead dog being sent to a farm to live. Too many parents try to avoid discussing death of pets with children.” He thought through her next words, and he struggled to think of what to even say in response. Grief was painful. Daniel felt like an excellent example of how death and grief haunted some people. (He also noted how she specifically said humans, seemingly separating herself from humans.)
He said nothing.
Instead, he let her express her excitement over a dead doe. The stench wafted over to him, and he made a face of disgust. This deer had to be dead for a few days … which Regan seemingly thought too, as she waxed on about the carcass and the maggots lining the deer’s eyes. Part of him was slightly thrilled to have actually found a deer after her earlier suggestion, but he disliked seeing just how grossly dead it was in front of him.
Her suggestion that he carry the carcass to her car left him shocked, although he kept his face neutral as he looked at her. Did she seriously expect him to lift up the doe and carry it back to her car? Daniel stared at her in silence for a few moments, watching as her fingers brushed through the doe’s fur.
“I ain’t sure about that,” he said, thinking through his options (which were either carry the doe or leave the doe). “I ain’t really wanting to lug around a dead deer.” The weight of it didn’t bother him; he knew that carrying would be no issue with his strength. His hunter strength made lifting dead shifters and beasts easy enough, that a doe would be easy enough.
But he really did not want to carry around a deer in his arms.
Regan’s big sad eyes though were almost convincing enough. Daniel was not immune to pleading eyes, and she did seem to really like that disgusting dead doe.
“I ain’t carrying it,” Daniel told her. “But I may have something in my truck. It’s got wheels. Put her on that instead.” He still had dollies in his truck bed that he borrowed from a coworker, and while their wheels weren’t made for rolling through the woods, it was a better option than having to carry that doe in his arms or over his shoulder. “I’m guessing you know exactly how to find our way back to this doe?” he asked. He knew how to get back to this location too, but that was more from his tracking skills.
Daniel turned back around to head back to his truck to get one of the dollies. “It’s impressive how you can find dead animals so easily,” he commented. “How do you do that?”
—
It was no wonder the Dullahan had appeared for them. Daniel was clearly the rare human who understood that nothing must be wasted in death. That if you’re going to end a life, you had better witness what comes after. You had better need it and be ready to carry it all. Maybe if Regan kept Daniel talking about this, the Dullahan would grace them a second time (even if the moon was not right). She would have liked to hear this conversation, wouldn’t she? She would have approved? Of both of them…?
“You are not neglectful,” Regan said. “It seems you have a responsible lineage behind you. Such values are best conferred early… it is harder to shape someone later.” Had Jade been here, would she be giving Regan a nudge right now? One of those looks that meant ease up a little? No, no, she was fine, she decided. Her commentary was still on the correct side of normal, neither foot in the grave. Regan was certain. “I did not have any live pets. I articulated a coyote skeleton when I was eight. His name was Bell.”
Yes, this would go down as one of her great successes. A full page in her journal spattered with ink.
Or… maybe not, because Daniel was saying… that he was not (?) going to carry the deer? What? But Regan had asked correctly, hadn’t she? Sure, she didn’t use the word please, but the question mark was there! Was her tone off? Not inflected upward enough? She could never hear it. Eyes not moist enough? Where had she failed? Regan’s hands froze in the animal’s fur, fingers spread over its ribs. “You won’t help?” This was not the outcome Regan had wanted, and she couldn’t stop her head from dropping, breath leaving her lungs cold. She was going to have to abandon the doe here, and she’d miss most of its impending bloat. Everyone would miss it. No one would be here to give it their presence and devotion. Even the flies were not here in number, owing to the weather, and they were usually the most reliable attendant. Maybe she should have ordered Daniel after all. But then she’d most likely be left without a deer and without—
She looked up. Daniel was not done speaking on the subject. Because he had something in the truck. Regan’s eyes were glued to him as she gripped the deer’s side, hard enough that her fingertips were making indentations in its soft, sweet, autolyzing flesh. All was not lost (only the deer’s life). Daniel was going to help. She needed to stop questioning him; the Dullahan hadn’t. “Oh, then—wheels, yes, good. Grand, even!” Regan sprung to her feet. Her gloves were coated in shiny liquid—fluid that had seeped from the deer’s organs to its thinning skin, now marking her. “That will allow for us to carry more if we find other remains along the way. There should still be space in my car. Not that I would not find room. Maybe we will find a second deer.” Or an eagle.
So he wanted to know how Regan found the animals. Regan met Daniel’s eyes, her chin high. “I am surprised it took you this long to ask.” She never really hid her ability to sense death, though she rarely admitted it freely, either. Carcass after carcass, she’d faced the cruelty of her peers, the isolation, but she had always viewed this particular symptom of hers in a positive light. “I can get us back here, of course,” she wasn’t some child, “I could do it blindfolded.” She had. It was her introduction to promise binding, too—I promise I will not remove the blindfold until I’ve found my way back. Cliodhna knew nights in the muddy moors would straighten her out; it was one of the few lessons for which Regan could still claim retention. “And yes, it is impressive, isn’t it? I always know where to find death. I am a Medical Examiner, you see. A very good one.” Most people would accept the incomplete answer for a whole one. They didn’t want to know. Easier to look away. Humans.
Daniel seemed to know his way around, too. He knew what direction the truck was in, at least, as Regan started after him, her steps light now that she knew they’d be returning. She collected the bird bags as they passed by where she’d left them; the birds could be stowed safely in the car to free up her hands in the field. “I doubt you need me to point us there,” Regan said, making sure she had a good grip on the precious cargo. “You obviously know the woods. You have probably been on this trail a dozen times already. More?”
Gravel crunched under her boots as they entered the lot. Regan approached her car, letting Daniel go to his own for the dolly, but she watched him out of the corner of her eye. There was a chance his plan was to leave her here and speed out onto the road so he didn’t need to help her move a deer; it could’ve been his plan from the second Regan placed her hand on the doe. Her lungs tightened, braced. But Daniel was opening the trunk, and Regan could see him lowering the folded dolly to the ground. She had been right to place some trust in him. Regan slid her bird bag into her passenger seat through the window. The glass was still blown out (it wasn’t even worth repairing, really) so she hadn’t bothered to open the door.
After, she joined him at his car, eyes on the metal dolly. “You came prepared for this. I should have known. At this rate, we will encounter her again in no time. The Dullahan, not the doe. Well, actually, we should hope both are inevitable. Are you prepared for her, as well?” Regan glanced toward the woods, the north. “I will allow you more of my confidence in the future... she has, and she knows.”
—
“Yeah, better to learn values young,” Daniel agreed, although he felt some sort of caution in his words. When he thought about his training as a ranger, not as a hunter of deer and other various animals, he recognized how his mother tried to explain her own moral code around when to kill shifters. She didn’t uphold the idea of killing all shifters, and she attempted some sort of basis around teaching him when to actually go for a kill. He knew a bit about her upbringing in a rigid hunter family—from the strict hunter camp her parents ran to the large hunting parties of killing any werewolf encountered on a full moon. She taught him at a young age how she did not agree with those ideas, which is why he never attended hunter camps and why he tracked shifters to determine if they were a danger to a community before determining if they should be killed.
Which all left him in a strange position sometimes as he thought through this whole moral compass thing. Through all his values taught to him at a young age. These last few years left him in a strange state of mind as a hunter.
Daniel let out an amused breath as Regan mentioned her pet coyote skeleton. Of course she had a skeleton as a pet, rather than a live animal. At this point, most of what she said didn’t come as a surprise to him. Their back and forth messaging left him at a point where this all made sense to him, in some strange, confusing way. “Do you still have Bell?” he asked. “We had two dogs when I was growing up. Two bluetick hounds, if you know what those are.” Hunting dogs for a hunting family, typical.
Even though Regan was a bit of an oddity (well, more than a bit), he still found her intriguing. Almost like a nice presence. He was often drawn towards peculiar people, and her strange questions and obsession with death didn’t really confuse him as much anymore. (Though, don’t get him wrong, he still believed there was a chance she was going to kill him. Maybe a 15% chance.) For whatever reason, he found it easy enough to chat with her even as she sat next to the dead doe and stroked its fur with her gloved hands, even as she looked up at him with her eyes begging him to help her take this dead animal home for whatever strange reason she had. He couldn’t understand why she wanted so many dead animals, but he didn’t really need to know why.
“Yeah, maybe a second deer,” Daniel said with a nod of his head. He wasn’t going to say it out loud—he didn’t want to bring it up—but he was not putting any dead animals in his truck. His truck bed was filled with hunting and camping equipment, and the inside cab only had a front seat. Whatever they found would end up in her car. He mentally drew the line there. Hopefully her car had all the space for whatever they found.
He scrunched his brows together as she explained how she could find death. Her being a medical examiner explained nothing to him—maybe it would to someone else, but for Daniel who spent his life learning about the supernatural world, the answer made zero sense. “So because you’re a medical examiner, you know how to find dead animals?” he asked, keeping his tone casual as he cast a glance over towards her. “Ain’t met any other medical examiners who can do that.” (Not that he’d met that many in the first place. He mostly avoided hospitals and doctors.) “Gotta be something else, yeah?”
They walked back to their vehicles, and he helped Regan by grabbing some of the dead bird bags. “Oh, yeah, a lot of times on this trail,” Daniel answered. “I think I’ve mentioned that I do guided hikes for people. Mostly when tourists wanna venture off the designated trail and need someone who ain’t gonna get them lost.”
Daniel walked over to his truck and opened the tailgate to grab a dolly from when he helped Daiyu move the trophy. He still needed to return them and replace the broken one … but that was a task for a different day. He placed the dolly on the ground and pushed it. The wheels sort of moved through the gravel, but it would have to do for now. He was not going to carry a dead deer. It would be a struggle maneuvering the dolly through the woods, but he would make it work.
“Yup, always prepared,” he responded. He certainly did not keep dollies in his truck for carrying dead animals, but he didn’t think it was too important to state that to her. “I think we’ll just focus on the dead doe for now.” He did not want the Dullahan to make another appearance for him. If she came again, he decided that he may have to actually fight her to ensure that neither he nor Regan were killed. Just because the strange headless woman left them alive last time did not mean she would do the same a second time.
Daniel grabbed onto the side of the dolly, lifted it up, and placed it to hold it under his arm. Rather than push it through the woods, he preferred carrying it and avoiding the unnecessary hassle until it became … necessary? Sure, necessary. Until it became necessary for rolling the doe carcass back to Regan’s car. The two walked back to where they left the carcass. Upon entering the familiar area, Daniel glanced around as it seemed like the doe had disappeared. “This is the right spot, ain’t it?” he asked as he put down the dolly. He walked over to where he could have sworn the doe had been. The grass was flattened from where, he assumed, the doe had been. A closer inspection revealed tufts of fur in the grass, which he picked up and rubbed between his gloved fingers. He noted his and Regan’s tracks from earlier, confirming this had been where they found the doe.
He hummed to himself as he looked around the area for another set of tracks. Something came for this doe, though he wasn’t sure what it was. “Well, I guess we gotta keep looking for some birds.”
—
“I do have Bell,” Regan said. “He is one of the few possessions I still—I have not been home for a long time. I do not engage in sentimentality, but it’s nice to have something from then. Much less fragile than a live animal, though I suspect most people would think otherwise.” Daniel mentioned his old dogs, a rare piece of personal information cast out of him. She slotted it into her hippocampus. If only the living could be cut open, everything exposed under the hanging fluorescents of the autopsy suite. “I know what a dog is.” Regan shot him a look with a raised brow. Or had he meant the specific breed? Too late to ask.
The dolly did not glide easily over twigs and leaves and gravel, but Daniel was making it work, his hands and shoulders steady. This was the easy part, Regan knew. The way back would be more challenging; the woods would be stubborn in their release of the deer, and Regan would have to make sure Daniel was not tempted to leave the dead weight behind (he hadn’t left her behind; his track record of accepting dead weight was encouraging).
Regan felt a bit useless with free hands—always did, and sometimes even without free hands. For a moment, she debated answering his earlier question, because Daniel saw through the medical examiner explanation. He was unusually clear-eyed; lies were just more forest for him to navigate. His shaggy mustache made Regan want to underestimate him, and she wasn’t sure why (the Dullahan never would). Perhaps it was strategic. As they rolled closer to where they’d left the doe, the temptation never quite withered away. Here Daniel was, helping her, going birdwatching, surviving the Dullahan’s judgement by her side, and Regan had not told him of her function.
“You were right,” Regan said, walking alongside Daniel and the dolly (and her chest swelled thinking the deer would soon join them), “but I am no hack. I do not cut corners. My expertise is real. Much of what I know does come from my occupation and experience.” She licked her lips, which felt dry, and she tasted the slightest, most gentle lingering of decomposition. You could not be so near death and not be touched back by it. “So I will tell you. There is something…”
Regan froze. “Something is wrong.”
The woods were truly silent when Daniel and the dolly went still with her. She knew what was wrong. They would pile into the clearing and the doe would be gone. The emptiness ahead of them gaped inside her like an abdominal cavity without organs to fill it.
They continued, and there it was: nothing. They were standing where the doe had shared its precious fluids with the grass, and now there was nothing at Regan’s feet. Daniel seemed equally mystified, lowering himself to look for evidence in an appropriately forensic manner. Her fingers curled to fists, glamour cracking with her knuckles. “This is very much the spot,” her eyes were still on the ground like she could will the doe back, “and I think you know that, too.” She turned to him, all the congeniality they cultivated vanished with the body, because some things were more important. She’d slash across the evening and need to hope it did not scar.
Regan spoke slowly. “Which means someone stole my doe, and they will not get away with it. The birds will wait. I will not be disregarded.” She rolled up the sleeves of her sweater and flicked her gaze down to the sparse spots of rusty blood and disrupted grass and dirt. Daniel seemed to notice some fur, too, which might have been from the deer or might have been something else. “What is that from?” Regan asked him. Her breath whistled high in her mouth. “Whoever took it dragged the carcass.”
Could it have been someone or something dangerous? Yes, probably. That was a problem for when the doe was back in her waiting arms.
She didn’t need to follow something so subtle. Regan lifted her head, gaze pulled automatically through the trees. She invited her death sight, eyes filling dark and vision narrowing only to what mattered. Daniel ceased to be sensed, but the doe’s death was soft and prickling against her skin. “You can track it with me, or you can remain here. Either way, I will take the dolly and return with my doe.” She looked toward him, eyes drawn more to mice, worms, birds. “Perhaps it’s a test. Are you coming?”
—
Daniel gave Regan a funny look as she replied that she knew what a dog was, because he never doubted that for a moment. She was odd, that was for certain, but he knew the same could be said for himself (he was, at times, too aware of his own eccentricities). He moved past the comment on dogs, deciding it wasn’t important either way. He’d grown used to her strange comments now—her weird notes about his autopsy or his dead body still gave him some alarm, because of course they did, but it almost seemed like normal, casual conversation to her. He also guessed that she might not be human, so it sort of made sense that she would have such … strange things to say. Especially from her explanation of how being a medical examiner made her such a professional at sniffing out dead animals.
He hoped she would finish telling him about the something before trailing off about the something wrong around them. He wanted to hear more about what she may say—would she actually admit that there was so much more to her abilities than being a medical examiner—but the missing doe caught their attention instead. As he scanned the woods to see if he could spot anything, he listened to Regan insist on finding the doe even as he wanted to return to finding the dead birds (a much better task). Daniel wanted to keep her away from the Dullahan this time around, and maybe he sort of convinced himself that his being here would ensure her safety. (He was a hunter after all. Of course he thought he could fight anything. He fought and killed beasts that towered over him, so what was a headless woman? He was better prepared to deal with whatever she was this time around. Maybe. (Probably not.)).
Daniel was not at all a Dullahan expert—he barely understood what she was from how Regan described her—but the deer completely missing didn’t really seem like a sign from the Dullahan. She probably would have just taken the deer’s head. Unless she thought it was an offering from them. Oh, fuck, he did not want that to be true.
His gaze followed where the doe was dragged across the earth until it seemingly disappeared. Something took it. Something that could lift up a heavy doe carcass.
“Well, it’s my dolly,” Daniel replied, turning his attention over to Regan. It wasn’t his dolly—it was a coworker’s, but that didn’t seem entirely relevant. “I think …,” he trailed off for a moment. Sure, he suggested looking for more dead birds, but if this was the Dullahan again… “I think we’ve got plenty of birds though, yeah? We should head back. It’s getting kinda late anyway.”
But clearly not, because Regan insisted that they find the doe. She turned her back to him and marched off into the dark, leaving him behind. Daniel ran his hand across his face and shook his head. It would be so easy to just go back to his truck and get out of here, but something in him insisted that he stick with Regan. As much as he didn’t want to encounter the Dullahan again. But he thought back to Jade and Regan’s relationship, how he let Regan get hurt the last time they met the Dullahan. How that must have felt for Jade to see her bone partner’s neck covered in bruises. He shuddered as he recalled that feeling of that time he came home to an injured Talia (yes, he couldn’t stop thinking about her, no matter how hard he tried. It was impossible to shake her off him. He still held a love for her even though he knew that she was trained to kill him)---but he knew that ache in his body as he watched her shake and tremble from the injuries, how he took care of her and soothed her. He didn’t know what Jade felt, but he could only guess how he would feel if a friend and fellow hunter let his partner get injured. Especially if they let his partner get injured a second time. (Not that he had a partner anymore. He didn’t really want another one of those. Too much mess.)
He stood up and stretched out his neck. He heard Regan plodding through the woods, and he followed after her. “Hey, I’m joining you,” Daniel said as he caught up to her and walked by her side. She shouldn’t be wandering off into the night without someone around to keep her protected from all the danger that lurked about.
The pair continued on a short distance farther into the night, but the night gave Daniel pause as an ache started in his neck and slithered its way down his spine before spreading out through his back. He glanced around, staying calm yet alert, looking for what set off his ranger senses. He didn’t want to startle Regan, so he turned to look over at her, “I think we oughta head back. Ain’t found the doe yet so it’s probably long gone.” He placed his hands on his hips as they walked, one hand hovering above where he kept his handgun hidden under his clothing and the other above one of his hidden knives. “We should go.”
—
Daniel seemed to have a change of heart (not one requiring cardiac surgery) and Regan was not sure why. But he was attempting to steer them back. Away. Call it an evening. The cowardice was disappointing and surprising in Daniel, but Regan understood that the human nervous system had its limitations (hers was less prone to misfire; an instrument second guessed nothing).
She would be extremely nice about this deficit of Daniel’s. “The Dullahan will not desire your spine for her whip if she hears of this display. Giving up so easily… we are both armed! So stand tall, saighdiúir. Be a skeleton worthy of harvest, as I know you to be.” He probably needed to hear something inspiring—humans enjoyed platitudes like a hobby. She really was being so kind and thoughtful (if only Jade could see and beam at her). “My grandmother used to say, ‘bíonn na cuileoga ag lorg an chréachta is mó’. It is the largest, most grievous wound that draws the flies. We must expose ourselves if we are not to be punished. We may even be rewarded.” Regan marched straighter through the darkening woods.
“My answer, then, is no. Birds are not deer. And a later hour increases our odds with the Dullahan.” It didn’t take long for Daniel to solidify his presence at her side again. Or maybe she was at his side. The Dullahan had bestowed approval to him first, after all. She looked at him. “I am not leaving without my deer. It is that simple.” That was clear now, yes?
And once more, Daniel could decide for himself if he wished to remain nearby, though Regan would firmly ‘request’ the dolly if he tried to abscond with it. An excellent dolly, really; it had grown on her. The sheer utility. The reliability. The kindness without judgement. She liked what the dolly had to say… meaning the sound of its wheels over sticks and pebbles. The Dullahan surely would have approved of the dolly. Fate—if it existed—had recognized something within the dolly and seen it fit to bind together its purpose with Regan’s own today. She did not want to be without the dolly. “I can tell the doe isn’t gone, and I think you can, too. You continue to study our surroundings.” Whatever Daniel was seeing, whatever his expertise was tracking, didn’t matter to Regan. Death pulled her body forward, and never had it failed her.
She had been so absorbed, she might have missed the onset of more nerviness from Daniel. Because he still wanted to go? Regan gave him a tired look. “This is important.” Though her hands were antsy and as the sun passed away further, the Dullahan felt ever-closer, not far beyond the deer itself. That must have been it, she realized. The nerves. It all made sense now; this whole time, she had been attempting to ease Daniel’s concerns incorrectly. “You fear she will reject you this time,” Regan said, explaining to Daniel what she knew him to be feeling. “You think if we try to reclaim the deer and fail, it will be more humiliating than not attempting to recover the remains in the first place.” She tapped a gloved finger on her lips and tasted a trace of rancid decompositional fluid. That had been an accident. “I believe she will think more poorly of us if we abandon the deer. She might at least still see value in our heads, if we fail. That is what I think.” Regan looked toward Daniel, not unkindly. Did that help him? She wanted to help him, to allow him to overcome. “It is an understandable concern. I will accept the consequences. I could have stayed with the deer while you retrieved the dolly.” Except she hadn’t trusted him to come back. Another fault. “I will not allow you to be tainted by my error. I will make sure she sees.”
Night had nearly fallen over the woods now, but Regan could feel how close they were. In front of them, a tall, uneven rockface waited. A cave gaped. It was shouting for Regan. “Over here!” She was reaching for her phone to turn the light on, but hadn’t even wrapped her fingers around it before spotting something hunched inside. And smelling the stale but mild rot of fresh remains, stagnant inside the cave. Deer. The hunched thing moved. Its eyes shined blue-green.
The animal was difficult to see, but looked like some kind of… bird? Not a species Regan was familiar with, though Daniel probably knew it. And she hadn’t anticipated encountering any live birds today, while birdwatching. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the cave, and now she could see more than those tapetum lucidum and an outline of feathers. The bird was enormous. The size of a mountain lion. Its flanks shone with scales, and a rooster’s comb ornamented the top of its skull. Most importantly, Regan could see the dark pile of her doe’s remains wet and sloppy behind it. She felt them even more clearly—death bleated and bled for her, no longer a carcass’s caress but trying to rake her closer by the skin.
She was not leaving without her deer.
“Ears,” Regan said, not glancing back, and it was all she managed to speak before her lungs pushed out the scream. It exploded into the cave, echoes still blaring after the initial short burst of decibels. The bird screamed back, an obvious cry of agony. “Thieving coileach!” Regan leaned toward the cave opening. “Return my deer to me at once. Shoo! Leave!” That echoed, too.
She heard its talons scrape against stone as it stepped closer. A gust of cold air hit her—a flap of the bird’s oversized wings. It screeched like a big chicken stuffed into a garbage disposal. Regan’s lungs swelled in answer. Jade would have pulled her back. There are other decomposing deer, she’d remind Regan. And were the bird mantling over anything else, Regan would have run without argument. But it had her deer. So Regan stepped closer, another scream vibrating its way up her chest, waiting for oxygen to ignite it. The bird lunged before she could feed it with a breath.
—
Daniel had very little to say in response to Regan attempting to convince him that the Dullahan accepted him—or that he feared the Dullahan would kill him this time. He hoped that strange entity would not make an appearance again, but if it happened again, he already knew that he would die trying to keep her away from the two of them. He thought at times that he had become too relaxed about hunting and keeping people safe. Even if he suspected that Regan may not be human, he knew she was important to Jade. Reminder after reminder passed through his mind—Regan was an important person in Jade’s life which meant he needed to keep her safe this time. He said nothing in response though, deciding to pass over the discussion about the Dullahan. He found himself often doing that with her. She would bring up the Dullahan in their texts, and he’d bypass that discussion with little acknowledgment (he had plenty of experience in his life of rerouting the conversation away from the supernatural towards something else instead).
Regan ignored his insistence to leave (though he knew that he could probably insist better. If he revealed what he knew then maybe they could get out of this situation). “Let’s not …” Daniel trailed off as he saw movement in the cave. He stepped closer towards the cave, and he narrowed his eyes as he tried to get a clearer look at the beast hunched over the doe carcass. Even though his night vision was slowly developing more over the last couple years, it was not close to what other rangers sometimes had. But it was enough for him to see the large winged figure moving towards the two of them. He recognized the red fleshy comb on the top of its head, the deep golden brown feathers covering its wings, and the vibrant green scales coating its body.
Daniel dropped the dolly and reached out to pull Regan away from what he recognized as a cockatrice. But she said ears without a glance towards him, and rather than grabbing hold of her, his hands flew to his ears as she started screaming. Her scream reverberated off the cave’s walls. He slammed his eyes shut as the scream pierced his eardrums. What the fuck? That was not a scream he expected to hear from her. His heightened hearing already made noisy environments feel like too much for him sometimes—his brief time living in a small city was too much for him for a multitude of reasons, and top of that list was being able to hear his neighbors moving about in their apartments. Each footstep, creak of a floorboard, and chattering conversation drove him mad. And now she screamed at an unexpected volume.
“What the fuck, Regan,” he grumbled, still keeping his hands over his ears as she and the cockatrice screeched at each other. He slung off his backpack, grabbing for earplugs that he knew he kept in there in case he encountered a siren, and he moved fast as he shoved them into his ears. He wasn’t going to listen to all this screaming when he needed to keep her away from the cockatrice and its deadly venom—venom that he knew would kill him, and he guessed it would probably kill her.
The cockatrice crowed its warning at Regan, but she seemed to stay in place. Daniel muttered under his breath as he and the cockatrice moved towards her at the same time. He grabbed onto the sides of her arms and yanked her away from the cockatrice, right before it could jump onto her and sink its teeth into her flesh, releasing its venom into her. He dropped one hand away from her, but his other kept a tight grip on her as he steadied his gaze on the cockatrice that took a moment to shake its head and ruffle its feathers at missing its target.
“We need to fucking go,” he said through gritted teeth, as he removed an earplug from one of his ears. “Forget the deer.” He considered tossing her over his shoulder and booking it out of the cave, but the cockatrice now stood between them and their exit. It paced back and forth as it stared the two down, and it crowed in anger as it rushed towards them again. Daniel pulled her towards the opposite side of the cave, away from the irritated cockatrice.
—
Regan expected to feel the weight and claws of the animal crashing into her, but the impact never came. Daniel was there instead, gripping her arms, and the half-formed scream rammed against the inside of her chest and surged up her throat. The alley flashed through her mind. The graffiti. The way Pubik had grabbed onto her as she screamed. The spray he was reduced to, with only ribbons of his bloody flesh dangling from her hands. It couldn’t happen again. It couldn’t. Regan bit down hard, keeping the decibels inside, blood spreading in her mouth. She stumbled back as Daniel addressed the creature, keeping a careful distance between them and it.
With its feathers on end, the animal looked huge. And it was blocking them. Daniel was troubled by that… but as far as Regan was concerned, it meant they were on the right side of the animal. Her eyes fell bright on the remains, so close. More splattered than before, intestines looping out, a leg crushed by a beak or talons. It was rotting so vulnerably. And it was her deer, and it was waiting for her, and—Daniel was saying to forget it?
“I’ll never forget the deer!” Regan tried to save it, sneak past the animal, but Daniel reeled her back. He fenced her by the cave wall as he turned back toward the screeching creature (which increasingly seemed less like a bird). It shrieked and rared up on its hindlegs, and Regan swallowed back the response she wanted to scream back. Regan looked between the deer, at Daniel, back again. She could still feel those icy fingers on her neck, the ones that’d grabbed her by the hairs of her nape when she thought about the alley. Daniel… The living or the dead? The human or the deer? She already knew the answer.
It felt like allowing the deer to sink to the depths of a tar pit, but she was not willing to die for it or further risk Daniel’s safety. It wasn’t human remains.
The creature prowled. She noticed the blood on its claws. Her deer. That was never going to not be painful. “Okay,” Regan said, “we can leave. But are you—” The animal pounced again, and Regan did screech back this time, though barely. The thing flinched. Hesitated. Left the cave opening exposed. She looked toward Daniel. “What is the plan? Because I may change my mind if we wait too long.” What was he planning on doing? Because if the answer was killing this creature, then Regan did want that deer, as well as the new carcass. But—well, it would’ve been wrong, killing something for its scavenging. Regretfully, she looked toward Daniel for direction.
—
Daniel rolled his eyes as Regan insisted that she would not forget the deer, ignoring his suggestion that they get the fuck out of this place. The last thing he wanted was the cockatrice killing either or both of them. He kept his eyes focused on the beast as it moved around the area, keeping them trapped in the cave until it jumped towards them again.
At least now Regan seemed more interested in leaving behind the carcass and escaping the danger. But it jumped at them again, and this time Daniel did not hesitate as he pulled out his handgun that he kept hidden in a holster underneath his clothing. He kept his eyes trained on the cockatrice even as he could see in the corner of his eye Regan looking towards him. “There’s an opening for now,” he said, as he carefully sidestepped towards the cave entrance. “Move towards the entrance. Just gotta get away from it.” He placed his body in front of Regan’s as he moved them towards the escape, though he never took his eyes away from the cockatrice.
As they moved closer towards the entrance, closer to safety, the cockatrice screeched and rushed at them. With no time for second-guessing, Daniel lifted up his handgun, instructed Regan, “Your ears,” and fired a shot right at the creature’s chest, right at its heart. The gunshot harmonized with the cockatrice’s screeching as both sounds echoed off the cave’s walls. He waited a moment and watched as the creature collapsed to the ground.
“Don’t move,” he said, still not taking his eyes off it even though he guessed it was dead—or almost dead. He stepped over to it, checking to see if he could hear its heartbeat or see if it was still breathing. He kept his handgun pointed and ready in case the cockatrice jumped at him. He didn’t hear anything, and the ache in his back left his body, telling him that there was no longer a beast nearby.
Daniel sighed, switched on his gun’s safety, and returned it to the holster. He stared down at the cockatrice for a moment, before turning his attention towards Regan. “Sorry,” he said, an apology for killing a living creature in front of her. “Didn’t want it getting either of us.”
—
It wasn’t surprising that Daniel carried a firearm on him—Regan had assumed as much. No one who didn’t carry a weapon mentioned deer jerky. But it being expected didn’t matter; as soon as she saw it in his hand, trained over the creature, her heart slammed inside her. She didn’t like firearms. Despite the hunting with her brothers, despite knowing how to shoot a gun herself, she had seen too much violence explode out of the barrel of a gun to feel safe around them. Ironic, really. The Voice didn’t need to be here with her for her to realize that—she was uneasy around guns yet they were more humane than her own lungs.
There was not a chance she was going to leave him here, even though she knew Daniel could protect himself. He’d demonstrated as much with the Dullahan, and most humans would not have continued on with her to retrieve the deer. So Regan needed to be better, too. She would not allow her own cowardice to snip at the tether the Dullahan had honored them with. She needed to at least be his equal. She was supposed to be a force of nature. Above fear. Above almost everything, really, though the list had atrophied over the last couple of years. Some harbinger she was. How worthy of approval.
Daniel offered the same warning she’d given him—ears—only Regan didn’t need one beyond preventing a startle. She might have been a failure, but that didn’t change her anatomy, and loud noises were more beautiful to her than any music. (Which was not particularly telling, but Jade wasn’t here to point that out.) She didn’t move to cover any of her holes.
The shot rang through the space, and the creature let out a final, screeching squawk at the same time. Quick. Had it come from Daniel’s mouth, Cliodhna might have fawned. Regan felt the death, another source of friction between the layers of her skin, joining the deer. She’d known even before Daniel instructed her not to move. “It’s dead,” Regan said, though she doubted that was going to change the fact he wanted to check. There was a tragedy here, and Regan recognized it. In reclaiming her carcass, she had effectively caused the death of another animal. Or made Daniel cause it, really, which might have been worse. That had never been something she’d wanted, but now that it was here, and it deserved to decompose where someone could cherish it… as she’d told Daniel before, she intended to leave with both carcasses now.
The apology surprised her more than the death. “I should be the one apologizing,” Regan said, not apologizing. “I made you believe you needed to kill something. You accompanied me and then I refused to leave the carcass, and then you thought I was in danger. Or perhaps you feared for your own life more, but I don’t think that was true. Or you wanted the carcass, too, and would not admit it… that is possible.” She glanced at him, assessing. No; he didn’t look at the pile of deer parts even once. “But that belief was incorrect. I’m capable of not dying.” Regan stood straighter. “Not indefinitely, of course. But I can handle Jade’s… vampires, and I can handle this mutated bird.” She was never in real danger, definitely not. Because she could have handled it. Never mind that the creature was faster than her ability to scream at it, or the fact it had already almost ripped open her jugular. If she had been able to stun it, deafen it, then she could get her hands on its hide and scream it to nothing like a murderer pretending to be a force of nature. Her hands felt wet and warm with Richard Pubik.
They didn’t feel worthy of the death before her, but staying here wasn’t an option. Daniel could be trusted to handle the remains, so Regan allowed him to help her load them onto the dolly (she adored that dolly like a child adored roadkill). Truth be told, he did most of it, and Regan tried to remain objective about muscle tone and not worry that he wanted both of them for himself this entire time and was a particularly effective liar. That would have gone against everything she knew about Daniel. Conversationally, sure. But mostly via the Dullahan.
The dolly was full and heavy now. There was the deer with its ruptured organs and tattered flaps of skin, and now the bird. She was going to articulate its skeleton, for certain. How did it have scales when it was so clearly avian? And she was not sure what to make of the tail. How many vertebrae—right, Daniel. She chased him and her dolly full of her remains (not his) out of the cave, the light making her squint even as it was softening into a sunset.
“I have questions,” Regan said finally, though she was remiss to break the peace. As it was growing darker, the Dullahan might call for them at any moment (assuming she was both capable of speech and decided to utilize it this time; Regan wondered what her voice would sound like and then what praise would sound like in her voice), and Regan could not miss it. “Have you seen this species before?” Her eyes drifted to the creature on the dolly. Its feathers were dripping blood onto the wood. She refrained from touching; she might have been a failure, but she was strong in other ways. “You were ready. Most people would have run, but you drew the gun and your hand never shook. Yes, you hunt. I am aware. Most hunters would not remain calm under those circumstances, however.. And… you are friendly with Jade. You know about her. So I cannot help but wonder…” Another thought occurred to her. “Your ears—why did you bring earplugs, anyway?” That wasn’t something most people carried around. Jade would not tell Daniel, but maybe—was it possible he knew? Had anticipated this? Her? When she was an expert at subtlety?
—
Daniel raised a brow as she explained how he did not need to apologize. He was uncertain how to explain that he did have to kill the cockatrice, probably, to keep them both alive. At least he thought he did. The beasts moved fast and their venom was deadly, so it was either them or it in this situation. He sighed and shook his head at her. “No, I ain’t wanting the carcass of it.” He knew from conversations with Jade that Regan wanted to join her on hunts, and she also told him that Regan only knew so much about the world of the supernatural, not believing in most of the creatures that lurked in the world, especially in this town. “Ain’t a mutated bird,” he said, though he paused for a moment as he thought about it. “Well, I guess in a way it is.”
They moved on though to collect the carcasses, loading them onto the dolly. He carried it carefully but quickly at the same time, as he didn’t want to spend too much longer in the woods. He thought it would be best to get back to the vehicles to load up her car, though he was not entirely certain how both creatures would fit in there. But that really wasn’t his problem, was it? He decided that he may help her squish everything into the trunk and backseat, but nothing would end up in his truck.
He pushed the dolly out of the cave. The weight of two dead animals was a lot on the dolly, but he was a hunter, he had plenty of strength to shove this stupid dolly through the woods. He grunted as one wheel got stuck behind a rock, and he pulled the dolly back and jerked it to the left to keep it moving through the woods. The wheels got stuck a few times, but he pushed and shoved enough that it kept moving.
“And I might have answers.” Daniel expected Regan’s questions—he questioned enough about her that he guessed it was his turn to be the suspicious one. At least she already knew about hunters, so it wasn’t as though he would have to explain a whole new world to her. “Cockatrice,” he answered. “Do you know what a basilisk is?” His turn for his first question. It would be easier to explain one if she already knew the other, but he suspected he may have to do further explaining if Jade was right about how much Regan knew.
He grunted as he pushed the dolly up a small incline, and he placed his foot on the wooden platform to get some leverage to wheel it up through the forest floor. “Guess I ain’t scared of much, which you oughta already know.” He referred to their encounter with the Dullahan, though maybe she did not think about that as a frightening type of moment. Whatever. The ground flattened out after the brief incline, and he pushed the dolly across the ground. “The earplugs come in useful for what I do,” Daniel replied. “Or noise canceling headphones. Sometimes both.” A vague answer that didn’t really get to the point of what she was actually asking.
The dolly’s wheels got stuck again, and he grumbled as he stopped pushing and walking for a moment. He squatted down to inspect the wheels. They were not meant for rolling through the forest with two animal carcasses, but they weren’t really made for a giant heavy magical trophy. He tore out some of the twigs stuck in the wheels and tossed him to the side. As he stood up, he sighed and placed his hands on his hips as he looked towards Regan. “Look, Jade and I … Well, I guess we run around in the same circles. You already know that she hunts vampires,” Daniel said. “I’m sort of like her. I don’t hunt vampires though.” He turned back towards the dolly and pushed it again, and this time it slid forward smoothly. “I hunt shapeshifters and other beasts.” He motioned towards the cockatrice. “Like cockatrices.”
—
Basilisk… the word did sound familiar. They were lizards, Regan remembered—or at least something like them. Lived in the tropics. She had seen a skeleton for sale online once, no doubt of dubious legality, and had resisted purchasing it for the simple desire of evading the very trackable international wildlife trade. None of that mattered. The creature oozing from the surface of the dolly, wedged next to the shiny remains of her doe, was not a small lizard. If anything, it was avian, but the scales were undeniable. Every time the dolly jerked over a rock and Daniel righted it, the edges of all the scales and feathers caught the last of the light. And the hind legs were not exactly… “I’m familiar with basilisks, though I do not yet have the skeleton of one. This is not a lizard,” Regan declared, with the same certainty she might’ve affirmatively declared it to be a mutated bird.
Then Daniel used the word cockatrice. Why was he asking about lizards, then? It didn’t matter. And Regan wasn’t sure she wanted to palpate for answers. “I see.”
The line between what she did know and what she didn’t know was a cliff she dreaded toeing. Vampires. Zombies. Ghosts. The words never stopped getting caught on her tongue, and rarely made it past her lips if they formed at all. Vampires were easiest—Regan had seen them, had seen what Jade meant by the word, and she could at least use the term around others who understood she wasn’t referring to Dielight (she hadn’t seen the movie, but heard it was about a banshee whose lover ‘came back’ after death and the banshee then, obviously, needed to destroy their lover for the insult to Death). Zombie was inexcusable. Ghost was… forget about that one. Cockatrice, at least, didn’t offend her pre-existing vocabulary, and didn’t threaten the natural order of all things.
So she was coming home with a cockatrice—fine. She allowed Daniel to steer the dolly through the remainder of the woods, since he was treating both sets of remains with continued respect. He really was well-lubricated for almost anything they had encountered. Though Regan thought he was a bit bashful about his performance in front of the Dullahan. Not because it was poor; he excelled at being passable. Regan trailed behind, but not far. She kept an eye for any dragging entrails or snagged skin.
“Yes, you were prepared. Some healthy fear, perhaps, as humans are supposed to have a modicum even when they are respectable. Self-preservation. I admire the fortitude. I, too, am above fear. Self-preservation does not apply to me, though.” Or had that changed? What had pushing her grandmother into Farraige na Buanachta been if not some form of self-preservation? It had not been selfless. That was the point. One single act that was not, followed by hundreds of choices that would’ve made Cliodhna scream so hard her teeth would’ve shot out of her mouth. “Or it didn’t. I don’t know.” There was an obvious way to have an answer. “I will ask the Dullahan.”
As the parking lot came into sight, the trees thinning and forest floor transitioning to gravel, Regan began considering the geometry. She’d need to fit both carcasses in her trunk, which already had a number temporarily housed there (they would definitely smell by now). If she opened the compartment between the seats, allowing access to the trunk, maybe she could have the cockatrice’s tail poke through there. But first, she was still waiting on information from Daniel. She guided him toward her Honda, clear tarps stretched over several of the windows where she’d screamed the glass to dice.
She didn’t move to open the car; it felt like giving up. Daniel had no questions for the Dullahan. Regan would be leaving the woods tonight without having seen her, and it would shred her thoughts for days and days, and Daniel would simply move on, confident in the initial assessment. Not understanding how many more years and complexities Regan had to account for. Regan only knew such confidence standing over an autopsy table. “And you are always prepared because…?” She raised an eyebrow, but her attention was split between Daniel and the contents of the dolly that sat stenching between them. Daniel seemed to be weighing something as he dislodged some sticks from the wheels, but it didn’t take long—he was rather decisive, Regan had found, but rarely made a big deal out of it.
He stood straight, and Regan waited. Deliberation had left his face. “The same circles.” Regan was right. But was she correct about the hunter thing, or were her more specific suspicions warranted? Her fists tightened, nails probably biting into her palms, and she refused the temptation to put herself between Daniel and the dolly. Hunter or not, his actions were his actions; she should still trust him as she did before. “Okay. So you are a hunter. A slayer, or…” No, he was trying to explain something else.
He was less like Jade and more like… Daiyu? Regan knew too many of these people now. She was getting better at understanding the variations and genetics (she studied Jade especially thoroughly), but there was still one kind of hunter that hadn’t entered her orbit—and she had hoped to keep it that way. In Saol Eile, they were called maor. Here, she’d learned, they were wardens.
Regan stared at the pocket Daniel had popped the earplugs into earlier. She stared too long. (She also noticed his shirt was slightly tattered, dirt-smeared, and had some blood on it). “Shapeshifters.” She said, her eyes narrow and expression almost bored. And how appropriate that the word never settled peacefully in her mouth or her mind. It was—if she could be inelegent—the biggest load of feces anyone had ever attempted to serve her. Daiyu had, and now Daniel. But unlike Daiyu, Daniel wasn’t insisting there were humans who became other things. “The only thing this cockatrice is going to shift into is a skeleton, and I assure you the bones are already ready and waiting under flesh and muscle. Things don’t, people don’t—” She shook her head, lifted a hand to her messy hair, because there was a chain reaction in her thoughts she didn’t want to ignite, that began with Daniel killing things he believed were ‘werewolves’ and ended with humans in her morgue beneath her tender hands.
The more obvious conclusion, the more dangerous one right now, was more appealing. “I know what those were really for, the earplugs. Do not lie to me.” Had she been a fraction bolder she might’ve called him a warden then and there.
—
Regan stared at him for what seemed too long, and as she repeated the word shapeshifter back at him, Daniel realized just how right Jade was about Regan not knowing much about the supernatural world. He had no idea what Regan was—certainly not human—but he assumed that she would at least recognize how strange everything was in this world, especially in Wicked’s Rest. At this point in his life, Daniel decided that all the oddities were normal enough. Why wouldn’t there be killer snowmen or clothing that tried to kill you? Why not get trapped in a video game? It was all nonsensical, but it might as well happen.
“I ain’t saying that that shapeshifts,” he said, pointing towards the cockatrice carcass. “I said shapeshifters and other beasts. That falls into the other.” Daniel knew he was doing a poor job at explaining any of this to Regan. He was better at keeping information secret, which meant not talking about it. When he talked about the supernatural, usually the other person was aware enough that he didn’t have to explain much of anything. “You’ve heard of basilisks, so they sometimes lay eggs in a hen house and then you end up with this. A hybrid creature.” Terrible explanation, he thought, but the best he could do. He wasn’t a teacher, not by any means.
He signed as he tried to think about how to explain the shapeshifter part. She had trailed off her words, leaving it at the part about people, and he tried to explain that some people shifted and sometimes … sometimes he killed them. Sometimes he had to kill them. Just sometimes.
Daniel crossed his arms over his chest and glanced around the area. “Look,” he started, as he turned his gaze back to Regan. “Not everyone is human. Some people can shapeshift into werewolves or sirens or bugbears or …” He sighed, not really wanting to get into the long list of shifters that she may have never heard of before this moment. He stopped himself before he announced that shifters weren’t human. They weren’t, but it came with some strange feelings whenever he thought about one shifter in particular.
He raised a brow at her going back to asking about the earplugs. Her scream was awful, and his head still rang from what he heard before shoving the earplugs into his ears. But he was not exactly sure why she was so focused on the earplugs. He already sort of explained them. “Like I said, they come in handy,” he answered, arms still crossed over his chest as he looked down towards her. “Sirens, they’re a shapeshifter. Got a killer singing voice that can hypnotize you. The earplugs and headphones come in handy to block out sounds.”
But why had Regan brought up the earplugs twice? The second time sounded accusatory, as if they had something to do with her. Daniel tried to remember what he picked up on from the Farrans over the many years of training with them and even more years of hunting with Robbie, as he tried to think of anything about Regan. He guessed she wasn’t undead, because why would Jade, a slayer, date someone she hunted? (He refused to do any introspection on himself and his former feelings for Talia—fuck, why did he still have feelings for her?) He didn’t think she was a shifter or human, so that left him with few options. He wished he could narrow it down, but he wasn’t putting together any of the pieces. “Why do you care so much about the earplugs?”
—
A warden would have been better. That was all Regan could think, as Daniel rattled off a list of words that belonged only in Stephen King novels. Werewolf she had heard before, bugbear meant nothing, siren… well, she thought of blaring ambulances racing to the hospital. And here Daniel was claiming that these things transformed, or shifted, between human and some other shape. Human. He was admitting that he hunted things that were sometimes human. Just like Daiyu. A warden would have been better.
Regan would have been content to search these woods all night for the Dullahan with Daniel had they needed to. Now she only wanted to get away from him. Maybe then she wouldn't have to think about what Daniel was saying (and how it was almost certainly, definitely, a misunderstanding, but she didn’t want to ask for more information). Surely it would never come up again. And Regan, with her hands in a decedent’s blown out chest cavity, would not need to wonder if she would see Daniel with his shotgun in the last, flashing moments of her patient’s life.
She wasn't sure if she bought the siren explanation for the earplugs, but she also did not want to pull those sutures out. “Sirens are loud,” Regan admitted, “but most people don't carry around earplugs in case one drives by.” That was not what he meant, and she knew it. Before Daniel could say more about his sirens and his werewolves and his bugbears, Regan began loading the cockatrice into the trunk of her car, bending its limbs around the black trashbags of her other prizes. It fit, but barely. She spared Daniel a glance over her shoulder as he asked again about the earplugs and why she cared. Wasn't it obvious? She had even screamed in front of him, shaking his ossicles up in a blender, in a way he felt likely even now. Maybe he knew, and was wondering if she would tell him the truth or attempt to tell a lie that would make her stomach hurt the way his ears had. Regan almost always found herself reaching for a lie, even when the person she was speaking to would have been receptive to more.
But Daniel had been chosen by the Dullahan and Regan kept coming back to that fact he was special, chosen, and Regan was considering lying to him. Next time she encountered the Dullahan, that whip would surely go all the way through her jugular for it (if not a mile-long list of her other failures). Could the Dullahan truly choose a human over one of Death's servants? Regan couldn't have been so bad… otherwise she wouldn't have been allowed to live that first encounter. (Right?) “I should go,” Regan said. “The carcasses are going to decompose unless I get them into a freezer soon—especially the birds, which have been sitting in the car this whole time. Not that I don't want them to decompose. That's the point. But they deserve better than rotting in the trunk of my car.” The Dullahan would probably even choose Daniel’s car over her car.
Daniel was watching and Regan had already discovered that he was not the type to drop things—he did not let things go. It was a quality that probably made him an excellent hunter and tracker. “I don't care about the earplugs,” Regan said, “I care about what prompted you to bring them here. It is unusual to carry around a pair, and your siren explanation—it does not matter.” She grumbled. Earplugs were offensive, in a sense. “It's fortunate that you had brought them. I suppose. Caves truly are echo chambers.”
There was another question in her mind—whether he would tell Jade about all of this. Now that Regan knew that they knew each other, were friends even, she wasn't sure how far Daniel's discretion would stretch. With them both being hunters, they probably had some sort of bond. Was it more sacred than the bonds that Dullahan bestowed upon both of them?
“We should do this at a later hour next time. That… that is why she didn't show up. It was not dark or late enough.” Regan closed the trunk, careful not to catch any feathers in the seal. She gave the dolly a light push, nudging it closer to Daniel. It really was a good dolly, wet and red after this evening. Regan gave Daniel another look, slightly more peeled back, less accusatory. “I know there are different types of hunters. I… thought you might have been a warden. In which case, those earplugs would have been for me.” No follow up questions, please and thank you.
Regan opened the door of her car and slid in, breathing in the hair-stripping stench of everything they had collected. All of those birds successfully watched. She adjusted some of the clear tarp over the window. Before closing the door, she looked out at Daniel. “Acceptable,” she graded him. Until and unless she learned otherwise. But she wouldn’t, right? Regan hurled those thoughts about human murder out the window (tried to—the tarp bounced them right back into her head.) “A later hour next time. Remember.”
