lenoredauphine:
It’s fleeting, the curvature of a half-smirk with a fondness which doesn’t quite reach her eyes as she relegated her gaze back to the evening beyond the windshield. “You can always read my mind.” Her life had hung in the balance for so long now that perhaps Lenore had simply grown accustomed to the constant fear, the paranoia which blossomed each time she glanced over one shoulder. “Have they been in my house?” The basement came to mind immediately, the plethora of mystical objects and black magic grimoires laden about the entire space. Surely enough had been strewn about to paint a rather decent picture, enough for any hunter to connect dots and draw a mistaken conclusion about precisely who was behind the murders throughout their bloody little town. Her secret would no longer be viable, all evidence of her perceived villainy would be aired in the open and once more she would have a coven at her back, along with the enraged band of hunters seeking a scapegoat.
"To me it does. And it matters to me that you know it, too.” His belief in her had kept the witch remaining on a solid path for so long, she detested any notion that he might waver now. “You might as well be. The second they come looking for you and realize you’re gone too, they’ll put the pieces together. People will know what we are, Zeke. Hunters will know what we are.” That the woman he rested his head beside each night was far more than a passing face in the crowd, that their lives were so fervently intertwined to the point where no one, living or dead, could sever their bond. The more violent ones would take umbrage with that fact, perhaps even going so far as to lay waste to everything Zeke Callen was— his home, his life, his reputation. Her stomach turned over at the very thought that he might risk such retribution for her alone. “Me neither.” She would call Cait from the road, reassure her that everything was status quo; the final lie in a lifetime of deception.
A silence falls over them as the town limits approach, the weathered sign which signaled an end to a journey which had altered her life so completely in the form of the man beside her. How could she have known well over two years prior that she might become enraptured with another person so fully, how parting from him in any sense ached with such ferocity that she might choke on it. Despite her protests about his involvement, it was the singular reason for why she couldn’t deny him as they crossed over the invisible line which marked the end of Red Creek. “I love you.” The first time she’s uttered those words of her own volition, weighted beneath the gravity of their situation and the uncertain future looming beyond the scope of his truck’s headlights.
He imagined that it might have caused strain in worry that often swelled the concave of his own chest in knowing anyone might have gotten a little too close to his own arsenal of weapons that lay left behind in the foundations of his home. That hunters, of all people, had stumbled upon the treasure trove that bled the black magic that his other half knew like the lines within his own palm, Zeke could only truly wonder how much the very thought irritated right down to her bones. “Yes.” Spoken through clenched teeth, the knowledge that things might have gone very differently had Lenore been home and not likely curled up waiting for him at his. “They didn’t find anything, and they won’t,” until the likely figured out Zeke’s own part in the woman’s life and put two and two together. Labeling his own scouring of her home to his own advantage in getting her out before that happened. “Enough----” Sharpened tongue cut listlessly against the hardened tone of voice. It was well beyond what he knew and what he didn’t --- the fact now stood, that right now in this very moment, he couldn’t have cared less; allowing the woman to be hunted down by people he often considered his own equals was.. daunting to say the least.
Teeth marred the inside of his cheek roughly as he listened to what Lenny already no doubt knew he’d thought about. Zeke wasn’t one to make a choice like this so lightly; any other perhaps caught in the whirlwind of lacking care, but not this. “So let them figure it out.” His hand instinctively tightened around the steering wheel, white knuckled and the like. There was nothing inviting about the likely reaction he’d no doubt meet from so many hunters that Zeke found himself surrounded by. Isolation, however much he chose it, didn’t quite extend to the community of hunters; no matter how hard one ever tried. To know that they’d given an oath to do away with evil and tarnish any hope of a regular life was something that bled kindred spirits together even blinded in denial. Where Zeke was once revered and respected for being who and what he was --- and forever sticking to it, he’d lose all of that in lieu of what he’d chosen this night. “Let them figure it out.” He muttered again, mostly to himself as fingers drew roughly across his sharpened jawline. The meek confession that slipped with certainty between lips he could have traced lines of in his sleep only stilled him for barely a passing moment. The lingering nature of a half smirk pressing the recesses of his own mouth as he switched hands against the steering wheel and instead reached for hers. Silken to the touch and almost fragile within the confines of his own; the very likelihood that fingertips that he encompassed were just as violently capable as he had brought him here. “I know.” An utterance that felt much more at home for him than the repetition of such sentiment. A tightened squeeze of his hand pulled forth a haphazard sigh as he looked back to the road, taking a sharp right turn at the small, barely noticeable dip in the trees. “We’re not going far, not yet.. --- Not until I know what they’re doing.” He’d much preferred being ten steps ahead, of which he couldn’t truly be with the expanse of Red Creek at their backs. Instead, pulling up to a cabin, well hidden and only known by a small few people, he shut down the truck and paused just enough for silence to linger. “Stay here, let me check everything out before we do anything else. If you hear anything --- see anything, you get out of here, okay? ----- don’t argue with me.”
