The Runt of the Litter

Tightrope Walking is an Extreme Sport

Note: Hey, lovely people! Thank you for reading, voting, and commenting! As always, that was truly a highlight of my week ❤️

This chapter was a request from the incredibly kind 1ipod2 who wanted to see how Anna and Kate meet. I believe it's been mentioned in other chapters that they met before either of them lived in Lebanon, and I've always written Kate as a person who knows about the supernatural. I had every intention of making this into a full-on case when I started, but it just didn't turn out that way. It wound up focusing entirely on the two of them meeting, and I felt like it worked. I hope this satisfies you!

Anna and Kate are both thirteen in this one.

Tightrope Walking is an Extreme Sport

The Impala's doors creaked open, and three sets of feet crushed different piles of leaves and twigs on the forest floor at almost the same time. The air smelled clean and plenty, and the sky was barely visible above the tops of the trees. They were deep in the woods, and they still had a little bit of hiking to do to get to the campsite.

It was cool, but not cold, and they all had their flannels and canvas jackets on. The boys went around to the trunk to pull out the weapons duffel and their backpacks. Anna was already wearing hers. It wasn't heavy with just a book, some clothes, a flashlight, and a couple different silver knives in case something were to happen. And they were here for what they felt relatively confident was a werewolf case, so something could happen. But she was with her brothers, so that something probably wouldn't lead her to use either of her knives.

"I can't believe nobody shut down the campsite. Two people dead. How many bodies does it take for people to believe something's wrong?"

"It's like I keep telling you, Sammy. As long as they can keep telling themselves it's wildlife, they will. Anything so they don't have to believe there's something worse out there."

"Still. Even if they think there's some kind of killer grizzly out there-"

"Which is exactly what they think-"

"Why wouldn't they have cleared the campsite and sent some people out after it? Grizzly or werewolf, two bodies should be enough to close up for the season."

Anna heard the trunk slam shut and looked to her right, up the path they would be walking shortly. There were a couple of signs giving directions to the campsite even though it was a straight shot. She wondered how on earth it had taken so long for a monster to stake this place out and start dropping bodies. These were easy pickings for something with the speed and strength of a werewolf, and it wouldn't have been hard to find if you'd stumbled into town.

There had to be a hundred or a thousand replicas of towns and campsites like this all across the U.S., she thought, and if monsters had the capacity to plan and strategize the way that people did, they would probably set up at places like this all the time. People would pin any killings on wild animals because they were so deep in the woods, and the monsters could stay well fed. It was perfect in a really creepy way. Anna wondered how many werewolves did have setups like that, how many people were being torn apart every year because nobody knew better than to think they'd approached a grizzly. The thought made her shiver, but she didn't have any more time to dwell on it.

"Bout a mile that way," Dean said from right behind her.

Anna looked up at him and recognized that look in his eye that said he wasn't excited for this hunt. He usually liked the action-y hunts-- as if that wasn't every hunt to some extent-- and werewolves were often some of his favorites. On the contrary, though, Sam hated werewolf hunts because of some bad memories. Anna could barely remember Madison, but she could remember in vivid detail the days that had followed and the deadened look in Sam's eyes. Nobody was excited for this hunt, though. Whenever there were too many people around for a hunt of any kind, somebody always got hurt, and the more people there were, the harder it was to ensure that very thing didn't happen. This could just as easily become a deadly hunt as an exciting one.