Run Like the Devil • L.S. • Larry Supernatural AU

Chapter 10

The scream seems to go on for hours, stretching and cracking in places, unnaturally loud and persistent, until, suddenly, it cuts off, and Harry's head drops forward, his shoulders heaving with the force of his breaths. Louis' ears ring in the quiet; it takes him a few moments to find his own voice, gone hysterical when he hears it. "Harry," he calls, "Haz, can you hear me?" Harry doesn't respond, and Louis turns to Niall. "Is this—is something wrong?"

"Dunno," Niall says, voice short and clipped, face serious and slightly grey in the harsh light down here. "Never done it, have I?"

Louis' gut wrenches. "Where the Hell did you even get it from?" How could he not have thoroughly vetted this ritual himself? He trusts Niall, but it seems foolish in retrospect not to have interrogated this kind of risky spellwork.

"A friend," Niall says.

"Who?" Louis' half-shouting now. Harry's still slumped over and breathing heavily, every now and then making little noises like he's in pain. Louis' afraid to move closer; the syringe still dangles from his lax grip, and he gets the urge to throw it across the room.

Niall waits until Louis' looking at Harry again to say, quietly, "Zayn."

It's a good thing, too, because Louis does throw the syringe, and it bounces off the opposite wall but doesn't make any sort of satisfying noise: no crash, no shatter, goddamn medical plastic. "You got it from Zayn? And you're just now telling me."

"It doesn't matter," Niall says. "Zayn's trustworthy."

"Yeah," Nick starts, and Louis turns on his heel, nearly overbalancing.

"You," he says, pointing at Nick, "shut the fuck up."

Nick crosses his arms. "I think you'll find—"

"Nick," Niall says, laying a hand on his arm. Louis twitches. "Tommo and I have got this. You go on up and keep an eye on things, how about?"

"Fine," Nick mutters, and Louis hears him climb the ladder and open the trapdoor, wincing involuntarily when it slams shut with a deadly-sounding clang.

"Louis," Niall starts, "listen—"

"Since when are you even talking to Zayn?" Louis interrupts. "What the fuck, Niall?"

Niall puts his hands up. "Not long. Not really until you left last week, actually, it was a bit mad, actually—"

"And you didn't tell me?"

"You were a bit preoccupied," Niall says. "And you would've gotten your arse in a twist. Just like you're doing now. It doesn't matter, okay? Zayn's trustworthy."

"Trustworthy?" Louis practically shrieks it, incredulous. "Have you lost your fucking mind?" He's struck with the sudden and disturbing urge to throttle Niall, put his hands around his throat and squeeze until his face goes purple. He shakes his head, trying to dispel it. Did that come from him? He's never thought anything violent about Niall, not really.

Niall's hair sticks straight up where he's run his hand through it, and his face is slowly turning red. "No—shite, I mean, I don't trust him not to be an arse, I'm not sayin' everything's okay, just that he's good on this kind of thing."

Zayn is good at this kind of thing—it's one of the reasons he'd made a good partner—but he left. And yet here he is, back in Louis' life without being there, somewhere behind the curtain pulling strings Louis didn't know existed. He yanks at his hair, trying to steady himself.

"Mate," Niall says slowly, "maybe it's best if you don't hang 'round down here. There's no way for him to get out, you only have to give 'im a shot every hour."