Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When she embraces, your heart turns to stone

She comes at night when you’re all alone

And when she whispers, your blood shall run cold

You better hide before she finds you

~Within Temptation, Ice Queen

(Then…)

She told herself to just keep running. That’s all she could do right now- all that guaranteed her survival.

Keep running and put as much distance between it and her as she could. Sooner or later she would have to find someone who get help her...right?

Right?

The environment, though, was proving to be quite a hindrance in her maintaining her goal, and in spite of the adrenaline pumping through her veins, she could feel herself slowing down. The snow was fell heavily upon the land, getting in her eyes and increasing the thickness of the blanket of white that had already settled upon the land; it was almost up to the top of her shins, making it harder for her to move, each step feeling like she was sinking further into the earth.

Her body was also showing signs of fatigue: her thigh and calf muscles were burning with overuse, as was her back and her hips. Her lungs and throat felt similar, the latter raw and dry and begging her for some water. Her head was starting to pound from exhaustion, and she could hear her pants growing more ragged, her gulps of breath taking longer. If she didn’t find somewhere to hide, or someone, soon, she knew it could get her just off her own exhaustion.

She pumped her arms at her sides to try and keep her pace- ‘Just like you were taught in track,’ she told herself weakly, ‘Just like you did on the track team’- but with how worn out she was, all it did at this point was strain her shoulders.

A blast of wind came blowing in from the north and hit her in the face. It stung her skin where tears had been rolling down her cheeks endlessly. She had long since stopped sobbing, but they continued to come, the horrendous images from earlier constantly haunting her mind. Not even the fear that it might happen to her was enough to block them out.

‘Clawson...Silar…Brooke...’ she thought as she stumbled, a fresh wave of tears blurring her vision as a weak sob escaped her throat.

Oh gods, it had been horrible. She didn’t think a body could ever be contorted in such a way, or that the smell would be so revolting...She didn’t think she would ever have to experience that smell in her life…

Her throat burned with the sour taste of acid. She swallowed back the bile that suddenly threatened to come up. Her stomach churned like it was trying to twist its way right out through her abdomen.

Suddenly, she heard the crunch of feet in the snow behind her. Her nostrils picked up on the scent of smoke, which made her sinuses itch.

It was here.

A fearful sound escaped her. She bent her head and tried to will herself to move faster, pumping her legs harder in spite of the horrible stitch that had opened up in her side and the way that the action sent waves of red hot pain through her hips and legs.

There was a throng of trees up ahead. If she could only get in between them, she could hopefully lose him. All she had to do was get passed the opening, and then she could swing up into the branches and hide out in the tops.

There was a growl behind her. Her hackles raised up pin-straight when she heard it- it was only a few feet away from her.

She stumbled forward as her boot suddenly hit a rock that had been hidden under the snow. Her arms flailed about her as she lost her footing. The disruption of her balance quickly sent her careening towards the edge of the hill that had been running parallel with her. Her foot then slid on a patch of ice, sending her tumbling down the steep hillside.

“W-Whoa! Whoa!” she exclaimed.

Her hands flew out at her sides, futilely trying to find something to hold that could break her fall. Her feet flew out from under her, and soon she was rolling down like she was little more than a leaf being blown by the wind. Her arms and legs got tangled under her painfully, as her belly, chest, and back slammed into the ground and were jabbed with stones and broken branches. Her chin stung as it scraped against the surface of a stone at one point, taking the skin right off.

She landed in a heap at the bottom, her arm bent at a painful angle underneath her. Her head swam, dizzy from the rapidly blurry images that passed her as she fell and the deep need for sleep, as she had been up most of the night.

With a groan, she slowly lifted herself up on her other arm, trying to regain a sense of her surroundings. Clumps of snow clung to her hair, matting the light orange strands and chilling her skin painfully. Her knee throbbed from where it had banged against a couple of rocks. Her chin was numb, but dimly she could feel blood dripping off it from her scrape.

She looked up. The moon’s waning gibbous stared down at her like a giant eye, its milky whiteness slightly veiled by the heavy cloud coverage. The wind howled around her like a pack of mournful wolves.

There was a sound of feet hitting the ground behind her. A low growl followed it, and she felt sudden heat at her back.

She froze. Coldness unlike anything in this icy landscape or the frostbite overtaking her fingers and toes spread through her, burying deep into her bones, reaching the very depths of her soul.

She told herself not to turn around. But with her body aching and bruised from the fall, already pushed to its limits, she had no energy left to even stand.

The lump in her throat big enough that it felt almost like she was going to choke as she swallowed. Slowly, she turned to look over her shoulder.

Orange light seared her eyes and illuminated the whites as they widened. The growl grew in volume, until it became a loud, menacing small.

It was all she could think to do was scream.

(Now: Monster High, 5:15 am)

“Yahh- Gods, the sun isn’t even starting to come out yet,” Heath commented with a yawn, running a hand through his hair, “Did Coach Igor really have to set our meet-up time to be this early?”

“It’s gonna take us four hours to get to Clawmath Falls,” Clawd said, “It’s either leave now and be spend most of that time sleeping on the bus or go later and spend six hours stuck in traffic.”

“Yeah, and with the way this weather is looking, it’s best we get on the road when we can. Before the black ice starts forming,” Deuce said, looking up at the dark grey morning sky with a bit of wariness.

“Clawd, have you seen my bag of nail polish?”

The three of them looked up to see Clawdeen looking over at them, from where she’d been kneeling besides her bags and Clawd’s. Like them, she was wearing the school letterman jacket underneath her purple peacoat, but where the boys had all dressed in their casketball uniforms, she wore her fearleading outfit.

“If I didn’t pack it, I wouldn’t know,” Clawd answered with a shake of his head.

Clawdeen pouted. “Well, would you help me look for it?” she asked. She turned to her duffel bag and unzipped it, before she began rifling around in it. “Oh, I hope I didn’t forget it on my nightstand! I had just bought those, and I wanted to use them with the ghouls!”

“Don’t you have, like, a whole shelf of nail polish?” Clawd asked incredulously, “Why do you even need to bring any, anyway? You’re going to be performing in your uniform the whole time, it’s not like anyone will even see your nails.”

That earned him a small glare from his sister. “Just because they can’t see it doesn’t mean I won’t know it’s there,” she argued, “I’m allowed to feel cute, even if other people can’t appreciate it.

“Also, I can’t trust that Howleen won’t try to use them while we’re gone,” she added, her nose wrinkling in disdain, “Last time, she tried to sneak some of the blue polish I had, and her clumsy ass knocked it over trying to put it back in place and spilled half the bottle! Not to mention it got all over my sweatshirt.”

Deuce and Heath chuckled as Clawd just rolled his eyes. All arguments of nail polish were quickly forgotten about, though, as they heard a car coming from around the corner. They, as well as their teammates who had already showed up, all turned as they heard the screech of tires against pavement, which echoed particularly loudly in the quiet of the early morning.

Headlights illuminated the darkened silhouettes of a nearby streetlight and bus-stop bench, before Draculaura’s new bright pink Corvette made its appearance. Two of the guys from the casketball team quickly scurried out of the way as it turned the corner too soon and came right in their direction, before it pulled into a space next to Coach Igor’s beat-up Jeep.

“Try not to delay our trip by making us deal with cops and forcing a crime-scene cleanup team out here in three degree weather, okay, Laura?” Gory called out from where she sat in her and Bram’s vintage hearse.

“Sorry!” Draculaura exclaimed as she got out. She looked over to the two boys and waved, “Sorry, sorry! We were going through the intersection and a cat suddenly darted out across the road. It kept coming towards me and I didn’t want to hit it.”

“Did it ever occur to you there is a concept known as gradual deceleration?” Cleo asked in exasperation, stepping out of the car and brushing some hair behind her ear. “I swear, those three seconds might just have been enough to give me whiplash. These next four hours are going to be a pain.”

Draculaura turned and pouted at her. The boys and Clawdeen walked up to them; Deuce came up next to Cleo and put his arm around her, drawing her into his side.

“Oh, come on, don’t be so dramatic,” he said with a smile, “Laura’s a good driver, it couldn’t have been that bad.”

“And how would you know?” Cleo asked him, raising a brow at him.

“Hey, I’ve ridden in the car with Jackson when he’s changed into Holt mid ride,” Deuce answered, “You think those wooden roller coasters at the state fair are bad? It’s like that ten-fold with him. Oh, and there was also the time he nearly caused a pile up in the maul parking lot because he decided to go fifty through the parking lot and didn’t use his blinker.”

Clawd and Frankie made matching faces of discomfort at his comments. They both understood exactly what he meant, having shared many a ride with the blue-skinned manster; whereas Jackson followed the traffic rules to a T and acted like he was gonna break out in hives if he so much as went two miles over the speed limit, Holt seemed determined to try and get as many tickets and infractions as one person could.

Cleo rolled her eyes at her boyfriend’s response, but leaned over to kiss him, proving her annoyance was only temporary. Draculaura, meanwhile, turned to Clawd with a smile and walked over to hug him at the waist.

“I’m sure it was just a little scare for everyone,” he said as he put his own arm around his ghoulfriend’s shoulders, “And I’m sure the cat will be grateful for a little reckless driving if it means he doesn’t end up under a tire.”

“He came out of nowhere,” Draculaura said, gesturing with her hands, still wearing a look of slight astonishment, “I was so scared that I wouldn’t be able to stop in time, or that a car was coming and would T-bone us. And then he wouldn’t get out of the way, either! It was like he was trying to keep pace with the car.”

“Maybe he was trying to see if you would take him in,” Clawdeen joked, “He probably heard about that litter of kittens you fostered a few months ago and wanted to see if you were still accepting applicants.”

Draculaura sighed, “I wish. Fangelica would love it, for sure; she’s been begging Ramoanah and my dad for her own pet for a while now. But after one of them peed all over Dad’s big report for his meeting and the others nearly clawed Ramoanah’s eyes out when she went to grab a scarf they were laying on, they said absolutely no cats.”

Frankie gave her a sympathetic look and lightly patted her shoulder. “Just give them time. I’m sure they’ll warm up eventually, when they realize how silly they sound.”

“The king of darkness, defeated by a house cat,” Heath commented, “Who knew his ultimate weakness was hidden right under us?”

That invoked a laugh from their group. Frankie then moved away from them a few feet in order to pick up her overnight bag and purse, which she had left by the side of Laura’s car. As she bent down, Deuce looked over and noticed something with the way her skirt moved.

“Whoa, Frankie!” he exclaimed, “What happened to your leg?”

That got the attention of the others, who looked over at her to see what he was glancing at. Frankie saw his head tilted downward, and looked down at herself.

“Oh, this?” she asked, kicking out her left leg, “Oh, yeah! I meant to tell you guys beforehand- my mom and dad figured out a better way for me get electricity!”

They all huddled around to get a better look as she held out her leg. Instead of the usual flesh and blood, a solid metal prosthetic rested in place below her knee. A series of gears rested at the ankle joint, underneath of which they could see some wiring that ran up into the shell of the prosthesis. The steel of her calf had already been decorated with a few stickers and some marker illustrations of lightning bolts and other little random shapes; most likely the work of her little sister, Alivia.

“We just had it installed this weekend,” Frankie explained, putting her leg back, “Dad wanted to make sure all the kinks were worked out and that everything was functioning correctly before letting me go and run around in it. Especially with the game coming up.”

“It helps you get electricity, you said?” Clawdeen asked.

She looked and realized then that Frankie’s neck bolts were gone. Now, there was nothing but two neat rows of stitches on either side of the cadaver’s neck.

“Yeah,” Frankie said, tilting her head to allow the others to see the stitching, “It works kinda like a windmill: There’s a rotor inside, and whenever I take a step, the gears move by a pulley in my ankle and help it turn. That helps spin a little device that works as the generator, and it sends the signals up to my nervous system by some wires that connect to the branches of my sciatic nerve.”

She smiled, “So no more nightly recharges, and no more worrying if I’m gonna go off the fritz every time there’s a static with the laundry.”

“Oh, that’s so cool!” Draculaura exclaimed, “We totally gotta celebrate with a sleepover sometime soon! You know, now that we don’t have to make my dad drag the extension cords up from the basement.”

“My mom and dad are gonna be glad to hear it as well,” Clawdeen said with a smirk, “Now they’ll only have to worry about the electric bill going up whenever Rocks and the triplets decide they’re gonna try and have a movie-video game- stereo night.”

“Don’t forget the four of them insisting that every light in the downstairs has be kept on, even when it’s past two in the morning,” Clawd added with a grimace.

Frankie gave both her friends a small pout. “Hey, I’m not that bad,” she protested.

“Of course you’re not,” Cleo remarked, giving her a small pat on the shoulder, “You just have the capacity to disrupt the power grid of the nearest tri-state area whenever it is a bit thunder and lightning out.”

Everyone stared to laugh, as Frankie turned and gave the mummy a small glare over her shoulder. Cleo just shrugged. It was all in good nature, though, and soon Frankie found herself smiling, before she joined in on the laughter.

It was cut, short, though, as a strong, sharp wind suddenly rolled in on them. They all gave a collective shiver as it blasted them hard- Clawdeen and Cleo in particular whined as it whipped at their hair and threw their styles out of place- drying out their eyes and crawling its way through their thin jackets where they had been left unbuttoned.

“Whooo, geez!” Heath exclaimed in disdain as he turned his back on the wind, cuddling deep into the collar of his jacket and shoving his hands into the pockets, “God, the weather lately has been such ass! I swear, only a week ago we could still get away with just hoodies.”

He looked to Clawd and Deuce. “I’m just gonna let you both know, when we get to the hotel, don’t ask me to do anything that involves the outside. Not even to the pool, unless it’s one of those indoor ones.”

Clawd smirked. “Oh, yeah, we’re officially entering ‘No Heaths allowed’ season. I hope you’ve got enough fat stores to last you when you go into hibernation.”

“Oh, hardy-harr-harr,” Heath replied sarcastically with a roll of his eyes.

“Maybe we should call Abbey and see if she can make a last minute trip to come with us,” Deuce said jokingly, “Then you have all the cold you need right in underneath your own covers.”

He grinned as Heath whirled around and shot him a hot glare. It quickly relaxed, though, as the fire elemental leaned back and gave his own smug smile.

“Joke’s on you, she actually has a fully booked schedule this week,” he said, “Marisol is in town for a few days and so her, Abbey, and Bloodgood are making plans to do some catching up. Abbey says she wants to take her hiking, go explore those trails down by the abandoned railroad tracks.”

Cleo made a face. “Going for a hike in four inches of snow with thirteen degree winds up to fifty miles per hour? Sounds…‘fun’.”

“Hey, they’re Bigfoot people,” Heath said, “A snowstorm is like a a five-minute drizzle for them.”

They all turned towards the school as a sharp whistle sounded through the parking lot. It was not of the winter wind this time, though, but rather was that of Coach Igor’s characteristic silver instrument that he was never seen without.

He let it drop back onto his chest as he held up his clipboard and looked down at it. “Okay, teams, huddle up,” he said, “We’re gonna be hittin’ the road in about ten, so I want to make sure that everyone’s here. Last thing I want to deal with is your parents or you calling me when we’re already an hour on the freeway, crying that you overslept or your cat had a bat mizvah or something, or that your great-three times removed something or other had a party you forgot about.”

His lazy eye slid over at the ghoul squad. “And I would like to avoid certain misadventures involving the ghosts of fashion designers or aliens or magic crystals that steal people’s voices, or any of that, if possible.”

Snickers broke out among the rest of the casketball team and fearleading squad, as Frankie and the others blushed and looked away. Clawd bit his lip and stifled a giggle as he heard Clawdeen mutter “...not our fault that Toralei can’t buzz off the first time we tell her to.”

They could see Toralei and the twins look over at the them at the werewolf’s mention of her, the three of them wearing frowns. Cleo looked back at them and raised her brows, silently challenging them to start something. Luckily, the werecats just rolled their eyes and turned back to the coach with a small huff.

“Coach, the snow’s coming down pretty fast,” Romulus spoke up, “You said the drive to Clawmath Falls is four hours. Do you think it’s okay to travel in these conditions?”

“That’s why I told y’all to be here by five-thirty, Canidae,” Igor replied, “The weather reports says it’s still light enough that it will take a while before it starts sticking on the roads. By the time it gets heavy, we should be well on our way then, and it’s supposed to be clearer skies further south. If the traffic isn’t too bad, we should be able to avoid the storm before it really hits the area.”

He looked over his shoulder to the bus driver, who leaned against the side of his vehicle as he smoked a cigarette. “What’s our ETA looking at right now, Alejandro?”

The bus driver looked up curiously. At the question, he looked at his watch. “Right now, if we take off within the next ten minutes or so, and we keep steady speed, I’ll reckon we should be making it into Clawmath County just a little bit after ten or so.”

Coach Igor nodded. “Good,” he said, “That should give us ample time to check in to the hotel be able to settle for a little bit before we have to head up to Eldritch.”

He turned back to the teams. “Alright, let’s get this show on the road!” he called out, “Everyone, start getting your things and line up. When I call your name, go on and get on the bus. And no dilly-dallying! By the time I get to this bottom, anyone who waits to get on after me is gonna get left behind!”

“Yes, Coach,” they all said with varying degrees of monotony.

“Okay, then,” he responded, then held up his clipboard and started going down the list, “First off: Abiteth, Fangtasia.”

“Present,” one of the fearleaders, a dark skinned vampiress with cropped hair who ran in Gory’s inner circle, said as she raised her hand.

“Yeah, yeah, no need for all of that,” Igor said with a wave of his hand, “Just get on the bus. Battaway, Talas. Bosco. Brownpelt. Burns, no funny business, got it? Okay, then, Cabello. Carmine…”

(A little while later…)

The snow continued to fall around them as the bus steadily rode down the empty stretch of the two-lane road. It was steadily approaching seven o’clock, but the sky was still a starless dark grey, with thick clouds that blocked out the moon and made everything look three shades dimmer.

Right now, as Draculaura looked out the window, they seemed to be the only vehicle on the road right now. Alejandro, the driver, had taken a route that took them on a detour around the highway and into what looked to be more rural territory; on either side, past the guardrails, she had seen nothing but thick stretches of snow-topped pines for miles. Occasionally, she saw a turn off into a gravel road with a few mailboxes that led to a house or two at its other end, but other than that, it was like the weathered yellow schoolbus was the only sign of life in the world right now.

She pulled away from the window and sat back in her seat, taking a second to look around and observe what everyone else was doing. Coach Igor sat behind the driver’s seat and was currently leaning over it, occasionally consulting with an old print map in his lap as he and the driver made small talk and he made sure they were going the right way.

Some of her classmates had since fallen asleep in the time they had been on the road, and those who had not found various ways to try and occupy their time. Next to her, Frankie read from a thick book, while across the aisle, Clawdeen had hear earbuds in and was doodling in her sketchbook. Scarah, who sat next to her, also had her headphones in and rested her head against the window pane as she dozed. Cleo sat with Deuce, leaning against him as she flipped through a magazine while he played on a handheld gaming device.

Draculaura craned her neck and saw Clawd sitting a bit perpendicular from her, a few rows behind her. He had one leg crossed over the other and had a book of crossword puzzles propped up on it, his brows furrowed as he seemed to be stuck on one. Heath sat next to him, and Clawd allowed him to rest his head against his arm as the fire elemental slept heavily. He seemed to sense Draculaura’s gaze, and looked up to meet her gaze; he gave her a small smile that she returned.

Settling back forward, she looked down at the book Frankie had in her lap, lightly skimming some of the text on the pages that were exposed to her.

“Whatcha reading, Frankie?” she asked.

The dual-eyed ghoul lifted her head and glanced over to her, before she turned back to the page she was on. “Oh, just something I found in the library the other day. It’s about these hikers that went missing in Russia in the late fifties, and when their bodies were later found, there was apparently a big controversy about what could have happened, because of their condition.”

She marked the page she was on with her index finger and flipped back a few pages. “They named the area where they were heading after one of them,” she explained, “‘Die-At-Love Pass?’ God, Abbey would probably laugh if she heard how much I was butchering this.”

“Dyatlov Pass,” Draculaura corrected, “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about that. They found that they had run out into the snow for some reason, right?”

“Yeah,” Frankie explained, “Not just that, but for some reason, the tent had been cut opened with a knife from the inside. Two of the hikers they found didn’t even have shoes on.

“The initial cause of death was ruled hypothermia, but then they did a second medical a few months later and found a lot of weird injuries,” she continued, “Like, two of the hikers had major fractures in their chests, like they had been crushed, and their eyeballs were somehow gone. They found one girl’s tongue was even missing. The official explanation was that they got caught up in an avalanche and got lost in the snow, but that area’s not known for having avalanches, and there’s a lot of debate as to what could have really happened.”

“Yes, I remember the discussions when the news first broke,” Draculaura commented, “People have blamed everything from the indigenous communities in the area, to a military cover-up, to yetis.”

She shook her head. “It’s almost like everyone’s forgotten that no matter what happened, nine people died. Their families may never receive peace of mind as to what the real story is, but it’s like people have sensationalized it like it’s some sort of campfire tale. Or some puzzle to figure like a Sherlock Bones’ novel.”

“It is a little creepy to think about, though,” Frankie admitted, looking up to stare past the vampire out the window, “You go up to have fun with your friends for a weekend, and then your contact with the rest of the world just...stops. Something happens, and there’s not a soul around to ever say what truly happened to you. And sometimes they don’t even find you- it’s like you’ve completely been erased from existence...”

“That happens a lot with people who go missing in the wilderness, unfortunately,” Draculaura said, joining her in watching out the window, “So many people overestimate their skill level or their preparedness, or hubris makes them think they don’t need all the essentials, and they don’t realize just how big the outdoors is. Or just how easily the elements can wear you out.”

The bus had since turned a corner, and after a brief distance uphill, it leveled out onto a long road that overlooked a cliffside. In the dim grey light of early morning, the forest below looked like a vast black ocean. Just in the distance, they could see the looming peaks of the mountains. The snowfall was much heavier in this area, appearing as thick white butterflies in the bus’s headlights that became large splatters as they hit the windshield.

A pop of color in the distance caught Draculaura’s attention. She furrowed her brows and pressed her cheek to the window, straining to see whatever it was clearly. It was ahead of them, steadily getting bigger as the bus drove closer in its direction.

It was pockmarked with holes and scratches, and was covered with so much rust that it almost completely hid the words from view. It was also almost hidden by the scraggly branches of a tree that had long since shed its leaves, but the almost naked steel lit up like a light bulb, allowing her to just make out its printed letters just as the bus passed it.

WARNING: PRIVATE PROPERTY

UNAUTHORIZED, TURN BACK

Draculaura frowned. She turned her head and tried to re-read the sign again, but by then it was already a long ways behind them. She faced back forward, her brows furrowed in a confused expression.

What private property could be over here? As far as she could see, it was nothing but empty highway for another dozen miles. The other side of the road was just a plain rockface, and over the guardrail, there were no turn offs or anything that suggested anyone lived over here.

Perhaps there was someone that lived on the side of the cliff, a few miles down from the guardrail- one of those hermits that lived off the grid, maybe, or an old cabin for lumberjacks and researchers to hold up in so they wouldn’t have to drive hours back into the city. But even so, it would be awkward placement to have such a sign be off the middle of the highway, especially when the shoulders were so narrow. She doubted this was a place that attracted stargazers.

“Hmm,” Coach Igor grunted, “Are you sure this is the way? It says here we should be passing over the Mckenzie River Bridge to get through to Armitage Park.”

“I’m positive, boss,” Alejandro said, “Drove through this area just last week to deliver a horde of disgruntled T-ball players to Eugene.”

He shook his head, though, and frowned as he turned up the speed on the windshield wipers. “God, this crap’s coming down hard. Last time I saw something from the sky fall this thick was in the Cascades back in ‘eighty, when the volcano erupted. That damn meteorologist lied.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to make it, or should we stop and see if it clears up?” Coach Igor asked, his mouth tugged into a grim frown.

“Do you really want to be the one to tell a bunch of cranky half-asleep teenagers that we’re gonna have to just sit here in the blistering cold for no one can say how long?” Alejandro replied, giving the hunchback a doubtful look before he turned his attention back out the windshield, “Relax, I’m not going faster than thirty. Besides, if we think to slow down and it keeps snowing, it could get too thick and we get stuck. Then we’re really screwed.”

“If you say so…” Igor responded, his tone still a bit uneasy.

A few seats back, Clawd chewed on the end of his pen and he found himself stumped by one section of the current puzzle he was on. It felt like it was right on the tip of his tongue, but after trying to run through his mental dictionary several times, he still couldn’t figure out the answer.

“The scientific field of veterinary medicine associated with the study of animal reproduction…” he muttered as he repeated the hint given at the bottom of the page.

He frowned, drawing a blank. He didn’t even know there was a specific name for studying pregnancy in animals. Wasn’t that just another part of pediatrics?

He heard a small groan next to him, before the slight weight against his arm lifted. He looked to see Heath sitting up, his eyes narrowed and glassy as he looked around the bus.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he joked.

Heath let out another moan and rubbed at his eyes. “How much longer do we have?” he asked.

Clawd pushed back his sleeve and looked at his watch. “A little over two hours,” he said.

He set his arm in his lap and looked out the window. “Kinda weird,” he commented, “The sunrise should be starting about now. Even with all these clouds, it should have been getting lighter by now.”

“God, we still have all that time?” Heath questioned, rubbing at his slightly sore neck, “Great, now we just get to sit back and relax and watch the beautiful sights of endless blobs.”

He glanced out their window with a pout as he said the last sentence.

Clawd smirked. “I mean, you don’t have to watch the whole time. You could read a book or listen to your music or something.”

He then raised a brow. “You did bring something, right?” he asked.

Now, that got him a small glare from Heath. “Of course I did. But I can normally do that stuff and be able to get up and move around when I’m done. For this, though, I gotta sit down for hours.”

Clawd nodded in agreement. He said, “I get that. Just don’t think about it- you keep yourself distracted, it will pass by in no time.”

“Easy for you to say, Heath muttered, leaning over to take another glance out the window, “When you’re not someone with restless leg syndrome-”

He suddenly cut himself off. His brows knit into a confused expression.

“What?” Clawd asked.

“The fog in the distance,” Heath said, pointing, “It’s a weird color. Like look, do you see that?”

Clawd turned and followed his finger. The sky was slightly lighter, but was still heavily overcast, and the winds now blew thick with snow, casting a light grey haze on everything in the distance. Closer to the horizon, where Heath was pointing, he could see some mountains and hills, along with a small gathering of trees that ran diagonally down the hillside of one.

Between those trees, a thick mist wove through them, further blending them into the snowy background. At first, Clawd thought it was just due to the reflection of the lights inside the bus.

But...no. He furrowed his brows and leaned closer, watching as it gathered up into a thick cloud and moved slowly down the hillside. The first thing he noticed was that it wasn’t like regular mist- it was thick, almost like that of a cloud of smoke, or the pyroclastic flow after a volcanic eruption.

It was also a vibrant orange color, sticking out against the dark morning like someone had taken the clouds hit by the sunrise and just scattered them against the earth. It reminded him of those scenes from disaster movies that involved a spill of toxic waste, or the one he watched with Gil where the mist itself killed people that walked into it.

“What the hell….?” he muttered to himself.

“Are you guys seeing this?” he heard Packquita, one of the ghouls on the fearleading squad, suddenly ask aloud.

He raised his head to turn to her, seeing many of the others on the bus also turn to her attention. She was halfway kneeling in her seat, her free arm gripping the back of the seat to support herself, as she pointed out at their side of the bus, at the window. A chorus of murmurs started as people turned to see what she was pointing out, like he had done with Heath.

“What the hell is that?” he heard Scarius, one of teammates, ask.

“It looks like a smoke cloud,” Iris commented, “Maybe there’s a fire?”

“No way,” Dougey replied with a grim frown, “You’d see flames, and there’s no way smoke would be that color.”

Coach Igor had also taken notice of the strange orange cloud that was growing in the distance and was watching it warily, his mouth twisted down in a deep frown. He turned to Alejandro and asked, “What the hell’s over there, Al?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the alebrije responded, only sneaking a brief glance at the side window to also see what had everyone alert, “Any set-ups out in these parts have been abandoned for years. They don’t even allow people to go camping down there with how rough the terrain is-”

He was cut off as suddenly, they all began harshly bouncing up and down.

The bus’s wheels suddenly gave off a harsh grinding sound, akin to something being caught in its gears. Suddenly, it jerked to the right, sending all of them flying to the side. Several of the students yelled as they were thrown from their seats, while others clung onto the upholstery for dear unlife.

“SHIT!” Alejandro hissed, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

He attempted to right its direction by straightening out, but the force of inertia fought back stubbornly, and with the opposing forces, all of them could start to feel the back end of the bus swerve out of alignment with the front.

Frankie and Draculaura screamed as they were thrown against the window hard, before gravity yanked them into the aisle. Bags of snacks and pencil cases spilled onto the ground, and their contents were sent skittering across the floor with the bus’s violent movements.

“Al, for god’s sake! What did you do?!” Coach Igor questioned as he himself tried to keep from getting tossed about.

“I don’t know!” Alejandro exclaimed, fighting with the steering wheel as he tried to get the bus back to normal.

Students continued to cry and scream as the automobile refused to right itself and they were thrown against the seats. Out through the windshield, the landscape passed through the headlights like a wild roll of film. Darkened trees shone one second, then the snow-covered mountainside the next.

Clawd lunged and caught Heath right as the fire elemental was about to be thrown onto the ground, the latter letting out a yelp of surprise as he narrowly avoided slamming face first onto the dirty bus floor. Clawd grit his teeth in pain as the gesture pinched a muscle in his back and sharp pain began to throb from the area.

He looked up with the intent of making sure Clawdeen and Laura were okay. Something in the windshield caught his eye, though, and as he looked forward, his eyes widened at the sight that awaited all of them. The blood drained from his face.

“WATCH OUT!” he yelled, pointing forward.

The rest of the teams screamed as they also caught sight of what in front of them.

The rough jerk of the back of the bus as its wheels got caught in a thick patch of snow sent the front careening to the left, where it was headed right towards the rock wall that made up the other side of the cliff.

Coach Igor exclaimed, “Look out!”

“Fuck!” Alejandro swore.

He threw his weight into his grip on the steering wheel, actually lifting himself out of his seat as a means to try and finally twist the damn thing in the direction he wanted. It strained against his hold and that of the opposing pull of the force generated by the rough, snow-laden ground; the loud grinding of its machinery was like nails on a chalkboard.

With all his might, his back and arms screaming out from the exertion, and the bottom of the wheel digging into his gut, he managed to yank the bus to the right, narrowly avoiding its nose crashing right into the rock face. Several of the kids screamed as they saw it fill up the nearest windows, like it was a giant coming right towards them.

Suddenly, they jerked again, then to everyone’s horror, there was sensation of gliding across the ground. They had hit a patch of ice, and now the bus slid across the road on pure momentum, an eighteen ton hockey puck in a rink.

“SHIT!” Alejandro yelled.

His foot stomped on the brake pedal repeatedly, and he twisted the wheel left and right, but the endeavors were fruitless, the smooth surface of the ice providing no grip for the wheels to gain traction. Everyone huddled down in their seats as they felt it gain speed, many of them beginning to cry.

“Do something!” Igor yelled out in panic.

“I’m trying!” Alejandro yelled back.

He turned the wheel again and slammed on the brakes. His hand shot out and yanked the gear shift in whatever direction he could, but the bus showed no signs of slowing down.

His eyes widened when he saw they were now approaching the guardrail on the right side. He twisted in his seat and stared out at the students.

“BRACE YOURSELVES!” he yelled, “BRACE YOURSELVES-!”

The bus slammed into the guardrail. Everyone was tossed about in their seats at the impact. A sickening crunching sound filled the air as the front end was crushed, gears snapping and metal tearing like it was nothing more than paper. The guardrail made a groaning noise as it strained against the force, bending inward, before it completely gave way..

There was another harsh lurch as the front wheels went off the edge. The students felt a horrifying sense of weightlessness as the the back end began to lift, the bus teetering against the cliff for a split second, before it began to slide forward.

“OH MY GOD! NO! NO!” Toralei screamed.

“EVEYRONE HANG ON!” Coach Igor shouted back at them.

“WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!”

“PLEASE, PLEASE, OH GOD PLEASE!”

It all devolved in various degrees of screams and yells as gravity won, and the bus’s belly scraped against the ground as it continued on over the cliff.

Then its back end went over the front, leading it to somersault as it went down. Soon, the echo of screams in the gray wilderness were joined by a chorus of smashing glass and tearing metal as the bus tumbled down the cliff slide and into the dark, icy forest below.

Chapter Text

“The time is upon us.”

In the distance, a figure. They stood at the edge of one of the cliffs, which overlooked the vast landscape of the forest below. In the early hours of the morning, a blanket of darkness remained cast over the land, blending landmarks and any identifying features that mayhap could have helped a lost traveler find their way into one big pool of blackness, only occasionally broken up by the moonglow of snow.

“I have waited for so long…” The figure murmured to themselves, “None of them know. They will never know what it is like to desire and know that you can never have it. That it will never be enough even when you get it. To never be able to scratch that itch...oh, how I have longed…”

“Who are you talking to…?” a voice from behind them spoke up.

The figure turned. Two others had since appeared on the cliff with them. Their hoods were up, shielding their faces from the sharp wind that came blowing from over the mountains in the north. Although, the first figure thought with some amusement, it wasn’t like any of them were really affected by the cold anymore.

They looked back out over the forest. “Don’t mind me,” they said, “I am just...pondering what is to happen next.”

“I am so restless,” they admitted, “It has been so long since we have had any fun. Since we have had...sustenance…”

One of the other figures, noticeably a few inches shorter, nodded. “I understand,” they murmured, their voice slightly higher-pitched than the other two. “No one seems to want to come around here anymore. The visits from the others out there were already scarce, I’m aware, but still. Even the animals don’t come around anymore.”

“Do you think they have caught on to us?” the third figure asked.

The first figure shook their head. “No,” they replied, “There were be more attention. More gathering in this area trying to find the answers. But they have made sure that everyone keeps quiet.”

That made the second figure growl. “I hate them,” they said, “They are the reason why we are like this. Why He wanders about.”

“We cannot be too critical of them, I suppose,” the first figure said with a sigh, “If it wasn’t for them, after all, we would all long past the river with the ferryman by now. At least we still live.”

“If you could really describe this as ‘living,’” the second figure replied with some sarcasm.

They all raised their heads as they heard suddenly heard a sound on the wind. They looked out at the range of hills in the distance; from those lying to the south, there was the faint but sharp sound of something grinding hard against the ground. A vast machine that was trying to resist the forces of whatever had come upon it.

They then all jumped as a small boom suddenly echoed throughout the forest. Accompanying it was the sound of some sort of metallic groan- something straining against a great weight- before they picked up on a series of crunching noises and dull thuds as whatever was responsible for them seem to fall down a great height, slamming against a series of hard surfaces as it did so.

As it did this, screams filled the air. They were filled with panic and fear, and gradually diminished in volume as they descended further to the ground, before they promptly cut out as another loud booming sound echoed through the forest. Then, the night grew silent again, like it never even had happened.

The figures looked at each other. It had been a long while since any of them had seen a car- there were no roads this high up, and this part of the forest was too dense and the ground too uneven to even attempt to try and scoop out a trail- but they had enough experiences in their old lives to recognize the tell-tale sound of an accident.

Their eyes suddenly sparkled with excitement. It was of a nefarious, almost sadistic nature, one that would send goosebumps down the spines of anyone who had stumbled upon the three and seen their expressions. Their mouths bared childlike grins that were full of hunger.

“Fresh meat,” the second figure murmured giddily.

“It is a new offering,” the first figure replied in agreement, “It seems that our luck has not run out just yet.”

They turned back to the outlook, and tilted their head back to sniff at the air.

“In due time, they will belong to us,” they said in assurance to their companions, “They will all belong to us.”

Clawdeen had no idea where she was.

She looked around, confused at the snowy landscape that surrounded her. For as far as the eye could see, the ground was a thick blanket of ivory, freshly fallen snow crystals lightly glittering in the moonlight that peered out from from the gauzy curtain of clouds that currently shielded it in the sky. Huge, towering pines spread out around her and huddled together in thick patches along the hills, large black spindly giants in the nights, their branches all dusted with a finer layer of snow like powdered sugar on a cake. There were no stars, but the moonlight cast everything in a light blue hue, softening the roughness of the shadows and the eerie silhouettes that formed in the night.

Any other time, the sight might have been beautiful, a perfect snapshot to put on a Cryptmas postcard. Right now, though, Clawdeen just found her placement in this land confusing. She had never seen a forest like this before; how had she even got here?

She turned around, gauging everything around her. Strangely, she couldn’t see any tracks in the snow behind her that indicated where she had come from. As she turned to look over her shoulder, it crunched beneath her feet. It was accompanied by the sharp bite of severe cold brushing against her ankles, and a small sound of discomfort escaped her as she looked down.

To her surprise, she was wearing only her fearleading shoes and some ankle socks. Her legs were completely bare, the pleaded skirt of her fearleading uniform lightly blowing against her thighs as a slight breeze came in from the south. Clawdeen shivered and hugged herself as it easily blew past the thin cotton of her clawsity jacket; although her fur gave her a little extra heat in the winter, it still was no match for Mother Nature’s winter kiss.

What was she doing here? And in the worst clothes to be in, in these conditions? While admittedly she had her own moments of choosing to sacrifice practical comfort for flair and making a statement- thus was the curse of a being a couture connoisseur- not even she would be willing to go out in this kind of weather without even a sweater or at least some proper boots.

“What the…” Clawdeen muttered to herself.

She put a hand to her head, trying to remember what she had last been doing. Based on her current wear, she hadn’t managed to mysteriously sleepwalk five miles in the snow. And a quick look at the moon told her she wasn’t out on a hunt with the pack, like they did whenever it was a full night.

There had been a bus...yeah, a school bus, with Laura and Frankie and Cleo and her brother on it- both the casketball team, and the rest of the squad, actually...they’d been driving and...and…

She was broken from her train of thought as she suddenly caught on to the sound of someone coming near her. She looked over her shoulder to see a faint figure between two trees; they appeared right now as just a light gray silhouette, their features covered by the snow-laden wind that suddenly picked up, but with the way they were moving, Clawdeen thought they looked like they were running.

“Hey, hey there!” she called out, waving her hands, “Over here!”

The figure came closer. They were definitely running- their arms pumped back and forth at their sides, and their legs seemed to grow and shrink as they repeatedly hit the ground in short, quick strides. She began to hear the sound of them panting- from the pitch, it sounded like it was a woman.

As she came closer, Clawdeen could start to make out her features and the details of her clothes. She was still mostly obscured in shadow, but the shape of her face and the patterns on her fur suggested that she was a werecat. She wore a thick winter coat that open and actually almost falling off her shoulders with the thrust of her arms, while her boots, Clawdeen noticed, were unlaced with the tongues flopping back and forth and smacking at her shins. It was a miracle that she hadn’t managed to trip herself.

“Hey! Over here!” she continued to call out, “Can you help me? I don’t know where I am-”

She cut herself off as the woman ran right past her, not breaking her stride once or even sparing a quick glance at the werewolf. Her feet left heavy imprints in the snow as she ran towards the next thicket of trees that lay in front of her.

“H-H-Hey!” Clawdeen called out, reaching out for her, “Wait a minute! Where are you going?!”

She started for the direction the werecat had gone in. Her footing was awkward, though, her shoes not at all appropriate for such inclement weather, and she stumbled as her feet got suck into the thick snow and she struggled to pull them at.

The werecat was already almost to the edges of the forest already. She finally acknowledged Clawdeen with a look over her shoulder, still running all the meanwhile.

Clawdeen paused at the look in her eyes.

They were wide with terror. Even in this darkness, even with the distance between them, the amount of stone-cold fear that filled her gaze was as stark as the white glow of the moon in the night sky.

Clawdeen felt chills run through her that had nothing to do with her lack of heat insulation or the stinging cold of the winter setting. It was immediate at once that the werecat was not running just for the sake of making haste back to a campsite or because she just wanted out of the cold.

“You should not be here.”

Her hackles went pin straight on the back of her neck. Her blood ran cold like the rivers she could hear rushing against rocks in the distance. The voice was like gravel.

She shouldn’t turn around. Her mind screamed at her to run just like the werecat. But no matter what her instincts told her, Clawdeen suddenly found she couldn’t move her body. Her bones would not obey her, seemingly gained a mind of their own as they maneuvered her feet to turn, forcing her body around to face whoever had spoken.

“Come on, Clawdeen.”

She stood chest to chest with whatever had spoken.

Clawdeen sucked in a sharp breath, feeling her heart drop.

“Clawdeen…”

Her lips parted.

“Clawdeen…”

She screamed.

“Clawdeen!”

She felt her body jerk. She heard herself let out a groan as she opened her eyes; a small whine escaped her as she was suddenly hit with a blast of cold air. It registered to her that someone was grasping her shoulder and shaking her.

“Clawdeen! Clawdeen! Please, wake up! Wake up!”

Clawdeen lifted her head. She turned to look over her shoulder and met a pair of tear-filled purple eyes. Draculaura sniffed, her gaze filling now filling with relief. Her hair was disarray, Clawdeen noticed, her pigtails pulled out of alignment and several loose strands hanging about her face.

“Oh, thank gods!” she exclaimed, lunging for Clawdeen and wrapping her arms around her. “I was so worried!”

As she sobbed against her shoulder, Clawdeen looked around in confusion as she felt another sharp blast of wind hit her. She shivered in Laura’s hold. Why was it so cold?

Her eyes widened when she saw the scene that lay in front of them.

Their teammates were scattered around them, helping each other to their feet or tending to injuries they had sustained. Everyone was pale and wore looks of shock similar to her own, some of them unable to do more than stare off at their surroundings, overwhelmed at the whole situation.

The bus lay on its side, now nothing more than a twisted and crumpled up mess. The windows had all been shattered, and one of the upended wheels was bent almost completely horizontal. The nose was smashed in, the windshield wipers snapped like twigs. Around it, everyone’s belongings lay scattered about where they had been thrown from the bus. Just from around the corner of the bus’s upended rear end, Clawdeen could see her duffel bag lying in a heap of snow; it had been torn along one seam, and her shoes and clothes spilled out through the opening like the guts of a disemboweled animal.

Jeez, some imagery, she thought morbidly to herself. She shivered and looked down, finding herself lying in a small imprint in the snow. It clung in small chunks to the fur on her legs and to her uniform.

“This is…” Clawdeen commented, the shock of the situation leaving her blank-minded and unable to focus enough to form full sentences. She looked around at their surroundings, a sharp gasp escaping her as it occurred to her where they were.

On the other side of the bus was the slanted edge of a cliff-face, a stack of thick grey and brown sedimentary rock that loomed like a massive storm cloud coming in from the distance. Its snow-speckled surface was vandalized by two giant skid marks going down its middle, where the rock had been scraped and the snow had been disrupted by something wiping it off. They were parallel to the length of the bus where it now lay. Bits of scrap metal and glass also littered the small edges in the rock.

Way up above, Clawdeen could see the now-ruined crash barrier sticking out from over the top of the cliff. The metal was bent and warped, the edges of where the bus had torn through it ragged and thinned out from the strain.

Up above, spanning as far as the eye could see, the sky was one thick blanket of dark gray. Wherever the sun was, it was buried under the heavy clouds, the light of the day only provided by that the snow that absorbed and scattered whatever light was provided earlier. Meanwhile, the snow fell in endlessly, a thick shower of confetti with flakes nearly the size of coins.

Clawdeen turned and looked ahead of them. They were in some sort of clearing, the ground rough and rocky and slippery with ice. Boulders jutted out here and there, while thickets of winter bushes lay scattered about, their branches heavy with snow. Towering firs with trunks that stood at least nine feet tall until you got to their lowest branches and bare redwoods stood together, the bare branches of the redwoods looking sharp and jagged, like nails hammered into a baseball bat. With how heavy the snow was falling, the wind blew thick white clouds in their faces, and beyond the trees, all Clawdeen could see was a white haze.

Another sharp wind suddenly came rolling in, throwing up a handful of snow that blasted her in the face. Clawdeen let out a cry as she felt it hit her in the face- it might as well have been a handful of pebbles, the cold so sharp it actually hurt. Goosebumps broke out across her arms and legs as the wind easily cut through her fearleading uniform and jacket, wrapping her up in its freezing embrace. She hugged herself tightly and looked up at Laura, her eyes panicked.

“We...we…” she stammered.

Laura swallowed and nodded, her expression grim. “I just woke up,” she said, “The rest of the vampires recovered pretty quickly. You were one of the first people I came across.”

“Clawdeen! Laura!” someone yelled out to them. They turned to see Clawd running towards them.

He dropped to his knees in front of them and threw his arm around them, drawing them close to his chest. Clawdeen blinked, a bit surprised by the gesture; even on their good days, neither her nor Clawd were really the physical type when it came to showing familial affection.

Right now, though, as the weight of the realization of their situation came down on her, heavy like someone had draped a blanket of lead across her shoulders, she found herself actually tearing up- both from the situation and the gesture. She held Clawd back tightly, her fingers digging tightly into the fabric of his clawsity jacket.

“Thank gods. I was so scared when I couldn’t find either of you,” Clawd exclaimed in a thick voice. He pulled back from them and looked at each of them. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Draculaura said, “Good ol’ healing factor took care of most of it before I was even fully awake.”

“My head hurts a little,” Clawdeen admitted, putting a hand to her temple.

Clawd nodded and tilted her head up so that they were maintaining eye contact. His gaze was stern, but that of concern as he lightly turned her head this way and that, seemingly inspecting her eyes and her face for injury.

“You don’t seem concussed right now,” he said as he let go of her, “But we may not know until later.”

“Uh, okay,” Clawdeen answered. What did ‘later’ even entail, with all that was happening right now?

“Clawd! Get over here, we need help!”

The three of them turned to find Deuce waving over at them. He stood with Romulus, Bram, and some of the other guys from the casketball team as they all huddled together in a circle around a piece of metal that had been flung off the bus. It had pinned another one of the casketball players, Marcus, who supported himself on his elbows, his face contorted with pain as the heavy metal dug into his shins.

“Shit!” Clawd exclaimed.

He quickly pulled away from the girls and got to his feet, running in the snow over to them. Around them, the rest of both teams bustled about, trying to help each other or at least just get their surroundings.

“Iris!” Manny was calling out, his voice and face heavy with panic as he helped the cyclops to her feet. “Are you all right?”

“M-My arm hurts,” Iris whimpered, wearing a wince as she gripped her left arm. “I-I think I might have landed on it wrong when Hatia and me fell to the floor, w-when the bus turned.”

One of the werewolf girls on the squad, Grrrsula, sat with her back against a boulder, holding her right leg against her chest with her teeth grit in pain. There was a rather large gash running across her knee, with blood coating her light brown fur. Gory was kneeling in front of her and doing her best to bandage the wound with a pair of stockings.

“Shit!” Grrrsula hissed, as the bespectacled vampire tugged on the ends of the stocking to tighten the bandage, “Fuck, it feels like someone’s driving a nail right through the bone!”

“Well, you can still feel something, so that’s good,” Gory commented as she grabbed another sock, “Let’s be thankful it wasn’t through your head.”

A little ways away, at the edge of the clearing, Toralei was wandering seemingly aimlessly. She had her phone raised above her head, and was turning to and fro as she stared up at it with a weary expression.

“Tor, what are you doing?” Meowlody called out to her. She was hugging herself tightly, slightly hunched over in an attempt to protect herself from the wind. Next to her, Purrsephone was sitting on a rock, the brunette bouncing her leg in a mix of anxiety and chills as she cringed and turned away from the blast of snow that was dotting her hair.

“Trying to find a signal,” Toralei answered, her voice unusually resigned, “We weren’t that far from the highway. Satellites are everywhere these days- there’s got to be data somewhere, right?”

On the other side, a small group had gathered around another fallen teammate. One of the fearleaders, Carmen, had sliced her arm open- although unlike some of the other gashes they were seeing, this one looked self-inflicted- and was keeping pressed against Packquita’s mouth as she fed the strawberry blonde she-wolf her blood; the latter had her head laying in the lap of Brocko’s sister Clawdrina, who looked down at her with tears in her eyes.

“Packquita, come on!” she pleaded, “She can hear me, right? She’ll be okay?”

“She’s probably concussed,” Carmen commented, her brows furrowed as she focused on trying to help the she-wolf heal her injuries, “Keep talking to her.”

“Clawdeen! Laura!”

The two of them looked over, seeing Frankie and Cleo running up to them. Frankie’s hair whipped about her face wildly, the wind and exertion throwing it in every single direction and making her resemble the classic image of her mother in the old movies. Cleo was keeping up right behind her, hair and makeup equally a mess and a large bruise taking form on her cheek, but in a manner completely unlike her, she was ignoring her disheveled appearance, and actually looked worried as her and Frankie approached the two girls.

Clawdeen and Draculaura got to their feet, and the four of them embraced each other.

“We were worried!” Frankie exclaimed, looking back and forth between all of them wildly, “We woke up and we didn’t see either of you in the bus. I was scared that you had been thrown from the bus.”

“I don’t even remember how I got here,” Clawdeen admitted, looking over her shoulder at the spot where she’d been laying.

“I found you slumped against the seat,” Draculaura said with a sniffle, wiping at her eyes, “I tried to carry you over my back outside, but your shoe got caught against a piece of metal that had come up between the seats and I dropped you.”

As she spoke this admission, her eyes suddenly widened, seemingly realizing how it sounded. Her cheeks, already flushed with cold, grew even redder as she blushed. She looked up at Clawdeen with a sheepish expression.

“S-Sorry about that, by the way,” she muttered.

Whether Clawdeen meant to respond to her, or simply chose to ignore this remark, it couldn’t be said, as right then, they were all called to attention at some shouting coming from the other side of the bus.

“Hey! Anyone out there, give me a hand!” Dougey was yelling out, “Come on!”

He suddenly appeared from behind the smashed-in nose of the bus. Heath was on his other side, Coach Igor between the two of them as they struggled to carry him around to the clearing, his arms thrown over each of their shoulders. It was a bit of a task, Igor’s hulking figure and the uneven weight of his peg leg making it hard for him to walk, even with the support of the two of them.

“Coach!” Clawd yelled out. Him and the rest of the guys had managed to get Marcus out from under the random sheet metal that had been digging into his legs, and now they were tending to the lacerations that were left from where it had cut into his skin. They all got to their feet as they saw the older man appear, and him, the ghouls, and all of them hurried close for assistance.

Dougey and Heath set Igor down on a small rock. The gym teacher groan as he was finally able to get off his heat. He put a hand to his side; they could see there was a rip in his jacket, exposing a superficial but very large abrasion running across his side, near his ribs. There was also a large bruise forming at the corner of his left eye.

“Coach, you okay?” Deuce asked, taking a step forward in concern.

Igor reached up and took off his red ballcap to wipe at his forehead. “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about me,” he said, “A lil’ banged up, but I’ve been through worse.”

He let his hands drop and sighed. He looked out at all of them. The ghouls all felt a pang of pity; none of them had ever seen him like this, looking so defeated and lost about the siutation.

“Come on, teams. All of you, gather around,” Igor then said, waving them towards him.

Everyone steadily made their way to him and huddled in a circle, pressing up against each other for warmth. Some of them had sat down, but most of them stayed standing, unwilling to bear the biting cold of the snow beneath them. Everyone looked uncomfortable, and most of them were already shivering.

“Okay, well…” Coach Igor, began, looking at his lap, before he peered up at all of them, his own gaze weary like theirs, “This is...this is some deep crap we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

That earned a few week chuckles from the group, but for the most part, everyone could only look grim. The icy cold kiss of snowflakes that were never-ending and the harsh wind were just two factors that reminded them of what exactly had happened, as the situation began to settle upon all of them.

“Coach, w-what...what are we gonna do?” Heath was the first one to dare ask.

He looked the most pitiful right now, of all of them. He had his shoulders raised up and his chin buried in the collar of his coat, with his arms wrapped tightly around himself and his sleeves pulled over his hands as makeshift gloves. He was shivering quite violently, to the point he was practically vibrating on the spot, and from her position, Frankie swore she could hear his teeth chatter. It definitely wasn’t going to be easy on him as a fire elemental.

“Well, first of all,” Coach Igor answered, “We should do a head count and make sure everyone’s here, before we do anything else. Nothing to get us off on a worst start than to try and make plans and it turns out there’s someone we didn’t see who needs help.

“Everyone line up,” he ordered, gesturing with his hand for them to come closer, “Clawd, Cleo, you do your counts, make sure everyone on your team is accounted for. I want to make sure no head injury is screwing up my memory.”

“Yes, sir.” “Sure.”

Everyone stood around, looking at their environment uneasily as the three of them counted off the members of each team. Some tried to make it easier by raising their hands. A few of them had started to cry, and were sniffling and wiping at their eyes as their friends tried to comfort them.

Clawdeen looked up at the cliff face. She could feel her stomach twist into knots as her eyes slowly trailed the length of the massive skid marks that marked their descent down the steep rockside. The top of the cliff loomed over all of them like a titan arising from the depths of Hell, its edge nearly blending in with the dismal gray tone of the sky.

What were they going to do? She doubted that, from the way the snow kept falling like it meant to go until the treetops were buried, that anyone was going to be driving out on these roads any time soon. She pulled out her phone and clicked on the home screen; she had already expected it, but that still couldn’t stop the pit of dread she felt when she saw the No Service stated in the corner where her usual data bars would be.

To add more weight to the gravity of the situation, just then she heard her stomach let out a small gurgling sound. With them having left so early, she hadn’t had much to eat besides a quick donut and small protein milkshake her and Clawd had bought at convenience store. Grimacing, she put a hand to her stomach.

Most of them had only had small snacks. It wasn’t a super long trip, they had all talked about maybe getting breakfast once they got to the hotel…

“Coach,” Brocko suddenly spoke up, breaking her concentration, “Wait, w-where’s the driver?”

Coach Igor paused. He looked to the blonde werewolf, his finger still stuck on Manny from where he was taking count. “What?” he asked.

“The bus driver. Alejandro,” Brocko clarified, “Where is he?”

It was no reassurance to any of them as they watched Coach Igor drop his hand, while the already fair skin of his face managed to drain further of color. His one good eye widened in shock.

“I thought…” he spoke up, “I thought one of you had gotten to him…”

Everyone stiffened. They looked between each other, as they all realized none of them had seen the alebrije since everyone had started to wake up. Clawd shared a grim look with Deuce, before he looked to Romulus; the older werewolf shook his head, his jaw tightening as he did so.

“W-We haven’t seen him, Coach….” Clawd answered weakly.

Panic filled Igor’s expression. Almost in sync, him and both teams looked back at the wreckage of the bus. They peered in through the broken windows at the front, where the driver’s seat lay.

Many of them let out gasps as they caught sight of a silhouetted figure laying slumped over the steering wheel.

“Shit!” Clawd hissed, as him and several of the boys immediately darted for the bus.

Igor scooted around on the rock to watch as they hurried over to the driver’s side. Dougey and Manny hurriedly climbed up the side to get access to the driver side door. Bram and Heath bent down and tried looking in through the remains of the windshield. Bram squatted and used his sleeve to wipe at the snow that was gathering in the cracked glass that remained.

Even with the wind, one didn’t have to be a werewolf to catch the horrified gasp that escaped him when he saw what was inside. Heath made a choked noise and stumbled backwards, his hands flying to his mouth. He suddenly turned and ran farther away, putting his hands on his knees as he bent over and began retching.

A feeling of collective dread went through the groups. They all started to exchange worried looks with each other, many of them swallowing hard; there was only one plausible explanation that could’ve triggered such a reaction in the fire elemental…

“Shit,” Bram hissed out as he stood up. His back was still to everyone, but they watched him link his hands together and clutch at the back of his head.

He turned to face them. When he looked up, his gaze was troubled.

“Bram?” Igor called out, his own voice worried.

Bram let his hands drop. His mouth set in a thin line. Slowly, reluctantly, he shook his head, which caused several gasps to echo out.

Dougey and Manny knelt down, and Dougey reached into the driver’s side window. They could see him reach and grab Alejandro’s arm, presumably feeling from a pulse. After a minute, he let his arm drop and sat back up on his knees. He looked at Coach Igor, his expression stricken- it was an unusual thing to see on the usually gruff wolf-man.

“Coach, he’s…” he began, “He didn’t…”

“Oh, gods…” Draculaura whimpered, putting her hands to her mouth as she turned away from the scene.

“Fuck!” Igor swore, twisting back forward. He balled his fist and slammed it down on the rock. “God fucking dammit!”

Near the bus, Heath continued to wretch. Deuce came up to him and put a comforting hand on his back, trying to soothe him. A few of the girls began to whimper, and a couple of them broke out in tears.

“He...He was only, like, thirty, right?” Carmillo looked to his friend, “I-I thought I heard him talking earlier this morning about his daughter. L-Like, that she had just started winter sports at her school…”

“W-W-What are we gonna do?” Purrsephone whimpered, looking to Toralei and Meowlody in panic, “O-Oh god, he’s dead, what are we gonna do?!”

“I-I-I don’t know,” Toralei answered.

“He’s dead,” Purrsephone just repeated, her bright yellow eyes manic, “He’s dead! He’s dead, oh god, he’s dead!”

“I know, Purrsephone! Jesus!” Toralei snapped at her, “I have eyes too you know!”

It was harsh, but from the look in her eyes, it was clear she was barely keeping herself from panicking. Meowlody stepped in between them, trying to calm the two of them down.

“Okay, now, hold up. Everyone just calm down,” Igor tried to keep the peace, holding out his hands, “Let’s all not lose our heads.”

“What the hell are we gonna do with him?” Scarius asked, crossing his arms.

Hellvira looked and gave him a frown. “What do you mean?” she asked, “We gotta send him back to his family.”

“How are we gonna do that when we’re at the bottom of a ninety-foot cliff?” Scarius countered, “Like, we can’t take him with us.”

Iris, overhearing their conversation, let out a gasp and looked to the vampire with a horrified expression. She exclaimed, “We can’t leave him here! The animals will get to him!”

“Well, do you want to carry a two hundred fifty pound man on your back for however long it’s going to take us to get out of this shit, when it’s thirteen degrees out and the snow is up to our ankles?” Scarius threw back.

Iris flinched back at his harsh tone and looked down sheepishly. She started pressing the tips of her index fingers together. “I-I-I was only saying…” she stammered out.

Manny put a hand on her shoulder and shot his teammate a withered look.

“Hey, guys, hold on,” Igor tried calling out to them, “Don’t let-”

“Gods!” Cleo squealed as another sharp wind came blowing in. The cold cut them all like a knife, burying itself deep into their bones, and accompanying it came a thick curtain of snow that blasted all of them in the face; it was like a dozen of sharp needles, stinging their skin and their eyes.

Cleo let out another whine as her hair blew further out of place. Her hands grabbed wildly at her scalp as she tried to tame the unruly locks and get them out of her face. “Ugh! What is with this fucking wind?!” she exclaimed, “Give it a rest already!”

Standing off to the side, Hatia suddenly burst into tears. “What are we gonna do?!” she cried out, “No one knows we’re here, Marcus is hurt, and now we have a dead body with us!”

As she sobbed, Scarah put her hands on her shoulders and murmured to her, trying to calm the brown she-wolf down.

The volume quickly rose. Soon everyone was talking over each other, arguing over what they should do, others lamenting and sobbing about the whole situation at hand and where they were even supposed to begin to get out of it. Their voices rose over the winds, drowning each other out while simultaneously amplifying them as a collective buzz.

“HEY!” Igor finally yelled out, his patience at its breaking point.

The chatter instantly cut out. Everyone turned and stared at the old hunchback, shocked; they had never heard him bellow like that before.

Igor sat back on the stone, giving all of them a stern glare. He carefully met all of their eyes, before he took a deep breath and looked to the side.

“Romulus, get my bag, would you?” he asked, pointing to a blue duffel bag that lay among the wreckage, like everyone else’s. “I should have an extra map in my front pocket.”

A few seconds later, Romulus came over and handed him the tattered bag. Igor set it down between his legs and bent over. He pulled out a folded print map and opened it up, setting on his lap as he looked over the routes.

“Okay, if my sense of geogregraphy is still intact, we should have been passing along route fifty-eight around the time of the crash,” he explained, holding out the map out as best as he could to try and give everyone a look; a bit of a useless task, though, as its flimsy body easily crumbled and bent against the force of the wind. Igor just did his best to keep it still, though, and pointed along one line with his finger.

“Had we been sticking to the highway, we would’ve passed over the bridge that overlooks McKenzie river,” he continued, “Part of that runs through the east of the Cascades. My guess is that Alejandro took us off route along here, down McKenzie River Road.”

He traced a gray outline running parallel to the blue one that marked the highway path. “The river drains the eastern part of the Cascades near Eugene, and flows west to drain into the Willamette River, in the valley. With all these trees and these cliffs, I’m guessing we’re somewhere here-”

He made a circling motion in a green patch of the map. “It looks like there’s a few unincorporated communities that lie within a few miles of here, if we’re lucky, but otherwise we seem to be on the one main road going through these ranges for at least six miles.”

Gory frowned. She stuffed her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “Sooo,” she spoke up, “What does that mean, exactly?”

Igor sighed and allowed the map to drop into his lap. “Well,” he admitted, “It means with our current situation at hand? We’re pretty fucked right now.”

Everyone winced at that. To hear the coach, who was normally strict about them using adult language and trash talk, be so blunt, really drove home the hopelessness of the situation. Some of those who’d been crying looked like they were close to starting up again, while others just looked around at each other, desperate for some kind of reassurance.

All of a sudden, Bram stepped forward and raised his hand.

“Well, Coach,” he suggested, “You know, some of us can transform to fly. And most of the werewolves, you guys have gone hunting and hiking in conditions similar to this before, right?”

“Well, yeah?” Romulus replied, raising his brow in confusion.

Igor frowned. “What the hell are you suggesting, Devein?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Brocko agreed, “What are you volunteering us for?”

“I was just thinking,” Bram explained, “Send some of us to climb back up the slope. Me and some of the guys can shift in our bat forms, and we can fly up back onto the road. I’m sure if the wolves shift into their four-legged forms to, or we help them climb, they can also get back up in no time. And then we can trace our steps back along the road and get help.”

That sparked a murmur between the teams, as everyone discussed his suggestion. Some of Bram’s friends, along with some of the werewolves- including Romulus and Clawd- were nodding their heads in agreement.

Igor, though, frowned and answered, “Absolutely not. We’re not splitting up.”

“But Coach!” Bram argued, “We can’t just sit here forever! Look at how deeper the snow’s gotten with all of just standing around, talking. If we wait for people to realize we’re missing or for other cars to come, that could take hours.”

“It might be better for everyone if we break off into much small groups, Coach,” Romulus advised, “IF we all have to move about as a single unit, that’s more heads we have to keep count of. We’ll have to move slower to make sure we don’t lose anymore.”

Igor was persistent, however, and shook his head. “We’re not splitting up,” he said firmly, “You kids are my responsibility, and I’m not gonna risk you are all getting more lost or getting hurt cuz I wasn’t there to keep you safe. This wasn’t even the route I had expected us to be on, I thought Alejandro would just take us along the highway- We’re staying together.”

“But, what are we gonna do?” Toralei asked, “Just wait here and hope someone drives by and happens to notice how the road’s out?”

“We should at least see how far we are from civilization,” Bram argued in frustration, “Look, how about this- let me at least go into bat form and fly up high, and maybe I can see how far down the road we are? Maybe we can get a sense of how far the nearest building is, in case we decide to walk?”

Gory looked at Igor and shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt to get a better gauge of our location, Coach.”

Igor frowned, clearly wanting to remain firm in his refusal. After a moment, though, he closed his eyes and gave a sigh, hanging his head.

“Fine,” he said when he looked back up, “But be careful. I know you vamps think you’re invincible against such ‘puny’ things like the elements, but Mother Nature picks a grudge with anyone, man or monster.”

For the first time since this whole thing happened, Bram cracked a smile. “Oh, I know,” he assured the older hunchback, “Believe me, I’m not planning on bursting through the cloud coverage and flying right for the sun’s rays.”

“Good, cuz I don’t need Headmistress Bloodgood making me the new headless horseman if I have to bring you back in an urn,” Igor commented.

“Be careful, Bram,” Gory said, her expression troubled behind her glasses.

Bram gave her a smile and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “Don’t worry about me,” he reassured her, “I’ll be back before you know it. Literally.”

He then stepped back from her. Everyone watched in anticipation as he spread out his arms and flexed his hands. Bram closed his eyes and focused.

Many of them flinched at the suddenness of his transformation, as his body suddenly seemed to retract and pull inward, like he was being sucked into a void, before he quickly shifted into his bat form. The only evidence the small black creature flapping before them was him was the small tuft of blonde hair that covered his head.

Bram gave a few flaps to keep his lift, before he took off north, using the wind to gain elevation. Everyone and Igor tilted their heads up, trying to keep track of his movements. The combination of the ever-falling snow and the dark grey of the clouds, though, quickly obscured him from their view, and soon he was barely more than just a little speck that they could just barely detect in the sky.

As he gained altitude, though, Bram quickly found his plan going to the way side. The heavy snowstorm made it hard to see, the flakes huge and getting into his face and obscuring the geography at this height in a haze of white. It wasn’t long before he felt his wings getting heavy with moisture, and within a few minutes he already found himself struggling to keep going and stay in the sky.

The wind also suddenly shifted; he let out a yelp- in this form, it came as a small squeak- as he was blasted in the face. His wings flapped wildly about him, his aerodynamics thrown completely off course, and in a rare bout of panic, he felt a leap in his chest as he felt himself briefly drop from the sky. He managed to lift himself back up and keep flying, but with the rough weather, he was becoming way more tired out than he normally would be when he was in this form.

He tried to squint and looked down, turning his head about to try and glimpse where the road was. To his surprise, though, he could barely see anything from up above- the thick treetops and the high rise of the mountains obscured the path and any connecting turns the road may have had, and with how hard the snow fall was, everything was cast in a gauzy white veil, hiding finer details of the land from him. He was dismayed to find he could barely see even the ground below him, the terrain little more than a sheet of white with an occasional sprinkling of black patches from rocks or trees.

Come on, come on, Bram thought to himself, fighting against the wind as it became stronger and threatened to blow him right out of the sky.

Why was this so hard? He had flown in plenty of bad weather before- rain, sleet; hell, one time him and Gory had flown for a full twenty-five miles trying to get away from a tornado- but there was something about these conditions that were getting to him.

It almost felt like the elements were purposefully working against him. Trying to keep him away and from getting help. Like a pair of invisible, giant hands that were swatting him away.

A snowflake suddenly went into his nose. Bram sputtered and flapped about, taken aback by the sudden irritation in his sinuses that made him want to sneeze.

He was suddenly falling again. His wings couldn’t gather lift. His vision spun, with the ground approaching in a matter of seconds, filling up his vision with white.

It wouldn’t actually be all that bad, if he did hit the ground. With his healing factor, he would be up and walking in mere seconds, even if the fall broke every bone in his body. Even with that, though, with the situation at hand considered, Bram knew he couldn’t afford any reckless injuries. Injury was energy, and energy meant a greater demand for blood, and him and Gory had only packed enough to snack on during the trip.

Twisting his body however he could to right himself, he spread his wings wide and allowed the wind to glide him forward, moving passively in the air for a few minutes before he managed to get back into a rhythm. He turned around and started flying back, squinting as the wind dried his eyes out.

As he looked around, though, a sinking feeling suddenly filled him as he saw he couldn’t recognize the landscape under him.

What the fuck...he thought, his head twisting rapidly left and right as he searched the mountain slopes for signs of the bus.

He couldn’t have gone so far that he was completely out of sight of it. He couldn’t have- he had only been up in the air for a few minutes, max. He had covered some distance, but the sight of the bus’s wreckage should’ve still have been in visual distance for him.

Panic started to overtake him. It was hard to focus on trying to look and fly at the same time, his body starting to stiffen with fear that he made himself even more lost and making harder for him to keep the pattern of flapping his wings. Bram couldn’t remember the last time he had ever been scared to this degree- honestly it had probably been before he had become a vampire.

He had turned around. He swore he had been going in a straight line. So why couldn’t he see anything?

No, no, no, no...the thoughts echoed in his head like a broken record.

In the distance, only faintly visible through the haze, he caught sight of a small flash of orange. Bram flapped his wings harder, desperately moving towards the direction of the speck, trying his best to not lose sight of it. The cold had long since taken a hold of him, and he as he flew, he could barely feel his wing membranes or his nose. The cold was steadily creeping up his fingers and making its way to the center of his body, the feeling hurting and yet also somehow numb at the same time.

The orange-yellow speck appeared again. Relief flooded Bram’s chest as he flew closer and found it growing. As he flew over it, he could register that it was the top of Heath’s said; the latter was standing in a small semi-circle with some of their teammates as they dropped dead branches and shreds of rubber from the bus’s tires, along with other scarce detritus they could find in the area, into a pile in the center of them. Heath had his hand out with a small flame at the ready, presumably ready to set it alight.

Bram hadn’t realized how worn out the trip had made him until he dove down in an almost desperate manner. Realizing he was coming way too close to make a steady landing, he hurriedly shifted back into human form and landed clumsily on his feet in the snow, stumbling about as he lost his footing on a slick patch of ice. The others flinched and jumped back in surprise, not expecting his sudden arrival.

“Well?” Clawd asked as he righted himself, “How did it go?”

Bram frowned. He shoved his hands in his pockets, keeping his gaze locked onto the ground, unable to look at all of them.

“It’s no use,” he admitted in a mumble, “I couldn’t see anything. I tried but…The snow and the wind are just too much.”

He lightly kicked at some small clods of snow with his foot, clearly embarrassed by his failure. Gory came up to him and gently wrapped her arms around him, hugging him close in an attempt of comfort.

Several members on each team dropped their shoulders, dejected by the lack of progress. A few of them turned away as they found themselves on the verge of tears.

Igor gave Bram a sympathetic half-smile. “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” he advised, “Unless you were a weather elemental, there’s little that can be done about this shit weather. Better that you know your limits than try to wear yourself out and hurt yourself and cause more trouble.”

It was of little comfort to Bram, or anyone else in the crowd. Cleo frowned and looked around, before she turned back to the coach.

“Sooooo...now what, then?” she asked, “What do we do? Just sit here twiddling our thumbs?”

Igor opened his mouth to answer, but before he could give a response, another sharp gust of wind hit them; everyone let out a collective whine as they were chilled to their bones. Igor let out his own grunt of disdain and put an arm up to try and block the snow from getting in his face.

“I think it’s best we start off by making sure we don’t freeze,” he said, “Burns, how’s that fire pit coming along?”

“I can’t guarantee it will last us long, coach,” Heath admitted, “The rubber and the wood we’ve found is waterlogged and soaked, and most of the leaves are gonna burn up in seconds, but I can probably get it burning for a little while.”

“That’s good enough,” Igor said, “At least we’ll have some source of warmth for a while. Manny, Clawd, help me up, please.”

They trudged over to help him, as everyone else eagerly hurried over to the firepit, as Heath bent down to set the detritus alight.

He was right- the flames were rather weak, and the excess moisture contained in the wood caused it to give off thick plumes of smoke, causing many of them to cough. It was still heat, though, and it was better than nothing, so many of them just covered their noses with the collars of their jerseys or turned away from the burning smell and held their hands out. They sighed as the heatwaves warmed their frozen hands and toes, which had started to tingle from numbness.

After a little while had passed, where everyone just tried to warm themselves up and take a minute to breathe, they all sat around the fire in a circle. They had taken a rocks, logs, and other things in order to make makeshift stools and seats, to try and keep from having to sit directly in the snow. It was only a brief respite, though, and every now and then someone let out a shiver as the gales from between the trees caressed their faces (or in the ghouls’ cases, their bare legs) with freezing hands.

Igor had all of them look through the wreckage to see if they could locate whatever was left of their bags and other belongings.

They all made a point to stay away from the front of the bus, where Alejandro lay.

“So, what are we looking at?” Igor asked, having just done a brief inventory of his own duffel bag.

“Romulus and me found that first aid kit you mentioned in the back of the bus,” Clawd announced, “I has gloves and bandages, and all that stuff for injuries, and we found a whistle in it. I was thinking it could be useful for if there’s a chance we see someone on the road above, we could try using it to signal them.”

“Great,” Igor confirmed.

“My keychain has a flashlight on it,” Frankie suggested.

“I have a lighter,” one of the werewolves, Clawgustus, raised his hand.

“I am a lighter,” Heath added jokingly. That managed to get a small chuckle out of everyone.

Igor nodded, processing this information. “Good, good. Keep that somewhere safe,” he advised, “And how are we looking in terms of food?”

Everyone simultaneously grimaced. They had searched their things and tried to see if they could pool together their food items, in case there was anything they could share or ration. To their shared dismay, they had little more than a small collection of candy, chips, some jerky from a few of the werewolves, a few cans of energy drinks and bottles of Graverade, and a piece of cellophane-wrapped banana bread that Scarah had brought along. Insignificant sources of energy, excesses of carbs and sugar and no real nutrition. Even if they tried to split everything evenly, it wouldn’t last them a fortnight.

Igor seemed to take their silence as enough confirmation. He nodded his head and looked at the ground. “Yeah, me too,” he said, like one of them had said something, “All I have is a sandwich that’s flat as a pancake.”

He turned to Gory and Bram. “And what about you lot and your blood stores?” he asked.

“All together, we have about twenty,” Gory said, “If we try to ration ourselves, we should be able to last a few days without too much trouble. But…”

She made a grim expression. “We’ll have to do what we can to preserve our strength.”

Igor made a face and nodded again.

Toralei sat back on the rotted log her and the twins had dragged over. “Well, at least we know we won’t have to worry about running out of water,” she joked weakly, scooping up a handful of snow and letting it drop back down between her fingers.

“Eating snow won’t actually hydrate you,” Deuce pointed out, “Your body expends more energy in order to warm it up to liquid form, and it will eventually further decrease your body temperature. You need to boil it first in order for it to be drinkable.”

In response, Toralei gave him a withered look. “It was just a joke, professor,” she said.

“But piggybacking off that- again, what do we do?” Frankie asked, “My phone says it’s close to ten. We’ve been stuck here for over three hours, already. And it doesn’t look like the weather’s gonna be letting up anytime soon.”

“Frankie’s right,” Dougey agreed, “If the snow keeps coming down like this, it will be up to our knees in no time. We don’t have any shelter, and the fire’s barely keeping itself alive as it is.”

He crossed his arms and looked out at everyone. “I say we try and go for help.”

Igor immediately shut him down, “No. We stay put.”

“We don’t know how long it will be until help comes,” Purrsephone spoke up, “We won’t even know how long it will be until someone notices we’re even missing. What if there’s a chance, like, a few feet from here, there’s a cave or something? At least we’ll be warm and won’t have to risk animals trying to scavenge through our stuff.”

“Or, we’ll find a trail we can’t turn back on, and then we’re stuck just having to go deeper and deeper,” Scarah argued, “All the forest guides say that if you get lost, you should stay put and make camp. Wandering around will only get you more lost.”

“Yeah, and not all of us are made to have built-in fur coats or be able to hear the sound of a woodpecker three miles away,” Cleo said sourly, “We may not have much for now, but we definitely won’t have anything if we stumble around and use up more our supplies because we can’t find where we are. I say we stay and wait.”

Brocko, now, raised a suggestion. “Well, maybe it doesn’t have to be all of us at once. Like Bram said earlier, maybe if some go in groups and scout around-”

“We are not splitting up,” Igor said firmly.

“Coach is right,” Clawd agreed, “There’s safety in numbers. If someone gets hurt or something, at least we’ll know about it, than be left in limbo and not having any way to communicate back with each other.”

“Great, so then we just have to sit around the campfire and tell tales while we freeze our asses off, and hope we’re not popsicles by the time that people actually figure out we’re here,” Hellvira answered sarcastically.

“If they figure out we’re here,” Fangtasia muttered.

Their voices started raising again, and it quickly became heated as everyone clashed over their own views on how to go about things.

“Hey, hey, now settle down,” Igor commanded.

As they all looked back to him, he said, “Look, I think we’re all pretty tired right now- we already had a long ride ahead of us even before all of this, and I’m sure being woken up like you all were before didn’t exactly help you be rested. These past few hours have worn all of us out. It’s definitely worn me out.

“So,” he suggested, “Let’s just...try to get some rest for a little bit. We’re all stressed, we’re tired- we’re definitely not gonna be able to go anywhere if we’re only working at thirty-percent capacity.”

“Rest?” Purrsephone repeated, looking around uneasily, “Around...here?”

Toralei gave her a look out of her peripheral. “Would you rather sleep in the bus?”

That got her a frightened glance from the dark-haired werecat. Purrsephone’s eyes were big yellow disks of fright. “N-N-No! I-I’ll be fine out here!”

“Coach, do you really think that’s a good idea?” Deuce asked, “What if we get buried under the snow?”

“I wish I could give a better suggestion, Deuce, but at this rate, I don’t think of us are in any condition to go anywhere,” Igor admitted.

“Yeah,” Draculaura agreed, rubbing at her eyes, “Now that you mention it, I’m exhausted. It feels like my bones got coated in lead.”

“Yeah, my head hurts,” Packquita agreed, “The brain fog’s making it impossible to think straight.”

“Me and some of the guys brought some blankets along to stay warm on the bus,” Dougey said, “I’m sure if we all pile together and trade them evenly, we should be able to share body heat and stay warm enough even if the snow doesn’t let up.”

“Oooh, are you offering to let people snuggle up against you?” Toralei joked, giving him a playful smirk as her eyes flashed with amusement.

Dougey’s eyes widened at her question, his cheeks burning bright red. That got a chuckle out of everyone, including Igor.

They sat around their small bonfire for a little while longer, nobody willing to leave the comfort of the warmth of the fire. They tried to keep it going for as long as they could, feeding dead leaves and pieces of bark they could find on the ground to it, but eventually, even with Heath’s abilities, the flames were unable to keep going with the weak kindling. After another hour, the flames grew smaller, before eventually they smothered themselves out, leaving behind a small pile of ashes and embers.

As everyone started to get up to go get the blankets, it seemed that Igor had made the right call; the mental and emotional stress seemed to sap them all of their strength. Their movements were sluggish, their steps heavy with each footfall into the snow. All of them felt like zombies- and of course, the fucking cold didn’t help matters.

They all gathered around the tail end of the bus’s ruins as Dougey and some of the other werewolves climbed into it to search for the blankets. Then, as they came out with them, they all attempted to organize themselves in a way that would help all of them be comfortable and maximize their ability to stay warm.

A few petty squabbles broke out, as some started to argue about who would have to bear sleeping at the edges of the group, but they were quickly silenced by a tired and angry Clawdeen, who shouted, “Then sleep on top of each other if you don’t want to be at the sides, but shut up already!”

There was also some uneasiness from some who realized they’d be having to lay next to Igor. He paid no mind to their looks, though, as Clawd helped him settle on the ground. As he made himself comfortable against the metal of the bus, he just cast them a look with a raise of his brow.

“If you want to make a gap and sleep with your backs being freezing cold, be my guest,” he said, “But I ain’t going anywhere.”

That seemed to get through to them, especially since they all had little choice in who they wanted to be next to if they wanted to stay warm.

Frankie held a hand against the ground to steady herself as she lowered herself to the ground. She gave a small sigh of relief as she felt the weight finally be lifted off her feet- well, foot, now that her left one was no longer of flesh and bone. Her right one, meanwhile, she rotated her ankle about and flexed her toes, trying to relieve some of the ache in her sole and joint, while also trying to revive some feeling; it and her fingers had long since gone numb, save for the occasional discomfort of pins and needles.

She looked at her right leg with a bit of worry. Her leg was made of titanium, and her father had told her he had reinforced the inner lining with carbon fiber as a means of keeping it waterproof, but part of her still worried that the prolonged exposure to the low temperature or moisture would cause it to rust or mess up the gears.

At least timing was a little bit on my side, she thought to herself as her hand reached up to horizontal scars that ran across each side of her neck, where her bolts used to be. If she had still had them in, she knew she would’ve been screwed- all this moisture would’ve been catastrophic for her system, and she would’ve had to bring the big, obnoxious travel generator to allow her to recharge in the night; it would have no doubt been lost or damaged in the crash.

Frankie felt a flutter in her stomach as she thought of what would have happened to her without it. The memory of losing complete charge during the incident with the time machine still sometimes gave her nightmares- there was not enough words in any language to describe the terror of feeling that you were going to sleep, and knowing you may never wake up again. Of Death was slowly pulling you into the shadows, into its cold embrace and there was nothing you could but just allow yourself to drift.

“Hey, Frankie, do you mind if I get next to you?”

She broke from her thoughts and looked up to see Heath standing in front of her, one of his hands pointing to her left.

Frankie smiled and scooted over to give him some room, patting the spot next to her. “Help yourself,” she said.

Heath grinned and sat down next to her. He put his duffel bag behind them and lay his back against it, using it as a makeshift pillow. Frankie then looked as she saw someone sit down on her right, finding Scarah lowering herself to her knees.

“Ooooh,” the banshee remarked as she shivered, “Gods, it hurts everywhere. Feels like I might as well have fallen down the mountain myself. I can only hope my toes don’t snap off tomorrow.”

She looked to Frankie with a small smile. “I hope it’s not too much trouble with me being here.”

“No, good ahead,” Frankie replied cheerfully, “It’s probably better that I’m not the one holding the edge of the blanket. The last few sleepovers, Laura says I’ve hogged the blankets.”

As she lay down, distributing the blanket that Dougey had given her among the three of them, she was surprised as she suddenly felt a large wave of heat coming from her left, where Heath lay. It was a delightful, welcoming feeling to her chilled skin and frozen fingers and toes. Like she was laying right next to the heater in her house.

“Wow, Heath, you’re really warm!” she exclaimed, “If you keep that up, I can almost imagine I’m back home in bed, under the quilt my mom made.”

Heath turned to her and grinned. “Oooh, Miss Stein, be careful there- I do have a ghoulfriend, after all, and I don’t need to cause any unnecessary tension with my cousins.”

Frankie snorted and shoved his arm playfully. “You’re stupid,” she giggled, while next to her, Scarah shook her head, her eyes closed in an exasperated look.

As they calmed down, everyone huddled together under the sparse blankets. They did their best to try and fit together, while also trying to not be uncomfortable with how close they had to be or the fact that the girls tended to be more curled up and take up more space due to their uniforms exposing their legs.

It was definitely no king size, Frankie thought as she closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep. She winced as she felt pebbles and small rocks digging into her back. She had brought her bathrobe on the trip, and had laid it underneath her to try and give herself some comfort from the icy ground; it was poor insulation, though, and as she moved, to her dismay, she could feel patches of it become damp as her movements and body heat generated enough friction to melt some parts of it. Her, Scarah, and Heath tried to hold the blanket down as best as they could, but the harsh wind blasted through it like it might as well have been tissue paper, and within seconds she was practically vibrating with how hard she was shivering.

It would have to make do, though, she told herself. Better to be uncomfortable and still have her life than to end up like...like Alejandro…

The thought of knowing that there was a dead body only a few feet away from them that was going to be left to rot for however long it took rescue to come made her stomach churn. She swallowed against the burning feeling in the back of her throat and forced herself to take deep breaths to will away the threat of nausea.

“Hey, Frankie?” Heath suddenly murmured beside her.

Surprised to hear him speaking, she turned her head to face him and opened her eyes. “Yeah?”

Heath wasn’t looking at her. He was staring up the sky, unchanged from how it had it looked earlier. A endless stretch of gray, with thick snowflakes coming down from the heavens like it meant to bury the whole world in a blanket of white. It seemed darker out, though she didn’t understand how- it had to be only midday right now.

“How long do you think it’ll be until they find us?” Heath asked in a small voice, “What if they follow along the wrong route and don’t realize we came up this way?

“What if...what if they never come before…” he stammered, struggling to get the words off, before he trailed off. She could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed, like the words were a bitter taste in his mouth.

It was a far cry from the goofy, lighthearted, sometimes annoying attitude he carried himself with on a daily basis. He was trying to stay calm and keep his voice steady, but Frankie could detect the underlying fear in his words.

It was the same fear that lingered in the back of her mind, no matter how hard she was trying to keep it away so she could sleep. Part of her almost wanted to stay awake, knowing it would just follow her into her dreams, where it had free reign to torment her to whatever twisted fantasies it could mold itself to.

She hesitated at first, struggling to think of a response that could comfort him that didn’t sound completely hollow. How could she reassure him he was being unreasonable, when those very same anxieties were gradually taking root in her heart? When she couldn’t even reassure herself?

Frankie knew that nothing good would come out of surrendering to this hysteria, though, and so, taking a deep breath to try and calm her own nerves, she reached over and gently grasped one of Heath’s hands, where they had been resting on his chest over the edge of the blanket. He finally pulled his gaze away from the sky to look at her, to which she returned with a gentle smile.

“We’ll be fine,” she said softly, “As long as we stick together and help each other, we’ll be out of here in no time. The second the coaches realize we never showed up, they’ll call Bloodgood and she’ll make sure a search party is out before we even have to start considering eating each other.”

Heath snorted at her comment, “Why are you already thinking of eating people?”

“Hey, I got a big appetite,” Frankie joked, “When I get hangry, my mind wanders very easily.”

That got her another chuckle out of him, and thankfully, she could see him slightly relax, before he closed his eyes. Turning her head back so it rested in a more comfortable position, she closed her eyes again and shifted, trying to make her muscles relax. Her eyes and head felt heavy, and her body ached greatly with exhaustion and pain from where she’d tensed up during the crash.

Finally, one by one, her and the rest of the teams drifted off, their sore and battered bodies desperate for some recuperation after the ordeal they’d been put through in the past few hours. They curled together, all previous reservations on closeness and having to be right up against each other forgotten as arms and legs flailed over trunks and daily rivals cuddled up to each other, seeking out warmth.

All around them, the snow continued to fall. Within only minutes, their blankets were covered in a fine layer of white. Everyone’s hair and lashes were dusted with flakes like powdered sugar.

With how tired everyone was, they were all deep asleep in no time.

Which meant that nobody was awake to see the large cloud of orange fog that suddenly appeared from between the trees.

It came towards them slowly, moving with the direction of the wind. As it moved, though, it obscured all nearby landmarks and features, smothering all the surrounding landscape in a thick orange haze. It snaked through the tree branches, splitting off into dozens of little fingers, before it joined back together in one giant wall, thick like cotton, like a stormcloud had fallen right from the sky.

Nobody was the wiser as the fog crept towards them and soon made its way over them, wrapping them all up in its touchless embrace, obscuring them from the rest of the icy forest around them…

He watched as the fog poured over them. It was swirling like a massive hurricane, as if it was trying to make sure that it could touch every inch of them. Give itself enough time to work its influence on them, burrows its way through their skin and settle into their blood and bones.

Those poor bastards. They had no clue what they had gotten themselves into.

They would learn, though.

If there any gods above or below that still retained some degree of mercy- even now, though he doubted it; he had long since accepted their own abandonment of him- they would make sure none of them survived the night. Let them go to sleep and never wake up again.

From his experience, many preferred that to having to be stuck out here in this hellhole, losing your mind one day at a time.

Especially once they had finally come across him.

“No matter,” He muttered to himself, “They will learn.”

If they knew what was good for them, they would take whatever meager supplies they had and get the hell out of here and leave him alone.

Or else he would show them, as he had shown the many others, what he felt about the invaders of his domain.

He looked down at his palm and held it out. With a sudden flick, he clenched his fist hard.

Yes, they would learn.

One way or another, they would learn.