Chapter Text
Chapter One: Song of the Mountain
1975
Ty Cuthrupp doesn’t know Arlo Givens very damned well. Other than the few facts everyone did: he was fresh from Vietnam and a mite bit fucked up about it, his wife was too pretty for him and his boy was awfully quiet for a Harlan tad his age. Though lots of boys came back home to Harlan the same amount of fucked up and Ty couldn’t say any words about wives or children considering he had none of his own. Arlo was one of the few taking some initiative with the direction of his life, as Bo would say. Which was why Ty was out here in the goddamned woods with the man in the middle of the night trying not to piss himself every time he heard the odd noise in the darkness.
This land was not his people’s, nor was it Crowder’s, or Bennet’s, or anyone from proper Christian stock. This place belonged to the Hill People but for some reason Bo had sent Arlo and himself out here to bury a…problem, rather than throwing it down the nearest abandoned mineshaft. The humidity in the air was thick enough to build a barn—the fault of rain a couple of days ago during a mid-July heat wave. That July moon though, at least that was round and full—nearly bright enough to see by without a flashlight when the trees gave way to sky.
A mile in Arlo ceased his incessant complaining he’d been on about since delivering Bo’s orders. The quiet hung in the air and Ty stopped in his tracks before whipping angrily around ready to ask what the fuck was the other man’s problem now except there was no one behind him. Arlo’s disappeared leaving Ty to carry the body along with the shovels alone all while trying to keep an eye out. Any cop out of Harlan County would be better than the heathens that were crawling around these hills. Any cop anywhere really.
Fucking Arlo.
Again, he didn’t know him very damned well, but he was pretty sure the guy was a huge asshole to abandon him out here after being the one to bark Bo’s orders at him like that was his place. Ty was a big guy, he could handle the load…and the dark, and whatever the hell else was out there. He swallowed against the sudden dryness of his throat, there was definitely nothing out there. Just whitetail and polecats, and a particularly noisy-ass hoot owl squawking above his head. If he were anywhere else the buggy-eyed chicken would be silenced by a round of homemade buckshot. Out here it was just too risky.
“Arlo!” He hissed into the night.
No one answered him. Furious and put-out Ty decided to trudge on, twigs snapping beneath his boots as he made his way through the brush. The noisiest creature in these woods was him and he didn’t like the target that felt painted on his back because of it.
That feeling of being a target grew. Sweat dripped down his temples, salt stung his eyes, in a huff he dropped the body and started digging where the body landed too pissed to go any further. He hit a tree root with his shovel, the resulting ringing clang was loud enough to make something in the trees fly away. Ty raised the shovel again then stopped.
His ears strained against all the night sounds, the chirping insects, the tree frogs, the errant irritating owl. At first he thought it was Arlo come back but that skinny son of a bitch can’t growl like that. He whipped around expecting a feral dog, maybe a coyote, a feral hog if he was unlucky, what he doesn’t expect were the pair of glowing orange eyes in a mass of dark shadows.
“Easy now,” Ty says in a faux soothing tone tainted by hysteria, “easy.”
He reached down to his belt and that all he was able to do. The mass of shadows moved faster than he could think. The last thing Ty Cuthrupp saw was massive jaws coming toward him, the last sound he made was a cut-off scream.
Once Ty was mostly stripped down to red bone Arlo Givens does step out of the trees. His face was set in a grim line. The beast stopped gnawing on a piece of stubborn human gristle and looked up, Arlo tried for a weak smile. He’d always thought, since he was let in on the secret, she was pretty as a wolf too: glossy black coat, swishing tale, bigger than a grey wolf and barely smaller than horse. He could still see her in the face, subtle emotions flickered over canine features.
“Come back to me, Frances, come on now.” Arlo reached his hand out and the wolf got up to lean its snout against it.
The transformation was a graceful, impossible thing. Fur and claws receded into smooth pale skin and Arlo’s wife emerged like a siren from beneath waves of violence. Long brunette hair drapes her shoulders and Arlo wasted no time un-balling the sun dress he had brought with him.
She was silent for a while; the taste of coppery blood lingered in her mouth even though she was in her human form the taste was not awful. It was the taste, the killing, that kept her sane. That’s what she’d been taught, that’s what she still believed. If she had married a better man that would be a worry, as it was, well, she’s just fine with Arlo.
“Ready to get on home? Maybe cook me some dinner? Raylan’s over Helen’s.” The man’s smile is a little more real this time.
Frances smiled back pretty as a blood-spattered picture, “Sure, honey, cousin Loni will take care of the mess.” And the other body. They don’t touch the too long dead if they don’t have to.
She leaned into Arlo as they leisurely walked back, moon drunk and blood drunk, and in Arlo’s case maybe a little bit plain drunk. Arlo curled his arm around her narrow waist and for a moment in time they had no secrets from each other, for a moment they were really truly in love.
Now
The door’s gonna hold, he’s pretty certain. One more problem on top of the cluster fucks of his problems nowadays is that all of his old safe houses were in Florida. The old cabin his mother used to lock herself away in on the full moons was mostly rusty tin roofing being held up by old memories and spider’s silk, Raylan put three whole weeks of work into the shit shack to get it back it to reasonably stable again. It will have to do.
The cabin has the advantage of being unknown to everyone but him. Not even Arlo or his Aunt knew. Things were not good in the last of his mother’s days, it showed in the way she pulled away into hiding—an animal waiting to die. Raylan knew, Raylan had to. She didn’t want him with Arlo but she didn’t want him in the hills either.
It’s impossible to be here and not think of her. If he closes his eyes and focuses his senses he thinks he can pick up her scent. Rose oil. All that chemical shit sold in stores made her nose wrinkle like a rabbit rather than the predator she really was.
It is there, that scent, beneath the wood rot and mold.
Raylan holds onto it the best he can, the full moon is only two days away and his control is shaky. His grip on his own shit has been worse since he’s been back, the woods and deep valleys of Harlan sing to the wildness in him.
And Boyd.
Boyd always did know how to rile him up easy as breathing.
Boyd didn’t know, there had been times Raylan had wanted to tell him—a long time ago when they were the kind of friends born from the very earth itself. Earth and gunpowder boys running around half drunk most the time and all foolish all of the time. Both of them were either running away from their daddies or looking for a quick buck. Boyd had never asked why Raylan went off with his momma and then off on his own once a month, never wondered where Raylan’s temper came from. Never asked. Boyd was good like that. Always willing to wait.
In the end Boyd was left waiting. Aunt Helen spirited Raylan away in the night with a pocket full of money and fear in her eyes. If Raylan stayed he’d end up like Frances, they both knew it. Moon sick, because of Arlo and because there would always be people out there that knew what he was and would seek to use him. Like Bo. Like the Hills Alpha he heard hushed whispers of as a child. So he left and spared little thought to Boyd Crowder, to Harlan, once in a while he thought of his momma and the way her singing always had a bit of howl to it during the high notes, how he had her pretty brown eyes and her glowing citrine ones. Two for one sale, she used to say. Arlo hated it. Hated looking at him. Still did.
Boyd had been easier to forget about when he wasn’t threatening him in a federal building in front of God and everybody or threatening him over a dinner of fried chicken. The man was around every goddamned corner these days. Raylan has to crush the urge to take him by the throat and hold him down. Sinking his teeth into anything while the moon bloomed in the sky is dangerous territory. Not because he could change anyone—the bite transforming awry travelers is just horror movie bullshit, the wolf was in the blood, by birth, but rather because he might not be inclined to stop.
The curse demands lives.
Raylan hadn’t killed anyone specifically because of it, his momma never let him, he’d learned to deal with the white hot pain over the years. Chains helped.
He drops the ones he brought to the cabin in the middle of what could have been a small living room at one time, tests them against the bolts in the concrete floor. They’ll hold too.
Raylan leaves the cabin right before dawn touching the carved sigil on the door in passing. The mark was the work of a cunning woman his momma knew, like her from the hills, and was meant to draw the eye away from wherever the mark was laid. The magic in it has a strange sort of aura all its own, weak from age and the woman who made it being likely dead. Raylan had her met a few times, she had looked like any other cranky old lady from anywhere in the holler.
Things in Harlan, people, were often not just what they looked like. Unless you knew what to look for you would never know it. Magic could be found in anywhere in the world but in Eastern Kentucky it bled into everything, as wild and ancient as the mountains themselves.
The drive back to his motel is quiet and mild enough to shut off the air conditioning and roll down the window. Miami had smelled too much of heated bodies and brine. The only good thing about coming back to Kentucky, at least there’s that. The air. Sweet and when the wind was right—didn’t smell the faintest like lingering coal dust.
Strangely Ava had been standing outside his door for a good while before leaving. He would have thought she would have no cause to pay him a visit these days. Her scent lingered thick on his makeshift porch, he’d be surprised if there isn’t a note shoved beneath the slit of the door.
Sure as rain there is.
The hastily folded paper smells of perfume twice as much as his doorstep. He sighs, and carefully sets the note on the table without reading it—stares at it a moment, then throws it in the mini-fridge successfully cutting off the heavy scent.
He’s barely halfway relaxed into his shitty mattress before his cell starts buzzing. He can’t help but growl at it deep from within his throat, a hair from inhuman.
Gruff and annoyed Raylan answers without looking at who’s calling, “Givens.”
Art’s voice is entirely too chipper, “Well, good morning to you too, sunshine.”
Raylan’s too tired and too full of sharp edges for a witty retort just that second, “Art.”
“Who pissed in your Cheerios?”
“On any good day I assume there would be a line.” Raylan muses, more awake know if no less sharp.
Over the line Art laughs, “I suppose that’s true. You just have a way with people, Raylan.”
“Oh, is that why I’m getting a call on my day off? My impeccable people skills?”
“Maybe less your people skills and more your hillbilly whispering skills.”
He gets up and braces himself against the uncomfortable ripple beneath his skin then pulls his boots back on, “You got a hillbilly in particular?”
“Boyd Crowder.”
“Oh, is that a fact?”
“‘Oh, is that a fact’ he says. Like you’re not chomping at the bit to find a way to put him away since they let Crowder out. I would advise you next time you try to shoot him—”
“Now I didn’t plan—”
“Next time you try to shoot him make it stick. Until then he says he wants to talk about some old business of his daddy’s. ‘Real pertinent information’, or so he claimed. Bo Crowder is dead however his business partners aren’t so if Crowder has anything we want it. But he’s only willing to talk to you, naturally, and in person. Today.”
“Naturally.”
Art made a considering noise, “You call me when you get there, so I know if I need to call Tim and Rachel in.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“See, why don’t believe you?” With that Art hangs up.
Unfortunately, Art has an irritating habit of being right about Raylan’s luck at least. Raylan’s no longer than twenty minutes over Harlan County lines when he feels it. Tugging at his chest like the worst kind of dread. Magic. Fresh. Clearer than a blood trail and twice as strong. If he headed things like ill omens he should be turning around right now. Feeling the magic like this means either the person working the cunning is either near or directing it at him. He hasn’t had a spell slung at him in quite a while, when he was in South America chasing around Tommy Bucks is the last time he can recall. He’d slighted a woman he shouldn’t have. She’d taken the hex off after much groveling and a very expensive bottle of tequila.
Raylan idles a moment between heading straight to Boyd who Ava has for some unfathomable reason let take up with her and following the pull of none too subtle magic. He has to admit—he’s curious, and if that killed the cat well then it is a good thing he’s on the other side of that fence. The pull takes him past Harlan town proper and straight up into the mountain on winding roads with eroding steel safety barriers between him and a long deadly drop.
Eventually the roads ran out, everything always ran out in Harlan. He checks his Glock and his backup before trekking through the sparse pines and craggy rock of the mountain side on foot following the tugging on his heart.
Luckily, or perhaps that will be determined, he doesn’t have to go far before a voice says close to him and far away at the same time, “You’re Frances’ boy.”
Raylan rests his hand on his holster and turns slowly, it’s been a long time since he’s been anyone’s boy and much longer than that since anyone’s been able to sneak up on him. Even so he answers with all due politeness the women in his life raised him with, “That I am, ma’am.”
To all appearances the woman is alone, which amounts to all of jackshit around these parts. She’s older than him by a good fifteen years or so though the cunning and the moon-touched tended to look younger for longer even those living most of their lives exposed to the elements. Her hair is auburn and wiry, her eyes flinty. Shrewdly she looks him up and down, cataloging everything.
After a while Raylan sighs between his teeth, “May I inquire as to why you have a sign on me and just who the hell you are?”
The woman nods, for the moment perfectly civil, “I’m your mother’s cousin. Mary. She and I were girls together. I see her in you, she howls in your blood. Clear as day.”
Raylan smiles, nods, “And the other thing?”
The wind starts to blow harder and unseasonably cold. Mary’s eyes narrow, “It’s been a long time since you’ve been home, boy. But the land remembers you. I ain’t put no sign on you. I just knew you were here and I came to see the lone wolf.”
Lone wolf, she says the words with a heavy sort of intonation, the cliché of it obliterated in the wake of a silent warning. Mary stares him down, “I ain’t put no sign on you, Raylan Givens.”
Temper starting to wear thin Raylan narrows his own eyes and licks his dry lips against the cold, “Speak plain.”
Mary smirks, “You’ve been gone too long, maybe you’ve forgotten how these things work. I’m telling you, I ain’t put a sign on you but you were drawn out here all the same.”
A howl erupts in the distance, long and mournful. Definitely not a coyote. Raylan’s takes ahold of the grip of his gun but doesn’t draw and adjust his hat. Two other join the first and the sound settles over them colder than any mountain wind.
“He calls you. He called you mother too. She let herself go moon sick than be pack again.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” He grits out.
“I’m tellin’ you. To be careful. I owe Frances’ son at least that. And this.” From her coat pocket Mary pulls out a piece of paper and a rough piece of coal. She scrawls a messy symbol on it and presses it into Raylan’s hand. “That’ll keep you hidden from him for a time. Not forever. He knows you’ve been back and sooner or later he’ll want you.”
Something roils inside him, “The Alpha.”
Mary nods. Raylan looks down at the paper and when he looks up Mary’s gone. He doesn’t waste time making his way back down to the warmth of his town car. He keeps the paper in his pocket and intends to keep it there until the power in it fades to smoke. In the rearview mirror he sees his eyes flash with unnatural light, Arlo called it hellfire, and doesn’t bother to will them gone before he drives away. The only soul on this road is him anyway.
It’s not fear in his stomach exactly. More like the apprehension born from watching the skies go sickly green and hearing the roar of a train when no train is supposed to be going through. And maybe if he was being honest with himself the same feeling he got when he was twelve and Arlo would look at him with a mix of fear and loathing, no matter what he did he was going to bleed. Best thing to do was brace for the storm, the fist, and live through it. Survive.
Raylan has always been good at surviving.
Dealing with Boyd and his silver-tongued bullshit is almost a relief. For as dipped in the black heart of Harlan as Boyd is, he’s still only human. The havoc the man could wreak is the kind Raylan could deal with on any day of the damned week. And since he’s still in the state of mind of being honest with himself, he always did like Boyd more than he should.
Raylan doesn’t have the chance to knock before Boyd has Ava’s front door sprung open—the hinges groan in protest. A fierce toothy grin that doesn’t reach his eyes is plastered on Boyd’s face. He’s worried, then. More than that the anxiety rolls off him, it had took Raylan a minute to get used to Boyd’s scent when he just returned. Feelings weren’t so easy to sniff out if they were Raylan might still be married. His senses do give him an edge sometimes and there are a few emotions he can hone in on without trouble at all. Fear, anxiousness, and the acrid turned butter of a lie. Useful in his line of work though hardly reliable and worthless in apprehending criminals if the higher ups don’t want to listen to a good old boy’s ‘gut feeling’.
“You are a sight for sore eyes, Raylan.”
Maybe Boyd’s smile doesn’t meet his eyes but there is something there, something soft, that dies before Raylan can make anything out of it. He holds the door open for Raylan and sweeps his hand gallantly backward in a wordless invitation.
“I imagine. How’s the wounds?” Raylan walks past in long strides giving the rooms a quick look-over.
“You mean from a few months ago when you stopped me from getting my due justice upon my daddy’s murderers? Oh, you know how it is, Raylan.” Boyd has always said his name like that, some strange sort of benediction there between the syllables, “Itchier than a dog’s ass in the summertime. Though I can see by the expression on that pretty face of yours you couldn’t possibly care less.”
Raylan turns to fully face him and grins himself, “Pretty, huh?”
“Raylan,” Boyd’s voice goes serious in a rattle snake second, “I ain’t called you here about my daddy.”
Raylan’s brows lower, “You realize it is in fact not a quick drive down here from Lexington?”
“I do, but Raylan, it’s about your daddy—”
“And why the hell would I give a—”
“And Ava.”
He tips his hat back and studies Boyd from the ends of his wild hair all the way down to his dust covered preacher’s shoes, then breathes out slow, “What about Arlo and Ava?”
“They’re missin', Raylan.”
tbc