all's fair

It wasn’t as though the ahuizotl was haunting Talia’s dreams. She hadn’t heard any phantom baby weeping over her shoulder, she hadn’t seen flashes of Daniel wielding a rock in her hand. But the creature’s death still weighed on her heart. Though she had come to terms with her boyfriend’s part in killing it, Talia still mourned for it. Still thought about it as an innocent animal that had died, had been killed, only because it behaved the way its nature dictated. 

Maybe that was why she went looking for the werewolf corpse. 

There had been countless other shifter deaths since that first one she had gone to, where she crossed paths with Eve. And even more she was sure she never ended up hearing about. That no one would ever hear about. But when the Chimera bartender she was shooting the shit with in town leaned closer, lowered their voice, and told her Heard about a dead wolf last night, Talia’s spine had gone stiff, her eyes bright. She had asked if they knew where, what had happened, did anyone else knsow?

Once again, she found herself trekking through the woods of Seven Peaks, in search of a dead werewolf, hoping to… What? That last time, she had wanted to find some indication or clue of who had killed the wolf. She wanted it to be a ranger that she could track down and kill for revenge. Talia hadn’t gotten that satisfaction then and she didn’t even want it now. No, she just wanted to find the poor soul and maybe offer the body some dignity in death. If she had a chance of identifying it, she’d like to do that as well so she could pass the sad message along to any loved ones.

Different this time as well was Talia’s concrete knowledge about the clean-up crew. It wasn’t just some abstract, shadowing network of hunters anymore. It had a face and a name and it was Eve. This sister of Daniel’s closest friend growing up, the girl who had given him a place to stay and helped him back to health in the aftermath of the berserker attack. Maybe Eve had already found the wolf and disposed of its body. Maybe they were ash. Maybe Talia would be, too, some day.

The dense canopy of trees cooled things from the sun, but it also trapped the humidity around her, making Talia feel claustrophobic in a way she never did when outdoors. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before she found the body. Still in its fur, matted with blood, and a scent that was just edging on familiar. Talia couldn’t place it, though – he must have just been someone who had frequented the Chimera, maybe. Someone she knew in passing but never knew. Unlike the last corpse, this one had a clear bullet hole to the head and, if she concentrated, Talia could just make out the stench of the silver bullet. No wild animal or supernatural beast had taken this wolf down. Its death had been a ranger.

“Fuck.” Her voice was hoarse and the curse fell, useless, to her feet. Talia crouched, put a hand to the wolf’s muzzle. “I’m sorry,” she said, just as useless as the swear, just as useless as her apology to the ahuizotl had been.

—

It was annoying that Eve had also found out about this corpse from a shifter, and not from the hunter that had killed them, but at this point, she was used to it. Since that night with Rosemary, nothing phased her anymore. The one thing Eve had struggled to deal with for years was suddenly easy to bear. Acceptance felt… well… good? It didn't matter, Eve had still found out through the value of her connections (no matter what Henri said).

As she approached, she spotted a figure crouching by her pick up point from a distance. Eve paused, grabbing her binoculars to quickly scope the scene. Her rifle rested against her shoulder, but she carefully adjusted her grip once she recognized who was next to her corpse of interest. 

Talia Shaw was a curious case. Eve had never blamed supernatural beings who hunted hunters. They were all in an evolutionary arms race, after all. The prey animal developed hard scales and poisonous skin, the predator developed sharper teeth and claws to peel the skin off. (Probably, Eve had never paid enough attention in biology to keep track of more than the basics). Her attack on Daiyu was personal, because all murder was personal. But despite Eve’s understanding of Talia’s position, that hadn't changed the right course when Daiyu had asked for Eve’s help. It was, by all rights, a situation Daniel should have handled, and his betrayal was only evidence of how soft he’d become.

At least it didn't hurt anymore. Not that that meant Eve could let her guard down around Talia. She approached slowly and cautiously, watching the werewolf carefully.

“Girl, we have to stop meeting like this.”

—

With the rustle of footsteps coming closer, Talia knew that she would soon have company. Before she even caught that unique gait she knew it would be Eve. The clean-up crew, come to clean up. Her last run-in with Eve had settled some of her nausea over the bodies of her kin getting thrown away. She knew, she knew, the importance of keeping the secret, that was paramount for the safety of everyone but particularly the supernatural beings in the equation. That didn’t mean it sat right with her, though, that the bodies of wolves (or bugbears or balam or nixies or whoever) were treated like little more than collateral damage. Something to be managed without so much as a note to the family.

The secret-keeping worked for all parties in the balance, but at the end of the day, Eve and her like were serving one interest and that was humans.

Still. Eve hadn’t treated that last werewolf like trash (even in its fur, which she knew made it easier for some hunters to detach from the full weight of what they were doing, in killing them). It had been a clinical approach, true, with gloves and a body bag, but not one completely devoid of humanity. So if it had to be anyone that Talia found here, in the woods, with a dead wolf at her feet, she was at least glad it was her. Even with the tension that seemed to stretch between the warden and Daniel, herself caught very much in the middle. The cause of that tension, really, even if Daniel had a good helping of the blame himself, his lie to Eve not helping matters.

She wondered if the flippant comment was meant to disperse that awkwardness. It almost worked, and maybe would have been fully effective if Talia couldn’t still feel the ahuizotl’s blood, slippery, on her fingers. “We could, if hunters would stop killing wolves.” There’s an edge to her voice but it’s a dull one. More like she meant it as a volley back to Eve’s playful comment and hadn’t quite landed it right. 

“But, I’m gonna guess it wasn’t the hunter who did this that called you. My information tells me he’s been here most of the night.” Eve’s clients, Talia was pretty sure, called her as soon as the deed was gone and the warden was no slouch. If she had heard about this murder right when it had happened, it would have been cleaned up without a trace by now. Talia would have never found out about it, and neither would the bartender from the Chimera, or whoever had told them. 

—

If Talia’s words should have felt sharp, they didn’t. Eve flicked up her eyebrows in recognition, and nodded. Her tone was quietly factual as she replied, “Which could only happen if wolves stopped killing humans. It's an unfortunate way of the world.” 

Eve smiled a little wrily, dipping her head in quiet acknowledgement. Her annoyances with other hunters were not ones she wished to broadcast with Talia, no matter how right she might be. Eve’s system worked, which was all that mattered. “I never reveal my sources. People need to be able to trust me with all their secrets, no matter how macabre or taboo.”

Like a werewolf, in love with a ranger. Eve resisted the impulse to check the time. She could not be more aware of the imbalance between the two of them. Eve was stood just far enough away that she could aim and fire if Talia jumped at her, while Talia still knelt by the body. But Talia had more experience with killing hunters than Eve had with killing werewolves. She began looking around the area instead, for ammunition shells or forgotten weapons that may lead a hunter hunter back to whoever had killed this werewolf here.

—

Eve’s words stung, her matter-of-fact tone only sharpening the blade. As if wolves were the only ones to blame. As if they had started the slaughter. As if it were up to hunters to decide that humans were so much more worthy of life than any other being. “Right. That’s the only way. All you hunters possibly decide to lay down your weapons.” She matched her expression, eyebrows canting to her hairline. 

The way Eve spoke about the cycle continued to grate at Talia. The unfortunate way of the world. As if hunters were just passive bystanders and had no power, no hand on the scale, in all of this. She did, still, shake her head when the hunter told her she didn’t reveal sources. “Yeah, no. I wasn’t fishing for information. Just commenting that whatever hunter killed him was apparently too chicken-shit to do the right thing and clean up after himself.” She assumed that would irk Eve as much as the other woman’s comment had irked her. If hunters stopped calling Eve for clean-up then the whole network fell apart, didn’t it? Hunters relied on her to keep their world secret, but she relied on them to actually call her when the secret needed covering.

Was it only hunters, Talia found herself wondering for the first time. “If I killed a hunter, or just a human, and needed help getting rid of the body to keep the secret. Would you come?” It took her a beat too many to realize just how bad that sounded. Lifting her hands, she added, “Pure hypothetical. I don’t do that I promise.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. She hadn’t gone after a hunter since Daiyu. That was her promise to Daniel, like his back to her. “Just wondering whether your commitment is to total secrecy no matter who’s calling.”

— 

“Would you rip out your teeth and claws? Ordinary humans don't have scales or wings to keep them safe. They only have us.” Eve replied, still mild, even as Talia's tone revealed the teeth beneath her sweet exterior. She did frown as Talia described the hunter who had left this corpse here. Sloppy. Way too close to a trail head. “You and I are agreed there. I don't see any evidence of a chase or a major injury after this point that excuses it.” 

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Eve said mildly, without judgement. If Talia had stalked Daiyu enough to find her home, she certainly knew enough to know her friends. And even if that wasn't the case, Daniel had probably told her. He had probably told her everything about Eve’s  and his disagreement. It was another part of the betrayal that had lost it's sting these days.

But it also meant that whatever Eve said here, Daniel would also hear. Eve imagined for a moment that Daniel looked at her the way Henri had, disgust curling his nose. Fuck it, let the world see her as she was. Let him know what sacrifices Eve would make that Daniel shied away from. “I would. The secret protects humanity. Of course, the supernatural benefit from it as well.” She chagrined. “I don't usually tell everyone I meet that I am also a hunter.”

Her gaze drifted to the corpse, itching to start packing it away. “Did you know them?”

—

“That’s different and you know it.” The teeth and claws were her birthright, as innate to Taia as any animal with predator advantage. Why should she apologize for being born as what she was? A predator. “Who says they need to be kept safe?” Talia couldn’t understand why it was so goddamn important to protect the humans, at the detriment of every other species they decided was in their way, threatened their neat little way of life. She didn’t know how to see the sense of it. In the last six months or so, she had found a way through – had learned how to put down her anger, her hunger for revenge, her bloodlust. She had found a way into loving a human, a hunter. But that didn’t mean Talia could understand this duty they all built up, the near fanatical attention to keeping humans alive.

A twitch ran through her, like a prey animal scenting a predator on the air, at Eve’s blunt callout. It wasn’t a lie, in the strictest sense, but Eve shouldn’t know that. Daniel had told her he couldn’t be sure what all Eve knew but– Well, why wouldn’t she know what Talia had tried? Daniel and Daiyu had been friends before. Of course Eve was friends with them. Of course Eve would…side with Daiyu. “I’m not,” she said, voice steady. “I used to. It’s actually all I used to do, before I came here. And then I kept doing it here and then-” It wasn’t that simple, she knew. It wasn’t just lamplight blue eyes and tree canopies and histories whispered across their pillows. It wasn’t only him (because it was also Talia lying near-dead on the rough wood floor of Daiyu’s cabin, crying out for her father and knowing in that moment that her sister would hate her) but he was the neatest story that would make sense for Eve. “Then I met Daniel. And I stopped.” She hadn’t killed since. (A flash of ahuizotl blood pluming in the lake water.) She hadn’t killed a hunter since.

“In your defense,” she offered, unsure why she does, “there would be little else to explain your presence at a werewolf’s murder.” Daniel, she thought to herself, in answer. That’s why she gave Eve that slightest soothe to her ego. Because Daniel wouldn’t want Eve to feel bad and Talia didn’t either. Because Daniel wouldn’t want Maya to feel bad.

Her eyes fell to the werewolf at their feet and, with a rush of shame, Talia could feel tears crowding at her lashes. Her “Yeah,” was soft as the rustle of leaves under Eve’s feet as she approached. Soft as the ahuizotl’s last, dying cry. “I must have. I recognize his scent even if I’m not sure who he was exactly.” She cleared her throat. “Last one, you toted off to dump in the river, right?” Talia had helped haul the body in the bag, to swing it up into the waiting van. “Same plan for him?”

—

“Why is it different? Sincerely.” Eve asked curiously. She ought to be more careful, Eve thought distantly. She did not know what Talia was capable of. And out here both of them had plausible deniability. She could have played coy, and agreed with what Talia said. Offering false platitudes until the other party was soothed was a speciality, and riling Talia up served little purpose. Eve knew better than anyone that a shifter's partner caring about her was no protection against the shifter themselves. She answered, with a shrug, “We’re their teeth and claws.”

Talia just didn't feel like a threat in that moment, not to Eve, and a platitude didn't seem as necessary for someone already in love with a hunter.

Eve bent over, and scooped up an empty casing on the ground, smear with silver and gunpowder residue. It had a word printed on the bottom, leaving Eve to purse her lips as she recognized a familiar hunter surname on the bottom. Sloppy. She folded them into her pocket, just as Talia was finished speaking, with an understanding nod. “So you are just like us, then.”

Talia offered a defense which Eve waved away with a wry smile. “You would be surprised at the lies I can usually get away with.” There were no other casings on the forest floor, no other blood, no other weapons. It was just the body left, if only Talia would get a move on. 

Grief often demanded the sharing of it; Eve understood this too, even without having felt it's touch in weeks. “I am sorry. I don't have any information on their name, or I would share it.” At Talia's follow up question, Eve shook her head. “No. Dismemberment for the Death Pit. It's closer.”

—

Sincerely. Nothing about Eve’s tone betrayed a challenge, but Talia still heard the razor-sharp edge of one. Or maybe it was just a sore subject to her. Maybe she was trained to always hear the challenge when it was a question of defending shifters against hunters. “I was born with my teeth and claws. It’s what I’ve been since birth. Nature gave them to me. If nature wanted to defend humans so badly, it would have given them the same.” And it had, in the cases of hunters. Evolution had adapted them out of normal humans to defend themselves against the supernatural. Defend themselves. Not proactively cull all the species from the world. 

She stiffened further, spine lining up, when Eve compared her to the hunters. “No.” Her voice was quiet but firm and it settled over the area like ash falling from a forest fire. “No, I’m nothing like you. I didn’t start the fight, for one thing.” The most important thing, if you asked Talia. Eve’s fussing around the corpse caught her attention, though. “What’s that?” 

The Death Pit was a corner of the town Talia had only just learned about, from Emilio’s unfortunate encounter with it and a siren. Much as she loved Wicked’s Rest, she had a feeling she would never completely understand all that it had to offer. “That’s awful.” She shook her head, tried to keep down the tears she could feel burning at the back of her throat. “You can’t just…throw him in a pile of corpses. Especially not when that one has all those fucking zombies and shit lurking around.” He would get eaten. “Let me take him. I have my truck. I can bury him on my land.” She could give him a proper burial, an honor he deserved.

—

Eve let Talia's statement hang in there air between them for a long moment, hoping to cool the heat with which it was said as she considered it. Although Eve was not about to mention it in this moment, with a werewolf's corpse lying between them, she could not help but note again how similar they were. When she answered, it was slow, thoughtful, even though this too was a script she had adapted in her head a dozen times. Eve had not paid enough attention in biology to truly find a new script, after all. “Nature gives different species different tools. Humans are like ants. Some of us are built to serve and protect the rest of the hive, like soldier ants. We were given to humans the way your claws were given to you. It's not how I would have evolved us as a species, but here we are.”

She had hit a nerve. That wasn't surprising. And as Talia stiffened, so did Eve herself, quietly taking a step back, a twig snapping under her plastic foot. Her body recognised something her mind no longer could. “All that matters to me is the present. It sounds like you've spent your life killing hunters to protect other shifters. In evolutionary terms, a predator’s defense mechanism against a prey’s defense mechanism.” She tilted her head, searchingly. “But maybe I'm wrong?”

“Evidence,” Eve replied simply, her tone offering no space for questions. If Talia was true to her word, that was all that should matter. Some part of Eve knew she was playing with fire, but she could not feel the heat of the ensuing burn. The bullets in her rifle weren’t silver, but bullets were bullets, after all.

As Talia objected, Eve exhaled. She didn't say that she put corpses of every kind in the death pit (aside from hunters). Nor did she point out that the worst had already been done, that this person would not feel the scandal of the desecration of their body. But then, Talia offered an alternative, and Eve had no issues with that at all. “Sure, as long as it's not an obvious grave. Would you like help carrying the body?”

—

Talia rolled her eyes at Eve’s explanation. It sounded, so much, like the reasoning her parents and pack had spun. The narrative they trotted out to explain why it was right and proper that wolves should root the hunters out and kill them before they could be killed. Didn’t it sound neat and logical? Didn’t it sound like something you could build a life on top of? A pack? A gang of ranger children? (Had that been the story that Daniel’s relatives passed down, family to family, at that camp his mother wouldn’t let him attend?) 

It didn’t matter. No argument would have swayed Talia, not before she was ready herself. It felt like the same was true of Eve. After all, she had turned on Daniel for not fulfilling his hunter duty. “You say that with such confidence,” was all she said in counter. As if Eve, or any of them, could ever know what nature meant when it did something.

She was wrong but Talia lost her argument in the second that Eve backed away from her. She recognized that move, that stance. Eve was afraid of her. Or– Maybe not exactly. But she thought of her as a threat. Almost immediately, Talia mirrored the move, stepped back as well, put more distance between them. There was no danger to Eve, not from Talia. Not unless it was to defend herself. But she didn’t want to force that. Who was predator and who was prey – that was her argument. Who drew first blood and why. “I don’t kill hunters, in the present. And I won’t, in any future,” she offered. The evidence didn’t matter. 

Not an obvious grave. No marker or honor or nameplate. Not that she could give him one, without knowing his name. But it was still better than sliding his corpse into a pile of dead in all stages. The stench of the place alone– It was no place for a werewolf to be, in life or death. Something in her rebelled when Eve offered her help. Don’t touch him, she wanted to scream. It was a small part of her, though, instinctual mostly. Talia tended to listen to her instinct but not this time. This was Eve, the subject of a dozen conversations or more between her and Daniel. (Someone Daniel had told her not to trust, not completely, but hadn’t she been the one to cause that rift?)

“Sure. If you don’t mind. More hands make less work.” Her truck wasn’t far off. And then. She had a tarp and weights to hold it down. She could bury him behind the tomatoes, in their garden. She would have to tell Daniel about it, of course, but he would understand, she thought.

—

Eve smiled and nodded, accepting that her approach was probably not one Talia was interested in hearing about, at the end of the day. “I guess we all have to have something to believe in,” she acknowledged with a strong edge of self-awareness. Few other hunters agreed with her beliefs, how could she expect that from Talia? For all that they could play pretend of being friendly, asking each other about their siblings and talking about local hiking routes, they would always have two sharply different views. In the questions of what Eve would tolerate from people useful to her, Talia’s beliefs were hardly the most controversial. 

Talia also backed up, and for a moment Eve wondered why, until she realised it was a mirroring of her own behaviour, but Eve could not even point to why she had taken a step back. Her heartbeat was still smooth and steady in her chest. She could not trust Talia, but there had been no real movement to propose that Eve was at risk. So why had Eve moved? “Okay. Then that’s what matters.” Not that it would stop Eve from helping Daiyu if the situation called for it. 

“Of course.” They were far enough out that Eve thought it was unlikely that they would have company, but all the same, she carefully scanned the perimeter, sending her pocket drone off to do a quick loop before it landed back in her palm. “We're clear.” The corpses of humans and werewolves were weighted differently, different bones and muscles shifting the centers of gravity, but Eve knew the balance points easily, and quickly scooped up the back half of the wolf. 

— 

Talia hoped Eve was being honest, that she only cared that Talia promised not to kill again. That she believed that Talia would abide by her word. More for Daniel’s sake than anything else. If Eve could come to terms with who she was in the present and who she intended to be from that point on, maybe the two of them could make their amends. Talia wanted that, badly. Knew how important Eve and her family, the memory of Robbie, was to Daniel. And with the conversation she had with him recently looming… The more people he had in his support system the better. 

The drone (she thought that was what it was, at least) took Talia a little by surprise. Good to know that hunters had those kinds of things on them. Or at least Eve did. She would have to give Rory and Clem and Wyatt and *everyone* a heads up to be even more careful than usual when it came to roaming about while shifted. Some hunters would wait to see you being a danger — others wouldn’t. She couldn’t deny, though, it was a nice perk to know that their coast was clear. 

Carefully, with a sigh to brace herself, she lifted the front end of the werewolf. 

Thinking of Daniel made her bring him to the forefront as they moved, asking Eve, “Are you and Daniel still cool? He said he saw you kinda recently and was still worried things were off.” He would forgive Talia her indiscretion, she hoped, if it meant it cleared the air.

—

Between the two of them, the werewolf felt lightweight, balanced easily on their shoulders like a casket on its way to the funeral. Not that Eve had been to many hunter funerals with a true casket, but when they had, usually onle one or two people were truly needed for carrying the casket, but there were always a dozen hunters with their shoulders under it anyway. They carried each other, no matter the cost. It was sometimes easy to forget. This werewolf only had a hunter and a werewolf to carry them, but it would have to do. 

Eve looked long and hard at Talia. Talia, who had killed hunters, who had tried to kill Daiyu, and had only failed because Daiyu was that fucking good. Talia, who had made Daniel a traitor of his own people, who was probably more bloodsoaked in human blood than Eve could ever possibly know. And yet, she was acting in her nature, no different from any hunter. Daniel loved a werewolf who killed hunters, but Eve loved a hunter who killed humans, and what was a Talia if not a mirror of all the bloody red handprints on Eve’s body, where she had let Henri touch her. Or a reminder of the other shifter that had recently tried to rip Eve in half. Talia wasn’t just soaked in her own bloodshed, but in all the betrayals she reminded Eve of.

“Yeah, totally. No hard feelings.”