Moonlight

“Beacon Hills, California,” Leila’s older brother, Sam, mumbled under his breath, breaking their almost two hour silence. They were both slumped over their laptops on either side of a small hotel table while their oldest brother, Dean, snored away a few feet to their left. The room was dark other than the limited light from their laptop screens and the tiny bit of moonlight that was pouring in from between the old musty tan curtains hanging haphazardly from a rod that looked like it would fall at any moment. They were both pouring over every news site they could find looking for their next monster hunt. They’d been at it for hours, but monsters seemed to be somewhat at bay at the moment; neither of them had come up with anything solid.

“What about it?” Leila asked in a hushed tone. Sam didn’t answer right away; a glance at him told her he was scanning various pages of a news article,

“Seems suspicious. There’s been about a dozen mysterious deaths in the past year or two. Police are saying they’re animal attacks. The last body was one Maureen Fillmore. She was found a week ago carved into so many pieces that they couldn’t even find enough of them to put her back together properly, and it looks like all of the previous vics were about the same,” Sam rambled off, and Leila nodded.

“So what do you think we’re looking at? Vampires? A spirit? Demons? Something else equally vicious and monster-y?” Leila asked, and Sam rolled his eyes ever so slightly.

“I don’t know. But it definitely sounds worth checking out,” he replied, and she nodded.

“California, here we come,” Leila said, and a few minutes later, they both moved silently around the room, packing away their belongings and packing Dean‘s for him. Sam collapsed into his bed and Leila tugged the mattress out of the pull-out couch and both of them were asleep in minutes.


Two days later, they finally passed the “welcome to sunny Beacon Hills” sign. Taking advantage of the fact that she was driving Dean’s beloved black ‘67 Impala (which was a very rare occurrence and normally only happened when her brothers absolutely had to sleep), Leila glanced at Sam’s sleeping face in the rearview mirror and Dean snoozing beside her and decided to keep driving and scope out the town a little bit. Normally, she and her brothers just checked into the first hotel they saw, but she wanted to see the sights (and to keep driving).

She’d driven to the other end of the town and back before Dean finally awoke quietly beside her. He gave a loud yawn and turned his attention to her.

“I’m assuming we’re here?” he asked, and she smirked slightly.

“We’ve been here for about twenty minutes, but since you’re such a prick and never let me drive, I figured I’d scope things out a bit,” she said, and he let out a dry chuckle.

“And?” he asked, turning to look out the window.

“And it seems like a normal little town. Not too big, but not too small either. High school, hospital, couple nice hotels, couple dive-y hotels, couple grocery stores. Nice little industrial district down there,” she said, pointing to their left. “Police station back that way,” she said, pointing behind them.

“Yeah, well too bad the normal little towns are normally the ones full of fairytale monsters,” Dean replied, and Leila nodded slowly.

“I’m starving. Let’s find some grub,” Sam piped up behind them, making Leila jump. Even though she hunted monsters for a (kind of) living, she still scared ridiculously easily, and her brothers loved to take advantage of that. Both of them let out small laughs, and she directed a middle finger to both of them.


A few hours later, they’d checked into their hotel and filled themselves up with as much crappy diner food as they could handle. Dean headed to the police station to talk to the sheriff and the other officers about the case, and Leila and Sam were headed to the hospital morgue to check out what was left of the body. All three of them were posing as FBI agents, which was something that Leila still marveled at every time it worked. At twenty-three years old and 5’7” in height with her long dark hair and bright green eyes, she looked nothing like an FBI agent, and she knew it. But somehow, when she wore the suit jacket and pants that she despised and stood beside one of her brothers, and flashed one of her many fake badges, people (almost) always bought it.

“I’ll go check out the body and you talk to the nurses and doctors and see what they’ve got to say,” Sam instructed her as they walked through the hospital’s sliding glass doors, and she had to smile to herself. Her brothers were both ridiculously protective of her, and neither of them even really liked the fact that she insisted on hunting with them. But when she’d threatened to begin hunting on her own if they wouldn’t let her hunt with them, they’d chosen the (somewhat) lesser of the two evils. If she was hunting with them, at least they could protect her.

“I’ve seen just as many dead bodies as you, you know,” she said and he nodded.

“I know. All the more reason for you to not see another one,” he said matter-of-factly, turning on his heel and walking down the hall away from her. Chuckling dryly, she turned and began walking toward the nearest nurses’ station.

“Hello, sweetheart, what can I do for you?” the nurse sitting at the station asked, smiling happily up at Leila from her chair.

“Officer McCoy, FBI, ma’am. My partner and I are in town to investigate the recent animal attacks here,” Leila said in her most authoritative tone.

“You’re a bit young to be FBI aren’t you?” the nurse questioned, smiling slightly.

“I’m old enough,” Leila said, extracting her badge from her pocket and flashing it.

“Alrighty then,” the nurse responded, and Leila knew she was being rude, and she felt bad for it, but most of the time roughness was the only way to convince people that she was actually FBI because of her height and the fact that she looked about ten. “What are the FBI interested in animal attacks for?” the nurse asked, and Leila glanced at her nametag.

“Well, Miss McCall-” she began, and the nurse raised her hand to silence her.

“Please call me Melissa,” she said, and Leila gave a curt nod.

“Melissa. We’re in town because we’ve been informed that it’s all a bit suspicious,” Leila informed her.

“Suspicious as in you think they’re murders?” Melissa asked, and Leila shook her head shortly.

“Suspicious as in suspicious,” she replied, and Melissa nodded. “Have you noticed anything off about the bodies?” she asked.

“I guess you could call it suspicious. There’s been fourteen bodies, and all of them have been the exact same -torn into so many pieces that the police can’t even find them all,” Melissa said, echoing what Sam had said before.

“What kind of animal are they saying is causing the attacks?” Leila asked, and Melissa shrugged slightly.

“They’re not saying. But if you ask me, I’d say it looks like a mountain lion or a wolf or something,” Melissa said, and Leila nodded.

“Thank you so much for your time, Nurse McCall,” Leila said, giving her a quick handshake and then turning to go find Sam. A moment later, he appeared in the hallway directly in front of her and met her in a few seconds.

“Anything?” she asked, and he nodded.

“Yeah. The news wasn’t lying when they said the body was in a bunch of pieces. It’s got wide gashes all over it and bite marks in a few places. What did you get?” he said as they walked toward the door.

“One of the nurses said that it looked to her like a lion or a wolf,” she said, and he nodded.

“I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s definitely our kind of thing. It’s not just a normal mountain lion, and there aren’t wolves in the area -I checked,” he said, and she nodded back at him.

“I think you’re right. Let’s go see what Dean got,” she said, and they set off down the sidewalk toward their hotel.

As they walked, Leila couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. At one point, she even mentioned it to Sam, but after looking around, he assured her that she was just being paranoid. A few moments later, they walked into the front lobby of the hotel, and as they did, someone bumped into Leila, almost knocking her over.

“Dude, watch it!” she exclaimed, turning around to see the back of a tall male figure striding the other way. She flipped the bird to the back of his leather jacket. “Dick,” she mumbled, turning to follow Sam into the lobby.