Moonlight

Two days went by, and they didn’t find much of anything. Dean hadn’t gotten any information at the police station that they didn’t already know, and things were starting to look bleak.

“Maybe we were wrong. Maybe it’s not our kind of thing,” Sam sighed, slamming his laptop shut and standing to stretch his legs. “I’ve been pouring through the online town records and I can’t come up with anything,” he vented, and Leila shook her head.

“We’ve got to give it a few more days at least. You saw the last body; that wasn’t a mountain lion,” she said, and Dean grunted from across the room.

“Just because it wasn’t a mountain lion doesn’t mean it’s our kind of thing. What if it was a human? Humans are just as if not more evil than monsters sometimes,” Dean said, repeating the same thing he always said when he was frustrated at a lack of leads.

“Sammy said there were teeth marks on the body, Dean. You ever see a human with sharp, animal-like teeth?” Leila asked, crossing her arms smugly.

“You’re a smartass, you know that?” Dean asked her, standing and tossing on his heavily worn brown leather jacket.

“I learned it from my big brother,” Leila said, and she saw Dean try to hide a smirk.

“I’m gonna go get some grub. Keep lookin’,” Dean said, crossing the room and exiting quietly.



Sam and Leila spent two more hours searching every town database and news story available to them before Leila finally got tired of sitting and exited the room silently to go get some fresh air. It was after dark and the air was thin and crisp, making her wish she’d brought a jacket along.

She’d been walking down the street with no particular destination in mind for about five minutes when she got that same sensation that someone was following her as she’d gotten the first day they’d arrived in town. Automatically, she turned and began making her way back to their hotel. As she walked, the little hairs on the back of her neck stood, and she shivered and began walking faster. She glanced behind her to see no one, and when she turned back around, there was a shadowy figure standing a few feet ahead of her. She blinked and squinted to try to see through the darkness, and she could barely make out the frame of a man. He was tall and dark and that was about all she could see.

“Why are you following me?” she asked into the darkness, mentally cursing herself for not grabbing her cell phone off of the table before she’d come outside. Her brothers always yelled at her for never having her phone on her, and in that moment she desperately wished she’d listened to them more often.

“Who are you?” the figure in front of her answered her question with one of his own. Mustering up all the courage she possibly could, Leila took a few hesitant steps toward him and was able to make out a few more of his features as she did so. As she’d deduced before, he was tall and muscular, but now she could see that he had dark hair and dark scruff on his chin, paired with a set of piercing green eyes that were staring daggers straight through her. He was also wearing a dark leather jacket, and after a moment it clicked in her mind that he was the one that had almost knocked her over in the hotel lobby a few days before.

“I asked first. Why are you following me?” she repeated, and his stone-cold expression didn’t budge.

“I don’t care that you asked first. I want to know who you are and why you’re here,” he said in a tone that sent tremors through her. She didn’t know why he was so angry at her, and she didn’t particularly want to find out.

“Listen… I don’t want any trouble, okay? Just… just let me go back to my hotel and then I’ll leave and never come back,” she said in the most innocent voice she could manage. As she spoke, she slowly slipped a hand behind her back to make sure that the pistol she always carried was securely in its waist holster, which it was. She left her hand on her gun, just in case she needed it.

“First you’re going to tell me who you are and why you’re here,” he insisted, and in lieu of an answer, she decided to turn and bolt the other way down the street. She knew it was probably not a very smart idea, and she knew that he’d most likely chase her, but she figured it to be her only chance.

He was behind her in seconds. He grabbed her by the arm and turned her to face him. “Listen. I’m not going to hurt you unless you give me a reason to. Just tell me why you’re here,” he repeated in the same bone-chilling voice. She yanked her arm out of his grasp and snatched her gun off her waist in one swift movement. She pointed it squarely at his chest and shook her head definitively.

“No. Actually, I’m not going to hurt you unless you give me a reason to. Now why don’t you tell me who the hell you are and why the hell you’re so interested in me,” she said, worrying mildly about the fact that the gun pointed at his heart didn’t seem to be fazing him at all. In fact, he looked utterly nonchalant about it and almost seemed slightly amused.

Her mind instantly starting working, trying to figure out what kind of monster he had to be, and what she had to do to take him down if she needed to. A human would most definitely be at least a little worried about a gun pointed at his heart, so she knew he had to be something, the only problem was that there was about a million somethings that he could be.

“You know what? No more games,” he said, smacking the gun out of her hand in a movement so quick that she barely even saw it happen.

Before she knew what was happening, he knocked her over the head with his open hand, and she instantly felt herself slipping out of consciousness. The last thing she saw before the world went completely black was the trunk of a car closing above her.