Author's Note

Okay, so this is weird, and I'm not sure if this is conveying what I meant... sorry in advance.
Song above is like <<< a certain OTP for this book. (It's From Eden by Hozier)

IN ALASKA, danger is the lingering, creeping shadow that dwells behind every inhabitant. Fear becomes the devil on shoulders, whispering in goose-bumped skin empty promises of safety while nicking its teeth into pulsing necks- because danger is always near- too close.

For the first time in Rory's life, he feels it- he feels fear climbing into his skin, forcing the hairs on his arm to stand straight up- a defense mechanism built into the human body that would only do him good if he was an earlier, much more hairier human being. He knows this because he took Introduction to Anthropology as an extra curriculum- and really, who takes Introduction to Anthropology instead of Art?

The air in the Mavericks' home feels thick- stout with the stench of fermented alarm and caution. Rory feels like he can't breathe- but his lungs are filling to the brim with something that makes his feet feel light and his hands tremble around the base of the bat he held.

He brings his fingers to his lips- they're soft, buttered from the juice he was drinking in the kitchen minutes ago- but, underneath the pad of his finger, he swears he feels cracked skin, as if his body was mirroring the fear his mind was pushing around in turmoil.

"What is it?" Rowan whispers, and her voice is a new thing here- a squeaky clean, just washed and waxed sound that manages to politely make its presence known here. Here being the deepest retreats of Rory's mind- where he lets his sane, highly functional piece of brain take refuge and lets the primal, built-in instinct- that's not just adjacent from fire bad but neighbors, stacked together seamlessly- take over.

"Blood," Rory doesn't know how he found the capacity to speak- let alone gather enough composure to turn from the window and into the wide, hazel stare of his sister. "'S blood," he repeats, as if his throat was a broken record player and the record stuck on repeat was the worst album Rory's body had to offer.

When his voice slices the air with shaky breaths and tangents of who is it, what is it, why is it, the house was shaken by a knock- something viscously rapping its fist against the hard mahogany of the door.

Rory follows his gaze to his sister, whose eyes are wide and utterly mirroring the same emotion Rory was feeling: fear.

"Whatever the crap that was," Rowan's voice shakes as she takes a cautious step towards the door, her chest heaving as her monster of a blade hangs out in front of her, the worn handle trapped between the girl's trembling fists. "I'm going to kill it with my fucking cleaver," her tone is as strong and powerful as her shivering body will allow.

"I'm," her brother licks the corner of his lips, eyebrows knitting together as he thinks for a moment. "I'm going to open the door, Row, I'll-"

"No one is going anywhere near that door," she interrupts him, intercepting his statement with the this-is-final voice that only the Maverick women seemed to possess. "No one."

Rory swallows, the gulp echoing in the silence of the room as he stares almost longingly at the locked door- as if he's entranced by whatever lay behind it, curled in the snow and ice of the porch, as if it was waiting for a boy like Rory to pluck it from Alaska's cold fingers and into his greedy own.

"If anyone is going to check," Rowan's nose twitches- her eyes are watery, not out of hurt or fearfulness, but something in her body forced her to react like this. When adrenaline and anticipation leaked into her system, the waterworks began for vain reasons. "I'll check, I'm the oldest after all," her smile is feeble, but her cheeks are ruddy red- more color than the deadly pale skin Rory possessed at the moment.

"Only by twelve minutes," he reminds his sister, and laughs- only a small chuckle, because that's all they can afford- anything more than an unsure snicker of a breath in the quiet of the room will bring too much hope to their campaign, give them too much optimism when they're staring back into the eyes of grim reality.

"Give me the phone, at least," Rory's voice is a lonely, quiet hymn in the living room as he blinks wide towards his sister. "I'll call mom, okay, and you- you just," he presses his lips into a tight, wide line constructed of worry. "You crack the door- you don't, don't you dare do anything else, understand?"

Rowan nods, her forehead lined with sweat even though inside the house, it's hardly pushing seventy degrees.

"Go to the dining room, better signal," Rowan whispers to her brother as she stuffs a handful of phone into her brother's open palms. He nods quickly, not thrilled to be in the next room over, but his skin is practically tingling at the thought of mom- the word itself resonated with safe and all things good to Rory.

With trembling legs, he felt his bare feet press to the freezing wooden floors- but the cold wasn't the explanation for his gooseflesh.

*

Rowan was a curious child- much of everyone she met- which wasn't much, considering she lived in Covington- explained she couldn't be more than the polar opposite of her twin brother.

Where Rory shook with fear, Rowan smiled with a giddy feeling curling in the pit of her stomach- forcing her on her feet in attempt to near possible danger as her brother practically begged her to come, beckoning her to the safety of their mother's arms, or their home, or to the stables their mother boarded two mares.

When Rory cried the day his first tooth fell out because it feels weird, momma- Rowan tied her two front teeth to her bedroom's doorknob and slammed it shut. It wasn't the smartest idea, considering the amount of blood had practically put their mother into cardiac arrest. But, while Rory only received one dollar, Rowan reaped two.

When Rory would sit at the end of her bed, staring up at her ceiling that had plastered paintings- all by her brother, she didn't have one creative bone in her body- whispering about the eyes in the forest that followed them every second of the day, Rowan would laugh and tell her twin he was scaring himself. Or maybe, his mind was creating something to keep up with the lonely life in Alaska, creating dancing friends out of windy trees and wolves'- because her brother was always specific- eyes out of fireflies.

Obviously, she was the opposite of her brother. Romantic versus realistic. Fearful versus fearless. Content versus restless.

But, now, listening to the steady footfalls of her brother walking out of the living room- there had not ever been a more powerful feeling inside of her, her gut- maybe, or her chest- that wanted to yell for her brother and reel him back beside her, tuck the boy into her shoulder and close their eyes while tapping their heels together as if they were both Dorothy- and 'no place like home' sounded a lot like 'no place like safe'.

Her cleaver shook in her fist, and for the first time in her life, she felt the bad giddy- the nervous wash of emotion in the pit of her gut that turned her mouth dry and her mind more worried than high on anticipation for the next adventure.

She can hear her brother's voice two rooms away, deep and strong- and shaking, but that's normal, that's Rory's way of speaking- unsure and not all there, like half of his voice is hiding somewhere between her brother's baseball glove and her english saddle in the deepest crevice of the basement- where all things the twins were interested in, but didn't quite pick up, hid.

The doorknob is beneath her left palm- where it has been sitting still for the past three minutes. Her heart is in her throat- she swears she can feel it beating against her jugular and the ends of the organ tickling at her collarbone.

Here is what she knows: outside her front door, there is blood. The thought alone sent a thrill up her spine- stitching her body up into a ball of tight tension and suspense.

Rowan closes her eyes, taking in a deep breath to fill her lungs with the scent of home- something to calm her down- and she's flooded with the tang of dirty copper instead of the smell of her brother's favorite coffee and her mother's reek of Yankee Candles.

There is enough blood outside, seeping and staining the porch, for her nose to be clogged and backed up by the distinctive stench of copper.

Her grasp on the cleaver tightens, turning her knuckles a chalky white; she creaks the door open as she counts down from a hundred in threes.

*

As Rowan lets a sliver of the door open- the hinges sound close to screaming considering they had probably been frozen for the better part of three months- she doesn't catch anything but the light of porch.

She can see the dark horizon before her. The forest trees around the house seem to leak seamlessly into the black sky, not even stars bothering to show their face in a place as lonely as the vacant planes of Alaska. And beneath the dark, waned skies, in the only flickering, dim light the porch had to offer, laid a bloody heap of a man.

Rowan drops her cleaver- her limbs falling limp at the sudden revelation- that a man, a human being as real as Rory and Rowan herself, laid splayed like a broken bird on the iced over cement. If she were more poetic- if she were Rory- she'd think that the limp, bloody fist that rested on the weather strip whispered with desperation- like the last stand a man in his eleventh hour took before death. And his body, something so sweet and blatantly promising beautiful, was in a heap of strong, trembling, shivering limbs.

It felt like a fallen angel had been damned onto her doorstep.

She opens the door, wide now, and bends down to him- not bothered by the freezing temperatures- she can take a few minutes on her front porch. Rowan wants to touch him- but he seems like glass- maybe he is. Maybe he's frozen solid.

Her foot takes a step onto the porch- and her bare feet are marginally shocked by the freezing boards of the porch before she feels blood squash between her toes. It's already cold, and has half of the consistency of an ICEE from the low temperature.

"Wh-" she tries to yank her foot away before the man's limp hand suddenly jumps and wraps around her ankle like an iron cord- it felt like too much strength in such a battered man.

"Help," It's a rough whisper from the man's trembling lips, he manages to roll over, from his side to his back, grunting as he does so. The movement only causes the ice below his body become stained with red, his jerky limbs clearly unabashed at ruining the porch.

Rowan feels her tongue dry, it seems like the interior of her mouth has become coated thick with cotton- her lips building a prison for anything more than a grunt.

"Pl-" the man tries to whisper- and maybe it's bad- cowardice of her- to jump back as his bloody fingers try to grasp her tighter. "Please," he repeats. "They're coming."

And suddenly, the mention of 'they' sends a shock of pure thrill and horror up Rowan's spine. Because it isn't just Rory and Rowan and him, it's Rory and Rowan and him and them.

She glances up to the horizon of the plateau, where the valleys and the forest would be aligned with a perfect ray of vision to the house in summer- she only sees darkness. Trickles of the moon lay sprinkled on the tips of the tallest trees, but aside from the few spontaneous tracks of trees, she's practically blind. And they are out there. Whoever they may be, she does not want to meet them.

"C'mon then, quick," she grunts- and maybe her words taste like bitter regret, but she doesn't acknowledge it- Rowan is almost grown, she's a big girl. And the stranger is wounded; and the man, after-all, is just one man. If anything, the odds are with her, stacked against him because she had her momma's left swing and her brother was tall enough to intimidate anyone- even if he was as thin as a reed.

The stranger gives her a grateful grin, chapped pink lips taut and the crevices of his teeth painted in crimson.

"Rory," Rowan calls out, as she places her palm on the man's shoulder, his skin is burning hot, regardless if it's the middle of a brutal winter. "Rory-" she tries to repeat, but Rowan is interrupted by her twin's heavy footfalls on the living room's wooden floor.

"What?" His hazel eyes are blown wide and his hands hold a bat, knuckles losing color and turning a chalky white at the vise-tight grasp. "What?" He repeats within a second- as if he had given her time to explain.

"C'mere, this guy- this man, is- I need help carrying him in," she tries to sound sane- but not a note in her voice is even close to steady or calm, it's a hymn away from trembling instead. Her arms are light with adrenaline, her wrist moving as if they were on strings because of the sudden decision of 'we're doing this, we're going to save this man' has her entire body shaking.

"What?" He repeats, as if he hadn't heard her right- but he did. His bat almost goes limp in his fists, dragging on the living room's red Persian rug.

"Help. This guy needs it," she says, almost as if she's agitated now- his lips aren't turning an angry purple, but the threat of hypothermia in this weather is too high- each second he lays on the front porch is another second towards a quick, impending death.

Rory looks bewildered, but he does as told, following his sister to the door and staring down at the stranger- to him, he seems too surreal. The shock of scarlet blood, frayed by the porch's dying lightbulb, with the splayed out man weakly trying to catch the bottom of his sister's sweatshirt, is too outlandish. Even more, the stranger is a stranger.

Rory had never met a stranger in his life- that is how minuscule Covington was.

He shoved his smartphone into his jogger's back pocket, and left the bat resting in the umbrella stand beside the door.

"Grab my shoulder, okay?" Rory told the man, and two viscously green irises blinked up at the boy, fringed with blonde eyelashes and watching Rory, wide with either hope or fear- the teenager could not decipher.

He bent himself in half, Rory's knees almost scraping the floor as he led the man's palm onto his shoulder. His hands were shaking, practically vibrating from pure adrenaline as the stranger's fingers squeezed onto his skin, digging into Rory's shoulder beneath his sweater.

The man leaned his head onto Rory's collarbone, his burning breath leaking onto the boy's neck- for a man in freezing temperatures, he ran hot.

Rowan caught his other hand, inclosing her palms on his bloody knuckles; sharing his weight between the two teenagers helped, but Rowan still gritted her teeth and Rory huffed from exertion. The man was groaning, repeating 'they- they, coming' over and over again into Rory's neck. The moment they managed to drag him into the house, he dropped from both of their arms to lock the door, before sliding down the smooth, wooden panels. He dipped his head back, exposing a bloody throat and bobbing Adam's apple, as the stranger let out a huff of a laugh.

"Dimitri," he whispered, his eyes trailing over Rory's full height before he grinned to himself. "I'm Dimitri."

"Gotta last name, Dimitri?" Rowan asked from where she stood, her arms tightly crossed together and her backside to the fireplace. Everything, from her body language to her questioning voice, told Rory she was basically the tangible form of tense.

"Do you have water, or maybe- bandages? Antibiotics?" Dimitri didn't stay on the subject too long, and in the dimness of the living room, he was this close to staining their mother's favorite Persian rug.

"C'mon, let's get him to a spare room," Rory whispered to his sister, his face a ruddy red- and not from the cold, Dimitri's eyes were following him, an interested brow raising in a rogue attempt to catch the teenager's attention.

"Can you walk?" Rowan questioned, moving towards him. Her hands folded on her waist as she bent over to study Dimitri, who groaned and nodded.

"With help," he grumbled; his voice was thick and Rory shut his mouth, pressing his lips into a thin line as his teeth gritted together, nervous while he listened to the newest fixture of a man in the home.

"Grab the emergency aid kit, Ro," Rowan commanded to her brother, nodding her head towards the kitchen as she bent down to Dimitri's side. Her hands were greedily scraping up his thin, bloodied sweater, trying her best to support his weight, and the dead-weighted man leaned on her shoulder from exhauastion. He let his head roll to face the floor before he lifted his gaze to Rory, giving him a bloody grin before mouthing 'thank you both'.

*

Rory's hands were scrapping through the kitchen cabinets, pushing back old cans of nonperishable fruits and vegetables, and piling the boxes and bags of snacks onto the counter to reach the very back of the top shelf. His hand patted blindly on the hard wood, vainly tapping around to find the emergency aid kit.

When his phone began to vibrate in the back of his pocket, he finally discovered the kit in the farthest corner the cabinet had to offer.

The boy smiled, scrapping it out by the tips of his fingers, as his left hand found the back pocket of his joggers.

"Momma, hey," he began, half distracted by towing the unopened kit down and working with one hand to peel off the tape that kept it sealed shut.

"Rory? Rory, please tell me you didn't let them in, please tell me you- please," his mother's voice, which was usually a constant of calm hymns exploded into his ear, her words thick with something he's never heard before- something he never wanted to hear.

"Mom?" Rory forgot the kit, letting the plastic box drop to the floor as he looked wide eyed out of the kitchen's bay window to his right, as if he could catch sight of anything in the pure darkness that had infected Covington for the past sixty days. "Mom? What, mom- where are you?"

"Ro, Ro baby, I'm- they planned this, they... I should've seen this fucking coming, and I didn't- I- I need you, you and Row- I need you to not let anyone in, not even me. They can't come in unless you let them in. Are you listening to me Rory?!" Rowena's voice was rushed out, frantic and achingly desperate through the static of the phone.

Rory felt cold, as if his veins became channels of Copper river, like the icy touch of Alaska was sending a harsh freeze into his body because he needed the chill to breathe. "Mom- mom, we let- there was a guy, and we let him in, we let- we let him in," he trailed hopelessly, his fingers combing through his mop of brown hair as he tried to contain himself- as he tried not to break apart and chip like the ice in his veins.

"You- Ro, I, Rory- I can't get to you, I can't- I can't get- I'm," his mother was cut off by her harsh sobs- because maybe, maybe this was the end. Maybe becoming a stranger's savior was the equivalent to shaking hands with Death and watching him take your soul away. "An avalanche hit the Brodys', and- and we aren't going to be cleared out for days- Ro, Ro," Rowena sounded utterly desperate and lost- her babies, her children, the only evidence she had left as proof that the man she met eighteen years ago had existed, were finally catching up with fate.

"Mom?" Rory whispered, closing his eyes tightly, as if he was trying to blink himself out of this nightmare. "Mom, what do I do?"

Rowena was still silent, and for a moment- he had thought he had lost connection- until the teenager heard her sniffing.

"Don't leave, don't leave- and don't make it mad, give it... give it what it wants, until I get there," she whispered, and she sound almost defeated. "When I get there, ask me a question only you and I know the answer to, and- and, and don't leave- don't let any soul come in- but, and I mean this, whatever you hear- no matter what you hear- don't go outside."

"Mom, mom?" He whispered, utterly lost. His eyes were wide- because what could possibly create something so morbid that he'd leave the safety of their home to investigate?

"What, baby?" Her voice was broken. It wasn't because of static- it was the same voice that haunted the home every December 19th- but it wasn't December- it was the second of January and Rory was terrified of what that meant.

"Are we going to die?" His words could only be described as owlish, full of something that only tainted his nightmares and most fucked-up thoughts.

"No, no- neither of you will," she whispers.

And the way she says it, filled with a hiccupy voice no child liked to hear their mother use, makes him feel as if she wished they would.

Author's Note

Sorry, re-reading it isn't the most entertaining, but I hope y'all enjoyed it, at least.
We liking any characters? What about that strange new lad? What about Rowena's sudden freak out?

Comments and thoughts appreciated UuU