From Unexpected Places [Morans/Erin]

[Erin Tischloew]

[erin]The beat to shit van came barreling up the access road to the Morans' ranch a good fifteen miles an hour faster than was really safe. It squealed to a dust-cloudy stop in front of the house and almost before it was all the way parked the driver jumped out and started jogging toward Wyatt.

"You don't know me," she informed him, a bit unnecessarily. "My name's Erin, I heard about you from Eve Amherst." (This was true, in a manner of speaking, though presented a bit misleadingly.) "You've got a swarm of Acheri demons headed this way, they should be here by sundown. They're not that hard to dispel but we've gotta protect the living creatures on the ranch."

The stranger, Erin, was wearing an outfit that screamed 'Town', even if you ignored the bright orange hair. Which was hard to do. But she seemed perfectly serious as she held up a skein of bright red wool yarn, still in its paper sleeve. "They kill the horses, man. All of them but two." She was so emphatic on that last that she sounded close to tears. Worse when she added, "The horses, the dogs, even the barn cat and her kittens. Just to get at your sister. Please, you've gotta believe me! We have to protect them, sunset's not that far off."[/erin]

[Wyatt Moran]

Wyatt, who'd been dressed for the day's work on the ranch, which he'd just finished, had his gun out and had been easing it down when the stranger mentioned his sister, and just that fast it was up and pointed at her again.

Sense of urgency or not, she was now a threat. Especially because it would take more than one skein of yarn to protect all the horses, their necks so big that it would take several to get all of them red necklaces. "That's close enough," he said, back to the house, from which Dani came out, stopping on the porch when she saw Wyatt with his gun trained on the bright haired stranger.

"Wyatt?"

"Back in the house, Mouse," he said, voice soft and sounding for all the world like he was calm.

"You see that?" Dani asked the other woman even as she was backing up, "You have him so upset he's rhyming." Not that her brother at all looked it. He looked as calm as his voice had been, even as his gun was trained squarely on her chest.

"How do you know Eve?" he asked, eyes narrowing.

[Erin Tischloew]

[erin]An entirely human growl of frustration. "It's a long story. Look, I'm all human, I'm not a hunter, and I'm here to help you guys. I know that you," she nodded toward Dani, "are a psychopomp or whatever you call it, I don't think it makes you a monster or anything like that. So can we please tie red yarn around the necks of all the animals now and you can point your gun at me later? Pretty fucking please?"[/erin]

[Wyatt Moran]

Wyatt didn't lower the gun until Dani's hand came to rest on the shoulder opposite his gun hand. "Maybe we should listen to her. She seems pretty scared."

Wyatt didn't turn around. "Truth?" he asked.

"Pretty sure, Wy. At least around the edges, especially the bits about saving the animals. And I don't want to lose the horses, especially not with Navajo so close to foal."

Wyatt swore under his breath and lowered the gun, holstering it and striding toward the woman, nodding to the yarn. "You got any more of that?" he asked, the southern twang in his voice thickening as he got down to business. "'Cause that sure as shit ain't gonna be enough.

[Erin Tischloew]

[erin]A raggedy laugh. "A whole bag full of it, I bought out the fabric store. I'm pretty sure the clerk at Joanns thinks I'm a psycho. Or that I just really like to knit."

She tossed Wyatt the skein she'd been holding and reached back into the van for the big white and turquoise bag full of more skeins. As she approached the siblings it could be seen that she already had a length of the yarn tied around her own throat, it had just been sort of overwhelmed by the hair and the weird clothes and so on.

"Where can I help?" She held a skein out to Dani as she asked it, her vision of this hadn't been clear enough that she knew who did what around the farm. That and she tried not to think about that kind of thing too much anyway. It just made her head hurt.[/erin]

[Wyatt Moran]

"The barn's this way," Dani said as she hurried down the steps, catching the box knife Wyatt tossed tossed her after pulling it from his belt, where no less than two hung at any given time.

She was about to jog off toward the barn when Wyatt said, "Dani,", voice quiet but solid enough to get her attention.

"Oh, right," she said, grabbing a skein from the bag and cutting a piece of it to tie around her own neck as her brother did the same just as swiftly.

Taking the bag from the new comer, Wyatt said, "Come on," and led the way to the barn at a very brisk jog. If a horde of the things were coming, he wasn't about to wear himself out by full out running all over the ranch.

When they got there, he whistled to Chance, one of the many dogs that took up residence with them, as they went past and inside. The dog followed obediently and Wyatt knelt down once he'd cut another length, getting it around his neck. "Good boy," he said softly, then turned to survey the barn.

The horses, mostly quarter horses of several colors and white and black spotted apaloosas, were already starting to agitate in their stalls. "Get Navajo settled," Wyatt said, the mare of high concern because of how heavy she was, "We'll get the rest."

Whether they had time for it or not, he turned to Orange Hair and asked, "You know horses?" If she didn't, he'd send her off to find the rest of the dogs and cats and chickens. He couldn't have her spooking them more than they already were, they could hurt themselves.

[Erin Tischloew]

[erin]"No." Why pretend otherwise? She wasn't a farm girl, her love of animals came from other places. She pulled a pair of folding sewing scissors out of her pocket (bought at the same JoAnns that the yarn had come from) and asked, "Where do you want me?" Sunset was coming way too fast to fuck around with fumbling to find where things were.

When Wyatt sent her off to deal with the chickens Erin laughed a bit but went to give it an honest try. What followed was a moderately hilarious twenty-minute chase, one where she fell down many, many times, but eventually she managed to get all the birds collared at the cost of some peck marks on her hands and the utter ruin of her stockings.

And hey, the chicken scent sort of helped when she went to co find the cats and get them taken care of. She ended up having trouble with a calico barn cat, the one with the new litter of kittens, and as dusk fell had to strip off her sweatshirt and bundle the kittens into it, then sprint for the house to get indoors before full dark. She and Dani collared the mewling kits together as the first wisps of the low, unhealthy-smelling fog rolled in.[/erin]

[Wyatt Moran]

Wyatt got the last horse settled, blindfolded and tied loosely by a lead going from bridle to a hook of sorts in the stall wall (just like he had with every other), just as the girls were finishing up with the kittens.

"Rock salt?" he asked as he slammed the door behind him, already dumping salt across the thresh hold.

"Got it," Dani said, sounding eerily cheerful given the situation. "Valentino?"

"I'm worried he's going to kick himself a broken leg," Wyatt said before pressing his lips together and striding to the living room and the wood burning stove to grab one of the iron pokers because a farm house was old and drafty and there were more nooks and crannies to get in through than they could salt.

He grabbed another and tossed it to the new girl.

"He'll be fine," Dani said.

"I'm sure he will," Wyatt said of their prize winning Arabian, the only horse in the barn not american standard, "But I'm more worried about you at the moment."

"I'll be - " but she was cut off by the appearance of a grey looking little girl, causing her to squeal even as Wyatt swung the poker, sending the demon dissipating into the air.

"You wanna tell me everything you know about this?" he asked Erin, the smooth evenness of his voice finally breaking into something far more tense and matching the rest of him as he salted the windows and a line across the entrance to the room, for all the good it would do.

[Erin Tischloew]

[erin]Erin had a poker in one hand and a container of rock salt in the other as she tried to lay a line across the window sills in the kitchen and kept being defeated by the same slight outward slant that sluiced dampness away from the walls. "You've got most of it," she admitted. "I knew they were coming here, I knew why. I knew that in the end you'd probably be able to fight them off," no 'probably' about it, she'd seen the outcome clearly, "but that most of the animals would die to their plagues. And I knew that I was close enough to make it here in time to warn you if I hauled ass down from Utah. I don't know who sent them, what their grudge is against Dani, or whether they'll come back." Nor, and this was a bit more important but she didn't say it aloud, she know why she'd had the vision in the first place when they were nothing directly to do with the Amhersts nor why it was one of the small handful of events where she was given to understand that she was allowed to interfere if she chose.[/erin]

[Wyatt Moran]

"Dani?"

"Truth, as far as it goes," Danika said. She couldn't shift back and forth between her forms, but in human form her senses were more heightened and she got residuals of the grim's power, one of which was a very basic lie detection sort of thing. Another was seeing to the heart of a person. "Except she's not human," she added brightly, "At least not your standard mill run type. She's more...whole grain."

A sigh. "In English?"

"She's a seer or something. S'why she said what she did about knowing the animals would die."

He turned back to Orange Hair and asked, "They still gonna?" Then followed that with, "And who the hell are you?" Orange Hair only worked for a name for so long.

[Erin Tischloew]

[erin]"I'm not a seer," she snapped, less offended than she was jealous. Seer would be so much easier, at least she chose to believe so. "And I don't know if they are now or not. I only got the one piece of information, like a warning. No live-feed Twitter updates."

She glanced over at Wyatt and just gave up on the damn salt. It wasn't going to happen. "Erin. And you're Wyatt and Dani and you have some complicated history that I don't know and am kind of grateful I don't. And--" a creepy gray-haired girl appeared behind her and she whirled and swung the poker through it without hesitation, "they're here."[/erin]

[Wyatt Moran]

And just like that the onslaught began, demon after demon appearing and being dispelled by one of the three of them cutting through them with the iron. It was only temporary, though, and not enough to get rid of any of them for more than a few minutes.

"We can't do this all night," Wyatt muttered as the three of them stood in a circle with their shoulders pressed together.

"How do we kill 'em?" Dani asked, breathing a bit heavily from all the exertion, "'Cause I am all for ending this."

"That would be in the book."

"Of course it is," Dani said, sounding resigned before another demon popped in on them and she swung at it. "I'll get it."

"Like hell you will. Stay here, keep swinging, if I'm not back in five minutes," he paused, shrugged, "Just keep waiting."

He took off at a dead run, out of the living room, through the kitchen and into the office that was down the hall, leaving Erin and Dani to fend for themselves.

He was back in less than two, though he'd almost run right into yet another demon.

"Corner," he said, backing them both up so that he and Erin could stand in front of her and swing at them while she stood against the walls where they came together and look it up.

They all maneuvered over and she took the book, which was really a beaten up, old school Trapper Keeper with hearts and palm trees on it, and got it open.

"Oh, good," she said over the whooshing of air as the other two continued with their temporary dispatching of the demons. "We just need to wrap a medicine woman's red cloth around each one's neck. I don't suppose you found one of those at Joann's."

[Erin Tischloew]

[erin]"They were all out. And Hancocks was closed." She ducked under a clawed hand and lashed out at shin-level. It still worked, disrupt them with iron and they go down. "I might have some Silly String in the van, would that count?" She was starting to panic and had to battle that down, nothing good would come of it if she actually was in real danger. She started taking slow deep breaths, which was kind of weird in the middle of a fight, but she was trying her best here.[/erin]

[Wyatt Moran]

"We have something that'll work," Wyatt said in a minute break between appearances, he didn't want them hearing this, though for all he knew they could be listening even when they weren't attacking.

"Do we? Where? Cellar?"

"No," Wyatt said then waited for another break in the attack. "In your closet."

"What?"

"I'm not sure it'll work, but it's all we've got. A medicine woman's a shaman, right?"

"Right."

Attack, attack, break. "And what's a shaman?"

"Do you really think this is the best time for a pop quiz?" Dani asked angrily from where she was still stuck behind them. But she answered anyway. "A healer, sometimes. Or sometimes a..a..."

"Intermediary between the natural and supernatural worlds, or between this life and the next," Wyatt said, sounding like he was quoting it right out of a book.

Dani clearly got what he was saying but said, "I don't even own anything red."

This time he just went ahead and spoke while he was swinging the poker. "Yes you do, Mouse."

"No I - oh, no. No no no no. No way. I'll just take the fever or whatever the hell it is they do."

"I'll buy you another one." Then, to Erin, "We need to get upstairs. It's the best shot we have. You up to it?" because he was very aware of her breathing pattern.

When Erin said she was right with them, they moved in their slow, awkward but still effective circle up the stairs and down the hall to Dani's room, backing her up the closet when Wyatt directed them to.

Minutes later he was shredding a red gown into strips while Dani again took over helping Erin, swinging with renewed and very angry vigor at the demons as they came at them.

[Erin Tischloew]

[erin]A gusty laugh when she saw the dress, then Erin was back to hacking and slashing at creepy little girl demons and trying to convince herself that this was funny and not even a little scary or dangerous. "You're an evil bastard. I might have preferred the demons too, that's a hell of a dress."

"Although," a pause while she dispelled two of them in the same blow, which kind of made her want to ask if anyone had seen that, "how are we going to get them around their necks? You gonna lasso 'em?" Another swing, and either she was cocky from the last one or it was just time, but she finally took a slash of clawlike fingernails across her forearm. "Son of a bitch!" And then, "But totally fine, no problem, I am absolutely not afraid." They were going to think she was insane, but better that than having their eyes and ears burned out and their brains come melting out their ears.[/erin]