Gil watched, completely unfazed as the ground cracked and buckled, fingertips poking up from the soil like worms. He didn’t bat an eye as a set of hands followed. No reason for him to be surprised at this point; he’d seen it all over and over again.
Wasn’t the first time Adrien had died, and Gil doubted it’d be the last.
“…That’s four times this month,” he remarked to the silver-haired teenager crawling out of an unmarked grave like it was no big deal.
“God, werewolves are the worst,” Adrien grumbled, heaving himself up out of the ground.
Werewolves were a special kind of awful. They’d thought that silver snares would have slowed the thing down long enough to finish it off with wolfsbane and silvered blades, but that hadn’t been the case. The snares had hurt the beast, but the metal wasn’t quite as pure as they’d been promised. Adrien ended up getting torn to shreds when it broke free from the traps and fled howling into the night.
“I swear,” he went on, raking clumps of dirt out of his hair. “I swear if I ever find out what created those things, I’m going to slug it. I don’t care if it’s a god, a demon, a nature spirit or a mage with too much time on their hands, my fist is gonna cave in its face.”
“Sounds like a good way to get cursed or turned into something embarrassing,” Gil said.
“Worth it.”
Gil just rolled his eyes and dropped the subject. There was no arguing with Adrien when he got like this; the boy was more stubborn than an entire team of mules. It didn’t help that nothing could put him down for good. The fae he’d offended had meant it as a curse, but he treated it as more of a superpower than anything.
He’d seen Adrien get dismembered, decapitated, shot, stabbed, bisected, burnt, folded, spindled and mutilated, and the kid just came back each and every time. The first couple times it had freaked him out, but once he realized that death was only a slap on the wrist for him he became reckless.
He’d better hope that fae never lifts his curse. He’ll be in deep shit if she does.
While his hunting partner turned his attention to shaking all the grave-dirt out of his clothes, Gil decided to bring him up to speed. He had missed the last few hours, after all.
“So let’s recap; we’ve got a wounded, angry monster on the loose and we can’t be sure if our weapons are even any good against it since the guy that sold them to us might not be honest.”
“Should probably pay a visit to him after all’s said and done to ‘discuss’ that.”
“Agreed,” Gil said. “Moving on, we also have a lot of very upset townspeople who were counting on us to kill that thing. All they saw was us screw up and you get turned into confetti.”
“Did they haveta bury me though? I’ve got dirt everywhere and breaking out of a coffin ain’t exactly easy. My hands are sore as hell,” Adrien complained.
“Local superstition dictates that werewolf victims be buried immediately, for fear of them rising from the dead.”
Which was why it was good nobody but them was present. Gil could only imagine the panic if one of these people saw an empty grave, or worse yet, the boy they just buried crawling out of it. Never mind the fact that Adrien was very much alive; they’d still want to drive a stake through his heart and burn his body.
“Let’s get back in the car and follow it,” he said. “Even if the silver’s probably barely silver at all, we know the wolfsbane’s good since I grew it. I’m thinking we coat the snares and whatever weapons we still have in it and finish the thing off before it’s had time to heal up.”
Adrien nodded, brushing himself off one more time before heading back to the car.
“Yeah, sounds like a plan. I owe that mutt a few puncture wounds anyway. And then we settle up with that asshole who sold us crappy silver.”
“You’re looking forward to that part, aren’t you?”
“…You’re damn right I am.”
I love the humor in your stories. The way your characters brush off simple things like killing the undead as of they had misfiled paperwork. Amazing
Lolll like Shaina, I enjoy the humor in your work too! It's so funny that he got cursed with immortality, basically. So he complains about things like how people buried him this time, as opposed to last time. XD And how dare those werewolves do this to him again? Grrrr.