December 1st, 2019
Ashgrove, Colorado

"Come on, Jack. Get up," a voice said, shaking him awake far too early.

"Ten more minutes." Jack mumbled something unintelligible, turning over on his sheets.

"No. Get up, let's go," Ash demanded in a whisper.

"What do you want?" Jack stuck his head from beneath his thin blankets. Despite the frigid cold, it was always pretty warm in his room.

"Get up. I've got a surprise for you." Before Jack could even get another word out, his oldest brother hauled him up by his ankles and held him almost entirely upside down over the bed.

"Ash!" he shouted in alarm. "How are you still able to do that?" He opened his eyes just as his brother decided to drop him, none to gently, back on the mattress.

Ash grinned, running a large mit-sized hand through his short, messy hair. "I'll always be bigger and stronger than you, twig. Now pack a bag. You're coming with me."

"What? Where?"

"Road trip," Ash answered. "Hurry up." He turned around to leave, but Jack wasn't about to go so willingly.

"A road trip? In the middle of winter?"

Ash shrugged. "Sure. Now get your things. We gotta leave before it gets too late. I'm gonna go get Willie."

"Will's coming? How're you gonna manage that?" Jack raised an eyebrow skeptically.

Ash shot him a conspiratorial look. "I have my ways. Don't worry."

"What about Marley? She coming too?"

Ash's smile disappeared and his whole body tensed. "No," he answered tightly. "Just us this time. Maybe when she's older. Doesn't she have school anyway?"

"Doesn't Will?"

"Touché. Pack your shit. I'll kidnap the nerd if I have to. We gotta get outta here while we still can, before security shifts back around and catches us. Stupid Juliet and her stupid security."

Jack chuckled, despite his best attempts at staying stern with his oldest brother. "Mom's gonna be pissed when she finds out we've all just up and left in the middle of the night."

"What're you six?" Ash snorted sarcastically. "We're all adults. We can do whatever the hell we want. And anyway, I already told her. She said it was a great idea. You know, bonding experience and all that. I just wanna make it out of here before those pricks decide to fuck with me." Jack wasn't buying his bullshit story though. Ash always had a lie or two up his sleeve.

"I can't just leave. What about Marley?" He stumbled across his disastrous bedroom, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and trying to remember where he'd last thrown his duffel bag.

Ash scowled. "She'll be fine, wimp. But you can bring your fucking dog if it helps you sleep or whatever."

Jack shot a level glare over his shoulder. "I was already going to, whether you wanted Keala to come or not." Ever since Ash started hanging around again – right after Jack graduated – he'd just drag him out of bed in the middle of the night for some random adventure.

Two weeks earlier, he'd insisted that Jack go with him to some music store eight towns over, and even though he'd promised it would only take a few hours, they'd been gone for almost three days. Three weeks before that, his older brother woke him up just to be his getaway driver while he paid a visit to some guy who owed him money. And then there was that incident where Jack had to go bail him out of jail at three in the morning because he was involved in a bar fight.

No matter where they were, or what they were doing, Ash somehow always managed to find himself neck deep in trouble. Without fail. And he was damn good at pulling Jack along with him. Jack didn't actually mind much, though, as long as they were hanging out. Will did, however. He kept a healthy distance from the two of them.

"Meet me at the car. And be quiet about it, will ya? I don't want you waking Mom up. She's had a rough enough month already," Ash warned sternly, before disappearing from his doorway. "And keep a lookout for those bastard rent-a-cops. Or that pain in the ass, Juliet." He rolled his eyes when he mentioned the name of the groundskeeper their mother hired a year or two back. Juliet had practically made it part of her job description to get under Ash's skin whenever he was in town.

Jack shook his head tiredly, rummaging through his piles of clothes and throwing his cleanest smelling laundry into the muddy green duffel bag that had once belonged to his grandfather. He tossed a few other personal items in and jammed his feet into his hiking boots, pulling his favorite black hoodie over his Led Zeppelin t-shirt. He shrugged on a heavy winter coat and stuffed a pair of gloves into his pockets, before heading out, tugging a beanie down over his ears. He wasn't on as bad of terms with the cemetery staff as Ash was.

Keala sat obediently at the front door, staying in the same spot until he was ready to go, but the second he opened it, she shot out like a bat out of hell. She'd always been more on the wild side than anything else. The midnight black mutt raced into the forest, blending in with the night before his eyes, while Jack leaned tiredly against Ash's beat up old Chevy Blazer. It was a rusted truck that had once been painted sky blue, but had since turned to a coppery color. He waited for nearly ten minutes before he saw his brother emerge from the massive estate they'd grown up in, carrying Will in his arms like a baby. It was a good thing he slept like the dead.

"That's your genius plan?" He smirked as he pulled one of the creaky doors of the old truck open so Ash could strap Will into his seat. Jack cringed a little, thinking how furious he was going to be when he finally woke up and realized they'd dragged him on one of Ash's surprise adventures.

"Shut up," Ash grunted. "It'll work if you don't wake him up. Go get his backpacks. I packed some of his stuff up for him." Jack stared at his brothers for a moment before silently following Ash's orders, snatching the six different bags he'd thrown together and hauling them out to the car. "Thanks, man. You ready?"

Jack nodded, too sleep deprived to think much, and whistled for Keala to come to him, only waiting a few minutes before the energetic dog darted out of the shadows. "Good girl," he praised, opening the dented back door for her to jump into and climbing in after her.

"You paid more attention to girls the way you do that dog, maybe you'd have a girlfriend," Ash suggested, making sure they had everything before he slid into the driver's side and pulled away from the Pleasant Family Cemetery and Funeral Home, where they'd grown up.

"I don't need a girlfriend, Ash," Jack reminded him for probably the hundredth time that month.

Ash chuckled, deeply amused. "Sure, kid. Even Will has had a girl. And he's the biggest geek we know."

Jack frowned, staring out the window, shaking his dark, wavy brown hair out of his eyes. "So? What does that have to do with anything?"

Ash shrugged, driving easily down the winding roads away from the cemetery on the hill and back toward Ashgrove, the large college town that their property overlooked, nestled deep within the mountains. The streets were quiet until Main Street, which never seemed to sleep, but even then, on such a cold night hardly a soul was out. It was a nice change to the normally bustling, noisy crowds that were always around.

"I'm just saying," Ash started, glancing in the rearview mirror, catching Jack's eyes briefly, "it's okay to be gay."

Jack rolled his eyes. "I'm not gay, Ash," he deadpanned, having heard his brother's theory more times than he could count. "But thanks."

Ash shrugged again, keeping most of his attention on the icy road. "Yeah, but I mean, if you were-"

His younger brother groaned loudly in the backseat, leaning his head against the foggy window. "I'm not," he insisted. "Why do you always have to say that?"

Ash smirked, and even though Jack couldn't see his face, he could hear it in his voice. "Because you can't possibly still be pining after that Case girl."

"Oh god, just shut up now, please," Jack complained burying his face in his hands. Ash could be unbearable at times, especially during long car trips.

"Don't be overdramatic." Ash's chestnut-colored eyes swam with humor. "All I'm sayin' is that maybe you'd have a shot with her if you had some experience first."

"I don't want to have this conversation with you," Jack groaned. "Let's talk about where we're going and why we had to leave in the middle of the night instead."

The smirk slipped off Ash's face as they reached the edge of town, crossing the bridge that led deeper into the mountains. "What? I can't go on a road trip with my two favorite brothers without there being a reason?" he joked halfheartedly, and Jack didn't need to have a good look at his face to know he was lying.

"That's a nice story. Now how 'bout the truth?" Jack responded as calmly as he could. "I think you've learned by now that you can trust me."

"Go back to sleep. I'll wake you up when it's your turn to drive," Ash said after a long silence. Jack held back a groan of frustration, having half a mind to jump out of the car right then and there and hike back to town. The thoughts were still swirling around in his head when Ash spoke again, his voice just barely above a whisper. "I need your help."

Jack leaned forward in his seat. "With what?" he asked curiously. His heart picked up speed when Ash stayed silent for longer than necessary. Normally he was all for unloading his problems on his little brother, so the fact that he was clamming up had uneasiness crawling up and down the boy's spine. Whatever shit the oldest Slayer brother was involved in wasn't the typical bar fight or small time drug deal; from the look on his face it went a whole lot deeper than that.

"Jacky," Ash warned desperately, "somebody wants me dead."