December 2nd, 2019
Radcliffe Highway, Colorado

"Tell me," Will demanded the second his seatbelt clicked into place. "Hey. You're going the wrong way. Home is in that-"

"We can't go home," Ash interrupted stonily, and Marley shrank back into her seat at just the sound.

"Ash, goddammit. Turn around or-"

"Someone's trying to kill him," Jack interjected before things could escalate even further. "They broke into the house last night and killed two of the security guards. Mom said not to go back."

Will's icy glare turned on Ash. "What the fuck did you do?" he growled, disgust clear in his voice.

Ash's grip on the steering wheel tightened until his knuckles were white. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen," he said in a low voice, laden with regret.

"What? For us to get caught up in it, or for it to happen in the first place?" Will snarled.

"Both," Ash responded, sounding just as angry as his brother. "But there's nothing we can do about it now. Is there?"

Will stared at his brother's profile open-mouthed, gaping at him. "Really? That's all you're going to say? I can't believe you. Just drop Marley and I off at the next bus stop and we'll figure out our own way back."

"And then what? Where are you going to go? Back home? Oh, that's smart. Take Marley back and let her get snatched up in some sick twisted way to get Dad out of hiding. Why the fuck do you think he asked Mom of all fucking people to raise her?" Ash shouted, his deep voice resonating throughout the car. Marley ducked down even further beside Jack, flinching at the sound of her name.

"I'll figure something else out," Will responded indignantly.

Ash took a deep breath. "Look, just spend a month with me okay? At least until things settle down, and then I'll put you on the first bus back to Ashgrove. Come on man, we have to stick together this time."

Will shot him a bitter glare. "I can't just leave school for a month."

"Tell them it's a family emergency or something," Jack suggested, much to his brother's chagrin, he was sure.

"What do you think, Marley?" Will asked, turning around in his seat and settling his icy hazel gaze on her, shaking his short light brown hair out of his eyes.

She kept her eyes trained on the foggy window. "I think Ash is right," she answered, her voice quiet, even in the confined space. "They won't stop this time."

"You mean...?" Jack started to ask skeptically, and Marley nodded almost unperceptively. She wouldn't talk about it to anyone... except Jack, once, when she was high on pain meds after breaking her leg a few months earlier. He'd promised not to say a word about it, and he hadn't until that moment.

"Alright! It's all agreed then!" Ash exclaimed, turning up the stereo. All he had in terms of music was a box of old cassette tapes that he'd collected over the years. They were mostly albums from the seventies and eighties and despite having heard them hundreds of times, he never got sick of them. Jack didn't mind much either, but Will and Marley were a completely different story.

"If we can't go home, where are we going then?" Will asked after the song ended and another one started.

Ash grinned, glancing back at Jack in the rearview mirror. "We're gonna make a trip out to Kit's, place."

"No way," Jack muttered disbelievingly under his breath. "I thought she was still in Alaska."

"Got back a few weeks ago. Been asking about you ever since-"

"Wait a minute. Who's Kit?" Will asked bitterly, not liking being out of the loop so much.

"An old friend of Dad's," Jack replied before Ash could even open his mouth. "She's awesome."

"How do you know her?" Will stared out his window with an indifferent expression, but Jack wasn't buying it. He wasn't very good at hiding his emotions.

"Ash used to take me to her place a lot when I was a kid," Jack answered honestly. Ever since their older brother left when he was sixteen, he'd been blowing into town on random occasions and whisking Jack away. He always asked Will to come along too, but only got a no for an answer every time.

"So Dad's friend is gonna help us?" Marley asked. "How?"

"You'll see." Ash's voice always carried a harder edge when he spoke to their kid sister.

Jack leaned closer to Marley when Ash turned the music up. "You'll like her," he promised reassuringly in a whisper. As snarky and antagonistic as she tended to be, on the inside, she was just a scared little kid trying to defend herself. She'd had it rough in the eight years she'd kicked it with their dad before he practically dumped her on their doorstep.

They drove for the next fifteen hours in mostly silence with some bickering here and there, before ending up at Kit's Scrap Yard, a property encompassing a good twelve acres, and home to the one and only Kit Westing. Keala barked and wagged her tail when they pulled to a stop, almost kicking Jack in the face in her haste to get out of the car. Barking a couple more times, she darted through the piles of old cars and other metal junk that cluttered the yard.

"The hell is all that racket!" a loud voice shouted as a screen door slammed shut somewhere behind the giant piles of crap that littered the property.

"Kit!" Jack called, leaving his siblings behind and jogging through the maze of junk to get to Kit's little two-story house in the center of it all.

"Jack? That you, boy?" the old woman asked, lowering her shotgun when Jack and Keala raced to her front porch, jumping up the rickety porch steps and almost barreling straight into her. He hugged her quickly, before scrambling backwards, trying not to blush with mild embarrassment at his public display of affection, as the rest of his siblings came into view.

"Hey, Kit. How ya been?" Jack stuffed his hands into his coat pockets as he rocked back and forth on his feet.

"Busy." The old woman turned her bright green eyes behind Jack to look at Will, Ash, and Marley. "So, you brought the whole damn Slayer clan?" she remarked. "What ya kids need? I ain't heard from your daddy in months."

"We haven't either. Been six weeks, at least." Ash followed Jack's lead and engulfed the lady in a brief hug, but as he pulled away, Kit smacked him upside the head. "Ow," he groaned. "What was that for?"

"I've been back almost two months and you haven't stopped by once!" Slyly, she winked at Marley who lingered at the bottom step.

"I'm here now, ain't I?" Ash complained, rubbing his head and moving as far out of the old woman's reach as he could get. She may have had a tower of graying hair, glasses almost an inch thick, and barely stood taller than Ash's shoulders, but even Jack knew to be terrified of the old geezer. She could be downright scary when needed.

"Well come on in, tell me what happened while I was away," she said, holding her front door open for the Slayer siblings to head on inside. Jack grabbed Marley's wrist and pulled her along with him, sensing her reluctance.

"I've been on a dozen or so jobs since you've been gone, but one went... weird a couple months ago," Ash started out as they entered the dimly lit living room.

"Weird?" Kit laughed. "Kid, all the jobs are weird." She glanced surreptitiously at Will, Jack, and Marley, before returning a pointed gaze at their oldest brother. "They don't know," she guessed. "Still?"

Ash's expression hardened. "They shouldn't have to," he answered rigidly. "Especially the kid."

Kit shook her head, laying her gun carefully on top of the mantelpiece over the fireplace. "It's a dangerous world out there for the ignorant."

Beside him, Jack felt Will getting more and more aggravated by the minute. "What are you talking about? We're right here, goddammit, so you might as well tell us," he demanded finally, through gritted teeth. His fists were clenched at his sides and he glared sharply at Ash.

"It's nothing you need to know right now," Ash promised stubbornly, and the tension between the two was practically tangible.

"The hell it isn't!" Will snapped back. "You kidnapped me in the middle of the night babbling on about some crackhead bullshit that you actually expect me to believe, and now you're keeping us out of the loop about-"

"Alright just calm down," Kit interjected, nudging Will toward the couch across from where Ash sat in the old armchair. "You boys need to spit out the truth and do it right this minute. Marley, be a darling and help me in the kitchen."

"But-"

"Come along, honey. I'll tell you some embarrassing stories about those big tough brothers of yours," she bribed, and Marley was on her feet in a second, grinning as she followed behind the old woman.

"Deal." She smirked darkly, sending tingles up and down Jack's spine.

"Kit!" he and Ash whined simultaneously.

"Shut up, boys." Kit laughed, disappearing with Marley into hallway and back toward the kitchen on the other side of the house.

"What's going on, Ashton?" Will growled when he was sure the other two were gone.

"Well..." Ash started, dragging out the word. "Do you want the whole truth?"

"Preferably," Will sneered.

"Fine. Remember how Dad insisted on us learning Martial Arts when we were kids? How adamant he was about it?"

Will's glare didn't let up. "How could I forget? He always said he was beating the discipline into us without ever lifting a finger," he responded sarcastically, while Jack sat silently. He wanted to hear everything Ash had to tell them. He'd stumbled onto a few secrets over the years that he'd never been able to make sense of, there were so many questions he needed answered.

"And all the hunting trips?" Ash asked. Will nodded, that time keeping his mouth shut. "Yeah, well turns out there was another reason for it. He was kinda grooming us for the family business."

"For what, to fend off bugs and small rodents?" Will's attempt at sarcasm served only to make both his brothers want to laugh, but they held in the urge.

"Nah, turns out, Dad's not even really that kind of exterminator." Ash chuckled, like it was all a big joke.

"Then what is he?" Will obviously wasn't in the mood for jokes. Jack felt like whatever words were about to come out of his brother's mouth would change everything he knew, and yet, the guy was cool as a freaking cucumber. It irked him.

Ash shrugged. "An exterminator of sorts," he answered about as casually as he would have if asked what color the sky was.

Will floundered for a moment, trying to come up with some semblance of a response, but nothing remotely sensible emerged, at least not for a good couple of minutes. "A bug exterminator or people exterminator?" Jack almost let out a choked laughter at the way he'd worded it.

"A... um... pest exterminator," Ash responded lightly, leaning back on the couch like it was no big deal. Like they weren't talking about the fact that their father (and mostly likely Ash too) had been lying to them. "Only his targets are a little weirder than most."

"Weirder how?" Will asked, not once giving up on his skepticism.

Ash shook his head. "I don't want to tell you yet. Better to ease you in one step at a time. You'd just laugh in my face anyway."

"Why would I do that?"

Jack shot his older brother a level glare. "Because you always laugh in our faces when you think we're screwing with you."

"No I don't," Will denied vehemently. When Jack and Ash fixed him with identical indignant looks, he sighed in defeat. "Fine. I promise I'll try to keep an open mind."

"Not try, do."

"Shut up, Yoda."

Ash kicked Jack lightly from where he sat catty corner to him on the couch. "Respect your elders, kid."

"Ow! Goddammit. Why're you so violent?" Jack groaned, rubbing his shin.

Ash shrugged. "You guys wanna know the rest or not?"

"We do," Jack and Will replied in unison.

"When I was sixteen, Dad called me up one day asking me for help, he needed back-up. So, I went. And I was really good at it."

"Good at what?" Will asked contemptuously.

"Killing monsters," Ash explained nonchalantly. "Only the scum bags who deserved it. Besides, I save people."

"So what, you're some kind of hero?" Will's voice dripped with condescension.

"I didn't say that. All I'm saying is, I actually do some good out there. So does Dad. And the others like us."

"There are others?" Jack asked a little too quickly. But his excitement went entirely unnoticed by his brothers, much to his relief. It was better to have them bitching at each other rather than focusing on him.

Ash smirked. "Kit is one. In fact, she's one of the best," he boasted proudly.

"No shit?" Jack remarked, having always known that the old lady was strangely kickass for a woman who'd recentlys hit seventy.

Will's eyebrows rose almost to his hairline, and he jabbed a thumb in the direction of the kitchen. "That sweet old lady?"

Must've missed the shotgun she pulled on me, Jack thought with a knowing smirk. The fact that she was a trained killer only seemed to make sense, putting all those missing puzzle pieces into place for him.

"It's true, kiddo," Kit said from behind, holding a tray of chocolate chip peanut butter cookies. "Was raised in this crap." She set the cookies on the coffee table and grinned sideways at Jack.

"Really?" Will asked. "Your parents were psycho killers too?" Ash Charlie Horsed his arm so hard he yelped, and he immediately mumbled a wooden apology.

Kit laughed. "It's not exactly like that. You'll see."

"Really?" Jack asked eagerly. To him, there was nothing better than the thought of following in his older brother's footsteps. It was what he'd always done.

Kit nodded, ignoring Ash's pointed glare. "You always were our little secret weapon, kid," she told him, just as casually as Ash had mentioned the family "business".

"How?" Jack looked between the old lady and his brother hoping for an answer.

"What do you mean by that?" Will's voice was laced with suspicion.

"Your dreams-"

"Nothing," Ash interrupted briskly, glaring daggers at the woman, even though Jack knew she scared him. "She means nothing by it."

Kit shrugged innocently. "Oh, ignore the ramblings of an old lady, kid," she amended sweetly, almost mockingly, right before Marley called her name from the backyard. "I'll be back, boys. Don't kill each other."

When Kit was out of the room again, Jack's sharp gaze landed on Ash. "Seriously man, what'd she mean?"

Ash averted his eyes, sinking further into the armchair. "Nothing, she meant nothing," he repeated stubbornly.