A Gift From: frea_o
Type Of Gift: Fic
Title: Second Skin 1/2
A Gift For: hufflepuffsneak
Rating: PG-13/T
Warnings: Violence, blood, swearing, mentions of violence toward women
Summary/Prompt Used: Clint as a country sheriff dealing with mysterious murders on his home turf, Natasha as an FBI bigshot (or someone impersonating an FBI bigshot) +1 for Kate Bishop as a deputy or as a nosy teenage detective.
Author's Note: I combined two of the prompts. You'll see. Thanks to my betas, who shall remain nameless.



Clint Barton looked down at the body at his feet and wondered, rather uncharitably, why people chose to die before decent things like letting a man get his coffee or eight hours of sleep. Really, the lack of coffee was a bigger insult of the two. He’d lost plenty of sleep in his life and given that he was one of two officers of the peace for a county that had more cows than people, he’d lose plenty more. But Stewart’s Point wasn’t big enough to afford a twenty-four hour Starbucks and his coffee machine was busted, so really, the deceased could do him a giant favor of waiting until after his deputy arrived with caffeine to die, thanks.

“Got a live one, boss?” Deputy Bishop strode in, and whatever was in the homemade mug in her hand smelled sinful.

“The opposite, actually. Gimme.”

“Make your own.”

“Fine way to treat your mentor and guiding hand in your life,” Clint said. His deputy was fresh out of college, though she still looked about twelve, in his opinion. She wore a battered pair of purple chucks and a long-sleeved thermal shirt. Winter was making its way into Stewart’s Point early that year. “Can I at least get a better whiff?”

“How can you even smell it with that stink around?” Kate wrinkled her nose, though her eyes were sharp on the body.

“Finely tuned olfactory senses.” He gave up the coffee as a temporary loss and stepped carefully over the body. Dr. Morse, who served as coroner for this county and all of its neighbors, always yelled at him if he touched the body before she arrived. Given that Bobbi lived over three hours away, it was more than a little frustrating. “Check it out.”

“Check what o—what the hell?” Kate gawked. The deceased, a man in his forties or fifties dressed in khakis and a checked shirt, with the beginnings of a pot-belly, had been discovered on Joe Keckridge’s front porch. Given that Joe (who’d probably been sneaking out to go poaching, Clint thought) didn’t recognize him and that he was cold as a stone, the hunter had seen fit to contact the sheriff’s department right away to tell Clint that something was wrong. A dead body wasn’t actually terribly uncommon around Stewart’s Point, since there were quite a few hunters and accidents and old age happened, but this body had definitely merited a police investigation.

Three gashes spread from Mr. John Doe’s right hip to just under his armpit, tearing open the flesh beneath so that Clint could see the gore. Blood pooled under the body definitely confirmed those suspicions that this had not been a natural death.

“Yeah,” was all Clint said.

Kate immediately crouched down to get a better angle, not at all grossed out by the viscera on display. “Those look like claw marks,” she said, frowning. “Too big to be a wolf and we don’t get many bear attacks.”

“And there’s no other mauling,” Clint pointed out. “I figure a bear kills you, he’s gonna want to gnaw on you a bit.”

Kate rolled her eyes at him. “Are you going to make stupid comments on purpose until I give you some of my coffee?”

“All signs point to yes.”

“You can have a sip. That’s it.”

Clint took three greedy gulps when Kate held the travel mug out. She called him an unflattering word in the Navajo language, but at least the hit of warmth and caffeine had been enough to wake him up a little so he could focus on the John Doe. “Thanks, kid.”

“Jerk. Any signs of ID?”

Clint pointed to the obvious bulge of a wallet in the man’s jeans pocket. “Oh, for the love of—” Kate sighed and, snapping on a latex glove, fished for the wallet.

“Bobbi’s gonna give you the look,” Clint said.

“She’s your ex, not mine.” Successful, Kate held up the wallet. “Oops, look what we totally found right beside the body in plain sight and not anywhere near his pocket.”

“You’re all right, kid.” Clint took the wallet when she held it out and frowned. Credit cards, a movie theater loyalty card, health insurance cards that would do him absolutely no good in the afterlife. The license, though, that was from New York; the man was a resident of Midtown. “Huh. Tourist?”

“Mr. Declan Miller,” Kate said.

“Oh, I always thought that was pronounced ‘dee-clan.’”

“How you ever got to be sheriff is Stewart Point’s greatest mystery, which tragically will never be solved. Because you’re the sheriff.”

“Quit being mean to me or I won’t buy you a replacement coffee on the way back to the station.” Clint pulled out his phone and opened the app that he’d forced onto the budget the year before. Convincing the county court that they needed updated technology and a living, breathing deputy in the same year hadn’t been easy; other cuts had had to be made, which was why the coffee machine at the office was constantly busted and why Clint lived in a glorified trailer behind the station rather than the apartment he’d kept up for a few years.

It was worth it, to have Kate around, not that he was ever going to admit that to her.

“I already talked to Joe, but if you want to take another pass at him, be my guest,” Clint said as he waited for the app to pull up any information on the unfortunate Declan Miller. “He’s pretty sober, so chances are he won’t hit on you too badly.”

“Pass,” Kate said. She drank the last of the coffee and set the mug down, out of the way. “I’ll do a perimeter check instead.”

“Watch out for bears.”

“I told you, it wasn’t a bear.”

“No,” Clint agreed, once his deputy had stepped off of the porch and into the pre-dawn gloom, flashlight in hand as she began to search for any hint of what might have happened to the victim on the porch. “It wasn’t a bear.”

* * *

By the time Bobbi Morse arrived and carted the body away, looking perturbed at such a gory, violent death, Clint had had time to drag out the station’s ancient point and shoot and take a few crime scene photos. Kate had found signs of a scuffle at the edge of the woods, and a blood trail leading toward the cabin, and there weren’t any footprints leading away other than the ones they suspected belonged to Miller. While Bobbi secured the body, Clint and Kate collected samples that would probably take months to get back from the state lab. It was a couple of hours before they were able to leave the cold and head back into town and the station. Kate offered to write up the paperwork if Clint did the daytime patrols, which he gratefully accepted.

A couple hours later, Clint stopped at the Java House and bought a couple of coffees, chatting with the baristas as he did. News of a dead tourist had already spread, thanks to Joe’s big mouth, so he gave them the official line that he couldn’t share anything about an ongoing investigation (which made one of them laugh at him) and took the coffees back to his office.

“Bobbi’s already sent over his effects,” Kate said when he strolled into the office with the coffees in a tray and half a danish sticking out of his mouth.

“Already?” Clint swallowed the danish. “She’s not doing the autopsy in Williamstown?”

“She made Dr. Reeds open his office so she can do the autopsy there.”

“Huh.” Reeds was going to pitch a fit over that, Clint thought, which would eventually be his problem. He’d handle it the way he did every other time: by ignoring Reeds completely. “Well, that’s good. Anybody call in with any tips?”

“Nope.” Kate popped the ‘p’ in the word. “I waited until you got here to go through the effects.”

“This is why you’re my favorite deputy.”

“And if you had any other deputy but me?”

“Still you.” They headed back to the interrogation room, which doubled as pretty much anything they needed it to be, including a drunk tank, evidence lock-up, and where Clint stored some of his extra archery gear. Kate had already spread the plastic bags of Declan Miller’s things on the table. She went through his wallet in greater detail as Clint laid out the clothing, which was already stiff with the dried blood. “Huh,” he said.

“What?”

“Look at this.” He pulled an old silver chain, thin and delicate, from the bag. A battered medallion no bigger than a nickel hung on the end. “Weird accessory for a guy whose dress code seemed to be set to boring.”

“Wait, why does Mr. Manhattan have a talisman?” Kate took the medallion from him.

“A talisman?”

“Yeah, you know, ward off evil spirits. If you believe in that kind of crap, which I don’t. But some people do.”

“I don’t know,” said a voice at the door, and both police officers swiveled in surprise. Clint’s first thought was to wonder exactly how the woman had approached so silently, given that she was wearing stiletto boots and those things were not quiet. His second thought was wondering if his jaw was on the floor because wow.

He’d never seen the redhead in the doorway before. That wasn’t so surprising—Stewart’s Point was small, but it was also near the Interstate and people passed through pretty regularly—but it was kind of a damn shame that she’d waited this long to walk into his life. She was, in a word, stunning, somehow compact and yet lithe at the same time. Her hair seemed like a red riot, all curls and loose down to the shoulders of the very professional-looking suit she wore.

“I mean,” she continued as both Clint and Kate gawked at her, “if enough people believe in something, maybe they have a point.”

Clint stepped between the table full of evidence and the door. “Can I help you, miss?” he asked.

She regarded him with a gaze that wasn’t quite piercing, but neither was it demure. “Sheriff Barton?”

“That’d be me. I’m afraid you’re not allowed to be back here—”

“Special Agent Romanoff,” the redhead said. She stuck out a hand, and Clint shook it, feeling a little star-struck. He hoped it didn’t show on his face. She pulled out a wallet and showed him her ID card and badge. “I’m with the FBI.”

“Oh.” Well, that certainly changed things. “Nice to meet you. I’m Barton—though you can call me Clint—and that’s my deputy, Kate Bishop. What brings the FBI around these parts? We’re not usually one for attracting the feds.”

“I’d wager you don’t usually have dead bodies with strange gashes in them show up, either.”

Clint exchanged a look with Kate, who shrugged in a She got you there, boss way. “Maybe not. I haven’t had time to run a search for similar crimes beyond logging it in. You taking over the case?”

“I’m here to assist.” Special Agent Romanoff’s close-mouthed smile didn’t ease his doubts. “My division has seen this kind of thing before.”

“What, bears?” Kate asked, looking pointedly at Clint.

“It wasn’t bears,” Natasha said.

“Oh, I know that. But this goofus suggested bears.”

Clint glared at his deputy. “You’re the worst. Log that in, will you, while I have a chat with the nice professional FBI agent?”

“Aye-aye, boss.”

“We can talk in the front room,” Clint told Natasha, “since our conference room is kind of occupied at the moment. After you.” He gestured that he would follow, and the minute Natasha was out of sight, he turned and stuck his tongue out at Kate, who only snickered.

“She seems fun,” Natasha said as Clint hastily cleaned some of his arrowheads off of his desk. She played with some sort of silver chain on her wrist, one that seemed delicate and ethereal and not really something an FBI agent would wear. “You don’t meet many deputies with purple hair like that.”

“City council hates it,” Clint agreed. There had been several pointed emails from Councilman Jamm about the purple streak forelock. “Which is half the reason I let her keep it. Is our dead body connected to another killing? Nothing came up on the search, but then, I haven’t had time to run any extensive ones, like I said.”

“I’m unsure. My division is in charge of investigating any strange deaths and this one...”

“Is definitely strange,” Clint said, nodding. He logged into his computer, hoping that Kate had had time to log everything from the scene into their system. She had, and had even put a shortcut to the file on his desk, insulting his ability to use his computer. With a glower toward the evidence locker, he renamed the file. “You seem confident it wasn’t bears, which tells me that even if you’re unsure it’s connected to other crimes, you’ve seen something similar.”

The politely amused look on Agent Romanoff’s face faltered for the tiniest of instants. “You’re sharp,” she said. “I expected a portly guy with a beer gut for a sheriff.”

“That was the last guy. I hunt too much to get a proper beer gut. Not for lack of trying, though.”

Romanoff’s left eyebrow went up. “Pity. I do enjoy a good beer gut. Perhaps you could walk me through the crime scene and I can tell you if I’ve ever come across anything like that before.”

“Deal.” He tilted the monitor so that she could get a look, unsurprised when she pulled out a small, flashy little phone that could probably do ten million things at once. She nodded occasionally, asking questions about the placement of the body, the location of the blood trail, as he walked her through it. “I stopped by the local inns and B&Bs on my patrol today,” he said, finishing up. “Declan Miller wasn’t registered at any of the usual haunts, so either he was staying with somebody or he drove in from somewhere else. We haven’t gotten any reports of abandoned rental cars and Kate’s working on digging up next of kin and his records.”

“The FBI can handle that, if you prefer. We can expedite the process.”

“He died on my turf. I’ll contact next of kin myself,” Clint said, though he would have happily passed that chore on. “But getting his records would be a big help.”

“Done.” Agent Romanoff smiled and it was a bit like getting struck in the face by a sledge hammer. The FBI really, really did not make them the way they used to, Clint decided. “Have you interviewed anybody else?”

“Just Joe, and I spoke with some of the shop owners on Main Street, to see if he’s been poking around or doing any sightseeing. Not that there’s much to do in the Point. No dice.” Clint clicked ‛export’ on the program. “Want a copy?”

“Most locals aren’t inclined to share like that.”

“If using the FBI keeps my town safer, I don’t see the problem with it. What’s your email?”

She listed off an address and watched him hunt and peck at the keyboard to type it in. Once he’d sent it off, her phone chirped. He folded his hands together on the desk. “All right. I showed you mine. Show me yours?”

“May I?” she gestured at the computer.

“What? Oh, sure.” He pushed the keyboard and mouse across the desk, wincing at the state of both of them. Kate had always yelled at him for eating by his workstation, and now every crumb stuck between the keys seemed to stand out like a neon sign. “What are you going to—wow, okay.”

In the space it usually took him to find the Internet Explorer icon, she’d managed to log into the FBI mainframe. “This was nine months ago, outside of Sioux Falls,” she said, clicking the mouse so that four or five images—rather grisly ones—filled his screen. “A couple of hikers went missing and turned up three days later, mauled.”

“Ouch,” Clint said.

“The locals originally thought it was wolves, though attacks like that aren’t common in the area. And later, when we connected it to some kayakers in Sun Valley with similar tissue damage, our technicians said that the claw marks didn’t match any animal known to the northern hemisphere.”

“What do they match?”

“We’re still working to answer that question, Sheriff. There have been nine incidents that my office believes it can connect, eight of them resulting in deaths, in the last nine months.”

“And the ninth?”

“A lone hiker was mauled. He wasn’t able to describe too much about whatever attacked him, except that it stood on two legs and had claws like a bear’s or a wolverine’s, he said. But he said it was definitely humanoid.”

“So, some psycho made himself a pair of claws and is attacking tourists to get his jollies?”

“The victim was severely dehydrated and incoherent when we got a chance to talk to him, so I don’t know how much of his story is credible.” Agent Romanoff shrugged. “But so far, the MO has been similar. Sparsely populated areas, hikers or kayakers in ones or twos, animal-style maulings. There haven’t been too many attacks in the same state, so we believe it’s somebody mobile, nobody local.”

“Declan Miller didn’t look too much like a hiker,” Clint said, frowning. “And apart from the gashes, there wasn’t much mauling.”

“Did he have any defensive wounds?”

“A cut on his wrist,” Clint said. He took the keyboard back to root through his original file until he found the image Bobbi had sent over, which he hadn’t had time to sort yet. The FBI certainly had arrived quickly. “Underside of the wrist, looks like he could have been holding his wrist up to block a downward strike.”

“Hm, I’d say that’s likely. Did you have your coroner check his hands for gunpowder residue?”

“We didn’t find any trace of a gun at the crime scene.” Clint frowned.

“Something had to scare off your attacker,” Romanoff said, gesturing with her phone stylus at the screen. “It could be that he or she absconded with the gun.”

“That’s all we need, a crazed wolverine-man with a gun.” Clint held up a finger while he dialed Bobbi’s number into the station phone. She kept the conversation brief, like she always did. They’d ended things more or less amicably, but that didn’t mean she wanted to spend much time in his company. “She’s checking on your theory,” he said when he hung up. “So what else do you have on this man?”

“Frankly, Sheriff Barton, we’re not even sure it’s a man. Or a woman.”

Something in her expression had him squinting at her. “Wait, you think this is something occult? Just because Declan Miller had the talisman or whatever it was on his wrist?”

“I notice you yourself wear one,” Agent Romanoff said, nodding at his chest.

Clint looked down at the stamped Cooper’s Hawk on his old medallion. Wearing it was just a habit at this point. “This is just something an old man left for me when I was a kid. It’s a circus trinket.”

“Circus? Really?”

“Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.” His buddies at the police academy had given him guff for the fact that he’d grown up working for Carson’s Circus, but as he grew older, Clint found he minded less and less. It had given him a different approach to studying things in life than most people, and that made him a good police officer. “There’s quite a native population in this area that puts stock in that sort of the thing, but I’m an equal opportunity atheist and non-believer in all things.”

“You’d be surprised by what’s out there. Always best to keep an open mind.”

“I guess. Hey, do you think—”

Kate stuck her head into the main room. “Hey, boss, I just got in—oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt your little tête-à-tête, but since I have, just wanted to let you know that I finally tracked down Declan Miller. He goes by Monroe Miller, apparently, which isn’t much better, and he’s a Professor of the Occult at NYU.”

“He’s a what?” Clint asked, blinking.

Natasha raised a See? eyebrow at him.

“Yeah, he left his rental car at his hotel over in Sawyer, too. Must’ve hiked all the way to Joe’s.”

“Long way to hike,” Clint said as Kate disappeared into the back room once more.

“Or to be hunted,” Romanoff said. “You mind if I poke around the town some this afternoon?”

“Have at it. If you need a sidekick, I’ve got a very annoying deputy to get rid of.”

“I heard that,” Kate called. “You love me and you know it.”

Clint sighed. “Trouble is, she’s right. Where are you staying?”

“Ah, um, Palmer’s?”

“Patty’s?” Clint guessed.

“Yes, that. Why?”

“Just curious. You staying in town for a couple of days, I’m guessing? If you want to grab some dinner, I can swing by and pick you up. We can compare case notes.”

Agent Romanoff rocked back in her seat a little, tilting her chin up as she regarded him. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Yes, I think I’d like that.”

“May not be back in time,” Clint said. “But if I am, six?”

“Sounds good. I’ll call you if I find anything.”

“Same.”

Before Romanoff got to the door, though, she stopped and turned to look back at him. She seemed to debate with herself before she said, “Hey, you should, um, you should put some salt across your threshold. And at home, too.”

“Salt,” Clint said, blinking.

“Yeah. In case it is something occult. Can’t hurt, right?”

“I guess not.” Though Clint didn’t much see a condiment outside was going to ward off the thing that had gashed the lifeblood out of Monroe Miller. Still, he managed a smile. “See you later.”

The minute the door closed behind the FBI agent, Kate strolled back into the room with a couple of files in hand. “You have a really stupid smile on your face right now.”

“That is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“I’d normally tease you for thinking with your dick, but in this case, I’d have to agree, and I don’t even go for other women much. Want me to do the notification?”

“No, I’ll handle that. You stay in the station and hold down the fort. Oh, huh, she left the files open on here,” Clint said, blinking at his monitor.

Kate elbowed him out of the way. “A chance to play around in the FBI database? Gimme.”

“Fine, fine.” He moved to the other desk as he dialed the number she’d handed him for Mr. Declan Miller’s next of kin. In this case, it was a sister that the man hadn’t apparently been too close to, but every time hit like a shockwave. Ten minutes later, he hung up with his stomach in knots that had nothing to do with Agent Romanoff’s captivating beauty. “I hate doing that.”

Kate made a sympathetic moue as he shrugged out of his khaki shirt and pulled his quiver out of the locker. His service piece stayed strapped to his waist, but he hunted better with his archery gear. “Where are you going?”

“To get a better look at the crime scene. If the drop dead gorgeous FBI lady’s right and our dead fellow was being hunted, there might be more evidence in the woods.”

And he was determined to find it.

* * *

Two hours later, he frowned at the ground two miles from Joe Keckridge’s house. Two sets of tracks had briefly crossed out of the pine needle floor covering and through a patch of mud, painting him a clear picture of some kind of chase. The first set belonged to size twelve loafers, which Clint expected. It was the second set that he found disturbing. It looked like some kind of wolf or bear print, but it wasn’t the right size for either. And bears didn’t have five claws on their footpads. They had four. Even more disturbingly, there had been only two distinct paw prints. A bear or a wolf would have left four.

A shiver ran from his hairline to the base of his spine. Maybe, a tiny voice that he would have preferred to ignore whispered, there had been something occult in these woods, tracking and eventually killing Monroe Miller. But that didn’t tell Clint why this—creature didn’t feel right, not when there was solid evidence it could be a person, but he couldn’t really see any way to get around it—creature had been hunting Miller or why Miller had been out here in the first place.

But standing around wondering wasn’t going to lead him to Miller’s killer any faster, so Clint took a few pictures and moved on, searching for any more evidence.

When he got back to the station house, he made sure Kate was busy filing reports before he carefully laid a line of salt across the threshold of the police station. If anybody asked him about it, well, the station suddenly had an imaginary slug problem.

* * *

He was ten minutes later than he’d said he would be, but given that he’d also said he might not come over at all, he didn’t figure Special Agent Romanoff would mind too much. Or so he thought until she didn’t answer her motel room door.

“You poking at the pretty new guest, Clinton?” Patty—of Patty’s Hotel—asked as he stood on the sidewalk on the second floor, outside Natasha’s hotel room. It seemed she never realized he’d grown out of the rebellious foster kid teenager phase, for she always squinted at him menacingly. “Am I gonna need to chase you off with my shotgun if you get too frisky?”

“Don’t worry, Miz Patty,” Clint said. “If this one doesn’t like me, she’s got her own gun to chase me off. Though I don’t think she’s here right—oh, spoke too soon.”

The door to the hotel room behind him swung open, so he waved at Patty without missing a beat and spun on his heel. “Evening, Agent Romanoff,” he said.

“Evening, Sheriff Barton.” Clad in jeans and a form-hugging tank-top, Natasha idly toweled at the ends of her damp hair. Clint tried not to gawk, but there was a drop of shower water sliding from behind her ear down toward her collarbone, and the tank-top didn’t leave much to the imagination, so he wasn’t entirely sure how successful he was. Natasha just smiled. “I’m afraid I’m not exactly ready yet. Give me a minute?”

“Sure. I’ll hang out here with Patty.”

Once the door had closed, Clint leaned against the railing, puzzling it over in his head. The off-duty Natasha didn’t look anything like an FBI agent, not with those jeans and definitely not with the tattoo he’d noticed on her arm. It had been some Cyrillic design, starting two inches above her left elbow and rising all the way across her upper arm like some Russian phoenix that disappeared under the strap of her tank top—and maybe even went farther than that to places his brain quite happily wandered while the rest of him told him to quit it. It seemed almost fanciful in origin, which was not personally something he would have imagined on her, but then, he definitely wouldn’t have imagined her in the first place.

His imagination simply wasn’t that good.

It only took her a couple of minutes to emerge, shrugging into a leather jacket. “Thanks for waiting. I know it’s a pain.”

“My fault. I was late, anyway, so we’re even.” By mutual and silent agreement, they headed for the steps down to the parking lot. “Where do you want to get dinner? Not too many options in the Point, though, I gotta warn you.”

“Any place to get a steak?”

“Don’t want salad or some rabbit food?”

“Don’t be sexist. I thought you flyover states were known for quality beef.”

“We do all right.” Clint unlocked his jeep, which he’d parked next to an SUV that was obviously a rental. “I know a place to get a great steak. Did any more come through from your office about Monroe Miller?”

“I sent it to your deputy.” Natasha climbed into the passenger seat and fiddled with that silver chain on her wrist once more. Amusement had the corners of her mouth curving up. “She says to tell you that she’s staying late to log it in and that you owe her one for letting you make time with the drop dead gorgeous FBI lady.”

“She said that? She’s obnoxious because she’s twenty-two,” Clint said. “We think she’ll grow out of it. Maybe. We hope.”

“Really?” Natasha’s smile only broadened. “Because she said those were your words, not hers.”

Clint fought back two strong urges, one to run his hand over his face and the other to assign Deputy Kate Bishop speeding duty for life. “Did I ever tell you about what a crying shame it is to have a deputy who’s a compulsive liar?” he asked, mildly. “It’s such a tragic tale.”

“I’m sure you get by.” Natasha patted his arm. “Now how about this steak?”

He took her to Bixby’s Steakhouse, which was Clint’s favorite because they used a much better rub than the place most locals preferred (Kate had told him multiple times how wrong he was). Natasha declined the house wine, choosing seltzer water instead, so he skipped his usual beer for a glass of Coke that would have made Kate side-eye him.

“So how’d you become sheriff?” Natasha asked after they’d both placed their orders.

Clint moved a shoulder. “I did my training down in Missoula,” he said. “Served on that force for a couple of years, but I wasn’t much fond of the area, so I packed up and my feet led me here, I’d say about ten years ago. I met Kate about two years in.”

“Kate’s been your deputy that long?” Natasha raised an eyebrow as she bit into the salad. “I thought you said she was twenty-two.”

“Not my deputy exactly, but...” Clint fiddled with the Coke glass, balancing it on the very edge with only one finger. The story of Kate Bishop’s delinquency wasn’t one he shared much, even though most of Stewart’s Point was used to seeing the dark-haired young woman at the sheriff’s office. But for outsiders, it was a different story. And if Natasha ran a background check, she’d see most of it anyway, so he shrugged off his uneasy feelings. “I busted her when she was fifteen, trying to break into the general store. She’s one of the Beaumonts.”

“I’m sorry, the whats?”

“The Beaumont Hills subdivision, just north of town. Where all of the rich folks live.” Clint moved a shoulder. “They’ve got their own fancy security force, and that’s where the municipalities get a lot of the money. Kate’s father’s a lawyer, her mother’s native. Either way, neither paid much attention to her, as far as I can tell, so she reacted by acting out.”

“As you do. I’m guessing she took a shining to you and spent all of her time around the station?”

“Oh, hell no. We fought like cats and dogs all the way to her hearing. Judge Maximoff’s not my biggest fan, so when Wanda saw Kate and me mouthing off to each other, well. Let’s say Kate got a different type of probation and I got myself a working intern.”

“Wanda Maximoff is another ex-girlfriend, isn’t she?” Natasha looked amused.

Clint shifted in his seat. “We may have had a thing, once upon a time. She might also be a robot. Whatever. Anyway, Kate started hanging out around the station and after a while, it wasn’t so bad. Kind of like having a very bratty kid sister with a vocabulary five times as big as mine.”

“And now she’s your deputy.” Natasha nodded to herself.

“Wait, what did you mean when you said another ex-girl—aw, man, you talked to Bobbi, too?”

“Dr. Morse had a lot to say about Stewart’s Point.” Natasha’s smile beamed out. Her teeth had a strange glint to them, but Clint couldn’t figure out why. “Especially about its sheriff.”

“In my defense, I am an idiot with women. And I haven’t dated every woman in the county, before you go off thinking that.” Clint glowered a little as their steaks were brought to the table. He’d ordered his well-done to the point of burnt, the way he liked it, but Natasha’s practically oozed blood, it was so rare. “So, I seem to be airing all of my dirty laundry. You should tell me about you, Agent Romanoff.”

“Natasha,” she said. “Agent Romanoff’s for on duty hours.”

“Natasha, then.”

Natasha cut into her steak and then eyed him from beneath her lashes. “I’m afraid I don’t have any kid sister deputies or anything interesting like that.”

“Aw, too bad. Where are you from, originally?”

“Moscow.”

Clint blinked. “Russia?”

“You know of another Moscow?”

“There’s one in Nebraska, I think. You don’t sound Russian.”

“I moved away a few years ago.” Natasha’s smile this time didn’t show any teeth. “I joined the Bureau when I was twenty-four.”

“So last year?” Clint asked, giving her a pointed look.

“Nearly ten years ago, actually.”

“Get out. You are not older than twenty-six.”

“I have one of those faces.” Natasha grinned while he shook his head. “They had me on a task force based out of Chicago for some time, but my talents were deemed more appropriate for my current office, so I transferred in and now I keep my ear out for suspicious deaths.”

“Well, as much as I regret the circumstances of how you came to be here, may I say that I’m glad you found your way to Stewart’s Point?” Clint raised his glass for a toast.

She blinked a couple of times, but with a tiny bounce of her shoulders, clinked her water glass against his cup. The smile she gave him felt like one of the most real looks he’d seen on her face all day. “Me too,” she said.

* * *

By the time Clint drove her back to her hotel, the sun had fully set, blanketing the area with inky darkness. “You forget how dark it can get out here, when you live in the city,” Natasha said as they drove along the main stretch to Patty’s Hotel. “Lots of hunters out there?”

“Maybe not, if word of the dead body got spread around to the other counties.” One of the local news stations had shown up to cover the death, which the media was calling an animal mauling, so Clint supposed most everybody in the area knew about the dead tourist by now. “Or maybe more. Weather’s not too cold right now. Look, if the person that killed Miller is your hiker-mauler, shouldn’t he or she be moving on to a new area?”

“Not necessarily,” Natasha said.

“What do you mean?”

“Could be the killer didn’t get what he or she needed from Miller.”

Clint pushed that around in his mind some. “I have no idea what sort of thing our killer would want from a guy that wears Dockers to go hiking in the woods.”

“He was a professor of the occult, and this killing spree is pretty damned spooky.” Natasha frowned as her fancy phone beeped. “Oh, huh. HQ just sent over some files. Does Patty’s have a business center?”

“Patty’s barely has a printer for the front office. I’ll take you to the station.”

“Actually, could you drop me off? I could follow you in. I’d be more comfortable with my own car and that way you don’t have to drive me back.”

“You sure? It’s not a problem.”

“I’m sure.”

He was surprised to find the office empty, given that Kate liked working later in the evening (he did, too, but he figured a respectable sheriff should probably put in regular hours). There was a note on his desk about the processed evidence and a command not to touch her pastrami sandwich. He crumpled it up as he logged into the computer for Natasha.

“Any new leads?” he asked once she’d accessed the server and had downloaded the files.

“Hm, not sure yet. I’ll let you know in a second.” Natasha kept typing away without having to look at her fingers or hunt for the keys, and Clint had to admit that he was a little jealous of people with that ability. She nodded at the bow he’d rested beside his desk from his earlier hiking expedition. “You any good with that thing?”

“So-so.” He was tempted to pick it up and show off, but Kate yelled at him when random arrows showed up in things in the office. So instead he wandered to the front door to peer outside, feeling a little restless thanks to the Coke he’d had at dinner.

“I notice you took my advice on the salt,” Natasha said after a moment.

“Was I not supposed to?”

“What? Oh. You were.” Natasha bit off the sentence, as though there had been more she had intended to say. Clint eyed her for a moment, wondering why she suddenly seemed a little more tense than before. “I thought you were a non-believer.”

“Slugs,” Clint said, giving her a winning smile.

“Uh-huh.” Though she shook her head, he couldn’t help but do a fist-pump inside that he’d made her smile like that.

At least, until he heard something.

His hearing had never been perfect—as a boy, he’d been temporarily deafened by the human cannonball’s cannon, but he’d recovered enough of his hearing to apply for the Academy—but it was still good enough that he swiveled toward the door at the sound of the scratching noise outside. Or it sounded like scratching; he couldn’t tell.

Natasha rose to her feet immediately. Since she wasn’t bothering to confirm that he’d heard the noise as well, Clint grabbed one of the rifles from the rack and headed for the door. Natasha’s own Glock handgun had appeared in her hand, almost like magic, though Clint figured she’d probably worn the leather jacket specifically to hide it.

“You expecting company?” he asked.

“Would you be mad if I said yes?” Natasha said, but her voice was grim.

“Could be a dog,” Clint felt the need to point out when she thumbed her safety off.

“Don’t worry, Sheriff, I won’t shoot any innocent dogs on your homestead.”

“Good enough for me,” Clint said, and pushed open the door. He took point since it was his office, looking out into the darkness of the cracked parking lot beyond. The light at the far corner was out again, but he didn’t think the noise was coming from that far away. “Hello? Anybody out here?”

No answer, but there wasn’t any more scratching, either.

“Huh,” Clint said. Natasha touched his elbow and jerked her head to the right. The office was on the edge of town—not there was really much town to begin with—and that path led back to the sagging trailer that Clint called home for now. Between the trailer and the station were about fifty feet of scrubby grass and some bushes. The treeline sat beyond the trail. Apart from a few coyotes, a couple of owls, and one very annoying falcon, though, he’d never encountered trouble from that direction. “If you’re out there, speak up,” he said, approaching the corner. “This is the sheriff—”

A hiss, like a wild animal in the darkness, was the only hint he had. Clint had been approaching the side of the building, but something streaked around the corner and barreled into him, so fast that he didn’t even get a shot off. Five bright points of pain exploded over his right shoulder, like somebody had dug five individual knives into his flesh. He cried out, lashing out with the rifle like it was a baseball bat instead of a deadly weapon. The thud of it hitting skin and muscle was unmistakable.

He stumbled back to fire and froze instead. It was just damned impossible. He’d been attacked by something. It was taller than him by a few inches, but it was covered in thick fur like a wolf’s. Vivid green eyes had widened in shock and rage from beyond a snarling, bear-like snout. Clint counted nasty, yellow teeth. A lot of them. A lot of them snapping right for his neck.

Something grabbed his jacket and yanked, and he flew back, landing solidly on his rump. He dropped his gun, his shoulder on fire. In a blur, Natasha was between him and the creature. She stood with her feet spread, squared off against the beast.

What was she doing? Clint scrambled for his gun. “Natasha—look out—”

He wasn’t fast enough: the beast-man lunged for Natasha. It swept one of those giant claws toward her, but Natasha dodged nimbly. She also seemed impossibly fast, but maybe it was the pain altering his viewpoint. Natasha jumped out of the way and fired twice, putting two slugs directly into the beast-man’s chest.

It did nothing but piss the beast-man off.

“Oh, shit,” Clint said and finally scooped up the rifle. He jumped to his feet, teeth clenched as agony sang from his shoulder to his tail-bone. “Stand back so I can get a shot.”

“Not gonna do a damned bit of good, Barton!”

The beast-man swung again and again, letting out a roar of fury that made Clint’s bones want to turn to water. Somehow, Natasha was faster, darting in for an uppercut.

“What the hell is it!”

“Dangerous!” She shouted in pain as the beast-man’s claws raked against her midsection with a sickening ripping noise. She collapsed to the ground in a heap.

“Natasha!” Clint shot the beast-man right where its heart should be if it had one of those. The beast-man just turned to Clint with a snarl and advanced on him. Clint fired again.

Nothing.

“Well, crap,” Clint said, and used the rifle like a baseball again to bludgeon the creature in the ribs. It earned him a backhand that felt like being hit by a pickup truck. He flew a good six feet, landing in a cloud of dust and dirt and coughing.

The beast-man let out another roar and stalked toward him. Clint didn’t bother to let the misery that was his childhood flash before his eyes; he rolled out of the dust and bounced off of the building, dodging out of the way as best he could. His shoulder felt like somebody had soaked it in kerosene and tossed a match.

He was probably about to die. Natasha was probably already dead.

What the hell was this thing, even?

Green light exploded at the edges of his vision, making the beast-man draw back. The scream that filled the air was unearthly, eerie, and chilling to the bone. Clint immediately swiveled and got his second shock of the night: Natasha wasn’t dead. Natasha was standing, Natasha looked pissed, and even stranger than that, Natasha was wreathed in green light, her red hair like a beacon in the night.

She didn’t look quite human. The lines on her face were carved too sharply, and her eyes, they glowed a bright, furious yellow. Darker green light seemed to shine on her skin like demented, magical veins.

Without missing a beat, she leapt forward onto the beast-man. If Clint had thought she’d been fast before, though, it had nothing on her now. She moved so fast that she became a streak of pale light, a streak that was still graceful and lethal like a ballerina trained to kill. She pummeled the beast-man with her fists, occasionally grunting or gasping if a hit landed. A silver knife large enough to be a small sword appeared in her right fist, and it glinted as Natasha tried to bury it in the beast-man.

Neither Natasha nor Clint saw it coming: the beast-man feinted, the unearthly Natasha didn’t call his bluff, and said beast-man finally broke through, delivering a haymaker that sent Natasha into the wall.

“No!” Clint shouted, scrambling to his feet.

She landed with a grunt and fell into a pile on the ground again.

“You son of a bitch!” Clint raised the rifle and fired again. The bullet caught the beast-man in the side of the ribcage. It didn’t even seem to acknowledge the shot as it raced for the front door of the office. Clint scrambled to give chase, but when it reached the door, something even weirder than the light around Natasha happened: it couldn’t touch the door. It was as though some sort of invisible barrier had arisen, preventing the beast-man from touching the building. It swiped its claws and roared in frustration and Clint outright gaped.

Then it looked down at the smudged line of salt across the doorway and roared again. It rounded on Clint. Its previous anger had nothing on the sheer outrage and fury on its beastly face. Once again, Clint realized that he was about to die. He swung, trying to hit the beast-man first, but it struck out, even faster. The center of his chest seemed to ignite all over again with pain—

But it was the beast-man that let out the truly anguished cry of pain. Before Clint understood what had happened, it backed away, cowering from him as though he’d taken a chainsaw to it or something. An arrow with lavender fletching sprouted out of its shoulder.

It roared again and to Clint’s shock, turned tail and fled, racing away into the night with inhuman speed. He heard a curse and saw Kate flinging herself out of the creature’s way, but the beast didn’t even seem to notice. It ran right by and disappeared into the tree line.

Clint didn’t bother to see if his deputy was okay or to chase after the creature. He raced for Natasha, praying. She was moving, sluggishly, but the attacks looked grim: shreds of skin were hanging off of her stomach where the creature had ripped at her. And of course there was that glowing thing, too.

She looked up at him with eyes that were bright yellow and it took everything he had in him not to back away in terror. “I’ve got you,” he said instead, though his own chest was burning and he probably didn’t look much better. “It’s gone. I’ve got you.”

He heard footsteps approaching, but it was only Kate, her quiver and bow strapped across her back. She looked wary, and he realized that she must have been in his trailer, watching TV or just taking a break. “What are you?” Kate asked, kneeling next to the FBI agent.

Beads of sweat dripped down Natasha’s forehead as she struggled to sit up. The light seemed to be pulsing now, and the Cyrillic tattoo Clint had noticed earlier had apparently expanded, as he could see it covering the back of her hand. “Long story. I need water.”

“You need an ambulance, is what you need,” Clint said. How she could possibly be conscious after that swipe she’d taken from the beast-man, Clint didn’t know. But she was pushing herself up slowly, jaw clenched and her breath coming quickly. “No, stay put—”

“No hospitals,” Natasha said. He flinched when she grabbed his arm, but her skin didn’t feel strange or supernatural. “I’ll be fine. I just need water.”

“And a blood transfusion and to avoid any nuclear power plants, too,” Kate said, but Clint saw his deputy take a deep breath and lever her shoulder under Natasha’s arm, supporting the redhead as she stood. “Though you’re not the only one that needs an ambulance. Stay put, Barton.”

“I’m fine,” Clint said, though he could feel blood dripping from the wounds on his upper chest. “It’s a scratch.”

“‘A scratch,’ he says,” Kate said to Natasha, as though Clint weren’t even there. He rolled his eyes and decided to ignore her, choosing instead to raise his rifle and cover their retreat into the station. His head was still spinning and if it weren’t for the very real pain across his front, he’d have a hard time believing that he hadn’t just ended up in some dream. “I bet you thought Marie Antoinette was just getting a little off the top.”

Natasha let out a pained breath. “I like you,” she told the deputy.

“That’s good. I’m incredibly likeable.”

They stumbled into the station, stepping carefully over the line of salt. “Sit,” Kate told Clint as she dragged Natasha back to the holding cell, where they kept a cot. “Stay.”

Since he wasn’t actually a dog, he ignored her and followed them back. Natasha seemed to be dimming...going out like a fading light bulb. Her eyes still had a yellow glint to them, but she no longer seemed larger than life. Given that she was panting and gasping, her throat working convulsively, that made sense.

“Water,” she said. “Need water.”

“Deep breaths, as deep as you can get them,” Kate said.

Natasha grabbed her arm. “Water,” she said in a guttural voice, and the light in her eyes changed from yellow to red.

Kate stumbled back; Clint didn’t blame her, as he’d reared back in surprise himself. “What the hell!” Kate said.

“I’d get her some water, if I were you,” Clint said. Because dizziness set in, he ignored the fact that the woman was glowing like a radioactive popsicle and dropped to the ground, putting his head down.

“Clint!” Kate reached for him.

“Get her the water first. I’m fine.”

“You are leaking out of several holes, you are not fine,” Kate said, but he heard her boots stomping away and then back. She dropped the entire thing of twenty bottles of water he’d picked up on a run to Sam’s Club on the floor, but at least she didn’t grumble when she uncapped a bottle.

Though it was hard to concentrate, he saw Natasha all but pounce on the bottle, sucking the water down in less than three seconds. He and Kate gaped. Natasha, on the other hand, gestured for another bottle and downed that one greedily, too.

The glow dimmed with each bottle drunk until it was just FBI Agent Natasha Romanoff sitting on the cot with hair that was damp from sweat. She gritted her teeth, reached down, and put a hand over her midsection. The ripped skin on her abdomen seemed to glow for a moment longer before—and Clint wasn’t sure if blood loss was making him hallucinate now—it knitted itself back together, forming smooth, unbroken skin once more.

“Holy shit,” Kate breathed, speaking for both of them. “What are you?”

“Later.” Natasha crumpled the last water bottle and surprised Clint by dropping to her knees next to him. “We need to get him on the cot. And get his shirt off.”

“Not on the first date,” Clint said, and his words were slurred. Why wasn’t he reacting to the fact that the deadly gorgeous woman he’d tried to charm over steaks had turned into some kind of supernatural Lite-Brite who could literally put herself back together? Surely he should find this stranger than he did.

He didn’t believe in aliens or any of that junk.

The woman wrestled him onto the cot. He swore because that only made his chest hurt more, especially when Natasha calmly began to unbutton his shirt. “We shot that thing like five times,” he said, his fists clenched at his sides. “Didn’t even matter. It was like we were shooting pea guns. What the hell!”

“Shh,” Kate told him.

“And it wasn’t human. I know that, but I keep thinking this isn’t possible. This all isn’t possible.”

Kate swore.

“What? What is it? Am I going to die?”

“Hardly,” Natasha said.

“Good. I don’t want to be killed by a bear.”

“It wasn’t a bear.”

“Excuse me, this is my death, I get to decide how it goes,” Clint said. He expected a scolding, but Natasha and Kate just rolled their eyes, eerily in sync. Kate flicked out her hunting knife and he realized a second too late what she planned to do. “Aw, no, I like this shirt.”

“The shirt’s toast, boss,” Kate said, focusing on cutting it away from him.

Clint finally risked a glance down at his exposed torso. He wanted to groan at the sight: the beast-man had gashed him pretty good on the shoulder from that first blow. Blood had dripped down to the waistband of his jeans and he could see the jagged edges of the wound which meant he was definitely going to scar.

Dammit. First his favorite shirt, and now he was going to have some gnarly-looking scars. In addition, the second swipe cut four shallow scrapes across his collarbone, stopping where the circus pendant he wore lay. He was going to have to clean blood off of that, which was easier said than done.

“We need to call an ambulance,” Kate said, looking pale.

“He will be fine.” With all of the calmness in the world, Natasha picked up one of the few bottles left and uncapped it. “This will hurt some, Sheriff.”

“Can’t hurt any more than—oh, god! Ugh!” Clint’s entire body arced up as she turned the bottle over, upending it on his chest. The water felt like fire ants had been released all over his body, biting into every inch of skin and causing individual pinpricks of agony. “What are you doing? Russian water torture?”

“Not far off, actually,” Natasha said, and she put her hand right below the pendant he wore. Clint’s stupidly slow brain informed him that said hand was glowing, and he wondered why that was for a moment.

And then the agony truly started.

Thankfully, the darkness followed closely behind.

(continued in part two)