Chapter Text
It is traditional, it is inherited, predisposition
All day I've been wondering what is inside of me
Who can I blame for it? I say it runs in the family
Rachel smiled at the man at the counter, cheeks hurting from disuse. “Can you wrap it?
‘Philip’ – she assessed from his name tag – stared at her for a silent moment, the clock behind his head ticking one minute closer to closing before his face split into a forced smile. “Of course. Is it a gift?”
“Mhm,” she moved a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and continued counting her bills as Philip watched her with dismay, “it’s for my son. He’s turning fifteen but somehow it always feels like it was yesterday he was wearing diapers and begging for mommy."
They both laughed, hollow and forced. Both of them fulfilling their side of the social contract.
“They grow up so fast, don’t they?” Philip said even though it was obvious he didn't have children of his own, following the script, taping the wrapping paper together over the box.
“Too fast,” Rachel added with a small – what was meant to be – secretive smile, feeling like she was playing pretend.
A little jingle sounded behind her as she walked out of the store, the plastic bag moved in motion with her leg, smacking it occasionally and annoyingly.
The streets were quiet, the small town whose name eluded her seemed abandoned, and the darkness felt suffocating almost; a thick blanket, the electricity of foreboding traveling through her veins as the moon began to peek over the edge of the horizon.
The Ginger Snaps Motel (charming name) was a beacon of neon light down the road, and she hurried her steps toward it. The familiar word Vacancy soon flickered intensely above her head, and after throwing a watchful eye over her shoulder, towards an almost empty parking lot, she entered their assigned room.
Timothy sat fixed in the chair, ruby-filled tubes traveling from his veins to the plastic bag on the table.
She moved the present behind her back as she went to him. Kissed his head, and straightened her back again. “Is Caleb back?”
“Varek?” Timothy asked, staring blankly at her to ascertain his refusal to use his name was duly noted. “No, he isn’t,” he confirmed then, resuming the book in his lap.
Rachel contained a sigh at his theatrics, and looked around the desolate room, unsurprised at the fact Timothy conveyed. The beds were still unmade, the do not disturb sign was a constant accessory to their door, and their bags remained as she had left them – in a pile in the corner by the door – very small travel bags, as the rest of their essentials were still in the van.
Nowadays, Rachel marveled each time she ignited the engine; the trustworthy vehicle had to be running on stubbornness alone.
She forced any thoughts of Varek on a moon-lit night out of her head, hid the shopping bag in the drawer by the bed, sank into the mattress as every bone in her body popped, and groaned as her nerves finally loosened.
“How are you feeling?” She asked him, making sure the scale shifting the blood back and forth still did its job; its constant buzz filling the air between them.
He threw but a quick glance at her, she still caught the vacant, dazed look in his eyes. “It’s not so bad,” he assured, shrugging.
“Timmy,” she reached for the clammy strays of hair in his face, brushing it away as he cringed. “Answer honestly.”
She tortured herself with the details.
He shoved her hand away. “Like you’re draining me of blood.” His voice was harsh. Then he grimaced, forcing himself to calm down. “Like I could eat an animal whole. I dunno, Mom. I’m just tired and also– basically starving on top of that.”
She chuckled sadly with a smile, “I’m sure…” she began to say, chewing her lip in dismay, “Varek will bring you something to eat.”
He smiled back at her, perhaps a little grateful, and that was enough for Rachel to be able to face that name and everything it withheld.
“I just wish you would let me go out with him."
A sudden knock came from the door, saving her from having to answer his statement; to repeat the conversation yet again.
“Speaking of the devil,” Timothy said coldly, sinking deeply into musty green cushions.
Saved by the devil.
Rachel kissed his head again, briefly wondering if Varek had lost his key card – she wouldn’t have been surprised considering the night – and crossed the room to open the door.
She flipped the lock, and the dull click of the mechanic was followed by a swift, loud force of the door being kicked open in her face.
“Mom!?” She heard Timothy call out behind her. She stumbled backward, barely managing to keep herself standing.
A shape entered the room like the wind, Rachel brought forth the gun she carried in the holster at her hip. Blinking away the shock, breathing quickly through her nostrils, she studied the boy in front of her; barely a year younger than Timothy, with dirty clothes, smudged cheeks, and a feral glint to his eyes; bloodshot whites.
He stared through her. “Found you,” he said in a juvenile, singsong voice as those eyes landed on her son.
Shit, Rachel thought, cocking her gun. She heard Timothy fall back into the chair to her side, a fruitless attempt to stand up, to protect her.
But that was her job.
"Brother told me to wait…" they young boy stalked forward, one slow step at a time.
“Stand back ,” Rachel ordered, aiming at his head, and calculating how the fuck they were supposed to get out of there quickly enough if she were to shoot him. He sneered at her, snorting at the contraption in her hands, at her words.
“That won’t hurt me,” he cooed. “I just want the half-breed, you stupid bitch.”
“Like hell, I’m going to give him to you.” She breathed in, readying herself.
Or so she claimed. But her hand refused to fire as she stared at what could've been the fate of her own son in another, crueler world.
The boy charged. Timothy screamed.
“No!”
Varek closed his hand around the thin throat, earning a frightened whine like from a small pup.
Rachel released her breath in an instant.
He asked without opening his mouth as the boy struggled in his grasp.
And she meant to answer, but her eyes wandered down to the motionless rabbit at his side instead; the hind leg tied to his belt, the fresh blood covering his arms and hands, smearing the neck in his grasp.
"I had it." Rachel lied as she looked up again, holstering her gun.
Varek smiled, all bloody teeth. "My bad." Wasn’t foolish enough to believe her.
"I can't…" The incapacitated boy suddenly hiccuped, voice scraping to escape his mouth, "I can't take another moon. I-I just can't–"
"Yeah, yeah.."
He choked on his words as Varek pushed him inside the room, his tiny bare feet kicking wildly as they dragged across the floor. He slammed the door shut behind him with his boot, effortlessly tripping the intruder to his knees; adamant to keep his head pushed down, hand still buried in the long hairs at his neck.
"P-Please–"
"Now it fits to ask nicely?"
He pulled his head backward, exposing his neck toward the ceiling.
"After you threaten what's mine?"
Thick tears began to roll down his dirty cheeks, leaving clean trails of skin in their wake as they dripped down to the pale carpet below.
"Please, I can't do this anymore. I-I just want to be human."
He sounded like a broken record. The poor kid, Rachel caught herself thinking.
"Mom," Timothy bit out through aching, clenched teeth beside them, his request crystal clear despite not saying it out loud.
Don't let him kill him.
"Caleb," Rachel said. Forwarded the message.
He eyed her, visibly clenching his jaw.
"Let him go."
He hesitated, caressed his fragile scalp, and for a moment Rachel feared his hunt hadn't been enough; hadn't sated him.
She furrowed her brows, pleading him with her eyes. Whatever was true, he still complied.
The boy fell to the floor in a heap of limbs as he was released. Seemed nothing more than a struggling bird, a lucky irregularity to have managed to escape the jaws of a predator.
"Get him to the van," Rachel requested, voice gentle not to risk frightening him, forgetting his ill intent made easier by his very likeness to Timothy; the same age, the same struggle.
Varek shook his head in response.
"I'll get him," Timothy intervened to interrupt what seemed to be a pending argument. Pushed himself up from the chair, catching the armrest to wait out yet another dizzy spell he hadn’t accounted for.
"Why not honor his request?" Varek mused.
Rachel considered the blood already stored in the mini-fridge, and quickly decided against it.
"Because it's spoken for," she answered.
"Right. I always forget there is a waiting list."
"They just can't get enough of me," Timothy joked darkly, dragging his feet toward the boy – fit for fight once more, but then he stumbled slightly on nothing, so it was rather a matter of more or less.
"They? Cowards you mean…" Varek muttered, leaning his back against the door, like he wasn't working with them now, with his– she couldn’t make herself think family – for the cause he used to oppose.
Against the cause for which he had killed.
It was harder for her to pretend it was forgotten as they reached yet another anniversary of all those deaths that could've been avoided.
Murders, her mind corrected her; the part of her desperate to remember, lest she be fooled again by his charm, like when she married him.
And here lay a boy to remind her, on the floor of some motel in an infinite row of motels, always the same flowery curtains, that despite what the Skinwalkers ought to know now, they still want her son dead.
Just to be safe. Why take a drop when you can take the whole pint?
Rachel resented it. To be forced to fear both sides. Not only the one who would rejoice in his death, their role as apex predators then assured but also the other; intending to take his life for their own (to be human) despite her attempts to scream, wave and tout that they only needed a drop of his blood.
That was why they also made the bullets.
And yet you didn’t shoot? A disembodied voice asked. Twitchy men, and broken women with their claws penetrating their fingertips rarely listened to her screaming. It sounded fairly similar to Jonas’, she concluded, despite his tics and habits growing more faded by the day.
Timothy reached him shortly. Shook his shoulder.
Rachel reached for her handgun, just in case.
"Tick, tock," Varek said as the boy laboriously began to stir.
"Don’t be an asshole," Timothy answered, flipping him off over his shoulder.
The full moon hung high and heavy outside, bright in the cloudless sky as it had almost completed its climb. Rachel thought she should have gotten used to it by now as she looked toward the light behind the pulled curtains, the power the moon held over them.
Equal to both sides, she thought humorlessly, despite its callous nature. Its grasp was just as hard on the apex predators as it was around its victims.
"Fuck! " Timothy exclaimed suddenly, ripping her from her wandering thoughts back to the present, to be met by the sight of teeth mercilessly sinking into an arm.
Her stomach lurched in shock, fingers fumbling for her gun.
Varek reacted faster, grabbing the young boy by the collar and dragging him backward.
The mutilated arm followed the motion caught in an iron grip, reluctantly the teeth slipped out as Timothy whined in pain, strings of flesh and blood splattered to the floor.
"Careful," he snarled toward the boy with a flash of his own teeth. Clenched his arm, the chunk of missing meat, against his stomach.
Rachel was right by his side in the blink of an eye but still she considered herself too slow –
"Wait!" Timothy slipped from her grasp, the panic aimed at his attacker; blissfully licking his lips, and a few seconds away from having his throat ripped out by someone far more dangerous. "I offered."
Varek stopped abruptly, his clawed hand hovering a mere inch above unsuspecting flesh.
Rachel grabbed his shoulders, "You did what?"
Timothy glared back, his eyes so bloodshot the whites almost looked completely red.
"I gave him my blood. Shouldn’t I have?"
He tried to kill you, she wanted to shout, but the boys beat her to it; screaming at the top of their lungs, folding at the waist, at the same time, but for two completely different reasons.
"Mom," he said as she struggled to keep him upright, misunderstanding her anxiety as he heaved for breath. "It’s gonna heal.”
"The van?" She asked Varek.
His lack of an answer was answer enough.
They won't make it in time .
"No, not the van," Timothy pleaded, "let me out. I promise I'll be good."
With two large steps, Varek left the stranger on the floor, and grabbed Timothy by his shirt.
"They have any information about us?"
They being the crooked woman down in the lobby, chewing gum at check-in, inserting a fake name at her keyboard with long, artificial nails.
"Nothing true."
"What are you–?"
At her confirmation, Varek shoved Timothy into the small bathroom, nothing more than a tub and a toilet to accommodate him on the inside, a small, askew frame of a pair of jumping frogs on the far wall to watch over him.
He tossed the rabbit in as well, and it landed with a moist smack, "Dinner," he explained, and slammed the door shut as Timothy growled in protest. He shouted uselessly for Varek to let him out, but he was ignored as he barricaded the door with his foot, sitting on the counter adjacent to the bathroom for leverage.
“Mom!” He screamed then instead, “let”– a loud bang as shoulder connected with the door –“me” – another, louder –”out!”
Rachel sank slowly to the carpeted floor with her breath dry like a dead leaf in her throat, feeling numb and useless, brushing away dampened hair from an unknown boy’s face; his features contorted into one of pure agony as well.
“What’re we gonna do with you?” She said quietly to him, smiling a broken smile.
Timothy continued up until the very moment he could no longer shout words at all, fists ceased to bang on the other side of the white, plastic wood, and cruel accusations simmered away.
But it did not become quiet as the wolf emerged, like a moth from its cocoon.
No, it became louder.