The Unfixing

[Aidan Fox]

Ronnie gave the all-call for dinner, and everyone gathered around the kitchen table and counter island to divvy up the day's second helping of McDonald's and to compliment Jamie on her new fashion accessory. Over the course of the evening, it changed from a bionic arm to a hook to a lightsaber, until it was obvious that the little girl was about to fall asleep at the table, and Tess offered to carry her upstairs to bed.

As the kids milled around and polished off the last of the french fries and ice cream, Aidan moved over toward Jake and Anna. "We looked for other traps," he said. "Anything we could think of. Julian even sniffed around. He found the perp's trail."

He glanced over to the table to make sure the kids were occupied. "There was one person, male. He went straight to the hide-a-key, then came in through the back door. Went upstairs, lingered around the bathroom and the banister. Then the porch and the fence. This guy knew his way around the house and knew exactly what he was going to do."

[Julian Davitt]

Julian, if he had been normal, would have been excited to have been included in on this very adult sort of conversation, even in these circumstances. The truth was, this wasn't the first time that he'd been in this sort of situation. Bears, mountain lions, foxes, ravens, all of the other creatures would not hesitate if they had the chance to have a cub for food, or would sniff around their dens.

The stranger's scent was noticeable in the clean environment of the house; the man (and the scent told him plainly that it was a male) hadn't bathed for some time. He smelled of anger, bitterness, and sweat that was slowly turning rank.

"I smelled him by the fence too," Julian supplied. "He was hiding in the alley for a while. He was all over the place."

[Jacob Foley]

"Okay. Can we not refer to him as The Perp?" Jake muttered irritably.

All evening he'd been waiting anxiously for the discussion, his insides felt hot and coiled like angry vipers, and he was in desperate need of an outlet. Being diplomatic about the situation, and humouring any possiblity other than the glaringly obvious, was an insult to his sensibilities. His face creased with incredulous frustration.

"Come on, as if there's any doubt: it was Apollos! Who else would sneak into our home, using the hidden key, take nothing, and dismantle only a few very specific things? The fence, the decking, the banister, and the upstairs faucet - all things he worked on, and considering his little bitch fit with Anna a couple of weeks ago, it makes perfect sense. Even Jamie-"

He paused, and checked the volume of his voice, "Even Jamie worked that much out before her accident- which- which wasn't even a fucking accident!"

[Anna Fernandez]

She should have been angry. She had every right to be scared. But instead she only felt numb, the cheeseburger that had sounded so good thirty minutes ago sitting like a lump in her stomach. Perhaps it was a result of too many hours spent at the hospital with Jamie. Maybe she was all worried out.

"I can't talk about this right now," Anna said softly, shaking her head. "Tomorrow... but..." She put a hand to her forehead, her hair falling forward to cover most of her face. "I am exhausted."

[Aidan Fox]

Anna's exhaustion was palpable, like a heavy weight grinding her down into her seat. Aidan could see it, Jake could probably feel it, and Julian, who read body language more than facial expressions anyway, probably understood it as well as anyone. As a rule, Anna pushed herself to new frontiers of care and provision every day, and now what should have been a day of rest had turned into a nightmare.

"Anna, go to bed," Aidan said softly. "Jamie's already tucked in. The kids can finish cleaning up. Jake and I will take care of the rest."

If anything, the kitchen was even more subdued after Anna had slowly bundled off to bed with Jake's assistance. Once they had cleared away the trash and the detritus of the ad hoc construction, the kids all trickled away, some to their bedrooms, some to the study, some to the TV in the big bedroom upstairs. The kitchen was empty aside from Aidan and Jake, and once Jake made a cursory telepathic sweep to make sure there were no eavesdroppers, they began planning.

It was hours later that they shut off the lights, the last of the residents to retire for the night, except for Jim who never had to sleep. At long last, after a day full of fear and anguish, Redención House had settled in for the night.

[Feral]

Feral had moved when the wolf started sniffing about. He made sure to mask his scent before he left his hiding spot, just in case.

Then it was the usual crocodile patience. Feral would watch and be still, for days if he had to, until he got his moment. He didn't need days. His moment came upon him at last.

The lights winked out in Redencion House. Feral emerged from hiding and began his transformation.It started at his feet. Bones emerged from the tips of his toes and out of the tops of his feet, curving to roughly match the contours of the tops of his feet. Two long, nasty spikes erupted out of the fronts of his calves and two more fanned out on either side of the spikes, curving to come as close to touching as possible at the backs of his legs. His thighs mirrored his calves.

His bottom-most ribs emerged and lengthened down his torso, protecting his guts, but preventing him from bending in the middle. From now on, he would only be bending at the waist: his back was forced to be perfectly straight. The rest of his ribs grew out of his chest and met each other, making him look more skeletal than anything so far.

Two more nasty spikes sprouted from his elbows, and more bones sheathed his upper and lower arms. Pointed bones emerged from his fingertips, as had happened with his toes.

Feral's face was all that remained unprotected for the moment. His face elongated and his features sharpened, giving him the expression that earned him his name so long ago in Greece. Then, bones emerged from his jaw, protecting his neck at the cost of being unable to turn his head. Bones unsheathed from under his eyes to protect his lower face. Last of all, the bones in his forehead emerged into a spiked crown, and more bones covered the top of his skull and the back of his head, hiding his hair.

Now, to business.

[Feral]

Feral could not risk being loud or hurried. Haste made waste; Caution was King. Jim never slept: he would be a problem. The wolf too, was a problem. As long as no one else got up in the night, he would be fine.

Had they moved the key? Did they suspect? It didn't matter. If he had to climb to the roof and slide down the chimney, he would enter that house. At last, he decided there must be a different method.

Feral didn't believe in God or Luck or Fate. He was his own God, he made his own Luck, and chose his own Fate. He made sure to come prepared. A roll of duct tape, procured from a neighbor during a "lunch break," was all he needed. He chose a window far away from where he suspected Jim sat, reading or watching TV. He made several strips and plastered them on the window. Then he hit the area where the tape covered the glass. There was a silent crunch, then Feral was able to peel the tape away and unlock the window from the inside. He slid it open and let himself in.

He moved across the way and up the stairs on the balls of his feet, heading deliberately toward Anna's room. She always slept with the door open, cracked, or unlocked in case Jamie or another kid needed her in the night.

Feral stepped inside, where the pregnant woman was lying asleep and peaceful on her back. He watched her chest rise and fall with her breathing. Saw the small round belly, which kept the one thing that caused him so much trouble. It would be easy to cut it out of her and leave her bleeding.

But not yet.

He placed his palm on her stomach and could feel the little thing inside her respond. It kicked fiercely, and Feral smiled savagely. Maybe it really was Anna's baby. He looked at the mother's face, saw it stir. He slid the other palm over her mouth and held her firmly, letting his fingertips dig into her belly: an unspoken warning.

Move, or scream, and I WILL hurt your baby!

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna couldn't remember later what woke her up. She didn't even remember the transition from sleep to awake, only that suddenly there was a pressure on her belly and something over her mouth and she was looking up into the face of the Devil. Bone white in the light from the streetlamps, a grinning spectre of evil covered with hideous spikes.

Claws pricked at her stomach, and she trembled with fear for her baby, frozen in place by the implicit threat. All she could do was stare at him, and as she did she realized she recognized him. Apollos' eyes, full of hate or something else, gleamed at her behind the bone armor that shielded him.

The room began to glisten with ice, but he was untouched, breath fogging in the air as he kept her mouth closed tightly with a rough hand. Anna didn't know if she could freeze him fast enough to save the baby, but she couldn't stop her anxiety from dropping the temperature in the room to below freezing.

Please... please... no no no... Her heart rate spiked, thudding loudly in her skull in the silence of the room, and she felt so exposed, so vulnerable. So alone.

Not alone in a house full of people though. Jake! Jake wake up! Me ayuda me ayuda me ayuda me ayuda...

[Feral]

Feral could not stay much longer: the room was getting too cold. He could be seen shivering. He had to remain the perfect picture of intimidation: untouchable, hateful, a nightmare through and through.

Besides, it was only a matter of minutes before Jake showed up. It was not time for Jake to meet his nightmare. Though a little foreshadowing never hurt anyone. Well, anyone except Anna.

Feral dug his fingers into her soft, smooth skin and began to scratch at Anna's belly. He braced to keep her pinned under him as his fingers worked quickly over the spot where the baby kicked and punched at the walls of its womb.

Only a moment more, and the true nightmare will have finally begun.

[Jacob Foley]

Sleep was long to come to him that night, when he settled into bed stiff with anger, and restless from his inability to do anything. It was some comfort, however, that he'd been finally able to relocate back into his old attic bedroom, where he was no longer disturbed by the pitter patter of small feet overhead. Instead, he was shaken awake, drowning in the sound of a terrified voice - Anna's voice. His eyes snapped open and he found himself alone, but the rush of fear was real, the voice was real, and the intruder in the house was very real. He leapt out of bed, dashed across his room and threw open the door.

"Anna!" he cried out, his voice sounding the alarm throughout the house, "ANNA!"

An avalanche of clattering wood as he raced to the second floor, an unholy terror that was not his own crystalized in his heart, sucking the air from his lungs. In his mind's eye, he could see the man on the other side of the wall, hunched lecherously over his sister, and he barrelled inside without a hesitation in the world.

[Feral]

At last, it was finished. Feral stood up suddenly and turned to the door as Jake burst through it, showing an aggressive stance and horrifying visage. Then, just as suddenly, Feral dove through the window.

Let Jake thing he managed to spook his sister's attacker into running away. Soon they would learn--they would all learn--just how powerless they really were.

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna could feel his claws breaking the skin of her belly, scratching the softness that covered her growing baby, and her eyes bulged as she screamed mentally. Too terrified to move or do anything but stare at Apollos, she could hardly think, and when the door flew open and the creature released her to dive through her closed window, she lay there a moment longer, like Sleeping Beauty in a crystal ice castle.

Jake slipped and skidded to her side, and Anna suddenly could move, a trembling hand going to the firey pain of her belly, and she opened her mouth and screamed.

[Aidan Fox]

The stampede of footsteps down the attic stairs and across the hallway was enough to wake Aidan, who charged out of bed in a tank top and sweatpants and raced into Anna's bedroom. He stumbled in through the open door seconds behind Jake and quickly assessed the scene - Anna with her nightgown pulled up over her abdomen, which glistened in the low light, Jake standing like a cannon with a burning fuse and no target to fire on, the smashed-out window with the curtains swaying gently in the sudden draft.

Aidan hadn't seen the intruder, but he didn't have to. He met Jake's eyes for one critical moment, then dashed back into the upstairs hallway and into one of the bedrooms.

"Julian! I need your help, now!"

[Jacob Foley]

A glimpse of the intruder was all Jake was afforded before his escape, he cut a nightmarish vision through the shadow and moonlight, his teeth glistened like daggers, and then he was gone. Jake skidded an advance across the glass floor and crashed at his sister's side, ice stabbing at his bare knees, he took her hand, desperate to lend it warmth. The sudden scream speared him through the chest and turned him colder than the frosted air.

"Anna. Anna! Anna! It's okay. I'm here now. You're safe," he managed, horrified eyes wandering down to her lacerated belly, "Oh, Jesus! Someone call an ambulance!"

Inside, he felt his stomach clench, it felt like a rock, sinking. Trembling fingers reached out and carefully examined the fine glistening lines carved into her flesh. He swallowed hard to dislodge his heart from his throat.

"Anna, it's alright. The baby's going to be alright. Please, don't panic. It's going to be alright. I'm here..."

[Anna Fernandez]

"No - no," Anna gasped, trying to sit up while Jake tried to keep her down on the bed. "Dónde está? Se fue? Se fue?"

The house was an uproar of feet in hallways and people yelling, and she held a hand towel to her stomach as instructed by her brother who was on the phone suddenly. "Call Tycho," she tried to ask him, but couldn't tell if he heard her or not.

[Julian Davitt]

Julian had been dreaming.

He was running through a meadow, one he vaguely remembered from before. He must have been hunting, because he was snuffling deeply, cataloging a scent and following it mercilessly, inexorably running it down.

Beside him ran his pack, and he became happy when he saw his mother, her scent old, stale, but still memorable, making her way around them to encircle the poor beast that was to be their food.

The animal was still out of sight, but that didn't bother him, as the scent was growing stronger. And then his mother cried out, yelping and whining loudly, bringing him to a halt so suddenly that he almost lost his footing and fell in a tumble of legs and fur.

"JULIAN!"

He yelped as he woke, surprised and still reeling from the suddenness of his awakening. He crawled from his position underneath someone's bed and trotted out into the hall, making his way quickly to the commotion. He smelled him almost immediately, despite the measures the man had taken to hide his scent. It hung in the air, heavy, like the fear and anger emanating from Aidan and Jake, both of them prowling as if they had been caged.

He growled sympathetically, a low rumbling deep in his chest rising and mixing with a slight whine. Anna was in distress, her scent in relief against the chilled air of the hall and room, mixing and mingling with all the others.

He looked back at Aidan, his tail low and his ears edged back, his hackles slightly raised from the heightened emotion around him and the fear of the intruder which had so recently been here.

[Aidan Fox]

Julian's body language was unmistakable - a perfect mirror for Aidan.

"Apollos," he said. "Help me find him."

Aidan charged down the stairs and burst out the front door into the sodium glare of the streetlights. Then he ran to the cratered turf beneath Anna's bedroom window where Feral had landed and sprinted off into the night.

There was no need to explain to Julian what he wanted.

[Julian Davitt]

"Apollos. Help me find him."

Julian didn't know who Apollos was, but quickly assumed it to be the name of the intruder. When Aidan burst off out of the room and outside, Julian hesitated, looking over to where Jake and Anna were on the bed.

After an interminable moment, the wolf seemed to make a decision, and turned away toward the door. He loped off, following Aidan. With his long legs and determined stride, even the stairs, which tripped him up constantly, didn't pose much of an obstacle. He caught up with the man as he drew up under the window.

His nostrils flared, and he took in deep breaths of air. In the open, the man's scent was harder to track; he had done a good job in trying to hide his scent. Anna's lingering scent was easier to find, and it had clung to him. He smelled faint traces of blood as well. He snuffled around the dirt where his footprints were most easily seen, and followed the scent to the edge of the yard.

Julian turned to Aidan, his eyes wider than normal in the darker night, and loped off, following the scent as well as he could. His pace was quick, but with the number of scents around, and the precautions the man had taken beforehand, Julian was forced to rely on Anna's lingering scent on him to differentiate what he was tracking.

Slowly, the scent grew stronger, but Julian couldn't help but wonder if he'd find the man, who had gotten farther away than he'd expected.

[Aimee Connors]

Aimee climbed out of bed as a scream ripped through the air, nearly stepping on Jen's head as her roommate flailed about and stumbled out from the bottom bunk. "What the hell is going on?"

"If this is another of Jamie's nightmares I'm going to get some Lunesta for her and force her to take them," grumbled Jen, grabbing for a fuzzy robe to throw over her baggy sleep shirt.

Aimee tugged a pair of pajama pants on and cracked her door open in time to see Julian dash down the hallway and presumably down the stairs. "Red alert, Jen, this isn't a drill." She eyed Jamie's door, still shut, and then reached back inside and grabbed her ditzy roommate's hand. "Come on, lets check on Jamie."

They dashed across the hall, narrowly missing Tess who looked like she'd had a fight with a leaf blower from the way her hair was sticking up, and piled into the little girl's room. "Jamie? Everything okay in here?"

[Feral]

Feral ran through the streets and alleyways, leaving scratches along walls or turning over things in his wake. He was leaving a trail. Knowing Jake, he would come for him alone, or possibly with his friend, Aidan. Feral knew next to nothing about Jake's friend, but hoped that birds of a feather flocked together. They might even convince the wolf to join them.

Follow me! Feral snarled in his mind.