A/N: Just to avoid any confusion, this is a short story that later inspired Secrets in the Moon and there are major differences right down to the character names.
Cora Pennington wasn't very good at waiting. To whit, it drove her mad that she could do little but watch the moon rise over autumn-bitten trees, bringing her terror ever closer to reality. It being only minutes into dusk, she hadn't yet left for the wine cellar hastily reinforced to hold her father for when he... Well, it seemed wrong to call it a shift. That was what the werewolves in the city did, their bodies smoothly transforming from man to beast and back again. What her father suffered through each month seemed as far from that as a soothing massage was from being beaten with a club.
Cora checked her lipstick twice while dark blue filtered into the lavender-hued sky. Stars winked into existence as she lit cigarettes and stubbed them out almost immediately. She played with the pearls at her neck and fussed with the careful waves in her hair. None of the fidgeting prevented the inescapable: she needed to go down and watch over her father.
But she didn't want to, and not just because she'd already caught glimpses of what he turned into. The revulsion licking up her spine held far older roots than his recent affliction. Simply, she didn't want to be alone with him.
Movement along the peat gravel driveway drew her attention. In the last glimmers of twilight, a car pulled up and its driver got out, hat cocked at a familiar angle.
"Hayes," she breathed.
She ran down the flight of stairs, startling the maid lighting the evening lamps, and burst into the front room just as his knock came at the door. It was a breach of etiquette to answer it herself, but she did so, anyway, trying not to sound breathless. "Detective Hayes. This is a very pleasant surprise."
"Thought you'd need some support, kid." His voice was as easy as his smile, with that particular snap to his words that all inner city wolves had.
He refused to let the maid take his hat and coat, one of those wolfish peculiarities, and instead dropped them on a chair. "Is he already locked up?"
"Yes. He insisted on going down there early. He hates not being in control, you see." Cora didn't realize how her hands fidgeted until Hayes caught and stilled them with his own.
"Nervous?" His amber eyes held the same piercing quality as when he changed into a wolf, but his thumb ran over her knuckles gently.
"I didn't think it'd be this hard," she admitted. "I thought I wouldn't give a fig about his curse after what he did to me."
Unconsciously, her fingers reached for the back of her neck, sliding up to the raised scar hidden by her hair. A remnant of the binding sigil. Sometimes it still burned as a ghostly threat when her father grew angry.
Then her hand fell away. "But he's in such pain when it happens, and the thing he becomes..."
"We'll find a cure." Hayes traced the curve of her cheek, coaxing her into looking up. "I don't make promises unless I can keep them."
"You said just the same thing about breaking my binding."
He gave her that bold grin that came out whenever he tasted blood. "Maybe I don't like leashes of any kind."
They arrived at the cellar to find Cora's father waiting, straight and dignified in his dressing gown as if he were about to retire for the night. Cora had tried to make things more comfortable, lighting the walls with lamps and placing rugs on the cut stone floor, but there was no way to hide the wrought iron bars that separated her father from the rest of the world, and real sympathy slid into her voice as she greeted him. "Hello, Father."
"Cora," he said, already frowning. "Who have you brought along?"
"This is Detective Hayes. He's the one who helped me find you."
"I don't want him here."
"I thought thatâ"
"Thought? You don't think at all," interrupted her father, the words cold. "You're as foolish as your mother, though at least she had a compliant nature to make up for it."
Cora flushed. Beside her, Hayes growled softly.
When she said nothing, her father added, "Show him out. I want no one to witness my infirmity, do you understand?"
"What you want doesn't matter, Mr. Pennington." Hayes pushed aside enough of his unbuttoned suit jacket to reveal the gun holster snug against his waistcoat. "I'm just here to make sure you don't do anything too nasty. Understand?"
It had been ages since Cora had seen her father flabbergasted, but he recovered all too quickly.
"How dare you?" An unnatural snarl slid into his voice, growing with each word. "You, a coarse, flea-bittenâ"
Then pain flashed across his face, and he folded in two as if someone had punched him. His ears had suddenly grown pointed.
"Here it comes," muttered Hayes, hand still ready at the gun.
"Already?" Cora instinctively looked up at the circular window set in the ceiling. The moon peered back, casting its cool light on everything in reachâher father included.
Cracking noises drew her gaze back to his shaking form. At first, she had the bewildered thought that his makeshift room held nothing that could be destroyed. Then she realized it was the sound of his bones breaking. The features of his face bubbled, tongue lolling like a man choking in a noose, before he crumpled to the floor.
His spine bent and snapped in quick, shuddering movements all too clear against the fabric of his dressing gown. A tail sprouted, dark with fur, and he began screaming. His voice devolved into something guttural and utterly wretched as the muscles of his body convulsed and swelled. Hands scrabbled at the ground until fingernails broke past the quick.
When her father looked up again, hair had sprouted from his face and teeth bristled in his mouth. Another spasm left those fangs biting down on his tongue, and then the froth at his jowls grew bloody. Despite it all, his eyes were still completely his, and when they met hers, Cora had to turn away, feeling ready to crumple, herself.
But Hayes pulled her close, arms tightening to keep her upright. He couldn't block out the wet, ripping noises of flesh reassembling itself, or the hoarse note in the agonized howls that still sounded like her father's voice. Yet he was warm and solid against her, and she didn't even care when he mussed up her hair by tucking her head under his chin.
Eventually, something in the growling changed. Solidified. Now Cora only heard claws scraping against stone, and panting that echoed against the walls.
"Is it over?" she mumbled into Hayes' neck.
She felt him nod. "You don't have to look."
"No, I do." She sucked in a steadying breath, glad his arms were still around her, and then twisted around.
Glowing eyes stared back in a mountain of muscle. Rivulets of drool streamed from a blunted version of a muzzle. The creature that wasâsomehowâher father had grizzled fur tipped with silver, as if even in this beastly form he felt the ravages of age. It moved awkwardly, on limbs fit neither for walking upright nor bounding on all fours, and the bright moonlight picked out every grotesque characteristic without mercy. A patchwork creature, a nightmare that shouldn't have existed in real life. And yet those long claws promised evisceration of anything within reach, and those enormous fangs could crush a skull like an egg. Cora knew this; she had seen it.
As the miscreation of wolf and man began pacing the confines of its cage in a clumsy lurch, she found herself saying, "Strange, isn't it? How he seems both terrifying and pathetic. Now that I see him in full light, he's almost easier to take."
"It always is when the monsters are obvious." Hayes watched the creature, too, but his hands rubbed along her arms in silent reassurance.
The moon proved absolute with its revealing light, shining on another secret in her heart. The words slipped out of her easily. "I'm glad you're here, Hayes. I've had so many thoughts about spending a night with youâjust not like this."
"You think I can't smell that, bunny?" His teeth nipped at the curve of her ear.
Cora wished to feel his body against her own, to feel his warmth fill up the ashen space between her ribs. But even as she considered the thrill of a frenzied Hayes ripping the silk sheets on her bed, the creature snuffled against the bars with a rumbling growl.
Her sigh was one of defeat. "But it would be very foolish to use this night for us."
"There'll be others." Then Hayes licked up her neck, the heat of his tongue tender against her scar. "He won't take away your future, too. I promise."
And she knew enough about him to believe it even as her father's roar shook the walls, assuring sleepless hours ahead.