SOLIVAGANT.

With Ms. Kennedy informed of the situation, Sammy was on to the next person on the list: Mr. Castillo. Don’t get him wrong, he genuinely liked and respected the guy, but... it was hard to explain.

Basically everything he’d seen or heard about Mr. Castillo doing that wasn’t directly related to hunting seemed to be a kind of terrifying look into the sort of life Sammy desperately wanted to avoid. The man was a living, breathing monument to the consequences of pouring a whole life into the job, the way that it could core out his whole life and leave a man scrambling to glue together the shell of what was left. He didn’t know the details of everything that had happened two years ago, but he’d heard enough to know that it was bad. Working with him was fine, he always managed to learn something, and the man clearly knew his stuff, but spending long enough around anyone who’s so clearly living an echo of another life was enough to leave Sammy sitting on the curb a few blocks away to drag his thoughts back together. 

He’d started to write that into his schedules. 2:00-3:45, Training w/Mr. Castillo, 3:45-4:00, Buy a smoothie and sit in the park. Fun times. 

That didn’t really matter right now, though, not when Mr. Shiv was in a coma and Sammy had to run around and alert other senior hunters in town instead of going to the Crow & Chalice directly to check on his status. He pushed open the doors to Sweetwater, grateful to see that it was just early enough that none of the regulars had started to trickle in, crossing right to the bar. 

“Shiv’s hurt. I got a note today, he’s being taken care of by someone allied with the Brotherhood, but it’s been two weeks and he’s still not awake. I spoke to Ms. Kennedy about it already.” He slid the letter across the bar, so Mr. Castillo could read it, sitting on one of the stools. 

Adrian makes an effort to train the newbies, passing on the torch so to speak. He’s no recruiter, they usually find him by word of mouth, he’s not roping anyone into this life. There’s no shortage of recruits as wanna be heroes grow on trees in Port Leiry. Ten out of ten humans have had some supernatural encounter in this city, nine out of ten of them want justice against whatever the fuck it was that happened to them, about one out of those nine goes seeking it out for themselves. Adrian’s own father had been the stupid one and two generations of Castillo had been suffering ever since.

Bottom line is not all of these newbies last. They either quit early, which frankly, is the smart way to go. The ones that go the distance are usually picked off by their first or second hunt. Third if they’re really lucky.

The kid is a medic, which technically speaking, is different than an usual soldier. Instead of fighting the good fight, medics like Sammy linger on the battlefield as a first aid measure. It's apples and oranges. Werewolf bites and bandages. It's like playing ding dong ditch on death's door.

Right on cue, Sammy bursts through the doors, except he doesn't look right. There's no Hello Mr. Castillo, how are you doing today? falling out of his mouth. Is Sammy concerned? Scared? Wary? Wary isn't new, Adrian gets the feeling his broody, pessimistic nature makes Sammy uncomfortable. But whatever this is, this emotion that has overcome Sammy, is.

The kid gets straight to business. Shiv is in trouble.

Shit happens with Brotherhood kin everyday, but it hits harder when it's family.

His visible eye widens with concern. "What happened to Shiv?" Adrian shoots back at Sammy without missing a beat.

What Sammy says next puts a grave feeling in his stomach. "Allied with?" What the fuck does that mean? Are they.... being cared for.... by...

Two weeks have passed and no one has bothered telling him until now? Yeah, maybe he's been mentally checked out the last few months due to the demolition of his family, but that doesn't mean he should be completely left out of the loop. Especially, when it involves Shiv. Adrian is practically their uncle. No, not practically, he is their uncle.

"Why are you just telling me this now?" Adrian barks at Sammy. He gets ferocious when he's scared like a dog does. Raised hair, bared teeth, I'll hurt you before you hurt me. He does this now, to Sammy, because Adrian knows what he will say next is going to hurt.

Every time she thinks she has herself protected, a particularly motivated vampire proves just how little control Morgan has over anything.

In this case, she watches with abject horror as Gael fails to compel her, and then immediately turns that horrible power on his daughter. "Gemma, no, don't listen to him!" But it's useless. She knows it. And she doesn't dare reach out over the threshold where the vampire could grab her. So she's helpless as the girl marches inside. A weak attempt to stop Gemma is made as Morgan's hand just slips past her arm -- she knows how strong a compulsion is. She can't stop it, and she doesn't want to hurt Gemma (and lacks the strength to hold anyone for long). Morgan doesn't dare call for Gabe at this point either. "Shit."

There isn't long to sit with her disgust at Gael, though, as the woman stands firm in her doorway as if she is the only thing holding the walls up. With the current state of the Castillo-Fiori clan, she very well might be. "You -- I can't believe you just tried that. All of it!" Her shouting is drowned by the sound of an engine, though, and her relief is only momentary when she realizes the pizza boy hasn't just shown up in the middle of some sort of domestic.

No, it's Adrian, and once more Morgan stays rooted to the spot as Gael reacts faster than she could even blink. There's a harsh crunch of man on metal, and the woman is already near to tears as her conscience grapples with labeling cowardice as courage, staying safe inside and doing absolutely nothing as the twins collide upstairs and the husbands clash in her driveway. She hears Star climb the stairs after Gemma and the dog begins barking outside the door to the guest room. All while she stands, knowing every choice is certain death -- and making no choice at all is still a damning decision.

The vampire drags Adrian to her doorstep, some vicious mockery of a cat presenting you with its prey. Yes, I see it. Drop him, please. Morgan's glistening eyes catch the one of Adrian's that isn't covered as he struggles and her nails dig into the paintwork of the door jamb, reminding herself that what Gael has done to his husband he could do to her the second she leaves the safety of her home.

But words carry across the threshold just fine, and suddenly he's driving daggers through her with the mention of Bradley. Suddenly, she's back in that arcade while a monster roars at her before reminding her how desperately hungry he was, how sweet her husband tasted, and how he killed the man just because he could. Because he believed he should. And after what Gael has done to his daughter, after what he tried to do to Morgan herself, she isn't sure she can risk this being a bluff.

"He lost someone recently, so he's going to spend a little time with us. Is that okay, Mo?" "Can we help him find the person he lost?" "No, sweetheart. Sometimes when you lose someone, it's not like hide and seek. You don't get to see them again, but you remember them still, and then you can find them again in your memories."

She's lost things she didn't have, before. The family she never had and still somehow lost. But Morgan has lost people, lost her person, and she'll never forgive herself if she loses someone on her doorstep, two feet away, while she stands and does nothing. While she stands crying for everything she's lost and still stands to lose.

"No... p-please," Morgan begs, her voice barely a whisper at first as she emerges from the deep pit of memory she was thrown into. The sound of a hard thump upstairs shakes her back to the present once again and she looks at Adrian as Gael forces himself onto the man in this strange beast shaped like passion, rage, and insatiable hunger. The foundation of Morgan's resolve is crumbling, and it feels like the whole house Gael wants to enter so badly might collapse with all of them inside. Morgan begs again.

"I'm... I'm sorry. S-stop, please -- I'll let you in i-if Adrian comes in first. Please, just... don't kill him. Don't kill any of them, please."

The line—don’t kill any of them— rings in his skull, sour as curdled milk. Any of them? Morgan’s plea fractures something deep, because it folds his children into the same ledger as the man who burned their lives down. He swings his gaze to her, the porch light carving harsh hollows in his face.

“Any of them?” he repeats, voice raw, hand cinching tighter on Adrian’s throat until the pulse thumps frantic beneath his thumb. “Morgan, no. Him—just him. And clearly even that’s touch and go.” Case in point: this stupid fucking kiss. “But my children are exactly that: mine. I crossed the grave for them. I won’t lay a finger on their heads.”

But the house still denies him. That vampiric curse of the threshold, it might as well be iron bars. Gael adjusts, knuckles whitening around Adrian’s collar as he drags the hunter sideways, nudging him inch by inch toward the doorframe.

Morgan hesitates, lips quivering. She looks smaller than she did a minute ago, guilt widening her eyes to brittle porcelain. He almost pities her. Almost. Because he’s watched pity bloom into weakness before, and what waits on the other side of that door is not weakness but salvation.

“Let him inside first,” she whispers and “That’s the arrangement,” Gael replies, low. He pushes Adrian forward like a battering ram.  Adrian lurches, furious, one-­handed on the jamb as though he could brace away the inevitable. The gun is still tucked at his waistband, but Gael can feel its weight trembling—a threat on life support. He wonders whether Adrian realizes the barrel will never line up before Gael’s fingers sever the tendons controlling it. Some equations solve themselves before they’re written.

With a choked sob, Morgan steps back. There. The veil breaks; Gael feels the invisible film of the threshold peel like wet paper. Power slides into the foyer on a cold breeze. He almost sighs at the sensation—relief, hunger, the intoxicating scent of human heartbeats thudding from upper rooms.

But he’s not foolish enough to drop his guard. Adrian could still throw something tragic and heroic into the gears. Gael shifts, twisting the hunter’s arm behind his back until tendons creak, guiding him through the doorway. “Think you can hold him for me, Morgan?” he says, nodding toward the stunned woman. “I’m just going to go upstairs, call Gemma off and bring them both downstairs. I promise.”

Adrian snarls incoherently. Gael ignores him. His ears are tuned to softer frequencies—the rapid patter of twin heartbeats at the top of the stairwell, the low growl of Star, the scuff of Gemma’s sneakers on hardwood.

He can't wait to see his kids any longer. He lets Adrian go. Two steps and he’s at the base of the staircase. He puts his palm flat to the banister, remembering the hours he’d spent here on some pizza night. Still your family, he tells himself. You only have to show them.

For the second time that night, Gael takes the stairs two at a time. The hall smells of dust and laundry soap—mundane, comforting things that snag his undead senses and pull him backward in time. He braces against the ache those memories stir—lets that hunger for all that was clot in his mind like scar tissue, thick and functional.

At the top landing he slows. No need to spook them more than he already has. The guest-room door hangs ajar, a sliver of lamplight spilling across the carpet. Inside, Gabe stands rigid beside the nightstand. Gemma hovers behind him, cheeks blotched crimson, defiance trembling through her shoulder. She’s bleeding from the back of her head. Fuck, that must have been the crack they heard—

But for the first time in two years, Gael sees his kids together and it’s like the sun. 

“Gemma—easy you can stand down now.” His gaze shifts to the boy’s white-knuckled grip. “Gabriel, no one’s here to hurt you. Let’s all head downstairs, the three of us, and talk this through—together.”

A notion of love shouldn't be fucking tampered with.

For a moment, for one goddamn sliver of a second, Adrian falls for it. For the vampire, for Gael, for the fucking kiss. He doesn't recoil when Gael's lips meet his, he doesn't pull away either. Not at first. Their lips are like magnets, one suited for the other, find their way to one another, because that's just what they do. It's nature's will.

Adrian misses his husband. He misses the feeling of his strong arms wrapped around him. How life didn’t feel safe until Gael rolled into his life. How it felt even more dangerous after the fact. He misses laughing with him. How Adrian’s dry quips would fall under his breath, not meant for the ears of another, but Gael always heard what he had to say. They’d share a knowing look and an along with a boyish smirk towards each other. Gael was the only person in the world who knew Adrian could be funny. He misses the mundane parts — the bullshit of raising a family, the comforts and complications of marriage. He misses the extraordinary parts too. The hunting, the killing, their sacred attempts of cleansing this world of whatever evil they could. Post hunt showers, where there was nothing inherently sexual about it, but ethereally intimate. How they washed the sweat, blood, and war off of each other. He misses that too though, sex with Gael. His misses the soft touches and tenderness in the way their bodies meshed, but he misses the rough parts as well. The animalistic ways in which they reminded themselves that they belonged to each other and no one else. He misses Gael. The Gael that was mortal. The Gael that was human. The Gael that was his.

Then the blood, the metallic droplet, falls from Gael’s lip onto Adrian’s tongue. With it, a sinister realization. This is no white flag, this is no act of love. This is treason on both parts. Gael, because he knows Adrian wouldn’t ever allow this to be healed this way. He much rather have his other eye gouged out than endure whatever this bullshit savior act Gael is trying to pull here. Adrian, because he allowed this kiss to happen in the first place.

Now, Adrian recoils, now he pushes away. He does his best to anyways, as Gael’s grip keeps him posed. Out of his one eye, he sees a flower vases sitting on the porch. If he could just reach over, grab it, and smash the thing over Gael’s head. It wouldn’t do anything but buy him seconds, maybe, but the satisfaction of watching the glass shatter against the vampire’s big head would be worth it.

And then there is Morgan.

Adrian practically barks like a rabid guard dog at the mention of her late husband. Fuck Gael for mentioning Brad and fuck him for playing on her heart strings like a goddamn fiddle. How fucking unfair and how flat out fucking cruel.

Morgan goes on to beg for their lives, Gemma's, Gabriel's, Adrian's and hell even her own. The crack in her voice wield daggers into his chest. She’s contemplating Gael’s offer like it’s any good. Did Adrian’s warning go in and out of her ears? Don’t let Gael in, under any circumstances. One threat on Adrian’s life and she starts to fold. “Don’t fucking do it, Morg,” Adrian snarls under his breath, still wrestling under Gael’s grip, but it goes unheard seemingly by both parties. Death would have been kinder than whatever this fucked up reunion has left in store.

With one invitation, the veil is shattered, and the Moss home is no longer safe but another piece of collateral damage in Adrian’s wrongdoings. His relationship with his son, his relationship with his daughter, his marriage, ah, the Castillo-Fiori home and now Morgan’ home. All destroyed in the name of righteousness.

Was it worth it? Was it worth it? Was it worth it? has been booming in his mind all night with no ceasefire in sight.

When Gael runs into the house, Adrian is left on the porch, trying to catch his breath from the ordeal. Heavy in, heavy out are the breaths that filter through his body. With defeated, sad, brown eyes, Adrian hangs a look at Morgan.

“You… should’ve… called his bluff…” Adrian says breathlessly. And if Gael wasn’t bluffing? Hell, that would’ve been okay. What better way to die than to die protecting the ones you love?

Define it.

It's a command more than a question, and she’s never been an obedient daughter. But it's also an opening – and invitation. He may have let her inside out of a misplaced sense of parental affection, but there’s no mandate that he carry on a conversation with her – so she will take each and every opportunity given.

“No and like that’s the question isn’t it? Defining it?” Gemma sips her wine, “And it's super important because I don’t know how long you’re going to tolerate me being here, so I don’t know how many questions I get to ask.” A pointed look, another sip. “So I should just dive right in with ‘why’d you kill my dad?’ but then that question is really – why’d you make Gabriel kill him? Were you too cowardly to do it yourself? Was it some kind of profoundly cruel hazing ritual?” She lobs these accusations with an air of negligence, nursing the bottle of wine and flexing her fingers such to work the feeling back into them.

“But then because I’m me, and a wholly self-centered creature – I have to ask. Why was I never good enough for you? And I don’t mean like all the technical hunter bullshit, I mean like why was I, Gemma, the whole person and your daughter, never good enough?”

It doesn't keep the knife from diving into his chest. It doesn't keep the blood from seeping out the wound. It doesn't make him feel any less hollow than to hear those words come out of her mouth. For the most part, this is an internal battle. His hints of pain are reflected by the way his eyes, nearly black now, narrow at the sight of her, the way his lips press into a thin line, by the way he slams down another shot.

"You know who I am, Gems." Rain slams down against the thin roof of Sweetwater, as Adrian swallows the whiskey. "Gabriel knows who I am. Gael, your dad, knew too, he knew better than anyone." The past tense is purposeful because Gael doesn't know who Adrian is anymore. He wasn't the only one who died that night.

"Say what you want about me, but never have I pretended to be someone or something I wasn't. Whatever gene that liars have to make it so easy for them to lie, I didn't get. Gael, though?" He shakes his head, followed with a bitter scoff. "I bet you that he came out of the womb bullshitting the nurses."

Thunder rumbles above them.

"Everyday, everyday for twenty something years, he looked me dead in the eye and he lied to me." For the past two years, Adrian's held a magnifying glass to every memory he had with his late husband. With a fine-toothed comb, he picked through everything, to find any hint of falsity. The truly fucked up part of it all, it was indistinguishable, he couldn't tell. Love and lies, they blurred.

Would Adrian ever truly know what was real and what wasn't?

"I'm not saying that being a liar means you deserve a death sentence." Adrian continues. "Lying about being....." The sentence goes unfinished, he doesn't need to say the word. They both know already. "Putting my family in harm's way...." his voice trails off again. "That does."

Here comes the part of the conversation Adrian was hoping to avoid all together. He sighs as if to buy more time to put his thoughts together. "I always knew about you, Gems," he finally says. "Not for sure, but I'm not an idiot. One witch plus another witch equals....." He gestures his hands in the direction of the only witch standing in the room. "Chances were good it was going to be you or Gabriel, if not both. But I always had my money on you."

She gripped a stake in her hand, aimed, and threw it at the dummy. It flew across the room and then missed by a foot to the right, colliding into the wall behind it. Her jaw clenched and she ran her hands over her face in frustration.

"What if I can't?" Rose asked as she glanced towards Adrian. "What if this is all I'll ever be able to do?" Negativity about herself had consumed her life. She was a good Professor. She was smart. But she was no longer good enough to survive in Port Leiry.

She blew out a breath, the strands of hair that had fallen out of her messy bun lifting up and around her face. She grabbed another stake, glared at the target, and threw it. This time, her throw was faster, placing more momentum on the wooden stake. It hit the dummy in the left thigh, just above the knee.

Rose isn't. Not yet. Sure, she's floundering, practically flapping her fins around like a desperate fish pulled out of water. Isn't that what this life is? Humans being pulled out of the safety of their world and thrown into another, one full of monsters and devils, and the humans try to beat them at their own game.

Some are better at evolving into this world than others.

Her skills are there, imbedded into her muscle and her memory, but she's got to dust them off and make them new. She runs the play again, this time, she's quicker. She's more determined. She's improving, but it's not perfect.

Nine thousand hours to go.

Adrian claps like a proud coach after an interception, but that's the only form of praise she'll get from him on this one. "Okay, okay," he comments, "Let's run it again. This time, go for the heart." He hands Rose a stake. "A stake in the thigh will wound them for a second. One second until the pull it out and they recon in two seconds." Rose knows this, he knows she knows this, but Adrian says it anyway. Typical mansplainer.

        as they pull out of the driveway, gabriel shoots off a brief, vague text to gemma about going out for a while. she sends back a picture of her at a party and gabriel’s brow furrows, begins rapidly texting back a series of questions regarding where she is, who she’s with, when she’s coming home. neither of them are all that eager to share, it seems. he powers the phone off, completely.

         it doesn’t surprise him to hear it’s a long drive, necessarily, but it does intrigue him.  “ will we get there while it’s still dark? ”  would give him a huge clue to who they’re hunting, maybe where they’re going.

He has regrets about that night, of course he does, Adrian isn't a monster. Cold? Maybe. Heartless? In some instances. Not a monster. He doesn't hunt for pleasure. He doesn't hunt for sport even. He hunts with purpose. Gael's hunt was no exception.

Though getting Gabriel involved in that night was a parenting flaw, if there ever was one. He was supposed to be back up, and hell, Gabriel was. If Adrian had involved anyone else besides Gabe, they'd ask too many questions. Who? What? How? Why? Gabe, the perfect soldier, didn't wonder. He made a choice and followed through with it.

Adrian's never let the angelic, golden exterior fool him; there is a german shepherd underneath all that golden retriever fluff.

"We'll hit Seattle after sunrise," Adrian tells Gabriel. It's an extra twelve hours in the city, but it gives the entire day to plan. To map the city and hotspots accordingly. To kill the fanged fuckers by midnight and be back on the road tomorrow morning. To return back to their home in Port Leiry, not feeling any less hollow.