[Wednesday POV]
My steps carried me deeper into the crypts, leaving Enid with Tyler and the decision she must make. It did not matter which path she chose; his death that day was already carved into fate like a name etched into wet cement.
There is a minor irritation in that inevitability.
I had intended Tyler to be more than a corpse in waiting. He could have been useful, an obedient pet, a blunt instrument for experiments, a distraction when boredom gnawed too loudly.
When I discovered his master was Marilyn Thornhill, I traced her to a laboratory and took her notes. Her serum, plant-based and distilled from Nightshade, improved control over the Hyde. I read her methods, mapped her errors, and rewrote the formula on cleaner principles. In my version the Hyde would accept a new master without confusion or rebellion.
But then she and her pet made the fatal mistake of touching the few people Perseus still bothered to tolerate. Their interference shattered everything. They signed their own death certificates.
I glance at the stone faces and the carved names as I walk.
Should I have asked Perseus to spare Tyler? Or should I proceed, honoring my calculus and ignoring his rare sentiment? He never explicitly ordered their deaths, yet I assumed it, knowing him.
My fingers trailed across carved lips that had never kissed anything but dust. Overthinking now is useless. I would see what Enid chose, mercy or instinct, and adjust accordingly.
My thoughts drift to Enid, uninvited, yet persistent.
Seems she isn't so simple as I thought. The way she stepped from the wrecked car made me re-evaluate her.
The door on her side had been crushed inward, the metal twisted like tinfoil, and yet she had forced it open as though she had forgotten the limits of her body. She likely did it absentmindedly and forgot it immediately, yet anyone who studied her kind would have drawn a few conclusions.
That strength could not be normal. It might be a gift, one of the rare mutations in werewolves that enhanced speed, power, or other abilities. But such force? Impossible.
The second possibility was that she was no longer an Omega. A Beta perhaps, one who followed an Alpha and shared its power through the bond that strengthened them in combat. Still, that too seemed impossible. Perseus would never allow her to live under someone else's leash.
So, the last and most likely guess remained, she was an Alpha. Something that stood at the peak of her race. A rarity so extreme that only a few dozen existed worldwide, unknown even to most Outcasts.
Knowing Perseus, that possibility was almost certain. Why else would he have accepted her if she had been just another ordinary werewolf?
A small mechanical sound interrupted my catalog of theories, a faint click that belonged to metal.
I turned my head.
At the end of the corridor stood Marilyn Thornhill, her smile too sweet for the damp air, a pistol steady in her hands.
"Stop right there, Wednesday," she said. Her confidence dripped like perfume, cheap. "I would rather not stain my shoes, but I will if I must."
I met her gaze and forgot to blink.
"Then you should have worn red," I said.
Her lips curled, but the smile did not reach her eyes.
"Still that sharp tongue," she said softly. "You really should learn when to keep it sheathed."
I tilted my head, ignoring her remark. "Why this ritual?" I asked.
It was the one thing I had never managed to understand. I had already found who was behind it, uncovered her past and her obsession with the Addams family, but why target me this way? Why not kill me directly? My father had killed her brother. Logic would have demanded my life in return, not the resurrection of a corpse.
She turned, brushing dust from the front of her long coat and revealing a dagger strapped to her hip.
"My family was torn apart by your kind," she said. "You walk around with your freakish powers and dark little hobbies, and the world bends for you. But Crackstone knew the truth. This land was meant to be pure."
"Crackstone was a genocidal lunatic with a god complex," I muttered. "You really should have aimed higher when choosing role models."
She smiled, unbothered. "I am not reviving a man. I am restoring a vision, a future without monsters. And thanks to your blood…"
She moved toward me, each step careful and deliberate, the gun steady in one hand while the other brushed a drop from my temple with her thumb.
"…we can finally finish what he started. And you cannot stop me."
The moment she touched me, I saw an opening. Her attention wavered for half a breath, long enough. I caught her wrist, twisted it, and with a fluid motion summoned the knife from the ring.
The knife flashed once in the dim light.
Blood sprayed across the crypt walls and down my coat, hot and heavy. Thornhill stumbled back, a red line blooming across her throat as she dropped the gun. She collapsed without a sound, her eyes still wide with disbelief.
I wiped my blade clean on her sleeve and whispered,
"I didn't stop you. I outlived you."
The words echoed softly, swallowed by the crypt's damp air.
Something was off.
I turned toward the altar. It stood beneath flickering candles, carved from dark stone and covered in symbols. I stepped closer. The faint scent of rot mixed with wax filled the air. My fingers brushed over the surface of the altar, tracing the engraved lines.
I drew the knife again and let a small trail of blood fall onto the stone. The drops hissed on contact, spreading through the grooves like veins awakening after sleep.
The air thickened. The candles flickered violently, shadows stretching and twisting across the walls. The coffin in the center of the chamber began to tremble.
Stone cracked. Dust spilled like breath.
From within, something moved. The lid slid aside with a low groan. A hand, bone white and trembling, clawed its way into the open.
Crackstone.
His form rose slowly, body creaking like an ancient door forced open after centuries. Fragments of rotted flesh clung to bone, and his eyes burned with that same self-righteous fire that refused to die.
Before he could fully emerge, the knife found his chest. His mouth opened in disbelief, a soundless protest caught in his throat.
Light poured from the wound, cracks spreading across his skin, through his eyes, down his arms like shattered glass.
He looked at me as if trying to understand why the world had betrayed him again.
Then his body broke apart, piece by piece, dissolving into dust that shimmered once before vanishing into the still air.
The altar dimmed. The air settled. The crypt fell silent again.
I stood still, the knife heavy in my hand, watching the dust that filled the coffin.
Something was off.
I could not feel the thrill. Everything had been so easy that it only made me bored.
Through it all, I had never risked my life once, because I knew he was always near, protecting me.
This entire mystery, the only time I truly felt alive, was when I lied to Thornhill and Tyler, just to watch how they scrambled to hide the clues, how panic slipped into their eyes when they realized I was so close to the truth. The rest of it? Boring.
Maybe if I had not developed my powers to this extent, trying too hard to match his level, I could have found some joy in it. Fumbling through the dark, losing myself in a web of clues, falling into a few traps, bleeding a little for the thrill of crawling back out again. Maybe then it would have been worth it.
Maybe there could have been more victims. Perhaps even Crackstone could have earned a better ending than dying pathetically in a crypt. He could have reached the school, killed a few students before crumbling apart. That would have at least made the story more entertaining.
In the end, I didn't have as much fun as I would have liked, and that was entirely his fault.
"Perseus, come out. I know you are here."
Percy leapt down from somewhere above and landed beside me with a soft thud. He looked around, then at me, and smiled.
There was a severed head tied to his wrist, swinging slightly with each movement. I raised a brow.
"Thornhill's brother?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "I wanted to make a grand entrance, but she is already dead."
He unhooked the head and tossed it aside. It rolled once across the stone floor before coming to rest near the altar. Then he looked back at me, the same quiet smile still there.
I tightened my grip on the knife still slick with Thornhill's blood.
What if we were never together?
What if I ended it now, one clean cut and the thrill returned, the world burned bright again, and everything dull in me finally woke up?
The thought lingered like a pulse in my skull. It was not fear, it was curiosity.
What would I truly lose if our paths had never crossed at all?
[Flashback]
I came home from school that day, my bag heavier with irritation than books. He was in his room, as always, drawing.
He didn't have to go to school. He didn't have to sit through whispers or laughter or the dull ache of being observed like something on display.
There was a knife on the table, one of Mother's smaller ones, left from some forgotten experiment. My fingers closed around it before I could think. I walked toward him, slow, deliberate. The sound of my steps was the only thing breaking the silence.
He noticed me but didn't move. He only turned slightly, that small, infuriatingly peaceful smile still on his lips, unconcerned by the blade in my hand.
"Am I weird?" I asked suddenly. I was not sure why. Perhaps I only wanted to hear it from someone whose words could matter to me, even if I pretended they did not.
He tilted his head, the light from the window catching his eyes. The smile stayed, but there was a flicker, confusion, not understanding why I had even asked.
"I should hope so," he said. "It makes life more interesting."
His words landed quietly. Simple, unbothered, honest.
I looked at his childish face, perfect symmetry, unshaken calm, and something in me crumbled. The knife slipped from my hand and…
[Flashback ends]
… clattered to the floor.
I stepped closer to him. My hands found his without command, and his fingers intertwined with mine as if they had been waiting.
We began to move, a dance, unspoken and instinctive. The same dance I had seen my parents share whenever the mood took them. The world outside it ceased to exist, swallowed by the rhythm of steps and the steady beating of our hearts.
The moonlight crept through a crack in the crypt ceiling, cutting through the dark until it reached him. It framed his face in silver, his eyes, his calm, the way he looked at me as though nothing about the blood on my body mattered.
It felt like looking at the end of a story I did not want to finish.
And if I had the choice, in the story we became, to never meet him, I would always renounce it.
Because to live without him, only that would be torture.
************
Author Note:
Big thanks to Anselius for pointing out a few parts that could be optimized.
Also, I started reading other fanfics again while waiting for the bus... and now I remember why I began writing my own.
Sometimes I wonder if some authors actually think about what they write, or if they just type whatever comes to mind, throw in a bit of R18, and then spam their Patreon without caring about the story's quality...