***Trigger Warning***

***Racist language***

It was nearing another full moon, which made Cara nervous because she knew she wouldn't see Daniel during that time when the moon was it's fullest. She worried whether he would make it back at all, despite how strong and willful he'd proven himself to be. Logan had finally decided on something they could try to cure Daniel with. He was a cautious man and had been weary to try anything that didn't seem logical (which unfortunately excluded most "cures" that had been written about in common mythos), but he had settled on a very precise form of wolfsbane.

"These herbs were grown very high up in the Caucasus Mountains in Russia," Logan explained to Cara as he steeped the tea in the kitchen. "According to my sources it is devilishly tricky to get the conditions just right, find the exact soil, protect them from the elements, and they must be harvested during the new moon. I had to go through a very old contact of mine, who knew a man in Russia who knew someone that had done work with this other man whose been trying to grow the herbs in these conditions, and believe me getting it shipped back here was no easy task." This was true. Logan had sent her on a four-hour drive to meet the man who was holding the package for them. "All of this has been with the intent to help those with Lycanthropy, however they have had no success with the poor souls over there."

"So why are we going through all this if they've had no success?" Cara asked, indignantly. Logan patiently held up his one good hand.

"I doubt they had a subject like Daniel." He turned to her with a gentle smile. "I wish I could guarantee this would work. Odds are it probably won't, but I think it's worth a shot, and that's really the best we can do for this poor man." Logan gestured for her to take the kettle and cup he had laid out. "Let it steep for a while longer, a half an hour. Pour him one full cup and make sure he drinks it all, but slowly. This stuff is toxic and would likely make a normal man very ill, so don't be too alarmed if he has a bad reaction to it. If it doesn't cure him, I very much doubt it will kill him."

"Do you want to come down and watch how this goes?" Cara asked. Logan shook his head.

"I'm feeling a bit tired, I think I best lay down for a bit. You come get me when you have news though." Cara nodded and picked up the kettle and cup, as well as a bag of supplies she had grabbed during her trip out of town, and went down to see Daniel. They had started the kettle as soon as they saw the werewolf begin to change, and now Daniel was fully returned to his human form. He had wrapped his waist up with the tattered remains of one of the blankets in the cell. Cara tried to bring him new blankets often since the wolf made a point of ripping them up. She passed him a fresh one from the pile she'd brought earlier in the morning.

"Thanks, Cara," he said with a grin, and secured that one around his waist as well. "What's this you're bringing me today?" She set the kettle and cup down by the bars and took a seat in her chair, pulling it up close to the cell.

"That is tea, brewing with wolfsbane, that special type I told you Logan was tracking down."

"And it's suppose to cure me?" Daniel asked trying to sound skeptical, but Cara heard the hopeful eagerness.

"We can't be sure, but there's a small chance," Cara said, not wanting to bring his hopes up just to crush them. Not to get her own hopes up either.

"Well then..." Daniel said, reaching for the kettle. Cara put her hand out to stop him.

"Not just yet, Logan says it needs to steep for a half hour."

"Oh, so what should we do in the mean time?" Daniel asked, eagerness still in his voice. Cara hoped it was the same desire she had, to spend a little time together. She held up the bag she'd carried down and pulled out the newly purchased electric razor.

"I was thinking you might like a haircut? Especially since you might be rejoining society soon," she added with a nervous giggle, a laugh that Daniel joined her in.

"I certainly would appreciate a haircut," Daniel said, brushing his hand along the tangled mess of his hair. "But don't you think we're kind of jinxing ourselves with this?"

"I think it'll work or it won't, but hopefully a haircut will make you feel good either way. So here, take a seat in front of me so I can help you with this." He smiled at her and took a seat with his back to the bars just in front of her.

"Be careful not to reach your hands too far in, I don't want the wolf seizing any opportunities," he added. She was careful as she got to work. Cara was no stylist by any means, so she simply buzzed his hair down until all the knots were gone and a short mess of dark hair remains. Daniel ran his hands over his head.

"I feel like I just lost ten pounds. Feels like it did when I was in high school." He glanced back at her with a boyish grin. "Thank you." She beamed right back at his charming grin.

"How about that beard of yours?" she asked, dangling the trimmer before him. He felt around his chin, to the tangled and crooked beard that he'd grown, and nodded enthusiastically.

"I'll take care of it though," he said as she motioned forward. "Keep you out of biting distance." Cara accepted this as he took the trimmer from her hands, their fingers briefly touching. Daniel made quick work of the beard, taking it down as short as he could until only some stubble was left.

"Alright, let's see, turn around," Cara said when he was done. He stood up and turned to see her, a nervous grin on his face. He still looked a little shaggy, but Cara could see him, as he would have been outside of this horrid curse. He was a very handsome man, with a lean figure and kind, gentle features. His smile stood out easier now, that grin spreading across his cheeks.

"Wow Daniel," she said, having to take a moment to gather her words.

"That bad huh?" he joked.

"Not bad at all. Look," and she took a small hand held mirror out of the bag and handed it to him. He took a moment, with a soft smile as he examined himself in the mirror (probably for the first time in many years, Cara realized). "You look really good."

"Thanks, Cara," he beamed, and she did too. Cara thought of other moments in her life, of kissing her first girlfriend, Angel, for the first time, that deep look into the other person's eyes when you both know you want to. She felt that now with Daniel. But they were far apart and the bars stood between them. 

The moment passed. 

Daniel handed the trimmer and mirror back to Cara. "Is it your turn next?" he asked with a laugh.

"I don't think the short hair would suit me as well as it does you," Cara laughed.

"You sure? I think you could pull it off." Cara laughed more, but shook her head.

"Nah, trust me, it wouldn't look quite right. Here..." she waved him to come closer, then brushed her short curly hair up so he could see the roots. At the base of her black hair, it was white, pure white. "The rest is dyed. I normally do touch ups more often, but there's been other priorities the past couple months. I bought a kit along with the trimmer to take care of it."

"How come?" Daniel asked, genuinely curious. "I mean, I think you would look great with white hair too." A light blush came to his cheeks.

"Thanks," Cara said. "I actually thought it looked kinda cool white. I wore it that way for a while after...after what happened with my mom and Nolan. Sort of a mark to show others what I'd been through. I had pride in surviving it all. But once I started doing work with Logan, he suggested I dye it, only for discretion. Not too many darker skinned, white haired, twenty-something year olds out there. He wanted me to be more indistinguishable in the work we do."

"Makes sense," Daniel said. He started to fidget and went over to the wall, taking a seat, leaning his back on it. This tended to be how they sat when they spent time together. She could tell there was more he wanted to ask on the subject, so she waited until he found the words. "You don't have to tell me if you'd rather not, but what was it...what happened to you when you were younger? What turned your hair white? What made it so you see spirits and demons?" He got nervous again. "That is, only if you want to tell me."

Cara looked down and sat silently for a moment. Then she poured the cup of tea, it was time. She passed the cup through the bars so that it was within Daniel's reach, and he took it.

"Sip it slowly," she told him. "Not many people know the full story of what happened to me that night. Only my circle. You see Logan a while back figured out a way for all of us that do this kind of work, monster hunting, exorcisms, to stay connected, but also stay safe if any of us got compromised. We all only know a few people that know each other. My circle is Logan, Jack, Bethany, Gregory and Andie. I know a few people outside of that circle, but none of them know anyone else in the circle. And everyone else in the circle knows more people, but none of them know me. Until recently, Andie didn't even know of Logan, Gregory and Jack, but she was a connection of Bethany and mine." Cara paused as Daniel took his first sip of tea. He made a repulsed look but kept it down.

"Make sure to finish all of that," she instructed. "My point with all that is...I want you to be in my circle. You're part of what's going on, and I'll tell you everything that happened. I try not to go to these places often, but I want you to know."

They locked eyes. Cara took a deep breath.

"It was fifteen years ago, when I was fourteen, we were living in this house...this horrible place.  The house was haunted. I was certain of that, even back then. Well, pretty certain. Only I didn't know then what I know now, and neither did my mom or step-dad. I lived with them and my little brother, Nolan, who was seven. 

"There were many things...off about that place, like the creaks and the bugs.  It was an older house, so some creaks were to be expected. I accepted that the porch steps bent slightly under my weight, and that the floorboards in the living room groaned with each pass over them. It was the creaks late at night that told me something was off. 

"The house would grow deadly silent at night once everyone was in bed. Neither street noises nor the wind seemed to reach through the walls, which was odd enough on its own. But then the house would breathe. This was the best way I could think of it. A gentle crick cracking would start from the roof and stretch along the walls, through the upper floorboards, down the stairs, through the main floor and settling in the basement. And then they started moving."

Cara paused for a moment, clocking the curiosity etched across Daniel's face.

"Don't forget to drink the tea," she reminded him, and he took a small sip in response.

"I wasn't sure yet who they were - that would come years later, but I was sure there had to be someone moving around the house at night. The creaks in the floors and scratches from the walls took on a very human feel, sounding as if it was a person doing it.

"I would cautiously peek my head out of the bedroom door some nights to see if I could spot the source of the noise. Sometimes it was my mom or Greg (my step-dad) or Nolan. But most of the time it was no one. They didn't want to be caught.

"I had brought these concerns to my mom, multiple times, but it all came down to the same thing for her and Greg, it's an old house, there's bound to be a few things off with it. They were both far too stubborn to admit they had bought a shit hole."

Daniel chuckled a bit at that, and then took another drink, grimacing as he did so.

"Taste bad?"

"Getting worse with each sip," he laughed. "But I'll manage. Go on."

Cara continued, delving back into the unpleasant memories. "The bugs were far harder for my mom and Greg to ignore. At first there had only been a few more flies than seemed normal, and more spiders hiding in the corners. Mom assured me that the flies would die off as it got later in the fall, but they only appeared to keep multiplying. The flies along with the creaks would keep me up at night with their incessant buzzing, always loudest at night. Then we had started finding the cockroaches, which finally spurred the parental figures into action. Exterminators were called and we all took a much needed weekend vacation from the house.

"That had given us a temporary reprieve from the bugs, though they appeared to find their way back to the house soon after. Mom and Greg felt they simply needed to speed up some of the repairs they had in mind, help keep the bugs out permanently, but I doubted that would make much difference. They weren't natural.

"I had been in the shower after school one day, washing my hair, when these words came flashing through my mind, Don't forget to wash behind your ears."  Daniel looked a little confused, so she tried to explained further.  "You know, didn't your parents ever say that to you as a little kid at bath time?"

"I'm not sure that they did," he shrugged.

"Doesn't really matter.  The point is those words came rushing back to my mind then, hissing in my ear. I couldn't refuse the command, was too afraid of what would happen if I did. I reached my fingers behind one ear and felt something. That something moved as I ripped it off and tossed it to the floor of the tub. I saw this giant earwig thrash for a moment before being swept into the drain. 

"After letting out a small cry, I reached behind the other ear, and tossed two more down the drain, slipping as I did. Luckily I only bruised my elbow in the fall. I was far more concerned by those earwigs, where they came from, how they got there.  It was all becoming far too much to handle.

"It hadn't been any of that stuff though that had truly convinced me the house was haunted. It was this feeling that would seep into my dreams as I slept. That they were watching me. I would be pulled awake and know with terrifying certainty that as soon as I opened my eyes I would see them watching from the far corner. But when I did there was never anyone there. The feeling would pass, until I fell asleep again.

"As the months went on, that sense got stronger. And they were no longer in the corner. They were in front of the door. And then they were in the middle of the room. And then at the foot of my bed. And then beside the bed. And then right beside me so that I could feel hot breath on my face.

"I had cried to my mom about this, but she had simply assured me it was all in my head. That the stress of the move and starting at a new school was just taking a toll. Maybe that made sense, I had tried to convince myself, but there was something on mom's face, something that said she wasn't sleeping well either. Greg looked exhausted too.

"Actually, it was only Nolan that seemed to be doing okay. Maybe he was just too young to really notice all the strange things going on," Cara said with a shrug. 

Maybe, a voice in her head nagged.

She shoved that thought down, continuing the story.  "I hated being in that house, so I tried to spend as much time away as I could, spending a lot of nights at my girlfriend, Angel's house. Her full name was Angelica Hudson, but Angel had been a little nickname I'd given her." Cara smiled softly to herself, before glancing awkwardly at Daniel, whose expression hadn't changed. "I'm bisexual," she felt compelled to throw in, and then brushed ahead to the more important points of the story. "Her parents thought we were just friends having sleep overs, but one night her mom caught us fooling around and kicked me out. It was the night before Halloween, Devil's night.

"When I was approaching my house, I saw one of the lights on through the window. It was later than anyone should have been up, and it was in Nolan's room. At first I was just confused, but as I got closer it didn't look like the normal bedroom light. It had this orange glow, and I started to think it was a fire. 

"But then I saw this figure in the window. And it was looking at me." Cara glanced at Daniel, to see how he was taking it so far. His eyes were fixed on her, as he took gentle sips of his tea. The taste didn't seem to be bothering him anymore.

"That demon Logan and I summoned the other day, its name was Yeqon. It was the one staring out my brother's window, grinning at me. I didn't know it was a demon then, but I knew it was something monstrous. I could see it's eyes, those dark swirling pits that descended into nothingness." Cara shook her head. "I didn't really have a chance to figure out what I was thinking in that moment. Maybe a sensible teenager would have run for help, or started screaming to wake the whole neighbourhood. But the only thought that came rushing to my mind was that I had to save Nolan from that monster.

"I ran into my house, and some of the details are fuzzy after that, but I'll tell you what I know for sure. It felt hot in the house, like there was a fire, but there wasn't. I ran up the stairs...no, I crawled, my legs felt too weak. I got to Nolan's room and the knob was hot, but again no fire. It was something the demons had summoned with them, a piece of their realm. I opened the door..." Cara paused to gather herself, she realized she was shaking, and tears were threatening to flow out if she continued. She looked at Daniel and that gave her strength.

"I opened the door and found my mom and step-dad. They were strung up by their feet. Holes had been made in the plaster ceiling, and they were hanging from the wooden support beams. The ropes were tied tight around their ankles, and then extended to tie their hands behind their backs as well. Their throats had been cut, all the way around, opening both arteries. The blood was pouring out, but not onto the floor. There was a pool."

Daniel spoke up softly, "A pool?" Cara nodded and wiped away some tears.

"A kiddie pool, like the type you inflate in your backyard in the summer. It was Nolan's. It had these stupid cartoon flowers on it. Blood was dripping over the smiley faces on those flowers. The base of the pool was full...full of their blood. There was no one else in the room. I..." She shook her head once more. "I'm not really sure what happened next. The neighbours found me sobbing in the middle of the street. I was covered in blood, my mom's blo-" She stopped herself, she didn't need to go there. "The police came and did their work, set out looking for Nolan and the killer, but of course that case remains unsolved to this day.

"I was sent off to a different state to live with my dad and his wife and her kids. My dad meant well enough, but he didn't know how to help me at that point. I was broken. The nightmares felt constant, whether I was asleep or not. I spent a bit of time institutionalized. There was a lot of therapy, and that lasted a long time. And there were a lot of pills. That helped for a bit, numbed me beyond conscious thought. Eventually I was deemed ready to re-enter society. I was fifteen then. They had me repeat the ninth grade, but that didn't really matter. It was a new school, so it was all going to be new anyway. My hair had grown in fully white by then. My step-mom spent a lot of time urging me to dye it, to be a little more normal. I kept it as it was though, partially as my own stubborn 'fuck you,' but mostly because I didn't want to pretend things were normal. They weren't normal, they were never going to be, and I didn't want to hide that.

"School was shit. I avoided the other kids. The ones who knew rumours of what had happened, pitied me. Some that didn't bullied me. Some guys tried to fuck me, cross some weird white-haired bi-racial fetish off their list. I broke a guy's nose once for playing with my hair. Teachers had only so much patience and didn't care for me much after that. They didn't want to be around me anymore than I wanted to be around them.

"Most of that stuff just didn't matter anymore. Not after what I'd seen. And what I was still seeing. After that night, I could see spirits around. I didn't realize it at first. I'd see a man in a very outdated suit and just think he was going for some strange hipster look. But it wasn't long before I started seeing the one's touting grisly fatal wounds, or the one's crying out in pain, while everyone else around ignored them. I made the mistake of talking about these experiences with my therapist, and that only brought on a stronger round of drugs. Eventually I learned to give them the answers they wanted to hear, to acknowledge my confusion. But I could always still see them just as clearly.

"Another year went by, so I guess that would have made me sixteen. The drugs kept me mildly numb and hazy, but stable. I went to school, did my work, went home, did the family dinner thing, went to my room. I tried to limit my interactions with people. Actually, I ended up trying to chat more with the spirits I would find. Most couldn't carry a conversation, or were too frightened to make sense, but some were interesting. They were the closest I had to friends at that point, but they scared me a bit too, especially the ones soaked in blood and screaming for help. I thought I might kill myself, and honestly if I wasn't able to see the pain those spirits were in, I really might have.

"But then there was this kid, some boy in the year ahead of me. I looked at him one day and felt this horrible pain in my chest. There was something off about him, but I didn't understand what. I watched him for the next couple weeks after that, stalked him really. I was acting strange, but so was he. He wasn't talking to anyone, he wasn't smiling ever, wasn't eating his lunch. And all this time I felt this tightness growing in my chest.

"After a while I resolved that I needed to reach out to him. I thought maybe, just maybe, he was like me. Maybe not seeing things like me, but at the very least, he was depressed and lonely, and maybe thinking of ending things. I was very anti-social by that point but I hoped to do my best. 

"So one day I sit down with him in the cafeteria. He doesn't acknowledge me, but then I see it. It's not his face looking at me, but a different one, a face floating overtop of his. It's this rotten skeletal face. It opens its mouth. The tongue is black and made of worms, wrapping around each other. It makes some deep rasping sounds, the first time I hear demonic speech, but I understand it because I feel it. The thing is saying, leave me, nigger whore. And then this boy underneath says the same in English.

"I didn't understand any of what was happening, but it made something in me snap. I screamed out and grabbed at the skeletal face, grabbed the boy's face too in the process, but I could feel the rotting skin of this thing in my hands. I climbed onto the table and tackled them both to the ground. I started trying to pull at this demon, trying to rip it free from this kid (not that I understood any of that). I just wanted this horrid creature gone. I was screaming the whole time. Other kids started trying to pull me off, but they couldn't. It took one of the larger teachers to restrain me, and I saw the skeletal face laughing at me as I was pulled away.

"I was suspended and my dad put me on house arrest. My therapist was called in and once again they were talking about institutionalizing me. Might have happened if Logan hadn't arrived a couple weeks later. 

"The boy's parents had contacted a local priest for help when they had started to see that something seriously wrong was going on with their son, something beyond normal medical help, and it happened to be one who knew of Logan, and so he had come down and taken care of it, sent the demon back to Hell. In the process he had also been told the story of this girl at the boy's school that had attacked him. Logan had found the story intriguing and did a little digging...on me.

"He showed up at my door one evening with some fake brochures he'd made to give my dad and step-mom. It advertised him as running a special after-school program for kids that had been through traumatic experiences, helping to counsel them and get them to work through their issues. He had all the proper identification and credentials to go along with that (Bethany is a wiz at that stuff). So Logan sat with me and my dad and step-mom, and talked about all these wonderful activities his program does, focusing on real-life skills, in an environment with people who have been through similar experiences.

"Once my dad and step-mom were feeling comfortable, he asked for a few minutes to speak with me privately. I'm sure you can imagine I was loathing this man up until this point, this happy-go-lucky, positive, turn-your-life-around fucker, but once he was sure we weren't being over heard, he looked at me very seriously and said, 'I know the truth of what you've been through. That boy at your school was possessed by a demon. You knew that didn't you?' I told him yes, and what the demon looked like when he asked that. He asked me what else I saw, and I told him about the spirits. He told me he knew a fair bit about those sorts of things, but that he couldn't see like I could. He told me what he was really there for, that if I wanted, he would teach me what he could in secret, and once I had finished high school, I could work with him, fighting demons. He let me think things over, but there was no need, my mind was made up instantly. If there was a chance I could figure out what had killed my mom, what had taken Nolan, I was going to jump at it.

"We met once a week after school for the first while. The schedule changed as time went on, since Logan still had other places in the country he needed to be, but he always stayed in touch with me. Logan went to great lengths to deceive my dad, fake workbooks, a fake website. Finally once he deemed me to be ready, we went back to the house. 

"I could feel it through my chest then, there was a demon in that house. Logan knew the house was haunted too though, and he didn't need my sight to tell. He said there was a deep stain in the house, a deep evil that had been dwelling there: a demon for sure, two in fact, he thought. But I only saw one still there. If there was another, it had moved on.

"It grinned at me out of the shadows, out of passing glances in the mirrors. It didn't have a true body. It had bonded itself with the house. I asked if we could just burn the house down to get rid of this demon, but Logan said it would still cling to the foundations. We needed to learn its name he said, and then we could expel it."

Daniel suddenly made a heavy groaning noise and his hands went to his stomach.

"Daniel, are you okay?" Cara asked. He nodded curtly.

"Fine. I think the tea may be taking some kind of effect. Keep going, I'd like to hear the end."

"Well there isn't a ton more to tell. Logan and I performed; I guess what you'd call a séance. We spoke to the demon. It tried to break me. It talked about my mom and what they'd done to her." Cara paused for a moment to catch her breath. She had stayed strong then and she stayed strong now, but the memories still hurt. "It talked about Nolan, telling me twisted things they'd done to him. Perverted things." She shook her head. Daniel clutched his gut tighter. "Logan still managed to get its name though: Yeqon. Watcher, it called itself at first. When the demon in the forest said that I knew it was the same.

"Logan bought that house, through some contacts he had. The demons were gone, but he had it torn down all the same, for safe measure, and I think mostly to try and give me closure (whatever that's worth). I haven't been back since. Don't think I ever will. What's past is past." She was done her story and a glance at Daniel told him that. He cried out and folded over into fetal position.

"Daniel!" she cried out, standing up and hugging the bars. "What's happening? Tell me what you're feeling." But she could already see it. Hairs were sprouting on his arms, tiny droplets of blood trickling through.

"I don't think the tea worked, Cara, and I think the wolf wants me to know," Daniel moaned.

"You can fight through it, Daniel. Don't let it take you." He shook his head, grating his forehead on the cement floor.

"I'm sorry, you don't have to watch this."

"I'm staying here with you," she said firmly, even though the sight of Daniel's bones beginning to stretch and pop hurt her too.

"Cara," he said softly, his voice growing raspy. "What was it that happened in that room? What don't you want to remember?" She wasn't sure she could say the full truth of it. For so long she had told herself that it wasn't real, even Logan had said that part couldn't have happened; a traumatic hallucination, perhaps forced on her by the demons themselves. But she would tell him what she could.

"I saw...I thought I saw Nolan's hand, slipping into the pool and disappearing. I jumped into the pool to try and save him. I...I was losing my mind." She gripped the bars tight. Claws were pressing out from Daniel's fingers and toes.

"What did you see?" Daniel asked, his voice closer to a growl now.

"I saw Hell," she admitted. Maybe Daniel heard, maybe not. The transformation took him completely. Cara turned and left the basement. She didn't need to see the wolf. And Daniel was no longer there.