"Accept the things to which fate binds you."

- Marcus Aurelius

                                                                                ***

Galloway woke up to the soft clicking of someone picking a lock. The room was swathed in shadow, dim yellow from a nearby exterior light edging around the curtain the only illumination. With effort, she rolled onto her side and got to her hands and knees, then retched, dark blood forming a little pool between her braced hands.

The clicking ceased for a moment, then started up again with greater intensity. Muscling the lock rather than finessing it. Her body shook as she attempted to crawl to the other side of the room. She had a dim memory of a demon throwing her gun into the far corner.

She knew it was probably a useless effort. It was too far away, and she was still too sick.

She coughed, moaning when she heard a small crack from her sternum. Galloway tried to drag herself farther from the door when a deeper click sounded through the room, signaling success for whatever was trying to get in.

Galloway leaned against the bed, spitting blood to the side when a stray tooth morphed into a fang and punctured the wall of her cheek. The door finally swung open, and she wasn't too terribly surprised to find herself looking into the face of the Hunter.

Caleb's eyes carefully scanned the rest of the room before he stormed past her to kick the bathroom door all the way open. When he was satisfied, he came back and crouched down in front of her.

Bitter coffee eyes bore into her, and she found nothing but distaste and horror in their dark depths. It honestly struck her as a little funny, the way he looked at her. Like she wasn't a person. It wasn't surprising, but it was humorous. She even managed a small laugh before the bones in her shoulders strained, shifting against ligament and tendon. The connective tissue popped off the bone, then reattached. She fell to the side, gasping, her eyelids fluttering as her bones fell back into place.

"Where's the Hellhound?"

The question was stone cold, and she looked up to find him watching her impassively. When he saw he had her attention, he held up his gun and gestured to the hideous bruising all down the side of his face. "I want to make sure there's no hard feelings."

With another ragged inhale, she asked, "What's a Hellhound?"

Caleb reached down and fisted his hand in the hair just above her ear. "You know good and fucking well what a Hellhound is," he hissed, yanking her back to a sitting position. "Your kind work with them almost exclusively."

She gagged, then dry-heaved, but nothing came up. Not even bile. The spasm cut off her breathing as her body tried desperately to find some way to rid itself of the virus rampaging through her. Galloway coughed violently, succeeding in tearing some of her hair out when he didn't release her.

Something warm and slick splashed across her lips. She brought her hand up to lightly touch her face. Red coated her fingers, and a massive pain exploded through her skull, blood gushing from her nose.

Caleb didn't seem to care as he shook her roughly. "Where is he?"

"Gone!" she rasped. Her eyes had closed of their own accord as she waited for the ache in her head to dissipate. Tears that had nothing to do with the havoc in her skull prickled at her eyes. "They took him," she whispered. "They took him back to Hell."

Now he did let her go, though she couldn't know if it was because of shock or unbelief. She cracked an eye open to find he was still inches away from her. He frowned, eyebrows pulling together sharply as he looked around the room.

His frown deepened when he found the streak of black blood—now dry—and the ruined devil's trap. Galloway's head lolled back against the edge of the mattress as the headache receded, the gush turning to a more manageable trickle.

Slowly, her words stilted as claws began to burst free of the skin under her split nails, she said, "You know...what Collectors are?"

Caleb's head tilted, making him look like a curious crow. His eyes wandered over her and he stood up. She coughed, her teeth rattling with every burst. The claws retracted. Miniature tremors started to run through her muscles.

A small gasp escaped when she found herself flying into the air. Her ascension came to a brief halt, and her head rested against his shoulder.

"Yeah. Ran into one a few years back. So I know how to kill you." He dumped her unceremoniously onto the nearest bed.

Galloway moaned when she landed on her bad shoulder. The small bones in her fingers lengthened, then cracked when they couldn't find room to grow out. She rolled to her better side to find him giving her an unsympathetic look.

"It takes a little effort and some creativity, but I don't even need silver bullets."

She tried to laugh, but her throat was too tight with pain. "Then why haven't you done it?" she croaked, then paused when he frowned. "If you're gonna kill me, then kill me," she said with a little more force. "I hurt too much to give a damn. So quit dicking around!"

Galloway closed her eyes, clenching her teeth when her right femur rolled in its socket, trying to accommodate a more wolfish posture. She could feel it straining as the bone turned, then relaxed when it settled back into its proper place, panting. Her gaze flicked up just in time to catch the surprise that ran through his eyes. 

He tucked a wayward strand of hair back. "I don't really go in for unjustified murder. I want to make sure I need to kill you before I do. I'm not sure if the Hound not being here works in your favor or not."

She snorted, tasting blood as her teeth loosened for the hundredth time, bigger fangs trying to grow in their place. When her teeth had settled back into their normal spot, she said, "You're a Hunter, honey. Somewhere, sometime, you killed someone or something that didn't deserve killing."

He smiled grimly, but even in her misery she didn't miss the way his mouth thinned. He tapped the gun's barrel against his thigh. "Who says you don't deserve killing?" he asked.

"Absolutely no one," Galloway admitted, watching as he blinked rapidly. "I'm more a monster than anything you've ever seen before, kid. I've been killing for decades now."

He blinked once, then again before rubbing a hand over his mouth. His eyebrows drew together, and she started to wonder at his intelligence.

"Huh." The Hunter cocked his head, then sat on the other bed, making her have to turn a little to see him. The bite on her shoulder screamed and she swore she could feel the flesh moving, knitting itself back together, sealing the sickness in.

After a moment, he said, "I was kind of expecting you to convince me not to kill you. Most people—well, things, in your case—tend to beg at this point."

"Sorry to disappoint you," she muttered, beginning to shake again. She barely managed to groan, "Hold that thought."

Another of those blinding seizures wrapped around her. Her body went rigid, flailing against the mattress. Her back arched until it felt like her spine would snap, and her heart stopped beating for a moment.

Then it was over and she lay listlessly against the comforter, sweat streaming into her hair. She took in a long, slow breath, her muscles trembling with the residue of the attack. When she could muster the energy to do it, she looked at Caleb with dull eyes. "You can't scare me," she managed. "If you're going to do it, do it. If not, leave. Just go away and let me suffer in peace."

"Why'd they take him?" he asked. He cocked an eyebrow. "If they actually did."

She flinched when she realized that he was talking about Sirius. Galloway closed her eyes, then immediately opened them when she saw how that silver wire had cut through his skin all over again. Panic and despair were starting to nudge at the edges of her mind.

Caleb prodded her leg with the gun, making her whimper. "I asked a question."

Turning his head with sudden interest at her reaction, he inspected her leg. When she still didn't answer, his hand flashed out like a striking snake and she screamed when he grabbed her leg just under the knee, twisting it to the side. 

"Looks like your leg's broken," he said calmly.

"Go...screw yourself," she gasped, blackness sparkling around the edges of her vision.

Caleb tightened his fingers, then let go, standing up. Warily, she watched as he walked over to the door and locked it. He turned back to her. Running a hand through his hair, he sighed. "Look, we can get ugly about this, or you can just answer my questions and I can kill you clean."

She spit in his general direction, blood and saliva mixing into a sticky glob. Weakly, she curled her fingers towards herself. "Let's see what you got, kiddo."

He sighed, sitting on the bed next to her. She tilted her head, smiling a little. Caleb snarled and she was slammed back against the wall, his fingers biting into her throat. Her smile slid to a sneer as he placed the barrel of the gun against her temple.

Staring directly into her eyes, he said, "This won't kill you. You can actually heal up from a head shot with enough time. I made that mistake with the last Collector. But it will hurt."

Her smile came back. She was pretty sure he was lying—a bullet to the brain would most likely kill her. "Let's try it and see."

Caleb's mouth twitched to the side, dissatisfied by her reaction. The metal of the gun felt icy cold against her fever-hot skin. He let go of her, sitting back. He rubbed a hand over his mouth and she chuckled. "Aw, poor baby. Doesn't have the stomach to carve an answer out of me."

Even as she said it, she wondered why he did seem so hesitant to hurt her. Most Hunters didn't mind dishing out a little pain to things like her when they got the chance.

He stood and took a step away from her. Giving her a disgusted look, he said, "Lady, you got problems."

"You have no idea." She sighed, watching in relief as the cracks in her nails started to seal themselves. A sure sign that the virus was beginning to recede.

She watched in silence as Caleb paced back and forth for a second, then sat up a little straighter when he turned back to her. He looked at the bloody bandages on her shoulder. "Maybe I'll just kill you once you turn. Easier to kill a werewolf than a Collector anyway."

Another fit of cold overtook her and through chattering teeth, she said, "I'll have t-to disappoint y-you again. I'm n-not turning."

"You were bit."

"Because you didn't just shoot the damn thing," she snarled. She spit another glob of coagulated blood. "Collectors can't turn into werewolves, dumbass. We just get sick. So this," she paused and gestured around the room before continuing, "this is all thanks to you. Because you were too slow on the draw, cowboy."

"You think we can stop with the cute nicknames?" Caleb asked dryly. He ran his tongue across his teeth. "Where is he? For real. Even if I don't kill you, he's dying. Tonight."

"Sore loser," Galloway muttered, looking meaningfully at the side of his face where Sirius had clocked him.

Caleb sneered. "Not quite that petty. He's a Hellhound. Baddest of the bad. I'm just doing a public service killing him. It being a little personal sweetens it, though."

"Trust me. He's doing a lot worse than dying right now." She looked away from him, blinking hard. Her breath started coming a little faster when she tried to think about why they would have taken him. It choked her when she thought about what they could be doing to him.

The Hunter was silent for a long time. She looked over when she heard the creak of springs to find him sitting on the bed. He stared at her, then asked, "Care to explain?"

"Not even a little." She sat up straighter as the aching started to leach out of her bones. "But since you asked so nice, maybe I'll answer anyway."

He rolled his eyes as she sneered. "If that was me asking nice can't you imagine what it would be like if I was mad?"

She snorted, then rubbed at the blood that had started to dry on her chin. "I think we've established you don't have the teeth to back up that bark of yours, sweetheart."

As soon as the last word was out of her mouth, she sank her teeth into her lip. A stabbing pain that had nothing to do with the lycanthropy virus was starting to make itself known in her chest. With an almost silent moan, she looked down and finally sighed. "After what went down in the park, we were going to just haul ass out of town. We got attacked by some demons. I was sick from the bite and Sirius got...recalled."

Caleb narrowed his eyes. "Recalled?" Then he quirked an eyebrow. "Sirius?"

"That's the nicest way of saying he got dragged back to Hell and is probably getting turned into fish-bait right now," she snapped.

Now he laughed. "Well, good fucking riddance."

Galloway turned her face away from him, not allowing him to see the small flash of agony that brought on. She closed her eyes and lay her head back on the blood and sweat-soaked pillow. "Can you just leave me now?" she asked quietly. "Or kill me? Or what-the-hell-ever you plan on doing here? I'm just done, all right?"

She started to cough—big, hacking gusts of air—as her lungs attempted to remove the blood that had leaked into them throughout the illness. Leaning over the side of the bed, she gagged as the clot was removed. She spit again, the blood dark and shiny against the pale carpet.

Galloway lay there on her stomach, exhausted. Recovery was almost as bad as the actual sickness.

Her eyes started to fall shut, only to fly back open when he gathered her hair and tied it back. She scrambled sideways, not wanting him to touch her and he held his hands up in surrender. She stared at him. "Why are you still here?"

"What's your name?" he asked, catching her off guard. There was something strange and wistful in the way he asked the question.

"What?" she asked blankly. His brown eyes were inquisitive, but guarded. With a sigh, she said, "Does it matter?"

"It might."

Too wiped out to play any more games with this lunatic, she said, "Galloway."

"Proper Irish name," he observed, surprising her. "Americanized version of Galway, right?"

Shaking her head in bewilderment, she shrugged. "Maybe. That's what my parents said anyway."

"Parents?"

It was almost insulting how surprised he looked. She held his gaze, trying desperately not to think about what they could be doing to Sirius right now. Finally, when the shocked silence had stretched too far, she rolled her eyes. The balls felt gritty in their sockets.

"I was human, you know," she said with no small amount of venom, "once upon a time. Still am. A little bit, at least."

Now he looked down, the color draining from his skin. Quietly, he said, "Human."

"Aw, don't go second-guessing yourself now," she mocked. With a sideways smirk, she added, "Most of the things you've killed used to be human."

"You said you're still a little human now." Caleb rubbed at the back of his neck, and she watched as he seemed to wage a silent war with himself.

Galloway wondered what was so difficult for him here. If their positions had been reversed, she wouldn't have had any qualms about killing him. Frowning, she wondered if maybe he didn't know as much about Collectors as he thought he did. "I just mean I still have my Soul," she said finally. "Human is probably a questionable term."

Now he shook his head. "Do you want to die?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. But I'm starting to think that you aren't gonna be the one to put me in the ground."

Caleb turned his face away, the muscles in his neck and jaw taut. She gnawed on her lip, quickly stopping when the chapped, split skin complained. Pursing her lips, she narrowed her eyes at the Hunter. "You didn't plan on killing me at all, did you?"

He ignored her and walked across the room, his attention caught by something on the ground. He bent down and picked up her gun before sitting once more on the bed. With practiced ease, he ejected the magazine and stared down at the silver bullets there.

She tried again. "Why did you come back here? If you were going to kill me, you would have just killed me. What are you doing here? What are you waiting for?"

"Just shut up for two seconds," he snapped, his eyes going to the devil's trap in front of the door.

Galloway coughed again, then sat up when he stood and walked over to the door. He crouched down next to the trap, running his fingers along the circle's edge. Quietly, he asked, "Why did you draw this?"

She rolled her eyes. "I told you—"

"You said you got attacked by demons," he interrupted. Standing back up, he walked back to her and towered over her. Leaning down, he said, "Why would demons attack their own little delivery girl? Why would they take the Hound?"

She shook her head. "I don't know!" she snarled. "Maybe because you couldn't kill a damn werewolf and our Debt got her heart ripped out instead of being collected properly. Maybe because Theron's just trying to make me lose my mind. Maybe because this is all just fun and fucking games for them! Maybe because they think they can force my hand by taking him. I. Don't. Know!"

Caleb took a step back as her tirade revealed her innermost thoughts. He blinked rapidly as he tried to catch up with everything that had just come out of her mouth. 

With a grimace, she turned her face away, pissed that she had said so much. "Go. Leave," she said stiffly.

"No," he snapped. A little more quietly, he said, "I can't just let you go."

She barked out a laugh. "Then what? You aren't going to kill me. You can't keep me. Sooner or later another demon's gonna come looking."

Caleb rubbed at his mouth. "You seem pretty sure that I'm not just going to kill you here and now."

She smiled condescendingly. "Hunters don't play with their food. They can't afford to. Not with how big and fast and strong the game is. No. If I'm supposed to believe you wanted me dead, then you would have come in here guns blazing."

"You talk like you know," Caleb observed, and she bit down on her tongue. He narrowed his eyes. "What's your last name?"

Her eyebrows came together. "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"Humor me," he said. It didn't sound like much of a request.

"If I tell you, will you leave me alone?"

"I won't make any promises," he replied honestly, "but if I hear the right answer it might lessen your chances of catching a bullet."

Her mouth thinned into a line of uncertainty. She stared at him as he once again brushed back that single unruly strand of hair. Finally, with another big sigh, she decided it couldn't really hurt anything. Choking a little on the word, she said, "O'Malley."

Caleb's face went death white as he sat back weakly on the bed. She blinked slowly at his reaction.

"Don't lie," he whispered.

Now she grimaced. "I'm not."

He stared at the devil's trap. "You really are a Hunter," he muttered to himself. A jolt ran through her, and she gaped at him. His gaze found hers and, unsteadily, he said, "I knew you looked too familiar. I just didn't want to believe it."

Time turned to syrup around them as she struggled to understand what he meant by familiar. Caleb was staring blankly at the floor, his fingers twisting together in a silent fit. His breath rasped out. "How are you a Collector? You're a Hunter. You were a Hunter, anyway."

"I-I'm...both."

"You can't be!" he hissed, standing up. Anger made his hands shake as he balled them into fists, and her eyes widened in surprise at the ferocity of his response. What made him care so much?

"I was a Hunter before I became a Collector," she said cautiously. "I just kept going after my contract was up."

Caleb sat back down, his fury suddenly abandoning him. She couldn't help but be sympathetic as he ran his hands through his hair, then pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Admittedly, though, she had no clue as to why he was having such a massive freak out.

"Became a Collector?" he muttered.

When he looked up, she nodded, confused, and said, "Yeah... Collectors can only be made from people who have sold their Souls."

His lips parted in horror and he stared at her. She was just about to snarl a response when his expression suddenly shuttered and his voice went emotionless. "You sold your soul and got turned into this?"

She wasn't sure she liked how he said this, but couldn't really blame him for having this attitude. Most Hunters would roast slowly to death before they'd make any sort of deal with a demon. It was stupidity or weakness to do so in the eyes of the Hunter community, and you couldn't be either of those things to survive the life. It would be ten times worse to know she had made a deal that forced her into working for the demons.

Before she could answer, he snapped out, "Does everyone who makes a deal turn into something like you?"

She narrowed her eyes. "No," she finally snipped. "Most people just spend a couple thousand years on the rack."

Caleb's breath blew out slowly, his eyes very far away as he nodded. Unable to keep quiet, she demanded, "Tell me what you meant when you said I looked familiar."

His gaze snapped up to hers and he grimaced. After another minute of silence, he said, "You don't remember."

It wasn't a question. Her eyebrow raised. 

"Huntington," he said simply. "West Virginia, in 1995. You rescued an eight-year-old kid from a wraith that had already killed his parents and little brother." 

Galloway blinked rapidly, her mind propelling her back to that night. She had been tracking a wraith with a taste for academic that was stalking the local university. Too late she had realized who its latest target was going to be. A bright young man working on an engineering degree, all while he supported his equally young family.

She sank back against the wall as she took in the man in front of her. She remembered him as a small boy with tanned skin and a missing tooth. She remembered taking him to the police station, warning him not to tell anyone about what he had seen that night.

She remembered him.

He continued, "I spent...fourteen years trying to find that Hunter who had saved me. I wanted to thank her—"

She cut him off. "For what? I wasn't fast enough to save your family."

He nodded. "I know. And I was angry for a long time. But I've learned that you don't always get to save everyone since then."

She just shook her head, her heart pounding unsteadily at this twist of events. At least now she knew why he hadn't just killed her. Sadly, she knew that she was most likely the reason he was even here at all. She had set him on this path all those years ago.

"I got someone to give me a lead on a blonde Hunter pretty quick," Caleb said. "She had quit a long time ago but ran an inn or something back east."

Galloway's heart started to sink. Her breath came in smaller pants.

His dark eyes pinned her in place. "But the woman I met was too old to have been the one I was looking for. And her eyes were blue, not grey."

Galloway sucked in a rattling breath, looking up at the dim ceiling, tears stinging her eyes.

Caleb continued mercilessly. "Siobhan, she was real good to me. Put me up when I didn't have anywhere else in the world to go. Told me the woman I described sounded an awful lot like how her mother used to look. Even showed me an old black and white photo. I'll be damned if it wasn't a scary-ass resemblance. But she had died long before I'd been born. Siobhan mentioned that she'd had a sister, but that she'd died a long time ago, too."

She leaned forward a little, lips parting, her fingers fisting into the bloody sheets.

He leaned forward. "I'd pretty much given up on finding her. So imagine my surprise when I walked into that bar and saw something straight out of my nightmares."

Her hands trembling in her lap, she looked back down and whispered, "That's why you didn't just kill me."

"I had every intention to," he muttered. "You look exactly the same as you did twenty-odd years ago. I just didn't know what you were. Could have been a vampire for all I knew. Then I saw you with that Hellhound out in the woods. I knew what you were then, and I thought I'd made a mistake about who you were. I didn't... I didn't know that..."

"That you actually owed your life to something that works for Hell?" she asked caustically, trying to hide how the mention of her family had unraveled her. Shaking her head, she said, "Well, consider me thanked. You've done what you wanted to, now you can leave. Slate's wiped clean, no need to stick around."

Caleb looked up at her with a weak smile. "Ah..." He shook his head helplessly. "I can't just leave now. I think you and I need to talk."

Galloway's mouth dropped open, her eyebrows pulling together. When he just shrugged, she scoffed. "About what?"

His gaze hardened. "About what we do now."