Malia was sitting on the side of her hospital bed, already getting into the attire that Melissa had brought for her. The coyote was never one to squander time, never one to hesitate, always ready to jump face first into action, in the area of impatience, boldness and shear courage, she had much in common with her cousin Derek.
" Are you actually gonna say something? Or are you just gonna stand there like a creep?" she said halfway turning to look towards the figure standing at the door since, she was facing the opposite way.
" Wow! What a hurtful thing to hear and from my own daughter at that! " Peter said sarcastically, his arms crossed over his chest.
" Well, three years apart doesn't really work well in favor of a father daughter bond so..."
He could swear he felt a small nip in his heart as he took the last sentence in, he then did his best to put his usual neutral facial expression back on, as he used his leg to push himself off the doorframe, " Where are you going? "
" Melissa informed me that Scott left with Braden to see whatever the hell we're supposed to see in the basement of doom so, I am going to help," she stated, zooming past Peter to exit the room.
" Well, Melissa informed me that Lydia is talking to another Banshee who apparently has all the answers and guess what? She's only a few walls away, so don't you think we should start from there?" both the emphasis he put on the word 'me' and his tone, gave away his irritation and discord on the matter, his daughter on the other hand, didn't seem to be fazed by it, not one bit. She kept on walking away from him without the slightest hesitation, " MALIA!" he yelped out, which made her stop in her tracks, realizing that she couldn't keep on ignoring him, to her dissatisfaction, she swiftly twirled around, her demeanor displayed a combination of confusion, angst and anger or something in between.
" What?" she spat.
" Look, I don't mind your 'punch first ask questions later' attitude and frankly, it is one of the things I am proud of you for, but don't you think that maybe, just maybe this is exactly the situation where you could use some time to seriously think before any action?"
" No offense, but if I could afford the luxury of actually stopping to think, I have a list of people that I'd rather do that with and... you're not really at the top of said list,"
If anyone had told Peter five years ago that somebody's words would inflict that much emotional damage to him, he'd have called them crazy, then again, she wasn't just a somebody...She strode off leaving him behind, in the rising dust of his own ponderings. Both him and her mother were ready to get their hands dirty but neither of them was rash.
He followed on her steps shortly after, still wondering what he did in his lifetime to deserve that, though his past actions flashed quickly before his eyes to remind him that, he'd done fairly enough to deserve exactly that and maybe even worse than that.
****
"The beast of Gevaudan drew his last breath in 1767 at the hands of the first hunter from the Argent clan. The memories of him were best to be erased as you know.
But his closest friend wasn't ready to let go quite yet, he successfully managed to combine his medical knowledge with the supernatural in hopes of resurrecting the monster.
He was named the sergeon, in his first fifty years of research he crossed paths with two other like-minded people: a man who will be known as the pathologist and a woman who will be known as the geneticist," Maylee was trying to count the story in the right order of events, so that she can elaborate on what she ment by 'my beloved family'. Lydia was all ears, sitting straight, barely even blinking, fully immersed fearful of missing any detail, "The three of them together formed what you know them as, 'The dread doctors'. After only a few decades, they understood that they had something else to worry about beside their initial quest, their mortality was beginning to pose an issue. Nevertheless, they started moving around the world until, they met him,"
"Him?"
"My father, ... In 1827, France, a very ambitious man who supported their ideals and was fond of their determination, that is how he became known as the apprentice. It merely took ten years in their company for them to inculcate in him the knowledge they'd built up over the years. He caught up fast, so fast that he grew goals and ideas of his own,"
"He wanted to leave them? "
"Yes, he eventually broke away from the group in 1840, he realized that he was in no way interested in wasting his years trying to resurrect one creature, one that he barely even cared about. He wanted power of his own, he wanted control and he had already scripted the perfect strategy... Build his own army...Of pawns,"
Lydia caught a heave of grief in Maylee's voice as she uttered those last words, she... Could only deduce who she ment by pawns.
"Unlike the dread doctors who struggled to complete the chimera process, the apprentice, had single-handedly figured out a way to create even spiritual supernaturals, such as kitsunes..."
"What? But I thought Kitsunes were people who shared their bodies with a fox spirit..."
" Well, you were not wrong, yet... Here I am attesting of the possibility to create your own from scratch," she declared sarcastically forcing a smile on her face.
"What about hellhounds?" asked Lydia, fighting against her fear of the answer she was about to get.
" As of now, I can't be sure of that but... I can say that he found a way to control them,"
" Which also means that... He found a way to kill ghost riders?"
" If that surprises you, wait until you find out which creature got to be his first foot soldier,"
"A banshee?"
"Dead center!"
"Wait!... You said that he's your father, does that mean... You were his first soldier?" Lydia asked in shock.
"Not quite, but I was his first creation," Maylee kept dropping bombshell after bombshell with no breaks, Lydia wondered how much more could she take in before her mind gave up on her.
" So... He created you? A banshee...?"
" Yes, I was the first, since then he created hundreds more of different creatures,"
" Hundreds?... But then... How old are...you?"
This young woman opened her mouth to answer a simple question of age, yet what came out of it was nothing less than astounding, " Around a 156,"