It wasn’t bad at first. Tony took her to a cabin in the woods. Tony gave her, her own room. There were plenty of toys, and plenty to eat. There wasn’t a bed time and the only rule was that Cait was to do what Tony said. Cait was used to that from the Sisters, so it wasn’t a big deal and Tony wasn’t nearly as strict as they were.
Not at first.
For the first month or so, he gave her a lot of weird tests. Sometimes they were written. Sometimes he would ask her a bazillion questions that felt really odd and random. But he always told her she did a great job, and how smart she was, and that she was special to him, so it made Cait feel pretty good.
Tony was helping her get strong. At night, she’d have nightmares. One night it was really really bad. She’d gotten out of bed and knocked on his door.
“Hey Tony?”
“What?”
“I… I had a bad dream.”
“You see those people you killed?”
“… yeah. It worse though it was-”
“You’re gonna have to learn how to deal with that kid. They probably won’t stop. So just let them make you strong. Own it. You killed them, there’s no changing that. Don’t let that scare you anymore. You’re gonna learn how to control it.”
Cait sniffled. “Okay.”
“Back to bed.”
“Night Tony.”
The next month, Tony hung a calendar on the wall. There would be another Blue Moon in 14 months.
“Some things are gonna change around here.”
“Kay. Like what?” Cait asked with a mouthful of food.
“You trust me?”
“Sure. I guess.”
“Hey!” He suddenly barked at her. Cait jumped and her eyes got wide. He’d never yelled at her before. She sat up straight. “I said, do you trust me?”
Cait swallowed her food and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Yeah what?”
“… yes… sir?”
“Good. So things are going to get harder. You’re not going to get to play all day anymore. You’re gonna have to train. We only have 14 months, and if you don’t get good by then Cait, I’m afraid you might kill me too. Do you want that? Do you want to kill me like you did those people?”
Cait blinked, fear and sudden tears welling up into eyes. “No! No Tony! I don’t want to hurt you!”
Tony smiled. “Good. We start to tomorrow. You better get a good nights sleep.” He’d gotten up and left.
Things did get harder. He woke her up early the next day. He barely gave her time to finish her food. They got in the truck and took a long drive, at least an hour away. The whole way there he’d bark things at her, telling her she had to memorize them, and that there would be a test when they arrived.
They pulled up to a compound. Inside looked like some huge obstacle course. At first she was excited, it looked like a place to play a really cool game of hide and seek. She wasn’t allowed to play. Tony begin quizzing her on the things he told her in the car. At first she got the answers right.
“What time did the doctor go to work?”
“9 am.”
He struck her. It was hard enough to hurt, but not to bruise. Cait blanched at the hit, eyes welling with tears, shock on her face.
“What time did the doctor go to work?”
“You hit me!”
He smacked her again.
“Do you want to get strong or not? This is how you get strong! And eventually I’m going to show you how to get so fast, so I never hit you. So no one ever hits you. Now do you want to get strong, or do you want me to call Mother Superior and tell her, she was right about you?”
“NO!” Cait did not scream, the word came out more growl, the sound more wolf than human.
Tony smiled. “What time did the Doctor go to work?”
“I don’t remember!”
Tony shook his head, looking disappointed. “Do better tomorrow, Cait.”
Next came the course. First he made he run it as a human and kept track of her time. Then he told her to shape-shift. She didn’t know how. He smacked her for that. Fury welled up inside of her. She tried, but couldn’t make the wolf come out. When he looked disappointed it made her afraid. What if he got tired of her and went back on their deal? What if she hurt him or someone else on the next Blue Moon? She promised she’d do better.
When he took her home that night, he made her cookies. He told her jokes. They even watched a cartoon together.
The next morning, all that kindness was gone. The cycle kept repeating. It took her a few more days before she stopped getting smacked for forgetting the details he’d tell her in the car. On the seventh day, he went to smack her for not being able to shape shift – and it happened. Suddenly. Except this time it didn’t burn.
Cait knew the hit was coming. Instinctively she’d learned his tells. His eyes would get colder, his arm would twitch, and without thought she was no longer too frightened to be a Faoladh. Without thought she transformed into a wolf, she caught his hand in her jaws and bit him with a growl.
He cried out and she immediately released him, shifting back into her human form, her eyes wide, his blood in her mouth, tears in her eyes. “Tony I’m so sorry!”
But Tony just smiled, holding his bleeding hand at his side. “There’s my little killer. What a good girl you are.”
Hurting him didn’t feel good, but she pushed that down and with his blood on her teeth she’d smiled nonetheless.
For twelve months the lessons grew harder, more brutal. He taught her how to fight. How to move in and out of tight spaces as both a human and a werewolf. How to be quicker and faster than she was. When she got it wrong, he hit her. One day she tried to shape shift to bite him again before he could strike her, she got a dart in her neck before her jaws could clamp down. She’d never known someone else was inside the room.
When she’d woken up, he’d looked disappointed. “I thought you were learning how to control yourself Cait? I thought you didn’t want to hurt me.”
That one stung. But she lashed out – “But you keep hitting me!”
“Because you’re not good enough yet! You don’t want to get hit? Do better!”
She was too young to argue with his “logic”. So every day she showed up and got better. And after a time when they came back to the Cabin at night, she didn’t want his cookies or his jokes. She’d go straight to her room. Reading the books he’d left for her, or taking that time to be alone.
She never noticed how much it pleased him.
After ten months the course was changed to resemble a mansion. She was taught how to infiltrate it. How to avoid the security cameras, what room she had to go into, and how much time she had to get there. They drilled it over, and over, and over again for four months.
It was the night before the Blue Moon. Tony hadn’t woken her up that morning. She burst out of her room to find him sitting in the kitchen, sipping coffee, reading a paper.
“Aren’t we going to train?”
“Naw you got a big night tomorrow. We’re taking the day off.”
“Tony you haven’t taught me how to control it! What am I gonna do tomorrow? We have to do something!”
“Cait, calm down. Come sit.” He patted the chair beside him.
Cait hesitated, but finally went over and sat next to him.
“Here’s the truth. There’s no way to control it-”
“But you said-”
“Let me finish.”
She gritted her teeth but remained silent, staring at him.
“That devil is going to burn inside of you the rest of your life. It means you’re a killer, Cait. There’s no escaping it. But you can choose who you hurt. It’s the only way to make the fire burn out. You’ve got to burn hotter.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone!”
“What about bad people?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if you could hurt mean people? People that hurt little kids like Lilly? Wouldn’t that be okay? You’d be a protector just like faoladh are. But you’re better than them Cait, because you’re a devil too. That makes you special.”
Cait was silent for a long time, chewing her bottom lip. “You… you want me to hurt someone in a mansion tomorrow night, don’t you?”
“He’s a bad man, Cait. A very bad man. You’d be doing the world a favor.”
“What did he do?”
“He hurts people. But he’s not like you. He can control it. He just likes to do it. You know what else?”
“What?”
“I tried to help him, like I helped you. I gave him money, and that beautiful house he lives in and you know what he did?”
“What?”
“He tried to take my business away. He tired to burn it down. Isn’t that terrible?”
Cait paused, and then she nodded. “Yeah. Why did he do that? Want to take your business away?”
“I told you Cait, he’s a bad man. So now you’re gonna make sure he never hurts anyone else ever again. And guess what kiddo? You’re gonna be protecting me too. Doesn’t that make you feel good?”
In some ways it did. Tony had been good to her, mostly. Tony was trying to make her stronger. Tony was the closest thing to a father figure she’d ever had in her life, and she wanted to please him.
But there was a small part of her, that told her to run. As far, and as fast she could away from Tony.
But where could she go? And right before a Blue Moon? What if she hurt someone who didn’t deserve it? She couldn’t do that again. She wouldn’t do that again. Cait nodded. “Okay.”
Tony smiled and ruffled her hair. “Okay.”
That day of the Blue Moon that agitation came again. But Tony woke her up early and took her the compound. She fought hard that day. She didn’t get smacked once. That night, they got in a different car, all black with tinted windows.
He drove her into a city, into a suburb with big houses and pulled over. Cait could barely think. She felt a fire burning inside of her. She kept fidgeting. She could feel the wolf pulling at her, wanting to change, wanting to hunt. She needed to hurt something. To do something to get this fire out of her.
He’d dressed her all in black. Tucked her hair underneath a cap. “Get in just like we showed you. If anyone gets in your way, you shift and you kill em. Do it quick. Do it quiet. No howling. When you’re finished with him, come back here. Okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” She nearly growled it.
Tony chuckled. “My little killer. Go get ‘im.”
Cait got out of the car. She wanted to slam the door but closed it quiet. She did what he told her. They’d ran the mansion so well, nobody saw her. She was just a kid, and she was quick. With her eyes burning, and a fire raging in her blood she opened the door to the bedroom. She closed it behind her. She could hear a man snoring.
Cait stood in the dark, with only the light of that blue moon shinning in the window. She was breathing hard. Sweat on her forehead. It was time. She was trembling, she could barely control herself. She needed do this. She could almost hear a voice in her head telling her to be free, to kill them all, to let them out, to let hell loose –
But she didn’t want to be a killer. She didn’t want-
A light snapped on. A woman sat up in bed and blinked when she saw Cait. “Oh my – who are you? Why are you in here?” The woman touched the sleeping man’s shoulder. “John wake up.
“John do something!!”
“No! NO! Take her! Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me! NO!”
“Get away from my son!”
Cait screamed and it turned into a howl. She shape shifted in their bedroom. She heard the woman scream. The man started screaming too. Just like before. Cait howled again, charging at them, veered to the right and burst through their window. She hit the ground hard, too hard, tumbling. She picked herself up and ran. Ran. Ran. Through backyards, and over gates, running, running, and running – something hit her in the neck, and she passed out.
_________________
“Do you have her?”
“Yeah. Didn’t go as expected.”
“You were lucky with the dosage. It will not always contain her.”
“It’s because she’s so young still.”
“Why didn’t she kill them?”
“Unsure yet. Faoladh might be a little stronger than we thought.”
“Beat it out of her.”
“Maybe if we got her younger, sure. Not going to work with this one. I’ve got another idea.”
“We need her.”
“I know. I’ll break her.” Tony hung up, watching as his team doctored the photographs to his liking. He nodded and looked at the sleeping Cait in the back of the van. He brushed the hair away from her face, an almost tender gesture. “I’m going to break you little, Cait. One way or the other.”
________________________________
When Cait woke up, she was in her room. Except there were boards over her windows. All her toys were gone. There was only a mattress on the floor. She was covered in blood. It was on her hands, she could taste it, in her mouth. Panic clawed at her. What had she done?
“Tony?” Silence. “TONY!”
It was then she saw it. On the wall in front of her were pictures. They resembled crime scene photos. She recognized them. The house in the woods. That night. The people she killed.
Poor eight year old Cait made a distressed sound, tears bursting forth. “TONY!”
She stood up, hugging herself but then she realized – there were different pictures. It was a different house. Cait vaguely remembered running past it, but people were dead. A whole family. Again. She’d killed someone again.
Cait sunk down to the floor, sobbing.
Finally the door unlocked and Tony walked into the room, staring at Cait. “See what you did?”
“I didn’t mean too. I didn’t… I didn’t…”
“Those were good people, Cait. They were just a family. And you killed them.”
Cait shook her head. “No. No, I couldn’t I don’t remember I-”
Tony grabbed her by the wrist and shoved her bloody hand in her face. “LOOK! LOOK CAIT!” He dropped her wrist, and grabbed the back of her shirt, dragging her over to the wall. “Look at them! You ripped them to shreds! This is what happens, Cait! If you don’t kill the people I tell you, you’re gonna to hurt other people! Innocent people!”
All Cait could do was sob, trying to deny it, wanting to deny it, but how could she when she could taste the blood and see it on her hands? When the pictures were right in front of her?
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
Tony sighed and just shook his head, letting her go. “You’re gonna stay in here, and think about what you did. And then we’re gonna try this again. You’re gonna do what I tell you next time, aren’t you?”
“Yes! YES! I’m sorry. I’m sorry-”
Tony walked out of the room, closing the door behind him, leaving Cait crying on the floor.
And he smiled.