A/N: The storm hits. Under normal circumstances, I would have split a chapter of this length in two, but there was simply no point at which it could be done without ruining the flow of the scene. So for once, I have allowed an overlong chapter to stand at its original size. Enjoy. :)
15: Into the Woods
There was a moment of terrified silence.
Reynard could feel the pounding of his blood in his veins, the echo of his pulse against his ribcage and temples as he fought dizzying disorientation and rampant shock caused by the force of the impact and barely realised recognition of his foe. Kane loomed above him, golden eyes aflame, his face and clothing stained with an array of blood and gore that Rey did not like to consider the origin of. He groped for his wand only to find himself empty handed – he had left his only weapon on the kitchen table. Almost unconsciously, his gaze shifted towards him family – to Diana, dishevelled and wide eyed as she rose to a shaken crouch by the hearth, her expression filled with realisation of the same truth that had moments before struck her husband; to Remus clasped, almost engulfed in her arms as he peaked out at the sinister stranger with terrified bewilderment. So vulnerable. So exposed. So trapped
But looking had been a mistake. Kane - Abel – the feral - his nephew – had followed his gaze.
In two steps, the blood-splattered feral was towering over Rey’s wife and child, running his tongue along his sharpened teeth and grinning nastily as they shrank back.
“So you would be Mrs Lupin.” His golden stare drilled down into the cowering woman and the precious bundle in her arms. “Or Mother, as it might have been, if your husband had not been such a coward. What kind of man did you marry, that he still obeys the whims of his father when he’s grown?”
Diana did not reply, her lips pressed together tightly, her face white. Pressed against her chest, Remus gave a tiny half-sob.
It was enough. The cold yellow eyes fixed upon the little boy, who shrank back into his mother’s arms at once. Kane’s stare was glacial as he drank in the child before him.
“And what’s this?” he drawled softly. “Well, well. It seems that you’ve finally got yourselves a replacement for me. And a replacement of your blood at that.”
Diana’s grasp on her son tightened sharply at the hinted threat in the tone. In spite of his dizziness, Rey half-staggered to his feet, determined to distract the werewolf from menacing his son.
“Abel…” he gasped, but got not further.
Kane wheeled upon him instantly, his golden eyes ablaze with fury. “You will not use that name!” he roared. “That name is nothing, the child who bore it gone! It was a name for those who lose, who die, who fall, a name given by a worthless father who squandered his potential to wallow in his misery. I will not follow his path!”
His features contorted into steely, determined rage as he strode to within inches of his retreating uncle, his voice dropping to a vivid whisper. “I will be the striker of the blow and not its victim.”
Rey could feel Kane’s foul breath against his face, see the burn of his eyes. He shrank back against the wall in spite of himself. He saw the feral’s half-smile at his successful intimidation.
“Still the coward, Lupin,” he breathed softly. “Did you think I wouldn’t know why it was you would not take me in? I heard that stringy social worker discussing my case on the day he took me to stay with those ridiculous foster parents; I heard his belief that Rafe Lupin had scared you away. But you must have let yourself be scared, must not have cared quite enough, or perhaps you wouldn’t have rushed so much to obey the man who killed your sister.”
The world tilted violently. Rey’s breath choked in his throat.
Kane’s teeth gleamed as he smirked maliciously. “Didn’t know that, did you?”
Was he delusional? Was he mad? Or did he really believe what he was saying? Rey wasn’t entirely sure, but the very half-hint of suggestion was ridiculous. He knew what had happened to Rhea. He had been there, heard the words from her own mouth. Just what stories had Isaacs filled his son’s head with?
Rey found his voice. “You’re lying.”
“Am I?” The feral chuckled cruelly.
“Isaacs killed her.” Rey steeled himself. The werewolf was playing games, he was sure now. He was spinning lies, trying to upset and confuse him and he was not going to succeed. “Your father kidnapped my sister and held her against her will.”
This time Kane laughed outright. “My father? That spineless depressive? He wouldn’t have had the nerve! The one bold move he made in his life was snatching me from that hospital and frankly I’d rather he’d left me.”
Casually, coldly, he rested one clawed hand against the wall beside Rey’s head, scratching restlessly at the wallpaper.
“No, no, no.” He shook his head as his eyes ground into his uncle. “She went of her own free will, if not really because she wanted to. Your charming daddy left them no choice. He was not happy when he found out his little girl was carrying – how was it he said he put it? - the spawn of a werewolf, much less that she carried it willingly. At one point, he was threatening my father with Azkaban. So they left. They fled.”
Rey fought to contain a rage of his own that would have likely killed them all. “How would you know?” he retorted. “You weren’t even born.”
A large chunk of paper was rent from the wall with a shriek of torn plasterwork; Kane examined the pattern skewered on his claws with bland thoughtfulness. “My father was a talkative drunk. And he was drunk a great deal of my childhood, bemoaning the woes of his life to the world, how no one would accept him because of what he was, how people avoided him, would not employ him and of course, the epic tale of his lost love and the cruel father who had ruined everything. He never shut up about it. When he finally hung himself, it was almost a relief.” He snorted disdainfully, peeling the paper from his fingers and flinging it to the ground. “Lycanthropy was wasted on him.”
There was little Rey could say to such an extraordinary statement.
“You seem surprised.” Kane cocked an eyebrow, tapping a foot impatiently as he turned circles mindlessly on the spot, pacing like a caged animal. Beyond him, Rey caught a glimpse of his wife, moving with surprising stealth as she edged her son quietly behind the nearby armchair. “But it’s true. Adam Isaacs was a pathetic excuse for a werewolf. So much power, so much potential and what did he do? Drowned it in alcohol and moped.”
The feral flexed his claws absently as he paced the small room, his eyes still inexorably fixed on Rey.
“He could have been so much more,” he drawled softly, his eyes distant. “I learned that much from his binges. It was there, so often, the little glint of gold in his eyes, the moment of power, of possession, when the wolf would appear through his drunken haze, when, just for a moment, he would be strong. Just for a moment, I could almost respect him. He must have tasted the truth of his existence in little bursts a couple of times a week. But he never embraced it. He would start muttering about your bloody sister and what she would have wanted and back would come the drunken sot who reeled into unconsciousness. I suppose even wolves have standards and no self-respecting wolf wanted to stay in that undignified mess of mind and body for long. It was enough to make me vomit.”
The pacing halted sharply – in three steps Rey had been backed yet again into the wall by the sheer force of those wolfish eyes. “And it was all thanks to dearest grandpa.”
Hard as it was to read emotion from the alien golden eyes, Rey was receiving one message loudly and clearly. “You’re insane.”
“Admittedly true.” Kane smirked and buffed his blood-soaked claws easily against his leather jerkin. “But your family made me this way.”
With the feral’s attention once more drawn, Rey could see out of the corner of his eye that his wife was moving once more. Her grasp on Remus had been released, the boy tucked away out of sight behind the furniture. The mother of his child was now edging her way towards the opposite side of the hearth – towards the coal scuttle and…
And the poker.
Good old Diana! It wouldn’t lay a feral out for long, but it might be enough for Rey to get through the door, across the hall and to the kitchen table where his wand was waiting. But only if they could keep Kane distracted.
Time to talk and keep him talking. Nonsense or not, it was buying them time.
“Your father kidnapped my sister.” Rey repeated the words firmly, almost reassuringly as he boldly met the werewolf’s gaze. “She said so. I was at the hospital, I heard her. I don’t know what lies you’ve been fed…”
“I’m not the one who’s been fed lies.” Kane snapped his sentence away, slamming his palm against the already beleaguered wall with enough force to make Rey jump. “I was fed nothing but the ravings of a drunkard too inebriated not to tell the truth. It was you who were fed lies, you and your sister. By the time your father was done with her, she didn’t know what she was muttering. Powerful things, Confundus charms.”
Rey gaped. What was he saying? Had he really just accused Rafe Lupin, a once highly respected member of the magical community, of confunding his own daughter?
“That’s ridiculous!” he spluttered in disbelief.
Kane laughed grimly. “That’s what people said, when a werewolf tried to claim it. That’s what was so clever about it. He found them, you see. Found where they had run to, where they had hidden to escape his wrath, traced by his bully boys over a search lasting months. They found them that morning, the day I was born as it turned out, held captive and restrained by Lupin’s mob until the man himself responded to the owl they sent him. And when he arrived, my heavily pregnant mother was told that if she abandoned the child and came home where she belonged, all this madness, as he called it, would be forgotten. She refused. As my father tells it, she spat in his face.” He smirked humourlessly. “I’m certain he loved that. The fact that he drew his wand on her was a fair indication of his feelings. And then he told her that this…” He snorted again. “Was for her own good.”
And owl fluttering through the window of their home – his father’s pale face and sudden disappearance. No. Rey pushed the rebellious thoughts back down. The werewolf was lying. The werewolf was lying. Whether he truly believed this tale or was reciting his own invention out of vindictive pleasure, Rey was not certain. But his father would never… Yes, he had been strict and argued often and loudly with his daughter, and no, he had not been fond of werewolves, but he had loved her. Surely he would never have done something like this to his own child. Not unless he truly believed she was in danger, unless he truly believed that it was…
That it was for her own good.
A common phrase his father had used around Rhea. He had loved and hated her all at once. All he had ever wanted, Rey knew, was for her to simply do as he told her, take the nice safe job, the nice safe husband, have the nice safe life. It was for her own good, he had told her in one of their blazing rows. If she did not know what was good for her, he would have to show her.
But no. He would never have taken an action such as this.
Would he?
“The first spell he cast was a memory charm, wiping her mind of a willing departure, of any happy times with her werewolf lover.” Kane’s gaze was sharpened blade of gold. “And then came the Confundus charm, and as she reeled confused, he whispered poison in her ear. My father had tricked her into leaving. He had held her against her will. He had forced himself upon her. She did not want his child. She just wanted to go home. She hated him. She hated Adam Isaacs.” Kane’s eyes glowed. “And when the shock caused her waters to break and they dragged her to the hospital, that was all she was able to say.”
No. No, no, no, no. But repetition could not kill the whispered yes within his mind. Those words, near enough exactly, had been Rhea’s. Over and over again, as though learned by rote. How could Kane have known them? He had not seen Isaacs in the hospital, he was sure; indeed he remembered from his questions of ten years ago that it had been more than an hour after his sister died that Isaacs had made his dash into the hospital to snatch the baby. So where had he heard those words to repeat them to his son if not when they were drilled into Rhea’s head in the first place?
“My father broke free in the chaos of rushing your sister to hospital.” Kane had resumed his circular pacing, forcing Diana to still her careful advance to her weapon.
“He waited outside, until he saw that the bully boys had been sent away. He sneaked inside, waited until your father had left to sign the death paperwork and snatched me away. And thus began his ten years as a drunken self-pitying waste of skin. His death was a blessing to both of us.”
His eyes fixed once more upon Reynard. “And that, my dear uncle, is where you came in.”
With a vaguely disquieting expression, he lifted one of the several family photos scattered on shelves and mantles around the living room and gazed down at it absently. Diana’s hand wrapped around the poker just out of his line of sight, drawing it into concealment beneath her robes.
“A very pretty picture.” Kane’s voice was oddly soft, but a cocktail of bitterness and disdain sharpened its edges. “And to think, it could have been me. We could have all been sitting down to supper together right now, whilst I babble on about my nice boring job in the Ministry. Just think of the fine upstanding citizen I might have been if you had actually taken me in and given me the benefit of a wholesome upbringing.” He sneered. “Pathetic.”
With a venomous lob, he hurled the picture against the stone of the fireplace, where it shattered into fragments, narrowly missing Diana who leapt back with a cry. Rey’s half-start towards his wife was forestalled by an extended handful of claws.
“Just stay where you are, Lupin, there’s a good chap.” Kane’s lazy, sadistic drawl was filled with the easy confidence of a man convinced he was in complete control of the situation.
“Contrary to what this little exercise might imply, I wasn’t heartbroken when you rejected me; you didn’t impress me much in our little interview.” Kane shrugged easily as he turned smoothly away to kick at the shattered picture fragments with his foot. Rey hoped it was only in his imagination that the feral’s eyes drifted to the slight hint of movement and stifled sobs behind the nearby chair. “But I was angry at why, angrier than I think I’d ever been. Yet again, Rafe Lupin had slammed the door on my having half-a-life. And you had been weak enough to let him. There is nothing I hate more than a coward.”
A clawed finger ran the length of a bookshelf, scratching away the varnish with an agonising squeal. “The foster parents they sent me to were worthless – simpering, fussing milksops, no use to anyone. My father’s morose drunkenness became almost appealing against a backdrop of vapid smiles and their desperate, insincere efforts to care. Oh they tried to like me, they really did, but it was always there – the little glances, the uncertain looks when they thought I couldn’t see them. They were scared of a ten year old boy.” He gave a snort. “So, albeit in a different way, they made it very clear just as Rafe Lupin had that you didn’t have to be a werewolf to be treated like one. I was guilty by association.” Kane almost casually slashed the spine of a book with his fingertip. “I was gone from that hole within three weeks. I was tough. I had as good as raised myself after all. I would take my chance on the streets.”
The smile he fixed upon Rey was predatory and utterly vicious. “And then, I met Hel. You might remember her. You did help that Auror kill her yesterday.”
Rey winced at his wife’s quiet gasp, causing Kane to smile with glee. “Hadn’t you told your wife about that Lupin? What a lovely open marriage you have.” He sneered at the exterminator. “Hel was everything my life had been missing. A strong presence, powerful, capable of teaching me to survive and to prosper. Her wildness fascinated me, the glint that I had seen and respected in my father’s eyes bursting to life in hers. I told her I wanted to be like her. I thought she was going to kill me but she didn’t. She invited me to her hideaway. I watched her transform before my eyes that full moon night and then I placed my arm in her mouth myself and relished in the pain. I abandoned my foolish attempts to follow my father’s miserable path, to be accepted by a world that did not want me. I let the wolf become my world, my truth, and I have never looked back. If I was going to be treated as a werewolf, as a monster by association, then I was determined to deserve it.”
He walked slowly over to Reynard, his face hovering less than an inch from his prey.
“So you see, my wonderful childhood was courtesy of your bloody father. Just as my wonderful adolescence was courtesy of you. Not that I mind much now – you probably did me a favour, all told, giving me a chance at this power. But I don’t like being abandoned out of cowardice. Rejection isn’t something I handle well. Especially when the man who rejected me sees fit to wipe out the woman I had turned to when he so easily cast me aside.”
Slowly, with a flash of teeth, Kane drew back, sauntering back to the shelf of pictures as he lifted a proud shot of Rey’s parents and drew his sharpened fingers down the glass with an agonising shriek of sound.
“My darling grandpa,” he murmured viciously, without turning. Diana had started to rise, poker grasped behind her back. “Ah yes. One of my greatest regrets in life is that Rafe Lupin was inconsiderate enough to die of natural causes before I was strong enough to tear him limb from limb. But at least I still have you. And them.” He gestured over his shoulder to the abruptly frozen Diana and their hidden son. “And now that you’ve taken my Hel from me too, I think you deserve something special. Certainly more special than I gave your Auror friend.”
Rey froze, fighting a sudden wave of coldness as his eyes swept over the bloody mess that stained Kane from head to foot. “What?” he breathed sharply.
He was not certain he wanted a response. He was right to. He got the one he’d dreaded.
With a casual shrug, Kane smashed the second picture against the bookshelf and turned once more to face his uncle. “You may be wondering, perhaps, how I found you?” The feral’s grin was cruelly triumphant. Slowly, languorously, he drew the back of one clawed finger down the still fresh blood that stained his cheek. With repulsive pleasure, he slipped the finger in between his lips and smoothly licked it clean. He smiled, teeth glinting.
“I’ve just been speaking with Orestes Bevan. And of course, his lovely family.”
Rey’s stomach dropped like a stone. Oh Gods, no! Please!
Kane chuckled at the shock and rage that swelled unbidden in his captive’s eyes. “I had no idea that such a prominent Auror lived so close to my former hideout until I spotted him strolling along the lane this morning. Casual as you like, he was, as though killing my mate was no more than a day’s work for him. And although I am not really a stray, I felt a sudden urge to follow him home.”
He thoughtfully examined his gory fingers. “They kept me waiting mind, sending the children to a neighbour whilst his wife bundled him off to St Mungo’s to see about that arm of his. But I found myself to be in one of those lovely trusting neighbourhoods, where folks, even Auror folks, do not always lock their doors. The attic made a comfortable enough hideaway as I rested and waited until I was quite sure that all the family were home.”
Repulsion and horror rampaged through Rey’s soul. “You killed them all? Just to find me?”
Kane smirked as he waved a dismissive hand. “Of course it wasn’t just about you. How egotistical you are! I had a few things to say to Bevan in regards to the death of my Hel. But he was most uncooperative about your location. I think he may have doubted my good intentions.”
I wonder why, Rey thought blackly but was wise enough to restrain his tongue.
The feral ran his tongue along his teeth. “Auror stubbornness is a nuisance. In the end, I had no choice but to slit his gullet and have done with it.” The cruel smile spread alarmingly. “But his wife – she was very helpful. Especially when I so generously cradled her frightened children. Shame it didn’t help them – or her – in the end. They really did make a terrible mess of the carpet.”
Rey’s gaze fixated upon his wife. He couldn’t look away. He could see Diana’s expression shifting from repulsed shock to horrified fury as she squared her shoulders determinedly and rose to her full, if not spectacular, height, both hands clasped around the poker concealed beneath her robes. He remembered how well she had liked Elise Bevan. He remembered how fondly she had played with her kids. He could see her fears for her own precious child alive and blazing in her eyes.
She was going to take Kane’s head off if she could.
And Kane still hadn’t noticed, hadn’t considered her a danger. Elise Bevan had been a quiet woman, eager to be protected by her big strong husband – was he perhaps expecting Diana Lupin to be the same? He was in for a very rude awakening if he was.
Praise be for small favours.
“Of course, once I had the name of your home, it was simply a matter of borrowing a little floo powder. It wasn’t as though they would be needing it again.” Kane continued to drink in Rey’s horror, oblivious to the danger from behind and Rey knew there and then that he had to do whatever he could to keep Kane’s attention to the front. “ It really was a stroke of good fortune, Bevan living within walking distance of that old wreck of a farm you were all holed up in. Otherwise I might never have found either of you.”
Once again, Kane was upon him in seconds, all but thrusting through him the wall as he hurled him backwards once more, clawed fingers tapping against his uncle’s chest. He leaned forward with a vicious smile of victory.
“And I’m so very glad I did. You see Lupin, as I see it, you owe me; owe me for the life I could have had and the life you stole from my mate. And I’m not prepared to let that go. I want reparation. I want retribution. I want justice.”
Reparation? Retribution? Justice?
Anger swelled in Rey’s chest at hearing these words spoken by this murderous, vindictive killer. He had slaughtered countless people for no reason but his own pleasure, butchered a good man and his young family out of petty spite. And if his ever flowing life story was true, he had asked for this, inviting the bite and becoming a feral out of some foolish, childish desire. He had given up his humanity out of sheer resentment. True, Rey could not escape the guilt that he had driven him in to a position where he could be made such a thing. But this was not his fault. He had been dragged into it from a misplaced sense of kindness and the love he had had for his sister. Whatever his father had done, whoever had been told the truth and who fed a pack of lies, he had not been involved in the events of his sister’s death – his only wrong was a decision not to adopt a child he had been under no real obligation to care for in the first place. He had made one mistake. Did he and his family deserve to die for it?
It was too much. He simply snapped. It had been a long day after all.
“Reparation for what? For a life you’ve said yourself you didn’t even want, for a family you disdain? Why do you care about my cowardice if being a feral makes you so happy? Retribution for what? For the behaviour of my father? I am not Rafe Lupin, you have no right to take your frustrations with a dead man out on me! I loved my sister, I would have done anything to save her but I was a child! Justice for what? For stopping your precious Hel from tearing my stricken friend limb from limb? For preventing one death by allowing another? Hel Kane was a murderous, insane killer, whereas Orestes Bevan was a good man with a good family that you slaughtered for doing his job, for trying to protect the innocent! Reparation! Retribution! Justice! The words should stick in your throat! How dare you storm into my house and lecture me about your awful life? You didn’t have to be this way! I didn’t force your hand into the werewolf’s mouth! You chose your life so don’t blame me if you aren’t happy with it. And if you are happy, why do you even care what I did? What do you want me to do?”
He saw the blow coming but there was no time to do anything but deflect it to somewhere not lethal. The pain was stunning as Kane’s claws raked his shoulder, catching him as he tried to twist his throat out of range and hurling him into a heap in the shattered glass that had been his father’s picture. He felt Kane’s foot smash down against his back, pinning him in place as he loomed ominously over his uncle and bent low.
“I want you to bleed,” he hissed.
And then, Diana struck.
There was no denying that it was a fantastic shot, a powerful two handed swing worthy of a Quidditch Beater, driven by the infuriated strength of an indignant wife, mother and friend. Kane’s dodge was impressive as he wheeled at the last moment to face the sudden danger, but he was just an edge too slow – his head snapped back with the force of the poker’s impact, blood of his own splattering fresh crimson across his cheek as he cursed obscenely. Kicking free of his foot, Rey rolled in spite of the glass that dug against his skin, grasping one of the larger fragments and plunging it with all his might into the soft flesh of Kane’s calf.
The feral howled with pain and shock, stumbling backwards under the abrupt onslaught, but he did not lose his head. Diana’s second blow slapped against his palm as he caught the poker mid swing and wrenched it harshly from her grasp, sending her careening backwards with a vicious shove to tumble against the armchair, tipping it sharply over. Suddenly exposed was Remus, cowering, tearstained and bewildered, scrambling instinctively out of the way of the falling furniture and his half-stunned mother to stumble out of his corner into the room beyond. He did not see the sweeping hand until its claws closed viciously around his throat and yanked him off his feet with a gasp.
Rey froze. Diana froze.
Remus whimpered.
Kane smiled slowly.
“Why Lupin,” he drawled. “That was almost brave.”
Rey was paralysed. His boy, his Remus was clutched viciously in the claw tipped fingers of Abraham Kane, one arm, the hand holding the snatched poker, clasping the child securely against his chest, the other still wrapped horrifyingly around his throat. His son was shaking with shock, pain and fear, his brown hair tousled, his cheeks deathly pale and wet with terrified tears and his eyes wide and fixed upon his father, filled with a mute, desperate appeal for daddy to come to the rescue. Blood was trickling down his neck from where the feral’s harsh one-handed grip had pierced the fragile skin.
His son. Kane had his son.
No, please. Anything but Remus.
Slowly, unsteadily, his eyes never leaving his child, Rey rose to his feet.
“Give me my son,” he said softly.
Kane smirked incredulously. “Be careful you don’t drown in all that righteous indignation. Honestly, Lupin. Why should I?”
“You can have me instead.” He meant it. “I’m the one you came here for. I’m the one you want. You can torture me, kill me, do whatever the hell you want, but put down my son first.”
His nephew gave a cold chuckle. “Put down. What an interesting choice of words. But no.” Slowly, carefully, the feral began to move towards the window, his eyes darting between husband and wife and rapturously drinking in their terror. “I think I’ve found a better way. You and your wife are getting a reprieve for your little flash of bravery, a stay of execution. But believe me, it’s only a stay.”
With a flick of his wrist, the poker went flying, smashing the pane of the nearest window into fragments that clung like saw teeth to the frame. A few sideways kicks of Kane’s boot cleared the gap more thoroughly. His grip on the terrified Remus never loosened.
“Do you know what tonight is, Lupin?” There was a kind of lazy satisfaction to the feral’s drawl. “Have you checked your lunar calendar?”
A chill like arctic winter engulfed Rey from top to toe. He remembered the heavily waxing moon that had gleamed over the farmhouse the night before, full in all but name and his eyes widened. Merlin!
“Full moon.” Kane’s smile confirmed Rey’s worst fears. “And look out there now – all but dark, the sun almost gone, and soon a full moon rising. I can feel it coming. And when it does…”
His golden gaze flicked to Remus. He snapped his teeth.
“No!” It was Diana’s horrified gasp that responded first, half-starting forward only to be instantly stilled by Kane’s slight tightening of his grasp on her child. Her eyes fixed hopelessly upon the vicious predator in her living room. “He’s too young,” she whispered, pleading, desolate, drained of her fire by the icy cold danger to her only son. “Don’t you know what will happen if you bite a child that small? He won’t be able to cope.”
Kane was laughing before she even finished. “Exactly,” he breathed, maliciously smiling at a mother’s grief. “Oh I won’t kill him – I’ll be very careful. But I know what will happen. His mind won’t be strong enough to fight it. I won’t even have to talk him round.” He teased the tender neck of the little boy with his fingers, tearing at the skin and smiling at Remus’ sobs of anguish and his parents’ desperate-to-comfort eyes. “And then I’ll have a pack again, an adopted son of family blood. And I’ll bring him up well in your honour; I’ll make sure to teach him everything I know. I’ll raise him in my image, just as my poor Hel raised me in hers. And when he’s old enough – when he’s ready – he will be the one who will come back to kill you. And you and your wife, Lupin, you can live your lives in anticipation of the day your prodigal returns to claim his rights in the knowledge that it was your own cowardice that brought it about.”
With an agile leap, he landed poised for a moment on the windowsill, Remus dangling terrified in his clasp, and turned to revel one final time in the terrible fear in the two pairs of eyes before him. He smiled.
“I hope you enjoy the wait,” he said. “I know I will.”
And then he was gone.
They were both gone.
Rey bolted for the window instinctively; his eyes fixed at once upon the fleeing figure and the fragile human bundle in his arms. But before he could even half hoist himself onto the glass strewn window frame, the shadows swallowed them as they plunged into the woods and vanished into darkness.
Kane was gone.
And Remus soon would be.