Chapter 42: Pendant
The cabin door groaned shut behind Luke, cutting off the weak afternoon light. The drive had been long, the silence in the truck oppressive. Scott’s scent was still on him, a phantom warmth beneath the smell of pine and damp earth. He needed to check the wards, the hidden symbols Michelle had painted in the basement. The place felt cold, emptier than it should.
He never heard her approach.
A shadow detached itself from the deeper gloom near the stone fireplace. A figure, slight and familiar, moving with an unsettling, silent grace. Nancy. Her face, once arranged in lines of professional concern in their support group sessions, was now a mask of fanatical serenity.
Before Luke could react—before his training could scream threat—she was pressed against his back. Her arms slipped around his neck, not in an embrace, but with the efficiency of a snake. Something cold and metallic settled against his sternum.
“Hello, son,” she whispered, her voice a dry rustle in his ear.
He grabbed for her wrist, but it was too late. A searing, black pain erupted from the pendant, burning through his skin and into his chest cavity. It wasn’t fire; it was corruption, a virus of pure rage and hunger that bypassed his nerves and went straight to the dark well inside him he struggled to cap.
Luke’s back arched. A guttural, choked sound escaped him, then ripped itself into a primal, vibrating scream that shook the dust from the rafters. The change didn’t come at his call. It was wrenched out of him. Bones realigned with sickening wet snaps. Muscle tore and re-knit, expanding. His shirt and jeans shredded as his body erupted into the massive, grey-skinned wendigo form. The pendant, now nestled in the coarse hair of his monstrous chest, glowed with a sickly violet light.
Nancy stumbled back, her eyes wide with ecstatic triumph. She watched as her son—her true son, the instrument of her grim faith—towered over her, panting hot, rancid breaths, his black eyes fixed on nothing, seeing only the bloody impulses the pendant fed directly into his brain.
“Yes,” she hissed, clapping her hands together like a delighted child. “There you are. My beautiful boy. They tried to hide you from me. To soften you.” Her expression hardened into vengeful porcelain. “But we have work to do. Loose ends to tie. Starting with the one who thinks he tamed you.”
She spotted Luke’s phone, discarded on the floor where it had fallen from his torn jeans. She picked it up, scrolling with a delicate finger. She found the contact: Rabbit.
Her text was simple. Cabin. Now. Alone. Emergency. I love you rabbit.
Scott stared at the phone screen in the apartment’s kitchen. The aftermath of the previous day still sang in his muscles, a tender, secret ache. But this felt wrong.
“He wouldn’t call me rabbit” Scott mumbled, more to himself than to Liv and Michelle, who were packing a bag of protective herbs and chalk. “He’d just tell me to come. He’d say ‘get here’.”
Liv snatched the phone from his hand, her brow furrowed. “It’s his number.”
“But it’s not his voice,” Scott insisted, the old anxiety curling in his gut. “Something’s off.”
Michelle zipped the bag shut, her face grim. “Then we all go. If it’s nothing, he can be pissy about it. If it’s something…” She didn’t finish.
The drive to the cabin was tense and silent. The woods seemed to close in, the towering pines like sentinels observing their approach. No smoke from the chimney. No light in the windows.
“Fuck,” Liv whispered as they pulled up. The cabin door was slightly ajar, a dark mouth.
Scott’s heart was a frantic bird against his ribs. “Stay close,” Michelle said, pulling a small, iron dagger from her coat.
Scott led the way, his sneakers crunching on the gravel. The silence was absolute. He pushed the door open wider. “Luke?”
The moment he crossed the threshold, the world exploded into motion. The door didn’t just slam shut—it slammed with the force of a gunshot, a blast of invisible energy throwing Liv and Michelle backward onto the dirt. Scott whirled around. The windows darkened, as if coated in instant grime. He grabbed the doorknob. It was frozen, immovable, and cold as a grave.
“SCOTT!” Liv’s scream was muffled, distant. He heard a thud—a shoulder against the solid oak—then Michelle’s voice chanting something sharp and ancient. It was useless. The magic holding the cabin was old, and thick, and vicious.
The air inside changed. It grew heavy, stale. It smelled of damp fur and old blood and the cloying, floral perfume Nancy had always worn.
Scott turned slowly.
She sat in Luke’s worn armchair, her legs crossed primly, as if waiting for a session to begin. She wore a simple grey dress, her hair in a neat bun. She smiled.
Every ounce of warmth left Scott’s body. His breath fogged in the suddenly chilly air. It was her. The therapist. The woman who had listened to his nightmares, nodded along with his guilt, all while secretly steering him and the others toward their deaths to feed her son’s transformation.
“Hello, Scott,” Nancy said. Her voice was a therapist’s voice, calm and analytical, which made it infinitely worse. “You look well. Rested. Loved, even. It’s a pity.”
“Where is he?” Scott’s voice trembled.
“Oh, he’s here. He’s so here.” Her smile widened, showing too many teeth. “I’ve been looking for a way back to him for so long. You three—you and those noisy little witches—you built a little cage of normalcy around him. Tried to make him forget his purpose. His hunger.”
Scott took a step back, his heel hitting the wall. He was trapped.
“You were always the weakest link,” Nancy mused, tilting her head. “The most emotionally needy. Clinging to him, the big strong officer who saved you. Pathetic. You were a gaping wound looking for a bandage, and he was too damaged to see you for the anchor you are.”
“Shut up,” Scott breathed.
“Why? It’s the truth. You’re useless. A traumatized little boy playing at being a survivor. You contribute nothing. You just take. You take his strength, his focus, his… divinity.” She spat the last word. “He was meant for ascension. To be a god of the deep woods. And you wanted him to be your boyfriend.”
She stood up, smooth and poised. “You should have died in that halfway house. Your blood should be on those walls with the rest. It was the design. His great unleashing. But he spared you. A sentimental error. One I’m here to correct.”
A floorboard creaked in the hallway behind her.
Scott’s eyes darted past her. Movement in the deep shadows of the hall. A shape, massive, blotting out what little light filtered through the blocked windows. It emerged with a low, continuous growl that vibrated in Scott’s teeth.
Luke. But not Luke.
He was larger than Scott had ever seen him. His shoulders hunched, brushing the doorframe. Corded muscle, slick and grey, bunched and shifted with every slight movement. His claws, black and cruelly curved, scored deep grooves into the wooden floor. His head was lowered, jaws slightly parted, strands of saliva webbing between rows of needle-sharp teeth. His eyes were voids, fixed on Scott, but there was no recognition in them. Only a predatory, starving intensity.
The pendant on his chest throbbed like a vile heart.
Scott’s body was a riot of conflicting signals. Primitive terror screamed through his nervous system, urging him to run, to hide, to make himself small. This was the monster from his deepest fears, the embodiment of the violence that had almost consumed him years ago.
But beneath the terror, a deeper, more agonizing current pulled at him. This was Luke. The man who held him at night when the dreams came. The man whose sweat and scent and whispered promises were etched into his soul. He saw the curve of a bicep he’d kissed, the line of a jaw he’d traced with his fingers, now distorted into a tool for slaughter. The love didn’t vanish. It twisted, sharp and painful, into a spearpoint in his gut.
He was terrified of the monster. And he ached for the man trapped inside it.
Nancy watched Scott’s face, drinking in his despair. “See?” she purred. “He’s home. And his first real meal in six years is long overdue.”
She lifted a hand, a conductor ready to begin. She pointed a slender finger at Scott.
She pointed a slender finger at Scott. "He's going to kill you, of course," Nancy said, her voice clinical. "Likely devour you. That's the appetite of a god. But it won't be that clean, Scott. He's been pent up so long. He'll probably take you first. Rough and fast and hard, like an animal. Then he'll kill you. It's more efficient that way."
The words, delivered in that calm, therapeutic tone, unlocked a primal flight response. Scott didn't think. He ran.
He bolted past the fireplace, skidding into the short hallway that led to the cabin’s back rooms. The bedroom door was shut. He threw it open, hoping for a window, a back door, anything. There was only the rumpled bed where Luke had wrecked him so completely the day before, and a single, high window, now blacked out by the same oily magic sealing the cabin.
He whirled, lungs burning, and sprinted for the kitchenette. Maybe the back door there. His shoulder slammed into the frame as he rounded the corner. The door was there, solid oak, but the small window beside it was opaque, swallowing the light. He grabbed the handle, yanking with all his weight. It didn’t budge. Not even a rattle. It was as if the door had been welded into the wall.
He heard the slow, deliberate footfalls behind him. The grind of claw on pine floor.
Scott turned, pressing his back against the unyielding door.
They filled the doorway to the main room. Luke, a mountain of shuddering grey muscle, his breath puffing in hot, ragged clouds. And Nancy, nestled almost protectively at his side, one hand resting on his massive forearm as if presenting a prized beast.
"You can't leave," Nancy said, not unkindly. "The spell is quite specific. Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out. Until the business inside is concluded."
Scott’s eyes shot to Luke’s face, searching the void-like orbs for any flicker of the man. "Luke," he begged, his voice cracking. "Please. Fight it. I know you're in there. Please, fight it for me."
Nancy’s laugh was a light, tinkling sound. "He can't, Scott. The pendant doesn't suggest. It commands. It speaks directly to the hunger. Your voice is just a faint echo to him now. A memory of a squeak."
Luke strode forward. One massive step, then another, closing the distance in the small kitchen. Scott squeezed his eyes shut, a whimper trapped in his throat. A colossal hand, hot and rough as bark, wrapped around his throat. It didn't squeeze. It held him in place.
Scott’s eyes flew open as he felt it—a thick, wet swipe up the side of his face. Luke’s tongue. It was broad and coarse, like a cat’s, leaving a hot, sticky trail of saliva from jawline to temple. He was tasting him. Savoring the salt of his fear.
Nancy clapped her hands together once, delighted. "Oh, it's going to be fun watching him break you. Your last shred of hope being the one to eliminate you? It’s poetic, really. Truly." She gestured to the bedroom. "Take him. Right there on the bed. Let's not wait."
Luke’s hand moved from Scott’s throat to the front of his shirt. He didn't rip it. He simply lifted Scott clear off the ground with terrifying ease, carried him the few steps back to the bedroom, and threw him onto the mattress. Scott bounced, disoriented, scrambling backward until his head hit the rough-hewn log wall.
Luke filled the doorway again, then entered, ducking his head under the frame. The room seemed to shrink around his intimidating mass. The air grew thick with his heat, his predatory scent. Scott drew his knees up, making himself small, his heart a machine gun against his ribs. This was it. This was how it ended.
Then, Luke turned his head toward Nancy, who lingered in the hallway with a satisfied smile.
He laughed.
It was a deep, rumbling sound, not the growl of a beast, but a man’s genuine, darkly amused laughter. The void-like eyes swirled, the absolute black receding like ink down a drain, revealing the sharp, familiar grey of Luke’s gaze. He was fully present.
“You always did underestimate me, Mom,” Luke said, his voice his own, layered with that subterranean growl but utterly in control.
Nancy’s smile vanished. “The pendant… it commands you. I crafted it.”
“You crafted a trinket,” Luke said, looking down at the pulsing stone on his chest. He curled a taloned finger around the chain. It snapped like a thread. He held the pendant up, and with a quick squeeze of his fist, it shattered into dull, grey dust. “Low-level compulsion. Useful for making a feral dog heel. Not even an itch for a god.”
The shock on Nancy’s face was absolute. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. She took a step back.
Luke took a step toward her, his immense form moving with a grace that was suddenly, terribly deliberate. “You thought you could take him from me?” he whispered, the menace in his voice freezing the air. “The one good, clean, quiet thing in my life? After everything you made me? After everything you orchestrated?”
He raised a hand, not towards Scott, but toward Nancy. Her body went rigid, her eyes wide with terror. An invisible force held her fast, legs locked, arms pinned to her sides. A thin, choked squeak escaped her.
Luke turned back to Scott, who was still pressed against the wall, trembling, tears cutting clean lines through the saliva on his cheek. The monstrous features softened, not receding, but the expression within them shifting completely. The hunger was gone, replaced by a pained, furious tenderness.
“She can’t take you,” Luke said, his voice rough with emotion. “And she doesn’t get to watch. But I want her to know. I want her to see what she tried to poison.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, the frame groaning. He reached for Scott, his taloned hands retracting, shrinking back into the blunt, strong fingers Scott knew. The grey hue of his skin lightened, the extreme musculature softening slightly, though he remained larger than his human form, a powerful, hybrid version of himself. He was choosing this shape.
“I love you,” Luke said, the words clear and devastating. “I would never hurt you. Not like that. Never.”
A broken sob ripped from Scott’s throat. He uncoiled, launching himself across the mattress and into Luke’s arms. He buried his face in the hot, solid expanse of his chest, fingers clutching at the thick hair there. “I thought—I thought you were gone, I thought you were gonna—”
“Shhh,” Luke murmured, wrapping his arms around him, enveloping him completely. “I’m here. I’m always here. You’re mine to protect. Not to break.” He kissed the top of Scott’s head, his lips lingering. “My rabbit. My good, brave rabbit.”
Scott leaned into the embrace, the terror evacuating his body and leaving him weak and shaking. He cried, releasing the catastrophic tension of the last ten minutes. Luke just held him, one massive hand cradling the back of his head.
After a long moment, Luke looked over Scott’s shoulder at Nancy, still frozen in the doorway, her face a portrait of furious, disbelieving horror. “What should we do with her?” he asked, his voice a low rumble against Scott’s ear.
Scott pulled back slightly, sniffling. He looked at Nancy, at the woman who had curated his trauma, who had aimed a weapon at the only love he’d ever known. The cold, sharp clarity that sometimes followed his panic attacks settled over him. He wiped his face with the back of his hand.
“I have an idea,” Scott said, his voice quiet but steady.