Prompt 069

Title: Lycan Tales
Genre: Drama, suspense
Characters: Caine
Prompt: 069~Inside
Word Count: 1,576
Rating: PG-13
Type: Series
Summary: Lancaster secrets
Warnings: Language


The rat infested shithole(Caine’s words not mine), earlier the same day

He absently scratched his stomach as he stared up at the ceiling. If he squinted his eyes just so and tilted his head the cracks seemed to take on the shape of a woman’s breast. Saggy, but he wasn’t complaining. He hadn’t gotten laid since…well hell, Caine couldn’t lie to himself. He had never gotten laid. Being in a nuthouse sort of limited his options. Crayola had stripped and offered and he had less than politely refused. Maybe he should have taken her up on her offer but Caine couldn’t imagine bumping uglies with a woman who looked like a drag queen on her good days. Now Alana, on the other hand...he was pretty sure her breasts would fit the palm of his hands just right and-
Growling, he shook his head. He wasn't going near the woman. She was a menace. Groaning, he swung his legs over the mattress.

He had been putting it off. He had been in this place for almost a month and a half now and he still hadn't gone up there. He didn’t want to go up into the attic and look around. He and his father used to go up there when they came to visit this place and after his break down yesterday night he just didn’t want to face the memories. But he had to. If there was one thing that his father had drilled into his head it was that knowledge equaled power. Sure, he didn’t want to be alpha but apparently the pack had suffered in the years that he had been in the institute. His uncle Ethan had never been a kind man but he was pretty sure he was on a huge ego trip now and everyone was suffering. He kicked at the pile of clothes that were scattered near the bed as he rubbed his forehead. Heaving a sigh he shoved off the mattress and padded down the hall. He stopped right before the entrance to the living room and looked up.

His dad had instructed the architect to build an attic. Once the attic had been built his dad had asked the man to remove the stairs leading to it. If the man had thought the suggestion strange he hadn’t said anything. His dad had been smart. No one would take the time to find a ladder just to go into an old attic. Not unless they thought there was something important up there. And since few people even know about this house, and seeing how all but one of those people were dead, no one would thing there was anything valuable up there.

Caine began to take deep breaths. He could feel the oxygen going through his body and working its way into his muscles. He half crouched and then pushing off with his legs aimed for the opening in the ceiling. His first attempted fail and he landed back on the ground with a thud.
“Fuck me,” he hissed as a shooting pain went through his elbow. Growling, he shot back up to glare at the offending opening. This time he took a few minutes to collect himself before trying again.

His hands grazed the edge of opening and he scrambled for a hold. Briefly claws shot out of his hands and stabbed through the wood until he had a firm grip and then receded as quickly as they had appeared. Caine hung there for a moment trying to catch his breath before he slowly, but surely, pulled himself upward.

“Christ on a crutch,” he wheezed as he planted his hand on the floorboard and his arm on the lip of the opening. He panted for breath.
“I’m out of fucking shape. What kinda bullshit is that? I used to breeze through this thing ten years ago. Now I’m acting like some kinda of out of shape, old man whose balls are hanging down to his knees.”
Pulling his body the rest of the way through he flopped on the floor. Just as quickly as he landed he sprung up and crouched down. A low, warning snarl came from him as he peered into the corner before he realized that he was staring at a reflection. In astonishment he walked over and peered at himself.

“Oh for fuck’s sake! Is this what Alana sees? No wonder the woman was scared of me. Not that I care,” he told his reflection quickly. “She could choke and die on that nasty dog food she carries in her purse for all I care,” he muttered as he poked at his face in the mirror.
There really hadn’t been mirrors in the nuthouse. Seeing as how they thought he might go all ballistic, sharp objects and things that could be turned into sharp objects, had been kept away from him.
“But good Lord, they could have told me I looked god-awful!”
Frowning, he pulled at his beard before he sharply shook his head and turned away. He had not come here to primp in front of a mirror.

He stopped in front of a bookcase and tapped a finger on the shelf as he tried to remember what his dad had told him the code was. He blew out a breath. He had been a kid. He had been more excited to get into the ‘secret’ place than to remember what his dad had told him. Caine stood there for a good fifteen minutes, racking his brain, before a hazy thought jolted his memory.

“Boo-yah!” he exclaimed in excitement then reached for the first book. Shakespeare, then came Bryan, Churchill after that, King’s biography, Tolkien, Hemingway and then Cummings big book of poems. His hand hesitated over the last book before he softly whispered under his breath:
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…”
He heard a soft clicking sound…

...as the door to the room swung open. The scent hint him. The smell of old books working on becoming mildewy. His father had loved books. Caine could remember the sound of his voice as he read him to sleep each night. That had been their time together. His dad had made sure of it. He might have missed a few school functions when business took him away but Caine couldn’t recall a time when he hadn’t been there to read him to sleep. This room showed his love of books.

But these weren’t just any books. Sure there were the usual but this place had been carefully constructed to hold the history of the Lancaster clan. For over two hundred years his ancestors had been documenting the evolution of not only the their species, the lycanthrope, but also the evolution of the Lancaster’s as a whole. From the first Lancaster, who had been a scientist and had tried to rid himself of the ‘dreaded disease’ as he called it, to the his father, who had spent many a night working on the book. No fact was too trivial, no illness too common. It all ended up in the books.

Caine rubbed his chin as he looked over the well worn books. This room housed the history of his family. A history he hadn’t wanted to deal with because armed with this history he would have to face the future. He couldn’t just hang in a constant state of limbo any longer. He either had to act or continue to be the prey. At that thought he crouched down and grabbed a book.

Walking across the room he sat down in the old chair and began to flip through the book. Every now and again he’d stop to read a hastily scrawled passage or look at a drawing that had been painstakingly etched. He stopped when he saw his father’s handwriting. His father had documented everything from the time he became alpha until just a few days before his death. His name appeared here and there but he was startled to see what appeared to be a short message addressed to him. It had been hastily written and taped on the back of another page.



Caine paused at the end of his dad’s letter. For ten years he had wondered if his dad had been blinded by trust for his uncle and now he finally knew the truth. His dad had never trusted Ethan and had just wanted to keep a close eye on him. Caine shook his head. It hadn’t worked. Caine knew that his father hadn’t thought that Ethan would attack him outright but he had been wrong. Dead wrong. It wasn’t a mistake that Caine would make. True, he didn’t want to be alpha but neither did he want the pack to suffer because of his own wants. Heaving a sigh Caine closed the book.

Running a hand over the cover a slight smile curled his lips. In his hands he was holding his family's history. A history of men and women who had persevered when they didn’t know anything about lycanthrope, when myths had made them something to be hunted and when empowered with knowledge they had learned to blend in with society. He might be the last of the line but he would not shame them.

It was time for him to stop hiding.