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| A pact made with blood |
Hi, I know I haven't posted in a long time. I've finished with the final version of the first chapter of my first novel, which happens to be a fan fiction using Ginger Snaps as its reference.
It's called Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. It's an alternate sequel to the first film that keeps the setup (the first five minutes) to the sequel Ginger Snaps: Unleashed, but takes it in a totally different direction.
Unlike the version of the book that's up on fanfiction.net, this now starts with Ginger.
So, you'll find the first chapter right after the jump.
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| Ginger deep into her change-- and loving it. |
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| Brigitte deep into her change-- and hating it. |
GINGER
SNAPS: THE FERAL BOND
PART
1: THE SPIRIT, THE PREDATOR, THE PREY, AND THE HUNTER
CHAPTER
1: THE SPIRIT
For
a second night in a row, an alley in the snowy Canadian town of
Dauphin was haunted. If somebody saw
this spirit—and only a rare person could—they'd see a teenage
girl with shoulder-length red hair wearing only a long, blue
t-shirt, her pajamas in life. She had no part in choosing her
clothes. They didn't matter because nobody but her sister Brigitte
ever saw her. Below-freezing wind whipped through Ginger with no
effect. She sat with her bare knees bent in front of her chest. Her
eyes prismatic with tears, she stared at the snow mound beside her,
keeping an anguished vigil over her dying sister buried beneath.
Fifteen-year old
Ginger questioned whether she was dead because she didn't remember
dying and her memory of her last living month was surreal and
terrifying. This was more like a
string of hundreds of
worsening nightmares. A freezing oblivion separated each haunt
episode.
I
must be in a hospital bed in a coma. Please let me wake up now!
Please!
Her home,
her parents, her
school were all gone. Brigitte lay unconscious beneath the
snowdrift—frozen, poisoned and dying—the worst nightmare yet.
I'm
supposed to protect her. I've failed.
Death
would not unite her with Brigitte. Ginger somehow knew this. She
dreaded her fate if Brigitte died. Damnation, unending loneliness and
eternal madness were likely.
Ginger
could hear her sister's heart, its beat grew
faint and irregular. The
phantom reached her hand through the drift and touched
Brigitte, whose heartbeat then
strengthened and steadied. A
burning spread throughout Ginger's spectral body, followed by extreme
numbness. The ghost's vision went brown. She cradled her shoulders
and curled up, trying to keep her grip on this haunt. Then she
bottomed out. So had Brigitte.
“There
you go, B.”
Ginger's
boost bought
her sister some time, but it
increased the spirit's torpor, informing her that the end of
tonight's haunt and another chilly immersion came nearer. If she went
away there was no telling when she'd return, it could be few hours or
a week, but Brigitte would be dead first. For a long time, Ginger
went stock still, the sound of her sister's heartbeat the only thing
she heard.
A
rattled growl roused Ginger to her feet. She peered
down the alley. A werewolf almost the
size of a bear was coming. It carried
a dead collie in its jaws.
Ginger ducked back.
Maybe
he won't find her?
A
false hope. He
came around the dumpster and
gazed through Ginger at the mound.
He released his prey and sniffed. His eyes were blue with no whites,
his fur gray and black. He looked like a wolf, but not any existent
species. His pupils reflected light back gold. She knew from
over-the-shoulder reading of Brigitte's journal who this was. In
fact, if Ginger recalled her final living month correctly, she made
him what he was now.
“Jason
McCarty,” she hissed. She crouched. Her voice hissed, “Stay
away!”
The werewolf
either ignored or couldn't
see her. The ghost
held still while the beast dismembered its prey, then lifted its head
and stepped forward.
Ginger
struck at his head. She
acted on new instincts and had no idea what she could do. Her hand
passed into his skull and held there. Waves of jarring heat and cold
passed through her. Her vision browned out around the edges again and
her ears rang until she recoiled. Embracing her shoulders, she again
barely kept herself from sinking into chilling unconsciousness. She
was relieved to hold on, but she was so much weaker. Jason seemed
unfazed.
Shit!
That hurt me more than it did him!
Nevertheless,
she had done something. The werewolf shook its head blinked and
sniffed at her. It growled and spoke, sounding both like a beast
snarling and Jason speaking. “Ginger! What a surprise. After all
this time, we meet again. I see you've changed.”
“I've changed
less than you have, and at least I'm not butt-ugly.”
“Well, at
least I'm still on the warm side of life. It's been two years, and
I'm not at all the boy named Jason you knew, but to keep it simple
I'll answer to his name. What makes you prowl alleys now? Looking for
tricks to turn? Practical, but think you're just a little late
for that.”
“Ha-ha!”
She couldn't believe she caught his inflection. “Sure you're not
Jason? Because you still seem like the same asshole to me. I'm
protecting my sister from you. Is this the first time you've seen me?
I was there when she ran away from you this time.”
He sat down on
his haunches and lifted his paw as though taking an oath. Ginger
couldn't help gawking. It was bigger than a dinner plate. “I swear,
I haven't seen you since the night you fucked me. You were very
rough. Unfortunately, old Jason couldn't appreciate it the way I do.
Brigitte loves it rough too, and I'm here to see that's just the way
she gets it.”
“You fucking
liar. She hates your guts and doesn't want you within a continent of
her. I've watched you chase her from place to place.”
The beast
slammed its claws into the snow. “I'm talking about long before
that, Ginger. Now, I'm just waiting for the inevitable. She's fought
her changes for two years and has made this so stupidly hard, but
she'll give in soon. I know the monkshood she's shooting isn't
working too well anymore. Very soon, her sense of smell will tell her
I'm her proper mate.”
“How do you
know she's been shooting monkshood to stop the transformation?”
“So,
you did miss a few episodes between the old Jason and Brigitte? There
was a time when they
were friendly. When she tried to help Jason avoid the inevitable.”
“You and B?
Never!”
“It's true!
The first months after you died. Tonight, I brought a kill as a peace
offering. I've come to awaken her. Share a meal. She's going to be
starving.”
“Peace
offering, or piece offering?” She sneered. “You want to hump her
after she changes.”
He laughed. It
sounded like an old man hocking his throat. “I know she's
hibernating beneath the snow to hide from me.”
Ginger did a
double take. “Hibernating? You fucking idiot! She's dying. She took
an overdose of monkshood and she's in coma.”
The werewolf
drew back. It blinked several times causing the gold of its irises to
wink. “What?”
“I was there
watching. As you said, monkshood isn't working too well. She made
test cuts on herself every day. She healed in a few hours, so she
panicked and doubled her dose. That's when you showed up. She
ran away from you in the storm and passed out here.”
“You're just
fucking with me!” The beast shook his head and sniffed. “Yes, she
wreaks of monkshood, but she always smells that way.”
“Can't you
hear her heartbeat and how it stumbles? That isn't hibernation.”
Ginger swallowed a sob. “She's not going to last much longer.”
He stood still.
His ears and whiskers twitched. “Shit! I never knew she was so
dumb! Why are you just standing there?”
Ginger chuckled
in surprise. It never occurred to her Jason might help. “I can't
move a grain of snow. I can't leave her presence. Nobody can see me.
And right now, I'm weak and barely staying . . . present.”
Jason released
a snarl that didn't yield any words. He moved to the snowdrift and
began to dig. “So, I'll uncover her. But I won't stick around.
Human's discovering me is the last thing I need, so I'm blowing town
before dawn.”
Ginger nodded.
She understood very well a werewolf's compulsive secrecy. She had
lived it.
"It's up to
you to get somebody's attention, then they'll get her to the
hospital.”
He swept the
snow away from Brigitte's face. Her blue complexion shocked Ginger.
“What can I
do?”
He gazed back
at her sidelong. “You'll figure something out.”
* * *
The
afterlife was never longer to Ginger than the next hour as she tried
to hold on, with Brigitte's dying heart and scarce breathing loud in
her ears.
She
broke her stillness when lights went on in the building across the
alley. For several anxious minutes, nothing else but noises emanated
from the structure, muffled speech, and the sounds of cardboard being
cut. A middle-aged man carrying boxes came out. The snow in the
middle of the alley was cleared, but deep piles and drifts lay along
the edges. Brigitte was exposed between two dumpsters but the area
was shadowed, and he wasn't looking that direction.
He halted with
a jump at the sight of the dismembered dog. Jason had placed the main
part of the carcass to draw attention toward Brigitte.
“No, Jeezus!
A fine start to the day this is,” said the man.
“Come on,”
Ginger said unheard. “Just look that way a little further.”
But his eyes
stayed on the carcass, which he then stepped around on his way to the
dumpster. Ginger put her hand into his head. Again, the surges of hot
and cold hit as a maelstrom of words and visions buffeted her mind.
It took her whole will to keep her hand in him. She shouted out into
his mind as loud as she could, “GIRL.
THERE. LOOK!”
She withdrew.
Her vision browned out again. Pins and needles prickled in her arms
and legs. Sinking was inevitable, but she held on a few moments
longer. He dropped the boxes, took out his flashlight and walked
toward the mound. To Ginger, the man's
attention seemed to shift at a glacial pace from Brigitte's frozen
hand up her arm to Brigitte's
glittering, icy, dark-brown hair and frostbitten face.
Her purple lips were drawn in a harrowing
smile, teeth gleaming
white against the her blue
features.
He
gasped and yelped as
his wife opened the door
and called his name, making him
clutch
his chest.
“Rose!”
he yelled. “Quick! Call the police! There's a dead girl out
here!”
No,
not dead yet! Ginger thought as she sank away into
unconsciousness. Everything went black, and cold like being immersed
in ice water.
*
* *
Ginger either
awoke or started another nightmare. She found herself standing in the
middle of a trauma center. Her sister on the bed in front of her—not
dead. Ginger clasped her hands together, and relief made her levitate
a foot off the floor, but she stopped short and sank back down.
This wasn't as
good as it first looked. Brigitte lay unconscious with an
oxygen mask. She inhaled with choking
gulps. The machine above her showed
erratic vital signs; its alarms kept going off. A glance at a
clock told Ginger it was now the afternoon. The
trauma
team
rushed around,
oblivious to the
red-haired ghost who shunned
any accidental contact with them. Ginger
backed against the wall and peered at the scene.
She didn't know
medical terms, but she could tell “sinus arrhythmia” and
“bradycardia” were very bad.
After the battle
to save Brigitte raged for a frenzied half-hour, during which they
had to defibrilate her twice, a tech dashed in, mask down.
“Toxicology says her
blood sample was spoiled
again.”
“What?”
yelled the doctor. “That's the third time!”
The tech
shrugged. “Yes, but they
did identify the stuff in her possessions.” He showed the doctor
the tablet screen.
“Aconitine?”
“Of
the monkshood family,” said the tech.
“Yes!”
Ginger shouted. “Finally!”
“Quite
a tolerance, too. Each ampule contained enough to kill five
adults.”
“Wait,”
the doctor said, “The
symptoms do fit aconitine poisoning.”
“Now you're
talking,” said the ghost.
He turned to a
nurse. “Prepare atropine. Five milligram. Intracardiac.”
In
a few minutes,
Ginger
winced as the biggest needle she ever saw was inserted deep
into her sister's chest. The
nurse compressed the plunger.
Ginger moaned. The sympathetic pain felt like a heart attack to the
spirit.
As the
nurse withdrew the syringe, the
alarms stopped and the graphic traces became regular again.
The spirit sighed; a similar
relief went through the postures of the trauma staff.
Ginger
walked up to the foot of Brigitte's bed. “Oh, B., I think you're
gonna make it. You scared the shit out of me for days.”
The
nurse turned and smiled at the doctor. As he began to say something,
demented, hateful eyes flared open behind her. Brigitte jumped on the
nurse who saved her life seconds before. She chomped and snapped at
the nurse. The woman fell screaming in Brigitte's hard grip. The girl
snarled like an enraged wild beast. The noise made the whole team
quail. For a moment, they looked to Ginger like they were all ready
to flee.
But none of
Brigitte's bites met flesh. The oxygen mask muzzled Brigitte, who was
too delirious to know. The whole team recovered and jumped on
her. Despite just being on death's door, she exhibited the uncanny
strength to shrug them off. The alarms rang out, vital lines to the
machines severed. “Restraints!
Get her in restraints!” cried the tech who was trying to break
Brigitte's indomitable hold on the nurse.
“Too late,
she's not in the bed,” said one who attempted to use pressure
points on Brigitte. Two others attempted to sit on her, but the nurse
was still underneath. One other was pulling Brigitte's hair.
“Shot! We
need a shot!” one of them cried.
Standing
invisible and engrossed at the foot of the bed, Ginger
never saw the staffer who ran through her like thin air.
Ginger went blind, her spectral body aflame. She
lost her grip and blacked out into the cold. The nightmare episode
ended; the freezing interval began.
*
* *
Ginger
came to and found herself in
a hospital room. It was dark outside the window and the lights were
off, but that didn't
matter to the phantom. She could still see. Everything just had a
dark, blue cast around it; blue, and some other color she never saw
in life.
Brigitte lay in
a bed unconscious, soaked in sweat and in restraints. This time
Ginger and her sister were alone. The monitors next to the bed
were steady and quiet. Brigitte
seemed out of danger and her complexion was nearer to normal. Her
frostbitten cheek was bandaged. Ginger sighed in relief, a habit from
life.
Then she
gasped: the calendar clock on the table suggested she missed at least
a week, but she couldn't remember the exact date this all started.
Plus, she didn't know how long Brigitte was buried in the snow.
Two nights at
least. Did I miss any? And is that thing even accurate?
It read 9:20
p.m. Ginger went to the hall and looked both directions. The lights
were low. Aside from snores, TV's and monitors everything was quiet.
Ginger rejoined
her sister. “B? Can you hear me? Brigitte?” Ginger repeated and
came within millimeters of caressing her sister's face. Fear of the
sensations that would trigger stopped her. She called her sister's
name several more times and got no response.
“B, if you're
still being an asshole and pretending you can't hear me, I swear, I'm
going to find a way to kill you.”
When there was
still no response, Ginger absently sank her hands into the mattress.
No, she
can't be vegetative. She'd heal . . .
Eventually .
. .
. . . I
think.
It
took two more seconds for her break down into helpless weeping. “Oh,
B., what happened to us? I don't remember anything after we were at
Sam's on Halloween. Why wouldn't you tell me what happened? Why
didn't you talk to me?” Her own tears felt chilly. When they fell
toward Brigitte's face, they disappeared before landing. Somehow this
made Ginger feel worse. “Why did you act like you didn't miss me?”
I want to
die.
That
thought choked Ginger with laughter. “Remember when we used to plan
suicide together? And took photographs of our best ones? That was so
much fun. I miss those days.”
The spirit then kept vigil. Still as a gargoyle, not even breathing, unblinking eyes fixated on Brigitte.
In
this state, she knew hours passed. The occasional tech or nurse would
check in, make some notes, study the monitors and would and leave.
Ginger moved only when they got too close, then she would resume her
vigil. For the whole night, Brigitte showed no change.
At
3:02 a.m. three men entered the room. By then Ginger was just
reaching the end of her haunt and was fighting the cold blackout.
The
first man was tall, blond with a strong jaw. The second was medium
height and dark skinned. He looked Hindi. His black hair and thick
mustache gray-flecked, he wore an impeccable blue pinstripe suit.
The
third had a complexion in between the other two and wore hospital
scrubs with a mask that obscured most of his features. He spoke with
a Manitoban accent. “This is her, Mr. R.”
The
blond man said, “And she has still had no
one visit her? No relatives? No Friends?”
Offended,
Ginger rushed between them and shouted. “I've been here you
idiot! I'm her sister. Ginger, and I'm here!” He didn't
respond.
“No,”
said the man in the suit. He had an Sub-continental accent. “Very
unusual. And quite sad,
really.”
Mr.
R. rubbed his palms together. He turned to the man in scrubs, “Dr.
Gadepalli and I need to confer privately.” The scrub man left
without even a nod.
When
the door was shut, R. spoke. “Show me what you described.”
Dr.
Gadepalli pulled Brigitte's hair back from her ear and pointed. “You
saw the pictures of her frostbitten ear. Look how there is no
frostbite. No scarring either, in less than a week. It
is completely regenerated.”
“Completely
shaped tissue regrowth.”
The
doctor nodded. He peeled
back to bandage from Brigitte's
face. The blotch of frostbite, which
had been the size of Ginger's palm, had
dwindled to quarter-size.
Ginger
felt renewed distress. “Oh, B., you must be really close now.”
Ginger did a double take, not believing she forgot the date for the
full moon.
“Impressive!”
said R.
“But
here is an anomaly,” Dr. Gadepalli pulled back Brigitte's sleeve,
and showed cut and needle marks that marred
Brigitte's arm. “These have not disappeared,
as you can see.”
“That
does not matter. I've seen enough,” said the blond man. “I want a
room prepared for her at your facility.” He gestured for the doctor
to follow him from the room. “The company will
handle the transfer
. . .”
Ginger could
hear no more. They left the room and she couldn't leave Brigitte to
follow them. In a mere few minutes, her consciousness faded away.
* * *
Ginger awoke in
yet a different hospital room, standing in front of a sunny window.
The rays went right through her to make a spot on the wall. Brigitte
was there, unconscious, but there were no more monitors. An IV was
the only visible device attached to her.
Ginger walked
up to her sister. “B?”
She then jumped
at the sound of a page turning. She discovered a nurse sat against
the wall in a chair, reading a novel. Ginger approached and read the
name tag. She shouted in the nurse's ear. “Hi, Cassie!” The ghost
waved her hand in front the woman's face. Cassie turned the page
again.
Oh, a fast
reader.
Ginger's
invisible hand didn't even break her pace.
Brigitte
moaned. In a blink the ghost was with her.
Ginger
levitated a foot off the floor in excitement that her sister was
alive. She dropped down slowly.
“Brigitte!
Brigitte!” she called. Brigitte moved, sniffed and frowned. “Come
on. Wake up, sleepy head!”
Brigitte
sniffed more, stretched her fingers, then opened her eyes.
[EOC]
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