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It wasn’t until half-way through Arizona that Derek found himself humming. It wasn’t along to a song on the radio, which made Cora side-eye him pretty hard, and it wasn’t something he liked humming. It was a little amelodic, more like the sing-songy quality of a long-memorized idiom than an actual song, and it made him a little uncomfortable, like he wasn't totally happy learning the idiom/song in the first place, but he just couldn’t stop humming.
“… the one-of-a-kind….” He muttered to himself as the Camero idled in a fast-food drive-through in Wilcox.
“What have you been mumbling?” Cora snapped, not without fondness. She’d been taking the roadtrip, the enforced closeness with grace, feet up on the dash—regardless of Derek’s death threats—and had proclaimed herself and her dubious gas station maps navigators over the GPS.
“You don’t remember either?” He shifted his attention to his little sister. “There as an old rhyme, a poem, something that I almost remember.”
Cora’s eyes caught a bit in the setting sun, shinning beta gold momentarily. “Probably wasn’t that important, then.”
“Probably.” Derek agreed, and pulled ahead dutifully.
۰۰۰
Later that night in the motel room, Derek found himself mumbling again, “give gifts to…” in the shower while Cora painted her toenails to some late night talk show.
۰۰۰
It wasn’t until they were thirty minutes outside of Lordsburg that Derek pulled off the side of the highway, killed the engine, and just rested his head against the steering wheel without a word.
“Hey,” Cora asked, her brows furrowed in classic Hale anger/concern, “you ok? Want me to drive for a while?”
Derek inhaled deeply. “I want to walk around for a while. I feel trapped in here after so long, you know?”
“You picked hell of a spot, but sure, why not stroll through the desert? Couldn’t have done it at the national park yesterday, but big brother knows best right?” Her bitching was still mostly good natured.
She’d been a lot more open since Derek had healed her, and her spirits had been steadily rising the closer they got to the New Mexican pack she’d been staying with for the past year.
“C’mon, grab a couple water bottles.” He urged, stepping from the sports car with his own.
“We pulled far enough off?” Cora squinted over the top of the car at him, before ducking back in to grab her sunglasses.
“Should be fine.” Derek reassured, and started out to the desert, chirping the locks after he heard his sister slam the door behind him.
They set a brisk pace through the tall, dry grass until both the highway and the Camero were miniaturized by the distance.
“Seriously, bro, what’s up with you?” Cora final caved and asked, voice laced with concern.
Derek kept walking steadily for a few more paces, as though he hadn’t heard the question, before he faltered.
“You know, mom would never have named you Cora. She had strong opinions about people who named their kids names that rhyme, or had themes, or that all started with the same letter.”
“So, we’re glad she didn’t name you Lerek or Dora?” Cora asked acidicly, glaring Derek down.
“Actually, she and dad had been quietly talking about trying again.” He continued both his steps and his train of thought, distractedly. “There were hushed conversations of Elizabeths or Benjamins, or Avas. Laura and I were both grossed out and ecstatic; Peter’s kids were getting a little too old to spoil without regrets.”
“So why did they pick Cora, then!?” She demanded, heels dug in literally and metaphorically, “do you just want to rub in names?”
“I finally remembered the rhyme I was humming, Cora.” Derek turned to her slowly, wearily. “We never talked a lot about the supernatural when we were kids, our pack was too well established, but mom made us memorize the rhyme. She said all cubs had to learn it, that you’d be hard pressed to find a single pack on this continent that didn’t know it.”
He sighed and rubbed his face, knocking his aviators askew until he pushed them up to look at his little sister.
She mockingly shoved her lenses up too, to look her older brother in the eye, his care-worn and exhausted face contrasting with the bright, hot day.
“Witches collect the rare / one-of-a-kind, the lost, not found. / They see into your heart, beware / give gifts to keep you bound.”
“What the hell does that even mean Derek?” Cora demanded, throwing her water bottle to the ground angrily.
“It means there’s a coven of witched based in New Mexico that steals power from shifters. They look into your mind, your heart, and show you what you most want so they don’t have to kidnap you, so you’ll take them where they want you to go. It means mom would literally never name her second daughter Cora. It means that at some point last year, I was the last Hale. The last of what had been one of the largest, strongest packs in this country. It means that no matter how badly I wanted it, I never had a little sister.”
Instead of the wicked laughter and melodramatic villain bandstanding Derek had grown to expect, Cora attacked. Sharp talons slashed at his face, a grotesque, twisted face screamed at him.
“You could have just come with me, idiot!” His little sister’s voice screamed, “You would have never known! You would have been happy, you would have had family again, not just your fucked up uncle!”
The thing about witches, though, is that they’re relatively easy to kill, once you know who they really are, once you break the hold on your mind and hear through their lies. This one was a little stronger than usual, having already absorbed the power behind his alpha shift, and with the proximity to her coven, but she was still decidedly human with human weaknesses, so as long as he didn’t let her hands stray too close to her pockets for any of her focus items, it was probably one of the easiest kills of his life.
And if he sobbed desperately while holding the body of the little sister he never truly had, they no one would ever really know.
The witch had to have been absolutely ancient as, by the time he managed to swallow back his tears, the body had degenerated into nothing but bleached, cracked bones and focus stones. He grabbed the shining ruby that was obviously his alpha shift, and the sunglasses that he’d bought his baby sister on their first day on the road, and the water bottles. He cracked one of the bottles on the way back to the car, and downed the second on his way back to her bones. He smashed the rest of the focus stones, watching the magic swirl away on the wind, and tenderly tucked the emergency blanket he kept stashed in his trunk around the bones.
When he made it back to the Camero a second time, he changed his shirt, and shoved her bag into the back where he wouldn’t have to think about how he had to listen to his little sister bitch about shopping, but still making him sit in the husband chair and insisting on modeling everything for him, disregarding his opinions anyway.
He drove nonstop back to Chiricahua, and mourned his packmate and the last sister he never had.