The man who called himself Pablo had offered him something resembling fatherly warmth.
Not much of it, barely enough to notice, but Manson had been running on so little for so long that even that small amount felt like standing next to a fire in winter.
He'd listened to him. The blood-pull was unmistakable, he'd known from the first moment that this was his actual father, whatever else the man was.
Did he hate him? Of course he did. His entire childhood had been shaped by that absence, the specific cruelty that other children reserved for kids without fathers, the way adults quietly decided that a boy without parents to complain to was a safe target.
His adoptive mother had worked herself halfway to death raising him alone, and she deserved better than his problems stacking on top of her exhaustion.
So he'd swallowed everything. Every session in the bathroom, every taken lunch money, every comment about what kind of person grew up without a father.
The third time the transformation happened, he'd let it. James had given him what he needed, photographs, documentation, enough material to lure Martina out.
She'd sheltered Peter's behavior for years, covered for the bus driver, looked the other way with the practiced ease of someone who'd made it a habit. He'd decided she deserved what came.
He gave the anger his body again.
The fourth time was at school. Someone's idea of a joke, a locked door, an empty classroom.
The anger had come up faster than it ever had before, and when it left there was a room that needed to be rebuilt.
That was when the fear arrived. Not of other people, but of himself, of how easy it was becoming, how short the distance between ordinary feeling and losing the thread entirely. He'd thought seriously about walking away from all of it, pretending the ability didn't exist.
Then Pablo had asked him to deal with the two outsiders.
He hadn't wanted to. The wanting-not-to had been clear and solid in his chest. But Pablo leaving again, that second abandonment, felt unsurvivable in a way he couldn't reason himself out of. So he'd agreed.
He'd gone close to them multiple times. Watched them from different angles, different distances. And every time, they'd just been two people.
Talking, working, existing. No cruelty he could find, no harm he could point to. He couldn't do it. Couldn't let his own need to keep his father around become the reason two uninvolved people died.
He'd told Pablo he couldn't go through with it. Pablo had given him the mirror instead. Told him this was cleaner, no blood, just displacement.
And then he'd shown him the other piece of it, the workaround, the way to use someone else's machinery to do the work.
A phone call to an organization called the Tribunal. A report about a witch operating in the area. Some fabricated details he'd never actually witnessed, enough to bring their people running.
Maybe it was fear of being left again. Maybe it was the relief of not having to kill anyone directly. Either way, he'd done it.
He'd managed to get one of them. Then the other one appeared from nowhere and he'd gotten her too. And tonight had been the final piece.
Except the Tribunal's operative had come in swinging for blood from the first second, and then the building had come down, and now he was here.
The unfairness of it sat in his chest and burned.
He wasn't ready to die here. His adoptive mother still needed someone. There were people in the world who deserved what he could do to them, real ones, people who hurt others and kept walking.
And he'd only just found his father, after eighteen years, and the thought of losing that again before it had become anything real felt like a specific kind of cruelty designed for him personally.
Thud.
His heart found its rhythm again. Blood moved back into his extremities, filling the empty places, and something in his veins answered it.
Thud.
Louder. Stronger. Something in the blood that hadn't been there before, pressing outward.
Thud.
His eyes opened. Everything was red.
On his forehead, the crescent that had been almost dark refilled in seconds, growing from a sliver to a full circle, and then the blue light went out of it completely.
What replaced it was red. Deep red, blood-colored, a full moon burning on his forehead like a brand.
The transformation came back and it was different. Red markings traced up from his hands and feet, veining across the skin, the muscle underneath expanding past what it had been before.
The rebar pushed out of his body on its own, the wounds sealing behind each piece as it left. The strength that returned wasn't the same strength. It was more.
But the rage came with it, and the need for blood, and the want for violence so complete it left no room for anything else. Manson stopped being the one making decisions.
The rubble exploded outward.
Chunks of concrete the size of cars cleared the debris field entirely. The dust that had been settling lifted again and filled the university grounds in seconds, rolling outward over the walls into the street. The ground shook with each impact.
When the werewolf came out of the wreckage, it found Raphael sitting on the far side of the debris field.
There were blood bags everywhere around him. At least twenty empties, some still slowly deflating, scattered across the ground in every direction.
He was finishing the last one as the werewolf appeared, his eyes already fully red, fingers already lengthened, the nails already at the edge of being something else entirely.
"Knew you weren't dead."
The system had gone quiet too long. Something had shifted inside the rubble and he'd been ready for it.
He wasn't concerned. Twenty blood bags was a lot of blood. His reserves were full in a way they'd never been during this fight, and the moon above him was exactly what it had been all night — round, white, completely unobstructed.
Full moon.
"The moon has a lot of children," Raphael said. "Werewolves are one kind." He stood, and the power that had been building since he started drinking came with him, climbing toward its ceiling. "Vampires are another."
He let Blood Frenzy open completely.
[Blood Frenzy: Physical functions raised to 200%. Full moon amplification: additional 100%. Current total: 300%.]
[Physical Functions: Lv9.]
Eva's support was minutes away now. Time was entirely on his side.
The red in his eyes met the red in the werewolf's.
"Let's find out which of us does this better."