Disclaimer: I do not own Skinwalkers nor its characters. They belong to LGF, After Dark, and whoever else screwed the movie up. Also, I have no claim on "Frozen" by Celldweller.
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A Fading Memory
It happened every night when he finally was able to sleep. His head hit the pillow, his eyes closed, and she was waiting.
Her hair was wilder than ever, her eyes the perfect hybrid of lupine amber and feline green. Fangs stretched out past her lips, dripping rubies and staining those full lips crimson. Her nails were black talons. Yet her skin was that supple, smooth tan, tinted with a natural blush that suited her so well.
Every night she was there, waiting for him in this ethereal mixture of her two shapes. She seemed to glow; the first time he'd imagined he was dreaming of her as his angel of vengeance. Maybe even death.
Now he knew better. He knew the routine, and it was the only part of his knew life he remotely enjoyed. It was guilty pleasure at its finest; something he was ashamed of in the cold light of day, but craved with abandon when his turn for sleep came in the dead of night.
As always their surroundings were a dim gray – the black and white of his wolf vision returned to him but flawed by his new disease.
She was a different story. She he always saw in perfect illumination. Every detail of her form he'd memorized long ago and still could recall better than the back of his hand.
The fluid movements of her lithe body were made to taunt and tantalize; she didn't breathe without doing so in a way to make him want her. It had been her whole purpose in her second life, she'd once told him, and these nightly visits were no different.
He knew they weren't real. He knew she wasn't real. Nothing but detailed fantasies, his imagination running wild and rampant. His memories and hidden longings, the temptations of his second life plaguing him in her perfect form.
He didn't fucking care.
Caleb didn't care that when she reached for him, it was all in his mind. He did not care a single bit that when he fell to his knees and clutched her form to him that it was wishful thinking. Caleb Varek imagined his face buried against her abdomen, remembered the feel of her fingers in his hair, and he knew that his pleas for forgiveness were all internal.
She never replied; how could Caleb imagine the proper response? He couldn't predict Sonja's reply – or the others he was begging for forgiveness from. He couldn't speak for Sonja or Jonas; his young pitiful niece or his loyal Beta. He couldn't even speak for Varek. And so she never replied. She never spoke at all except to beckon him to her.
And he always came.
Time didn't exist in this world his mind created for himself. Her touches lasted only moments and eternities.
Nothing else mattered but them.
It wasn't real; it wasn't the relief or the release he needed so desperately in the real world. It wasn't the forgiveness for his sins that he craved. It was an ecstasy that made him forgot for a while, and eased the pain of knowing he'd never have what he truly needed or wanted.
He couldn't have those things, and he didn't deserve them.
Yet every night when he fell asleep, he dreamed of her in all her glory. He laid himself between her legs when she beckoned him, and he found the closest thing to bliss he'd ever achieve again.
He woke up cold in the mornings, and there was always a shameful stickiness that he hid from his wife and his child. Again shame would overcome him; he'd secretly promise his family he would stop. When nightfall came to greet them, he'd be awaiting eagerly.
Just like every night before.