Something a bit different this time. This chapter is told from Ginger's perspective, and its the only one that will be, but I felt like it was important to give a glimpse into what Ginger thinks, feels and wants for herself, without Brigitte's own bias.

While I personally do consider Brigitte to be the main character of the series, for a number of reasons, I'd planned this story quite a ways in advance, and this seemed to be the best place for it, kind of like a brief interlude before the finale kicks off. It was meant to explore a little of what Ginger went through, and got up to during the three years I put between GS and GS: Unleashed.

Needless to say, I think she had just as rough a time as her sister.

I'd also quite appreciate some feedback on this, as we come to the end. Let me know what you think.


Ginger bit down hard on the chain-links, trying not to scream.

Agony. Agony would be the word.

Mike's boys had cuffed her to a cluster of pipes in his office, her arms pulled around them so she was forced to sort of embrace them for balance.

Christ, if she didn't know better already she'd swear the monkshood was fucking killing her from the inside out.

She'd lowered herself awkwardly to the floor, and started using the chain on her cuffs as a chew toy to stifle the rising urge to cry out. Last thing she wanted was Mike or the others coming by to check on her.

Brigitte had done this for three years. Three fucking years. She'd only been using it for about three months.

This fucking sucked.

She could hear Mike's crew moving about outside the office, and probably keeping an eye out for the police.

The drive here in the van had been uncomfortable, with them too scared to floor it and get caught out, but too worried to move too slowly and get asked questions because they just happened to be driving an unmarked van that early in the morning.

None of them struck Ginger as being particularly at ease with what Mike was doing.

They were drug-pushers. They sold to a few locals, the drifters who stopped off in town, and couriers from other 'businesses'. They weren't kidnappers. They definitely weren't hardened criminals.

But they had guns, they were scared, and Mike wasn't much of a thinker. That made them pretty dangerous.

The pain was getting worse. She whimpered, involuntarily, biting down harder on the metal cuffs.

Mike was adamant Brigitte would come back for her. So was Ginger, to be honest. But unlike Mike, she didn't think Brigitte would be stupid enough to just walk in the door with her hands raised in surrender.

Brigitte had never really liked to admit it to herself, but a lot of the times she remembered 'Ginger' getting them in trouble had been based on Brigitte's 'ideas'.

Brigitte had great ideas. Downright conniving. She was devious as hell when she wanted to be.

The room started to wobble slightly, and her vision wavered. She clenched her eyes shut, pressing her head against the pipe.

She would come back for her. Ginger knew that. Even after everything Ginger had done, fucked up, ruined…Brigitte would still come back for her.

Even after…

Ginger awoke screaming, flailing around for grip. Her hands fumbled uselessly, feeling all wrong. Not the right muscles, not the right hands, not the right…

She screamed again, coarse and raw, one hand going to her chest where the knife, where Brigitte…

…nothing.

Her mind, her memories were all jumbled, things came back to her out of order.

She was Ginger. She had hands and feet, arms. No tail, no paws, no fur.

No knife in her chest.

"Fuck! Brigitte!" She cried, rolling onto her back. "Fuck, fuck, I'm sorry! Brigitte!" Tears were sliding down her face. She could still feel it, the knife, where it had plunged into her chest. Cold and sharp.

She was covered in blood, and naked. Cold. Wet.

Trees were all around her. The ground coated in damp, fallen leaves.

"Brigitte!" She cried again, helplessly.

There was so much blood. It was in her hair, on her skin, under her nails, in her…mouth.

She rolled over sharply and threw up.

So much blood. Stuff stuck in her teeth.

She threw up again.

Memories in flashes. Sharp. Painful.

Trina dead in their kitchen. Burying her under the shed.

"Oh god…oh god…"

More memories. Their teacher, sprawled over his desk. Her nails…claws raked across his face.

Her stomach rebelled.

"Oh fuck…" She threw up again.

The janitor. Biting, clawing at him. Tearing his heart out with her bare fucking hands…

"Oh…fuck…fuck…" She panted, dry heaving. Nothing left. Nothing left.

Sam. Just flashing images now. Anger. Red. Violence. When the wolf had taken over. The hunger.

Mauling him. Dragging him through the house. So much blood. Gouging his throat out. So much blood.

"B-B-Brigitte!" She whimpered, clutching her stomach and sobbing. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

The look on Brigitte's face. That look. The fear. The horror. The sadness. The betrayal.

It all came back.

Brigitte lying to Sam to cover for her. Lying to the school for her. Lying to their parents for her. Begging her to stop. Pleading her try and fix things. Holding her after she'd been bitten. Holding her after she killed Norman. Holding her after she tried to cut her tail off.

"I'm sorry." She whispered, sobbing.

Brigitte looking at her, horrified, as she advanced toward her in the empty school halls.

"You know, we're almost not even related anymore."

"Oh god…" She retched again.

Brigitte trying to swallow mouthfuls of Sam's blood. Spitting it up, afterwards. Even then, even when there was practically nothing of Ginger left but a little voice trapped and screaming inside the wolf. Even then…

"I can't…I won't!"

"What the fuck…" Ginger rasped. She wanted to throw up.

She felt so weak. Her body felt like it belonged to somebody else. Weakly, she rolled onto her side and latched onto a tree for support, using it to pull herself up.

Still so much blood. Couldn't tell whose. What else happened? What else?

"I'm not dying in this room with you!"

Brigitte had tried to cure her, but Ginger had been long past reasoning with. She'd thrown away that chance, long ago.

The wolf had leapt at Brigitte. Brigitte had raised the knife.

Her chest still burned where it had gone in, though there was no scar, no sign of it now.

She remembered collapsing, tired and bleeding on the floor of the bedroom. She remembered feeling cold. She remembered her heart slowing, more and more…

Brigitte sat down beside her. Holding her changed, twisted form for…hours, maybe. Crying quietly.

Then nothing. Nothing.

She looked around. Through the trees, far away, she could make out the backs of a row of houses.

Bailey Downs. She was still in Bailey Downs.

Ginger took a careful step, letting go of the tree.

Another memory hit her like a truck and she grabbed it again, as her legs almost buckled under her own weight.

Brigitte grabbed the knife, cut Ginger's palm.

Sam in the corner, begging her to stop.

"No…" Ginger gasped.

Brigitte gripped the knife harder, glaring hard into Ginger's eyes.

She sliced her own palm.

"No, no no no no…" Ginger shut her eyes and shook her head.

Not this. Not this.

Brigitte grabbed her hand and pressed it against Ginger's, forcefully. A cruel mockery of their 'pact'. Mingling their blood. Infecting herself. Taking the curse.

"Now I am you."

"Oh god, Brigitte, what the fuck did you do? What the fuck have I done?" Ginger moaned, clinging to the tree.

Brigitte was still out there somewhere. With her curse. Her burden. Alone.

She had to find her.

Nothing else mattered.

Ginger remained rooted to the spot for a moment, as it sunk in she hadn't the first idea how to go about finding her sister.

Ginger looked in the direction of Bailey Downs, trying to order her thoughts. Focus. One thing at a time.

Food. Clothes. Information.

She let go of the tree, stumbling painfully on towards the gardens.

Memories, nightmares, swam around her head, but she gritted her teeth and forced them aside, thinking only of Brigitte.

She'd find her. No matter how long, no matter how hard. She'd find her sister. She'd…make this right. Fix this. Somehow.

They'd be together. Some day.

Ginger growled, flexing her fingers and straining against her cuffs. The monkshood was…

…she'd never been in so much pain. Not that she could remember.

She wanted Brigitte. She needed her. She wasn't sure she could do this alone.

Brigitte had told her the monkshood wasn't always enough on its own. It took a lot of your own will. But that didn't come easily, for her. She'd spent years without fighting the transformations at all.

And unlike taking the monkshood, the change came a little easier every time…

Part of her had dared to hope that she might not transform again. That once was enough, that just maybe…whatever it was had burned itself out or something.

But about a week after she left Bailey Downs behind, she began to notice it again. The changes had started again. Small things at first, like before. Streaks of white in her hair, her teeth sharpening to points and growing, her nails becoming claws.

The hunger.

She'd balked at first, at the killing. But her decision to stay away from civilisation had eventually forced it on her. She'd learned, the painstakingly hard and slow way, how to hunt. How to stalk. How to end the life of things living around her.

Ginger didn't have the first notion of where Brigitte had gone, besides leaving Bailey Downs. She left quickly too, once the posters started appearing, and her photo, along with Brigitte's, started showing up in the papers and on the news.

They were missing, feared dead.

She wasn't surprised, given the state she'd left their home in. Furniture trashed, rooms torn up, blood smeared and clawed all over the place, and…and Sam's body in their bedroom.

And neither she or Brigitte anywhere to be found.

That probably raised a lot of questions.

It was as good a reason as any to put as much distance between herself and Bailey Downs as she could though, and north was the easiest option.

After everything that had happened, she kept mostly to herself. It was too dangerous, being close to people. She walked. Alone.

Tiring, but safer.

It wasn't fair. It seemed like no time at all had passed before she barely recognised herself at all. One night, as she tried to sleep, huddled in an old shack not far from the road, it happened again. It was a full moon, and as she screamed and clawed at the floor, the walls, the door, she felt Ginger slip away, into the dark and the animal emerge.

Some days later, Ginger awoke again, wet, bloody and freezing, sobbing in the woods. The half-eaten carcass of a deer was close by.

She was sick repeatedly, but eventually her hunger and exhaustion won out and she weakly approached the body, and forced herself to eat.

Ginger swore to herself that was it. No more. Never again. She'd fight it harder next time. Somehow.

But it didn't matter.

There was an argument outside the office now, Ginger noticed, vaguely. She was more concerned about other things though.

Like the hairs on the back of her hand. The way her nails had started to stretch, and sharpen. The fact her hair had almost doubled in length, tumbling over her shoulders, streaked with a silvery white.

She wasn't winning.

Ginger was breathing heavily, biting down on the cuffs, ragged and choppy. Her teeth felt different too. Less like teeth and more like…say…fangs.

The cuffs wouldn't hold her for long. The office door wouldn't bar her for long. The others outside would be dead in seconds. She'd cut through them like a knife through butter. She'd kill them all.

And Brigitte would leave her.

It wasn't fair. She didn't want this. She didn't want to kill. She didn't want to change. But she had no choice, she couldn't stop this. She'd never been able to stop this.

Without it, she'd never have found Brigitte at all…

It had taken Ginger a few months to realise the transformations were regular. Coming with the full moon. It brought to mind Brigitte's mad ideas about werewolves and lycanthropy, and how she'd shot them down out of hand, from the start.

Felt like a bit of a fucking tit now, really.

There was a time when her greatest fear had been cramps, PMS, bleeding monthly, 'woman issues'.

Fucking hell, that had been the life.

Not she spent half each month warping into some kind of predatory creature, barely human, and three days on four legs killing and eating the local wildlife. Including household pets, if it felt like it.

It had taken her a bit longer to realise it was taking her somewhere. The closer she got to the full moon, the less she thought like Ginger, the more she seemed to gain some sort of…sense of direction.

Her senses themselves changed. She noticed things, sounds, smells, tastes, far more. And certain smells and flavours brought out strong…impressions. Specifically strong impressions of her sister, Brigitte.

She wanted to find her sister more than anything, did her other half know that?

Should she be trying to find Brigitte at all when her other half wanted to kill and eat most things she came into contact with?

As far as Brigitte knew, she was dead.

When she thought about Brigitte, it produced a kind of hunger, deep inside her. But it wasn't the same as before. It wasn't an urge she recognised, like she had come to with the beast's need to rip, and tear, and kill. But it was need still, and yearning, and it pulled her on.

Her route was hardly direct. Brigitte either wasn't in any hurry or wasn't going anywhere specific. Ginger had spent a year almost, bouncing from town to town across Ontario.

A year.

She prodded the fire she'd made with a stick, depressed. Smoke drifted up through the trees above.

A year.

Alone, without anybody. Transforming into a bloodthirsty creature every month. Staying away from people as much as she could.

Happy birthday, Ginger, happy birthday Brigitte, she thought, bitterly.

She was so lonely.

It wasn't as if she or Brigitte had ever worried about making a lot of friends, but they'd had each other. She'd had Brigitte. She'd always had Brigitte.

She'd always…made sure of it.

"You wrecked everything for me that isn't about you."

And she'd made sure Brigitte had shared the consequences of her actions.

"Now I am you."

Deep down, Ginger hoped that was never true. Brigitte was better than that.

It had occurred to her, with nothing but time to think on her hands for the last year, that she hadn't always been a good sister to Brigitte. That she'd used her and coerced her as much as Brigitte had wilfully stuck with her, over the years.

Ginger thought more and more about their time together, growing up, their memories, and she found herself not always as comfortable with the Ginger she had been as she used to be.

The Pact, for starters…

"You swore we'd go together, one way or another."

"When we were eight."

It used to just be their thing. Something that tied them together, on top of everything else. Where other siblings fought and squabbled, they always came together, formed ranks against anything in their way.

"Out by sixteen or dead in this scene, but together forever."

But now it just made her feel hollow inside. Made her feel stupid.

"C'mon, B. Together forever."

"United against life as we know it."

She missed Brigitte.

Ginger gripped the pipe to hard her hands went white. Her claws scraping painfully against the metal.

She was losing control.

Her body was shaking now, and she could hear the heartbeat of every stupid frightened idiot in the warehouse outside. She could feel their nervous, quick pulses, she could fucking taste their-

"Fuck." She snarled, trying to think about something…anything else.

If one of them picked now to check up on her…

"Fuck." She hissed, banging her head against the wall. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

She had to hold on. She didn't want to kill anybody. She didn't want Brigitte to leave her again.

Inwardly, she wasn't sure whether Brigitte really meant it, but that was bad enough. There was a time when she knew exactly what Brigitte was thinking, but in three years, her sister had changed. She wasn't the same little sister she remembered.

Brigitte had grown up.

The years had made her harder, colder, bitter. The monkshood, her endless fight against the transformations had taken whole parts of her sister away.

But she was still Brigitte. She was still Brigitte, in a way that Ginger wasn't really herself anymore.

"I said I'd die for you!"

"No. You said you'd die with me. Cause you had nothing better to do."

Maybe that was for the best, considering some of her past choices.

And her own, complex, troubling, not-entirely sisterly feelings for Brigitte aside, she still loved her. She always would…

A few months later, she'd picked up the scent of the other werewolf. It had been pretty clear that it wasn't Brigitte.

A few months more and she had realised, with alarm, it was following Brigitte too. It was familiar. But different.

One night, she came up on an old lumber camp, a few miles outside of a small town. It looked pretty abandoned, but it definitely didn't feel like it.

Something was here, and it was driving her haywire.

She stalked into the middle of the place and decided to skip the sneaking around bit.

"Alright, who the fuck are you?" She snarled, glancing around.

"That you Fitz?" Someone emerged from a dilapidated cabin. "Thought it was. I'd recognise the smell on you anywhere after you-"

She recalled Brigitte's voice, scolding her.

"You gave it to Jason. You had unprotected sex and you infected him."

"Spare me the memory, McCardy." Ginger turned to face him, irritably. "You weren't that good."

"Bitch."

"Cave-boy."

Jason looked rough. His hair was longer, wild and tangled. And his skin was patchy, marked and scarred. He looked more animal than human.

"The fuck are you doing out here?" She snarled.

"It's a funny thing Fitz, but I'm following another werewolf, know anything about that?" Jason sniggered, twitchy, jumpy. "And she's givin' off these…these serious vibes, know what I mean? Like, I wanna-"

"Back off, McCardy." Ginger stepped forward, clenching her hands into fists.

"Hey, I mean, there's nothin' you can do. But I'm a hot-blooded male, this is…I mean, it's driving me crazy."

"Stay away from her." Ginger barked.

Jason grinned, then laughed.

"Oh man, I wasn't sure, but, but it is Brigitte isn't it? It's your freak of a sister." Jason laughed again. "It's funny, she was always just a nothing, quiet, weird little thing. Not worth a look, but now she's just giving off these…I don't know, it's like she's in heat or somethin' Fitz, and I am craving-"

"She's mine!" Ginger lashed out, striking him across the face.

He pulled himself upright quickly, rolling his shoulders.

"You can feel it too, can't you?" He sneered, working his jaw.

"No." Ginger replied.

Yes, she thought.

"The wolf wants her, doesn't it?" Jason smirked.

"You know, we're almost not even related anymore."

"No."

Yes, she thought. She'd realised it, some months earlier.

"It doesn't care that she's your sister." He chuckled. "Oh man, that's so freaky, it's so you. You two always were stuck together."

"You love it. Should come for the ride. A little scratch. Swap some juice. We'll be our own pack, like before. It's so 'us' B."

"Shut up." She growled.

Her other half, the wolf, had been trailing Brigitte alright. But it wasn't just so Ginger could find her. It wanted…it wanted..

"Whatever, Fitz." Jason shrugged. "You honestly think I care anymore? I'm a fuckin' werewolf. I've eaten people. I just want to fuck something, and your sister'll do. She thought she'd cured me, y'know, so much for that, the stupid little dweeb."

"What?" Ginger asked, sharply.

"Stuck a needle of some shit in my damn neck, back in Bailey Downs two years ago. It almost made things normal for a while. Didn't last though. Oh well." He shrugged again.

The monkshood wasn't a cure.

Brigitte had no cure.

It wasn't as if Ginger hadn't begun to suspect something was wrong, after nearly two years. Brigitte still smelled like a werewolf. She was still following something that was definitely Brigitte, and definitely a werewolf. But she'd still hoped that maybe there was…some other reason, some other explanation…

It wasn't a cure. Brigitte had spent two years only delaying the curse. Slowing it down.

"Look, I won't hurt her…I think." Jason said, smiling. "Just want to have a go. You can always go next?" He chuckled.

Ginger stared at him for a second. Her blood boiled.

"What?" Jason asked, defensively.

Ginger leapt at him with a snarl and they went down, kicking, punching, clawing and biting. They rolled across the clearing until Jason threw her off, through a cabin door. He charged at her but she was faster, already back on her feet and tackling him through the cabin wall. She pummelled him repeatedly until her fist was raw and bleeding and his face a pulpy, bloody mess.

"Stay the fuck away from my sister, McCardy." She hissed, grabbing him by the shoulders and hurling him back into the cabin.

The whole structure collapsed on top of him, as Ginger stumbled backward in a cloud of dust and debris.

She stared at the ruins for a moment, before turning toward town.

She'd find Brigitte first, before McCardy, and before her other half, and she'd be damned if she let anyone touch her ever again.

Ginger was going pretty wild caged up in the office. Nobody was even looking in on her, they probably didn't care.

Judging by the smells, some of them were getting high on their own fucking product.

She felt like she could have used some of it. She needed to calm down, or she was going to lose it.

Sometimes she didn't think Brigitte truly understood how hard it was to fight it, the animal instinct, the sheer hunger, its power. Brigitte had, but her sister had a degree of self-control bordering on the fucking legendary.

She'd had to, growing up with Ginger.

Ginger had gotten pretty used to coasting by getting what she wanted. When she'd been bitten, she'd used the curse to get even more of what she thought she wanted.

Sex. Affection. Attention.

Blood. Death. Carnage.

Maybe this was the price. For her…sins…

Ginger raged and screamed in frustration, taking out her anger on the rock face.

She clawed at it, punched it, hit it, kicked it until her hands were raw and bruised and bleeding, and then she carried on.

She couldn't control it. It wasn't her fault. She couldn't control it.

She hurled up the contents of her stomach violently, leaning against the rock, exhausted. Blood and…and other things.

The torn and…half-eaten bodies of the hikers were behind her.

Ginger cried, her body racked by great heaving sobs. It wasn't her fault. She hadn't wanted this. She hadn't. She hadn't.

It wasn't even the first time.

She'd tried her best to stay away from people, but…but she had to find Brigitte. Each time she got close, close enough to have a chance of finding her, she was always close to the edge, to the full moon. There was never enough time. It wasn't fair.

It wasn't fucking fair!

Every time, she'd changed in the town Brigitte had been in. She remembered sparse images. The wolf had stalked her sister, hunted her. Wanted her for…

Ginger vomited again.

It wanted her for…

It had taken her love for her sister and twisted the fuck out of it. She wasn't even sure anymore what that meant.

After three years, it was getting hard to tell where Ginger ended and the beast began. Both wanted Brigitte. And the reasons were…were getting confused.

The only thing she cared about was Brigitte, the only thing she was interested in was finding her. It was her only goal, her only reason for not just finding some way to end her miserable fucking existence.

Brigitte had moved on again. On the run for real now. Ginger was hardly surprised. She thought she was being stalked by a fucking monster.

Maybe she was.

Last night, the wolf had gone after Brigitte again. It had found her in another shitty motel. The odour of monkshood had been so strong it had kept her away for a moment, until that other guy appeared, with the car.

Neither she or the beast had liked that. They'd torn the poor guy to pieces. Ripped him from the car while Brigitte screamed. But they'd lost her in the cold streets.

She spared a glance for the mauled bodies behind her and retched again.

She'd picked up Jason's trail again too. He was getting close. Too close.

Next time, she'd kill him.

Ginger pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, her stomach still feeling like shit. She tried to steady her resolve for scavenging through the hiker's belongings for things she could use.

She'd be faster next time.

Nothing else mattered, only Brigitte. Nothing else.

Just Brigitte.

Couldn't let herself sleep. She might wake up as something else.

Ginger struck her head against the wall repeatedly, trying to stave off the urge she felt to sleep. Her body felt like it was burning, and her bones ached, like they were trying to…change shape.

Fucking hell, she would have killed for some of that pot right now.

She chewed on the metal cuffs, tense as all hell. She was dimly grateful they hadn't just used rope or tape, especially if…if…

Ginger couldn't do this. She was going to change. And she'd either kill every person in the building, or be shot dead trying, like some mad fucking animal.

It wasn't fair. She was trying. She'd tried. And Brigitte would never know. She was all out of chances, and she'd die with her sister thinking she was the bloodthirsty monster she'd only known her as since that last night in Bailey Downs.

She didn't want Brigitte to remember her like that. She didn't want to be something she had nightmares about, like she had. Some twisted ghost of who she'd been, plaguing her mind. She didn't deserve that. Brigitte hadn't done anything to deserve any of this.

She shut her eyes and gritted her teeth, clinging to the last threads of who she was.

It wasn't fucking fair.

"Don't leave me!"

Her eyes snapped open, looking around frantically. That had been Brigitte's voice, she was…so sure of it, but there was nothing. Nobody. Just her.

Her breathing was ragged, shaky. She closed her eyes again.

"Look at me."

That was her own voice. Tinged with worry, out of breath, but it was her.

Ginger slowly tried to calm herself, slow her frantic breathing.

She started to…see things. Like a memory, half-forgotten, buried deep in her mind. Fragments, images, sounds, faces.

There was snow. A forest. There was Ginger, and Brigitte, the ones from her dreams. They were huddled close, on the floor. Brigitte's foot was caught in a bear trap. She was in pain, terrified.

"Count to one hundred, and before you do it, I'll be back. Alright?"

Brigitte nodded, hesitantly.

"One, two, three…" Ginger began, then hurried off.

Ginger opened her eyes, momentarily confused. She'd felt as if she'd been asleep, almost, but no time had passed.

"…four, five…six…"

She heard Brigitte's voice, continuing the count, her voice wary and pained.

Ginger looked at the door.

She either hadn't had enough sleep lately, she was going crazy, or…or this was really happening. These dreams…meant something. Ginger hadn't the first idea how or why that would be so, but lacking any other ideas…

Brigitte was coming for her. She believed that. She didn't know what else she believed, but she trusted her sister.

"…seven, eight, nine…ten…" She began to count.