The Legend of the Werewolf (24 page)

"Sometimes I leave. Other times I
arrange to have...an accident."

Anne couldn’t breathe. She was going to
have another panic attack and the sickness was coming back to
her.

Mike’s palm left her knee, reached out
and took Anne's free hand. The touch was shy, but when she felt it
she gripped his fingers, afraid of letting go. His touch made the
attack recede.

"You've faked your own death before?"
Mike asked. All calm and cop-like questioning.

Bill nodded. "It gets harder with every
year though. Two hundred years ago all I had to do was pretend to
commit suicide by jumping into a river. Had to make sure there were
people around who would see me, though. I would change into a wolf
and swim to shore. People thought the current had swept a pathetic,
elderly man away. Now, there are scuba divers and whatnot to search
for bodies."

"You would have left," Anne accused again,
the shock replaced with resentment. The hand that held Bill’s
tightened like talons on his wrist.

He winced.

Regaining control, Anne removed her
claws from his hand. Little crescent spots of blood appeared where
her nails pierced the flesh. Guilt cascaded over her like a
waterfall. "I'm sorry."

Using the hand she wounded, he took a lock
of her hair and placed it behind her and then held her chin in his
fingers. "It's alright, Annie, you're right. I was planning on
doing it when your marriage was announced. Thought you would leave
if I was no longer there.

“
But then you told me you loved
the rest of the pack, like they were your family. I already knew
you saw Westley as a brother. I also knew that if I left, you would
stay. Only you would be alone."

Mike let go of Anne’s hand. She felt
cold without it, but said nothing as he stood to pace.

He scratched his chin, not focusing on
anything in the room as he turned around and around. "Hadrian
doesn't know you're immortal. Otherwise, he wouldn't be looking for
people he thinks are the reincarnated versions of you."

"That's true. I'm not certain how it
happened, if it was something he did by mistake when he cursed me
or if Luna did it when she gave me the moonstone." He spoke the
last part softly. The rock on his lap glowed at the mention of its
creator’s name.

Bill sighed. “Either way, he is
limited. Lord Hadrian is a wizard but he wasn’t immortal like she
was. He had to trade his soul for immortality and the power to do
what he did to me. But creating new breeds of monster took a lot of
his power away from him.”

“
Werewolves and shadows,” Anne
said. Mike stopped pacing.

Bill nodded. “This isn’t in any of the
stories, but those shadows are actually his men at arms from the
days before werewolves. He killed them and trapped them in the
shadow world so he would always have servants.”

Bill stared at Mike. Anne got the
feeling that her grandpa was showing him something else.

Mike straightened. “A thousand years of
living like that, he must be nearly out of power.”

A flare of hope ignited in Anne's chest.
“This is good news.” She looked between the two men. Neither of
them seemed to share her enthusiasm.

“
Well, this means you’re safe,
right? With Hadrian running out of power, we can just wait him
out.” Still he said nothing. “Right?”

Bill sighed, his nose crinkling. “I
imagine that is true, he is running out of power. As for waiting
for him to run out completely...after all these years of relying on
his guard of shadows, I would wager he has enough tucked away for a
rainy day.”

Her hope was snuffed out as though Bill
took a fire extinguisher to it. She rubbed her eyes, fighting off
the oncoming headache. "Great.”

“That means he’s still
coming.”

Anne faced Mike. A grim determination
rested in his blue eyes and hard jaw.

She wasn’t a psychic like him, but she
could see the wheels in his head turning. She shook her head. “No.
You can’t leave.”

His gaze softened. "Annie, Hadrian still
believes that I’m what your grandfather is and he’s proven his
willingness to attack and cause harm to anyone who helps
me."

Her heart pounded in her chest like it
was trying to get out. Her mind scrambled for an excuse, an
argument so he could stay.

Mike was silent as she struggled, as
though waiting for the same thing, but nothing came to her. He was
in charge now. She couldn’t force him this time.

“I’m sorry. I’m leaving.”

"Don't go." Anne got up as he exited
the room.

Bill’s hands reached out and latched
onto her arms.

The gentle action was enough to stop
her. Her eyes followed his retreating back until they could follow
no more. The door to the cabin creaked as it opened and closed,
signaling his escape from her.

Her voice travelled on an airy breath
that was too late for him to hear. "I want you to stay."

Abruptly, her throat seized up. Her eyes
stung as salty liquid filled to her rims. Her chest rose and fell
rapidly out of control and nothing that had just happened made any
sense.

Bill squeezed her hand, and she looked
down.

“It’s alright, sweetheart, let him
go.”

His words didn’t make the swell in her
throat go down.

The orb on his lap illuminated gently like
a nightlight. Its’ usually calm glow did nothing to help
either.

She looked back at her grandfather, the
man who raised her, protected her, and sang her to sleep when she
had nightmares.

Anne could still remember the radiant
smile that lifted his cheeks the first time she called him Grandpa.
Her tears fell down her cheeks before she could wipe them
away.

He didn't look like a crazy person, but
like someone who was being brutally honest. Her grandfather really
was the wolf of legend.

It meant that Mike didn’t have a deity
for a lover, but he was clueless to how she felt and still leaving
her.

She brushed her palms over her cheeks,
drying them while forcing a smile. "You don’t look anything like
Mike. You sure you're the first werewolf?"

He smiled at her attempt to lighten the
mood. "I got the immortality, but not the youth. I suppose I won't
be able to prove it until tonight, though."

Anne’s smile cracked and sank like
Titanic. "Tonight?"

He nodded. "It's full moon tonight and,
for the first time in a thousand years, I'll have this stone in my
hand. It's calling her."

Tears swelled again at the implication
behind his words. Anne opened her mouth to speak but she choked.
"But ... I thought you said you weren't going to leave?"

"Oh, honey." He pulled her to him and she
didn't fight it. She held onto him as he rocked her like he used to
when she was small. "I don't want to leave you, believe me, I
don't. But with Lord Hadrian hovering around the pack, it's safer
if I left. I might never get another chance at this and I've missed
her for so long."

Anne fought back the urge to laugh.
Bill seemed to notice the slight shake in her shoulders despite her
attempt to hide it.

"Why are you laughing?"

She shook her head, mostly at herself.
"I don't know how to describe it, hearing you talk about love." She
sniffed and wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand. "I always
thought of you as a hermit or something."

Bill laughed, a deep throaty sound that
made Anne sink farther into his arms. She wanted to memorize how he
felt; he familiar woody scent of him beneath the scratch of his
trusty housecoat. What if she never hugged or smelled him
again?

"Do you really think she's going to
come for you?" Her small voice asked without her
permission.

"If she's anything like I remember,
stubborn, then yes. I expect she'll want to come down just to see
what's going on with her rock."

“I meant for you.”

He was silent for a time. “I don’t
know. A thousand years is a long time, even for a
Goddess.”

If the bitch knew what was good for her
then she wouldn’t break her grandpa’s heart. "Why did she never
come down before?"

He shrugged. "She did, I just don't
remember it."

Anne looked up at him. "You don't
remember?"

He shook his head. "It was hundreds of
years before I had control of my transformations. I was little
better than a wild animal.

“During my captivity, when I woke up
the morning after a full moon, weak and in pain, Hadrian stood
above me. Holding the stone in one hand and the end of my chain in
the other, he told me Luna came to see me, not knowing what had
happened, and that I attacked her."

Anne's heart jumped in her throat. How
easily she'd forgotten the part in the story where the first
werewolf was kept as a pet until his escape. She just couldn't
picture Bill in chains. "What happened next?"

Bill sighed. "He told me that I killed
her. I believed him until the next moon passed. Again, he stood
above me with the moon stone in his hand. I remember wondering why
he would still keep it so close to me during a full
moon.

“
I realized it was because she
had returned for me but, again, I had no memory of her or what I
may or may not have done.” His hands fisted in his robes. “Or of
what Lord Hadrian had done to her. This continued for I don’t know
how many moons, until one day I awoke alone.”

She would not cry. She would not cry.
“Alone?”

He nodded. “With Lord Hadrian no longer
above me, silently mocking me, it meant that she gave up hope,
ceased coming for me. Perhaps she thought I was a monster every
night and day, not just during her few hours of her visits to
Earth. I don’t know for sure.”

Anne wished she could control her
stupid tears. “I guess it makes sense, though.”

“What does?”

“
Your huge collection of old
knives and medieval daggers,” Anne said, thinking about all the
blades with their interesting designs and handles hanging on the
wall in her grandfather’s house. She used to think he’d spent a
fortune on them. Now it was more likely he’d just picked them up
over the long years he’d been alive and just never gotten rid of
them.

“Hmm,” Bill said. “Used to scare me to
death when I’d catch you playing with them.”

That made Anne laugh a little at the
memory, then she got serious again. “Are any of them magic? Like,
do any of them have the power to kill Hadrian?”

That would be so great if they
did.

Bill shook his head. “No. Luna never
blessed any of my weapons when we were together. They’re just
antiques.”

That was a
disappointment.
Anne shook her head and wiped her dripping eyes. "This
doesn't make any sense. If she's a Goddess then why couldn't she
cure you? Why couldn't she punish Hadrian?"

"You never asked these questions
before."

"I never knew that the man in the story
was you."

Bill nodded. "Fair enough." He scratched
his silver head of hair, as though searching for a proper answer.
For the first time, Anne was caught by the particular shade of
silver his hair was.

Is that another thing Luna is
responsible for? Giving her grandfather the same color hair as the
moon?

"I believe the only way to
explain this is that, even though she is a Goddess, she's not
all
-powerful."

"But she's a
Goddess
." Anne insisted, as if that alone
held all the answers in the world.

"True, but she's still limited. Not the
end all, be all of creation," Bill said. "Think about it, Annie. In
all the stories, Luna can only visit her love on the full moon.
That's a limit she had to live by. Luna can be a Goddess all she
wants, but it didn't make her more powerful than a man who sold his
soul to the devil to have her.”

His rough palm stroked her cheek, then
touched her hair. “You remind me of her.”

She blinked. “I do?”

His lips twitched in a smile. “The
shape of your nose. The color of your hair and eyes. I suppose it
was why I found it so easy to take you in. Not just because I felt
responsible for biting you, but, even though you were too young to
be my daughter, I always thought that if she and I ever did have a
child, she would look like you.”

Warmth spread through Anne’s chest, but
cold dread soon replaced it. "What if the reason why Hadrian
stopping standing over you wasn’t because Luna stopped
coming?”

He didn’t look like he
understood.

“What if Luna is dead?" She elaborated
with a whisper.

"That," Bill said, eyes becoming hard, "is
something I don't want to think about.”

THIRTEEN

Mike walked in a straight line towards
Gordon's house. He made it twenty steps before he stopped to look
back in the direction of the cabin he came from.