The Legend of the Werewolf (30 page)

With a strength that made a lie out of
his seemingly gentle disposition, he clutched her wrist with tight
fingers and forced her hand to reach out.

He dropped the moonstone into her palm
and released her.

What?

She yanked her hand away from his,
marveling at the red bruise his fingers left behind. The ball
didn’t stop glowing, if anything it glowed brighter. He stared at
her with the same adoration on his face, his eyes glazed as though
looking beyond any of her imperfections to see what he wished to
see.

He reached his hand out again, slower
this time.

His knuckles brushed her
cheek.

She slapped his hand away and stood, no
longer caring if she tripped and made a fool of herself. She wanted
to be as far away from him as possible. "Don't touch
me!"

His lips quirked upwards as though she
were playing a game with him. Anne held onto the moonstone with
both hands, using it as a shield against him. It certainly seemed
to protect against his shadow men, why not him as well?

"I have been searching for Edward for a
millennia. It never occurred to me that you might choose to become
human for his sake. I was unaware you could do that."

Anne shook her head. He’d said
something like that before. Repeating himself couldn’t be a good
sign. "I'm not Luna. My name is Antoinette. You made a big mistake
here."

Again he looked at her as though he
thought she were an ignorant child. "I am not shocked that you
don't remember—"

Anne lost it. "I'm not Luna, you freak! My
name is Anne! It's Anne!"

"
Silence
!"

His voice barged around the room like a
crashing truck, shaking the walls. The quake traveled from her feet
to her knees, threatening to buckle her. Anne closed her mouth.
What she wouldn’t give to slash the man to pieces with her claws,
or even go the old fashioned route and stab him with one of the
daggers her grandfather collected.

Hadrian got to his feet and stepped
toward her. Anne forced herself not to step back.

He reached his hands up and gripped her
shoulders. Anne winced as his sharp fingernails dug at her flesh
through the gown.

Hadrian stared her in the eyes, lowering
one hand to grip the moonstone with her. "You are Luna. Once you
remember, you will activate this stone and we'll go to your kingdom
together."

Anne shivered as Hadrian threaded his
thin fingers through her hair. "You will be a Goddess once more,
and I will be your God."

SIXTEEN

Mike charged passed past Brock and Fanny,
on a mission, moving like a rocket. He pushed open the door to
Bill's room with the butt of his palm and stepped inside without an
invitation.

Strange, the difference between the ways
he was treated before he left compared to now. When these people
thought he was the first werewolf of legend, they were ready to
make him their new pack master.

Now that they knew the truth,
their eyes followed him with the suspicious air of a trespasser. He
idly wondered about the little girl with the
Selena Gomez
notebook, and
whether or not she ripped up the autograph yet.

The pressure against his shoulder when he
shoved pastsed Brock was proof of their switch in loyalties from
Mike to Bill, or Edward, as he was really named. The true first
werewolf.

Bill lay in bed, his arms above the
covers that were tucked securely around his chest. His face made
the pillow look like a dark shade of white.

Bill opened his eyes to see who had
barged in. Mike jerked to a stop. The man's stare held him in place
long enough for Brock to clap a hand on his shoulder and
pull.

"Let him stay." Bill's body, while weak
and frail in bed, released a strong voice that had the power to
stop Brock's hand the way it stopped Mike's feet.

Brock grunted and released him, his
eyes apologetic even though he said nothing to Mike.

Westley and Chris entered the room with
him. No one protested Westley's presence or moved to halt him as he
stepped toward the bed and sat in a vacant chair.

He reached out and took the old man's
white hand into his. He held it as though the man in bed were his
own grandfather. "Looks like you've been keeping something from us
for a while."

Bill's pale lips lifted in a smile.
"Everyone has a few little things they keep in the back of their
closets."

Westley smiled back at the joke. It was
just as weak as Bill's. "That's a pretty big thing to be hiding in
your closet."

Westley released Bill's hand and
slouched in his chair. Chris went to stand behind him, putting two
supporting hands on his lover’s shoulders.

Bill reached his hand out and nudged
Westley to sit straight again. "Did you go to see your father
yet?"

Mike shifted his feet. He suddenly wished
he'd let Brock and Fanny pull him from the room. Now that he
watched the scene before him, he felt more like an interloper than
a cop.

Westley shook his head. "I don't think
I can handle seeing him yet. What about Annie?" He changed the
subject. "You said Hadrian took her."

There was only one place Mike could
think of that an aging warlock like Hadrian could take anyone. "The
Shadow Land."

Annie said it was where he went during
the day. Why not take her there?

All eyes snapped to him, as though
they'd forgotten about him while in the company of their pack
master and creator.

Bill's eyes sparkled. "Smart
kid."

Mike stepped closer to the end of the
bed and gripped the wooden frame. "I know you can go there. It’s
how you escaped. Send me there."

"No."

"What?" Mike pulled back like he’d been
punched. That was the last answer he expected. He figured the old
man couldn't wait to send someone into the frying pan to pull out
the girl he raised as his own.

Even Westley stared down at him with
confused horror on his face.

"What?" Mike said again, growling the
word this time.

"Wait a minute, you have the power to go
there? To the Shadow World?" Westley asked, looking up at Chris for
confirmation.

The dragon raised his hands. "Don't
look at me. I don't know anything about your myths."

“
But, why not send him?” Westley
sputtered.

"You don't understand," Bill said, halting
any further conversation from the pair. "Those things that attacked
you were powerful enough on their own, in a world where light
exists. In that world there is nothing; the sun never rises, there
only exists enough light to cast shadows. Shadows that move,
attack, and kill."

Bill paused. His hand reached to his
chest, clutching it during a sharp intake of breath.

Fanny shoved past Mike. "You should be
resting. No one should be in here."

She grabbed Mike's arm and, while she did
not pull, she looked at him as though expecting him to follow
before glaring at everyone else. "All of you, out."

Westley crossed his ankle over his knee,
folded his arms, and glared back at Fanny. Behind him, Chris leaned
against the head of the chair, also showing his lack of regard for
the command.

"Since when do you think you have the
power to order around your pack master?" Westley asked.

"When he decided he didn't want to be a
pack master." Fanny shot back, this time she did give Mike's arm a
little tug. When he didn’t move, she snapped, "Let's
go!"

Westley slammed his hand down on the
arm of the chair and shot to his feet. Shoulders straight, body
tight. He looked ten feet tall. He stole her attention away from
Mike.

"Get your hands off our guest
and get out of this room, Fanny.
Now!
"

Even though he wasn't a werewolf, Mike
still felt the power of Westley’s command rocketing from his voice.
Fanny dropped Mike's arm as though it were diseased.

"That means you too, Brock," Westley
growled.

The copper haired man nodded, turned,
and left the room with more dignity than Fanny had when she finally
turned her shocked face to the floor and walked out of the
room.

Brock shut the door quietly behind him,
leaving them in peace.

Good
, Mike thought. If Westley had stayed
silent Mike might have had a fight on his hands, and there was no
way he was going down quietly against that tight faced woman or the
redhead.

The room was silent for half a second
before Mike turned into a cop again and confronted Bill. "Tell me
exactly what you know about that place and what I can do to get you
to send me there."

Bill eyed him carefully. "Light. You
need a lot of light," he said. "The moonstone can produce enough
light to create the appearance of daylight, but Hadrian took that
with him." His eyes went down at the last part.

Mike turned his head to Westley. "Do
you keep any powerful flashlights around here?"

"We have some lanterns. Those should
shoot light out in all directions instead of a straight beam like a
flashlight."

"Not enough," Bill said, taking in deep
breaths and shaking his head. "A small amount of light only creates
more shadows. You need something bigger."

"Like me." Chris's face lit up as he
called the attention of the other three men in the room. "My scales
are reflective, that should help when I send out fireballs big
enough to burn anything that casts a shadow."

Westley gaped at him.

Chris slapped his shoulder. "Did you
seriously think I was gonna let you go without me?"

Bill shook his head, determined to ruin
their hope. "And, if you come across something that cannot be
burned? What will you do then? I don't want any more deaths on my
hands. People have been dying for over a thousand years just
because they looked like me."

“What’s there that can’t be burned?”
Mike asked.

“
His castle,” Bill
replied.

Unbelievable.

Well, not really. It figured a medieval
lord would live in nothing less.

Mike rubbed his face when no solution
presented itself.

He paced to think. “I called for
backup, told them where I’d meet them. I could call and tell them
to come to the ranch instead but …” That would take hours. Mike
fisted his Stetson and threw it to the floor. “Shit!”

“
We don’t have time to wait for
them,” Westley said, knowing where his thoughts had
gone.

“I can help.”

Everyone turned their heads to the door
that had opened a crack without their notice.

Mike’s eyes rounded to saucers. “Bud?
What are you doing here?” Then the bandages wrapped around his
torso and head became more noticeable. “What the Hell happened to
you?”

“You know this boy?” Bill
asked.

Westley looked between them. “Who is
he?”

“
My brother. And you’re
not
helping. You’re
going to tell me what happened then I’m going to send you
home.”

“
Why not? He’s helping and he’s
my age,” Bud said, pointing a finger at Chris.

The dragon scratched his red hair. “I’m
older than I look kid.”

“Whatever. Mike, you don’t even know
what I can do.”

Mike opened his mouth to say that it
didn’t matter but Bill beat him to the response.

“He’s very powerful.”

Mike half turned so that he could look
at the old man, still weak in his bed. “What are you talking
about?”

“That boy tried to defend Annie. I saw
him. Very brave. He even caught a truck and threw it at her
attacker. Unfortunately Hadrian still got the better of
him.”

“
Threw a truck?” Mike looked at
Bud, his eyes gazing over the scrawny muscles in his
arms.

“Not physically.” Bud glared at him as
though insulted before crossing his arms, hiding them. He looked
around the room. “Here, look.”

He reached his hand out, pointed it
towards the nightstand where pad of paper and pen sat. He drew his
fingers together, as though he were holding onto something small,
and the pen lifted into the air.

Mike’s breath caught in his throat. The
pen came towards him, slowly, like a submarine in water. He put his
hand out as it came close enough, and the little plastic pen
dropped into his heavy palm followed by the paper.

Mike stared at his brother. The little
brother he hadn’t seen in so many years, the one, he realized with
this revelation, he knew almost nothing about.

“
I don’t think it was the car
accident that made you psychic,” Bud said, shrugging. “I think it’s
just the way we are.”

“But …” He was too stunned to speak, so
he just stared at the pad and pen some more.