by Terri Lane
“Go, Dad,” Gabbi’s voice burst through, fear lacing her tone. “If anything he’s saying is true, then get out of here, I don’t want to lose you too. I will look after myself...”
“Yes, go...” Mr. Luca drawled. “Then I will feel free to do the same to you as I did to your wife...”
****
Keli
I stood at the door to Mr. Luca’s home, sickness swirling within me. I knew what I needed to do, what I wanted to do, but still it wasn’t easy. The foundation of my life had been torn out from underneath me, and now I didn’t know where to stand.
That was until I heard an animalistic howl, one that I knew could’ve only come from Baz. Something about that noise set everything aside and allowed me to shove that piece of wood which was the only thing that separated me and them.
“Baz,” I called out with a tremoring voice. “Gabbi?”
But I got nothing back, so I stepped forward on the tips of my toes. It was hard to pick out any sounds with my heart thundering in my ears, but using logic and all the training that I’d ever had in my place of work to move in the direction I assumed this whole mess would be unfolding. Not upstairs, that was too complicated if things went wrong, but not at the front of the house either. Undoubtedly Mr. Luca would want to do all that he could to ensure that the noise was kept to a minimum.
Plus, he acted very strange about the back room in his home when we first came to investigate the robbery. I didn’t read too much into it then because he was such an odd man and people were often strange about being investigated, but now...well, now I could read what I wanted into everything.
As I neared the room where I felt most suspicious, an ice-cold feeling consumed my heart. I wasn’t totally sure what it was, but there was a darkness surrounding me.
“There, this is much better now, isn’t it?”
At the sound of Mr. Luca’s voice, that sensation intensified. It wasn’t very often that I encountered true evil, even in my line of work, usually it was people who’d fallen on hard times, desperation drove them to do bad things, but every so often I came across someone who made me feel sick to the depth of my soul.
Mr. Luca was evil, I should’ve sensed it before. I should have paid more attention to Gabbi.
“Please...” Gabbi’s reply screamed of sadness. “Please, this isn’t my dad’s fault. Let him go, it’s me that you want.”
If Baz was caught then this really fell to me. If he wasn’t able to defend his daughter then it would be me who had to do it all. My fingers clutched tighter onto the gun in my pocket, I tried to gain some confidence from that but nothing came.
“Shut up...”
As soon as I stepped into the room with the gun held high, a pregnant pause filled the room. It seemed that I could be sensed just as much as the evil surrounding Mr. Luca. Gabbi eyed me with shock and awe, Baz kept his head fixed towards the ground, seemingly humiliated to be caught in the sick, twisted cage that Mr. Luca obviously had ready for him. Mr. Luca was the only one with a smug smile plastered across his lips.
“Ah, we meet again, Officer...” He stepped closer to me, his glasses sliding down his sweaty nose. The excitement radiated pungently off him, making me instinctively want to step backwards away from him, but I didn’t. If this was a man that enjoyed playing games then I needed to remain strong. I had to show him that I was in control, not him. “I’m sorry, it’s terrible rude of me but I do forget your name.”
“Blake,” I hissed back, wishing that I could throw some of that strength into my voice too. “Officer Blake.”
“Right, Officer Blake, well it’s good to have you here.” Mr. Luca sensed my discomfort and he continued coming at me. “But you aren’t needed today. I appreciate the way that you saved my home last week, but today as you can see I’m fine.”
I could feel Gabbi’s eyes burning into my cheek, but I didn’t turn away from Mr. Luca. Right now this was all about me and him and this weird little standoff that I’d accidently gotten myself involved in.
“I understand that you are fine, but it seems to me everyone else in this room is not. And as a police officer, it’s my duty to ensure that everyone is okay. I’m sure you can understand that.”
“Humans, yes.” He paced the room with that smile on his face the entire time. He thought that he had me in the bag, but I wasn’t going to succumb. Whatever emotional baggage he had over the Rymeria family it didn’t apply to me. I was in the unique position of being able to see things very clearly. “But this family isn’t human. I don’t know if you’ve seen yet, if you’ve realized, but they are beasts, animals, a threat to the human race.”
“A threat?” My heart raced, I knew now that I seriously needed to bluff my way through this. I had no idea about these creatures, I had only just learned of their existence moments ago, but I had to make this man believe me. “Shifters have been walking among us forever. How many humans have been harmed? Hmm? None, as far as I’m aware. How many humans have become aware of their existence? Hardly any. They keep to themselves and I think it’s our duty to allow that to continue.”
“You don’t know anything. You might think that you do, but you don’t. I’m the expert in this subject, there’s not a damn thing that I don’t know. All I need to do now is ensure that I’m the one to make some money for this discovery.”
“Money?” I screwed up my nose is disgust and horror. “You’re doing all of this for money? Aren’t you smart enough to find another way to get rich? And why don’t you find a wolf willing to be revealed?”
“Oh, this isn’t all about money young lady, so stop trying to figure me out.”
“Oh well then please, enlighten me.” I said, and waited for this weirdness to be revealed.
****
Baz
I can’t stop myself from looking up as Mr. Luca says this needing to know more. He threw me when he talked about Margery, and that moment of weakness got me locked up. I assumed this was where I’d die, but then Keli burst into the room and gave me a shameful sense of hope. I shouldn’t have to rely on other people to save me, not when I have all this extra strength, but it’s too late to be concerned with that right now.
“I first learned about wolves and shifters as a boy.” Mr. Luca paced the room as he spoke, telling the story like it was a fairy tale. The only problem was we all knew that it was the truth. “The family maid, my father’s whore, she was one. I caught her on more than one occasion changing which is when my fascination began. I knew then that the world wasn’t what everyone thought it was, so I turned my head to science.”
He glanced down at me, smirking in that horrible way as he spoke. I growled, hating him with every bit of my being but there was nothing that I could do from where I was.
“Carry on,” Keli warned, noticing the tension rising. That woman was incredibly perceptive, it made me admire her like crazy. “Come on, let’s hear the rest.”
“Okay, well I spent my life discovering what I could, researching, learning, experimenting with things that others wouldn’t dare to. But I was always missing something...a subject. Or a live subject, should I say.”
As soon as he said that, I realized that he didn’t intend to let Keli out of here alive. No matter what happened, he wanted her dead now. He never would’ve confessed to a crime that he could get locked up for if he did. This had just got about a million times worse...
“So, as I’m sure you can imagine, I felt over the moon when Margery started working with me.” My heart flip flopped, I felt it beating in my chest. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to learn the truth about their relationship or not. “At first my interest in her had nothing to do with Baz, and it had everything to do with her.” I wished that I could block my ears, but with paws I couldn’t. “She was beautiful, with her long dark hair, her big violet eyes, those plump lips, legs that went on forever...” It might have been three years, but it still hurt to have someone talking about my wife like that. “I wanted her to be mine.”
“But
she was married,” Keli interjected coldly. “Not for you to show any interest in.”
“Love doesn’t always work in the way that we want it to. Sometimes we fall for people who aren’t ours.” Mr. Luca sighed wistfully, leaving me wondering if he didn’t like the way things turned out. “I loved her from afar, but unfortunately my affections didn’t seem to be returned. That didn’t stop me, I knew that she was meant for me, so I continued on with persistence, and that was when I learned more about her husband.”
He spun around to face me, his smile cutting deep into my heart. It was good to learn that Margery didn’t return the affections of this horrible man, but it didn’t change the ending to this tragic tale.
“I discovered that it was actually him that I wanted, not her, which only made my fascination grow. And to learn that there was a daughter in the picture too, a halfling that could go either way...well, as a scientist all I wanted to do is learn more.”
I hated the way that he turned to Gabbi at that moment, I didn’t want his eyes anywhere near her, he was the scum of the Earth.
“Well, I would like to say that in my lust for knowledge, I forgot about my lust for Margery. I would like to say that I returned to matters of the head rather that the heart, but of course emotions are not rational and I couldn’t turn them off. I yearned for her every single day. In the end, in a moment of madness I revealed to her what I knew. I told her that I knew exactly who Baz was and that I’d reveal who he was to the world if she didn’t come to be with me.”
I hated to think of my wife suffering because of who I was, I never wanted that. It taunted me the whole time that we were together, I wondered if love wasn’t enough.
“She came to my home that night, and I thought it was to be with me but actually she wanted me to see reason. We argued, things got heated, I’m ashamed to say that I lost my temper royally. I did...something that I regret. I...I killed her.”
A roar burst free from me. To know that I lost my wife in an accident was bad enough to come to terms with, but to learn that she was murdered because of me and that now my daughter was in danger, well it was almost too much to bear.
“I didn’t mean to, it just happened. It was one of those heat of the moment things, a moment of madness. A violent outburst that had horrendous consequences that I’ve regretted ever since. So, of course I had to stage the car accident to make it seem that it wasn’t my fault. There were already going to be enough questions surrounding her death, I didn’t want to make it worse.”
I was shaking violently, rattling the cage, my temper was riling up, truly getting the better of me, but there was nothing I could do because I was still stuck in this cage. I was in danger, Keli was in danger, Gabbi was in danger...Margery was gone. I needed to do something, and quick.
****
Keli
The gun shook in my hands making me acutely aware of its presence with every passing second. I knew that I needed to do something with it, to put an end to this cycle of madness that had been going on for years, but somehow I couldn’t quite make myself do it.
“Why?” I whispered, my voice thick with emotion. “Why did you do all of this? Why couldn’t you just leave things alone?”
“Aren’t you interested?” Mr. Luca sneered at me. “Don’t you have an inquisitive mind? How can you go through life not wanting to know absolutely everything about it?”
Baz rattling in his cage had my interest piqued, of course it did, but not in the way that Mr. Luca meant. He wanted a body to chop up, he wanted parts to sell to a newspaper, he wanted to torture and torment, and to make wealth from it.
“Life is boring without all of this, don’t you think? The people who live in this world with their eyes closed must be bored. We’re the lucky ones, we know this world now. You can work with me, help me in my mission. I could use someone like you, a cop to ensure that I never get caught.”
His words inspired nothing within me, but my silence seemed to assure Mr. Luca that I was at least thinking about it. His expression lit up, encouraging words continued to roll off his tongue, but I tuned it all out. Instead I focused on the terrified whimper coming from Gabbi, making her sound more like a scared child than the moody teenager I met only a short time ago. I also listened to Baz and the terrifying sounds coming from him. In that moment, I remembered the brief look we shared outside, I could instantly feel something from him. Despite the animal that he was, Baz was a good person deep inside, I could just sense it.
“So...” Mr. Luca sensed that he was losing me, so he spoke louder to drag me back into his world, “what do you say, Officer Blake?”
“What...what do I say?” I stammered, trying to buy some more time. I just wanted a moment to collect my thoughts, to sort out my mind before I did something rash, but it felt like the walls were closing in on me, like the sounds were bursting through my ear drums, like I couldn’t concentrate however hard I tried. “What do you think that I’m going to say?”
“I assume that you’re going to tell me how right I am, and that you want in on this. You cannot make a lot of money from being a police officer, and sure I guess you have excitement, but not as much as you would have with me.” He stepped closer to me, reaching out his hands, wanting to touch me. “We could take over the world, me and you, we could have everything that we ever wanted.”
His smell drifted up my nose again, it prickled at my nostrils, just adding to the overwhelming sensations that I was experiencing. A dizziness filled my mind, a fearful sickness that I might be about to screw everything up.
I fell backwards a little bit without even realizing it, losing any possibility of looking strong. Mr. Luca grinned, he knew that he was winning.
“And...what if I say no?” I gasped, trying to regain my balance.
“Well,” he shrugged as if this answer should be totally obvious, “you know that I can’t let you out of here alive, not with everything that you now know. I’m not stupid.”
He didn’t need to say it, we could all feel it hanging thickly in the air: I’ve killed before and I can do it again.
“Well, that leaves me with very little choice, doesn’t it?” I laughed awkwardly, my mind racing painfully inside my head.
“No, I suppose not. So, what do you think? Sounds good, doesn’t it? Live and be rich, rather than die in the place of a beast.”
“Keli!” Gabbi’s shriek cut right into me, as if she genuinely thought that I was about to go through with this. Did she not know that I was playing along while the right decision came to me? “Keli, don’t do this. Save us, please.”
Mr. Luca wandered over to where he had Gabbi tied up and he ran a dirty finger along her cheek, causing her to shudder. “Oh it’ a shame, isn’t it? You really could’ve been a beauty, had you not been such a beast. You have a lot of your mother within you. It’s just a shame that there’s so much of your father.”
“S-stop,” she pleaded desperately, tears thickly filling her voice. “Stop this, please. Now, you can end this.”
“Oh, but you know that I can’t.”
Mr. Luca assumed that she was talking to him, but I knew better. Gabbi was pleading with me to put an end to it, and she was right. There was no excusing this man’s behavior, and he was too far gone for any kind of redemption. This was it.
I lifted the gun slowly, noticing that there was no shake to my hand now, and I aimed it towards the back of Mr. Luca’s head. Baz fell deathly silent behind me for the very first time since this awful man started talking about his wife, as if he didn’t want to distract me from what I needed to do.
I stared down the barrel, getting the angle just right so that Gabbi wouldn’t have any injuries herself and I waited, needing him to move away from her so that she wouldn’t get covered in blood. While I waited, I knew with utter certainty that this was the right thing. I’d been fearing a moral grey area, but there wasn’t one here. This truly was the only way.
Then, at the exact right moment, I pulled the trigger, and I watched the
bullet fly from the gun. The noise was deafening, it rang right through my brain, but as the walls stained with red relief flooded me.
It was over.
****
Baz
“I’m sorry, about all of this,” I told Keli awkwardly as I brushed the mud from me. “This should never have involved you.”
“No, no,” she panted with the palest face that I’d ever seen. “No, it’s fine. I came for you, I followed you into this, I...I knew what I was getting myself into.”
“You didn’t though, did you? Not really. When you jumped into the police car with me, you had no idea that I was a wolf. Maybe I should’ve warned you along the way, that would’ve been kinder.”
For the first time since Mr. Luca’s head blasted against the wall, Keli turned to look at me. There were a whole range of emotions flickering through her eyes, all of them I understood. “I wouldn’t have believed you,” she admitted. “I would’ve assumed that you were playing with me.”
There was something behind her gaze at that moment that she wasn’t quite vocalizing, and it tugged hard at my heart strings. I desperately wanted to reach out and touch her, to hold her close to my body, to keep her safe from anymore trouble, but of course that wasn’t possible. I had to fix my arms close by my side to stop myself from doing anything crazy.
“Yes, I suppose you would’ve. I guess it’s hard to know that there’s more to this world than you know without evidence.”
Gabbi slumped into a chair and watched intently as this odd exchange raced between me and Keli. She was covered in as much dirt as me because we’d been out in the woods burying the body. The blood was cleaned up now, there was no evidence that the man had been killed, I had done everything that I could to make it seem to be more of a missing person case than anything else. We shared a look, the knowledge of what we’d just covered up flowing between us.
“Thank you,” Gabbi finally broke the silence. “Thank you for saving us both from that man. I know that must’ve been hard for you, I understand that the decision is probably tormenting you, but you did the right thing.”
