by Greg Hair
“No, please, sir. It wasn’t me.” The boy vampire cried, very near wailing. “Please, God! Somebody help me!”
“No one’s going to help you. Not even God.”
“Please, my name’s—“
“I don’t want to know your name,” Jamie said, stopping and dropping the teen at the edge of Loch Awe.
The nameless kid’s eyes turned blue as he pushed himself up from the muddy ground, flying to his feet. Throwing a left and a right, he quickly flew back, into the lake, when Jamie landed a hard kick to the boy’s stomach. Jamie shifted.
The werewolf and vampire fought in knee deep water that soon turned red around them. The boy fought bravely, landing a hit here and there, but, ultimately, in vain.
Making it obvious that he was a young vampire, from the way he telegraphed his moves, the boy never stood a chance. The blond werewolf, trained by Nicholas, was too strong, too fact, and too cunning. He was smarter in a fight. Jamie dominated the battle.
Jamie, his thick yellow fur wet from rain and lake, grabbed a final right thrown from the kid, and twisted his arm, pulling it off. The vampire fell to his knees, screaming, much like the now-blind werewolf had.
The werewolf seemed to snicker behind his large fangs, laughing at the boy, the same age as his attacker, that he had moments earlier proclaimed as guilty.
“I am innocent,” pleaded the young vampire, on his knees and up to his chin in cold Loch Awe.
The werewolf paused, as if debating the boy’s innocence or guilt. Then, suddenly, swiped the vampire’s face with his powerful claw. The kid collapsed into the water. Jamie kicked the boy further out from the shore and watched him sink.
The young king changed to human, and waded out of the lake. The crowd that had gathered, parted as he passed. No one spoke. The storm above passed, and the rain stopped.
“Aren’t you going to make sure?” asked Nicholas.
“Of what?” responded the nude king.
“That he’s dead.”
“No. If he’s not, I’ll find out, and get to kill him a second time.”
The elder grabbed Jamie by the shoulder, halting the teen’s march to the castle.
“Now that all the undesirables have been weeded out, it’s time to make our stand against those coming to destroy us. Landon will be coming in a few days.”
“How do you know this?”
“Annelise will have made it to Italy by now. They will have seen the tape. They will begin their march to our gates within a day or so. I’ve been around long enough to know when the enemy comes. We have our army assembled, and even more is sure to come in the next few days. You are ready to meet your destiny. And I am ready to take you there.”
Nicholas released his hold, and the nude teen walked away, into Kilchurn Castle.
Chapter 22: Requiem
“What are you doing here?” asked LillyAnna.
“What do you mean?” Landon asked.
“I’ve been looking for you all morning. I wake up to have breakfast with my husband on our first morning, and you’re gone. So I waited for about an hour, thinking you were coming back soon, with food or something, and you didn’t show up. So where do I find you? In a bar.”
LillyAnna suddenly startled when an older man, sitting at the bar, yelled out, raising his hands in a touchdown kind of gesture, and spilling his beer in the process.
The man ran around the bar, patting patrons on the back, rambling in Italian, and nearly laying a kiss on LillyAnna.
“What the hell?” she said, pushing the guy away.
“Look on the television. He’s watching football, and his team apparently just scored.”
“They get football over here?”
“We call it soccer.”
“Yeah, anyway, why are you in a bar?”
“Okay. I understand you’re probably upset. But, as you can see, I’m not drinking.” Landon waved his hand over the empty, dry rocks glass that sat on the table before him. “And this isn’t just any bar, it’s where I met the guy that put me at the bottom of the canal.”
“You haven’t had a drop?”
“Nope.”
“Then why are you here, of all places?” She pulled a chair out and sat down. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s nothing particularly wrong, I guess. I’m just…here. I guess I’m testing myself, with this empty glass. A glass that could easily be filled in seconds. And, I’m thinking.” He looked down at the glass, his hand playing with it, oscillating it on its bottom, imagining an amber liquid inside.
“Thinking about what? Filling that glass?”
His eyes shot up at hers. Then he smiled, and looked back down.
“I am thinking about other things, too,” he said. “I still have my self-doubts. I wonder how this is all going to end. Who lives, who dies. Does anyone live? Do we all die? I don’t know. Can I stop Nicholas? How do I do it? Our forces aren’t big enough to take on—“
“Stop, please. You’re gonna give me a headache, and drive me to drink. Honey, we’ve been down this road before. We don’t know how we’re going to beat him, and we don’t know who’s going to make it through to the end, but we are going to keep moving forward to that moment, with faith.
“We’re going to face Nicholas and, I believe, we will prevail. How? I don’t know. But, I’m not so sure we have to know. Maybe we just need to be there, put ourselves there to stand against him, and God will take care of the rest.
“As far as our numbers, God will take care of that, too. We will go to Scotland with the force we’re supposed to have. Stop worrying about all that stuff, and have a little faith.
“When I first met you, you had so much faith in what you did, as a werewolf. That was one of the things that attracted me to you—your convictions. That doesn’t mean that agreed with you, but you were so confident about who and what you were. I wish you could get that back.”
They sat there, for a moment, in silence, when the older man burst up from his seat again, repeating his joyous dance around the bar, only this time, keeping his distance from LillyAnna.
“Yeah. Me, too,” said Landon, regaining his thoughts.
“Anything else?”
“Actually, Lilly, there’s a couple of things. First, aren’t you a little concerned about what I may become when all of this finally goes down? I mean, something’s gonna happen.”
“I’m definitely curious, I’ll say that. I think we’re all a little curious about it. That’s probably one of the things that concerns Nicholas the most. What’s the second thing?”
“I’m mortal, now. Do you not think about that?”
“Okay, look, I do pretty well with having faith regarding everything else, but when it comes to you being able to die, now, I don’t like to think about it.”
“Well, you need to think about—“
“I don’t need to do anything,” she said, jumping up from her chair, “least of all think about you dying. I just got married, last night, and you’re already talking about making me a widow. When you’re done feeling sorry for yourself—“
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Please, sit back down. I’ll change the subject.”
LillyAnna stood there, arms crossed, tapping her foot, and looking out the door.
“Please,” said Landon. “I won’t bring that up anymore.”
“Okay,” she said, sitting down again, slowly, as if she were still thinking about walking out the door. “I guess. I need to talk to you, too, about something. It’s on everyone’s mind.”
“You’ve certainly got my attention. What is it?”
“Actually, it’s good you brought all this up. All except that one thing. And it’s funny I found you here, with that empty glass—how are you doing? I mean, with the sobriety and all?”
“Fine,” he said, curtly. “Why?”
“Everyone’s just a little worried about all that weight on your shoulders. You’re not the only one that thinks about every issue you deal with. We all wonder what it’
s like to be you, to carry all these burdens. In reality, no one can blame you for wanting to drink. But, still, you can’t. We’re just wondering how you’re doing. That’s all.”
“I won’t deny that I think about it. Sometimes, I want a drink so bad, I can actually taste it.”
“You crave it?”
“Sometimes.”
“What keeps you from having that drink, then?”
“Honestly, nothing. Nothing keeps me from drinking. Nothing that I can see, anyway. Maybe I’m just trying very hard. Maybe it’s you. Maybe I’ve just been lucky. I don’t know.”
“We just want to make sure that you know, that you remember, you’ve got a support system here.”
“I know. I’m aware. I’m taking it a day at a time. Sometimes, it’s moment to moment. Sometimes, life just sucks the life out of me. I’m doing the best I can.”
LillyAnna stretched out her hand across his as he massaged the rocks glass, his gaze lost in the finite emptiness of it and his thoughts.
“I know this is your burden to carry,” she said, “but we’re all here to walk beside you.”
The glass cracked under his tightening grip.
Suddenly, his heightened ears picked up the quick steps and heavy breathing of someone quickly approaching the bar from outside.
Landon turned his head to see a teenage girl bolt through the entrance and stop, looking around the bar. He started to get up and approach her, when she ran toward an older gentleman sitting on a barstool.
Landon listened as the girl raced and rambled in Italian, making no sense to him since he didn’t speak the language, and clearly not being understood by those who did speak it. The werewolf turned in his chair to see the old man and the bartender try to calm her down, seemingly attempting to get whatever message she was desperate to convey.
Finally, after taking a couple of breaths, the girl threw her hands on the man on Landon’s side of the bar, looked him in the eyes, and tried, sternly, again to get her words across.
“Does anyone here speak English?” LillyAnna asked, standing up and addressing the entire bar.
“I do,” said another Italian teen, a boy about the same age as the desperate girl.
“Get over here. What’s she saying?”
The boy listened carefully, saying nothing until the girl stopped talking, appearing to wait for a reaction from the older man.
“She says the girl is gone,” said the boy teen. “She, the babysitter, took a nap and when she awoke, the little girl, the man’s daughter, was gone.”
Landon jumped from his chair. The father of the missing staggered toward the door.
“Keep him here,” said Landon, facing the translator. “Ask her what the girl was wearing, what she looks like. I need to know her age, and the address from where she was taken. How long she’s thinks the girl’s been gone. That one, I want you to write down and give me a landmark it’s near. I don’t know Italian addresses well. Quickly.”
Landon grabbed the teen girl, jerking her to his table. As the boy asked his questions, the werewolf did something that would normally get him arrested—he traced his nose over body, smelling her, differentiating between the babysitter’s scent, and the child’s. She resisted, until LillyAnna stepped in to calm her.
“A pink shirt, white pants,” said the translator. “Shoulder length blonde hair, in a ponytail. About four feet tall. Age seven. She thinks it’s been about an hour, but she can’t be sure.” He handed Landon a slip of paper with the address. “And the landmark their house is near is Poveglia. It’s an island which is located—“
“I know where the island is,” Landon said.
Suddenly, the girl began rambling again.
“There’s one more thing,” said the translator. “When she took the girl for a walk earlier, she noticed that she kept seeing the same man in different places. He was thin, with dark hair. But, once they got home, she didn’t see him, anymore.”
Landon looked at LillyAnna.
“Who are you?” asked the teen boy.
“The guy that’s gonna get her back. I’ve got her scent, Lilly. Stay here, keep them here, and keep them calm. No police. In fact, don’t call anyone. I’ll be back, soon. With the girl.”
Landon dashed out the door, and into the morning light.
Chapter 23: Requiem
Quickly finding the missing girl’s address on the piece of paper given to him by the teenage translator, Landon entered, shuffling through the interior smells. The scents of beer, cologne, pasta and varying kinds of sauces, and innocence attacked his nose.
That’s how werewolves and vampires often described the ubiquitous scent of children—innocence. Each child carried their own smell, like fingerprints, but children, on the whole, also had a scent much different from that of adults. Werewolves, and vampires, often described it as that newborn smell, even as children got older. The term most often applied to the smell, was innocence.
Looking around the home, the place was littered with, primarily, two kinds of objects: toys, and beer bottles. There were other items, such as newspapers, dirty dishes, and the like, but mostly, toys, and beer bottles. Landon smelled the air for signs of physical abuse. Blood, he realized long ago, stayed in the air, like leftovers still sitting on the dining room table for a week. He found none. If there was any mental, or verbal, abuse taking place, Landon wasn’t able to discern it.
It didn’t take him long to find the final spots where the little girl, and the babysitter, had been, the places where their smells were most powerful and lingered.
The babysitter on the couch, he thought.
He went upstairs, to the girl’s bedroom. No signs of a struggle, no peculiar scents. Landon headed back downstairs, following the trail to her last location.
The front door.
He stopped, standing before the closed entrance.
She answered the door. The sitter slept through the knocking. The little girl answered the door. Someone knocked, the sitter slept through it, and the girl answered.
He opened the door, stepping back outside.
He breathed deep, smelling the air. Her trail carried off to the right. Then, out of nowhere, he felt it. A slight charge in the air, mixed with her scent.
“What the hell is that doing there?” he said to himself. Someone else must have gotten wind of the situation and is looking for her, too, he thought.
Sprinting off to the right, the werewolf tracked the scent all the way to its end—the nearest dock. Finding a motorized boat nearby, he jumped in, followed the scent out into the lagoon.
Landon continuously shifted the use of his senses, turning his nose upward as he moved across the water, then looking down into the canal, expecting to find the girl at the bottom, just as he had been. He paid so much attention to what was beneath him that he nearly ran aground on a tiny island in the middle of the waterway—Poveglia.
The girl wasn’t in the water, at least not in the canal. The trail continued onto the island, the very place where werewolves and vampires had been holed up.
This is damn peculiar.
Getting out of the boat, and mooring it to a nearby tree, Landon picked up the scent again, and traced it to a group of trees a little farther in. Then, the trail stopped.
The girl’s scent was stronger, ending in Landon’s current location, and the electrical charge was more powerful.
What the hell is going on here?
He listened carefully, suddenly picking up on shallow breaths, coming from within the ground.
Landon zeroed in on the breathing, then dug quickly, finally hitting a large plastic bin. Wasting no time to pick up the container, he ripped the lid off, and found the girl inside, unconscious. She still wore her pink shirt, and white pants. Her blonde ponytail was still in place.
Then, coming from a distance, he picked up another sound—approaching footsteps, lightly on the ground, almost tip-toeing—and a charge.
Leaving the girl hidden behind the grouping of trees, L
andon stepped out to see the vampire, almost panicking at the sight of the empty hole, running his hand over his dark hair.
“What’s up?” asked Landon, startling the vampire.
“Nothing. I was just—“
“Just…what?”
“Looking for something.”
“Did you find it?”
“No.”
“Well, I found it.”
Landon waited for what seemed like forever for a reaction from the vampire who starred at him as if Landon were a ghost.
“What did you find?” asked the vampire, near stuttering.
“A little girl.”
“The missing girl? Well, that’s great. I’ve been looking all over her. Wanted to take her back to her family. We should do that. They must be worried sick.”
“How did you know she was missing? No one’s been called.”
The vampire stood still. Landon moved his fingers, dangling at his side, like a gunslinger waiting to draw.
“I’ve seen you before,” Landon said. “You came here with Piper, from England, didn’t you? I wonder, were you like this before you were turned, and it stuck with you, or is this something new?”
“I don’t know what you mean?” The vampire took a slight step back.
“Yeah, that’s it. I want you to run.”
The vampire spun around, taking off toward the open field that lay between the nearest edge of Poveglia and the main building on the island.
Landon changed and ran after the kidnapper. The werewolf gained on him, leaping over the vampire, then spinning around and grabbing him by the throat.
The vamp tried desperately to release the werewolf’s hold, attempting to pull back each claw, but the beast’s grip was too strong. He tried hitting, kicking, scratching—all to no effect. The creature that held him was impenetrable. His anger was impregnable.
Landon, carrying the vampire by the neck, took him back to the trees and beyond, to the edge of the island. He looked over his shoulder at the little girl, still sleeping, still breathing.
Reaching the water, the werewolf turned the vampire over and laid him face down into the water. Landon took his other claw and, digging into the base of the skull, removed the head below the surface of the lagoon.
