by Greg Hair
Chapter 26: Requiem
Bianca walked to the edge of the open field on the other end of Poveglia, and sat beside Robert, the blind werewolf, and William, the one-armed vampire. The two refugees from Kilchurn had been passing the time, watching the adult leaders, Landon and the others, train all those who had arrived in the past few days.
“Why aren’t you two involved?” she asked.
“What are we supposed to do?” asked William. “I have one arm, and he can’t see.”
“Which is precisely why you should be training. One, you could use it, given your new situations, and second, Nicholas and Jamie won’t be expecting you. Landon and the others can definitely use that to their advantage. Both of you are still useful. Unlike me.”
“What do you mean, unlike you?” Robert asked. “I heard that you were at Kilchurn just as we were. You, too, have something to contribute. You know the layout.”
“I wasn’t pregnant, then.”
“What’s your connection to that place, anyway?” William asked.
“I’m carrying Jamie’s twins.”
The audible silence that came from William and Robert rang in her ears.
“Serinda is my, was my, sister,” she continued. “I thought Jamie loved me, so…well, you can see what happened. Then he left me for her. But, he doesn’t know I’m pregnant.”
“I’m very sorry you had to find out like you did about her,” said William.
“I’m sorry you were set up to take the fall for what Nicholas did.”
“Do you think Jamie can be saved? I mean, it’s obvious he’s being used by Nicholas.”
“Obvious to everyone, but Jamie. No, I don’t think he can be saved. I used to, I used to have hope for him, but once he hooked up with Serinda, and married her, then did what he did to you two. No. He’s gone.”
“But, you are here,” said Alessandro, walking over from training. “Alessandro was listening, oh yes. You are right. All of you are right. Your knowledge of the enemy’s ground is quite useful.”
“Why does he talk like that?” asked William.
“That’s just Alessandro,” said Bianca. “Be nice, or you’ll deal with me.”
“Sorry.”
She turned her attention to the Venetian. “Aren’t you busy working one on one with Katarzyna, over there?”
“Alessandro is, oh, yes. But, please, do not change our direction.”
“Change direction?” asked Robert.
“He means don’t change the subject,” said Bianca. “So, Alessandro, you want us to help?”
“Oh, yes. Alessandro would like that very much. As would those who must practice. Robert, your other senses will magnify, as you’ve already noticed, but even more so when you shift. Unfortunately, you will not regain eyesight then, but your hearing and smell with be better than any other werewolf’s, besides Landon, of course. And, Alessandro imagines, so will your ability to discern vampires.
“Oh, yes, Alessandro is right. And you, William, it will be difficult for someone to put a hold on you. You will find it much easier to remove yourself from an enemy’s grasp. And, Miss Bianca, believe Alessandro when he says that the intimate knowledge that all of you have, not only of their layout, but of their minds and personalities, means much. To truly know thy enemy, one must understand more than the enemy’s skills and home.”
“Okay,” said William, “I’m in.”
“Me, too,” replied Robert. “Bianca?”
“I’m thinking.”
Annelise walked up from behind Alessandro.
“You’ve been saying you feel useless. This is your chance to change that,” she said. “Especially if you’re not going to stay in bed like LillyAnna told you to do.”
“Okay.”
“Bianca,” said Robert, “do you feel that?”
“Yeah, I do.” She turned around, staring back toward the Octagon. “A new group of vampires.”
“Hey, Ryker! Landon!” called Annelise. “There’s a new group coming.”
The Consuls stopped their training of new recruits to welcome the most recent additions. Seeing a large number of people coming down toward the field, led by a beautiful, tan, dark-haired woman, Landon stepped forward from his group.
“I know them,” he said, turning back to the army behind him. “Catalina!”
The young vampire ran over, stopping beside Landon.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Over there, coming down the hill, isn’t that—“
“My sister!”
Catalina ran toward Graciela, the Mexican vampire priestess, whose ritual had removed Landon’s immortality, throwing her arms around her. Landon followed, quickly counting fifty new additions.
“You came to help?” asked Catalina. “I can’t believe you came to help.”
“I am very happy to see you, sister,” said Graciela. “The spirits told me to come. This evil cannot go unpunished.”
“I’m very happy to have you here,” said Landon. “Thank you for coming.”
“My dear werewolf, my people and I did not come alone.”
From behind Graciela’s vampire followers, emerged a much smaller group of werewolves.
“Javier,” he said, reaching his hand out.
“Hello, my friend. I could think of no better way to thank you for putting us on a better path, than to offer our lives in your service.”
“No more kidnappings from surrounding villages?”
“No. If fact, we tracked down all those we had taken, and returned them to their families. We now offer protection, like you suggested, to our own town. God truly sent a miracle to us the night we met.”
“Don’t thank me,” said Landon. “Just because I suggest it, doesn’t mean you’re going to do it. You followed through with it, and it sounds like you’ve made a better life for yourselves. Some people have it within them to turn away from the wrong path, others don’t. I’m glad to see you were able to.”
Landon turned back to Graciela.
“Now, about my immortality, or lack thereof.”
“That still on your mind, werewolf?” asked the priestess. “No questions. Trust God. Vaya con Dios.” She turned to walk away.
“Vaya con Dios?” Landon asked, catching up with her. “Go with God? That’s it? That’s all you have for me?”
“Landon Murphy, there is nothing more that you need. God does not make mistakes. He did not make one when He took back your immortality. He knows what He is doing. Why can’t you trust in that?”
“Fine,” Landon huffed, and led the newest arrivals to his friends, introducing them. He then asked everyone to gather together in the field.
“My friends,” he began, “most of you have traveled very far to be here. Ryker, my co-Consul, and I, are extremely grateful. We cannot thank you enough. The evil we will soon be facing is daunting and, for some of us, very personal. My son, Jamie, is the one who calls himself king. Nicholas, the catalyst for all of this, was once a trusted member of Burghausen. He knows some of our tactics. And, you should know, I have killed him before.”
The collective gasp hit him like a rogue wave.
“He cheated death,” he continued, “because he is the first of us, all of us, cursed by God for sins committed two millennia ago. And the truth is, I don’t know how to destroy him. But, I trust and have faith that, together, we will bring him to his knees. Some of us may fall. All of us may fall. But as we fall, we will take Nicholas, and his army, with us. Tomorrow, we leave for Scotland, and soon, Nicholas will be Hell’s problem to deal with.”
The crowd erupted with cheers. Landon excused himself, and walked toward the water. Small waves lapped the shore.
LillyAnna came up from behind.
“Well said. Did you believe any word of it?”
“Doesn’t matter if I do, it only matters that they do.”
“That’s not true. If you don’t believe in us, in yourself, we will fail. You’ve obviously made a difference to so many people in t
his world. Believe in yourself. Your father would be proud of you.”
Landon thought for a minute. “I need to be alone for a little while.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find whatever it is in me that everyone else sees.”
He walked away, heading for the dock.
Chapter 27: Requiem
Entering the same Venice bar where he met Gar, the werewolf who put him at the bottom of the lagoon, and where he most recently met the father who was too drunk to find his daughter, Landon had some reservations. He held fear too closely to his heart.
But, he thought, for the past several months, since this all began, I’ve had nothing but reservations; nothing but fear. It’s time I work this out.
Seeing no signs that told him he couldn’t smoke, Landon pulled out a cigarette, grabbed an empty rocks glass off the bar, and sat at a table beside a window.
Your father would be proud of you, he recalled LillyAnna saying.
Pulling out a lighter, the same lighter he picked up off the ground at Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, the one that was used to kill his father, he lit his cigarette.
The owner of the bar hadn’t installed a stereo system to pump music through the air, but the owner wasn’t there today. Instead, a scrawny teenage looking young man with mussed up dark hair was behind the bar. And he brought his own portable CD player.
Soon, U2’s One began playing. It set the tone for where Landon was going within his own mind.
He thought about some of the fears that had been plaguing him for quite some time.
He feared for LillyAnna. Finally, he’d found someone, somebody he could be himself around, his true self if need be, who wouldn’t judge him. For all intents and purposes, he found his soulmate.
I didn’t marry her so I could watch her die. She’s come too far, and I love her too much. There’s gotta be a way to keep her safe from Nicholas.
His thoughts turned to his fears for Liam and Mara.
They’ve already lost their mother, now they may lose their father. How are they supposed to grow up dealing with that? On top of dealing with what they are? How can I protect them if I’m dead?
He feared for the lives of his friends, and all the strangers that flocked to Venice to follow him.
I’m supposed to lead all these people to their death? Is that what you want me to do, God? Just lead them to slaughter? The way Nicholas slaughtered all those babies two thousand years ago?
With smoke rising from his hand like a fire brewing inside him, he turned his thoughts from the present, back in time, to his childhood. How his father, Allen, had always told him to walk away.
You don’t fight, he’d say. Walk away. Run if you have to. Then, one day, Allen took his own advice, leaving his wife, Jean, to raise their son. Until, finally, she died.
He thought about the first time he changed, stopping a rape in a Louisville park. The fear, confusion, and pain, as his body burned, bent, and broke, inside and out. The first time he killed. Three men—slaughtered. The feeling of drowning as he shifted back to human form the next morning.
All his running for ten years. Meeting Paige and leaving her. Traveling to Europe to search for answers and ending up at Burghausen.
All the lost children he saved, and those few he didn’t. All the murderers, pedophiles, and rapists that, in his powerful werewolf eyes, had it coming.
He took a draw from the cigarette and looked out the window at the beauty of Venice, and sighed, blowing smoke at the window. As if it were his own last viewing of the Jewel of the Adriatic. One continued to play.
He remembered how he met LillyAnna, someone like him who, unlike him, still retained her beauty and humanity. Meeting Jamie, the teenager with so much rage and hatred, who turned out to be his son.
Nicholas, the true wolf in sheep’s clothing. The great betrayer. The one who corrupted Jamie, kidnapped Liam, Mara, and Paige, and subsequently killing the latter. The one who died. And the one who rose again.
Landon got up from his seat, taking his rocks glass to the bar.
“Fill it,” he said, and the bartender quickly obliged. He then returned to his table with the amber liquid, and sat down.
Nicholas, the one he killed, who came back to destroy him. Took Jamie and the children again, sending them back, and killing Celeste in their place.
Landon’s father, Allen, returning to his life, seemingly brining LillyAnna with him. All the repairs he made between himself and his father, himself and LillyAnna. His second chance with Allen. That second chance snuffed out as Allen was engulfed in flames.
Landon looked down at the lighter on the table, the weapon that took his dad from him, as Bono’s falsetto voice brought One to an end. Then, a brief pause, and Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight began. Though he tried to hold them back, a couple of tears escaped.
The destruction of Burghausen, and the death of the Consuls. The Senate broken and on the run. Himself on the run, even after ascending to Consul, with his new powers, all the way to Mexico where he lost the one gift he counted on the most to beat Nicholas—his newfound, Consul given, immortality.
Landon, having not yet taken a drink, gripped the glass hard, thinking about the taking of Annelise. His best friend’s wife, gone, and her subsequent torture.
Then, his own near death, left to drown at the bottom of the Venice canal. Nearly killing LillyAnna in his rage when he was released.
Jamie’s betrayal of Bianca, who now carried his children, as he married her sister, Serinda. Serinda, killed by Nicholas.
Just another pawn, he thought. All pawns to raise himself to a god-like state. To kill God.
Landon sat with the dead cigarette butt in his hand, the light having gone out minutes earlier, as he stared at the liquor in the glass, his mind wandering to the intervention, and his own long battle with alcoholism—his other demon.
He looked up to suddenly see the father of the missing child Landon saved walk through the door. The man spotted Landon and rushed over to his table, taking the werewolf’s hand and shaking it vigorously as he smiled. He jabbered on in Italian, Landon not understanding a word, but letting the man say what was on his mind, anyway.
“Anybody in here speak English?” Landon asked, motioning for the man to sit in the other chair at his table.
“I do,” said the young bartender.
“Well, get over here. What’s he saying?”
The young man ran over to the table by the window.
“Ask him to start over,” said Landon. “Then, please translate.”
The bartender, himself now jabbering in Italian, again acquiesced to Landon’s request.
“He says,” the young man began, “that he’s very fortunate to see you here again. He notices that you have a drink, and wants to know if you’d like another when you’re finished with that one.”
“I’m not gonna drink this one,” Landon said.
“Did I give you the wrong drink?” the bartender asked, no longer translating. “You want something else? I’ll get it for you.”
“No. I don’t want something else. This is fine. Don’t worry about the drink, just keep telling me what he’s saying.”
The bartender listened further to the father sitting opposite his daughter’s savior.
“He says you are a hero. That everyone will know who you are and what you did.”
“You tell him to stop right there,” Landon said, as the young man translated. “No one needs to know. And tell him I don’t want a drink. I don’t think you told him that a minute ago. And tell him that, apparently, he shouldn’t drink, either. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to go looking for his little girl if he’d been home, sober, like he was supposed to.
“Look,” he continued, hearing every word he said in English, regurgitated in Italian, “it’s what I do. I find missing kids. I was very happy to save her. As long as she’s alive, and safe, I don’t need any kind of reward.”
“He says that he has quit drinking. He
turned to alcohol when his wife left him several months ago, thinking his world had ended. He realizes now that his daughter is his world. He wants to know if you have saved others.”
“Yes, I’ve saved lot of people. Like I said, it’s what I do.” Landon began to listen, and pay attention, to his words.
The father continued.
“You are a hero, he says,” the bartender translated. “The world is safer with someone like you in it. We are all very lucky. Obviously, there are bad people in it, like the one who took my daughter. His daughter, I mean,” said the young man. “God sent you here, to this place, at the right time, when you were needed. He knew what He was doing. And I thank Him for that. And I thank you. My hero.”
The father stopped talking, and the bartender followed suit.
Landon sat there, quiet, unresponsive.
“Sir,” began the bartender, “did you hear what he—“
“Yes,” Landon said. “I heard. I was listening.”
He thought again about all the fears he held so close, for LillyAnna, his children, his friends, and the strangers who rallied to his side. Then a new fear raised its head in his—the fear of a world ruled by Nicholas.
The werewolf stood up, as Phil Collins entered his famous drum solo, leaving his liquor untouched, and the cigarette butt lying on the table. He began to walk away, when he suddenly came back.
“Thank you,” he said. He placed the lighter still in his hand, on the table. “I don’t need that anymore. Tell him it was my pleasure to save her.”
“Where are you going?” the bartender asked.
“To save everyone else.”
Chapter 28: Requiem
Landon awoke before dawn. He sat in an old chair in the small makeshift bedroom he shared with LillyAnna, watching her sleep. She tossed restlessly, at times talking in her sleep, though he could never make out what she was saying.
With the first rays of the Venetian morning cracking the dark barrier, LillyAnna stirred, eyes opening and closing, repeating several times, until she noticed him sitting in the chair.
“Good morning,” he said. “Sleep well?”
“Not really. Today’s the day, right?”
