by Greg Hair
“Well, you accomplished what you tried to prevent, anyway. How’d you like feeling all the resentment and hatred a few minutes ago? Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, wouldn’t you say? And to top it off, you weren’t around when your wife died.
How did that feel?”
“I wouldn’t know,” answered Allen. “I was there when she died. I was there when she was buried. What you don’t know, is that I’ve always been there, even when I left.
I’ve always been around. I felt that I could do more for you and your mom from a peripheral standpoint.”
“What are you talking about? You just hovered around us, watching our misery.
You sick fuck. You mean it was easier on you that way. Easier for you to deal with things by not dealing with them. Easier for you to watch what we went through, from the outside, without having to experience it for yourself. You had no accountability, no responsibility. Like the day of my birth—I know you weren’t there for that. I know you were out drinking. You traded my birth for the bottle.”
“Landon, just because something is easier, doesn’t make it easy. You don’t remember this, but I would come into your room at night, when you were little, and hum John Lennon’s Beautiful Boy, as you slept. Don’t think for a minute that I didn’t love you. It was not easy at all for me to do what I did.”
“Then why stand idly by, watching us suffer, watching her cry herself to sleep, and doing nothing? Damn you.” Landon took another drink.
“I suffered as you did, Landon. I died when she died. I loved you and your mom more than anything. Even if I’d been there, in person, I wouldn’t have been able to keep her from dying.”
“That’s not true. You could have bitten her. Her first change would have cured her kidney disease. She’d be here today.”
“Is that what you would have done? Made her like us? She would have hated what she had become. You believe that would have been the best course of action? No, you don’t—that’s why you didn’t turn Paige when you had the chance as she died.
Besides, there’s no guarantee it would have worked in either case—we don’t know that either would have felt threatened enough at the time to make the change.”
“Whatever. But still, don’t preach to me about the best course of action.”
“Landon, you never knew that I was there for your first change. I was proud of you when, even though you had no idea of what would happen, you stepped in to save that girl anyway.
“She’s now married with three kids, and teaches Special Education at a high school here in Louisville. Your intervention has had repercussions in a classroom years later. I also know that you have spent a great deal of your time brining the worst kind to justice—and saving those who are completely helpless. You are by far better at this than I ever was. You are what I couldn’t be—you’re a true hero. You can hate me all you want, but I am extremely proud to call you my son. I love you, son. And I loved your mom.
I’m sorry.”
Landon stood there dumbfounded. He had no clue how to react. He turned back around to the glass, and replenished his drink. His eyes welled, making it difficult for him to see clearly what he was doing, especially since he didn’t want his father to know that he had gotten to him emotionally and, so, refused to wipe his eyes. He had to guess by the sound of the liquid filling the glass when to stop pouring. He cleared his throat and spoke again.
“Why are you here?” he asked quietly.
“I want to see my grandchildren,” said Allen. “I mean, I’ve seen them from a distance, but I’d like to meet them. I know I was a bad father with you, but I believe I can do things right with them. I don’t want them to suffer as you have.”
“And you think I’m just going to let you waltz in here, and give you the opportunity to do to them what you did to me?”
The sudden ringing phone diluted the tension. Landon took another drink before he answered.
“Speaking. Excuse me? What do you mean they never showed up to school? They left here about a half-hour ago. Let me call their brother’s school and see if--. I beg your pardon. Really? That much damage? Closed indefinitely? No, ma’am, I’m sure they’re all okay. He probably just took them to the mall or something, since he didn’t have school today. Absolutely. Yes, ma’am, I’ll speak with him as soon as they come home. I don’t think this will happen again. Thank you for calling. I’m sorry? Yes, I do know about their issues. I’m handling it. Thank you for your concern. Bye.”
“What’s going on?” asked Allen.
“Jamie is what’s going on—as usual. He never dropped the twins off at school. I don’t know where they are.” His eyes again took on a warm red glow.
“What was that about issues?”
“It’s the twins. It’s nothing.”
“We can go look for ‘em.”
“What’s this ‘we’ stuff? Besides, I’m going to try to give him a chance. I’ll wait till it gets dark. If they’re not home by then, maybe I’ll let you prove yourself. And when I get my hands on that kid…” He took another drink, emptying the glass, then filled it back up.
“Thank you—Landon.” Allen stood from his seat. “There’s actually another reason I came back. Another reason why I let you have your way today. I need to make amends for the wrongs I’ve done to you. I’m not expecting forgiveness, but I need to do this for myself. I need to forgive myself, and this is the first step. Son, I have cancer. I’m dying.”
Chapter 4
As Landon dealt with the arrival of his father in Louisville, Jamie and the twins stood at the subway station near Central Park in New York City. The warm spring morning was much different than the cold January night when Jamie last stood here.
Countless flyers of missing persons dotted the station wall behind them. They waited for the train to pass then, jumping from the platform to the ground, followed the tracks to the place where Landon had sealed Nicholas’s body within the clandestine underground complex. Jamie remembered well the way back, as did the twins.
“Are we going to see Uncle Nicholas?” Mara asked.
“You remember him?” asked Jamie. “You remember being here?”
“Yes, we remember,” Liam said. “It’s not far, now.”
“But do we have to go?” asked his sister.
“Yes, we’re all going. Why do you ask?”
Jamie spied ahead the few steps that led up to the door. Rats squeaked and scurried about the ground. Suddenly, he felt slight vibrations from the tracks. A train was approaching.
“He scares us,” she said.
“Well, right now,” said Jamie, “what we need to be scared of is being flattened by a subway train. Come on guys, we gotta hurry.”
Jamie picked up speed, followed by Mara, then Liam. Nearing the doorway, he turned and boosted Mara up to the small, outcropped ledge. Turning back, he realized Liam was several yards away—his shoe was stuck on a track.
The rocks around the tracks began jumping as the train approached, its light turning around the bend, as Jamie ran after Liam. The boy was in tears, panicking, when Jamie reached him. The teen bent down to wriggle Liam’s foot out from underneath the track.
“Come on, you son of a bitch. Come on,” Jamie said, sweat dripping on the ground. The rushed pumping of Liam’s heart was deafening. Jamie smelled urine as it leaked out of the boy’s pants. They looked down the tunnel and were blinded by the light that approached. The train was seconds away.
Finally, Liam’s foot loosened from the track. Jamie scooped the child up and, as the train neared his backside, in two leaps, made it from what should have been the point of impact to the ledge where Mara stood.
The rushing wind of the passing train took away any breath the three had left.
Once the train had passed, Jamie turned, examining the doorway to Nicholas’s tomb. He suddenly realized that the door that had been used by Landon to seal shut the entrance, was lying to the side of the ledge.
Someone’s broken in, he thought. A
t least, that’s what he thought until he investigated the door closer, and noticed the deep imprints of hands on the backside, the inside, of the door. Someone, or something, has broken out.
Jamie took a few steps, looking up and down the dark tunnel, smelling the air and listening for anything that may be approaching, or standing only inches away. Sensing nothing, he stepped back up to the ledge and led them inside.
The smell of rot and decay met their noses the farther they traveled into the winding passages. This was not the condition Jamie remembered the underground complex being in. The place seemed dustier than before. Liam and Mara held their hands over their noses. The lights were dimmer than before, if they were even working at all.
“You don’t need to be scared of Nicholas,” said Jamie, suddenly remembering Mara’s comment prior to the train incident moments before. “No reason to worry about someone who’s dead.”
“But he’s not dead,” said Liam.
“What are you talking about? Of course, he’s dead. Your daddy killed him.”
“No, he’s not,” answered Mara. “He told us in our dreams that he’s alive.”
“Yeah,” Liam said. “And he’s really mad. That’s why he scares us.”
“Both of you have the same dreams about him?” Jamie continued leading the twins down the dark passages. Running into numerous spider webs slowed them down.
“Yes. And Liam isn’t lying—Uncle Nicholas is not happy.”
“Oh, shit,” Jamie said, moving quickly away from the topic of conversation as he suddenly felt a tell-tale electrical charge.
“What is it?” asked Mara.
“Nothing. Stay close.”
“Why are we here?” asked Liam. “I want to go to home.”
“I don’t know why we’re here. I feel drawn here, pulled here. And I have my own reasons for bringing you.”
The three reached the end of the serpentine corridors, finding the large metal door that led to the cathedral-sized room ajar. Jamie prepared himself for what he would find on the other side—Nicholas’s still impaled body. Then, suddenly, another electrical charge ran through Jamie’s spine.
Pushing the door open, a flood of rats came pouring out. The children screamed as Jamie found complete and utter darkness and cold. His senses were livened only by a wave of decomposition that washed over him. He stepped inside and felt along the wall, remembering a light switch existed somewhere near the door. He found it and flipped it, as all three gasped.
The illuminated chamber exposed something Jamie never expected—a body-less pike in the middle of the room. That’s not to say that there wasn’t a body; actually, there were lots of bodies, strewn all over the floor. The blood-stained pole in the center stood like a tower, alone in a field of corpses.
“Glorious, isn’t it?”
Jamie spun around to see the ghost of the man he was looking for, only this Nicholas was less spectral and more corporeal than he had anticipated. He was clothed in his favorite attire—a fine black Italian suit.
The teen stood speechless, motionless, as the walking dead stepped into the room, nearing his vertical grave. Jamie and the children wavered where they stood from the stench.
“Not quite so empty a tomb,” said Nicholas, “but not completely lifeless, either. I love what I’ve done with the place, if I do say so myself. Still, the ambiance is missing something.”
“What’s that?” asked Jamie, approaching cautiously.
“Landon’s head on this fucking pipe!”
Jamie took a couple of steps back, closer to where the twins waited by the door. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How is this possible? Who are all these people?” He was nervous. He hadn’t been nervous before around Nicholas, but now, now that the dead man stood before him and spoke, he was. He knew, however, that turning his back and walking away would be a grave mistake. He almost felt like relieving himself as Liam had on the tracks.
“These bodies are not people--they are empty shells. Inside those shells, was once food--like oysters. How do you think I have survived, lived, sustained myself, all these months?”
“That’s just it,” began Jamie, “how are you alive at all?” He suddenly realized that he’d seen many of the faces that covered the floor before, on the missing persons posters at the subway station.
Nicholas walked closer to Jamie, his eyes locked on to his protégé’s, and whispered in his ear. “I’m not your average werewolf.” He looked down at the twins, never smiling, then back toward Jamie.
“I still don’t understand. Who are you?” Jamie asked, suddenly realizing Nicholas no longer had a French accent.
“I’m much older than you think, and it takes a lot more than a pole to kill me.” He placed his hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “But more on that later. Now that we are reunited, we have much work to do.
“I need to know, however, before we begin, what you’ve learned these past few months at Burghausen.”
“Well,” Jamie began, after thinking for a minute, “I haven’t been at Burghausen.
I’ve been living in Kentucky with Landon and the twins. I haven’t learned anything about being a werewolf. He’s taught me one thing. He helped me to be sure about something that I already believed—you were right. About everything. About him, about people, mortals I mean. He took me to a field in Indiana, a place where someone had been murdered years ago.”
“Burned?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Burghausen was involved in the capture of the perpetrators. Go on.”
“That story, and the way I’ve been treated at school, and seen others treated, have taught me that you were right—mortals are monsters.”
“I’m glad to see that, while I haven’t been around, you’ve been able to learn about that which you most needed to—yourself. But back to business. Tell me, what has Landon been up to?”
“He patrols mostly. Goes out at night, hunting down those he deems unworthy.
And drinking. A lot of drinking. He doesn’t spend much with us.”
“Anything else? Does he call anyone, see anyone?”
“I don’t know if he calls anybody. I don’t think he sees anyone. I know Ryker, or anyone else from Burghausen, never comes around.”
“And his precious LillyAnna?”
“Her neither. I’ve found some pictures he’s printed off the computer of her, ones he tried to hide, but I think that’s it. I don’t think he’s talked to her. Not since he left her in Germany.”
“Interesting.”
“Nicholas,” began Jamie, “I have to ask—why are there two vampires here.”
“I’ve been expecting you,” said Nicholas, bending close to Jamie’s ear, “though I was not expecting the kids.”
“Yeah, speaking of them, they said you were alive; that you visited them in their dreams. I thought they just had vivid imaginations, but here you are. Do you know what they’re talking about?”
Nicholas returned upright, and walked toward the children, extending one fingernail to a claw. He knelt down, running his one, long claw down Liam’s cheek.
Liam shook. “I’m able to tap into the weak-minded and weak-willed. I believe, though, that no resource should be wasted, but must be put to good use. We must, and will, use all means necessary to further our cause, to advance our kind, whether that means vampires—or these children. Remind me to teach you the game of chess someday.
Besides, who said there were only two vampires?” Jamie looked around, searching for signs of activity in the shadows.
“Fear not, my apprentice” said Nicholas, “they’re not here for you. You are simply the bait to attract their real prey.”
“You’re talking about pawns, aren’t you?” asked Jamie, still eyeing the darkness, but returning to his previous train of thought.
“Good.”
“I think that’s why I brought Liam and Mara with me. I brought them for the same reason, I mean. But, if they’re pawns, what does that make me?”
/> “My dear boy, you are to be the king.”
“Is there a queen?”
“We shall see. Now, you can explain later why all of you are in Kentucky, and not Germany, but for now, it is time for us to go.” Nicholas began leading Jamie and the twins back out the cathedral-sized room.
“Go? Go where?”
“I have yearned for many months to be free of my private halfway house. I have only ventured to the surface when I needed food. I acquired a safehouse in Savannah, Georgia, sometime ago. No one knows about it. We’re heading there. We’ll take various cars along the way, ditching each at a certain point. The children will come with us. Do you have a phone?”
“Yes.”
“Let me see it.”
“Who are you calling?” Jamie asked, pulling out his silver cell phone and handing it to Nicholas.
“Burghausen. Those in charge there are still antiquated. They don’t have the means to trace calls, but their connections at the Quantico do and I want people to know where you are. How the hell do you use this thing?”
“Why?” asked Jamie, taking the phone back and pulling up the keypad, then giving it back to Nicholas. “I mean, why do you want them to know where I am?”
“Because they’ll send your father here.”
Chapter 5
“Cancer?” asked Landon. “What kind of cancer?”
“Lung. It’s terminal.”
“How can you possibly have cancer? You’re a werewolf. Your body instantly kills the cancer cells when you change. How did you get lung cancer?”
“Well, when I gave up drinking, I picked up another habit—smoking. A lot. And as far as our ‘cure,’ I haven’t changed since I left.”
“I don’t understand. Why haven’t you changed? Why don’t you change now, and kill the cancer?”
“Because I’m ready son. For all the pain I’ve caused you and your mom, all the mistakes I’ve made, I’m ready. I’m truly sorry for what I’ve passed on to you—my illness. Both of them. You were an innocent victim that didn’t ask for any of this, but I’m proud of what you’ve done with what you’ve been given. Now, it’s time for me to move on and release you from the burden you’ve been carrying all these years.
