by Mandy Rosko
“You said you were having visions!” She yelled. He had, but he’d never specified what was happening in them. Only that he’d died somehow from Hadrian.
None of the anger she felt was towards him. She wanted to deny this along with him, but she couldn’t. She believed in it too much. If she got her hopes up then it would only be a matter of time before they were crushed. “You can’t tell me you still think you’re not the one.”
Mike’s fists clenched, canines clenched under snarling lips. “I am not your Goddamn legend.”
God, if only that were true.
"He’s right, you know," Bill said.
Mike stared at the man. "What?"
“What?” Anne said at the same time.
Bill pulled the orb from out of his housecoat pocket. It lit up like a flashlight in his hands. His thumbs caressed the marble. "No question about it, this is Luna's stone."
Anne couldn't take her eyes away from it. The warm glow that pulsed from the stone in a tender beat eased her anger away. She forgot all about Mike's aggravating accusations against her grandfather and the hope swelled against her will.
Bill must’ve had his chance to study the thing and he still thought Mike wasn’t the first werewolf. But she couldn’t be too careful. "So Mike isn’t the first? You know it for sure?"
Mike's eyes remained focused on Bill, waiting for the answer.
Bill nodded. “Just like always. I know it for sure."
Anne's heart soared.
Only to fall abruptly.
Shit. If anyone else heard this it was back to marrying Westley.
No, wait, people thought she was still bonded to Mike. The fact that he wasn’t the first wolf of legend would be a bummer but they couldn’t do anything about her marriage unless they discovered the bonding was a lie.
"I don't get you people." Mike rubbed his eyes. "Between wolves who want to throw me out, wolves who think I'm God and wolves who don't, this whole thing gives me a headache. No one knows what's going on and everyone here is dead set on believing what they want to believe."
"Oh, I agree with you,” Bill said. “The people you've met here are mostly fickle, eager to say they shook the hand of the man they grew up being told about. And, yes, there are too many versions of this story to count."
"What about his visions?" Anne asked, still struggling to get down from the high of hearing her grandfather, who was an expert on this and had a chance to study the rock, claim that Mike was not the first.
However, she couldn't pretend the visions Mike had didn't exist. "Mike has visions of himself being killed by Hadrian. It's not possible that those are memories of a past life?"
Bill shook his head. He sat down, pulling Anne next to him and sat the glowing rock in his lap before taking her hand into his. "Since our guest here is determined to sniff out all of our secrets, I think it's time that I told you one of mine."
The idea that Bill could have any secrets brought a half grin to her face. "We don't keep secrets from each other."
His guilty eyes told her otherwise. Her grin dissolved like sugar in water.
“While your visions are a shock,” he said, eyeing Anne hard. She gulped. Maybe she should’ve eased him into that a little better. “I imagine that seeing the death of some poor creature has not been the only thing you have seen,” Bill said, turning his gaze to Mike.
He took a breath and reluctantly nodded. “I’ve seen men, who all look just like me, being killed. They look like they’re from different times though.”
Bill nodded. “Yes, I imagine they would be.”
“What do you know?” Mike asked.
Anne wanted to know the same thing.
“I know that those men are not you, nor are they older versions of yourself. Just, unfortunate individuals who happened to resemble someone Hadrian hated.”
Whoa. That was pretty…crazy. Anne couldn’t speak.
Mike nodded with a sigh. “I was starting to worry.”
“And, your other visions?” Bill prodded.
Mike stared him in the eyes. “I see someone else, who, again, looks just like me. He’s standing in front of a glowing woman. She disappears, promising to come back, then Hadrian comes out of the woods with his men and jumps him. I’m guessing that that was actually the first werewolf.”
Bill nodded.
This was leading somewhere. Knowing that didn’t bring her any excitement. It brought dread and fear. Like she was about to hear something she didn’t want to. “Grandpa, what are you getting at?”
He looked at her, sad eyes seeming to have aged a thousand years. "Michael's visions are not his memories. They are mine."
TWELVE
"What?" Her grandfather was insane. He'd lost his mind. Of all the explanations in the world he could’ve give, saying that Mike’s visions were her grandpa’s memories was the last she expected to hear.
Mike sat down on the other side of her, his hand touching her knee. Warmth from the support spread inside her, but her eyes remained on her grandfather.
She said nothing, just stared, waiting for him to tell her it was a bad joke. His eyes remained patiently cautious as he stared back.
"I thought you were hiding something," Mike confessed, his hand still stroking her knee, believing her grandpa without hesitation. "From the very beginning you always seemed to know more than what you were letting on. Always so sure that I wasn't the one, with no way to back it up."
Bill nodded. "That's right. It’s difficult proving you're not the one when the only way to do so is to confess that I am."
"You believe him?" Anne wanted to deny the whole thing. Hearing that the first werewolf was her elderly grandfather was no better than if it really had been Mike.
There was still a killer warlock out to kill someone she loved.
Mike didn’t blink as he stared at Bill. "I'm looking into his head right now. He's letting me see what he's lived through…” he paused, eyes glazed as though watching something. “He's telling the truth."
Oh. So that's why Mike wanted to sit next to her. Not for comfort, but so he could be at perfect eye level with Bill.
Anne looked into his soft blue eyes, searched for any hint that he could be pulling a fast one. She found none. Nothing but the painful truth sat behind them.
She had to look away, images from her childhood crushing her.
And she believed.
God. How had she not seen it? Ever since the day he changed her over twenty years ago, he never seemed to age. His skin didn't fall any further. No more lines marred his face, his full head of silver hair never succumbed to baldness.
Actually, Anne had no idea how old he really was.
Queasiness attacked her innards. She bent over and clutched her stomach. "Oh my God."
Bill rubbed her back. "I'm so sorry I kept this from you, but it was the only way to keep you safe. If anything, it was wrong of me to stay for this long."
She whipped her head at him. "Stay? What do you mean, stay?” Anne sat up, pushing any sickness she felt to the back burner. “Where would you have gone?"
Her question dumped a heavy load on his shoulder, he showed her that pain in his face. "I'm nearly a thousand years old. I can't stay in one place for long without anyone noticing I'm not aging. Even in wolf years I should’ve aged a little by now."
A click of knowledge sounded in her head. Shock froze her blood, turning it into a river of slush. "You would have left."
He looked away. It felt strange that her own grandfather would turn his face away in shame when she was the one who did that after disobeying a rule of some kind.
"Sometimes I leave. Other times I arrange to have...an accident."
Anne couldn’t breathe. She was going to have another panic attack and the sickness was coming back to her.
Mike’s palm left her knee, reached out and took Anne's free hand. The touch was shy, but when she felt it she gripped his fingers, afraid of letting go. His touch made the attack recede.
"You've faked your own death before?" Mike asked. All calm and cop-like questioning.
Bill nodded. "It gets harder with every year though. Two hundred years ago all I had to do was pretend to commit suicide by jumping into a river. Had to make sure there were people around who would see me, though. I would change into a wolf and swim to shore. People thought the current had swept a pathetic, elderly man away. Now, there are scuba divers and whatnot to search for bodies."
"You would have left," Anne accused again, the shock replaced with resentment. The hand that held Bill’s tightened like talons on his wrist.
He winced.
Regaining control, Anne removed her claws from his hand. Little crescent spots of blood appeared where her nails pierced the flesh. Guilt cascaded over her like a waterfall. "I'm sorry."
Using the hand she wounded, he took a lock of her hair and placed it behind her and then held her chin in his fingers. "It's alright, Annie, you're right. I was planning on doing it when your marriage was announced. Thought you would leave if I was no longer there.
“But then you told me you loved the rest of the pack, like they were your family. I already knew you saw Westley as a brother. I also knew that if I left, you would stay. Only you would be alone."
Mike let go of Anne’s hand. She felt cold without it, but said nothing as he stood to pace.
He scratched his chin, not focusing on anything in the room as he turned around and around. "Hadrian doesn't know you're immortal. Otherwise, he wouldn't be looking for people he thinks are the reincarnated versions of you."
"That's true. I'm not certain how it happened, if it was something he did by mistake when he cursed me or if Luna did it when she gave me the moonstone." He spoke the last part softly. The rock on his lap glowed at the mention of its creator’s name.
Bill sighed. “Either way, he is limited. Lord Hadrian is a wizard but he wasn’t immortal like she was. He had to trade his soul for immortality and the power to do what he did to me. But creating new breeds of monster took a lot of his power away from him.”
“Werewolves and shadows,” Anne said. Mike stopped pacing.
Bill nodded. “This isn’t in any of the stories, but those shadows are actually his men at arms from the days before werewolves. He killed them and trapped them in the shadow world so he would always have servants.”
Bill stared at Mike. Anne got the feeling that her grandpa was showing him something else.
Mike straightened. “A thousand years of living like that, he must be nearly out of power.”
A flare of hope ignited in Anne's chest. “This is good news.” She looked between the two men. Neither of them seemed to share her enthusiasm.
“Well, this means you’re safe, right? With Hadrian running out of power, we can just wait him out.” Still he said nothing. “Right?”
Bill sighed, his nose crinkling. “I imagine that is true, he is running out of power. As for waiting for him to run out completely...after all these years of relying on his guard of shadows, I would wager he has enough tucked away for a rainy day.”
Her hope was snuffed out as though Bill took a fire extinguisher to it. She rubbed her eyes, fighting off the oncoming headache. "Great.”
“That means he’s still coming.”
Anne faced Mike. A grim determination rested in his blue eyes and hard jaw.
She wasn’t a psychic like him, but she could see the wheels in his head turning. She shook her head. “No. You can’t leave.”
His gaze softened. "Annie, Hadrian still believes that I’m what your grandfather is and he’s proven his willingness to attack and cause harm to anyone who helps me."
Her heart pounded in her chest like it was trying to get out. Her mind scrambled for an excuse, an argument so he could stay.
Mike was silent as she struggled, as though waiting for the same thing, but nothing came to her. He was in charge now. She couldn’t force him this time.
“I’m sorry. I’m leaving.”
"Don't go." Anne got up as he exited the room.
Bill’s hands reached out and latched onto her arms.
The gentle action was enough to stop her. Her eyes followed his retreating back until they could follow no more. The door to the cabin creaked as it opened and closed, signaling his escape from her.
Her voice travelled on an airy breath that was too late for him to hear. "I want you to stay."
Abruptly, her throat seized up. Her eyes stung as salty liquid filled to her rims. Her chest rose and fell rapidly out of control and nothing that had just happened made any sense.
Bill squeezed her hand, and she looked down.
“It’s alright, sweetheart, let him go.”
His words didn’t make the swell in her throat go down.
The orb on his lap illuminated gently like a nightlight. Its’ usually calm glow did nothing to help either.
She looked back at her grandfather, the man who raised her, protected her, and sang her to sleep when she had nightmares.
Anne could still remember the radiant smile that lifted his cheeks the first time she called him Grandpa. Her tears fell down her cheeks before she could wipe them away.
He didn't look like a crazy person, but like someone who was being brutally honest. Her grandfather really was the wolf of legend.
It meant that Mike didn’t have a deity for a lover, but he was clueless to how she felt and still leaving her.
She brushed her palms over her cheeks, drying them while forcing a smile. "You don’t look anything like Mike. You sure you're the first werewolf?"
He smiled at her attempt to lighten the mood. "I got the immortality, but not the youth. I suppose I won't be able to prove it until tonight, though."
Anne’s smile cracked and sank like Titanic. "Tonight?"
He nodded. "It's full moon tonight and, for the first time in a thousand years, I'll have this stone in my hand. It's calling her."
Tears swelled again at the implication behind his words. Anne opened her mouth to speak but she choked. "But ... I thought you said you weren't going to leave?"
"Oh, honey." He pulled her to him and she didn't fight it. She held onto him as he rocked her like he used to when she was small. "I don't want to leave you, believe me, I don't. But with Lord Hadrian hovering around the pack, it's safer if I left. I might never get another chance at this and I've missed her for so long."
Anne fought back the urge to laugh. Bill seemed to notice the slight shake in her shoulders despite her attempt to hide it.
"Why are you laughing?"
She shook her head, mostly at herself. "I don't know how to describe it, hearing you talk about love." She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand. "I always thought of you as a hermit or something."
Bill laughed, a deep throaty sound that made Anne sink farther into his arms. She wanted to memorize how he felt; he familiar woody scent of him beneath the scratch of his trusty housecoat. What if she never hugged or smelled him again?
"Do you really think she's going to come for you?" Her small voice asked without her permission.
"If she's anything like I remember, stubborn, then yes. I expect she'll want to come down just to see what's going on with her rock."
“I meant for you.”
He was silent for a time. “I don’t know. A thousand years is a long time, even for a Goddess.”
If the bitch knew what was good for her then she wouldn’t break her grandpa’s heart. "Why did she never come down before?"
He shrugged. "She did, I just don't remember it."
Anne looked up at him. "You don't remember?"
He shook his head. "It was hundreds of years before I had control of my transformations. I was little better than a wild animal.
“During my captivity, when I woke up the morning after a full moon, weak and in pain, Hadrian stood above me. Holding the stone in one hand and the end of my chain in the other, he told me Luna came to see me, not knowing what had happened, and that I attacked her."
Anne's heart jumped in her throat. How easily she'd forgotten the part in the story where the first werewolf was kept as a pet until his escape. She just couldn't picture Bill in chains. "What happened next?"
Bill sighed. "He told me that I killed her. I believed him until the next moon passed. Again, he stood above me with the moon stone in his hand. I remember wondering why he would still keep it so close to me during a full moon.
“I realized it was because she had returned for me but, again, I had no memory of her or what I may or may not have done.” His hands fisted in his robes. “Or of what Lord Hadrian had done to her. This continued for I don’t know how many moons, until one day I awoke alone.”
She would not cry. She would not cry. “Alone?”
He nodded. “With Lord Hadrian no longer above me, silently mocking me, it meant that she gave up hope, ceased coming for me. Perhaps she thought I was a monster every night and day, not just during her few hours of her visits to Earth. I don’t know for sure.”
Anne wished she could control her stupid tears. “I guess it makes sense, though.”
“What does?”
“Your huge collection of old knives and medieval daggers,” Anne said, thinking about all the blades with their interesting designs and handles hanging on the wall in her grandfather’s house. She used to think he’d spent a fortune on them. Now it was more likely he’d just picked them up over the long years he’d been alive and just never gotten rid of them.
“Hmm,” Bill said. “Used to scare me to death when I’d catch you playing with them.”
That made Anne laugh a little at the memory, then she got serious again. “Are any of them magic? Like, do any of them have the power to kill Hadrian?”
That would be so great if they did.
Bill shook his head. “No. Luna never blessed any of my weapons when we were together. They’re just antiques.”
That was a disappointment. Anne shook her head and wiped her dripping eyes. "This doesn't make any sense. If she's a Goddess then why couldn't she cure you? Why couldn't she punish Hadrian?"
