“I wish I could say I am sorry about your friend, Mr. Woods,” Lucius confessed.
“Don’t be,” William was quick to add, “I’m not. He was my friend because he had my back, he protected me, he was my teacher and many other things, but at the same time, he was a cruel killer. Mr. Torrence was right in ending his life.”
“Good,” Dylan stated firmly.
“Although I’m ahead of myself, aren’t I?” Will distracted them all with his question, “I met Eddy like I said and he showed me to his Alpha. I became part of a pack for the first time in my life. With them, I learned of the vampires. They had their groups - their covens, just like we had our packs. Not only that, often we would fight. It was easy to kill a vampire, at least it was for us back in the day. To us, vampires were just a pest we needed to eliminate and they seemed to reproduce like rabbits.”
“What do you mean?” Rebecca’s voice sounded confused, fragile. Almost like her question meant much more.
William, deciding not to stop to inquire the true meaning behind her question, continued with his tale after taking a quick glance in her direction. “Then there were the obvious wars between packs, which divided the island of Manhattan just enough to make it interesting.
“The humans rarely interfered. If the did they were killed or turned. If turned, they were eventually killed, anyway. It was a rough life, but I survived because of my youth. My physical youth. I soon found out the rest of the pack protected me like some biological duty. It was their nature. They took care of me as if I were what represented their young. After I left New York years after, I found the same phenomenon was true for other packs. It was as if the Alpha took care of me like a cub. As if he felt an instinct within that called to his fatherly impulses. It’s hard to explain.
“I played to what they wanted perfectly. I learned to act weak and naïve and that kept me alive. For a while I felt safe with them.” William stopped, scoffed, and said, “For a very short while.
“Like I said, I hadn’t met a vampire like Mr. Torrence until that day when he killed Eddy. I didn’t know his name, but I saw his face. He came like an executioner in the night. That night, the night Eddy died, he watched us battle each other in a war against another pack. He waited, patiently, in the shadows. His scent was in the air, so different from the other vampires. I think I took notice only because I wasn’t really fighting, but hiding. I remember everything about that night and how, when the fighting was over, he came down on Eddy and Jonas, an older werewolf who often convinced Eddy to wreak unnecessary havoc in the city. I watched this vampire, this formidable being, swiftly take out their hearts and then disappearing into the darkness again.”
William stopped, his memory of the events came back to him complete with scents and sounds; the smell of the wet concrete, the wind mixing the scent of fresh garlic from the pizzeria down the street and the blood coming out of his friend’s ribcage as Dylan Torrence pierced it with his bare hand to take out his heart.
“What an easy way to die,” the werewolf muttered almost to himself.
William hadn’t noticed his silence until Lucius was forced to interfere, “Do you need a break, Mr. Woods? Time to gather your thoughts?”
“Mmh?” He raised both eyebrows. Looking around he knew none of them would ever understand what this day meant to him or how difficult it was for him to confess the losses he’d experienced.
Alyssa spoke, “Are you all right, William?”
He wasn’t sure. He had seen… he had wished this moment would come for years and now that he was here, exactly where he’d dreamed one day he’d be, he wasn’t sure he would survive it. There were suddenly so many things that could go wrong. His anxiety started to rise; his will to control it was proving hard to find.
It was Dylan Torrence who saved him.
“Perhaps,” he started just as he reached into his jacket’s pocket, “you can tell us what this is?”
The key Dylan had taken out of his pocket now lay on the table before him. William stared at it as if it was some strange, magical object, although he knew exactly what it was.
“It’s a key,” he muttered the obvious. “The key.”
Lucius spoke, “A key to what, Mr. Woods?”
Raising his head, he stared right into the director’s grey, cold eyes, “To everything I’ve found about him.”
“About the Alpha?” Dylan almost fell out of his chair. “The Alpha? Don’t toy with me, boy, what do you mean?”
William could see the werewolf hunter’s excitement. He knew he was trying to find him, the Alpha to all Alphas. Everyone was.
“I-I don’t know who he is, but…”
With a loud thump, Dylan hit the table in front of him. He obviously hadn’t expected to hear that. What a disappointment. If anything, the one thing that could have saved William’s life would have been the identity of the most powerful alpha in America. The Alpha.
“They call him The One, that’s all I know,” William continued, although this didn’t seem to satisfy Dylan. “They all began to follow him. The alphas he began to recruit would meet with him in private only after being contacted by his lawyers.”
“He has lawyers?” This time it was Jake Anderson who had asked the question.
“Yes, “ nodded William. “They came in suits. They weren’t werewolves, if you can imagine. They walked right in with such confidence,” he couldn’t help but smile, “You should have seen them. The One never came to us. Our alphas always went to him. I don’t know where they are taken. They are just picked up in black cars, expensive cars, and when they come back it’s like they know the most valuable secret in the world. You can see it in their eyes.”
“When did The One show up first? Do you remember?” Lucius asked.
“I don’t know, perhaps in the seventies,” William explained, “By then I had moved on. I began to travel around the country looking for a pack that offered more than the last.” He shook his head, “They were mostly all the same, regrettably. The werewolves are all unpredictable, chaotic. No matter where I went they fought between them, they made new werewolves by accident constantly. Their packs grew and then they shrunk because they got into fights. After The One showed up they began to have purpose and, believe it or not, they fought less, they turned fewer humans, they began to follow his rules.”
“What do you mean?” Alyssa asked.
“I mean there were now missions, there was an objective. The members of each pack were channeled into a greater purpose. They took on roles and stole or killed or threatened because they had a reason to do it. The more I moved around the more I discovered they were all connected somehow. Technology also played a role, especially after computers became popular. It was a network that worked silently, but effectively. It took me ten years to find Dylan Torrence. By then I had seen him in action several times. Always the same, the efficient killer. He would come, he would complete his own missions all while ruining what The One had wanted. It took me a while to discover about the agency. In fact, everything became easier once Charles Lewis, the agent who helped bring me here today, came into the picture.”
“Lewis?” Dylan asked.
William nodded quickly, “He’s human. He does not have any superhuman powers. He can’t catch my scent or hear my heartbeat. He became the easiest target to follow. And I did. I followed him. I became his shadow until I began to learn more and more about your agency,” he motioned to Lucius, “I learned about N.A.V.S.A. and it’s function. Not only that,” William smiled again, “I learned more about vampires just by listening to Charles’ conversations over the phone than I thought possible.”
“Like what?” The other werewolf hunter, Scott, asked.
“Like how you are our opposite. We are wild and unpredictable, you are cold and efficient. You are everything a werewolf couldn’t be.”
“You include yourself in this group, I gather,” Dylan interrupted.
“Perhaps.” William had to admit, “But in all my years alive I’v
e not met another werewolf who is more like a vampire than I am.”
Dylan snorted, not believing his ears. “Right.”
“It became easy to contact you after I met Charles Lewis,” William continued doing his best to ignore Dylan, “All I had to do was leave a little something and he would make sure you showed up.” There was a pause, William looked around the table, trying to predict what his audience thought about what he was revealing. “I had to be very careful and certain of what I conveyed in my messages. I wanted, most of all, to win your trust. I knew if I gave you incorrect information you would not help me when I was ready for you to help me. For twenty years I waited until I found what I thought would let me in your group, the most valuable piece of information I found while living amongst the werewolf packs.”
“And what is that?” Lucius didn’t sound as eager as William hoped when he asked.
“I found three things.”
“Yes?”
This was the moment of truth. He would reveal everything he had to bargain with. Taking a deep breath, he said, “The One has an advisor. A woman. She is very powerful. I believe,” he turned to the two witches sitting at the table, “that she has to be a witch.”
The witches gasped offended. The look on their faces suspicious; William didn’t know much about their covens, but he knew they would be surprised to learn one of their own was aiding a werewolf.
“Who?” Victoria, the one with the most authority asked, perplexed, “Who is this witch? Can you support your claim? Have you any evidence?”
“I don’t know who she is and I don’t have any evidence,” he replied.
Victoria quickly turned to face the director, “I know nothing of this,” she said, “Cassandra knows the identity of every witch born. This is how we know who they are and they are all accounted for. All of them belong to a coven and all of them know which side to fight for.”
“Can you be certain?” the director asked.
She almost stood up, incensed. “For hundreds of years we’ve-“
“Can you be certain?” repeated the director.
They could all tell what she wanted her answer to be.
“Tell me, Victoria,” he continued, “After hearing to everything William has said so far, do you sense any untruths?”
Victoria, a witch who could tell if someone was lying. It took her a moment to calm down before she could start shaking her head from side to side. “No.”
“Anything at all?” he pressed, “Anything that should prompt me to tell my two best werewolf hunters to reach into this man’s heart to relieve him of his suffering? Anything?”
“No, I do not,” she repeated louder.
“I thought so,” Lucius exhaled. “My suggestion is, when this meeting is over, that you go back to your covens and discover who has sided with the werewolves.”
“But, you can’t possibly-”
“Find out,” repeated Lucius.
“Yes,” her lips trembled. William’s information had shaken her world more than she had expected it would. “I understand. I will account for every single one of them and their actions.”
“How many witches are there?” It was Rebecca, the young agent who had just joined Dylan in his fight against the werewolves who asked the question.
The two witches did not speak; almost as if they had not heard her ask. William, who was also interested in this answer, asked it again.
Grant said, “Not many, if I’m not mistaken, perhaps a couple of hundred?” he guessed.
Victoria looked at him as if he were forcing her to reveal her most inner secrets. “Twelve covens in North America, all with no more than a dozen members.” Then, “There are those we have identified with the help of Cassandra, but are still too young to be of any use.”
“So,” Rebecca wondered out loud, “They all work for you?”
“No, child,” it was Lucius who answered her question. “We will keep discussing this some other time.” He turned to the werewolf, “Continue, Mr. Woods. You said you uncovered three truths. You spoke of one, what are the others?”
“Yes,” William nodded, “The second one is that The One is one of the United States Senators.”
Hearing this brought gasps around the table once more.
Lucius leaned over the table, narrowing his eyes, “Are you sure of this?”
“Positive.”
“Which senator? When was he elected?”
“I-I don’t know, maybe two years ago?” William guessed, “but this narrows down our list, doesn’t it?” Lucius looked thoughtful. “I mean, all we have to do now is get close enough to each one of them and smell them, right?” Lucius was still unresponsive, “You, sir, you could do it, couldn’t you? With your position of power? You could arrange for meetings with them.”
“It’s not that simple,” Lucius finally revealed.
William couldn’t understand, “Why?”
“He would know about us just as we would know about him as we came close, wouldn’t he?” Scott added.
Lucius agreed quietly, “The President of the United States is the only human in a position of power who knows about our existence. Lately, it has become more difficult to deal with him. Each President presents different complications. For a while, I have believed Senator Hicks will be an ally one day and have been hopeful he will be the one I meet in the oval office to tell him about our world this coming February. In a way, if what you say is true, it makes perfect sense he was attacked today. Now, the Republican candidate I am not so sure about. But I’ve met him and he is not a werewolf.”
William didn’t understand. Why were they telling him about the President when it was a Senator they should be looking for? There were a hundred senators and the vampires had all the time in the world to search for the werewolf among them. They could start with the ones elected last and then… He then had an idea he had never considered a reality, “You think the One wants to become President? I mean, not this year, but during the next election?” He then took a guess, “Maybe Hicks will become a strong adversary if he becomes President which is why they wanted to kill him today.”
They all looked at each other quietly. Dylan spoke, “Well, the President has access to our world and he knows to pass the information along. The werewolves would hunt us down if one of them ascends to power,” he predicted.
After a while, Lucius exhaled and added, “I will take this information into consideration before we move forward with any plan.” Finally, he looked intently in William’s direction, “What is the third truth, William?” Lucius asked almost reluctantly.
William was ready to answer his last question, “The key you see on the table is the key to a security box in a bank in Chicago. Inside this box are three discs. Discs where I managed to copy the entire Alpha’s hard drive three days ago. Inside there is information on the other Alphas, their locations, packs, invoices, and much, much more. I’m sure inside there must be a key to The One’s plan. His lieutenants, his right arms. You’ll have the names and address of the most powerful werewolves in the country. With this key, all you have to do is walk in that bank, pick up the discs and use what’s inside.” He paused. “This is my bargaining chip. I give you the identities and locations of the six alphas and you let me join your agency.”
“Think of everything we can learn from him!” Grant was on the verge of shouting to agent Scott Wilson, the werewolf hunter in front of him. They had all taken a break. Rebecca had followed Dylan as he escorted Will back to the holding room. It was only a gesture now since the werewolf had not returned to the handcuffs and no one was there to make sure he didn’t escape or did anything dangerous. They trusted him now, didn’t they? Rebecca thought.
She was certain William Woods had begun to win the hearts of the heartless after the dramatic tale he had told.
Only the vampires had gathered in the next room, across the hall where Will waited, the witches and Josh had stayed behind, and Alyssa had excused herself for needing to leave to attend
a prior engagement.
The room where they had gathered to discuss the fate of the werewolf was almost identical to the conference room, except this one only had a small desk with a computer, a printer and a phone on top of it. Presumably, this was where Jake Anders had come to contact his law firm when he had stepped out of the meeting a few hours ago to gather more information on their guest.
While Scott and Grant argued about what to do with the boy, Jake continued his business as he talked on the phone trying to figure out the legal implications of bringing William over to their side. Lucius sat behind the desk pensive, not really engaging with anyone. Looking at all the men around her made her miss Alyssa. What could have been so important she felt she had to leave? Rebecca missed her presence; she had hoped she would be one to speak for William and not against him. She didn’t know her that well, but Rebecca could have sworn Alyssa had shown more sympathy than anyone for the young werewolf throughout the tale.
Dylan stood in one corner of the room, his arms crossed, his shoulder resting on the wall as he simply stared at the two vampires arguing with interest. Rebecca, as she had been doing for the past few minutes, stood puzzled next to the door trying to figure out where she fit in a world she clearly didn’t yet understand or even knew fully about. At least she knew what was right, yet she felt powerless to do something about it. Vampires, werewolves, witches… it was all too much. She should have been prepared for that and more when Dylan had revealed what he was a year before when she was nobody in a small town. She shouldn’t have been so surprised to hear William mention not all vampires were like her partner.
Were there different kinds of vampires in the world? What did that really mean?
She had too many questions and clearly not enough time to ask them and be taking seriously. There was a more pressing matter at hand, after all, and that was what the vampire agency was going to do with a young werewolf who wanted to be treated like a vampire.
Werewolf Phenomenon: N.A.V.S.A. Series Book Two (The North American Vampire Secret Agency) Page 11
