Hair, Greg - Werewolf 01 (18 page)

“Intact.”

Fear never entered his mind, nor was he disgusted. He wasted no time in making his request.

“Turn me,” he said. “Turn me so we may be together, in this life and all those yet to come.”

She begged him not to ask that of her, which meant she was asking him to consign himself to death.

“Do not ask that of me, please,” she said. “If you die human, you will still be buried in the royal crypt. If I turn you, you will forfeit that right, and the right to the throne. You will never see your family again. They need you. Denmark needs you. Even if it is in death.”

“I need you,” he said. “Even if by some miracle I survive tonight, I will still be dead. I know that you will leave after this, and my soul will go with you, wherever you are. The rest of me will be a useless, dead shell, roaming the cold halls of this castle. I will be the empty cocoon that remains of the migrated butterfly. Unless you turn me, I’m dead either way.”

Annelise, unable to say no to anything Ryker ever asked of her, acquiesced, fulfilling his wish. The bite to his neck was more painful than what he’d been experiencing moments before. She carried him out of his chamber, as he trembled in her arms during the vampiric transformation. He was never seen again. The royal family searched all over for him, or his body, the king dying not long after. The rumor spread throughout the kingdom that the cause of death was a broken heart.

“That’s why I cry when I think about how we met. What he sacrificed to be with me is incomprehensible. When his father died that year, he had no other son, and Duke Christian of Oldenborg became king.

Over the course of the centuries, we moved about the world, eventually settling here at Burghausen. And that’s our story.”

LillyAnna hadn’t packed a single article of clothing, listening to her new friend’s tale. Annelise had done it all for her while telling her story. Annelise then reversed the question.

“So what about you and Landon?” she asked, still wiping away tears.

“Well,” LillyAnna began, “I can’t deny that I care about him.”

“Come on,” said Annelise. “I know there’s more to it. Out with it.”

“I’ve only known him a couple of weeks, and I feel like I’ve known him forever. I don’t know if it’s possible to fall in love, real love, within that span of time, but I think maybe I have.”

“I do think it’s possible. Love is love. It doesn’t matter how quickly it happens, or how long it takes. It does what it wants. The only thing you can do is hang on. I’ve been hanging on for six hundred years. Does he feel the same about you?”

“I don’t know,” LillyAnna responded. “Sometimes I think he does, but then other times, it’s like, I don’t know. He pulled me out of the depths when I was at my lowest and gave me a purpose. Now I’m in a castle in Germany, meeting other werewolves and vampires. He understands me better than anyone else ever has. I want to tell him how I feel, but I’m scared. We were together last night. Nothing happened, but he still hasn’t sent a clear signal.”

“Get used to that, honey,” said Annelise. “That’s men. Whether mortal, werewolf, or vampire, their gender doesn’t change. And I do know how he feels; I’ve seen the way he looks at you. The thing with Landon, though, is that he’s seen a lot of pain in the past ten years or so. I know you’re scared, but he’s more afraid than you are. Not just of getting hurt, but also of hurting you. He’s trying to protect both of you. However ridiculous that sounds, that’s how he thinks. Don’t worry—he’ll come around.”

Suddenly, Ryker entered the room, informing the women that Landon and Jamie were finished preparing for the return trip, and they were all meeting on Landon’s balcony for drinks. LillyAnna and Annelise followed, arm in arm.

After everyone’s arrival at Landon’s balcony, Annelise whispered in Ryker’s ear, still crying from her confession, and the two excused themselves for the evening.

Annelise could only think that, though the baby died in the fire, she would give anything to know the kind of love its mother felt up to, and beyond, that moment. It was the one kind of love that vampires couldn’t have, the greatest love of all—the love that comes with mortality. She needed to be alone with the only one that understood her, the only one that has ever understood her.

20

Jerry sat at the kitchen table in all black clothes, the front locks of his curly black hair nearly touching the top rim of his black glasses. The small red brick house on a suburban street just outside Boston provided enough room for a family of four or five. It had two occupants. Jerry often kept to himself in the basement, having set up his bed downstairs as a teenager. His mom’s bed was directly over his.

Connie was let go from a local factory due to a buyout a couple years earlier, and currently she got by on social security. She typically spent her days in her nightgown, robe, and fuzzy slippers. She was thin, in her early sixties, but looked like she could easily pass for mid-seventies. It wasn’t often that Jerry saw her without a cigarette dangling from her lips. This morning she was making the usual biscuits, bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes. Almost every meal she ate was fried.

“You get a job yet?” she asked in her usual condescending tone, setting a tub of butter and butter knives on the table.

“Yes, mother. I have a job,” said Jerry.

“Selling those knives of yours? How’s that working out?”

“Fine.”

“Not very well, is it? I told you not to sell those. I told you nobody would want to buy knives from a door to door salesman when they can pick some up at the local store.”

“Well, it just so happens, I’ve got a potential buyer in New York.” He knew that she knew he was lying.

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. For thirty years now you’ve been nothing but a worthless burden. No wonder your father left. Why can’t you be more like your sister, Jenny? She’s so pretty, and she’s got a real job, married, kids. What do you do? Sit in the basement all day and night, then go out and try to sell knives.”

Jerry sat there, emotionless. He wanted to fight back; he wanted to tell her that maybe dad left because she was cruel and unloving to him as well. Instead, he sat there staring at the fried potatoes in front of him. He didn’t even like fried potatoes.

“Yeah, don’t say nothin’,” she said. “And look at ya. No wonder you don’t have a girlfriend. Who would want a fat slob who dresses like death? If I had known what I was going to be getting when I was pregnant…”

“What would you have done?” he asked, staring at his fried potatoes.

“There were legal options in place before you were born.”

He knew what she meant. She walked over to the table, bent down so that she was eye level with him, and said the word anyway, “Abortion,” drawing it out like molasses.

She turned, walking back to the stove to finish cooking her plate of food. Finally, Jerry looked up. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She meant what she said. His older sister had made her proud, but he, he was a curse. The fruit that came out of her womb that day was rotten. And she hated him.

A stream of smoke wafted up from her dangling cigarette as he stood from his chair, walking around the table. He stopped one foot behind her, his breathing more controlled now than ever.

“I know you’re standing there,” she said. “What do you want?”

He said nothing, only breathed slowly in and out. In and out. Slowly.

“What?” she asked, turning around to face her son.

She dropped the spatula and oven mitt that she held in her hands. The pain in her stomach was dull and sharp at the same time. The butter knife turned and twisted inside her while the smoke from her cigarette, which was still dangling from her mouth, circled above. She gasped as he pushed the knife in farther, his hand nearly penetrating the open wound until the instrument was no longer visible. The curse that had emerged from her womb thirty years ago found its way back in.

Suddenly, Jerry heard the sound of a car door shut in the driveway. He dragged his still-dying mother out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the basement, shutting the door behind him. He heard the footsteps above as the person entered the house.

“Mom?” called Jenny. “I brought you some groceries.”

She walked through the living room and into the kitchen, where she noticed spots of blood on the floor. The bacon sizzled.

“Mom? Jerry?”

Gradually the sound of music began to come up through the vents in the floor, like a 1950s prom was taking place in the basement. It was Bobby Vinton. Jenny turned the corner of the hall and, reaching the basement door, slowly opened it. The stench of something rotting hit her like a runaway truck, and it might as well have been the dark side of the moon. There wasn’t a shred of light anywhere.

“Jerry? Mom?” She waited for an answer. “If this is some kind of joke, it’s not funny.”

She proceeded down the steps, escorted by Bobby Vinton, feeling her way along the walls, the handrail. She was rarely in the basement and didn’t know that layout of the furniture at all. Trembling, she held both arms out in front of her, slowly shuffling her feet, trying not to trip or bump into anything. A sense of relief came over her as the song faded away. Jenny rammed her knee into a table as she startled as the first keys of “Mr. Lonely” played again. She continuously ran her hand along the wall until she found the light switch. She breathed a sigh of relief when it came on.

The basement looked more like a cave, a habitat for eyeless creatures that spent their entire lives untouched by light, than human living quarters. The walls were painted black, like most of the furniture, though one could still make out the various etchings Jerry had made with his many knives, carvings that resembled certain aspects of the female anatomy then dissected by further cuttings. There were posters, also covered in black, of various bands like Rage Against The Machine and Tool, whose lyrics had been twisted and convoluted by the downstairs listener.

On the ceiling were velvet pictures of dragons and half-naked warrior women, the kind that one would find on the sides of 1970s vans, which glowed brightly with the use of Jerry’s black light. His wardrobe was no different from the outside color scheme.

The coffee table sitting in the middle of the room was littered with the origin of the rotting smell: several human hearts lay strewn on magazines, women’s magazines that no longer contained the faces of their female models. Every woman’s face had been meticulously cut out. The bedroom resembled the living area, save for one addition—a tarantula. What one didn’t find in the room, however, was any sort of enclosed habitat for the arachnid. Jerry allowed it to roam free. This was the first time Jenny had ventured downstairs since he made it his home.

“Jerry!” she screamed. “Where the hell are you? You’re scaring me!”

The hot breath on the back of her neck barely had time to register when an arm reached around, grabbing her throat. She heard the person inhale deeply.

“You smell good,” said Jerry. “Mom’s right—you are pretty.”

“Jerry,” she said, trying to gain her breath, “where’s Mom?”

“I always thought you were pretty.”

She felt something solid rub up and down her back. A knife.

“Jerry, please. Don’t do this. Where’s our mom?”

“Well, she was cooking breakfast, but now she’s lying down on the job.” He turned on his bedroom light, exposing Connie’s body lying on his bed. Jenny tried to scream, but her brother only squeezed her throat tighter. She felt the stabbing pain of the knife repeatedly enter her back, then the numbing sensation when her face hit the coffee table.

“See, it’s girls like you that’s the real problem with this world. All the pretty girls.”

She lay there in her blood, unable to do anything but listen.

“All you women are the same. Get a job, make money, be good looking. What about real love? Well, two for Boston will mess up my final count. Nothing I can do about it now. Gotta go if I want to make New York by nightfall.”

He reached down, taking her keys out of her pocket, and walked upstairs as if nothing had happened. Jenny couldn’t feel the pain anymore, or hear her car’s engine as Jerry pulled out of the driveway. All she could feel were the hairs of the large spider, brushing slowly against her face while she lay there unable to move. All she could hear was Bobby Vinton.

21

Night had fallen in Bavaria as LillyAnna and Jamie sat on Landon’s balcony while he made a trip to the kitchen. All three werewolves had studied the maps and graphic pictures of the victims’ bodies in the US. They read the letters to each respective city’s police department from the killer, explaining his hatred toward women and the power they hold over men. They knew the killer’s motive. What they didn’t know was where he would strike next.

Like others before them, Landon, LillyAnna, and Jamie could find no discernable pattern to the killer’s spree. They simply hopped from city to city. Each victim had been discovered in a local warehouse or other abandoned building with multiple stab wounds to the upper torso. Police found them after they were reported missing by concerned family members and friends. Most of the dead left behind a now motherless child. Authorities in every large city were put on alert, though no one was sure what to do after that. There were no surviving witnesses, no prints, no video footage, absolutely no leads. Being put on alert was the only comfort the scattered police departments had left to offer their citizens.