“Why are you telling me this?”
“Only a simple history lesson. I would like to give you a gift, if you please,” he said, pulling into the open a briefcase.
“Okay. But I still don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“At some point, I would like to give you a further history lesson regarding the fall of the Roman Republic. I simply have the greater good in mind. But for now, this will have to do.”
“Whatever it is, I’m not interested. I won’t betray my friends.”
“I’m not talking about betraying your friends; I’m talking about helping them. Judas has been vilified for thousands of years for his ‘betrayal’ of Jesus, yet would the Christ have been crucified had it not been for Judas?”
“No,” answered Jamie, “and that’s why he’s so hated.”
“Yet, was he not serving a larger purpose? The Christ was sent to die for our sins, which had to happen in such a way that it would only attract further followers. Only a betrayal would have sufficed. At least that’s how Judas’ actions are viewed, as a betrayal. I offer to you, however, that Judas is actually a hero who may have fulfilled one of the greatest roles in the Bible. If he had not done so, history may have been much different. Nothing happens outside of God’s will; therefore, it was His will that Judas commit one of the most vilified acts in history, yet it was an act that allowed the Christ to fulfill his role. Sometimes, the villain can be the hero. There is much for you to learn.”
Nicholas opened the briefcase, pulling out a book. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled. His eyes danced under his eyelids as the aroma wafted through his nostrils.
“Ahhh,” he said, “you can smell the history. You can touch history.”
He carefully put the book back in the briefcase, and handed it to Jamie.
“You must be careful with it,” Nicholas instructed.
“Take great care when touching it, when holding it. The book has become brittle over the years. Watch the binding. Above all, though, be careful that no one sees that you have it.”
“Why is that?” asked Jamie.
“Because this particular book is so powerful, so dangerous, it is the only book banned by the Senate. Oh, you can find distorted and censored copies of it in any library and bookstore in the world, but this is not a copy—it’s the original. It is kept locked away and I had to use a diversion in order to obtain it. In fact, I believe you were there—the fires in the village.”
“Yes, I was. And a baby died. You killed a baby for this book?”
“I did not kill that baby,” said Nicholas. “Those men did. And they were paid a hefty sum to do so. Too bad they didn’t live to use it. Don’t worry, no one will suspect. Those men were heavily intoxicated, so the Senate will believe a random act of violence. An extreme act, to be sure, but random, nonetheless. Besides, the baby is what’s called collateral damage.”
“I know what that is, but a baby?”
“It’s not the first time.”
Jamie stared at Nicholas with both horror, and a strange fascination.
“I had to get everyone out to get it. This book has been studied and used over the centuries by those in power. I will explain more later, but I must go now. Take it to your room. Peruse its pages at your leisure. I will instruct you later on its translation.”
“Translation? It’s not in English?”
“Italian,” answered Nicholas.
With that, Nicholas quietly stepped out of the room, making his way down the hall like a ghost. Jamie retired to his bedroom, setting the briefcase on the bed. After getting undressed, he looked again at the case and opened it. Pulling the book out, he noticed that there was no title on the cover binding. He opened it, shocked at what he found. There, on the first page, was the title, written in blood. He flipped through the rest of the book. All of it was in human ink.
Nicholas was right, though, it was in Italian. He turned back to the front of the book, and tried to make sense of the title.
Il Principe.
He hadn’t a clue what it said. He stuffed the book back inside the briefcase.
Nicholas stood outside Jamie’s room, watching the light go out from under the door. Then he smiled, and walked away.
LillyAnna moved down the hallway as if sleep walking, tears dropping onto the polished hardwood floor. She knocked on Landon’s door.
“Yes?” asked Landon.
“Are you busy? I need to talk,” she said.
“I’m never too busy for you. Come in.”
She tried to dry her red eyes with her hands, but the more she rubbed, the more they welled up. Landon led her to a chair by the window, pulling up another next to her. His hands cradled hers.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I know why I’m this way.”
“What way?”
“A werewolf,” she responded.
“So do I. You were attacked back home in Cincinnati.” He looked down at the floor, becoming frustrated, unable to see where she was going. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m not the only one from Cincinnati,” she said, trying to control her temper. “My life has been changed forever because of him.”
“Because of who?”
She looked him squarely in the eye, saying, “Jamie.”
Landon’s hands slid off of hers as he slumped back in his chair.
“Jamie? Are you sure?”
“His first change was three months ago, on the outskirts of the city where I was driving. It seems that in his confused state, he bit me.”
Landon stood, walking around the chair, and looked out the window. Most of the fires had been put out. A couple buildings still burned, but the flames were under control. He paced across the floor for a minute, what seemed like forever to LillyAnna, finally returning to his chair.
“Really? It was Jamie who created you?”
“Yes,” she said, raising her hand to her head. “I’m getting a headache.”
“Here, lie down on the bed. It’s been a long day.” He looked at the clock by the bed—three a.m. “And a long night. I’ll get you some aspirin.”
Walking over to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, he returned a second later with two pills and a glass of water.
“Stay with me,” said LillyAnna, taking both pills together.
“Okay. I need to grab some blankets for the sofa.”
“No. Stay with me here,” she said, rubbing the bed beside her.
Landon walked around to her side of the bed, helping her get undressed. He tucked her under the covers, and moved back around to the other side, still in his clothes. Raising the covers, Landon crawled inside. The heat gradually increased as their bodies moved closer together, intertwining. The only light in the room was that which filtered through the curtains from the full moon.
“I want what you want,” said LillyAnna, “but…”
“It’s too soon,” Landon said.
“I think for tonight, I just need to be held. I need to feel another body’s warmth. I need…” She paused.
“I understand.”
“Tell me about you,” she said. “Tell me about your family. How you became like this.”
Landon’s voice lowered as he began to tell the story of his childhood and his family.
He reminisced about the times when his mother, she later told him, would check on him at night, finding him staring out his window into the dark trees beyond their home. It was a kind of sleepwalking. What she didn’t know was that he was seeing something in the trees, something with red eyes. It was looking at him, though not in a threatening manner, more like it was waiting for something.
Landon also recalled how, when he was a child, his parents often argued, and though it never escalated to the point of a physical confrontation, it was nonetheless traumatizing for a kid. The worst part was that they argued over him, and he knew it.
“There’s nothing wrong with him. Why do you keep saying that?” pleaded Jean, his mother. “He’s just going through a phase.”
“Because there
is
something wrong with him. You just don’t know it,” yelled Landon’s father, Allen.
And that was basically it. Every argument was typically a two-line conversation with each line of dialogue simply being manipulated endlessly to say the same thing multiple times so that it was always more of the same.
What Landon didn’t understand then as a boy of six, but what he knew now, was that his father knew what Landon was, or more precisely, what he would become. To Landon’s knowledge, his mother never knew. Allen and Jean obviously loved each other, but that love was often kept at a distance, at least for his father’s part. And he understood now, why Allen never let Jean fully inside. Allen knew what Landon was because Allen was one himself. Allen was a werewolf. Not that Landon had ever seen his father change, nor did he ever talk about it directly to his son.
Landon’s parents met as teenagers at the local high school in Danville. Allen Murphy had recently moved to central Kentucky with his parents, having emigrated from Ireland. The locals rarely saw the Murphys in public together, and they saw even less of the elder Murphy out alone. The tall, young redhead never spoke about them. Jean’s parents, on the other hand, were quite active in the community. Her father was the minister at one of the Danville churches.
Allen and Jean had many of the same classes together, and he had demonstrated a talent for history. Often he would argue with the teacher about various events, almost as if the history books had gotten the stories wrong, and he had lived through them to prove it. He would always say that his father taught him history at home, and that the elder Murphy knew more about the subject than the teacher did. At times, the educator would get so worked up that he would storm out of class and down the hall to the principal’s office, begging for Allen to be removed. He never was.
Most other students just thought he was weird; Jean took to him almost immediately. They began dating only a few weeks after he had arrived, and he often visited the young blonde at her job at the Dairy Dip. She always gave him free ice cream. Her parents seemed to like him well enough, and like most other people, she rarely saw his.
The young couple got married not long after graduating high school, her father officiating the ceremony. Allen got a job at a local factory; Jean had been promoted to manager of the ice cream shop. It wasn’t long after the wedding, though, that Allen began to grow distant and angry. He drove to his parents’ house a lot, coming home more upset than when he had left. At first his anger was toward his father, then himself, and finally he would take it out on Jean. The drinking started soon after. Not a lot in the beginning, but worsening steadily over time, especially when he discovered she was pregnant.
He didn’t say much of anything to his wife, typically because he wasn’t around. He was either at work at the factory, or out drinking. He never went to a bar because there wasn’t one. Boyle County, like all central Kentucky counties, was dry. However, like all resourceful drinkers who live in dry counties, Allen found a way to get his drink. He even found a way on a cold 15th of March 1973, the day of Landon’s birth, leaving Ephraim McDowell Hospital to drive to a friend’s house.
This didn’t mean that Allen was a bad person, or that he didn’t love his family. Quite the contrary, he just didn’t know how to be a father, especially the kind of father that a kid like Landon, a kid who was so profoundly different, needed. Allen would often pull the car over in the rain with his family inside if he saw a stranded motorist. Times were, of course, different then, but it was as if Allen had no fear of anything. Jean would sit in the car with their son, looking worried as Allen helped change a tire or start an engine, especially if she deemed the stranded motorist to be shady.
Allen, on the other hand, had no problem with stepping in when someone needed help, including any fights that broke out in his presence. And the fights always ended quickly when he got involved, with the pugilists backing down and away from Allen every time. In fact, when Landon’s father did step in, those involved seemed to shrink back in fear, though Landon didn’t know why at the time; Allen always kept his back to the boy if he was present.
Things gradually worsened over the next several years, primarily when the family moved north, just outside of Mt. Washington, when Landon was ten. Allen had secured a job in nearby Louisville at the Ford Plant. The drive was long, but the money was good. Jean worked at the nearby Burger Queen. They rarely saw each other with him working days, and her nights. It didn’t help that Louisville was a wet city, meaning that Allen regularly stopped for a drink, or several, once his shift ended. His drink of choice was always whiskey.
Landon, being new to the Spencer County school system, made a few friends but was always just on the outside. Much of his time spent at school and on the bus was on the receiving end of verbal taunts. Though he had become adept at continuously dodging any actual fights. Naturally, he felt that he needed to learn to defend himself, but his father had other plans.
“Walk away. Run if you have to. Do you understand me?
You
do not fight.” Allen’s words were stern and stinging. It took years for Landon to decipher why the emphasis was always placed on
you
. Did he really not care about his son’s well-being? Not to mention what everyone at school would think of him. Why not just go ahead and put a sign on his Trapper Keeper saying “Fresh Meat, All Bullies Welcome”?