The plan was to go to the most recent crime scene to find clues and pick up a scent—no different than picking up on a missing child. This was nothing out of the ordinary for Landon.
He’d helped catch a serial rapist in Miami about a year earlier. By impersonating a police officer and gaining admittance to the hospital room where the victim was being examined, he was able to get a mental picture of the guy from the scent she still carried. She hadn’t yet taken a shower, which for Landon’s purposes was good. Someone’s scent was still easily traceable even after someone had bathed, but it was more difficult to gain the scent off a rape victim. Their showers were different.
LillyAnna and Jamie were standing by the balcony rail when Landon walked out with three wine glasses and a bottle of wine. This was going to be their first mission together, not counting the previous night’s fires. He passed out the glasses filled with red wine.
“Normally, I wouldn’t be party to a sixteen-year-old drinking,” he said.
“But I’ve changed a lot, in more ways than one,” said Jamie. “I’m a man now.”
“You’re more than a man,” Landon said, making a sly reference to Jamie’s alter ego.
The crystal glasses clinked, and each person took a sip.
“You think they’ll find the person who killed that old man?” asked Jamie.
“Oh, they’ll find them,” answered Landon. “They’re more upset that the person didn’t come forward after it happened. They know the guy had a heart attack, so it was an accident. Why hide? Whatever the reason, Ryker will figure out who it was, and the person will have to go before the Senate. There’ll be some kind of punishment. It’ll be more than it would have been if they had come forward in the first place.”
Landon and LillyAnna stood there quietly while Jamie sat on the balcony railing. Landon noticed there was something on her mind.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing, really, it’s just something that’s been bugging me for several days now.”
“What is it?”
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” she said. “I understand. You remember on the plane ride over when you were talking about why you do this kind of work?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you left one part out,” said Jamie. He could see that LillyAnna was dancing around the topic.
“I’m getting there,” she said. “What did you mean when you said that you were seeking redemption? Redemption for what?”
Landon sat in the nearest chair, noticeably uncomfortable. He finished his wine, grabbed the bottle, filled the glass up again, and drank all of it in one sitting. LillyAnna had no idea that she would soon regret bringing it up and would wish the night had never taken place.
“Murder,” he said. He started to fill his glass again, then decided to forgo the stemware, drinking from the bottle.
“Murder?” she asked. “What do you mean, murder? I know you kill criminals, people who deserve it. Is that what you mean?”
“No. I mean I killed a man in cold blood simply because I didn’t like him, and I could.
“I met a woman once, in a bar, back in Louisville, a while before my first change. She was beautiful, with long black hair. Man, could she sing. It was karaoke night. Anyway, we ended up having a few drinks and went back to her place. You can figure out what happened. The next morning I got up, and she basically threw me out. She thanked me for a good time, but said she had a boyfriend she really loved. I was devastated. I thought I had made a real connection with her. Well, I walked out of the house, and that was the last time she ever saw me, although I would see her again several months later.
“I never forgot her face or how much I enjoyed being with her that night. I also never forgot how betrayed I felt. So after my first change, I went back to her house at night, watching them through her window. I was so young and stupid and full of this new power that I had. I was also very drunk. I watched how happy they were.
“Well, as fate would have it, she sent him on an errand. I changed and followed. That’s when I discovered how moonlight affects us. The thing is, maybe I wouldn’t have been there in the first place if I weren’t intoxicated to begin with. Being drunk in my human form led to my being present at her house; being drunk on moonlight led to the man’s death.
“I waited until he came out of the store and was driving back to their house. I could hear the bath water running from inside, so I knew this would be the time. He got out of the car, and I charged. I grabbed him. He dropped his gallon of milk, and I carried him to a nearby field. Because of the full moon, I wasn’t thinking clearly at all, but then I wasn’t thinking clearly before I shifted in the first place, either. It was there that I killed him. I’ve been running from that ever since.”
He looked down to see he was clutching an empty wine bottle. He saw the tears in LillyAnna’s eyes. Jamie looked at him with shock.
“I didn’t want to tell you this,” said Landon. “I didn’t want you to think of me as those that I hunt.”
LillyAnna grabbed his hands, kissing them.
“I don’t,” she said. “I never could. I know all the good that you do. I know this is helping you, though, to talk about it. It may help more to say their names, give them some identity. What were their names?”
“Her name was Morgan. I think his name was Sam.”
Jamie’s eyes suddenly became enflamed as he lurched from the balcony rail to Landon’s chair. The elder fell backwards, the empty bottle breaking in his hand. Blood seeped out. LillyAnna jumped back.
“You!” Jamie said. “You killed my father. You destroyed my life. My mother and I were both beaten because of you.”
LillyAnna rushed in to pull Jamie off but lacked the strength equal to the enraged teen. Landon, however, pushed up with both arms, like lifting weights, and threw Jamie back toward the railing.
“Wait, Jamie,” pleaded Landon. “I’m sorry. Are you sure? Are you sure that was your father?”
“When I grew up in Cincinnati,” said Jamie, “everyone called my mom Angel, but her real name was Morgan. She told me before she died that my father’s name was Sam. She said that we weren’t even from Cincinnati, but that it didn’t matter where we lived before. She had long dark hair, with some grey in it. You killed my father, you son of a bitch!”
“That’s not possible,” said Landon. “The man never changed. If he were a werewolf, he would have turned. He would have fought back.”
“Oh, my God,” said LillyAnna. Her face gave the expression of someone who had finally figured out the killer in a whodunit.
“What?” asked Landon, looking at Jamie, who hadn’t yet taken his eyes off him.
“Jamie, Landon didn’t kill your father,” she said, “Landon
is
your father.”
Landon fell to the ground, his hand still bleeding as he placed it to his forehead. Jamie swayed back and forth, then leaned against the railing to steady himself.
“No,” said Jamie quietly.
“Yes, I think so,” Landon said. “I was with your mom about nine months before my first change. I killed her boyfriend Sam not long after. He never shifted, but you’re a werewolf. You were never attacked, which means yours was inherited. From your real father—me. Oh, Jamie, I’m so sorry.”
“Shut up. Shut up!” yelled Jamie. “I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you are. You son of a bitch. You destroyed my fucking life. I’m gonna make you hurt the way you’ve made me hurt.”
Instantly, Jamie bounded over the balcony rail to the ground below. His momentum to flee was suddenly interrupted by a hand gripping his arm. He turned to see Nicholas standing in the shadows.
“Come with me if you want revenge,” he said, pulling the teen back into the building.
LillyAnna knelt, embracing Landon. All he could do was sit there. Sit and think. Think about the night he met Morgan, and slept with her. Think about the night he killed her boyfriend, Sam. In a couple of minutes he had gone over the facts several times, trying to come to a different conclusion, but the result was always the same. Jamie was his son.
“Honey, we gotta get you bandaged,” she said.
Landon looked down at the fresh wounds in his hand, performed a partial change, then brought it back to normal. The wounds were gone.
“I keep forgetting about that,” said LillyAnna.
“He’s my son,” Landon said in a whisper. “Jamie is my son.”
“Yes, he is. He’s beautiful. He’s missing your red hair, though.”
“He looks like his mother, only blond. I need to go after him,” he said, standing on broken glass, crushing it further.
“No, you don’t. You need to let him be. He’s a teenage boy who just discovered who his father really is. Add that to everything else that’s going on in his life, like discovering that he’s a werewolf, and you’re gonna have a confused kid. Give him time and space. He’ll come around.”
“No, you don’t understand. I know what he’s going through, to an extent.” He told her the remaining pieces of his family puzzle.
On a hot Saturday in July, when Landon was eleven, Allen left their white brick home down by the creek to go to the store for cigarettes. He never returned. No note, no phone call. Jean contacted the police, fearing that Allen had possibly met with foul play, but they found no trace of him. According to the local convenience store’s employees, he’d never been there. For several years after, Landon always imagined, and subsequently told the kids at school, that his father had been called into operation by some clandestine government organization to an exotic country. His mother cried a lot.
For several years afterward, Landon and his mother moved from county to county, school to school, never staying long enough in one place for him to come into his own. Finally, in the spring of ‘91, after living in Louisville for three years, Landon received his high school diploma and moved out.
It wasn’t long after that Jean was diagnosed with kidney disease and put on dialysis. She never allowed Landon to be tested to see if he was a match for donation, just in case he were to have children someday and one of them needed a kidney. Jean continued to work as much as she could, which became less and less as the months passed. Landon did his best to help her around the house, often driving her to and from dialysis, but the situation only grew more difficult to bear. He never allowed himself to become naive about what she was going through, always remembering that dialysis was basically life support. In September of ‘92, Jean Murphy passed away. Landon looked for his father to show at her funeral, but he never came.
Time passed after her death in an alcohol-induced haze that he was more than happy to perpetuate. He jumped from job to job, residence to residence, never really settling in one place. He drifted aimlessly, and he was okay with that, until he had enough, giving college a try.
“I need to find Ryker,” said Landon, returning to the crisis at the moment. “He needs to know what’s going on. He may be able to help.”
“Okay, come on,” she said, leading him back into his room to help him out of his bloodstained clothes before searching for the vampire.
Jamie was quickly rushed to Nicholas’s bedroom. He lit a small candle to give Jamie enough light to see, but not so much that would give away their location. He could see that Jamie was about to speak and gestured for the teen to keep his voice down.
“What the hell is going on?” whispered Jamie.
“We must leave immediately.”
“Where are we going? Did you know all of this was going to happen? Did you know he was my father?” Jamie started to rattle off more questions when Nicholas stopped him.
“I will answer those three quickly; then we have to go. The plane will be ready when we arrive at the airport. First, we are going to the United States. If it is revenge you seek, I know its location. Second, I did not know any of this was going to happen, I was merely passing by and happened to overhear the conversation. No, I did not know Landon was your father. I do know, however, that it was you who gave the old man a heart attack. Don’t worry about that. His time was near. Where we are going, the Senate cannot touch you.
“You will become a great leader; many will follow you. There are others who believe, as I do, in the idea of transfiguration and the old way. There are a few such clandestine individuals here at Burghausen. They have simply waited for their prince.”
“A leader? I’m just a kid. Who would follow a kid?”
“An entire nation once followed a teenage girl in fifteenth century France,” responded Nicholas. “People will follow you.” The master worked his puppet. “Now come, we must hurry.”
Jamie followed Nicholas out of the room into the hallway, where they stood quietly for a moment, listening for any coming footsteps. Nicholas turned and walked swiftly with Jamie close behind, out of the main building to a waiting car. Before Jamie joined Nicholas, however, he couldn’t help but do that which he was forbidden to earlier. He touched one of the Koenigseggs and smiled, hearing one of the guards approaching. Nicholas turned back, seeing what was happening. After making a stop gesture with his hand and saying a few words in Latin, Nicholas ordered the guard to return to his post.
“Wait,” said Jamie.
“What is it? We must hurry.”
“I want to take one of these,” he said, nodding toward the Koenigseggs.
“Those belong to the Consuls,” said Nicholas.