“So, Jamie, are you from around here?” asked Landon.
“No. East.”
“So, Jamie,” started LillyAnna, “been mutilating animals long?”
“What the hell, man. I don’t need this. Let me out,” Jamie demanded.
Landon shot her another look.
“What?” she said to him, looking annoyed at his demands.
“Jamie,” said Landon, “this wasn’t the way I wanted to do this, but the question is valid. Are you
aware
that you’ve been mutilating animals? What’s happened to you doesn’t work the same for everyone.”
“Yeah, I know what I’ve been doing. I don’t have any money, and I gotta eat,” answered Jamie. “What do you mean, ‘It doesn’t work the same for everyone’?”
“Not everyone who shifts is aware of what they’re doing. Some people lose their minds during the first change, getting locked inside. Those individuals need to be hunted and terminated. How much do you know about what you are?”
“Well, I’ve learned that full moons are a myth.”
“That’s not entirely true,” said Landon. “They just don’t cause the transformation.”
“So what do they do?” asked LillyAnna.
“I’ll get to that later. Jamie, I would like to offer you the same thing I’ve offered her. That’s LillyAnna, by the way. I want to help you. LillyAnna is fairly new to this, too, so I’m also helping her. I’d like for you to come with us.”
“Come with us? Where are we going?” asked LillyAnna. “This isn’t the way home.”
“Hey, I’m not going anywhere,” said Jamie, growing angry. “This is kidnapping. Let me out.”
“I’m not kidnapping you, per se,” said Landon. “You need help, but you’re too young to be able to make the kind of decision necessary to help yourself. Plus, you could move up to something other than killing animals if I don’t intervene.”
“You can’t do this. Let me out,” Jamie demanded. “I don’t know who the hell you are.”
“Where are we going?” asked LillyAnna.
“If both of you are going to get the kind of support you need, I need help. We’re going to see some friends,” said Landon.
“You have friends?” she asked.
The car had taken a detour and soon pulled off the road, onto Bowman Field, and into a hangar. Landon parked next to a private jet. He spoke with a thin man waiting at the hangar, giving him instructions regarding the rented tux in the trunk.
“Whose plane is this?” LillyAnna asked.
“I don’t have time for this,” said Jamie. “Good luck to you. Hope your kidnapping of other teens goes well. I gotta go.”
“No,” said Landon. “I cannot allow you to roam the streets, mutilating animals. Get on the plane.”
“Screw you, man. I ain’t going nowhere.”
“Screw me? I don’t think so,” Landon said, as LillyAnna positioned herself between him and Jamie. “Look, go with us. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll bring you back to Louisville, the first time you say it. You have my word. We are the only other ones like yourself that you’ve met; who else do you have? I’m trying to help you before you do something you really regret. Please, don’t make me put you on the plane myself.” Landon’s claws began extending.
Jamie, reluctantly, boarded the jet, and all three took their seats.
“Landon,” said LillyAnna, as the plane taxied to the runway, “where are we going?”
“Neither of you has any idea how deep this goes,” he said. “We’re going to Europe.”
As the plane headed east from Louisville, Landon observed that LillyAnna and Jamie were both still confounded by the turn of events, the latter seething. No one expected to be sitting on a private jet that night, heading for Europe. Landon, though unable to read minds, was astute enough to read facial expressions.
“We’re going to Germany,” Landon finally confessed. “It’s time you both knew the truth—all of it. We’ll be meeting those who helped me when I was in your position. This is their plane. I’m ready for any questions. It’s a long trip.”
“These friends of yours live in Germany and own a private jet sitting in Louisville, Kentucky?” asked LillyAnna.
“The people we’re going to see have some money,” Landon answered with a slight smile.
“Hey, I got a couple of questions,” said Jamie. “Just who the hell are all you people?”
Landon took a deep breath, saying, “Okay. We’ve got plenty of time.” Jamie listened as Landon recounted his first change. The one point he left out regarding the beginning of his story was the various relationships with women, though he wasn’t sure why he felt the need to omit it.
“After my first transformation, and what happened in the park, I left town. I didn’t understand what I was, or why I was that thing. I mean, I knew what it was called, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that it was really happening, and it was happening to me. So I started walking and just kept going. I never accepted rides because I was afraid of what could happen. I especially feared full moons. Like you, Jamie, I thought they had some kind of control over the change. I realized quickly, though, that the changes weren’t happening just during full moons. In fact, they occurred when I least expected them.”
“But,” Jamie interjected, “you said that they do have an effect, just not what I thought.”
“That’s right. They have the same kind of effect on us that alcohol has on our human bodies—intoxication.” Landon noted the disbelief in Jamie’s eyes.
“You mean we get drunk on the full moon?” Jamie asked, almost laughing.
“In a way. We lose our inhibitions somewhat, and can get a little clumsy. You know, we’re able to exist because we’re myth. People don’t believe in us, so we’re able to move about. Yet many myths are planted with a seed of truth. It’s the same with the full moon. You know that the moon has an effect on the tides, right?”
LillyAnna nodded. Jamie sat unmoving, his arms crossed.
“Our bodies contain a lot of water. Mine about sixty percent and hers, around fifty-five percent. Everyone thinks that it’s a myth about people acting a little crazier or the capacity of hospital emergency rooms increasing during full moons. It’s not. It has an effect on our bodies. Even in werewolf form, our bodies are so much water, but the effect is different. Our chemical composition changes to a degree, therefore the effect is different. Understand?”
“Ah, this is a bunch of bull,” said Jamie.
Landon looked at him seriously and said, “Really. You’re a werewolf sitting on a private plane flying to Europe. I think you can open your mind a little with this.”
“But how do you know all of that? Did your friends teach it to you? What happened after you left Louisville? How did you get to Europe?” asked LillyAnna, not stopping for a breath.
“Sorry, I forgot that’s where I was going. So I made my way across the US, working odd jobs, staying in seedy motels if I was lucky, sometimes staying on park benches. That lasted about ten years. Eventually, I ended up in New York City, working as a short-order cook at a diner. That’s when I met Paige.” He watched LillyAnna for any disapproving looks, but when he saw there were none, he continued. “She was a waitress in a diner, and we started talking. We eventually tried living together for a little while, but I couldn’t handle it. It had been some time since a change had occurred, but I felt I was pushing my luck. So I left and never went back, never contacted her. That was five years ago. That’s when I went to Europe.”
Landon looked out the window and saw the Atlantic Ocean come into view. It was night, but the clear sky allowed for the reflection of the full moon. LillyAnna reached over and placed her hand on Landon’s. Jamie watched.
“When we land, we’ll have a little drive ahead of us, through the German countryside,” he said. Landon noticed his companions staring at him. He cleared his throat and picked up where he left off.
“I went to Europe looking for answers. I wanted to know if there were others like me and why I was like this. My last name is Murphy, so I naturally started in Ireland, my father’s birth country. I lived in Ireland like I had in so many places back home, on the streets, in the countryside, moving from town to town. Finally, after about a month, I found another of my kind, named Finian. Actually, he found me after hearing about some American going around asking about werewolves. He knew who I was because he knew my father and grandfather. He took me to his family’s home in County Limerick. It turned out that my ancestor’s home was about a mile away from his, and that I came from a long line of Irish werewolves.”
Landon’s view strayed out the window again, as if looking for that greenest of islands.
“Finian’s house was like one of those idyllic, romantic cottages with a thatched roof, like you stepped back in time. His wife and three kids were there when I arrived. Two girls, around the age of ten or so, Moira and Kennedy, and a seventeen-year-old son named Lennon. Actually, my time spent with Finian was the only time I’ve come across any kind of feud between werewolves. It seems that even werewolves can harbor ill feelings toward each other, depending on nationality.
“Finian had been part of the Easter Rising of nineteen sixteen; it turns out that Irish werewolves don’t much care for the English ones—and vice versa. In fact, he invited me to go out hunting with him one night, saying that he could smell English werewolves nearby, but I declined. I’m not much into all that. Werewolves are werewolves, and people are people, you know?”
He continued, “Anyway, Finian explained that there are two ways to become one of us: when a human is bitten by a werewolf, or if the gene is passed on to the offspring by the father. A son or daughter can receive the gene and later turn, but when the girl grows up to have children, if the father of those children is not a werewolf, the children won’t be. It’s only
passed
by the father. Anyway, that gene then lies dormant until the hormones become balanced. At that point, there’s only one thing that can awaken it: when a real danger to life exists. When someone is in a fight, flight, or fright situation, and that person’s adrenaline is pumping like never before, that’s when it’s activated. I know, LillyAnna, that you were attacked awhile back, and that’s how you received it. What about you, Jamie?”
“I think it was through my father,” Jamie said. “I don’t remember ever being bitten.”
“Where’s your father now?” asked LillyAnna.
“He died before I was born. Attacked by an animal is what my mother told me,” he answered.
“Possibly another werewolf,” said Landon. “Did she mention if he had any enemies?”
“No, she didn’t. The man I thought was my father, who turned out be my stepdad, hit me and my mom a lot. I ended up killing him, and her, during my first change. I didn’t mean to; I just had no control.”
Everyone sat quietly, waiting for someone else to make the next move.
“So Ireland is where you found what you were looking for?” asked Jamie, changing the subject and wiping away the tears.
“No,” said Landon, picking up on Jamie’s cue. “Like I said, I’m part of a long Irish line, but that line began elsewhere. Finian said that he had forgotten where exactly our specific branch began, but that there were offshoots in Russia and Germany. So I thanked him for his hospitality and set off for Russia.”
Landon suddenly felt the lack of sleep over the past couple of days weigh heavily on him. He knew what it was like, however, to crave answers, and his guests were hungry for more. He continued feeding their appetite.
“I was concerned on my way to Moscow that I’d have a difficult time with the language barrier. I only speak English. Vampires are much better with linguistics than most werewolves.”
He saw their eyes immediately widen. “Vampires?” they said in unison.
“You didn’t think one was going to exist without the other, did you? Vampires, and other werewolves, that’s who we’re going to see. And no, there’s no bad blood between the two groups just because they’re different species. If there’s a fight between a werewolf and a vampire, it isn’t because they detest
what
the other is, but rather that they just don’t like each other. I’ll get back to them, though.
“When I reached Moscow, I drifted, just like in Ireland. When you’re moving from place to place, trying to track something down, you follow leads. Some are good leads, and some aren’t. Eventually I ended up in the western border of the country, ending in a little village called Kursk. Another dead end—or so I thought. It didn’t take quite as long for one of the Russian werewolves to find me. Word about strange foreigners asking about werewolves travels faster in small towns and their local taverns. I figured they would all think I was crazy, but I wasn’t left with much of a choice.”
Suddenly a voice came over the intercom, breaking the flow of Landon’s tale. “No storms reported over the Atlantic or Western Europe, Mr. Murphy. Should be a smooth flight.”
Landon touched a button located on a pad on the wall. “Understood, thank you.”
“Where was I?” he asked his listeners.
“Kursk,” LillyAnna replied.
“Right. So I’m at a local tavern, and I’m asking about werewolves and making a fool of myself because no one in a little bar in Kursk speaks English—I had to play Charades to tell people what I was looking for, and then they would just burst into laughter—when this hulking Russian, who looked to be about thirty, comes up. He says something in Russian, and everyone in the place starts scrambling for the door. In a few seconds I’m the only one in there. Me and this big Russian…”