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.

  17

  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”?

  “Dad, you don’t understand,” Landon responded through his tears.

  “Oh, I understand a lot more than you do. I understand that you need to avoid all the fights that you can. I don’t care what you have to do, and I don’t care what it makes you look like. You think all of these other kids are always going to be your friends? Think again. You’re not like them; you need to stay away from everyone.”

  And that’s where it always ended: You’re not like them; stay away. Landon, of course, always wondered, what does he mean I’m not like them? Allen rarely made any sense to his son. Little did Landon and Jean know, though, that Allen’s strangest move was yet to come.

  18

  Jamie knocked on LillyAnna’s door. No answer. He knocked again, receiving the same response. Pushing the door open slowly, he peered inside to find she wasn’t there. He wanted to see if she was okay. He wanted to apologize again for what he’d done to her. He wanted to tell her that he would never intentionally hurt her.

  Moving closer to Landon’s room, he heard noises coming from inside. Leaning against the door’s wooden façade, the muffled whisperings reverberated in his ear. He knew who it was. It was them. It was her, and she was with him. He listened a few seconds more to the laughter and soft-spoken words that moved through the door, piercing his head. Jamie imagined it was himself holding her.

  Hearing footsteps approaching, he quickly backed away from the door, continuing on his path, and outside into the main courtyard, to just below Landon’s balcony. The curtains were drawn, but the windows were open so that the breeze occasionally swayed the thin white veils back and forth. Then the wind picked up the sounds from Landon’s room, delivering them down to Jamie, providing his teenage angst with a soundtrack that would remain in his head for a long time to come.

  He looked up at the sky, the moon that hung overhead. It struck him that it was a full moon, and he remembered what Landon had said about full moons— they provide an intoxicating effect. Jamie closed his eyes, listening to the sounds from above. Then, his mind heard a different voice. Come, drink from my ever-flowing fountain of light. I will never betray you. I understand the phases through which you go; I have gone through them since the beginning and will until the end. I will be your mistress.

  Jamie opened his eyes and ran, ripping his clothes off as he went, out of the main entrance, jumping over the gate, and into the wooded area that bordered the castle walls. The lower tree limbs left scratches as he ran by, and then, seconds later, they began to collect fur.

  Jamie noticed that he had less balance than before, stumbling from time to time, knocking over small trees as he bumped into them. Down the hill, toward the town, he rolled. The great blond beast tried to stand when he reached bottom, but only fell backwards back onto the ground. Then he noticed an old man carrying empty buckets to his home that had been used to put out the fires.

  Jamie slinked along close to the ground, breathing heavily, his heart rate increasing. He stopped and sat still for a moment. The trees and old buildings that surrounded him seemed to dance around the area. Now there were two old men carrying buckets. Now three. Or was there still only one? The blurred vision made it difficult to tell. The werewolf snorted as Jamie laughed to himself from inside. This was ten times better than any drug.

  He inched closer to the old man, men, whatever. It didn’t matter to Jamie if there were fifty old men carrying buckets; this was fun. He crouched lower as the unsuspecting villager walked toward the bushes. Just a couple more steps.

  Jamie leaped up with a terrible roar, the old man dropping his buckets, stumbling backwards, and falling onto the ground clutching his chest. The werewolf snorted again as it stood there watching the downed figure grab his arm. Other townsfolk, hearing the commotion, ran toward the scene. Jamie darted back into the woods and found a vantage point halfway up the hill to watch from above what was happening below. He transformed back so he could hear more clearly, without the intoxicated effects, what was being said.

  “Werwolf,” the old man said. “Werwolf.” That was the last word ushered from his lips.

  The villagers looked up toward the hill, trying to peer through the trees, into the darkness. Spying nothing, they picked up the body and carried it to its former home, shutting the door and locking it. Jamie lumbered up the hill to return to the confines of the castle walls. Climbing to the balcony outside his room, he quickly changed to his human form and jumped into bed.

  19

  Jamie awoke the next morning to the sound of an argument taking place down the grand hall. Getting dressed, he tracked the commotion to the dining room. Landon, LillyAnna, Ryker, Annelise, and Nicholas were already seated when he arrived at the table.

  “Well, look who decides to sleep until almost noon,” said Ryker. “Why were you up so late last night—out killing old people?”

  “It’s not funny,” said Annelise. “He’s kidding, Jamie.”

  “He’s knows I’m kidding. We know it wasn’t him.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Jamie asked, doing his best to earn the German equivalent of an Oscar.

  “An old man was killed last night,” said Landon.

  “Died is more like it. Killed implies that he was attacked,” LillyAnna said.

  “Whatever. An old man died last night, and the last thing he said was ‘werewolf.’ There hasn’t been a villager killed by someone at Burghausen in hundreds of years.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Jamie said.

  “We know that,” said Landon. “Not only do we trust you, but Nicholas vouched for you saying that he saw you sitting by the fireplace in the Blood Room until the early morning, and then you went to bed.”

  “Well, it was someone here at the castle,” Nicholas said. “The Consuls are convening the Senate soon to get to the bottom of it.”

  “The Senate?” asked Jamie.

  “Yes,” he replied. “We have coexisted with the townspeople for hundreds of years without incident. Now, they’re not ready to evict us yet because of all the good that we do for them, but they do want the proper person brought to justice. And rightly so.”

  LillyAnna stood from the table and walked over to Jamie.

  “Can I see you for a moment in private?” she asked.

 

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