The Legend of the Werewolf (23 page)

"The questions he asked are none of his
business."

"The things you heard and what I
told you involving
my
family were none of your business either," Mike
snapped.

Anne's face heated. She'd forgotten
about that. "What does it matter?"

Mike's eyes hardened. "Did he change
you?"

She couldn't answer that. If she told a
Griffon City cop the truth about that she would never see Bill
again. "What does it matter?"

"Yes, I changed her," Bill answered for
her.

Anne threw her hands into the air and
screamed. "Stop doing that!"

"Are you aware that it is a crime to
change a normal human and bring them into the paranormal
world—?”

"Resulting in anything from a stiff
fine to prison time. Yes, I know."

"It was an accident, Mike, he didn't mean
it," Anne defended. She wanted she rush up and throw her arms
around Bill's neck, as if that could somehow protect him from
Mike's strange, attacking questions.

Mike leaned back against the mahogany
headboard. Folding his arms, he narrowed his eyes as if in deep
thought. "Alright, explain."

"My house caught on fire when I was
five. Bill pulled me out but he did it in his wolf form. He dragged
me out with his teeth and he accidentally bit down on my
skin."

She hadn't spoken these words to anyone
other than Bill. Everyone in the pack knew the story of how she
came to be among them, but whenever the subject came up she always
avoided it. It felt strange to have kept quiet for so long only to
blurt it all out now.

Mike's eyes widened. "Your house caught
fire?" His eyes immediately went to Bill.

"I didn't set it." Had he been in his wolf
form, Anne was sure his hair would have stood on end. “But, since I
was the one who turned her, I assumed responsibility for
her.”

"You were just in the right place at
the right time, that it?"

"It was our moon night. Westley had
just had his first change, younger than normal, but he was still
healthy. So I was running with him and his father." Bill's voice
remained defensive.

"Any other survivors?"

Anne answered this time. "No. Even if
there were, it wouldn't matter. Bill would have had to take me
anyway. Humans are ill equipped to deal with werewolf children on
their own."

She relished throwing that in Mike's face.
For parents, having a child bitten by a were was a rude wake up
call to the things they were sharing their world with.

Very rarely did the bitten child end up
staying with the parents. The risk was too great. By law,
paranormal law, if the parents couldn’t handle the transformation,
the child was placed in a nearby pack to learn control.

Some parents would visit. Others liked
to pretend they never had that child to begin with, preferring to
go back to their lives were vampires and werewolves didn't exist
outside of the movies.

Anne couldn’t hold back the explosion, her
inner wolf was itching to get out, to start a fight, and it was
circling and growling inside of her head. "Why are you
interrogating him?" She shifted off the bed and went to stand
beside her grandpa, suddenly not wanting to be anywhere near
Mike.

She hated the hurt her retreat put on
his face.

"Because he's hiding something," Mike
replied.

Rage burned inside her. “Fine. You’re
right. It’s only fair and if it’ll shut you up then here you go. My
mom was a drug addict. Major, hardcore addict who sometimes forgot
she even had a daughter for days at a time. When she did remember,
I was a burden who cut into her coke money because I needed things
like, you know, food to survive.”

Mike’s eyes widened. He stood up,
horrified. “Annie, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“
No. You want to know. I’ll tell
you,
Officer
.”

He winced. She ignored it. “She got
herself wasted one night, decided she was hungry and turned on the
stove, forgot about it and went to bed. I woke up in the woods with
a giant wolf looming over me and my house on fire.”

Mike didn’t try to cut in again. His
eyes stayed sad though. It made Anne want to start crying. “I’m
glad she’s dead. I don’t want her back. If she hadn’t burned the
house, Bill wouldn’t have saved me, and I wouldn’t be where I am
now. She would’ve sold me and I’d either be dead or just like
her.”

With a deep breath, Mike closed his eyes,
then brought a hand up to rub his forehead. "Thank you for telling
me that. It helps me to understand things better.”

His eyes opened, flashing her with
diamond strength that froze her where she stood. “Something’s still
not right. You can’t tell me that everyone respects Gordon so much,
yet they're willing to get into a group and confront him all for
the sake of a story that has no factual value?"

“
You said you were having
visions!” She yelled. He had, but he’d never specified what was
happening in them. Only that he’d died somehow from
Hadrian.

None of the anger she felt was towards
him. She wanted to deny this along with him, but she couldn’t. She
believed in it too much. If she got her hopes up then it would only
be a matter of time before they were crushed. “You can’t tell me
you still think you’re not the one.”

Mike’s fists clenched, canines
clenched under snarling lips. “I am
not
your Goddamn legend.”

God, if only that were true.

"He’s right, you know," Bill
said.

Mike stared at the man.
"What?"

“What?” Anne said at the same
time.

Bill pulled the orb from out of
his housecoat pocket. It lit up like a flashlight in his hands. His
thumbs caressed the marble. "No question about it, this
is
Luna's
stone."

Anne couldn't take her eyes away from
it. The warm glow that pulsed from the stone in a tender beat eased
her anger away. She forgot all about Mike's aggravating accusations
against her grandfather and the hope swelled against her
will.

Bill must’ve had his chance to study
the thing and he still thought Mike wasn’t the first werewolf. But
she couldn’t be too careful. "So Mike isn’t the first? You know it
for sure?"

Mike's eyes remained focused on Bill,
waiting for the answer.

Bill nodded. “Just like always. I know
it for sure."

Anne's heart soared.

Only to fall
a
bruptly.

Shit. If anyone else heard this it was
back to marrying Westley.

No, wait, people thought she was still
bonded to Mike. The fact that he wasn’t the first wolf of legend
would be a bummer but they couldn’t do anything about her marriage
unless they discovered the bonding was a lie.

"I don't get you people." Mike rubbed
his eyes. "Between wolves who want to throw me out, wolves who
think I'm God and wolves who don't, this whole thing gives me a
headache. No one knows what's going on and everyone here is dead
set on believing what they want to believe."

"Oh, I agree with you,” Bill said. “The
people you've met here are mostly fickle, eager to say they shook
the hand of the man they grew up being told about. And, yes, there
are too many versions of this story to count."

"What about his visions?" Anne asked,
still struggling to get down from the high of hearing her
grandfather, who was an expert on this and had a chance to study
the rock, claim that Mike was not the first.

However,
she couldn't pretend the visions Mike
had didn't exist. "Mike has visions of himself being killed by
Hadrian. It's not possible that those are memories of a past
life?"

Bill shook his head. He sat down,
pulling Anne next to him and sat the glowing rock in his lap before
taking her hand into his. "Since our guest here is determined to
sniff out all of our secrets, I think it's time that I told you one
of mine."

The idea that Bill could have any
secrets brought a half grin to her face. "We don't keep secrets
from each other."

His guilty eyes told her otherwise. Her
grin dissolved like sugar in water.

“
While your visions are a shock,”
he said, eyeing Anne hard. She gulped. Maybe she should’ve eased
him into that a little better. “I imagine that seeing the death of
some poor creature has not been the only thing you have seen,” Bill
said, turning his gaze to Mike.

He took a breath and reluctantly
nodded. “I’ve seen men, who all look just like me, being killed.
They look like they’re from different times though.”

Bill nodded. “Yes, I imagine they would
be.”

“What do you know?” Mike
asked.

Anne wanted to know the same
thing.

“I know that those men are not you, nor
are they older versions of yourself. Just, unfortunate individuals
who happened to resemble someone Hadrian hated.”

Whoa. That was pretty…crazy. Anne couldn’t
speak.

Mike nodded with a sigh. “I was
starting to worry.”

“And, your other visions?” Bill
prodded.

Mike stared him in the eyes. “I see
someone else, who, again, looks just like me. He’s standing in
front of a glowing woman. She disappears, promising to come back,
then Hadrian comes out of the woods with his men and jumps him. I’m
guessing that that was actually the first werewolf.”

Bill nodded.

This was leading somewhere. Knowing
that didn’t bring her any excitement. It brought dread and fear.
Like she was about to hear something she didn’t want to. “Grandpa,
what are you getting at?”

He looked at her, sad eyes seeming to
have aged a thousand years. "Michael's visions are not his
memories. They are mine."

TWELVE

"What?" Her grandfather was insane.
He'd lost his mind. Of all the explanations in the world he
could’ve give, saying that Mike’s visions were her grandpa’s
memories was the last she expected to hear.

Mike sat down on the other side of her,
his hand touching her knee. Warmth from the support spread inside
her, but her eyes remained on her grandfather.

She said nothing, just stared, waiting for
him to tell her it was a bad joke. His eyes remained patiently
cautious as he stared back.

"I thought you were hiding something,"
Mike confessed, his hand still stroking her knee, believing her
grandpa without hesitation. "From the very beginning you always
seemed to know more than what you were letting on. Always so sure
that I wasn't the one, with no way to back it up."

Bill nodded. "That's right. It’s
difficult proving
you're
not the one when the only way to do so is to confess
that
I
am."

"You believe him?" Anne wanted to deny
the whole thing. Hearing that the first werewolf was her elderly
grandfather was no better than if it really had been
Mike.

There was still a killer warlock out to
kill someone she loved.

Mike didn’t blink as he stared at Bill.
"I'm looking into his head right now. He's letting me see what he's
lived through…” he paused, eyes glazed as though watching
something. “He's telling the truth."

Oh. So that's why Mike wanted to sit
next to her. Not for comfort, but so he could be at perfect eye
level with Bill.

Anne looked into his soft blue eyes,
searched for any hint that he could be pulling a fast one. She
found none. Nothing but the painful truth sat behind
them.

She had to look away, images from her
childhood crushing her.

And she believed.

God. How had she not seen it? Ever
since the day he changed her over twenty years ago, he never seemed
to age. His skin didn't fall any further. No more lines marred his
face, his full head of silver hair never succumbed to
baldness.

Actually, Anne had no idea how old he
really was.

Queasiness attacked her innards. She
bent over and clutched her stomach. "Oh my God."

Bill rubbed her back. "I'm so sorry I kept
this from you, but it was the only way to keep you safe. If
anything, it was wrong of me to stay for this long."

She whipped her head at him. "Stay?
What do you mean, stay?” Anne sat up, pushing any sickness she felt
to the back burner. “Where would you have gone?"

Her question dumped a heavy load on his
shoulder, he showed her that pain in his face. "I'm nearly a
thousand years old. I can't stay in one place for long without
anyone noticing I'm not aging. Even in wolf years I should’ve aged
a little by now."

A click of knowledge sounded in her
head. Shock froze her blood, turning it into a river of slush. "You
would have left."

He looked away. It felt strange that
her own grandfather would turn his face away in shame when she was
the one who did that after disobeying a rule of some
kind.