Colby walked toward the picture, wanting to touch it, wishing to study it. Yet, he stopped short when he noticed something in the small windowsill, next to the cot. A half-drunken bottle of white liquor. Already suspecting, Colby went over to the window and turned the long thin bottle around so that he could see its label. And yes, there were the words he’d been looking for, Thessaly Tsipouro written both in English and Greek.
Instead of going back to the picture, Colby found himself grabbing the bottle by its neck, then heading back downstairs to the liquor cabinet. He pulled out a short glass with a heavy bottom and poured out a drink, which he placed on a small wooden tray. Then, with no thought in his head but to complete his mission, he took the drink upstairs to the strange man, setting it down in front of him with a formal bow of his head.
The man’s eyes flickered toward the glass then back up to Colby. He didn’t thank him. Or give him so much as a nod of acknowledgment. But in the next moment, Colby felt his chest lighten and the arms he didn’t realize he’d been flexing suddenly relax.
“Your father is in the garden,” the man reminded him.
His father! Colby rushed out of the odd man’s office without further comment or question. It almost felt like he’d been released from some unseen force as he ran down the stairs and out to the gardens behind his house. To where the man said his long-lost father could be found.
The man hadn’t lied, Colby soon found out. He did find his father in the garden.
His body lay upon the ground, next to a bushel of roses, a pair of sheers gripped tight in one hand, and the other hand clutching at his chest. But as for the body itself, it had mummified, its skin completely blackened and leathered over a skeleton that seemed to still be yelling out in death.
This was his father. Not the man behind the desk, but the putrid body lying here before him in a black pool of God only knew what.
As the sun rose, Colby looked upon his father for the first time. Then he wretched, vomiting up every bit of the meager meal he’d eaten while searching for the tsipouro.
Then he sobbed. Sobbed and sobbed like the little boy he’d been when his father had left and never come back.
He had no idea how long he went on like this, but eventually the large man appeared, coming to a stop just a few feet away from Colby.
His eyes flickered dispassionately over the body, then he pointed toward a nearby greenhouse enclosed in glass. “You’ll find a wheelbarrow in there. Bury him in the field beyond the east side of the garden. Next to your grandfather. It’s best to keep your lineage in a row, don’t you think?”
Colby didn’t answer with an opinion. Couldn’t answer with an opinion. His throat felt closed in a way that could not form words. Instead of responding he fetched the wheelbarrow along with some gloves and did exactly as the large man instructed. Digging a deep hole to the left of a simple grave marker that read COLBY KREFT 1917-1966 carved across it.
Colby filled in the hole, then went looking for a piece of wood. He found one easily. For someone had carved several planks and placed them under a tarp. His father? His grandfather? One of the other Colbys who’d come before him?
It didn’t matter. Colby carved the birth year from his parents' wedding certificate into the piece of wood, a dash, and then the current year. He placed the marker and returned to the house, where he cleaned himself up in a tiny bathroom just off his father’s living quarters. Then he donned one of the attendant uniforms and returned to the kitchen, where he made open the freezer to find several ziplock bags full of meat. He knew this because someone…most likely his father…had written words like venison, pork, beef, fish, and so on outside of each one.
Colby wanted to cry…but found he couldn’t. So instead he cooked and thawed a bag marked steak, and then plated it and took it to the thing still screeching upstairs.
Damianos Drákon. That was his master’s name. He was extraordinarily rich, and he remained that way, even during recessions and the kind of Black Monday-like stock market crashes that had investors jumping out of windows in Paternoster Square. His English was perfect but tinted with an accent which seemed to Colby more ancient than Greek. But his intonation didn’t really matter, did it? They didn’t talk much. Damianos—or Anos as he told his business partners to call him when attempting to cast an illusion of friendship, didn’t pretend to consider Colby a partner or friend. He barely spoke to him for any reason beyond command and instruction. And Colby rarely asked him questions beyond, “Will there be anything else, sir.”
Colby soon got used to living across from the prisoner. The screeches quieted during the day and gave rise every night. They reminded him of the cicadas he’d heard on the annual Abernathy New Forest camping trip. Very strange and unworldly at first, but soon faded into the background. The prisoner sounded like one of the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park but appeared to be a man. A large one, like Damianos. But unlike Damianos, he had a forked tongue, and one glowing red eye, which never blinked. The other eye was little more than scar tissue. And Colby sometimes wondered how it had been lost. If perhaps Damianos had taken it as punishment before chaining him up in his attic.
Colby wondered a lot of things, over the next twenty years. But never asked.
His master appeared to be in his thirties when Colby arrived and remained that way as the years, the decades ticked by. From what Colby could tell Damianos had servants of all sorts scattered across the entire world: spies and minions and business “partners” who didn’t realize they were also minions.
But Colby was his only personal attendant—at least the only one who lived on site. And he ran the household like clockwork. He trained with cookbooks until he learned to cook the master’s favorite foods better than a Michelin chef. He early adopted things like online shopping, personal time-management systems, and smartphone to-do list apps, to better keep the house in perfect order. He even acquired a pilot’s license, learning to fly everything from a Piper Cub to a Learjet. For Colby accompanied the master all over the world. Standing attentively in the background of endless business meetings as Damianos negotiated deals for millions at first, then eventually billions.
Most of the meetings involved making more money, gem mining operations, and oddly enough, mountains. His master seemed to like collecting mountains from all over the world, and the few times Colby had seen him express frustration was when one of these deals didn’t go through. Why was he so obsessed with these mountains which often didn’t have much more to offer than a small town and one solitary hotel if he was lucky?
This was another question Colby thought about but never asked.
One night, after Colby brought his master’s evening meal up to the office, instead of answering “no” to Colby’s usual, “Will there be anything else,” his master looked him up and down slowly, as if just really seeing him for the first time. “How old are you now, Colby?” he asked.
It had been so long since Colby had thought about anything pertaining to himself that he had to take a moment to calculate the answer. “Thirty-eight,” he eventually replied.
Damianos gave an aggrieved sigh. “I suppose I should let you go, then. Thank you for your service, you shall find your compensation in an account in your name at the European International Corporation Bank.”
Colby’s head snapped up to stare at his master, who had already turned his attention to his meal of an entire roasted duck, and enough scalloped potatoes and braised cabbage to feed a family of five. He had said thank you, but other than that, it was as it always was with Damianos. Once an order had been given, he appeared not to notice or care that Colby was still in the room.
But Colby’s body relaxed as it had that day twenty years ago when he’d gone to seek out his father in the garden, and suddenly it felt that his will was his own.
Except when he opened his mouth to ask his master a question, any question at all, nothing came out.
He tried again, and again after that. But failing both times, he closed his mouth, then
did as he suspected his master wanted. Left without any fuss.
Just like that, Colby found himself freed. He could go wherever he wanted.
And wherever was home. He took the smallest plane from the master’s collection, flew himself back to England, and went directly to the home he had left twenty years ago.
Instead of his mother, however, a rotund woman with brown hair and warm eyes answered the door. She had no idea who he was talking about. Her parents had bought this house as a vacation home five years ago after it reverted to the government for non-payment of taxes. And the fishing village had transformed into a fashionable beachside town in the two decades Colby had been away.
Colby checked into a hotel, then visited the town’s EIC bank branch. When he presented his old school ID as proof of identity, instead of answering his questions, a man in a tailored suit came out to take the teller’s place.
He introduced himself as the manager of the bank—one it turned out Damianos Drákon either established or somehow owned—it wasn’t entirely clear to Colby, and he still found himself unable to ask questions. In any case, without requiring any further identification, the bank president led him back to his office where he took out a large binder and walked Colby through his portfolio. All his wages had been invested, as it turned out, and he’d even been provided with a pension. His master had been more grateful than Colby formerly believed. For he’d taken him in as a pauper and released him as a millionaire.
Colby used the money to hire a detective to find his mother. The report came back quick and bleak. Commended to NIH nursing home due to early onset dementia, and then she died at the relatively young age of sixty-seven. His stepfather was still alive and had moved back to East London, but of course, Colby didn’t care about that.
He stared at the report. Then stared at it some more.
Then he went to his old home, knocked on the door, and when the woman with the warm eyes answered again, he offered to buy the place from her for one million dollars on the spot.
The girl had looked at him queerly. Then said, “The woman you were looking for earlier…she was your mother, wasn’t she?”
Perhaps it had been the sight of a grown man crying on her porch. Or something gentle and light in the woman’s heart. She invited him in for some tea. Her name was Fiona, and just three months after he showed up unexpectedly at her door, they were married in a registry office ceremony with a reception to follow in the backyard of her parent’s house in Surrey.
Her parents had not fared well in the Great Recession, so they were not in the position to question their daughter’s whirlwind romance. Colby had millions of pounds at his discretion and no police record. So, who were they to protest the interest this mysterious stranger had taken in their plain daughter, especially after Colby paid off their severely in arrears mortgage as a wedding gift?
Despite his millions, soon after the wedding Colby took a job as a concierge at the same hotel where he’d stayed upon coming back to his hometown fishing village. He had tried to live a life of leisure in the months leading up to his wedding and had discovered it didn’t sit well with him. He often found himself flashing back to certain moments. Flying all the way to China to learn to cook a meal, Damianos had remembered enjoying during a trip to Hong Kong in the 60s. Disposing of a body after one of Damianos's North American agents had failed to block the passage of something called the Idaho Amendment. Placing a television in the prisoner’s room to drown out the sound of his screeches. It hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked. Every night the prisoner screamed and screamed.
No…better to stay busy, he decided. He took a job and paid a man to teach him and Fiona yoga. He let his wife drag him to musicals and funny films on the days he had off, and he reveled in her body any night she would allow him.
Fiona could barely comprehend his passion. “I’m just a mousy old thing. My parents had written off me ever getting married, but you act as if I’m Cleopatra.”
How could Colby explain it? He couldn’t. So, he'd kissed her some more and then rolled on top of her, telling her truthfully, “You are the center of my life, the single best thing that has ever happened to me.”
Not surprisingly, she soon fell pregnant. One girl. And then another. And finally a boy, who he insisted they name anything— “I’m quite serious, Fi, anything at all”—but Colby.
Max it was, then. After an uncle who’d always been kind to her. It seemed fitting as their relationship had started with her kindness toward him. On the seventh year after his release, he went to sleep to the sound of his new baby boy cooing in his crib.
And woke up to the voice.
Your holiday is over. Time to come back…
It was morning. Earlier than he usually got up, but still. Without a word to his sleeping wife he climbed out of bed and wrote a note. “I must go now. It is crucial that you send Max to Abernathy, the same boarding school I attended. There will be a spot waiting for him when he turns six.”
He tried to write something more…explain…but found his hand would move no further. A fool. He’d been a fool not to realize earlier.
When he arrived at the small airport where he’d landed seven years ago, he found the Tango XR in the exact same hangar. The low-wing plane’s aluminum bullet nose sparkled in the daylight as if it had been waiting for him to return for the other half of his inevitable round trip.
Less than seventy-two hours after his son’s birth, he landed in the flat field behind the master’s Greek estate and headed straight to his room on the top floor.
After changing into his waistcoat and trousers, he once again found Damianos in his office. When he’d first stepped into this room as an 18-year-old boy, the man…alien…whatever he was…had seemed much older than Colby. But now he appeared much younger than his own forty plus years. And the contrasts in their appearances only deepened as the next couple of decades went by.
At least, he supposed they did. He didn’t bother with mirrors after his return. He went back to cooking meals and ironing a never-ending laundry pile of suits, tuxes, and his own uniforms. The prisoner on the top floor continued to Jurassic screech like clockwork. More bodies had to be disposed of, and occasionally they received visitors. Large men, all topping two meters. Some were tanned. Quite a few were oriental. At least four of the visitors had forked tongues and red eyes like the prisoner.
Colby never asked them questions beyond their preference for coffee or tea or something stronger. They all, without fail, requested something stronger.
Things continued as if the seven years away had only been a brief blip in his life’s script. Years, then even more decades ticked by.
Then one day while visiting one of his odd mountain hotel properties on the small island of Lykos, Colby found his master out on the balcony instead of in his suite when he brought up his nightly portion of Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac wine. And when he slid open the balcony doors, Damianos was staring down at his smartphone with, what appeared to be a smile on his face. This uncharacteristic smile revealed canines so sharp, Colby had to wonder not for the first time in these several decades, if his master was a vampire.
Wonder but not ask out loud. However, Colby did glance around his master’s shoulder and saw but a simple text message. The Viking girl has returned.
“Sir, may I get you anything else?” Colby asked after setting down his glass of wine on the balcony’s small table. The wine was so deep a red, it almost appeared black in the light of the half-moon hanging above the hotel.
“That will be all, Colby,” Damianos answered with a cold nod of his head.
However, then he added, “Before you leave for the evening, please turn on some music.”
“Of course, sir. Your usual after-dinner playlist?” Colby asked, bringing out his old smartphone to queue up the usual opera playlist on the hotel’s ancient smart wall sound system.
But then Damianos said, “No, I’d like to listen to my workout playlist tonight.”
Odd,
but Colby no longer reacted to anything his master said. Just like he didn’t ask questions. He made the necessary adjustments, and a few moments later, a song came blasting out of the smart wall. “Radioactive,” by Imagine Dragons.
Colby startled. Not because of the volume, but because this song had been popular during his time with Fiona. Back when he’d been free. But not truly…
Colby found himself looking over his shoulder at the man who stood on the balcony with his hands clasped behind his back.
Wondering. But as always, never asking.
For as the male singer welcomed in a radioactive new age, it looked to Colby like Damianos Drákon owned this place. Not just the island the estate stood upon. But the sea in the distance.
And everything beyond.
Whoever that Viking girl was…Colby felt sorry for her.
Part II
Control the wolf. Control the wolf…
8
Wilma
Wilma awoke underneath warm covers her body still aching from her full moon shift. But how nice to wake up in a bed and not some cold and dank woods, she thought with a yawning sigh—only to pause mid-stretch when a warning shivered through her.
Hold up, I'm not in the woods! Why wasn’t she in the woods?! Or her own bed even?
Panic rushing through her, she surged fully awake, sniffing the air. Her scent-gathering mission only made her frown that much harder. It smelled like human in here…like a human male.
Switching to her other senses, she scanned the room. The bed she’d found herself in was big…but not as large as the California Kings her father had ordered for all of them when Wilt turned fourteen and started complaining that he was too old for a bunk.
The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy Page 46