Willow

by Amy Richie

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Knights of Andros

  My hands were already starting to shake when we pulled onto the long country road that led to my little cabin, but first would take us to Carlie's large white farmhouse that she shared with her father. A father who seemed to know all about werewolves. What was I going to say to him? Maybe it would be better for Carlie and I to go to the cabin.

  I rejected that idea quickly, though. I hadn't warned Gage and Jed, and we couldn't just show up. Jed was supposed to be dead. Gage wanted to know about Carlie but I doubted if he actually wanted her to be nosing around the place. There were lines that just couldn't be crossed.

  We pulled into the long driveway and she cut the engine of her car, plunging us in sudden silence. "You ok?" she asked with a pucker.

  I shrugged. "Yeah."

  "My dad's not going to care."

  "Only because he doesn't know."

  I heard her hiss of breath but didn't turn to look. "I meant about skipping."

  "Oh."

  "Come on."

  Carlie's door opened and I felt the shift in the car as she got out. There's no danger here, I told myself firmly. "Nobody here is going to hurt me," I whispered before opening my own door.

  I followed Carlie up the short dirt path that led to a blue door on the side of the house. "We hardly ever use the front door," she explained. I must have let my confusion show.

  I screwed my face up into a polite smile. "It's a nice … door."

  "Nice and blue," she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows high on her forehead.

  I grinned and she led the way into a small kitchen that the blue door led to. I had expected the room to be larger, but it was cheery enough. The modern counters and appliances were shining and spotless.

  "It's nice in here. Clean."

  "My dad likes it clean. You want something to drink?" She rummaged through the fridge and pulled out two bottles of water.

  There was another door that led to a huge dining room with a large round table that would have made King Arthur jealous. Carlie rolled her eyes in my direction and continued without stopping. Besides the kitchen, all the rooms in Carlie's house were enormous.

  "Dad!" she called loudly, bringing my attention back to her. We had stopped at the foot of the stairs. There was a rustle of movement followed by a loud crash.

  "What … do you think he's ok?" I whispered nervously.

  Before she could say anything, a very tall man wearing tiny glasses that were slid to the very tip of his nose came tripping out of a room we hadn't gone into before. "Carlie?" This must be Carlie's dad.

  Mr. Webb was a wiry sort of man with bright orange hair that stuck up in odd places. Either he had been electrocuted or had his hair cut by a blind madman. Or maybe he had just slept on it wet.

  "This is, Willow." Carlie pointed to me, making his eyes shift to where I stood.

  "Hello, Willow," he greeted tightly.

  "Uh … hi," I replied awkwardly.

  "So what are you … " He looked again to Carlie.

  "We skipped the rest of the school day."

  "Oh." He nodded distractedly. His eyes kept darting back to me. "Hard test today?" He grinned but it was short lived. "You know you'll just have to take it later."

  "No test," she denied. "We just didn't feel like going."

  "Hmm." He frowned, but like his grin it disappeared quickly.

  "We're going upstairs."

  "Right." He grinned again. "To talk about boys?" He wiggled his eyebrows dramatically.

  "Something like that." She began up the stairs. I smiled awkwardly at her dad and darted up after her.

  "That was … weird," I muttered.

  Carlie's room was the first one we came to. It was a clean room painted white. Several posters were hung to break the monotony but it still looked unlived in. The bed was pushed all the way against the wall, made up perfectly.

  She hung her bag and jacket inside the closet and turned to me expectantly. I quickly shrugged out of my own jacket and handed it to her. She offered me the only chair while she sat cross-legged on the bed.

  "Your dad is … um … "

  "Yeah, I know." She rolled her eyes.

  "No," I chuckled, "he seems nice."

  "He seems like he just served time." Her eyes widened slightly.

  "Or, just got done fighting a war."

  "Why do you say that?" She didn't look offended - just careful.

  "It's just … his eyes dart around a lot - as if he's waiting for his enemy to jump out."

  "Maybe not a war, like WWII or anything, but dad does belong to the Knights of Andros." I jerked back at the sound of Andros' name. "I do too, but … you know … I'm not sure if I really … " She stumbled over her words but I was still stuck on the Knights of Andros.

  "What's that?" My eyebrows came together severely. What was she talking about?

  "What's what?"

  "Knights of Andros?"

  "You've never heard of the Knights of Andros?" She seemed as shocked as I was.

  "No, I haven't."

  "Have you ever heard of a vampire named Andros?" Her hands stilled their nervous fidgeting. "Well, I mean, my dad always said he was a vampire. I never believed him. Have you heard of him?"

  I let out a long sigh and decided that since she already knew, what was the harm of confirming the facts? "Yeah, I've heard of Andros and he is a vampire."

  "Have you … seen him?"

  "No. He lives in the ancient city."

  "The ancient city?" she whispered, as if to herself. "Do you suppose all the legends are true then?"

  "Probably most of them."

  "It's weird."

  Yeah, just try morphing once, and then you'd know what weird is. "Yeah, I guess so."

  "I mean, my dad has told me these stories my whole life." She shook her head back and forth slowly. "Knowing is different than actually knowing."

  "So what is the Knights of Andros?"

  "It's a … club."

  "A club?"

  "Not a club really. But kind of." Her green eyes widened slightly as she struggled to think of the right word to use.

  "Ok, a club. That does what?"

  "Hunts werewolves."

  All sound stuttered to a stop, including my heart. "What?"

  "This Andros character started it way back in … I don't know the 1500s or something."

  "Who's in it?"

  "Some humans, and vampires … "

  "And?"

  "And some werewolves, too."

  "Are you sure? Why would a wolf join up with a group like that?"

  She shrugged. "My uncle is in it. And my dad."

  "Your mom?"

  "She was bitten, too. But she died." She tried to look like it didn't bother her, but there was an unmistakable quiver in her voice.

  "Sorry," I mumbled an apology. I should have guessed it. And yet Carlie was strangely unafraid of wolves.

  "It was a long time ago."

  "What do the knights do exactly? Meet with Andros?"

  "I've never seen him. There are meetings, though."

  "Have you ever been to one?"

  "You know, I always thought all this stuff was just crazy talk, like UFO's and the Loch Ness Monster."

  "I'll ask Gage, he'll know who they are." Gage was probably around when the group first formed.

  "My dad hates werewolves."

  "One killed his wife. Why aren't you afraid?"

  "I know Rueben."

  "Rueben is … young."

  "I love him." Her voice sounded small, like an echo in a huge empty house, but not like a little girl's declaration.

  "He is charming, I guess."

  "He's not," she laughed. "But I do love him, Willow. I was drawn to him when I first saw him. Like I always knew he was different."

  "Yeah … different."

  "So my dad has seen a lot of things in his time," she said abruptly.

  "He has good reason to check the shadows then."

/>   "Yeah." She shrugged lightly.

  "Have you ever met any wolves?"

  "Besides you?"

  "And Gage."

  "And Rueben." She looked away, her cheeks slightly pink.

  I tried not to stare at her. She was strange for a human. A wolf had killed her own mother and turned her uncle into a monster. She belonged to a group that hunted down the creatures and the first one she meets, she falls in love with.

  "And your uncle of course."

  "The others in your pack," she began. I felt myself stiffen. Now I would know how much she knew. "I saw other wolves. They're the boys at school, aren't they?" I refused to answer - or maybe I just wasn't able to speak. "Rodney and Steven?"

  "Yeah," I half-whispered.

  "Who was seen this morning?"

  "Steven."

  "And you're the leader?" I nodded. "How did you become … a wolf?"

  "How?" My voice cracked.

  "You were bitten?" she prompted with eager expectation.

  On Carlie's nightstand was a framed picture of a little girl and a woman with long brown hair and bright green eyes. Carlie and her mom. I stared at the picture. She couldn't have been much more than eight,

  "I lost my mom when I was pretty young, too," I said in a low voice.

  She looked over at the picture I was still staring at. "I was seven."

  "I was six, so I guess I beat you." I smiled half-heartedly.

  "What happened to her?"

  "Werewolf attack."

  "Oh."

  "Yep. I was six and Ivy was four. We were camping with our parents in some remote part of Alaska. They were … not good parents."

  "Did they abuse you?"

  "I don't really remember them, but what kind of people take their small children to a remote part of Alaska?" I smiled tightly, which she did not return. "It must have been a real mess cause the cops didn't bother to count body parts, they just said we were dead, too."

  "You were taken by the wolves?" she prompted when I fell silent.

  "Ivy and I were bitten, but not killed, and then taken."

  "So that's how you become a werewolf, getting bitten by one?"

  "Not just any wolf, though. It has to be the female and it's not always successful. The bite could kill you … or change you."

  "How do you know if it's going to work or not?"

  "There's no way to know. Look what happened to your mom and uncle. One lived and one died."

  "Maybe my mom was bitten by a male."

  I shook my head. "If a male had gotten a hold of her … " I shuddered.

  "I … "

  "It's not like it happens a lot," I interrupted her. Now that I had started talking I found myself wanting to tell Carlie more. "Your dad is right that a wolf doesn't age but that doesn't mean they just get to live forever."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Eventually the person becomes more wolf than human. The wolf gene takes over. For males it doesn't matter, they live out in the wild; but they need a female who's still mostly human. Once the female gets too old … they kill her."

  "What?"

  "Yeah, but you would know … I mean, she would know before it actually happened. By then she would be so connected to her pack they would own you … her. She would do anything for them; give anything to keep them safe. So when it gets too much she would choose a human child and change her. She would raise the child with the pack. When she turned seventeen, she'd be mature enough to take over. That's how it's done."

  "Why a child?"

  "The young are more susceptible to the change. They're less likely to die."

  "Females are never changed as adults then?"

  "They can be. There was a female called Noreen who changed adults. It's harder to make the pack trust them, though. But not impossible."

  "What if they don't want to lead the pack?"

  "Then what would be the point of changing her?"

  She shrugged.

  "But what I don't understand," I jumped out of the chair and kneeled on the floor by the bed, "is why they put me in charge of this pack."

  "You're a female - raised since you were young."

  "Yeah, but I'm still young and the boys are young. There is so much room for mistakes. Of course we're going to mess up. It's like they're waiting for something big enough."

  "Then they'll come kill you?" Her eyes widened almost comically.

  "Maybe but … "

  "But what?" She inched closer to me.

  "They want something from us. Why wouldn't Andros just order them to be killed? Why would he let us meet?" I chewed nervously on my fingernail. "He's just letting them get stronger. Why? What does he want?"