Lucius fixed his grey eyes on the werewolf before answering, “Mr. Woods, I have found that vampires and werewolves both, present a danger to humanity. We are here to stop anyone who posses a threat. Like they often say, with great power comes great responsibility. I try to harness that power and responsibility for good.”
“Of course,” William said, “I understand.”
Scott, the other werewolf hunter added, “I do think werewolves reproduce faster than vampires, though. I mean, sure, they kill, but it’s easier to create a werewolf than a vampire. Now, if a scratch is all it takes…”
“Yes,” Dylan agreed, “but if their numbers grow and they run in packs they are easier to identify and stop. Their chaotic nature also makes them easy to kill. It is much more difficult to kill one of us. I suppose everything happens for a reason.”
The other vampire agreed by raising both eyebrows.
“How long did it take you to realize you had become like them?” Alyssa asked him; she looked like one of the most human vampires William had ever met.
William came back to his story, “I guess it’s without saying I stayed under that broken roof for days. I was weak and dizzy and alone and there wasn’t a way I could have escaped my prison with only my human strength. Not even during the first full moon was my transformation complete. Nonetheless, it helped me finally break free. That night I felt renewed, healthy and strong. It still didn’t cross my mind that the beast who had attacked me could have caused any changes in me, nor did I suspect my new strength was connected to becoming a werewolf. Regardless, the new vitality gave me the confidence to try to get out of the fallen barn. It was still difficult, but I slowly emerged from the wood planks until I was free.
“Of course my family had been murdered, mutilated and left there to rot for days or perhaps weeks. I’m not sure for how long I was trapped there. My senses still hadn’t changed, but I still remember the stench of their death and rot as I entered my broken home. I-“ William couldn’t continue. In his mind, he still saw flashes of his parents and siblings dead everywhere, with arms or legs missing and pools of dried blood around them; flies buzzing near their still bodies. “I was so hungry,” he said instead of describing the horror, “I ignored the death around me I began to look for food. There wasn’t any. Like my family’s bodies, everything I could have eaten had begun to decompose days before.
“Starving and thirsty and unable to think straight, I ran out of my house looking for one of our neighbors. At first, they saw my panic; they fed me and clothed me, but once they began to ask questions, they realized what had happened in the house. They knew me. They knew of my eccentricities. They knew I rarely talked to anyone and once they heard me describe what I had seen, when I told them about those monsters, they began to suspect the worse.
“The men in the village got together to visit my parents’ house where they found everybody murdered and, in lack of a more reasonable explanation, assumed it had been me who had done this horrible act. Not only that, as I begged them to believe me when I said it had been werewolves, they only got reassurance I was a crazy boy who had turned on his loving family on a madman’s killing spree.”
“Oh, no,” Alyssa gasped. “Did you run, then?”
“I tried,” William told her, “Before I could run they took me. They beat me and stabbed me believing they were killing a killer. They then dropped me in the river somewhere deep in the woods.”
“No justice,” she added in shock.
“I’ve seen little justice in my life, my lady,” William felt this was the only way to address a vampire as gentle and delicate as she was. “I healed, as you can imagine,” William continued. “Not only that, as I was alone in the woods I began to change. I could hear and smell animals around me like never before. It became easy for me to hunt them, which proved very helpful. Not only that, I found that I enjoyed animals raw even if I didn’t know that’s what werewolves ate. Physically I healed of all wounds in a matter of days, but I would not change until the next full moon. Even without knowing it, I was a werewolf. I was a werewolf since that day when I had been scratched by one of the beasts who murdered my family. I didn’t know it, but I had been cursed.”
Stopping for a minute, he could see pity in the women’s eyes, but reluctance in the men’s faces. Only Grant seemed to really understand; the scientist who still found wonder in the little things.
“What happened then?” Grant asked.
“The full moon came again,” William said softly, “I endured the first transformation of my life against my will.” He found himself smiling at the memory, “So painful I remember screaming half the night. The first time it happened lasted for hours. Slowly my bones broke and found their new shape. My face changed, my teeth, my eyes. I was conscious for most of it, only after the transformation was complete did I black out, letting the beast take over.”
“Kill anybody?” Dylan wasted no time in asking.
“No,” William replied immediately, “I was alone in the woods. Every full moon I spend there I killed only animals. Of this I am sure. I wasn’t near anyone, village or town, during the first year of my new life. Besides, I was alone because I feared I would cause someone harm the same way those beasts had caused me harm. I did not see or had contact with another human being until I was sure I was in control. Until I knew I wasn’t a danger to have around. It took a long time.”
“You taught yourself to control the beast?” Grant asked another question.
“I did, Dr. Helm, I did,” William replied, “Trust me, it was hard. Even harder was not to be able to communicate with another soul for months. It was ironic how I evaded human contact while I was younger and then… I found I couldn’t really live without others. It became my purpose to learn to behave as normal as possible in order to rejoin society. I was thirsty for human contact. I needed it! I refused to let my new condition alienate me from humanity for long. I fought my instincts and learned to be human.”
Dylan said, “Only you weren’t human.”
“No.”
“And we are vampires, Dylan,” reminded Alyssa annoyed, “don’t forget what you became when you first started this new life.”
There had to be some untold story there because even Rebecca, the young vampire who now worked with the greatest werewolf hunter William knew, turned to look at her partner with curiosity.
The attention was taken from the moment by the arrival of the lawyer, Jacob Anders.
Jake entered the room empty-handed. For some reason, Will had thought his job was to gather all information he could find on a one, William Woods, and had expected him to come back with a pile of files with his history. The lawyer apologized for interrupting and sat back down between Will and the vampire Alyssa – who, Will noticed, looked nothing like a vampire. None of them did.
Jake Anders asked, “Did I miss anything?”
“Origin story,” Lucius answered immediately. Then, continued, “So, Mr. Woods. You ventured out into the real world after you had controlled your impulses.”
Will nodded, “Yes, sir. You have to understand I had no idea what a werewolf really was back then. I mean, I couldn’t even start to comprehend all the rules that really went with the package. I know them now. Following the rules has kept me alive all these years. Knowing them helps me control my feelings, my instinct, my desires. And I have desires,” he regretted saying that final sentence.
Immediately, Dylan turned to him to ask, “And what desires are those?”
“Well,” William shifted in his seat, he played with his hands. He was nervous and he had been using every part of his willpower to keep himself grounded. Since meeting Dylan he had found many emotions trying to go wild without his control. Dylan brought feelings of hate, injustice, even fear.
He decided to explain, “I’m not sure how a vampire works,” Will began as a way of answering the werewolf hunter’s questions, “but, with us werewolves, every single emotion grows exponentially. It’s a physical thing. Ki
nd of like a woman and menstruation,” he stopped. He knew he had made the ladies uncomfortable immediately. The witches, creatures he had never met before, had sat down listening like statues until he had made it personal, “I mean no disrespect, of course,” he looked at each of them, “It’s just easier to explain this way.”
“Go on,” Alyssa prompted. “What are you trying to say?”
It was so easy to talk to Alyssa; there was something in her that relaxed him, even. Whenever he continued, he spoke to her as if she were the only one listening, “It’s hormonal. A werewolf is more animal than man, there are instincts that are enhanced like the need to satisfy your hunger or defend yourself. Every single feeling you have is intensified. For example, if you are afraid, then you could lose yourself in the fear, or it could manifest with aggression. If you feel love, you will feel it tenfold; it will consume you, and if you don’t get what you want, it could lead to aggression. Jealousy can lead to aggression, sadness can lead to aggression. It is the way a werewolf can make everything that happens around him stop spinning: with aggression.”
Lucius interrupted, “It is this aggression that has cost humanity many lives.”
“Yes.”
“What makes you so different, then? Where is your aggression, Mr. Woods?”
William pursed his lips; he needed to find the right words. He needed to say them in the right tone. He needed them to believe his honesty. “We are beasts, but we are men, as well, sir.” He waited for Lucius to agree, “We could all control these emotions, this anger. It’s possible.”
“Doesn’t look like many try very hard,” Scott, the vampire sitting next to Lucius, said. “I have confronted many werewolves and each and every single one of them are causing harm before I intervene.” He shook his head, looking dismayed, “Not one of them has been different.”
William could almost see this werewolf hunter taking out the heart of thousands of werewolves. A fate he had avoided so far.
Will finally admitted, “You’re right. It is more difficult for some to control their impulses. I don’t know why. Could it be genetic? Their upbringing? Their history? Personality? I couldn’t tell you.”
“But, you can control it,” for the first time, Rebecca, the youngest vampire in the room, spoke. Whenever he looked at her, he couldn’t help but look at a child. So new at being what she was, still naïve in many things about the world she became a part of. While he felt comfortable with Alyssa, he couldn’t help but feel protective of Rebecca. He wanted to help her, listen to her, reassure her. He wanted to be a friend, or a father or a confidant. It was all part of being who he was, all these feelings and thoughts always polluted by the beast inside him.
“It took me a while to realize,” Will answered the young vampire’s question, “that I am able to control my instincts much better than many of my comrades, yes.”
There was a pause, yet it wasn’t long lived. The director prompted, “Continue with your story, please, Mr. Woods. You were created, you learned control. What happened when you rejoined society?”
Will thanked the interruption to his own thoughts, he continued; “It was hard and easy at the same time, sir,” he began. “Hard because I had never before been good with people. It was always hard for me to interact with others as I was growing up, except it was never as necessary to my survival until I found myself in the situation of needing others to endure. I found a town, nothing special about it, just a town. I am, as you can see, very young looking. I can’t even grow a real beard,” he exclaimed in amusement suddenly, his finger caressing his smooth face. The rest, surprisingly, smiled with him, too. “Back then in the 1930’s being young wasn’t what being young is now. Back then I was old enough to work and the only thing I really knew how to do was how to build houses, buildings. I had helped my village grow as I had grown up. It was a good experience to have and it was what helped me find a job and start a life.
“Those first three years in that first town were wonderful,” Will remembered fondly, “I was independent for the first time, I had purpose. I was happy. I even had friends. I also learned how to read. Still, people asked their questions and I had to learn to evade answering them. I lived in a room over a lace shop and everything began to feel normal for me again.”
“And the full moons?” asked Alyssa.
“The full moons came only once a month and only at night, of course. In the beginning, I would just go back to the woods I knew, I would spend the night there and go back into town the next morning. I used every one of those nights in my effort to keep practicing the ability to maintain my own consciousness during the transformation. It didn’t take me long to feel a mastery of this and soon all I had to do was shut my door and windows and wait to transform in the comfort of my own room, and then-“ he stopped as the memories came flooding in; memories of happier times.
“And then?” Alyssa prompted.
He turned to look at her again, he liked looking at her, “And then I didn’t transform anymore.”
He didn’t need to elaborate on the fact because he knew they were aware most werewolves could not only control their transformation during full moons, but also could transform whenever they felt like it. It took time and practice, and the vampire agency had known and confronted them for so long to have learned as much.
“It is a painful process,” William added, “it doesn’t matter how many times it happens. It was a wonderful night when I sat down on the floor in the middle of my room thinking about the possibility of remaining human during a full moon. One day, my dream became a reality.”
He watched his audience, the men looked at him with conflicting emotion, but the women actually looked happy for him. Even the witches, who most of the time looked stoic, like statues.
“Please continue, Mr. Woods,” he heard Lucius say; he had lost himself in his own thoughts again.
“Forgive me, sir,” William said, “I won’t bore you with the trivialities of every year of my life, except to say I soon found that as much as I wanted to believe I could actually pass for human, I was not one. I never got ill, I never grew up. This presented problems. My friends did get ill, some of them died. My friends also grew up; they took wives and had children. That was something I could never do. I looked like a man when I really wasn’t and soon I realized I needed to move around before the people I knew started to suspect something was terribly wrong with me.
“I eventually enlisted as a soldier and fought wars. Back then it was easier to forge a document to have it read whatever I wanted. I officially became William Woods, the First, during World War II. Fighting wars wasn’t as bad as I thought for someone like me. Yes, there was death and suffering, but I was also immortal and that helped me help others survive. Sure, they sometimes wondered about me, but since I had just saved their lives they just looked past my differences, past my invulnerability.
“I met many people during the war. I made friends and I lost friends and by the time I came home in 1945 I was a changed man. I was older. I still look seventeen, like I am now, but I was now a man in my thirties. I had visited many countries and met many men and women. I had even gotten intimate with a special lady or two,” he found himself blushing, wondering if that was information essential to his tale.
“Anyway, I was back in the United States and out of the army and back to the construction business. This time I moved to Alabama. I had earned enough in the army to be able to buy a little piece of land. I worked for a construction company to earn a wage and worked on my own farm, starting from scratch. For a few years everything was working out great for me; except I was alone. I was, as always, unchanging and alone.
“I decided to sell everything and move into the city. At first, I thought I had chosen wisely; I soon learned I was wrong.
“It was around the 1950s when I thought to try one of the universities. They were gaining popularity, many people were attending and they offered to teach me more than I ever dreamed of. I traveled to Maryland, applied for medical
school and was accepted. For the first time looking young didn’t seem to be a problem. I began my studies, met new people my age, both physical end emotional, and once more, I had purpose, except…”
“You were a werewolf,” Dylan interrupted again with his sarcastic observation.
“You are precisely right, agent Torrence,” William said enthusiastically, “That was the problem. So far, I had managed to live my life as the only werewolf in the area. When I moved to Maryland, I found I wasn’t alone. Not that I thought I was alone. I obviously wasn’t. A werewolf had infected me just with a scratch and I could only assume there had to be many others who had been infected like I had been. I had always known there were others, but since I had lived without ever meeting another for so long, I didn’t really pay attention to the existence of others that much.
“This all changed when I went to a bar near the university with some friends.” With a sigh, he stopped for effect. He knew this was the part of his story the vampires would most likely want to hear. He watched them all, impatient, wanting to know more. It would still be over two decades until he decided to contact the vampire agency. It would still be a few years before he realized werewolves weren’t the only supernatural creatures roaming planet Earth.
William knew they were all eagerly awaiting the rest of his tale, so he continued, “They came in the bar and I knew exactly what they were. I could smell them. I had never smelled a werewolf before, but it was unmistakable. The two men who had just entered the bar were definitely werewolves. It wasn’t a full moon night, and the men looked to be in their late thirties or early forties. They both wore overalls and were still dirty from a day’s work. Perhaps they worked in the railway or a factory, I never knew. They walked to the bar and ordered a beer; I could hear everything they said. Only just like I knew about them, they knew about me.
“They both turned to me in unison, it almost looked rehearsed. My friends around me kept talking, drinking and laughing; I couldn’t be a part of them, not anymore. I got up abruptly and stepped out of the bar. That had been a mistake, but I had no experience, I was scared and confused and didn’t know how to react. The two men followed me out. It was dark and wet and no matter how fast I ran they were on my trail.
Werewolf Phenomenon: N.A.V.S.A. Series Book Two (The North American Vampire Secret Agency) Page 9