Chapter 6: Will

Chapter 6: Will

I had taken the man’s words to heart and not overstayed my welcome. The second the sun came up, I descended from his rooftop. I completely forgot about the gun. I had intended to use it on the vampires, but such an opportunity never presented itself to me in the night anyway.

No big loss there.

All night, the vampires had jumped from one roof to the other, trying to find out where Alexis was staying. I didn’t understand how it did not occur to them where she was staying. It didn’t make sense that Ralph would send the thickest of his bunch to finish the job of killing Alexis.

Whenever I thought about her, her stinging words came to mind. It happened so much throughout the night that by the time it was morning, I had half a mind to just leave. If she wanted to be on her own, then she could have Bangor all to herself. I could go back to Fiddler’s Green, find the men responsible for my demise, and kill them one by one. After that, who knew? Maybe I’d end up roaming the rest of the country. When I was imprisoned, I regretted not having visited more of the country. Now that I was a free man, I could do that. Hitchhike my way across the States, see the sights, meet new people, and reinvent myself into a new man. A man that would be fitting for Alexis.

As I had given the man my word, I did not use his rooftop again. There were other rooftops that I had scouted throughout the night, rooftops that belonged to no one in particular. I should have chosen them instead.

Since there was no cause for hunger or thirst, as I had been fed quite heartily by that kind old man, I decided to stay around the alleys and keep an eye on the bar. Even though most of my supernatural faculties were not working, I couldn’t help but feel my bond with Alexis tell me that something bad was about to happen.

I had to take care of her.

When evening fell, I saw a man come to the bar and take Alexis away in his car. My heart became a cocoon of jealousy, and my mind exploded with a million questions. Who was this new man? How long had Alexis been seeing him? How long did she mourn for me before she found some other suitable man to call her beau?

Who was this guy, anyway? Dressed in a suit, suave as hell, slick hair, and an expensive car—what a fucking douche. What did she see in him that I didn’t have?

I underwent pangs of jealousy as I scouted for another location to hide. I couldn’t go to the roofs. Somehow, the vampires had lounged nearer to the bar, and if I went to the roofs now, they’d see me and report back to Ralph that I was alive. That would open a whole new Pandora’s Box.

The alley across the road was deserted. As it happened, it was pretty dark as well. I could see the bar from here and keep an eye on the roofs as well. While I waited, I told myself to be patient and give Alexis the benefit of the doubt. She was going through a lot of emotional turmoil. It did not befit me to ceaselessly pester her and plead my way back into her life. But this display of going out with another man was humiliating for me.

Some dark part of me thought that Alexis was perhaps just waiting for me to die so she could resume her plan of moving away from Fiddler’s Green and start her new life in a new town with a new man. Oh, how that dark part of me came alive with its disgusting imagination as I sat in the alley, waiting and waiting. I imagined the man kissing her, touching her body, being intimate with her, and it made me see red. The rage that I had so diligently aspired to bury deep down within me was unearthing itself the same way I had unearthed myself when I had crawled out of my cave.

I wanted to kill that man.

And any man who’d come close to her.

But this was just my deranged thinking fueled by jealousy. Nothing more. There would be no killing of mortal men. Not now. Not while they were innocent.

The vampires, on the other hand, would die.

I didn’t have access to a gun, but what I did have were my wits and a lot of time on my hands. Sitting in that dirty alley, I spotted tons of empty bottles, many of which were shattered. I assembled the ones that were still half intact from the topside. These would function quite well as shanks if the need ever came to use them.

When night fell, I tried to shift in the alley, but all my efforts were in vain. My attempts made me feel weak and unhinged. At one point, I even questioned my sanity, wondering if I had ever been a werewolf to begin with. The reflection on the mirrored window showed a haggard man with a patchy beard and unkempt hair. Maybe I was just a hobo, a bum who lived in these streets and had perhaps just imagined that I was a werewolf from Germany in one of my meth-induced highs.

But then I saw the car stop in front of the alley and Alexis step out of it. Seeing her made sanity prevail in my mind. I was not crazy. I had most definitely not invented some fable about me being a werewolf. All that time I spent with her as her mate was proof that I was a wolf.

There was no time to linger in this alley. The minute Alexis appeared, so did the vampires. Their silhouettes stood jaggedly atop the roof, watching her get out of the car. If they didn’t know where she lived before, they knew now. I had to kill them before they’d get a chance to call for reinforcements.

Once the man and Alexis had gone into the back alley behind the bar, I came out of my hiding spot and assessed the situation. The vampires were not on the roof any longer. But where were they? I craned my head around the corner to see Alexis talking to him.

When the man tried to kiss her, she pushed him back. I heard each word of what she said, and it brought my heart great comfort. She had not allowed him to touch her. Alexis was still mourning for me. There was hope yet.

Before the man could come out of the alley, I immediately hid in my hiding spot and waited for him to leave, all the while keeping an eye on the vampires.

As the man was getting into his car, the vampires appeared from the other end of the street and came up to him. They were talking in whispers that I could not decipher. By the end, the man gave them cigarettes and got into his car. Were they just asking to bum cigarettes from him? That was very unlike them. This situation was all kinds of fishy, and I intended to do something about it.

As the car drove away, the vampires, still smoking their cigarettes, headed into my alley, not knowing that I was waiting for them with two shanks in my hands. There were five of them. I let them pass by me while I tucked myself away behind an industrial air conditioner unit. They didn’t even hear me as they walked past me, talking about how cold it was and how they wished to be back in the cove.

They’d never get to the cove.

I jumped out of the shadows and crept behind the two vampires falling behind. I stuck both shanks into their necks. Before they could fall to the ground, I retrieved the shanks and flung them at the two vampires. The only remaining vampire turned around and hissed at me, baring his fangs. I was ready for that. I picked up the two shanks from the dead vampires’ bodies and slashed at the remaining vampire as he ran toward me. I slit his neck and his torso, drawing an immense amount of blood.

Here they lay, the five conspirators who had sought violence on my mate. And as I stood over them, towering, I could not help but feel my strength return to me. The realization that I was still a force to be reckoned with, even without my werewolf abilities, was an encouraging one.

Knowing that I could not linger in this alley, I cast one look at Alexis’s window and saw her staring. She couldn’t possibly see into the dark alley. It was pitch black here. I leaped back into the darkness and took care of the bodies by dumping them in the trash disposal. There was still a lot of blood in the alley. I could not do anything about that. When the police or whoever was unlucky enough to open the trash disposal would come across the bodies, they’d try to understand what happened here. They’d chalk it up to gang warfare. Hopefully, this would be the end of the matter.

In killing the vampires, I had exhausted my option of hiding in the alley, but now that they were not a threat, I could go back to the roofs.

I stayed up all night, keeping a watchful eye on the bar and the alleys to see if any more vampires would turn up. When they didn’t, I slept at dawn.

***

The other good thing to come out of killing those vampires was the money I robbed from their bodies before I dumped them in the trash. I had more than five hundred dollars in my pockets and the whole city to myself. While making sure that Alexis was safe was my prime designation, I had to sustain myself too.

So, not knowing where any of the best restaurants were, I just took to the streets and walked wherever the roads took me till I came to a diner that looked just like the ones that I had seen in Fiddler’s Green.

Half an hour later, a quarter of the staff at the diner was staring at me from behind the counter with wide eyes. I was ravenous and thus had ordered half a dozen eggs, ten slices of bacon, a whole jug of water, three burgers, and a cup of coffee. I was ravaging all of it quite ravenously until I realized that a lot of people were staring at me. I slowed my roll, ordered a cup of tea and a slice of pie, then just sat there idly as if I had done nothing wrong and drank my tea while I ate my pie.

Now that food and water were in my body, I could think more clearly. The delusions and fears started fading away, and sleep took hold of my body once more. I didn’t know how long I sat there and when I fell asleep, but by the time I woke up, a waitress was loitering around me, poking me with a rolled-up newspaper.

“What is it?”

“You can’t just sit here and fall asleep. This place is for paying customers only.”

“I paid, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but you were asleep for three hours, mister. We didn’t bother you for the first two. Now you gotta leave.”

“Well, in any case, here’s some more money for your troubles,” I said, tossing her fifty dollars. “Cheers.”

“Do you want some coffee to go?”

“That’d be lovely.”

With my coffee in hand, I went back to the alley and saw that there were police at the sight where I had murdered the vampires. Upon nonchalantly joining the crowd that had gathered there, I asked what had happened.

“Some gang war, most probably. It’s the same shit all over this town. People from rival squads killing each other over drugs. These guys were peaking, the police say. Their pockets were filled with meth,” someone standing next to me said.

Well, that was the end of that. I stayed there long enough to see the crime scene being evacuated, the bodies being dragged off in body bags, and the sanitation department cleaning away the blood.

By that time, it was evening, and I was hungering yet again.

But I did not leave. I couldn’t leave Alexis alone in the evening.

I needed a place where I could keep an eye on her and somehow hear whatever was happening in her room. Then it occurred to me how stupidly simple the solution to my problem was.

No one would suspect a thing if I perched on the bar’s roof. Alexis’s room would be just beneath me, allowing me to see what was happening. I’d also be able to hear her. My vicinity to her would allow me to intervene if anything happened.

When the police had cleared the area, and when many customers had started going into the bar, I snuck behind into the alley and climbed up the roofs till I was on the rooftop of the bar.

I breathed a deep sigh of relief as I saw that there was a skylight fixed on the rooftop of the bar, granting me a sight of Alexis’s room. She was in there, talking to someone on the phone.

I pressed my ear close to the skylight and heard her talking.

“I’m not going to go out tonight, Lawrence. I’m sorry. I’m just so shaken right now. Someone murdered five people in the alley in front of the bar. The police were here all morning, interviewing the bartender. They even asked me some questions. I’m just too disturbed to go out tonight. I saw the police drag five body bags out of that alley,” she said.

Then the man on the line said something, in response to which she said, “You can come over if you want. I have a laptop. We can watch some random shit and distract ourselves from the frailty of life.”

The man said something more.

“Perfect. I’ll have the cook make you something nice. Do you like tacos?”

Well, this was not good news. She was already inviting this man into her home. This was reckless behavior. What did she even know about this man?

I tested my patience as I stayed on the roof and watched the man park his car across the street and come around the back of the alley. He climbed up the stairs and knocked on her sliding window.

Now I could see them both in the room.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” the man said, hugging Alexis.

“I’m not easily scared, but five bodies are a bit much, even for me,” she said.

“Why don’t you pour us a drink, and we can talk about it?” the man said.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Alexis said. She was now pouring wine into the two glasses with her back turned to the man.

“You mean you don’t know why five men—if that’s what they were—were found dead across your bar?” he asked.

“What’s with this interrogative line of questioning?” she laughed. “Are you being funny? It’s too soon to be funny. They were five men. They must have had lives. Families. Goals.”

“Nope,” the man said.

I was shocked to hear that word come from him. Even more shocked to see what he was doing. His hand was in his pocket, stroking something. Could this sick fuck be masturbating to the sight of my mate? I was pressed so firmly against the skylight that I feared cracking it.

“What do you mean by no?”

“They weren’t men,” the man said. “They were vampires.”

The two glasses fell from Alexis’s hands. She gasped. “How do you know?”

“It’s ’cause I was in charge of them, sweetie. Blair and Ralph paid me half a million to hunt you down and kill you. I knew the vampires couldn’t do it. I told Ralph that they wouldn’t be able to. I was right. You’re one tough cookie.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Alexis asked.

“I’m the guy the boogeyman hires when he’s fucked up. Sadly, for you, I’m the last person you see before you die. My, my, you caused such a fucking mess, didn’t you? Killing all those guys in Fiddler’s Green. Your mate dead. Your life uprooted. I almost think that killing you is a mercy. But the bosses disagree with me, baby. I’m going to have to end your life. It’s better if you scream. I always like it when they scream.”

Then he took his hand out of his pocket, revealing an army knife.

Alexis was backed up against the wall when the man lunged at her from across the room.