Chapter 16: Will

Chapter 16: Will

I lay there with my heart beating fast, my breath barely caught up, and my body drenched in sweat. Next to me, Alexis lay, with the beams of light coming from the windows lighting up her elegant body. Even now, spent of all energy, I became aroused again just by looking at her heaving breasts, her porcelain belly, and her slender legs.

The worst part was I was at a total loss for what to say.

“So…that happened,” Alexis spoke once she had caught her breath.

“What do you know? On a long enough timeline, even ninety-something years old werewolves can lose their virginities,” I said, immediately regretting that those were the first post-coital words out of my mouth.

“Allow me a little disbelief here, if you will, Will,” Alexis said in a high-pitched voice that was a prelude to her breaking out into a fit of laughter. “Were you really a virgin?”

“Of course,” I said, turning to my side and facing her. “Why do you ask?”

“Because let’s just say your technique was not amateurish,” she said, blushing deeply.

“Neither was yours, if I may say so,” I said. Even now, almost half an hour after it had happened, I could not forget the sensation of her warm and wet mouth on my member.

“I know what it is,” Alexis said, propping herself on her elbows. “Neither of us has done it before, so we don’t have prior experience to compare it to, which effectively makes it both the best and the worst sex we’ve ever had.”

I threw my head back and laughed freely. She joined in. It was a beautiful moment, both of us laughing, lying against each other, and recovering our collective strengths.

“But was it enjoyable for you?” I asked after our laughter had subsided.

“Yes. And for you? Did you experience release?”

“I believe I did.”

“Well, we broke the rules we set at the start of the day. About nothing sexual transpiring.”

“Oops,” I said. “It’s all your fault.”

Alexis sat up and looked at me in shock. “How the fuck is it my fault?”

“You just up and out of nowhere decided to give me the biggest gift anyone could ever give me. You gave me a part of my old life back. This ship. It symbolizes so much—struggle, perseverance, strength, and courage in the face of the unknown. You don’t even know how much it means to me,” I said.

“You’re saying I seduced you with your ship?” The bottom half of Alexis’s face was trying hard to suppress laughter, while the top half of her face was scowling uninhibitedly at me.

“I’m only jesting,” I said. “I guess now’s as good a time as any to state that the force that binds us together is stronger than either of us had imagined.”

“Fate is strange. The more you fight it, the more obstinately it shows that it’s not something meant to be trifled with. You push; it pushes back. You lance it, and it pierces a hole in your reality. It’s for this reason that no one can change the past, and no one can truly control the future.”

I was not expecting this high-brow answer from her. It left me speechless momentarily as I digested this platitude and simultaneously applied it to my life. Perhaps fate deemed it that I was to be imprisoned for seventy-six years because I had stubbornly pursued a woman who was never meant to by mate. A punishment doled by destiny. Maybe it was ironic that I only realized how much I needed Alexis after I had criticized and rejected her. This frame of reference humbled me, making me realize something that I could not say to her right away: Given the turn of events, fate had rejected my rejection of Alexis as my mate.

How else could I explain the fact that I had just made love to her? That my heart had somehow softened to her? Had fate guided her actions, bringing her closer to me?

“Did you get lost there somewhere in your thoughts, Will?”

“Shouldn’t we check in on Maurice’s phone?” I asked.

“Maliha taught me how to record all outgoing and incoming calls on that phone. We’ll see what he’s been up to,” Alexis said. She got up and started putting her clothes back on. “I’ll let you know if there’s a new development. Okay? In the meantime, you are not to go looking for danger.”

“Oh, things have changed now that I have my ship. I’m going to start repairing it so I can take it out to the sea. And don’t worry, I’ll keep out of danger,” I said, half-heartedly putting my clothes back on.

“All right, then, you better go now. I work here, and if the wharf manager drops by, she’s going to have a fit if she sees me and you in the warehouse,” Alexis said.

That was my cue to leave. It was better that we didn’t stick around to talk about the implications of our love-making. It was a completely unexpected thing, and we needed some time before we could talk about it or what all of this meant for us, if it meant anything at all.

I watched her climb up the stairs and exit the ship, and although I didn’t call out to her, I wished I had.

I wanted her to stay.

But this, this was good enough too. I had my ship back. If this didn’t give me a new lease on life, I didn’t know what would. All it needed was a little bit of paint, some grease in the gears and joints, a nice polish on the wood, and a new set of sails.

For one glorious moment, there was not a single thought of the horrors that I had been through, the vampires that were looming around town, the treachery that Maurice had performed, and the impending danger in the form of Blair Beckett.

For one glorious moment, it was just me, my ship, and the memory of the time I had spent with Alexis.

***

The boat came as a blessing in my life. It brought back knowledge that had been buried deep within the recesses of my mind. In another life, I had a strong tie to ships. I would engineer them, work on their engines, maintain their bodies, and when all was said and done, I would sail them. A time before the war had broken out. I earned enough money to buy my own ship.

I wanted to restore the Grimm Reaper to its original splendor.

I sailed it out of the warehouse and moored it near the harbor, far enough from the main wharf so that it would not disturb other ships but close enough that I could run back and forth to the maintenance department and get all the supplies I needed.

Even back in Germany, whenever I was working on a ship, people would gather around to watch, chime in with their advice, and talk to each other. Just men being men. There was something woven into our DNA that when a man worked, others were drawn to him. Thus what would have been a rather boring ordeal became a communal effort, all the men talking, helping around, drinking beers, and smoking cigarettes.

As soon as I had moored my boat and started working on it, the same thing happened. Idle men from the wharf, workers on their breaks, sailors, and fishermen saw me from afar and gradually huddled around, offering to help, handing me paintbrushes, buckets of paint, a cold beer, and a funny-smelling cigarette that I refused.

Only some of them were my pack members. The rest of them were complete strangers treating me as if I had always been one of them.

I worked on my ship, painting over the chipped paint, replacing worn wooden boards, and nailing in loose pieces. Those who were around me kept helping, asking me all sorts of questions about the ship and where I had gotten such a fine specimen. I knew better than to tell them the plain old truth, so I just led them on with a far-fetched story.

This routine repeated itself the next day and the day after that. I was glad that I got a chance to work on the Grimm Reaper, not just because of the communal nature of the activity but also because I was quite close to Alexis. Even if I didn’t see her, I knew that she was in the warehouse, safe.

By the fourth day, not only was I finished with the reparations, but I also knew everyone who gathered around by their first names, which was saying something, considering there were almost a dozen men.

“You’re gonna have to keep up with tradition,” Tony, a mechanic who worked on engines, said. “You finished the job; now you gotta buy us all beers at the bar.”

“Is that so? Is that why you louts have been standing around here for four days?” I said, wiping off the sweat from my face with a dirty cloth. Then I slapped Tony on the shoulder and laughed loudly. “What the hell! Why not?”

“Ah, good man you are, Will Grimm. A good man,” Tony said and clapped me on the back. Ronny, Marty, Sid, Simon, Albert, and Theo, who were all independent fishermen, cheered loudly and lifted their fists in the air.

“To the Grimm Reaper and her captain!” Martel, a janitor at the wharf, exclaimed, making the others join in. Soon they were all chanting “Grimm Reaper!” over and over again.

“Come now, fella, it’s gonna be curfew in a couple of hours,” Hanson, a security guard who made rounds around the wharf during the day, said impatiently.

“As if you need another beer, Hanson, you old drunk. I bet you can’t tell how many fingers I’m holding up,” I said, holding up two fingers in front of him, giggling as he squinted in concentration.

“Come on, man. I painted the starboard!” Hanson said.

“All right, all right. Let’s go to the bar. I’m buying,” I said, finally giving in. At this, the men cheered louder than ever. I felt so at peace here, with my work on the ship finished, around friendly folk who humored me and told me tales from their lives. Above everything, I felt normal. These men were simpler, more my pace, and did not talk in terms I did not understand. Their faces were creased with lines, their heads mostly bald thanks to the salty sea air, and their hands bore calluses—all of which were signs of hard work.

So we went to the bar, and I ordered a round of drinks for the folks. We sang old sea shanties, told each other dirty jokes, talked about women, and bet each other how many shots we could drink without throwing up. I had fun, to say the least. So much fun that I lost track of time. When I looked at the clock again, it was nine at night.

I excused myself from the company, bidding goodbye to them and making a superfluous promise that we’ll do it again sometime. It was late enough as it was, and I had promised Alexis that I would stay out of danger.

If experience told me anything, it was that danger lurked around at night.

I stuck to the main road, relying on the arc-sodium lamp lights to guide me back to the commune. I had learned that from here to Grimm Abode, the single road was lit with arc-sodium lamps. It was the only good thing that the mayor and previous alpha had accomplished, or so the pack members told me.

Just then, as I was about to head up the road, I heard rustling noises behind me. Thinking that it was probably a cat or stray dog, I ignored it and kept walking. Then the rustling changed into an altogether different sound: footsteps.

“You’re a lot taller than they tell me,” a voice said. A voice I had heard once before.

“And who is going about telling you things about me?” I asked, turning to face Ralph, the leader of the vampires.

Ralph laughed a laugh that was tense with menace. He approached me casually, whistling, hands in his pockets and a strut in his steps. He held out his hand. I could not believe his audacity. When I did not shake it, he put it back in his pocket.

“Ralph Emerson, named after the great Ralph Waldo Emerson. I don’t think we’ve met,” he said. “You must be the new talk of the town, Will Grimm.”

“What do you want?”

“Oh, I just wanted to size you up, see for myself what the hoopla was all about. Apparently, you’ve been giving some people, including my people, a run for their money. I can’t have that, Will. I have a business to run, you see. Mouths to feed. Well, you know what I mean. If I stopped my business today, could you imagine what all the vampires across the state would do if they didn’t get their daily fix of blood? There would be unchecked chaos. People would die.” As Ralph said this, he took out a cigarette and lit it. “May I offer you a Pall Mall?”

“You have drawn a dark curtain over this town. Your goons patrol the streets. You are smuggling not just blood but dangerous drugs into the country. On top of that, you threatened my pack when your men came to attack the commune. You treat this town as your hunting grounds. Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t just kill you right now?” There was that rage again, making my veins throb, making me see red.

“You appear out of nowhere, attack my patrollers in the forest, kill many of my men outside your commune, disrupt my business, and force my hand. Why don’t you give me a reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now?”

It was a good thing that I was outside of town limits. A drunken werewolf was powerful and capable of immense destruction and bloodshed. I shifted into my wolf form and growled at Ralph.

“Now we’re talking,” Ralph said, grinning. He threw his cigarette away and lifted his fists in the air. He bared his fangs and hissed at me.

He was fast, but I was faster. Every time he moved swiftly to attack me, I attacked him first. I tore through his leather jacket with my claws, ripped open his skin, and threw him in the air.

He resiliently got up and took a pistol out of his jacket, aiming it at me. I swerved, barely dodging the first shot, then ducked, narrowly avoiding the second bullet. As he kept shooting, I kept running toward him. I reached him just as his clip emptied and slashed the gun out of his hands.

Enough was enough. I tackled him and pinned him to the ground.

“If I die, my people will rebel. Do you want the blood of the people of Fiddler’s Green on your hands?”

I shifted back, now standing over him with my foot on his chest.

“I’m not afraid of you or your people,” I said.

“Fine! I surrender, then,” Ralph said. “You won. Are you going to kill some defenseless old vermin such as me? Wouldn’t that go against your principles?”

I lifted him by his collar, holding his face close to mine so he could see the hatred seething through me. “I have no principles when it comes to vampires.”

“Good, and I don’t have any principles when it comes to werewolves either. Which is why I hope you understand why I’m doing this.” He cackled like a madman, then suddenly brought a dagger out from one of his pockets. I let him go just in time to miss what would have been otherwise a lethal stab.

But now Ralph stood free and far away, out of my reach.

“It would have been so simple if I’d killed you just then,” Ralph said. “But it’s not very courteous to murder your foes on the first meeting, is it?” To my surprise, he walked over to me, stowing his dagger away back in his pocket. “Here’s what would have happened if you’d gone through with killing me.”

Ralph snapped his fingers.

I saw around fifty red dots appear on my body at once.

“Oh, yeah,” Ralph smirked. “We’ve upgraded. And we’ll be keeping an eye on you. This was a warning call. Next time there won’t be one. Stay out of our way, and we’ll stay out of yours.”

He snapped again, making all the laser dots disappear.

“Au Revoir, Wilhelm Grimm,” Ralph said, waving his hand as he walked back into the wilderness. “You’ve been warned.”