The Man at the Door Part 2

Please take the time to read The Man at the Door. This is a continuation of that story. To understand the action and get to know the characters you should read The Man at the Door first. The Man at the Door is item# 1150700. Thanks and enjoy! Please review.

Hours later the three of us have settle into a hotel suite in the village. Nathan and I force Marlie to go lie down; even if she won’t sleep, she needs to rest. Nathan is on the phone with his home office pulling strings to get more resources for the police here. I am on my cell with Melton, Brooks, and Crawford. I have hired some of the best people who receive the best pay and benefits for their discretion in handling my affairs and meeting my requests whatever they may be. Today the request is relatively simple, research anyone from Würzburg in 1493 that could have known me or Johann and find out if any of them were or became supernatural and could still be around. Confident I would have a name quickly I hang up.

There is a knock at the door and both Nathan and I start towards it. “Stay back,” he practically growls at me. I don’t even bother to comment and just jerk the door open.
“Hey Zachariah, I’m glad you’re here.”

Marlie’s husband is a big man at 6’3” with a football players build of wide shoulders and narrow hips. His blond hair is just beginning to gray at the temples and his face is crinkling around the eyes and mouth. At fifty-five, he has maintained a trim figure and looks much younger. He inspires confidence and is one of the few humans I truly trust with my life. He wraps me in a hug as he comes into the room. “How are you Cay?”

“I’m all right. Marlie’s in the bedroom. We’ll give you a bit of time with her. Nathan and I will take the kids downstairs for a bite to eat.” All four children come into the room remarkably quietly.

“No, stay here. I’ll take Marlie to eat. She doesn’t need to get hungry.” A werewolf’s needs feed on one another. If the body is deprived of food, the hunger for flesh increases, the same goes for sex. A pregnant werewolf cannot change which is the reason many werewomen never have children. Very few are powerful enough to resist the change for nine months, and even if they can do that, there is great risk during the first change after pregnancy. The strain of changing after holding back that long can literally tear you apart. Marlie is the strongest were I have ever met; I think it has to do with the fey and Brownie blood in her. She is the only were I have ever heard of to have survived more than one pregnancy, much less four.

The children settle them selves on the couch and flip on the TV like typical American kids. Looking at them, you would never guess their mother is the most powerful Eriu-Ben in the world. Willow, the eldest and only girl, has big tears running down her face as she hugs me. She is sixteen and lovely. Pale hair and green eyes, she is already tall for her age, at least six inches taller than I am, and like her name, she is very thin, almost waif-like. Resembling her grandmother, she has tiny hands and feet. They will always be small and childlike; as she is a Brownie. Sean is next at fourteen he is a moody hormonal teenager. His blond hair hangs a bit too long into his eyes. Too cool to hug me. Liam is six and still young enough that this is an adventure. Jeremiah is the youngest at four. He is the only one with his mother’s reddish hair and it is sticking out in all directions from sleep.

Marlie’s children sometimes stir an ache in me. As a vampire, I know I will never have children and seeing how happy the children have made Marlie and Zach and watching how the children have grown and are always becoming their own people. Sometimes it is hard to watch what you will never have even if you aren’t sure you ever wanted it. Before my change, children weren’t something I had ever even considered having. I was only twenty after all and was apprenticing with my father to become a doctor. Now though I think children are something I would have enjoyed. I feel almost cheated and I think I would sacrifice all the benefits of my long life for the opportunity to hold my child in my arms. I resolutely push the thoughts out of mind and am surprised to see Nathan watching me closely.

My phone rings and I answer it quickly. “Yes?”

“Ms. Blane this is Jean-Paul. We have a problem.” Jean-Paul is the head of Melton, Brooks, and Crawford and one of the people I would consider a friend. “Elizabeth is missing. She didn’t come home last night. Abigale and I didn’t panic at first. She’s stayed out before with friends, but she always calls first thing in the morning to apologize, but we haven’t heard from her. Abigale called the school and she didn’t go yesterday. The last time I spoke to her was yesterday morning when she left for her run and I was getting up, so about 5 AM.”

“Oh God, Jean-Paul.” Elizabeth is Jean-Paul and Abigale’s seventeen-year-old daughter. Involuntarily my eyes flick to Willow, only a year younger.

“We wanted to contact you before we called the police, and we knew they wouldn’t do anything for 24 hours anyway. I was going to call you and then the police this morning, but there was a note on my office wall this morning,” his voice breaks and I know whatever comes next will be bad. Jean-Paul is a resolute professional and no matter how bad the news he is always calm and factual so the emotion in his voice shows this will be worse than anything before. “There was blood on the wall, too much blood. It read: ‘I will not be stopped this time. Cilissa will burn.’ We have already had the blood tested in the lab. It’s Elizabeth’s. The man said from the amount of blood used for the message is somewhere close to 3 pints and for someone of Elizabeth’s size even 2.5 pints could be fatal. She could already be dead Caylen. She could already be dead,” his voice trails off and even my supernatural hearing isn’t necessary to tell he’s crying softly.

“I am so sorry. Keep the human lab working for fingerprints, time frames, anything. I will have a supernatural crew in there within the hour to conduct their own search. They can probably tell us what did this. I will find him Jean-Paul and I will find Elizabeth and bring her back to you if I can. Feel free to take off as much as you need. Take Abigale somewhere if you need to, on me.” Already my mind is racing, planning how someone could have been here and done that to Marlie’s mother and been in Atlanta to take Elizabeth. It takes nearly nine hours to fly from Dublin to Atlanta on a private chartered flight, which is expensive around 100,000, and a two hour car ride from Marlie’s mom’s to the airport and another maybe hour from the Atlanta airport to Elizabeth’s home or school, time to bleed Elizabeth get to Jean-Paul’s office downtown, another hour, write a message prior to Jean-Paul’s arrival this morning. So, between yesterday at 5AM when Elizabeth could have been abducted 45 hours have elapsed. Subtract travel time of about 25 hours give or take. So we have 20 hours of down time in which the crimes could have been committed. It’s plenty of time, but it does tell us something about our assailant. He is wealthy, even if he didn’t charter flights he had accessible money in the thousands to buy plane tickets, rent cars excetera. He is supernatural, there is little time for things like sleeping or eating and the brutality of the crimes not to mention the fact he knew about Johann proves that, also most supernaturals are wealthy because with hundreds of years, unnatural intelligence and strength is a huge opportunity to acquire huge wealth. I worry about the down time, the longer it takes to find him the longer he has Elizabeth, if she’s still alive. I think if he planned to kill her it has already happened, but he may be torturing her or holding her for ransom. “Jean-Paul I am on my way right now. Please have someone get the jet ready.”

“Of course. Thank you Caylen,” Jean-Paul hangs up and I flip the phone shut.
Nathan is staring intently at me, but I can’t say anything in front of the children. I have tears forming at the corners of my eyes trying to trickle over. I remember Elizabeth as a pretty blonde girl of about nine when I last saw her. I walk to the bedroom and shut the door behind me before sitting on the bed and burying my head in my hands. The tears come quickly running hotly onto my hands. I don’t cry often, but after everything that has happened in the last few hours, I need to purge. Suddenly I feel a hand on my shoulder. Nathan turns my body into his and I cling to his solid frame. My tears soak his white shirt, and leave it stained pink from the blood in my tears. My breath comes in great sobs and Nathan just holds me patting my back and smoothing my hair.

“What’s happened?” he asks as my tears subside.

I run my hands over my eyes and step back from him. “Sorry about that,” I shrug but Nathan only shakes his head and dismisses it. “I have to go to Atlanta. Whoever did this to Marlie’s mom has taken the daughter of my friend Jean-Paul. He wrote a message in her blood on the wall. I have to go after him,” Nathan listens patiently as I finish the story, and as I speak, I feel the anger coming. No one touches those close to me; no one would dare. The anger is purifying. It pushes the fear and pain out of the way so I can focus on what needs to be done.

When I finish Nathan nods and thinks for a moment. “Will you need to feed before we leave?”

“We? Someone needs to stay with Marlie, and you will change tonight.”
“Zach is here for Marlie and you’ve seen a change before. It’s not like if I bit you will change.” Nathan gives a slight smile.

“No, you can’t go. I cannot be babysitting a new werewolf while hunting another supernatural. No,” I walk past him and grab my bag at the door.

“I’m coming, Cay with you or by myself. You cannot go throwing yourself into danger. I’m a FBI agent; I have experience. You don’t,” he comes up beside me and puts a protective hand on my arm.

I almost want to laugh. I am one of the most powerful creatures in the world. No one has wanted to protect me for a long time. “Do you realize what you are even saying? I am a goddamn vampire! I think I can take care of myself. I don’t need some little agent to take care of me. I am the predator. I have more experience hunting things than you can even dream of Nathan.” I know my temper is getting out of hand and I feel my power racing along my skin. My eyes are darkening to become black pools and my teeth are lengthening.

With a flick of my hand, I knock Nathan’s hand of my arm and knock him into the wall. Instantly I see that wasn’t the thing to do. He is too close to changing and not old enough to know how to control it. His eyes have gone wild and are rolling back in his head. His fingers are stretching out, the bones within them cracking and molding beneath the skin that is darkening with hair. He lets out a low guttural sound of pain and manages to shock me out of watching. The children are in the next room and once he’s changed, he won’t know them from any other kind of food. I dash through the door and slam it behind me.

“Willow, take them downstairs now! Tell Marlie he’s changing, but don’t let her come up here!” They stare at me without moving. “Go!” I yell. They jump up. Willow picks up Jeremiah while Sean grabs Liam, and they run out the door.

I hurry behind them and lock the door from the inside sliding the chain in place and dragging the couch to prop in front of the door. A hotel full of people is the worse possible place I can think of for a werewolf to experience a first change. He will want to feed on whatever is available. I guess that will be me because he can’t run around the hotel. That would be an international disaster. So, I have to let him feed on me enough to sate his hunger but not enough to kill me. Easy, right?

I walk back into the room and panic hit me. I don’t see him. Before I can think to smell for him, a noise comes from behind the door, a low dangerous growl. I spin around and slam the door shut so I can see him. He is crouched in the corner, clothes in tattered piles around him, gold wolf’s eyes gleaming at me, teeth bared. “Come on then, come get me,” I murmur pushing a wave of power at him. His hair stands on end and with one more growl, he leaps. I slam hard onto the floor with him on top of me. Huge jaws sweep down towards my neck. I manage to get my arm in the way and he clamps those sharp teeth around it crunching the bone beneath the tearing flesh. The pain startles me for a moment before I can remember myself I fling my arm and he flies into the far wall with a thud. He stands back up and looks at me with bits of my skin hanging from his teeth. My arm is already trying to heal itself. The skin begins knitting itself together and the bones come back together. It hurts. Nathan licks his lips and leaps again, but not for me. He goes to the door. He’s smelled the other people and has decided they will be better prey. I take off after him. He has almost reached the door. I launch myself at him and tackle him. We tumble across the living area smashing the coffee table and knocking a picture down as we slam into the wall. Nathan drags a claw across my stomach slitting the silk of my shirt as easily as the skin beneath it. He lowers his head to lick at the blood pouring out. Swiftly, the mood changes, I am not worried about him eating me anymore; the new hunger is a little more human. He lifts his large wolf head and Nathan’s own blue eyes are looking out. The change back is quick. The wolf’s body seems to fold back into Nathan as he lies on top of me. I feel his body changing and stretching as he assumes his human shape. He lowers his face and presses his lips to mine. A small moan escapes my mouth as I reach around him to pull him closer to me. Luckily, his clothes are still on the floor of the other room, so we only have mine to worry with, and they are in pieces.

A while later there is a knock on the door. It has to be Marlie. I get up and look for something to cover myself with. The room is destroyed. The heavy green curtains are on the floor. I grab one side and throw them over Nathan who has passed out on the floor, exhausted from the transformation, and other things. I wrap the other side around me and go the door. I shove the couch out of the way and pull the door open.

“It got quiet, so I figured you were done. You look a bit like Scarlett O’Hara in your curtains.” She comes in the room. She smiles just a bit as she looks at the destruction and at Nathan lying in the middle of the floor. I blush slightly and she laughs. “I see there were no causalities. He will sleep for quite a while since it was his first,” she grins again. “Change that is.”

I laugh and hug her before remembering how it started. She notices the change of my mood and pulls me to sit next to her on the couch. “What’s wrong?”

I tell her. As I near the end, I get up and find my bag, which has somehow managed to get on the ceiling fan, and get dressed. “I have to go now. The plane will be waiting on me. Tell him I’m sorry.” I nod towards Nathan and walk out the door leaving Marlie on the couch. I’m sorry for many things.