Chapter Twelve
1958 Words
Chapter Twelve
Eliza almost choked at the realization she was about to make. It can’t be. Eliza thought she might be going insane. Perhaps it was through her father’s influence that she began to make connections between things that had nothing to do with one another. But that really looks like them... She set aside the coincidences for a moment and tried to force herself to look at the photo objectively. Even though it was such an old picture, the resemblance was uncanny. Hayden and Theo. She couldn’t get these names out of her mind. Hayden and Theo. The ages matched too; if Hayden and Theo were seven and eight years old twenty-three years ago, this would make them thirty and thirty-one. This seemed right. Logically, Eliza knew that all of this was too farfetched, but deep down, it all fit perfectly together. She had found one of the missing puzzle pieces.
Eliza pressed ‘print,’ and watched the pages slowly glide out of the machine. They looked glossy and felt warm to the touch. After jumping out of her trance, Eliza snapped back to reality. Without giving herself time to change her mind, she got dressed, shoved the papers into her bag and rushed into her car. She checked her phone and noticed three missed calls from her father. This will have to wait. Eliza would speak to her father after she had sorted this out. There was something incredibly big going on, and she refused to rest until she figured it out.
Eliza turned the ignition and, before she knew it, she was speeding toward the mines. She didn’t know exactly where Hayden and Theo lived, so she would have to search their names in the living directory. While driving, she decided to check on Melissa. She called her up on speakerphone, but the only response she received was the low dialing tone of an unanswered phone. She hung up and re-dialed, but there was no luck.
Next, she dialed Hayden’s number. She knew that it was best to confront him in person, but she figured that it might be good to give him a heads up that she was driving over.
Hayden picked up after three rings. His voice was calm and smooth on the surface, but Eliza could sense his heightened sense of danger. After all, the last time that Eliza had called him, she had just survived an assault.
“Eliza?”
“Yes. Hi, Hayden.” Her heart was racing and her voice came through in broken-up breaths. She sounded as if she’d just been running.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes, yes.” The sounds coming from her mouth were becoming involuntarily high-pitched. She knew that Hayden would suspect something was up, but she refused to say anything until they reunited. “Are you home?”
“Yes, I just finished my evening shift at work. Are you sure everything’s ok? Where are you now?”
“I’m actually on my way to see you,” Eliza said.
“Eliza...”
“It’s ok, I’m already halfway there. Just tell me your cabin number so I don’t have to search the directory.”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Ok, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” She hung up before he could protest.
>>
Hayden opened the door, and he was a vision to behold. His dark hair was dripping and he wore a towel around his waist.
“You didn’t give me much of a warning,” he chuckled. “I had to get myself cleaned up... my job is a filthy one.”
“It’s ok,” Eliza said softly. “Can we talk?”
“Sure.” Hayden didn’t reveal any signs of confusion, but Eliza knew that he must have sensed that something was up. There was something about the way that Hayden looked at her that made her feel as if he could read her mind.
Without further ado, she pulled the printed papers out of her handbag. She passed them to Hayden and watched his face as he read over them. He showed no visible signs of emotion.
“These were your parents,” she stated bluntly, scolding herself internally for the unceremonious approach to the topic. She wanted to show more empathy, but Hayden seemed too tough to pity.
Hayden nodded. “Yes, this is Theo and I. Twenty-three years ago, I believe.”
“I’m very sorry that this happened to you,” she said. “It’s unbelievable that you and your brother had to lose your family.”
Hayden smiled eerily. “It’s all right, we still have family. A very big family, in fact. Almost as big as your boyfriend’s, if not bigger.”
Eliza paused to consider how Hayden knew about Andrew’s family, but realized that he must have done some research. It was no secret that Andrew came from the oldest and biggest family in their small town.
“Do you still see them?” she asked.
“At the annual get togethers, remember?”
Eliza recalled the ‘secret location’ gatherings that Theo and Hayden had told them about over dinner. “Oh right, the unknown location meetings.”
“Not entirely unknown.” He smiled. “We decided on this year’s location already.”
“Oh? Where is it going to be?”
“Right here, actually. In Birkbridge.”
“I see. To commemorate your parents?”
“Sort of,” he replied, his eyes lighting up with intensity.
There was a silence. Eliza figured that she needed to bring up her question before it was too late. She began slowly. “I’m not sure if you saw my broadcast today...”
“No, sorry, I was working,” he replied.
“Right, of course. Well, it turns out that Freddie was killed in the forest two days ago... by wolves.”
“Oh?” Once again, Hayden’s face revealed a look of amusement, but otherwise didn’t expose any other emotion. Eliza knew that she couldn’t trick him into a confession, so she would have to ask him upfront.
“Did you have anything to do with this?” she asked, looking deep into his eyes.
“Maybe I did.”
Eliza searched her mind for possible explanations, but she was at a loss. “How could you have planned a wolf attack?”
“I don’t know...” he said, flashing her a sideways smile. She could tell that he was playing with her. He knew that she was about on the verge of figuring out what had happened, and he was having too much fun to tell her upfront.
“How could it be that the only people to have been killed from a wolf attack in the past twenty-three years are Freddie and your parents? How is that possible?”
“Maybe my parents weren’t killed by wolves,” he said. “Check your facts.”
Eliza looked at the printed article, her eyes flitting around the text, searching for clues.
“Start by checking who found them.”
“Alonso Freelander... Andrew’s father.” As she uttered her boyfriend’s name, her voice had shrunk to almost a whisper. The strange coincidences were piling up too thickly to keep track of.
“Well, what do you know about this man?”
“Nothing much, except that he worked at Millstone Firearms for his entire life.”
“Exactly. And what was happening at Millstone Firearms during the time that my parents were killed?”
“All I know is that they hired a lot of new personnel,” Eliza said, recalling her father’s research once more.
“Exactly. And who else was hiring personnel at the time?”
“The mines,” Eliza responded, c*****g her head slightly. What did any of this have to do with the death of Hayden’s parents?
“What if I told you that the rivalry between the mines and the arms factory was about more than just business?”
“I’m listening...”
“Well, would you believe me if I told you that there was a century-old feud between the families that worked for Millstone and the families that worked in the mines?”
“You mean there was a feud between Andrew’s family and your family?”
“Yes. And many other families like us.”
“What do you mean, like you?”
Hayden paused. He looked Eliza in the eyes, as if to confirm that she was ready to hear the truth. She could tell that the game was coming to an end; he was about to tell her the truth.
“I mean, between the families of werewolves, and the families of people who hunt them. And also some exceptional people who are caught in between.”
Eliza took a moment to process this information. Werewolves? Was she really expected to believe that? But then again, it was hard to come up with any rational explanation for Freddie’s untimely death.
“Your parents were killed by werewolves?”
Hayden shook his head, and Eliza realized that she had just misread the situation entirely.
“No. But Freddie was.”
Eliza thought about this again. Hayden had suggested that he had been involved in Freddie’s death. But if Hayden was a werewolf, then how come his parents were killed by wolves?
“Can you tell me how your parents were killed?”
“Aha! Now you’re asking the right questions,” he said. “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Eliza. My parents were killed as the result of trickery. You see, the family of your beloved Andrew was notified of my family’s presence in Birkbridge. They didn’t see my brother and me as a real threat, since we were not yet showing signs of ‘shifting’, if you know what I mean. So they targeted my parents.”
“But if your parents could shift into wolves, how could Andrew’s family get them killed by wolves?”
“This is where things get interesting. The man who orchestrated the murder of my parents, Alonso Freelander, was working on a very important project. He began as a lowly factory worker but his skills qualified him to rise through the ranks fast. Soon afterwards, he became the unofficial supervisor of all the factory workers. This allowed him to quietly designate some resources to his personal project; the development of anti-werewolf weaponry. Werewolves have tough skins that can’t be penetrated with ordinary gunfire.”
“But your parents weren’t killed by guns...” Eliza began. The individual elements of this story didn’t seem to be adding up.
“Exactly. This is because, despite Alonso’s efforts, his guns were still largely ineffective. He hadn’t yet worked out the secret formula. However, he had certain duties to fulfill. You see, like everybody else in his family, Alonso was raised to kill werewolves. In 1994, many of our kind were hired to work in the mines, so Alonso took it upon himself to speed up the hiring process of Millstone Firearms, in order to increase the opposition. Naturally, most of the workers he hired were from his own family. But yes, as it happened, my family was one of the first to arrive in Birkbridge. And at that point, the Millstone boys were ill prepared. Which left Alonso to seek alternative measures.”
“What kind of measures?”
“Well, he decided to outsource the werewolf killing. Like I said earlier, the only two opposing sides are the werewolf families and the hunter families. However, there are also people living amongst us who possess certain faculties that can be useful to both sides. The loyalty of these people can be bought or negotiated, just like with any other professions. And, it just so happened that Alonso had heard of an exceptional young lady who was living in Birkbridge. She was unmarried and had a four-year-old daughter to take care of, so she was a pretty good target for their cause. He hired her, and she was able to use her talents to enter the minds of my parents. First, she hid behind our camper and used her abilities to make them awaken while my brother and I were still sleeping. And then, she lured them into the forest, where Alonso and his family of hunters were waiting. However, Alonso didn’t tell the young woman that the hunters’ weapons were still useless against werewolves. She walked over to stand by them, thinking that she was safe and that her work was done. She soon realized that she was the one who would have to kill the werewolves. Alonso didn’t tell her this because he knew she would decline. Naomi was a beautiful young woman who had her entire life ahead of her, and she was not prepared to be a killer.”
Eliza looked up at Hayden quizzically, thinking that she had misheard him. “Naomi?”
“Yes, Naomi Lanstead.”
- Writer
