Adelmo stood looking into the room and realized the prints he had made last night weren't where he had left them. He went into the dark room and found it empty. Everything was missing, including the picture he'd never seen, of his own face transforming into a wolf. It was gone, as were the pictures he had seen, the gory photographs of the bodies of the Devereauxs, torn apart by something, or someone.
All of the pictures from the crime scene before the police had gotten there were gone.
Adelmo went upstairs to call Lana.
**********
Lana had been completely unaware of Adelmo’s absence yesterday, as it had been her day off. Adelmo explained to her that he needed to take a few days off to see his grandfather, and asked her to pick up the keys to the shop that evening.
She agreed to stop by his house to pick up the keys. He hadn't been looking well the past few days and with that strange man attacking him the way he had, Lana thought it was a good idea for Adelmo to get away for a while.
As soon as Adelmo hung up, he went back into the bedroom to take a nap. He was going to need his rest for the flight to Romania.
He was never able to fully relax on an airplane, and he knew that sleep was not going to happen, no matter how tired he was.
He laid his head on the pillow and closed his eyes.
**********
Adelmo is running in the woods.
The full moon flickers through the trees, and he crashes through the brush, panting and gasping for breath as if his heart and lungs are about to burst.
The branches scratch his face. He wants to look back, looking back means death.
His trips on the tree root as before, careening wildly off the path.
The hot breath, the feral growl, the smell of death behind him.
He barrels into the small clearing.
The strange man from the bookshop cowers in the dirt.
Adelmo stops and stands over him.
The woods go silent.
Adelmo feels hot breath on his neck and smells death.
He turns and looks into his own yellow eyes, his own face in the face of an animal.
When he turns back to the man, it’s not as himself but as the creature.
Horrified at his own actions but powerless to stop himself, Adelmo leaps onto the man and rips out his throat, immediately turning his terrified screams into silence. He tears at the flesh with overwhelming ferocity, gouging flesh and spraying blood.
Adelmo tears the man limb from limb, splintering bone and ripping tissue with a strength he‟d never known.
He grips his head in his hands and, staring into the lifeless eyes, tears it from what‟s left of his neck.
He drops the broken, lifeless remains into the dirt and looks up at the blood-red moon through slit, feral eyes.
Adelmo throws his head back and howls.
“Adelmo?”
He turns. It is his grandfather, standing a few feet away.
“Grandfather! What are you doing here?”
“Your blood is on the blade.”
“The wolfblade?”
“Adelmo!”
Lana knocked again, shifting from side to side impatiently as she waited for Adelmo to open his door.
She knew that she was only picking up the keys to the store, but she sensed Adelmo had more on his mind than just that.
Lana sensed it on the phone when he called that afternoon.
And if there was one thing she depended on, it was her senses.
Lana knocked again. Why didn't he have a doorbell, anyway?
Inside the house, Adelmo was curled up on the floor, leaning against the door, listening and waiting for her to leave. His head hurt, and what was he doing here by the door? Why won't she just go away?
But she wouldn't. Adelmo had underestimated her tenacity. He thought that if he just ignored her, she’d leave.
But she wouldn't.
If he didn't think of something, she was liable to call the police or something. That was the last thing he needed. Adelmo wished he had his cell phone to call her and pretend he’d gotten detained somewhere, and he’d get the keys to her tomorrow. Ever since he’d been hit over the head and dragged into the store, everything was wrong. He peeked out the window and looked at his car in the driveway, delivered by the NOPD, just as Nik promised. Damn.
Why couldn't he just open the door and hand her the damn keys?
The truth was because he didn't trust himself around her, or anyone. Adelmo wasn't sure anymore if he didn't actually kill those people.
Where had he been for three hours in the attic that morning? Was he really just standing over that empty trunk all that time? Why were those pictures in his camera, and how did the camera disappear and reappear? What happened to the pictures? What was happening to him?
There were so many questions reeling around in Adelmo’s head that he could
barely keep
them straight. And it had all started with the strange man in the shop. The man
who spoke the same words his grandfather spoke to him every night
after the death of his parents. The words in Romanian that he hadn't heard
for so many years, but which Adelmo would never forget.
Il caut pe lup.
I seek the wolf.
Those words had started his descent into madness, and he knew only his grandfather could pull him out again. That was why he had to get to his grandfather in Romania as quickly as possible.
But his grandfather was missing.
Except in his dreams, apparently. What did he mean, "your blood is on the blade?‟
Lana wouldn't stop knocking. How could Adelmo think straight?
He jumped at the sound of the phone ringing.
Outside, Lana listened as Adelmo’s phone rang in each ear, once from her cell and then once from inside the house.
Adelmo was beside himself.
“Adelmo!”
Suddenly she heard a growling behind her, and turned around just as a dark, hairy blur rushed toward her from the shadows.
Lana screamed.
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