Mike’s last statement had shocked them all into silence. They looked at each other in confusion. Beth and Axel exchange perturbed and knowing looks. Lauren looked at each of the adults in bewilderment.
“Answer me! Where is she?” Mike roared, gripping Axel tighter, a manic look in his eyes.
“Mike Sommers, drop the knife and let the man go. We’ll discuss this peacefully.” Beth said soothingly, moving forward.
“No! I’ll see my daughter first, then we’ll talk!” The man bellowed “My daughter, now!”
“Let him go!” Lauren snarled. She had bent low, her fingers curled into claws, her eyes changed from the normal brown to a glowing golden colour. Her fangs were out and hair was beginning to sprout from her body.
Mike growled dangerously in response, his fangs even bigger than that of Lauren. Then suddenly his growl changed to a shocked expression. His fangs slowly receded and his eyes went back to normal as he stared at Lauren. The knife slowly dropped from his hand and he let go of Axel, the latter coughing as he tried to catch his breath.
“Lauren? My baby.” Mike uttered, then walked forward towards her.
“What?” Lauren said, then turned to Beth “What is he talking about?” Beth avoided her eyes and Axel stared at her with a sad expression.
“You-You’re my daughter!” The other man said “Lauren! My daughter. You’ve grown!” He cackled “Sometimes I think i killed you that night, all those years ago. But you’re not dead. You’re a-You’re like me!”
“That’s absurd!” Lauren said “My father died years ago.”
Mike stopped and looked accusingly at Beth and Axel “Is that the lie you told her? Seriously?”
“What lie?” Lauren yelled “Beth, what is he talking about?” But without waiting for an answer from Beth, her heart had answered for her. She looked at the bearded man again. Behind all the facial hair was the smile she’d always remembered, the big brown eyes that looked so much like hers.
“I think,” Beth said finally, calmly “It is time for an explanation”
☆
They were seated at the kitchen table: Beth and Axel on one side, Lauren and Mike on the other. Beth fidgeted with the cutlery on the table and Axel kept clearing his throat. Mike, on the other hand, looked at his daughter proudly, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled.
“Well?” Lauren snapped, looking at the two scientists.
Axel sighed, then said “First of all, Lauren, I want you to know that all we did, we did for you to be safe. Dr Makovsky would have killed you if he knew who you were.”
“You could have told me the truth, simple and clear.” Lauren said, her voice shaking tremulously “But you lied, no?” All the adults fell silent, barely meeting each other’s eyes.
“You’re being hard on us unnecessarily.” Beth said to her after a few seconds. “If we hadn’t taken you away from that town, he would have done the same thing he did to your father.”
Lauren placed her head in her hands and sighed “Maybe if you’d told me what really happened instead of lying about my father’s death… But then I suppose you’re right.”
“You were young.” Axel murmured. “You might have gone back looking for your father.
“Dad,” Lauren turned to her father. It felt strange calling him that after so many years of being apart. Strange but oddly comforting “Why is Dr Makovsky after us in particular? What did we do to him? And, this is probably a very late time to ask but, who Changed me?”
Mike’s proud smile faded and guilt and sadness filled the folds of his face. “I–I Changed you. Four years ago.”
“Your father was just a new Changeling then.” Beth cut in “The night he-the night Dr Makovsky gave him the serum. We found you a few hours later, in a pool of your own blood. You were barely alive.”
“But surprisingly you survived it.” Axel continued “After your first Change, you were so exhausted you passed out. We had to take you and skip town. Dr Makovsky knew you existed, but he didn’t know you were a werewolf. And now…”
“Now?” Beth turned abruptly towards him “Now what?”
“He knows. And he’s coming for us. For you. I came here to tell you as soon as I heard.” Axel looked pointedly at Lauren.
A stunned silence followed. Beth sank into her chair and placed her head in her hands.
“But-why? Why me? Why our family?” Lauren wondered. “How does my being a werewolf threaten him?”
Mike placed his hand on Lauren’s. They felt rough and callused, the hands of a man who had withstood a lot. He sighed and looked at his daughter. “I promised I wouldn’t tell you this until you were a little older. I promised your mother.”
“So..?” Lauren urged her father. “I want to know everything.”
“Everything…” Mike echoed “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Maybe start from the beginning.” she answered. Beth and Axel had excused them. The kitchen was quiet and the soft glow of twilight permeated the room.
“When Dr Makovsky was transferred to the United States from Russia by the Russian Academy of Sciences some twenty years ago, he needed an American communicant. Your mother was employed to be his liaison, follow him around, be his interpreter, personal assistant and such. She was very young, just short of her 18th birthday. And Dr Makovsky was way older and more experienced.
“At first he was just a veteran scientist, doing research work for the Academy here in America, and she was his assistant. He became very fond of her, and she was very young and inexperienced when she fell in love with him. She thought he was brilliant, charismatic, perfect. And-and he was her first.”
Gross, Lauren wanted to say. But she held it back. Maybe it was the sadness in her father’s voice, mixed with hatred. Maybe it was what he had said about her mother being young and inexperienced.
“Soon enough his perfect facade slipped after some years and your mother began to see some less pleasant sides of him. He loved doing ?????? to animals: creepy experiments that usually ended in their deaths. He loved making physical and irreparable changes to animals. Your mother was a great lover of animals and she was unnerved and scared, but she probably thought, better on animals than on people.
“Then he changed his victims from animals to people. He would kidnap people, especially little children, and do grotesque, dehumanizing things to them. The children usually died on the experiment table, and the few strong ones that survived It would run mad with delirium, then die a few days later. Your mother became scared and tried to call it off a few times and he threatened to take her life if she said a word. She’d tried reporting him to the police, but they were all too trusting of the Doctor to give her a listening ear. I was the only cop willing to listen to her, and she would come, often a few times each month. She showed me pictures of the things-the children. They were twisted and eerie, eyes completely black, hands gnarled into claws, sporting fangs. I had several ideas about what he was trying to do, but the closest to the truth was that he was trying to turn little children into werewolves.”
Lauren felt a cold shiver and suddenly, she didn’t want to hear the truth from her father. “Oh my God,” she said in horror “That’s so-dad…”
Mike shook his head, his eyes staring into the distance “You said you wanted the truth. This is it.” He said “Your mother begged me to save her from him, and save her I did-or try to do, that is. She called it quits with Doctor Makovsky and came to stay with me, and we lived in relative peace. I fell deeply in love with her. She was a strong woman, your mother. I was willing to face anything if it meant spending the rest of my life with her. We were happy together, at least for the first few months. Then the doctor began to send threatening messages to her, telling her to return to him. And that was not before he’d found out that there was a third person, a new addition to their wrecked family. She was pregnant before she left him.
“She managed to have the baby despite his threats, and had to go back to him. She’d begged for the baby’s life in exchange for her’s, and he’d agreed. As callous as that may sound, he told her that he would kill the baby and I if she didn’t come back to him. He couldn’t care less about the baby. That was how obsessed he was with her. One night she left with him, and I never saw her again.
Lauren felt the blood drain from her face “So does that mean-Do I have an older brother or sister? Or-Or…”
“Lauren,” Mike interrupted quietly, pain flashing across his face “It’s you. Dr Makovsky is your father.”