Grimm Wolf - Julie Steimle (fantasy novels to read .txt) 📗

in my life, about the day my eyes were opened, I am sure you would have me committed first in a mental institution before listening to me.”

The other man chuckled, as if to hint that he had thought about it. But he said, “And what is your conversion story? Why are you so convinced?”

But the professor shook his head. “No. I will not fall into that trap. I have learned my lesson a long time ago. People choose not to see and believe—even if reality of the supernatural slapped them in the face and took them on a wild with the Unseelie Court.”

Jordan perked up his head. He had heard of the Unseelie Court—or rather, the Unseelie Gang, which was an LA based gang where Rick had rescued four teens and had brought them eastward to his alma mater, Gulinger Private Academy, to start afresh. Jordan had met one of them, a punk kid who called himself Roddy Mayhem, who was training to be a mechanic under Tom Brown. The kid was admittedly weird. He always wore a hat, had olive skin and orange hair, and his eyes were the same freaky orange-like amber as Tom Brown’s. When Jordan had asked about the kid, Rick just shrugged and said the kid had a rare genetic condition and it was nothing for Jordan to worry about. But the kid had creeped him out, because the kid seemed to be able to hear the not so nice things he was thinking and kind of gave him the stink-eye.

“Oh, come on. I already think you are crazy,” the other man said jokingly.

The professor sighed, noticing that people were still listening in. “No. I’d rather not. The point is, researching this is a dangerous business. The supernatural is not gone. My point is, it was not defeated by science, as some presume, but rather the supernatural realm has adapted to the modern age, using science to their benefit. And so have the hunters of this age.”

The other man chuckled. “The hunters of this age… Are you really taking those people seriously? They are dangerous folk.”

“Indeed they are,” the professor replied with grave nod. “But the SRA know what they are talking about.”

The man chuckled with irony. “Sure, they do.”

But having also heard about this group the SRA—the Supernatural Regulator’s Association, that is—Jordan shot them a look. The SRA were constantly harassing Rick Deacon and his father. Crazy mad men who unfortunately got away with ‘hunting monsters’ such as werewolves.

“Do you mind?” the professor finally said to Jordan, irritated that he was staring at them.

“Sorry,” Jordan said, lifting his hands. “It’s just that I’ve heard of the SRA, and they are crazy.”

The professor’s friend grinned at him, nodding. He looked to the professor for that to be refuted.

“Oh, you have, have you? And from what source?” The professor’s irritation swelled as he gazed on the three of them. His eyes raked over the three friends’ hiking gear. Emory and Rhett were curious, as the SRA wasn’t a topic of conversation among them. They had never heard of it.

Jordan blurted out with a shrug. “From a guy they harass—Howard Richard Deacon the Third—my roommate at college,”

With a nearly involuntary lurch, the professor paled and leaned away from Jordan. At the same time, Emory reached across the table and slapped Jordan in the shoulder. “Hey! We promised not to mention his name on this trip!”

Ducking back, Jordan hissed, “Sorry!”

The professor stared more at them, his eyes taking them in entirely—searching their faces, quite possible for something inhuman about them.

His companion, however, merely curious, asked, “Why not mention him? The family is famous—if you really are his friend.”

The threesome exchanged glances. What Rick had said still burned in the back of their skulls. However, Rhett whispered, “Rick said his grandad had, uh, some kind of uh, disagreement with some locals, and he didn’t think it was safe to mention his name while we were here.”

To this, the professor paled more, peeking around them. He breathed out, “So it’s true.”

They all looked to him, hoping he wasn’t thinking what they thought he thought.

“What’s true?” his friend asked, mildly curious as one amusing a child with a wild imagination.

But the professor would not answer him. His lips pressed thin together. He shook his head. In fact, he looked like he was going to be sick and needed to leave the hotel quickly for his safety. He murmured to himself, almost wild-eyed, “It’s still light out. I might be ok.” He then lifted his eyes to them. “If he told you that, then you surely should not mention his name.”

“But why?” the professor’s friend asked, almost laughing but trying not to.

Turning a grave eye on him, with so much anxious weight, the professor said in a low voice, “Don’t you know anything about the Deacon family? They are famed werewolves.”

Jordan, Emory, and Rhett moaned, slumping against the table, hands over their faces. Yep. It was what they had suspected. He was one of those loons who believed that nonsense.

“And they know it,” the professor added, his watery blue eyes flickering to them, still trying to ascertain if they were human or not.

“It’s just a stupid rumor,” Jordan retorted, lifting one hand off his face. He sighed heavily as this was too much. “There is no such thing as werewolves. I’ve shared a room with him for over four years. I’ve never seen him turn into a wolf.” He raised his hands and made waggly magic fingers at him. “Oooh… And he has never bitten me. The guy is normal, though, frankly, a basketball fanatic.”

Rhett and Emory snorted, nodding together as they lowered their hands and took up their eating utensils again, intending to finish lunch quicker. “We’ve been hiking with him for the past month.” “There’s no such thing as werewolves.”

The professor’s friend smirked, pleased at them, folding his arms while he gazed back at the professor.

However, the professor seemed unaffected by their words. In fact, his eyes showed that he pitied them. Pitied. Those watery blue eyes said he pitied their ‘ignorance’. He shook his head sadly. But he did not answer.

“Well, Professor Taylor? How do you refute that?” his friend asked, egging him on.  

Shaking his head, the professor stooped low toward the table of the three men and said in a low voice, “If I were you, I would leave this town immediately.”

“And why?” Jordan eyed him, smoothing a smirk away so as not to be rude. This man was clearly mentally unhinged, but had once been someone of great educational importance.

“This is the full moon, the second night,” the professor explained as if it were elementary. “You don’t want to be around here on the full moon.”

They exchanged looks. Of course this would be his line of reason.

“What do you think?” the professor’s friend asked, still keeping his humor and composure so as not to openly mock him. “Their werewolf friend will transform and eat them? Because hikers go missing all the time.”

Emory flinched, hearing that last bit. Rick, funnily enough, had once told them at the beginning of their trio to stick together as ‘hikers went missing all the time’ and he didn’t want anyone harmed on his watch.

“Where is that Deacon? Your friend?” the professor asked, peeking around the room. “You said he was hiking with you for the past month.”

Rhett rolled his eyes, feeling weary of this. “Gone on business. He is a future CEO, you know.”

“Did he leave before yesterday?” the professor asked, one eye gazing off into space, sharply.

Jordan got chills up his arms. They ran down his back, stiffening his spine.

“Yeah, so what?” Emory said, not having any of it.

The professor looked to him. “There are three nights to a full moon. If a werewolf must hunt, he won’t hunt near people he knows. He will make a kill each night—and undoubtedly he will return to you the day after tomorrow.”

A sick jolt lurched in Rhett’s stomach. Even Emory’s smile slipped off. Jordan was getting severe creeps now.

“Mark my words,” the professor said, keeping his voice low. “Death surrounds the Deacon family. Maybe they are not killers, but death is their legacy.”

“Hamish!” His friend rose from his seat, putting his hand on the professor’s arm, finally seeing his friend had gone too far. “You are being way too severe in this. It is one thing to believe in magic and all that nonsense. Quite another to accuse their friend of murder.”

Straightening up, the professor shook his head. “I was not saying he was a murderer. I have no doubts he is protecting them. But you should know the history of that family. People die around them.”

“Because of crazy lunatics like the SRA,” Jordan said, rising, trying to shake off the nasty feeling. “His grandmother was murdered by one of them, you know.”

The professor gazed solidly on Jordan. “Yes, she was. I am not claiming to believe they are—what is the cliché?—the ‘good guys’. Rather, that being connected with that family puts yourselves in danger.”

“Really!” the professor’s friend looked appalled at him. His eyes flickered to the three friends apologetically.  

Jordan flinched, thinking about that. Rick had said something similar once to him. And most of Rick’s closest friends were the type who could take on threats. Cops. CIA. Even Andrew, the super knight doctor-to-be.

“His family steward was murdered when he thirteen,” the professor continued, not to be deterred by common sense. “The SRA had done it in an attempt to frame his family.”

“The mob threatens them,” Rhett murmured, shivering at the uncanny creepiness of it.

The professor nodded to him. “That too.”

“But the werewolf thing is nonsense,” Emory spoke up, trying to shake off the awful mood from the conversation. “Why do you believe in them?”

Gazing at him, the professor gently sat back down in his seat. “I am researching them, actually. I am a professor of Medieval and Celtic Mythology and Mysticism at Oxford. I was skeptic as an academic—up until I was…” he glanced to his friend, “abducted on All Hallows Eve by, what can only be described as the Unseelie Court.”

“What is that?” Emory asked, still skeptical, but curious.

Jordan settled back in his seat, wondering the same thing. Was it that LA gang he was talking about?

The professor answered gravely, “An ancient group of elvish folk. The damned by some points of view. Dark elves by another.” He shook his head, chuckling weakly to himself. “It doesn’t matter really. My doctor said I merely had a mental breakdown—only… No one can explain how I was standing in Kensington staring at the barely darkening sky while stepping in a fairy ring on All Hallows Eve and the following morning I was in Oakland, California. I took no plane. There was no record of my buying tickets. And I don’t think the flight would have been as short as the trip took.”

They stared at him, including his friend, stunned.

“So regardless of what I remember happening in between—what I experienced, whether a hallucination or real—does not change the fact that I physically went from one half of the world to the other,” he said. “And it was not aliens.” He shot his friend a dirty look as if the man would suggest it. Honestly, aliens or elves, it was all too impossible. It did seem funny to them, though that he would believe in elves, but not aliens from outer space. Both were on the wacko train.

But with this quantifiable, measurable fact, Jordan lifted his eyebrows, exchanging looks with Emory and Rhett. Was this real? It was definitely something verifiable. How long did it take to go from Kensington in London to Oakland, California? What was the fastest plane for that sort of thing?

“It is documented and verified,” the professor said. “Oxford campus security has me on record leaving the university at six in the evening. The Oakland Police department have me on their records at around ten in the morning—along with the others who were abducted by the Unseelie Court—including the