The Puppets and the Strings (A Werewolf's Saga Book 7) Read online

  A Werewolf’s Saga 7

  The

  Puppets

  and

  the

  Strings

  Michael Lampman

  © 2015, 2016 by Michael Lampman

  All Rights Reserved

  Made in the U.S.A.

  Check out all of A Werewolf’s Saga and go to

  www.AWerewolfsSaga.com

  A Werewolf’s Saga

  Changes

  The Pack

  Redemption

  The Wanderer Awakens

  Darkness Rises

  The End Times

  The Puppets and the Strings

  A Werewolf’s Saga, The Beginning

  The Dawn of Humans

  The Rising Son

  Changing Tides

  Coming Soon

  Reemergence

  Power and Pain

  My Journal

  Happiness, true happiness, is something that no one should ever take for granted. I know because I never have. I have done my best to live. I have taken chances to be happy. I have done everything that I knew how to do. As these past few years have flown by, I have found myself thinking back to everything I’ve lost, and thus to everything I’ve now gained. There has been so much that has happened. I’m not sure where to begin.

  My life began in a normal way, or at least in a way that I thought was normal. I grew up on a small farm in what is now Great Britain. My parents raised me up with nothing but love. They protected me in ways that I never understood before, until now. They kept me safe. They gave me a happy home. Everything changed when I discovered my true heritage—my true family. My world turned upside down when I learned what I really was. I left that home and started the journey that became my life. For a while, I found myself lost. I searched the world. I found someone that would change my life forever.

  I met my first love, Alana, and she taught me how to live again. She taught me a lot about myself. She gave me a reason to live my life. She gave me a home. She gave me passion, and she gave me strength. She was human, and knew what I was without saying a word. She didn’t fear me. She loved me like no one had ever done before then—completely and with assuredness. That love continued with the one person that understood me even more than my beautiful wife.

  Our baby girl Sima was a beautiful angel who taught me the truth about how to love without limits. She taught me how to be what I wanted to be. She taught me about true strength. When I lost her, when I lost both of them, my world crashed all around me. I found myself searching the world for a way to fix everything I had done. In the end, I set up the future by remembering my past. And now, here I am, and what a life it has been.

  Rachel and I have now been married for six years, and boy what a great six years it has been. If I could marry her again, I would do it in a heartbeat. We found our home. We lived our lives. She feels the same way as I do—loving without reservations. We have been happy and content. The birth of our son Casey only added to the feelings we shared. He added to our love. He added to our lives in ways that truly are hard to explain.

  It has been great watching him becoming a man. He is strong. He has will of character. He is gifted in so many ways. Like Sima before him, he has grown exceedingly fast. He now looks like a teenager, and acts like one too. It has caused us some problems.

  Casey being only six has made it difficult to stay in one place for very long. We have had to move constantly, trying to stay hidden from the world. Thankfully, we have been able to home school him, and keep him safe. Knowing what happened with Sima, it has kept us ahead of the dangers that followed her. It has allowed him to grow to the man he is now becoming, but it has also caused him pain some too. He wants to experience the world. He wants a normal life. With his growing now seemingly over, it has made us want to settle down too. We now just may have the chance to live a steady life. If only we can trust that we can keep him safe.

  The Walker world does not know he exists. We have stayed out of the affairs of the Elders, and because of this, we are not sure of how they would react to knowing he is alive. It keeps Rachel and me up at night wondering how he would fair in knowing the truth. He knows what we are. He knows what I am, but he does not know about the past. He does not know about the true perils of this world. We have kept him out of what happened with his sister, and the family we have left behind. We’re not sure how he will react with knowing the truth, but we do know that he will have to learn it sooner rather than later. He has to know what he is, and how dangerous that can be. Before we do tell him, and we will, it would help us to know what his real gifts truly are.

  With Sima, it was easy. She had a gift of speaking to me within her mind, but with Casey, we have heard nothing. We have seen nothing from him. I’m not sure if he even has a gift, but we will find out soon enough. He is reaching the age that I did when I first changed into the wolf. He is about to turn seven. He should show his gifts soon. Until we see something, we have to keep him in the dark about his future’s past. Without the powers that could protect him, we have to do it for him. We don’t have the choice.

  Now if we could just keep him from the needs that are now coursing through his thoughts. His lust for life, and his longing to live it, has to be subdued. He’s a lot like me. He’s stubborn. He’s willful. He is becoming hard to control. The time might have come for us to tell him the truth and everything he needs to hear. I can only hope he will understand this. Being a father is not as easy as I hoped it would be.

  1

  “Are you sure this is the place Ramada? It doesn’t look like a place to find anyone, human or otherwise at this time of night.” Martha Odan stopped at the front door of this—well—place. It didn’t look like much. The front of the building looked run down, with several of the windows shattered along the first floor. The four floors above it weren’t lit. There was little paint around the windows. The bricks didn’t even look like bricks anymore with their color faded and their faces dull. Nothing about it felt right. The place looked deserted and unkempt. She didn’t like this. It didn’t look like a place that humans would come to meet monsters like them. Humans would be too scared to come to a place like this.

  Ramada couldn’t care less where they met new potential members. As far as she was concerned, this was too perfect. She had new recruits to her growing family. Soon, the other Elders of the Walker council would have to respect her. Numbers meant power. It would give her influence. It might even give her a chance to get a seat on the council itself, and that was more important to her than Martha’s feelings. She needed the numbers. The name of her family wasn’t enough.

  Since the end times, the war between the humans and the Walker world ended for good, as the families divided under the leadership of the Sharlia clan. The families grew smaller and more intimate. New families formed because of this, bringing in humans who were ill or who were otherwise inclined to join their world. Some of the families that started, like her family, formed under the banner of one of the great families of the old world. Odan was a great Blood Walker from that time, so she thought the name was enough to build it into a great house. She was wrong. Many had never heard of the name before and so therefore, it gave her nothing. True power came with the strength of many. If she wished to have that power, the power she longed to have, she would have to get her family to become a large one. So she was determined to do just that. When she had heard that three humans wished to join her family, she had to take the chance to welcome them. Besides, she was following the rules. One of them was sick and nearing a very human death, so why wouldn’t she come here to this damned deserted place to welcome t
hem into her world. Three more were better than none would ever be.

  “It does not matter where we are Martha. It is where they wished to come to us.” She opened the only front door to the building and stepped inside. The door was painted red. It too was faded. It now only looked pink.

  Martha watched her carefully, with Henry staying on her left.

  He agreed with his much older friend. “We must build membership if we are to become great Martha. I will do what we must do to reach the summit.”

  Ramada bowed to him. Her long dark hair fluttered around her leather waistcoat and it made it blend together with the shadows all around her head.

  Henry admired the look. She looked like a good predator ever had.

  Martha was again outnumbered. She always was. Henry never stood up to Ramada. He was either too young, or too eager to please her, she didn’t care which it was. She just knew that he would never do it. It gave her no other choice but to go along with both of them, no matter how she felt about it.

  They followed her through the door. It closed behind them with a gentle thud.

  The smell of mustiness of the inside of the building only added to the feeling of desertion. It reeked of age. The air felt damp and cool.

  It all added to the feeling of dread for Martha. She had been a Nightwalker for a little over five years now, but every now and then; her human fears would overcome her. She was always afraid of being deserted. Her human family deserted her when she turned sixteen. They hated her lifestyle. They hated the drugs she took to take away her pain. They hated the disease the needles gave her. She returned these feelings back to them a thousand times over. She hated them for shutting her out. It made her distrust humans. She hated herself for giving them the power they gave unto her. Now, living as a Walker, these same feelings seemed just as strong. A monster like her should never feel things like this, but it did happen. Now was one of those times.

  They headed down a long, narrow hallway and followed the moonlight coming in through the windows behind them, over them, and in front of them. They followed it until they reached a large and overwhelmingly cave-like room in the center of the building. Dust was in the air. Dirt covered the concrete floor. Three men stood there in the center of that large cave.

  They wore all black clothes. Their pants had large pockets. Their black t-shirts were sleeveless. Their pale skin glistened in the moonlight. They looked neat. They looked strong.

  The last part struck Martha the strongest. They looked healthy. It confused her instantly.

  “What is this?” she had to ask. The three of them stopped just in front of the young men. She used their closeness and took a deep breath. She smelled them. They had a hint of sweat. They had a hint of what smelled like beef on their breaths. One smelled like perfume. No one smelled sick. They all smelled healthy. Death was not on any of them. “I thought one of you was sick.”

  They stared her down.

  They looked neat and washed. Their arms bulged with strength. Their hearts ran smoothly and calmly. Their breathing felt relaxed. They didn’t fear them for the animals they truly were.

  Ramada didn’t care. “We came here as we agreed to.” She bowed her head to the three young men. The time of gaining three more to her world was feeling as strong as ever before.

  The three men turned to each other, saw what they wanted to see so they looked back to the three monsters now with them inside the room.

  “They are here!” The center man yelled out, generally to the room around them, but he meant for it. She had to hear him. She had to know that all was well.

  “Who are you speaking to?” For Martha, her now cold heart almost felt warm. It even started racing hard inside her immobile chest. It felt odd. Vampires didn’t feel their hearts like this. It felt bad.

  A woman appeared just behind the three men. She stepped behind them and stopped. Her long flowing black hair glistened darkly around her pale soft face. Her skin looked as white as a newly washed sheet of linen. It almost sparkled in the moonlight aiming at her from a window behind the three monsters.

  “He is speaking to me of course.” She offered all of them a smile, and with it, it lit up her face. The moonlight wasn’t enough to do it justice in her gleaming eyes.

  “Who are you?” Martha began to shake. The three young men were supposed to come alone. They did not agree to this. This now started feeling dangerous. The dread built up inside her cool mind.

  “I am the bringer of the decision.” The long black hair dangled over her shoulders and covered them. Her pale flesh shined beneath it. “And it is decision time.” The smile grew larger as she said this. She looked gleeful. She looked content too.

  “Are you ready to join us too?” Ramada still couldn’t grasp any of this. She just saw a fourth person to join her family. She just didn’t care about anything else.

  “Actually, I was going to ask you this too, my dear Ramada.” The young looking woman with the flowing black hair and white as a sheet skin continued the gleeful smile. This was all too good to be true. She had it written in her eyes. They sparkled like gems beneath crystalline water. They were as bright as the sun.

  Martha felt this too. Her fear flowed.

  “How do you know my name?” Ramada slowly started feeling that something wasn’t right. The young woman didn’t feel like a human. She didn’t know why, but at the same time, she did feel it. Two more men coming in behind them only added to the feeling as it grew.

  Martha turned and saw the others behind them, and also noticed that they had weapons in their hands. They also wore helmets. Their black looking uniforms looked military. Believing they were, she didn’t know what to do. This was getting complicated. She let her vampire’s eyes flare. Their red color also brought out her fangs. Her instincts showed.

  The young woman behind the three young men seemed to gloat with seeing her change and show herself. She actually began to look almost pleased.

  “I know a lot about your little family Ramada. The great and powerful Odan would have been ashamed.”

  Ramada didn’t have the choice now. She heard the mocking sound in her voice. She heard her words. Something was wrong. Seeing the others and now knowing that her small group looked surrounded, she began to panic some too. Her mind flew and her thoughts turned ragged. In doing so, she now had a new thought come up inside her, and it made her heart burst through her chest. It sent a cold chill down her spine.

  “You are a part of the Gathering Storm, aren’t you?” She couldn’t believe that she even thought this, let alone that she spoke it. It felt like a nightmare had just blared into her wakened state. It was all too horrific to think right anymore. Something was very wrong in deed.

  Of course, most Walkers had never heard of the Gathering Storm, a small group of humans that had made it their mission to destroy Walkers and everything they were. Being the leader of a clan, she of course did know about them. Where they came from, they didn’t know. They only knew they were dangerous. They only knew of the pain they caused to the families they touched. This alone struck fear in to the Elders. They always feared humans but this was different. They possessed weapons that could not only kill them, but could destroy the very thought of them ever existing in the first place. It was a painful truth. The Walkers lack of visibility was all they had, but now with humans purposely hunting them, as this group was, it shined death onto all of them as never before. She feared them. She felt the same fear now.

  “We have come to judge you. We have come to make you whole again.” The young woman with the flowing black hair now had joy bursting in her voice. “We are the Gathering Storm and we bring you a choice.”

  “What?” Martha, being nothing but a new Walker, had no idea what she was hearing. She had never heard of this before and didn’t know what to think. She didn’t even know how to feel. Everything just went blank.

  The now five men circled them. They were now carrying what looked like pistols in their hands. They aimed them right at the Walke
r’s chests.

  “You will be judged.” The woman with the flowing black hair watched all of their eyes now flare to a bright and ever-reaching red color. She just laughed with the sight.

  Henry watched the humans surround them. He heard everything they said. He saw the weapons and growled.

  She laughed again. “I know how all of you must feel. I have felt it too. The pain for living in the shadows can be unbearable. We can shine the light back into your lives. We can end your pain. We can change you back to the light.”

  Martha shivered hard. “We are not a disease.”

  “Oh but you are my young friend. You are a disease. You are darkness and we are the storm to cleanse you back to the light.” The long black hair swayed some as she shrugged. She turned to all of her friends. “Do it.”

  Within seconds, several popping sounds echoed around the cavernous room. It sounded like air squeezing through a nozzle too small for it to flow properly through it.

  All of the Walkers felt instantly struck with what looked like small pencil sized darts.

  The one that struck Ramada hit her just between the breasts, up high beneath the nape of her throat. She didn’t feel any pain, but she did feel something that she didn’t understand. It started at the point of the dart and flowed down her arms. A numbing heat coursed through her and headed straight down to the tips of her fingers. It then flew down through her chest, to her hips, and then down into both legs. It didn’t feel all too weird really, until she found it hitting her face. That’s when her eyes burned. That’s when she saw the humans suddenly turn pale again.

  All Nightwalkers, as the Walkers called their vampire kin, saw humans in infrared. They could see the blood flowing through all living things. They could see the heart beating. They could see the air flowing in and out of their lungs. The skin looked transparent. They could see the body’s heat.