Chapter 37

“Where have you been?” Barry asked incredulously as he stared wide-eyed at his estranged father whom he hadn’t seen in nearly a decade.

“I’ve been around, working,” Luke Thompson said without a shred of guilt. His once full head of salt and pepper hair had thinned and turned grey, and his hairline had receded to the middle of his shapely head.

“I don’t understand,” Barry said. “You disappeared out my life like ten years ago or so, and then you suddenly show up in my office out of nowhere to tell me you’ve been working? Please, make it make sense.”

Luke shrugged. “What do you want to hear? An apology? You’re a grown man now, so suck it up and listen carefully to what I have to say.”

Barry saw red. The audacity of this man! How dare he waltz back into his life and act as if he owned the universe?

“Get out of my office, right now,” Barry said through clenched teeth.

“Which office?” Luke asked with an amused expression. “The one I paid for?”

Barry felt blood drain out of his face. “What?”

His father chuckled. “Who did you think your anonymous benefactor was? Some fairy godmother who decided to reward you for being a good boy?”

Barry was speechless. He continued to stare at the man whose only connection to him was their shared DNA. Luke Thompson had never acted like a father to him—not when he was a child or when he was a teenager, and most definitely not now. A father would not manipulate his child’s life for personal gains the way Luke Thompson was doing. It was cruel, but it was typical of this man who Barry had resented all his life.

“It was you?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Luke said flatly. “And I’m sure my associate already informed you that my generosity is not free of charge. There is a price to pay, and I have come to collect it.”

Barry stood up from behind his desk and marched to where his father sat with the confidence of someone who owned the space he was occupying at the moment.

“I don’t give a shit whatever messed up business you’re into, but I want none of it,” Barry said. “Get out of here and leave my life forever!”

“Too late, son,” Luke said with a smile that didn’t reach his hard eyes. “I did not come here to negotiate with you, Barry. I came here to give you an instruction which you will follow, whether you like it or not.”

“You’re not listening to me. I don’t want—"

“Shut your trap and listen to me!” Luke thundered. “I am on the verge of making a breakthrough in research that has been going on for years, and I will not allow you ruin it for me. If I succeed, which I will, it will change the course of mankind in a big way. This research is so revolutionary that the CIA has been heavily invested in it, funding test after test, and providing me with all the resources I need. How do you think I was able to transform your life with all that money I channeled into your career and businesses? You think I have a money tree somewhere? This is the source, Barry. My research and the CIA’s money are where your wealth comes from.”

Barry had to take a seat to get off his shaky legs. The bombshell his father had just dropped was too heavy for his overwhelmed brain to assimilate while standing.

“Why is the government involved in this?” Barry asked quietly.

“Because if this works out, it will change the American military in ways that have never been witnessed in human history before.”

“What exactly is your research about?”

“What I’m about to tell you must not leave the walls of this office,” Luke began ominously. “This is top secret stuff that is known only to a handful of people in this country. Do you understand?”

Barry could only nod. He had a feeling that he wasn’t going to like what his father was about to reveal to him.

“Years ago, I made a wild discovery that many people are still largely unaware of. I found out that the community we were living in Fairbanks was and is still being inhabited by shapeshifters, otherwise known as werewolves. Now, don’t roll your eyes because this thing I am telling you is true. As a matter of fact, I had dated one of them when I was in high school.”

Barry’s eyes googled. “This is crazy,” he said.

“Yes, it sounds crazy, but it’s true,” Luke Thompson said confidently. “Aida White, whom you may know as Aida Pearson, was my high school girlfriend. We were in love, or so we thought, so we told each other everything. You could imagine my surprise the day she confessed to me that she was a werewolf. Just like you, I found the notion too ridiculous to believe until she changed right before my eyes and became a huge wolf. I was so terrified that I ran away from her and avoided her after that day. I couldn’t tell anyone what I had witnessed, and I didn’t know what to do about it, so I kept quiet and stayed away from her.

“For years, I couldn’t stop thinking about that event, and wondering how many other people were werewolves our town. That was when I began to do my research about the existence of werewolves and I found a few articles in the local library that proved that they did exist, although they were labelled as folktales by the Native American people in the community.”

“So, what did you find?” Barry asked, curious.

“I found the story of Vak Smallchief, a warrior in ancient times who with the help of wolves, fought and won many battles hundreds of years ago. In his quest to become even more powerful, he sought the advice of a powerful shaman who told him to mate with a she-wolf on the night of a full moon in order for him to become one with the wolves. That he did, and he became the first werewolf in human history, starting the bloodline of the half-wolf-half-human breeds. Interestingly, these creatures used to live freely in the midst of humans without hiding their identities, until the government became curious about them and sought ways to create an army of werewolves that could be integrated into the U.S. army, but the werewolves didn’t want any of that. The earliest researchers also failed in their quest to create their own hybrid of humans and werewolves using the DNA of the descendants of Vak Smallchief that they had managed to capture. Slowly, the werewolf clans disappeared, or so they wanted us to believe…” Luke trailed away.

“Until?” Barry prompted him.

“Until I met Aida White, and she revealed herself to me. Now I knew that these strange beings were still very much around. They were hiding in plain sight and living amongst humans like regular people.”

“So, you’re saying that Rev. Pearson and his wife are werewolves?”

“Not the reverend, but his wife is. The poor guy is like many people today, marrying those werewolves without knowing their true identity.”

Barry sighed. “This is a lot to take in,” he said.

“I agree, but my future—our future, depends heavily on my success with this research,” Luke said. “I need you to find out who the Alpha is. I believe that if I can get my hands on his DNA, it would be the final piece of the puzzle in my research because he is a direct descendant of Vak Smallchief. He is not a crossbreed of human and werewolf; he is the real deal. The DNA of the Alpha has potency to give us the result we’ve been looking for. He is the key, Barry. We could make history if we nail this, trust me.”

Barry didn’t know how he felt about all this, but he couldn’t deny that he was intrigued by these pieces of information and at the same time, he was curious to see if his father was actually right about his assumptions.

“So, where do I come in, in all of this?” He asked.

“I know you thought that I never paid attention to you while you were growing up, and you may be right, but I did notice that you once mentioned to your mother that there was this girl in your class who was pretty but kept to herself all the time. Her name was what caught my attention back then.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Aubrey Silver.”

“What about her?”

“Aida told me back then that the werewolves were named by color according to their pack, so anyone in our town then whose last name was a color was most likely a werewolf.”

“Wow…” Barry exhaled.

“I need you to find out from her, who the Alpha is,” Luke said without mincing words. “Naturally, she would deny being a werewolf, but I need you to find a way to get her to open up to you.”

“Look, this all sounds crazy,” Barry said quickly. “And for your information, I already asked her about her being a werewolf because your associate kept threatening me, and now she thinks I’m nuts. I’m not traveling down that road again.”

“I don’t care what she thinks,” Luke dismissed his concern. “Find out who the Alpha is and do it fast, or else, she’s going to die just like her boyfriend. I will keep hunting them down and killing them until I find their leader who is by all accounts, the direct descendant of Vak Smallchief.”

“Did you say her boyfriend?” Barry wanted to be sure he heard his father right.

“Yes. That Eric fellow is in our custody right now as we speak, and if he doesn’t cooperate soon, that Aubrey will be next in line to catch a bullet where the sun doesn’t shine.”

Luke’s sinister tone sent chills down Barry’s spine. “When did you become a murderer?” He whispered in wonder.

“Call me whatever you want, Barry, but I will not let my life’s work go down the drain because of a bunch of tight-lipped freaks. If you don’t get in line, I will forget you are my son and sentence you to the same fate as them. Now, are you in or out?”

Something in the way his father spoke struck a chord of fear in him. He did not doubt it for one second that his father would put a bullet in his head if it would bring him closer to getting the werewolf Alpha that he so desperately wanted to find. It was a scary thought, and Barry was indeed very afraid.