“Yo! Terry! The cab is here! Get a move on!” Jeremy shouted from across the street. Lead guitarist and vocalist in Terry’s band, “Hydrofoil”, Jeremy was one of Terry’s closest friends. The band had two other members: Damon and Charlie. Damon was the band’s bass player, and Charlie accompanied Jeremy on guitar.
“Yeah man! We’ve been stuck on that plane for like… forever!” Damon echoed. He tapped his foot with slight irritation as he held open the door to the cab.
Terry stood there for a sec, and then turned around. “No worries, I’m on my way!” Terry ran over to his waiting friends, hopping in the car. For the group, the day went pretty much as planned: they checked into the hotel, went out and grabbed a bit to eat, went back to the hotel and collapsed. However, Terry just couldn’t shake the events that had occurred just a short while ago.
Back at the hotel, Terry shook a drowsy Charlie from his peaceful slumber. “Psst… Charlie.” Nothing. “Pssssssssst…. Chaaaaarlie….” Still nothing. “PSSSSST. CHAR…”
“I heard you the first time! Man!” Charlie shook his head, as if throwing off his exhaustion. “What the heck do you want, Terry? Can’t you see I’m beat?” Charlie wiped his face with one hand.
“Hey Char, did you bring your laptop with you?” Terry asked in an apologetic tone.
“Ugh… Yeah. It’s in my bag.” Charlie motioned over to a corner of the room.
“Mind if I use it? I think this place has wireless access.” Terry commented.
“I don’t care. Just please don’t wake me up again. I don’t care if the frikkin’ thing gets busted wide open, just tell me when I wake up.” With that, Charlie slapped a second pillow over his head to block out the noise, and attempted to go back to sleep.
Terry made an “Okay” symbol with his hand, and headed on over to where Charlie had stashed his bag. He pulled the case out of the bag with minimal effort, and slipped the laptop out of out of its holster. Laptop in hand, Terry made his way out of the room and down to one of the three private study rooms provided by the hotel. Carefully closing the soundproof door behind him, Terry carefully placed the laptop on the desk.
Terry slipped his key card into the small slot on the door, and the door locked behind him, registering a one-hour study session. “Whoa… fancy stuff…” Terry stuffed his room key back in his pocket, and set off on a quest for knowledge on the World Wide Web.
“Okay, Mr. Dell… I need you to tell me about werewolves…” Typing the word in as he spoke, Terry then hit the enter button, and watched as the search results popped up. “Hmmmm… Comic books, T.V., movies, fan-fics… eww… disturbing stuff, cults…”
After scrolling through a good 15 pages of results, Terry knocked his head against the table and sighed. “None of this stuff is real… well, maybe except for the cults and stuff… But I know Heather well enough to know she’d never join one of those.” Terry rose back up, stretching back in the chair. “Well… they seemed pretty secretive about it. Heck, if I was a werewolf, I wouldn’t want people knowing. They’d probably hunt me down and…”
That last statement, even before it was finished, triggered a memory from the conversation he had overheard earlier… Before Terry had realized that Heather and Dita talking.
“I've got family who are monsters, and FBI agents trying to kill my mom's friends.”
The thought replayed in his mind.
“…and FBI agents trying to kill my mom's friends.”
Terry’s eyes widened. “The FBI is trying to kill them?!... Oh shit! I never should’ve let them out of my sight! Those guys are gonna be in serious trouble, and they’re gonna need all the help they can get…”
Terry knocked his head against the table once again. “…What’s a guy to do? It’s obviously a secret I’m not supposed to know… What if…” Terry’s mind was at work again, this time visualizing a monstrous werewolf attacking him.
“You should’ve minded your own business while you had the chance, Terry!! Then we wouldn’t have had to kill you! Mwahaha!”
Terry shivered. “No, no, no, no… Werewolf or not, Heather’s not like that…” Terry looked up. “…And I sure as heck can’t go to the police…”
Terry sighed once again. He hated feeling helpless, especially when he felt his friends might be in danger. “I… can’t just sit around here and wait for something to happen, and hope they might call me for help. I need to be able to be there if they need me…”
“Beeeeeeeeeep!” The timer for the study room session went off.
“…It looks like this band is gonna have to be drummer-less for a bit.” With that, Terry darted out of the room, and back into the elevator that led to the band’s room. “It’s not like they have to know I know… I just need to be able to keep an eye on them in case something goes wrong.”
Terry jotted down a fake note saying he wasn’t feeling well and was catching a cab to the local hospital, but not to worry about him, saying he’d call them later. Terry returned the laptop to its place, and slipped quietly back out of the room.