He should have known, really it was an obvious fact that he continuously overlooked. When, in this world or the next, would a woman like that fall for someone like him for very long? She was pretty, blond, decently tall, skinny, perfect. She also freaked when she saw the monster he was. Will blinked several times to bring his mind back to reality. He wasn't in Romania anymore. She was nowhere near him anymore. This was where it all ended, back at the beginning.
Will Graham, 40 years old, brown hair, blue green eyes, born in Maryland. His mother left when he was two, the story his father told was because she couldn't handle being poor, the actual story was far more gory not something you really tell a three year old crying out for his mother. He then spent the next fifteen years following his father from shipping yards to working on long boats on the Mississippi. Then it all changed. 16 was a big year for him; he learned how to drive, he got his first girlfriend (and kiss) and he ran away from home. He drove through the night and went back to Maryland. His father was…he couldn't explain what his father was without making himself into something he wasn't. He became fast friends with a man named Anderton who ran a comic bookstore around the corner from his apartment.
That's really how everything started, Anderton gave him a purpose. His comics were filled with truth, justice, the American way. Everything a boy needed in his life to point him in the way of criminal justice. Anderton gave him a part time job and helped him get into college. He then was there when Will was accepted into the police academy. But he was gone when Will found himself down a psychopath who wanted Will to understand his pain. The man had lost his brother in a car accident (or something like that, Will really didn't remember or care to remember) and had become murderous after words, he got a taste for killing somewhere along the line, and when Will got put on the case, the man became obsessed with him. And then Will come home one night to find Anderton lying on the ground, bleeding out, his throat slashed and a bullet wound in his right shoulder.
Will drew his gun, he was ready to fire, because the murderer was standing over his surrogate father a bloodied knife in his hand. Will's finger tightened on the trigger, but he could not pull it. The two stood there for several minutes, in a face off, but all Will could do was shake as he kept his gun aimed at the man. The killer ran out the back door of the comic shop, the cops got him soon after. But Will found he was unable to pull the trigger, he couldn't deal with the "deadly force encounter" as the therapist in the FBI put it. Will dropped out of the police force, he never made it into the FBI for he was far too unstable, and used the money left to him by Anderton to run away again.
This time he was drawn in to the paranormal. Will was wondering around in Louisiana when Josh Pelt, his manager at the shipping yard saw one of his drawings. Will had been decent in art at school, or at least decent in his opinion, the people that Pelt sent his work to had different ideas. Some underground company known as Paramics saw the picture and offered him a job doing graphic novels for them. Will accepted, this job would allow for him to move around and something wasn't feeling right about that town anymore.
His first was about Voodoo and Zombies, it was a 250 page book that put the two concepts together in a story about the subject matter in a way that told the stories as well as presented all of the facts. His publishers loved the novel, though they would have preferred and expansion on some of the ideas, so Will changed his style to a single subject per book. He published four other graphic novels before the past caught up with him.
He was in a bar, celebrating his latest success, when a man stumbled into the bar. He looked almost like Will, older though only by six or seven years, and Will panicked. It was the one thing about his father he could never get over when he was younger; the man never looked a day over 30. The resulting conversation, and later fight, between the two was over why Will left. Come to find out, his father had tracked him because of his graphic novels.
Fearing for his life, in every way possible, Will went to his superiors in Paramics and had his name on the by-line changed to AWG, or artist Will Graham, though if anyone asked he passed out the name of Aiden. It was the name of his best friend in Jacksonville Middle School, actually it was the only friend he ever made. He had alternate ID's and passports made and instead of staying in one place and doing internet research he began to travel from place to place. He would stay in the "Mecca" of the myth when working on it. He went to Transylvania to study vampires, Greece to work on the creatures of their mythology (such as nymphs and cherubs), to Britain for the lady of the lake, and finally he found himself in Romania working on werewolves.
That is where he met her. She who he will never speak of again, she will just haunt him in his dreams, Vivian. She was everything he could have ever wanted, he reminded him of his mother in a non-sickening way, and then she turned out to be a werewolf. Yes, she was actually a girl who could shift into wolf forum. No, she did not have to wait for the full moon. Will had never been happier in his entire life. You see the reason, the TRUE reason he ran from his father was because he had watched him shift. And then three months later, after having hidden from everyone (and prior to meeting Anderton) Will shifted. He spent years fearing his nature, and he could have easily guessed that it was because of that nature that his mother left. Now he found he was not alone in this world. But of course after a month of running from the rest of Vivian's pack, she decided that she had enough of lugging around her "human toy" and left. She never knew he was a wolf, never knew he was anything more than a 24 year old man running from his past and writing graphic novels.
So back to his regular life, but instead of working his way through several more graphic novels he took the funds he had saved and went on a leave of absence. He planned to move to Maine, somewhere he had never been to before, but he got as far as Maryland before the sense of dread filled him. He didn't want to go any farther, he wanted to stay here, but he didn't want any of the memories. The first night back, he walked down the streets he used to roam every night. He felt comforted as he walked past the community college where he got his criminal justice degree, he was cold and afraid when he stood in front of his old precinct, but the one place his emotions were confused was at Heroes comics. Will had used a chunk of Anderton's money to keep the place open. But as she stood in front of the gated doors he felt a warm blanket of love fall over him, but it was tainted by spikes of terror. He needed to leave, but he couldn't.
A compromise was made, he went to Virginia. Wolftrap, ironically it was the name that drew him in. He got a job teaching at the FBI, it only took one or two classes to get his degree from the actually practice to teaching it. He spent some of his nights running with his collection of stray dogs. Some nights he would venture as far as the Maryland border before he would stop, catch himself and turn around. Everything was running smoothly, that was until Jack Crawford walked into his lecture hall asking him to look into the murder of 7 girls.
Authors note: cross over, lightly, to Blood and Chocolate (movie). This will be the only time in this collection that his very brief relationship with Vivian will be mentioned. The comics may come up again but I'm not sure yet. For the first handful of chapters (dealing with the murders that the show depicted) will be title by the killer and will be from Will's perspective in which he will be attempting to figure out what paranormal creatures they are and his delving deeper into the world of the paranormal. That being said, the next chapters will feel familiar (conversations pulled from the episodes) and will be short (about this length). Hope you enjoyed. And I will work on the next chapters for Dead Men Walking tomorrow after work, so it should be posted tomorrow night. Please review.