Carl Wilson
Three in the morning on a Saturday, and Ivy finally tucks herself into bed. Grandma’s warning that there’s something out there has her more worried than she’d really like to admit. Where she’s usually in bed by midnight on the weekends, it took her forever tonight to be willing to actually stop fretting enough to realize how tired her body is.
“In bed, light off!” she calls down the stairs.
“Rest well, Ivy,” I say. I make sure she hears me moving around downstairs for a while, pacing a bit, grabbing Grandma’s shotgun from the gun cabinet, walking out the back door. I don’t know if it will calm her knowing I’m on my way out to physically walk the property, but I’m sure it won’t hurt. As soon as I’m outside, though, I go to a side of the house opposite her bedroom in case she’s looking out her window, and I go out into the treeline. I set down the rifle, drop my clothes, and let the wolf loose. I’ll be much better at either avoiding or dealing with that damned zombie at night in my wolf form. And even though Grandma keeps silver shot, which I made sure to load, I’ve hunted enough to know that the gun would just get in my way.
It doesn’t take me long to pick up on vampire scent. Tonight, it’s strong, different than it has been before. I sniff the air again, holding my breath and concentrating on it. There is still a lot of familiarity to the scent I’ve had in my nose recently. Same clan, definitely, but a very different vampire.
It’s female.
Despite myself, a growl escapes me. I don’t want to have to think about dealing with two zombies in town. I’m having enough of a hard time holding my temper at the thought that there’s one of them in this area I’ve grown to love deeply, and coming around my Ivy. I find myself putting my nose to the ground, trying to find this other vampire’s trail. My blood is up, and the wolf is hungry. We’re under a waxing moon, so I can still control it, but I can also hear it whisper that pretty soon, the moon will be full, and it’ll be at its strongest. It wants to even up the odds, Truce be damned.
I stop and force myself to lift my head, to prove to both the wolf and myself that I’m the one in charge. The wolf doesn’t resist, but keeps telling me we should go get a good look at this one, so we’ll know what she looks like in the daytime and around town. Need to keep an eye on her.
My nose goes back to the ground, and I carefully, slowly walk the treeline around Ivy’s house until I pick up a fresh scent.
It’s not her, though. It’s the male vampire again. Now I’m getting truly worried, at the presence of two of them converging on the house. I can think of absolutely no good reason for them to be doing so. I take some time to really breathe in this other vampire. He’s been around for a while, carries himself more softly, more subtly, than the other one. I think that makes him more dangerous in the future, but less so in the present. The other one. If anything is going to happen tonight, it’s going to be the other one that does it. I make myself step off the trail of the male vampire, and continue stalking the female one. It takes several more minutes, but I hear her coming toward me. The wind is at my back, which puts me at a disadvantage, so I backtrack a hundred yards and move perpendicular to her, making a wide circle to come up on her trail from behind. Now that she’s upwind of me, I can pick up even more information about her as I approach closer.
The first thing I notice is that she’s very tense, and scared. Odd for a vampire on the trail of a pinkie. They usually have a much different scent, their hunger palpable, their excitement sweet on the air. This one isn’t sure if she’s about to die or not.
What does she know that I don’t? I come closer still, and notice another unique tang in the air. Wood, oil, metal, sulfur, silver… She’s armed. I let myself creep ever closer to her, until I can see that she’s carrying a long rifle, and I suddenly wonder if she’s actually hunting me.
I find myself torn between two powerfully conflicting urges, to either leap upon her and rip her throat out, or flee. If she’s carrying a gun for hunting werewolves, I’m not safe in Stokers Mill as long as she’s here, and by everything I hold sacred, this is my town. On the other hand, whether she’s out here looking for me or not, if I kill her, that’s the act that will break the Truce. And then the war starts again, and more of us wolves die.
If I can kill her and hide that fact, though…
“Carl.” It is only the fact that I know the voice, and that the whisper was so soft and gentle that I don’t startle or panic, giving myself away to the zombie that I’m following. I turn, and Nathan is just a few feet behind me.
“She’s not out here for you, or for Ivy. I will deal with this. You need to go home, and forget you ever saw her.”
I growl at him, very quietly. He seems to know exactly what I mean. “If I take care of it without you anywhere near, the Truce remains unbroken. You can keep Stokers Mill and your peace here.”
I growl at him again.
“Someday, my friend, but not today. Now go, before she and the other one see each other.”