The Wolf and the Vampire

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

LILLIAN

“Why?” Lillian repeated. “Was it because it seemed unnatural?”

“Yes, in part. Mostly, though, it was because when I got to meet Leon myself, I took an instant disliking toward him.”

“His physical nature? That his half-human, half-wolf head grows out of the trunk of a tree? That he has merged with the very jungle itself? His veins replaced by vines that now flow with chlorophyll instead of blood?” Lillian pressed her hands together, two index-fingers pointed at the journalist before her. “Your words, if I recall the article correctly. Quite dramatic writing, really.”

“Not quite my words, but no, not really. He was just a really big prick.” Cole’s expression betrayed no dishonesty, and she believed her fully. “So, this vampire of yours, Lillian, unless you want to talk about politics between the original shapeshifters and the new breed?”

“I don’t.”

Cole tapped her pen against her finger. “Fine. But I can’t promise you I’ll run your story. It’s just another alleged sighting. Another campfire story. If you could also talk about yourself, give me a bit on what it’s like for you as a shifter? From what I understand, you knew one of the shapeshifters that came forward. An Anastasia Siroccos. She led me to believe you two were close friends.”

“We were,” Lillian said, her voice tinged with hurt.

“And now you’re not because she revealed the existence of your kind to the world? You consider that a betrayal? And yet it is you, now, revealing the existence of vampires. Interesting.”

Lillian didn’t reply. Instead, her eyes went to the ring Cole was wearing. It was simple, nothing gaudy, but elegant nonetheless.

“Your husband is a shapeshifter, isn’t he?” Lillian wasn’t bashful about asking the question; she would get what she needed from this interview.

Cole grinned away her capitulation. “Okay, okay, so tell me about your vampire.”

“I was called to consult on a case in Hong Kong a few months ago. A man was found dead in his apartment. You’ll find it in the news if you want to fact check. Grisly murder. Bled to death, blood everywhere. Not gory though. No bits of meat, or chopped-off fingers, or anything like that, so that ruled out the triads… local gangs. They usually like to send a message.”

Lillian smirked when Cole swallowed. The woman had heart, but maybe not so much in the way of a stomach. “Anyway, the police were stumped. All the doors were locked from the inside, the apartment was twenty floors up. Security cameras showed nobody entering or exiting the only elevator in the building on his floor.”

“Puncture wounds?” Cole asked. She had already bought it. That giddy eagerness to believe could not be suppressed.

“Good guess. Yes, several, in pairs. Here,” Lillian said, gesturing with two fingers at the insides of her denim-covered thighs. “Femoral artery. Also, here.” She put her fingers above the neckline of her cream-colored sleeveless wrap top. “Carotid artery. And finally, here.” She patted her bicep. “Brachial artery.”

“Arteries?” Cole’s face was bunched up in confusion.

“Yes,” Lillian confirmed, nodding her head. “It was a mess.”

“You’d think a vampire would go for a vein. Drinking from an artery would be like drinking from a fire hose.”

“Well, not quite, but you’re in the ballpark. Crime scene was an absolute disaster. This was a classic whodunit, too. The police gave up, but the department hired my firm to do some unofficial investigation, to see if I could turn up anything.”

“This was official?”

Lillian hadn’t meant to pause, but she did and Cole clearly caught it. “No. Off the books through a few dummies. They wanted outside expertise. Not exactly kosher given the political climate.”

“Ah, I see. And did you turn up anything?”

“I found the guy.”

“The murderer?”

“Yes, but that’s not what he had intended to do.”

“How did you find him?”

“Uh-uh.” Lillian shook her head. “I’m not showing you all my cards. But I found him.”

Cole hummed, scribbling on her pad, simultaneously glancing at the voice recorder. “Continue.”

“Sometimes it’s not what they leave behind. It’s what they don’t.”

“How do you mean?”

“He didn’t smell.”

“I’m sorry?”

“He had no smell, no scent. As my wolf, my sense of smell is extremely heightened. It is as if you are swimming in a pool of odor all the time. Smell is thick and viscous all around me. The absence of a smell… well, it’s like the frothy wake of a boat that should be there, but isn’t.”

“How were you able to follow this person? No smell, no wake, no trail, right?”

Lillian laughed softly. “Now, that one was a bit tricky. There is never an absence of anything, which is why it is so startling, so striking, when that realization crashes into you. Been hiking much?”

“Yeah.”

“Ever just suddenly realized it was dead quiet? That all the insects, the birds, hell, even the wind stopped?”

“Sure.”

“Could you pinpoint exactly when it happened, or did you just suddenly, belatedly realize?”

“The latter, of course.”

“And then it’s all you can think about.”

“Right.”

“Same thing,” Lillian said, suppressing a shiver. “It was completely by accident that I noticed the lack of a smell, but once I did, it was very obvious. I couldn’t not sense it anymore, if you know what I mean.”

“Surely there were still smells.”

“Oh, of course. It’s hard to explain. Think of a page of writing, like your article on Leon, perhaps. Now someone takes a correction pen and cuts lines of white all over it.”

“Like words missing,” Cole murmured, entranced by the idea. “You know what the article is about, just like you knew there was an intruder, a murderer.”

“Yes.”

“But the details, individual words, are missing. You have to fill in the blanks.”

“Precisely. One person, scentless. But you can imagine the smell, fill in the blanks like you said.”

Cole had stopped writing, and she whispered a captivated, “And?”

“He was a vampire. I found him feeding on a vagrant. He was also a boy, no more than twelve years old.”

Cole sat up. That had piqued her interest. “That’s why you won’t tell me his name.”

“He’s just a boy. It’s not his fault he was turned.”

“Why did he kill the man? In the apartment?”

“That’s the thing. He hadn’t meant to. He hit the arteries completely by accident. Tried three times to get a vein where blood wouldn’t surge out into his face, but he missed. Three times. Three arteries. The death was a total fluke. You couldn’t repeat that performance. And even though he was just a child, even though he didn’t know better, hitting three arteries in a row like that… Well, that’s just misfortune.”

“Misfortune, huh?” Cole was once again busy scribbling, her felt-tipped pen scratching loudly enough to raise the hairs on the back of Lillian’s neck.

“Yes, misfortune. Could you use a different pen?”

Cole blinked at her. “Of course. Don’t like the sound?”

“Never did. Crayons on paper, too.”

“School must have been fun for you. Um, anyway, how did he, the boy, get into the apartment? Or out of it, for that matter?”

“Unlocked window. There was scaffolding nearby, but the police deemed it too far for any human to make the jump, let alone grip onto the windowsill. Of course, he wasn’t just any human. The jump, the grip… it was child’s play for him.”

“Funny,” Cole said without an ounce of mirth. “Oh, wait!” Her eyes grew wide with recollection. “I remember this. I read about it in the news. It was in a rich area, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

She raised an eyebrow. “But where do you work out of?”

“I do contractual investigation work all over the world.”

“I see. So, why did the boy enter this particular apartment?”

Lillian shrugged. “Don’t know. He didn’t talk much. Was in shock. Bloodlust, maybe? Hunger? Thirst? I found two recent puncture wounds on his wrist. Some vampire piece of garbage fed on this kid. Must have gone too far as well, because the boy looked weak, pale as paper. Now, I don’t know how vampires decide who they turn and who they don’t, but it was done to this kid. They turned him. He became a vampire before he even knew what one was. An innocent boy. He was terrified.”

“Where’s the kid now?”

“I let him go.”

“You what?” Cole cried. “Why?”

“What should I have done? Turn him into a walking experiment? Do you have any idea what the humans would want to do with him?”

“Not all humans are evil.”

“Enough are, and I wasn’t about to risk that boy.” Lillian was breathing hard. She hated to think the kind of life this boy would live. She hated that she couldn’t help him anymore than returning him to his parents. But it was all she could do. She warned them, and she directed them to some local shapeshifters who might be able to help.

The truth was, the shifters themselves didn’t even know what to do with vampires, what to make of them. But she knew that the two shifters she told that boy’s parents to contact would help however they could because they were good people. And they were also local and spoke the language, which helped to smooth the tensions.

The boy's parents learned not just something new about the world, but something new about their son.

Cole’s voice brought Lillian back into the present: “So instead you loosed a dangerous vampire boy onto the streets, who will no doubt feed again, and likely kill again?”

“And you revealed the existence of shapeshifters to the world, and even told everybody how to become one!”

Cole’s nostrils flared. “I did no such thing.”

“You told them where Leon was, and that he could do it. You said it yourself, tourism in Indonesia has tripled. No doubt on the Malaysian side, too.”

Viscous silence bubbled between them, and Lillian took it as an opportunity to calm herself. She got up, and went to the window, looking out into the wet, empty street on the outskirts of Bali. A light drizzle pattered against the glass window, and moments later she saw a lone moped putter by, belching out puffs of smoke that turned orange in the setting summer sun.

“Anyway,” she said, turning back around and leaning a shoulder against the window. Cole was still sitting in her chair, and it was evident she now regarded Lillian in a different light than when they had first met. “That’s my story.”

“Why are you telling me? Why do you want it printed?”

“The world now knows that shapeshifters exist. Vampires do, too, so why not tell them? Hell, most shifters don’t even know about vampires, but most shifters definitely read your magazine. Ironic, isn’t it? That your subscribers might overwhelmingly be shifters.”

Circe Cole wore a skeptical expression. “I don’t believe you’re doing this just to alert the public. You’ve got another motive. You may as well tell me if you want me to print.”

“I want you to put a call out for sightings. Have your millions of readers write into you about their experiences, if any, with vampires. Then I want you to relay to me the most likely sounding ones.”

“Why? Are you on the prowl…” Cole’s voice faded out as it dawned on her. “You’re hunting, aren’t you? You’re hunting the vampires.”

“I want to catch the bloodsucking scum that’s bitten this child,” Lillian growled. “So, yes, I’m hunting. And I need a starting point.”

“What will you do with him if you find him?”

“When I find them. Unless you have information I don’t.”

“When you find them.”

“I haven’t thought about that, yet. But they will get what’s coming to them, as sure as the rising sun.”