Awethology Light

The Falstaff Vampire Werewolves

  We met the werewolf at the San Francisco International Airport as I stalked along behind Mrs. Battle and her latest Vampire Survival 101 class. There is no Vampire 201. The rules are simple, set in stone, and those who disobey go from undead to true dead in a hurry.

  When you disintegrate in open sunlight, your travel options are limited, but after dark the airport is a vast buffet of distracted humanity. When I became undead a few months earlier, I survived Mrs. Battle’s class. She lets me tag along when she takes the newbies to the airport.

  The casual observer of our teacher would see an African American woman of middle years with a serious face and a medium dark complexion. Her stout form was clad in a dark-blue trench coat with a matching fedora anchoring her braids. She wore sensible tan shoes and carried a matching huge tan purse.

  I followed the three new vampires who scurried along after Mrs. Battle through the airport terminal like a family of baby ducks. I was the most informal in my long wool sweater over a tee-shirt and jeans, running shoes, no hat. I’m short and wiry with curly dark hair shot with gray and green eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. Vampire vision means I don’t need the glasses but they make me look even more harmless. I dragged along a wheeled suitcase-style cat carrier. Brutus, my vampire cat, is a great conversation starter. After a little kitty talk and hypnotic eye contact on my part, we adjourn to a more secluded corner of the airport. Then I open the carrier. Brutus needs to feed too.

  Unlike fictional vampires, not even one of the newbies looked like a stripper or an underwear model.

  Gordon Fong, a very thin, shy teenager, had been terminally ill when a vampire night nurse brought him over. As a new vampire, the cold wouldn’t bother him anymore but he wore a heavy blue quilted fleece coat.

  “Jenny often gets attached to a young patient and brings him over.” Mrs. Battle told me.

  “Does she ever come to class with her newly turned vampires?” I asked.

  “No,” Mrs. Battle said with a frown. “Most who make vampires don’t. I’ve told Jenny she shouldn’t turn so many, most of them won’t make it as undead. But she can’t help herself. She’s like one of those cat hoarders, addicted to rescuing strays.”

  My eyes turned to Brutus, but I kept my mouth shut. In human life I had four indoor cats and fed two feral cats in my back yard. Too late, I found out cats fear vampires, as well they should, we’re predators. My beloved cats ran from me and what I had become. My human friend, Kris, took over the care and feeding of all my kitties, indoor and feral.

  Eternity is a long time to spend with no feline companionship. Then I rescued Brutus. Trust me to find the only vampire cat in town. We’ve been together ever since. Okay, I’m a vampire cat lady. I won’t say “bite me,” but Brutus will be happy to bite you.

  Two new female vampires joined Gordon Fong on their first airport excursion with Mrs. Battle. Leeann Mackenzie must have been in her early teens, but she looked like a child to my eyes despite way too much make up and revealing clothes. She wore a pink crop top that kept riding up to show the jeweled barbell piercing her belly button. Her matching pink micro-miniskirt kept Gordon looking, turning away and then looking back again. He hadn’t been undead long and teen hormones hadn’t faded. I think he would have blushed, but we hadn’t had our first full meal of the night, so he didn’t have enough blood in him for that.

  Leeann wasn’t shy about telling us that she had overdosed at a wild party and been turned by a handsome vamp. “Now he never returns my phone calls,” she said.

  The third new vampire was Trisha Salazar, a dark-haired woman in her mid-twenties. She looked like a fashionable business woman dressed for travel, although she did manage to produce a come-hither look in her dark eyes and a quirk in her sensual mouth that had already caught the eye of a traveling salesman who just might become her evening meal. She wore blue jeans, grey suede boots with a matching jacket over a green silk blouse. Her bright blue designer scarf kept falling open to reveal a twisted scar on her neck that even her new vampire powers hadn’t healed. I wondered if the vampire that turned her tore up her neck past healing, or if silver was involved. It’s toxic to vampires and can leave permanent scars.

  I didn’t ask. It’s considered rude and might even be dangerous to inquire about the last, worst day of a vampire’s human life.

  I sure don’t want to talk about how Sir John Falstaff brought me over. It’s best not to say much about the creatures who drained my life and nearly destroyed me just before Sir John saved me. I was too weak to ask questions at the time. Those creatures had left a sliver of something terrifying in me and my cat that persisted even after Sir John shared his blood with me and I rose as a vampire. In typical male fashion, Sir John left as soon as the deed was done, but he gave my non-vampire friends a top secret phone number. On my first night of undeath I met Mrs. Battle. She taught me the basics of surviving without turning into a soulless killer. She never mentioned werewolves.

  Did I mention that the moon was full that night at the airport?

  Earlier in the evening before we set off in my car, a couple of unsteady drunks outside a bar on Geary followed Leeann’s micro miniskirt into an alley where they provided us a brief breakfast snack. Leeann looked so underage that I felt icky about it, but the drunks weren’t asking for IDs and we were all hungry. I concentrated on Mrs. Battle’s instructions on how to feed without killing the victim. She had it down to a science. Our feeding ended with a dazed satisfaction on the human side and a recharged vitality on ours. The drunken humans wandered back out of the alley leaning on each other. They wouldn’t remember what the hell happened, but the next morning each would reflect that whatever it was, it felt way better than sex.

  There were just two of them, and the five of us drank responsibly, so by the time we reached the airport, we were all hungry again.

  We entered the main terminal at SFO, but before we could hunt, Brutus started to growl louder than I’d ever heard. My quiet cat, who charmed potential victims with a blink of the eyes and a soft “meow,” was making sounds like an angry grizzly bear. People’s heads snapped around, and they steered a wide circle around us as they streamed past toward the security checkpoint.

  “He hates the carrier,” I apologized to no one in particular.

  Brutus started throwing himself against the sides of the carrier so that the handle shook in my hand.

  Then we all sensed it.

  None of us could look away from the heat that shimmered visibly around the man walking toward us. Tasty in every sense of the word, hard not to drool.

  “That guy is like the cover of a shape shifter romance,” Leeann said.

  He did have that olive-skinned outdoor look, the square jaw and hair falling in black curls over his brow. He walked with predatory confidence, dark eyes scanning the crowd, brown leather jacket gaping open to show how his tight tee-shirt clung to his washboard abs. The painted on jeans didn’t leave much to the imagination.

  I swallowed, imagining how hot his blood would taste compared to normal human vintage. It was hard to think straight.

  “Werewolf. Dangerous. Don’t look. Keep walking,” Mrs. Battle commanded in a firm tone. We walked on, trying not to look.

  But the werewolf wasn’t having it. When we passed him, he turned on his heel and followed us. Damn.

  “I always preferred the vampire romances,” I said to Leeann, trying not to look over my shoulder.

  “Not me, Team Jacob all the way,” Leeann said, twisting round to track the werewolf’s every move.

  Gordon moved up to walk next to Leeann, “I’m more of a gamer myself,” he said. The werewolf wasn’t bothering him, but Leeann had his full attention. “I like vampire and werewolf games, though. Zombies too. “

  I gave Gordon an “A” for effort.

  But Leanne tripped over her feet turning back toward the werewolf. “You think we could get him to take off his shirt?”

  Gordon didn’t have reply f
or that.

  Trisha seemed even more swayed. She kept staring at the werewolf. She seemed to be trying to make eye contact.

  “Do you know him?” I asked, wondering if she knew more about werewolves than I did (which wouldn’t be hard as I knew nothing). “Did he give you that scar on your throat?” I couldn’t believe I’d just said that. I kept babbling to distract myself from the werewolf, his predatory gaze reminded me of the things I must not name. The things that had almost destroyed me and Brutus as well. The cat growled in his carrier.

  “No, I’ve never met this guy. The vampire who turned me gave me this scar.” She didn’t seem upset at me, but her voice trembled with rage and when our eyes met for a moment hers were wet with tears.

  “Sorry,” I said. She was a new vampire and must have gotten that awful wound less than a week ago. Being bonded to a vampire who could do that to her must have been particularly awful. I had a bond with Sir John, the vampire who turned me, but he never brutalized me.

  “He gave me the scar to remind me to obey him!” She didn’t say a word to curse him, but it was in her eyes.

  “Class listen to me,” Mrs. Battle snapped her fingers, stopping us in our tracks before one of us fell or smashed into another pedestrian. “Get away from the wolf. Move to the side, out of traffic, and keep an eye on me.”

  “Are you going to fight him?” Gordon seemed hopeful.

  “Here? With all these humans milling around?” Mrs. Battle’s voice was soft enough that only vampires could hear it, but she gave Gordon a cold look that frightened him into silence. “Use your head and you’ll live longer.” she said. “Violet, get that cat carrier as far away as possible. If I give the signal—go. Everyone go home. I’ll meet you later. For now, wait. Don’t move. Trisha, this means you.” She wheeled around and bustled up to the werewolf.

  We followed instructions, but Trisha moved slowly. Her eyes were still on the werewolf, she said she had never met him, but she seemed to be anxious to contact him. We waited at the edge of the concourse watching the flow of people heading for the departure gates. They steered a wide circle around Brutus, still snarling in his carrier, but ignored the werewolf as they talked on cell phones or stared up at the monitors for arrival and departure times.

  Mrs. Battle marched up to the werewolf. When she stopped in front of him, he met her eyes and they had a little stare-down contest. He blinked first but recovered quickly. “I know what you are.” His voice was very soft, but we could all hear him with our vampire-sharpened senses.

  “And I know what you are,” Mrs. Battle said. “Does the Palo Alto pack know you are here?”

  So there were packs of werewolves in the Bay Area near the airport? First time I’d heard of that.

  “I came on my own.” The werewolf glanced around, lowering his voice even more. “I need to find a vampire in San Francisco.”

  Mrs. Battle snorted. “What do you want that can’t wait till after the full moon?”

  “It’s urgent. Please, I need your help to find . . .” He whispered, though we vampires could hear him. “Sir John Falstaff.”

  “You know him?”

  “I do, from long before he came here, before your country even existed.”

  “You’re older than you look,” Mrs. Battle hesitated a moment.

  “This is a matter of life and death. Our pack leader is in danger. I mean no offense, as you are all undead, but once a werewolf is dead, it’s permanent.”

  “Sir John needs to sort this out himself.” She beckoned me over. “Violet, you’ve got a chance of reaching Sir John because he turned you. Can you call him?”

  I came close, hauling the growling cat in his carrier. The werewolf edged a few paces away from Brutus.

  “I’ve called him before,” I told her, ignoring the werewolf, who radiated danger and yet smelled irresistibly of hot blood. Our breakfast meal of drunks in the alley had worn off and I was hungry. “Sir John can find me anywhere because of our bond, but he doesn’t always answer when I reach out to him.”

  “Try. Take this man to your house. The rest of us will take a cab and meet you there. What’s your name?”

  “Roderick, you can call me Rod.”

  Rod. Of course.

  Mrs. Battle ignored my raised eyebrows at the humor attached to the name. “I’m Mrs. Battle. This is Violet. She will drive you into the City.”

  We both nodded from a safe distance.

  “No biting.”

  “Yes, ma’am. No biting,” Rod said seriously.

  My mouth went dry. Standing within arm’s reach I could feel Rod’s pulse like the beat of a deep bass drum. I should have been afraid. Maybe once I would have been aroused. But mainly I wanted to sink my fangs into a vein, any vein and drain a few pints of his blood like a hot beverage.

  “That goes for you too, Violet.” I just nodded and swallowed.

  Brutus growled even louder. Mrs. Battle’s little class of newbies leaned toward the werewolf like preteen girls at a boy band concert, tracking his every move and only barely restrained by Mrs. Battle’s stern presence. Trish craned her neck forward, still trying to make eye contact.

  “Have Rod sit up front with you. Put the cat in the back seat. On the driver’s side.” Mrs. Battle said, “And Violet—” I had taken several steps toward the parking garage. I turned back as she added, “I mean it. Don’t feed from him or let anyone else drink his blood. You have my permission to hurt anyone who tries.”

  Wow. Now I really didn’t want the guy in my car. Way too close for comfort. But Mrs. Battle was not to be denied. “Let’s go, Rod. My car is in the short term parking.” I led the way.

  Mrs. Battle moved back to herd her charges toward the taxicabs. Trisha kept turning back to look at Rod.

  Neither of us said anything, but when I gestured for him to walk beside me rather than behind me, he moved to my left side, as far away as possible from Brutus, who kept up a steady growling in his carrier. The cat could easily smash his way out the carrier door if he wanted to. Instead he chose to hunker down and vibrate like an outboard motor. I tried to communicate my determination to protect him and it soothed him just slightly.

  I also kept mentally summoning Sir John, just calling him in my mind. Sometimes it worked. He showed up when things got dangerous. Letting a werewolf into my car and taking him to my house was scary enough for me, but Sir John was a force of nature with a whim of iron. He was a rogue who lied more than he told the truth, but he’d never tried to rip my throat out like Trisha’s vampire master. Now I wanted him to show up and protect me quite literally from the big, bad wolf.

  When we reached my car, I put Brutus in the back seat just behind me. Rod sat next to me, seriously testing my self-control. I gripped the steering wheel and concentrated on not breaking it—a definite possibility given my newly minted vampire strength.

  I found a parking place a few blocks from home, a minor miracle with all the early evening restaurant traffic on Clement. When I walked up my front steps, I stood aside and beckoned Rod through the door. “You can sit or stand, but stay back. My cat will probably run out and hide.” I set the carrier down and opened it.

  Brutus shot out of the door and charged over to the werewolf, every hair on his body puffed into aggressive attack mode that made him look like an irate, gray-haired porcupine.

  Rod didn’t flinch. He leaned down and put his hand out to Brutus.

  A suicidal move.

  “Hey, watch out!”

  Sure enough, Brutus bit him.

  “Omigod, I’m so sorry.” I took a step toward them. The cat stayed attached to his hand, drinking his blood.

  “It’s his turf,” Rod said. “He can feed.”

  I watched, spellbound as he let Brutus drink his blood for a full minute. Then he firmly pressed on the sides of Brutus’s jaws to remove him. The cat moved off several feet, sat down and started grooming himself in his usual post-meal way.

  Rod held up his hand out me, the blood dripping do
wn it as if to say, You know you want to.

  “No thank you.” I tried to look away from the blood. Fighting the craving made it flare up worse. I stepped back, and ran into a tall, solid body I hadn’t known was there.

  “Wise woman,” said a deep, velvety voice with a British accent. Even for a vampire, the fat man moves quietly.

  “Sir John!” I turned to see the rogue himself, tall, wide and white-bearded, with red cheeks that testified to an encounter with a willing blood donor tonight.

  “Good evening, Mistress Violet.” He regarded Rod with a steady gaze.

  “Sir John Falstaff.” The werewolf bowed, letting his hand fall down to his side, no longer dripping. It healed before our eyes.

  “Rodrigo, you old war dog,” Sir John sketched a short bow in reply. “You seek me out under the full moon. Foolish.”

  “My blood runs hot. But I must come here now. The local pack here is unstable. Even amidst the steel and concrete forest, they will find a few wooded acres to run and hunt tonight. I stay in human form to gain your help.”

  “Were you not a lone wolf?”

  “I found a home in Idaho, I’m second in command.”

  Sir John nodded.

  “My Alpha, Thomas, is a good man. Someone is holding him here against his will. I need to find him.”

  “You come alone?”

  “One of us trespassing here might die. Too many might cause a war.” Rod said as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

  Sir John nodded sagely. I listened, trying to wrap my mind around it. In the last few months since becoming a vampire, I’d sifted out the some of the truth from the myths. The San Francisco Undead Fraternal Organization had put me in touch with Mrs. Battle but they also loved to put out vampire disinformation that helped vampires to live under the unsuspecting noses of humans. Some of it I put on hold for future verification. Sir John bragged that he was the true inspiration for Shakespeare’s silver-tongued rogue. Or was he even older than that? Some things you can’t look up on Wikipedia.

  “How did your Alpha come to danger here?” Sir John asked.

  “He has safe passage from this pack to visit here for business, but a vampire sorcerer kidnapped him and restrains him by some magical means.”

  Sir John nodded.

  Okay, I had to accept vampires — particularly now that I am one. But they were discussing werewolf packs living among us and hunting under the full moon in nearby parks or recreation areas. And now sorcerers and magic?

  Mrs. Battle arrived with Trisha in tow. She didn’t have to knock. She reminded me to invite Trisha in and I did. I’d invited Mrs. Battle to enter my home before, so she had a permanent vampire welcome mat.

  “We took a cab and the driver provided a nice snack,” she said. “I sent Gordon and Leeann home. This is no place for newly undead teenagers. Here.” She dug into her purse and produced a unit of blood in a transparent bag and handed it to me. “I hate this packaged fast food, but we need you alert.”

  She turned to Sir John, “This is my student, Trisha. She asked to come and I think she may be of use.”

  While Sir John bowed and murmured a greeting, I sucked at the blood, close to body temperature. I finished and felt revived. I slit the bag open and put it on the floor near Brutus. He came over to sniff it, put a paw on the bag to hold it down and scoured it clean of every drop.

  I turned my attention back to the vampires. Trisha was still staring at Rod. He looked at the floor, avoiding her eyes. Interesting.

  “Sir John, you know this werewolf?” Mrs. Battle asked.

  The old vampire raised an eyebrow. “I know Rodrigo of old. I have heard rumors of the visiting Alpha he seeks.”

  Trisha flinched at this. I couldn’t stand it any longer. “What do you know about all this, Trisha?”

  “I knew a werewolf before,” she said. “Before I was changed.”

  “A werewolf from the pack here in this city?” Rod looked at her with a frown.

  She shook her head. “No. Please, I want to help.”

  “Time is short,” Sir John said. “Thomas has fallen into the clutches of a vampire sorcerer.”

  “We’re wasting darkness,” Mrs. Battle agreed. “The closest thing to a sorcerer in San Francisco would be Dr. Quiller, though he calls himself a man of science.”

  “Quiller!” I was so angry that my voice came out in a buzzing hiss. Brutus snapped his head up and looked at me. A slight red glow burned in his eyes. “Quiller experimented on my cat, tried to turn him into . . . you know.”

  Sir John put a warning hand on my shoulder. “Have a care, mistress. Less said on some matters, the best.”

  An unwelcome presence started to rise in me. Brutus licked the last of the blood from his whiskers then suddenly bounded up to the top of the sofa and from there to my shoulder.

  “I know where Quiller lives,” I muttered.

  Sir John bowed. “Then there we must go, Rodrigo.” He lifted his arm to include Mrs. Battle and Trisha. “Ladies”

  We walked up Clement Street to my car with Brutus on my shoulder and the full moon high in the sky.

  “‘Tis now the very witching time of night,” Sir John said.

  I looked at my watch, past midnight.

  “Now could I drink hot blood,” Sir John continued, nodding towards the werewolf. “But I will not. Gallant Rodrigo’s blood bears a beastly taint.”

  “Brutus drank his blood,” I told Sir John, “Will he be okay?”

  “Et tu, Brute?” Sir John turned his eyes to the cat. “Mayhap he might survive unswayed, primed as you both are by the road you both traveled to undeath . . .”

  Mrs. Battle and I looked around nervously. Trisha and Rod hadn’t had our experiences with those life-destroying monsters. With any luck they never would.

  My car’s engine hadn’t even had a chance to cool down.

  The largest passenger, Sir John, sat in the front. Mrs. Battle squeezed into the back between Rod and Trisha. Brutus moved from my shoulder to the center of the dashboard as if he knew not to block my vision.

  The curbs were crammed with parked cars at Laguna and Pacific. I pulled into Quiller’s driveway, despite the No Parking sign. He grew up in the 1800’s. He wasn’t likely to call a tow truck. Brutus hissed at the house and stayed on his perch on the dashboard. We left him there and headed for Quiller’s front door at the top of a long flight of steps bounded by a carved, white-painted, wooden railing.

  “My Alpha walked up these steps,” Rod said, tilting his head to pick up the scent.

  Most of the old Victorians on the block had been renovated and converted to flats with astronomical rents. But Quiller and his antique coffin probably had occupied his house since the place was built in the early 1900s.

  We knocked on the door. No answer. “Quiller invited you in before?” Mrs. Battle asked me.

  “He needed help to go home after I, um, persuaded him not to experiment on Brutus or any other animal. He was pretty shaky.”

  Mrs. Battle nodded. “I don’t doubt it.”

  No one asked why. I think my eyes were glowing red now.

  “Did he give you permission to enter his home?”

  “I forget, but we got in. Kris and I put him to bed in his coffin.”

  “Next time remember, it’s important. Break the door.”

  No one argues with Mrs. Battle. I threw myself at the door. The lock broke and the door itself shattered. The strength I gained when I became a vampire still surprises me.

  I stepped in, took a breath.

  “Now try inviting us in,” she said.

  “I invite you all to enter this house.”

  Mrs. Battle, Sir John and Trisha couldn’t cross the threshold but Rod walked in with no resistance. He let out a faint whimper, “My Alpha was here. He’s gone.”

  From inside the house we heard, “Help me. Please, I’m back here.”

  “Invite us in Doctor!” Sir John bellowed.

  “I invite you
all in.” Quiller’s reply was almost too faint to hear. “Help me.”

  Sir John led the way down the narrow carpeted hallway. Mrs. Battle followed him with Rod at her heels. Trisha and I fell in behind the werewolf. The rooms branched off the long, straight hall. The cries for help got louder as we entered the room at the end of the hall. We couldn’t see Quiller at first. Ornate Victorian furniture had been tossed about. The broken pieces of gilded decorations covered the antique carpeting. The mirror above the mantelpiece was cracked.

  “Was it like this before?” Mrs. Battle whispered to me.

  “We only saw his coffin room. It was crammed with decorations, but all tidy.”

  Groans came from under the wreckage of what must have been a large, silver-barred cage in the center of the room. A short, portly man lay under the twisted metal.

  “Help me!” Dr. Quiller tried to raise his head but flinched away when his skin touched the silver bars. The doctor always wore formal suits. His slicked back brown hair and huge mustache made him look like a tintype from the 1870s. Now his jacket and vest were ripped and torn, his hair was scrambled into a spiky nest. His head was gashed open and he whimpered in pain.

  Sir John stepped up to the cage and Rod stood beside him. Both of them hesitated to touch the metal wreckage pinning the doctor to the floor.

  Rod leaned down to sniff the bars. “Thomas was restrained in this cage. He was hurt here. I can smell it.” He growled at the vampire under the twisted silver. “Where is he?”

  Quiller turned his face away.

  “How do your shield your hands against the silver, doctor?” Mrs. Battle asked.

  “Asbestos gloves,” the doctor gasped, “On the mantelpiece.”

  Sir John picked up the gloves and pulled them on. He gripped the bars and pulled them apart with a groan of effort. Screws popped out as the welded joints parted. He threw each piece behind him until he cleared an opening to lift the largest piece of the cage away from Quiller, who gasped as it brushed his skin.

  Mrs. Battle reached in, gingerly avoiding the twisted wreckage, and pulled the doctor to his feet.

  Rod picked up a pile of clothing the doctor had been lying on and sniffed. “Thomas’s clothes. They smell of his blood and burned flesh when he twisted the silver. Then he shifted.”

  “The little she-wolf knocked me down. He told her to hit me with my lead doorstop. She smashed the lock on the cage before I could get back up. He threw the cage on me.” Quiller sank down onto an overstuffed fainting sofa. For a moment it looked like he might actually faint. He was in the right place for it.

  Trisha stepped over to stand in front of Quiller but didn’t touch him. “Where did they go?” she asked, her tone grim.

  “He took her with him. She almost bashed my head in. She’s fast, the little—”

  Trisha took a deep breath. She tried to raise her hand to hit him.

  “Get back,” Quiller said. The scents of Trisha and Quiller so close together told us all that Quiller was the maker who had turned Trisha into a vampire. She might want to hurt him, but she had to obey his commands. We all knew it.

  “She was a strong child.” Quiller’s voice got louder. He seemed to be recovering quickly. “Get her back and my experiments will be most illuminating.”

  I pushed Trisha aside to stand over him. “Doctor Quiller, you agreed to stop the experiments.”

  “On animals, yes. But werewolves are human, mostly.”

  Mrs. Battle pulled me away from Quiller. “Another time, Violet. Where did Thomas and his daughter go?”

  “They went out the back window at the end of the hall. I heard the glass smash.”

  I followed Rod out into the hall and up to the broken window. “I’m going to track him by scent.” He stripped off his shirt and handed it to me. “Here, take my clothes and follow me.” Then the jeans. Interesting, he was going commando. Simpler to change with no underwear, I guess.

  I had to back away from Rod as his body changed form in a dramatic way. Bones shifted under his skin, his face lengthened and he fell on all fours, a coat of fur crept out of his body, thickening in waves.

  “Follow him on foot, Violet.” Mrs. Battle said, taking a firm grip on Trisha’s arm. “He’ll need the clothes when he changes back.”

  “Trisha can you drive?”

  “I’ve got a license,” Trisha said.

  I tossed her my keys.

  “We’ll follow you.” Sir John led them down the hall toward the front door.

  I turned back to see Rod, who had bulked up considerably, a huge wolf with dark brown fur, padding toward the window. He smashed the last bits of glass leaping out. I had no choice but to jump.

  It was a one-story drop, I landed on my hands and knees. My vampire durability kept me from injury, but it took me a moment to get to my feet. Rod cast his nose along the ground. The scent trail led him to the seven-foot tall fence. He leaped it in a single bound.

  I scrambled up after him, across another yard. Another damn fence and we turned left along an alley that intersected Pacific Street. I heard an engine starting and looked over my shoulder to see my car following us.

  I ran after Rod. It was well past midnight and the residential streets were quiet. I didn’t have time to worry that an older woman running like a sprinter after a huge wolf just might get them to call the cops—or animal control. I caught up with Rod when he stopped with his nose to the ground finding the scent when it turned. Then he raised his head and started to run again.

  We rushed across the street past a man walking a miniature poodle.

  “Hey!” He snatched up his dog up in alarm. We left them far behind before he could utter another word. I could hear the engine of my car behind us, but I didn’t dare look back. I had to keep Rod in sight.

  Damn, he was heading for the Presidio.

  Spanish soldiers build it in the 1770s. It became a Mexican fort, then a U.S. Army base. Now it was a national park with a historic site with barracks, disintegrating artillery and military cemeteries. No guards at the gate, just carved stone pillars open to several hundred acres of urban forest from the Marina around the Bay to the Pacific Ocean.

  The vampires driving my car would be able to follow us easily if Rod stayed on one of the roads that crisscrossed the wooded area. He did that for awhile after he went through the open gate. But, when the trees got thicker, he plunged off-road and headed west toward the ocean. I followed.

  I heard car doors slam and Mrs. Battle, Sir John and Trisha began to crash through the undergrowth behind us.

  We emerged in a clearing near the edge of the cliff. Even in the night we could see a large wolf and a girl of about nine or ten standing there. The wolf’s coat was white, tipped with gray. The little girl wore a thin, cotton shift. A pack of about thirty wolves crouched pinning them close to the cliff edge. The ocean roared, invisible below the girl and the white wolf. If the three-hundred foot drop to the rocks didn’t kill them, the cold Pacific waters crashing at the base of the cliff awaited.

  I gasped just to see it. My fear of heights kicked in.

  The white wolf’s fur was matted with blood, his forepaws seemed dipped in it. The child standing next to the besieged wolf wore a strangely woven silver collar gleaming on her neck. Her feet were bare and bloodied, her hand clutched at the white wolf’s ruff.

  Sir John caught up with me. He was fat but fast with the speed of hundreds of years of vampire existence.

  “That must be Thomas, your Alpha,” Sir John said to the werewolf.

  Rod growled in answer. He threw himself into the mass of wolves. He gripped the first wolf in his path by the throat. It screamed as he tossed it to the side like a rag doll. The next wolf in his way yelped as he shouldered it out of his way.

  A deep-throated roar from the edge of the cliff froze all of us. Whatever that roar meant, the pack of thirty hunkered down. Rod thrust his way through the wolves. He took up a post on the other side of the girl, snarling a challenge.


  “That would be the Alpha of the Frisco Pack,” Sir John whispered.

  “You’re not supposed to call it Frisco,” I said automatically.

  “Will you argue with them?” Sir John asked.

  “What’s that collar on her neck?” The silver glinting in the moonlight kept drawing my eye.

  “To keep her from changing, and escaping,” Mrs. Battle came up behind us.

  Trisha came panting up to stand beside her, the youngest and slowest vampire.

  “Kayla!” The cry seemed ripped from Trisha’s heart. .A few of the wolves turned to look.

  “Trisha, no!” Mrs. Battle said.

  But Trisha threw herself into the pack of wolves.

  Sir John moved, calling out, “Stop!”

  Trisha made it through the first line of wolves, pulling past those who snapped and bit at her. Then three wolves piled on and knocked her down into the middle of the pack.

  No roar from the Frisco Alpha at that.

  In an instant all fear left me as rage surged up inside me. I tapped the force that whispered under my thoughts. The hiss I needed to ignore. The power I didn’t dare name.

  “All of you! STOP!” I yelled. My voice echoed over the crouching pack.

  Something small flew toward me from the direction of the road. The werewolves all turned to look. The three holding Trisha down froze. Their snarls died to silence.

  For a moment I thought it was a bat, but it was a gray cat, flying. Flying at shoulder height towards me with his eyes burning red.

  Brutus.

  I had never seen him fly, but his tainted power called to mine. Brutus landed on my shoulder with his usual heavy thump and dug in his claws to balance as if he had just jumped from my living room armchair.

  The cat growled at the wolf pack. Every one of them was five times his size. His voice held a deep rumbling warning.

  Then I felt a counter pressure from the ground beneath our feet. The Presidio held a military cemetery with more graves than anywhere else in San Francisco. They were soldiers once, then ghosts. Now they were hungry.

  For a moment we all balanced on a knife edge. I started to walk towards the cliff where Thomas stood, next to his daughter and Roderick.

  I pushed my way through the densely crowded wolf pack with Brutus riding on my shoulder staring down any challengers with his eerie red eyes. Sir John followed and Mrs. Battle took up the rear, I looked back and saw her scanning the crowd for attackers. But the wolves all moved aside to let us pass.

  Sir John pulled Trisha to her feet. Mrs. Battle took her other arm and they escorted Trisha to where Rod, Thomas and Kayla stood. Trisha took the little girl in her arms.

  “My daughter,” Trisha said, still hugging Kayla. She kissed the top of her head. “I thought you were lost.”

  Rod changed form while Sir John, Mrs. Battle and I kept the pack at bay. They cringed away from Brutus, which I thought was wise. I gave Rod his clothes. He stood guard while Thomas changed back to human form, a tall, imposingly muscled man with short-cut sandy hair. The wounds from trashing Quiller’s silver cage stood out more clearly without the fur to hide them. Mrs. Battle handed him her trench coat, which fitted with some effort around his massive arms but only came down to mid thigh on him.

  Thomas put his arm around Trisha and his daughter. “Kayla was born here, we didn’t know she could shift shapes,” he said.

  “I wanted her to have a normal human life.” Trisha said. “I think Quiller knew about your shape shifting. He stalked us.” She looked up at her husband. “You were back in Idaho when he attacked me, Kayla was there and she got so upset she changed into wolf form. When I rose as a vampire she was back in human form and Quiller had that collar on her. He took her away and told me not to try to find her.”

  Trisha couldn’t disobey a direct order from the vampire who turned her. As a new vampire, she scarcely knew how to survive.

  The wolves all turned to look at what must be their Alpha, a very large dark gray wolf at the head of the pack. He had already begun to change into human form. No one had clothing to offer him.

  “You want my sweater?” I asked, once he was done.

  Brutus snarled and the Frisco Alpha shook his head.

  “No, vampire woman.” He made it sound like an insult. Just as glad he didn’t borrow my sweater after that attitude.

  He stood in human form over six feet tall, lean and dark-skinned, at ease standing naked in the cold night. He turned to face Thomas. “We endured your short visits to our territory in the name of business for years,” he said. “If you want to raise a family here, you need to join our pack.”

  “Nathan, you know me,” Thomas told him. “I would never submit to you. I might defeat you in a contest for dominance.”

  “You might,” the Frisco Alpha—Nathan—said.

  “I don’t want to fight you or to take over your pack. I only want to take my wife and child home. You understand me?”

  “Dawn is near,” Nathan said, addressing himself to Thomas. “Your vampire allies will leave you soon. Your wife will die when the sun rises.”

  “I’m leaving your turf and taking my family home.”

  “Will your pack accept your vampire wife?” Nathan sneered.

  “Not your problem,” Thomas said.

  All the Frisco wolves crouched at some invisible signal from their Alpha.

  Sir John’s deep voice made everyone freeze. “Friends, werewolves, night creatures, lend me your ears! Look to your own pups, your human families. Dr. Quiller stalks shapeshifters for his experiments. You see what he did here? Caging Thomas, attacking his wife, capturing his child. Who will be next? You owe Thomas and his family safe passage for warning you of this danger.”

  Nathan held up his hand in a gesture that caused all his wolves to relax slightly. “Where can we find this Quiller?”

  “Follow our scent trail back,” Rod told him. “We just came from there.”

  “You’re going through the city streets naked?” I asked, not that I really wanted to help after he was so snarky, but still...

  Nathan shook his head again. “We run here often. Our clothing is not far away.” He made another wordless gesture and his wolves cleared a path for us away from the cliff. They trailed along behind us, but not too close.

  When we got to my car, the pack of werewolves moved off toward the Arguello gate, retracing the route Rod and I had traveled.

  “You think all those wolves will run through the Marina and freak out the pre-dawn joggers?” I asked.

  Sir John shook his head. “When werewolves stalk, they come as single spies, not in battalions.”

  “Can we ask the Council for help in restraining Quiller from taking more child victims?” I asked.

  “The Council has no interest there,” Mrs. Battle said. “Vampire laws are few and only enforced when they threaten our own survival.”

  “Nathan and his pack may threaten Quiller’s survival,” I said.

  “Quiller’s a few hundred years old, hard to kill,” Mrs. Battle said with a shrug. I couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry for Quiller either.

  “Dawn is nigh,” Sir John said.

  “We must get back to our coffins,” Mrs. Battle said. “Violet, keep Trisha in your basement till dusk.”

  As we hurried back to the car, I called my friend, who lived in the cottage behind my house. “Kit, it’s an emergency. Meet me in front of my place. I need to get a guest out of the light before dawn. “

  “I’ll be there. Can Bram come too?”

  “Please. I need help with three other guests. They can stay in my house during the day.”

  “We should have gone to the Idaho pack long ago,” Thomas told Trisha.

  “I had a great job. Kayla was in school.”

  “You could have found a job there.”

  This was an old argument.

  “Come on you guys, discuss this later. Trisha and I need to get to shelter.” I turned to her. “My keys?”
>
  Trisha handed me the keys and we piled into my car. Rod sat in front. Thomas and Trisha got in back with their daughter who huddled between her parents.

  “What can I do now?” Trisha moaned. “I can’t go anywhere in daylight.”

  Thomas leaned back between the seats and took her hand. “Our daughter needs us. The pack will accept you as my mate, I’ll see to it.”

  Predawn light threatened when I left the car in the bus zone in front of my door. My friends Kris and Bram were waiting on the sidewalk, well aware of the danger of daylight to me. Bram took the keys and went to park my car while we ran up the steps and in the door Kris held for us.

  I pointed out Kayla’s collar to Kris, “It’s Quiller’s work.” Kris nodded. She had met Quiller. “We can’t take it off because the silver burns us.”

  Kris unclasped the link that held the collar on. When she pulled it away from Kayla’s neck, the girl began to shift into the shape of a half-grown wolf. Trisha reached out to her, but Thomas hovered over his daughter protectively. “I’ve got this. You go rest for the day. I’ll keep her safe.”

  “Whaaa?” Kris turned to me.

  “Oh, yeah, they’re werewolves. They’ll explain. We need to get down to the basement.”

  Brutus led the way. I pulled Trisha through the basement door and shut it against the dawn light.

  Trisha collapsed on the rug at the foot of the basement steps and died.

  I stepped over her body climbed into my coffin. Brutus curled up on my chest.

  Before I could close the lid, I died.

  Again.

  When I awoke at dusk, Trisha and Brutus had already left the basement. I went upstairs. My human friends, Kris and Bram stood by the front window with Mrs. Battle and Sir John. They were old vampires, but their speed at reaching my place from their own lairs so soon after sunset astounded me.

  “Trisha just went out the door with her family,” Mrs. Battle said.

  “Bram and I helped them rent a trailer today and pack up their apartment,” Kris said.

  “They’re heading back to Idaho,” Mrs. Battle pointed out the window.

  I joined her just in time to see a Haul-It-Yourself truck pull into traffic on Clement and drive away into the dusk.

  “Quiller is her maker, will he be able to call Trisha to him?” I asked.

  “Rumor has it Quiller was attacked by werewolves at dawn,” Sir John said. “By the time he recovers, she will be too far away.”

  “Do you think Thomas’s pack will accept a vampire?”

  Mrs. Battle sighed, “Thomas thinks so. The young girl must learn the werewolf ways from a pack. But Kayla needs her mother too, even an undead mother.”

  “That must be the ultimate blended family, vampire and werewolf,” Bram said

  Mrs. Battle gave him one of her stern looks.

  Kris took his arm, “These folks will be hungry. Let’s leave them to do their thing.” Bram’s eyes widened and he let her pull him away.

  “Gordon and Leeann won’t join us this evening,” Mrs. Battle said. “Gordon asked her to go to the gamer store and feast on the blood of the nerds. Leeann said it sounded fun.”

  “My ladies, we must prey for our supper.” Sir John offered an arm to Mrs. Battle and me.

  We went out into the night.

 

  Lynne Murray’s Bio & Links

  I live in San Francisco happily indulging with a small group of formerly feral cats, all of whom were rescued and who daily return the favor. This story takes place after in the events in The Falstaff Vampire Files and before The Falstaff Vampire Ghosts (to be published in early 2016).

  Twitter URL: https://twitter.com/lynnemurray

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