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She spat it out and looked to survey the damage. The wound was so deep his head held on by only a thin piece of skin. Still, she watched to make sure he stopped breathing before turning back to the room. They were all dead. And blood stained Philip’s wolf’s fur. Again.
My wolf howled to stop him from eating any more of the corpses. He looked at her and gave her the closest thing to a wolf smile possible.
After we shifted back, we walked to Isaac’s truck in silence. The evening had been the most fucked up night of my life. I wanted to shower and then bury it all in a bottle of vodka.
And that’s exactly what I did.
I woke up a little groggy and dry-mouthed. It takes a lot to give a shifter a hangover, but I’d succeeded. After another shower, some toast, and coffee I was halfway back to myself. I had to push aside any lingering fog and figure out our next step in finding Stella and the missing shifters.
“What have your guys found? She’s clearly not just going to the carnival and home. There’s somewhere else,” I said to Liam over a third cup of coffee.
“They are adamant these are the only places she goes,” he replied as he handed me a list. It was a short list of the carnival, her house, and the supermarket she normally frequented. “In almost a month, this was it. Aside from when she was with you or Isaac, which as you know hasn’t been often lately.”
“The only answer is the door Roland told me about. I feel like he wasn’t lying. Why else would she tear out his throat?”
“Makes sense.”
“We need to go back and search there again,” I said.
He nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll get some men together and we can go tonight.”
“Great. I’ll text Isaac.”
Once we had the plan set, I relaxed a little. I even got some writing done. This whole Stella thing was screwing with my deadline.
Later, while Liam and I were eating lunch, I finally remembered to ask. “What’s a tribreed?” He froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Yeah, I remember that part.”
He set his fork down, patted his lips with his napkin, and took his time smoothing it back onto his lap. “Philip is the rarest of beings. He’s a shifter, as you know, but he’s also a vampire.”
“Excuse me? Did you just say vampire? They’re real?” At least he’d started answering my questions without too much prodding. Even if the answers weren’t what I expected.
“They are. They hide from both humans and shifters. They’re a paranoid bunch, and rightly so. They feed on us like they do humans, and because we know about them, we sometimes kill them.”
“Is it really a stake through the heart?” I laughed a little thinking of all the old movies I’d seen.
“In a way, yes. Anything sharp enough to make it to the heart will work. Or the eye. Or beheading. The references to sunlight, garlic, holy water, and silver are myths. The damage from the sun may weaken them because their bodies must work to repair it, but it will not kill them.”
“Wow. Okay. And what about the bat thing? There’s no way that can be true.”
He laughed this time. “It’s not. Though I’ve heard a theory that a bat-borne virus causes vampirism. It’s said a bat bit a human, and they became a vampire. How much truth is in that theory, I’m not sure.”
“Yeah, it reminds me of some theories on shifters. A rabid wolf or a curse from the Fae. People sure do like to talk about curses.” I smiled as I ran a hand through my hair. “So, what happened with Philip?”
“A vampire attacked him centuries ago. I thought I’d lost him, but he came back as the man you know today.”
I still couldn’t believe we were talking about this. Growing up I’d heard stories of vampires, but I’d always assumed they were fictional. Bogeyman stories to scare little kids. I never in a million years expected them to be real. Or that I’d know one.
“That explains the otherness I feel from him. Was he with you before he turned?”
“As I’ve said, he worked for my father, but when I was old enough, we became close friends. He was always rowdier and more daring than me. He loved to gamble. We went to a pub one night, often the only source of entertainment in those days, and he joined a card game.”
He angled his chair to better see me while he told me the tale of Vampire Phil.
“He won the game and bought the pub a round of ale to celebrate. He’d already had more than his share. Then a woman met his eye across the bar, he went home with her, and the next morning, I found him dead on my doorstep.”
“He was dead? How is he here now?” I glanced back at the house wondering how Philip would feel about this conversation.
“I put him on his bed and went to the pub to find out what had happened. They told me he went home with a woman, but no one knew where she lived. I searched the town all day into the evening. When I returned to the house, he was awake and raving mad. He attacked me. My wolf fought him off. He ran out of the house and returned at dawn covered in blood.”
