The way he said “life” I knew he meant more than dinner and a show. Actually, he just meant dinner. Peter might enjoy seclusion, but he needed a population to eat, preferably a mixture of vampires and people. Vampire bars and blood banks made eating so much easier, and the fewer the people, the less the options. “So that’s where we’re going? Up north?” I turned fully to Ezra. “What’d you call it? The Lapland?” “Yeah. It’s just the northern most territory in Finland.” He took a deep breath, and he sounded reluctant when he continued. “There’s something I haven’t told you.” “There’s lots of things you haven’t told me,” I corrected him nervously. “This is important.” He licked his lips and shifted his gaze. “You’ve heard of stories of werewolves, right?” My stomach dropped. Sure, I may be a vampire now, but there were certain things I couldn’t take. Like finding out an endless stream of monsters and folklore were real. After this, maybe we’d roll with a Yeti or go swimming with the Loch ness Monster and a Leprechaun. There had to be some point where fiction remained fiction, and I was determined that ended it immediately after vampires. “No, no, no,” I shook my head. “Jack told me there weren’t any werewolves. There’s no such thing.” “No, there’s not!” Ezra agreed emphatically. “Shape shifting of any kind is a complete impossibility. Or at least as far as I know.” “So…” My heart had slowed a little, but he was still holding something back, and that wasn’t comforting. “Why even bring them up? How do they relate?” “You’ve heard the stories about them, though, haven’t you?” Ezra continued, his deep brown eyes looking at me intently. “Yeah,” I answered uncertainly. My knowledge of werewolves was very limited, and mostly based on Michael J. Fox’s portrayal in Teen Wolf. I had never thought the film was very factual, because I couldn’t imagine how surfing on a van could be possible, werewolf or no. So I hadn’t given any credence to the lore, and the only thing I carried from it was that wolves were good a basketball. This information did not seem pertinent to the situation.
“How the full moon makes them come out, and they attack without reproach?” Ezra went on. “They turn into vicious animals, unfettered by remorse or logic.” “Okay, sure,” I nodded, hoping he would just hurry and make his point. “Do you remember when I told about the vampires I had encountered when I first turned?” Ezra grew even more solemn, and I didn’t like the way this conversation was going. I didn’t want to see how he tied those two thoughts together. “They were … rabid animals.” “You’re not… they’re not…” I faltered. “What are you saying exactly?” “Sometimes, some vampires, either by choice or just be design, don’t ever fully civilize,” he explained carefully. “The ones that are entirely primeval are usually killed pretty early on. Even vampires can’t stomach rampant monsters. But some willfully seek out a different life, one very separate from people and humanity. They live on the fringe of both our societies. “This has been the case since the beginning of our kind, of any kind, I suppose. They’ll always be something that lives just outside the limits.” Ezra took a deep breath and looked back out at the night sky. “We believe the early stories of werewolves are based on vampires living like this. In small packs that hunt together, living more like animals than people. While they are forced to live like us necessity, meaning they can’t kill most of their food, they want to hunt and kill. They hunt big game, like bears and elk, even wolves. Not for food, but for sport.” “People do that too,” I interjected, but I’m not sure what point I was making with that. Mostly, I was trying to freak myself out less. “We call them lycans. It’s short for lycanthrope, which just means werewolf. Its a little inside joke for vampires.” Ezra smiled at me with that, but I didn’t really think it was funny. “Lycan, I think, just means wolf, in Greek or Latin.” “This was a round about way of giving me a lesson in Greek?” I asked dryly. “There’s a pack of lycan that live in the Finnish Lapland,” Ezra ignored me. “I’ve come across them before, but it’s mostly an ever changing group, with only the leader staying the same. From what I gather, he’s a bit of a sadist, and the life expectancy for his pack isn’t anywhere near what it is for the average vampire, or
even for other lycans. They are known for their brutality, and they’ve killed innocent people and vampires indiscriminately. They’re just too strong to take on as a whole, so most of us are satisfied to let them be.” I swallowed hard and tried to focus on the bright lights flashing in the darkness outside of the window. By now, I had started figuring out how this story ended up with us here, waiting for a plane to take us to where these lycans lived. Our destination was very much connected with theirs. “Last week, for reasons that aren’t yet clear to me, Peter killed a member of their pack. They want revenge, and they don’t want to stop until they get him. And, Peter, in his current state, seems happy to offer himself up,” Ezra finished quietly. “We have to track him down before they do.” I could barely control my own bloodlust, but we were going to go trekking out into the wilderness to track down a pack of crazed werewolves-cum-vampires so we could save a vampire that had tried to kill me before. It all made perfect sense in my mind. I couldn’t see how any of this could possibly go wrong. We were guaranteed to come out ahead. “Alice?” Ezra asked when I just kept staring out the window. “Do you have any questions or anything?” “Nope,” I shook my head. “But Jack’s gonna be so pissed when he finds out what we’re doing.” 4 The hotel felt like a cross between a Holiday Inn and a hunting lodge, with fireplaces and antlers hanging on the wall, but I was still pleasantly surprised by the set up. After another two hour flight, followed by a short drive, we finally checked in. Since it was after two in the morning, the place was deserted, and Ezra spoke briefly in Finnish with the desk clerk. The room had hardwood floors, but generally, it had that same nice, generic look that any other hotel would have. They had internet access and a television, and I didn’t know exactly what I had expected. Some sort of run down hunting lodge with only one bathroom in the whole place maybe. But when I peaked out the window at the snow covered dark, based on the cars in the parking lot, it was relatively busy. “There’s a lot of people here,” I commented.
Letting the shades close, I turned back to Ezra. He had already started to busy himself with unpacking, while I had just dropped my luggage on one of the beds. I had claimed the double bed closer the window, and his was nearer to the bathroom. “There’s a ski resort,” Ezra explained absently. “I think I’m going to go ahead and take a shower.” He gathered up his change of clothes and toiletries, then looked over at me. “Then we’ll get some rest and have a go at finding Peter tomorrow.” “Do we really have time to waste?” I tried to ask without accusation. We had left in such a hurry, and I wasn’t sure how imminent the danger to Peter was. “We have to rest, or I’ll be of no use to Peter.” He shrugged tiredly, as if he couldn’t see any way around it. Once he’d gone in the bathroom and I heard the familiar sound of the showering running, I changed into my comfy pajama pants and a cotton shirt. They felt tremendous after spending the past twenty hours or so stuck in jeans and a sweater while traveling across the world. Thankfully, in my rush to pack, I had thought to pack pajamas, otherwise it would’ve been incredibly awkward sleeping in my underwear while sharing a room with Ezra. I had gotten sleep on the plane ride over the ocean, and with the time difference, I would just be getting up back home in Minneapolis. On top of that, Ezra had amped me when he dropped the news to me that we were really chasing after werewolfian vampires, so I didn’t exactly feel like sleeping. When I pulled out my phone, I was surprised to find that I had a signal (subconsciously I guess I had been thinking that Finland was in the stone ages) and that my charger didn’t work in the outlets. Fortunately, I’d had it shut off the entire travel time, so the battery was fully charged. Crossing my fingers, I sat down on the bed and hoped he would be awake enough to answer the phone. This had been the longest we’d gone without talking to each other since I’d turned, and it felt very, very strange. Like the chemicals in body were slightly off balanced without him. “Hello?” Jack sounded almost frantic when he answered the phone. “Alice? Are you okay? Is everything okay?”