“Hello, Luduan. I am the vampire, Christopher.” He bowed low to Wang as if it was perfectly normal for a vampire to meet a pig, pug, dragon-cross in a dark forest at night in the presence of four dead bodies.

“Well met, Vampire, I am Wang.” The little luduan nodded his head in response to Chris’s greeting.

“Guardian Harper. It’s always a pleasure to see you.” He kissed me on the cheek and patted my shoulder. “I’m glad you kept my little Lily safe. You girls were quite brave to come out here alone. I’ll collect the body of the poor, young Samantha and pass her bones on to her sire. A pity she didn’t have longer to enjoy being a vampire.”

“It’s over there. Can you take a look at another one? We aren’t sure what she was. Or really what we are going to do with her,” Lily told him.

“The cleaners didn’t take her?” Chris asked.

“No. We didn’t ask the cleaners to. I’m not sure we asked them anything at all.” I turned to Lily. “Did you ask them?”

“No. I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to give them instructions. I’ve never had to call them before. It was weird to see Jo being all official,” Lily told him.

“Really? I would have thought it would have come up before, with your power being what it is,” he said.

“No. The Safe takes care of it when she makes zombies go squishy,” I explained. He didn’t listen to me. He moved toward the bodies. The calm way he apprised the body bags deepened my dislike of him. Although that wasn’t fair since it wasn’t like Lily had fallen apart at the sight of the dead. Only I had.

“Lily, my love, much as I enjoy your powers’ effect on me, please back up a ways. You needn’t focus on drawing your power down. I won’t be doing any active magic. But I fear my human senses aren’t quite up to the task at hand.” He sounded polite and apologetic. I couldn’t make out his expression now that he had left the bubble of Wang’s light.

Lily backed up and then called out. “Far enough?”

“Go a little further so that I have plenty of clearance to move around the site.”

Lily backed up more. Wang and I followed her. We were now in the tree line, and I could barely make out the soft trickling noise of the stream. I couldn’t hear Chris at all. But I heard the bags unzip. One. Two. Three. I could no longer smell the bodies. The bags were good. I stood in the dark, straining to hear Chris, but he didn’t make a sound, and I couldn’t see him. It wasn’t until he passed back into Lily’s bubble that I could hear him again. It dawned on me that his vampire powers must have been silencing his noises. Because once he was human again, he was terribly loud.

“That’s a vamp, alright. The state of decay and remaining clothes match Samantha’s description. But I can’t be one hundred percent sure,” he said. I realized that he was wearing latex gloves. The fingers were stained with something dark.

“Did you look at the other body? Any idea what she was?” I asked, staring at his gloves. What had he been doing to the bodies to get them so dirty? It looked like more than casual poking around.

“No idea. She looked human to me. But I doubt she is. When do you anticipate the wolves will arrive?” he asked.

Lily looked at her phone. “Probably in another twenty minutes or so.”

“Good. They may be able to get a better trace of the killer. I couldn’t find anything, which just means we aren’t looking for another vamp. But we know that. It doesn’t narrow it down,” he said and removed the gloves from the wrist, snapping them up over his fingers, one inside of the other. He put them inside of a plastic baggy and tucked them in his pocket.

“We’ve had a bit of a break on that,” said Wang. “It would seem that the killer is human.”

“A human?" said Chris. "That can’t be. Samantha wasn’t staked. And they don’t kill dryads.”

“Why would the staking matter?” I asked.

“Because the only humans who know about us are the vampire slayers. It’s not impossible to think that Samantha could have brought herself to their attention. It isn’t unheard of for them to kill wolves. But they wouldn’t go after a dryad. They see creatures like that as beneficial and part of the nature cycle. Why they can’t afford us the same courtesy, I’ve never understood. But they don’t,” Chris said.

“There are humans who know about us? And who hunts us? How is that even allowed?” I asked.

“Who said we allowed it? Or could even stop it?” Chris asked.

“But they know about us?” Lily repeated my question.

“Of course. Did you think that this could be kept a secret? They have thousands of myths about us. Why did you think none of them knew? Because they act like it’s impossible? Surely, you girls can’t be that naive?” said Chris.

“I just thought they didn’t know that those were just leftover stories from a time when they did know—that the big joke was that they used to know about us, but as they learned more, they forgot somehow. And we became a myth. I thought it was the universe’s idea of a joke,” Lily said.

“Maybe it is. But some haven’t forgotten. The hunters still know,” Chris said with a shrug. “Perhaps the wolves will know what’s going on. Does anyone mind if I smoke?”

“You smoke?” I asked.

He lit up. “I was off it for quite a while, but now, I’m back on.”

“What Chris means is that there is no point in smoking when he’s a vamp. He can’t get the nicotine fix. But that doesn’t stop him from craving it,” Lily explained. This information made me scale down my guess at Chris’s true age by at least 70 years. Maybe he was just a short guy.

We stood in the dark and watched Chris smoke. There was something oddly voyeuristic about watching him. He enjoyed it too much, more than I would have thought possible. Even Wang was silent. I was so tired. I kept waiting for my second wind to hit. But it didn’t come. In the dark, I heard Lily’s phone. She looked at the screen and announced that Jen and her family were on their way.

We heard the wolves approaching long before we saw them. They crashed through the woods. A mix of voices and occasional yips sounded when they came into view, carrying lanterns that illuminated the hoard. Some of them were in wolf form. I hadn’t expected all of them. But all of Jen’s brothers and sisters were there. They brought along their spouses and some of the older children. Jen’s parents and the local pack leader stood at the front of the crowd. No wonder no one could get a clean scent off of Alice’s house if they constantly swarmed into every situation with this many people.

“Stop! You’re going to contaminate the scene,” Chris yelled.

“Who are you to tell us where to go?” asked the pack leader, puffing up his chest, ready to fight.

“When I’m not around the guardian.” I noted Chris’s use of Lily’s official title rather than her first name. I wondered if he was trying to hide their relationship. And if he was, what that meant. Chris continued speaking. “I’m a vampire. I go by the name Christopher. The murderer is human, and I can’t get a clean scent off the scene. I was hoping that one of you could. But If you all go charging about, what evidence there is will be lost.”

“We aren’t bloodhounds, you know!” someone shouted, but the rest of them reacted to the idea of it being a human killer. Wang had moved away from Lily and licked the air like mad. “A human? Impossible. They wouldn’t have been able to bring her down.” The area alpha peered down at Wang and said, “What are you, then?”

The area alpha was a dark-skinned, older man, but clearly, still fit. He wore his hair military-short and stood straight up as if expecting to be inspected by his commanding officer at any moment. “Until we collect the dead, no one may speak. Anyone who speaks out of turn, I will punish. The null is right here. I won’t have to go hunt her down. Now you lot stay there. Only the parents need to come with me.”

Jen’s mom and dad stepped out of the family group and came over to stand by the pack leader. They looked completely crushed as if they had been sick for ten years since the last time I saw them, which had only been a day or so ago. It took me a moment to find Jen among a crowd of her siblings, people who all looked so much like her. But there she was, standing next to one of her sisters. They were holding hands. As loud, annoying, and overwhelming as the entire wolf pack could be, I was very glad that they had all come up here to support their parents. I had only been expecting Jen and her parents. With seeing them all together like that, I knew that wouldn’t have been right. It was best that they were all here for support.

“Now, who is this creature, and what is his purpose here?” The pack leader asked Wang. Wang very politely explained who and what he was. The pack leader moved on to the next point. “You say it was a human that did this? You’re quite sure?”

“As I have explained, it would have been impossible for our informant to lie to me. If he says that a human did this deed, then a human did this deed. We can question his motives on telling us this information, but I don’t believe we have any reason to question the veracity of his statements,” Wang said.

“It wasn’t a hunter of my people either. Not that they ever would have taken out a dryad, but the kill was wrong, too. I assume we aren’t the only Old Ones with an enemy among the humans,” Chris said. He waited for the pack leader to reply.

The man took a slightly longer time than necessary to reply. I figured he was trying to figure out how much to reveal and how much to play close to his chest. The magical world wasn’t known for the free exchange of ideas and information. When he finally spoke, he asked a question. “How were they killed?” That simple question implied a lot more than it revealed.

“They were strangled. All of them. With something very heavy that did some tissue damage,” Chris said and then stopped. I wondered if he was holding back, too.

“Not our hunters, then. They don’t strangle.” The pack leader did not volunteer anything else.

“Your girl is in the first bag on the right. I’m very sorry for your loss,” Chris said. He managed to sound like he meant it. Maybe he even did.