Archer groaned and held his side, but reached for the knife in his pocket. Still ready to fight. Giselle staggered and retrieved the makeshift stake, using it as a crutch as she hobbled to their nearby ATVs. Lars stirred for the first time, and Ryan staggered to his feet to check on his teammate, his arm still hanging useless from a dislocated shoulder.
I remained frozen where I stood.
Blood covered half of Archer’s face and dripped down his arm, turning the dirt into mud around him. He held his shoulder and arm tight to his body, protecting his ribs, and breathed in shallow gulps with a pained expression on his face. “Ada, are you okay? Did it touch you? Hurt you? What happened?”
Giselle got a phone and called for assistance, and soon enough the wailing sirens of the local volunteer firefighters finished off what remained of the quiet. She gave me a hard look as she crouched next to Lars and examined a knot on his forehead. “Maybe you should get out of here.”
I shook myself out of paralysis and retrieved one of their first aid kits. “I can help.”
Archer waved me away when I attempted to clean his face and the deep tear in his scalp. I almost barfed right into it, so my green face might have clued him in to the impending disaster. I handed him gauze to apply pressure, then retreated to where Ryan attempted to re-set the joint.
Archer groaned and shifted his weight as he leaned against a broad tree trunk. “It was a vampire.”
“Couldn’t have been anything else,” Isidro said. He winced as he checked a quickly-developing bruise under his torn shirt and used the garment to wrap around the bloody hamburger of his leg.
“But it’s daylight,” Archer said. He gazed up at the canopy of leaves. “It should have burned. The holy water didn’t affect it. Could it have been a hybrid? Something else?”
“We’ll review the footage after you guys are checked out,” Giselle said. Her cold gaze landed on me. “Should be some interesting things on there.”
My heart sank.
“It sounded like Drago,” Ryan said. “The old master of Chicago.”
“That can wait,” Archer said. He tilted his head at me. “Don’t need to discuss it in the open.”
“We might as well,” Giselle said. “She talked to it. She could have shot it in the face and didn’t.”
I shook my head and fumbled for a good excuse. “I couldn’t move. It looked at me and I couldn’t do anything.”
Her eyes narrowed, but it wasn’t like she could call me a liar. She’d been mesmerized first. She tilted her head for the vampire to snack on. So what if I hadn’t pulled the trigger? He could have controlled me as easily as he controlled her.
Isidro exhaled and adjusted his knee, only a small squawk escaping as he did so. “Drago knew how to create werewolves. But wasn’t he killed when the new cabal came in?”
“No one confirmed it,” Archer said. “There were reports he met the flame but no one knows for sure.”
“He created werewolves?” I looked between all of them. “This vampire? He knew how to make werewolves?”
“That’s the rumor.” Ryan helped Lars sit, steadying him as Giselle examined him for other wounds. “And since werewolves turned up wherever he nested for longer than a few years, it would explain a lot about what’s happening here.”
Something else lingered in my mind like a popcorn kernel between my mental teeth. “Is it true, what he said?”
They all looked at me as one. Archer spoke, though, and only opened one eye. “What do you mean?”
“That you’re here to kill me, after I survived the wild man attack. You’re here to look for werewolves, and deal with them when you find them.”
The team traded looks. No one spoke, and only Archer met my gaze. “Sort of. I can explain.”
My heart sank.
Before anyone else could speak, volunteer firefighters and park rangers filled the trail with equipment and loud questions. I staggered back and sat on a half-rotted stump as one of the rangers asked me about injuries, but I just shook my head and watched them treat Archer’s team. Watching from a distance felt the only way I could stand to be there, knowing he might have been flirting and drawing me in to make it easier to kill me when the full moon rose.
The medics put Isidro on a stretcher immediately and hauled him to the ambulance, then put Lars in a neck-brace for the same concierge service. Archer got a sling and a quick-step in the same direction. Giselle and Ryan got patched up quickly but waved away other help after Ryan got a sling and some ice packs.
I watched it all with curious detachment despite that my heart fluttered and buzzed. Were there more teams like them? Archer mentioned others in a roundabout way while we watched that awful video of the werewolves killing and being killed. How many other groups went around killing cryptids and the supernatural? Who funded them? Some weird eccentric billionaire? The Catholic church? The government or police?
“Doc Montgomery?” One of the rangers I’d helped track a rogue bear stood in front of me, tipping his wide-brimmed hat back off his forehead to study me. “What are you doing out here?”
My mouth went dry and tacky as I looked up at him. What if I just told him the truth? They’d take me back to the hospital and lock me up in the psych ward, and I wouldn’t have to worry about vampires and werewolves anymore. I could play along until all of the craziness blew over, then move to Boston to live with my mother and research something simple, like quantum entanglement, instead of cryptids and supernatural nonsense.
I cleared my throat. “They wanted to interview me for their documentary.”
He nodded. “Sure. The city folks through it was a mountain lion. That seem about right?”
Everything felt wooden and stiff as I attempted to stand without breaking my back. Even with the vampire blood, after the last two days I felt about eighty years old. “Yeah. Massive mountain lion. Pissed off and hungry, I’d guess. They fired at it a lot and eventually struck it, and it ran.”
Lies. All lies. Not even particularly believable lies.
The ranger nodded and frowned at the surrounding trees. “Well, that’s the strange thing. There’s no feline tracks in the vicinity, and we haven’t tracked any of them in part of the parks in years. You sure it wasn’t something else?”
“No,” I said, and sighed. My head ached and the words slipped out before I really weighed the consequences. “I’m not sure of anything, Paul. It looked and sounded like a mountain lion, but it might as well have been a werewolf.”
“A werewolf?” He coughed to cover a snort, not wanting to offend me no doubt, and put away his notebook. “Sure, why not. Although it’s not the full moon for a couple of days. We’ll have to put up signs to warn the tourists.”
I smiled with aching cheeks, and retrieved my jacket. At least the rangers still felt comfortable teasing me. If they suspected me of anything crazy, they wouldn’t crack jokes about it.
The rangers and a single cop searched the area, including the trucks parked on the road, and questioned Giselle and Ryan before interviewing me officially. Our accounts matched and the rangers shrugged, chalking it up to a hungry cat trying to bulk up before winter, and made notes to search for the wounded animal.
I followed as Giselle and Ryan began the long trek back to the trucks, the rangers lingering on the trail to search for hints about where the notional mountain lion went. When I reached for the door of my truck, Giselle blocked it.
Her voice lowered so no one would overhear. “I know you’re up to something. I know you have something to do with that vampire. I heard what you said about helping it. Archer might not want to believe it, but he’ll see it eventually.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. My voice trembled as the terror of Dragomir’s attack landed on me at once and sent the world spinning. He’d been so close to killing all of them, and it would have been wholly my fault. “I would have shot him if I could have.”
“No.” Giselle shook her head. She glanced over as two of the rangers strode past, talking about getting the tracking dog. The one in front of me narrowed her eyes. “No, you’ve spent too much time out in the woods in the dark to tell me that. You knew what it was and what it could do. It knew you. You’re the only one without any real wounds, Ada. What kind of deal did you make with it?”
I folded my arms and wished I could drown her out with my thoughts alone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But even I wouldn’t have believed me.
“It doesn’t feel anything, you know. It’s an unthinking beast whose only motivation is blood lust. It was probably lulling you into complacency so it could feed from you over an extended period of time. It might have done so already and you wouldn’t know it. They’re predators. We are their prey. They can influence you until you beg it to bite you, until you believe it’s your idea. It’s all manipulation.”
“You would know,” I said. I reached for my door again. “You’re the one who offered your throat to him when he captured you.”
Her face paled.
Maybe she didn’t remember.
I shook my head and slid into my truck. “Yeah. Watch that footage and then we can talk, because you smiled at him and waited for him to drink from you. I hardly believe in vampires at all. But if I did, I would tell you to stop poking around searching for him if you don’t want to be found.”
I had my own score to settle with Dragomir, after I found out what happened to Jamie.
“How long have you known it was here?” Ryan watched from just a couple feet away. “Have you hidden it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I started the engine and wondered if I could just drive away, even with them in front of the truck. They’d probably get out of the way. I desperately needed the solitude at the cabin to get my thoughts in order. Once the sun set all the way, I could summon Dragomir and get to the bottom of things.
“That’s not a ‘no,’” Giselle said. She didn’t wait for me to deny it again. “We’ll deal with you later. Don’t leave town. Don’t do anything crazy. Archer will talk to you if we need anything else, but I doubt it. He’s the team lead and it’ll be up to him what we do — about you and the vampire.”
I started to respond but they turned and limped back to their SUV. I watched them go, then put the truck in gear and bumped up to the road. Jamie was close. I’d solve that mystery and figure out what to do next later. But first I needed to get the truth out of a vampire.