The soft weight of the chain and medallion against my chest reminded me that Jamie chose to leave us behind. It burned my skin all the way home and as I sat in front of the fire and stared at the flames. Hopper basked in the glow, raced into the bathroom to dunk in the cold water, then bounded to sprawl in front of the fireplace once more. I ignored the slowly-growing lake at my feet.
If I helped Dragomir, I’d be responsible for every awful thing he did. He’d saved my life at least twice. Possibly more. What did I owe him for that? Or did his behavior and threats to Archer’s crew — and to Jamie — cancel out any good Dragomir might have done?
I still didn’t know what the hell a master vampire was or what he did. It sounded as if other vampires reported to him; how many of those fuckers were there in the world? I added it to the mental list of things to ask Dragomir or Archer, whoever crossed my path first.
And made a note to not visit Chicago any time soon, if the vampires there were scary enough to overpower Dragomir.
And Jamie... Jamie was a werewolf. Archer said vampires could make and control werewolves and Dragomir knew how to make werewolves. Occam’s Razor. Dragomir attacked my brother ten years ago and turned him into a werewolf. Or possibly one of Dragomir’s werewolves attacked Jamie, but they wouldn’t have done so unless Dragomir allowed them to. I rubbed my temples. Why couldn’t I get a straight answer out of anyone? This was why I didn’t like people.
Dragomir knew perfectly well where my brother was at every point in our acquaintance, including when he offered to help me find Jamie and handed over fake evidence from an impossible crime scene. He knew it all along. The vampire — set me up, maybe. He could have easily stalked the cabin and figured out who I was and what scientific training I had. He’d waited a century in the woods, plotting and planning like a giant spidery nightmare. Maybe...
My thoughts balked at the implication, but the impossible, devastating possibility bubbled up all the same. What if Dragomir found Jamie first and offered him the bargain – his life for fixing Dragomir’s problem? Jamie would have turned him down. I knew it. He would have done it to protect us. And if human Jamie turned him down, Dragomir could have turned him into something he could control: a werewolf.
Except Jamie was stubborn to an extent that he would have done the impossible and wrestled control away from the vampire who made him.
Then I would have been the closest thing to a solution for Dragomir. Time meant nothing to him. He could have waited ten years to set things up to his liking. Enough cryptid evidence to draw me out into the woods until he put the crazy guy in my path to attack me, so Dragomir could save me. Give me his blood so he could track me. Put Jamie bait in front of my face to motivate me to work faster.
I stared at the flames as guilt and rage battled through my heart. It didn’t matter which won. They both focused my concentration on the problem. I retrieved my laptop and started researching folklore and myth around killing vampires and creating werewolves.
And Archer... There wasn’t room in his world view for a good vampire or a harmless werewolf. Even if Dragomir wasn’t and I couldn’t tell if Jamie was harmless just for me or for the whole town. Archer would kill them both and not lose sleep over it.
I wouldn’t mind him killing Dragomir, although first I needed to find out what happened to werewolves when the one who created them died. If Jamie’s life was bound in any way to the vampire, I had to keep Dragomir alive until I could break the connection.
Of course, I’d taken some of Dragomir’s blood and he’d had mine, which meant we were connected as well. Would his injury or death have deleterious effects on my health? How long did such a thing last? It took six weeks or so for blood to fully replace itself in the body, which meant at the very least I’d be connected to Dragomir another month and a half — if I was lucky. I hadn’t been able to test enough samples to figure out whether Dragomir’s virus or genetic abnormality would change my blood and DNA permanently prior to a complete change, but it sure as hell bumped to the top of my to-do list.
Just the thought left me even colder. There weren’t enough blankets in the state to warm me up after that.
At least one thing was clear — so long as Dragomir stuck around, Jamie wouldn’t come home. He didn’t want to endanger me, as evidenced by his unwillingness to approach the cabin over the past ten years. He’d been alive and could have come home to see Dad before he passed. Jamie hadn’t tried to convince Mom to stay. He’d stood back and watched the family fall apart. He helped it fall apart.
Anger surged in my chest. He’d gone through a lot, but so had I. I’d been alone; he had a pack with him and the knowledge that he could see us whenever he wanted. He could have had his family back in a second. I took care of Dad in the last months before he died, when none of the chemo and radiation helped. I struggled to make ends meet after I left my job at the university, and spent every waking hour trying to find him or cryptids or any way to survive — and he knew it. He knew it, and not once did he leave me a sign. He deliberately stayed away from me.
I didn’t care if he wanted to keep me safe from Dragomir and the werewolves. Jamie knew better. He’d been raised better. Family came first and took priority over anything else.
But was I angry enough to ignore him? Consign him to a fate of running as a wolf under the full moon and slowly descending into the same kind of madness that drove the wild man to attack me? Was he headed that way?
Could I face fighting my brother and maybe... maybe killing him and the beast he’d become? I knew I couldn’t. I would never be able to. In my heart I would know it was him and I wouldn’t pull the trigger. Even if it meant saving myself or someone else. Even if it meant saving Archer. Even with the jaws around my own throat starting to close, I didn’t think I could do it.
My jaw clenched and I stabbed the keyboard with enough force the “F” key skipped off and disappeared under the couch – promptly followed by Hopper. What the hell was I supposed to do? I’d never envisioned a future where Jamie lived and didn’t want to come home. Finding him dead had always been a possibility. Finding him alive and lost — also a potential ending. But him being alive and mostly well and still wanting to stay away... It never occurred to me. It broke my heart. That — just that — destroyed every dream I’d dreamt. How did I start my life over without him, without a mission, without anything?
Betsy would have shouted “I told you so!” right in my face after giving me a glass of bourbon to drown my tears in.
I had to keep Dragomir alive, at least for a little while. Archer... I’d go back to the hospital to talk to him in the morning and hopefully do a better job of explaining why I cooperated with the vampire and what I needed to do going forward. Maybe I could get Archer on my side; he had to understand, at least a little bit.
Either way, I had to protect the rest of the cryptids — whatever was hiding in the mountains — from Archer, and Dragomir, and even myself. I couldn’t afford to make them known to the public. Those secrets would always remain lost in the mountains. Exposing the cryptids to the world would draw far too much attention to the mountains and would bring herds of conspiracy-minded wackos, in addition to the legitimate biologists and wildlife researchers, to tromp through the trails and campsites. They would eventually run afoul of the werewolves or fall victim to Dragomir’s thirst, and in the sweep that followed, regular cryptids would get caught up.
I had to abandon my research or at least hide it. Disguise all the evidence and testing so no one like Archer could use it to hunt down the creatures still hiding in the depths of the park. I could continue searching for them but only in order to protect them and remove signs that others might stumble across.
The fame and money that such a discovery would bring me no longer looked so appealing. Even if Jamie didn’t want to come home, I didn’t want to be the one who eventually exposed him as a monster to the whole world. I didn’t want to subject him to the stress of having to avoid tourists and hunters and God only knew what else, and to control the other werewolves from attacking humans. Who knew what would happen if a werewolf pack felt their territory shrinking and lashed out at the interlopers? If it followed anything near the trajectories of the vampire math problem, we hovered on the brink of disaster.
If Archer’s rich backer decided to send more teams out to deal with the problem before it became a disaster, we were all fucked. Proper fucked, like one of my English classmates said after his unsuccessful dissertation defense.
So my choices were limited. Very, very limited.
I stared into the yellow-orange flames and waited for an answer, but none came.