Chapter Four
Upon my return home, two things happened. Firstly, Ray swept me up in a bone-crushing hug that took me off my feet. When he finally set me down, he looked me over for any sign of possible injury. Werewolves in general were not supposed to be very open with their feelings. They were supposed to be these ruthless beings that were strong, proud, and emotionless.
Ray wasn’t a typical werewolf.
He had no problem showing how much he loved me and Ilene, especially since our mother had died. He’d acted indifferent around an old werewolf like Roger Mason, but while in that bathroom, I could tell how hard it had been for him not to run over and hug both of us.
The second thing that happened was Ilene demanding to know everything that had happened. She was fascinated by my first encounter with a vampire since I’d shifted for the first time. And to be honest, I was too. Everything that I had thought about a vampire had been wrong. When I’d first been attacked, it had been at nighttime, and I didn’t remember anything else about the attack.
Werewolves seldom remembered their first attack.
What I needed right now was to sit down and talk to Ray. I needed to be able to ask any questions I might have without fear of being ridiculed.
“Dad, I thought that vampires couldn’t go out in the sunlight. Unless he managed to jump from tree shadow to tree shadow, everything I knew was wrong.”
“They can go into the sunlight as long as they have a regular amount of human blood. If they go longer than a week or so without feeding, then step into the sunlight, they begin to burn. If they don’t move into the dark, they’ll catch fire and eventually burn to ash. When a vampire is staked, all of that blood that they took to sustain them is lost. They turn gray, shrivel up, and die.”
I thought about what he was saying. “But, if it’s so easy for a vampire to feed, why would they go a week without doing it? I would think that it would be almost impossible for a vampire to well…starve?”
Ray smiled. “It’s very easy for a vampire to feed. If they catch someone’s eye, most of the time they can influence a person to do whatever it is they want: invite them into their home, let them be fed upon, even kill themselves. But, some vampires don’t like having to feed off of humans.”
“What?” Ilene asked, surprised. “You’ve met a vampire that didn’t like to drink blood?”
“No, I didn’t say that. Some vampires don’t like feeding from humans, not because of some moral reason, but because they don’t like associating with humans. They consider humans to be beneath them, because they tend to be weaker. And even though werewolves can taste a little gamey to them, they prefer the challenge of hunting us to that of simply persuading a human.”
“So some vampires are just picky eaters?” Ilene asked.
Ray nodded once. “Yes, Ilene, some are. Others would feed on an infant and have absolutely no feelings of remorse. Some prey on the sick or elderly, simply because it’s easier.”
“Vampires are disgusting,” Ilene said. “I can’t believe anybody would ever want to be a bloodsucking monster.”
“If it was a choice between dying or that…some people wouldn’t have a problem with it.”
“You’re right, Alanna. Some people are so terrified of death and getting older that they would be willing to do anything to forestall it, even if it meant killing others to do it. You both need to remember that, in case you ever find yourself in a fight with a vampire again. They will do anything to survive, even if it means killing the innocent. Never turn your back on a vampire.”
“Dad, are all vampires evil?” I heard myself ask.
He didn’t answer for a minute, and I could tell he was seriously thinking about this answer. “I’m not real sure, Alanna. I guess it’s possible that there are good vampires, well, at least as good as any vampire could be. But I’ve never met or heard of any actual good vampire.”
So, there were evil vampires, and then there were eviler vampires. There was no such thing as good where they were concerned. I couldn’t accept that. Nobody was inherently evil. People were born with free will, and they could choose what they wanted to be.
Couldn’t they?
If what Ray was saying was true, the three of us hadn’t chosen to be good; we’d been pre-programmed that way. Ever since we’d been born, we’d never had a say in the matter. That just wasn’t possible. Being good or evil was all about choice. Surely there was a vampire somewhere that wasn’t completely evil, which had made the conscious decision to be good.
Ray seemed to sense my inner ramblings. “Kiddo, I haven’t met every vampire in the world. I could be very wrong. There may very well be good vampires, and I’d even like to think that I could meet one someday. I guess you’ll just have to find it out on your own.”
Nobody spoke for a minute, and I used that time to think about something else that had been bothering me.
“Dad?”
“Yeah, kiddo?”
“What can you tell me about Roger Mason?”
He frowned. “Alanna, I don’t think–”
“Dad, he seriously creeps me out. I want to know as much about him as possible. I’d also like to know what he could have possibly wanted with you. I mean, he did ask you out to lunch today, didn’t he?”
He sighed, and rubbed his face tiredly.
“Alright, Roger called me out of the blue and asked to have lunch with me. Roger just moved back to the area, into his family’s old home, and he wanted to get to know some of the other werewolves in the area. He asked about me, and about you and Ilene.”
“He wanted to know about us?” Ilene asked happily.
Ray looked at her, obviously concerned. “Yes, he did.”
“Cool. It’s awesome to have important werewolves take an interest in you,” she said with a smile. “Isn’t it?”
“Ilene, Roger Mason isn’t the kind of man I want you to know. He’s the guy that you spend as little time with as possible, because he unnerves people. Anyway, he was born back in sixteen twenty-four. He’s from one of the oldest werewolf families left. He was married at one point, with four children, until one night when he was in his late thirties. That night, a vampire passing through attacked his family, killing his wife and children. He and his oldest son were the only ones to survive the transformation from human to werewolf. His younger son, wife, and two daughters all died.
“Roger and his son, Henry, traveled the country, destroying vampires everywhere they went. A short year after the deaths of his family, Roger and Henry were ambushed by a small coven of vampires. Roger survived, with the scar you saw on his face. Henry wasn’t as fortunate. He died a very horrible, painful death, and it destroyed what was left of Roger’s compassion. He feels nothing now, except hatred, and perhaps lust.”
“Lust?”
“There have been some rumors floating around lately that Roger has been looking for a new mate.”
I was shocked. Werewolves mated for life, always. In the event of their mate’s death, they were sometimes known to starve themselves to death. Very few took a second mate. Normally, losing your mate wasn’t something that you could ever recover from enough to love another person.
“Werewolves have been known to do that. He isn’t the first to want a second chance at happiness,” Ilene said, breaking the uncomfortable silence in the room.
“Yes, but as I said, Roger is incapable of feeling anything but hatred for anything or anyone that he deems unworthy of life. I don’t think it’s possible for him to actually love another woman.”
“So, what you’re saying is, that after watching his entire family get brutally slaughtered, he turned into a monster?” Ilene asked. “What about you, Dad? If you had lost both of us instead of just mom, what would you be like right now?”
“He wouldn’t go around killing people just because one person hurt him!” I snapped. Ilene’s stance on vampires and their worth was pretty obvious, and I couldn’t help but feel a little disturbed at how little respect for
life she had. Everything had a right to live, didn’t it?
“Vampires are not people, Alanna. They’re dead creatures that kill others to sustain the remnants of their previous life. They’re disgusting, immoral, and should all be destroyed.”
“How can you sit there and condone the eradication of an entire group of people?” I asked, disgusted. “That’s like saying that Hitler had the right of things. It doesn’t matter that vampires are different from us or humans. They’re still people, and they don’t deserve to be wiped out!”
Ilene was speechless. She just stared at me, her mouth opening and closing with no words coming out. Finally, she found her voice. “You’re unbelievable. Those monsters killed mom, and you still think that they’re worthy of life?”
My temper rose, and I felt my hands clench into fists. “You know something, Ilene? Mom wasn’t the great person that you obviously think she was. She was a good mom, when she was here. But do you know how many times she left dad, broken and alone, only to come crawling back when she realized that she couldn’t make it work on her own? She didn’t even try to take us with her. Ever. She didn’t care about either of us, or the fact that the only reason dad wasn’t totally and absolutely destroyed by her leaving was that he had to take care of us. She. Didn’t. Care.”
Ilene glared at me. “How dare you speak about mom that way? She loved us and you know it. She wasn’t perfect, but she was our mother. I can’t believe you would actually say something that horrible about her.”
I noticed that during our little fight Ray was completely silent, and I wondered which of us he would end up siding with.
“Ilene, there are a lot of things you don’t understand about mom, because you were so young when she died. You were just a little baby, so I don’t blame you for not remembering, but she wasn’t a good person. I loved mom, so much, and I still do, but that doesn’t mean she was without her faults. Nobody is perfect.”
Ray’s hands were clenched tight, same as mine, and he sighed. “Ilene, Alanna’s right. Your mother made some poor decisions, and her memory has affected the way you think about vampires. I don’t like them, in fact, I’ll even admit that I hate them, but I don’t think they all deserve to be destroyed. Besides the fact that we need them to become the werewolves we are, we don’t get to decide who lives and who dies. You have to understand that everything has a right to live.”
Ilene got up so suddenly that she knocked her chair back, and stormed from the room without a second glance at either of us. We both watched her go, surprised and scared by her angry outburst.
“I’m worried about her.”
“I know,” Ray said sadly “We’re losing her.”
Ilene was a no-show at dinner, which was just as well, because Quinten was positively loving the attention that Ray was giving to him. The two of them had always liked each other, and part of me suspected that Quinten might have even thought of Ray as a replacement father-figure for the one he lost, but this was different.
For the first time since they’d met, Ray considered Quinten a man.
After dinner, the three of us took seats on the front porch. Ray and Quinten were busy talking about any and everything they could. It was then that I realized Quinten would never ask Ray about help for his grandmother. He’d be much too proud, especially now that Ray was finally proud of him. I’d have to talk to Ray without Quinten knowing.
He’d still probably hate me. I’d noticed over the years that men were strange like that. They were always so proud and stubborn. They had trouble accepting help from anyone. So I drove Quinten home and decided to stop at the park to think about what to do. How did I approach Ray with such a huge favor?.