Battle for Blood Ch. 04

Cole sat in a high back chair next to the vampire by the fireplace. Cole couldn't help feel like they were on set for some ridiculous play as the fire threw harsh light out onto their faces. Everything was just so here. The unchanging faces of the occupants lent the rooms the same sort of immobile permanence. Cole had never liked it.

"We are in trouble," Landsman said simply. "The weres are taking this one very seriously. This is not just some cult out in the middle of Norway. This is a global network of werewolves. Come midsummer they will attack. They believe their time has finally come to rid themselves of the vampire menace and become kings."

Cole snorted. "You can't be serious. They have tried this a million times. How is this any different?"

Landsman regarded him sadly. "It's all of them Cole and they are building numbers. We have reason to believe they created an army just to watch you. How many dogs lay outside your pit on any given day? Fifty? They were mostly new. They come into their strength faster than baby vampires and the wolves have been working on this for a long time."

Cole began to think seriously. A fair number had guarded him. The doctor had told him of at least five local boys in her one small town who had been turned. They could not all have been accidents. "Why has the council not responded? What are we waiting for?"

Landsman shrugged. "The old world vamps do not have the same problems we do. This land is perfect for wolves, lots of land, forest, unmarked territories for them to piss on. It's a misery for us, too much sun, too much technology. We are limited to the northern reaches of this country. The wolves have taken over the southwest, the Midwest, every cursed national park forest or reservation. We have been trying to negotiate, first for peace, then for you, then for anything. They are incorrigible. Our people are leaving back to Europe and Asia. The European council has suggested we do the same. They will send us only nominal reinforcements and the war is lost before it's begun."

Cole let this sink in. The silence stretched out between them. Wolves had been living under vampires for centuries, since the first ones had appeared in the freezing woods of northern Siberia. Because they died eventually they were never able to establish the same kind of infrastructure that vampires had. Vampires, in turn, had treated the wolves like inferiors; some even took them as pets, slaves or guards. Wolves were not organized on a large scale by nature; they were too territorial, too trapped by their own instincts to rise above the pack mentality. If there was a global movement, all the wolves headed the same way, it was unprecedented.

"We need you, ancient one. You have been our champion before in every war we have ever fought. We thought we had found something else, something incredible, but it proved to be disappointing." Cole realized he was talking about Shane.

"What?"

"You met her, actually. I assume because you are here alone she did not survive your rescue, but we sent the only known offspring of a vampire to rescue you."

Cole widened his eyes. "She was what?"

Landsman nodded. "Unfortunately during her extraction her father was killed so we may never know how he did it but she is made both human and vampire."

"What happened? Why was she disappointing?"

"She only possessed a fraction of the power we had hoped she would show. Adriana found her and trained her and even she agreed that the girl would not win this war for us. She suggested we use her to retrieve you. All of our efforts had come up short. They fortified you against vampire attacks rather well. We suspect there is at least one vampire working with the wolves."

Cole's brows snapped together. "Impossible. Why would any vampire work with them?"

Landsman shrugged again, looking younger than even his human years. "Perhaps it is the end. We have no army, nor have we ever. We cannot build one, our people are too independent. We have thirty-five vampires living under this roof, 60 more in the compound and that is the largest concentration of our kind anywhere. We never thought we would need to fight on this scale." Landsman paused, letting the silence fill with the sounds of the fire. "Rest assured, ancient one, if the wolves win, we will become the hunted and no vampire will be safe."

*

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