Sweetheart

He moved through the mist towards her voice with a surety he had never felt before. The soft sound of that voice filled him with a sense of longing that in his innocence and youth he could never explain, but in his young heart he understood only too well. The tenderness in her tone as she called out to him was something he had never known before, and it drew him inexorably towards her.

Great Aunt Ileana could sometimes speak to him that way when Great Poppa Stanislav wasn't around. Many times she would tell him that he must be strong and hard like his Great Poppa. However, when they were alone, sometimes she could be sweet and kind, and she would make him smile. His cousin Oana, too, could often times be caring, and when the elders weren't around they could laugh and play together.

Still, the affection they showed him wasn't like this. In her mysterious voice, this angel in the mists promised him an unconditional love, one that would not wither even under the steely gaze of Great Poppa Stanislav. He knew this by the sound of her voice alone. It felt like a warm summer breeze that beckoned him forth with the utterance of the only word she ever called out to him, "Sweetheart."

She finally came into view as he scampered through the silvery mists that concealed her form. Her hair was a dark red. Her eyes were like two blue stars that blazed through the fog that seemed to perpetually conceal her. She held out her arms to him and called again that one word that struck right to his heart.

"Sweetheart."

Through the mist he could see her hold open her arms to embrace him. He quickened his pace to a run. He leapt through the air with all his supernatural agility and strength, hoping that just this one time when she wrapped her arms around him he would be able to see her face.

Then he woke up.

He startled from the dream that had haunted him so thoroughly the past several weeks. He sat straight up on top of the large scaffolding mounted to the roof of the abandoned warehouse he was hiding out in. Jolted from the sweet dream of longing into the fetid realm of the dingy city that now surrounded him, he groaned. Alone in the dark, his still heart ached.

He felt he knew exactly who she was, and exactly why he was seeing her. She was his mother, and she was calling out to him. When he had told cousin Oana about his belief she told him he was being silly. She told him his momma had gone to ash, slain by the hunters when he was born. It was a tale the whole Gens knew, and so did he. But he didn't care, he knew what he felt.

When he had confided in Great Aunt Ileana about it, she had immediately become upset and told him they were just dreams, and that he must not speak of such things, especially not around Great Poppa Stanislav, for it would greatly anger him. She told him to forget about it and mind his lessons, but he didn't forget, he couldn't.

For years he had listened to cousin Oana tell him secrets. She loved secrets, and because they were the only two young dhampir amidst the Gens he was the only one she had to tell them to. It was from Oana he had learned his mother's name: Zora. It was a beautiful name to him, a name that smacked of mystery and hidden promise.

It was from Oana that he learned why Great Poppa Stanislav let no one amongst the Gens speak of her. Oana had said that his momma was what she called a "romantic". She had fallen in love with the ways of the mortal world and a mortal man who practiced those ways, a poet, according to the tale. She had fled the Gens and had gone away to man's world, greatly angering his grandfather. According to all Bohdan knew, his mother had attracted the attention of the mortal hunters. How or why he did not know, but Oana said the mortals had killed her and his father.

Great Poppa Stanislav was not just his grandfather, and not just an elder, he was an ancient. He was born in a time when a great army called the Romans ruled the old mother country, a place Great Poppa called Dacia. Many, many moons ago his Great Uncle Dragomir had asked Great Poppa Stanislav to lead his Gens from the old Sinca forest of Dacia to a new home in the Pine Barrens of the province of New Jersey. The mortals called it Wharton Woods. His people called the forest New Sinca.

Most all the great chiefs of the New World dhampir were direct descendants of Great Poppa Stanislav. There were many in the forests of the American provinces, and it was said there were others in the far-off lands called Mexico and Canada. There were also many Gens in the city, but Great Poppa never spoke of those and no one else in the Gens did either, probably because Stanislav wouldn't let them.

Great Poppa was perhaps the fiercest nightwalker in all the New World. It was said only his brood brother, Dread Vali, could rival him. Among the dhampir of the New World, Great Poppa Stanislav was the big chief, the Great Father of the American dhampir, the Night King of the New World.

To Bohdan he was elder, teacher and ofttimes bane. Great Poppa was strict, and when Bohdan didn't listen he would get a good cuff to the ears to learn him. Great Poppa would also often profess his pride in Bohdan, too. It pleased him that Bohdan was such a good hunter at only eighty-eight moons old. Great Poppa was also something else, what his cousin Alexandru called an "ultra-traditionalist."

His cousin explained that if Great Poppa wanted, he could be the richest immortal in all the New World, but this was not Stanislav's way. Instead, he would only live in the old ways, hunting the creatures of the woods for meat and blood. Dhampir were not like other vampires, as the Primul Tata, the first father, was born of a vampire strigoi mort sire and a mortal Stregheria witch mother. Thus, they not only drank blood, but hungered for fresh meat as well. More importantly, unlike all other vampires, they could walk in the day without fear.

The woods had everything a dhampir needed: room to roam, game to hunt, and a sky to wander under. This was the way Great Poppa Stanislav liked it. He refused the comforts and the baubles of the modern world, for he swore with all his might they made the dhampir weak. Bohdan found it funny that his great Poppa did not like the modern world, but he liked its tools. At their hamlet in the barrens, Great Poppa had all sort of metal tools: fine metal hammers, well used, but sharp saws; many tins of nails of all kinds. They were apparently all forged by two wizards named Sears and Roebuck.

Cousin Alexandru told Bohdan to never speak of Great Poppa's love of the man-made metal tools, for that would make him furious, so Bohdan didn't. It greatly confused him because Great Poppa was a master smith who could forge weapons like no mortal could. Alexandru told him that it was the convenience that Great Poppa liked, but Bohdan didn't really understand what that meant.

Cousin Alexandru was a scoundrel and very cunning, and Bohdan liked him very much. He was the one who would go into the mortal world and get the things the Gens needed. He was the only one who was allowed to do so. That was where the problem between his momma and Great Poppa started.

Every dhampir was born of a union between one mortal and one immortal parent. If the child was born to a mortal woman it would be human for a time, and eventually would transform into its true self. That was when the Gens would come for it and take it back to the hamlet to teach them the ways of night. If the child was born to a female immortal, then it was born dhampir, like Bohdan.

They said that his mother had slain many hunters the night he was born, but she could not stop them all. They said his mortal father had fled with him, but the hunters had tracked them down all the same. They said that if Great Poppa had not shown up when he did, not only would they have killed his mortal father, but set Bohdan to ashes too. They said that after Great Poppa Stanislav and the other warriors of the Gens were done with them only one had escaped with his life.

They said his father was a great bard who truly loved his mother, and knew her secret, and still gave her his heart. He wondered if the hunters who might still live knew what they had taken from him. He wondered what things would be like if his mother and his father had lived. Would they have taken him far from the Pine Barrens and the Sinca Gens? Would he have gotten to live in the mortal world like his father? Would he know the things that mortal boys got to learn? Would he have gotten to play the video games and go to school like mortal boys could? Would his father have taken him to Disney World, where Oana told him there was a magic kingdom where faeries lived, and even mortal children got to live forever? He hated the hunters even though he had never met them, and he knew he always would.

Oana had told him something else, too: his mother had traded with the Nora of the city. The Nora were another tribe of vampires. They were bald like the dhampir, and they could turn invisible. The dhampir could wear the Form of Shadows, but they could not become invisible; that was special. However, the sun burnt the Nora, burned them to a crisp. Also, they could not take the human form like the dhampir could, they were not shape-shifters.

Oana had said that the ability to walk in day among the mortals meant that his mother was very useful to them, and they would barter boons with her. It wasn't much, but it might be that they would remember her. Maybe they would even know where she was, and why she wouldn't come and get him. He believed it was because she was afraid of Great Poppa Stanislav; everyone was afraid of Great Poppa Stanislav.

Alexandru had told him the Nora hunted the world of man for more than just blood. They used all the secrets they learned being invisible to make themselves rich. He had swiped a large roll of the paper money that mortals seemed to love so much from his cousin's stash. He would gladly give them the whole roll if they would tell him where she was, or at least what more may have happened to her.

Thus, he had stolen a pocket box from one of the pineys, the mortals who dwell in the barrens. Pocket boxes were marvelous things. Cousin Alexandru had one, and had shown Bohdan how to work it a couple of times when Great Poppa was off hunting. You could watch the moving pictures on them. Find the great library that the wizards kept in the air called, "the Intronet", and talk to people like on the telephone through one. Cousin Alexandru had told him you could even track with one because they were like a compass. You typed in the place you wanted to go, and it showed you how to get there.

So, he had typed in Front Street in Philadelphia, where Oana had said the Nora dwelled, and the blue dot appeared showing the way. With the paper money in his pocket, the pocket box in his hand, and the clothes on his back, he waited till Great Poppa was out chopping wood, and then he set out. He stole rides on trucks and the great iron rail trains. He ran when he could in his true form, and walked in the form of a boy when he couldn't. Three days, it took him; he hunted all along the way. He drank the blood and ate the flesh of raccoons, possums, rabbits, and had even brought down a deer. Good eating, and good blood. Eventually he found his way into the dingy city.

Bohdan had been careful to keep turning the pocket box off to preserve it, but the magic that powered it, its battery, his cousin called it, had failed. So he had made it to the city. The problem was he didn't know how to find the road called Front Street where the Nora laired. He was lost in the dingy city, surrounded by mortals. Despite his predicament, he was more determined than ever to find her; he just needed to find the Nora first.

With his supernatural senses he could smell the dirty, smelly mortals beneath him shambling about the abandoned building where he had slept through the day. To him, the layabouts of the city were a sorry lot. Great Poppa Stanislav had said that there were many humans in the city who didn't know how to hunt, or to chop wood, or build a cottage or just generally take care of themselves. They lived outdoors just wandering the streets. Cousin Alexandru said many of them would huff a kind of powder or snuff they bought from brigands who prowled the cities. The snuff wasn't like what the elders huffed, but some sort of poison that made them soft in the head.

Bohdan had seen this now first-hand. The humans would get the snuff and they would put it in needles and stick themselves with them, or they would smoke it like it was tobacco. Then they would do the weirdest walk. They would bend over, and just stand there like that, sometimes for hours, or caper about making strange noises and flailing at invisible foes.

Bohdan got up, and with an agility that would make a squirrel jealous, scampered to the middle of the scaffolding he was on to look down. He was easily over sixty feet up, but this didn't frighten him in the least. Even if he could fall, and in his mind he couldn't, falls didn't kill dhampir. It might hurt, but that's it. Only the flame or losing your head could kill his kind, and dhampir long learned that if the hunters came wielding the flame, a good throwing axe, a spear or knife could even the odds real fast. Heck, some of his Gens had the thunder-sticks. Doubled-barreled ten-gauge was what Old Silviu called it, and it sure made a racket. Silviu said it would blow a mortal man right out his boots and tear him in half to boot. Hunters had come to New Sinca before, but none of them had ever lived to tell of it.

There were several mortals milling about the great, cavernous building. All of them were disheveled and filthy to him. Dhampir benefitted from supernatural senses. They could smell blood from miles away, and track prey by scent alone better than a hound. Great Poppa's smell was so good he could tell where Bohdan had been during the day just by his scent. The mortals had not bathed in some time, and so they smelled terrible to him.

His keen eyes easily surveyed the warehouse, despite the dim light that only filtered in from the outside light posts and the sliver of Luna that hung in the sky. The eyes of his kind could produce their own light, and so they were never in the dark, like mortals were. This caused their eyes to glow an eerie, silver-like hue. The darker the environment, the brighter the eyes of the dhampir would gleam.

Bohdan could clearly see there were five humans down there, four male, one female. One of the men was quietly talking to the woman and trying to build a fire. Two of the others were sullenly conversing and a younger man lie alone in the corner wearing a grimy, red jacket with a hood on it that was pulled up over his head to conceal his face. He was lying on an old, beat-up mattress pushed against the wall.

Suddenly a thought occurred to him: perhaps these humans could help him. Perhaps if he took the form of a boy and approached them with some of the paper money, they would tell him where to find Front Street. He was not afraid of them, they were only human. Bohdan knew that even a little dhampir like himself was as strong as a full-grown man, if not stronger. Great Poppa Stanislav could rip off the arms of a human with no effort or all, or throw one into the high limbs of a tree with ease. Furthermore, if they lied to him he would know. He could hear it in their heartbeats and scent it on the air.

He quickly made his way to the wall of the ceiling where the scaffolding adjoined the roof. He called forth the Form of Shadow that all his kind could wield. Anyone who had actually seen him would have witnessed his small form suddenly become obscured by a blanket of darkness that clung to him like a cape made of pure shadow. With a silence that a ninja would envy, he clambered down the wall head-first. Dhampir could climb like spiders, and they defied gravity with ease. When he reached the ground he effortlessly flipped off the wall and landed with barely a sound.

He found cover between two beat-up old storage racks that had been overhung with a filthy canvas to form a makeshift room. There he began to concentrate. His stooped simian-like posture suddenly began to grow and straighten. His long pointy ears began to shorten and take on mortal form. His impossibly long arms began to shrink to a human scale. His silver eyes began to dim and take on the semblance of two blue eyes like his mother's before him. He grew long, straight hair. His facial features lost their animalistic, sharp edges and took on human contours. Most of all, his jet-black fangs and nearly two-inch long talons began to shrink and take on the form of normal human teeth and fingernails. When his transformation was complete he jaunted out of the shadows, letting his cloak fade, and approached the two humans. They never saw him coming.

"Jesus!" the older of the two declared as he jumped back, utterly startled by Bohdan's sudden appearance. The other human jumped back as well. They looked old to him. The one who cried out wore a dark-colored hat with a bill on the end of it that many of the pineys seemed to prefer.

"What the hell, kid, where did you come from!" he shot at Bohdan, as the other three homeless looked over to the commotion. Bohdan suddenly realized he had never had the chance to actually talk to a mortal before. He had seen several, and not just including the ones that his Gens had cooked and eaten for discovering their hamlet in the barrens. There were the sorcerers who traded with Great Poppa Stanislav on occasion, oft-time to get him to fight something for them, and they were never disappointed. Then there were the witches who would try to treat with Great Poppa, but there had been a falling out many moons ago with the daughters of the First Mother, and Great Poppa always sent them away.

There was the group of hunters that came, too. His Great Poppa had insisted that he hide in the trees and watch how the warriors of the Gens had dealt with them. It had been a gory sight to watch the mortal men ripped apart by his clan. Men thought their guns could hurt all dhampir, but they were wrong. The elders could shrug off all but the biggest thunder-sticks, and even the shotguns didn't hurt Great Poppa Stanislav. Bohdan didn't know if anything but flame could.

Suddenly the chance to actually talk to mortals thrilled him. It made him feel important. Back in the village, only the elders were allowed to parlay with those few who dared to visit the hamlet. It was a freedom he had never known in his short unlife. He decided that since he wanted to barter with them he would treat them with respect. Great Poppa would just intimidate them, and they would always bow before him.

"I am sorry, Sirs, I didn't mean to give you a fright." he told them earnestly. "I am Bohdan, I am coming from … from the New Jersey Province. I am lost, and I am seeking the road called Front Street. I was wondering if you could tell me how to find my way there. I will gladly barter with you for the know." English was not his first language, and ancient form of Romanian was. Bohdan didn't know it, but if a linguistic professor had ever heard him speak the tongue of the Gens they would be shocked. They would have trouble telling it apart from Vulgar Latin.

The two humans looked to each other in confusion. Between Bohdan's strange accent and his obvious problem with English, neither of them knew exactly what he was asking them. The other human, who had long, grey hair and wore a beat up, puffy blue jacket asked, "Where are you from kid? You sure as hell don't sound like you're from Jersey."

The man with the hat added, "And what the hell is a province?"

The other three humans had come over and were looking at him with the same confusion in their eyes. He knew he had to be careful. No dhampir was supposed to speak of the Night to mortals. The problem was, he suddenly realized he didn't really know their language. Their words were different form his. The Gens practiced the old ways, these mortals wouldn't grasp that.

Though he was young and inexperienced, he knew how to hunt. Great Poppa Stanislav had taught him to bait traps for bears and deer and such. You had to have something the prey wanted. He went into his pocket and peeled off several of the bills from the roll. They had the number twenty printed on them. He didn't know if that was a lot of money, but he would find out.

"Here," he said as he waved the twenties at the two men. "If you can tell me how to track to the Front Street road you can have these."

They looked at each other again with befuddled glances. The one with long hair told him, "Kid, you gotta be careful around here. You just can't go waving around Jacksons, you're gonna get got."

Bohdan wasn't exactly sure what the long-haired mortal meant, but it seemed as though he was trying to warn him presenting the paper money could be dangerous. "It is well, Sirs. If you please, I would just like to know how to get to the Front Street."

The two older men looked to each other completely baffled. Finally, the one with the billed hat said, "You know what, Kid, sure, why not." He then gave Bohdan instructions on how to find Front Street. Bohdan could tell the hatted human was genuine, and when he was done, Bohdan gladly gave each of them a twenty and turned eagerly to leave.

The younger man in the red hoody called out, "Wait, kid!" Bohdan had what he wanted, and because he had actually managed to get by talking to mortals all by himself, he was very proud. He bounded off paying no attention to the young indigent calling after him. That was, until the younger man began to chase him. Bohdan immediately heard the heavy footsteps trailing after him and whirled around to face his pursuer and growled. The sound he made was like nothing any human could make, and even the younger indigent stopped, surprised.

The older humans immediately began to feel it, that sense that something was very wrong. What kind of a child comes out of the shadows boldly bearing twenties and asking for rudimentary directions at this time of night? The woman called out, "Leave him alone, Cory!"

"Yeah, leave off, punk. He paid us," the long-hair added.

"Cory, get away from that kid, something ain't right," the hatted human said urgently.

All of them could feel it, but they didn't understand what it was. Each mortal near Bohdan was experiencing that ancient sixth sense, that inborn instinct that their ancestors from countless thousands of years ago understood. On a primordial level the humans sensed that they were in the presence of something other. This sixth sense that warned mortals of the approach of the creatures of the night was something they didn't understand in modern nights, but they could still feel.

"Relax!" Cory commanded them as he looked over his shoulder.

He looked back at Bohdan and a chill ran down his spine at the strange menacing sound the kid was making. "What's wrong with you kid, you some kind of freak?"

Bohdan grew angry. He knew if his Great Poppa saw him, he would not be pleased. Even if he was only a little dhampir, this human should still be afraid of him, or at least he knew that's how Great Poppa would see it. He also knew he was not supposed to reveal himself to humans. It was a bad situation for a little dhampir to deal with, and Bohdan wasn't sure what to do.

"Tell you what kid, you give me a couple of Jacksons and I'll take you to Front Street myself," Cory posed dismissively.

The last thing Bohdan would tolerate was a human near him while he sought the Nora. He stopped growling long enough to say, "No. No money for you, layabout, now go away."

"What did you say, kid?" Cory challenged as he tried to rise up menacingly over Bohdan, which only succeeded in making the small dhampir angrier. Then, the brazen addict made one of the worst decisions of his mortal life. He reached out to grab Bohdan. Cory discovered something that all supernatural creatures who have walked the night for any length of time knew of and feared: Night Steel. Dhampir teeth and claws weren't jet black because they were rotten and neglected, but because they were made of Night Steel. This preternatural metal inflicted wounds that even other vampires and werewolves had extraordinary difficulty healing from, and it was as hard as any metal forged by man.

Bohdan lashed out with terrifying speed. His lips lost their human form, his fangs instantly transformed to their true, lethal shape. He sank his jaws into Cory's arm right at the wrist, and very nearly bit it off entirely.

Cory screamed in shocked horror as he fell back holding his now sagging hand as it clung precariously to his arm by what little meat still connected it to his limb. Behind him the other humans all shrieked. The older indigents had the good sense to trust their instincts and run as fast as they could.

While blood spurted from Cory's mauled wrist, Bohdan began to chew the chunk of meat he had taken out of Cory's arm. It tasted so bad that he almost gagged. Bohdan imagined that if he were to ever eat scat this is what it would taste like. Between Cory's shrieking and the horrible taste in his mouth, Bohdan lost his temper. This human had tried him, and now that he had suffered for it he was screaming and calling attention to them both.

He spat out Cory's wrist and fully transformed back. This happened so fast the screaming addict didn't have time to see it. Bohdan lashed out with a slash from his two inch long claws, considered small by dhampir standards, and cut right through the flesh of Cory's screaming mouth. The skin around his jaws gave way in a wound that nearly peeled his face in two. Blood filled Cory's mouth and he began to choke on it.

Bohdan then leapt forward and kicked the addict in the chest with such force he not only knocked him flat but also knocked all the air from his lungs. The small dhampir then picked up a brick lying amidst all the detritus of the warehouse and cracked it over the front of Cory's head to shut him up. His intention was just to quiet the screaming mortal, but a moment later, with the other homeless having run off, and silence flooding back into the warehouse, Bohdan could hear Cory had no heartbeat.

He threw down the brick and spat at the now dead addict. He hadn't wanted to kill the human, just to silence him. He had been trained from the time he was very small not to leave a human intact if a hunter might recognize the prey as having been brought down by dhampir. If you killed a human you had two choices: eat it or burn it.

Given the taste of this human, and the fact that he was only a little dhampir, eating it was out of the question. He had been trained in the ways of the wood since before he could first talk. He knew how to start a fire, and knew it would be difficult to burn this body. He began to panic as to what to do. He knew the other humans would bring sheriffs, and he needed to be gone soon. That's when he caught the scent of something familiar, alcohol. Dhampir didn't drink it of course, but cousin Alexandru had shown him that it could be used to start a fire quickly. His cousin had come by several bottles of the stuff from some mortals he had slain for Great Uncle Dragomir.

Bohdan bounded over to the origin of the scent and there was a bottle of half consumed booze that one of the homeless must have dropped. He snatched it up and began to douse the body with it. Given that the derelict warehouse had plenty of abandoned wood pallets lying around, finding two dry sticks to rub together wasn't difficult. He used his claws to prepare the wood for rubbing as he had been trained. Given his strength and speed he had the wood smoking in moments. By the time the police sirens could be heard approaching the body was on fire and Bohdan was gone.

***

Bohdan made was way through the city in the form of a boy. He had handled the situation with the foolish layabout quickly, and his Great Poppa probably would have been pleased with him. However, he was not happy. His momma had fled to the world of man because she had loved its ways. If she was out there hiding amidst the mortals then he would have to know those ways too. Yet the first time he had tried to just barter with a mortal he wound up slaying one.

Claiming First Kill against the mortals was something every dhampir warrior was expected to do, but Bohdan was very young to have done such a thing. Doubtlessly this would please Great Poppa to, but not him. He had to find a way to understand the humans better. Hopefully when he found his mother she would help him grasp the human's world, and they could live there, well away from the Gens and Great Poppa's wrath.

He stopped suddenly as he picked up the scent. He knew it wasn't mortal. He knew the scent of War Wolves, shamans and wolf witches, and this wasn't it either. It was a musky scent, dry and harsh. He could tell it didn't belong to any living being. He figured he had found them. He looked about until he saw a street sign and ran over to it. Sure enough it read in the mortal tongue, as he called English, Front Street.

He could smell the nearby river, the great Delaware, and from what Oana had told him, that meant he was close. He looked for a perch where he could get a better view. The stone buildings here were much higher than many of the ones that he had seen thus far. It would be difficult to climb up one without being seen by the nearby humans, even at night, because of all the electric lamps set atop the tall poles. Mortals might notice a strange shadow where there should be none, especially if it was climbing up a high wall.

Plus, some mortals kept staring at him as he made his way through the city. It had not escaped his youthful notice that there were no mortal children out at this time of night in this part of the city, at least not now. He had seen many young ones on his way here, but this place wasn't like the others. There didn't seem to be any of the stone cottages here where the humans huddled after the sun went down. This place appeared to be where many shopkeeps sold their wares.

He noticed that there were various small copses of trees clustered on the corners of the paved streets. He tried to look nonchalant as he made his way over to one looking about sheepishly to ensure he was unobserved. When it seemed there were no mortals nearby, he waited till one of the motor cars drove past and then let the form of boy slip away. He hunkered down low and called the shadows to him. The cover of the tree sheltered him form the intrusive light, and he slipped easily into darkness.

Then it was a simple matter for him to clamber up the trunk. He moved more like an ape or a chimpanzee then anything human as he effortlessly ascended the tree. When he reached the last sturdy branches at the top, he double-checked to ensure no humans were nearby. He then ran up the length of the branch and leapt off it. He propelled himself through the air and landed on the nearby wall with a soft slap. He waited and looked around. They only thing any human would have seen if they looked up was a small shadow on the wall. Once he was sure he was safe, he scampered up the sheer wall like a squirrel.

Once he got to the top, he could tell that no humans came up here regularly, and he could relax a bit. He drank in the night air, picking up the scent again. It was very close. He bounded and scampered across the rooftop in the direction of what he believed to be the Nora. He felt a certain thrill moving furtively through the night. Here, up so high, mortals didn't tread. Out here on the rooftops there were no elders to tell him what to do. These lonely rooftops belonged only to him, his own little world. He wanted to loiter a bit, but he knew he had no time. Great Poppa Stanislav might already be looking for him, and he could track anything, even through a city.

He made his way up and down several walls and across several rooftops until he came to an odd roof that the mortals did dwell on. There were plants and bushes planted in big stone tubs without legs. There were many chairs and tables out there too, and he could see doors made of pure glass that the humans were using to go onto the roof. He had only ever seen wooden doors before. Bohdan knew he had to be close now. Only the rich would have doors made of glass; no wood folk would do such a thing. What if a bear came along, or a war wolf; they could smash right through it. The Nora might do such a thing, they were rich and there were no bears or war wolves on the rooftops to threaten them, so what need would they have of good, strong wooden doors?

He sniffed the air and knew they were here, but below him. He darted off in their direction and quickly scampered down the wall into a wood-lined alley replete with trees Bohdan wasn't familiar with. They did not detect his approach as he came closer.

There were three of them talking amongst themselves. They each had on strange hats with wide brims that helped conceal their features. They had very broad shoulders, and had a blocky look to them. They all wore the long coats that his cousin Alexandru liked to wear when he went into the mortal world. Alexandru was so fond of them because he liked to hide his gladius sword under the coat. As he crept up on them he heard them talking about something called insurance. Then the seeming eldest among them mentioned his Great Uncle Dragomir by name.

"I am knowing Dragomir." he said out loud, completely catching them off guard. All three Nora jumped back, cursing. They assumed a combat stance and the eldest drew forth one of the hand-guns that mortals like to carry. Bohdan wondered if such a little gun could hurt him. It was nowhere near as big as Old Silviu's double-barreled thunder stick.

"I am meaning you no harm." He told them. "I am only little dhampir; I only come to trade."

"What the hell!" said the eldest as they came closer to get a better look at him.

Bohdan assumed he was eldest because he was biggest. It worked the same way with his kind. One of the younger Nora asked, "What the hell is it?"

"He already told you," the elder said, "He's dhampir."

"One of Dragomir's?" the third Nora asked.

"The Philley Gens doesn't have any whelps I know about right now. There are too many of them." The elder stated.

"So he comes from the barrens?" The second Nora asked.

"Yes!" Bohdan told them enthusiastically. "I come from the New Sinca Gens, from the New Jersey Province."

"Province?" the second Nora asked.

The Elder told him offhandedly as he glared at Bohdan with alarming intensity, "It means state. Why are you here, boy? Does your grandfather know you're in the city?"

"He may well, Great Poppa Stanislav is very cagey. I have come to trade," he told them, intent to quickly change the subject away from his grandfather. "I have brought the paper money, much of it; if you help you can have it." He held up the wad of cash and waved it around so they could see it.

"Where the hell did you get that?" the second Nora asked. He seemed to be the youngest and hadn't known what Bohdan was when he had seen him for the first time. The other two seemed the wiser. He thought this might be good, for if the elder Nora knew Dragomir and they knew about his Gens they wouldn't want to make trouble with him.

"How much you got there, kid?" the youngest Nora asked.

"Shut up, Cutty!" his elder scolded.

"What, what's wrong?" the younger Nora asked, confused by the sudden hostility of his elder.

"What did you want to trade, Boy?" the elder asked him.

"Stories, stories about my momma. I was told several moons ago that she traded boons with the Nora of Front Street. I am looking for her, and thought maybe you knew what happened to her; she was called Zora. Did you know her?" he asked earnestly.

The two elder dhampir looked at each other with trepidation. Cutty asked the other two if they knew what Bohdan was talking about. Finally, the eldest Nora seemed to think it was wisest if Cutty knew what he was dealing with. The eldest asked him as he pointed at Bohdan, "You know who that is?"

"A dhampir kid; right, I remember you guys telling me they breed new members rather than biting them."

"Good, I wasn't wasting my time when I was telling you this stuff. Right now there's only one male whelp out in the barrens, because the dhampir Gens, that means clan before you ask, is pretty big right now, so they don't need new members. That single male child is the grandson of Stanislav; you remember what I told you about him?"

Cutty hesitated, and looked over to Bohdan before he replied, "Stanislav the Slayer?"

"Yup," the elder replied, "That's the one. Member why they call him that?"

"Because he killed War Wolves in a straight-up scrap, right?" Cutty offered in a worried tone.

"Yeah, War Wolves," the eldest confirmed. "You ever see a war wolf, kid?"

"No," Cutty replied hesitantly.

"They're twice as big as silverback gorillas, and ten times meaner. They can throw cars, and their claws and fangs can rip wood apart like a hot knife through butter. Now imagine something then can rip one of those giant werewolves apart, and that's what that little dhampir is going to be in about twenty years, and that's what his grandfather is right now. Except if you took every single dhampir in North America, Mexico and South America, you would find none of them is as dangerous as Stanislav, probably since most all of them can trace their bloodline right back to him. Now, you want to find out how much money that dhampir whelp has, or do you want to shut up and go tell Lassiter what we are dealing with here?"

"I'll go get the boss," Cutty agreed.

"Good boy," the eldest Nora said, as Cutty went into the great stone building.

The two remaining Nora carefully approached him. "Does Dragomir know you're here, kid?" the eldest asked.

"No; Sinca Gens can come into the city when they want," Bohdan claimed.

"They can," the Nora agreed, "but tradition clearly dictates that all younger dhampir are supposed to show Dragomir the respect of his station, and present themselves to him. Now, your uncle is going to be mad if you don't go visit him and let him know you're here. Obviously, we know who you are, and we know Dragomir is your great uncle, and if Dragomir gets angry with you then you know your grandfather will, too."

This agitated Bohdan, and he dropped to all fours in a simian-like fashion. The Nora got nervous and backed up, worried he might mean to attack. The fact was, he knew the Nora weren't wrong. Though Uncle Dragomir was junior to Great Poppa Stanislav, this was his territory, and whenever Alexandru came into the city he had to report to Uncle Dragomir right away. Technically that meant Bohdan did too, at least as far as he understood it. He hadn't counted on the Nora knowing so much about his Gens. He did know that going to see Uncle Dragomir was out of the question. His great Uncle would immediately take him back to Jersey. Dragomir was many, many moons old, but he feared Great Poppa Stanislav as much as any other.

Suddenly four more Nora emerged from inside the stone building, and Cutty was with them. Two were male, and two females, and all dressed up in the strange, fancy, city folk garb. Bohdan found this to be very silly. The Nora had skin that was very pale, and their eyes were yellow. Their bald heads and squared, blocky forms looked very strange in human clothes to him. He found it odd that creatures who didn't look human at all tried so hard to dress like humans. He wondered if maybe it was because they could not shape shift like his people could.

When the eldest in the alley saw them, he quickly approached the one among them who had very broad shoulders and wore a long coat and wide brimmed hat. Though he was not the tallest, it was obvious to Bohdan he was their chief, and Bohdan assumed he was the one they called Lassiter. They looked over at him and spoke very quietly in a language that Bohdan didn't understand. Finally, the broad-shouldered elder slowly approached, keeping his hands up in the air so that Bohdan could see they were empty.

"Hey there, little shaver, my lad tells my you've come looking for tell of your momma," Lassiter asked.

"Yes," Bohdan said excitedly, "I've come to barter. I have the paper money, many notes of twenty, you can have them if you will tell any know of her."

"Oh, dear, lad," said the broad-shouldered Nora, "Sadly there's not much to tell. She ran afoul of the hunters, I reckon right around the time you were born. We Nora, we have rules, just like the dhampir Gens, you see. The ancient way of our cabals is, no immortal is allowed to do anything that'll make a hunter savvy to our lairs. So, you see, once your momma was tagged by the hunters, we couldn't help her. That's the law of night."

His accent was even stranger to Bohdan then the other Nora. Bohdan knew that most likely meant he wasn't from these lands, like Great Poppa and Uncle Dragomir. That also meant he was likely old. Bohdan could not read him like he did the first Nora who had lied to him. He knew he had to tread carefully. Even if this Nora wasn't dhampir, he was still likely very strong, far stronger then Bohdan.

He began to feel vulnerable and knew it was probably best to go. Yet he was sure that these Nora knew something; they just didn't want to tell him. If he left with nothing, the trek here was a waste. If he had no idea how to find his mother, then all that was left was to return to New Sinca, and Great Poppa Stanislav, who was going to be very angry with him. But how could he make them tell him? He was only little, and they certainly weren't afraid of him.

Then the thought occurred to him, they weren't afraid of him, but from what they told Cutty they were certainly afraid of Great Poppa Stanislav. "I am hoping my great Poppa is not yet knowing that I'm here. He might think me lost in the woods and is tracking for me. If I leave now and go see my Great Uncle, then he will be knowing, and he will know I come to see you. If you barter with me the tell of my momma, you can have all the twenty notes and I will go back to New Sinca rabbit-fast. I will tell him I got lost hunting, and he need not be angry with you or me."

This made all the Nora look to Lassiter for his reaction, all but one. One of the two woman among them never took her eyes of Bohdan. There was a strange look on her face that he had only seen his cousin Oana sport whenever she talked about seeing the big city.

"Well," said Lassiter, "you're a little whippersnapper, aren't you? I'd figure you too small to be so cagey, lad, but you are definitely one of Stanislav's. You know Alexandru, don't you boy?"

Bohdan shuffled in place uncomfortably; this Lassiter and his Gens seemed to know everything about him. "He is my cousin, you are knowing him?"

"Of course," the elder Nora replied. "You Sinca dhampir are the most dangerous of your kind. Dragomir is a killer and a slayer, but he's been in the city for easily over a century now. You wild dhampir, you night stalkers, there's nothing that fights like you. Alexandru is as good as any three of his city cousins in a scrap. He's done some favors for us, with his uncle's permission, of course. Those bills you're waving at us, little one, he almost certainly got those from us. Does he know you took them?"

Bohdan dropped down to all fours again and growled in agitation.

"I didn't think you did." Lassiter concluded smugly. "Listen, little one, what's your name?"

"Bohdan," he snarled back.

"Bohdan, look, you know that your Great Uncle Dragomir, your cousin Alexandru, and most of all, your Great Father Stanislav are all going to be very cross with you when they find out what you've done. Come with me, we'll take you to your uncle, and he'll take you back home to the barrens. If you come with us like a good boy I'll tell your Uncle that you just got lost and came looking for him. I'm sure he'll explain everything to your Great Father who will just be happy to have you safe back in the barrens, Okay?"

Bohdan might not have been able to articulate the concept of condescension, but despite his tender age he understood it. The politics of dominance was how his Great Poppa ran things in the barrens, and when another member of the Gens had displeased him he would be dismissive of them, if he wasn't furious at them. Bohdan didn't like the way Lassiter did it at all. It wasn't direct like Great Poppa was. Most of all, it infuriated him that the Nora wouldn't share their secrets, which he knew they had.

He didn't understand all that was going on, given his innocence in the world of night and his youthful inexperience, but he understood that Lassiter had angered him, and he wanted to spite him for it. Lassiter was too big and strong to be challenged by a little dhampir, but Bohdan was very cagey for his tender years. He had to be; Great Poppa tolerated nothing less. He knew from his cousin Alexandru that Nora couldn't climb like dhampir could, and now he also knew they couldn't detect the dhampir when they wore the Form of Shadow.

With an agitated snarl Bohdan leapt onto the nearby wall and began to clamber up it with a speed that utterly surprised most of the Nora. Lassiter cursed and tried to get to him but he wasn't nearly fast enough. The Nora began to curse and Lassiter began to shout orders when suddenly the female Nora who had been staring at him called, "Wait, Bohdan, I knew your mother! I knew Zora!" Bohdan stopped cold and looked down at her with a gaping jaw.

"Mary!" Lassiter raged, furious she had admitted as much.

"Do you want him to run?" she yelled back. "When the Slayer comes looking for him, are you going to explain to him that the cabal lost his grandson? I remember the last time he came looking for Zora. Remember what happened to Mullins! The Slayer cut him to so many pieces you couldn't count them before they turned to ash!"

Her words froze Lassiter in place with a rictus of fury plastered to his pale, blocky face. His sizeable fists clinched in anger, but Mary didn't seem to care. She looked back up the wall and said, "Bohdan, your mother and I used to be friends, good friends. She told me all about your Great Father Stanislav. She told me about how he slew the great sasquatch that lived in the barrens and drove off his tribe when your Gens arrived. About how he fought off all the Lenape Wolf Witches who tried to drive him out, and how they made peace with him because they feared him. About the time he slaughtered the hated nosferatu cabal right here in Philly, back in eighteen thirty-one when they tried to bring cholera down from New York. That's when your Great Uncle Dragomir took over the city, to make sure they never came back. She told me all about your aunt Ileana, and how old she actually is."

Bohdan was shocked, he knew the Nora had secrets, but he didn't think they had all the dhampir secrets, too. He wondered if his Great Father would be angry if he ever found out. He clung to the wall looking down at Mary, not knowing what to do.

"Bohdan, if you promise to come with me, if you let me take you to your uncle, I'll tell you some stories about her," she offered.

"Do you know where she is?" he asked in return.

Mary looked up at him confused. "Honey, didn't you hear Lassiter? Your mother was killed by the hunters about eight years ago. Didn't the Gens tell you that?" All the Nora seemed to share her confusion, all but Lassiter.

"No," Bohdan insisted, "she is not gone to ash. I see her, I see her in my dreams; she calls to me."

The rest of the Nora just looked on befuddled. Mary replied, "Honey, those are just dreams, that's all."

"No, I see her blue eyes and dark red hair in my dreams; she calls to me," he insisted.

Mary hesitated as she looked up at the little vampire. Zora's hair was dark, but before she had died she had taken to dying it red every night when she rose from her slumber. She had said it helped her feel like someone new, but how would he know that?

"What did you say?" she asked the little dhampir, as she looked up at him in growing confusion.

"Enough!" Lassiter commanded.

He reached out to Mary and forcefully grabbed her and hissed, "That's enough. You're putting the whole cabal in danger, and risking your immortality."

Mary seemed even more confused and tried to push him away, but Lassiter grew angry and gripped her tighter.

"You're hurting me," she yelled at him.

"Silence, moron!" he snarled back. "Don't tell him any more, and don't listen to him." While Mary struggled in his vice like grip he turned to all the others and ordered, "Everyone, inside, now!"

The other Nora looked at each other with startled confusion. "Now!" he yelled. Realizing the depth of their elder's sudden, inexplicable anger, they all quickly moved to comply.

"What's wrong with you, Lassiter, you're acting like a bigger prick then is normal even for you!" she accused.

Taking hold of her arms he picked her up and painfully slammed her into the wall behind her, knocking the air from her undead form and actually cracking the brick wall. Her eyes grew fearful as she realized his level of angry desperation. Something the boy said had spooked him.

"Listen to me, Mary. Listen good. Once, I told you there were secrets that the ancients kept, and that we aren't supposed to know. Do you remember that?" he interrogated.

"Yes," she said through gritted teeth as he pressed her forcefully into the wall.

Then he said with deadly earnestness, "Stanislav is an ancient, and these are his secrets to keep. I don't know if there's anything else in America as old as he is, and I don't want to. I don't want to rough you up either, but you have to stop, now."

While Lassiter continued to try and intimidate Mary into cooperating, he had made a deadly mistake. Taking one's eyes of an angry dhampir, even a little one, was not wise. When Bohdan struck Lassiter, neither Nora saw nor heard it coming. The small dhampir's Night Steel claws cut through the back of Lassiter's knees like a razor cuts through paper. It wasn't meant to be a lethal wound, but it was meant to be a crippling one. With no hamstrings left attached, even Lassiter's undead form couldn't hold him aloft, and he shrieked in agony as he collapsed to the ground.

Completely taken by surprise, Mary looked on to see Bohdan crouched only just behind where Lassiter fell, his right hand held aloft in the finished swipe that had taken Lassiter down in a single blow.

A small child just took down a three-hundred-year-old elder with one swipe of his claws, she thought to herself . Are there any creatures in the night more lethal then dhampir? She knew that she should run. She should run from the controlling, manipulative beast that Lassiter was and never look back. She should run from the unlife he had forced on her, and she had never wanted. Most of all, she should run from this deadly child, this dhampir whelp who did represent death by virtue of his presence alone. Though the small immortal was obviously dangerous in his own right, he had nothing on what was going to come looking for him.

There was one thing that held her back: the memory of the woman who had given birth to this little immortal. The one time in the last ninety-five years of her unlife she had not felt truly alone had been when Zora had been her friend. She had cried tears of blood the night Lassiter told her what the hunters had done. She had missed Zora terribly on so many nights in the last eight years. This whelp, this little immortal, was all that was left of her in the world. She had learned that Stanislav had even forbidden the speaking of her name amidst the Sinca Gens.

That act her own father had committed, the forbidding of even the utterance of her name, was like a blow to Mary's heart. It was like he was trying to erase her memory. Now, after all this time, this child comes from nowhere bearing Zora's only legacy, only to take out Lassiter in a single swipe of his claws.

While Lassiter lie squirming in pain on the ground, the little vampire looked up at her with those mysterious, argent eyes. It was a look of nervous expectation as he gazed at her, given he didn't know how she would react. She realized that if Bohdan wanted to, he could finish Lassiter right now.

She suddenly launched herself at him, and fell to her knees. Bohdan feared she meant to attack and hissed as he held out his claws in a threatening manner, but she held out her arms to him, like his mother had in his dreams. "Bohdan, honey, come with me; you have to come with me now."

He hesitated.

"The others will come out any second to see what happened," she warned. Still he did not move.

"Bohdan," she said desperately, "he's coming, Stanislav is coming, you know he will." His grandfather's name alone was enough to conjure fear in the little dhampir's eyes.

"Come with me; I know how your mother used to avoid him, I know how to trick him so he can't find you, but you have to come, now!" she pleaded.

The mention of his Great Father was enough, and Bohdan dropped his defensive stance and scampered into her arms. Though she wasn't as strong as her creator, she was still a vampire, and lifting Bohdan's weight took no effort at all. She ran from the alley as fast as she could carrying him.

"Mary!" Lassiter screamed. "You idiot, put that whelp down and help me, or when Stanislav finds you, you are dead! He will cut you to ribbons! You don't know what you're doing!"

Mary turned and looked at her creator and tormentor, and glared at him for a moment before she sneered, "Go to hell. I hope the Slayer finds you before he finds me." She turned around and ran towards her car. The other Nora appeared around the corner of the building in hot pursuit just in time to see her car take the curb as she drove around the corner and disappeared into the city.

***

Bohdan looked out the window of the car as he pressed his hands against the glass in fascination. "What are they?" he asked as the conveyor belt pushed the car through the car wash.

"Brushes, I think, big brushes that wash the car," she said as she looked to the little dhampir with a careful amusement. You'd think by his reaction that she was taking him through a ride in an amusement park. Mary understood only too well that this was all brand new to him.

"Where does all the water come from?" he asked in wonder. "So much water."

"From pipes under the concrete and in the ceiling," she told him.

"Water through pipes?" he asked. "I thought pipes were just for smoking." She tried not to laugh.

"When cousin Alexandru wants to wash his pickup I have to help him carry water up from the pond in the big buckets," he said wistfully. She understood his fascination only too well. The first time she had seen an automated car wash was back in the sixties when they were still new, and she had been impressed. When she stopped breathing they were still making model T's.

A thought struck Bohdan and he turned to her with such speed she flinched. "The water, and all the soap you said, they will throw off Great Popa Stanislav, that's why you showed me the car wash, yes?"

She knew from seeing Zora, Alexandru and even Stanislav himself, how fast the dhampir were. This child moved with that preternatural agility, but to him it was simply normal. What else did he have to compare his attributes to, to compare anything to? His Gens kept him out in the barrens like some kind of undead, barbarian tribesman. Her still heart ached because she knew Zora well enough to know this is never what she would have wanted for him.

"Yes," she replied. "It was a trick your mother use to use when he would come looking for her. It worked, most of the time. It should give us time to get somewhere before the sun rises. I know a place that Stanislav never found. We could go there."

"Where is it?" he asked.

"It's not a far drive," she said hesitantly. "Your mother and I used to ditch there when we didn't want anyone to find us."

He had taken on his human form not long after they made their getaway, and before they had switched cars. Lassiter had no information on the Chevy Caprice she was driving now, so he wouldn't be able to track them easily. Bohdan looked at her with his wide, pleading blue, eyes. "Do you know where she is?" he begged.

"Honey, they told me she suffered the second death. Lassiter told me she was gone. That was maybe eight years ago, that's all I know." Something in Mary ached. A feeling of bitter regret that had plagued her more than a few times over ninety-five years as a vampire. The deep sense of loss whenever she contemplated what Lassiter had taken from her: the chance to ever have a real family, and children of her own. It hurt even more now that she was here with this immortal child, and Zora wasn't.

She had heard a story once, one she never believed. Amidst the many breeds of vampire there were the succubi and the incubi. The Nora simply called them the pretty ones. They were the most alluring creatures in the night, and they were hated by many other breeds of vampire because of their unparalleled ability to sway and seduce mortals. She had once heard of a succubus who had wanted desperately to have a child of her own. She tried magic of all kinds, desperately seeking a way to defy the undead nature of the curse. After exhausting every avenue, she actually approached a female dhampir and asked if she might bear her a child, and she would compensate her for the whelp however she wanted.

Legend had it the dhampir did not react well, and she was forced to flee. The story ends that her longing for a child was so great that she tried to kidnap a child from a dhampir matriarch who had just given birth, and she wound up being cut to pieces by the mother's Gens. Looking at this immortal child, witnessing his innocence, something she hadn't been close to in over a hundred years, now she believed the story.

After a long forlorn pause, Bohdan asked her, "Why are you helping me? If you believe Mama is gone, then why help me hide? Won't your chief be very angry with you for helping me after I stringed him?"

"I hope so," she told him, as she took great satisfaction at the thought of Lassiter on the ground and helpless. Bohdan cocked his head in an obvious show of confusion.

"He's not my chief, he's my jailor. Lassiter never asked me if I wanted to be immortal. He never gave me a choice, like some of the others. He just took me."

"Why?" he asked, with genuine curiosity.

There was a long, sullen pause before she answered. "I was what you would call a flapper back in the twenties."

"Twenties?" he inquired.

"The nineteen twenties, or what your Gens would call about three hundred moons ago." She told him.

"You are some moons old," he said.

"Yeah, but next to Stanislav, that's nothing," she admitted.

"There are no others next to Great Poppa, except his brood brother Vali."

"What does that mean, 'brood brother'?" she inquired.

"Great Poppa Stanislav and Dread Vali are both sons of the Primul Tata, The First Father. They are very strong, very old. I am told that because dhampir are immortal we don't keep family like humans do. Two dhampir of the same blood line are brothers and sisters unless they have the same mama and poppa, then they are brood."

"Ah, ok, I think I get it," she said. Mary decided she would be far better off not knowing anything about "Dread Vali." If he was as bad as Stanislav was, then she prayed she never had to meet him.

"Well, many moons ago I use to help run hooch for the Atlantic City gangs all through Philly," she informed him.

"Hooch?" he asked.

"Booze, alcohol. It was Illegal back then. A lot of people got very rich smuggling it," she informed.

"Ah," he said. He knew what smuggling was, his cousin engaged in it sometimes for the elders. "You are like Alexandru, you are a scoundrel."

She laughed out loud. "Yeah, I was a scoundrel. Lassiter said he liked that, he liked the way I ran things, and he wanted that in his organization. I think he just wanted a new moll."

"What is moll?" he asked.

"A scoundrel's sweetheart," she answered.

"But he was not sweet to you?" Bohdan posed.

"There's nothing sweet about Lassiter, or pretty much any of the old ones like him. He thought he owned me, and I've resented that for a long time."

"That's why you help me?" he inquired.

She hesitated before she answered. "That's part of it; the other part is your mother. Either in life or in death, she was the only real friend I ever had. Zora was amazing. She was damn near fearless, except when it came to your Great Poppa; she wasn't crazy. She was fiercely loyal, and trustworthy. I never had to worry about Zora backbiting me, never. Her word was better than gold, it was platinum. She understood me; with her I not only had a true friend, but we had a lot of fun."

Bohdan's eyes grew wide, and a grin graced his human visage. She realized that even the barest mention of her was like a light on his young heart. The conveyor finally ejected them from the automatic car wash after the dryers were done.

"I'll tell you more about her, I promise," she said, as she started the engine. Having paid for the wash already, she simply drove off. Bohdan continued to ask her questions, and became more insistent about them when she played along. She knew only too well that Stanislav certainly didn't allow him to ask questions about the world, much less his mother.

He was fascinated about everything. He asked about how all the lights were powered. She got him to call a pocket box a cell phone. She had to explain that Disney World actually wasn't a magical place, but an amusement park, which really didn't seem to convince Bohdan it wasn't magical. She told him Sears and Roebucks were not wizards but an old department store chain.

Finally after driving nearly an hour outside the city proper into a more suburban region, she pulled into a junkyard. A place like this offered Bohdan tons of places to hide, and the metallic scent of all the rust could help throw off Great Poppa Stanislav until he got close enough. As soon as Bohdan got out of the car he picked up the scent immediately and leapt on top of the car and grabbed Mary's arm with inhuman speed.

"No, No, Mary, we must go!" he said as loud as he dared. "War wolves! I smell a war wolf near. My great Poppa Stanislav keeps a war wolf pelt in his cottage he took in battle; I know the scent. Only big dhampir can scrap with war wolves, they are very big, very strong!"

She picked him up off the car's roof and said, "It's Okay, I know. His name is Harald, he's a lobo."

"Lobo?" he asked.

"It's what they call a werewolf without a pack. He runs this place. If you pay him enough he'll let you crash here for a while, and because he's a war wolf, no one comes here. Stanislav never found it, or if he did, he never bothered to try and tackle Harald," she stated.

"Great Poppa has slain many war wolves. They don't come to New Sinca anymore," he responded.

"I know, but like I said, he never found his way here before. It's been a long time, but I know Harald is still in the business," she said with false confidence. She did not hear the werewolf approach, but Bohdan did. He pointed behind her and she whirled around.

Harald was in his human form, which was less imposing than his were form, but some would say not by much. He stood six-foot-four and probably weighed in at two hundred and fifty plus pounds, and she knew it was muscle. His hair was a thick, long grey mane. His shoulders were massive, his arms as thick as pythons and his biceps were as big as any bodybuilder's, and even the western-styled duster he wore didn't hide the fact. A Bowie knife, honed to a razor's edge, hung from his belt, and despite the fact it was eight inches long, it did not look big on Harald.

"Why is there a dhampir whelp in my yard?" he said to Mary, despite having not seen her in over five years. War wolves had the same kind of olfactory ability that dhampir did. Harald was centuries old, and even in his human form, he could scent what Bohdan really was.

"Hello, Harald, what happened to no questions asked?" she inquired.

"I tolerated the female dhampir years ago because as an adult she was here of her own accord. dhampir don't lose whelps, and no one has ever stolen one, or even attempted to, and lived to tell of it. So, Mary, why is there a dhampir whelp in my yard?" She knew she was on very dangerous ground. Harald could tear her to pieces. He had never cared when Zora had come, and he knew who she was. She didn't think he would care enough to ask questions now.

"How much is it worth to you not to ask that question?" she posed.

"Who is he? I won't ask again," he threatened.

She hesitated, and put the little dhampir down behind her. Bohdan got down in a defensive stance. She looked down at him, then over to the massive werewolf. "His name is Bohdan, he's Zora's son," she admitted.

He waited a long time before he replied. "Stanislav's grandson," he more stated then asked.

"You know he is; I didn't think you were afraid of him." She tried not to make her words sound like a challenge but just a statement of fact.

"I'm not," he said flatly.

"I can pay you three times the old fee," she offered.

"Five," he said tersely.

It was a lot of money, but the sun was coming up soon and she did not want to anger Harald now by wasting his time. "Deal," she said, as she went into her jacket to get the money. She handed the cash over and picked up Bohdan and attempted to carry him off to one of the nearby derelict RV's that Harald's "guests" stayed in.

"Wait," he said, and she stopped.

"Boy," he called. From her arms Bohdan looked towards him.

"Your Grandfather, he accepts duels? He accepts duels from war wolves?"

Bohdan didn't hesitate, "Yes, a great war wolf once came to New Sinca to challenge him, and Great Poppa fought him before the Gens and the Alpha wolf's pack. Great Aunt Ileana told me the tale of it. The Gens still speaks of it. Though they tell the tale of The Five more often at the fire."

"The Five?" Harald asked.

"The Great Alpha wolf knew the old ways. When Great Poppa slew him, his pack left, because that was the way, and Great Poppa kept his pelt because that was his prize. The five were younger wolves, they did not know the old ways. They sought to hunt Great Poppa and the Gens in New Sinca. Their pack met Great Poppa's cohort while they were out hunting."

"And your great father's cohort defeated them," he stated bluntly.

"No," Bohdan said. "They did not."

"So your Great Father lost?" the werewolf pressed.

"No," Bohdan answered. "Great Poppa told the cohort they were not allowed to fight. Then he challenged and defeated the five on his own. He killed four of the war wolves and told the last to go forth and tell all the other wolves that the next time they came back that they would not just face Great Poppa, but all the Gens in battle. He said that after they were done with them they would go out and find the war wolves' tribe, and end them all, cubs too."

A long moment passed and Mary grew very anxious as she could not read Harald's steely eyes. She desperately hoped he wasn't offended enough to do anything. "What happened?" Harald insisted.

"They never came back," Bohdan told him. "No one ever comes back. Even the hunters don't come to New Sinca anymore," Bohdan told him. Harald gave them a wry grin, then inexplicably walked away.

She looked to Bohdan as she picked him back up. "Are those stories true?" she asked, in an anxious tone.

"Yes," he told her. "I never saw my Gens fight the war wolves, but I saw the hunters when they came. They brought the flame guns with them, and many thunder-sticks. The kind that barked very, very fast. They hurt the young dhampir, not the elders, especially not Great Poppa."

"These flame guns, were they attached to a kind of pack that the hunters wore on their backs?" she asked him.

"Yes," he said, "but that didn't help them. Great Poppa is a forger of steel. He uses the old way to make the steel, and forges the Ulfberht blades. He learned it from a draugr of the Norse. The draugr could not slay a great troll that plagued his tribe. He sought out Great Poppa long before the leaving and promised him the secret of the Ulfberht. Great Poppa slew the troll, and the draugr gave him the secret."

"What's a draugr?" she asked.

"Great Poppa called them the War Dead. He said they are not as vampyr, and feed off battle. There are very few left," he answered.

"So, what did this steel have to do with the hunters?" she asked.

"Great Poppa doesn't just make swords of it like the draugr did, but axes and spears. Cousin Andrei threw an Ulfberht axe at the flame gun's pack so hard it caught on fire. Once the other warriors saw this the hunters with the flame guns died very quickly. Those with the thunder-sticks were torn apart. Great Poppa would rip off their arms and slam them against the great trees in the forest so hard they would break in half."

"Jesus Christ," she swore, "and they made you watch this?"

"Great Poppa and Aunt Ileana say I must learn how to defend the Gens. I must be strong, so I had to watch how it was done."

Mary hesitated. She always believed she understood how dangerous Stanislav was. As she looked into Bohdan's anxious, argent eyes she realized she had only an inkling. This monster from a forgotten age was killing other monsters for Vikings probably over a thousand years ago. She remembered Lassiter warning her about the secrets that ancients keep, secrets like some long-lost form of steel so hard it punctured its modern-day counterpart.

She pressed Bohdan close to her and walked towards the RV. While she carried the little dhampir to the old camper that was set up on cinder-blocks, she contemplated the fact that she had never really believed in God. Tonight she sorely regretted that, because if she believed in a higher power she could pray to it to protect them from Stanislav tonight. She figured God was about the only one that could.

***

Trevor sat alone in the abandoned warehouse warming himself by the fire he had made. After Cory had been killed here most of the local homeless had avoided the place like it was haunted. He found that notion moronic. It suited his purpose now as no one wanted to come here. Trevor, or Trevey as they called him, didn't share much in common with the local indigent population. He had no addiction, he had barely ever been arrested, and then only when the cops were being dicks. He knew how to survive on the streets, and had done so largely on his own.

He hadn't liked Cory; most who knew him hadn't, so he didn't mourn to hear the kid was dead. He didn't believe the story that Ted and Steve told about some freaky kid biting his arm off, that was just plain loony. The way he figured it, Cory owed the wrong people too much scratch and it finally caught up with him, case closed.

He had gotten used to the idea of the solitude when the voice with the strange accent scared the living hell out of him. "Hello there," said the stranger who appeared out of nowhere.

Trevey pulled a kitchen knife out of the makeshift scabbard he had made for it from under his denim jacket and threatened the stranger with it. "What the hell, you freak!" he shouted. "Get out of here, it's my fire and my spot!"

The stranger was wearing a long, worn trench coat over a black tank top, a pair of beat-up jeans and old hiking boots. He was cut, and had the kind of muscle from someone who either worked out regularly or had a genuine manual labor job where he did a lot of lifting. He had a slick look about him, and Trevey figured he didn't have much trouble with the ladies with those looks and that dark hair. What was the weirdest thing was he definitely wasn't sleeping on the streets, so he had no reason to be in a place like this. Trevey had never seen him before.

"No need for that friend, I'm not looking for trouble, just looking for information" the stranger said, with a nonchalant confidence.

"I got no information, and I'm not your friend, so piss off," Trevey sneered. He got up and approached the stranger still holding the knife out in the hopes of driving him off. What happened next was the last thing he would have believed possible. The stranger smiled at him, and opened his trench to reveal a long scabbard of his own about two and a half feet long. Suddenly the stranger moved so fast that Trevey only saw a dark flash of movement, and the knife was knocked painfully from his hand. The force of the blow knocked him down and he fell almost flat on his back.

When he looked up the stranger was holding some kind of vicious-looking short sword right at his face. He had never seen anything like it, it looked like something out of a movie, and it sure as hell didn't look dull. "What the hell is that?" he asked, as he tried to scramble away from the blade.

"You like that?" the stranger said. "It's called a gladius. It's a Roman blade. My great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather made it for me. Notice how the blade curves inward like that on both edges. It gives it a greater cutting power. I once cut the head off a charging boar with this, in just one slash."

The stranger seemed to purposely allow Trevey to get far enough away so that he could stand up. Given as long as he had lived on the streets, he began to understand what the stranger really was. There were lots of people on the streets who thought they were dangerous, but when the real fight started they pissed their pants. There were lots of people on the streets who could be dangerous, but that didn't mean they were good at it. This guy was one of the few who was truly dangerous, and Trevey knew it. "What the hell do you want?" he snapped at the sword-wielding psycho.

The stranger's reaction surprised him. He suddenly and calmly just put the sword back in its scabbard. He then reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. "I want to give you some money for some information. You got a problem with that?" the stranger asked snidely.

"What the hell do you wanna know from me, do I look like information?" Trevey replied.

"There was a man killed here. It is said that some saw a young boy here when it happened. Some say the young boy did it. Now we know that boy was here, and we believe he headed south, but we would like to know if maybe you heard anything before we go looking. Maybe he told some of the others who were here where he was going? Would you know anything about that?"

One of Trevey's biggest problems had always been he was way too brave for his own good. "You mean to tell me you jumped me, hit my knife out my hand, and threatened me with the giant ass pig sticker your great, great, great whatever grandfather made for you over some crazy story about a kid who bit off Cory's arm."

"Bit off?" the stranger said, suddenly becoming very intense.

"Its bull!" Trevey yelled back. "You know what, freak, you and whoever you are with can have this hole, I'm out of here."

That's when the vice-like force gripped his neck from behind and lifted him off the ground. His hands immediately went to whatever was wrapped around his throat as his legs kicked frantically and he began to choke. Whatever was holding him felt like cold stone against his skin as he tried desperately to free himself from this hellish force that was holding him effortlessly off the ground.

"I tried to help you," the stranger said in a flippant tone.

Trevey suddenly flew through the air some twenty feet and smashed through a rotten piece of ply wood before landing on the ground with a meaty thud. The wind left his body, and pain surged through every inch of his flesh. He gasped and choked frantically trying to fill his lungs with air, and he thought for sure he was going to die, and he didn't even know how or why.

"Now, nothing can help you," Alexandru said, as he walked over to the now wounded Trevey. The young dhampir didn't bother to rush, he knew the homeless man didn't have much longer to live. Great Father was not very patient at the best of times, and especially not when looking for his youngest grandson.

When Trevey looked up he finally saw the others. All of them were bruisers, and all of them bore a strange resemblance to the smart-mouthed stranger. The first one he saw had a beast of a double-barreled shotgun clenched in his hands. It looked like something out of an Old West film. His shoulders were huge, and his arms were, too. The look on his face was not happy. Another, slimmer bruiser appeared, holding a matched pair of deadly looking hand axes. A third appeared who also wore a trench coat, and in his hand was another one of those swords, and strapped to his waist a six-shooter in a cowboy-like leather holster, complete with large-caliber bullets in all of its loops.

Trevey looked around in confusion as he tried to understand what these maulers would want from him. That's when the gigantic eighteen-inch foot landed on the ground just inches away from his face. He looked up and his face went from pained shock to abject horror. The creature that towered over him was such a horrific sight his mind refused to believe it could even exist.

It was easily well over seven feet tall. It's skin was a kind of mottled grey that actually did look almost like some kind of pliable stone. Its build was almost ape-like, with a massive chest, and legs that that looked like they would be at home on all fours or walking like a man. Its arms were impossibly long, and thicker than tree branches. Its body rippled with corded muscles that were layered heavier than any human form could ever hope to carry. Its pants were thick leather, and tailored to its form, as was the half vest it wore. It brandished a belt upon which two large knives hung. Each was almost as big as the swords the maulers carried. Its face looked demonic, with a nose that tapered into a wicked beak. Its ears were pointed and canine. Its eyes shone with a preternatural, argent light that seemed to reflect the ambiance of the nearby fire. Its fangs were huge, and jet black, and each of its long, lean sinewy fingers was tipped with an ebon claw well over five inches long. It must have weighed hundreds of pounds of hideous, freakish muscle.

Trevey's eyes teared up in absolute terror, and he gawked at the monster helplessly from the ground. Just as he believed that this horror could not become any more unbelievable the creature spoke. Its voice was rumbling, deep and inhuman. "The boy," it growled, "what do you know about the boy?"

Trevey could find no words, and Stanislav grew angry. Faster than Trevey could see he suddenly was kicked onto his back and then the massive dhampir stood over him. Trevey's shoulder exploded in agonizing pain. He looked over at his body to see the massive beast had lodged his claws right through his shoulder bones despite the fact he never even saw the creature move. Then it picked him up by the claws alone. The agony was so great Trevey couldn't even scream.

The beast threw him back down. Trevey writhed in pain, blood shot out of his now open wounds. The horror leaned over and put its monstrous face right into his and raged, "The BOY!"

Trevey's mind raced, and suddenly he remembered it. "Front Street," he croaked through the pain. "They said the boy told them he was looking for Front Street! Please! Oh, God please, just go away!"

Stanislav looked right at Alexandru. Still maintaining the form of man, the younger dhampir replied, "The Nora. He must be looking for the Nora. Bohdan must know they worked with his mother."

"How would he know this?" Old Silviu challenged in old Dacian.

It was Stanislav who answered. "Oana," he growled angrily. "She likes to tell him stories."

Trevey's sanity slipped in the face of the horror that had come out of the night. He tried to rise, and managed to at least sit up. As he wept hysterically, Stanislav looked down at him with utter malice and contempt.

"Go away, please go away," Trevey pleaded. His shattered sanity refused to believe this was actually happening.

Trevey could never understand that the supernatural killers surrounding him lived in a world where weakness of any kind was a sin. With utter disdain Stanislav seemed to flinch. Trevey never even saw him move before his head just slid right off his shoulders. The Great Father moved so fast that even Old Silviu, who had been born to night before the fall of Rome, could only barely see him move at all.

Stanislav sheathed his lethal blade. They all knew that leaving behind evidence of a kill could alert the human authorities and was forbidden. That's why they all had their favorite weapons. Hunters might recognize the work of night steel, but shotguns and swords were not commonly equated with vampires of any breed.

"Great Father," Alexandru asked hesitantly in the old tongue, "shouldn't we go see Dragomir? The treaty we have with the Nora, they'll help us if we ask. They wouldn't dare say no. Dragomir can contact Lassiter and …"

"No," Stanislav ordered, "We go see the Nora now, and if Lassiter is wise he will have Bohdan, and my grandson will be safe. Alexandru, burn this," he said, as he looked down at the now headless corpse. Alexandru moved to incinerate the corpse, hoping that Lassiter did indeed have Bohdan. He liked the Nora for the most part; it would be a shame to see them slaughtered.

***

Cutty looked around before he slipped the spare key he had made into the door of The Long Night. Lassiter's club was closed, of course, and he wouldn't be coming back to it any time soon. Until Mary and that little dhampir bastard could be found, no one was coming back to the club. Lassiter's mortal employees would handle things easily enough; they basically ran the place for him anyway, especially the two or three of them who actually understood what he was.

Cutty knew this was a real calculated risk, but he also knew that the dhampir were most likely to make a beeline for Dragomir at his mansion in Society Hill. He only intended to be in and out, and then gone. This whole dhampir thing promised to be a real pain in the ass, but it also afforded some very interesting opportunities.

Lassiter was a distrustful, resourceful, scheming rogue, and he was very good at it. He spied on all the younger Nora of his cabal, and always had the upper hand. This made it very difficult to set up any kind of operation that he didn't know about. Not that any member of the cabal couldn't set up their own operations, but they had to always give Lassiter his cut. Cutty had other ideas.

He ran bets for Lassiter, acting as a bookie to both mortals and some other supernaturals alike. Now, this would normally make it easy for him to set up his own action on the side, but Lassiter always made sure he was with a human servitor or another Nora when he made collections on the bets. This meant that all the money he collected had to go back to Lassiter while under the watchful eye of whatever partner he had that particular night.

A simple and very mundane discovery had led him to an idea. In the smoking room of The Long Night, where the ladies and gentleman of the upscale setting would retire to enjoy cigarettes, cigars, pipes and even hookahs, there were various bronze ash trays on bronze stands. They had bowl-style tops that rested on the stands. The tops had removable trays for easy cleaning. The trick was, the bowls could be lifted off the stands, and the stands were hollow.

So Cutty would go out and make collections with his partner, and his partner really had no idea who the clients were that owed Lassiter, or who were his personal ones. Lassiter only ever told anyone just what they needed to know, and that worked to his disadvantage in this case. So he would go make the pickups, retire to the smoking room before the meet with Lassiter, and hide his small share of the cash in the bronze stands in plain view of everyone. He wasn't technically stealing from Lassiter, so far as he was concerned, and no one was any the wiser.

He had been waiting for the perfect opportunity to sneak into the club and retrieve his cash, which should be somewhere in the vicinity of seventy-five grand. It would be perfect for his own private investment, and finally begin the process of hopefully setting up something of his own.

He quickly locked the door behind himself, and then disarmed the alarm system with the security code. Swiftly he made his way to the smoking room. He found the cash right where he had been leaving it.

"Brilliant," he told himself. That's when he heard the back door to the club smash open. He suddenly really regretted turning off the alarm. If it was the dhampir, he knew there was only one way to handle this, the Nora way. He backed up against the wall in a small alcove near the coat racks, and turned invisible. He hoped it would be enough. This place was rife with the scent of his cabal, the dhampir would smell it everywhere, maybe it would cloak him.

He tried to stay calm, but after what he had heard and seen, his anxiety wasn't easy to control. One little kid had actually taken Lassiter down. Granted it was a sneak attack, but still, it was just a kid. If the natural weapons of a dhampir whelp were deadly enough to take down a Nora elder, then what the hell could a full grown one do?

Cutty listened, but he couldn't hear anything more beside the creaking of the wood panels all over the smoking room. This didn't surprise him; that dhampir whelp had snuck up on them, and they had never seen him coming.

When Stanislav appeared, Cutty inhaled in horror. The massive dhampir hadn't made a sound. He just literally appeared from a shadow that flickered through the door for just a second before he came out of nowhere. Before Cutty could blink, a death grip locked around his throat.

He was a vampire, and his first instinct was to use all his supernatural strength to pry himself free. When he tried desperately to peel Stanislav's huge fingers from his throat it was like trying to bend steel. He couldn't budge a single digit. Stanislav lifted him up and stared him in the eyes. He recognized by scent and sight this was not Lassiter. Cutty didn't know if it was by scent alone that the gigantic dhampir had found him, or his horrified gasp that had given him away.

The huge dhampir dropped him, and Cutty tumbled to the floor. The other dhampir began to file into the room. The clothes they wore were enchanted by Great Aunt Ileana's magic. When they transformed, their garb would grow into the appropriate size to transform with them. When they entered the room, none of them were in human form. Cutty knew Alex by his clothes more than his appearance, as they had dealt with each other enough over the past several years. The fact they were all armed to the teeth, in addition to their night-steel jaws and claws, was not a promising sign.

Cutty got to his feet making a very deferential show, and never taking his eyes off Stanislav. He had to crane his neck just to look up at him. Alexandru said nothing. It was not his place to speak first; he was actually the youngest dhampir in the room. Stanislav glowered at Cutty and interrogated, "Lassiter; where is Lassiter?"

Cutty removed his hat and hesitated to answer. Stanislav slashed out and cut his face right on the cheek. The pain was excruciating and Cutty tumbled to the floor again. Stanislav began to growl again. Cutty cried out, "They're out looking for the little dhampir! Right now, with everything we have! Lassiter will find him, he's cooperating with Dragomir right now to search for them. Alex, call Dragomir, he'll tell you!"

Alexandru looked to his Great Father for permission, and Stanislav nodded at him, he then turned his withering gaze back to Cutty. "Bohdan was here, his scent is on the wall outside. Where is my grandson?" Stanislav demanded.

"He … he took off." Stanislav growled and took a menacing step closer to Cutty. "He was too fast, clambered right up the wall at first. Lassiter tried to talk him down, but then Mary …"

Now Stanislav grew truly angry. He rushed at the Nora and towered threateningly over him. Cutty cowered on the floor beneath him holding his own, thick, trembling limbs over his head. "Mary," Stanislav hissed. "Mary who minds many secrets, secrets that are not hers. Mary who whispers rebellious thoughts in foolish ears, Mary who makes trouble for my Gens, my daughter."

"Yeah," said Cutty, "that's her," he squeaked, as he dare not look up at the savage standing over him.

"What has Mary done?" the massive dhampir asked, in a low, dangerous tone.

"Lassiter was really careful; when your grandson showed up he didn't want any of us talking to him, so he ordered everyone back in the club, and we all went back, all but …"

"Mary," Stanislav growled.

"Yeah, yeah, she wouldn't cooperate, so Lassiter got mad, and then he started roughing her up, to get her to stop talking to your grandson, and then, and then, and then …" he stammered.

"And then what!" Stanislav roared.

"Bohdan attacked; I don't know why! Maybe he got mad or something. He slashed out Lassiter's hamstrings, and now the boss can't walk!" Cutty spat out desperately.

"Did he hurt my Bohdan?" Stanislav menaced.

"No, No, not at all! It was Mary! It was all Mary, she picked up the kid and ran off. All the cabal is out looking right now, I just came back to get some stuff. We'll find him, I swear!"

Old Silviu seemed particularly amused at the part where Bohdan attacked Lassiter. Alexandru stepped up as he hung up the phone. In old Dacian he told them, "It is as Cutty says, right now Uncle Dragomir is using all his resources to try and track down Mary and Bohdan. He offers his domicile for us to lair in when the sun comes up, and we can't wear the form of shadow."

Stanislav sneered and balled up a gigantic fist to slam into Cutty. Alexandru held up his hands in a pleading and submissive gesture as he offered, "Great Father, it may not be wise to harm Cutty any more. If you end him, the Nora will just disappear, and they will never help us find Mary. Maybe it's wise to respect the treaty."

Old Silviu added, "The boy is right Great Father. These Nora are cowards. If you spook them too hard, like the deer, they will bolt, and we won't see them again."

Stanislav growled in displeasure, but he knew they were right. He un-balled his fist, reached down and set Cutty back to his feet. The Nora looked up in surprise. "Listen," Stanislav ordered. "You will return to Lassiter, now. You will tell him my niece Ileana knows the ancient ways. You will tell him that if he finds my grandson she will make him a poultice that will heal his wounds faster. It is a secret of the dhampir, we use it when two dhampir fight. You will also tell him if the reprobate Mary does not return my grandson, there will be war. Now go."

Cutty ran with all the speed his supernatural form had. Stanislav watched him flee with derision. He turned to the cohort with him, and said, "We follow Bohdan's scent as far as it goes."

Old Silviu saw the look of concern on young Alexandru's human visage. He was one of the few who by right of age could council Stanislav without permission, and didn't generally have to fear a receiving massive backhand. "Great Father, perhaps we should take Dragomir's offer and go to ground for the day. With the sun comes up, the only way we can track is in the Form of Man. We know how much you hate the mortal form."

"We rest while she takes my youngest grandson further from New Sinca?" Stanislav growled in objection.

Silviu looked to Alexandru, thus granting him permission to speak. Alex knew that wrong words would get him knocked through a wall. No one questioned Stanislav's right to lead in the New World, or many other places on the planet, for that matter. However, wise council was on occasion required, and even though he was young, he knew he had to be brave enough to make the point, or later he would lose respect for it, even from Stanislav himself.

The truth was, that though they could move by day, Stanislav was too powerful now to hold the human form for long. The ancients found it more difficult with time to maintain a human guise as their power increased and they got further and further away from anything human. More to the point, tracking by scent alone after a moving automobile in the city was a whole different thing then tracking in the forest. Stanislav might lose the scent, and that would leave them in the city or the suburbs with an angry eighteen-hundred-year-old dhampir ancient ready to rip apart the very box truck they were transporting him in. Alexandru knew they needed the resources of the modern world to make this easier, And Uncle Dragomir and Lassiter had those in spades. Now he just had to convince Stanislav of that without getting punched through the wall.

"Mary can't move by day," he said in Old Dacian. "She will have to wait for the sun to set. She could be a hundred miles from here by now. The best way to find her is to pick up her trail from the night network, or from mortal authorities who might identify them for us. We need to find out what vehicle she's in. If we can't get a clue as to where she went, it might be impossible to find her at all without Great Aunt Ileana's magic."

They would have held their breath if they had breath to hold, as they waited for him to respond. Andrei shifted uncomfortably and fiddled with his hand axes. Grigore nervously adjusted his gun belt. Old Silviu stood as still as stone. As Alexandru looked on, Great Father's gaze seemed to leave the room. All the younger dhampir could tell he was no longer listening to them, but weighing something in his ancient mind. The massive dhampir then said, "She could not have gotten so far. Yes, she has the automobile to move her quickly, but as you say, Young One, she would have to find safe haven quick before Bendis grows feint in the sky. She would want somewhere she knew, where she would feel safe. She must know we will come for her. Where would she …" Stanislav trailed off.

When his Great Father mentioned Bendis, the old Dacian goddess of the moon, Alexandru got nervous. Stanislav often mentioned the old ways whenever he got introspective, or when he was about to act. Suddenly the massive dhampir elder spoke. "Yes, no good to fight under Helios; too wide, too open under a blue sky, too many mortal eyes."

"Fight?" Silviu asked.

Alexandru was confused at first. Great Father was talking as though he had some inkling of the area, and could guess where Mary might be. Then it dawned on him this was hardly the first time he had explored Philly. He had helped Stanislav comb these very streets almost a decade ago searching for Zora. A dhampir's memory never faded; the only way he would become lost is if the mortals had constructed new projects over the old landmarks he knew.

Alex risked the question, "Do you think you know where she is?"

Stanislav replied, "I think soon I'll have a matching pelt to hang with my others in New Sinca. Bring the truck about, we will lair at Dragomir's villa today. Tomorrow we pick up Bohdan's scent, and find the Nora. Tomorrow her eternity ends."

***

The moment the sun was down, Mary had Bohdan in the car. She knew the only chance they had was to keep moving. This wasn't like last time. The truth was, Stanislav had multiple opportunities to physically accost Zora all those years ago, but he hadn't. Dragomir had been constantly trying to convince her to return to the barrens, but she wouldn't.

In the end, Zora had believed that her Great Father could have come and got her whenever he wanted. She wanted to believe it was because he truly loved his daughter that he had refrained, even if his ancient, barbaric traditions wouldn't allow him to admit such a thing openly. Now things were different, Bohdan was his grandson, and dhampir protected their young savagely. There would be no hesitation from Stanislav this time. If he found them, she was ash and Bohdan would return to the Pine Barrens, and that was all there was to it.

She had woken up in the middle of the day from a daymare. She had seen Stanislav twice back when Zora was around, and she had never forgotten the massive beast. She had dreamt he had found them, and he had cut her to pieces. The truth was, the dream was only too real, because nothing had happened in her daymare that couldn't happen in reality.

She had discovered Bohdan was gone after the dream had roused her, and she panicked. She discovered two hours later when he came back that he had gone hunting. He had killed a possum and a raccoon, drained their blood and eaten them down to the bone. Though she was angry, she was also relieved. She had forgotten how easily the dhampir could survive in almost any environment. Despite the fact the sun was up, he hadn't been caught. She was amazed at how capable he was despite his age.

She was hungry, and would have to find a meal somewhere soon. Hunting for Nora was usually easy in the city. Philly was rife with the homeless, and any Nora could easily overpower and feed on them. The process was simple, sneak up invisibly, knock one out cold, and then feed at your leisure. The Nora never killed their meals, it was messy and unnecessary. Given the common prejudice against the homeless, if one ever actually had a story to tell, no one believed them anyway.

She made small talk with Bohdan and made sure he was in his human form as they drove aimlessly. She tried to convince herself the small talk was to try to keep him calm, but she knew it was really to try to ease her own anxiety. All the while, her hunger nagged at her. She had no idea where she was going. She had plenty of cash at least, it was in the getaway car in case she ever had to bolt. At last she found what she was looking for. An older homeless man camped out behind a series of small stores in a strip mall.

She parked the car and begged Bohdan not to wander far. Then she went off to feed. While she was gone, Bohdan wandered around the strip mall watching the mortals go about their daily lives. What caught his eye was a woman with several children coming out of a craft store.

She herded her brood of three little ones, two boys and a little girl, towards her SUV. The two older children began putting things Bohdan had never seen before in the car. Apparently the two older children had school projects that required all the strange stuff to complete. Bohdan wondered what a school project was, and if it was fun. He envied the children the attention their mother gave them.

He watched from behind a car some distance away as suddenly her youngest, a little boy, tripped and fell in the lot and began to cry. Bohdan was shocked. If he had shown such weakness from such a small thing, his Gens would have punished him. Instead, the woman bent down, tenderly picked him up, and cleaned him off. When he was quieted she kissed him, and then picked him up and put him in some kind of special chair that seemed to be made for little people.

His heart ached as he watched the SUV drive away. That human woman had no idea he existed, and he found it strange that she would never know how much her affection for her children had wounded him. Not out of any spite or envy, but out of a profound sense of loss. He almost missed Mary's approach, and jumped when she came up behind him. She had found him observing the family and paused. She understood only too well how he was feeling while he watched them. She had been there many times over the last ninety-plus years.

"Hey," she said after his reaction, "are you okay?"

"That was stupid, I should not have done that," he said sullenly.

"Done what?" she asked.

"Let you get so close behind me. No one is ever supposed to sneak up on dhampir," he told her.

She replied sympathetically, "You were distracted. It happens to all of us."

"Not to dhampir. If Great Poppa Stanislav saw he would be furious," he replied.

"Well he's not here, and we shouldn't be either. Time to go," she stated.

"Did you feed?" he asked earnestly.

"Yeah, so let's put some more miles between us and the city," she added, and then they left the strip mall.

While they drove she looked to him and inquired, "There's something I want to ask you."

"Yes?" he said.

"When we first met outside Lassiter's club, when you were on the wall, you said you saw your mother in your dreams, and that she had red hair."

"Yes," he said again, "in my dreams she calls to me. She is in a mist. I cannot see her face, but I see her hair; it's dark red." They then continued to drive on in contemplative silence. He looked up to her with the big blue eyes of his human form and waited for her to speak.

"In your Gens, back in the Pine Barrens, do any of the other dhampir ladies have red hair in the form of woman?" she asked.

"No," he told her, "only dark hair, like Great Aunt Ileana."

"Did anyone in your Gens tell you your mom used to die her hair red?" she inquired.

He looked up at her with confusion clear on his face and asked in his broken English, "What is, dye hair?"

That answers that question , she thought. It made perfect sense that he wouldn't even understand the concept, as she was pretty sure that the female dhampir of the Gens didn't have much in the way of modern beauty standards. She tried to explain to him what dying one's hair was, and naturally he didn't get it. While she did so she couldn't get out of her head the one fact that had been bothering her, how did he know that his mother had been dying her hair red?

That's when the thought struck her, but it seemed so improbable. What she needed was some arcane advice, and she believed that she knew where to get it. He wouldn't be happy about her visiting, but he owed her a favor, and it was one he had to pay back.

"Bohdan, I need to go see someone, about you and your mother," she told him.

"Who?" he asked curiously.

"A wizard, a real one," she explained.

"Like the sorcerers who come to barter with Great Father?"

"Kind of like that, but more powerful than sorcerers. You will never see the ones like him come out to the Barrens because you dhampir males are highly resistant to magic, and he's afraid of your kind. He won't let you inside his sanctum, but he owes me a big favor for something I swiped for him. So if I dropped you at a local park when I went to meet him could you keep hidden so no one could find you?"

"Yes," he answered. "What do you want from him?"

"He knows all kinds of lore and secret things. I am very confused and I need some advice here. He studies your kind because he's always searched for a way to understand you. Now listen to me, Bohdan, okay, I am not making any promises here, but, if maybe somehow, some way your mother is still unlive, he would be the one who would know how," she explained.

"He knows where momma is?" Bohdan asked excitedly.

"No, I didn't say that, but if she is actually out there, then he might know how to find her," she corrected.

"Oh," he said, with wide eyes, "What is his name?"

"No one knows his real name, and it's probably best not to ask. His title is Merlin, it's what supernaturals call a very powerful wizard. So will you be okay if I drop you off in the woods or something where you can hunt? And when I'm done I'll come right back and get you and tell you what I learned."

"He won't let me visit?" he asked, crestfallen.

"No, I'm sorry Bohdan, he's afraid of dhampir, especially Stanislav. He won't talk to me if you're there."

"Oh, okay, yes, I can hide from mortals easy. Only dhampir can find dhampir. Even your tribe didn't see me when I crept up on them. You sure he won't let me visit; I'm only a little dhampir?" he pleaded

"I learned from Lassiter last night even little dhampir are dangerous, and you can bet he knows that. Plus, he knows how good you can track, and that Stanislav can, too. So he won't want you near his house."

"Oh," Bohdan expressed, "okay, if he can help you find momma, I'll go to the woods and wait."

"Mary?" he asked.

"Yes, Honey," she replied.

"You'll come back for me, won't you?" he pleaded.

She looked over sympathetically and promised, "Yes, honey, I swear, I will come back for you. You and I are in this together now. If we can't find your momma, then we can still leave. We can go far away, where hopefully Stanislav can't find us. There are places where dhampir don't dwell, just not many."

He smiled and admitted, "I like you Mary, I'm glad I found you."

She smiled back and told him, "I like you too, kiddo."

***

The box truck that Alexandru was driving pulled into the junk yard far enough from the road so that no passing mortals would see them open up the back. The moment the vehicle stopped, the back door lifted and Great Father Stanislav leapt out, followed by the other dhampir. None of them were in human form accept Alexandru, who had driven. Stanislav turned his withering gaze upon Alex, who knew what it meant, and he immediately turned back into his true form.

None of them needed to say it, they could all smell it, the stench of a war wolf was all about the place. Stanislav turned and began to move towards the main building with the stride of a super-predator. His younger clansmen fell in behind him in order of their age.

"That's far enough, dhampir!" Harald called out as they approached. Stanislav made a very open and contemptuous show of still striding forward and only stopping when he felt like it. Harald growled revealing his canine teeth, evident even in his human form. The werewolf was dressed only in a loincloth, which was a show that he meant to take his war form at a moment's notice. His body was full of scars earned in fights through the several centuries of the werewolves' existence. His muscles were hulking, and would have given professional weight-lifter pause. He stood defiantly with no fear evident in his form, voice or scent.

Stanislav was not impressed.

"Why do you have no pack?" Stanislav demanded rudely.

"Why do you care, bloodsucker?" Harald shot back.

"Because if we slay you with a pack we can at least say it was a fight. If I just slay you, it's not even a slaughter." The ancient vampire insulted, and his fellow dhampir laughed.

"I'm in need of a new pack; my old pack slaughtered the vampires of Stockholm when King Gustav took the city. I was a young wolf then, and there are no young wolves now in this place strong enough to run with me, or old enough to remember my deeds."

Stanislav laughed aloud mockingly. "No dhampir in Stockholm, whelp!" He retorted. "You slaughtered cowardly Nora, or weakling incubi!"

"I'm no whelp, leech," Harald spat, "maybe you can't do math. I am over six thousand moons old."

Stanislav laughed even louder. "Now live three times more and I'll call you elder, boy!" the huge dhampir ridiculed.

"Are you sure, bloodsucker?" The werewolf challenged. "For such a follower of the old ways, hundreds of your children here in the States live in the city next to the cowardly Nora and weakling incubi. What's the matter, mighty Stanislav, don't your offspring fear you anymore?"

Stanislav snarled. "Big talk, from a mangy whelp hiding in a scrap pile," he shot back. "Are you going to challenge, mongrel, or will you bore me into torpor?"

Harald grinned in vitriolic contempt. He then reached over to a junker and picked up an envelope sitting on it. He held it up and said, "Here is the make, model and license plate of the car Mary arrived in with your grandson. With Dragomir's connections and the Nora's influence, finding it for you probably won't prove too hard."

Stanislav looked at Alexandru for confirmation that such a prize would be useful. The younger dhampir nodded his head and said, "Dragomir and Lassiter have contacts throughout the police all over the tri-state area. If we have the info on the car, we should be able to find her," the younger dhampir said.

Stanislav strode forward, the other dhampir stayed back. Harald put down the envelope and strode forward as well. Stanislav announced, "I find the prize acceptable, and your pelt when you are dead. I, the challenged, decree the terms: Claws and jaws, speed of foot and strength of arms. No weapons, no magic."

"I would have it no other way," Harald agreed as he squared up to Stanislav. Given as the werewolf was still in his human form, he had to stare up at the massive dhampir.

"Tell me, Mongrel, what prize is worth your death? You could agree to parlay and just given me the tell of Mary's automobile. Instead you choose to die in contest with me," Stanislav queried with genuine curiosity.

"You think you are invincible. All your kind do, but I've slain dhampir before, and you are no more immune from our claws and jaws than any other night creature. When I return to the old country with your head, the young wolves will flock to me. I will throw out the Grey wolves who betrayed the old code, and forsook the Veien. I will raise a new nation, a moon nation, and the dhampir will rule the night no more," he announced proudly.

Stanislav roared in laughter. "Take your form, Norse, and learn the lesson your ancestors knew ages ago," the huge dhampir announced, as he unbuckled his utility belt and threw it with the massive attached knives back to old Silviu. The others watched as Stanislav crouched into his favorite fighting stance, and Harald began to change.

The war wolf's head began to elongate and ripple as his flesh and bone extended, stretched and snapped to allow for the horrifying transformation to his war form. His height began to increase, his shoulders began to take on huge proportions. His eyes bled as they changed from human to canine and began to gleam the color of the moon. His arms began to lengthen to monstrous proportions not dissimilar to Stanislav's. His legs bent back in a canine fashion, his muscles swelled up to many times their original size, and a fine silver-grey fur covered his body. When his transformation was done he was truly an impressively terrifying sight, well over seven feet tall when he stood up, but his proportions still didn't rival Stanislav's.

Both creatures roared at one another as they mutually declared battle. Stanislav would normally begin to circle a cagey old wolf like this, which is exactly what Harald expected him to want to do. Instead, Harald made the mistake of believing that Stanislav's massive size made him slow, and believed that he was quicker then such a huge vampire. The werewolf decided to go right for the initiative and score a telling blow with a quick strike. His right paw slashed out with all his supernatural strength and preternatural speed. Stanislav's near-matchless experience in battle immediately read the werewolf's body language, and he was not taken by surprise.

For all the lethal werewolf's power, speed and instincts, he barely saw Stanislav move at all. The Great Father stepped back and slashed up with his razor-sharp night-steel claws in a move timed to catch Harald's massive arm mid swing. His ebon claws slashed through Harald's forearm nearly amputating the war wolf's huge limb.

The shock of the pain hit the werewolf much like plunging into an ice-cold river might, and catching him by surprise. The creature's canine maw contorted into a rictus of pain and no sooner had it withdrawn its wounded arm than Stanislav saw the opening in the gigantic lycanthrope's defense and struck, as he had so many times before. What Harald and much of Stanislav's Gens did not know was that the war wolves the Great Father had slain in New Jersey were hardly his first lycanthrope kills. Old Silviu was the only one old enough present to have seen the various werewolves who had met their ends fighting the Great Father in the ancient nights and all throughout the Dark Ages. Silviu knew this fight was over before it had even begun.

Stanislav's slash cut the muscles in Harald's chest that allowed him to even lift his arm properly, taking out the werewolf's right limb completely. The werewolf slashed out in a counter attack with its left set of claws. What came next Harald had never seen before. Stanislav seemed to leap back under the arc of the attack, but landed on his massive arms in such a way that allowed him to balance on his simian like hands. With his legs held aloft in a perfectly balanced stance he delivered a double-legged mule kick with a feat of gymnastics so skilled that an Olympic athlete would have looked on at it in envious horror.

The power of the kick was fueled not just by Stanislav's massive, preternaturally powerful legs, but effectively the supernatural strength of his whole, immortal body. Given that the Great Father could literally lift untold amounts of his own weight several times over, the huge werewolf went flying through the air like he had been shot out of a cannon.

Harald's war form hit a junked car over thirty feet away just a second later with such force he went right through it and into a pile of junkers behind it which then fell on top of him after he bounced off the dilapidated wall of vehicles. The first vehicle he hit spilt nearly in two and sailed through the air some fifteen feet away in two different directions before crashing to the ground.

After a blow that titanic, Harald had very little sense left in his massive canine skull. The only reason he was not cut to shreds instantly is because the cars where now lying on top of him. For whatever reason, Stanislav did not lift them off, despite the fact that Harald, even in his bestial state, knew he could. The werewolf struggled with its one good arm to shift the vehicles off itself. The pain and sheer force of the blow had knocked the primordial rage from his massive wolf-like body. Harald knew, in his instinctive way, he had never seen anything fight like that before, and began to understand this duel was a terrible mistake.

The last thing the werewolf ever did after it finally shifted the weight of the wrecked car off of itself was look up to see the deadly glint of Stanislav's argent eyes. The Great Father struck out with blinding speed and unimaginable power. Though Harald's neck was several times the size of any human's, the huge vampire cut right through it. The lycanthrope's head went sailing through the air in a graceful arc before landing on the hood of a nearby heap. It then slid off the wrecked car because much of its own blood had spurted out of its massive skull and acted like a slick when it landed. Stanislav felt it was a fitting way to slay the war wolf, given what it had planned for him.

Once dead, a werewolf would begin slowly shifting back to its human form. The flesh and blood of a werewolf were the most succulent while still in its wolf form. He looked over to his clansmen, they had all tasted war wolf before. Each one salivated at the thought of tasting delicious werewolf flesh again and drinking down its blood. The right of the kill belonged to him, and he got the largest portion. He ripped off a massive leg and then looked to the younger dhampir and roared, "Feast!"

The irresistible scent of supernatural blood in the air had driven them to near frenzy. The other four vampires gave into their bestial natures and tore off in a run at the transforming corpse. First, they locked on with their massive fangs tearing into the dead werewolf's veins and all began to drain its blood. Stanislav locked onto a wrist, and in moments they had drank the corpse dry. The Great Father ripped the werewolf's heart out of its chest and swallowed it down whole.

With the blood drained, they began to cut the lycanthropes flesh right off its bone with their razor-sharp claws and fangs. They devoured the wolf meat with a rapacious savagery that even a school of piranha could have admired. The whole time, they were very careful not to eat any of the skin off its back, for the pelt now belonged to the Great Father by right. When they began to get down to the last bits of choice meat, Alex got pushed out because he was the youngest. The young dhampir looked on in agitation, and then remembered the werewolf's severed head.

He snuck over and picked up the now half-human skull and began to eat the flesh right off Harald's face. When he was done with that, he began to scoop out the brains and down it like it was pudding. Old Silviu looked over and yelled in anger, "You little bastard, give me that!" Alex attempted to run but his Great Father smacked him in the head so hard it knocked him down, and Stanislav, having eaten his fill, took what remained of Harald's head off him and threw it to Silviu.

Alexandru rubbed his sore head as Old Silviu finished off Harald's brains. Andrei tried to grab a scoop but Silviu punched him and ate until he had taken his fill, then gave the other dhampir what was left of the skull. Then Silviu ran after Alexandru, determined to punch him in the face to teach him about eating more than his deserved portion. Great Father reached out and stopped him while yelling, "Enough! Alexandru, get the prize and bring the truck. Then call Dragomir and tell him what he must know to begin tracking the Nora." Alex picked up the envelope and ran off before Silviu could get at him.

"You spoil him, that's why he's such a rapscallion," Silviu accused his Great Father.

"The boy does much for the Gens, and saves us the trouble of the city. I learned him, so it is enough. Andrei, you will help me take the skin so Ileana can turn it back into a pelt back at the village. Silviu, take Grigore, and make sure no one is near; slay whatever you find that may have heard or seen too much. When we are finished in the city we return to New Sinca, and Ileana will cast the bones. Between Dragomir's mortal servants and Ileana's vision we will find the Nora, and I will have back my grandson."

***

South of Conshohocken across the Schuylkill River there were various highbrow neighborhoods with homes that ranged from impressive to luxurious. Go far enough west and you would start to run into the mansions. It was a good distance from the city proper and from the Nora and incubi who dwelt there. It was suburban enough so that werewolves and dhampir would have little interest in it. Mary was reasonably certain that's why Merlin chose it.

Her car was a classic, and in very good condition, so it didn't stand out too much in the environment. She had texted him to let him know that she needed to call in her boon, and he had only texted back an owl meme meaning he was willing to see her, but he had sent nothing else. She figured he was probably well aware of what was going on.

When she went to knock on the ornamental door, which cleverly concealed protective runes, it opened by itself. She hated when it did that. She strode inside and walked up the wide, decorative curved stair case to the upstairs library where Merlin took his meetings. She looked around at all the art work and artifacts that he had acquired and wondered how many of them were actually magical.

Though they called him Merlin, he did not look the part. He was dressed in an expensive, yet casual suit, his gray hair was immaculately combed in a short style Caesar cut, and his blue eyes were piercing. The sleeves and hems of his clothes were replete with arcane symbols that were almost certainly for more than just show.

Merlin wasted no time in rebuking her. "Do you know how many preternaturals you have pissed off? The Nora have all but evacuated Philly, and your cabal is considering putting out a hit on you. The incubi and succubi have fled as well. The Lenape wolf witches are attempting to work a curse that will force you to reveal yourself so the Slayer can catch you. Even the local ghosts are perturbed because they can sense Stanislav's presence nearby. That doesn't even account for the local war wolf pack that's furious over Harald's death."

Long before she had arrived, she had called into one of her contacts in her network that was still willing to work with her and had found out what Stanislav had done to Harald. The news disturbed her, but it didn't shock her."Pack?" she asked in confusion. "Harald was a lobo. He didn't have any pack."

"Technically yes, but there is a young pack that he would often give shelter to. They tried recruiting him to join them, but he wasn't exactly impressed with them," Merlin informed.

"I'd hoped Stanislav wouldn't go there; he never did before," she said sullenly.

"That's because he was waiting for Zora to come to her senses. The Slayer could have killed you both any time he wanted to, but contrary to what you might believe, Mary, he didn't want to. Did it never occur to you that Dragomir wouldn't take her in? No Gens anywhere in the North or South America would have. The word was out, and no one was going to help her. Not even the other bloodlines of vampires.

"Many believe there was one real reason she kept playing rebel without a cause, because of you. That is the way Stanislav sees it, and on top of having interfered with his daughter, now you have his grandson. He wants you destroyed, and this time Zora won't be there to protect you. Dragomir has already put out the word. If any Gens catches you with that whelp, you are doomed. Dhampir will never allow one of their young to be taken, even if he did run away.

"I know you liked Zora, but this is suicide, Mary. No one dares to kidnap whelps from the dhampir. Even those Gens not directly descendant from Stanislav would love to be the ones to destroy you and return the whelp to him, if only to gain a boon from the Great Father of North America.

"You shouldn't have come here, you've done more than just place me in danger, you've possibly destabilized the entire region. The CIA Dark Force is on the move. They know that to even entertain trying to stop something like Stanislav could take a battalion of marines armed to the teeth, and even then, it's not guaranteed."

"I thought they just watched us," she said.

"They do, but their real goal is to make sure the world never believes we exist. Remember, they do business with us, and even the CIA understands that Stanislav is a force of nature that normal weapons won't harm. The dhampir know only too well how to kill hunters, and bringing a flamethrower or dragon's-breath rounds barely works against them these days. They aren't like nosferatu, they have weapons, and they know how to use them. They've infiltrated our society, and they know how to use our own tools against us. Take the boy back, Mary, or let me do it for you. You are in way over your head."

"I can't do that," she said.

"Why," he demanded, "because of some misplaced loyalty to a dead dhampir? Zora's gone, and Stanislav is the boy's grandfather. By their laws that makes him the boy's guardian, and no one in this world is likely powerful enough to change that."

"What if she's not dead?" Mary asked.

"Is that a joke?" he accused.

"Do you think that little dhampir just showed up by accident? He came looking for his mother," she told him.

"So tell him the truth and take him home," Merlin insisted.

"I would, except for one thing. I think there may be a small chance that Zora is still unlive, and I think you might know it," she accused. "When Bohdan showed up he said something that didn't make sense to me at first, that his mother had red hair."

"This is why you've placed us all in danger and drew The Slayer out of the Pine Barrens, because the boy was curious about his mother's hair color?" he asked incredulously.

"No," she countered, "Because her hair wasn't red, not naturally. She began dying it not long after she started to lair in Philly. Now how would he know that, and don't bother telling me it's because someone told him. Stanislav expressly forbid the mention of even her name after what happened. Not even you, Merlin, will try to make the argument that someone slipped. No dhampir in the Western world will cross Stanislav, much less tell his grandson something he wasn't meant to know. Bohdan told me he has been dreaming about her, and in his dreams, she has red hair. That's just a little too much of a coincidence in the mystic world of night for my tastes. I've heard stories about how when some of our kind are hurt real bad we go into a coma, into a kind of torpor, and we can stay that way for decades while we heal. If Zora wasn't burned, and she wasn't decapitated, then there is a chance she's still out there somehow, calling to her son. If she, is I'll bet you know it."

Merlin shot daggers at her with his angry glare. He stood up and stated plainly, "A rustic pack of savage dhampir are roaming the city destroying anything in their way. An angry pack of war wolves is looking for them because they are young and stupid enough to think they can challenge Stanislav and his Gens. The other bloodlines have fled the city, Dragomir is furious, government agents are underfoot, and you have delusions of grandeur all because one small dhampir had a bad dream.

"Do you know who Ileana is Mary?" Merlin threatened.

"I know who she is," Mary shot back snidely.

"Do you? There may be no other dhampir so steeped in their mystic lore and magical rights as she is, except the Three Sisters. She's no mere sorcerer, she's an augur. Some of the other Matriarchs in the Sinca Gens feared what would happen if Stanislav left the woods to search for little Bohdan, given his power and sheer, massive size. The most powerful dhampir matriarchs are mystics, priestesses of their kind, and several in the Sinca Gens tried to persuade Stanislav to let Dragomir find the whelp. It was Ileana who silenced all of them, and insisted that Stanislav search for the whelp personally.

"Every dhampir priestess who practices the magic of the old world in the Americas either learned it from her, or by another female dhampir who was taught by her or one of her students. Who do you think was helping Stanislav raise the boy? You can bet your undead ass she wants him back. You have crossed the two oldest, most dangerous dhampir in the New World, and you want me to help you. Are you insane?"

Mary took out the platinum coin inscribed with Merlin's runic symbol. He had given it to her after she had swiped a powerful talisman for him. It was a mystic boon, a Geas, mystical assurance that the issuer would repay their debt, no matter what.

"Are you insane and stupid!" he yelled. "You would trade in a boon of that magnitude for this! Ask for a million dollars, it's yours, ask for five million, I'll have it by the end of the week. Ask for a mystical protection symbol so no technology could ever detect you again, I'll craft it. Ask for Lassiter's deepest, darkest secrets, I'll contact the spirit world and get some of them for you, but don't ask for this."

"It's the only thing you have that I want. Now, tell me the truth, is she still unlive?" she demanded.

His face turned angry red, his hands literally trembled. By mystical law, he had to comply. "She is," he whispered in irate contempt.

"Where? Tell me all of it," she commanded.

"She is buried in a cemetery in New Jersey; she was interred there by the hunters of the Order of Saint George," he admitted begrudgingly.

"How the hell did that happen, and the dhampir not know?" she questioned in shock.

"Her lover never saw her killed. He took the child and fled while she was fighting with the police who arrived to investigate all the blood and screams after Zora slaughtered the medical staff who were stupid enough to deliver her monstrous offspring. He called Alexandru; Zora had given him the number for some reason. Alexandru told the Great Father about the birth of his grandson. As you could imagine, he was more than slightly concerned.

"Stanislav killed the hunters who went after Garret and Bohdan, all but one. However, by the time he got to the hospital he couldn't get near it. It was crawling with police, and she was gone. The Gens searched, but there was no sign of Zora after that night, and Stanislav couldn't sense his daughter anymore. Eventually Dragomir discovered that the Order of Saint George had been there. They all assumed that she had been killed, since Zora wasn't the type to ever let hunters take her alive. No night-stalking dhampir would, they assumed that she had been set to ash, and moved on.

"Several years later, while trading info with a lobo nomad who came through here, I discovered the Order of Saint George had set up an operation as caretakers of a New Jersey cemetery. Naturally I investigated, only to discover they had interred a dhampir there. The whole operation was set up by a cop that joined the order about eight years ago. The one that managed to get away from Stanislav that night he rescued his grandson. The one who saw his friends and coworkers slaughtered by Zora, and then witnessed her father butcher the hunters. If I'm right he is waiting for her to wake up and call to her Gens psychically. I figured it would be Stanislav who heard her, but instead it was her child, or so it seems," he explained caustically.

"Why the hell would they go through all this trouble, and wait all these years? That's insane! It makes no sense!" she insisted.

"It makes perfect sense. After they attempted to destroy the New Sinca Gens again, almost two years ago, they finally decided there was no way they could hope to defeat the dhampir in their own territory. They lost the entire kill battalion they sent out there, and we both know for a fact the Sinca dhampir didn't lose a single member. They had Zora all that time and they came up with a plan. Use her to lure them out of the forest, and hopefully be able to destroy at least some of them and weaken the Gens, then go back with even greater numbers."

"You never told them this?" she asked incredulously.

"Of course I didn't tell them, you half-wit! What do you think would happen? Exactly what has happened now! If Stanislav found what they had done, he would have led a full-on war band to the heart of suburban South Jersey and waged an open war on the Order. Is that what you want? Do you want a giant dhampir and a bunch of savage, supernatural barbarians slaughtering hunters in the open night of the South Jersey suburbs? Don't you think that might be a little hard to cover up?"

She didn't have to think about that long before she admitted, "Ok, you have a point. But for all your intellectual superiority, how smart was it, Merlin, to just wait for all this to happen? You had to know she would wake up, and that some dhampir somewhere would hear her."

"Not necessarily," he shot back. "Vampires can remain dormant for decades, even centuries or longer. There was no guarantee that Zora would ever wake at all. If that was the case, then the hunters were suitably occupied babysitting a cemetery and leaving the rest of us alone."

"You still should have told me; she's my friend," she demanded.

"So you could do what, go get staked by hunters and risk revealing the entire Philadelphia supernatural community? I think not. There are maybe forty-five hunters staking that place out, all posing as employees of the cemetery; there are no less then fifteen of them there at any time of the day, all trained to spot and combat creatures like us. Stay away, Mary."

"There is no way this ends that easy, and you know it," she challenged him. "Zora is calling, and Bohdan will keep trying to get to her. He came all this way on his own; do you think that's going to stop? What if he finds his way there, and they destroy him? When Stanislav and the Sinca Gens find out it will be all-out war. That will be even more impossible to cover up! We need to get Zora out of there, whether you like it or not."

He sighed, and walked over to the window in frustration. She followed behind him and continued to hound him. "You're in this, Merlin, and there's no backing out now. Stanislav may be a near feral savage, but Dragomir isn't, and neither is Ileana. If they find out you knew all this and let it happen …"

He turned back to her with such a withering gaze that she thought he had inflicted the evil eye upon her. She wisely kept her mouth shut at that moment. Though physically she could tear Merlin apart, she knew better than to try to even touch him. He was far too smart and cagey to have let her get this close if there was even a chance she could hurt him by mere physical means.

He then approached so close she thought he meant to knock her down. "So, vampire," he dared, "are you willing to risk all for your long, lost friend?"

"Yes," she said without hesitation, "she was the best friend I ever had. She risked her unlife for me, she helped me get out of a bad situation. I owe her."

"Then I guess the next question is, how fast can you dig?" he posed.

"Very funny, dickhead, but I'm not laughing," she rebuked.

"Neither am I," said the wizard. "You are the one who's going to have to go there and dig her up. All I have to do is provide you the distraction to help you do it."

"What kind of distraction?" she demanded. He didn't answer, instead he sat down at his desk and began to dial a phone.

"Who are you calling?" she insisted.

"Your distractions, the whole pack of them," he told her snidely.

"Werewolves?" she yelled in alarm.

"War wolves, to be precise. These ones very much want to meet you, but don't worry, I won't tell them they won't be able to see you, even with their night vision. They may be able to smell you, though."

She went to grab the phone, but he made a gesture and blocked her hand with some sort of invisible field. She shot a deadly glare at him. "Are you psycho, Merlin? How the hell am I supposed to work with them after Harald!"

"You're not, you're supposed to use them to distract the hunters so you can rescue Zora, and I would do it quick, were I you. When the hunters and the war wolves clash, one side is going to be victorious, and I would be gone before that happens were I you," he warned.

Mary was not pleased by any of this; she told Merlin his plan was asinine and that he was truly crazy. He countered that the only thing that could possibly distract the hunters was a pack of war wolves. He made it very clear that that the Order of Saint George was expecting vampires, not werewolves, and in the conflict she might have the chance to save Zora. She asked how the hell was she supposed to dig her up that fast, and Merlin told her that was something she needed to figure out. Mary was well aware that he was purposely putting her in danger for a variety of reasons.

At the risk of getting blasted in the face with a hex, she said, "Merlin, you should understand this. You'd better do everything in your power to make sure I walk out of this, because one thing I will promise you is that I will make sure whoever ends me knows you're behind all this."

"I am behind nothing, I have kept the peace, Mary; a peace you have done nothing but threaten," he spat back.

"Will the war wolves see it that way, or the hunters, or Stanislav?" she countered.

He smiled at her derisively. Then he picked up the phone and began to dial it again.

"Now who the hell are you calling, Stanislav?"

"No, the caretaker of another cemetery that harbors ghouls," he told her with icy coldness.

Mary smiled, "That's more like it," she said.

"Oh, indeed," he replied with scathing sarcasm.

Ghouls were loathsome creatures, to be sure. Cowardly carrion eaters, they frequented cemeteries. Though they were vile to behold, and worse to be around, they were also very cunning. What they would do is wait till the day a body was just interred in a grave, dig it up long after everyone had gone home, and eat it. Then they would bury the coffin again and ninety-nine percent of the time no one would be the wiser.

More revoltingly, they had developed a taste for the embalming fluids that modern morticians used to preserve bodies. It was almost like alcohol to them, but they could only get the intoxicating effect from it if had been in a body for a certain period of time. They had even gone to paying certain funeral home directors to utilize their favorite mixture of fluids to help create the tastiest corpse. No one had more contacts in the funerary industry then they did.

Ghouls were good at two things. One was avoiding detection; they were better at stealth then even the Nora. The second was digging up graves, which they could do in mere minutes. With just a couple of them she would be able to unearth Zora in no time flat.

Once Merlin had made the arrangements for her to meet them in their home turf, she told him that when this was all done they were quits, and she would hopefully never bother him again. Merlin told her she had best never dare to bother him again. When she was gone, Merlin sat at his desk and picked up the phone and dialed it for a third time. When Lassiter picked up at the other end, the sorcerer told him, "We have to talk."

***

If all the dhampir of the Gens could fit into Great Aunt Ileana's cottage, they would have, if Stanislav would have let them. Bohdan's disappearance had greatly upset the clan, and all of them swore that if any creature visited harm upon him they would die a very slow death, being eaten alive. Thus, it came as no surprise that when Stanislav retuned without him Ileana was disappointed. She put far less stock in Dragomir's technological tricks then Alexandru did. That was why Stanislav never even had to ask her to read the bones; she told the other elders to join her in her cottage where she would take the reading.

Ileana was second to only Stanislav in age in the New World, and had always been the spiritual and mystical leader of the Gens. Ileana was a whelp of no older than a hundred and thirty moons when the conqueror Charlemagne and his son defeated the Avars. She would grow to adulthood in the times when old Bulgaria ruled the lands the Great Father calls Dacia. In those days the daughters of the first mother, the Italian witches, still taught the dhampir girls the secrets of the old gods.

Ileana knew more about the ancient magics than perhaps any mortal Stregheria who now lived, and only dhampir priestesses older than her could claim more knowledge, and those remaining you could count with one hand. She was known by all the Gens of the New World, and her name was famous even in the old country.

All the elders, including Stanislav himself, watched and waited while she read the bones. Each bone came from a different animal or human, each with its own spiritual significance. Etched into each one was an ancient rune that was read in a specific manner depending on how it fell in regards to all the other bones. The concept was not dissimilar to the modern tarot, which Ileana disdained as new age tripe; after all it was only invented in the fifteenth century, and the Italians who created it were not Stregheria.

"The bones are clear," she said as she stood up to her full height, which was over six feet tall. "The wolves will lead you to Bohdan. Find the wolves of war, they will come seeking you, Great Father, but they will be led astray."

Stanislav rose from the crouch he was in, towering above all. The cottages of the dhampir were will built spaciously to house the size of their males. Where a full-grown dhampir woman could be about six feet tall, the average male was almost six-eight. The Elders like Stanislav and Old Silviu were significantly bigger.

He approached his ancient niece and asked, "Led by who?"

"Magic." she replied, "Potent magic. That's all I see concerning it. What is more important, Uncle, I see the unseen one, the trouble maker, the malcontent. She will be with them."

"How is this so?" Old Silviu asked. "Why would wolves tolerate her? Would they not just savage her?"

"I think that is what they intend to do," she answered. "I believe they are angry at the new pelt that will adorn my Uncle's cottage with his other trophies. I believe they think she is to blame, and they are right. The unseen one who led Zora astray and took Bohdan, led Great Father to their elder. Then the grey wolf found out why war wolves are wise to fear dhampir. Now they seek her, and then you, Uncle."

Stanislav snorted derisively. "When I find them next time, all the sortie will fight, and none of them will live to tell of it." Old Silviu smiled. "Where are the wolves going, niece? Where will we find them?"

"To the Necropolis that Dragomir has just revealed to us, where the hunters dwell," she told them. To the surrounding elders this was surprising. They didn't know much about hunters, other than how to kill, cook and eat them. Most of their knowledge about the mortal hunters was really based on rumor and stereotypical tropes they had always applied to them. They found it strange that a bunch of mortals would haunt a necropolis.

Ileana looked to her uncle with wide, appealing eyes. He had known her and protected her since she was a girl. When her parents where killed by the dhampir of a rival Gens, he had avenged them. Then he had taken her in, and raised her as his own. Stanislav was the one who had bartered with the witches of old so they would teach her the deepest secrets of the Craft. She was his closest family, and had been with him now for over twelve hundred years. He knew when she wanted to talk to him alone.

Stanislav waved the other elders out, and without word or protest they all silently left, closing the door behind them. He looked to her indicating she should speak. "It is as I feared, she's calling out to him. That's why he left, that's why he went to the city. That's why he found the trouble maker."

Stanislav objected, "If my daughter still unlived I would know; if she called out from torpor I would hear. I would go to her, and bring her back. I told you this. You are powerful, my niece, you always have been, but you know the old ways as well as any. I am her father, and I am eldest and the most powerful in the New World and the Old. If my daughter cried out, I would hear her."

Ileana countered, "Not if she wasn't calling to you. Not if she didn't want you to find her."

"She is not so powerful," he posed.

"No, but she is willful, she always was," Ileana noted.

"That is not enough, I would hear," he insisted.

"Unless …" she baited.

"Unless what? My daughter, who is barely even a century old, was suddenly to become so powerful she could fool me?" he challenged obstinately.

"Great Uncle, after your father, you may be the most powerful dhampir elder in the world where your strength is concerned. But it is not power that governs a summoning, the magic doesn't work that way. It is desire, she calls to the one she most wants to find her; she calls to Bohdan. I believe there is a reason she does not want you to hear."

"Which is?" he asked, almost hesitantly.

"She means to take Bohdan away, she means to raise him in the city, amidst the mortals."

Now Stanislav grew angry. "Zora was obstinate, and she was brash, but she was never stupid. She knows she could never hide from me. If she unlives, if she is out there, I will find her, but this time she will come to me. She will come back to New Sinca where she belongs, and together we will make her forget her foolish obsession with the mortal world, even if you have to hex her to do it."

"How will you make this so?" Ileana asked.

"Bohdan. I will find my grandson and bring him home. Here he will stay. If Zora wants to help raise her son, she will return to us, and if she does, we will make sure she stays. If she chooses not to come, then you and I will raise Bohdan in the old ways, in the true ways, in the ancient ways of night as it was meant to be," Stanislav declared.

"You know Uncle, nothing would please me more, but it is not so easy. If she rises, and claims her son, she will flee to the city with him," she warned.

"There's no Gens in the New World that would dare to give her haven," he announced with absolute certainty.

"Yes, Uncle, not here in the New World, but what about the Old one?" she countered.

The Great Father growled. Usually that was enough to silence any dhampir in the Gens, but Ileana knew when she could press her uncle, and when she could not.

"Vali has not forgiven you, and he never will," she said.

"If my brother wants to break the peace, then he can come to New Sinca and I will remind him why all the Elders of the ancient Gens were so glad I left," Stanislav snorted.

"Great Father, dear Uncle, you know this can't be. The Primul Tata warned you were not to fight again. You and Vali are the last of his sons, and your three sisters warned me to make sure you never came back, for if you and Vali duel, the Primul Tata will wake. This world is not ready for his ancient might. There would be carnage, and disaster might befall us all if mortal men knew what truly stalked the night," she implored.

"Which is why the New World is mine and the Old his. What does my brother have to do with my Grandson?" he demanded.

Ileana immediately replied, "Zora is obstinate, but not foolish. If she takes Bohdan back to the Old World, Vali will give her haven, and wait for you to come and challenge."

"You presume too much," he snarled in genuine anger. "She is my daughter; though she may be disobedient, she is not treacherous!"

"She is a mother who is trying to get her son back, and when she does, she will be a dhampir matriarch trying to protect her whelp. What won't she do to get away from us?" Ileana offered.

She knew if she didn't have his love, and she wasn't the second most esteemed elder in the New World, she would probably be flying through the wall of her cottage for challenging him like this. He growled, "What are you saying?"

"You must bring Bohdan back, but when you raise Zora, you must send her away. She can never be trusted now. She is a city stalker in Dragomir's way, not a true night stalker like us. She will always be driven by the urge to take Bohdan to that world. One day we will turn around, and she will be gone, and so will Bohdan. She does not understand how precious her blood is as the granddaughter of the Primul Tata, so how can she understand how precious Bohdan is? He is the great grandson of the First Father, and he will be strong," she finished.

Stanislav did not like what he heard. He turned away and dropped to all fours as he stalked angrily around the cottage. If anyone had seen how Bohdan had behaved after Lassiter had angered him, and then seen how the Great Father lumbered back and forth now, they would have instantly seen the resemblance between the two and how they both moved. Ileana had said the day Bohdan was brought back to the Gens how much like Stanislav he looked.

The Great Father turned back to his niece and demanded, "Enough, I will hear no more. I will bring Bohdan back, and I will raise my daughter from torpor. If Zora rejects the old ways, then her rights as a matriarch are forfeit, and you will be Bohdan's matriarch then, and forevermore. Zora will have the chance to rejoin us, and if she doesn't, then her fate is in her hands, and we will speak of it no more."

"As you say, Uncle," she said, as she bowed her head deferentially towards him.

"Where is she? Throw the bones and tell me where she lies," he insisted.

"No need; she is in the necropolis where the hunters dwell," she revealed.

Stanislav's faced contorted into a grimace of barely contained rage. "Then the Nora weren't lying, and Dragomir was right. They interred her, they kept her there, waiting for us to come. They think they have set a trap," he sneered.

"Yes, the bones don't say as much, only that she is there, but what other reason could there be?" she agreed.

He stood up and curled his mighty hands into massive fists. "Tonight I will drape the necropolis with the entrails of wolves and hunters. Tonight I will remove that vile Nora's head with my hands and crush it to pulp between my fingers. Tonight the unseen world will remember why they fear the dhampir. Then I will hunt and kill every war wolf and every hunter in forty leagues of every direction of the compass. After we are done, all our enemies will know that to come near New Sinca is death. I am taking our ten best warriors with me, and the others will stay behind for your protection." He then stalked out of her cottage and went off to gather the hunters.

Ileana watched him go. She knew that it was unlikely that he would exile Zora; a dhampir's bond with their offspring was strong; it was the same with her own children. It was forbidden for one female to attempt to take the child of another without the permission of an elder. Such things were only done under the harshest circumstances. The truth was she had bonded with Bohdan, and grown to love him as her own. She ached to have her little nephew back with her, and she deeply resented Zora for putting them all in this position.

She had always wanted Zora to learn the old ways, and to be not only as a daughter to her, but learn the mystic craft of her ancestors. But her niece had always rejected so many of the old teachings. What had the New World brought her but pain and near destruction? If Zora wanted to leave to stalk the cities, that was her choice, but Ileana would not tolerate her risking Bohdan's future. As far as she was concerned, Zora had already forfeited her rights to her son.

The seed was planted in Stanislav's heart now, and though Ileana took no joy in manipulating her Uncle, especially given how dangerous a risk it was, she felt in her still heart that it was best for her family and her Gens. Stanislav loved Bohdan too, and saw himself in his little grandson. He would never let Bohdan go, any more then she would.

She made the gestures and whispered the spell to summon another dhampir to her. She didn't have to wait long till Alexandru appeared at her door, and she waved him in. She ordered him, "You will call Dragomir. You will tell him that he and those cowardly Nora city stalkers will use all of their catspaws and their deceit to make sure that the humans go nowhere near the necropolis tonight, and to make sure the mortal law givers are well distracted. Tell him Stanislav is going with a full sortie of the best warriors, and he is going to slaughter every hunter and every wolf he sees. If anything mortal is unfortunate enough to be near, it's doomed, lawgivers or not. Stanislav isn't going to make allowances for human sheriffs, they will perish too if they are in his way."

"What's going on?" he asked, as he didn't yet have all of the details.

"Your Great Father will tell you that, and you will tell Dragomir what I said," she instructed.

"Yes, Great Aunt," he said, as he bowed his head to her and moved to go call Dragomir.

"Alexandru," she called him back.

"Yes," he asked.

She approached him and with an intense glance she said, "No foolish bravado or tomfoolery tonight. Tonight, Great Father will doubtlessly have you by his side. Tonight, you will hunt, and you will kill, and you do so with all the craft and cunning of your people, and you make no mistakes. You will be facing war wolves and hunters. No room for nonsense, you understand?"

"Yes, Great Ileana, we will bring Bohdan back," he assured her.

She nodded, and watched him go.

***

She made sure again that her shotgun was loaded. She had come pretty much armed to the teeth. She had a sawn-off twelve-gauge pump action that could hold up to eight rounds, and all of them loaded with silver pellets. She had a .45 caliber 1911 with 8 full magazines of silver bullets, a silver-plated Bowie knife that cost her more to make then all the silver rounds cost together, and a small Walther PPK .380 which was meant more for distraction than anything else. Mary decided if her eternity was going to end tonight, it wouldn't be for lack of shooting back.

She had brought along other equipment as well, which was mostly all stuffed in her backpack. Several smoke grenades, a foldable fox-hole shovel, even some noise boxes to use as distraction if she had to, and a police-band radio. She had on a bullet-proof vest with impact plates, too. Her supernatural strength allowed her to carry the gear with relative ease. She knew having all this stuff might come in useful one day. Lassiter used to laugh at her for hoarding it. "If you're close enough to need a gun or armor, you're too close," he told her once. Sadly, she knew he was right.

The cemetery the hunters had taken over was covered by security cameras that detected visible, infrared and ultraviolet light. It was an impressive setup by human standards, but not to a Nora. The older a Nora vampire became, the more wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum they could master. Though their invisibility was accomplished through some supernatural means even the Nora themselves didn't fully understand, they did fully grasp how it worked.

A Nora could shift themselves out of the visible light wavelength up or down the electromagnetic spectrum. A young Nora started out going either infrared or ultraviolet. These days most reborn Nora almost always went up the spectrum to start in the ultraviolet range because infrared imaging equipment was so readily available in the modern nights.

She, however, was born in a time when speakeasies and flappers were the order of the day, and back then nobody but the eggheads knew what the hell the electromagnetic spectrum was. Thus she had managed to master all the way up to radio waves, though the spectrum she was in now was microwave. She could only see or be seen in that specific wavelength of light. She had learned that using radio waves around cops and security guards tended to interfere with their radios. This was a great tactic to disrupt communications, but hunters might know that, so unless they were using airline frequencies, they wouldn't be able to detect her unless she made a sound. After nearly a century or so of undeath, when she moved she didn't make sounds anymore, unless she wanted to.

She had also snuck into the main house where there were two hunters monitoring the cameras in their hidden command center. She had discovered what frequency they were communicating on, and now her police-band radio was set to it. She wouldn't turn it on, of course, until the time was right, lest it give away her position.

But she knew, despite her mastery of stealth and all her preparations, she wasn't safe. Both dhampir and werewolves were notorious for their olfactory senses, and both could track prey by scent alone. She had brought two cans of anti-dog pepper spray, so that if the war wolves got close she could confound their senses. It would infuriate them, but it would also make it near impossible to track her by scent in the vicinity of the spray.

The hunters had inscribed the name Zora Garret on the headstone where they had buried her. They had done it on purpose in the hopes of making her easy to find. However, they were counting on dhampir showing up, and all their defenses were based on that. A pack of war wolves was the last thing they probably expected.

To state that this was going to be tricky would be the moronic understatement of this decade. The ghouls who were hidden just outside the cemetery were waiting for her signal and wouldn't come in until both the hunters and the war wolves were distracted. She had to time this right. She had positioned herself a great distance away from where Zora was buried. There was a hunter who was making rounds in this part of the boneyard, and hopefully she would be able to lure the wolves right at him.

At least Bohdan was safe. She had left him at a hotel that was just near a good-sized section of woods, so he could hunt, and she had shown him how to use the room key so he could get back into the room she had rented if he wanted to. She had great faith in his ability to go unseen, and if she didn't make it through this, she gave him instructions to take the cash she had left him and go somewhere safe. Where that was, she had no idea.

With everything she had done, she thought that she was prepared for this, but she wasn't. When she first saw the war wolves approaching in the microwave spectrum she almost panicked. They were quietly stalking their way through the cemetery. It was amazing that seven creatures who were so massive could move so quietly. They were huge, and she had made it a point her whole unlife to never get this close to them for any reason, and now here she was. Fortunately, war wolves only had natural low light vision, and they couldn't see her, but nevertheless they were moving right in her direction because they could smell her.

What the war wolves weren't counting on was all the cameras, and Mary became aware the hunters were wise to them when one of them close to her ran into a nearby shed. This was a mistake; his quick movements caught the attention of the war wolves, who changed tactics. They split up in to three parties, one of them three strong, the others just two. Two of the groups went at the shed, and the biggest one kept coming at her. She realized they may be primordial savages, but they were cunning savages.

She needed them fighting each other, and it wouldn't be but mere seconds before they were close enough to her to be lethal. She slid down out of the tree she was in and began running towards the shed. She made no attempt to be furtive, she wanted them to hear her. Off in the distance she saw the lights on several electric maintenance vehicles flick on. Several hunters were piling into them as they were loading rifles. Each vehicle had a small cab with four seats and a flatbed that at least two armed hunters were standing in.

The wolves must have seen it too, and suddenly they bolted. Given that they could see several armed bands of human hunters gearing up to come out into the cemetery, they began to stalk. The hunters began to take up positions and open fire with AR-15-style rifles that she hoped were loaded with silver bullets. The fact that their rifles couldn't fire dragon's-breath rounds meant that they could be. Even though their defenses were set up to repel dhampir, all the wooded areas in New Jersey meant that war wolves could be a problem here, too. It wouldn't be surprising at all if the hunters were prepared for that as well.

Despite the fact that the hunters knew the werewolves were coming, all the headstones provided the wolves with excellent cover. They were staying behind the larger gravestones to help give their huge bodies more protection. She realized that the hunters might have picked the wrong place for a gunfight against supernatural creatures whose preternatural reflexes would be able to use the environment against them.

Shots rang out as the fight began. She was grateful that the hunters weren't using full auto; that would bring the cops really quick. She knew she only had so much time to act now. Rather than try to run around the field of fire she was in, she began to dodge across the cemetery as best she could because she needed to get to Zora's grave as quickly as she could.

She also knew that placed her very close to the wolves.

She needed to throw the wolves off the scent and provide them the chance to get on top of the hunters. She took out one of the cans of pepper spray, placed it on top of a three-foot-high headstone, and moved away from it. Then she pulled out her Walther and shot at it until she hit it and it exploded. Even at a safe distance she could smell the pungent stench of the pepper spray fill the air. The wolves furiously howled their discontent as the pepper began to burn their noses.

She then got down quickly and fished several smoke grenades out of her back pack, pulled the wires out of them and hurled them towards the hunters as they began to expel plumes of thick, grey smoke into the night air. The hunters gave out cries of confused alarm and began to shoot through the smoke in hopes of keeping the werewolves pinned. The wolves suddenly grew silent, and she knew what that meant; they were moving in.

She got up and began running as quickly as she could. She could clearly see in the microwave spectrum two of the huge nearby war wolves making their way stealthily towards the hunter in the shed. She avoided them and began making her way toward Zora's grave as quickly as she dared. When she was far enough away, and nearly at the grave, she turned on the radio and stopped to listen.

The hunters and the war wolves were engaged; she didn't need the radio to know that. She heard pitched gunfire, inhuman howling, ferocious roaring and human cries of terror and pain. She listened to the desperate hunters as they began to try to coordinate a defense, but suddenly became aware that the two hunters in the control center were screaming that they were losing all the cameras, and had no visuals.

That wasn't right.

Reasonably certain that the war wolves and the hunters were occupied, she shifted her senses and stealth powers in the infrared to see if the infrared cameras were still emitting light. She quickly noticed that many were gone. She began to search about hurriedly to try and figure out what the hell was going on. The war wolves were cunning, but in their animalistic state not intelligent enough to stop the attack and take out the cameras.

The she saw it, just a moment, but it was all she needed to witness. A shadow moved over one of the cameras she could see nearby, then it was just gone. A shadow that emitted no light of any kind, that she could not penetrate with her infravision, and that moved slowly and purposefully. There was only one kind of creature that cloaked itself like that: dhampir.

She almost lost it, she quickly took cover and looked around, and she could see them. There were at least three near her, and there was no telling how many more. She gathered her will and used all her mental fortitude to control her fear. She knew she had to act. If the dhampir waited, and that was all they had to do, they could just move in and slaughter the winner of the fight before their victims even knew they were there. If that happened she would never be able to rescue Zora. If it happened while she was still here, she was almost certainly, finally dead.

What was worse, if dhampir were here, then it was likely that Stanislav was leading them. She had seen him precious few times in her unlife, and she had hoped beyond hope she would never see him again. She closed her eyes as the crippling anxiety threatened to paralyze her. If she could breathe, she would be hyperventilating. She focused on Zora and the memories of her dearest friend, and on her child who was now counting on her.

What are you doing here , she thought to herself as she pressed herself up to a large tombstone and closed her eyes in fear. You are Nora, you don't take chances. It goes against the code. It's how we survive. Dhampir and werewolves and nosferatu are warriors, we aren't. We don't scrap, we run.

Then she remembered the time Zora saved her unlife from that lone hunter. He had come into her lair during the day armed with stakes, an axe and dragon's-breath rounds in his shotgun. Zora could have cut and run, the day was no threat to her, but she stayed and took the hunter down. He had never even seen her coming. It wasn't till she woke the next night that she discovered how close she had come to the second death.

She remembered those nights she and Zora had gone out together hunting and grifting. What it was like to have fun again. She had even gotten drunk again off some dupes Zora had gotten sloshed. It was the first time in decades she hadn't felt alone, and maybe the first time ever she felt she had finally found someone she could trust.

Then she remembered Bohdan's big, silver eyes and how they became wistful whenever he would just say her name. She opened her eyes. Damn It, I'm tired of being a coward. I've been a coward for nearly a hundred years. For nine damn decades I've let Lassiter intimidate me and use me. I don't want to be afraid anymore. I want to remember what hope was. I want my friend back.

She took a deep breath, and for a moment she felt human again.

Then she took off like a bat out of hell. She didn't run away, but right back at the hunters, because she knew exactly what she had to do. Back across the graveyard, the war wolves had gotten on top of the hunters and you could hear it. Frantic gunfire, screams of mortal lives ending, even a war wolf cry out in agonized fury as it took a silver bullet.

She went right towards a position where two hunters had climbed up on top of a small mausoleum, where they were shooting at the war wolves. When she was almost to the crypt they were on, she leapt over thirteen feet through the air right on top of the roof. The hunters heard the impact but they couldn't see her and they turned around with shocked expressions.

Using her forward momentum combined with all her supernatural strength she punched one of the hunters in the face as hard as she could. His head practically exploded. He flew backwards into the air and right off the roof, and she turned around as the second hunter switched the rifle to full auto, but he never got the chance to fire. She kicked his legs out from underneath him and grabbed the rifle in his hands as he fell. He refused to let go; even though he was utterly at a disadvantage, he was still stalwart enough to resist. She chalked that up to hunter training.

She punched him in the face with all her vampiric strength and then he let go. She butted him viciously in the head with the rifle, knocking him off the roof as well. She then got to her knees, steadied the rifle, and looked around to see a shadow making its way over towards the fight. Once she had a clear shot she unloaded all the rounds in the magazine at it.

It was a thirty-round clip, and more than a few rounds found their way into the target. The dhampir roared in pain as it suddenly became visible. It was big, easily over six feet tall, though she had never seen this one before. He was wearing a flannel jacket and overalls, but his feet wear bare, and she could see the massive claws that tipped his fingers and toes. Despite the fact she had hit him with 5.56 rounds, he barely moved back at all, but he sure as hell looked pissed.

That's when the bullet slammed into her armor. The impact was from a powerful caliber. It took her off her feet and rolled her off the roof next to the body of the hunter she had hit in the head with the gun. She dropped the rifle while she was tumbling down. She quickly got up and got cover.

How the hell did they see me! she thought.

She scanned the nearby area and found her shooter. There was a dhampir in a tree with a bolt action hunting rifle. He was probably firing a .308, which was more powerful than any of the AR's the hunters were carrying, and she would wager more accurate, too. The dhampir became visible each time he shot. He let off two blasts and she looked over to see he had wounded one hunter and head-shot the other.

The dhampir have goddamned snipers! she contemplated with alarm. He must have seen her muzzle flash after she opened fire, and that alone was enough for him to zero her. Her armor had protected her, but she could clearly see the huge dent the large caliber had left in it. It would have gone right through her if she hadn't been wearing the plate. She knew she couldn't afford to give him any more shots, he was good. If he managed to head-shoot her, despite her being a vampire she would be in a lot of trouble. She figured this dhampir could have been hunting prey in the Pine Barrens with that rifle for a century, and that would make him a whole hell of a lot more deadly than any other gun fighter here.

She ducked down behind the grave stone she was using for cover, and got on her radio. Mimicking a male voice more than just convincingly, she called out over the radio channel, "Dhampir! Dhampir closing in on the perimeter at eight and eleven o'clock!" She could hear the nearby hunters begin to panic.

The hunters had already lost nearly four of their members, and maybe more. Their leader gave the call to fall back towards the office where the command center was, and they began a strategic retreat. They needed a more defensible position. A small five-man squad began to move to the front lawn of the office to provide covering fire for their comrades, when two of the war wolves who were hiding around back suddenly leapt on top of the roof, ran across it with terrifying speed and leapt off right into the middle of the squad.

One of the werewolves landed with all seven hundred pounds of its supernatural savagery right on top of an armed hunter. The impact crushed the human, literally breaking his bones and puncturing his lungs with his own ribs. The other wolf came down nearly jaws first and decapitated a second hunter with terrifying ease. His severed head launched off his shoulders spraying his life's blood all over the hunters near him.

The three remaining hunters weren't expecting the savage sneak attack and their rifles worked against them in the tight situation. The werewolves were so close that they didn't have the room to bring their rifles to bear without actually butting their weapons against the massive furred bodies of the war wolves. All three of them maintained a trained presence of mind and tried to step away to bring their silver bullets to bear against the monsters.

One of the massive wolves struck out with his claws slashing a hunter across the face with enough razor-sharp force to slice one of his eyes in half and give him whip lash. If he lived he would be horribly disfigured. The other werewolf leapt up off the human it had just decapitated and closed its jaws around the throat of another hunter and bit his head clean off.

Finally, after seeing almost all his squad killed in mere seconds, the last hunter got just far enough away to get his modified AR-15 aimed at the massive beast and he began to unload. The silver bullets did their job with lethal efficiency at such a close-range, punching through flesh and muscle and in some cases lodging in the massive bones of the huge, supernatural, killing machine. The hunter aimed center-mass like he was trained, and managed to get one of the rounds he let off right through the massive lycanthrope's heart.

The huge war wolf began to collapse dead. As it did so its companion was already lunging at the last standing hunter. Before the bold human could switch targets the werewolf drove its massive claws right through his face and out the back of his head. Gore, blood and brain matter flew across the lawn as the werewolf withdrew its clawed hand with lighting speed.

Several squads of the other hunters saw this, and furious over the brutal slaughter of their fallen comrades, took aim and fired. This was a fatal mistake, and exactly what the pack leader of the werewolves wanted. The remaining werewolf from the first attack took off running, as it understood that at a distance the humans had the advantage, and its life was in peril. The fifteen hunters who lined up all looked the same direction and began to open fire, with no one watching their backs. The other five werewolves sprung the trap and the slaughter started as they leapt on the hunters from behind.

At least ten hunters were shooting in the direction of the dhampir, and two of those had flame throwers on their backs. Mary knew it time to get the hell out of here. She remembered how Bohdan had said his Gens had means of dealing with flame throwers and she didn't want to be anywhere near the mortals when they did.

She made a wide sweeping arc trying to keep away from any dhampir she could see, but hauling ass towards Zora's grave as fast as she dared. She could hear gunfire being exchanged, and now a lot of it was full auto. The hunters had doubtlessly realized if they didn't use everything they had they would be dead very soon. She got out her cell phone and sent the text to the ghouls. She was not surprised at all that they were already waiting for her at Zora's grave.

"What are you waiting for, dig so we can get out of here!" she ordered. They looked on fearfully towards the sound of battle, at first refusing to comply.

"Dig!" she demanded, "or do you want to tell Merlin you don't honor your debts and face the curse you know he'll hex you with?"

They growled at her but then got down and started to dig. The ghouls were truly horrific sites to behold even for her. Their physiology had left everything and anything human behind entirely. They were more lizard than man. They had large tails that extended off their tail bones. Their chest, legs and limbs were oval in form rather than round like a human. their skin had an almost scale like quality, and had the color consistency of dead flesh. Their faces were alien with huge, black eyes, massive misshapen noses and a doglike maw filled with razor-sharp rows of fangs and powerful molars for tearing flesh and grinding bone. Given that their bodies couldn't wear normal human clothes, they wore t-shirts with the arms ripped off that sported logos from their favorite bands and TV shows. They adorned themselves with hats, do-rags, and various kinds of jewelry.

What they were impressive at was digging. Their clawed hands moved so fast they remained a constant blur as they moved the dirt with supernatural speed. The power they scooped the soil out with literally shot the dirt between their legs in a constant stream behind them like some sort of an industrial excavating machine.

Stanislav was at first hesitant to approach, not for fear of any foe on the field, but because of the awful, pungent stinging scent that was interfering with his sense of smell. In addition to their night vision and their enhanced hearing, their sense of smell was pivotal to their perceptions. It was maybe their most developed sense. That the hunters managed to neutralize this advantage galled him, and he quickly determined they would bleed for it.

He gave the signal for all the others to hold. They may have lost their noses, but their hearing was keen enough to hear a heartbeat within ten feet. He gave the call of the fox howl, common in the pine barrens. The Great Father could mimic it perfectly, and given the diminutive stature of the grey fox no one who heard it believed that a massive fifteen-hundred-pound dhampir was making it. His next signal marked his position and let the rest of the hunting pack know to look at him. He gave them a moment as he dropped his form of shadow and then gave the hand signals for an attack on the hunters, letting the rest of the warriors know exactly who he wanted slain first. In Stanislav's thinking the flame-throwers were a far greater threat then the war wolves. The Gens fanned out, and began to move in.

The hunters now knew they were there and began to break into six parties of five men; of these, three squads had shotguns armed with dragon's-breath rounds, and of those, two had flame-throwers. The hunter leaders took fifteen men still armed with silver bullets back to try and help the hunters who had been ambushed by the war wolves as fast as they could, leaving three squads to try and deal with the dhampir.

The hunters used infrared goggles to try and find the dead zones of shadow that they knew dhampir used to cloak themselves. What the hunters did not know was that Sinca dhampir had a significant advantage. The Gens had already fought hunters, and knew about their heat vision goggles, their dragon's-breath rounds, and how to deal with their flame-throwers. The hunters had no such experience with the dhampir.

The three squads formed into a reverse triangle formation with the flame-throwers out in front. The dhampir quickly retreated until they were about fifty yards away, which they knew was beyond the effective range of the shotguns and the flame-throwers the hunters bore. None of the humans was ready for what happened next. The dhampir just appeared, almost all of them, and well out of range of the hunters' weapons.

Great Father pulled out his matching Ulfberht blades and threw them with all the lethal force and supernatural accuracy that his eighteen hundred plus years gave him. The blades flew so fast that the hunter's mortal eyes could barely even perceive them much less react to them. The blades hit the hunters with the flame-throwers with such power that they slid through their bodies like a bullet might penetrate wax. The blades punched through their backs killing them instantly and puncturing the fuel tanks they were wearing, dousing the hunters nearby with the victims' blood and diesel fuel.

The other hunters in the squads fared little better, as three other, younger dhampir threw spears with tips forged of the same Ulfberht steel. These weapons sailed through the air with lethal and graceful arcs also punching right through the hunters they hit, and lodging them to the ground beneath them. Almost at the exact same time, the dhampir sharp shooter put a round right between the eyes of another hunter, killing him instantly.

Then Grigore started. The duster-clad dhampir pulled his single-action Colt Army revolver from its holster and began to drop hunters with it as effortlessly as Great Father had thrown his blades. He had acquired the revolver when it was first introduced, in eighteen seventy-three, and had been practicing with it ever since. He could hit a target dead square with it over two hundred yards away, six times in a row and never miss, even if the target was moving.

Within just seconds twelve hunters were dead. Their three remaining members knew this was a lost fight and turned to run. Great Father then pulled a wand from his belt replete with ancient runes masterfully inscribed into it all along its foot-and-a-half length. Such mystical devices were magically imbued with a single effect that could be called on with a power word the creator scribed into the wand when it was constructed. He then called out in his deep rumbling voice, "Ignite!" The diesel fuel that that had escaped the ruptured fuel tanks of the flame throwers ignited under the effect of the powerful magic Ileana had placed into the wand.

The remaining hunters screamed in agony, and the dhampir cheered in glee. They looked on at the wand as Great Father replaced it in a sheath on his leather belt. They marveled at the power of Ileana's magic. She had crafted the wand after the first fight with hunters years ago to turn the power of modern weapons against their users, for in the eyes of the dhampir, science was useless against magic.

Meanwhile the other sortie of hunters had got into firing range of the werewolves, who were ravaging their comrades they had ambushed only moments ago. The werewolves had torn apart more the half the hunters in the three squads, but they had managed to kill at least one more of the massive beasts.

The hunter captain yelled out, "Hit the deck!" The remaining, desperately battling hunters that could dropped to the ground, allowing their allies to get mostly clean shots at the five remaining werewolves. Even though one of the war wolves had a hunter in its mouth they didn't hesitate to fire. The sheer volume of 5.56 rounds that came blazing at the werewolves hit almost all of them, but killed only two of them. The three remaining war wolves yelped in pain or surprise and ran off as the hunters desperately tried to reload their rifles as fast as they could.

That's when they noticed the light coming from behind them. They turned around to see the blazing fire where their fellows had chosen to stand their ground against the encroaching dhampir. At first one of the hunters yelled out in victory thinking that the flames meant their comrades had lit up the vampires. That's when the flash-bangs the dhampir threw from the shadows exploded and blinded the hunters wearing the night-vision goggles.

"What the hell," one of them declared, still holding his eyes, and then his head nearly exploded from the shot he took from the dhampir sharp shooter. Grigore shot up from behind a tombstone and began to follow suit, gunning down partially blinded hunters with preternatural accuracy, his colt six shooter barking off death with each shot.

The remaining hunters saw the most terrifying site they would ever see. Great Father had seen these humans were armed with the silver laden rifles, not the dragon's-breath shotguns, and so he knew they posed no threat to him. He simply ran right at them. They barely had time enough time to get off any shots at him as they saw him for only a split second. The silver bullets that actually managed to hit him simply disintegrated harmlessly against his stone-like hide. He covered the distance to the hunters in nearly a breath before he suddenly appeared and swung his massive arm in an impossibly long arc. His night-steel talons cut through flesh and bone instantly, decapitating four of the hunters so fast they died simultaneously from his one, lethal swing.

Blood covered the faces of several of the nearby hunters who gasped in horror at what they had just seen. One stepped away and something hit him in the back of the head. He turned around shocked that something had got behind him, only to find himself staring right down the barrels of Old Silviu's ten-gauge. His head exploded as the ancient dhampir gave him the first barrel, and the hunter standing just near him got the same treatment when he attempted to turn around.

Great father simply swatted out to his left as one of the hunters attempted to bring his rifle to bear. His forearm hit the human in the head, simultaneously crushing his skull and breaking his neck. The last hunter had his gun trained on Great Father finally ready to unload, but never got the chance to pull the trigger. A terrible pain hit him in the chest and stole his breath. While blood began to flow out of his mouth he looked down to see Alexandru's Ulfberht blade sticking in his chest. He collapsed dying.

What happened next took the dhampir by surprise. One of the war wolves leapt out and came right at one of the younger dhampir who was celebrating the victory over the hunters. The young vampire moved too late to dodge and the werewolf locked his jaws around its sinewy neck and bit the vampire's head right off.

The war wolf couldn't have understood it, but it was the worst thing the remains of the pack could have done, for the dhampir flew into a rage. Andrei reacted after only a momentary shock of seeing one of his clansman meet destruction. He flung his axe in a side throw. Like Grigore, the dhampir had been practicing with his weapons for nearly two centuries. The Ulfbert axe swung on a side axis, with perfect aim and landed with deadly power right in the war wolf's open mouth.

The lycanthrope frantically pulled the axe out of its maw as it howled in agony, but by that time Andrei was already on it. He swung down with his other axe, severing one of the war wolves' massive forearms in two. The massive beast swung its claws at the dhampir but Andrei deftly ducked and as he did so he swung his axe in an overhead arc cutting off its other arm. That's when two more dhampir jumped on the war wolf and bore it to the ground as all three of them then abandoned their weapons and began to cut into the huge beast with their deadly night-steel claws.

The other two werewolves had locked onto the biggest prize, Great Father. Hoping the temporary distraction had caught the ancient off guard, they charged. They made the mistake of not accounting for Old Silviu. He dropped his shotgun and lunged at one of the war wolves from behind, cutting its right hamstring. The great beast dropped and rolled. It managed to get back up on its one leg and turn to face the charging Silviu. It reached out to try and grab the vampire, but Silviu deftly locked hands with it. The huge lycanthrope was used to its inhuman power and strength being able to overwhelm any of its foes. When it tried to force Silviu back it was shocked at the strength that the dhampir exerted on it. Silviu's centuries of existence as undead made him more powerful than most any werewolf he was likely to meet, and he exerted those ages worth of ancient, supernatural might on the war wolf, forcing it down to its knees and crushing its hands in his own at the same time.

The war wolf howled in pain and fear as it realized it had encountered a creature far more powerful than itself. With blinding speed Silviu ripped his hands out of the war wolfs maimed grasp and then slashed the beast's neck wide open. Alexandru then tackled the werewolf to the ground, and a third dhampir joined in as they began cutting it to furry, bloody pieces.

The last werewolf, the pack leader, bore down on Great Father with all its fury. It lunged with all its speed at the massive dhampir, and then was suddenly plucked out of the air and slammed to the ground with such force that most of its bones broke, and beneath it a 2-inch-deep impact crater was formed. The war wolf never even saw Great Father move. The werewolf lost all its breath, and blacked out. Its supernatural endurance kicked in, and began to knit its bones and heal its internal injuries. It opened its eyes a moment later, and stared up at the Great Father in sheer terror.

Despite its animalistic nature, and its primordial understanding of the world, it knew what it saw shouldn't be possible, even amongst the creatures of the night. Great Father stood over it holding up over his head a huge granite monument he had just ripped right out of the ground of the cemetery. It must have weighed well over a ton, and he held it aloft effortlessly. The war wolf rolled over and tried to crawl away with all the speed its broken body could muster. It wasn't nearly fast enough. Great Father brought the massive, granite slab down right on the war wolfs' legs. The giant tombstone shattered under the impact into several large pieces, and imbedded itself into the ground pinning the werewolf in place.

The war wolf howled in agony as it desperately attempted to unpin its legs. Stanislav roared with furious ire, and then set upon the lycanthrope with a rage no living creature could rival, much less fathom. Consumed with fury and blood-lust over the death of their clansmen, the dhampir fell into an absolute frenzy when the scent of the war wolf's blood hit the air, and the taste of the werewolves' flesh fell across their tongues. It was utter, inhuman, barbarous savagery. They didn't bother killing the werewolves who were still breathing, they just set to eating them alive. They cut the tendons in their arms, or simply tore or severed their limbs so they couldn't fight back, and began cutting and biting the lycanthropes flesh right from their bones.

The roars of the dhampir reached the ears of the ghouls, and they stopped. Mary watched as the four of them jumped out of the large whole they had dug nearly over five feet down. "What are you doing?" she insisted, "don't stop!"

The ghoul listened, and then they heard Stanislav roar again. "Dhampir, that's not a werewolf, that's dhampir!" one of them accused.

Mary had become visible in order to communicate with them. "You're digging up a dhampir, so who cares, get back down there and dig!" she ordered.

Great Father roared again. One of the ghouls said in terror, "What ever dhampir is yelling like that must be friggin' huge!"

"Do you know whose grave this is?" one of the ghouls asked his pack mates. They all looked to him. "Zora, daughter of Stanislav the slayer, the Great Father of all the American, Mexican, and South American dhampir."

"Why didn't you tell us, you dick!" one of the other ghouls screamed.

"It doesn't matter," Mary implored, "Dig down to the coffin and then scram!"

"Merlin only said war wolves, he didn't say dhampir, I didn't think it mattered." The Ghoul answered. Stanislav roared again along with the other blood-mad dhampir of his Gens. The Ghouls had had enough, they disappeared right before Mary's eyes and she could hear all their padded feet scamper off at high speed.

"You chumps can't lam off; Merlin is gonna hex you bitches when he finds out you bailed!" she threatened, but they were already gone. She looked back, barely only able to perceive what was going on from her position near Zora's grave. She thought for sure that Stanislav and his Gens were still fighting the war wolves; she had no idea that the battle was already over. She looked down at the remaining foot or so of dirt that remained over Zora's coffin. "Ah, hell," she swore, as she ripped the shovel out of her back pack, unfolded it, and then leapt down into the grave to begin to dig with all her supernatural strength.

Nora were masters of not being seen when they were trying to, but their senses were nowhere near as keen as the dhampir. That was why she didn't know they were behind her until one of them pumped the shotgun, chambering a round. She turned around slowly to see two humans standing over the grave, and in her haste she had forgotten to become invisible again. With a shotgun the hunter would nail her easily at this range even if she became invisible. The hunter standing behind the shot gun wielder was slim, with long blonde hair and was holding a Glock trained at her. The one holding the shotgun stood out to her a whole lot more. His hair was completely grey, and he looked to be about fifty. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and work boots, with an ammo bandolier across his chest clearly carrying dragon's-breath rounds.

She slowly put her hands up as the hunter looked down at her. At this range, even at night, she could see his dark-colored eyes. They were haunted by years of dealing with the horrors of the night, and their steely resolve let Mary know this was no faint-hearted amateur.

"We always suspected that the dhampir were cooperating with the Nora. Now we know. They sent you to dig her up while the freaks attacked us. I have to admit, using werewolves, I didn't see that coming. You may have won this fight, but now we know what you can do, and next time there'll be twice as many of us, and we'll be ready. I may not be able to kill the thing tonight that slaughtered all my friends that night she gave birth to her little freak, but I can at least make sure you don't get to tell the tale."

He raised the shotgun to aim carefully, Mary closed her eyes and cringed in anticipation of the second death, and the blond with the Glock cried out in pain and fell over. The dark-eyed hunter turned around to cover any threat, but didn't see what had happened to his comrade, then he suddenly screamed and fell backward, spilled over the edge of the grave and nearly fell down right on top of her. When he hit the dirt at the bottom of the grave she could see the back of his legs were sliced open, hamstringing him. She looked up at the lip of the grave and saw Bohdan standing there with his claws outstretched. Suddenly she heard gun shots and Bohdan took a hit that knocked the little dhampir into the grave. It was the blond hunter who had shot him from behind.

A fury overtook Mary at the thought of harm coming to Bohdan. She didn't care how he had got here, only that he had just been hit. She rushed over to the small dhampir to see the blast obviously wasn't a dragon's-breath round, or the little dhampir might literally be on fire. The hunter in the grave with them made for his shotgun and to Bohdan's credit he slipped out of Mary's grasp and threw himself at the hunter. The small vampire slashed at the hunter's face and cut through flesh right into the bone. The hunter screamed and tried to wrestle his shotgun away from Bohdan as the dhampir gripped it in his other hand and wouldn't let go. The hunter was now blinded by all the blood in his eyes, his legs were next to useless, and he wasn't as strong as Bohdan.

The ghouls had actually widened the grave with their unusual method of digging, and rather than a six foot by three-foot hole, it was six feet by nearly four feet and about five feet deep, giving the little dhampir and the hunter room to roll around over the top of the coffin while struggling for the shot gun.

Realizing the threat, Mary switched back to the microwave spectrum, becoming invisible to everyone around her, and it was just in time. The blond hunter appeared at the top of the grave trying to get a shot at Bohdan but couldn't get a clean chance to fire. He began to shout instructions to the other hunter, named Frank, apparently, to throw the little monster away from him. What he did not see was the invisible Nora pull out her own pistol and aim it right at him. She unloaded all seven rounds of her .45 ACP right at the hunter, and at least five hit him right in the chest. Though they were silver bullets that made them no less lethal at this range.

The blond hunter fell back beyond her vision. She looked over and realized that Bohdan was literally overpowering the hunter, and figured the human didn't have much longer left to live. She holstered her gun, pulled out her razor-sharp Bowie knife and with her undead strength leaped out of the grave at an odd angle to try and throw off the hunter if he was still alive and somehow could see her. Fortunately, he couldn't. He wasn't dead, but he was seriously wounded. He was desperately trying to reload his pistol.

She made her way over to him as quickly as she could without giving herself away. He was leaning heavily on a large tombstone holding his chest, and wheezing with each breath. She pulled out her Walther and unloaded the clip at him, and she didn't miss. She didn't care whether he was actually dead or not at that point. She dropped the gun, ran over to his inert form, and stabbed him brutally in retribution for having actually shot Bohdan. She figured the first clip he had shot at the dhampir were most likely silver bullets, which would make sense that one hunter would have dragon's-breath and one would have silver, given they were up against war wolves and dhampir. The little vampire had been incredibly lucky.

In the grave Bohdan braced his feet against the hunter's chest, and then ripped the shotgun right out of his hand. That's when two arms suddenly appeared beneath the hunter as they ripped through the coffin lid and grabbed him. Drawn forth from her torpor by the smell of the hunter's blood, she flung herself out of the grave and ripped the top of the wooden coffin she was in right off. Driven by a desperation to feed that no mortal being could possibly ever understand, she grabbed on to the human with crushing strength and latched onto his throat.

Bohdan was utterly taken by surprise, and fell backward with the shotgun still clasped in his hands. Fortunately, his fingers were nowhere near the trigger of the gun when he fell on his butt. He watched with morbid fascination as the other dhampir began to feed on the now nearly helpless hunter. She was emaciated, and sickly looking. The funeral clothes she had been buried in were tattered and rotted from nearly nine years in the earth. He had never seen another vampire look so haggard, and at first he was scared. However, as she drained away the hunter's blood he watched as her skin went from deathly blue, to the normal pallid grey of a healthy dhampir. Her body began to fill out, her eyes began to glow with argent, supernatural power. Her arms became lean and strong and her leg muscles began to fully form again. Her skin became pliable and supple and her receding gums began to fill in again as the blood she consumed returned her undead vitality to her. While she sucked away the last drops of the hunter's blood, much of her strength returned to her.

Mary appeared at the edge of the grave and looked down with shock. "Zora?" she whispered in confusion. Across the cemetery the horrifying feast on the blood and meat of the werewolves carried on and the sound of savage dhampir could be only partially heard as they were too busy gorging themselves on their fallen enemies. Zora looked up as her senses began to come back to her, and she could suddenly think clearly again. She looked up to the Nora she recognized only too well, and said back, "Mary?"

Then her senses took note of the small figure in the enlarged grave where she now stood. Her sense of smell immediately noted his scent was very much like her own. He looked up at her and did not immediately recognize her because in his dreams she always wore her human form. Seeing no recognition in his eyes she knew what to do, and she began to transform before his eyes. Though her hair was originally dark it had somehow taken on a blood-red hue despite the fact that the dye she had in it had faded years ago after she had been interred in her grave.

When her transformation was complete she looked down at him, and smiled. Finally, at last, after all these months, there was the missing part of the dream. At last, he could see her face. He transformed into his own human form, carefully put down the shotgun and then got up and leapt into her arms.

She caught him and pressed him tight to her.

He whispered, "Momma."

She replied softly, "Sweetheart."

"I found Mary, and she found you. We found you, momma," he told her, as bloody tears welled up in his eyes.

"I know, sweetheart, I know. In my dreams I called to you, and you found me. You found me," she whispered to him, as she to wept tears of crimson joy. In a single, beautiful moment, mother and son were at last reunited, and she prayed they would never be apart so long ever again, and he wished for the same.

The perfect moment was suddenly shattered when Stanislav victoriously roared. Fear shot through her, and she clutched her son even tighter. She knew that roar, she had heard it before on many occasions. She scented the air and could smell war wolves, dead war wolves.

"Great Poppa is here, Momma, he is fighting the hunters and the war wolves." Bohdan told her.

"No, my sweetheart, he has fought them, and he's already won," she told him.

"Zora, they could be here any second, we gotta get the hell out of here!" Mary warned desperately.

Zora could hear the grisly feast off in the distance, and she knew exactly what was happening. If they did anything foolish to call attention to themselves, or the first moment the feast ended, they were done, and she knew it. Though it would be some time before she got all her mobility and strength back after having lain in torpor for nearly nine years, she had all the potency she needed to leap out of the grave with considerable ease, even with Bohdan in her arms.

"Come on!" Mary said as she ran past. The two female vampires fled as quickly but as quietly as they dared, carrying Bohdan with them till they got to Mary's Chevy. Then Mary was very careful, she held her breath like she was mortal again, and turned over the engine. She had to use all her will power not to peel wheels out of there right then. She did a quick K turn, and then all three vampires drove off into the night.

Back at the macabre feast, the pepper spray had long since dispersed enough for the dhampir to able to use their scent again to track. Since they were drunk on werewolf blood, the Sinca hunters had yet to notice. Stanislav devoured hunks of werewolf meat from the now human-looking thigh he had ripped off its previous owner. He still believed that his daughter lie buried here. He also believed that Dragomir and Lassiter would keep the mortal sheriffs away; giving him the time he needed to both burn the bodies and rescue his daughter. His olfactory senses were filled with the rich, sweet smell of war wolf hemoglobin when he finally caught just a whiff of Bohdan's scent and he immediately sharpened up.

He took a deep breath, and there was no mistaking it. His grandson was either here, or had been here. "Enough!" he roared at his Gens. The other dhampir immediately stopped gorging themselves on werewolf meat and came to their senses. The moment they did they caught the scent too. "Bohdan," he said as he turned and thundered off at full speed, and the rest of the dhampir were hard pressed to catch him.

He came upon the grave in seconds, and looked around to see one dead hunter above ground who had been brutally slaughtered, and one dead hunter in a grave marked with his daughter's name. While the other dhampir were just catching up he leapt into the grave and grabbed the dead body there to inspect it. He immediately recognized the face of the dead mortal. It was the only human who had escaped the night he had rescued his grandson from the hunters some eight years ago. Back then he was a mortal sheriff. Obviously, Zora had gained her revenge for the death of Bohdan's father. He could smell her scent all across the grave.

He leapt effortlessly out of the grave and followed his daughter's scent to the spot where the Caprice had quietly gotten away just several minutes before. He scented the air and made to run after them. Old Silviu grabbed his arm and stated "No, Great Father, we must not! We have to burn these bodies, we have to destroy all signs of the fight, especially the war wolves. You know the law, you were there when your father first spoke it, we must not let the mortal world know of our passing."

Alexandru bravely spoke up, "By now they could be miles from here, we can't hope to catch them on foot. Dragomir and Lassiter can find them. We have her license plate; they can't get far." Great Father turned and gave him a blistering gaze, and Alexandru immediately turned his eyes to the ground.

"Plus, we have Ileana, If Dragomir and the Nora can't find them, there's no place they can hide from Ileana's magic," Silviu reasoned.

Great Father looked at him with a furious grimace.

"We must, Stanislav, I know you want your grandson back, but we will find him. We must not abandon the necropolis like this," Silviu pleaded.

"Take them back!" Stanislav roared. "Gather all the bodies of the war wolves, and the hunters who were not killed by natural means. Burn them in the big house the hunters were quartered in, all of them. Leave that which can pass for a human slaying to save the time. Alexandru, grab those small automobiles the hunters were using, and load up the bodies on them, now!" All the dhampir turned and moved to fulfill his will without question, except Silviu. He looked on at his Great Father hoping that he would join them in the task and not run off after Bohdan. The Great Father turned around again and gave him such a scowl that Silviu knew he was pressing his luck, and then he quickly left to help supervise the cleanup.

Great Father stalked back to the grave his daughter had recently occupied, and drank in the air again to get the other scent he knew as well, that of the Nora. He picked up a shovel that she had left behind, and crushed it before he threw it away. Then he looked at the tombstone that the hunters had used. The name Zora Garret that was inscribed on it mocked him, as they had used her mortal lover's name as her surname. The human lover who had convinced her to leave the Gens behind.

He smashed the grave stone with his massive foot, shattering the marble and leaving it in ruins. The he threw back his head and roared in fury with all his preternatural might. For miles around they heard him. Human beings of all ages and creeds felt a horrifying chill surge up and down their spines. The sound of his inhuman rage touched on their ancient instincts, paralyzing them with a terror they could only understand on the most primordial and visceral level.

Those few who owned guns ran and got them. They clutched them tightly, praying they would have the courage to use them if the monster who had just bellowed came for them in the darkness. Many families huddled together in their homes, cowering in fear. Some called the police, even though they weren't sure what to report. The ones who were close enough to hear all the gunfire threw down their phones in frustration as Lassiter and Dragomir had all the lines tied up so no one could call 911. All throughout the area, for miles all around, no mortal being who heard that roar would sleep that night. They all knew deep in their bones what it meant. The memories of their ancestors called to them from the most ancient, darkest days of legend, telling them that out there, in the night, there was a monster, and the only hope they had was to pray that it didn't come for them. Stanislav growled menacingly as he turned and stalked off to join the rest of his Gens.

***

Zora watched with warm satisfaction as Bohdan played with the new toy Mary had bought him. It was some sort of robot that could transform into a car, or a plane, or maybe both. He loved it. It had taken him no time to figure out how to work it. To her it was some sort of strange puzzle, but to Bohdan it was a key to another world, an imaginary one where the robot was not some piece of metal and plastic, but real. Mary had showed him how to work YouTube on her tablet, and he had found the instructions for the toy there.

He looked up to her and said in old Dacian, "Look, Momma, I'm playing like a human boy."

She laughed and with a smile replied, "Yes, Sweetheart, like a human boy."

Bohdan looked up to her. He could appreciate the wistful expression on her pretty face, but he also saw the concern in her eyes. She was amazed at how perceptive he was. She realized, only a couple of days after having the chance to finally raise her own son, that the training the boys got was very different than what Ileana taught her when she was a girl, especially after she had heard the stories of some of the things that Great Father had insisted he watch.

Bohdan put down the toy. Unlike mortal children who might be more interested in the piece of plastic, the most important thing to him was his mother. In his human form he scampered over to her and jumped up on the picnic table she was sitting at. They were outside a small hotel she had just checked out of. Mary would be arriving at any moment with news of what had happened since they had fled.

"Great Poppa will come looking for us, won't he?" Bohdan asked.

"Yes, Sweetheart, he likely will," she told him truthfully.

"Where will we go? All the Gens in America and in Mexico or Canada all come from New Sinca. They all listen to Great Poppa," he asked.

"We'll stick to the suburbs for now, until we can figure something out. Dhampir don't like suburbs, they like the country or the city, where the hunting is best," she told him.

"What is a suburb?" he inquired earnestly.

"It's a place between the city and the country. People live in houses there, and there aren't nearly so many of them. There are woods, but very little woods, nothing like New Sinca, or Yellowstone," she answered.

"Oh," he said. "Is Disney World in a suburb?" he asked, with a hopeful tone.

She laughed even louder. "No, Sweetheart, Disney World is an amusement park. There's no dhampir there, because hunting is very difficult there, too."

"Oh," he said sadly.

She brushed aside the hair of his human form. She loved seeing his face; he had his father's face in his human form. "Who knows, I hear that there are swamps in Disney World, and alligators there too. Maybe one day," she said, unable to bring her herself to dash his Disney hopes.

"Alligators," he said with excitement. "We've never had the chance to hunt alligators. Once we got to hunt the wild hogs that sometimes escape from the farms. They get really big, momma, Great Poppa said the one he took down was twenty-five uncia, lots of meat, very tasty," Bohdan spoke, using the old Roman form of measurement the Gens had taught him. She knew she would have to teach him pounds and inches, and a lot of other things, if they weren't going to stick out in the mortal world.

The thought of her father slaughtering three-hundred-pound pigs effortlessly brought her little comfort. Stanislav could snap a six-hundred-pound boar's neck with one hand. She was grateful the he had taught Bohdan so much, though; she just deeply resented Stanislav for being so hard on his grandson. "I've never hunted alligator, I'm sure they taste good, and probably lots of blood to drink," she told him.

"Could we, Momma, could we hunt alligators in Disney World? By day we could move among the mortals and try all the rides, and by night we could take our true forms and hunt together in the swamps. There's nothing in those swamps that could hurt us! We would be like a king and queen there, with no other dhampir to lay claim, we would be the big chiefs! We could rule Disney World as our own Gens. Mary could come with us, she could hunt the mortals; it would be easy for her. No one can see Mary unless she wants them to. Nothing could stop her."

She hugged him, "I don't know sweetheart, it sounds dangerous. Millions of mortals visit Disney World every year. We could get caught," she warned him.

"We wouldn't get caught, the humans can't catch us, even the Nora can't hear us when we stalk. We could do it, momma, we could unlive in Disney World," he said wistfully, as he hugged her. It was then that Mary's car pulled up. She was grateful, as she wasn't exactly sure how to discourage Bohdan from his new fantasy of unlife at the happiest place on earth. Mary had ditched her Chevy; it turned out that somehow Lassiter had found about it, and after a harrowing chase they managed to barely escape the mortal authorities who were trying to track them. She was driving one of the new SUV style vehicles now.

"Aunt Mary is back. Why don't you take your new toy and head to the playground over there so we can talk?" she asked him.

"Okay, Momma," he said as he leapt off the table and picked up his toy.

"Stay where I can see you," she told him.

"I will," he said. He scampered off to go play on the jungle gym while Mary approached.

"How is he?" Mary asked as she sat down with Zora.

"Happy for the moment. He dreams little boys' dreams," she told her dear friend.

"Talking about Disney World again, huh?" Mary asked with a grin.

"Yes," she said sadly. "He so wants to see it."

"You know it might not be as crazy as you think." Mary mused. "I mean how many vampires or werewolves are going to frequent Disney World?"

"They don't, but they don't have to. My brother Vasile rules Florida. He's been there over a century now. He's much like Dragomir, but far fiercer. He and his Gens bought much of the swampland in Florida when it was still cheap to do so. When the corporations tried to make them sell the land their C.E.O.s began to disappear. There are others of night who had stakes in those companies: wizards, succubi, even other Nora. Once Vasile began to destroy them they got wise and backed off. The Florida Gens are actually widespread in all the swamps across Florida. They live disguised as humans when mortals are close, and hunt in the swamps when there are no humans around. If we got too close to any of the swamp lands down there my brother would hear about it in minutes."

"Jesus, you guys really are everywhere these nights," Mary commented.

"These nights, yes. Great Father's bloodline spreads all across North America and beyond," Zora commented.

"Well, that is definitely part of our problem now," Mary replied.

"What have you heard?" the dhampir asked.

"Lots, none of it good," Mary offered. "My contact told me that the night we escaped, a member of your Gens, Florin, was killed by the war wolves. Great Father is furious, and in the last two weeks he has hunted and slaughtered two packs of werewolves in New Jersey. The Nora network believes that there aren't going to be any more war wolves in New Jersey soon."

"Florin … I'm sorry to hear that; I liked him. He was always kind to me," Zora said with regret.

"Well, Stanislav has sure as hell avenged him, and it gets better. War wolf packs are moving to New Jersey to claim back their territory and get revenge. Great Father has put out the call, demanding that the Gens all across North America, Canada and Mexico send a tithe of warriors to his Gens. He has stated that as he slays the war wolves, their territories will be given to the best dhampir warriors to rule as their own in his name."

"By Bendis, how many have come?" Zora asked in genuine alarm.

"Lots are moving all across the states now. All the chiefs are sending a couple of warriors, none want to piss of Stanislav, or Ileana. The network figures that dhampir numbers in New Jersey might triple, or straight-out quadruple. Hell, the Lenape wolf witches are terrified. They have outright turned on the war wolves. Not that they were ever friends. The two breeds have always hated each other, but the wolf witches are gladly handing over any intel they have on the war wolves, so long as Stanislav keeps the promise of peace he made with them over a hundred years ago, and he has thus far."

"Its war," Zora whispered.

"War on the war wolves, yeah. There's a lot of nightwalkers that are really pissed off at us right now, pretty much all the breeds of our kind. My breed is terrified at the thought of Stanislav leaving the pine barrens to make war. Most of the city Gens are fearful of the consequences too, but none will dare question the Great Father," Mary told her.

"They blame us," Zora agreed.

"Mostly me; they say I shouldn't have interfered. They say that if Stanislav had found you in the cemetery that night they would have just taken you back to the barrens, and Bohdan would have come to you and all would have settled out," Mary told her.

"They want me back," Zora said ominously.

Mary hesitated to reply.

"Mary …?" Zora pressed.

"Not this time, Zora, it's not you they want." Mary looked over to Bohdan. "Ileana …" Mary faltered.

"What, what did she do?" Zora insisted.

"She put out the word to all the Gens, all across both continents, that you are an unfit mother. She decreed as the chief Matriarch of the New World that your right to parent Bohdan is null and void, and that he's to be returned to New Sinca the first moment any dhampir finds him."

Zora was furious. She stood and declared loudly, "She has no right!" Bohdan looked over with concern at his mother's outburst. She quickly told him everything was fine and to go on playing. Zora sat down and tried to control herself. "It is the ancient way of our people that a mother's rights are sacrosanct. To take a whelp from a matriarch requires the most serious crime or neglect and a matriarchal tribunal. She can't just take Bohdan from me."

"Well, she blames you for starting the war, and says you placed Bohdan in danger. The other great Matriarchs are not happy about their sons risking themselves in a conflict with the war wolves; they blame you, or us, really," Mary told her.

"Look, Zora, the fact is while you were in torpor she was caring for Bohdan in your place. Think about that. Plus, Great Father sees Bohdan as his son now, according to what I heard. Together they raised him for eight years. They want him back. Ileana in particular wants you out of that picture; it's pretty obvious she sees Bohdan as hers."

Zora growled and her eyes began to glow silver as her preternatural anger grew. "Careful!" Mary warned, "We can't afford to get made."

Zora closed her eyes, and gathered herself, and when she opened them again they were once again blue. "She'll never take him from me. I'll die first," she swore.

"Right now I'm afraid that's exactly what Ileana wants. We are up against it here, Zora. There are no major cities in the U.S., Canada or Mexico where there aren't dhampir or Nora. Our people have spread like a plague. To make matters worse, all the woodlands are either inhabited by some form of lycanthrope or dhampir. Those shape-changers that do deal with the dhampir are just as afraid of Stanislav as everyone else is, and would gladly rat you out in a second. War wolves will just attack you the moment they see you. So far as the other breeds of vampire, the Bibi, the succubi, the mullo, or any of the others, for that matter, none of them will dare cross Stanislav. That doesn't leave us a lot of options. We can hang low in the suburbs and keep moving. Given my powers, I can hunt, but I can't afford to stay in one place too long, and neither can you. We don't have a lot of options here, and I don't know where we can go that could possibly be safe."

Zora did not respond, instead she sullenly looked over at her son, who now played quietly on the swings in the distance. A long, uncomfortable silence overtook them as both the immortal women pondered their situation. "There may be one option, but it's a dangerous one."

"They're all gonna be dangerous, no matter what. So, what kind of danger are you proposing?" Mary asked.

Zora smiled at her. "The daughters of the first mother, the Stregheria."

"The witches?" Mary asked in surprise. "I thought dhampir didn't tolerate them."

"That is actually a recent development that happened when I was very young." Zora informed her.

"You know I'm Nora, so don't give me snippets. I have to know my options," Mary insisted.

Zora's grinned again. "You know I dreamt about you while I was … while I was sleeping. I can never repay you, Mary, for helping my son, for risking your immortality to rescue me from the hunter's trap. The kind of bravery it must have taken to exhume me, knowing Great Father was only seconds away. There are few who would have the heart to dare that."

"I missed you too, more than you know," Mary warmly replied. "And when I found Bohdan, or I should say he found me, I knew I couldn't just walk away. We hug later, now, the Stregheria?"

Zora laughed. "You know they are witches, from Italy originally. The First Father was born to a strigoi mort vampire, and a witch; no one really, truly knows how, but that's the nature of magic. We call her the first mother, some call her Aradia. It is said she also had children by a mortal man, twin daughters called Alseides and Auloniades. They formed the core of her coven, and taught other women the old religion. The daughters trained one very special witch. She was brazen and beautiful, she saw the true power of the First Father, and overcame her fear of him. Her name was Befana. Like Aradia before her had lain with a strigoi mort, she lie with the Primul Tata and bore him several sons and daughters; my father was one of them."

"So the dhampir are all descendents of witches?"

"Yes, so the legend says. That's why the males of our line are highly resistant to sorcery, and our woman are highly skilled with magic," Zora told her.

"Isn't that a little counterproductive?" Mary asked, while trying not to sound sarcastic.

"Aradia didn't think so. She raised her son in the wilds, and when he began to grow to manhood, Aradia and her daughters saw how powerful he was. It is said that the first mother had enemies, as all powerful leaders do. Some of these enemies were other witches," Zora continued.

"These enemies, these rival witches or sorcerers… once the First Father could fight, I wager they didn't last long," Mary concluded grimly.

"None of them did. Even other vampires grew to fear him, and he only ever grew more powerful," Zora answered. "Aradia became queen of the witches in her day. She founded her own mystical empire, an empire of night, and her son, the Primul Tata, was her guardian protector. The coven worshipped the First Father's strength, and deified him, and his matriarch. This is why women hold so much sway in our society."

"So then, what happened that turned the dhampir against them?" Mary asked.

"About a hundred years ago there was a powerful witch, named Camilla. She was powerful enough and strong enough to conceive children from Great Father Stanislav to continue the ancient pact. The agreement from the days of Befana was simple: the first children born to such a union would always be dhampir, and be handed over to the Gens of the father. The second children of the union would be kept by the witches to be raised by the Stregheria."

"Wait a minute, I thought all children of dhampir became dhampir," Mary asked in shock.

"With humans yes, but Stregheria possess the ancient ritual magic to actually control whether or not the child is living or undead. The most powerful witches can even control the gender of the child," Zora informed. "Camilla was strong, but she wasn't experienced enough to control the gender of the offspring, and they were born girls, twin girls."

"And the fact that they were born girls pissed off Stanislav," Mary concluded snidely.

"No, Mary, that kind of sexism is a human thing; dhampir may have traditional gender roles, but most all dhampir woman learn not only to use magic, but to love it. If you were to try to convince a dhampir woman to forsake magic to become a warrior she's likely to hex you, then send her son to kill you for offending our ancient traditions. Make no mistake, the woman among our people are even bigger drivers of our traditional culture than the men are. It's the women who hold the men to the warrior standard. Men are expected to be leaders, and our woman don't tolerate weakness in each other, and especially not in our males."

"Okay, so they were born girls, what was the big deal?" Mary asked.

"Not just girls, twin girls, Mary. You don't understand, that was sacred to us, more than simply auspicious, but a sign of great favor from the Moon Goddess."

It clicked for Mary, and she said, "Oh, Because Aradia had twin daughters."

"Exactly," Zora confirmed. "Great Father was proud to the point of bursting, and Great Aunt Ileana was utterly ecstatic. The girls would have been raised as priestesses, and probably become legends in their own time."

"What happened to them?" Mary asked.

"Camilla kept them. To the Stregheria, the birth of twin girls under such auspices were just as sacred, and her coven decided to raise the girls as human. They attempted to bargain with Great Father, and Aunt Ileana, but they were furious that the pact had been broken and they had been denied the baby girls."

"Did they slaughter the witches?" Mary asked grimly.

"They almost did. Aunt Ileana called for blood, and wanted Camilla killed for her treachery," Zora said.

"What saved her?" Mary asked with surprise.

"My father," Zora admitted.

"Stanislav! Stanislav spared her? Could the witches have even defended themselves against him if he attacked?" Mary asked in disbelief.

"No, and the Stregheria knew it. Aradia herself warned all the woman of her tradition to never rile her immortal sons, or her grandsons, since they were born to destroy her enemies. There was no magic that could overcome their rage and cunning."

"But the Stregheria did it anyway? Why, how did they know Stanislav wouldn't lead a full-scale reprisal against them?"

"They were counting on the sacred nature of the ancient relationship between the covens and the Gens. They were right in the end, but it cost them, dearly," Zora told her.

"So, what did your father do?" Mary asked hopelessly lost in the tale.

"It wasn't just him. All the great matriarchs of all the Gens all over the world were equally furious over the betrayal. Even my father's brother, Dread Vali, set aside his enmity with Stanislav to agree on this. They banished the Stregheria forever from all Gens lands and holdings, and forbade any male dhampir from ever breeding with them ever again."

"What's the context, how bad a punishment was that?" Mary asked.

"It was a death knell for the true blood line of the first mother. You see, daughters of dhampir born to a Stregheria witch are always very powerful. It keeps the blood line strong because the dhampir are all descended from Aradia. Without the renewal of the ancient blood line, eventually the elite priestesses of the Stregheria will fade away. The human daughters of the dhampir are long-lived by human standards, they can live to be almost three hundred years old. In the end they are mortal. Having children with human men dilutes that blood. So eventually the most powerful magic of the first mother and her daughters will be lost to them, because they won't have the mystical strength to use it."

"The end of their way of life," Mary said softly.

"Basically, yes," Zora told her.

"Why do you think they would help you?" Mary posed.

"I'm hoping that my elder sisters might be willing to take us in," Zora said with hope in her voice.

"The twins? Holy crap, they would still be alive," Mary mused.

"Yes," Zora said, "old and powerful now, and maybe willing to help me."

"You still didn't say why Stanislav didn't kill Camilla, or any of the witches," the Nora pointed out.

Zora grew sullenly quiet. Mary waited for a long moment, wondering if she would reply, hoping she had not touched a nerve. "You were human once Mary, so I think you might be able to understand this very well. For many dhampir, we only have the briefest memories of what it is to be human if we are born to a mortal mother. My transmogrification came when I was only five, then my mother had to give me up to the Gens."

Mary could see this was a very sensitive subject, and despite her burning curiosity, her affection for her friend kept her silent. "I cried a lot as a child, I didn't want to change. It was difficult for me. I always resented Ileana for trying to take my mother's place; that's why I know so little magic. If not for Stanislav, I don't know if I would have kept my sanity some times."

"Really?" Mary couldn't help but ask.

"Does that surprise you? Great Father would take me out to the barrens to hunt with him. There he would show me all the most beautiful sights of the woods. He would hold me in his arms, and sing to me the songs of old, like his mother would sing to him when Aradia herself walked the earth."

"Stanislav, sing?" Mary inquired incredulously.

"It's not uncommon. Dhampir men must always show strength, none more so than my father. But when they are alone with their daughters, they can show a very different side. It's different with their sons, of course. Mary, don't make the mistake of believing that Great Father is just rage and fury. Our society is based on family, and there is love there. Dhampir may be savage, and barbaric, but there is a nobility in our way, too. No dhampir ever steals from another, and every one of our kind can always find help with any Gens they come across; we take care of our own.

"When my mother died, I noticed, some nights, that my father would disappear. One night I tracked him. It wasn't easy, and he caught me, of course. I asked him where he was going. He was angry, but he didn't answer. He grew quiet, and told me to come with him. I thought he meant to punish me, but instead he took me to my mother's grave, and there we gave a prayer to Bendis to watch over her soul. I cried. Great Father told me I must never speak of it, and until this moment I never have.

"Mary, you knew only too well Stanislav could have found me whenever he wanted. He always knew where I was. He had Dragomir keep an eye on me constantly. He wanted me to come back, and he was waiting for me. He could have come for me any time he wanted, and he could have destroyed you at any moment. You are my friend, that's what saved you. He knew if he destroyed you he might drive me further away."

Mary had always suspected as much, but she still didn't know what to say.

"Is that why he spared Camilla, because he actually loved her?" Mary inquired.

"Maybe," Zora said. "Most dhampir will not admit it, but to many of us the mortal parents of our children are dear to us. Though they can't live amongst us, that doesn't mean we don't visit them, or even look out for them. Great Father made sure my mother was well taken care of through Dragomir.

"For me, I still can't believe Garret is gone. The pain isn't real yet, and when I think that I will never hear his voice again …" Zora couldn't continue. Mary wasn't going to ask any more questions; she knew when it was time to shut up.

For a long time Zora stared at Bohdan as he played on the swings. Mary watched him, too. Here they were, two vampires, nearly two hundred years of unlife between them, and both were captivated by the little boy who played innocently only thirty feet away.

Though she knew she shouldn't, Mary broke the silence. "Will you tell him about Garret?"

Zora never looked away from her son as she answered, "Yes, I have to. His son should know who he was. Garret was thrilled at the idea of an eternal child. It was like a piece of him would live on forever. If Ileana and my father find him, if they take him, they'll never let him explore the mortal side of his heritage. It would be like a part of Garret dying if his son never knew his name."

"We have an hour or so before we have to leave and make it to the next safe haven. Why don't you go to him. I'll keep watch," Mary said. Zora smiled at her offer, and then they did hug. Zora got up and slowly walked over to her son. Seeing her approach, Bohdan leapt into the air, flipped several times, landed on the ground with a forward roll, and stood up with incredible agility for a dhampir his age.

By the goddess , she thought, he even moves like Stanislav. She smiled down at him and held open her arms. He leapt to her without hesitation. "Do you like your new toy?" she asked.

"Yes, I saw it on the TV once. I would sneak out to the cottages of the pineys who lived near the road, and sometimes their children would watch the cartoons, the robots would fight in them. I like this one, he's a good guy," he eagerly told her. She laughed in reply.

"I used to wish that I could play with them, that Oana and I could take the form of boy and girl and play with the mortal children, but Great Aunt Ileana said it was forbidden. I miss Oana. It makes me sad that she's still back in the Gens with no other whelps to talk to."

"Maybe one day you'll see her again," she said.

"I hope so," he wished.

"You remind me very much of your father, Bohdan. You are kind, like he was," she said wistfully.

"My Poppa, Oana said he was a poet. Is that true, Momma?" he asked.

With a warm smile she told him, "Yes, he was. If you like I'll tell you all about him, sweetheart."

THE END

Bio: I'm a supervisor for a security company in New Jersey. Like many aspiring writers, I know I'm always telling a story in one form or another, and dreaming about being published. Like many geeks, I spent much of my childhood telling stories to other kids from the story-telling side of a dungeon master's screen, with dice in one hand and a pencil in another. As I grew up, the games grew less frequent, but the stories just kept coming, and then I began writing more. These days I just love the feeling of someone reading what I've written, because a story without a reader is a tale never told.

E-mail: John Rossi

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