Hybrid

Victoria slipped through the labyrinth of tents, her footsteps silent against the soft dirt beneath her travel boots. There was really no reason for her to be so discreet; the temporary settlement was entirely devoid of activity. The rest of her coven were out in the black woods, fetching their store of blood for the night before they had to retreat beneath the lightproof tarps and wait for night to fall again. Victoria had already retrieved hers from an unfortunate deer nearby. Now, however, she had business to attend to.

The small, square log cabin around which the encampment had been erected loomed directly ahead, situated on the edge of the clearing, where the shadows reigned strongest, its single brick chimney smokeless. Two windows, updated from their eighteenth-century ardor with glass panes, flanked the door on either side, covered from the inside, she knew, with heavy blackout curtains.

Victoria knocked on the wood before entering, shutting the door quietly behind her. The interior of the cabin was just as barren as the exterior, its amenities comprised of a blanketed cot in the corner, a desolate red-brick fireplace, two simple wooden tables placed parallel to one another, and three chairs, one behind the first desk, the others in front, nearest to her.

The coven regent was bent over the farthest table, his back to Victoria, but she knew better than to think he hadn't heard the suctioned pop as the doorframe locked into place. He, more than any of them, was a warrior, designed to anticipate surprise and sabotage.

"Should you not be out obtaining your fill for the night?" he growled without looking up from the maps splayed before him. He moved his arm, and his dark cloak shifted with it, slithering in the candlelight.

Following his subtle movement, the familiar tangs of melted wax and blood lifted into the air, fresh and warm. He must have recently returned from hunting himself and donned the cloak to settle in until dawn broke. The cloth bore a silken sheen not otherwise achievable from common thread, speaking towards a richness long forgotten by today's industries. It was the mark of a regent, a symbol of formal presence, and he wore it often. Victoria knew that he preferred the antiquated image it projected, if only to reveal his status and nature without words, but she also knew that he wasn't always trapped in old notions of human civility. When he needed to dissolve into society, he wore modern attire, often favoring band t-shirts and tight-fitting jeans.

Victoria cleared her throat, finally acknowledging her own presence. "I've gotten it, but sir…" She hesitated. She needed his full attention for this.

He turned his head in her direction, not quite looking at her but listening attentively. "What is it?"

"I…found something peculiar in the woods," she said, lowering into one of the chairs on the nearest side of his makeshift desk.

He turned further, this time rendering his expression visible. It was cold, as per usual, his green eyes flashing a bloody red. "What?"

"A body," Victoria answered, holding her head high. She wasn't afraid of the coven regent, despite his best efforts. She never had been. "One of the wolves."

The coven regent's cloak fluttered as he spun fully to face her, one of his eyebrows rising, but he wasn't looking at her. He was staring at his desk, where a cloth-bound tome lay open to an illustrated page, yellowed and disintegrating into dust.

"What are they doing so close to the camp?" he murmured, striding towards it. He slipped on a soft white glove and flipped through a few of the pages, mindful not to break any of them, then rattled off several transcriptions in Latin. Victoria didn't understand a word of it, but she waited patiently. It wasn't her place to interrupt.

"Hmm," he mused, straightening. He hardly spared Victoria a glance. "Thank you for informing me. You may leave."

Victoria's mouth fell open. That was it? "What's going on?"

"It is nothing of your concern," he said firmly and clearly, turning back to his maps. He marked a spot on one with red pen.

"I think you know more about this than you're letting on," Victoria said, circling around his desk. Under different circumstances she wouldn't press the issue, but bodies of werewolves had been showing up wherever the coven went lately, all from different tribes. And the regent had been growing increasingly distant and waspish, shutting himself inside his lodgings and speaking to none until he ordered the coven onto the next location. It was obvious that he was concerned, yes, but his behavior betrayed him.

He was following something, or he was running from it. They all were, everyone he had changed and taken under his wing, but the difference between the two was that the coven didn't know what.

He sighed now. "You never listen, do you?"

"No, I don't," Victoria agreed. "You should know that by now. What is going on?"

"Unfortunately, you are of much lower station than I, and I cannot afford to spill any secrets lest they be entrusted to the wrong person." He tapped a finger against his lips and marked a spot on another map, this time in blue ink.

Victoria was taken aback. He usually treated her as her status entailed, yes, but he had never likened her to a vampire like Francis, even if he was an Elder, or loud-mouthed Raivis. "Lower station? That's what you're going with? Look, I don't care if you're the regent, Arthur—"

"Oh, but you should," he interrupted, practically spitting. "You should care, because I can end your life just. Like. That—" He took one step for every word, the soles of his shoes like claps of lightning on the polished wood floor, and Victoria found herself backed into a corner, Arthur's face hovering a mere foot away from her. His eyes flashed, and the coldness of his stare hardened, absolved of any golden illumination.

Yet she wasn't afraid. He had taught her never to show fear.

"But you won't, because you bit me for a reason that night—how many years ago?" she asked rhetorically. Arthur's expression softened a bit. "Yet you never seem to want to share it. Why is that? Do you regret freezing my heart and turning my skin ice cold?"

"No!" Arthur blurted. He huffed and whirled away from her, running a hand through his hair. Usually so perfectly styled, it appeared like that of a man tearing at the seams, thick and untamable. His tone was less imposing when he added, "That's not it at all."

"Then what is it? Better yet, what in blazes is going on with these dead wolves?"

He peered through his hand at her, looking briefly quizzical. "Since when have you cared for the wolf tribes?"

"I don't, but I don't want to see them utterly wiped out, either."

"Neither do I," Arthur agreed, bracing his hands on the desk and staring at the book. "But it seems as if someone does wish to see that occur." He growled under his breath and slammed the book shut, leaving an indentation where his hand lifted. "Sit down. I'll tell you."

Victoria resumed her seat, dropping her elbows on her knees and waiting, this time impatiently, as Arthur settled himself in the opposite seat, behind his desk.

"As you've noticed, the bodies of lycans have begun to turn up near coven camps, all bearing the wound marks of a vampire. Fortunately, it isn't only our coven that has been affected, but others around the area as well."

"Is the Council aware?"

Arthur nodded, his voice turning begrudging. "Yes, they have been alerted, and they've asked the regents to inform them of any future attacks. Speaking of which, did the wound on the lycan you saw appear like the mark of a—"

"No. There were slash marks all over the man's body, as if the culprit was in a hurry," Victoria answered.

"Ah." He nodded again and raked a hand over his face, clasping it over his mouth and chin in thought. It was then that Victoria realized his icy brevity had begun to dissolve. The eyes that dominated the focus of his face had dimmed, allowing for an inspection of other, subtler features that she normally didn't give attention to.

On a surface level, she spotted glints of red-gold in his hair, made prominent by the flickering light of the tapers. Then, the faint line of freckles over his nose, the slope of his eyebrows.

Underneath, an all-consuming worry, and a familiar one: the fear of being discovered by humanity. The consequences of being able to capture irrefutable evidence that the monsters they wrote stories about truly existed. The stake was something every vampire learned to fear, no matter how much audacity her regent instilled.

Suddenly, Arthur Kirkland didn't seem like a regent. He looked like an ordinary vampire trying to do everything in his power to stay alive and protect his own. Despite having known him since he changed her blood all those years ago, he had never shown this side to her. He hadn't any reason to.

But it still left Victoria feeling as if she didn't know him at all. Not really.

"That is certainly a new development," he murmured finally. His fingers flew to the book again, but he let it go, clenching them instead. Hiding his hand beneath his cloak, he rose swiftly. "I'll have to alert the Council." He muttered profanities and dug among the maps for a folder, his movements fast and flurried, almost hasty.

Victoria slipped around the desk for a second time that night and laid her hand over his. He stopped, staring at it.

"What does that tell you?" she asked.

He looked up and, to her surprise, grinned smugly. "It tells me that perhaps vampires are not the sole culprits. Slash marks? Those can come only from a werewolf."

"Or a hybrid."

Arthur froze for a moment, so slight that any normal human eyesight wouldn't catch it, and then his fingers started moving again. "There can be no such thing."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes!" He slammed his hands on the desk, palms and fingernails tearing twin holes in one of the maps to crack and scrape the wood underneath. Victoria leapt back, lips pulled in a silent hiss, fully fanged. She hadn't ever seen Arthur coiled so tight. His eyes glowed red, and his mouth was set in a taut, angry line.

"Get out."

"Why?" Victoria demanded.

"You don't want me to become any angrier."

Slowly, she straightened, fangs sinking back into her gums, and when Arthur turned back to his papers, she did as she was ordered, emerging into crisp night air. She rested against the wood beside the door for a several minutes, a part of her reluctantly hoping he might call her back as she pondered Arthur's reaction to her suggestion of a hybrid. Had he created one? Had it gotten loose into the wild?

Hybrids were rare, and few that were made survived beyond a newborn status. She had come across one once, when she was still a human living in Chicago and unable to process what her eyes were seeing, but hindsight and lifestyle changes had convinced her that the creature she'd seen gorging itself in an alleyway one autumn night was one of those beings.

Victoria had thought they didn't exist in Europe anymore. Only in the Americas, where blood rivalries didn't run as deep. But if Arthur had successfully created one, it would explain why these strange attacks were happening. It would also explain why he had the coven roaming the forests all over the continent rather than remaining in the Ardennes, where their home resided.

There was only one way to find out.