For several weeks, Isabel had been trying to find the right moment to continue discussing her unease with Godric, but it had been impossible. Either countless problems arose that demanded the sheriff's attention, or he would disappear until dawn without explanation. One night, while she was in her office, he contacted her by phone.
"Isabel, I need you to come here with some of our underlings. I have two young, badly injured vampires with me who have been tortured for days by a pack of werewolves. I don't know yet if they were looking for something or if they were just having fun, because the kids aren't in any condition to talk. I'm going to follow their trail before they get too far away."
"Where are you, Godric?"
"In a cabin in the Sabine National Forest, east of Saint Augustine. I'll send you the coordinates. Use the helicopter; there are only a few hours left until dawn."
"But won't you need reinforcements?"
"Probably not. Let me know when you've picked up the kids."
Isabel launched the operation with her usual efficiency. Just an hour later, they had the victims with them and were flying back to Dallas. However, when she called Godric, there was no answer.
She wasn't worried, considering the circumstances of the chase might prevent Godric from answering calls. Nor did she fear that he was really in danger from encountering an enemy beyond his capabilities. There were truly few human or supernatural entities that could defeat him. Throughout the rest of the night and the following day, she continued to have no news, so she informed Stan, the sheriff's second-in-command.
Finally, almost at the end of the following night, Godric returned to the nest, just in time to hear Stan's irritated reproaches towards Isabel for letting the sheriff go alone, as well as her sharp response, as she was unwilling to tolerate a subordinate's impertinence.
"Calm down! I'm here and everything is okay... I couldn't call because my phone was smashed in the fight."
Surprised by his silent arrival, they both fixed their eyes on Godric. His physical appearance was as usual: the eternally adolescent body remained relaxed, his facial expression calm, and his gaze gray and inscrutable. Except for the dirty and completely torn clothes on his chest, back, and legs, indicating where his flesh had been opened by the sharp claws of the wolves, only to close minutes or perhaps hours after suffering the wounds.
"What happened, sheriff?" Isabel asked, approaching him with relief.
"It was a large pack, more than twenty werewolves. It wasn't easy to reduce them and minimize deaths at the same time; I had to resort to guerrilla tactics... Finally, I managed to take eighteen of them prisoner, who are now in cells, in the care of the King."
"I suppose he won't have thanked you for the arrival of so many unexpected guests," Isabel said ironically. "In any case, I suppose you need a shower and rest, Godric. Can I bring you a blood bag as well?"
"Thanks, Isabel. While I get rid of all this dirt, leave in my office the matters from the last few days that I need to review or sign. When I'm done with that, I'll go to sleep. You don't need to bring me anything to eat. Stan," he continued, turning his attention to his other subordinate, "you take care of staying in contact with the court, in case they need more information about the prisoners... And another thing: I don't appreciate you criticizing my first deputy for doing exactly what I ordered her to do. If you don't respect the hierarchy or control your temper, in the future I won't need you under my command."
The tall, burly vampire on the cowboy hat bowed his head quickly in submission and hurried out of the room, not without giving Isabel a furious look.
Godric sighed, exhaling air in an unnecessary breath. He was exhausted after those three days of pursuit and fighting, and frustrated by the impossibility of preventing violence in his territory, despite all his efforts in recent decades. Certainly, he had made much progress in establishing fair rules of coexistence among all supernatural beings in Area 9 of Texas and, compared to other areas of America and Europe, Dallas was an oasis of peace. But even so, outbursts of belligerence seemed inevitable. And, honestly, although he considered his goals to be valuable, he hadn't enjoyed the hunting and the punishment of offenders for a long time.
Isabel didn't want to ask him any more questions or insist that he consume any blood bags. Precisely, Godric's tendency in recent times to do without food was one of her concerns. He always said that, at his age, he hardly needed it, and it was obviously true. The older a vampire was, the further they moved away from the normal laws of Nature and the more strange abilities they acquired. But most of them, as the centuries went by, not only didn't stop eating, but seemed more eager for the pleasures that gluttony and lust provided.
The following night, however, seeing her superior rested and without imminent obligations, Isabel decided to resume a conversation with him. The vampiress was elegantly dressed, as usual: a high-fashion green silk dress, fine heeled shoes, and her thick dark hair tied up in a bun. Her aristocratic tastes had adapted to the times, since the time she frequented the court in Madrid in her human youth, always exquisitely. Godric, on the other hand, dressed with such simplicity that, in certain unfairly judgmental circles in the king's court, he was considered pretentious. He really wasn't. He could have been accused of many things throughout his long existence, but hardly of vanity or presumption. Somehow, he had become increasingly comfortable wearing light-colored natural fabrics, as if those pants and shirts had a certain affinity with a spirit longing for light.
"How are you today, Godric? I hope you've fully recovered from the efforts of the last few days..." Isabel began softly.
"And I hope you're not still worrying about me unnecessarily. You know there are few things that can really hurt me..."
"Can I ask you why you were in the Sabine National Forest four nights ago? As far as I know, we hadn't received beforehand any complaints about that group of werewolves."
The sheriff looked away from his interlocutor, letting his gaze rest on the city lights that came through the window. Long minutes of silence passed, and Isabel began to feel guilty for wanting to break Godric's voluntary isolation, even though her intentions were the best. But finally, he turned his steely eyes back to Isabel.
"I'm afraid that finding myself in that situation was completely accidental. If I was there, it's because sometimes I feel the need to wander through the forest. To have the stars above my head and watch them blink among the branches of the trees, smell the earth and decaying leaves...and maybe remember what the world was like in my childhood, or when Eric and I traveled long through the european woods. There aren't many places in Texas that resemble the dark forests of my country, but Sabine comes close."
"Do you miss those times?" Isabel asked, surprised, because vampires are not prone to nostalgia and, although their memories are perfect, they prefer to live in the present.
"No, I wouldn't want to be Death again, to be a monster," Godric offered a sad smile. "But when I walk through the solitary groves, thoughts and sensations that died out two thousand years ago arise in me, and I feel pain and joy at the same time..."
"You know that giving yourself up to those meditations is dangerous, right?"
"Yes, I know. Little by little I'm moving away from the way our people think, and I ask myself questions that are absurd for us, like what is the point of our endless existence or if there is hope for something better than just surviving at all costs. I used to tell my offspring that there was no right or wrong, only to kill or be killed, but now I know that's false. Humans have been asking themselves these questions since long before I was born, and yet their lives are fleeting, and the answers come quickly for them, whether they want it or not. But maybe their dying it's a privilege."
Isabel was frankly scared.
"I'm afraid for you, Godric. You're saying things that chill me, you talk like someone tired of living, someone who could seek true death..."
Godric shook his head with a serene expression.
"Forgive me. I didn't mean to overwhelm you. But you're wrong. I really don't feel tired of living. There are many things that still amaze me in this world: the beauty of Nature, the kindness of many beings, human or supernatural, like you, Isabel and, above all, Eric, my child. I also care about the task at hand, that of pacifying our area and preventing humans from falling victim to our appetite. However, I'm starting to believe that we should consider our prolonged existence as a stage to transcend and that, at some point, each of us should take the step to do so. And it could only be to voluntarily renounce immortality."
The sheriff then got up, ending the conversation, and silently kissed Isabel´s forehead before leaving his office. The vampiress felt blood tears welling up in her eyes and hurried to wipe them away with a linen handkerchief (she couldn't stand the inevitable Kleenex) so as not to ruin her makeup. Nothing she had heard had been reassuring at all, but remembering Godric's last words, she had an inspiration. She would contact Eric and beg him to intervene. Never since she had lived in Godric's nest had the Viking visited Dallas, but she knew he was acting as sheriff of Area 5 in Louisiana, and that he resided in Shreveport with his own offspring, a certain Pamela.