He hears the crackling of a fire. He opens his eyes, but there's something warm on his face. Something warm is also grasping his hands, flexing his fingers. There's weight over his body, like a heavy blanket. He takes survey of the feeling through his limbs. His heart is beating and he's breathing, even though his chest is stiff and the inflation of his lungs still shallow. Someone's removed his outer clothes as well and he's laying on something soft and furry. He shifts ever so slightly.

"Don't move yet," the person holding his hand says. "Your joints are still frozen."

His breath catches in surprise. This isn't who he expected.

"How did you know it was me?" he asks, his voice soft and raspy.

The covering over his face is removed. He blinks in the sudden light until his eyes adjust.

Solon looks down at him, an eyebrow raised. Dark hair falls over his face, a stark contrast to his pale undead complexion. His eyes, though the same deep red as Heli's, also contain flecks of gold.

"Of course I knew it was you."

"Everyone else was so suspicious."

Solon's expression doesn't change as he folds up the towel he'd had warming Heli's head. "You mean Jaan and Jakah? I was definitely shocked to see you here, but I didn't have any doubts about whether it was really you." He pauses. "Besides, if you were shapeshifting, you would have turned back when you lost consciousness."

"Jaan was about to take my head off."

Solon lets out a short laugh. "I bet he was angry." He leans back, watching the fire.

As far as Heli can tell, he's lying in a small hut, even smaller than Oma's home. Solon sits on the floor between the low bed and a cast iron wood stove. He doesn't have to go far to reach from the stove to Heli. The floor is covered with furs like the one underneath him, the walls rough-hewn wood. A few cups, Heli's coat and other clothes hang from hooks by the stove, but otherwise there's not much to speak of in terms of decoration or adornment. The hut is also void of windows.

"So what are you doing here?" Heli asks. "There's no way you live here."

"Why not?" Solon says. "Everything was getting insufferable. I came up here with the idea of making my own fortress of solitude."

Heli frowns as he looks around the tiny hut.

"Solitude I get," he says. "It's not much of a fortress though."

"You know, like in the comics," Solon says.

"The what?"

"What have you been doing all this time?"

"Nothing," Heli sighs. "I've been nowhere doing nothing."

Solon gives him a confused look, then grabs one of the towels hanging by the fire and rewraps Heli's cold hands. He reaches over to turn Heli's shoulders and face. His touch is warm. Not as warm as Viken or even Eugene, but still a soft heat radiates from his skin as he tilts Heli to better face the fire.

"Why are your hands warm?"

"Anything above zero degrees is going to feel warm to you now," Solon replies dryly. From a small wooden chest, he pulls a glass bottle filled with blood and uncorks it. "Though apparently I do run hotter than most of us. Not as warm as a living person, but enough that a good coat actually does something."

"Why?"

Solon shrugs. "Maybe I just absorbed enough sunlight those years ago."

"Do you really think that's it?" Heli laughs, but the motion stabs his still-frosty chest. Sensation has returned to his body, and it hurts. The skin on his hands is a sickly blue-grey.

Solon doesn't respond. Heli lets his eyes close as he listens to the sizzles and pops of the fire inside the stove. He doesn't hear any howling wind outside.

"If the storm's let up we should go back," Heli says. "Otherwise everyone is going to think I've died again."

"You aren't going to be able to move for a while," says Solon. "Your entire body is damaged, that's going to take some time to heal. Make sure to drink something."

"As soon as we can, then," Heli mumbles. "Or you go, so they don't go out looking for me."

Again, Solon doesn't reply. He places another warm towel over Heli's face, and in silence, leaves him to rest.

When he feels comfortably warm enough to move without too much cracking in his joints, Heli again turns to face the stove, letting the cloth fall off his face. Under his shirt he feels the cool metal of his locket shift. Absent-mindedly, he pulls it out, snapping the clasp open and closed while he stares into the flickering flames through the iron grate door. He has no idea what time it might be, but he hasn't heard Solon move around in quite some time. Maybe he did take Heli's suggestion of going to town and advising Eugene and the rest of his whereabouts.

Though, now that he thinks about it…just how long had Solon known they were around? He knew about Jaan and Jakah too, so he must have seen them. It hadn't just been chance for him to pull Heli out of the storm. He could have approached them at any time.

Everything had gotten insufferable…

When Jakah had said they'd all gone their separate ways, Heli hadn't asked for more details. Part of him was hoping that maybe they'd just had their own goals to follow, and he'd put any negative speculation out of his mind. Solon's desire for solitude seems to confirm his worst fear.

They'd separated because they'd grown apart. Perhaps they'd been arguing. Maybe, despite Heli's own desire to bring everyone back together like in old times, they didn't all want to see each other again. What if they thought he was selfish to ask them to drop the lives they'd built in the years without him? He'd already made Jaan an outcast of the society he'd worked so hard to become a part of.

He shoves the locket back into his shirt and sits up. His bones creak and protest, but with a few long stretches he feels good enough to remain upright. The door opens and Solon steps in. He looks surprised to see Heli up, but he smiles.

"Come out here for a second," he says.

Heli grabs his dried coat, hat and other winter clothes from their spot on the wall, and throws everything on. He cautiously opens the door. The night air is still, but bitterly cold. It doesn't seem a wise idea to go back outside after he'd just thawed, but with one look up at the sky he understands why Solon had told him to come out.

Ribbons of light extend into the sky, flickering as they fade from green to teal to bright blue. As they wave the colours shift and change into new patterns that weave around each other. Behind them the night sky is full of stars. He stands in awe of the fantastic sight.

"Any goals for this year?" Solon breaks the silence. "It is the new year, after all."

"Yeah," Heli pauses to put his thoughts in order. He'd barely experienced the past year, and a whole slew of years before that, and there's no shortage of things he wishes to accomplish. The past few months had made that clear. Besides, he also wants to prod Solon, just a little.

"I want to pay Eugene's debt back, and figure out how to lift this curse, and stop having all these spells on me," he says. "I want to be free from Lamia."

Solon shifts his weight next to him.

"I want to find everyone," Heli continues. "I still don't know what happened to Jino, Noa or Shion."

Solon doesn't say anything at first. After a few moments, he mumbles. "I'm sure they're fine."

"What about you then?" Heli waits for Solon's response.

"I want to go ice skating."

"That's what you said in 1914. What's stopping you?"

"With you, and everyone else," Solon concludes.

"Pretty big coincidence, isn't it? If Eugene hadn't taken the job here, I would have had no idea how to find you." Heli takes his eyes off the lights above and turns to face Solon. "What happened with you guys?"

Solon also looks down from the sky. His expression is serious, his stare piercing.

"You disappeared. You can imagine how everyone dealt with that."

Heli can imagine, sure. However close his guesswork is to the truth is another matter.

"We should go back in before you freeze again," Solon says.

Heli nods and they step back into the warmth of the tiny hut.

"It's not like we all hated each other or anything like that," Solon says as he takes off his coat. "I know that's what you're thinking."

"I wasn't."

"I know you too well." Solon kneels down and lifts open the small chest. He pulls out a fresh bottle full of red liquid and pours a bit into two wooden cups. "If any of us argued, it wasn't because of you. It was always about her."

He offers Heli the cup. The blood has a similar taste to Eira's pancakes.

"Lamia? What about her?"

"We all knew something was wrong. But there was disagreement about where we would go. The younger ones didn't want to leave. Jaan had his own plans. Jino…I don't know."

"And you came up here to be alone and…?" Heli lifts the cup. "Where do you get blood from? Wrestling with bears?"

Solon nearly spits out a mouthful of blood as he bursts into laughter. "No, no bears."

"How do you get by in the summer?"

"Hm?"

"Isn't it daylight for weeks at a time?" Heli asks.

Solon gestures about the hut. "That's why there are no windows."

"What about blood?"

"It's easy enough to come by and keep," Solon taps the lid of the chest. "And, though it sucks, turns out you can go for quite some time without eating."

"Yeah, it sucks," Heli mutters, but Solon doesn't seem to notice.

"Eventually you'll start to decay," Solon continues. "I wonder how long it'd take before…"

"A few decades, probably," Heli interjects. He drains the last drops of blood from his cup and hands it back to Solon. "Can we go back to the inn now?"

Solon takes the cup but shakes his head. "I think you should wait. They're quite a ways down the mountain, I don't know if you'll make it. It might be warmer tomorrow."

"By what, one degree?"

"That's still warmer than it is now," Solon grins.

Heli rolls his eyes and leans back into the raised platform that makes up the bed. There's only one, and it's rather narrow, and he hardly thinks the floor looks spacious or comfortable enough to lay on.

"Where have you been sleeping?"

"On the ceiling." Solon keeps a straight face though Heli laughs. "You think I'm joking?"

Heli glances from Solon to the wooden surface over their heads. It's plenty high enough for them to stand but there's nothing else noticeably interesting about it, no loft or other space for storage or lying upon. He can't have meant outside on the roof.

"There's no way to-"

But in a flash Solon is upside down, his feet planted on the ceiling above. He stays there, staring back at Heli, who jumps to his feet.

"How are you staying there?" Heli gives Solon's sleeve a tug but he's firmly attached, hanging from the ceiling. "What's holding you up?"

"What are you talking about? Everyone can do this."

Heli looks back at him perplexed.

"Just come up here the same way you'd teleport anywhere else. Or, if it's easier, you can try crawling up the wall. For some reason that works too."

Heli looks down at his hands trying to figure that one out. He's not sticky. How on earth is he supposed to climb up a completely flat surface?

"You've come back from the dead, turned into mist and shot yourself across a room in the blink of an eye, why are you getting hung up on this?" Solon says.

"This one is-"

"Get up here."

Heli closes his eyes, making the mental image of being up on the ceiling with Solon. When he opens them he's looking Solon in the face as they're both now upside down. He's not sure if it's more or less weird that the effects of gravity don't seem to affect either of them. Even their hair isn't hanging down the way it should.

"Oh this is-" In the momentary lapse of concentration his feet detach from the wooden surface. Solon grabs his arms, keeping him affixed.

"Don't think about it too hard," Solon advises him. "You'll get used to the feeling of it."

Heli nods and insteads focuses on Solon's grip on his arms. He feels like he's trying to balance on a narrow surface, and movement too much in any direction will send him off the edge. It takes a few moments for the sensation to be comfortable.

"When is this useful?"

"For jumping down on people, probably. Or just scaring them. I don't know. I don't actually sleep like this," says Solon.

"I didn't think so," Heli grins. "If we could walk up walls, I'm surprised Noa never tried anything to prank us."

"Hm," Solon hums as he thinks. "Some powers," he says slowly. "Seem to come with age."

"Are there any others I should know about?"

"Maybe. I'm not giving a demonstration."

Heli raises an arm to give Solon a teasing push, but the movement throws him off balance and he drops to the floor, head first.

"Ow!"

Solon drops down far more gracefully, landing without a sound on the soft furs covering the floor. Heli rolls over, a hand on his head.

"Do you want some ice for that?"

Heli's second attempt to smack Solon also fails. Solon's laughing as Heli sits up.

"When I feel you're up for it, I'll take you back to town," Solon says. "I've been living here long enough, I hope you'll trust my judgement."

"I don't trust your judgement for choosing to live here in the first place." Heli watches as Solon pours them each another cup full of blood. "Aren't you bored?"

Solon merely shrugs.

It's hard to sleep in the constant low light. Though Heli's lost complete track of the time, he doesn't sleep more than a couple hours. He has no idea what the hour is when he wakes, but Solon is already gone. The wood in the little stove is almost completely burned up, only a few embers remaining. Suspecting Solon may have been outside for quite a while, Heli throws on his coat and steps out the door.

Strangely, the air does feel warmer. Light snow falls from the grey, cloudy sky. He holds out a hand to watch the flakes fall on his glove. Footsteps of varying depths lead to and from the front door, the tracks of several days worth of walking in and out of the hut. While they're not in a completely empty field, the trees are more sparse than in the thick of the forest. The wooden hut itself is settled next to a large tree on one side. A small black pipe sticks out of the roof, the chimney for the wood stove.

He walks around the hut, trying to follow some of the footsteps, but every trail stops just a few paces away from the front door. He retraces one last set of prints. After about five or so steps, the shape changes. As he looks closely into the snow, he can make out something that looks more like a paw print than a human's.

He shivers and scans the ground. There's no blood splatter, no scraps of flesh or clothing that might suggest Solon had been attacked. Though if he had been asleep and hadn't heard a struggle, if something had happened, he expects the snow would be much more disrupted.

Solon is nowhere to be seen, and Heli has no idea where they are in comparison to the town. In the event Solon is in trouble, he doesn't have a clue how he'd get back and find help. Wandering through the forest aimlessly is out of the question.

He turns, looking for any sign of where Solon might have gone, when something walks into view. A large black wolf saunters towards him. Though he's never actually seen a wolf, this one doesn't seem normal. It's absolutely huge, its fur entirely jet-black. It stops underneath the branches of a tree and looks up with its red eyes.

The wolf rises onto its back legs, stretching up towards the branches of the tree. It pauses for just a moment, then seems to explode. Smaller black shapes flutter from what had been the form of the wolf. Heli's slow to process the sudden change and it takes a few moments for him to realise that the flying shapes is a swarm of bats.

They rise through the branches, circle the top of the tree then change course, the whole mass heading straight towards him. Heli doesn't know if he should flee back into the hut, or stay and stand his ground. The bats are coming for him faster than he can make up his mind. He raises his arms as he thinks they're about to crash into him, but instead they reconvene into a single form.

Solon emerges from the bat swarm. The edges of his coat settle down from the end of his flight. His face is completely indifferent to the feat he'd just pulled off, but Heli is absolutely bewildered. He gapes, his arms still up in a defensive position, his eyes wide.

"What?" says Solon.

"I- you- that- you-," Heli flounders for words. Shapeshifting isn't too uncommon of an ability a vampire can have, but how did he not know Solon could do it? And multiple forms, at that? This was definitely way more amazing than anything Heli could do. Though he's ashamed to think it, he can't help but wonder why Lamia had chosen him over Solon, who was certainly more valuable. And as he remembers the wolf another sick realisation settles upon him.

"It was you?"

"Me what?"

"You ate…those people…and Eira?"

Solon just blinks at him. Heli's reeling as the pieces fall into place. It had been Solon he'd seen the night the last body had been discovered. He'd had his fill and was still there, lurking in the trees, watching them. That would have been the first time he saw Heli, and it would explain why he hadn't made any move to reveal his presence. If Jaan and Jakah knew he had that form they would have figured everything out earlier. Solon didn't want to see them after all, and that's why he was stalling, offering excuses to keep Heli from returning to them.

The confusion in Solon's expression becomes more pronounced.

"I didn't eat any people."

"I saw you," Heli counters. "I saw you, but you were a huge wolf."

"Ah, yes," says Solon. "That was me."

"Were you also lurking outside the inn under my window?"

Solon tilts his head. "I was in town but I don't know about any windows."

"What about our promise?" Heli's voice rises. "You've been out here eating humans?"

Solon just sighs. Grabbing Heli by his coat sleeve, he drags him through the snow and back into the hut. Heli stumbles onto the fur covered floor as Solon calmly shuts the door

"For the second time, I have not eaten any humans."

"Then why were you there?"

"I've been tracking it," Solon says. "I've been trying to stop that thing, but I'm always too late."

He sits down next to Heli, who crosses his arms with a pout.

"When the nights began to grow longer and I was finally able to step out of here, I knew right away something was wrong. Animals were acting weird, running around in circles, throwing themselves into the fjord. At first I was afraid they'd been infected with something, but then I saw it."

"Saw what?" Heli demands.

"Something, not unlike us but also…not like us at all."

Heli uncrosses his arms. "How so?"

"It was…" Solon stands and also pulls Heli to his feet. "Why don't we try to find it?"

"Now?"

"If we're lucky. Or maybe unlucky, depending on what happens."

Solon's hut isn't as far from the ancient cemetery as Heli had been imagining. The familiar snow-covered mounds come into view as they emerge from the forest. Instead of venturing further among the stones, Solon pulls Heli down to crouch on the ground.

"See that one there?" he whispers, pointing to one of the mounds. A black hole indicates the deep tunnel Heli had seen the last time he was here.

"I noticed it before," Heli whispers back. "Where does the hole go to?"

"A grave."

"Obviously, but what-"

Solon raises an arm to quiet him. He squints through the dim light and falling snow, looking for whatever it was that Solon was waiting for. The minutes stretch on, yet nothing seems to be happening. He pulls on Solon's sleeve, but Solon brushes him off, the concentration in his face unbroken.

He smells it before he sees it.

A stench of something rotting accompanied by the smell of fresh blood wafts through the clearing. From the opposite side, a huge lumbering shape comes into view. Though humanoid, it's far too big to be an ordinary person. Tattered scraps of fabric hang from an equally tattered skeletal body. Gaping holes in its cheeks reveal black, rotten teeth. Its eyes are equally dark and sunken.

He grips Solon's arm. The monster teeters as it approaches the grave, then shrinks down to a normal size and disappears into the darkness of the hole.

"That's the thing that's been outrunning you?" Heli stands with Solon, still clinging to his sleeve. "That decrepit, barley mobile thing?"

"Morning must be approaching," Solon says.

"Let's kill it now."

"No," Solon shakes his head. "It can't be killed."

"It doesn't even look like it could put up a fight."

"Don't be fooled by its appearance either. It's fast when it wants to be. Strong, too," Solon explains. "I thought it might be possible to stake it. I managed to catch it once. Caught it off guard after it grabbed a woman. A sharpened wood spike straight into its heart made no difference. It doesn't need to eat either. There's no apparent benefit. It just kills. I'm definitely not crawling into a hole with that thing."

Heli looks back to the gaping black space in the pristine white snow.

"Why is it attacking around the inn?"

"I don't know," Solon replies. "You smelled blood too, right? It probably killed someone else tonight."

Heli's attention snaps back to Solon, his eyes wide. "Jakah and the rest are the only ones staying there now."

He doesn't need to say any more. Solon is off, hurtling back down the mountain into the town. They circle the inn, looking for any sign of a fresh body, but aside from the lingering scent of blood nothing else is there. Only a few of the inn's windows are illuminated, and at least one of them he recognises as the room he and Jaan had been sharing.

They step inside the quiet building. No one is there waiting for travellers to enter. The cafe doors are closed and the inside is dark. Perhaps even Eira has finally gone home for the night. Heli prays that everyone else is just upstairs in the room. Eugene, still pouring over his books, Viken, bored and just flipping through to look at the pictures, not outside, searching for him.

Something small bounces down an adjacent hallway, followed by a bounding grey dog. They disappear out of sight for a moment until the dog returns, a green ball in its mouth.

"It's not my fault." Heli hears Jakah's voice. "I didn't lose him. It wasn't my idea to go up there with a storm coming. Eugene should have checked a weather report."

A flash of green whizzes by and with a thunk embeds itself into the wall. The dog Frida again runs behind, but stops to whine at the now unreachable toy.

"Is this what you've been doing?" Heli rounds the corner and Jakah screams.

"Where have you been ?" he shouts. "We went up that mountain a dozen times, retracing every step you took but you were just gone ."

"Experiencing a real twist of fate," Heli grins.

Jakah tilts his head, confused.

"I thought you said it was coincidence." Solon approaches from behind. Jakah's eyes widen as they flick between the two of them, stunned.

"Is this real?" he marvels. "No way. You've got to be kidding."

"Very real," says Heli. "Where's Jaan?"

"Oh, right," Jakah says. "You better go upstairs before one of them is murdered. They've been arguing all day."

Heli can hear Viken's voice before he even reaches the door.

"So which is more important to you? This monster or figuring out what happened to Heli?"

"I'm telling you, if we find one, chances are we'll find the other," Eugene's voice answers.

"NOT IF HE'S BEEN EATEN."

Viken screams over Heli's knock. When the room seems to settle into uncomfortable silence, he tries again. Stomping footsteps precede the door being flung open as Viken grumbles.

"What do you want, Jakah?"

"Hey."

Viken's jaw drops open as Heli enters. He collects himself and gives Heli's shoulders a shake.

"What happened to you? Why aren't you eaten ? Who is this?"

"This is Solon," Heli says. From the little desk, Jaan and Eugene both turn. Jaan opens and closes his mouth, as if looking for something to say while Eugene just gapes.

"More vampires?" He eventually mouths.

Heli shoves his hands in his coat pocket, unsure what to do with this strange and uncomfortable atmosphere.

"Um. Did you figure out anything else about this monster?"

Eugene shakes his head as he breaks out of his shocked state. "No, I'm completely at a dead end. Why, have you?"

Heli nods. "We saw it."