Boris and the Vampire (Legends of Pinewood 2)

If A Vampire Comes to Town

When people said they needed to talk to you without speaking right away, it never boded well. 

Especially not when it was your pack leader Ivana saying the dreaded words: 'we need to talk' over the phone, along with a message that she was already on her way to your house.

I assumed I wouldn't like what Ivana had to say.

I knew I wouldn't like what she had to say when I saw the grim expression on her face as she walked past the threshold of my little house in the woods. She didn't even give me the time to offer her tea like the gracious host I was, and marched past me without taking off her jacket or uttering a single word.

"Lovely to see you too," I called after Ivana as I followed her to the living room.

Ivana made a beeline for the couch and dropped herself down on it with a defeated sigh. "Boris, I won't beat around the bush. The vampires want to exercise their rights as decided in article five of the supernatural accords. They sent a vampire man to our territory. He wants to live in Pinewood town to study humans."

"What? " I stared at Ivana incredulously. "You've got to be kidding me. You turned him down, didn't you? Tell me you turned him down."

Ivana shook her head wearily, like she'd already expected this reaction. "You know I can't just turn him down, Boris. Believe me, I wish I could."

I sat opposite Ivana on a creaky chair. "Let's see if I understand this correctly. You want to set a vampire loose in werewolf territory? My territory? We can't. Especially not now. You know how fragile the integration program is, and we're just about to introduce the first group of young werewolves to the humans. Is there nowhere else this vampire can go slinking around?"

"Unfortunately, we don't have much of a choice when it comes to location." Ivana sighed, running a hand through her thick, black hair. "The supernatural accords we all signed are very clear about this. Every species has the right to make contact with humans to see if living together in peace is possible, and no other species can stand in their way unless there's a valid reason for it. If the vampires wish to make use of that right and choose to do it here, there's little we can do to stop it."

I snorted. "You know I'm all for learning how to get along better. But you have to admit the vampires are not exactly like the rest of us. It's like unleashing a starving fox in a chicken run. How's that for a 'valid reason'?"

"I share your concerns, Boris," Ivana said. "But we can't think of vampires as beasts either. Hungry for blood as they are, they are thinking people. Remember that it wasn't easy for some of us either when we first came into contact with humans."

She meant her son, Aquila.

Aquila had definitely been a handful when Ivana, at the end of her wits about his disdain of humans, placed him in my care to expose him to a high school in Pinewood town. There were many other young werewolves like Aquila who thought of humans as weak, craven, and unworthy of our protection. They didn't see we needed them as partners to continue our existence, and that we had to share their world now so it was only fair to let them know, gently, that we were here.

Simple exposure seemed to be enough to change things, however. Humans like Xavier, bless him, eventually showed Aquila humans weren't all bad. With Xavier as his mate, Aquila had finally calmed down and became accepting of the idea of human mates for others, too. A great result we hoped to repeat with other young werewolves. We even considered stepping out of the shadows and letting the entire of Pinewood town know we were werewolves. 

All of this was possible because there was one very important difference between our disdainful young wolves and a vampire. A difference I didn't hesitate to point out to Ivana: "Aquila never saw humans like a walking juice box, though. He was all bark and no bite and everyone knew it. A vampire is tempting fate an awful lot more than we should be willing to do."