Page 27 of Daddy Wolf's Secret Baby

Everyone knew what he meant by ordinary crime. Once in a while rogue shifters, an evil witch, or a group of humans with nasty, hidden agendas found their way to town. Muggings, theft, and those kinds of crimes didn’t happen as often.

After everyone left, Zac looked at Josiah. “Let’s go talk to Laverne and see what they know.”

Josiah nodded. Laverne was the head of the local vampire nest that had a deal with the local blood bank. She and her family were very nice people and were very well-liked, whether people knew they were vamps or not.

She opened the door as soon as they pulled into her driveway. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Zac hugged her. “How are you doing?”

“I was doing a lot better before this rogue nest of idiots invaded our territory.” She looked at Josiah and smiled. “I heard that some congratulations are in order.”

“Yes, thanks. Word gets around.”

“I make sure to keep my ear to the ground about everything. I have lived for the last seven hundred eighty-three years by paying attention to what’s going on around me.”

Josiah laughed. “True enough. You look damn good for your age.”

“Thanks, but I’m sure you didn’t come here to talk about my physical beauty and matching sunny personality.”

Zac’s smile faded. “No, ma’am. It seems we have a problem going on in our community.”

“Sit down and I’ll make you some coffee.”

She looked at the shock on Josiah’s face and laughed. “We need blood to survive, but we can eat what mortals do. I happen to like the taste of mortal’s food, including coffee. I promise that my coffee is one hundred percent Columbian roast from beans and has no people parts, including blood in it.”

“I’ll take a cup,” Zac said.

Josiah nodded in agreement.

She motioned to the chairs at the kitchen table and set out three cups of black coffee.

“I know about this rogue nest from some of the children.”

Josiah knew that the folks she referred to as children were several hundred years old as well.

“It is led by a man named Christoph, who is infamous among other vampires. He goes out of his way to fulfill every stereotype about vampires he can think of. He and his group are predatory and evil. None of them care who they feed on. They will attack a child if it’s convenient and completely drain it of blood. Unfortunately, they also seem to get off on torturing their prey before they feed by scaring the person half to death.”

Zac sighed. “The stress hormones, cortisol, and adrenaline probably make the blood taste different.”

“That is true. Anyway, Christoph is like an evil magnet. He seems to draw every rogue vampire to him and his pack grows all the time and they do a lot of destruction. They have no problem killing us. The other issue is that the fear they cause makes people cast all vampires into the same light, making us targets.”

“I think that is the way for just about everybody. One or two people in a group gets negative publicity and everyone in the group pays the price, whether it’s police officers, teachers, doctors, or people from different cultures,” Josiah said.

“Yep. The adage that ‘all it takes is one bruised apple to spoil the entire barrel’ is true.”

“Thank you for the coffee. We need to be going,” Zac said. “Please keep your eyes and ears open and if you get any clue as to where they might be hiding, call me. You know how to get ahold of me.”

“I sure do. Be careful when you go hunting these guys. They are some very bad people.”

“You take care, too.”

“This is going to be a challenge,” Zac said once they were back in his truck. “I just hope we can find them before anyone else is hurt. I’ll let everyone else know.”

Josiah shifted and combed the mountain for several hours, looking for any potential hiding spot for the vamps. He didn’t see any sign of them and was extremely frustrated when he walked down the mountain and shifted.

The irritation disappeared when he pulled up to Jace’s school just as the bell rang. He ran out of the doors with a couple of friends, laughing and talking. Jace saw Josiah’s pick-up and ran toward it, waving to his friends.

Even though he had spent several hours roaming around the mountain, he couldn’t say no when Jace asked if they could shift and go to the mountain.

---