Devil You Know

Enough To Worry About.

They were all quiet for a moment then Elsa remembered her clothes, “Dad, why did the lab need my clothes?” she asked.

“Ah yes,” Marcus opened a thin file on his desk and took out a piece of paper, “It was Hesper who suggested it, she was surprised, as we all were, that you had no injuries.” Marcus frowned as his eyes scanned the page, “Your clothes had traces of Emily’s blood, werewolf blood and_” he looked at Elsa, the frown remaining on his face, “And your blood.”

Elsa felt Sebastian tense behind her, she shook her head, “But I wasn’t hurt.” she insisted, why would her own blood be on her clothes?

“Are you absolutely sure?” Marcus asked.

“Of course I’m sure!” said Elsa, “I’d have noticed surely? Werewolves being poisonous to me and all that?”

Marcus looked thoughtful, “Maybe if it was just the werewolf's claws that caught you, no saliva or blood…” he shook his head, “It would still have taken longer to heal,” he said.

“Could it have been something else?” Sebastian asked, “Glass or something, she was in a pub car park.”

Marcus was reading the file again, “Hmmm,” he said absently, “Yes I suppose so.”

“It must have been,” Elsa said, “I was rolling around on the floor, there would have been all sorts of rubbish around. I must have just cut myself and then healed before I even noticed.”

Marcus snapped the file closed, “I’m sure that’s it,” he said but Elsa could detect something in his tone and his expression that made her uneasy. The only thing her dad had tried to hide from her since she’d become a vampire was his relationship with Katherine, other than that he had been open and honest with her in an attempt to make up for hiding the truth of her mother’s death from her for 17 years. She couldn’t tell if he was lying to her or hiding something exactly but Elsa knew that there was more her dad wanted to say and for some reason he wasn’t saying it. She decided not to challenge him now, she had more important concerns.

“Are we going to tell Kate?” she asked, “About Grant?”

“I think that’s up to Grant,” Marcus said.

“Can I speak to him?”

“I’d have to speak with his counsellor first,” Marcus said, “Maybe not today, but when he’s ready you may be able to help him having gone through something similar yourself. Logan is going to speak with him too when the time is right.”

Elsa nodded, “Where did those werewolves come from Dad? Why didn’t we know about them?”

Marcus frowned again, “Gray is furious with himself for missing it. It wasn’t his fault of course, there had been no reports of anything that could be a werewolf attack and he knows every werewolf in our region, he’s confident this has come from outside our area. We are running what human DNA we could recover from the wolves to see if we can identify who they were before they were turned.” Marcus looked intently at Elsa, “Just know Elsa, that you did the only thing you could have done, I don’t want you thinking about who they once were, you could only deal with what you were faced with and you saved a lot of lives last night.”

“I know Dad, it doesn’t make me feel any less guilty though.” Elsa didn’t want to talk about the werewolves and who they may have been, she wanted to be alone with Sebastian again, the only way she knew to block out those kinds of thoughts, “Is there anything we can do to help today?”

“Honestly? No sweetheart. Grant’s not up to talking, Emily just needs to sleep. The clean up team have pretty much finished, well, cleaning up and we’ve got Hesper tying up a couple of loose ends.” He sat back in his chair, “You just need some normality I think, take your mind of things.”