Hotbloods, Coldbloods, and the Creatures In Between

#11: Rylan

"This is a second run-in with the police in one morning." I say to Vito. I'm wearing his underwear and nothing else. He's much smaller than me, so it's stretching in places it shouldn't be. It's better than being naked after shredding another outfit. The life of a lycan is an inconvenient one.

"I don't care how many we have." Vito says, brushing off as much dirt and leaves as possible. It's not worth it. The blood is caked to his mouth. He still looks damning. "Are you sure this is the way?" He asks.

"Both you vamps smell like shit. Can't tell the difference. I'm following Sonny's scent. I'm positive they came through here." We looked across the abandoned industrial park. Potholes riddled the asphalt and weeds snuck through cracks, some taller than me. Sonny smelled like human body odor with squirts of fear. He probably shit himself when he put himself between us and the Pickett prick. Maybe that's what I was smelling. "Resilient for a warmblood."

"Sonny is going to get himself killed if he keeps hanging around." I won't let anyone kill him. He saved me from this asshole and the debt hadn't been paid, especially now more complicated, since he tried to take a bullet for me. A small metal pellet that I could have dug out myself without so much as a wince.

"He would have died for us."

"He's fragile." Vito shot back as we entered a large building of concrete blocks and windows that were either broken or too dirty to see out of. They were both asleep, Sonny sitting on Dominic's lap, his face buried into Dominic's neck. Dominic looked dead, still as a corpse, while Sonny's shoulders heaved with each breath.

Vito is about to kick Dominic's foot to wake him, but I hold him back. "They need their sleep."

"Vampires don't need sleep."

"Sonny needs sleep. And Dominic needs Sonny. Let them sleep, man."

We leave them in peace, wandering outside for a signal on the mobile phone Gryle had given us. "This is a piece of garbage. I don't have any bars." Vito said.

In spite, the phone began to ring. "Did you find her?" Gryle voice buzzed through the small speaker.

"We followed her scent to a haunted house, where we lost it."

"And practically town the place down. It's on the news. A gang fight at the historical mansion. What happened?"

"We were ambushed by Bradley Pickett." Silence filled the space, broken by Gryle's sigh. "Do you know if Bradley found her?" His voice struggled to sound stoic, but worry bled through.

"We didn't exactly try to follow him. He ran out as the shit hit the fan." I said.

"Killed his mercenaries with a little help." Vito glanced at me, not sure how to explain what had happened.

"Who helped you?" Gryle asked.

"A girl named Tess. She seemed to know Sonny."

"You saw her?" Gryle asked. "Where did she go?" He asked again, before we could answer. I wasn't sure how to explain this to a warmblood. The limits of their accepting imagination varies.

"She's dead." I said.

"So, you saw her ghost." Gryle was a warmblood that believed in the impossible.

"It was more than that." I said. "There were others. They held down the mercenaries. Attacked them. It was like shooting fish in a barrel." I picked at my teeth and Vito smiled with amusement.

"Tess was talented." Gryle said under his breath.

"Look, Gryle." Vito eased, "we lost the scent, but we got some information for you. Why don't we call it as it is?"

Gryle paused, pondering the offer. "I sent Emie to your family's house." Vito stared at the phone. "She thinks Pickett is behind it."

"That's bullshit." Pickett is a warmblood. "My parents weren't bested by a..." Vito tripped for a word.

"Warmblood?" Gryle asked. Vito's eyes widened, but I wasn't surprised. Gryle's number one girl, Emie, was a vampire. "Pickett is a warmblood looking for fights with creatures. He's a bored child with his parents' checkbook. Apparently so upset with his mundanity that he chooses to come after creatures of every temperature." Vito looks weary. "Hotbloods," and Vito looks at me, "coldbloods," Vito bites his tongue, "and the rest of us do our bests to blend in between. The girl you're hunting is my sister, Victoria. A skilled witch who has been on the run since she's been thirteen. Just up and left."

"Why would Bradley want her? And why would Bradley want my parents?" Vito asks.

"The world of creatures is not common knowledge, but if one was to go searching, they could find information on you. On your family. On all coldbloods and who governs them." Gryle continues. "If Bradley is behind your parents' kidnapping, you shouldn't underestimate him. He has the intent and the means to bring creatures to their knees. He brought Tess, a talented witch, to her knees." I remembered the dead girl with porcelain skin and white hair, straight as needles. "Come back here and we'll strategize a hunt for information on Bradley Pickett," a click signals the end of the call, and Vito plucks the phone from my hand, spins, and sends it soaring. It hits a concrete wall and explodes in shards of multicolored plastic.

"I'm going to skin that prick alive and then drain him of every shred of life." Vito growled. He spent the next four hours hunting rats and creating a pen of old boards of wood and metal, held together by heavy stones and gravity. "When Dominic wakes, he'll have to feed."

"On eleven rats?" I ask, peering into the container, the rats climbing over themselves and scratching to get out.

"He's still maturing." Vito said, and didn't bother to elaborate. "He'll be hungry. I don't think Gryle would appreciate us bringing back Sonny as a bloodless corpse." Without warning, Vito paused. A rat squirmed in his hand, slowing tightening until the squirming turned to screeching and screeching turned to crunching bone. Death and pain gripped Vito's eyes, turning red with blood.

"Vito..." I say in an attempt to get his attention. He begins to growl, his muscles twitching like he's stepped on a live electrical wire.

"No." His voice is faint, but it's begging. It's desperate. And it's overflowing with violent rage. Still holding the mess of a rat in his fist, he turns to me, with eyes on fresh meat. I don't have time to take off my borrowed underwear as it begins to tear, my body expanding, folding, then inflating rapidly. It feels like I'm getting a rough massage, bones crack into new positions as the space becomes smaller around my massive body. Vito holds onto my arm and bites my wrist. Like a mad toy dog, I wave my arm and flick him off. He reaches for me again, his eyes filled with blood.

I want to tell him to stop, to calm down and tell me what is happening. Instead, he leaps for my face and I swat him like a bug. Vito flies through the air, and through the wall of windows, leaving a vampire-sized hole where sunlight is pouring in.

I hear a scream, andturn to Sonny, where Dominic is burying his fangs deep into the warmblood'sshoulder.v