Natalie turned in surprise. “What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he muttered, glaring at the book. He stood. “I’ll come with you.” The books in here were being mean to him, damn it.
He followed her through the empty halls toward the library. It was on the other side of the administration block and Natalie’s sneakers squeaked softly on the linoleum floors. Just him, and her, and squeak, squeak, squeak. Moonlight spilled through the glass that formed the wall to an atrium within the building, bathing everything in a silver glow.
“Do you really like working here?” he asked suddenly. He was innately curious about her. She’d been a bookish kid, with a keen interest in romantic literature and spectacles that had seemed too big for her face. Now he’d seen that her collection included journals from explorers—some he’d heard of and some he hadn’t. He’d seen historical texts, government records and works of fiction in several different languages... He’d seen medical studies, religious references... There were all sorts of jars and vials of stuff that looked kind of gross, and old bowls and artefacts that looked like they belonged in a museum. Or a dump. Or a museum of a dump. He should have known little Nina would soak up knowledge like a starving sponge. No, not Nina. Natalie. She wasn’t that little girl he’d first encountered in the renal ward at Irondell Memorial Hospital.
She glanced at him, surprised by his inquiry. “Yes, I do like working here. Very much, actually. I get to read the old stories, explore and test the beliefs, look into the science, and generally let my imagination go wild. And then I get to talk about it every other day with my students. What’s not to like?”
His lips quirked. She’d found her ideal job. For a moment he envied her. He’d spent so many years working for his father, of trying to regain his trust, his forgiveness, he’d assumed similar aspirations to the extent that here, seeing Natalie doing what she loved, he had to wonder if his life was what he wanted it to be...or what he deserved.
Natalie unlocked the door and in moments had switched on lights and a computer at one of the student consoles. He raised an eyebrow as she went to a set of drawers and started riffling through the catalog. It wasn’t long before she strode down one of the aisles. He followed her. She wasn’t looking at books, though, but a selection of long, round canisters.
“What are these?”
“Maps, mainly. I want to check them against some satellite imagery we have stored on file for a certain area.”
He frowned. How did that have anything to do with a werewolf cure? “Why?”
She pulled out a container and walked to a long table at the end of the aisle, twisting open the lid as she went. “I just found an alpha prime’s letter to one of his guardians from before The Troubles. From what I can tell, this is a pack that didn’t survive the wars.”
Lucien took a deep breath for patience. Getting information out of Natalie was proving a challenging process. “And?”
“He wanted his guardian to go look for his missing scion.”
“And that’s peculiar because...?” It didn’t surprise him that a father was searching for his son or daughter. Of course, he couldn’t really see his father searching for him if he went missing. But his family wasn’t the normal bonded unit. Not since his mother’s death.
“Because he mentions his son went missing in an area where there are no recorded shadow breeds.”
“Null territory?” Some people called nulls the neutralizing agent of Mother Nature against everything non-natural. He preferred to call them freaks. A human breed that nullified anything supernatural or magical within their bounds, just by being. No effort required. Freaks.
“No, not to my knowledge. I’ve checked the old territorial outlines. There was no null activity anywhere near this place.”
“There could be any number of reasons why a scion would leave a pack. Maybe he was taking a break? Maybe he was running away... Maybe he didn’t like his father and was setting out on his own?” Lucien shrugged. He could relate to all options so far.
“In this letter, the father states that he wants his son found, to prevent WTH.”
Lucien frowned. “What the hell?”
Natalie shook her head. “WTH is an old acronym that is no longer in use. Werewolf-to-human. In other words, the kid was trying to transition from shadow breed to human.”
“What? Is that possible? Is that a thing? How did I know not about this?”
“It’s not a thing. There are some people out there who strongly believe they should be something other than what they’re born to be. I think this scion was looking for a way to transition, and I think maybe he found it. There are no further records of him anywhere, and teenage boys don’t just disappear—not without press articles, missing persons reports, etc.”
“Where are we talking?”
“The Aerion Mountains. Mount Solitude.”
Okay, so now she had his attention. The Aerion Mountains were fabled for being shrouded in mystery, with a large number of indiscriminate disappearances—vampire, shifter, witch, human. It had once been the Great Trail Junction, where several picturesque mountain trails met in an axis. It was also close to the horrific incident that had triggered The Troubles.
Now, though, not many people ventured into the area. He remembered hearing about a similar place in the North Atlantic, the Bermuda Triangle, where ships and planes had disappeared. Vampires avoided the Triangle like lycan toxin. The very idea of being trapped, surrounded by salt water, was the stuff of even the toughest vampire’s nightmares. The Great Trail Junction was no different. Vehicles, planes—anything that crashed seemed to be swallowed up by the surrounds. There was a rumor that the minerals in the earth messed with magnetic fields and that’s why people got lost. Still, these were old myths, stories told by firelight by drunken teens or by grandparents to scare some sense into the young.
“This is just one lycan. A rebellious, flighty little lycan,” he pointed out. He didn’t understand how this could have anything to do with finding the cure for his sister. He sighed. “This is from before The Troubles, right? They wouldn’t be recording shadow breeds as such. We were still thought of as humans back then.”
“And the closest town to the base of the Mount Solitude kept meticulous records of everyone who ‘disappeared.’ They had to mount the search parties. This scion wasn’t listed—as dead, missing, medical miracle, whatever. We know he was in the area. We know he was actively trying to transition from werewolf to human. Maybe he figured it out. Maybe there are others...”
“Or maybe daddy alpha got it wrong and the kid ran off in another direction.”
“Maybe... But what else do we have to work on?”
“Good point.”
His frown deepened. There was very little in that area. The terrain was rough and inhospitable, with some remote outposts that offered nothing more than an opportunity for a person to change their mind from venturing further. He leaned forward as Natalie flattened the map and placed his hands on two corners to keep it rolled out. Natalie glanced at the book in her hand, then down at the map, tracing along the legend of the map then peering down at areas. She shook her head. “I don’t get it.”
“Don’t get what?”
“There is nothing in this area. It’s so remote, yet the closest town reported more deaths and disappearances than the entire population.”
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