Part 3: Chapter 52 A Family That Trains Together...

My Aunt Scarlett wanted to start training with us. I thought that was pretty cool. She also wanted the rest of the family to join. Most of them knew how to fight. I think Eva was the only one who didn’t really know how. I spoke to my father about it and he said it would be okay. Eva would join the beginners group and everyone else would join my group. When Eva gets caught up, she’ll join my group. I thought this would be great for the pack. They would learn different techniques facing off with a vampire.

I was proud of Aunt Scarlett. She was really becoming more social. I really liked this side of her. She wasn’t just hanging out in the background any more. I hoped the reason for the change was maybe because she had started seeing Nathan for therapy. I wasn’t sure if she was but I had hoped. I didn’t want her going back to the quiet, wallflower Scarlett.

The whole family, including Nathan, started training together with the pack. This brought us closer together, I think. Dad and I switched off leading the group. It was more fun when I got to take a break from leading. The lycans would shift to wolf form and pair up to fight one of the vampires. Scarlett loved this part. She would spar with a different pair of wolves each day. So did the others, in order to implement different fighting styles. Things were going great. I loved the extra time with my family.

When Eva joined the group, Scarlett would spar with her. She did so until Eva got the hang of sparring. Then Eva would spar with the wolves.

Occasionally, we did a group sparring session. Vampires on one team and the wolves on the other. This was good practice for a real battle. We even sometimes split the groups, half the wolves and half the vampires on one team and the rest on the other. Those sessions were the most fun.

School started again. This year I was a senior. My friends, Ethan and Lucas, and I had been applying to the same colleges. We wanted to go to the same school. We wrote our essays and sent them in with our applications. I was really looking forward to another year being a teenager.

It didn’t last very long. In October, just after Mom’s birthday, we heard the Blood King was attacking packs again. I called for an emergency council meeting.

At the meeting, I learned that the Blood king had been doing this on every continent. He was looking for someone.

I called around to the other councils to find out more. Apparently, The Blood King has been doing this for decades. I was told that he used to only attack humans, but had started attacking vampire covens and families in the nineteen-sixties, starting in Europe. For some reason, he was now attacking wolves. With human families, he wiped them out entirely. Now that he was attacking vampires and wolves, he didn’t wipe them out. Presumably because they were supernaturals and the humans weren’t.

He was coming east, so I was getting worried he would come here. I still sent aid to those packs that needed it. Aunt Rose asked around in the vampire community to see who had been attacked by the Blood King, to see what or who he was looking for. The vampires that survived said he was looking for a girl who survived an attack during World War Two. I got the same information from several packs. Was this girl perhaps his daughter or some other loved one, that he was going through all of this to find her? We had no clue.

We amped up training and put patrols on high alert. We didn’t know if he would come here or not, depends on whether he finds this girl or not, I guess. Mom and Dad suggested Mom’s family move to the pack temporarily. We built them a house just behind the packhouse. We thought this was a good idea with Jason and Scarlett both being survivors of that awful war. The Blood King may come here to ask them if they know this girl he is looking for. But he doesn’t ask nicely. He tortures people to get information. And the reports we have been getting from those who have survived him, say that the Blood King believes the girl is hiding with wolves. I doubt she is a girl anymore, World War Two was ninety years ago. But if she survived the war, she could have been made a vampire. I don’t know of very many packs that are accepting of vampires or many vampires who would hide out amongst wolves.

Kids at school were worried too. I did my best to reassure them. A lot of them had lost one or both parents and maybe a sibling just a few years ago when we fought Khenzu. They didn’t want that to happen again, I didn’t either. But just in case, we had new protocols in place. The bunkers had been cleaned and restocked in case we needed to use them and we had motion sensor cameras placed just outside the walls of the territory, every ten feet.

We were training with more purpose now. And Coach York started training during gym class again. We needed everyone ready just in case.

I had wanted to be a normal teenager like last year. I had so much fun with my friends and Beth. I wasn’t going to get that this year. I was really disappointed and frustrated. I feel like I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I want to be more proactive. Keep the Blood King from coming to Hyacintho Lunar, but how? There’s no pattern to his attacks that we have found. And no one knows his whereabouts between attacks. Uncle Ben and Zach haven’t been able to see anything either.