Jeff sr's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The bloody rose still lay on the cot when Jeff sr found the vampires' trail. Broken ferns. A dropped shoe, small, his son's. The tracks led north, toward the old castle everyone in Shiveland feared. He knew where they had taken Jeffery jr. He also knew he could not go there alone. He was one man now, not a wolf, and stone walls waited for him. He found the castle at dusk. Weathered spires. Colored glass burning with lamplight inside. Two werewolves stood guard at the door, taller than any man, armored, watching the dark. Jeff sr crouched in the treeline and counted the ways he would die. His son was inside, past those guards, past walls he could not climb. He had claws for one night a month. This was not that night. He went back for help. Karla waited at the shelter. Her son had been gone three days now, and she had not slept. She met Jeff sr at the door with dirt still on her jeans and the knife on her belt. "You found it," she said. Not a question. "A castle. Two guards. More inside." He pressed his palms to his eyes. "I can't take it. Not like this. I need someone strong enough to stand with me, and I don't have one." Karla looked past him at the dark trees. "Then we don't take it," she said. "We don't fight them." "They have Jeffery jr." "I know whose son he is." She cut herself off. Her jaw tightened. She did not finish the thought. "Guns won't open that door. You said it yourself. So we stop trying to be strong." Jeff sr dropped his hands. "What does that mean?" Karla reached into her coat and set something on the table. The rose from the cot. Its petals still dripped red, wet as a fresh wound. "They left this," she said. "It's a message. A message means they want something. You don't send a note to someone you just want dead." Jeff sr stared at the dripping bloom. He had seen it as a threat. She had seen an open door. "They took him alive," Karla said. "They kept him alive. That's a trade, not a killing." She picked up the rose by its dark stem, careful of the thorns. "So we go to the castle. Not with guns. We go to bargain." Jeff sr felt the fight drain out of him and something colder take its place. He had spent all day looking for a sword and an ally to swing it. There were none. But there was a table to sit at, and a price to learn. "They'll name a cost," he said. "Yes." Karla put the rose in her coat. "And we'll find out what it is."