Chapter 12 Julian

As I tucked my unconscious gryphon friend into bed, I envied the effect the scotch clearly had on him. Apparently, alcohol did not work as impotently in shifters as it did in vampires. Though I had never been much of a drinker in life, I did occasionally indulge when the misery of immortality and the pain of Alice's loss became too great.

But no amount was ever really enough. What I wouldn't give to find oblivion for even a single hour. Caesar would certainly be out for several.

Now I sat here, in the armchair of his room, with only a meager mellowness in my bones. Not enough to ease the grief warring inside me.

I reached for the half-empty bottle of scotch, then paused. I didn't want to be in this room alone with my thoughts and Caesar's raucous snoring. I needed to do something productive, clear my head, at least for a little while.

With a new purpose, I strode out of the room.

I had been sent here to investigate the possibility of gryphons nearby, and I had yet to do so personally. Caesar may have spent some time searching, but he'd only done so by air.

It stood to reason that such shifters were likely living as regular humans in the surrounding dwellings and only taking to the mountains to stretch their wings. And seeing as I had nothing better to do, I intended to scour the entire town for any signs of them. If I could accomplish this for my friend, it would ease at least one thing on my guilty conscience.

I stepped out onto the snow-covered ground outside the inn's main doors, enjoying the crunch of ice as I crossed the clearing toward the shadowy trees that encircled the building. Once there, I harvested the shadows to conceal myself and broke into a vampire's sprint.

I combed the nearest neighborhood—which was mostly houses spread out over a wide, hilly area. I focused my senses, homing in on every word spoken, every stray scent that might resemble Caesar's, every flutter of wings in the night sky, as I passed each home.

I cleared the town in a half hour with no luck. But I wasn't finished yet. I knew from peering out the window of the plane before landing that there were at least a handful of cabins and such scattered through the mountains in more remote locations.

So, I followed the road that led toward Mount Logan and trailed every path that strayed from it, all the while scanning with my eyes, ears, and nose.

With these more isolated residences, I took my time, circling each house, peeking through windows, sniffing doors. One after the other, they proved to be nothing more than the homes of regular humans—though I did find one family of ursas in a lavish cabin at the base of a mountain.

After coming up short so thoroughly, I decided to dash up to Mount Logan and scout the area for myself.

For any other creature—aside from one of the flying shifters—the trek up the steep and seemingly endlessly-climbing mountain would have been perilous, to say the least. Even I stumbled for the briefest second on a broken-off rock, but my supernatural reflexes and powerful fingers allowed me to claw into the mountain face to catch myself before I'd even begun to call.

I held myself against the frosted rock for a long moment to regain my bearings, staring down at the blanket of white punctuated by dots of trees hundreds of feet below, and I wondered what it would be like to fall from this great height.

A human would die instantly on impact unless they bounced off one of the ridges that jutted out, smashing bones and making their last seconds of life agonizing. But would a vampire die? Would I die?

No. Unless I landed in such a way that my spinal cord severed at the base of my neck or some miraculously sharp rock punctured my heart, I would not be so lucky to die. The more likely scenario would be that I shattered every bone in my body and had no choice but to lie there for however long it took my bones to heal themselves.

Living was so much more painful than death.

I continued my climb, thinking back on what Caesar had said about Alice being at peace. He was right. It was beyond selfish of me to rip her out of whatever afterlife she'd found and subject her to the difficulties of life once more. As I was unwilling to ever damn another with immortality, the action would be ultimately moot.

She would age, get sick, experience loss, and one day die again. All only so I could steal a few decades with her. Would she want that? What if I brought her back, and she hated me for it?

Carrying the burden of my emotional discord like a heavy weight, I finally made it to the mountain's peak and collapsed onto the snow. I stared up at the black sky, dotted with thousands of stars that didn't seem to give a fuck I was here.

"What am I doing?" I murmured in a broken voice.

The mild winter wind whistled softly in reply, blowing a light dusting of snow over me.

"Alice, what would you have me do?" I asked, willing my desperate prayer to find her in the great beyond. "Am I meant to hold on to your memory? Am I meant to devote my existence to bringing you back, to share the life with me we both deserved?"

Of course, there was no answer. Not even a breeze anymore. I couldn't even find her voice in my head now, the one I'd always turned to for guidance.

Perhaps that was because I truly didn't know what her answer would be. My rigid loyalty told me I couldn't let her go. She'd been the one good thing in my life, and I'd only gotten to call her mine for such a short time. It had been easy to hold on to her ghost when life was bleak, empty, meaningless.

But ever since Shea came into my life, there was meaning. Existence no longer felt empty or bleak. And maybe, just maybe, I was tired of being alone with my memories.

"Alice, please," I whimpered, closing my eyes against the grief-stricken red that began to coat my vision. "Please give me a sign. Tell me what to do. Am I allowed to move on? Am I allowed to let you go?"

The air remained still and listless around me, and unable to hold it back anymore, I succumbed to my sorrow. Heavy, raw sobs fled from my chest, racking my shoulders as blood tears spilled down my cheeks.

I didn't know how long I lay like that. Eventually, my lamenting croaks subsided, my tear wells ran dry, and I drifted into a nothingness akin to twilight slumber.

My stupor was broken by something small, moist, and oddly warm grazing my cheek. I immediately opened my eyes, my vampiric speed jackknifing me into sitting on instinct to prepare against a possible attack.

But my darting gaze found nothing at eye level in any direction. What had that been?

"Mew."

Furrowing my brow, I cast my eyes to the lower left corner of my vision, then slowly turned my head toward the ground beside me.

A tiny, white kitten hunched there, licking at the blood that soaked into the snow from my crying. It was no wonder I hadn't seen it immediately. Its fur blended so perfectly with the snow, making it nearly invisible save for the little pink bow affixed above its ear.

I stared at it for a long moment, watching it lap at the blood-coated ice. It looked strangely familiar, but I couldn't place how. It looked nothing like Rainbow or Goldie—the only other two cats I'd been in contact with in decades.

Also, how the hell did it get here? Surely, it couldn't possibly have climbed up this mountain on its own. I barely made it, and I was a fucking vampire.

I looked around, scanning the area for signs or sounds of its owner and wondering why on earth anyone would bring such a small kitten to this frozen place.

The night was just as silent as it had been for hours. There was definitely no person within at least a mile radius of me.

I turned back down to my left side, but the spot was empty. Not as if the small creature had wandered off but as if it had never been there at all. The snow around me was completely undisturbed. No indentations of tiny paws leading away, no pressed down spot beside my spilled blood where it had been sitting. Nothing anywhere but the impressions I myself had left.

Had I hallucinated it? Was the high altitude and thin air messing with my mind? But if so, why would my mind conjure that particular image? Why not Alice, who I so desperately wanted to see that I didn't care if she was real or not?

Coming up with no reasonable answer, I sighed.

The horizon toward the east was beginning to brighten with the first hints of impending dawn. It was late, and I needed to get back before the lack of shadows restricted my ability to run at my full speed because I had no desire to walk the long distance at a human pace.

I began the arduous climb back down the mountain, having surmised that Hadrian's intel was, indeed, faulty. There were no gryphons in this area at all.

As I made my way down, I continued to think about that strange apparition. Why had I seen it? Was it possible that it had somehow hopped away in my footsteps, and that was why I couldn't see its pawprints? That was highly unlikely.

And why had it seemed so familiar? I was certain I'd seen it somewhere before, but where?

The answer hit me the second I stepped off of the precipice of the mountain and onto flatter ground—the sweater Shea had gotten me.

I paused there for several seconds, remembering the sweater in vivid detail. Yes, that had been the exact same kitten. White with a little pink bow.

But that still didn't explain why I had imagined it there. Was it that I was missing Rainbow? If so, I would've seen him, wouldn't I?

Or…

What if it was my mind telling me what I really wanted?

I had asked for a sign. Maybe this was my subconscious's way of answering that call.

With a glance at the eastern mountains, I kicked into a sprint through the blanketed and woodsy terrain. I needed to talk with Caesar one more time before he left. We had one final issue to discuss.