up positions at either end of the sleigh with its huge harnessed animals: Serge took the Rudolph end, because the red nose gave off a rosy glow that he could read by - he was on War and Peace, in the original Russian, for the eighth time. Pasha hopped up to sit on the back of the sleigh while they waited for Nick to pop in and out of the huts that had put refreshments out for him.
Rudolph heard it first: the howling.
The big beast's ears perked up.
His red nose quivered. He snorted. He stamped the ground. Behind him, the other reindeer moved restlessly in their bridles and harnesses.
Serge stepped back and called quietly to his cousin, "What in the name of all that's holy was that?"
She was triangulating: her howl, their howls and barking, and the village where she knew it was all converging. If she hadn't been so frightened for them, she'd have been excited beyond words. Beyond words. That had been her life with them. Feeling loved, taken care of, taught, trained, encouraged, protected . . . and then nudged out on her own. She had to leave, because she was a female. In a wild dog family, only the dominant pair mated - the Alpha male and Alpha female - so the other females had to go off in search of their own new band, which would be made up of brothers who had broken away from a different parent pack.
That wasn't possible for her, of course.
She wasn't dog, she wasn't wolf, she wasn't human.
She was mutant, hybrid, half-breed, monster.
She'd been unbearably lonely without them.
Slowly, over the years, she'd grown accustomed to living as a human who rarely shape-shifted, and then only to protect the endangered. Now they were endangered. Beyond words. That was also why she couldn't have warned them ahead of time. In their brains, there was memory and there was now, but there was no future. There was no way for her to say, Don't go there.
North of the village the dogs came . . . running, running, howling . . .
Close enough to see their quarry - the huge succulent beasts so conveniently tethered and tied down - the dogs slowed, scattered, circling the village, surrounding it, crouching low as they secured their positions, hair rising on their necks, primed for attack, listening for signals, for danger, for the moment when they would all rush forward . . .
Silently, they moved, and then, muscles bunched, they waited until . . .
As one, as if the pack were one body with one brain, the dogs attacked from every direction, muzzles back, teeth bared, lunging toward their kill.
The reindeer, restrained by forces stronger than leather, shuddered in their halters and yokes, but they were not helpless. They were enormous, with murderous hooves and teeth, and jaws that could grab a dog and crack its head even as it was flung to the side. Between them and the dogs, on either side, Pasha and Serge were the ones who looked helpless, until their eyes glittered and their teeth showed. They, too, could grab and tear; they, too, had superhuman strength beyond anything the wild dogs possessed, the two vampires making up in strength and viciousness what they lacked in numbers.
The townspeople slumbered under the spell of Christmas Eve.
"No!" Ingrid cried, as she raced toward the village.
Massacre seemed laid out in front of her. Her family wouldn't stand a chance, mere natural predators against unnatural ones. Long, thick white wolf fur streaming behind her, she thundered into the midst of them, snarling, growling, pushing her own family out of the way so she could protect them from this force they could never understand.
She hurled herself toward the vampires at the heart of the fight.
Blood and fur flew all around her.
There were cries of pain, roars of fury.
And then a space cleared, and two bloodied but unbeaten vampires stared at this new attacker who was like none of the pack they had seen yet.
"What the . . ." exclaimed Pasha.
"Werewolf!" screamed Serge.
She pulled back into her haunches, primed herself to launch at them, pushed off with her great strength, and was airborne when the door of the nearest village hut flew open and the Old One stepped outside. He yelled at Serge and Pasha in a voice that quaked the ground around them, "Forget the dogs, you idiots! Don't let the werewolf get Rudolph!"
Ingrid shape-shifted while in mid-lunge.
Before their eyes, the white wolf changed into a nude