Burnt

Chapter 8: Loopholes

Alison's POV

The pack library spans across half of the first floor of the pack house. It's one of the few places that I haven't spent a lot of time in. Library shifts are on the lower end of the payscale compared to the other options.

Amelia seems to know the place like the back of her hand though. It takes her all of two minutes to lead me to a section in the back filled with old leather books.

"Do you work in here a lot?" I can't help but ask as I start looking through books.

Her head shakes in my peripheral vision, "No, the pay is too little. I spend a majority of my free time in here though."

There are a couple of things that I've noticed about Amelia over the last couple of days. I don't think she has any other friends. She tends to be on the quiet side so it's not surprising. If she does have any family, she doesn't talk about them.

We pull the books with intriguing labels from the shelves and pile them on a nearby table. By the time we feel like we've got anything that could help it's a slightly impressive pile of dusty leather and old paper.

"I don't even know where to start." I murmur, breathing deep as I look at the stacks.

Amelia shrugs her shoulders and sits down. "You just do." she says, pulling the nearest book towards her and opening it to the first page.

We read for hours before finding anything of any actual use to us right now.

"Here's something," Amelia says. I look up from my book at her and she starts summarizing her reading, "The Original Coven created the first vampire in Plovdiv, Bulgaria sometime between the year 943 and 948, according to this dead guy who translated some bulgarian writing in an old diary in 1645."

Damn, everything was so long ago that it's hard to tell what are facts and what are guesses. "Does it happen to mention why the fuck they thought creating murderous, bloodthirsty monsters was a good idea?"

Amelia grins at my phrasing before looking back to the book. She skims the pages for a few moments before stopping on one. "Wow, uh, yeah. So, according to dead guy, they were at war with the werewolves. The vampires were a weapon."

My eyebrows scrunch together. "What?"

She nods, spinning the book towards me. I read the open page before looking back up at Amelia. Hopefully, this makes more sense to her than it does to me.

I've never met a wolf that had any sort of feelings about witches. Nobody really loves or hates the idea of them because they started disappearing so long ago. Rabid vampires are now more of an issue for wolf packs than witches are. I guess that was the original purpose of vampires.

We mostly see the ones that have gone crazy though. A lot of the vampires that attack packs are erratic and out of control. They've been compared to feral cats but, from what we're taught about them, they attack without any regard for their own life. The sane ones are the real threat.

The good part about this, for wolves anyway, is that the tame ones attack packs so rarely that up until a few days ago I thought that our pack had never been attacked by them. I suppose the tame ones are more focused on witches than wolves, which brings me back to- what the fuck?

"If they were made by witches to attack wolves then why are witches the ones practically extinct? I mean, as far we know there's only one left." I say, dropping my head into my hands.

I hear Amelia flip through a couple more pages before she stops. "For now, let's just assume they have mommy issues and take a break. You look exhausted, no offense." she suggests.