"Scaline, où allons-nous? Pour le petit nouveau, je veux dire. Etes-vous sûr qu'il est encore un loup-garou?" Scaline, where are we going? For the new kid, I mean. Are you sure he is even a werewolf? Samuel asked me
"Tais-toi, Samuel, j'en suis sûr. Le garçon est jeune à peine neuf ans. Ses gens l'a quitté. Il n'y avait personne pour prendre soin de lui. Donc, nous allons l'inviter à vivre avec nous, les gens Atakapa.” Hush, Samuel, I am sure. The boy is young barely nine years old. His folks left him. No one there to take care of him. So we are going to invite him to live with us, the Atakapa people. I turned to him and demanded a better idea.
“Ignorants, ces gens maudits. Un enfant.” Ignorant, those damned people. A child. Sam muttered. “Where are we going to find this boy?”
“Boulevard Arago and Rue de la Santé, I was informed that the child will be in a ally there.” Sam looked at me.
“Paris? Scaline, we are in Rheims. That’s more than an hour and a half away. There’s only the two of us.” I turned to him, smiled with all my teeth and winked.
“Aww, Sam. We have been together for thirteen years, and you still doubt me. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Shame on you.” I turned back to the road.
The street lights look like fireflies dancing about. Daddy and I used to lay in our backs and watch the day turn into night. We would catch fireflies with the tribe and put them in jars for later. He said the fireflies had escaped by the morning, when I woke up and they were gone. I always tried to stay up all night to watch them plan and execute their ideas. Of course by then I had fallen asleep and Daddy would carry be to my bed, so I’d wake up magically in my bed.
Leah-Somo, Daddy’s shadow, would be up already, watching Daddy sleep. Tryen, Daddy’s shifter, and I would always come by and plan how we would wake him up. We usually just jumped on his bed, until he grabbed one of us and pulled us down to him. We would laugh until someone came to tell him news of the day.

“Scaline, I never doubt you. But it’s just us two, should I call for help? Ace, lives down the street from there. Hell, Corbin lives five minutes from there. Scaline, I’m not saying let’s call it off I’m saying let’s get our boys in there to make sure the kid is alright.” I turned to look at him again this time I saw worry linger beyond his eyes.

“Ace and Corbin, two men? This child isn’t used to men talking to him! They won’t know what to do with him, they don’t know anything about children!” The car swerved, as I yelled at him.

“Men?” Sam scoffed, “They are barely seventeen. Men.” He chuckled.

“Hey, you were a man in your father’s eyes at seventeen.” I pointed out. “Fine call them, the boy is nine years old, shaggy brown hair and blue eyes. He hangs around the streets. He likes cars.”

“I like this kid already.” He chuckled once again. He put the phone to his ear and in the background of the humming engine you could hear the ringing on the phone. “Ace, hey, no trouble. Actually I have Scaline here and we were wondering if you could go look around for a child nine years old, male, brown hair, blue eyes. Yes, he’s one of us. Boulevard Arago and Rue de la Santé? Yeah, we will be there around eleven p.m. Get Corbin to help you. Don’t scare him please.” Sam laughed, “okay, okay! Geesh, see you then.” After Sam hung up with them, he looked at me. “We searched all around France for him, if he isn’t here?”

“We will call everyone and have a look out for him. I was told the child could be killed by hunters at anytime. He keeps dodging any contact with anyone, maybe we should have told Ace that the boy will run.”

“That boy needs a challenge in his life.” I laughed, “Everyone, I mean everyone gives him a free be in everything.”

“Jonah hasn’t called lately,” I reminded him.

“Jonah is a busy man, being the Red Coats dog and all. ” Sam mumbled. I put my hand over his.

“Call him, he’s my family too.”

“You haven’t seen him in four years, he changed.”

“Sammy call him or I will.”

“I’ll call Michael instead.” I rolled my eyes as he made a dramatic event on opening his phone and pressing numbers on the phone. Again with the ringing on the phone. A mumbled hello answer.

“Put it on speaker.” I whispered.

Sam pressed another button on the device and clicked it to the dashboard.

“Michael?” Sam called out. Music blared out, we flinched. It was so loud we couldn’t hear who was talking.

“Elliot! Turn it off!” The music came to an end. “Hello? Sam?”

“Ahh... Little brother. Having fun?” Laughter came from Michael’s side.

“Samuel, been a long time. I was starting to miss all your teasing. I’m over that fact, still on your wild goose chase?”

“Oh little brother, do you still not understand the way of the Atakapa People?”

“I understand perfectly. You hunt down children with the ways of the Moon. Sounds like fun.”

“Fun, this is just as much fun as the Royal Maiming is to you.” I said to him.

“Ouch, geesh, cousin that hurt. I’m wounded.” In the background Thomas chuckled. “Sam? Are you still in France?”

“We are,” Sam chuckled. “Driving late at night, on a road that it looks like no one used for years, in a sliver, 2010 Jaguar C-X75 Concept. Going fifty miles per hour. But we are here.”

“Are you going to Paris by any chance?”

“Indeed we are,” Sam smiled at me.

“By at least, let’s say tomorrow night?”

“Michael, are you implying that you want to meet up with us?” I asked.

“Well, I’ll be in the Plaza Athenee, I have a meeting in the morning, but yes dinner sounds perfect. Can you come?”

“If I have a child we will stay in the same hotel, I promise you.”

“Be careful, Scaline, promises are dangerous.”

“For a shadow and curious, but see here Mikey, I’m neither. And that’s what saved my life many years ago.” You could hear Michael sigh on the phone. “Your Highness?” Sam tensed up hearing a voice which wasn’t Michael’s. “‘The Elders are here, they wish to speak to you.’ Yes of course. Thomas, Issac. ‘Alone.’” Michael whimpered as Sam growled. “Samuel, speak to Thomas until I return.”

“Mikey!” Sam shouted, which surprised me so we swerved.

“He’s gone,” Thomas whispered.

“What do they want?!” He yelled at Thomas.

“I don’t know, but if they hurt him. They were at the Royal Maiming last friday, I wonder. But..” Thomas’ words were cut off after he growled. “Issac, take the phone. ‘Okay.’”

“Issac do you know what is going on?”

“With Michael? Thomas? Or the Kingdom?”

“All of the above,” Sam and I answered together.

“Well a bunch of Tribes on Naroo are threatening war, if they don’t get one of the Princesses like the Red and Black Coat kingdoms did. And Michael, well he’s just as stubborn as your father was. Refuses to acknowledge them. And Thomas disagrees with him, he thinks we should just talk to them about it.”

“Let me guess, they fought about it.”

“Loud and screaming at each other. Thomas had to leave for the night. Michael set fire to a room. A bad night. A really bad night.” We could practically hear Issac shudder.

“Okay, so the Elders are here to see what is going on in the situation,” I concluded.
“Not exactly, I believe that-” his voice cut off.
“Issac?”
“Uhmm... Mikey’s back, here talk to him.”
“Michael?” Samuel asked cautiously.
“Sam, I’ll call you tomorrow, but Le Relais Plaza, located at 21 avenue Montaigne, it’s just a few steps away from the Théâtre des Champs Élysées at eight thirty?”
“Mikey, tell me what happened. Please.” Sam begged.
“Sam, I can’t now. I have a meeting.”
“Yes,” I answered for Sam. “Eight thirty sounds good. See you then Michael.”
“Good night, Scaline, Sam.”
“‘Night, Mikey.”

Sam ended the call. We sat in silence, until the buzzing noise from Sam’s phone broke the quiet. “It’s just Thomas sending us the map to the restaurant.”

Again we sat in silence until, I broke the quiet. “Sam it's been a year since, well your father’s death. How are you adjusting to it?”
“Adjusting?” He chuckled darkly, “there is no adjusting, how did you adjust to your father’s
death? My dad went out and got drunk after Akakia died. And he had to raise another child. He was in so much pain, and when he realized the cancer came back...-” I looked over at Sam, a single tear laid on his cheek until he brushed it away angrily.

“My father’s death was tragic, the whole tribe was killed. But we were poisoned, Jesse died of a disease, something that vampires never died of. I never knew my father was sick until the day he died. He called Jesse, and asked for forgiveness. Your father beat it once, twice even. Then he sucummed to it, dying slowly after all these years. Everyone knew he was going to die. Yes indeed it was tragic, but the people had accepted the fact, he wasn’t going to live forever. The only one that thought he was going to live forever was Michael and he ran after his passing.” I looked at the street again.

I could see Paris’ lights already, we still had twenty minutes to go. Sam closed his eyes, obviously he was done talking about it for the night.

I stared at the lights, I tried thinking of the child in the city, lost, cold, scared. But my mind kept on the night of Daddy’s death. It took a week to kill out the tribe. The poison spread through the water, it took down only the curiouses, at first it was just the children, who got horrible fevers. Fevers that turned to coughing up blood and vomiting. Our healers got sick next. The woman that gave birth to me was the first to go, we buried her in the ground. The sickness didn’t stop there, all the warriors and tribes women got it. The new mothers and infants, cried through the night, the pain was unbearable-or so I was told.

Daddy was the last who got it. It took only a day to kill a person, for him it was two days, he lived long enough for Jesse’s shadows to get me. An hour before Leah-somo took me outside to some shadows waiting, Daddy shifted one last time, to take out his fangs. He pulled them out and shifted back, weaker than before. “Leah,” he called out, “help me make this.” Leah-somo took Daddy’s two fangs and wrapped them in cloth, sticking away from each other. Leah bit himself to the point of bleeding and rubbed it on the cloth, Tyren did the same. Daddy bit his finger to make a little blood come out and rubbed it on the cloth. Then he wiped the blood under my eye as a half circle, and made it look as if it was a sun. Under the middle ray he put three dots. “Now, Leah-somo, Tyren and I will always be with you. No matter what happens, Scaline, you are my daughter and I love you more than anything in the world. Honey, you may grow up as a white coat but one day, you will be the Atakapa Chief.”
With that, Leah-somo grabbed me in his arms, and ran outside. When we got to the river he stopped. Brandon was there, he came 200 miles to get me, I never knew as a child a vampire could travel that far but he did. Leah handed me over to Brandon who held me, Leah kissed my forehead and whispered “You are going to a great Chief, I’ll watch over your father as we watch over you.” Then he looked up at Brandon and said, “Burn the village to the ground.”
I struggled from Brandon’s grasp, who just held tighter. “NO! Our people are in there. Daddy and Tyren. Leah-somo, you're going to die.” He looked at me with a certain sadness, “Scaline, they won’t do it until my last breath, I promise. We, the people, all didn’t die from a silly little bug. We were poisoned, but it only took curiouses and it took into the water, so we didn’t realize it until it was too late.