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Paris, December, 2011
It was not practical for the creature that had once been known as Sebastien de Ulloa to completely avoid the city of light. But avoiding walking in Paris on nights when the moon was high was another matter. He'd been doing that for ninety years before he even thoroughly realized what he was doing.
He couldn't lie to himself anymore, but he could tuck things away into a corner of his mind and not think about them.
After that, it was another two decades before necessity drove him to find a Parisian club on a full-moon night. He lingered in the club as long as he could, then -- realizing he was being ridiculous -- left. He drew his coat closer around him as he walked down the street, as if to ward off a chill, and knew that he was looking for wolves.
They weren't there, or not the way they had been in 1903. No footprints padded behind him, no yellow eyes gazed out from alleys.
Not at first, anyhow. Sebastien began to ponder if he was becoming ridiculous in his old age.
Then, when he was mere blocks from his hotel, he realized a small, curly-haired wolf had joined him on the sidewalk as insouciantly as if they'd agreed to meet.
Hello again, it thought at him.
"Hello," Sebastien answered, and knew that if his heart still beat his pulse would race. "You have to forgive me. It's been a long time since I spoke to one of your kind. Do you want -- anything?"
Oh, hang on, the wolf thought -- and the wampyr realized uneasily that he knew the impatient tone as thoroughly as he knew its owner. With fascination, he watched the apparition ripple, lengthen, twist into a young man of insignificant height and impressive bearing.
It was no more real than the wolf, of course, but to all appearances he'd been joined by his old companion, Jack Priest. Who -- perhaps out of an urge to deny the emotion of the moment -- was looking down and surveying the clothes he'd come into being with. It was, in fact, the coat and suit he'd died in, though free of the ice and muck and blood that had coated those clothes at the very end, and not yet shredded by the teeth of a monster.
"I'd hoped," he said, "I'd look a bit less old-fashioned."
"I didn't know you could do that," Sebastien said, because he had to say something.
Jack shrugged lightly, and Sebastien got the uneasy sense it would look to any passersby as if he were talking to thin air.
"I'm a ghost," he said. "A ghost werewolf at that. I believe a certain vampire would say I shouldn't exist." A pause. "Anymore. At any rate, I'd never tried that before but it appears I can. Do you think I should go in for haunting?"
It took a moment for Sebastien to respond. "You know it's been --"
"A hundred and eight years, yes," Jack agreed crisply. "Or, rather, you know it and so I know it. Being a ghost is funny that way. As a wolf I can't say I care, the days just -- run like drops of water." He glanced over to Sebastien, eyes almost as keen and bright as they'd been in life. "You must know some of the feeling."
Sebastien had to nod, admitting he did. He realized that, even with an unlife that had stretched so far beyond what he could have expected as a human, Jack was still a tenth of his age.
It felt surprisingly lonely.
Sebastien licked his lips, enjoying the rare feel of moisture in his mouth. "Are you angry?"
It wasn't what he had expected to say. But -- a century later -- it was all he wanted to know.
"I was," Jack answered. "For a long time. We wouldn't have been out hunting monsters if you hadn't drawn Doctor Garrett into your court. I was more angry at her."
"You had no objection," Sebastien offered, defending both his own judgement and that of the sorceress seventy years in her grave. "At the time."
"I thought we were winning a war. It made me dumb," Jack said. "And I was loyal." This was closer to true.
He added, "I know you tried to turn me. Thank God I was already dead -- I would have been far more angry if you'd succeeded."
"If I had," Sebastien said, "You would have been saved. You were so -- young."
"Yes, and if you hadn't bought me I would have rotted away before I was ten," Jack answered, in the easy way he'd always revealed for the deepest truths, as if they mattered less if he said them lightly. "You gave me another fifteen years. A long life was never in the cards for me anyhow, and especially not one spent -- managing court games."
Sebastien half-smiled, bitter in his agreement. "Remember what I told you in Moscow? That I'd leave you?"
"You liked telling me that," Jack reminded him. "But that first time I said, 'not if I leave you first, sweetheart.' " He ran a hand back through his curls, as if he still had real hair that grew and fell into his eyes and needed to be tamed. "As it turns out, we left each other, didn't we? I died, and you -- well, I don't blame you for not tarrying in Paris a month to see what the moon might do."
"Forgive me," Sebastien said, and realized he was about to weep.
Jack looked at him with pity. "Darling. I already have."