When Katarzyna came back to herself the man was already dead. Not a surprise, the nearly dead vampires had only made her stronger, not less hungry. This had been a real meal at last, and she had drained him to the last drop. She slowly stood up and stretched in the light of the lamp he had brought with him. That had been a proper meal and the results were already showing as she looked down at her pale body.

  Too pale. Even before she had been turned, she had burned like a poorly tended stew in the sun. She picked up the lantern, studying it. The light was steady so she knew it wasn't an oil lamp, which obviously meant it was electric. Had electric lamps gotten cheap with time? Or was he rich? She took it with her as she sought out the nearest bathroom, intent on checking on her features and not looking at the body. She set the lantern on the sink and stepped back, studying herself while licking the remnants of her meal from her lips and chin.

  A too thin and wiry frame, her legs well muscled but she pinched at thighs without enough meat on them. Her mother had assured her that a child would put more weight on her, but even after a daughter and son her hips were the same as they had been before her marriage. Her waist was too slim, her chest small, barely fit for a woman of her age. Scrawny. She studied herself in the mirror, her face was soft again, young and almost childish. Her lips pulled into a tight line of displeasure.

  A wide mouth, too small nose, too large and alien eyes eyes. Her eyebrows were thin and her ears had a dull point to them that made her features feel inhuman. She hated it all. She focused on her hair, which was thick and a blonde color just this side of silver. It was long and she made a trip to a store room. She selected a few shoe laces to repurpose them into hair ties. She started to style her hair and looked over herself as a whole. Petite they called her. How generous of them to lie. Her mother had always said it made her distinctive in the village, but she was always kind like that.

  Her appearance was what had made her stand out to her sire when he came to town. She shelved that memory, hundreds of years past and not worth digging at. “Besides, men would fuck anything with a hole for their cock right? You'll do fine if you just bend over.” She paused for a moment in the middle of a braid before continuing, “I suppose so. Not like it matters right now anyway.” She finished the braid and then tied it up and out of the way, that would do. For now.

  She went and collected what fit her from the store room next, camo pants and a dark green tee shirt paired with black boots that more or less fit. She was surprised these were still in such good condition and wondered if it was the packaging that saved them or if they were made of something sturdy? Or maybe they just had never changed the stake and these clothes weren't that old?

  Too many questions and not enough answers. Time to get some. She collected the rifle and then took a moment to offer up a prayer of apologies to the dead before she checked the corpse. The poor man hadn't deserved to die in the dark just because she was hungry, but she knew she couldn't have stopped herself. She found a pistol, a folding knife, some extra ammunition, a couple flares, a water bottle, a black square of glass and metal, and cigarettes with no lighter. No food or other supplies so that meant there had to be a pack somewhere. She found it by the entrance, it made sense not to take it with him. If something happened in here and he was trapped, hurt, or died then the bag could be found to tell people where he went.

  Maybe. Or he just didn't want to carry it around and have it throw off his balance inside the bunker. She suspected that was the real reason when she collected it, hissing a bit as the sun was still uncomfortable to her freshly revitalized skin, and discovered that the man clearly didn't know how to properly pack for a long trek in the woods. It was balanced all wrong, it probably had been a constant irritation. Still she found everything else she expected, basic medical supplies, food, camping gear, even a book. She found pelts too and frowned. So he was a hunter then? Odd, he was clearly a decent shot judging by the pelts but also didn't know how to pack a backpack?

  She considered things for a while before finally deciding she wouldn't find answers by doing nothing. The book told her nothing of course, it was in English but that just told her again that she probably wasn't in Eastern Europe. Instead she went to the body and sat cross legged next to him. Maybe his things told her very little, but with just a bit of old magic his body could. She shifted one finger into a claw and carefully pushed it into her own arm. It was a little annoying to use her freshly invigorated blood as the medium for this, but it wouldn't take that much and it would make the connection stronger anyway. She hesitated. Basic animation? If she bound the spirit then it would give her better answers.

  But it was uncomfortable for the spirit at best, usually outright painful. And she had just murdered the poor man. He didn't deserve more pain. No, basic animation, it would be a dense automaton but at least his soul would rest. As much practice as she had gotten in the war, she always took her time drawing the symbols. One mistake could ruin the spell or even change the effect. When she was done he had a small network of arcane runes drawn on his face and chest, a little something she had learned from a mad Upiór back before the great war. With a bit of will she bound her magic to the body through them and whispered arcane words into his ear.

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  It would animate the body, creating a simple being without a will of its own and with the memories of the owner, useful for getting answers but too stupid to be of use otherwise. The spell took and she commanded it in a clear voice, “Sit up.” He followed the command like a poorly strung puppet and she smiled, it worked. Good. “Tell me your name.” He answered in a monotone, “Gregory Duvall.” She nodded, “Ok Gregory. Where are we?” He answered but she saw the issue immediately. He was speaking in English and none of that sounded like a proper noun. He could understand her commands, that was part of the spell, but that didn't help her understand him. She hesitated, “Well fuck me.”

  He started to stand, fumbling with his belt before she commanded him to stop with a sigh. She had to watch her words, the lesser animation spell made him into a simple meat puppet that would take anything she said literally and would try to fulfill the command immediately. She tried something else, “Can you show me the date? Write it down?” He immediately grabbed the black square from where she had left it and hit a button on the side she hadn't noticed in her quick examination of the odd box. The front of it lit up and he showed it to her. She jerked back from the sudden new light source and then caught herself as she stared at it.

  The time and date was clearly listed on the front, five twenty nine PM October seventeenth. No year, but it was a start. More importantly, “What is… no I won't understand you anyway. Show me how this device works.” And he did. Or at least tried to. She ended up having him show her how to get into the device a few times before finally just writing down a step by step process in a notebook from among his supplies.

  It took time and frustration but she learned the year was two thousand and ninety six. Well over a hundred years lost then. Eventually, out of frustration while trying to learn the rest, she snapped at the poor stupid corpse, “Why can't this be in Polish?” And obediently he went into the menus and in less than a minute the language menu made her wish come true. She stared, first at the phone then at the reanimated body. Finally she sighed, “Maybe I'm the stupid corpse.”

  It was a lot easier to navigate the device now and knowing it was that easy to translate writing made communicating easier, if not less tedious. “So who were you? Why were you in here with a rifle?” The corpse straightened to attention, “I was Sergeant Gregory Duvall and I was here to pay off my debts.” She waited for more and then sighed. Of course. Quickest, most direct route. She needed to hold his hand more, “Tell me about Sergeant Gregory Duvall, did he have a family, what kind of man was he? Where did he work, who did he owe money to? Why did he owe money, and how was hunting here a way to pay that back?”

  It took the animated corpse a moment to process the questions before answering them in a calm monotone, “Sergeant Gregory Duvall was a member of the executive security force for director Madison Kine and his yearly reviews showed competency. He was a husband and father with a daughter who is twenty. He worked at New Breed Security Innovations and he owed money to Malcolm Fore. He owed the money after losing several bets on horse races and taking loans from Malcolm Fore to cover his bills. Malcolm Fore told him if he brought back a valuable paracritter body whole, then it would cover his debts.”

  She nodded along, “I see. Will anyone come looking for him?” The body immediately nodded, “Yes.” She waited for more before catching herself, “How long before they come looking for him and who will be looking?” His monotone was starting make her restless and it had only answered a few questions, “He is due back next week and his corporation will be looking along with local law enforcement and the preserve rangers.” She frowned, “What preserve do you mean?” He answered instantly, “This one.” She took a breath, “What is this a preserve for?” It took hours and it was like pulling teeth. She had to walk him through each question part by part, asking obvious questions and carefully getting elaboration from the dead man. She hated every second of it.

  She learned where she was, the exclusion zone for the Evergreen Park preserve, in the country of the New Charlotte in the south eastern part of the former United States. The country, like many others, had buckled and broken under the weight of dozens of natural disasters, a failing economy, and the return of magic and the supernatural to the world when it started to become inhospitable from environmental abuse. According to him the dragons had emerged from the shadows and made a simple deal with the world after the initial chaos that their emergence caused. Grant them territory and complete sovereignty over it, and they would save the world from its manmade fate.

  The thought made her shiver with fear. She had only met a single dragon once in her long life, when the Thule Society managed to capture one while it slept. When it woke up they hadn't had a chance in hell of controlling it even with a dozen of their best. Terrifying to say the least. Once the dragons surfaced, it was just a matter of time before the other creatures of myth emerged. Undead were still a rarity though, higher undead like herself even more so. Not unknown, at least a couple old vampires she recognized had emerged in Europe but none had come forward here in the new world.

  She might very well have been the only one in the Americas for all he knew, but then she suspected that he knew much less than he thought he did. The exclusion zones like this one were sites where supernatural creatures, or paracritters as they were commonly known, either gathered at or were born into. Here they were free to live their lives openly, with the preserves being a place for outsiders to visit and the exclusion zone being a dangerous wild land where no one was safe.

  It was actually illegal to enter the exclusion zones and poaching on this land was punished harshly. The nearest city was Greenville and it was where Gregory had come from. It wasn’t actually that far from the preserve physically, but distance in the preserves tended to warp due the concentrations of magic. They had mana wells at their heart after all. More and more questions. She settled in to start asking them.