So, here's a pro-tip to all of you aspiring pilots out there: always, always, always read the manual.

This also applies to anyone operating heavy equipment, and to spaceship thieves. Because there is nothing worse than sneaking into a Model-D corvette and getting caught by dockyard security because you kept stalling the fusion engines during the pre-flight warmup.

Totally crushing blow to your social standing when you're fourteen years old on Luna trying to make a name for yourself.

Which is why I spent the last hour sitting in the cockpit of this military-grade dropship with nothing but a reading light on, flipping through a book so large it could probably be used as an artillery shell in a pinch.

Which would make it about half the size of 'A Different Virus'.

I only put the book down when I heard that howl; A wolf's howl, only much more so than what I've ever heard on nature documentaries before. I swear it rattled the chair I was sitting in, and in my surprise, I dropped the manual on the floor.

And so because I had been reading the manual for the last hour, the pre-flight warmup only took a few seconds. After that the engine was happily humming away, ready to perform whenever I took the controls.

Like pretty much any guy out there if you buy him a beer.

So I took the controls and hoped this ship would perform better than my last boyfriend's attempt at slam poetry. And...

I was not disappointed. That slick machine I was flying had some oomph. He rose to the occasion eagerly and was very responsive to my touch. I barely felt it when the engines lifted me off the ground, and I was enjoying the feeling of carefully restrained power as we soared over the hilltops.

If someone could make this ship spaceworthy, I think I'd leave Nightmare a wreck on Luca's planet.

It took a lot of effort, but I turned my focus back on the whole reason I was here. I flicked a few switches, and it only took four tries before I found the main searchlights.

"Thermal imaging for your sweeper cameras is above your head," Anna said through the speakers. "Second row on the right, middle switch. I'll patch you into my drone feeds."

"Thanks, ma'am," I said instinctively. I'm pretty sure she was the first person I had ever addressed as 'ma'am', come to think of it. And so far, the only one.

I turned on the thermal sensors and immediately got three hits out on the nearby hillside. Two man-sized blobs about halfway up the hill, and one unusually warm blob about the size of a small escape pod.

Except the escape pod was warm, had legs, and was charging up the hill towards the others.

I turned the ship and teased the dropship's turbofans into giving me a hard thrust. It shoved me into the flight chair, firmly but not uncomfortably, and we created the nearby rise. But when the drone feed appeared on the monitors, I knew I wasn't going to make it first.

Because that wolf was fast. The ship's auto-targeting systems had him moving at around forty-five kilometres an hour. Uphill. Not quite cheetah fast, but a big cat wouldn't have lasted halfway up that hill. The wolf looked like it could maintain that speed, that power, for a long, long time.

I wonder if that's the unspoken appeal of werewolves.

I didn't have time to get philosophical, however, and the world would have to live without whatever enlightenment I might have been able to share. Luca's werewolfified self was blitzing hard towards Alcuard and Lito, scattering trees like they were made of styrofoam. Its eyes burned with a feral, primal hunger. Its strength was on prominent display as it shoved aside everything in its path.

It lunged at Lito. And I was pretty sure that old fart was about to get turned into a gooey red mess.

Except Lito danced out of the way like a ballerina being chased by a turtle on sleeping pills. His first dodge to his right looked like something out of a video game, and the frame rate on the monitors wasn't quite good enough to follow his staff. He drove the wolf back, knocked it off its feet, and rolled it into the ravine.

"Uh, hey Anna, are you on?" I asked.

"I hear you, kid," Anna replied over the comms.

"Your husband's kinda scary," I admitted.

"Oh, he's a big kitten," Anna insisted with a gentle laugh.

"He just knocked a car-sized wolf into a ravine in less time than it takes me to get dressed," I exclaimed, just as I reached the site where Lito and Alcuard were standing. Lito waved when I cast the searchlight on the two of them.

I wasn't sure why he was waving, so I leaned forward and zoomed the camera in. Lito was shielding his eyes with his hands, and shaking like he was trying to shoo away a bug. He waved his hand for a few seconds, then flipped me the bird.

I gasped, appalled. I was about to say something, but Anna cut me off. "Move the light or turn it off. You're ruining his night vision."

"Right. Shit, sorry." I flew the ship forward a little and started searching for the wolf in the ravine.

It didn't take long. The wolf was already charging through the ravine, skirting the edge of the water. What both amused and terrified me was the ship's onboard targeting was now recommending treating Luca as an armoured vehicle, and transferring explosive rounds into the auto-cannons.

I took a moment to reassure myself that the safety was still on.

The wolf reached the beach in just a few minutes, a speed I was both astonished and bored by. Astonished, because that is an incredible pace to maintain without slowing down. Bored, because even the world's fastest car goes tediously slow compared to what I'm used to flying around in.

When werewolfy Luca reached the sand, he skidded to a stop. Those wolf eyes stared up at me, his luminous red orbs filled with a deep and potent hunger that my imagination was busy trying to reshape as something lustful. Because the logical part of my mind understood that if I descended from my ship and let him have my way with me, he'd tear me into pieces.

But there was some idiot part of my head that was convinced that if I did it, if I stepped down there, took off my clothes and surrendered myself to him, I would be the only thing he lusted after forever.

Yeah, sometimes Wattpad is really bad for the brain.

The wolf shook its head and grinned a most wolfish grin, as if it knew my inner turmoil and was mocking me for it. He turned away to shake out his fur, throwing off the water and dust to clean off that unnaturally shiny brown coat of fur. Once his hair was clean, he sat on his haunches, pointed his nose up towards the moon, and howled.

The wolf stood up, stretched, and gave me one last glance that looked so much like Luca's stupid grin that I nearly fired the autocannons out of reflex. He then charged back into the woods and up the hill.

"Request from Lito," Anna said. "Turn the fucking searchlight down to half-strength before space-bunny blinds me."

I sputtered, completely shocked. "What? Did Lito call me a space-bunny? What an ass."

"I might have added that part," Anna said with a laugh.

"I'm starting to see where Luca gets a comedy club's worth of sass from," I grumbled. "And it's not his dad."

"Yeah, Lito's more snark than sass. He would like you to try to keep the light at his back, whenever you can. Ideally, in Luca's eyes. And stick close this time, just in case your vampire boyfriend ends up in trouble."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Paramour? Boy toy? Special friend?" Anna asked, clearly impressed with her own wit.

I decided to try a different tactic to shut her up. "He wouldn't even drink my blood when I offered it to him. Seriously, he picked Luca over me. And who knows where he's been."

"Viviana probably keeps a list," Anna said. "Just in case some shipping magnate tries to accuse his trophy wife of sleeping with Luca as part of the divorce proceedings."

"That makes sense," I said.

"Good. Lito said Alcuard will be taking point in this next round. Try to keep the lights on their backs and in Luca's eyes, as much as you can. And be ready with the rappel lines, just in case you need to pull someone out," Anna said.

I nodded as the cameras lost Luca in the trees. I switched to thermal imaging, and he showed up as a slightly green blob a moment later. "Luca added something to one of the rappel lines. A portal, fixed to the end. The other side's in the middle of the lake, near that small island."

"Good thinking. Use it if you have to," Anna said. "Contact in twenty seconds."

I pulled ahead, and spun the ship around, hovering behind Alcuard as he stood in a small clearing with the ravine to his right. The vampire's long white hair and cape were both fluttering slowly in the stiff breeze my ship's turbofans were blowing, and he stood impassively as the wolf charged forward.

Alcuard jumped up, astonishingly high. Pole-vaulter high, actually. I thought he was going to come down and throw his fist at Luca like some sort of superhero punch. But as the wolf closed, and skidded to a stop below Alcuard, the vampire didn't come back down.

"Wait, he can fly?" Anna asked on the radio.

"He can float in the air slowly," I said. "Saw it on Mars when we first met him."

The wolf paced menacingly below Alcuard's feet, glaring up at him with a feral snarl. It darted backwards, turned, dashed forward and leapt up in the air. His jaws were wide open, fangs gleamed in the moonlight, and that terrible bite reached up...

And stopped about two feet below Alcuard's boots.

Werewolf Luca jumped a second time, snapping his jaws up at the floating vampire. And again, his leap fell short of where Alcuard hovered. The wolf patted at the ground, glared up, and whined plaintively, before jumping up again.

Then wolf Luca started to whine. Really cutely. You know how puppies make that high-pitched, pathetic and absurdly cute sound when you have something they want? That sound teenaged boys start to imitate when they try to convince you that they love you while they're trying to get into your pants? Yeah, that's the sound wolf Luca made while trying to eat Alcuard.

I started to laugh, despite the situation. And I swear Luca heard me because he turned his head in my direction and growled. Which was all the distraction Alcuard needed as he dropped from the sky, put his hands together, and dropped his fists on the wolf's head hard enough to knock it into the ground.

Alcuard jumped back as soon he landed, the wolf following closely behind. Alcuard stopped at the edge of the ravine, seemingly trapped But as the wolf lunged forward, the vampire jumped into the air again, and Luca tumbled off the edge, scrambling to keep from falling in.

At which point Lito appeared, casually set his staff against the wolf's chest, and shoved.

The wolf growled and grumbled, indignant and bitter, as it tumbled into the dark.

Alcuard landed, dusted himself off in a dignified manner, and held out his fist for Lito to bump.

Lito ignored him.