Chapter 113
Chapter 113
Far
I kept my eyes on the strange man, hoping with all my heart that he was simply looking off into the
distance. But when he started moving, panic set in, and I watched in horror as the vampire made
directly for where Angie was hiding.
“F***. Angie, someone’s spotted you” I willed my thoughts through the crowd, slamming into Angie’s
mind like a sledgehammer. “Get out of there, he’s coming”
“What?” her voice whispered in my head a moment later. “Where? I don’t see anyone.”
Alarm bells were sounding in my head as I watched the vampire glide past the hooded shifters. There
was an evil look in his almond eyes, and his mouth curled into a sneer.
“Tall guy, black hair, Angie move!” My desperation was clear in my tone. From the way the man glared
into the shadows it was obvious that he was aware of Angie’s presence. How he knew she was there, I
had no idea. Both Angie and I had taken great cure in masking our scents…
“I can’t! Angie’s voice was tinted with panic. “There’s another guy to my right. If I move now, he’ll be on
me in a second.”
Just then, someone in the crowd called out to Johan, begging him for a demonstration of his new
abilities. I snapped my gaze back to the stage, to Johan, who nodded in agreement and lifted his arms
skyward.
Whur abilities?
Another shifter was calling for Johan to present his wolf. The excited crowd murmured in agreement,
wanting to see their leader’s wolf form in all its glory. But Johan shook his head slowly, smiling serenely
like he was addressing a crowd of children.
I shook my head, banishing the questions from my mind. I had to get to Angie, to cause some kind of
distraction out of there. The vampire man was moving faster now, weaving through the crowd towards
her. I took a tentati graring to bolt through the forest to my mate’s side.
Cries of amazement erupted from the crowd and halted me. I glanced back at Johan and felt my
stomach drop like Johan stood on the podium, holding a large, glistening knife in his right hand. The left
hand, raised to the sky mom before, now lay at his feet – severed from his arm completely.
“Did he just. Fae, did he just cut off his hand Angie’s voice sounded in my head, real fear in her words.
“I’m too far away see clearly. Did he cut off his hand?”
“He did,” I whispered back, dread brewing in my gut, “but he’s not bleeding,”
Johan’s left hand lay at his feet, and he raised his stump into the hir victoriously. Only no blood seeped
from the wood, and the platform beneath him remained unstained.
I watched in horror as Johan stooped down to pick up the severed hand. He held it in the air for a
moment, coaxing gasps
ps of awe from the crowd beneath him. Then, before my very eyes, Johan moved his fingers. The
fingers of his left, severed hand.
They curled and pointed of their own volition as if still attached to his b*dy. Johan’s hand was moving
on its own. How?
Before I could fully process what I was seeing, Johan took his demonstration a step further. He handed
the knife to a shifter at his side, smiling dreamily at the crowd. And then, In front of all of his followers,
Johan stood completely still and let the shifter lob his head clean off his shoulders.
Someone screamed, and the rest of the crowd erupted into loud cries of disbelief. I resisted the urge to
run off into the woods, far away from whatever black magic was at play here. The shifters surged
forward in outrage, calling for the guilty. man’s death.
But before anyone could storm the stage, the impossible happened. The headless b*dy of Johan
stepped forward, leaned over, and picked up his severed head. His dismembered b*dy cradled the
head against its chest. The head that was still very
G
much alive on its ow
His eyes moved back and forth, scanning the crowd and his lips curled into a wide grin. The severed
head of Johan beamed
at his follower.
“Angie, he.. Something is very wrong here.”
I watched in disbelief as Johan secured his own head back onto his shoulders, and smiled down at the
mesmerized crowd. I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing, how this was happening.
But Johan was turning his head left and right as if he hadn’t been butchered only a moment ago. Not a
drop of blood was spilled from his b*dy. No evidence of the wound was visible at all
I quieted my wolf who howled in my chest, forcing myself to stay grounded in this reality, even though
this reality had just been thrown mercilessly out of order.
There was no time to stew on this impossible ability. The vampire man was almost on top of Angie, and
I had to act now. I sped off into the dark, making straight for my mate without a backward glance.
I had no idea what to make of Johan’s demonstration, no answer to the thousands of questions this
had brought forth. But something occurred to me, something that might prove useful in our fight against
this undead enemy,
-Dorothy-
When Ignatius came looking for me at the pack hall, he arrived just in time to find me rummaging
through his study like a mad man. I barely glanced at him before continuing my frantic search, pulling
file after file from the disorganized cabinets that lined the far wall “Finally, you’re here. I need your help
with something”
Ignatius leaned against the doorframe with folded arms, watching me with a confused smirk. “Would
you like to explain to me why exactly you ditched Plato at the cottage without a word of warning?”
I stood on my tiptoes, reaching for a box full of paperwork that sat just out of my reach. “I said I’d be
right ba you appointed him to protect the twins, I expected him to do his job
Ignatius strode to my side and nonchalantly lifted the box from its place on the shelf, holding it above
my he appointed him to protect my family. That includes you. How is he supposed to do his job if you
go running of warning
1 jumped for the box, but Ignatius lifted it out of my reach, looking down at me pointedly. “Dorothy,
what’s going o
“Elliot’s notes.” I walked over to lift the journal from the desk, now cluttered with pages and pages of
damage reports. “In notes, he mentions that Morgana was threatened by a specific pack. She wanted
to wipe them out so they couldn’t pose a threat to her plans,”
Ignatius’s brow furrowed. I’m not following. What does that have to do with anything! One woman
wouldn’t be able to take down a pack, even if that woman is a vampire.”
“That’s why I’m going through these reports.” I flipped through the journal, finding the page I was
looking for and holding it up to Ignatius’s nose. “Elliot was into the idea. He told her everything he knew
about the pack, he even sent his own soldiers to help with the attack”
Ignatius lowered the journal, eyeing me in confusion. “So you think this pack is important?”
“That’s just it,” 1 scurried back over to the desk and scavenged for the most recent report on vampire
attacks. “Morganna. wanted to kill these shifters because they stood in the way of her plans. So they
must be important right? If we can find out who they were, we might gain the upper hand in this war!”
A dark cloud passed behind Ignatius’s eyes. “Elliot sent his soldiers after a lot of parks back then. My
father was hungry for power. You’re never going to find this specific pack’s records by going through
those reports.
“That’s what I thought too, but there is a way!” I found what I was looking for, and pulled the file out
from under a large
stack of papers “Elliot sent his soldiers after this pack, but Morgana had the help of vampires too. If we
compare the recen
G.
reports of vampire attacks gith the old Bielke records, we might be able to figure out which pack Elliot
and Morgana attacked. There would be similarities, right?”
Ignatius scratched at his neck, clearly uncomfortable at the thought of rifling through records of his
fathers past war crimes. But he wanted to know the truth just as much as I did, and with vampires
closing in on all sides, we were getting desperate.
“It’s worth a shot. I’ll have someone compile all damage reports from the past two decades. Maybe
we’ll find something.”
“We have to know who these wolves were, Ignatius. I dropped the reports and let them flutter to the
floor, taking my mate’s hand and pressing it to my chest. “I can’t explain it, but it feels important. This
is how we fight back. This is the answer. It has
to be.”
.