A Shade of Vampire 32: A Day of Glory (4 page)

W
hat were
we going to do?
The question still plagued Brock and me as we held the Mortclaws hostage outside Blackhall Mountain.

Brock suggested that maybe we ought to get rid of them, kill them, since they were only going to continue killing others in our absence. But that didn’t sit right with me. These days, I did everything I possibly could to avoid claiming another’s life.

They were Bastien’s parents and pack, after all. Victoria’s parents-in-law if they ever got married. They ought to be treated with some respect at least, for that reason alone.

I had already exchanged strong words with them, informing the werewolves—as if they didn’t know—that it was simply not appropriate to eat their fellow citizens, and that I would not stand for it. But they had replied with what I knew all along: that they couldn’t help but crave their fellow wolves’ flesh. They had been touched by the black witches—whom I had assisted at the time—and that was what gave them their craving.

I sat down on the grass, mulling over our options even as my eyes remained on the line of giant werewolves.

Somehow, we needed to remove this ghastly spell from them. I pulled out the vial from my bag and gazed at it. Those black witches, even after their death, had left behind a legacy of destruction.

I could only be thankful that Rhys had made his exit from the world when he had.

I sloshed the liquid around and around in the glass. Breaking this vial would put a stop to their cannibalism for sure. But the problem was, I did not know exactly what else it might put a stop to. It could potentially put their very lives in the balance, which meant that even Bastien and Victoria could be affected, both of whom had consumed the elixir to differing degrees.

“What are you thinking?” my son asked, slumping down next to me.

“I’m thinking that we need to find a way to lift the spell. Transform them back into regular wolves, the way they were before Rhys came along and meddled with them.”

They might’ve been a strong tribe to begin with, but they were still werewolves, like the others. Even if they retained their craving for cannibalism, for their fellow wolves’ flesh, at least they would no longer have such an unfair advantage. The other wolf packs could conceivably band together to protect themselves. As it was, the Mortclaws were simply killing machines. There was no fight involved. The Mortclaws decided who they wanted to attack and eat, and it was done.

The black witches had meddled with nature’s balance in The Woodlands by creating these abominations, and somehow, we had to put it back.

“What if you opened the vial and tried to… I don’t know,
alter
the potion somehow?” Brock suggested.

I frowned doubtfully. “I could try it,” I said. “But again, I’m worried about Bastien and Victoria.”

“But whatever you did wouldn’t be as harmful as smashing the vial, would it? The risk wouldn’t be so great?” Brock pressed.

He had a point. “No. If I was cautious, the risk should not be as great.”

“Then maybe some risks have to be taken,” Brock said.

The other option, of course, was to attempt to lock the Mortclaws away again. But what if at some point in the future, they somehow found a way back out again? I did not like unfinished business, and simply bundling these creatures back in a hole felt like just that. It felt like we needed to solve this problem, once and for all.

I heaved a sigh and wandered back over to the Mortclaws, holding their gazes as I walked past each of them.

“Can you
really
not control your appetite?” I asked, my eyes narrowing on them. “Or is this cannibalism just a form of greed?”

They were too angry to speak with me anymore. They merely growled and yelled at me to let them free.

Well, if you won’t answer the questions, perhaps we’ll have to attempt to find out by ourselves…

I
t took
five minutes for the reality to sink in. Yuraya was gone, and she was not coming back.

I handed Bastien an old blanket I found on the deck, which he fashioned to cover himself, then helped him to his feet.

Bastien swallowed hard. “Well,” he said. “We can’t just leave her here.”

“What do you suggest we do?” I asked.

Bastien looked at Cecil. The old man didn’t look like he had any ideas.

“Should we slip her body into the ocean?” I asked.

Bastien bit his lip. I guessed from his hesitation that this was not done in werewolf tradition; it must be important to families to give their departed a proper funeral ceremony.

I shuddered to think about what would happen once the rest of the Mortclaws found out. As if they didn’t already have enough reason to hate me, now I had gone and murdered the woman they had picked out as Bastien’s betrothed since his birth. I still didn’t understand how Yuraya knew that Bastien was to be her betrothed. From what I understood, it was supposed to be the groom who broke the news to the bride. Maybe Sendira had deemed that particular tradition as breakable, in order to put more pressure on her son. Whatever the case, it was irrelevant now.

Silently, Bastien bent down and scooped her body up from the deck, leaving a trail of blood behind him. He raised her over the edge of the ship and dropped her into the waves.

“We have no choice,” he said hoarsely.

We stood and stared at the area where Yuraya had sunk, our nerves still recovering.

Then Cecil asked nervously, “So what now?”

My mind turned to Mona and Brock, waiting for me in The Woodlands. I hated to think how long I had kept them hanging around already. I really needed to get back to them.

But getting back to them meant returning to the Mortclaws.

We still weren’t sure why Yuraya had returned to the ship without them, but I could only guess that she had not managed to tell them yet about Bastien and me. Which meant that our trip back to The Woodlands should in theory be safer than we’d thought it would be only less than an hour ago. I wasn’t sure if the Mortclaws could sense when one of their kind had passed away, the same way they could sense location. I hadn’t felt anything, though I had only been influenced by a small amount of the elixir.

“We should return,” Bastien said firmly after another pause. His expression was ashen, but resigned. “We can’t keep running away forever. We have to return to the witches, and we have to solve this problem once and for all.”

W
e didn’t talk
much on the journey back to The Woodlands. I grew tenser with each hour that passed until finally the familiar outline of the Woodlands came into view in the distance.

We left the ship and arrived on the land, gazing around cautiously.

“I think we should head straight to Blackhall Mountain,” I said. “That’s where I left Mona and Brock. They said that they would hang around and wait for me there.”

Bastien nodded. “We need to return Cecil too.”

And so we set off through The Woodlands, each of us running at supernatural speed. Cecil appeared tired, but even at his old age his speed was nothing to scoff at—at least, compared to a human’s.

The closer we got to Blackhall Mountain, disconcertingly, the more I sensed the Mortclaws’ presence. Bastien seemed to sense them too. His gray eyes shone with anxiety. All of us feared the worst as we forged onward until we arrived in the clearing outside the Blackhalls’ lair.

I was expecting to see a bloody massacre, and while the ground appeared to be stained with blood, there were no fallen Blackhalls that I could see. Just the Mortclaws, all lined up in a row on the edge of the forest, Mona and Brock in front of them.

I gasped in relief. “Oh, thank God.” They had gotten the Mortclaws under control already. I couldn’t have imagined a more relieving sight than the monsters frozen on the ground as we made our way toward them. Maybe, finally, luck was on our side.

On hearing our approach, Mona and Brock turned around. Their eyes widened as they spotted us.

“You did it!” Mona exclaimed, looking quite disbelieving. “You found him!”

“Yes,” I said, my eyes falling once again on the Mortclaws. “And… look what you did…”

“Bastien!” Sendira shrilled out. She was slumped against the base of a tree. “Son, you must help free us!”

Bastien’s gaze moved fleetingly to his mother, and then to his father, who called out a similar plea. But then his focus returned to the bloodstained ground behind us. His face went pale. “What happened here?” he asked in a hushed tone, as though he feared the answer.

Mona’s expression saddened. “We found the Mortclaws attacking Blackhall Mountain. We managed to arrive toward the beginning of the attack, and prevented excessive damage, but some werewolves lost their lives. I’m sorry, Bastien.”

Oh, no
.

“The Blackhalls were supposed to have evacuated!” Bastien looked wounded. “They must have decided to stay and defend our territory… Who died?”

“I don’t know,” Mona said, shrugging, “but they headed back into the mountain.”

Bastien immediately turned on his heel and rushed toward the mountain, Cecil on his heels, while I remained with Mona and Brock.

“How long have you been keeping them here like this?” I asked.

“Several hours,” Mona replied. “I’ve kind of lost track.”

“What happened with you?” Brock asked, eyeing me, his brows raised.

I looked nervously at the Mortclaws. I didn’t want to talk to Mona and Brock about everything that had happened within the wolves’ earshot, so the witches would have to wait.

“Release us!” Sendira roared out.

Training my eyes on her, I moved toward her and stopped a few feet away. Blood still stained the corners of her mouth.

Given that she was now my mother-in-law, it felt almost wrong, disrespectful to be looming over her as I was, but I couldn’t help but remind her, “This is all your own doing, Sendira. If you insist on terrorizing other wolves and eating their flesh, you cannot be allowed to continue roaming The Woodlands freely. This is the price you pay for not controlling your appetite.”

Sendira snarled.

I wouldn’t tell her yet that Bastien and I had married. I would leave it to Bastien to break that particular piece of news to her.

I waited awkwardly with Mona and Brock until Bastien returned to us from the mountain.

He now looked grief-stricken.

“What happened?” I asked.

“They’ve already held a funeral for the dead,” he croaked. “Four lives were lost.”

I hugged him tight, hoping to instill in him some comfort.

Sendira really did not like that.

“How dare you touch my son!”

Bastien’s grief bled into anger as his eyes rose to his parents and other family members. Leaving my side, he stalked toward them and glared.

I was surprised when he immediately came out with, “As you have just claimed four of my family, so I have claimed one of yours. Yuraya is dead. I killed her.”

Gasps swept along the line of werewolves. I spotted a woman who looked like Yuraya, her mouth agape.

There was no regret in Bastien’s eyes. He almost seemed to enjoy relaying the news. It seemed that he had finally snapped.

He reached back to grab me. I had approached him as he’d been addressing his family.

“Victoria is my mate now,” he announced, “and if I hear one word of insult or protest against her, I will be sure to persuade these witches to lock you back up in the dungeon from whence you came for the rest of your miserable lives.”

Bastien’s chest was heaving as he turned his back on his stunned family, and looked firmly at Mona. “Please take us somewhere we can talk in private, without these cannibals.”

T
he grief
of losing four members of my tribe caused my emotions to erupt. The Blackhall tribe had suffered enough with the recent loss of my foster family and then the worry of my and Cecil’s abrupt disappearance. The last thing they needed was more upheaval.

At the sight of those Mortclaws frozen by the witches’ spell, I couldn’t stop myself from telling them exactly how I felt, be they my blood relatives or not.

Mona transported us to the other side of the woods that bordered the Blackhalls’ clearing.

Now, once and for all, we had to find a solution for dealing with these monsters. A permanent solution. Although I had threatened to have the Mortclaws imprisoned again, somehow, that didn’t feel like a proper resolution to me. What if some self-interested party like Brucella saw some reason to release them again in the future and found a way to do it? I didn’t want such atrocities to ever be repeated again in The Woodlands.

It seemed that Mona shared my thoughts. “I’ve been trying to settle this matter for good,” she said. She retrieved a vial of greenish-brown liquid from her bag and showed it to me. This was the first time I had ever laid eyes on it—this vial of elixir, the cause of all of my family’s problems. I wondered what my life would be like if the black witches had never entered The Woodlands. If the Mortclaws had remained as regular werewolves, albeit a stronger breed. Sendira would’ve still been a tough nut to crack, but it would’ve been nothing like this.

As I took the vial from Mona and stared at it, I felt so tempted to drop it, watch it smash into pieces.

If Victoria had not consumed some of it, and let it alter her being, I might have even taken the risk and done it; if it was only my life and the rest of my family’s lives at stake. If I’d really thought that it could solve this problem, I would’ve let the vial slip.

“So what are your ideas?” I asked the witches.

“I don’t have anything solid,” Mona said, rubbing her forehead. “But Brock came up with the idea that I try to alter the potion in my spell room. I would need to return to The Shade for that, however. I doubt that Brock's and my spell will be strong enough to keep these powerful beasts incapacitated while I’m in another dimension. Brock’s only a half-warlock, after all. If I leave, they will go free again and cause God knows how much more disruption until I return.”

“What if you brewed up a spell while you’re here in The Woodlands?” Victoria suggested. “You could tell Brock what equipment or ingredients you think you need, and we could go back, fetch them and bring them here for you.”

Mona sighed, then looked to her son. “I’m not sure what exactly is going to be required… so you’re going to find yourselves bringing back an awful lot.”