He strode away down the corridor and out of sight, while the door closed softly behind him.
“Let’s go in,” I dared to breathe. “That’s Bastien’s mother on the other side. I’m sure of it.”
Mona drew in a breath. “Okay…”
The hallway vanished and we reappeared inside a bedroom lit by a single torch, fixed high up in one corner. The flames sent shadows dancing around the craggy walls, casting light on the woman who had stolen Bastien from me. Mrs. Mortclaw. Brucella on steroids…
I reached out my hand and found Mona’s. I squeezed it, hoping that she would take the hint. She did. All three of us suddenly became visible, and I was sure that she had also lifted the spell that was muffling our scent.
The she-wolf, who had been reclining on the bed, immediately leapt up. Shock sparked in her gray eyes.
“You!” she growled, her expression nothing short of murderous. She moved to launch at me, but then stopped herself in mid-air, even before hitting the protective shield I assumed Mona had the sense to form around us.
The wolf eyed me like a rare, disgusting specimen. Her shock and anger turned to utter confusion. She breathed in deeply, taking in my scent. Her eyeballs bulged.
“What… What are you?” she croaked.
“Victoria Mortclaw,” I was half-tempted to answer, but that would have been taking things a little too far…
I glanced at Mona, weighing my answer, before replying, “Why do you ask? Isn’t it obvious who I am?”
“You… You are that human girl. But y-you—you’re different than the last time I saw you!” The latter part of her sentence came out as a furious growl.
“How so?” I asked, still trying to maintain a semblance of innocence, though it only seemed to be aggravating her.
“You have done something. You…”
“You feel some… connection to me?” I dared pose.
She gaped at me. That was enough of an answer.
Well, at least that tiny drop of elixir had done something. I had been so afraid that, in addition to it not granting me the ability to detect her location, I would also appear exactly the same to Bastien’s mother as the last time I’d crossed paths with her.
“This is witchcraft!” she hissed, her eyes narrowing on Mona and Brock.
I said nothing, and neither did they. I merely looked casually at her… or as casually as I could manage.
“Well?” I said after a pause. I tried to keep my tone as polite as possible. “Do you still wish to attack me?”
If Mona was right about the elixir, then the notion would go against the wolf’s every inner instinct. It would be like attacking one of her own.
She let out another growl. “What is it you want?” she snapped. “Why have you come here?”
I was relieved when she took a step back, albeit begrudgingly.
“I’ve come here to talk about your son… I’m in love with him. And he is in love with me. He does not wish to marry—”
“But they are already betrothed,” she responded, cutting me off. “Whatever you have done to yourself cannot change that fact.”
I tried to keep my calm. “May I address you by your first name?”
The wolf grunted. “Sendira.”
“Sendira. Do you not care about your son’s happiness? Do you not care about his wishes? Is he just an object for you to command as you will?” I swallowed hard, trying to meet her eyes even as I hoped that her heart was not fully forged of stone as Brucella’s seemed to be. “Trust me when I say I would do anything for your son,” I said quietly. “Anything. I would change into anything, be anything, if it meant that I could stay with him.”
Sendira pursed her lips. Her brows furrowed.
“Hmph.” She paused, and I actually thought that I might have gotten through to her just a teeny tiny bit. She glanced down at her hands before admitting in a more subdued tone, “I do wish for my son to be happy… You will never understand the love I hold for him.”
“Then why do you not listen to him?” I asked. “Why do you not listen to his wishes and instead act only according to your own? Look,” I went on, daring to move a little closer to her. I hated to come across as desperate, but that was exactly what I was right now. In spite of my trying to forget what I’d seen on the beach, at the back of my mind the vision of Bastien racing away with Rona still ate at me, and flamed up my desperation to reunite with him even more. I just wanted him back. I just wanted to hold him. Be with him and not keeping getting torn apart like this. Was that really so much to ask?
“Name your price,” I said. “I’m willing to do anything.”
Sendira ran her tongue over her lower lip, her right eyebrow twitching. Then she sank back on the bed, folding her hands on her lap as she paused for a moment. “Well,” she began, “your demands are certainly weighty. But I will say this: if you love him so much, and if you have truly formed a connection with him, then go and find him now. Find him and bring him back here. Back to me. Then I will perhaps consider taking your words seriously.”
“Okay,” I said, suddenly breathless. I could hardly believe that she was being even slightly amenable—Sendira, the same monster of a woman who had smashed into Bastien’s bedroom and scooped him away like a sack of potatoes even as he yelled for her to stop.
“I-I will find him,” I stammered, moving back and standing level with Mona and Brock again. “I will find your son, and bring him back. Soon. Very soon. I promise.”
Victoria
Mona and Brock vanished us away from Sendira’s bedroom and out of the Mortclaws’ mountain. Before we took off from the area completely, we were sure to look around. We rose upward, above the mountain, trying to familiarize ourselves with the area, so that finding it again would not be an impossible task. Though I realized that this was probably not even necessary, since we were going to return with Bastien—weren’t we?
As we soared back toward the beach where we had last sighted him, Brock muttered beneath his breath, “Everything would be so much simpler if we could just get rid of those damn Mortclaws. Just kill them. Then Vicky and Bastien could be together without their stupid interference.”
When we arrived at the beach and touched down, Mona addressed her son. “Murder is not the answer,” she said. “Murder should never be an answer except in the direst of circumstances. What we have here is an issue of long-held family tradition—and the culture of werewolves. In spite of how antiquated and unfair it may seem to you, this is their way of life. How they and all their ancestors have chosen to live. You have to respect it, Brock. Bastien is their son. And if Victoria wants to be with him, it’s only courteous that she at least attempts to play by their rules.”
“But aren’t they like, cannibals?” Brock countered. “Do they even deserve to live?”
“I don’t like that word, ‘deserve’,” Mona muttered, still frowning at her son. “First of all, we don’t know that the Mortclaws are still cannibals. We have no evidence of that yet. And secondly, neither you nor I are God. Who are we to judge who ‘deserves’ to live?”
“Well, we seem to do it all the time with the IBSI,” Brock replied.
Mona sighed. “Yes. But the IBSI is a different matter entirely. What we have here is primarily a private family affair. We have no grounds to simply step in and kill them for abiding by their heritage.”
While mother and son were debating, my mind was elsewhere. I was desperately scanning the ocean. “Guys,” I said, “we need to start searching. I told her we’d be back soon.”
“Right,” Mona said, averting her eyes to the water.
I climbed onto Brock’s back again and we began a thorough search of the waves.
They couldn’t have gone far, could they? Surely we would find them soon. I was feeling optimistic that we would spot them within an hour, in fact. And even if Bastien yelled at me to stay away again, this time, I would have something to yell back with. I would shout back that we might be on the precipice of his mother agreeing
to our being together. That we might finally be able to stop all this back-and-forth between the realms.
That we could finally just be.
Bastien
Soon after Victoria disappeared, I returned with Rona to the shore. My mind had been working furiously on the details of the crazy scheme that had occurred to me. The crazy, yet seemingly inevitable scheme.
The first thing I had to do was travel with her across The Woodlands to the old Port, where a number of boats should still be docked. It was too dangerous for her to reside on the mainland at present. We milled around the old vessels—most of them broken down and many of them leaking—until we found a small one that looked at least semi-inhabitable. It had a covering over it, and a place beneath deck where she could hide if need be… though if the Mortclaws got wind of even her approximate whereabouts, there would be no hiding. They would scent her out. Hence the need for her to remain inconspicuous.
“I cannot tell you everything that I’m going to do next,” I told her, “because I’m still working it out myself. But for now, Rona, you need to stay safe. You need to keep yourself hidden here, away from the reach of the Mortclaws.”
“How long will you be?” she asked.
“I cannot say,” I replied heavily. “It could be days, it could be weeks. But you need to somehow stay alive. The best way I can think for you to do that is to stay in this boat, and venture onto land only very briefly when you need food or water. But whatever you do, do not venture deep. And certainly do not dare go anywhere near your mountain, unless you have a death wish.”
She nodded, all the blood draining from her face.
I felt bad leaving Rona alone. I knew what it felt like to lose one’s family—although the Blackhalls had not been my real family, at the time I’d thought that they were, and in my heart they still were. The aftermath had been crushing. Without Victoria by my side, I wasn’t even sure how I would have survived it. But Rona had no choice but to be alone now. I would try to return to her when I could, hopefully with a more permanent solution as to what she could do. But first, I had to find a solution for myself. Until I’d worked that out, there was no helping Victoria, Rona, or anyone else in The Woodlands.
And so, after comforting the trembling Rona with a brief hug, I left her in the boat. Assuming my wolf form, I began racing back to the Mortclaws’ residence.
As my paws kicked up a storm of dirt behind me, I tried to brainstorm my options—everything and anything I could possibly think of, no matter how absurd or impossible it seemed.
As much as my heart longed for family and connection, I was better off with no family than with the Mortclaws. Just as I was better off without Brucella. If I ever wanted to meet with Victoria and steep myself in her love again, I had to break free from them in a way that was permanent. In a way that would cause them to never wish to track me down.
As I pounded closer and closer to the Mortclaws’ lair, it became clear to me that I had to use their stalwart adherence to tradition to my advantage. I had to turn their pride in their lineage into their weakness.
But before any of this, I had to gain their trust. Their full trust. Because the plan that was slowly forming in my mind would require time. Time during which I could not have them looming over me.
As I arrived outside the entrance of the mountain that was my birthplace, even as doubts about what I was on the verge of doing threatened to overwhelm me, I forced myself to think of Victoria. Think of her face. Her smile. Remember what it felt like to hold her in my arms. The memory of her gave me strength. Strength at a time when I needed it most.
I will fight for you, Victoria.
I will fight for us.
Victoria
My hope of finding Bastien within an hour quickly ebbed away. One hour turned into two, then three. We still had not found any sign of him or Rona.
Where could he have gone? My gut clenched as I thought of the promise I had made to Sendira. I said I would return “soon” with him. After almost four hours of nonstop searching, Mona and Brock had become thoroughly fed up.
“Let’s take a break,” Mona huffed. The three of us returned to the shore and sat down among a heap of dry, flat boulders. Setting down her bag, Mona stretched out beside me, while Brock did the same a few feet away. Mona reached into her bag and took out some food she had packed. She offered me some fig rolls, which I refused, but Brock gladly accepted. He and Mona sat munching while I set my eyes on the ocean.
He’s got to be somewhere nearby. Werewolves, being supernatural creatures, could of course travel fast even in the unnatural habitat of water. They could have gotten a fair distance by now, maybe even further than we had searched, but I couldn’t imagine that they would have gone so far because of how dangerous it was. Bastien already had firsthand experience of the perils of those waters. He’d almost been torn in two by a shark, for heaven’s sake. If Micah had not stumbled across them, he wouldn’t even be alive now.
No, I couldn’t bring myself to believe that he would be that reckless. But then where was he?
And I wondered why, exactly, he had been running from Sendira in the first place. This at least gave me hope that there was more to the story than met the eye, but it did not quell my frustration as we sat there on the beach.
Sipping from a bottle of water, Mona dropped down from the rocks to dip her feet in the waves. Brock followed her lead, even as he rolled up the bottoms of his pants.
As I sat alone now, my eyes could not help but wander to Mona’s bag, perched just a couple of feet away from me. Within reaching distance. The vial’s bulging outline was visible in the center of the fabric bag. The vial of Mortclaw elixir. The vial that was supposed to have given me the power to detect their location. God, what I wouldn’t give for that ability now. I could probably find Bastien in no time if I had that. I could find him, look him in the eye and have him explain everything before I took him to see Sendira where hopefully, finally, we could arrive at a solution to this whole mess.
But that one drop had not been enough to give me such an ability. It was only enough to create a familiarity in me when faced with Sendira.
But… what if I took just one more drop? Or not even a drop, but half a drop? A full drop had not made any visible difference to me, I reasoned, and I didn’t feel any different inside either. I felt just like myself. Would an extra half drop really go and change all that? I found it hard to believe that it would, and the upside to it working seemed to far outweigh the risk.
The vial was so close to me, it felt like it was taunting me.
Desperation was a dangerous thing—I knew that. It clouded one’s brain and debilitated one from thinking clearly, logically, objectively. But still, I couldn’t stop myself from posing the question: What would really happen if I consumed the tiniest bit more? Would I really live to regret it?
I supposed it all came back to the same question that Mona had urged me to answer for myself before we ever started out on this mission. And the same decision that my parents had left in my hands.
How much am I really willing to risk for love?
Lawrence
I finished paging through the sheets of expenses, scribbling big red circles around all the items I found questionable, before moving the stack back to my father. He was still on the phone. I got up, mouthing, “Going to get something to eat,” and left his office. I exited his apartment and returned to my quarters.
I needed space to think. My own space, without my father present. I kept trying to rack my brain as to where I could possibly find the files now. But each time, I drew a blank. It was the thought that they might be somewhere here in the IBSI’s Chicago base that was driving me insane. They could be so nearby.
There was nobody I could ask, not even in a roundabout way. It just wasn’t possible to ask for that sort of information without arousing suspicion. The moment that happened, all my doors would be closed. Heck, I would likely have to flee for my life.
My primary advantage over eve
ryone else was that I was somebody whom my father still trusted. And that still remained my most valuable asset—one that I simply could not be reckless with.
I dropped into a chair and leaned my head back, closing my eyes. I realized that continuing on the path of trying to locate the files was simply going to be too difficult, too time-consuming, and too likely to get me caught.
As much as it pained me—given that all the details of the cure were probably clearly laid out in those files—I had to cast thoughts of those files aside. I had to pretend, at least for now, that they did not exist. How then would I go about this?
As I brainstormed any and every avenue I could possibly explore, the lab on the other side of Chicago was at the forefront of my mind. Grace had recounted to me the scene that her father had witnessed there. They were conducting experiments involving Bloodless and even had a large stock imprisoned there. The scientists who worked there, surely, must know as much as there was to know about Bloodless. They worked day in and day out in close proximity with them… If they didn’t know what the cure was, who would? Given the dangers of their job, they must have some preventative measures in place in case one of them got bitten. At least one person there must know.
The more I thought about it, the more it became clear that paying a visit to Bloodless Chicago was my next logical step.
Lawrence
Once I had formed a more solid plan in my mind as to how exactly I was going to go about this, I picked up my phone and dialed my father’s number.
It was engaged, as I had expected. I opted to leave a voicemail:
“Dad, I’m going for shooting practice… In case you wonder where I’ve gone.”
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