Hunting the Rogues (Shadow Claw Book 8)

by Sarah J. Stone

  Chapter 14

  Ivanna and Nina watched the community heads gather around the circular stone table. It was cut away at the center where Agatha and Gale were held in two separate cages of black smoke crackling with silvery purple electricity concocted from Viria’sessences. The sight of the cages made everyone uncomfortable because the electricity crackling around it made the room smell like ozone and the sound bounced off from everywhere. No one dared go too close to it. Ivanna wasn’t sure if she’d seen anyone’s anger as great as Viria’s and she wondered how she managed to contain it all in that small body of hers.

  The room had grown insanely cold at the formation of the cages, as if the life had been sucked out of the very objects around them. And where most would describe fire as red hot rage, Viria’s knew no bounds in hardened cold stone. Every time Agatha or Gale even gave the tiniest wrong look or even a thought to what earned them their punishment, as silver thread would zip and sting them. Viria’s rage held no tolerance for betrayal or unreasoned crime.

  “Ivanna,” Gaea approached her uncertainly, “would you suppose they would be able to talk about everything with the cage zapping them?”

  “I’m sure the cage understands protocol…” it ended in more of a question.

  “Let the trial commence,” Sara spoke aloud. The sparks around the cage immediately disappeared. The smell of ozone lifted and warmth returned to the room. Ivanna and Gaea sighed in relief.

  “I’m sorry about your cousin’s involvement in all of this,” Ivanna whispered to the silver-haired woman. “You must not be holding up well.”

  “My family never really came around to like him much,” she said in dismissal. Gaea didn’t seem disturbed one bit, “I hated him for a long time. He’s a man of no morals.”

  Nina flipped through the files in her hands, “He has a lot more crimes to account for. Sexual assaults. He’s a dead man already.”Ivanna was not fazed by this. Women suffered enough to become disturbingly immune to the shock of it.

  “What about Agatha?” Gaea asked, somewhat disturbed yet curious and Nina produced more documents.

  “Illegal trade and dealings with other rogue packs,” she said. “Moonstone… That’s illegal! I didn’t know about this!”

  Ivanna looked alarmed as she approached Nina and looked over her shoulder. She demanded loudly, “Who carried out the investigation?”

  “We did,” a man said from across the table. He stood next to a woman who looked very much like him, draped in brown cloaks.

  “Ah, the Kurrit twins,” Ivanna said. “I should’ve known. Evidence?”

  The woman next to him held up a file. Ivanna patted Nina and Gaea on their shoulders and asked everyone to take their places.

  Court trials in the world of witchcraft and wizardry worked differently than all the others. The evidence for the crimes was brought forward by Kurrit twins, confirmed by the criminals under the Truth Enchantment. Once they plead guilty, their punishment was decided by the majority.

  Gale was sentenced immediately to victim reality program, followed by castration, and then death after a week. The victim reality program was a procedure where victims’ memories related to the crime are extracted. This includes not only the scenario, but the feelings, as well. This is transferred to the culprit and they are forced to suffer it in an induced state of sleep where everything is vivid.

  Ivanna did not feel it was enough of a punishment. At all. But there wasn’t much they could do after since a person like Gale couldn’t be kept alive.

  Agatha was sentenced to execution as soon as all the matters she had created were dealt with. The trio of witches sighed as the trial came to a close. It was quick, but heavy on their chests nonetheless.

  Sparks appeared once again around the cages. Ivanna huffed and approached the cages carefully and raised a hand toward them, using the other to imitate symbols that would allow her control over them. Carefully moving them away from the area and toward the many cells cut into the walls around them and barred for the sake of containment, she locks them in. Three figures appeared from the darkness in absolute white. The Punishers.

  “We’re done here, Nina,” Ivanna said as she walked to the door through which people were leaving. Gaea was staying behind to watch.

  “Can I see?” Nina asked skeptically.

  “I suggest you don’t for the time being,” she replied gently, “The sight can be disturbing and you have a child to look after.”

  Nina nodded, giving Gaea one last look. She felt sorry for her. After all, Gale was still her cousin. He was still family. She must’ve hoped for him to become a better person at one point. It wasn’t even in her knowledge he’d carried out something as vile as sexually assaulting someone.

  With a sigh, she leaves with Ivanna who surprisingly puts a comforting arm around her shoulders.

  ****

  Cole hadn’t really left Gael’s premises. He stayed in the bushes. Something tugged at his gut and he knew he had to stay back for a reason. He wasn’t done yet and leaving just because of Heather wouldn’t be a good enough excuse.

  It didn’t take long for the Elder to leave the house and disappear out of sight. It was growing dark, but the lights in the house turned off as soon as Heather did.

  Strange… He’d visited Gael a few times before and he always let the night lights on. He couldn’t see in the dark because he’d lost his powers. Staying where he was, he closed his eyes and entered into another form of vision where he could view the energies. Not dark energy, but the regular one.

  Something was definitely off because the whole house disappeared once he entered the spectrum.

  Impossible, he thought.Only a witch can do such a thing and none would mingle with a human. Much less a vampire who’d lost his powers.

  This was beyond a vampire’s abilities. He’d only switched spectrums to see where Gael was located within the house, but he’d uncovered more. He hated to doubt his teacher. He’d looked up to him since the day hewas rescued. He didn’t dare question or disrespect him, nor did he ever got suspicious of him. Gael was a father figure he’d lost and his savior. To think he could be hiding something from Heather was enough to ring alarm bells. Viria’s words rang in his head.

  Asther may have been powerful enough to control other people and their powers, but to take them away?

  He’d read books on Vampires. It was easy to turn people into vampires, but impossible to turn them back to human. If that had been possible then a lot of humans turned vampires would have willingly turned to the source since being one wasn’t the easiest thing to do. He’d only believed so willingly because it was Asther but he’d completely forgotten how things in this realm worked.

  Cole wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to go over and knock on the door. Gael had had enough guests for today and dealing with Heather must’ve been tiring enough.

  ****

  Gael knew he had been caught. Not completely, but he’d tipped off his student to suspicious activity. He didn’t think Cole would really have the time to visit ever since he got involved with the Council of Elders. Thinking hard, he knew he would have to come with a good enough reason and story to buy the pupil’s silence. Cole was very insightful and caught lies easily.No matter how much of an expert the person may be. Where Gael had seen a tough and dangerous life well after his thirties and over the course of a few hundred years, Cole had seen it within a relatively short period of time. And young people learned fast.

  Seeing Cole leave through the window, he returned to his basement where his training equipment was set up. State of the art holographic technology that projected almost solid replicas of human bodies, animals, objects, and whatever he wished to practice on. Placing his hand on a glass panel, a blue light scanned his hand and left behind an outline of it. The room was illuminated in white fluorescent lights. The floor was steel grey, and glass walls divided the place in sections. With a sigh he moved to the very center where his large cushion sat. Placing himself crossed legged o
n it, he closed his eyes and tapped into the dark energies.

  ****

  Evolution is usually for better purposes, but it did not control who was privileged with it. Only the powerful and capable ones of handling such strength grew with it, Mitch read.With this privilege should come the acceptance of it. Particularly that of dark energies. Many are usually very unwilling and the upgrade in abilities leave before the person even tries to use them, which why the process slow and usually very rare. The comfort of the transition varies, ranging from drastic physical changes to a completely different personality. Some have reported dreams and nightmares, while others have complained of aches as the energies tried to adjust.

  The process does not occur for just any reason. Oftentimes it has been noted that a very important event is on the way. Usually wars.

  Mitch grunted, “Well, obviously.”

  “Well, obviously what?” Nina asked as she stepped into Viria’s office. Mitch collected himself from his sprawled form on the floor with the book.

  “Evolution. War. Dark energies,” he rambled. “I mean, it all makes sense but I reckon we still have a lot of time.”

  “Have you been reading all this time?”

  “I’ve updated the files,” he said dutifully, “and sent the High Council to two other traced areas for investigation. Also, I practiced with my powers a bit. There seems to have been some addition to them.”

  Dahlia cooed in Nina’s arms, head turning toward Mitch and reaching toward him with half closed eyes. Nina smiled and neared the ghoul, but he put his hands up and took a step back.

  “Oh, no,nonononono, I can’t handle kids all that well,” he said uncomfortably as he remembered the bloody babies that were ripped apart by the velocity of landing back at the Morbus’s main HQ.

  “It’s all right.” She laughed. “I’ll help you.”

  “Trust me, the child is too fragile for these hands,” he said with a nervous laugh. Nina rolled her eyes and held Dahlia out to him.

  “It’ll be fine.” She smirked. “If you can hold Viria the way you do, you can manage Dahlia.”

  “H-h-hey!” he cried out.

  “I didn’t mean to walk in on you guys in the bathroom.” She laughed.

  Mitch covered his face with his hands and breathed, “That was just once.”

  “It was cute,” she admitted, “I left as soon as I arrived, though, don’t worry.”

  “Not holding the baby, though.” He sighed in exasperation. “I’m scared.”

  Nina’s face dropped, but she shrugged and pulled Dahlia to herself. “It’s all right. It’s been rough the past days.”

  Mitch didn’t like to admit it, but he felt pretty disturbed since the dead babies following him up the vent incident. Them being dead was one thing, but those bodies reacting to the dark energy he exuded and coming into his control was another. And using them to fight off the guards was something on a whole new level. He was really affected.

  Nina asked him to come down to eat. He didn’t object since it seemed rude enough to have declined her offer to hold Dahlia. He wondered if maybe he could somehow contact Viria and see how much she had progressed, but he didn’t want to distract her. So he waited in hope.

  Chapter 15

  Viria spent the whole day hanging like bat from the darkened corner of the ceiling. Spells of invisibility used up too much energy if in effect for hours, but she kept having to disappear briefly when someone’s bored eye rolled over to the ceiling.

  It was a conference room, and people were filling in slowly. The spotless white walls reflected the fluorescent lighting and the glass table was almost invisible against the equally white floor, save for the holographic screens within the glass and some protruding out of it.

  There was something in the air, though. And Viria was great at tasting the atmosphere. Panic was her favorite flavor in such situations, and she was getting an endless amount to feed on. With a smirk, she watched on.

  Murmurs and whispers grew louder in the air into questions and demanding slams of fists on the table. People started tapping away at the glass as their keyboards popped up and spheres of information with various codes spun before them.

  “The genetic coding has been tampered with!” someone cried.

  “Our fetus supply has been jammed,” another said. “The passwords are not working.”

  “But then they’ll never open!”

  “The current embryos that were undergoing formation have stopped and started to decay,” a voice called out.

  “Who did such a thing?” someone demanded angrily. “Check the CCTVs!”

  “They’ve been frozen this whole time!”

  A few swears rose up in the air. The fear was at an all-time high and Viria had never seen people act so unprofessional in her life. She could see fingers being pointed at one another as accusations flew. She held in a chuckle. This was the most satisfied she had felt in her life. She felt really proud of Mitch. He’d done the job so well and no one even got a hint. She was aware of a slip up but the woman who was present at the time said nothing. She sat confused and in a daze.

  Everyone froze. The lights dimmed, making the walls seem dark and grey. The people straightened out their lab coats and rushed to their seats. As soon as the last person got in place, the wall across split right in the center and slid soundlessly apart, opening up only a third. Lights lit up the newly appeared hallway.

  Slow clicks approached the room, growing louder with each one. The mood grew tense and anxious. It was so much that Viria almost felt sorry for them. She knew that there were some people in the room who had been forced against their will into these experiments or maybe had no choice but to join. She observed them all and could tell apart who the said people were. Zooming into their name tags, she punched the letters into her phone under her cloak and sent them in to Mitch, instructing him to follow a protocol of security for the innocent. She knew he would be able to pin their identities and personal information in the data he’d stolen from the computers and help them out. Viria wasn’t completely heartless. She always made sure to have good reasons for her actions.

  A figure appeared. Tall, thin, and graceful, dressed in a three-piece grey business suit. Her grey hair was cut short and styled neatly over her head. She was well past sixty, but she looked well-groomed, nevertheless.

  At her presence, everyone in the room stood and gave her a small bow.

  “Please, sit down all of you,” she said gently. They straightened and sat ever so robotically, all in sync and with absolute precision. Viria found it somewhat disturbing. With a nod of approval, the woman walked to the chair before her. A guard appeared out of nowhere and pulled the seat back for her, helping her in. He then returned to his post. Viria knew about the guards and had made sure to stick to the vents and be very careful and silent.

  The walls behind the woman slid toward each other and closed seamlessly. Viria would have never guessed the walls were doors to anything. As if that wasn’t enough, a huge hologram screen was projected onto the entire wall.

  “Let’s proceed with updates on the progress,” she said as graphs, codes, and documents opened up neatly on the screen in sections. A man started off with a hint of tremor in his voice.

  “Well, we had an eighty two percent success rate–”

  “Had?” the woman asked, a sense of hostility entering her voice.

  “Well, until yesterday everything was going smoothly,” he said with as much courage as he could muster, “but an overview of system shows that it’s been tampered with.”

  There was pin drop silence in the room as the woman processed what she had just heard. With a deep breath, she spun her chair to the screen behind her and responded calmly, “The damages?”

  Someone reached onto their screen and tapped away at some files that opened onto the larger one. Codes blinking ominously red, documents scrabbled and gibberish as if they had been encrypted, heartbreakingly plunging graphs that ended in straight lines like a dead heart
beat.

  The woman’s shoulders stiffened, knuckles going white at the arm rests of her seat. A hand rose, thumb closing over each finger to crack them and flex later.

  “What do we have left?”

  “The ones in the external containers have been left untouched.”

  “This was definitely done upon intrusion,” another said. “It was planned. This was not a malfunction of any sort.”

  “Work with what we have for now,” she said, “and I want an investigation done immediately and have the culprit captured.”

  “What about the other mission?”

  “Hunting down ViriaSchovsky can wait,” she hissed. Viria was startled. She didn’t think she would be pursued already. She needed all traitor being hunted down and destroyed before they got their hands on any more information. She couldn’t have the Morbus having the slightest clue about the sanctuaries.

  “Right now,” the woman continued, “we make sure no one gets here. This is the root of the whole organization.”

  “And the mother?”

  Mother?,Viria contemplated. She was getting an idea of sorts.

  “She is evolving well,” came the reply. “The test run proved the distribution to be well balanced, although a little shaky. She’s grown more powerful now. Our chimera will be powerful than ever now.”

  Mitch was right, she thought with her heart picking up an uncomfortable feeling.This is only getting bigger than what we keep assuming. I need to get back home.

  There was silence in the air. Everybody waited for the woman’s next words expectantly. Her long fingernails clicked on the arm rest.

  “No one leaves tonight,” she said dangerously. Turning around, she taps onto a button on the table and presses her thumb onto the surface. The lights turn red and an alarm echoes throughout the whole structure, followed by screeching sounds and clangs.