Chapter 112 -Fae-

"This is insane." I whispered to my mate, staring her down until she twitched under my gaze.

"This is nothing we haven't seen before, Angie muttered under her breath, but she kept her gaze straight ahead, hiding her unease. She needn't have bothered. The tension in her shoulders betrayed her emotions all too clearly,

I lifted my head slightly to peer through the leaves, eyeing the hooded figures that lurked around the firepits. The Tally were a pack before they were an army. This gathering is twice as Large, and these people are from all over the place."

Angie shifted closer to my side, craning her neck as she tried to see through the dense folliage we were hiding in "Can you see Johan anywhere

I let my silence speak for me, fully aware of the sinking feeling in my stomach Angie and I had been tracking Johan's followers through the forest for days on end. The gathering that Plato had discovered had dispersed.

All the attendants that hadn't been set on fire had scattered through the forest, most likely heading back to their own packs, Angie and I had traced them all, and our discoveries did nothing to help the uncase that had been building since the first vampire attack.

Some of the shifters who had been present at the gathering were part of the Bielke's allied packs Johan's influence had spread far and wide, infecting the land and nestling there. There was no telling just how many shifters were on his side. If there were turncoats among our allied packs, who knows what that meant for the Bielke.

It had taken weeks to discover the location of the next gathering, We had to keep a close eye on the shifters we tracked, checking in regularly for any signs of suspicious behavior. Finally, after another brutal vampire attack against a nearby pack. Angle caught a trace of three shifters moving through the woods after dark

We had followed them here, a gathering just like the last one. Angie was determined to see Johan herself. She refused to believe that the man could possibly be alive. Her pride would not allow it She was in for a nasty shock.

"Do you smell that!" 1 sniffed the air, wrinkling my nose at the putrid scent that wafted towards us.

"Smell what" Angie tested the air, frowning. "Your nose is better than mine. What is it?"

"Rot I nearly gagged, closing a hand over my mouth and pinching my nose closed. "Rot and decay, but hidden by something else. Something weaker?

It was like someone had sprayed a sickly sweet fragrance over a corpse in the hopes of somehow masking the stench. But there was no covering up the smell of death.

Angie closed her eyes, concentrating on her sense of smell while swallowed the bile that had crept up my

"All I can smell is a faint hint of metal Rust Something like that

It was then that we noticed the vampires. Among the hooded shifters that huddled in the dark clearing, there were others. They looked just like regular people, but regular people touched by angels. Beautiful with dazzling white teeth, and silky- smooth hair that glistened in the glow of the fires.

There was an eerie stillness to them. Shifters massed and moved around them, but these beings stood as it they existed on another plane of existence all together completely unbothered by the commotion. "Has Johan sided with the vampires" I didn't dare speak out loud after that I catapulted my thoughts directly into Angie's

ine plan to get revenge against the Bielke!

"It's not Juhan" Ange growled luck. Whoever thus mmposter is he's got bigger plans than just taking down the Bielke FM, Jan 26 Chapter 112 58%

A sudden bout of cheering erupted from the gathering, and both Angie and I snapped our gaze to the large platform built between the fire pits. There was a hooded figure climbing the stairs, the source of the putrid stench. A dead man walking.

Instinctively, I closed my fingers around Angie's forearm, gripping her tightly. In that moment, I was paralyzed with fear. I wanted to hightail it as fast as I could in the opposite direction, dragging my mate along with me whether she liked it or not

Johan was a man who had taken too much from me. He had taken Gideon, my brother in all but blood. He had nearly taken Angie too.

Every bone in my b*dy screamed for me to flee. Nothing good could come from ghosts clad in flesh. Instead, I steeled myself, leaning closer to Angie until my lips were pressed almost to her ear. "Tim going to take a closer look."

Thad barely untered the words before Angie gripped my knee, her voice a tense whisper. "Absolutely not!"

"I'll be fine. Keep watch from here. I had already shimmied out of my loose-fitting clothes, catching her with a quick k*ss before shifting quietly and slipping out into the underbrush.

We were too far away to make any solid deductions. I needed to see his face. I needed to know for sure that this man was a fake, that my demons were dead and buried.

I circled the gathering from a safe distance, taking care to avoid the watchful gaze of the vampires. When I was just meters away from the podium, hidden in the shadows of the forest and heavily clad with thysalis leaves, I waited, watching.

The main on the stage removed his hood and my b*dy seized up with fear. It was Johan's face. There was no doubt about it. He was here in the flesh, walking upright and addressing the crowd with a charismatic smile.

Only there was something off about him, something strangely wrong that I couldn't quite put my finger on. The smell of decay was almost overpowering, only from what little skin I could see, Johan looked fine. His b*dy was clad in a black cloak, and long robes concealed his limbs. Only his face was visible, and his hands that he raised in greeting to the excited crowd.

I peered over the heads in the crowd to where I knew Angie was hiding. She was completely hidden from view the dense brush that it was impossible to know she was there. And yet, someone seemed to have noticed her

Alarm bells sounded in my head when one of the strange, ethereal vampires turned his head. The man was tall, over the shifters that stood beside him, and his pale skin shone flawless in the flickering light of the fires jet black like a waterfall down his back.

His brown eyes, so dark they were almost black, were fixed on the forest where Angie was hiding.

-Dorothy-

"What am I missing?" I stormed back and forth, pulling strands of hair from my ponytail in frustration. "There's something important in those notes, I know there ist

I narrowly avoided trampling Elias, who crawled under my feet, gurgling happily. Picking up the excited toddler I turned to glower over the journal again

"Maybe Elliot had another journal?" Plato offered. He had been appointed to watch over me and the twins now that Angie and Fae were back on the job. Surprisingly, Plato didn't mind playing babysitter. I suspected he much preferred it to crawling around the forest on a ghost hunt.

Plato had spent a lot of time in wolf form back when the Tally had been hunting him down. These days he seemed determined to stand on two legs whenever he could help it. And if that meant playing nanny to two unruly children then so be it

"I doubt it." I muttered, bouncing Elias on my hip while he pulled at my hair. "Elliot mentioned something about a wolf pack, some group that Morgana was interested in"

"The Bielker Plaro asked absently. I knew he wasn't listening to a thing I said. He was too wrapped up in the puzzle that he and Amelie were constructing on the floor.

III

11.05 Fri Jan 26 Chapter 112

"No, not the Belke 1 snapped, and rescued a clump of my hair before Elias could stick it in his mouth. "This pack was smaller. Something about them was unique - and they seemed to have been a thorn in Elliot's side."

-Elliot had a problem with most packs back then," Plato glanced hip from where he and Amelie were sitting. "The Hirlke were at war with almost every b*dy at one point or another. What makes this one so special?"

"Good question." I marmured scanning the burned pages of the journal over and over again, turning up nothing new. It was infursating. All of the information we needed had been kept in that journal. But some of the pages were too charred to decipher much. Some pages were missing entirely. It was like trying to build a puzzle without all of the pieces.

My phone chimed then and I glanced at the illummated screen, Ignatius hail sent me the damage report from the most recem vampire attack. Seeking asdistraction, no matter how gory I sat down and scrolled through the report, balancing Elias

The vampire attacks had taken on a kind of pattern. Their strategies seemed to be well thought out. They would strike at might and work their way through residential areas. There was always a fire lit at one enst, driving scared shifters in the opposite direction, straight into the line of cold skins that waited on the other side.

I paused, jolting upright, and read through the report again. A flicker of an idea had just occurred to me. "Hold Elas" I handed my giggling toddler over to Plato, and swiped the journal from the table. "I'll be right back."

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