As the cub continued to cry, Loira vanished us to a distant cluster of rocks in the midst of the ocean, where we discussed what we could possibly do with our new find.
Our next step soon became clear. If the cub was who we thought he was, we had found the bait that we needed. Now all that remained was to figure out the best way to utilize it.
We had to find a way to lure the Mortclaws away from The Woodlands. Together, we managed to come up with a plan.
Loira returned to the Mortclaws’ lair—leaving Bastien with us—and waited for them to return and discover that the baby had disappeared. When Sendira and Vertus returned from wherever they had been and came to visit their baby in his room only to find that he was gone, Loira described their disturbance as palpable. The witch then gathered the courage to reveal herself to them and inform them that she had kidnapped the baby. If they ever wanted to see him again, she’d informed them, then they would need to follow her to an island where she held the baby captive. Not just Sendira and Vertus, but every single member of the Mortclaw pack.
The couple, grieving and enraged, had attempted to capture Loira, but with her magic she could meet them on equal ground. She could meet their speed and vanish before they could touch her. When she finally threatened to kill the baby if they did not begin following her within the next hour, having no other choice, the couple hurriedly gathered their tribe together… and the rest, as they say, was history.
Loira had described the other tribe members as extremely reluctant to follow—naturally, just as Sendira and Vertus were—but even in their new, monstrous incarnations, it was still instinctive for them to obey their leaders. And within Sendira and Vertus was still the love of parents. Parents who would do anything for the safety of their child.
Thus, between young Bastien and Loira, The Woodlands was saved. The witch led the Mortclaws to the abandoned Murther Island, where she already knew existed a suitable cave to lead them into. Once they had all gathered inside, on the promise of finding Bastien in its depths, she closed off the cave’s entrance with an indestructible, fiery gate… indestructible to anyone but a black witch. But we never saw any reason for those witches to seek out the Mortclaws after they’d already abandoned them. The Mortclaws had served their purpose during the ritual, having been a test for the black witches’ level of power, and were of no more use to the witches. Still, Loira had agreed to check back some time later to verify that the Mortclaws were still locked up.
On arriving outside the cave, she had expected them to have starved to death… but they hadn’t. They were alive on the other side of the magical gate.
A few years later, Loira made a brief stop by our lair. I had been out at the time and hadn’t been able to see her, but she had informed my husband that she checked the Mortclaws again out of curiosity, and they had still been living. This led us to conclude that their ability to survive without food for a long, long time was yet another side effect of the black witches’ ritual.
And I am counting on them still being alive now.
“How is the boy?” Loira interrupted my thoughts as we neared the dead tree whose hidden hollow contained the key to the Mortclaws’ prison.
By boy, of course, she was referring to Bastien.
“He’s… so-so,” I replied.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she pressed. “He still lives with you, in The Woodlands, right?”
“That is right,” I answered.
“And he still doesn’t know the truth about his heritage? He never asked questions?”
“He still doesn’t know the truth,” I replied. “My late sister and brother-in-law—”
“Late?” Loira interrupted, her eyes widening. “What happened?”
I told her briefly about the hunters who had occupied The Woodlands and managed to infiltrate the Blackhalls’ lair via the traitorous Detrius and Orion. The witch appeared quite shocked, asking me details regarding their deaths, before she turned the subject back to Bastien.
“Yes,” I said, “as I was saying, my late sister and brother-in-law brought Bastien up to believe that he was their child. His inability to become two-legged until he was an early teenager did bring a lot of questions to his mind, but they simply told him that he was different. A quirk of nature.”
“Doesn’t he look very different than his siblings did?” the witch wondered.
“There is a difference, of course,” I replied. “But not an alarming one. The Blackhall siblings didn’t look all that much alike, anyway.” The lack of difference between them and Bastien was thanks to the black witches’ not touching him much. They’d clearly affected him somewhat, given his delayed development as a child. He also had greater strength and speed than probably any male wolf in The Woodlands, and his spirit was wild and hard to tame. But that could also be attributed to his fine bloodline—the black witches had chosen the Mortclaws as their test subjects for good reason.
The witch stopped asking questions as we arrived at the dead tree. She knelt on the ground and reached inside its rotten hollow. She rummaged for a few moments before withdrawing a large, cast-iron key whose teeth were sharp and jagged.
She stopped to eye the key for a beat before swallowing and handing it to me. “Well, Brucella,” she said. “Here you are. You seem to know what you’re doing, or at least think you know. I granted your wish to bring you here, even walked with you to the key, but I do not wish to stay any longer. I have business to attend to back home.”
The key seemed to grow heavier in my hands.
At the back of my mind, I had been hoping that she would stay around longer. I wasn’t sure how she thought I was going to get off the island with no boat. Then it struck me that she was probably so convinced that I would not survive the encounter that she didn’t even bother thinking about it. Not that it was her concern anyway. I’d only asked her to bring me here and that was all she had agreed to.
I coughed my throat clear. “Thank you,” I murmured.
She nodded and looked me over one more time before vanishing. When I glanced again at the key in my hands, I realized that they were trembling slightly.
I gazed at my foreboding surroundings; a terrain of black, its appearance exuded misfortune. Then I turned my focus on the mounds of rock in the distance. I was now perhaps just a mile or so away from the Mortclaws’ cave. If I ran, I would be standing outside their gate in less than a minute.
But something made me hold back and wait by this old, rotten tree. As much as I hated to admit it to myself, that something was fear. Now that I was here, abandoned and alone, on this foreboding islet, I experienced true doubt in myself for the first time since embarking on this mission. Had Sergius been right all along by trying to stop me? Was this really the only way forward? But I caught myself before I could sink too deep into cowardice.
I widened my stance, digging my heels deeper into the soil. Perhaps, after the demise of the black witches, the Mortclaws would pose less of a danger to me now, anyway.
But I couldn’t rely on that.
I had to stop fearing and speculating, and start thinking.
Given what we had done to the Mortclaws, my game plan had to be to ensure that—in whatever condition I found them in— they fulfilled my purposes… and left me alive to tell the tale.
I turned the metal key over in my hands as I thought deeply.
I had one trump card to play.
God knew, I had to play it well…
Ready for the next part of the Novak clan’s story?
Dearest Shaddict,
The next book in the series is A Shade of Vampire 28: A Touch of Truth!
A Touch of Truth releases June 4th 2016!
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Bella xxx
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Read More by Bella Forrest!
A SHADE OF VAMPIRE SERIES
Series 1: Derek & Sofia’s story
A Shade of Vampire (Book 1)
A Shade of Blood (Book 2)
A Castle of Sand (Book 3)
A Shadow of Light (Book 4)
A Blaze of Sun (Book 5)
A Gate of Night (Book 6)
A Break of Day (Book 7)
Series 2: Rose & Caleb’s story
A Shade of Novak (Book 8)
A Bond of Blood (Book 9)
A Spell of Time (Book 10)
A Chase of Prey (Book 11)
A Shade of Doubt (Book 12)
A Turn of Tides (Book 13)
A Dawn of Strength (Book 14)
A Fall of Secrets (Book 15)
An End of Night (Book 16)
Series 3: Ben & River’s story
A Wind of Change (Book 17)
A Trail of Echoes (Book 18)
A Soldier of Shadows (Book 19)
A Hero of Realms (Book 20)
A Vial of Life (Book 21)
A Fork of Paths (Book 22)
A Flight of Souls (Book 23)
A Bridge of Stars (Book 24)
Series 4: A Clan of Novaks
A Clan of Novaks (Book 25)
A World of New (Book 26)
A Web of Lies (Book 27)
A Touch of Truth (Book 28)
A SHADE OF DRAGON TRILOGY
A Shade of Dragon 1
A Shade of Dragon 2
A Shade of Dragon 3
A SHADE OF KIEV TRILOGY
A Shade of Kiev 1
A Shade of Kiev 2
A Shade of Kiev 3
BEAUTIFUL MONSTER DUOLOGY
Beautiful Monster 1
Beautiful Monster 2
For an updated list of my books, please visit my website: www.bellaforrest.net
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Bella Forrest, A Web of Lies
(Series: A Shade of Vampire # 27)
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