Under A Blue Moon | #ONC2022

Chapter 15

"Shit," my dad muttered. Shit was an understatement. In fact, it was the king of understatements for this situation. Silence descended on the room as we all took in the information.

When Penny jumped into the necromancer's head, she found out that she was able to draw power from those bitten. And she got a shit-ton from the first attack. Every time one of us was bitten, our life force was drained and powered her up. Anyone else would have died instantly. But apparently, it was different for shifters because we had two life forces - ours and our animals. While we could survive one bite, the second would kill us instantly.

"If she manages to kill everyone in town and harness their power, there is no telling what horrors she would release on the country. She's power hungry and won't stop until someone puts her down," Penny finished talking and then took a seat by her cousin.

Learning that we were just the beginning and that it would only get even worse, was a hard pill to swallow. Suddenly, the stakes became even greater. It was no longer about trying to just save the pack but potentially the whole country. At the very least our town.

Things had quietened outside. It was disturbing. The corpses had just dropped where they stood. One second they were animate, the next a pile of bones. We were pretty certain it had something to do with the locator spell Penny did. Maybe it spooked her. It was doubtful that this was going to last very long, but we took it as the chance to regroup.

Outside smoke billowed through the air. Invisible against the black sky but the smell was strong. When the bodies dropped, people didn't waste any time to begin disassembling them. Most were crushing the bones into as fine a dust as they could get. But some were burning them.

"Is there a way to reverse what she's already done?" Sammy asked, glancing at me.

"I don't know," Elaine responded honestly. "What she's done is unheard of and honestly, before today I would have said impossible. I've never heard of anyone animating the dead and then using them as a way to syphon power. It's way beyond my knowledge."

I leaned against the wall. My arms crossed over my body. Addie stood next to me and being so close to her gave me the strength to not slide down the wall and tune everything out.

"How many have been bitten?" my dad asked.

"Eighteen, including those from tonight's attack," my mum responded. Addie sucked in a breath. Eighteen wolves meant close to half of our pack was now human.

"Anyone that's been bitten needs to be put in the main house along with our other vulnerable," my dad said.

"We can bring in more wolves," Ryker said. "The Morelli pack will also aid us should we need it."

"You'll need it," Penny said. "She's panicking now that she knows a witch is helping you. She'll throw everything at you. At this town."

"Maybe she wouldn't be if you had waited for me instead of jumping into her head," Elaine remarked.

"I didn't jump into her head on purpose," Penny defended. "It just happened."

Outside the window, Nero was sitting on the lower branch of the tree staring at me. As I stared into his beady eyes, my mind drifted, tuning out the others.

Why us? What did we do to deserve this? As though in answer, Nero flapped his wings sharply. He was right. Nothing. We didn't do anything to deserve this.

While no words passed between us, it was almost like we could understand each other. As though he could read my mind and I his. I silently chuckled. I'm going insane if I suddenly think Nero understood anything beyond the basics that birds knew.