Stained

4 : Femme Fatale

Argen

The evening breeze eased the tension off my shoulders. The air was crisp, fresh, clean, now that I was a distance away from those pups. Glancing back at the general direction of their pack house, I knew that it would only be a matter of time before they were extinguished by the hands of the Court. They were an inexperienced pack. I could only hope them a swift deliverance.

Whispers.

I turned around with narrowed eyes. Crouching lower, I sniffed my surroundings.

There were whispers in the air.

Rapidly, I circled around the immediate area, but I could feel no presence of any Creature of the Night. The most recent scent I could find belonged to the vampires that I was assigned to track. Those were days old.

A force touched my mind.

Instinctively, I flinched; baring my fangs at the intruder. I mentally strengthened the walls inside my head, preparing traps just in case the venomous hand tried again. My vision sharpened exponentially, as I knew it would whenever my eyes turned bloody crimson.

There was no one around. I was alone, hunting an invisible prey.

No one but merfolks had the innate ability to hide their presences that even I couldn’t detect. It seemed inappropriate and an extremely foolish move for them to be on land, even if they were on human form. Even more so in a Lycan territory. No. Those mutated fishes were no fighters – they were sly, but never aggressive.

Could they have joined the war?

Improbable.

After wasting an hour searching, I decided to let the matter drop for now. Whoever it was, that Creature had long retreated into hiding. Without a lead, I would only waste my resources blindly looking. Warily and with renewed determination, I resumed my search for my missing assignments.

The others have vanished. Completely.

Sniffing the air again, I circled the forked road where eight vampire scents were concentrated the most. Something happened here. I looked over my shoulders, eying the line of trees where the forest meets the sea. Only four scents lingered there; the rest stayed here.

What happened?

I tossed my phone as well as my socks and shoes towards the bleached driftwood covered in sand. Rolling the top of my sleeves as well as my pants, I made my way towards the angry waves of the sea.

White foam rose above the murky dark waters. Beckoning. Enticing. Lethal. Could the mutated fishes be involved?

Swiftly, I dove underwater like some sort of hunting bullet. Schools scattered, disturbed by my presence. Moving deftly towards the deeper part of the sea, my eyes registered a few odd artifacts scattered on the sea floor.

Air tanks. Glass cases.  A broken motor boat. Chains.

My fingers sought them, only to meet a very thin layer of film. Moss. Couldn’t be more than a few days of growth. Interesting.  Swimming further, I saw more ships, more boats, and several human skeletons. Judging by the rate of decomposition as well as the moss covering them, they had been underwater for years.

Evidence that no merfolk was nearby. Those saltwater creatures survived as a race by being cunning and elusive. They wouldn’t wreak havoc in a place near the surface. Meaning, aside from the pups and the mutated fishes, there was another creature I am yet to meet. One that was powerful enough to destroy four vampires.

One without a scent.

Feeling a surreal sense of vulnerability, I quickly made my way up. My head broke through the surface easily. There was no sight of land around me, just waves, and foam. The pale moon illuminated the night sky. Hours. I had been swimming for hours. And I was getting thirsty. Very thirsty.

By the time I reached the beach, I had thoroughly worked up an appetite. But my thirst was forgotten the moment I sniffed the air. Smoke. Fire.

The pups.

If there was one thing that Lycans hated more than silver, it had to be fire. They were technically animals, and animals feared fire. It was in their nature.

There was no need for me to see them, but my legs had a mind of their own and soon I was cutting through the forest like an arrow. I arrived just in time to see their pack house engulfed in flames, and several cadavers on the ground. There were women and children crying, trying to go back into the house, only to be stopped by their men. I could smell it. There were still people alive inside.

“Move,” I ordered and the crowd parted at the elemental force of my voice. Some of them snarled at me, poised to attack me, but I sent them flying away with a flick of a wrist. As soon as I was directly in front of the burning house, I closed my eyes and whispered a rune.

The fire whispered back.

Lifting my palms up, I willed the flames to come to me. The orange tongues flickered and hissed, sputtered and blazed, resisting my power over it. I grunted. It flared. I squashed them with closed fists.

Dust and ashes billowed into clouds and clouds of white smoke.

Infernal silence followed… and then there were cries of joy as family meets family, friend meets friend. My presence, ignored. These pups were really painfully young.

I turned to the man to my left. At least he had the guts to watch over me. “Your Alpha?”

He stiffened. “He’s… he’s been taken.”

“The fighters?”

“They are tracking him.”

 “Lead me to them,” I ordered.

He shook his head. “They have blocked the mental link. Nobody here knows where they are.”

I arched a brow.

The man continued, “They were initially going southwest, if that’s any help.”

I quickly took off to that direction, leaving the pups to their devices. The trees blurred past me as I began my hunt. It took me a mile or two to realize that tracking them was impossible. Their scents were all over the place, all recent. All wet, doggy and foul. I might have been going in circles.

The sickening force touched my mind again.

This time, I sensed a foreign presence behind me. I turned around with fangs bared, only to straighten in surprise. A very pale human girl of no more than sixteen years of age gazed back at me with impossibly black eyes.

I opened my mouth to speak, but by then, her heart thundered loudly inside that fragile chest. It was music to my ears. Standing before me was a vessel of warm blood. Delicious blood. Suddenly, all I could think and feel was my thirst scorching me, gripping my sense of reality. My control was merely hanging by the thread. I was on a verge of a rampage.

I was going to kill her.

She smiled, taking a graceful step closer. With open arms, she mouthed, ‘Come.’

I was on her throat in a blink of an eye.