Bites & Bruises (ManxMan)

Thirty Five

I ran my finger along one of the shelves to find it covered with dust. I couldn't help but make a face and turned to find Leona cocking an eyebrow, an array of items in her arms before she sauntered over and dumped them on the table in front of me.

"Problem?"

I shook my head, "Of course not, just admiring your lovely place."

From the corner of my eye I watched her flash me a sly grin before her attention turned to the items on the table. For the past two days we had become close, working on about three hours sleep before we were up and about again, discussing plan tactics and potions.

I knew what I would do when I got there, the first thing was to find Cassandra, the second was to decipher whether there was more than just one vampire around. Leona seemed to think so and she pointed to the piece of paper I had drawn a symbol on.

"This is the mark of the Shadow walkers" Her eyes shone as she spoke and I knew for a fact she was pissed. "They are a supernatural organisation that has been going for years, capturing creatures that aren't human and putting them to auction."

"Jackson is part of this organisation? But he's a vampire..."

She sighed and opened up one of the books before turning it to face me. Before me was a picture of someone in a cage whilst it burned, and in front of it were two people shaking hands, one of them had fangs and the other a dirty smirk.

Jesus Christ.

"Your maker must have something special about her otherwise her so called mate would be up for trade too."

I frowned. It had been so long since I had seen Cassandra and I tried my hardest to think if anything was different about her, I couldn't help but notice how much she seemed to glow but I just assumed that was because she was in the honey moon stage.

Surely she didn't have powers?

"W-What do you mean up for trade?"

Leona cracked her knuckles, "Supernatural creatures can be up for sale for numerous things, experiments, sex slaves, servants, pets... Usually it's a great sum of money that the capture gets in return."

"But that's suppose to be his mate, I thought mates couldn't live without one another."

"I guess some can, if their greed is bigger than their love that is."

I shook my head in disbelief and shoved my hands into my pockets, fiddling with the vial of blue as I watched Leona gazed down at the map.

"If the locator spell is anything to go by then you have roughly two days to get there and just as many to head here..." She trailed off and handed me another three vials. "These should withhold the decaying process long enough for you to get to your maker and come here to recover."

"What's going to happen if we get there and his maker is dead?"

We turned to find Noah lingering in the door like he was hesitant to step over the threshold. I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow and muse about how dishevelled he looked right then.

Killian and him had been locked in their room for the last day and only came out to have something to eat. Sometimes I heard them arguing, bickering like a married couple and other times I heard things I wish I hadn't. I blushed at the mere thought of what they were getting up to.

"...the inevitable."

I shivered at what that meant and fiddled with the vial again, feeling like as long as I had that in my grasp I would be fine. Marius and I would still get to live out our days in HollowVale where the wolves howl and the night is cold.