Dawn of Vengeance

Chapter 36 - Open Doors

Jake's POV:

It was the afternoon after the Siege and Jake was slowly removing the brace that he was wearing to help his leg heal up faster when the door to his room opened up. He raised his head making the silver cross around his neck jingle and found Lance standing in the doorframe looking much better than Jake did thanks to his little sped up healing. His hair was cut shorter than before as was Jake's because they each had decided to send a little piece of themselves with their two mentors today. Lance saw Jake struggling with the brace and moved to help him take it off which Jake knew better than to object to.

The two of them hadn't spoken much even to each other when they heard news of Wallace's squadron finding Father Matthew's body deep within the prison. That had been hard to hear for both of them because the old Saint was as much a father to either of them as anyone could've possibly been. There had been other casualties of course, half of the Guardian Core had been wiped out and most of their funerals would be later on today. It'd been decided that Father Matthew's as well as Sister Mary's funerals would be held on the same day which was to take place tomorrow. But that wasn't the reason why Jake was in such a gloomy mood, he'd made the decision to tell Eve and Lance about finding his birthparents by complete accident and that he'd had a brother as well as a new born baby sister.

He also told them about his mother dying during child birth and that her funeral was today. Lance hadn't known what to say but Eve had decided that it would be best for him to attend even if it was just watching the burial service from a distance. She said that it might help him bring closure to that part of his life after never even meeting her. Eve also tried getting him to agree to meet his other family but that was where Jake had drawn the line. He just didn't think he'd be able to do it because he didn't want to meet them; build a bond with them only to have someone tell them that he'd been killed trying to avenge his adoptive parents. No for now just going to watch people he never met put his birth mother in the ground would have to do, as grim as that seemed it felt like that was all he'd be able to handle.

Until then however he'd have to meet with Wallace who had commanded him to attend a meeting in the Church's training room before he went anywhere. Jake didn't want to go to that either but for this he really did not have any other choice but to attend. Besides he might learn something that could help him finally put an end to Stark and his ever growing band of vampires. He hoped so because every time he tried falling asleep over the past couple hours all he saw were images of Stark's, Scarlet's, and Gabriel's faces as they'd been the night of the Siege. It'd gotten to the point where he couldn't sleep and he just sat up the whole night fidgeting with this brace that held his knee together until the sun came up and he told the others about his family.

"This thing doesn't look very comfy." Lance finally said taking the brace off and laying it beside Jake on his bed. "You ok?"

"Yeah," Jake lied testing his leg for movement only feeling a bit of an ache when he moved it. "How's the rest of the pack?"

"Recovering." Lance said with a huge sigh not meeting Jake's eyes as he said it.

The werewolves that Stark had kidnapped not only from the Los Lobos pack as it turned out were the same ones that Jake had seen locked up on Alcatraz. He's used cattle prods on them every night since their capture to provoke them into changing and then kept on using them to get their other halves even more aggressive. It was cruel but Jake had to admit that his 'Warg' pack had been very effective wiping out half of the Guardians until another much smaller group of werewolves arrived led by an enormous grey wolf and got the Wargs to submit. Or so Wallace had told them, as it turned out the grey wolf that had led the charge was none other than the Los Lobos leader Merrick who had recovered from his injuries and gathered together some old friends to take back his pack.