2Moons - Dark Moons

CH 51 - Esper

Wayo POV

"Many lives hang in the balance." Sing tells us seriously. "I'm trusting you with this secret."

I nod understanding the severity, we always knew the hunters found something long ago that aided them in hiding from us, but they guarded it so well, no one knew what. Ming sits on the armrest near me in my office as we listened.

"It's an oil called Esper." He starts slowly. "We use it on our weapons when going on official hunts."

Hunter silver was made with a specific ingredient needed to ash a vampire, something we could smell miles away, so that's how they hid it. So simple.

"Esper oil has to be specially made, only 5 families in every country know the secret." He carries on. "Every vile made is numbered and stamped. My grandfather has ordered accountability from the families."

"He is here?" Ming asks.

"Yes, but he wants it to be kept quiet for now." Sing answers before asking. "We want to know what's happening about the ones who used it."

"It was a simple case of missing bodies and blood delivers not arriving, but it goes deeper than we originally thought." I sigh. "They have been specifically targeting thralls, or the blood of their descendants."

"Thrall...descendants?" Sing looks confused. "After their contracts are over, they get turned, don't they? You mean their human families?"

It was a little more complicated; we had our own secrets to. I look at Sing for a moment, I was told I could trust him and if he did anything to betray me, someone had offered their own head as punishment. He could betray me, but I had a feeling he wouldn't hurt Pha.

"A thrall has right of choice." Ming tells him. "Once their contract ends, they can stay thralls, be turned or they can ask to be returned."

"What does that mean?" Looks at us confused.

"We take them off vampire blood, they begin to age like normal humans and when ready we give them a new identity and return them to live a full human life."

"That...that can be done?" He looks surprised.

"It's not often chosen but yes." Ming answers. "The batches of blood missing include thrall descendants."

"The vampires Nami helped catch." I tell him. "They whispered a name."

An old organisation we though destroyed a while back but it seemed they had roots we didn't manage to pull out completely. They wanted to bring order through chaos but what they really wanted was a reason to cause trouble.

"I helped stop them the last time they tried to rise. The master was in the city then, he had an elite vampire group find them." Ming tells him. "You might remember, they kidnapped a hunter child...if we didn't find and return them to their family the consequences..."

"I will never forget." Sing looks up. "It was Nami, they kidnapped Nami. She remembered their name. Apep."

"It was her?" Ming's surprised.

"I want to move into Pha's old apartment with her." Sing sits up. "I ..."

I let my senses go when I feel the hint of a wave, Ming stops talking as I stand, moving with me through the halls; Lee joins us before we hit the ground floor. I smell moss, it's faint but it's there, I follow the trail as it winds around the hospital but keeps coming back to one place.

I feel the ripple of mist as it just manages to slip through my fingers before I can catch it. Someone was here. Old, much older than me to be able to hide. Ming and Lee would have felt it, but not as strongly as me.