by Dave Ferraro
Chapter Eighteen
Cameron punched in the code for the infirmary and stepped inside, a wide smile on his face. He’d felt bad that Shanna had had to spend the night in the infirmary, so was going to see if she wanted to go into town for breakfast as a nice surprise. He felt guilty about what she was going through, even if Tessa did assure him that the creature haunting her wouldn’t cause her any harm. It was still scary for her, and he didn’t like to see her frightened.
Amelia was tying her shoes at the edge of her bed while Jade looked on, as Cameron entered the room. Jade looked up at him and waved. “Hey, Cameron.”
“Hey,” Cameron greeted, glancing around the room with a frown. “Where…is Shanna here?”
“They had an incident again last night,” Amelia informed him as she stood up. “They went to help with the research around eleven.”
“Eleven?” Cameron echoed. “Eleven PM?”
“Yeah,” Amelia smirked. “They didn’t want to fall back to sleep.”
“Can’t really blame them there,” Jade murmured.
“So, she’s been with Hunter all night?” Cameron asked, clearly irritated.
Amelia exchanged a look with Jade, then cleared her throat. “Cameron. Remember how ugly it got in Greece when you were all jealous?”
Cameron blinked and felt himself blush. “Yeah. I…sorry. It just threw me for a second there.” He backed up toward the door as he added “I think I’ll go see if I can help at all.”
“Good idea,” Amelia muttered under her breath as he closed the door behind him.
He stood there for a moment, leaning against the wall, his mind whirling. He really couldn’t blame Shanna for working on research all night. He would want answers now too. But what was it with her? One night, she’s sleeping in Quinn’s room, the next she’s up all night with Hunter. Was he being unfair here? Because he thought that if she was spending her nights with anyone, it should be her boyfriend.
He shook his head, wondering at his thoughts. He was jealous, just like Amelia said. He needed to get over it. Shanna was a good person, and she would help anyone who needed it. Quinn had needed her help the other night. Last night, she’d needed it. And where had he been? Sleeping peacefully in his own bed, oblivious to her pain.
“Damn it,” he swallowed his rage at himself and stomped down the hallway. He really wanted to take out his anger on something. Maybe he should hit a punching bag or something until it wore him out. That would probably be best. He didn’t know what he would say to Shanna if he saw her now. He might blow up at her, unable to suppress his screwed-up, conflicting emotions. What the hell was wrong with him? Everything felt out of control. The monsters, Tessa, his body, his feelings…he was just a mess.
He paused as he walked by the room where Serene was locked up, staring at the door for a moment. The siren had been doing what she’d thought was right, had gone up against her sisters to help them as much as she could. And look where that had gotten her. Locked up tight amongst the enemies. He wasn’t even doing what was right. He was being so…selfish. If he could change what he’d agreed to do…if he summoned Tessa and called the whole thing off… He frowned. No. He was so close now. He pretty much just had to let things play out. It had been one big mistake, but the reward at the end was too tempting to just throw away now, after all of the grief he’d caused himself.
Continuing past Serene’s cell, Cameron made his way to the library, and was startled to see dozens of scholars leaning over books, spread across several tables. He was surprised at the sheer number of them, as he never saw them around the mansion. They mostly just kept to themselves on the other side of the mansion. But this was a job for them, not their lives. They came to work, got themselves elbow-deep in dust, and went home. Except for Hunter and a few others. Sure, there were rooms available for them to sleep over as well, in the few instances where it was necessary, but this mansion wasn’t their living quarters like it was for the hunters. They were visitors. For the hunters, this was their lives. And maybe Cameron resented them a little for it. The scholars got to just brush this off and have a real life beyond the work they did. But for the hunters, this was it.
But where was Shanna? He looked over the sea of faces carefully, noting that Hunter wasn’t among them either.
“Cameron,” a clipped voice said from behind him.
He turned to face Valor, who looked freshly showered, her hair still damp as it fell into her face. “Hello, Valor.”
“Good timing. I was just going to confer with Hunter, Shanna and Rachel. Would you like to join me?”
Nodding once, he followed her up a staircase to the library’s second level. It was a massive room, so it probably shouldn’t have been much of a surprise to him that the others had been in a different area.
Walking behind Valor, he wondered what she would do if she found out what he’d been doing. Obviously, she would kick him off of the team, but what other repercussions would there be? The Agency was part of a secret organization within the government. Would they let him just…walk away? Especially as they’d see him as a…a traitor? He swallowed hard. But he wasn’t a traitor. La Faer Noir was only talking with Shanna. That was nothing. He wasn’t turning her over to them. He wasn’t hurting her. He was just arranging a meeting between them. It was just a complicated process to get her there was all.
When he saw Shanna sitting at a table with Hunter, Rachel and Natalia up ahead, all of his dark thoughts fell away. Shanna always made him feel so much lighter. She was so beautiful…and he was so lucky to have her in his life.
“Cameron!” Shanna looked surprised at his appearance.
“Good morning,” he said, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. “I was going to take you out for breakfast this morning, but I heard you’d been in here all night.”
“Yeah,” Shanna shrugged. “I couldn’t go back to sleep. Not after that thing…” She shuddered. “But anyway, I already had breakfast, so I’m good.”
“Oh. Okay.” He glanced over at Natalia. “Were you here all night too?”
Natalia didn’t even look up from the book she was studying. “I don’t need much sleep.”
“Shocking,” Rachel muttered, to his amusement.
Valor took a seat beside Cameron near the head of the table and looked expectantly over at the group. “So, Hunter, what’s the verdict?”
Hunter sighed. He had dark circles under his eyes and was unshaven, his normally crisp clothes looking wrinkly in the sunshine that filtered in through the window behind them. But despite all of this, he still had an air of authority about him. Even if he couldn’t have been much older than them, he seemed like he knew what he was talking about, like he was in charge. And everybody listened.
“We haven’t made any progress on the creature that Shanna and Rachel have been seeing,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “But most of the scholars have moved in that direction now, so we’re hoping to hear something on that front soon.”
Valor perked up. “Well, if efforts are being redirected to the other problem, there must have been some headway made with the werewolves.”
“Quite. We’ve identified the symbol from the werewolves. It’s a command rune superimposed over a magickal signature. And from the readings we got off of the bodies, it’s a very powerful signature. The rune was the easiest to identify. It’s basically been used on these werewolves to carry out specific orders to the best of their abilities, without question, and until they accomplish their task. All of their natural instincts would have become secondary to their new directive, which would explain their odd behavior.”
“It’s a very powerful rune to charge,” Amelia added, walking up to them with Jade. “It would have drained the witch or warlock who cast it.”
Hunter nodded. “Amelia was actually the one to identify the rune. It was quite impressive, since what a team of a dozen scholars failed to
name, she was able to identify almost immediately.”
Amelia shrugged. “I’ve logged in a lot of hours on runes.” She smiled. “Plus, the scholars accomplished the most delicate work, since they were able to separate the rune from the signature. It’s tedious work deconstructing symbols like that backwards to get to the initial components. Like figuring out the ingredients for a cake from the cake itself.”
“I’m sure my team will be happy to hear that you were impressed.”
“So, we know that the person responsible for this is powerful,” Jade said. “And that they control the werewolves. Didn’t we already know this?”
“Not for certain,” Hunter frowned. “But that’s not all we learned. We learned who did it.”
“You identified the magickal signature?” Amelia asked, impressed.
“Yes. A warlock named Trivillis. It was nothing really.”
“Uh huh.”
“He was already in out database, otherwise it would have been much more difficult to pin down.”
“And so modest.”
Hunter pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, effectively hiding the smile that her compliment produced.
“So what do we do now?” Cameron asked.
“We bag us a real live werewolf so Amelia can pinpoint the source of the magic,” Valor said carefully.
“You can do that?” Rachel turned to Amelia sharply.
Amelia grinned. “No problem.”
“So that’s that then.”
“You did hear the part about bagging a werewolf, right?” Shanna asked dryly.
Jade snorted. “Good thing you have two of the best werewolf hunters on your team then. Now that we know what we’re in for, those pups are as good as ours.”