Page 88 of Veradel
“No! Don’t hurt my healer.”
The voice is high-pitched, young, and completely disorienting. I swing my head toward the source, where a small girl scurries out from the shadows of an alleyway.
Before her face even hits the light from the flickering flames licking across the rooftops nearby, I know who she is.
“Odette, stay back!”
I’ve never seen such a stubborn clenched jaw on someone so young. Odette ignores my command, hurries out in front of me, and throws her skinny arm out just like Lucan.
That’s when the Eleventh Guardian’s gaze flicks hungrily down, and my vision goes red when I remember what he did to her.
Hewas the vampire who snuck out through the catacombs and took her blood in the dead of night.Hesent her to the Healing Center with lethargy and dizziness that no one could explain and everyone wanted to ignore.
He’s set her on a track toward a shorter life. So now I have to end his.
But once again, the Eleventh Guardian turns to address the crowd that has begun to form around us, his arms spread wide as if to comfort them. If I attack him now, who knows how many bystanders would get hurt in the fight bound to ensue?
“Do you see how the Monster works?” He jabs a finger in Lucan’s direction. “Stealing our Chosen Ones from us.” He nods at me. “Murdering our sentries and Guardians.” He nods at all the bodies around us. “Manipulating frightened, young girls into joining his cause.” He nods at Odette. “Burning our city down?” He doesn’t even have to nod at the fire, swelling in size and sending plumes of smoke toward the moon. “We told you to beware his eyes and resist his howl for a reason!”
Nobody says a single word, but I can taste the fear and uncertainty slicing through the air. Just in the last few weeks, these people saw televised evidence that their Guardians were turning Chosen Ones to stone, yet the evidence is stacked against Lucan, too.
The Eleventh Guardian turns back to us with a sneer, but only for a moment.
“You think you’ve won,” he hisses in a voice low enough that only we can detect. “But I can assure you, this battle is far from over.” His next smile rips across his face. “You might have our humans… but we have your pack.”
Then he’s a blur of motion as he zips back up main street toward the Blood Moon Palace, leaving his fellow Guardians in heaps at our feet.
We all stand stark still, watching his figure get smaller and smaller until the door booms shut again in the distance as he closes himself in, no doubt barricading it so we can’t follow.
Lucan and I stare at each other with eyes full of fear.
The pack.
He doesn’t waste time shifting, much to the further shock of the people around us. Some scream or shout, but we ignore them. Tethered to Lucan’s mind once again, I try to spear toward the pack, but we both slam into a barrier so thick and wide that it’s only silence on the other side. No sign of Vivian, Merrick, or Soren. No hint of what might have happened to them in the catacombs, or of how the Guardians found out about them down there.
No indication of whether they’re alive or dead.
“How is this possible?” I ask, struggling to maintain my hold on the vampire hearts when my body begins to tremble. “How could a vampire block theirminds?”
As Odette stares upward in awe, Lucan collapses back into his human form with an unmistakable ripple of grief crossing his eyes.
Grief? Oh no, who…
“It wasn’t a vampire who blocked them,” he says, his tone low enough to split the earth itself. “Only werewolves can do that.”
“But… why would one of the pack block us out?”
The truth whips me in the face, stinging my eyes. Someone in the pack has betrayed us… and I think I know who.
Lucan’s lip curls. “Every mind has its own style, its own signature. I’d recognize that mental block anywhere.”
He doesn’t have to say the name out loud. It clangs from his mind to mine, so loud and crippling that I want to beat it away.
Gabriel.
Hurt and anger punch through me in waves, but I know it’s only an infinitesimal fraction compared to how Lucan feels. Gabriel may have hated me from the very beginning, but he never respected Lucan as alpha, either. And now the rest of the pack is suffering for his treachery.
But how did he defy Lucan’s orders? What does he even have to gain from this? Where’s the pack now?
