My brows furrowed. This was a scent I was all too familiar with.
Crystal’s POV
The Alpha of the Cherry Bay Pack was called Sorrell Estrada. He was unable to attend the parade because he was ill, so the Beta of the pack had come in his stead.
Sure enough, Sorrell did appear to be a seriously ill person. His face was as pale as a sheet, and there was barely any color in his lips.
I picked up the tea cup I was served, but did not drink its contents. I sat there, smiling as I spouted halfhearted praises for the development of the Cherry Bay Pack.
Not once did Sorrell betray his emotions. Even his voice was monotonous. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was a robot. Strangely, though, he looked straight at me when he spoke. I felt as though he was peering into my soul, and I bristled with unease.
Another odd thing was the fact that he never asked about my identity, nor did he seem inclined to do so. Instead, he ushered me inside without even asking why the royal family had sent me.
After some consideration, I decided to breach the subject first. “The royal family sent me here to meet with the lycan king,” I said slowly.
“His Majesty is not here,” Sorrell said in a low voice as he turned his listless eyes out the window. He looked like his soul had somehow been cleaved from his body.
“The king is not here? When did he leave?” I pressed.
I was getting miffed by this old man’s attitude. “I haven’t seen the king for a long time. It looks like you’ve come to the wrong place.” Sorrell turned to face me, his lips automatically curling into a smile.
Rage and anxiety roiled inside me. I knocked the table over without thinking and demanded, “What do you mean by that? After the surprise attack against your pack, King Rufus set out to investigate the incident himself. How can you say that he has not come?”
Sorrell remained calm, almost indifferent. He acted like everything I had just said was none of his business. “There was no surprise attack.”
I stared at Sorrell’s blank face, growing more livid by the minute. “You are lying! All the soldiers from the Royal Army who had come here to aid you are missing. The least you can do is give me an explanation.”
“What explanation? King Rufus did not come to the Cherry Bay Pack. This is the truth. It is up to you to believe it or not. As for the missing soldiers, I daresay that there is no such thing.” To my horror, Sorrell’s expression shifted, and he suddenly flashed me an eerie smile.
“You!”
I didn’t have many expectations before I came here, but I never imagined this pack’s Alpha to be like this. My intuition told me that something was not right. Sorrell must be lying. If the Royal Army’s soldiers had not gone missing, Rufus would have never come himself.
But since it seemed like I wasn’t going to get any useful information from Sorrell, I turned on my heel and made to leave.
“Let me see you out.” Sorrell instantly got to his feet. I wanted to scoff his offer away, but then I spotted a letter opener protruding from a crack in the floor tile just beside the overturned table. The blade was pointed upward, and Sorrell was about to step on it. It was too late for me to warn him. Sorrell stepped on it, piercing his foot in one, steady motion.
I sucked in a breath and looked at his face. It remained stiff and emotionless, as if he didn’t feel any pain at all.
My heart caught in my throat. The scenes from a while ago played back inside my head, and I finally understood what was wrong.
“Why have you stopped? Is there anything wrong?” Sorrell asked like nothing had happened.
I could feel the coldness of my gaze as it met his. “As a matter of fact, there is one more thing I had yet to deal with.”
Crystal’s POV
“What’s the matter?” Sorrell’s face remained devoid of any color. Beneath him, his foot was completely impaled by the letter opener, but there was no blood-not even a single drop.
I said nothing more. I merely took a couple of steps forward and braced myself. When I was sure that he was distracted, I lunged at him.
Sorrell was slow to react. He managed to dodge my attack at the last minute, but his movements were stiff. I chased after him and landed a kick on his knees. He crumpled to the ground, and the cracking sound of broken bones filled the room. It wasn’t until I had pinned him down that I noticed Sorrell’s body was stone-cold. He was cold all over.
He didn’t even struggle against me. He simply slumped there, his head hung low, as if he were already dead.
Sure enough, when I touched the base of his neck, I found no pulse. I dislodged the letter opener from his foot. Neither the blade nor the wound was stained with blood. I pried the wound open and found that the flesh inside had already dried up and was starting to decompose.
This was a dead man!
But this animated corpse was still speaking to me, asking repeatedly what was happening and what was wrong.
I was so terrified that I dropped the letter opener and scrambled off the body. Only the black witches and the vampires had the ability to control the dead. Noreen was gone, and most of the black witches who were still alive had retreated from the world. That only left the vampires. If Sorrell had been dead for some time, that would explain how the report about their pack being attacked was fabricated. The vampires simply wanted to lure Rufus out of the imperial capital!
Their infiltration went deeper than I thought. Rufus was likely in danger at this very moment. My heart clenched as a fiery wave of anxiety rushed through my veins. I needed to find him as soon as possible.
I was turning to leave when Sorrell’s body began to twitch violently. An awful smell rose from the corpse as its skin turned black.
It was about to explode!
Horrified, I covered my face with my arm and fled to the door.
In the next second, the corpse exploded, sending pieces of rotting flesh all over the room. The foul bodily fluids were splattered on the walls, and the mere whiff of it made me retch.
It soon started to corrode everything it touched, and I knew then that it was toxic. I wasted no time and used my witchcraft to form a crystal ball and use it to keep the horrendous mass from leaking out. It seemed that this room was no longer usable.
Just then, I heard a loud thud from above. I turned into a wolf and crashed through the window. I leaped out onto the terrace and onto the roof. As expected, I found a vampire peeping through the ceiling with some kind of controlling device in his hand. That disgusting explosion must have been his doing.
The vampire whirled toward me and bared his fangs.
“Werewolf,” he growled in disdain.
I roared in response, and then rushed forward and scratched his arm. Vampire blood could not stand any exposure to light, as it would cause an excruciating burning sensation.
The vampire hastily covered the scratches with his other arm and shot me a murderous glare. His fangs seemed to sharpen before my eyes. He was poised to kill. He used his powers to teleport next to me, his poisonous fingernails already aimed at my chest.
I wasn’t about to let him hurt me, of course. I dodged to the side and turned over. Then, in one swift motion, I pounced and bit off the vampire’s hand.
He screamed in pain, even as he tried to swipe at me with his other hand.
I shifted back to my human shape and dropped his severed hand at my feet. The vampire grabbed his chance. He took out a red bead from his pocket and smashed it to the ground, and we were immediately engulfed in a thick smoke.
I covered my nose and mustered the power of the black witch in my body. I waved my arm, and the smoke disappeared in an instant. The vampire had fled into the distance by then. I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath before chasing after him.
Crystal’s POV
The vampire moved swiftly and I followed closely behind him. His body slithered as quickly as a black shadow. He briskly entered a forest, rushing into the dense woods.
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