Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Alexis

After what seemed to be a long time, we now had the upper hand. It wasn’t just those few odd soldiers who had mutated; practically every soldier present in the vicinity of the town, commune, and forest had morphed into that distorted form, lending the werewolves an advantage—now we knew where they were. Their little bases all over Fiddler’s Green were compromised thanks to the ruckus these mutants were creating.

If that wasn’t good enough, then the fact that many of these soldiers were dropping dead on their own was something that played even more so in our favor. We only had a limited number of werewolves in the pack, which meant we could only send a limited number of scouting parties all over town to find these mutated soldiers. But now that many of these soldiers were dropping dead on their own, it made our work easier.

Will was not one to understand how this was going in our favor. For him, this entirely new chapter of mutated beings wandering around town, dying on their own, and posing as a menace to the common folk of Fiddler’s Green was one large flashback to the Second World War.

“This is how it begins,” Will kept saying whenever I broached him on the subject. “These are the first ashes of war, falling from a crestfallen sky. The horizon will soon be blood-red. And we will all taste war’s bitter taste on our tongues.”

“So, what does that even mean? Are we going to give up?” I asked him one time, his riddle-like statement perplexing me.

“Give up? Quite the contrary. I ran from the Second World War. Not this time. This time, I have a chance to defend my people and make my city safe. This time, it will be Blair who runs with his tail between his legs.”

Seeing him so adamant about eradicating the bad guys gave me fresh courage of my own, allowing me to truly take charge of the responsibilities delegated to me. The Grimm Abode desperately needed stronger defenses. Ever since Will and I had saved Vincent and escorted him back to the commune, I’d been busy setting up the new defenses.

Will was with me right now, helping me set up barbed wire along the front wall of the commune. Both of us were wearing military-grade gloves with which we were handling the wire.

“We should electrify the wire just to be sure,” Will said.

“You know, I was thinking the same thing. We can run electricity across all the barbed wires along the walls. But let’s do it with a backup generator that’s inside the commune. That way, if the electricity of the town is compromised, at least we will still have our defenses holding strong,” I said, fixing the last bit of the wire to the watch post. Morgan and a few other men had taken up shifts in the posts. There were four posts on each of the four sides of the commune. Each post had a machine gun fixed into it as a contingency for the worst-case scenario.

“This whole place looks like one big military complex,” Will said, taking a look at the commune. Outside the commune, we dug trenches and covered them with leaves and brambles. If any soldier was stupid enough to rush towards the Grimm Abode, they’d find themselves in the trenches. At the bottom of the trenches were wooden pikes, sharpened like stakes.

“There’s a storm on the horizon, Will,” I said, pointing my finger at the black clouds gathering, thunder growling in them, and streaks of lightning flashing across them. From up here, I could see the sea. It had been very stormy of late, and in anticipation of the storm, it had become even more tumultuous. Across the slope, Fiddler’s Green lay quietly, no one out and about in the open, everyone confined to the insides of their homes.

The impending storm lent us an advantage. As werewolves, we could shift whenever we wanted and go out and hunt more soldiers without having to worry about any townsfolks spotting us.

“We’re going to be fine,” Will said. “The storm is the least of our concerns. It’s Blair we have to look out for. Especially now that his serum has failed.”

“What makes you think it has failed?” I asked, hopping over to the post, where Morgan was standing, smoking a cigarette and handling the gun. He saw me and Will approach, tipped his hat to us, and then left the post to give us some privacy.

“If his serum had worked as he had intended, these soldiers would never have mutated like this,” Will said. “He wanted to make some form of super soldiers. What he has, instead, are failed experiments running amok. If that’s not failure, I don’t know what is.”

Back when I was studying in community college, I took a bio class in my third semester to get a feel for the clinical side of academia. The only thing I remembered from that class was the big vials of dead animals suspended in chemicals. They’d have labels on their jars stating “Iteration 1” or “Iteration 3.” Those iterations would go up to 10 or 11, depending on what the scientists had been trying to achieve. All those failed iterations were still on display in the laboratory so that the students would realize what mistakes the scientists had made and how not to repeat those same errors.

“Will, what if this is just one crop of bad results? What if he’s got successful iterations in his lab somewhere? Maybe these morphing soldiers are one big smokescreen that Blair’s putting up for whatever he’s actually working on,” I said. “We know Blair. And it’s very likely for him to do something like that.”

“You’re right,” Will said, now looking at me and holding me in his arms. “But that does not mean that the threat is not real. First vampires, now these soldiers. The threat has always been imminent and lurking around the corner. To make matters worse, the Clandestine Order is looking at us more critically than ever. Makes me feel like we’re walking on one of those circus tightropes. There’s no room for error, and the slightest disturbance will cause us to fall who knows how far below.”

“We’ve beaten worse odds,” I said.

“True,” Will said, patting my head affectionately, then going down the post stairs.

“You’re headed out with Vince and the men from the pack?” I asked.

“Someone has to round up the remaining soldiers. I heard from Vince that the soldiers are all gathering by the lake south of Fiddler’s Green, upsetting the natural order of things. They’re attacking animals and tainting the lake water. It might be a good chance for us to ambush them and kill them. That is if they don’t die on their own first,” Will said.

“Bye, sweetie. I love you,” I said, keeping watch at the post.

“I love you too,” Will said, blowing me a kiss.

I watched as the men drove out in Will’s Jeep. Then I waited long enough for them to go down the sloping road and head into Fiddler’s Green. Once I was sure that they were gone, I assigned my place at the post to one of the guys who had remained back at the commune and then headed to my home.

It was a plan I’d been cooking for quite some time now. Blair was at the center of everything that had been happening. If I could find him, isolate him, and somehow overpower him, it would mean the end of all this nonsense. I just needed some special help from someone in doing so.

Just then, there was a knock at the door. I opened it discretely and found Maliha standing there with her laptop bag.

“I waited for them to leave first,” Maliha said.

“You did good,” I said, pulling her inside the house. It was very critical to our operation that no one knew what Maliha and I were up to.

“I did something even better,” Maliha said, grinning at me. “You know these soldiers are just dropping dead everywhere? I went and took a closer look at one body. The whole console on it was quite functional, allowing me to access the files more easily than before.”

“Let me get this straight. You went out of your way to find a dead soldier and then hacked his console? Do you fucking realize how dangerous that is?”

Maliha blinked at me vacantly, then rolled her eyes and said, “Danger? You’re one to speak of danger. I am surrounded by werewolves. The world that I live in is filled with vampires and mutated soldiers. How much more danger could there be? And what do I have to gain if I stay there quietly in my apartment, worried stiff for my life? I’m doing my part just as you’re doing yours. I might not be a werewolf, but at least I can help the good guys in this fight.”

Then Maliha revealed the console that she’d brought with her. It was plugged into her laptop. I could not understand all that technical mumbo-jumbo that was on the screen, so I looked at Maliha, hoping she’d provide an explanation.

“Blair’s got state-of-the-art cybersecurity now. I guess he’s learned from his mistake,” Maliha said. “I cannot hack into his system as swiftly as I could before. But I’m not unsuccessful. It’s just taking me a lot longer to do it than before. When I finally decrypt this console, I’ll be able to provide you with an accurate location of where Blair’s holed up.”

“And then this madness will end once and for all,” I said softly.

“What now?”

“It’s this place. It’s Fiddler’s Green. You must have realized it by now,” I said, deciding to trust Maliha with what was lying heavy in my heart. “This whole place is diseased. It draws chaos from all over.”

“I never thought about it like that,” Maliha said. “But then again, up until a while ago, I did not know that werewolves and vampires existed, so what the hell do I know about anything?”

“We’re battening down the hatches, bracing for impact, and preparing for a fight. Say we defeat Blair. There’s going to be someone after that and after that too. It’s like the perfect hell loop.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?” I looked at Maliha. I was surprised as to how surely she had said no.

“This entire thing has an air of finality to it. I may not know what’s been happening in this town. But look at everything that’s happening now. This feels like the end of things. I feel it in my bones. When Blair dies, this will be the end of it. And since you’re my best friend, I’m going to say something to you. Something that you’ve been wanting to say to me but are afraid of. Yes. When you defeat Blair, you and Will are going to leave this place and start your own lives. I don’t believe in superstition. I believe in intuition. And my intuition tells me that everything will be fine with you.”

I just wanted to hug my best friend at that moment. Her words comforted me in just the way that my heart needed. There was no way that she could know the outcome of our upcoming fight with Blair. But she had reassured me, consoled me, and in doing so, had done her duty as my friend.

It was more than anything that I’d ever done for her.

“Thank you, Maliha,” I said, hugging her tightly.

“Hey. No need to thank me. You saved my life. As far as I’m concerned, I’m forever in your debt,” Maliha said.

While Maliha hacked away on her laptop, I looked out the window and into the commune. It had been a week since we’d rescued Vince and restored him back to health, a week since the soldiers had started morphing and mutating. Other than that, things were pretty normal, giving Fiddler’s Green that façade of regularity.

It only meant that something seriously fucked up was about to happen soon, and I was not talking about the storm.