Chapter Thirty

Neither of the gunshots had been at any of us.

"Those weren't aimed at me," Davor called out.

"I thought you killed all the witches inside," Niko said softly.

"Me too,"I mentally mumbled, panting as I stared at the cabin. "I guess I wasn't thorough enough."

"It definitely came from inside, and that guy you were talking about just disappeared." Davor leaned out the window as he spoke. "Let me see if I can get the doors. The smell of magic is strong in here, but something feels… different."

"Oh?" Niko sounded curious, and I was, too. We went to the door I had tried opening for them and Davor swung it open like it was nothing. I sniffed the air as silence reigned over us.

He was right. Something was different, and as I focused on it, I figured it out quickly as it began to dissipate in the breeze and disappear.

"The spells ended,"I said, unsure if I was entirely correct, but it felt right at the same time.

"Let's get inside and see what we can learn," Niko said, and he went in as Davor held the door.

"There's much to look through. Like whatever is in that box and if we can find my equipment. Also, Jacky, I agree. I believe the doors were being reinforced by a witch, and now that witch is dead, the spells ended. That was the change."

I nodded and padded into the cabin once again.

"Wait, before we start, let me go get Jacky's clothes. There's no reason to keep her like that." Davor rushed out of the cabin and was back in less than a minute while Niko and I waited patiently in the main room that had been knocked around a bit, and not only by me. Whatever scramble the witches had been in, they had made a mess of the place themselves.

"Thanks."

I moved to a corner away from the stairs and the main doors and Changed, quickly dressing the moment I was human. My injuries hadn't been too significant, and aside from a few light scars from being grazed with silver, I was fine.

"We need to figure out who just screamed and where those gunshots came from," Niko said, and Davor pointed. Niko and I followed that finger to see a door I had missed entirely when I had been down here, trying to get the door to the outside open for my brothers. Niko had missed it while he'd waited on me and Davor, so I didn't feel too bad.

"A basement?" I asked no one in particular, stretching my arms and legs as I spoke as quickly as I could. It had been several long hours since I had been bipedal.

"Let's find out," Niko said, marching to the door and pulling it open.

My guess had been right. It could have been a closet, but a basement made sense. I moved closer, squeezed between my brothers, knowing they could smell the thick magic and fresh death I could. Some of the death, however, was a little older. Not much older, but enough that it was an obvious difference.

"There's so much to smell that I'm not getting everything," Davor said softly.

Niko nodded in response as I opened my mouth.

"Me, neither," I said, beginning to walk down. They followed, and at the bottom, I held a hand over my mouth.

There were seven bodies in different positions. Two stood out, certainly killed by the gunshots we had heard when we thought the fighting was over. The other five had no obvious cause of death. I was frozen as Niko and Davor stepped around me, able to recover from the shock faster.

"They're sitting on mats with circles drawn on them," Davor pointed out softly. "They were doing some dark magic."

"They were doing magic. I don't think there's such a thing as light and dark. Just magic and how someone decides to use it," Niko replied, shaking his head. "I have no idea what they were doing."

I finally stepped closer and knew in my heart what my brothers were trying to put together.

"They were the witches controlling the werewolves and werecat," I said, crossing my arms over my chest and rubbing my upper arms as I tried to warm myself up. It wasn't cold, but I had to do something about the chills I had. "The ones that have been dead longest… the one that screamed once the werecat was truly dead… They died when the moon cursed they controlled died."

"I'm grateful to have you on this mission. I would have thought I was going mad if I thought of that with as much evidence as we have to prove it. Which is very little," Davor said, but while the words were an oddly condescending choice, his tone wasn't. When he looked at me, I saw that he believed every word I was saying.

"I don't like it," Niko muttered. "Not the idea, but the…" He waved a hand at the dead around us. "The fact that we're standing in the proof of it. It was one thing for the werewolves to be caught out by some witches, but us werecats… This is bad."

"It's been bad," I said, going to one knee to inspect one of the witches who seemed to have died for no reason at all. Someone had cleaned him. After that, I moved to the next as my brothers talked over my head, but I didn't listen. It was the third witch that told me something new.

Gently, I tilted her head and saw blood in her ears. So recently dead, the movement caused blood to run from her nose. I clenched my jaw and fought with my stomach as I tried to open one of her eyes and saw that the whites of them were entirely red, all the blood vessels burst. With that, I checked one of the cleaned ones. The eyes couldn't be cleaned.

"Jacky?" Davor and Niko were finally done talking, and Davor was asking for me.

I was checking all of them now. They all had those eyes, and I tilted the head of one and saw some missed blood in the ears.

"They cleaned the ones who died earlier, probably out of respect, but it's like the werewolves and werecat dying had… They all suddenly started bleeding in their brains and died quickly. There was no saving them."

"And once all the controllers died, the last two…"

I looked at what Niko trailed off about. The last two had eaten the muzzles of their sidearms and ended things before we knew they existed. There would be no witches answering our questions here.

"One of them must have been holding the spells on the doors, trying to protect the witches down here," Davor said, going for the practical rather than lingering on how those two witches had died. I didn't blame him.

"Let's go find your case, if it wasn't stolen on that plane, and contact our family," I said, straightening up and patting his shoulder.

We left the bodies where they had fallen, all of them. We scoured the house up and down, and while we found tons of documents to go through, there was no sign of the case.

"Fuck. If they stole it, they could be using it now or contacting one of my peers to break into my servers…" Davor groaned.

"Let me check one more thing," I said, heading out the door that faced the clearing. As I walked, Davor continued to spiral while Niko tried to settle him. I wasn't fretting, though. I remembered the bitch with the briefcase.

Sure enough, I kicked her off the case, and it was Davor's. I had been in a flurry of emotions and hadn't recognized it as his. Picking it up, relief settled in my chest.

"I got it!"

"Oh, thank the gods," Davor said from the door, sagging a bit.

"Yeah, they were trying to escape with it, but Niko gave the signal in time for me to deal with her," I said, pointing a thumb over my shoulder at her body. "I think that guy said that was his sister. If he's one of the ones in charge, then she was probably one of the leaders, too. They would have known this was important. We got here just in time. I tried to go after the plane, but they got it into the air before I could jump on it and go for the pilot or anything." I held out the case as I stopped in front of Davor, and he took it. After giving it a quick inspection, he put it down at his feet.

Then he hugged me tightly. Without hesitation, I wrapped my arms around him in return.

"Don't take risks like that, please," he whispered as we hugged. "We can't survive plane crashes with any real confidence."

"Yeah, I know. I figured it wouldn't get that high, or I would keep it from getting off the ground, but…"

"It's fine," Niko said. "We did it. The werecat is dead. The witches are… mostly dead. Only a handful escaped, and they'll probably pop back up, eventually. Davor, contact our family. Jacky, let's go look through their stuff."

"The Tribunal is going to want all of this," Davor said as I stepped around him to follow Niko. "Especially if we can prove it has a connection to Dallas and how these witches have been hiding the scent of magic."

"We can read it first," Niko said with a shrug. We headed for the box we saw the witches trying to leave with. There was even more in the house. We had a lot to go through.

"Well, of course. I'm saying something different. We're probably going to be joined," Davor countered.

That made Niko and me stop, looking back at Davor as we realized what he meant.

"He can find us anywhere," Davor said softly as he sat down and opened his case. "So long as there's a door that can be opened close enough to us, he can get here."

"And you think he'll show up," I said, trying to keep my anxiety at the prospect down.

"I think it won't only be him." Davor made a face, displeased for a moment, but he couldn't deny the reality. "There were werewolves, so he'll tell Callahan and Corissa, and they'll want to come and retrieve those bodies at the very least. If this is connected to Dallas, they'll have to all work together still, and this might be our first real break on that, not just for our family but for the werewolves and witches also working on what's going on here."

"The witches won't show up. They'll continue to hide behind the fact that their people are so spread out and vast they can't possibly know everything about every witch," Niko said with a snort of derision. "I bet their investigation has been half-assed, too."

"You know that it's not particularly feasible for them," Davor said, somewhat chiding. "It's frustrating, but it's reality. There are millions of witches. Sure, they could do better, but the reason they can even remain on the Tribunal is because they don't do too much. It's the most effective way they've found to survive, being who they are and what they can do."

"Meaning?" I asked, frowning as he started checking all of his equipment in the case. I wasn't sure if I had heard this explanation before, but if I had, I certainly didn't remember it at that moment. There had been so much going on for a while, and I hadn't even seen those witches in over a year.

"Matilda and Johann have some way that they've extended their lives through magic. Witches kill for that sort of information, yet no one has ever made a well-executed attempt on their lives since the Tribunal was founded," Niko answered instead. "Davor is saying that they remain so hands-off because if they push too hard, they're inviting more reasons for their own kind to kill them for their power and not only political power."

"Ah. So, how do they work?" I asked, crossing my arms, a little curious.

"Truthfully? The same way human society works. Not many citizens of a country have met their ruler, and the ruler certainly doesn't know all the needs and wants of each citizen. They make laws, they have forces in different areas of the world, and they enforce those laws. They meet with prominent figures of different communities, but they are also above those figures." Davor shrugged. "They aren't voted for, they can't be overthrown, and they won't be assassinated so long as they don't push too hard."

"They do have the largest force within the Tribunal, though. I would guess that nearly eighty percent of the Tribunal's forces are witches," Niko said, shaking his head a bit. "And yet, they're the laziest of all the members. It's a shame. We could use them since they would be able to figure out what sort of magic we saw here."

"Or Subira could," I pointed out.

"I was thinking the same thing," Davor said, actually smiling as he looked up from his computer. "I'll see if Father can get permission for Subira to move through the Tribunal to get here as well."

"Let's go collect everything together and start reading," Niko said, patting my shoulder as he started walking. "We'll leave the bodies as undisturbed as possible."

I nodded, heading into the cabin behind him. Every time I entered the cabin, I had a different goal, and it led me to see new things each time. Starting in the kitchen, I really got an idea of the operation we were dealing with. They had a massive supply of food, and I figured it was only a fraction of what they originally came with. I picked up every shred of paper, no matter what it was. If there was a piece of technology, I grabbed it as well, eventually using a large pot to carry everything I collected from the kitchen and dining area. I had recipes, phones, and more. I took it back out to Davor, where Niko had moved the large box of documents, which, on closer inspection, I saw were only on the top. The heavy part of the box was a large computer tower, something well-built and powerful.

Heading back in, I went upstairs with Niko. Dressers were left mostly empty, and everyone was living out of suitcases. There were more witches than there were beds, which explained the sleeping bags tucked in the closets with those suitcases. I found two boxes of documents and two tablets. Niko's last haul outside was one box of documents and another tablet.

"They brought a lot of technology to a section of the world with no service at all," I said, shaking my head in disbelief. Davor pointed up, almost comically, as he didn't look up from his computer, the satellite phone held by his head and shoulder as he typed with one hand until he was done pointing. I followed the direction and saw a satellite on the roof above one of the second-story windows, well within reach of someone if they reached out.

"They illegally set that up," he said, a simple explanation that didn't warrant any other discussion.

"Have you been able to reach anyone?" I asked, sitting beside him with one of the boxes of documents.

"Jabari replied quickly. He's spreading the news. He asked for a lot of details and said something along the lines of ‘I can't believe they were right,' which wasn't for me, then left the line open as he ran off to get Zuri and Mother."

"Huh. I wonder who ‘they' were. I mean, the best options are Zuri and Subira," I said.

Davor nodded, then pointed at the box with me.

"You should get to it," he said softly. "They can show up faster than expected, and we'll want as much private access to this as we can get. If you find anything that stands out to you, take a picture of it." He lifted something in his case and pulled out a small digital camera. "I'll secure all the photos for safe review later. Once the Tribunal has these, we might not ever see them again."

"All right."

And so, I started reading. Much of it made no sense to me. None at all. First, much of it was in a different language, and I was incredibly behind on picking up anything besides English. I had a little bit of knowledge of French, but no chances to practice it with anyone, and my German wasn't really from any sort of education. It was bits and pieces I was picking up from Dirk and now Niko, and it was all spoken, not read. I couldn't even identify the languages.

I flipped through until I found one in English and read it, frowning as I saw a name I recognized.

"Mygi Pharmaceuticals was disbanded, wasn't it?" I asked, looking up to see if either of my brothers reacted. "Or it's… been humanized, right?"

"The latter," Niko said softly, his expression changing as he moved toward me, leaving what he had been reading. "They used to research how to do a lot of things that would make supernatural lives easier. Blood substitutes for vampires, ending the curse for us, and more. However, they were discovered to be doing a lot of illegal things, too, like experimenting on a supernatural species that most of the world believes were actual myths and not possible. A lot of what was done by them was very secretive. I've only heard rumors."

"Same for me," Davor said, leaning closer. He was still on the satellite phone, but apparently, Jabari wasn't back yet. It wasn't common for someone to be left on the line the way Jabari left Davor. "Rumors. The cambions were discovered and held against their will by the company. It was that snake Hisao knows that helped blow the top off the entire thing, and that's how we have the cambions now as a Tribunal species."

"Kaliya Sahni," I said, knowing of the naga. I had met her and her mate, a cambion, officially only once when she came to get Cassius out of my territory.

"Yeah, well, the cambions were essentially given the company by the guy who runs the sister hospital. They humanized it, ending all supernatural aspects of it," Niko said, nodding. "The fact that it's?—"

"Davor, you're still here. Good," Jabari said on the phone, unintentionally cutting off Niko and ending our conversation. "You have five minutes. They'll be there. Father rushed it through. Callahan and Corissa gave no fight about it, and because they didn't, no one else on the Tribunal cared."

"Who all is coming?" Davor asked quickly, looking around at everything we had collected from the house.

"Mother, Father, Callahan, Corissa, and the werewolves will take a group, some of Corissa's pack, just for security and helping hands. Could be three, could be a dozen."

"Whatever they need to feel like they're safe with five of our family in one place," Niko whispered.

"Be safe, you three. Good fucking work."