Chapter 12 The Price of Betrayal
The Price of Betrayal
Once upon a time, when I was really young, my father used to watch the Discovery Channel every Sunday. Even back then, when we were on good terms, he wasn’t the warm type, more absent than present, and being a small girl, all I wanted was to get his attention in some way.
So even though I was bored out of my mind, I watched shows about nature with him.
Many times during those shows, when a leopard, for instance, was on the hunt, it lay in wait in the grand savanna a couple of miles away, watching its prey—usually a zebra, for some reason—like a hawk as it waited for the right moment.
In these shows, the narrator always said predators can be very patient when it comes to hunting their prey.
A stakeout like this could sometimes take hours, and sometimes less than ten minutes.
It depended on the prey’s movement, whether it was alone or with a herd, and even unforeseen natural elements.
I hardly ever listened to the narrator when they said those things, though, because the edit made it seem like only three minutes or so passed before the predator jumped into action.
Now, as I sat alone in a café near the hospital, I finally felt the clock ticking, and it was excruciating, since I could not let my guard down even for a moment and had to stay tense and alert for any possible openings. Staying in that kind of state was absolutely exhausting.
After we left the hospital, Lucien had explained his plan very briefly.
“We have to wait for the right timing,” he had informed me as he led me to the café.
“That’s a good vantage point to watch over the hospital entrance area.
Be sharp, and tell me if you notice two tall men and one woman arriving together. ”
“Aren’t you coming with me?” I’d asked, perplexed.
He’d shaken his head. “No, I’ll be someplace else. But here, take this.” He handed me an old, heavy Nokia that made me frown in confusion. “It’s a burner phone, very hard to trace. Text me the moment you see them. I’ll be around here.”
He was gone soon after, leaving me in the café all by myself.
I felt awkward, sitting alone in a café full of friend groups and families, especially without anything to do. If I wanted to be fully on guard, I had to be focused.
What I did bring with me was each traitor’s profile, since it included their headshot as well.
Readjusting my glasses over my nose, I scanned the parking lot outside and the hospital entrance on the other side of the road, feeling excited and agitated despite my exhaustion.
It was four o’clock in the morning now, still utterly dark, and it was hard to see anything in the dim streetlights.
I squinted my eyes, too, as if it would help.
Still tense and alert, I nonetheless took breaks to commit the three images to memory.
The two historians, Alby and Dianna, looked as average as any other person, both with dark hair and eyes, Dianna’s hair longer and pulled into a tight bun.
They could pass as everyone’s next-door neighbors in a nice suburban neighborhood.
Mack Page, the Beta, on the other hand, looked like what I imagined a werewolf would look like.
He had a bodybuilder physique, thick neck, and hair to his waist. In the image, his face was almost deadly, contorted in that same chilling way Lucien’s face had been back in Enoch’s office.
He still looked human, but everything about his expression seemed inhuman.
As though the wolf inside him was brought to the surface in all ways but his true form.
I wondered why Mack Page wanted his headshot to have this expression. It made him seem like an absolute vile menace, which he apparently was, considering the fact he tried to kill Lucien. But I thought he wanted Lucien fooled, for Lucien to trust him? That face screamed anything but trustworthy.
Or perhaps that’s how I saw it. Maybe there was a different reason for this that I, a mere human, didn’t know about. I wrote down a reminder in my pocket pad to ask Lucien later.
Sipping my strong Americano, I returned my gaze to the outside and almost spilled the drink all over my clothes. Because three people had just rounded the corner of the street and approached the hospital. Two men and a woman, one of those men long haired.
I took out the burner phone and immediately texted Lucien. His response was Stay put.
I frowned. Why? I texted back.
Because it’s dangerous and I can take care of them myself was his reply.
Yes, I knew it was going to be dangerous.
It was kind of obvious, considering Lucien was going after the trio who attempted to murder him, and if there was one thing I knew without a shadow of a doubt, it was that anything related to the supernatural—people, locations, objects, and incidents—was far more dangerous than anything humankind could possibly come up with.
But Lucien said that those who were after him might be after me too. So it wasn’t just his fight.
And if that wasn’t reason enough for me to participate, my gut was telling me that getting involved with Lucien in the first place might finally lead me to the answers I’d been looking for, for eight long, lonely years.
So, no, I wasn’t going to sit back while Lucien confronted the traitors who stabbed him—literally—in the back. My own life was at stake here too. I was in this for the long haul, and that meant getting my hands dirty if need be.
Don’t worry, I texted Lucien now, slapping some cash over the bill the waiter had just served me. I won’t get in your way.
I put the phone in the back pocket of my jeans and exited the café, full of determination, excitement, and, yes, some fear—but all it did was make me feel the most alive I had felt in a very long time.
Mack, Alby, and Dianna were inside the hospital, talking to the front desk. I could see that through the glass doors, from where I hid behind a nearby car. I had no idea where Lucien was, but I assumed he was somewhere around here.
He didn’t text me back after I shot him that message, and I took it as a green light to do what I could to help.
I watched as the three werewolves left the hospital, their faces grim. Mack’s face, unlike the other two’s, didn’t resemble his picture at all; his expression was far more laid back, even friendly and kind, which was at odds with his tank of a body and long, unruly hair.
With light washing over him, though, I could see his dark eyes. And nothing about those eyes was either friendly or kind.
A chill crept down my spine as my gut twisted. This was one of the werewolves who went after Lucien. Who tried to kill him and were now trying to figure out if he was dead or not.
That made me wonder about a few things that didn’t line up, though.
First of all, how did Mack and the others attack Lucien in the first place?
I mean, Lucien was an Alpha werewolf. He was supposed to be stronger than a Beta.
And why hadn’t they made sure they finished the job before they left Lucien to die?
If I were in their position—which made me sick to even consider—I would’ve made sure my target was dead.
This was too sloppy to make sense. Why was Lucien left there, then, with that Spellscript on his back?
Was it so he would die slowly, painfully?
But why?
The three werewolves’ murmurs as they spoke to one another grew louder, snapping my attention back to them, when, to my horror, they walked close to where I hid.
I pulled back from my peeping position and clamped my hands over my mouth, trying to muffle any noise I might make as I listened to their approach—and their chat.
“It’s getting ridiculous, Mack,” one of the men, apparently Alby, said in a whiny voice. “I’m telling you, there’s no way he could’ve survived that. The Syndicate said that their weapon’s death rates were ninety-nine point nine percent—”
A low growl made the tiny hairs on my arms stand on end, and Alby shut up. “Then tell me where his body is if you know better,” another man’s voice snapped.
What followed was the sound of a doggish whimper.
To my dismay, Dianna’s voice, when it came, was far too close, to the point where I thought they must’ve been on the other side of the car, near the driver’s seat.
“We can go visit the Underearth again,” she suggested placatingly.
“Ask to see the owner of the Mathenio, whatever that is, and demand answers.”
Someone pulled the driver’s seat door open so hard, the entire car shook against my back. The back door was opened, too, as Mack’s irritated voice said, “Alby, contact Zairos and arrange for an emergency portal.”
I heard a single person’s footsteps heading in my direction as one of the trio was rounding the car to get into the passenger seat. Of course the one car I chose to hide behind would be theirs, I couldn’t help but think in annoyance as tension and fear rose within me.
There wasn’t enough time to flee, and besides, I was neither fast enough nor quiet enough. So, my only option was to get caught.
Thankfully, I was good at acting.
Quickly, I lay down on the ground in an unnatural position and pretended to be passed out cold.
A moment later, the footsteps came to a screeching stop. “Guys!” I heard Dianna call, caution in her voice. “Somebody’s dead here!!”
She wasn’t the smartest cookie in the basket, was she?
I heard both men getting out of the car. “Now what?” Mack snarled, and I heard two sets of footsteps rounding the car to where Dianna and I were. Then all sounds stopped and Mack cursed. “She’s not dead,” Mack sniped. “Don’t you see her chest heaving?”
It was heaving indeed—and slowly, too, since I was currently regulating my breaths to slow down my erratic heartbeat and try to get rid of the tension that threatened to overtake my purposely relaxed body.
“Oh,” Dianna said, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, she just looked so . . . serene.”