Chapter Thirteen
“Are you sure this is was where she was sighted? This is practically a ghost town.” Paris looked around the little town that barely showed signs of life. This country province had a few shops and a handful of people milling about but other than that, he wasn’t hopeful of finding Anisa. They’d passed some cottages along the way and even questioned a few locals but no one seemed to know anything.
Paris looked around in frustration. Another dead end. He wanted to rip something apart with his bare hands. He felt his wolf fighting to break free. He and Dante had searched his little town thoroughly. There were a few agents of the Underground still scouring the area but so far no one had managed to turn up anything.
“This is what my sources have told me. They got it from the hunter,” Dante assured him.
“But it’s possible he could have given false information,” Paris suggested.
“It’s not likely considering it was Sasha who compelled him to speak. She enchanted his tongue so he was incapable of lying. Look, my friend, I know you’re concerned but she has to be out there. The world isn’t that big anymore. I battled my other brother for centuries mainly because he was always one step ahead of me. But technology has made it nearly impossible for someone to stay hidden forever.”
“But technology also helps the ones who want to hide. That’s how they managed.”
“You’re being a pessimist. We’ll find her. We’ve sent agents ahead of us and they’re posted all around this region ready to report anything out of the ordinary,” Dante assured him.
Paris wracked his hands through his hair in frustration. “We’ve been scouring this town for hours and haven’t managed to turn up a single clue. This is frustrating the hell out of me. And all the while, these people are walking around this town oblivious to the fact that I’m two seconds away from burning this entire country to the ground if I can’t find her,” Paris growled. His ears perked up as he detected movement several feet away. He turned around to see a woman coming out of one of the little shops. She didn’t seem to be heading in any particular direction. He wasn’t sure why but he followed her progress and noticed that she circled the perimeter of the street of the courtyard before heading back inside the store.
“What has you so fascinated?” Dante inquired.
“I noticed the woman over there came out of that shop and is heading back in. It just seems a little odd.”
“Yeah, I guess…you know, I noticed a man do the exact same thing a few minutes ago.”
They both turned in in the direction of the little store and waited. Sure enough, the woman Paris had spotted earlier came back out a few moments later only repeat the same action she’d done only minutes before. That was beyond odd.
“There’s the guy I saw,” Dante pointed out.
“Something is definitely off. I think we should check it out.” They headed to the shop and stepped inside. From the looks of things, it was once a convenience store but the shelves were practically empty. Several people wandered aimlessly around the aisle not picking anything up just…walking and not particularly looking at anything.
“It’s as if they’re under some kind of enchantment.” Dante walked over to one of the patrons, a man who was closest to them and began to converse in French. The man seemed to look right through Dante.
Dante’s eyes started to glow and as he grabbed the man by the face. Their eyes locked and from Paris’s perspective, the vampire was delving deep into the human’s man. It felt like several minutes before Dante released him. “Go home and sleep this off. You won’t remember any of this in the morning.”
The man nodded before heading out the door.
“What the hell was that all about?” Paris wanted to know.
“He was under some kind of enchantment but it wasn’t something as simple as a memory wipe. It’s like someone has siphoned off part of their soul. It was something dark. It wasn’t regular magic.”
“Black magic?”
Dante nodded.
That can only mean hunters are in the area. Or they still might be.”
“Very good, I was wondering when you would catch on, bravo.” A tall pale woman with short blonde hair stepped out of the shadows, clapping ironically.
He didn’t get a chance to wonder why he hadn’t been able to detect her before a jolt of energy hit him in the back sending him crashing to the floor. His wolf clawed to the surface, bursting through the seams of clothing as he shifted to his other form. Paris sprang to his feet just in time to dodge another jolt of energy. He quickly noticed that besides the tall blonde, there was two other hunters cloaked in black. One was a short, muscular man and the other was a tall gaunt woman so pale her skin seemed translucent.
Paris was certain he and Dante could take them down but the problem was, there were humans still wandering aimlessly around the shop and it seemed as if the hunters had no problem using them as shields. When Paris would have charged at the blonde who appeared to be the leader, she threw one of the hapless humans in his way. He bumped the human aside and continued to charge.
Before he could make it to her, she placed her hand out and chanted a spell beneath her breath. The humans who had had previously been wandering around without any general direction turned toward him, their eyes now a soulless black. They swarmed him making it nearly impossible for him to break free without seriously injuring one of them. The last thing Paris wanted to do was harm innocent humans who were clearly pawns of these hunters who had no regard for anyone’s life but their own. Paris had been involved in many battles in his lifetime but he’d never had to deal with humans in this manner before. Careful not to cause any major damage, she shook of assailants. When they came for him again, he ran into each one of them, knocking them to the ground.
He hoped by maneuvering them out of the way he could get to his puppet master. The blonde hunter laughed with glee before she teleported to the other side of the room. Paris briefly wished they had a witch or warlock in close proximity to counter this dark magic.
The humans ran toward him again, this time with clenched fists. None of them could hit him hard enough to cause any real damage but they were definitely an annoyance. When one of them yanked his tail with a force that took him by surprise he turned around and swiped his aggressor across the chest, tearing into his clothing.
Paris made sure not to dig too deep into the flesh, so that he wouldn’t kill the unsuspecting him. The man howled in agony before collapsing to the ground. His eyes changed to a watery blue. He clutched his chest and looked around him, apparently disoriented. He clutched his chest and scrambled away with a cry of fear, probably because there was a giant wolf a few feet away from him.
So it seems that he could break their trances if he caused them pain. He sunk his teeth into a woman’s arm, careful not to bite hard enough to rip her arm off. Like the man before her, she cried out in pain and scrambled away from him. He fought through four more humans before he made it to the blonde but just as he was about to pounce in her direction, she disappeared again, but not before smirking at him maniacally.
“You’ll never get to her in time.”
When she was gone, Paris looked around the shop frantically. There was no sign of her but he did see Dante fighting off the gaunt huntress who seemed to have some kind of invisible hold on him. Dante seemed to be paralyzed. Paris also noticed that the other shorter hunter’s body rested at their feet, while his head was several feet away.
Without further hesitation, he sprang toward the hunter knocking her off her feet. He opened his jaws wide and tore into her throat, this time using all the force he had at his disposal. He ripped and tore at her thin body with his claws. When he was done with her, she was a lifeless skeleton with chunks of meat hanging off of it.
By now the remaining humans were slowly coming out of their state of stupor. Paris could only imagine the sight they were waking to. A vampire whose fangs and talons were bared and a very large wolf.
Someone let out of scream.
Paris mind-linked with his ally. I think you should handle this, Dante.
The vampire nodded allowing his incisors to ascend and his appearance to go back to normal. His eyes, however, held their glow as he turned into the director of the quivering humans.
“This place was robbed. Some of you were injured but no one was hurt. You will leave this shop and forget you ever saw either one of us.” Dante pointed to himself and then toward Paris. He then turned to a tall man cowering in the corner. “You, remove all of your clothing except for your undergarments and leave them on the floor.”
Once the man had completed that task. Dante pointed to the door. “Everyone out. Go home and don’t come out until the morning.”
The group of people nodded before scurrying out of the shop in a hurry without a backward glance.
Paris shifted back to his human form and headed to the pile of clothing left on the floor. “That was considerate of you.”
Dante snorted. “I did it for myself. I don’t want to spend the rest of this mission looking at your dick.”
“Jealousy is a mother fucker, my friend.” Paris teased.
“Oh please, I was bigger than you when I was a boy.”
This was one of the reasons Dante Grimaldi was his best friend. Even when times were dire, they could find a moment to laugh together which served to strengthen their camaraderie.
As Paris shrugged on the jeans and t-shirt that were a little snug on his bulkier frame, the seriousness of the situation hit him again. “The head Hunter got away. She intimated that we wouldn’t get to her in time which means they know where she is.”
Dante pulled out his phone. “I’m on it, I’ll call in the team to meet us on the outskirts of this town at the abandoned cottage we passed. We can better formulate a plan if we put our heads together.”
Paris nodded absently. “That sounds like a good idea. But we have to hurry.”
Now more than ever, Paris was certain that Anisa was close. He could feel it. He just hoped that they could find her before the Hunters did.