The Moonlit Curse

Ch 7: The Challenge

Silence hung thick and awkward in the air. Elise shifted her weight from one foot to the other, looking between Hadyn and August. "I... I'm sorry for that," she said nervously. "She's probably just... she gets like that when she's tired. I'll just go check on her. It was a pleasure meeting you, Mister Eldred."

"And you, Miss Hawthorn. Give your Lieutenant my best."

Elise nodded and gave a bow before hurrying after Kiya. August waited until her footsteps carried her up to the second floor. Then, he launched himself across the room and shoved the other man outside, and then again until they were closer to the edge of the woods than the town so they wouldn't be overheard. "What the hell did you do?" he roared. "I asked you to speak to her, not scare her into hysterics!"

"I did speak to her," Hadyn snarled back. "And it went exactly how I expected. I do not see any way that the woman could be brought into the pack without catastrophic consequences."

"That's a touch dramatic for you, don't you think?"

Hadyn's eyes narrowed and the hairs on the back of August's neck rose in defense of the alpha's hard glare. "No," was his simple answer. "She will get us all killed."

"She hasn't told anyone. She's scared, damnit!"

"I need to know if you will hold yourself to your own promise!" Hadyn shouted. Though alpha commands had no effect on other, albeit subservient alphas, August felt the power wash over him like an icy bath. "Kiya Bridges is too dangerous. She needs to be put down for the safety of the pack."

August felt a sickening pit in his stomach as Hadyn reached into his pocket and drew a phial containing a shimmering, semi-transparent liquid.

"What is that?" August asked warily, though he was sure he already knew the answer.

"Vampire venom," Hadyn said in a soft, sobering tone. "Put it in whatever you plan to serve the soldiers tonight."

Another tense silence fell over them. August couldn't look away from the contents of the phial. There was barely enough to fill a teaspoon, but it was more than enough to cause devastating effects to both humans and werewolves alike.

Vampirism was a curse, just like lycanthropy. One drop in an open wound would turn a human into one of the blood suckers over the course of an extremely painful three weeks.

But a human could only be cursed once.

The venom was lethal to a werewolf, even one freshly cursed and not yet gone through the change. And unlike humans, the venom was deadly no matter how it entered the body. Which was why Hadyn wanted it to be put in the food.

If a human were to ingest vampire venom, for whatever reason, they were typically ill and craved rare red meat for a few days but otherwise fine. Werewolves, however, would suffer days of worsening intestinal symptoms that presented similar to cholera. The mortal world would watch them waste away, unable to eat or drink anything while the magic from two different curses would rip them apart from the inside.

A high-pitched ringing started in August's ears, and a terrible heat he'd never felt before rose in his hands and stomach. Human physicians would have her isolated to prevent the spread of the assumed disease. That was how Hadyn wanted Kiya to die. In pain even worse than she was experiencing now. He wanted her to suffer, sick and alone and scared, and he expected August to stand back and watch. "There has to be another way," he growled through clenched teeth.

"This is the easiest," Hadyn insisted. "Any other way will spark an investigation by the others."

"There has to be another way that doesn't involve killing her!"