Back To You

Chapter 24

The cottage was dark. All its window shutters had been drawn shut earlier in the day. Now, nearly two dozen men were seated on whatever furniture they could find. Some chose to sit on the bare floor. Excited whispers fluttered through the room as information was exchanged between the attendees of the secret meeting.

The door swung open, and a sandy-haired young man entered quietly. The others nodded to him as he headed to an empty spot on the floor to sit. His shift as a servant had ended barely an hour ago, and he was eager to be away from the master of the house whose temper tantrums had skyrocketed of late.

The young man was the last of the expected attendees. Once he was seated, an elderly man stood up, and the room fell silent as if on cue. "My fellow friends and comrades in arms, thank you for gathering on such short notice," he began, looking around the room.

"All of you have risked everything by joining our cause to rid our world of these vile masters. You have my deepest gratitude and admiration." The old man placed a wrinkled, shaky hand over his heart and bowed slightly in respect to his comrades before continuing, "Our ancestors were foolish enough to think of them as gods. But we are far wiser than that. We will not repeat the mistakes of our forefathers."

A slow smile spread across the old man's weathered face, overshadowing his amiable features with a malicious look in an instant. "They think us weak, but soon they will know how wrong they are. Today I call you together because we have gained vital information from our brothers in the vampire territories. A weakness in the defence of Hjem city can be easily exploited."

All around, excited faces were focused on their elder, including that of the sandy-haired young man. The old man continued, "We plan to subtly reveal it to the witches while, at the same time, information will be leaked to the vampires regarding the current location and details of the werewolf and witch armies, their strengths and weaknesses, all of it."

The old man was now grinning from ear to ear, ending his speech delightedly with the ominous words, "It is time we sit back and watch these greater beings destroy themselves."

Ten days after the secret meeting in the cottage, the inhabitants of Hjem city, both human and vampire alike, stared up at the sky in confusion. The cloud cover above the city had suddenly begun expanding beyond the firewall, enveloping it in the shade. Almost none of the city's residents knew the significance of this except for a handful of important individuals, including the young vampire prince and his generals.

Mathias stood atop the wall walk of the city's defensive wall. Beside him, the slim figure of Duke Brennus was as still as stone. Both men stared at the towering wall of flames a few hundred feet ahead, now shadowed by thick cloud cover. Without sustenance from sunlight, the firewall would eventually shrink. The prince said, "They know the secret of the wall of fire."

Brennus replied, "We have spies in our midst."

The young prince exhaled, feeling deflated. After all this time, the city's biggest weakness was exposed, but how? The secret of the firewall was so well guarded that even the civilian vampires living in Hjem had assumed the flames diminished during winter to conserve whatever energy was used to fuel it. In a way, their assumptions were not too far off the mark.

The only plausible explanation for the information leak was that a careless, high-ranking army officer had said something they should not have, likely in the presence of a human servant. A slip of the tongue, but a deadly one. Mathias turned to face the duke. "The humans are turning against us."

"Yes. It looks like some have betrayed us."

Mathias asked the most obvious question, "Can we disperse their cloud cover?"