A Shade of Vampire 32: A Day of Glory Read Online Free PDF Page B

slumping down next to me.
    “I’m thinking that we need to find a way to lift the spell. Transform them back into regular wolves, the way they were before Rhys came along and meddled with them.”
    They might’ve been a strong tribe to begin with, but they were still werewolves, like the others. Even if they retained their craving for cannibalism, for their fellow wolves’ flesh, at least they would no longer have such an unfair advantage. The other wolf packs could conceivably band together to protect themselves. As it was, the Mortclaws were simply killing machines. There was no fight involved. The Mortclaws decided who they wanted to attack and eat, and it was done.
    The black witches had meddled with nature’s balance in The Woodlands by creating these abominations, and somehow, we had to put it back.
    “What if you opened the vial and tried to… I don’t know, alter the potion somehow?” Brock suggested.
    I frowned doubtfully. “I could try it,” I said. “But again, I’m worried about Bastien and Victoria.”
    “But whatever you did wouldn’t be as harmful as smashing the vial, would it? The risk wouldn’t be so great?” Brock pressed.
    He had a point. “No. If I was cautious, the risk should not be as great.”
    “Then maybe some risks have to be taken,” Brock said.
    The other option, of course, was to attempt to lock the Mortclaws away again. But what if at some point in the future, they somehow found a way back out again? I did not like unfinished business, and simply bundling these creatures back in a hole felt like just that. It felt like we needed to solve this problem, once and for all.
    I heaved a sigh and wandered back over to the Mortclaws, holding their gazes as I walked past each of them.
    “Can you really not control your appetite?” I asked, my eyes narrowing on them. “Or is this cannibalism just a form of greed?”
    They were too angry to speak with me anymore. They merely growled and yelled at me to let them free.
    Well, if you won’t answer the questions, perhaps we’ll have to attempt to find out by ourselves…

Victoria
    I t took five minutes for the reality to sink in. Yuraya was gone, and she was not coming back.
    I handed Bastien an old blanket I found on the deck, which he fashioned to cover himself, then helped him to his feet.
    Bastien swallowed hard. “Well,” he said. “We can’t just leave her here.”
    “What do you suggest we do?” I asked.
    Bastien looked at Cecil. The old man didn’t look like he had any ideas.
    “Should we slip her body into the ocean?” I asked.
    Bastien bit his lip. I guessed from his hesitation that this was not done in werewolf tradition; it must be important to families to give their departed a proper funeral ceremony.
    I shuddered to think about what would happen once the rest of the Mortclaws found out. As if they didn’t already have enough reason to hate me, now I had gone and murdered the woman they had picked out as Bastien’s betrothed since his birth. I still didn’t understand how Yuraya knew that Bastien was to be her betrothed. From what I understood, it was supposed to be the groom who broke the news to the bride. Maybe Sendira had deemed that particular tradition as breakable, in order to put more pressure on her son. Whatever the case, it was irrelevant now.
    Silently, Bastien bent down and scooped her body up from the deck, leaving a trail of blood behind him. He raised her over the edge of the ship and dropped her into the waves.
    “We have no choice,” he said hoarsely.
    We stood and stared at the area where Yuraya had sunk, our nerves still recovering.
    Then Cecil asked nervously, “So what now?”
    My mind turned to Mona and Brock, waiting for me in The Woodlands. I hated to think how long I had kept them hanging around already. I really needed to get back to them.
    But getting back to them meant returning to the Mortclaws.
    We still weren’t sure why Yuraya had returned to the ship without them, but I