Page 89 of Catastrophe

“We are dead. We are dead,” he whispered and rocked in place, clearly traumatized and lost in his mind. I couldn’t judge him for it.

But when a loud weapon fired, causing everyone to scream and the dragon to roar, I had to wonder if he was maybe right.

CHAPTER 22

CHARLIE

Once we had a location from the hackers’ code, the rest was relatively simple. I tracked other similar codes all the way to the hunter compound. They made a rookie mistake to have the same person do all the online security, but unfortunately, the mistakes ended there.

I fought off the hacker trying to boot me out of their systems, their skills rivaling mine, but I knew better than to underestimate them after what they did to Adam when he tried to get me information on the hunters.

As I hacked into the compound systems, I pulled up live camera feeds onto the many screens in front of me. They flickered as the hacker tried to pause the feeds to stop me from seeing anything, but in the digital battlefield I was determined to win and I dropped bombs on them, distracting them with viruses and pop-ups.

Fuck you, hunter bastard, you think I’m going to let you just kill my family? No.

“This is quite exhilarating, Charlie,” Dralie told me. “Like a hunt. I cannot understand the squiggles flashing in front of us, but I can feel your fight. Remember, we are drakorian. We don’t lose to humans.”

As far as pep talks went, it was actually quite helpful.

“How are we getting on?” Arabella asked, approaching me from behind.

Isaac shushed her and then, in a reverent tone that did wonders for my ego, whispered, “we are watching a master at work.”

“I think you should head there. I’ll let you know when it’s time to charge in, but Baelen should go first since he’s got the ring. Once he’s cleared the place, you can follow. You’ve all got earpieces, and I’ll guide you from here when I’ve found more.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Isaac saluted.

Arabella smacked him. “Stop being so dramatic.”

“Babe, he came in here like three hours ago and achieved what we’ve been trying to do for a week. That’s something else.”

“I’m going with them?” Baelen asked. He hadn’t moved from my side since he returned from the shadow realm. I wasn’t blind to the tension between him, Savida and Daithi, when they returned, but I didn’t have the time to ask about it. I just assumed that Daithi was being his usual arsehole self.

“You have the ring, and you can get Clawdia and Zaide while the others concentrate on everyone else.”

He nodded, and I quickly explained how to use the earpieces before the task team called their goodbyes. And Baelen left with them.

With Baelen gone, Savida approached me hesitantly. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

“You could set up platters of food, water, and rest areas for all the witches that are about to descend upon this place. I won’t have time to help them.”

“Of course. An excellent idea.” He scurried off to Daithi, and they began discussing how best to go about their task.

I paid them no mind as my fingers flew over the keyboard, digging deeper into the hunter files that I now had access to. I was grateful other witches hadn’t taken to technology like I had because otherwise, they might have found a way to magically shield this information. As it was, I only needed to fight highly technical-beautiful, if I was honest about it-code and firewalls.

I downloaded as much information as I could, but my hunter enemy must have been onto me because he had stripped my rights and blocked me again with yet more code. Is he writing this from scratch right now? It was impressive. And while it pissed me off that all my hard work to battle into their files disappeared right in front of my eyes, I couldn’t concentrate on that right now.

I didn’t know how long it had been when I heard Baelen’s voice in my ear. “I’m here, Charlie. I’ve found her.”

“And?” I asked. I hadn’t looked back at the cameras, but I could hear Clawdia sobbing in the background, but I didn’t know if it was happy or sad tears.

“She killed Mary,” was not what I expected him to say.

“Fuck, is she okay?” I ran a hand through my hair. This is going to destroy her. She’s not a killer.

“She’s not responding.” I listened to him whispering to her, whispering assurances, and I scanned the camera’s looking for a sight of them in the laundry room but struck gold when I spotted a feed from outside a metal door. Thank you, findy powers.

“You need to get her to snap out of it, because I think I’ve found Zaide’s cell.”

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