Page 23 of Even Vampires Bleed
I can do it.
Léandre’s eyes are already on me when I look at him, and we both nod at the same time. In the next instant, my clothes pool at my feet, and I’m in the air.
All the harnessed groups of four move through the doors at the back of Notre Dame, and I follow after them under the watchful eyes of Léandre.
Pierre and Elhyor shift only when they’re finally outside, and from the corner of my eye, I see Luc gathering everyone’s clothes and tucking them into a box.
He’s not coming with us.
They need him more here with his ability to play with cameras.
And so we fly.
Dread and hope mix in my mind the whole way there.
When we arrive in Blois, half of the warriors shift to their human form and get clothes from their harnesses.
The other half stays in their animal form. The shifters who are now in their human form will carry backpacks in case we need to shift back once we’re inside, but we need to stay small and undetectable.
It’s only when the clothed warriors have left that Léandre finally arrives. I don’t know what trail he used to get to us, but all that matters is the fact he joined us. I was already going to be among the group that stays in animal form, and now Léandre is, too.
This is the reason why they didn’t want Léandre to come. No one can miss his white and red feathers.
They shouldn’t have worried, though, because there is no white or red visible on him. It looks like he rolled in the mud before joining us.
It also looks fresh. As if he flew most of the way to Blois without any mud and chose to cover himself right before joining the team.
At least we don’t have to fly long from here to meet with Ana—Marcus’ teammate and lover—and enter the dungeons from below.
The mud looks heavy; it would have been a pain to fly with that onhis wings for so long.
The silence is pregnant, but at least I don’t have Pierre eying me sideways anymore.
He left with the team that will attack the castle in human form and a weight has lifted from my shoulders ever since.
Not that I’m not burdened by any other thoughts, though.
Stop.
I breathe in through my nose and breath out through my mouth.
I repeat that twice, and then we enter the cave system Ana found. My brain’s only focus is the mission.
It takes us about ten minutes to arrive at the back of the dungeons, and it’s eerily devoid of any guards.
I’m not surprised, though, because I can hear the battle going on upstairs, and I know the guards that were down in the dungeons must have left their positions in a hurry to come up and help in the battle.
All at once, everyone shifts to their human form.
That’s when I realize a group of four shifters with a smaller harness followed us. I don’t understand why until one guy in the team gets what’s inside out of it.
Virtual keys.
They’re devices that scan the inside of a lock and print three dimensional keys to replace the original one.
Those things are immensely expensive, and we only have four of them.
Only two people are needed to operate one. One holds the machine, while the other feeds it the material the keys are made of—which is a weird mix of metal and plastic.
