Page 14 of Her Eternal Mate

“I don’t think you know how this works,” Alexis said, crouching by the soldier’s corpse and interacting with his armor. “This is computerized, Will. Meaning we can trace it back to whoever is in charge. All we need to do is plug his armor’s computer system into some source and, well, hack into it. You and I can’t do it, but we do know someone who can, don’t we?”

“Are we going to drag Maliha, an innocent girl who knows nothing of the world of werewolves and vampires, into this mess? She will go insane,” I protested. “That girl has lived a simple life. She will be traumatized upon observing a dead body.”

“You don’t give her enough credit,” Alexis said. “She did do her part in preventing all those bombs from going off, if you remember.”

“That was one thing. This is a completely separate thing. Think about what you’re saying. You’re asking to introduce her to a world that will overwhelm her senses. As much as I appreciate her moral candor and her bravery, I just don’t think that she must become unwillingly enlightened about the existence of mythical creatures.”

“As valid as your point is, dear Will,” Alexis spoke softly. If anyone else was speaking to me in such a tone, I would think that they were condescending. However, when it came to her, I knew that she was trying to be as patient as she could with me. I understood where she was coming from. It was just that I needed her to see that my viewpoint on this particular matter was just as valid. “We need her help. What do you suggest we do?”

I took a deep breath and then, with my hands rubbing my eyes, said, “I don’t even think we need to confirm to whom these soldiers belong. Isn’t it obvious? This is Blair’s doing.”

“How can you say that with such certainty without any evidence?” Alexis asked.

“Because look at the soldier and observe how abominably he has been tarnished. He looks to be affected by no less than a dozen concoctions and potions that have altered him into this inhuman being. Just look at him. He’s imbued with poisons. His skin is blueish. His veins are about to pop off any second. And if that’s not enough, just see what his eyes look like. And that’s not even the real reason that I’m convinced this is Blair’s doing. Just observe his armor. It is top-of-the-line, complete with extremely advanced weaponry and capabilities. Whom do we know who has such vast resources at their disposal that they can arm their soldiers to the teeth with such tech? It’s Blair. You have to agree with me here. It’s literally spelled out.”

Alexis was nodding, but it was not the affirmative kind of nod. This was how she nodded when she was deep in thought and needed to process faster. Then, lifting her finger up, she said, “On the other hand, this could be someone entirely else, someone richer and more dangerous than Blair. Someone who can potentially end the lives of werewolves with the tech and the soldiers they have at their disposal. Wouldn’t it be prudent that we knew about this threat rather than pin it on someone we already know? The last I heard of Blair, he was in the wind. Do you really think that after the financial losses he suffered through the dissolving of his business in Fiddler’s Green, he’d still be able to get back on his feet and muster up enough budget to create these soldiers?”

She had an irrefutable point.

“Fine. But we don’t have to tell Maliha more than she needs to know. We’ll just tell her that these are some bio-terrorists or something like that,” I said.

“I agree with you there,” Alexis said. “We’ll keep her in the dark as much as possible.”

Relationships, I had learned, were about compromise from time to time. This did not mean that one did not love the other. I had come to understand in our time together that Alexis possessed a different sort of wisdom from the one that I possessed. A feminine wisdom that sought to nurture and nourish instead of resorting to fight or flight. And it was for that reason that I accepted her suggestion.

Alexis helped me sling the dead soldier over my shoulder. Together, sneakily and slowly, we crossed the territory of the forest while avoiding the main paths. Who knew how many more soldiers there were out there? The commune was not very far away, but given that we’d chosen a more hidden and convoluted way, it was taking us double the time to reach there.

“I wonder what the endgame was,” Alexis whispered.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“This soldier…whomever sent it…I wonder what they wanted. What, did they simply think that they’d dispatch a soldier and he’d take care of us? That he’d kill the werewolves all on his own? When you come to think of it, doesn’t that seem like something that Blair wouldn’t do? Blair’s got a personal agenda against us. He wants his revenge against you for killing his father. Wouldn’t he try to come and kill you himself?”

Perhaps, after all his failed attempts on my life, Blair had realized his mistake, and instead of coming at me himself, he had resorted to sending soldiers on his behalf. But I had to be sure that this was indeed Blair’s doing. It could very well be someone else.

“Will, duck!” Alexis whispered just in time. As I ducked, I saw from behind the thicket that there were no less than fifteen soldiers, similarly armored and armed, walking in a progression through the forest path, all of them wielding those electrical zapping guns, all of them marching in that mechanical way that resembled the movements of a robot.

“An entire patrol,” I whispered back to her. “It’s too much for us to take on right now.”

“Agreed. Let’s just wait for them to pass and then head to the commune.”

As we stayed there, hidden from the sights of the soldiers, I thought more about what this meant. Was this perhaps the first part of a series of attacks against the werewolves? These sorts of things did happen in life. Whenever one stronghold fell, another power took its place. The last of the vampires had been beaten and eliminated, creating a power vacuum that was now being filled by these soldiers and their mysterious leader.

“Will, we can take ‘em,” Alexis said.

“How do you suggest that? We barely beat one of them. There are fifteen out there,” I said. As much as I preferred fighting bravely over hiding, there was no chance that just the two of us could beat all of those soldiers together unless we had some powerful weapon at hand.

Alexis flailed the dead soldier’s gauntlet in the air, saying, “We can use this.”

“Or we can simply use this,” I said. Her suggestion gave me an amazing idea. There were grenades, although not like the ones that I’d ever seen, attached to the dead soldier’s belt.

“Grenades?”

“Why not? It’s not like he’s going to need it,” I said.

“Very well.”

And so, just as the soldiers were passing the intersection where we were hiding, Alexis and I took off the grenades around the soldier’s belt and tossed four of them at the same time by pulling their pins.

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