♚Chapter 6: Never Let Go
AFTER returning to Mateus Manor, the group gathered in the largest reception room without taking much time to rest up first.
The boy bishop was still unconscious, and they had brought him into one of the many guest rooms to sleep it off. Phoebe had offered to keep watch over him.
Krister was resting in another room. He was debilitated and his leg was in bad shape, so they’d called for a doctor to come at once.
With everyone else out of the picture, only Lord and Lady Alexis were left to question.
Rock, Ebel, Guido, and Michaela surrounded Danilo, Placido, and Lauretta, who were still in a stunned state.
“…I now understand that we’ve done something that can never be undone,” Placido weakly admitted.
He’d returned to human form and borrowed some clothes from Ebel. Lauretta had fixed his disheveled hair for him, but his withdrawn face looked like it’d aged years over the last few hours.
“Clearly, neither of us was in our right mind. I especially couldn’t keep it together when it came to my wife.”
Lauretta clung to Placido’s shoulder like it was her only lifeline in the world as he spoke about their experience.
“My wife lost one parent after the other in rapid succession, and just knowing her younger sister was out there somewhere seemed to offer her a fleeting comfort. But then she also lost her sister, which sank her into even greater depression. She knew she had a niece but completely lost track of her whereabouts after Valencia’s death, further destabilizing her.”
Rock had met Phoebe and opened up her tailor shop in the slums around that time. She wasn’t at fault for it, but knowing about her aunt’s suffering still pained her.
“I think the Brotherhood took advantage of that weakness.”
Guido arched an eyebrow at that. “You think? That’s an ambiguous way to put it.”
Placido’s expression darkened.
“You may think I’m making up excuses, but…neither I nor my wife can remember exactly how we were invited into the Brotherhood.”
“…No way.”
“I’m sorry to say it’s true. At least Danilo remembers enough to help us figure out a timeline.”
Going from Danilo’s account, Lord and Lady Alexis seemed to have joined the Werewolf Brotherhood three months ago.
The married couple often went to a church in the holy church district to see if that’d help alleviate Lauretta’s worsening depression. There, they were approached by a member of the cult who won them over with just the right words, and before they knew it, they started visiting the sanctuary in the ancient ruins.
According to Danilo, they seemed to have been targeted in hopes of them becoming big donators to the cause. It hadn’t been long since the Brotherhood set up shop in those particular ruins, and their efforts in the capital remained modest due to a lack of funds and members. In fact, Danilo could prove a significant amount of the Alexis family assets had gone to the cult.
However, the Brotherhood’s first sacrifice was decided when the noble couple’s anguish caught the bishop’s attention.
“I tried to stop His Lordship.”
Danilo seemed to remember that moment well. He trembled and paled at the memory.
“The more I heard about it, the stranger it sounded. I wondered if a blessing granted by werewolves was actually capable of saving people—if a power that required changing your very shape and being could actually bring about true happiness… But not a word of advice or warning I uttered ever reached His Lordship. He kept repeating ‘I must accept this blessing’ just because the bishop recommended it. It almost seemed like he’d become a different person.”
Even the breaths he took as he spoke quivered with the fear that memory brought back.
“I wasn’t present for the ritual. I was far too scared to join him. I saw His Lordship’s eyes had turned the shade of gold when he returned home, I witnessed the moment he transformed into a werewolf, and then when I saw His Lordship and Her Ladyship embrace like they had found the answer, I felt the need to continue supporting them…”
“I must apologize to you as well, Danilo. I’m sorry.”
When Placido gave his heartrending apology, Danilo began to weep aloud, perhaps realizing he didn’t have to hold it in any longer.
Watching them also pained Rock, Ebel, and Michaela too.
“I might’ve been able to stop you if we’d met sooner…” Rock muttered exactly how she felt, but Placido only shook his head.
“You mustn’t blame yourself. It was all our own doing.” Then he pressed his fingers against his temples as if in pain. “Besides…I doubt I could’ve resisted the call even if you were there to stop me. That voice endlessly echoed in my head, guiding me…”
“What voice?” Ebel leaned forward, keen to hear the rest. “Are you saying that statue called out to you as well, Lord Alexis?”
“Indeed. That was undeniably its voice,” Placido confirmed. “‘Offer up thy blood, receive my power,’ it incessantly whispered to me in an encouraging, melodious tone.”
Guido jumped off the sofa as if he’d been pinched. “Me too! I definitely heard that same voice!”
“Brother…”
Michaela’s beautiful face tensed and Guido’s expression filled with regret.
“I was also tempted into accepting that curse by that voice…” he lamented with clenched fists. “I should have never listened to its trickery!”
He tried to crouch on the floor, but was hindered by the clothes he’d also borrowed from Ebel. The suit was a little tight on the taller Guido, and he immediately stood back up with a scowl.
“Ebel! Don’t you have any looser clothing?! I can’t even let myself go through the motions of being stricken with grief and anger wearing these!”
“I’ll make sure to have clothing in your size on hand from now on,” Ebel said with a light chuckle. Then he gloomily pushed up his burnt sienna hair. “It appears we were all given the werewolf curse by the same being. But for what purpose? And how many more lives will it destroy before it’s satisfied…?”
That mystery still remained unsolved.
Who was turning humans into werewolves, for what purpose, and how many?
Rock initially believed the Brotherhood was the main culprit.
However, according to Michaela, who’d been waiting for them outside the ancient ruins, every cultist who’d fled after Ebel and Guido went rampaging said the same exact thing:
“I don’t know why I was there. I was this close to getting cursed.”
Not a single one among them had golden eyes.
“I asked for all their names and addresses just in case,” Michaela explained with a long face. “But…to be perfectly honest, I don’t think they can provide us with any useful information because as soon as they exited the ruins, they all had the look of someone who was just conned without realizing it.”
“Do you think they also didn’t join the Brotherhood of their own volition?” Rock asked.
“It seems that way,” she replied. “Most of them are commoners who live in the capital, and those who couldn’t donate money seemed to be doing physical labor for the Brotherhood inside the ruins.”
The living quarters Rock saw in the ruins were probably for those particular members. They were likely recruited and drawn into the Brotherhood the same way Lord and Lady Alexis were.
If all the cultists were brainwashed into joining, then that didn’t leave many leads to probe into the truth of the matter.
“What about that male tailor?” Guido asked Rock in a frustrated voice. “He may have been a captive, but he still lived there with them. He must know something.”
“I plan to ask him about it,” Rock replied, but she didn’t expect it to amount to much.
Krister looked terrified and exhausted when she saw him in that cramped workshop. She highly doubted he was in the right state of mind to remember everything he saw and heard in those ruins.