As I walk the grounds of the property my linker had purchased am left baffled as to why he had been very particular about this middle of nowhere little town. Personally, I didn't really feel any certain way about the place. It was old and rustic, as every living human old town. Secrets buried themselves beneath the very bricks that built the place.
I had smelt it the first time I set foot here. The land was filled with werewolves, and their stench was infused in the very ground of the earth. I didn't have a problem with wolves generally. Never really had problems with anybody except for a few demons who would pit themselves against me and found out the hard way as to why I was a prince of hell.
This place was quiet, eerily so that initially I had assumed would be hard to feed due to less humans, but I then started to like it. Old towns had the worst of feelings, and they harbored the most resentment too. What I didn't like now were the wolves. At first, I didn't mind them but suddenly my linker is wounded in a way I hadn't ever seen him and that is a concern of mine.
"Sire..."
I turn slightly to incline that he has my attention and can continue but he hesitates and I turn back to stare into the night.
Among the many things I hated, unsure information was probably at the third top of the list. Half assed truths or untruths pissed me off. My region knew only to tell me if whatever they knew was a hundred percent verified or if it involved my linker.
"What is it?"
"The curse seems to have been activated" My gaze snaps so fast in his direction that for a split second I feared for my neck only to recall that I could do a 360 without so much as a scratch if I wanted to. The dark of my irises bleed through the dark night and I see red, literally. I had no doubt that in that moment I looked like a real prince of hades I was.
"Are you sure?" My voice is a horrid sound that grates even on my own nerves. Sethur winces as he almost drops to the ground but wills himself to stand even if it's with his back rigid.
"Yes sire, when he first fainted..." He didn't need to finish. I already knew how the curse manifested. I was there the first time. While Ekron was only half what I was the other human side of him was just as dominant, so his human side was still just that, human. He bleeds and eats like them.
He bleeds red as every human. But while he was near or touched by something or someone who was part of that curse or someone who could help him remove it, he would always bleed black. His blood would turn against him.
Because it's through blood that he was cursed in the first place.
He would be in anguish for all days, and so would his sire.
Unfortunately, there wasn't anything any of us could do to help. All of us would've to endure till a time we can get rid of it.
All three of us.
"Sire, remember that day we loitered in the human realm with Master when you said the stench of dogs was too much, and the curse manifested for the first time" I frown, remembering a day before Ekron's grand announcement that he would move us to an old town since we were disrupting the balance.
I recall specifically because Ekron had started complaining of a headache that day saying he had accidentally bumped into some idiot with more muscle than brains. But then I was before him in an instant and we had teleported before the humans could brink.
"...yes"
"Well, I presume that was the day it all started"
"...the wolves, the stench of them in the human town we visited. That day..." The day the headache started was the day we came across the wolves, and he had decided on coming to this town the same day. It wasn't a coincidence that we moved here; the werewolves were the trigger. At least one of them was.
"The wolves, or at least one of them is the trigger. Tell me exactly what happened earlier"
"We waited for him as instructed, when you felt his distress. But when we got here, he wasn't in, he was also just coming home. But he wasn't alone so I didn't really see much but a wolf was with him, I smelled the werewolf and saw him through the window and I'm very sure it's the same one from that day..."
"And how do you know it was the same one?" Even I didn't see him that day and I was the one to pull Ekron away from there.
"...."
"...right" Sethur was my second in command for a reason after all. He was also from the family of Gamigin, the marques of memory.
"Find me the wolf. I want it chained to the basement in the next thirty minutes. Am going to check on him"
"Yes sire"
I remember very little of that day, one moment everything was fine and the next we had to leave because he had a sudden wave of nausea and a headache. I hadn't really paid any particular attention because I was so worried since our kind rarely gets sick.