Chapter 205

I looked over at Candido expecting him to do something to say something, yet Candido's face didn’t change.

“Get out of the way, Hedy.”

I couldn't believe what he was saying.

“He's a member of Moon Shadow! How could his loyalty ever be questioned he's the only one–”

“One,” the second woman said and cocked her gun against my temple. “Two.”

“Get out of the way, Hedy,” he growled this time with a bit of command. I felt myself step aside even though I didn't want to.

Duster went still. He paled as a large man called Key approached him and started rifling through his pockets. There didn't seem to be much of anything on him: a few weapons, a dagger, and a mirror. There were other random things but it seems like he really had nothing suspicious. Just as I was about to say something, Key pulled out a phone and held it in front of his face.

My heart lurched what? And what was so important about a phone?

“Everyone was instructed to leave the phones in Lunae once we figured out that they had taken over the communication system and could actually use it to track us.”

“That’s impossible,” I gasped. “That’s just a lie!”

“How do you explain this?” Key asked. “You, unlike that idiot back there, were at the briefing, so what do you have to say for yourself?”

Duster seemed to try to come up with something. Silence stretched on as Key crushed the phone in his hand. Then, his shoulders slumped, clearly caught.

I was furious. Again, she'd shown me up acting as though she was meant to be Luna. Again, she showed me up and made everyone think she was supposed to be Candido’s partner. And now they wouldn't listen to me even more. It wasn't my fault that he was a spy. How was I supposed to know? If maybe I had been included in everything from the start, I would have noticed too. Duster, whose real name no one knew, was tied up and sat down. He was completely silent.

“We don't have a lot of time, so let's make this quick.”

“Are you going to answer us, or will we have to pull it from your head?” Candido asked.

Duster sneered. “Do you think I'm stupid?”

Candido looked as though he was going to punch Duster, but Estella stopped him.

“Punching him might feel good, but it won't get us the information we need.” She turned and called back into the group. “Psyche, how are you feeling?”

A tall woman with dark skin and hair shorter than Estella's walked through the crowd.

“Good enough to deal with this jackass.”

“Good. Take everything.”

Candido nodded, and I spoke up.

“Wait! Why would we trust a vampire to do this? It should be a member of Blue Moon or Moon Shadow. How can we trust whatever she was going to say is the truth? Haven't we gotten enough problems from trusting vampires and people who are associated with them?”

Duster laughed. “She really is dumb.”

“Don't call me dumb!” I yelled at him.

“And crazy,” he scoffed.

I growled. “You can’t talk to me like that!”

“Don’t you have some other setting?” Duster asked, rolling his eyes.

“All of our mind readers are dead,” Candido said, gravely. “Though I can assume you are at least partly to blame for that.”

Duster laughed. “It would be very hard to be a spy with people around who could read my mind. It was too easy too.”

He laughed again.

I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. I–”

“You have no authority, Hedy. Be quiet,” Candido said and looked at Psyche. “I trust you.”

I couldn't believe it. I stared at him as she walked forward, and Candido said nothing more. It seemed like Estella had corrupted him more than I first thought. Psyche stepped forward. She placed her hand on his head, and suddenly, he went absolutely still. His eyes started to roll back his body jerked and shuddered. I had never seen anyone read someone's mind. It looked painful for him. Was that normal?

Then, she started to talk.

“He was a part of the attack on Moon Shadow’s headquarters. He helped someone named Francium, but he was the source of the information about where the headquarters was…. He's been tracking Moon Shadow’s movements and feeding information into the system for months before the attack. It's how the attack went through so cleanly.”

“What do you mean by cleanly?” Candido asked. “Nothing was stolen.”

“They weren't there to steal anything,” she said. “They were there to add something and then apparently the servers were moved, hiding whatever they placed there. He understands it as some sort of tracking and hacking device.”

“Hacking….”

“A descrambler whatever that means. I'm not a technical person and neither is he, but he knows enough to know it was supposed to help them gain further access to the system.”

“A de-encryptor,” Candido said and sighed. “To give them full and unencrypted versions of the personnel files likely it certainly made sense that they would need something like that if they were trying to cut down certain people with certain powers… Depending on how long they've had access to the system it seems redundant.”

“Your mother encrypted the system just before she died,” someone said. “I didn't recognize him either but I guess he was a member of Blue Moon. “Vanessa didn't agree with it, but she let her do what she wanted because she was Pandora at the time… She said something about having a full lineage be so integrated into the system without security could be dangerous.”

Estella sighed. “It is most likely that was communicated to her through Hedwig.”

“What does that mean?” Candido asked.

Estella sighed. “His Majesty told me that Blue Moon had the original records from back before the planes were split, including lineage information. Basically, a giant family tree of any werewolf that might have retained some vampiric power, but he never mentioned that Blue Moon was dumb enough to use it as a potential personnel file for Moon Shadow.”

“... you mean to say that the way we made it easy for ourselves to find each other we made it easy for them to find us too.” Candido sighed. “Powers and lineage: who to kidnap, who to kill, and who might have powers. If they’ve has all of this information up until my mother died, it would explain so many of the disappearances over the years… then when Vanessa changed recruitment protocols…”

“It allowed just about anyone to get in if they knew enough about the organization since they no longer had a need to be traceable through the system… especially if Vanessa never kept up with the encryption and the Pandora after her never did either… It was supposed to be a failsafe, but no one alive knew how it worked, so it did you no good.” Estella shook her head. “Candido, you can't blame yourself for this. It’s a problem you inherited and had no chance of fixing before it became this bad.”

I couldn't believe it, and I knew everyone would just blame me when I was the person who was supposed to be watching the system. That was the whole point of Pandora's position.

“Feeding in what sort of information?” Candido asked. “How far back can you tell?”

The man jerked and cried out. He started to foam at the mouth, but Psyche didn't remove her hand, and she didn't seem uncomfortable.

“At least a few years. I would say at least three. It's a little fuzzy. He's the second person to infiltrate Moon shadow.”

“Who was the one before?”

“She died on a mission somewhere. He doesn't know how or why, but I would guess that someone found out who she was and killed her. Her code name was diamond. They worked together for a little bit before she died. He considers himself lucky that he escaped notice…”

“Who is Diamond?” I asked. I didn't remember the name she would have had to have been killed before I joined Moon Shadow.

“What was Diamond looking for?” Candido asked. “What was the ultimate goal?”

Psyche frowned and tilted her head. Duster’s body jerked again.

“He was tasked with taking over Moon Shadow’s new mainframe and getting information about the rest of the members of Blue Moon and new members of Moon Shadow…. And… something about an artifact? He doesn't know the full plan, but he suspects that they were looking for an artifact that Blue Moon might have had. They're still looking for an artifact called The Heart of the Moon, but they don't know where it is either… Diamond was tasked with getting that information, but it looks like she was killed before she could transmit anything useful.”

Candido seem to relax at that but my head was still full of questions.

“What else does he know?”