Chapter 83

The book was bigger than I thought and covered more subjects than I thought it would. I hoped that the book and the book on vampires didn’t contradict. If they did, which was right?

I reached the section about the packs and the lines of the packs and got to the New Moon Pack. I could have never imagined that this was all more complicated than I first thought.

New Moon descendants seemed to be closer to vampires than werewolves. It seemed like they were some other kind of vampire or some other kind of werewolf, but their mates were mirrors of them.

I wasn’t a literature person, but as I thought of Francium and Claire’s relationship, it made a lot of sense. They could probably talk for hours about boring literature and anything else that interested them. They were popular and beautiful just in general.

Did that mean Claire was capable of murder? I didn’t know. Was it the reason that she was now a vampire?

Had she really been turned, or was it something else? What did being turned even entail?

Those were all questions I would have to ask a vampire. If Claire was a vampire, it would be because

I opened up my laptop to search through the reports on Claire’s death to see if anything new had been added. The upgraded access allowed me to move unseen throughout the entire mainframe, and as I thought, I could put in requests for operative records as I needed to. They wouldn’t give me their codename, but they would give me everything I needed to observe them and track their actions.

Francium’s roommate seemed suspicious. He had a history of being very devout in his personal life. He was also from New Moon, some remote city that didn’t interact with many others. I couldn’t find much about his family. How had he gotten into this Academy? Had he been added to the student body by the alpha of the pack or for some other reason?

I was starting to wonder how much about our world I was in the dark about. It wasn’t on a boundary of the territory, but it was nestled up against a mountain. I checked the location against the directions he’d given me and realized that it wasn’t too far.

I made notes in the system before going back to Claire’s documents. I got the report of her being found, but there was no formal photos of her autopsy or her body being processed. It seemed that her body had never made it to the morgue.

How long after she’d been found had she been taken from the authorities? Had the authorities even been the ones to get her? If that vampire could change his face, other vampires could do the same. Did Francium have the clout to get them to help steal Claire’s body? The more I looked at the records and the photos that were taken, the more suspicious I was.

Maybe he hadn’t done it. Maybe someone else had done it on his behalf, but the fact that they were together now meant that he probably had a hand in it.

Whoever had written the report had clinical knowledge, but they wrote nothing right. There was mention of her having broken bones, but the photos had no bruising on her. The bruise that should have been around her neck if she’d been strangled wasn’t there.

The internal trauma from being raped, as the news claimed, was harder to tell, but there were no bruises around her hips or any other signs of a struggle. It helped that I knew how she died, but I couldn’t make sense of the coroner’s report.

If no autopsy had been done, then all of the things on the report had been written by someone with medical experience but without backup. It was forged or just fake. Maybe the police just thought it was a clerical issue, and the photos would show up eventually, but I knew better. My instincts said it was more complicated than that.

I went looking for the doctor on the death certificate, the name of the morgue that was supposed to have her body and everyone else involved with the case. As the computer started to compile everything I needed, I turned over the issue.

Claire was alive.

She’d had access to a phone, but it didn’t seem like she had been given the phone. That meant she was being kept against her will. But the photos didn’t explain anything, and neither did the case information.

She’d been turned, but how and when?

I set my jaw as the results started to pop up, and things got even more confusing: the names were real, but the people that signed off on everything were either dead and had been dead for several years, or they had no way to be in the territory. The doctor that completed the autopsy didn’t even work at that hospital when he’d been alive. It could have been a coincidence of name, but I didn’t believe that.

The hospital where Claire was supposed to be taken had the address of a little shack inside a smaller pack’s territory that was actually a general store. I opened a message to the Blue Moon leader and started to type my initial findings as I started to run a search for any other death certificates and cases with similar inconsistencies.

The leader’s icon appeared on the edge of my screen, indicating that she was online and watching me from her laptop.

Show me what you’re seeing.

I pulled up the files. Soon, more death certificates showed up, and I started to build a list of other people who might have faced the same fate as Claire. Some of them had death certificates with no complete autopsy photos. Some of them had been signed by the same doctor at the same location years after the man had died. There were other doctors from the same hospital name and address, but they were all dead and had been dead for years. Did that mean they were all vampires too? Werewolves who had been turned?

I started to pull up images of these people in the hopes of finding something else about them when a message appeared in the corner of my screen.

Follow this path and get me a full list of names that have been used. Cross-check all hospitals on all death certificates you can with their addresses. And check police stations.

I frowned, and my eyes grew large before I started the search.

Get me a list of doctors, police stations, hospitals, and any other things that seem off within the hour.

I’m planning to go to New Moon. I have a lead on Francium. I’m running facial recognition as well for the people I find.

Good thinking. Take your beacon with you. Check your mail before you leave. There will be another cellphone for you to take with you. If it rings, answer it.

My stomach churned, but I agreed and kept typing. I planned to leave my phone here, but I shook my head. Going there would be the perfect cover as Hedy for my moves as Pandora, and it would make Candido upset if he thought I was visiting someone.

It would make him even more upset if he thought it was a man. He’d already revealed that he was a bit jealous about my relationship with Francium. He’d been pretty obvious that the thought of me dating was a problem with him, but now, he had nothing to stand on.

He didn’t know who my mate was, where he was from, or anything else. For all he knew, I could be visiting him and trying to walk the path he wanted for me.

He’d be furious, and it made me so happy. Maybe he’d get angry enough to storm to find me and drag me back home.

The thought of him snatching me away and taking me back to the Estate to have his way with me made my blood heat. Would he be gentle with me? Would he kiss every inch of me until I couldn’t even think of anyone else? Would he marry me just to keep me from my mate?

The thought was thrilling.

The security team would report to him my movements if I took the jeep, and that was all that mattered to me. I smirked as I watched the program start to go. I grabbed my backpack and started to pack snacks in it just in case I got hungry. It was a long ride to New Moon from the capital. I packed a bit of homework and some other things that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for me to have. Then I headed out and down to the mailboxes. I opened the box and found a few pieces of mail and a package. I shoved it all in my bag and whistled as I headed towards the front door.