A Shade of Vampire 25: A Clan of Novaks Read Online Free Page B

it to his ear. “Yes. Hm. Of course. I understand. Yes.” Then he passed the phone back to me, his face still punchably calm.
    “I’ve spoken to Thornton,” Fowler said. “He will not interrupt a mission again.”
    “And what of the human casualties?” I growled. “You’ll just forget about them? Brush them under the carpet?”
    There was a pause on the other end, and then I felt the chill run down my spine as he repeated the same words as Thornton. “It is… regrettable.”
    I hung up the phone before recasting my glare on Thornton.
    The basic problem was that the IBSI—which, in my opinion, should have just been shortened to “BS”—was more powerful than the governments. The latter were dependent on the organization. If the IBSI withdrew, the governments would be completely helpless. Through all their funding, they had created a monster.
    Technically, they still had to obey the laws, but what Thornton had just done should have been cause to immediately fire him on the spot, along with all of his men. They would’ve withdrawn their sanction of us if we’d done the same thing, but it was different rules for different people. The hunters outnumbered us astronomically, and, unlike us, they were not disposable.
    The IBSI had always taken advantage of this fact, but this was the first time I’d ever seen it so blatantly displayed.
    There was nothing more I could say to Thornton than what I was already saying with my glower.
    “Get off our submarine,” I hissed.
    Stepping back, Thornton and the two men who’d come down with him gazed up at the helicopter. I was expecting them to grip back onto the ropes so they could be pulled up. Instead, to my shock, with a giant thrust of their legs, they leapt about ten feet in the air. Grabbing hold of the runners beneath the open door, they swung themselves back up.
    We stood, still gaping, as they swung out of sight and the helicopter flew away.
    It was Sofia who finally voiced what we were all thinking: “That was an awfully high jump for a human.”
    I narrowed my eyes on the disappearing aircraft. Something is going on with these hunters.

Victoria
    T his mission had certainly gotten eventful quickly.
    After the bomb went off, Kyle and I were left scrambling to steady the submarine. Once Kyle could manage by himself, I raced to the hatch to see Uncle Derek yelling at three hunters.
    Once they left in their chopper, the rest of us retreated into the sub. We headed toward the chamber of the submarine we kept especially reserved for injured humans found on excursions. I wasn’t sure when the tradition had begun, but whenever we found wounded humans we tended to take them to The Shade to nurse them back to health before returning them to their own world.
    Witches were already milling about attending them, and the rest of us assisted wherever we could. The state of these men was truly appalling. I wondered what on earth had happened to them, what they’d actually found on that ship. But I didn’t want to distract anyone by asking questions at a time like this. Once we felt we’d done all we could for the humans, at least until we returned to our island, Grace, Arwen, Brock, Heath and I retreated to a corner.
    “What happened to these men?” I asked.
    “Ogres,” Grace said grimly.
    “Now, dead ogres,” Brock added, retrieving a tissue from his pocket and wiping his singed forehead.
    “We got caught in the blaze,” Arwen explained, as she caught me observing his skin—and now I realized her skin was singed too. Her skin tone just made it harder to notice. “If we weren’t witches,” she said, “we would have been burned alive along with the rest.”
    I shuddered at the thought.
    Then Uncle Derek steamed into the room, along with Ben and my father and mother—all of them looking disturbed and angry as they looked around at the humans.
    I went to my parents. “What now?” I asked them.
    It was Derek who answered: “We return to The Shade.”

Grace
    T