Free A Shade of Vampire 27: A Web of Lies by Bella Forrest

previous transformation.
    “It is I, Brucella Lea Northstone. You may not know who I am, but Loira does. Please inform her of my arrival. It is a matter of urgency.”
    “What is the urgency?” the man asked.
    “That is the business of Loira and myself,” I replied, irritated. “Please, fetch her.”
    The man went silent and stopped responding to my calls after that. I could only hope that he had vanished and gone to seek out the witch.
    It was possible of course that Loira didn’t even live here anymore—perhaps she had even died. Although she had not appeared to be a particularly elderly witch, so I didn’t see why she shouldn’t still be alive and living peacefully in her homeland.
    Thankfully, I wasn’t left long to my own speculation. Loira manifested before me on the beach, wearing a long brown dress with sharply padded shoulders. She looked much the same as she had all those years ago. Her limp blonde hair accentuated the roundness of her skull, and was tucked behind ears that were slightly too large for her face. She appeared thinner now, however, and with a few more lines around her mouth.
    She appeared quite speechless to see me. And I didn’t blame her. After the last time we’d seen each other, there was no reason for her to think that we would ever meet again.
    “Brucella?” she asked, disbelieving. She strode toward me and stopped a couple of feet away. “What in heaven’s name brings you here?”
    I heaved a sigh. “Believe me when I say, Loira, that I would rather be anywhere but here. I have come out of sheer necessity… I need your help again.”
    She frowned. “More trouble?”
    A different kind of trouble… I steeled myself for her reaction to what I was about to say. I knew that she would think I had gone insane, just as my husband had accused me of.
    “Loira, I need you to help me unleash the Mortclaws.”
    The witch’s entire face scrunched in confusion. “What?” she breathed. She seemed to genuinely think that she had misheard.
    “The Mortclaws,” I repeated, “whom you banished to Murther Island all those years ago… Now, I need you to free them.”
    “Have you lost your mind, Brucella?” Loira exclaimed. “How could you request such a thing?”
    I exhaled in frustration. “I have not lost my mind, witch,” I replied, trying to reel in my temper. I couldn’t afford to snap with this woman. “I need the Mortclaws to help me fulfill a very specific task.”
    “What task?”
    I shook my head. “I have neither the time nor inclination to explain it all,” I said wearily, though, truth be told, it wasn’t all that complicated. It was rather simple. But like my husband, I simply didn’t think she would understand my motives. “But as one of the leaders of The Woodlands who commissioned you to lock them up in the first place, trust me when I say that I have considered the matter deeply… We require them to solve a problem in our land—as strange as it may sound, it’s something only they can help us with,” I lied, just for good measure. Releasing the Mortclaws would be no skin off her or her fellow witches’ noses, anyway. When the Mortclaws had been rampant before, they had terrorized primarily werewolves.
    Still, Loira gaped at me. There was a long span of silence until she finally seemed to realize that I was deadly serious about my request, and this wasn’t some kind of joke.
    “Well,” she murmured, “if you are so bent on this, then why do you need my help, exactly? You know where the key is. Surely you have not forgotten the location of the island, either.”
    “I recall the location of the key, but it has been many years,” I confessed. “I do not remember the route to the island well. I would find it eventually, I am sure, but it would take time. Besides, you know better than me how perilous the journey by boat is to that part of our world…”
    Loira swallowed hard, wetting her lower lip with her tongue. “Very well. I can transport you