Ley lunged forward towards fake Sebastian's direction and he evaded unsurprisingly. He backed out from her while keeping an eye towards Landon too. She quickly threw a chair on his direction to impede his escape path but he dodged and ran straight towards the door. He was about to clear it when Landon blocked the way out of nowhere and grabbed his neck effortlessly.
Landon looked inhuman with the thin fur stripes lining his skin and the sharp protruding fangs out of his mouth. The fake slowly turned blue as Landon choked him while letting out deafening roars in his face. Ley almost stopped him from choking the hell out of their captive but Landon soon switched gears.
"Who sent you here?!" Landon bellowed with most of the words coming out as growls.
However, the fake didn't seem affected with whatever Landon was doing. His eyes turned glassy while his mouth drew into an eerie smile.
"What did you do to Sebastian?!"
Fake Sebastian finally looked at Landon with gloat on his face then strugglingly said, "T-the n-n-new era h-has come."
It can't be . . .
Ley felt like she was hit by lightning when she heard the spoken words. Her mind can't seem to accept the facts in front of her. The scene was so familiar that she wasn't even surprised at the next thing that happened. She dully watched as blood trickled down the fake's mouth. Again. They are left with just another dead body.
The caster was dead and the magic lost its hold. It's real visage was slowly revealed. Emaciated skin and bones greeted them. It was like the body was already rotting away even while alive. Landon, back to normal once again, settled the body on the table with a grave expression.
Ley approached the table to take a look at the body and asked, "Can I ask Sera to try and identify the body and see if it's someone she knows?"
"I'll leave that to you then. I need to organize a team and track . . ." Landon trailed off when the door roughly opened and Sebastian staggered in with his clothes bloodstained and tattered. Landon immediately helped and propped him up on a chair. Ley leaned on the table as she waited for Sebastian to catch his breath.
"Around 5 shifters ambushed me when I caught up to the guy I was chasing. They activated a magic device that I haven't seen before. After that, I suddenly couldn't move my body at all. I panicked and tried to shift which gave me a split second of control. I immediately attacked the one holding the device and their formation broke because they were surprised that I could move and they were clearly protective of their device. My wolf took advantage of that fact and rampaged until I could escape." Sebastian slowly recalled the events.
"Do you remember the appearance of the device?" Ley interjected, getting as much information as possible.
"Not that much since I only caught a glimpse of it but I remember it was just hand-sized and circular. It looks like they've been improving it too compared to the first time they used it," Sebastian said.
Ley raised her eyebrows at what she heard and asked, "What do you mean the first time?"
Sebastian looked at Landon in silent inquiry.
"This is already the second time they used that. The first time was when we were gunned down in the car. Silas and Ara was attacked badly because of that when they intercepted the humans. From what we're told, it just slowed them down at that time," Landon explained.
"Did you already do an investigation on it?"
Sebastian shook his and muttered, "We already did but it lead us nowhere."
"Including Warped Alley?" Ley asked in doubt.
"Especially that place," Sebastian firmly replied.
Landon gave her a document containing a list of engraver profiles. She flipped through the pages and found someone missing from it. A quite powerful one at that. She placed the document back to the table and looked at the two.
"Someone's missing from it," she told.
"That's not possible," Landon refuted, clearly proud with their information gathering.
If it was about other subjects, Ley wouldn't challenge them however this was about her line of work. They wouldn't be much more informative than someone who was in the business itself. Besides, most engravers are a bunch of shady and arrogant people. They were a professional at hiding since selling magically engraved objects that harm other people gets them lots of enemies. They may not be the one who used them but they get hunted down nonetheless for information on who bought them like in this situation.
"Believe what you want. I'll check Warped Alley myself," Ley shrugged after saying her piece.
"You have an invitation?"
She flashed a smirk in Landon's direction and uttered, "I have my ways."
"Good. I'll go with you then," he stated.
Ley felt like she had just shot herself in the foot. She didn't want to spend time alone with landon more than necessary. "No way besides don't you have one?" she expressed her refusal.
"No. We just hired a guide. I'd like to see your information first-hand and I believe that we agreed to cooperate. Didn't we?," Landon drawled with emphasis on a particular word.
Ley couldn't find a logical reason to refuse so she just nodded reluctantly to his satisfaction.
"Sera will go here later and check the body," she reminded before hightailing it out of there without waiting for Landon to get another word.
Ley whipped out her phone once she was out of Landon's base, away from any sharp hearing range, and dialled a number.
"Look who actually called me," a playful male voice rang out from her phone. Ley rolled her eyes at what she heard.
"Are you busy?" she inquired as she heard shuffling of papers from the other side.
"Not really. I'm just loafing around actually," he enthusiastically replied but a loud cough from his background noise seemed to counter his words.
"You sure? I need a favor actually," she continued.
Silence reigned for a few seconds when he suddenly let out a loud laugh then said, "I should celebrate. I didn't think that you of all people would ask me for a favor when you never asked me for help."
"I need serious help this time," Ley's voice leaked out a bit of the helplessness she's feeling