Chapter 99: The Guard’s Mission

Red and black figures departed side by side, disappearing deeper into the night.

Alec lightly nudged Jane's arm, trying to comfort her. "The sooner we finish investigating the Moroccan coven, the sooner we can go help Caius."

Jane reluctantly tore her gaze away and took her brother's hand as they headed in the opposite direction. Losing control of a situation left a bitter taste in her mouth, and tonight alone she had already experienced that feeling twice. A violent urge to destroy everything surged inside her, battering against the iron discipline that normally kept her emotions restrained.

Alec tightened his grip on Jane's hand and quickened his pace.

The three of them followed Demetri closely, entrusting all navigation to the Volturi's finest tracker. William's disappearance had occurred at a fixed location, unlike prey that constantly moved to evade pursuit, making this task comparatively straightforward. Demetri himself was incredibly fast, but he deliberately maintained a pace slow enough for Felix, the least agile among them, to keep up without difficulty.

The journey stretched on in monotonous silence. The only sounds were boots crushing damp earth and branches brushing against their cloaks as they wove through the forest. Without warning, Jane broke the quiet. "Did the Guard ever give Vera a nickname?"

Vera was the guard who had led Jane to Sophie earlier that evening. Before they parted, Sophie had affectionately called her "Butterfly."

The Volturi Guard maintained a strict hierarchy. The higher one's rank, the greater one's freedom, while ordinary guards lived under the harshest discipline. They rarely joked with one another, much less invented playful nicknames.

Both Felix and Alec admitted they had never heard anything like that.

"Vera..." Demetri spoke from the front without slowing his pace, though he had been quietly observing the other three the entire time. Compared to them, he knew a little more about her. After genuinely considering Jane's question, he answered openly, "The mark I see through my tracking gift resembles the shape of a butterfly."

"A mark?" Jane asked, puzzled.

"The imprint my tracking ability detects," Demetri explained. After a brief silence, however, something suddenly occurred to him. His movements stiffened ever so slightly before he glanced back at Jane. "Jane... how did you know what her mark looked like?"

"Sophie told me," Jane replied thoughtfully. "She called Vera 'Butterfly.' So it wasn't really a nickname after all."

Everyone present could clearly see how deeply Jane cared about Sophie. At the same time, they all knew Aro would never permit someone mediocre to remain at his side.

With a grin, Felix joked, "If Sophie happened to possess two supernatural gifts, maybe Aro would change his mind and keep her after all."

Demetri played along with a theatrical sigh. "Does that mean my position would be in danger?"

"Focus on leading the way!" Alec snapped after narrowly avoiding a fallen tree blocking the path.

The joke was quickly forgotten. After all, no vampire had ever possessed two gifts simultaneously. Jane alone treated the possibility seriously, and she desperately wished it were true.

During the entire month before this, Sophie had seemed utterly ordinary. Aside from her surprisingly capable close combat skills, nothing about her had stood out. Yet it was only today, the very day she left Volterra's palace, that Jane had begun noticing subtle inconsistencies.

Jane could not help but wonder if Sophie had deliberately concealed her true gift all this time, only revealing flaws in her deception after losing her memories. 

But what possible benefit would that bring? Surely she hadn't hoped to be exiled by the Volturi.

Once this mission ended and they returned to Volterra, Jane resolved to find out exactly what kind of supernatural gift Sophie truly possessed.

….

By the time Caius and Sophie arrived in Dusetos, the small Lithuanian border town had already been informed of its mysterious distinguished guests. Every obstacle had been quietly removed before their arrival.

Aro delighted in manipulating the world through power and influence.

With him remaining at the Volturi's headquarters, those sent on missions never needed to worry about external complications. Aro swept away every inconvenience behind the scenes so the others could focus solely on completing their assignments.

Although Caius often looked down on the countless hours Aro spent smiling politely and socializing with what he dismissively referred to as "food," he could not deny the effectiveness of those methods. Whether it had been controlling the Roman Senate three thousand years ago or infiltrating modern governments three thousand years later, one truth had never changed. Power was eternally seductive, and infinitely useful.

Two centuries earlier, the werewolves' settlement had stood far from any bustling town, surrounded only by a handful of native households clustered into a tiny village. Every one of those local residents had already been relocated by the authorities under various convenient pretexts.

That made Caius and Sophie' task considerably easier. They no longer had to worry about concealing their movements from human eyes.

"Does Aro always handle things this... dramatically?" Sophie clicked her tongue as she looked at the deserted streets and abandoned courtyards with their gates standing wide open.

"Not exactly."

Caius still remembered what this little town had looked like two hundred years ago.

Compared to major cities like London or Paris, Dusetos had never been particularly prosperous. Even so, two centuries had transformed it beyond recognition. Its streets, buildings, and layout bore little resemblance to the place he once knew.

After confirming the direction of their destination from several hundred meters away, Caius grabbed Sophie by the back of her robe. "Time to get to work."

Sophie hurried after him. "We're looking for werewolves?"

With his towering frame, Caius covered an enormous distance with every stride, forcing Sophie to take two steps for each one of his. Fortunately, her newborn vampire body was strong enough to keep pace. Had it been another ordinary guard, they would probably have already earned a harsh lecture for moving too slowly.

"Every werewolf in Europe was exterminated two hundred years ago!" Caius declared with unwavering confidence in the thoroughness of his purge. "I've considered every possibility. The only explanation is that after I left, another pup was born. The overwhelming scent of humans masked the newborn's smell, allowing it to slip through the cracks."

In other words, they needed to identify the woman who had given birth to that werewolf two centuries ago.

Obviously, they could not travel back in time.

Which left only one possible method.

Sophie hesitated before asking carefully, "We're... not about to start digging up graves, are we?"

To her horror, Caius' perpetually gloomy eyes filled with unmistakable approval. For the first time since meeting her, he praised her sincerely.

"What an excellent idea."

"So... where were you planning to search before I said that?" Sophie asked weakly, desperately wishing she could take those words back.

Unfortunately, it was already too late.

Caius had already changed directions.

He genuinely believed her suggestion was brilliant.

They were actually heading for the cemetery.

"I was originally planning to search the old battlefield from two centuries ago," Caius explained. "I destroyed their entire den back then. If that woman ever lived there, she must have left behind some trace."

Sophie silently felt relieved for that unknown woman. Somehow, she had escaped Caius' massacre all those years ago.

Unlike Aro, who meticulously recorded every glorious achievement, Caius had spent centuries marching from battlefield to battlefield with little interest in preserving detailed records. He could no longer remember the precise year of his extermination campaign, only that it had occurred "about two hundred years ago."

Fortunately, Dusetos' cemetery had always remained on the outskirts of town. It had never been relocated throughout the centuries.

Combined with the region's sparse population, the number of graves was thankfully manageable.

After roughly identifying which graves dated back two centuries, Sophie and Caius exchanged uneasy glances.

"I order you," Caius declared with all the authority of a Volturi leader. Pointing from one end of the burial grounds to the other, he continued, "Dig up every grave from here... to there."

Sophie' eyes widened in disbelief. "Caius!"

"Have a little empathy! You hate digging up graves, so what makes you think I, a young woman, would enjoy doing it?"

Accustomed to unquestioned obedience, Caius' expression darkened immediately. "What exactly are you dissatisfied with? Carry out your mission. That is an order!"

A properly trained Volturi guard would have obeyed without the slightest hesitation, never forcing Caius to waste his breath.

Unfortunately for him, the one standing before him was a newborn who had yet to receive proper discipline and was by far the least obedient recruit imaginable.

Sophie' gaze quietly drifted toward another path.

In the next instant, Caius flashed to her side, expertly seizing the back of her neck. His voice carried unmistakable menace.

"If you dare run away, the Volturi will hunt you to the ends of the earth."

Faced with Caius' overwhelming intimidation, Sophie could only resign herself to her fate. Beneath her cloak, the Volturi crest still hung against her chest. Every vampire in the world recognized that emblem. If the Volturi declared someone wanted, there was nowhere left to hide.

As one final act of resistance, Sophie stubbornly raised a condition.

"At the very least, we need to find a shovel first. I absolutely refuse to dig through a graveyard with my bare hands."