Chapter 209 - The Truth of Shadyside
"Why is he so weak!?" Luke thought with a confused expression as he realized that Armand had lost consciousness.
The place fell silent once more, with only the sounds of the forest at night filling the air. Lauren and Elias stared in shock—what they had believed to be a normie had defeated their familiar with a single blow.
'So this is a psychic?' Lauren and Elias thought, their eyes fixed on Tuesday. It was the first time they had ever seen a psychic. Moreover, they also noticed that she had two auras, something they had read was even rarer.
Luke looked down at Armand with a rather disappointed expression. He hadn't expected the vampire to be unable to withstand even a single blow from him, nor to be completely helpless against his telekinetic strength.
'They must be the youngest of the secondary branch...' Luke thought, shaking his head. If he wanted an exciting fight, he would have to face the family leader of this branch.
Luke turned his head toward Lauren and Elias, who instinctively took a step back, their foreheads covered in sweat.
Elias swallowed hard as he felt Tuesday's sky-colored eyes fixate on him. Before, he hadn't understood how this girl could be so arrogant, but now he was beginning to understand.
Luke made a small motion with his hand. He directed his telekinetic force toward the two teenagers, and in an instant, they stopped moving, completely immobilized.
'What the hell!?' Elias thought, shocked as he struggled to break free from the invisible force restraining him, but no matter how much he tried, he couldn't escape.
'Why can't I break free!?' Lauren thought, equally astonished. Her feet lifted off the ground, and she, along with Elias, began floating toward Luke.
'My strength—over two tons—it's useless?' Elias thought, panic setting in. The chance of survival seemed to be zero. Their enemy didn't even need to exert himself to have them at his mercy—and he hadn't even used his blue aura.
Luke applied pressure on Elias and Lauren, forcing them to kneel close to him.
"Your mother should know you're a vampire, but she's a normie. How did she hide that from me when I read her memories?" Luke asked.
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He didn't have much time before more vampires arrived—he needed to get the information as quickly as possible while also clearing up some doubts.
Digging through Elias's memories would take too long, and it was likely that his mind was protected, just as his mother's memories had been.
"You read my mother's memories!?" Elias asked in shock.
Luke didn't respond. Instead, Elias felt one of the fingers on his right hand twist into an unnatural position, sending a sharp wave of pain through him.
"Answer my question if you don't want a painful death. I already know that your branch of the clan is kidnapping normies to drink their blood. If this comes to light, the main branch of the Drosia clan will kill all of you," Luke said in a cold, impatient tone.
"So if you want to live and don't want me to tell the other vampires of the Drosia clan what you're doing here, answer my questions," he added.
"Will you really let us live and not expose us?" Lauren asked in a trembling voice as she looked into Luke's eyes. She knew he wouldn't hesitate to kill them if they didn't cooperate.
"I keep my word. I don't care if you're kidnapping a few normies and using them as food. Now, answer or..." Luke said, raising his hand toward Lauren.
If Elias refused to talk, he would torture his cousin to make him comply.
"Alright, we'll talk!" Elias blurted out quickly. He didn't want Tuesday to torture and kill his cousin before making him suffer the same fate.
"Good. Be quick—I have limited time," Luke said, lowering his hand.
"You couldn't figure out that my mother had a half-blood son because of an artifact my grandfather created... It acts as a mental veil that blocks psychic intrusions. It passively encrypts specific or important memories, so when you entered her mind, you didn't notice any resistance and assumed she was just a regular normie," Elias explained.
'An artifact...' Luke thought, his lips curling slightly in annoyance. He was still inexperienced in reading memories, which was why he hadn't realized it. He simply hadn't been able to train this ability much.
"Does this artifact have another function? Like making the normies of Shadyside unaware of how strange it is that so many people are disappearing from their town?" Luke asked.
Elias nodded and began to explain briefly.
The interrogation continued for about ten minutes. Luke wanted to clear up some doubts about what was happening in Shadyside and how these vampires had managed to hide everything so perfectly. If it weren't for Wednesday's visions, it would have taken him much longer to find out that vampires were behind all of this.
The artifact, besides acting as a mental veil to protect normies with important information—like Elias's mother—could also be used on a wide scale to make all the normies in Shadyside believe that people were leaving the town simply because they found it boring.
However, it wasn't 100% effective, as seen in the case of Violet, who noticed that something was wrong.
For this reason, Elias's grandfather had sent the discriminated branch of the family to Shadyside to handle the cover-ups in case anything went wrong and to take care of the entire process of making normies disappear and sending them to the main family.
This discriminated branch consisted of only four people: Elias and his mother, and Lauren and her father—two normies and two outcasts.
The secondary branch of the Drosia Clan was composed of eight pureblood vampires, two hybrids, and two normies.
At the head of the clan were Elias's grandparents: Niklaus and Elena.
They had three children—two sons and a daughter. The eldest son married a female vampire and had three children: Rosalie, Armand, and Alex—two of whom had already been defeated by Luke.
The second son didn't have any pureblood vampire offspring. He had a brief affair with a normie woman from Shadyside, resulting in Elias—a half-normie, half-vampire hybrid who inherited vampire genes.
The third daughter also had no pureblood vampire children. She had an affair with a normie man from Shadyside, leading to the birth of Lauren, Elias's hybrid cousin.
Because they were hybrids, Elias and Lauren were despised by their pureblood cousins and the rest of the family. The same applied to Elias's mother and Lauren's father. That's why these four were sent to Shadyside—to monitor the town and send normies to the main clan whenever needed, ensuring that nothing went wrong.
Elias's vampire father was still alive, but Lauren's mother had disappeared the day she was born and was never seen again.
This meant that Luke, Wednesday, and Natasha would only have to face four real enemies: Elias's grandparents, Niklaus and Elena, his father, and his uncle.
As for Elias, Lauren, Rosalie, and the other two, Luke didn't see them as threats. He had already defeated four of them, and the lanky one had only escaped thanks to a teleportation device.
'It will be much less dangerous than I thought,' Luke thought with both relief and disappointment. The secondary branch of this vampire clan was weaker than he had initially thought.
Knowing how many enemies he might face, Luke moved on to the most important part of the interrogation.
"Did something important happen sixteen years ago? Whether in Shadyside, Sunnyvale, or the woods between the two towns?" Luke asked, slightly crouching to be at Elias's level. Elias trembled slightly, feeling Luke so close.
Elias was over 20 years old, though he was in 11th grade, because vampires have much longer lifespans. At 20 years old, they're still considered adolescents.
Since he, along with his mother, uncle, and cousin, handled the cover-ups for all the criminal or suspicious events, he should be aware of his parents' arrival 16 years ago and the Spellmans.
"Sixteen years..." Elias and Lauren repeated in unison. Luke knew from their reactions that something had happened.
"What happened? Speak," Luke said, raising his hand slightly, pointing toward Lauren.
"Hey, hey, wait! I'll tell you!" Elias quickly replied.
"Sixteen years ago, there was a big incident at the Nightwing camp. It was a camp located in the woods between Shadyside and Sunnyvale, near Alum Creek Lake," Elias added, trying to determine if this information was useful for Tuesday.
'Bingo,' Luke thought.
"What incident?" Luke asked.
"More than fifteen teenage campers died in a fire caused... by a psychic battle. They died in the crossfire. That's all I know. My mother, my uncle, and Lauren had to make sure all the normies believed it was just a regular fire, and little by little, we made them forget about the incident," Elias answered, looking at Tuesday with some suspicion.
It was obvious that the psychic in front of him was connected to the psychics who fought at the camp.
'The evidence is hidden at the camp,' Luke thought with a slight smile. He finally knew the location.
It was clear that his parents, who had had a slight advantage in escaping from the Spellmans, lost time hiding the evidence at the camp.
"What happened to the camp? I've been here for more than a month and haven't heard anything about it," Luke said. Natasha and Wednesday had searched for hidden information but found nothing.
"The year after the fire, at the same camp, a boy killed his girlfriend and then committed suicide. They closed the camp again that summer, but the next year they reopened it, and another tragedy occurred. A group of three friends drowned in the lake, all three died. This tragedy was the last nail in the coffin, and the camp was permanently closed," Elias responded.
"Mm... Did you also make everyone forget about that with the artifact?" Luke asked, and Elias nodded.
"Yes, my grandfather wanted to keep both towns normal and without any major incidents, since it would be very dangerous if they found out what they're doing here," Elias said. If any vampire from a major clan were reported, they would kill everyone for breaking the rule of drinking normie blood, especially doing it systematically for so many years.
'That artifact seems a bit broken,' Luke thought.
In Jericho, they changed the image of Crackstone after hundreds of years of hiding the true story and spreading false propaganda about him. Here, though, they managed to make all the inhabitants of Shadyside and Sunnyvale completely forget about an incident that happened 16 years ago, an incident where several people died.
"Tell me the exact location of the camp," Luke said, and Elias answered honestly, without lying. He didn't care much about what Luke was looking for, as long as they weren't killed, he would cooperate.
'Alright, let's go,' Luke thought, as his feet began to lift off the ground. Elias, Lauren, Rosalie, and Armand also started to fly.
Then, Luke began to fly at high speed, though not at maximum, heading toward the Nightwing camp.
'Is she taking us with her too!?' Elias thought, seeing how he was more than twenty meters off the ground, flying at great speed.
'Let's cooperate. We can't defeat her, let alone escape,' Lauren said, looking at Elias, who heard her voice as a whisper in his head.
'I know... I don't want to die,' Elias said to Lauren. His pureblood cousins were weak against Tuesday. Now, she was flying, carrying four people. Her strength was too uneven; they couldn't win no matter how much the four of them fought against her.
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