Tasting

385–Weeping Guardians

Nora:

Throughout dinner, Clara kept suggesting we stay longer. Each time she made that suggestion, she’d glance at me and smirk secretly. She seemed to be enjoying my irritation as I glared back at her. After dinner ended, I didn’t stick around and headed straight for my room.

I was so exhausted that the moment I lay down, I fell asleep. The bed and the pillows somehow felt incredibly comfortable. I thought I wouldn’t be able to rest here again, but I guess I was wrong.

I woke up to gentle knocking on my door. It was a maid who had brought me the file I had requested from the brothers the day before.

While brushing my teeth, I skimmed through the pages, and sure enough, the whole fog situation was back. In fact, this time, it was pretty bad. Many people had lost their lives and loved ones.

I got dressed quickly after my shower, throwing on blue jeans and a black top. If I was not mistaken, these were the same fog people Silas had mentioned when he talked about visiting Brody’s pack. Did that mean the fog people weren’t restricted to just one place?

Leaving my room, I found Nash and Silas at the breakfast table. It was still early, so I knew the others were probably still resting.

I reached the garden, wondering why they were eating outside so often, and slammed the file on the table before settling in comfortably, leaning back. I grabbed a sandwich from the plate and started eating while continuing to read the file.

T

“Morning,” Nash greetcu, Temmums

“Oh, morning!” I corrected myself, raising my head briefly before tapping my finger on the file. “So, according to this-” I paused to take a bite, “these fog people don’t have a pattern or a proper name?”

I watched them stare at me, their fingers tapping on the table and feet tapping on the ground.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“What’s up with you? You’re not acting like yourself. It would have been believable if you’d shown anger towards us. But you’ve shown nothing,” Nash complained, causing me to tilt my head.

“You want me to be angry?” I questioned, raising an eyebrow.

The way the two of them were examining me felt odd. It was as if they were certain something was wrong with me.

“Anyways, tell me what the progress is. Here in the file, it says there was a witness to the fog people?” I asked, diverting their attention back to the file in my hand.

Nash had his eyes glued to me before he shook his head and returned to reality, while Silas continued to watch me, not paying much attention to the task at hand.

“More like a survivor,” Nash corrected me.

“Umm, how so?” I was intrigued.

I remembered that the last time this happened, people ended up dying, but I still didn’t understand exactly how it occurred.

“As for not having a name, there is one. We just didn’t want to inform the

385 Weeping Guardians

pack members about it. We didn’t want them to freak out over a name for this monster,” Silas adjusted himself in his seat, leaning over the table to point to the next page where a picture of a young boy was taped, along with information about him.

“You have a name for it?” I asked, and the brothers nodded in unison.

“Ever heard of ‘weeping angels‘?” he asked. “It’s like that. They only move when you’re not watching them. When you look away, they move so fast. that you regret taking your eyes off them. But they don’t just reach you like that. You need to be alone, and the places where they used to be found are now gone. However, I’ve heard they’re attracted to a certain type of person,” he explained, and I began to wonder about what I had

seen.

I recalled the day I had come face to face with them. I’d look away, and when I looked back, they had gotten closer.

“We call them ‘weeping guardians,” Nash added.

“Hmm, Robert Mitch. Let’s go pay him a visit at school, then.” I checked the details on the witness, the guy they were calling a survivor. He must have some insight into what happened to him and how he became a survivor when I thought it would be that easy to escape them.

“Sure,” Nash agreed with the plan.

“But tell me again, how did he survive? And what happens when they finally get someone?” I was still in the dark, needing full information before we embarked on this mission together.

“You have to stay alone for them to come and attack you. Once they approach you, they kill you. I’m not sure how, but dead bodies turn up, all blue and cold,” Silas explained, and I nodded in understanding.