We still need man-things!

Chapter Thirty Four

Thanks to Mother Miranda's hyperbaric medicine, the sisters still survived. After this hard and painful night had passed, it became clear that their lives weren't in danger anymore. Even when they were still unconscious and completely petrified, doctors recognized a few changes in their appearance and believed that, despite their massive cold-contact injury, their bodies had entered their first stage of recovery.

Very slowly during the day, the healing salve began doing its job by supplying the skin with nutrients and reversing at least some of the damage. Nobody really knew the true outcome, however, but the fact that the black spider web-like fractures running their bodies had started to fade gave a lot of hope that Bela, Daniela, and Cassandra would eventually come out of coma and live their lives just like before.

As a loving mother, Lady Dimitrescu wanted to be as close to her darlings as she could. Having regained a lot of hope that she had lost during the night, she allowed Ingrid to take her position in the castle for today and kept in touch with her by phone, giving her tasks and instructions about daily chores and how to behave if Linda somehow made her appearance.

Her orders for this were quite simple: the evil girl is for shoot and kill, even when she actually preferred hanging and disembowelment. The risks were too great for catching her alive, so all of her maids had to arm themselves with pistols she kept hidden in the merchant's room and be ready to open the fire if she even showed her face again.

Mother Miranda, however, didn't believe this would ever happen and thought that Linda's motive was revenge for another girl who was sent to the cellar in the last year. She organized a large-scale manhunt in the early morning as guards who had been looking for her for the entire night had failed to find any evidence about her hiding spots.

Everyone over the age of 17 had to make up 8–10-person groups and start searching different places all over the region. With quarantine suddenly over, the villagers were all happy to meet with their friends and neighbors, even in the middle of that dangerous mission. What was strange, however, was that none of them started speaking of or mourning the 15 people who must have gone missing, according to the diary stolen by Mike. In the morning radio broadcast about far worse danger than disease, peasants were informed that only two outsiders, a young man and a woman, had died during the lockdown. And even their direct cause of death wasn't the outbreak itself, but exposure to the cold after they had escaped from the clinic while under treatment.

If Mike had heard this broadcast, he would certainly have thought that she was lying, but the truly happy villagers and their gratitude towards the leader for saving everyone with no local casualties seemed to prove that she either didn't actually sacrifice people to experiments or was forced to abandon this plan after the book was stolen from her lab.

Whatever the real case, the people loved Mother Miranda more than ever before and obeyed her without any argument. Even Alcina's maids, who were initially ordered to patrol in the castle, wished to join the operation and asked permission about helping their brothers with guns. Lady Dimitrescu allowed them to make up their own group and head to the nearby mountain, where a large abandoned farmhouse and its surroundings had to be searched. Only the headmaid and three volunteers had a strict order to not leave the building and make sure that nobody would be able to get inside.

Mike was also ordered to remain in place. Even if it were possible, he couldn't disappear without saying goodbye to Bela, Daniela, and Cassandra. Then night was a complete disaster for him too, but after hearing about girls improvement and that they would very likely recover, he wasn't depressed anymore. He was angry and constantly thought about what Linda's next step could be if this manhunt failed and how she might be connected to Snowrider's attack on the castle. He truly wanted to take part in that hunt, especially after sunset because of his night vision ability, but how could he do this without facing Miranda? It was something he couldn't imagine.