November 15 | Friday | Black Forest
BLAKE
The scent of blood assaulted his nostrils.
Crimson on white encircled the body of the dark-haired girl.
She definitely hadn’t been killed here. There would have been more blood, though even this amount was enough to distract him.
The sight was grim, repulsive in its cruelty, yet he couldn’t look away.
How strange it was to think that centuries ago, a similar sight wouldn’t have stirred much emotion among his ancestors. Another dead human. Another victim.
Abigail let go of the girl’s wrist. Her eyes, which had filmed over with white a moment before, returned to normal.
“Well?” Blake asked, watching her intently.
“Terror and pain,” Abigail whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. “That’s all I could feel.”
“That wasn’t very helpful,” Liam assessed.
Blake shot him an irritated look.
“More helpful than your comment.”
“I don’t know about that. I could have told you that the victim of some maniac felt terror and pain before she died.”
“If we’d found her sooner, I would’ve been able to read more,” Abigail said.
Blake shifted, uneasy. Something was constantly distracting him, and it wasn’t just the blood.
“Did he really leave?” he asked skeptically, his eyes narrowing.
“He? And which nameless individual might you be referring to?” Liam quipped.
Blake gave him a withering look.
“Will,” he muttered curtly. “Is he gone or not?”
“He’s gone. I can’t smell him.”
“You never could. Not the way I do,” Blake stated with a hint of annoyance, though he knew Liam wasn’t to blame.
Both werewolves and vampires had extraordinarily sensitive senses, but they were attuned to different things.
He was surprised, however, that Liam hadn’t noticed that Morgan didn’t smell…
human. “Besides, it’s not just the scent, which I can’t pick up now, but this…
energy,” he explained cautiously, not quite sure what to call it.
He had never experienced anything like it before.
“I feel it when he’s near. And I still do,” he muttered, frowning and looking around. “Like something is still here.”
“Whoa,” Liam snorted. “If we’re getting into energies, shit’s getting weird. Let’s clean this up and get out of here.”
Blake scowled. He didn’t like being dismissed.
“I know what you mean,” Abigail said quietly. “I feel it, too.”
So he wasn’t wrong. He pictured Morgan’s face in his mind, then whispered to himself:
“What are you?”