Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Xander
What have I done to deserve Noah?
Noah, the ray of sunshine in my gloomy house, who hums to himself when he thinks I can't hear him. Who writes romance novels at odd hours of the night, and who has taken all of this new knowledge in stride.
We had spoken well into the early hours of the morning until the first rays of sunshine crept through the windows.
Noah had fought off each wave of tiredness as it came, but when the world began to wake up, his words became slurred, and his beautiful green eyes drooped before his head was in my lap, and his lips parted as he slept soundly.
I didn’t dare to move, let alone breathe.
My fingers trailed across his scalp, brushing his soft locks as he slumbered.
I took every second to map each freckle on his face.
The soft curve of his cheekbones and the angle of his jaw.
He was a delight and I couldn't take my eyes away from him. It wasn’t until midday, when his lashes fluttered across his cheeks, that he came back to me, smiling shyly when he found himself nestled on my thighs.
The blush that crept up his neck nearly had me groaning, my fangs aching in my gums with the need to sink them into his pink-tinted skin.
I’m so caught in my own thoughts that I nearly miss the speck of sour in the wind.
The forest is quiet today as I do my usual patrol of the town's boundary. An afternoon rain has set in, mixing the thousands of scents around me into a ball of chaos. Yet as the gentle breeze passes across the water-soaked forest, I catch a hint of something… peculiar.
For a moment, I wonder if the pine, damp earth, and moss are blending together and playing tricks on me, but my nose knows better. After a beat, I follow the scent. Winding between trees and overflowing streams, I track the smell.
It's still faint compared to the overbearing scents of the forest, but I've had decades of tracking practice. The rain continues to fall in heavy welts as the sun grows old above me and the shadows of the trees chase me the deeper I go.
Mile after mile, the scent grows stronger until I can taste it.
Like battery acid and pepper spray, my body reacts to it as if it were poison.
The forest is far darker as I climb into a gully, shrouded with vegetation, but something in the back of my mind is telling me to find whatever this scent is.
The smell becomes almost unbearable as I pass a boulder and step into the shade of a cave. The earthy aroma of the rain doesn’t even make it down here; instead, I'm bombarded with whatever this putrid odor is.
Like rotten eggs and maggots. I grit my teeth and keep my mouth closed as I step into the mouth of the tunnel. The air grows stagnant, and the scent is insufferable as I make out a small form sitting on the dusty floor.
At first, they look almost normal—legs crossed, hands resting calmly in their lap. Then I see their neck, twisted at such an unnatural angle that my heart lodges in my throat. As if they’re looking over their shoulder… only no neck should bend that far.
I check over my shoulder, but the forest is just as deserted as it always is.
Lifting my shirt to cover my nose, trying to avoid the stench, I carefully step up to the figure.
It’s not uncommon for witches to come out here and practice their magic, but this is something else.
Something so unnatural, out of place. With a galloping heart, I survey the figure, making out their features beneath their ashen skin.
She’s young. Maybe a student from the college. With youth still in her sightless eyes, she stares vacantly up at the ceiling, her mouth agape in a silent scream.
The forest beyond the cave howls as the wind picks up and the sun sinks behind the mountains, casting me into darkness.
With the revolting smell now clinging to the inside of my lungs, I'm sure it will take weeks before I can clear it from the back of my throat.
Something happened to this girl. Something that’s wiped every trace of her existence. I can’t even pick up her scent or whether she has magic in her veins. As if she's an empty husk. Her soul completely sucked dry and left with this stench to fill its place.
A shiver scurries across the back of my neck, and I tense.
How long has she been here? Days? Weeks?
It’s impossible to tell with the way her body hasn’t begun decomposing, as if even the microbes within her gut want nothing to do with her.
Not even the animals of the forest seem to have come near with the lack of tracks on the dusty stone floor.
Despite my every instinct screaming at me to leave like my ass is on fire, I carefully adjust her jacket.
I grimace and gag. It’s a strange sensation at the back of my throat.
It feels so human, and if it weren't for the supernaturally abused corpse before me, I might have smiled.
But alas, I slide my hand into the visible pocket of her jacket, silently praying to find something that might identify her.
My fingers curl around a smooth surface with curved edges and a thin body.
Her phone. Pulling it from her body, I tap the screen only for it to be completely dead.
It’s good enough. I can hand it over to the police and report her death and her location.
Maybe then she’ll find peace. Put to rest in the earth where whatever has killed her won't bother her ever again.
Now, with her phone in my pocket, I give the cave a last glance, but there's nothing else, just rubble and leaves swept in from the wind.
Finally, I high-tail it out of there. Speeding up the gulley, I find the direction of the wind and use my strength to power on, further away from the cave and the foul land that now surrounds it.
Trees blur into a mirage of deep greens and grays and I push onwards.
My lungs burn with the desperation to breathe, but I keep my chest constricted.
It won't kill me to hold my breath, but my chest will burn until it’s unbearable.
The distant lights of Moonfell finally come into view from between the pine trees.
I’m dizzy and my ears ring so loudly that I lose my balance.
Sucking in a breath, I gasp as the stench still lingers in the air.
It’s not nearly as strong as in the cave, but it still has my eyes watering. I gag again, and this time I retch.
Black congealed blood pours from my throat as I heave, and my entire body shakes. It’s rancid and foul, yet it still doesn’t overpower the scent. I growl, clawing at the dirt as my nails lengthen and my vision turns crimson.
I’m so close to town the streetlights filter through the branches, yet every step I take feels like I'm made of lead. My joints scream and crack and every breath is laced with the acidic odor of the girl's body. I feel like I'm drowning in it.
The smooth surface of the road is a pleasant welcome as I take to the shadows and hurry deeper into the belly of the town. People take shelter from the drizzle in their cars as they whizz by, their headlights illuminating the dim streets, splashing water onto the sidewalk as they go by.
I sigh in relief as I turn the final corner into the main street and cross the road to the police station. The orange glow of their office casts streaks of light through the rain. I’m through the door and past the front desk in a flash, going straight for the sergeant’s office.
He’s at his desk, like always, with a piping hot coffee and his computer blasting white light at him.
He winces but doesn’t flinch as I pull his door open and collapse into the chair opposite his desk.
He’s known me his entire life. I watched him graduate from high school and become a police officer.
I was at his wedding and helped him put together his children's treehouse.
“Xander,” Malcolm sighs, leaning to the side to open the mini-fridge beneath his desk. He pulls out two items. A crispy, cold glass and a bag of blood.
With half his staff made up of supernatural beings, he’s fully stocked to accommodate them if things go awry. And in this case, he’s seen it before to know when a vamp is in need of a drink.
The ruby-red bag sloshes against the table, and I salivate.
Barely managing to sit up without a groan, I snatch the bag, ignore the glass, and sink my fangs into the corner of the plastic.
It’s thick and cold, and has my eyes rolling into the back of my head as I urgently swallow the flow of plasma.
The bag crinkles as I drain it, and my shivering limbs grow warm as the blood spreads through me, breathing heat back into my veins and fighting the shivers that dance across my skin.
I finish the bag and lick my lips. The stench is weakening from the back of my throat, but I can still taste rotten eggs mixed with the metallic tang of blood.
I cringe.
“Care to explain why you’ve barged into my office and nearly died in my chair?” Malcolm’s voice drags as if he couldn't be more bored.
I clear my throat and pull the phone from my pocket, placing it on the desk and tossing the now-empty blood bag into the trash can. “I’m here to report a death.”
That catches the sergeant's attention as he sits up a little straighter in his chair. Malcolm is a rather pudgy man with a soft tummy and a large throat, but his eyes are kind, despite the large bags that hang below them.
“Near the southern border, a girl, maybe in her early twenties. I found her body in a cave,” I explain as the sergeant clicks away at his keyboard.
“Human or Super?” he asks, his eyes not leaving the screen.
I bite the inside of my cheek. “I don't know.”
The typing stops, and Malcolm looks at me from over the top of his computer screen, his eyes narrowing. “What do you mean you don't know? You’re our best scent tracker in town, don’t make me call the Weres.”
I grimace. “It was impossible for me to tell. She didn’t even have a scent, let alone any indication of magic.”