His composure was back as Lucien interrogated him. It was as if the old Lance was gone for good. Lucien tried to launch the fire in his hand at Lance, but I grabbed it to stop him. The flame extinguished before I could touch it while Lucien looked disappointedly at me. I shook my head.
“Don’t stoop to his level,” I pleaded before rising to my feet. Lance watched me as I brushed the glass from me with small hisses of pain as they exited my skin.
“Mel—.” Lance didn’t get the chance to say any more than that as my fist made a connection with his face. I kneed his groin after. Then, as his head lowered to groan in pain, my kneerammed into it. I exhaled loudly, flipping the hair out of my face to stare daggers at him.
“Let me stoop to his level,” I finished. Lance cupped his nose, leaning his head back as he struggled with the blood gushing out of it. “And that’s for earlier.”
“What the hell did I walk into?” my dad asked from the entryway to the kitchen. He took in the broken glass, my beaten state and Lance’s worsening state. “Get out of my house now, boy. It seems my daughter did quite the number, but if you don’t leave now then I will finish what she started.”
Lance left and I sagged back to the floor weakly. Lucien caught me, his head burying in my hair. I grasped where my stomach would no doubt bruise while tears filled my eyes. My pain was deeper than the battered skin as I came to terms with my new relationship with Lance. He was right to say we were enemies. There was nothing more we could be.
“What did he do?” my dad asked.
“I made a comment about him being like his father, using the term ‘hunters’ and he snapped,” I explained before delving into the full story of what had happened.
Lucien used the first aid kit we had to patch my wounds. I hadn’t gotten all the glass out and with his vampire vision, he was able to make sure every bit was extracted from my skin with the tweezers from the kit.
Silence followed my retelling of the events. Dad looked more enraged than I had ever seen him while Lucien was too distracted with the glass in my wounds to show what he felt, but I knew it was anger. I reached out to him, grabbing his hand as the other continued with the tweezers.
Once his head lifted to look at me, I spoke. “I’ve endured worse so please don’t go silent on me. It makes me worried.”
“I’m trying not to track him down and rip his heart out.”
“I’ll help you hide the body,” my dad joined in. Lucien smirked at his comment. “I remember when that boy could barely gut a fish. Now he’s attacking my daughter.”
“Someone should keep an eye on him,” I directed at Lucien. “If he can snap like that on me, I have no doubt that he could do worse to someone he hates. Lance hated everyone in this town when he left. If he’s the killer, I want revenge.”
“You’ll get it,” Lucien assured me before pressing a kiss to my lips.
My dad cleared his throat at the kiss, causing us to break apart and for me to blush.
Lucien finished with my legs and I looked down to find no wounds. Lifting his hand that had held the tweezers, I saw the last sliver of a cut on his thumb before it healed. “I used a little of my blood to heal the wounds.”
My dad took to cleaning with Lucien once I was placed in the living room. I wasn’t allowed to move, even when the others came over. Ambrose approached me first, eyeing me in a particular way that made me feel uncomfortably exposed. I raised the blanket to my chin, leaning away from him as he continued looking at me.
“Nope, I sense no dark magic. She didn’t get the chance to release it,” Ambrose deduced. Erie exhaled in relief. “We got lucky this time, but she is untrained and her necklace is missing.”
“Wait, what? When did my necklace go missing?”
Erie punched her twin’s arm, glaring as she communicated with him silently. Isadora pinched the bridge of her nose while Lucien looked at them for an answer as well. “She asked a question and I would also love to know how the last object she had of her mother went missing. When?”
Isadora answered first. “Look, we had it in Agatha’s jewelry box for safe keeping. However, after you two went to thehunter, someone came while we were hunting and trashed the place. We cleaned it up, but we still can’t find the necklace or um… the stake.”
I shot to my feet, my own worries flying out the window at the mention of the missing stake. “The stake is missing as well? We were supposed to use that to track the killer!”
Lucien moved to my side, trying to calm me down. I wasn’t angry at them, but at whoever had taken the stuff. We were so close and our hesitation caused us to lose everything. My dad entered the living room then, having heard everything.
“The killer must have known that you were onto them. Who else knew that you had the stake?”
We pondered for a moment before we all settled on an answer. “The hunter. Hugo knew.”
“He told us to use it to find the killer. Wouldn’t that rule him out?” Lucien asked.
I shook my head. “No, he could have thrown us off by trying to be on our side. He could have even faked the attack and that’s why it was only a graze. The only other witness for that attack would have been Lance. Or—.”
“Your werewolf buddy worked there. He could let us take a look while distracting Lance. If we find the stake and necklace there then we can finish what he started,” Lucien commented. I gave him a look as he referred to Bryon as my ‘werewolf buddy’, but didn’t say anything on the matter.
“I’ll watch the hunter since I’m more experienced than these two. They can remain at the house in case there’s another break in. You two can go to her friend and see what he knows,” Isadora suggested.
