Life's Sweeter with Revenge

“Damn it vampire how many times do I have to tell you that I’m not your personal bloodhound!” Tyler yelled over at Victor.

I winced at hearing the word vampire. Victor wasn’t going to be very happy about hearing it as an insult especially since I was in hearing distance. Victor growled at the stupid werewolf and stealthily moved over to him. Before Tyler could even move away Victor had him by the front of his shirt and jerked him up in the air.

“You listen here mutt, Aiden told you to help me with this and that’s exactly what you’re going to do so stop pissing around and start sniffing.” He shoved Tyler away from him and then stood there until Tyler turned into a wolf.

Reece groaned dramatically over on my side. I looked over at her to see that she had settled down against a tree trunk. Her hiking boots were thrown within reaching distance and her head was resting against the tree while she lazily messaged her feet.

“Reece come on, you’ve done that twice now and we stopped walking ten minutes ago.”

She glared up at me. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m not a vampire or a werewolf, in fact I’m human and the last time I checked humans couldn’t walk around this god forsaken forest for hours on end like I just did. Going up and down and up and down every inch of this mountain wasn’t what I had been expecting when Vic called saying that we were going to catch his parents murderer, so excuse me for being human.”

I sighed slightly agreeing with what she had said. When Victor had called all of us out here I had been expecting something more glamorous then following around Tyler who was searching for where the car accident had happened two years back. Victor was hoping to find something…anything that could give him a clue to tracking down the vampire. Finding something like that after two years was very slim but to Victor it was his only hope.

I looked back over at Reece and decided that she was probably right. Maybe Victor was expecting too much out of our friends. Before sitting down next to Reece I looked back over at Tyler to see if he had made any sort of progress, he hadn’t so I made Reece scoot over.

The grass was a little bit wet from the morning dew and the ground was slightly chilly but it felt cooling against my warm skin. Reece wasn’t the only person who was having a tough time with walking up and down the hill. I was starting to get a little bit tired as well. I tried to blame it on the fact that I hadn’t been keeping up on my training since Widen was now gone but I knew that it wasn’t because of that.

Reece nudged her shoulder against mine in a playful manner. “And you called me lazy.”

I rolled my eyes at her and smiled. “No I didn’t I was merely pointed out that this is your second time stopping.”

She let out a short laugh before turning her attention back on her feet. “Yeah, whatever.”

After a moment I leaned my head back against the tree trunk and realized that I hadn’t actually spoken with Reece since she moved in with Jason. I couldn’t really be blamed for that however because she was either at college or at her internship at the local news station. I assumed that she was doing pretty well since I had seen her a few times on TV already.

I elbowed her lightly to get her attention. “How is living with Jason?”

“It’s a blast.” She giggled. “The other day he told me that he wanted to change our second bedroom into a gaming room because he didn’t have his own space. Of course that is a lie because the man took up our garage so I told him no. And do you want to know what he did?”

I nodded my head eagerly.

“He got one of his bodies to come in and hook up an internet cord and cable. So this morning I went into the attic and pulled out all of my old computer shit and set it up.”

I laughed at her. “You’ve got to be joking.”

She shrugged her shoulder nonchalantly. “That’s what he gets for going against me. So what about you and Vic? You guys sick of each other yet?”

I touched a hand to my lower stomach unconsciously and smiled. “Not even close.”

Reece’s eyes lowered to my hand and her eyes got really wide. She looked back up at me with a mix of surprise and shock and started to opened her mouth to speak but Vic beat her to it.

“Tyler’s onto something!” He yelled back at us before running after the wolf.

I looked back over at Reece with a small smile before quickly getting up and chasing after Vic, leaving Reece sitting by herself. We followed Tyler down the steep slope of the mountain and I almost fell a few times if it hadn’t been for Reece who was cautiously following behind me. I could feel a blush form across my cheeks at how clumsy I was being and thanked her for helping me. She simply gave me an all knowing smile before nodding her head and pushing me forward.

Tyler didn’t stop running until he came to the end of the slope and even then we ended up walking for a hot second. When we finally stopped walking however I wasn’t prepared at all for the sight that befell me. Tyler was circling around this massive tree that looked to be very very old but that wasn’t what surprised me. It was the giant bare scar that marked the tree around its trunk.

The cut that had made this scar must have been really deep because not even the bark had grown back around it. Its deep brown cuts and slashed edges had me holding my stomach in fear. This couldn’t possible had been the tree that Vic’s parents crashed into. I looked over at Vic to see his eyes cold and hard with the memory that must have been flooding back to him.

I could feel my stomach turn even more at the truth of it all and I reached out to Victor. “This is the spot isn’t it?” My voice had grown horse and weak from the sight before me but Victor had somehow heard it.

“Yeah.” He said gently before dropping my hand and taking a step towards the old tree. “It is.”

When Reece caught up to us she gasped at the sight of it but unlike me she remained quiet. She knew that this was the place that everything had happened. I looked back to her with a sad feeling pinging in my chest before looking back at the tree. For a moment we both just stood there thinking about the night that had changed Victor forever.

It seemed like an eternity before we both finally got out of our trances and when we did we immediately started looking at the ground. We had done enough staring and it was time to start looking for clues that might lead us to the vampire that had started it all. Of course we all knew that it was a long shot which was why only Reece, Tyler, and I had decided to following alone with Victor while Aiden, Jason and Ryan went to the Coroner’s Office to see if there were any fibers or other clues left on the bodies.

We all searched quietly until the sun started to go down and our feet hurt. Reece had stopped once before to answer a call and both Vic and I had listened in closely knowing that it was Aiden on the other line, but sadly the guys had come up with nothing. Meaning that if we were going to find anything it was going to be here.

There was barely any light left in the sky when Reece finally collapsed onto the ground. “Damn it this is pointless.”

I turned my head around tiredly to look back at her as she started to kick off her boots again. “We’ve been searching around the same spot for hours and nothing is here, and even if there was it is too damned dark out to see anything.”

I knew that she was right, because even I was having trouble stumbling around the forest in the dark, but I looked over at Victor with his head inches away from the ground and realized that he had completely ignored her. He was going to sit here and look until he went crazy from it.

It hurt me to have to do this to him but it was obvious that there was nothing here. With a heavy heart I made my way over to him. I was almost there when my shoe knocked into something. I curse at the thought of being so damn clumsy and bent over to see what I had idiotically stubbed my toe on. Through the dimly lit sky I saw the smallest bit of something shiny sticking out of the ground.

“Vic,” I whispered quietly as waved my arm over to him. “Victor.”

His head snapped up from the spot he was looking at and he instantly ran over to me. His eyes were wide with hope and I prayed that it wasn’t false hope. “What is it? Did you find something?”

I reached back down to the shiny object hidden underneath dirt and grass and started to dig it out. “I don’t know maybe.”

Victor was soon besides me helping me dig and move the chucks of rock and grass out of the way. In a matter of seconds Vic was able to yank the object out of the ground. I could feel my heart stop beating a=in my chest as I looked more closely at the object. “Is that?”

Vic smiled triumphantly as he stared at the object. “Yeah I think it is.”

Reece ran over to us with a slight limp. “What is it?” She asked once she was close enough to see it.

Victor started to wipe the dirt away to show more and more of the hard metal underneath. “It’s the rearview mirror.”

My eyes widened as I looked back at him. “The one that you stabbed him with?”

His smile grew even wider. “It must be.”

Tyler, who had changed back to his human form a while ago, looked over at Vic with his arms folded over his chest. “So what does this mean?”

“It means that we have a place to start.” He answered.