CHAPTER 180

Tristan's face was set in a pondering look as he sat on the bench while watching the lacrosse practice going on.

The reason for this was the spontaneous feeling of fleeting danger he keeps getting from time to time but now it no longer felt like danger but more like something was watching him.

It felt as if his mind was trying to tell or show him something that it could see but his eyes couldn't. And this change in sensation started after his short late night trip to the Nemeton.

"Hayes, get ready."

"Can I sit this one out, Coach? I ate something bad and I don't want to throw up in the middle of the field." Tristan lied. Coach looked taken aback, concerned even, but believed Tristan because the only time he missed practice were because of academic or family reasons.

"Sure. How about getting out of gear and going to check what's wrong?" Coach asked, chuckling as he did so. "Because trust me, the last thing you want is to not be on the same page with your stomach. Personal experience."

"And I don't doubt that." Tristan said.

He smiled, something he could now do easily, as he saw Coach running the entire team rugged because someone decided to prank his office. Which turned out to be a yearly thing between him and the lacrosse team as they always pranked his office on Halloween's Eve.

After practice, he and Boyd were returning to class when they saw a few police cars out in the parking lot.

"Oh please! Don't tell me this is what I think it is." Boyd groaned. He was already having a bad feeling at the presence of police officers in the school. Coupled with his limited knowledge of the supernatural world and the fact that he knew that most of the time they came to the school was because of a supernatural problem that they were trying to stop.

"First time?" Tristan joked.

"Please don't you too, Tristan." Boyd said with faux worry. "Can you hear what they are saying?"

"From here? With the whole school clattering about? Of course not. But I got something else in mind, come on."

Boyd followed Tristan who led them to where their anxious principal was pacing about.

"Oh students, I'm sorry but you can't be down here. It's been cordoned off for the time being." He said calmly.

Boyd stared questioningly at Tristan who was nodding in understanding at the principal's words.

"I hear you sir but can you tell me why the police came to the school?" Tristan's eyes flashed red as he spoke. Boyd watched stunned as a transfixed look came on the principal's face.

"They said William Barrow escaped from the hospital and his getaway car was seen near the school so they are conducting a search to find him." The principal answered slowly with a drawl in his words and a dazed look on his face.

"What the fuck?" Boyd whispered a shriek at what he was currently seeing. But then his eyes widened as he heard a certain name in the principal's words. "Wait, William Barrow? As in THE William Barrow?"

"Who's that?" Tristan asked.

"You seriously don't know him? He's a serial killer who blew up a school bus some years back."

Tristan said nothing to that and turned to the principal who still looked dazed, his eyes once more flashing as he spoke. "Forget everything that just happened."

Boyd could rarely hold himself back and asked as soon as they left the no-longer-dazed principal. "Is that the compulsion thing you told me about?"

"Mmn." Tristan nodded.

"That's dope." He said but then paused upon remembering something crucial about Tristan's compulsion. "You were going to use that on me to make me forget?"

Without missing a beat, Tristan nodded while Boyd looked on with disbelief.

"I actually wanted to use it on Lydia the first time I got it." Tristan revealed.

"Then why didn't you?"

"She became tolerable."

Boyd could only shake his head. Of course Tristan wouldn't give a moral reason like not liking the feeling of mind controlling someone.

Someone suddenly came up to them from behind and interrupted their small talk.

"Tristan."

"Yeah?"

"We need your help, it's kinda urgent." Scott said as he caught up with them.

…..

"You said flies came out of his tumor?" Tristan couldn't help but ask after hearing what Scott told them about William Barrow.

"And none of the X-ray scans showed any shrapnel?" Boyd asked.

"And Lydia said she's been hearing flies buzzing?"

Scott nodded to all the questions they asked. He and Malia tried sniffing out any prevalent scent around the school but so far they couldn't find him until Malia mentioned he might be able to help.

His ability to sense the blood in people's bodies over a considerable radius was the very thing they needed as Barrow in his current medical condition and having a burst tumor will no doubt make his blood very different from everybody else.

"Well that might work." Tristan said.

Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes which were now red and soon enough a mental picture of walking blood bags was painted in his head.

"Got him. He is in Coach's office." Tristan said. "I think he's watching out for a window to leave. Might wanna tell the cops to hurry up."

Spotting the black and murky blood that was hiding in Coach's wrecked office which was close to them had been extremely easy when it stood in contrast to the other walking healthy blood bags.

There wasn't much fanfare after he was caught and put in cuffs except for some students who were panicked to have a known serial killer so close to them and the fact that Barrow kept screaming madly about some kids who had glowing eyes.

"At least it was a normal serial killer this time around." Boyd said when they arrived in front of their lockers.

"Normal serial killer?"

"I know. It sounded weird the moment it left my mouth, but you know what I'm talking about. At least he didn't dice up any of the poor students or slit the throats of the teachers for some ancient sacrifice, right?"

Tristan nodded in agreement. "Well you're not wrong. Thank God for small miracles, I guess."

When they turned around to leave, they saw an Asian girl behind them, the History teacher's daughter, standing and gaping at them in shock and denial(?).

"Um, hey, need something?" Boyd's question snapped her out of her shocked dazed and she started stuttering when she attempted to reply.

"Yes, me? Um, no. I mean no. It's not, I mean, I didn't…"

Kira Yukimura fell silent and stared at the floor in embarrassment that she couldn't even give out a simple sentence before fumbling like an idiot.

Boyd stared at Tristan questioningly, their eyes going through conversations in an instant, which the vampire could only shrug to.

Her emotions were all over the place, which might be a normal thing for girls, was what Tristan thought when he tried to get a read on her.

"Say something!" Boyd whispered to Tristan.

"Why me? Can't you say something?"

"Girls find you easy on the eyes."

"That's if the uninterested gaze doesn't send them away."

None of the voices were that low that Kira couldn't hear them. 'Great. If they didn't think I was weird before, now they certainly do. Yup, just going to turn around and leave as if nothing happened. Please don't call me back.'

"Hey, new girl." Boyd called out to her before she could turn around and leave. "Sorry, I don't know your name. I'm Boyd."

"Tristan."

She was visibly relieved that they weren't outright asking any embarrassing questions, even managing a smile(a strained and awkward one) when she pushed out her name.

"Kira. Kira Yukimura." She said with a smile that was just begging them to leave it at them. She was both embarrassed and worried, and Tristan picked up on some of those so he tried using it to calm down her errant mind.

"Don't worry about that. It doesn't happen all that frequently that you have to worry. You'd soon get used to them and the random animal attacks once you stay in Beacon Hills for a while."

It wasn't until the end of Tristan's sentence that both Boyd and Kira knew what he was talking about. Boyd's eyes bulged out while Kira looked on with disbelief as what she just heard.

"The hell man?" Boyd squeaked out.

"Yeah, I'd rather not." Kira said with a slightly less nervous laugh. What did he mean she'd get used to serial killers and animal attacks?

Faced with Boyd's incredulous look, Tristan rolled his eyes and pointed his thumb at Kira who was now looking confused at being pointed at. "Shock helps with excessive panic and rattling nerves."

"Un-fucking-believable." Boyd just shook his head while Kira didn't know how to properly respond to that.

"Um, thanks…. I think?"

Tristan just waved it off dismissively, "No need," and walked away with Boyd who was saying something how weird he becomes at unexpected times.

"So that just happened." Kira muttered to herself while still floating in a whirl of disbelief at what she just heard from Tristan, especially the almost-common serial killing bit. Yeah, wild didn't even scratch that lid of crazy thoughts.

"At least I got my name out?" Her attempt to rouse her confidence failed spectacularly when she remembered how she had become a bumbling mess.

In her defense, it was all because of hearing and thinking about serial killers all day, one getting caught on the same day, and one of the original(crazy) duo passing it off like something normal.

If Tristan, Boyd or Malia had heard her thoughts, the remarks they would have given her would be a single sentence.

'Welcome to Beacon Hills.'

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