CHAPTER 185

"Bloodborns. I never liked your kind. Especially your kind."

The imposter rasped with a clawed finger pointing at Tristan. A mix of an Alpha and whatever was piloting the body.

"You never answered my question; who are you? And what did you do with their bodies?" Tristan asked again and this time he sensed a spike of amusement hidden in the depths of all quarry of evil the… thing before him carried around.

"Only one color, but not one size, Stuck at the bottom, yet easily flies. Present in sun, but not in rain, Doing no harm, and feeling no pain." The creature in front of him said as he took one step forward.

"Really? A riddle?" Tristan remarked unamused, with threadlike tendrils of wriggling blood coming out of different parts of his skin.

"What am I?"

Tristan stared at him pointedly, wondering where he was going with this, but regardless they had to get off the highway. "… A shadow."

'Hmm?'

The thing took another step, snarling more viciously as he did.

"What runs, but never walks. Murmurs, but never talks. Has a bed, but never sleeps. And has a mouth, but never eats?"

"A river." Tristan answered, now more suspicious at what was happening. With every answer he gave, the madness in front of him seemed to spread wider and lose its thick bond; something that made the imposter of him visibly angry.

"What's up with the riddles? Some type of druidic oath thing?" He asked but the imposter just stomped his way towards him with a grating snarl.

"You throw out when you want to use me but take me in when you don't want to use me. What am I?"

He was now a few feet away from Tristan and facing him head on, Tristan only had one phrase to say. "Oh shit."

He didn't know the answer to that one and upon that realization, they both rushed at each other; Tristan blocking the impostor's fist with his blood tails but soon realized that the person in front of him was very skilled, and that his words about facing Bloodborns might have some evidence of truth in them.

Other than their initial clash, nothing Tristan seemed to do surprised him but that didn't mean Tristan was in any way helpless against him.

"You bastard!" Tristan's blood grabbed one of both the imposter's hand and leg, turning them into grounded beef and bones.

Some of the wounds were twisting and closing themselves but Tristan knew they weren't healing. This person was good, more so than Satomi experience and skill wise, but it was the chaotic way they fought that spoiled it in Tristan's opinion.

… But he wasn't so sure with how maddening the laughter seemed to get.

Even if they could ignore the pain, or outright nullify the sensation of pain, there was little movement to be had when multiple joints and nerves were destroyed.

Seeing the imposter trying and failing to stand on one leg, Tristan sprouted more tails - ten in total - and used it to hold him in place inside a cocoon, destroying his last two limbs in the process.

He walked behind him and sunk his fangs into the exposed neck and pumped in huge amounts of his paralytic toxins into the veins.

When he was done he spat out the blood in his mouth, refusing to swallow even a drop of it, and gave a disgusted frown to the imposter who had now fallen completely silent upon being caught.

"You're dying. This body you're residing in is decaying." He stated. His captured prey only smiled at him and said nothing. "No matter."

In a simple motion of clenching his fist, the cocoon skewered the person through from all sides and decapitated him, letting the head full of holes to roll towards Tristan's leg which he used to crush it.

When he retracted his tails, he made sure to separate his blood from that of the dead man's and took not even a single drop into his body.

"Great. Now I have to find where to bury this." He sighed before wrapping the fly-infested body, along with the head, in a thin sheet of crystallized blood and sneakily made his way towards the Argents morgue/crematorium after making a call to Allison.

When he left, a firefly pushed its way up from under the blood soaked ground and flew away, buzzing excitedly as it did.

…..

Three people – Derek, Argent, Tristan – stared at the completely mutilated body Tristan had brought in and struggled on what to make of it.

"So something was controlling their dead body and you're thinking that it might be the same person that was controlling those shadow samurais?" Chris asked as he examined the corpse tentatively.

Tristan nodded while leaning against a tall cabinet. "We first thought it was a girl in our class but that thing wanted to kill her when Malia and I got there. But the thing is I've never felt any negative emotion towards us from her. The same thing with those samurais."

He directed his gaze at the table where the body was laid. "But he was different. He was particularly oozing it even when possessing another body."

"So there could be two forces we're up against. The one controlling the samurais that are trying to kill us, while this one was after the girl for some reason." Derek opinionated, prompting accepting hums from the two other people in the cold room.

"What are we waiting for? Let's go interrogate this girl and get this over with so that I can finally put this town behind me." Derek said and turned to leave.

…..

When Malia took Kira back to their house, she was very thankful that the girl was too scared to speak so she didn't have to answer any questions.

"And pray tell, why did you bring her here?" Boyd asked, eyeing Kira with extreme suspicion.

Malia briefly explained what happened when they got to Kira's house, surprising everyone who was listening, Kira included. Unfortunately the traumatized girl couldn't remain quiet any longer after they all turned to her for answers.

"So what's your deal?" Malia asked.

Kira frantically shook her head. "I-I d-don't know what y-you're t-t-talking about." She couldn't even summon the strength to cry, not after listening to tidbits of information that should have come out of fantasy novels instead of Malia's mouth.

"Huh. She's telling the truth. Let's try this another way." Malia muttered. "Werewolf, werecoyote, werejaguar, wendigo or druid; what species of supernatural are you?"

Kira looked both confused and startled at the question, not knowing what would happen to her and how it all depended on her answer.

"Relax, Kira. Just tell us what you know and if it's true, we won't harm you." Allison cajoled her softly, but held tightly the short handbow behind her coat.

Overloaded with all this information – not knowing what was real or not anymore, the stress during the weekend after listening to the vague conversation between her parents, and the most recent traumatic one – Kira broke down in soft sobs and said everything she knew, which confused all of them a whole deal.

"Wait, so let me get this straight: you have not the slightest idea that you're a supernatural creature?" Lydia asked deliberately, to which Kira answered, prompting her to turn to Malia who said that she was telling the truth.

"In summary: she's got no bloody idea what's going on, something wearing Ethan and Aiden's body tried to kill her, she didn't send those samurais, oh and her parents might be the ones behind it… for some reason 'cause why not?" Lydia listed off while counting her fingers for emphasis and turned to the sitting and rattled Kira. "And you thought they were serial killers. It's almost cute, and worrying, that that's what you came up with. And that I think the idea of serial killers is inconsequential."

She rounded off with a self-patronizing sigh and plopped down on one of the couches unceremoniously. "That's enough detecting for me."

"Um, e-excuse me…" Kira said before trailing off.

"Stop worrying and speak your mind. No one will hurt you." Malia said as she noticed Kira's rising nervousness when she attempted to speak, having never taken her eyes off her since the beginning.

Kira gulped and took a swan dive off the edge of uncertainty. "I… I mean, what are you people?.. As in…"

"Supernatural creatures?" Allison asked and Kira nodded slowly. "Well, I'm completely human, along with Boyd. Malia is a werecoyote and Lydia is a banshee."

"W-werecoyote?" She yelped as she saw Malia's eyes flickering between red and blue before settling on red like Tristan's. "Werecoyote. Got it."

"Oh don't look at me like that. I don't have the glowing eyeballs they do." Lydia disinterestedly waved off Kira's curious gaze on her.

Malia finally took her eyes off Kira, much to the girl's inner delight, and went to grab something from the fridge. "About time they showed up."

The door was pushed open and Tristan, along with Argent and Derek, stepped in, destroying the momentum of confidence Kira had built up and making her a nervous wreck once again.

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