CHAPTER 199

Victoria Argent was resting in her room when she heard the front door being forcefully swung open followed by what sounded like soft shouts.

"Dad! Mom!"

"Allison!"

She jumped out of bed the moment she heard her daughter's voice and grabbed a gun by the bedside before rushing down to know what was wrong. And oh was something wrong.

"Allison!" She shouted in shock as she saw Allison limping across the room holding a dislocated shoulder and numerous claws marks over her body.

"Allison, Allison! What happened to you?" She checked the severity of the wounds and sighed inwardly in relief when she saw that the most lethal ones narrowly avoided all the important organs and muscles.

"T-Tristan—" She broke out into a violent coughing fit, spewing out blood and spit as she did.

"Take it easy dear, slow and easy." Victoria cooed and carefully placed Allison on a couch before rushing to fetch a medical kit. She cleaned the wounds, cauterized a few, before bandaging them.

"Now take it slowly and tell me what happened." Victoria slowly began.

At that point Allison began to sob and shook her head frantically. "It's not his fault, mom. It's not his fault."

Victoria's eyes became as thin as needles as soon as she heard that. While it didn't explain anything, she already had the name of the likely culprit.

"Allison." She reiterated strongly. "Tell me exactly what happened."

Allison nodded and forced down her tears and choked as she summarized what had happened to her mother who only listened but said nothing throughout the entire narration.

"The Nogitsune is forcing him to sacrifice Kira and–and…" She tried saying it but she just couldn't handle it, breaking out in sobs once again.

"It wants him to sacrifice Kira Yukimura and dad in order to save Malia. I'm so sorry mom!"

Victoria's face was blank as she hugged her daughter who was trying to stop her tears from bawling out. She was proud of the strong Huntress her daughter had become but there were still things she couldn't be trained to overcome, things that'll break her every now and then no matter how strong she became.

This was one of those times.

"It's alright, Allison. You've done your best, so rest for now." She carried her daughter and laid her on her bed but Allison grabbed her hand when she was about to leave.

"It's not his fault, mom. It's just…"

"Don't give people an excuse to pardon their faults. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, what he did doesn't change." Her mother remarked coldly before walking out of the room.

She went down to the cellar, to a crate that bore the Argent family insignia, opened it and took a small box of marked bullets along with a sniper rifle before leaving the cellar and the house.

She opened her phone and opened a tracking app and nodded to herself in satisfaction. This had been done to quickly find any member of the family in the case of an abduction where they still had their phones on them.

...

[POV: With Tristan]

"Calm down, Tristan. Running around wildly isn't going to do anything." Chris said from where he and Kira were frozen below their neck.

Tristan turned to look at him with an intense soul-stare. "Trust me, I'm calm. You wouldn't be alive right now if I wasn't."

Chris snorted as if he just heard Tristan say something very funny. "You're the farthest thing from calm, kid. You are just one step from turning berserk and killing everything in sight. I guess we should count our lucky stars then that we're still not dead. Mm, maybe it is a miracle."

Tristan knew that he was running out of time and the itch to kill the two of them was creeping on him but he forced himself to wait until he was sure he really had no way around it.

Seeing Tristan anxiously pacing around, Chris called out to him. "You said it contacted you directly, right? It's a bit different from how it usually operates with riddles and distractions, but it still doesn't take away from the fact that it's a creature with a warped sense of humor. It won't hesitate to attack you both mentally and physically, which it's already doing from the looks of it."

"Can you find her, Chris?" Tristan asked in a soft vulnerable voice that anyone had ever heard him speak in.

"You're going to kill us if you don't find her, right?" Chris questioned to which Tristan nodded. He sighed.

"Do you know the last place she went to, or why she even went out?" Tristan shook his head. "Then it's quite possible that it was a setup. From your words, Malia rarely ever leaves the house if it's not related to your family or her friends."

"It's not my family or else I would have known." Tristan added.

Chris nodded stiffly in understanding. "So friends then? From what I know, that's Lydia, Allison and Boyd."

Chris looked at Tristan in surprise as the blood cocoon keeping him trapped shattered and flowed back into Tristan's body.

"I'm calm, but not for long. Just help me find Malia."

Chris pulled out his gun and leveled it at Tristan with anger visible in his eyes.

"And what's stopping me from putting an end to you?"

Tristan's reply was simple. "Because you can't. The moment you exert pressure on the trigger is the same you'll find one of these skewering your chest."

They hurried on as they were running out of time, but Tristan could feel his heart beating slower with every second that passed. Finally procuring a laptop, Chris hacked into Allison's phone to find her but nothing came of it.

Chris brows were filled with sweat as the minute ticked on, knowing that his life was coming to an end at the two hour mark.

Caw caw. Caw caw.

The both of them stared dumbfounded as crows started flying in from nowhere and circling around Tristan and trying to push him forward.

"Mm? You want me to follow you?" Tristan asked but all he got as an answer were louder caws, which he could 'feel' for some reason. "Did you find Malia?"

"Well, what are they saying?" Chris asked curiously when he saw Tristan talking to birds.

Tristan didn't reply and just grabbed Chris and followed the trail the birds were pointing him at.

They passed a clearing where he could actually pick up on Malia and Allison's scent. It made him excited as he increased his speed and it was when he pulled closer to the building that he recognized where they were.

Derek's old house, at least before the fire.

His bloodsense covered the whole building and the parts around it and immediately zeroed in on Malia's scent. Rushing to the small entrance gate, he ripped it off its hinges which turned out to be a wrong move as it seemed to have set off a rigged explosion with a high pitched frequency that assaulted his ears.

Even while disoriented, his ears picked up something coming at him from behind which he dodged and sent a blood lance towards where the bullet came from.

"Victoria stop!" Chris shouted in worry as he saw Tristan leap off towards where he was sure his sniper rifle was fired from.

"Tristan, don't you dare!" He bellowed and fired off two warning shots.

Victoria, who had barely managed to dodge the fast projectile, tried balancing herself to take another shot at Tristan but all she saw was a blur before she felt cold digits grabbing her neck in a tight vice.

Tristan took one whiff of her and snarled in irritation. "Vervain. You came here to kill me, didn't you?"

His hand tightened over her neck and he started choking the air out of her lungs.

"Let her go, Tristan, or I swear I'll kill you in the most painful way possible. Let her go now, dammit!"

Just a tiny bit more force and he'd snap that soft spinal bone of hers.

He heard Chris firing off warning shots but he paid them no mind. Right now, he just wanted to kill someone to vent.

He slowly unwrapped his fingers from her neck and yanked the rifle from her hand and severed it into two clean cut parts.

He stared at Chris who was glaring hard at him with the barrel of his gun still leveled at his head.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now?" Chris asked.

"Give me one good reason why your wife wanted to kill me?" Tristan asked in turn.

They both turned to look at Victoria who was massaging her neck while staring fearfully at him.

"You attacked Allison." She hissed furiously.

The two men said nothing, only staring incredulously at each other before suddenly bolting towards the underground cellar, leaving Victoria very confused as she followed after them.

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