CHAPTER 25

Midnight strikes, people's bodies sloshing, grinding against one another, strangers to strangers. Cups of beer in their hands on the air, hips swaying along with the music, sweat exchanged skin to skin. The heavy bass of the beat made the party alive.

Unknown to the people, the scenes behind the building. Where a corpse lay around its pool of blood, the neck almost went unconnected to the body. A woman sprawled above the male victim, unconscious.

A girl came running after she read the message her partner sent. She stopped in her tracks when the bloody scene appeared before her sight. With eyes wide and mouth agape, a hand immediately came to her mouth as she walked slowly. Her mind got completely sober.

The air seemed to freeze in her lungs. She had just met the woman. Liz had helped her escape. Now, she got her killed by dragging her to their mission. Water formed in her eyes as she pushed her feet to take strides closer to the bodies lying in the pool of blood. Her friend is on top of the guy, their wolf target.

"H-how.." She stammered on her words. When she got closer, her stomach flinched and both her hands covered her mouth to push back inside the food she consumed earlier. The wolf's neck was cut in half and got an inch away from its body.

"Hold your tears. She's still alive. Just unconscious." Rico stated it with a plain tone.

She shot her partner a murderous look. "Why haven't you told me directly?" Almost wanting to behead the guy herself. The tears retreated as she breathed a sigh of relief.

"I told you, I found her in a mess, not that she was dead too." He retorted with an amused tone and approached the passed-out woman.

Lorna scoffed in his direction and returned her attention to Liz. She crouched down and held the woman's left wrist to feel her pulse and that she was still alive.

She didn't know what to do as she got confused. Did Liz kill the wolf herself? Was she the one who brutally murdered him? Was she able to do this kind of killing? With so much hatred, the wolf's chest got holed up thrice and almost guillotined his head. Only a psycho could kill like this.

If Liz wasn't the one who had done it, then who could it be? But why is she unharmed?

"What should we do? Wake her up, or you can carry her to our hotel room." Lorna asked Rico, who was busy observing the lifeless body and its surroundings. Probably investigating the situation.

She doesn't have to think more for Melisca stirred on top of the corpse. Her eyes fluttered for a few moments before blinking normally. She groaned as she held her neck and rubbed a spot there.

"Liz, what happened? How did you end up like this?" She asked frantically while holding her friend's other arm and lifting her.

Melisca shook her head to somehow clear the fogginess of her mind and vision. Her brain pounded for a moment, making her stay still and wait until it faded away.

She's about to bring her hand to her forehead, yet the dried stickiness of something red in her palms catches her attention. Her eyebrows almost made a single line as she stared at the bloodstain. Then she looked beneath her.

Her eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. She even retreated a step, not wanting to be involved with the crime. The air she breathed stilled in her lungs.

Melisca turns to her body, the sweat and the strong metallic smell of blood on the ground, and make her nose crinkle. She almost bathes herself with the life liquid.

"W-what happened? How…" Her eyes turned to Lorna and to the other guy whom she didn't know and had never seen before.

"We should ask you that." Answered the guy sarcastically as he crouched down and stared closely at the corpse's stabbed heart.

"Liz, were you attacked? Or were you the one who did this?" Lorna asked back beside her.

She shot the girl a frowning face, then glanced again at the lifeless body.

Her head pounded as the scene before repeated itself in her mind. The stabbing moment, the slashing of the throat, the wolf's last murmured syllable. But then, there was someone behind her that only seemed like a gust of wind, and that person was capable of making her unconscious.

"Liz?" Lorna nudged her as she noticed her spacing out. Reminiscing the memories of the killing.

Melisca looked straight into the girl's eyes. "Yes. I was the one who killed him." She admitted, confident enough that she had done nothing wrong.

"Really? Are you capable of this kind of murder, Liz?" Lorna asked as her grip on Liz's arm loosened.

"Yes, and what's wrong with that?" She retorted, meeting the girl's gaze.

Lorna's about to say something, but she closed her mouth instead and shook her head as she let go of her. "Nothing. It's just the way you had done it."

"It's a complete mess." Rico joined in the conversation. Melisca then remembered that he was there.

"That's Rico, my partner." Lorna filled in, clearing the questions in her mind.

She stared at his face to familiarize it. He's completely human, yet there was something off about him. His golden blonde hair is combed to the side, with hazel eyes and a ring to the side of his bottom lip. A slanted shave at one of his eyebrows. The boy seemed to be younger than her by just a few years. He had a boy next door look, but a rebellious one.

"Have you really killed him? Why did you pass out then?" He inquired with a cold voice and serious face, and then their eyes met as he turned to her, standing up from crouching down on one knee.

She sighed, exasperated. "Due to the day's exhaustion and the struggle to fight him off, I haven't eaten anything either." As if on cue, her stomach growled. She's absolutely starving by now.

Telling him about someone else that made her lose consciousness would only complicate things. She would think about it later until she had rested enough. But for now, she has to keep it to herself.

"How did you get him then? He's much stronger than humans." The suspicion in his voice didn't go unnoticed as he looked at her with scrutinizing eyes.

"Am I not a distraction enough?" She replied with a playful tone and gave him a sly smirk. Knowing that she's in a wreck herself, still, she feels confidently attractive.

He just stared at her with a stoic face, waiting for her to say anything more. Sighing again, she pointed her index finger at the used item, lying on the ground, beside the wall of the building, a few meters away from them. Lorna approached the object with the flashlight of her phone and picked it up.

As the two looked in the direction she indicated, Melisca quickly scanned the surrounding for her own weapon. The knife that she had used to end the wolf, but she hadn't even caught a glimpse of it.

Lorna stomped back to her with a hard expression and a glare in her eyes. "Did you steal this from me?" Lorna showed the empty syringe in front of her.

"Yes." Her only reply.

Lorna's about to argue with the ready-to-battle face but her partner dismissed the commotion between the two.

"You have to go. I have to clean this up now, before the civilians would see us here, with the corpse."

She scoffed, "Thanks, Ric." Lorna mumbled and started on her way, not a glance towards the other woman.

"Not you, Lori. You're not going anywhere."

Both girls looked at him.

"I'm not leaving you with a brutal murderer as a company."

Melisca froze at what she heard from him. Her nose flared as she inhaled a large air and clenched her fists. She closed her eyes for a moment and bit her tongue to somehow restrain the words she was about to spit out.

She walked to him with a sarcastic smile on her lips. "If I wanted to hurt your friend, I should have done it earlier, before the wolf."

"Who knows what you have in mind? What are your schemes." He shrugged.

Then she shot Lorna a glance. "How can I hurt someone who's helping me to avenge my family?"

There was a moment of silence between the three, Lorna broke it by saying, "It's fine, Ric. I trust her."

"You know where trust can lead you, Loriena." He's dead serious for mentioning her complete name.

Melisca wanted to laugh but she did it on her mind. She agreed to the human male. Trust only leads you nowhere. You would end up just trusting yourself alone. Giving it to anyone would only damage your soul.

"I know, Ric, and I'll deal with it." Lorna gave him a look that she wouldn't change her decision regardless of anything he said.

The guy released a submitting sigh. "Then go." He took off his varsity jacket and tossed it to Melisca. The woman caught it before it fell to the ground. "Cover yourself with that."

"Thanks." Rick barely heard it from the woman before they turned their backs on him. He started thinking of how to clean up the place.

Then he remembered something was missing from the scene. "Wait!" He called the two girls again, they had only taken a few feet away.

Lorna posted an arched eyebrow at him as Melisca hadn't bothered to turn around, still fixing herself with the jacket he gave her.

Rico looked at the woman beside his partner. "Where is your murder weapon, Liz?"