“Are you sure about that?” Darrien sauntered after Ren with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t even look like he was nervous.

Ren scoffed at his own thoughts. Why the Hell would he need to be nervous? I wasn’t going to attack him. 

He looked around at the spot he’d sat at after school. There were rocks, broken chunks of sidewalk and dirt. A few bits of trash blew across the empty parking lot. That was it. He didn’t see anything.

His tears were spent.

He pressed the back of his hand to his nose.

“I’m…uh…” He whirled around, picking up dirt with his shoes. Nothing. He looked up at Darrien. “Looking for something.”

Darrien raised a brow. “I could…help you. If you want.”

Ren stared.

“I’m a vampire.”

There was a look that crossed Darrien’s face. Ren couldn’t tell what it meant.

Darrien shifted on his feet. “So?”

Ren took another look at him and then decided that he shouldn’t ask. The ring was what Ren was after. Whatever was going on with Darrien wasn’t his problem. 

Ren walked past him, but as he was crossing the parking lot to the forest, a loud bang rang out—a slamming car door.

He startled.

“Hey fangy! How about you come give my cock a suck!”

Ren froze against all judgment. 

When he turned around, he saw Regan and his two sidekicks heading straight toward him.

His feet were stuck to the pavement. Regan was holding something he couldn’t see. He started to jump to conclusions. A knife, a gun. Anything could be turned into a murder weapon.

Darrien waved his hand. “Regan, piss off.”

Regan jutted the thing in his hand toward Darrien. He didn’t even flinch. “Got somethin’ to say, faggot?”

Darrien raised a brow. “I already said it.”

Ren looked between Darrien and Regan. This would have been a great time to get the Hell out of there, but his feet were refusing to listen. They acted as if they wanted to stick around to see what happened. Frankly, he didn’t have the time. He needed to find that fucking ring before his mom found out. 

She was already mad about the letter from the Mines.

Regan looked Darrien up and down. He looked confused. “What’s gotten into you?”

He turned to Ren. He made a disgusted face. “Hanging around a vamp and defending him…”

Sam and Ollie looked just as dismayed.

Darrien pushed the thing Regan was holding. Ren finally got a look at it. It was just car keys. A bit of his fear deflated.

“Come on. We were just talking. It’s not like I’m a sympathizer.”

Ren took a step back.

All eyes turned to him. He kept walking backward until he knew they weren’t going to come after him. If it wasn’t his life on the line, he might have found the situation comical. Darrien looked like he wanted to say something to Ren while Regan, Sam, and Ollie were watching with clueless looks.

He must have looked ridiculous walking backward, but his heart was pounding so hard in his chest that he couldn’t think straight.

Once he crossed the parking lot, he turned. He disappeared into the thick brush of the forest, following the trail back home.

He kept thinking about Darrien’s words. He sounded genuine. Well, he had until he said he wasn’t a sympathizer. He hadn’t let Regan tear Ren a new one. That was the best thing Ren could say about him.

He was halfway down the trail when he realized the only place he hadn’t looked was the forest. Suddenly, the night before flashed before him. The dead girl’s face with her sunken eyes and pale skin almost knocked him off his feet. 

She’d been beautiful, even when she was dead. Whoever killed her had ripped her apart, but had left some of her intact. His stomach churned as he remembered the smell. It wasn’t the smell necessarily. The memory was imprinted on him. And so was the smell of copper.

He stood in the middle of the trail, gazing at the trees, the overgrown brush, and the dirt. All of it, paired with the cloudy sky made him feel small and insignificant. He’d always felt this way like his life wasn’t worth much, not to his mom or to himself. 

The wind rustled the branches. A couple of leaves fell away, soaring through the air until they found their place on the ground.

He stopped.

He let out a swift gasp before he couldn’t breathe. The air whooshed out of his lungs and he was captured there. The air crushed against his body, pinning him. It felt as if someone was speaking to him, but there was no sound. 

The urge was there. The urge to destroy everything in his path. He fought against it, struggling to stay in the right mind. The thoughts of blood and murder were everywhere. He couldn’t escape them. He was floating. He couldn’t be. His mind was tricked. 

His feet felt like they were hundreds of miles away from the ground. He was flying through the air like those falling leaves.

Then, it stopped.

He fell down with a large cry that ripped through his chest. The gasp that came after was soft as he hit the ground. He crawled to his hands and knees.

“What—“ A trail of spit splattered in the dirt. “—the fuck.”

He rolled onto his back, chest heaving as he clutched his throat. The air filling his lungs tasted better, foreign, but disgusting at the same time. It burned all the way down as did his saliva. His body was a heatwave crashing into itself and the trees were swirling like he was water going down a drain. 

When it was over, he got to his feet. He staggered.

The forest hadn’t changed. Neither had the trail, but there was something off about it.

Indescribable. That’s what it was.

He scurried away from the horrible sight.

Away from the trail, he diverged down a small hill. It cut corners, skipping over his house, and was an easier way to get to the general area where the dead girl was. She was buried only a few feet away from where she’d been murdered. Hopefully, the ring would be on the topsoil and not buried along with her.

The sun casted a faint glow through the treetops. It was late into the evening and he didn’t have a lot of sunlight left.

He made it to the site about ten minutes later. It wasn’t enough time for him to calm his nerves. Instead, he was left with a flushed face and twitching hands. 

It was even harder to focus when he was thinking about digging up a dead body he’d helped bury less than twenty-four hours ago. 

That was if it would come to that. He hoped he would find the ring on the ground before he had to make that choice.

The sun was now a faint glow on the underbrush. It came up to his knees.

He thought he’d gone the wrong way at first. The trees didn’t look quite right and the feeling he got once he stepped into a ring of surrounding trees made him feel like he was entering a different time zone. Then, he saw the large boulder marking this place as the bloody scene.

The smell of copper was in the air. It was hard to miss.

The sweet smell of the blood had long vanished. This was too old, too contaminated to make him hungry, but the thought of fresh blood made his gums ache. He pressed his tongue over his teeth, hoping it would soothe them. The ache went down some, but it was still there.

The freshly turned soil was soft beneath his feet. He crossed the clearing, following the smell of the blood until he was sure he was hovering over the kill site.

When he looked at it, the kicked dirt and the disheveled grass, it sent him back once more to when he’d found her.

Mantel was over her body, covered in blood. When he looked up, Ren thought he was a goner. He thought he was going to die last night.

Thinking about it now, it should have been obvious that Mantel wasn’t going to kill him. Mantel hadn’t been drinking from her. Ren was just so afraid his fear over road any rationality.

Shaking his head, he looked around. He kicked dirt, leaves, and the grass aside. He was tempted to get down on his hands and knees, but he thought it might be bad if his DNA or scent was on everything.

He laughed under his breath.

Did it matter though? His hands were on her body so it really didn’t make sense.

That was his breaking point. He fell to his knees and began to comb the area inch by inch. He wasn’t going to be leaving until he found that damn ring. Going home really wasn’t an option.

Dirt clumped under his nails. His fingers and palms were stained. The sun was no longer casting on the ground. It wasn’t fully set, but it was clear that this was all the light he was going to get.

The moon almost shined brighter than the sun had. He was able to at least make out some of the things lying on the ground. There were large and small twigs, beetles crawling in the dirt and crickets that jumped when he swept through the tall grass.

He hadn’t come up with anything. There was no shine and no touch of metal.

With a heavy sigh, he sat back on his heels. The girl was buried just past the trees in front of him. The boulder to his side gave him something strong to hold onto as he got to his feet. He dusted the dirt off his pants.

“What are you doing here?”

He almost jumped out of his skin.

He whipped around.

Mantel was standing in the clearing. The moonlight showed the natural blond highlights in his short wavy hair. He was wearing black slacks and a white button-down shirt. He looked ridiculous standing in the middle of a forest when he looked ready for an office job interview.

Mantel looked Ren up and down. He frowned.

“I—uh…” What the Hell was he supposed to say? That he was going to dig up a dead girl’s body because he lost a family heirloom?

It sounded like a fucking joke.

It might have been the thing to say because the next thing out of his mouth was a load of bullshit.

“Just…uh…making sure she was still here.” He turned around, ducking his head to look at the untouched mound of dirt. “Yep! She is!”

Mantel narrowed his eyes.

Yeah. It was pretty obvious Ren wasn’t there to make sure a corpse wasn’t walking.

He backed up as Mantel took a step forward. Ren really didn’t like the look in his eyes. It said Ren only had a few seconds to explain himself before Mantel attacked.

Mantel’s eyes glowed red.

He was getting closer, barely three feet away. “Tell me. What are you doing here?”

Ren’s mouth opened. Something about Mantel’s eyes.

Oh fuck.

“My grandfather’s ring. I lost it.” They weren’t the words he’d been meaning to say.

Mantel was right in front of him now. The red glow was impossible to look away from.

“Keep looking at me,” he said. His voice was steady, calming in a way Ren didn’t like. It was the voice of a predator about to catch its prey. “You’re going to turn around and never come back to this place again.”

Ren started to nod.

Wait. No.

Ren shook his head as hard as he could. His eyes closed. The red glow faded from his mind.

“You—“ Ren whispered under his breath. “What did you do?”