Margret pressed her hand to Ren’s forehead. She let out a sigh and gave him a pitying look.

“You’ve done it now,” she said while placing a towel wrapped around ice to his head.

She said that he’s done it, but really, it wasn’t him at all. If she only knew what he’d been through these past few days, she wouldn’t have said anything at all.

He watched the ceiling fan turn on its own. How he didn’t know. A breeze from the front door opening? Or was it his eyes playing tricks?

Craning his neck, he looked down at his hand. He’d smashed it under his weight when he fell. The pain had been nothing to what he’d been experiencing when the thing had controlled his body. There had been no registry at first. From the way his mom had yelled, it sounded like she’d been the one who fell.

His wrist was turning a light purple, but it didn’t look too bad. After all, it could have been far worse. Any closer and he would have broken his neck on the coffee table. It was a good thing there had been a wide-open space for him to smack face-first into the floor.

“Thank God I was here when you fell.” He turned to her. She gave a small smile. 

He returned it.

The second she turned, it fell. He thought back to what he’d found in her room. The glowing orb didn’t ring any bells and he hadn’t had the time to look at the journal. 

The thing controlling him had wanted that orb though. He didn’t understand why it dropped its grip on him when it was about to get away. If it was going through all this trouble to get that thing, then why did it hesitant when his mom came around?

He held up his bruised hand to his face. With his other hand, he traced the outline of the bruise. A spark of pain jolted through his arm. It was faint, disappearing once he let up on the bruise. 

He narrowed his eyes. 

It was just another bad feeling. Though, to be frank, he thought he would be more freaked out about something controlling his body. 

He blinked, eyes widening, and then glanced over at his mom.

If that thing could control him with ease, did it mean it could control anyone? Would it use him to hurt his mom?

His hands clenched. They balled into fists even when his right hand hurt.

Just add that to the list of things he had to figure out. This week had turned into a complete shit show. 

He closed his eyes and let out a sigh. The towel on his head made him feel ridiculous. This wasn’t a job for him. He was a frail vampire who couldn’t fight, knew nothing, and had no reason to be sought out by some supernatural force. There was no way he could solve all these problems stacking up against him.

The colors of the orb swirled in front of him. He furrowed his brows as the colors began to make shapes. They seemed to have a purpose, but he couldn’t make out what any of it meant. It was just in his head.

He was starting to question everything around him. If these things were happening for a reason, what is actually an accident? Which ones have a purpose and which don’t?

“Here.”

He cracked his eyes open. His mom held out a mug toward him. He sat up and took it with both hands, careful to not drop it. The hot tea soothed the ache in his right hand. The throbbing had gone down some thought it was still swollen. It might be a while before he could use it on its own. He wasn’t too worried. The only thing he did around here was school work.

The hardest thing he ever had to do in his life was bury and dig up a body.

He stared into the dark abyss of the tea. The steam wafted over his face. His eyes burned and he forced himself to blink.

“Is something wrong?”

His mom knelt beside him.

He shook his head. “Just…hit my head harder than I thought.”

She patted his arm. “I’ll go make you something to eat.”

He watched her walk to the kitchen all the while thinking about the Hunters in the forest.

The glowing orb meant something to his mom. He couldn’t ask her without her knowing that he’d gone snooping in her room. That would lead him to telling her about the thing controlling him.

And that would lead to him admitting that he’d always had some kind of urge to kill people. He didn’t think that would go over so well.

He clenched the mug. It burned, but he didn’t care.

What should he do? Ashton said to drop it and pretend as if nothing had happened. And was this thing connected to the girl’s death? What would that mean? What did the orb mean and why did the thing want it?

The tea burned his tongue as he gulped it down.

He had to figure some things out before he brought his mom into this. If she didn’t need to be a part of it he wanted to keep it that way.

***

The book was heavy in his hands. With his sore wrist, it was hard to hold it up so he propped it on his bent knees as he rested in bed. He slid his left hand under his head and turned to the contents page. The first few chapters were about broad topics like war and how vampires combated against humans. It was different in the sense that it wasn’t overly biased against vampires. In textbooks, vampires were always painted as the ones to start the war and to be evil.

That was how he’d always viewed vampires up until he started doing research of his own. If it wasn’t for school work, he didn’t think he would have even thought about looking outside the classroom. Though the school library was small, it did have a few books that weren’t too far up the government’s ass. They were scarce, but he made do with what he had.

This book hopefully had some answers to his questions. The Hunter Society had dealt a lot with vampires back in the day, but they were known for burning witches too. Their motto went something along the lines of destroying the evil lurking in the human world. That meant anything supernatural was in danger from them.

They’d been ordered by the government to disband after the war. He learned there had been a couple times through the years that they’d tried to come back, but they never got off the ground after their first leader died. It had never hit him that they might be trying to come back again. He’d always thought they were a dead group of the past. Much like the Mantels after the war.

A chapter heading caught his eye.

Supernatural Artifacts

Right under it was a chapter titled: Supernatural Beings and Powers.

Neither of them were exactly what he was looking for, but he did want to know more about his heritage. Even if that heritage was tainted by the horrendous acts by his blood family or the aching need to murder people for no reason.

He flipped to the chapter about the artifacts and began to read.

Halfway through he started to think he should move to the next chapter. Though it was interesting to think that there was such a thing as vampire blood necklaces and coffins, they were all speculation. Besides, he couldn’t really picture Ashton in a coffin. He also didn’t wear jewelry by what Ren could see.

He skimmed through the rest of the page he was on and flipped to the next.

His heart dropped into his gut. He straightened up, hand shaking as he tried to comprehend what he was looking at.

It was obvious at first glance. The picture was an exact match, down to the engravings on the side. He gulped, his heart racing as he leaned over the book, scanning over the photo over and over again. It was impossible, unbelievable, but it was right there in his face. There was no way around it. This was the truth.

The picture was of an old ring enchanted by the first coven of witches that had settled in North America. The ring had unclear powers since it had never been located after the coven had been burned in the witch trials. It was said that the thing had fallen into the hands of another coven who lived in the forest, isolated from society.

The picture was of his grandfather’s ring.

And below it was the picture of the orb that had been in his mom’s bedroom.

For a second, he didn’t know what to think. The picture staring back at him was all he needed to see to understand. He had a feeling there was something more to the ring, to the orb, and the thing controlling him, but he never thought he would find it in a book that he’d plucked from the library shelf. The thing he’d been searching for was about the Hunter Society and the death of the young girl. His intentions were simple. Find out what the Hunter Society was doing, what the girl had been doing in the forest, and possibly understand the thing trying to take over his body.

His hands were shaking and he had to set the book down. He took a deep breath, eyes locked onto the ceiling. Shadows from the setting sun danced across the white space, distracting him for just a second. He wanted to get lost in them. He didn’t want to come back to reality and face the hard cold truth staring back at him. The thing had been leading him here, even if that wasn’t its intention in the first place. Somehow, it seemed, he was meant to find this out. Though he didn’t know what it meant, it was just another thing he had to figure out.

He then remembered that he had his mom’s journal. 

The cover was worn down and the pages felt brittle. He grabbed it from his nightstand. As he cracked it open, he smelled his mom—her perfume—and an old smell that reminded him of being in the forest. His heart raced as he read the first page. There wasn’t much of an interest in it. It was her name, Margret Cornelli, in looped letters. 

He turned to the next page and this time he was greeted by more looped letters. It was a recipe. Strawberry jam. 

He laughed. 

Again, he turned the page. He wasn’t surprised when he found more recipes and more notes on things. There were a few journal entries that recalled about her day. He read them with a smile on his face, but soon, the entries became darker.

There were mentions of her father—his grandfather—falling sick. The entries became vague and then they took such a dark turn that Ren didn’t know what he was reading.

Frantic, he sat up and scanned the words in a hurried manner. She became to talk about demons. His mouth dropped when she talked about visiting the Mantels. 

And then the real thing that hit him in the gut was a sketch of his grandfather’s ring. On the opposite page was a large beast with read eyes.

Ren slammed the book shut.

He grabbed the other book and flipped it back open to the ring. He scanned the photo and description to find out any more information. As if fate were pulling a bad prank on him, the description for the orb looking thing was simple and sweet.