"Anything?"

  "Not really. You?"

  "Nope."

  We'd been searching the area for a while, now. The day was getting on, and the sky was fading amber. Aside from a few more pebbles with faint bloodstains, we couldn't find any other clues as to what had happened here all those months ago.

  I sat down on a fallen log and let my head rest in my hands. It was exhausting. I knew I'd often written off any negative feeling as being the fault of being a vampire, but it was just so much easier to pretend that it was the root of all evil. Vampire problems didn't count. Vampire problems were loose; I could decide the rules on them, because there was no one to say I was wrong. Vampire problems were the perfect excuse. One time, I managed to convince the others that the reason I'd missed school was because I was hungover from feeding the night prior. I did not, in fact, feed the night prior. I'd actually just been avoiding Victoria because we'd had a fight, and I didn't want to have to sit next to her in class.

  But this? Right now? I couldn't even lie to myself about this being a vampire issue.

  This was just blunt, cold, honest post-traumatic stress disorder.

  Every time I closed my eyes, I was sent back to those moments. Every time I inhaled, I swore I could still smell the blood. Every time I tried to ground myself with the noise of a bird chirping or the leaves rustling, I heard my own screams of despair replaying.

  It really did feel like I could smell the blood, though.

  "Oi." London called from a few metres away.

  I snapped my head up and forced myself back into the present, bottling up the trauma as well as I could as I headed over to her.

  "Think this matters?" London raised a brow.

  Before her, half submerged in a puddle, was a snapped branch. Not a twig, but a thick, heavy arm of a eucalyptus tree. There were deep claw marks all over, but far too big for a koala to be the perpetrator. Those same ever so faint stains that had been on that pebble coated most of the branch.

  I bent over the nearest bush and vomited.

  "Guessing that's a yes." London winced at the sight, hesitantly patting my shoulder.

  "... Yes."

  It took me another half hour to work up the courage just to look at the stick without feeling overcome with nausea and dread. There was so much blood that had stained the wood, and so much emotion burned into the damn thing. It felt like every splinter held a scream.

  A huff of effort left my lungs as I managed to drop the heavy branch into an open area, away from the shrubbery. London hadn't managed to even lift one side of it on her own. We stared down at it in utter silence for far too long before she cleared her throat.

  "Would you have... maybe stabbed her?"

  "I honestly cannot think of a single situation in which I'd weigh stabbing someone with a giant branch over hurting them with my claws."

  "Well, it's clearly got her blood all over it, and your claw marks."

  "Why the hell would I have stabbed her? And when?"

  "Okay, well... maybe after you bit her, she ran away and then someone else attacked her?" London threw her hands in the air. "It seems like it went right through someone."

  "I remember finding her with no unhealed injuries. It wasn't just that I remember already being there beside her, and she had no open wounds." I explained. "My memory starts a few steps away. If that injury that was on her chest was from being impaled with this branch, it would've had to have happened before I healed her, or I would've still had to have been there after to heal it. Y'know?"

  "Well what if she stabbed herself?" London shrugged.

  "You think she went 'oh no, my boyfriend bit me and I'm running away. Whatever shall I do? I know! Stab myself with a stick no human my size could ever hope to pick up'? Sounds really likely, there, London."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  "I know as little as you." She defended.

  "Am I wrong in feeling really pissed off right now?" Malachi grumbled.

  "That's how I feel every time Tori wakes up, I promise." Carly sighed. "I try not to take it personally."

  "She's off in her new life with a new name and a new everything and more than happy to leave us behind." Hunter raked a hand through his hair. "Zach must've really fucked her up when he killed her."

  "I don't think she's simply moved on," Carly leaned against the kitchen bench, "Zach saw her at the shopping centre the other day, but Autumn lives on the other side of Port Phillip Bay, at least an hour drive away. She must've come back for some reason."

  "So?" Hunter raised a brow. "Maybe she's helping Mr Vance spy on us."

  "Do you think," Malachi hummed, "Maybe the reason she keeps asking for Zach when she's here, is because she's trying to find him?"

  "She knows where he lives." Carly shook her head. "She could just pull up in the driveway if she wanted."

  "Maybe it's an attachment issue, then." Malachi nodded. "Just... separation anxiety or something."

  "Zach's not answering his phone." Hunter paced. "No texts back, not answering my calls. Neither is London."

  "I hope they're alright." Carly frowned.

  "The only dangerous thing in those woods is Zach, I'm sure they're just busy." Malachi shrugged.

  Carly thought to herself for a moment, before pushing off from the bench and making her way to the main bedroom.

  "Where're you going, missy?" Hunter followed her.

  "Oh, I was just gonna look for the journal." Carly replied. "Zach's been reading through it and sending me photos of the pages he's okay with me reading, but I think it might be worth reading all of it."

  "You're just gonna blatantly snoop through it?" Malachi chuckled. "He'll rip your throat out."

  "I don't even know where he keeps it. I'm just gonna look for it for now." Carly rolled her eyes. "Can one of you feed Tori for me?"

  "She can't feed herself?" Hunter frowned. "She's not a baby."

  "She can, but she makes a mess and goes a bit crazy." Carly began searching the room. "Can you just defrost some chicken and supervise her?"

  Hunter bit back a protest and headed to the kitchen.

  As time continued to pass, and the sun fell lower in the sky, I started realising that some of the things I'd thought I''d been hallucinating were more than tangible.

  For example, the blood I kept smelling was coming from the stains lingering on the branch and the pebbles. However, the cries in my ears weren't real, thankfully, and they eventually began to fade off. The longer I let myself drown in this place, the more grounded I found myself, and the clearer the line between trauma and reality became.

  Marking in our heads where we'd left the stick, London and I began searching out in the opposite direction from where the tent had been. It seemed like a long shot, but London remembered seeing that there was a registered camping site not far on the maps earlier. The problem was the lack of signal out here, we couldn't check if we were going the right way at all.

  "Maybe you were right, earlier," I murmured as I followed behind her, "Maybe someone else was there."

  "Hard to tell for now." London shrugged. "It's plausible. From what I can tell, the site where she died is actually closer to this camping site up here than where your tent was. Maybe she went to get help for something and was found by the wrong people."

  "I'm just lost as to what specifically killed her." I admitted quietly. "It wasn't my venom, it wasn't drained blood, nothing was broken, and no wounds were open."

  "Shock?" London offered.

  I narrowed my eyes at the dirt.

  It didn't take long for the cabins to come into view. The place was small, and seemingly privately owned. It didn't look like a registered park organisation or anything.

  There were three cabins along the edge of the lake; timber panelled, slightly run down, and cheap looking. A messy fire pit sat in front of the centre cabin, but it was more so a few logs surrounding a sand pit filled with dead charcoal. No one was staying there at the moment, and there was no sort of administration office or anything. The only other building of sorts was an outdoor bathroom off to the side.

  Nothing about this place felt familiar in the slightest, and there was nothing relating to Victoria. Though, I was surprised I'd never known about the place, given that Victoria and I camped in these woods for years.

  "Anything?" London asked.

  I shook my head.

  "It feels empty."

  "Empty?"

  I hesitated to elaborate. I couldn't really put it into words.

  "There's... a lot of noise here, but it's quiet." I traced my fingers along the rail of one of the cabin porches. "Muffled."

  London crossed her arms, pretending she wasn't absolutely baffled by my nonsense.

  "You can't sense anything?"

  "It's different." I walked over to the fire pit. "This place is... uncomfortable."

  "Go on."

  "There's laughter here." I gestured to the fire pit. "There's... a little fear. Even a bit of affection."

  I looked back to the cabins.

  "But it's so quiet."

  "Maybe no one's been here in a while." London sat down on a log. "Whatever it is you're picking up is just fading away."

  I hummed in consideration.

  My steps carried me to one of the cabins specifically. Wasn't sure what it was, but it looked upset. Anxious. Lost.

  "Something happened in there." I muttered.

  "Zach."

  I approached the door cautiously. The traces were definitely coming from inside.

  "Zach?"

  With a bit of force, I broke the doorhandle off and stepped inside, only to be hit with an overwhelming sense of terror.

  "Zach!"

  I grunted and snapped back to London. "What?"

  But all words left me when I saw what had caught her attention.

  There was a familiar car that had pulled up beside one of the other cabins, and a woman was approaching us.

  A woman with long, dark brown hair, a shark tattoo on her arm, boots with small chains around the ankles, and a serious scowl.

  "Autumn." London uttered.