Fangs | mlm

Chapter 22 - The future

The next morning Eleonora and Trevor had gone on trip to the nearest town to buy two pairs of handcuffs. Happy that it hadn't been necessary to buy ones with cheesy feathers, they had got a plain silver pair. At the checkout, they had attempted to act as ordinary as they had been able to. It must have worked in the end, as no one had asked them a single question. Though they couldn't have been sure whether the cashier had written down a note for their manager or not.

They had handcuffed both Griffin and Austin—neither of them had commented then on such precautionary measures. Then they left the van and headed for the forest, where Griffin would take the role of their guide. They soon discovered that tiny drops of water were coming from the grey clouds visible in the sky, and as no one had minded taking an umbrella, their last hope was that the raindrops wouldn't become larger later.

Griffin raised his arms, then wiggled them. 'Is that really necessary?'

'Yes. We can't risk your running away,' William said firmly while taking a huge step to avoid a puddle.

Griffin thought he had no other thing to do than to sigh, a hiss coming through his nostrils and his chest collapsing simultaneously. He gazed into the forest's depths. There had been times—not that long ago—when he would cover miles of land in a place like this in order to find prey. Supernatural beings loved to hide in places where encountering humans wouldn't happen often, and if it did happen by accident, they wouldn't be in a large group, thus being a lesser threat to them. The vampire was supposed to be his last trophy hunt—a jewel of his collection—however, the turn of events decided a different fate for the witch hunter. He had changed that way. It mightn't have been easily seen from the perspective of others, but he knew it and felt it in his bones.

'How much further?' Eleonora asked, pushing a leafless branch out of her way.

'A bit more,' Griffin said, loudly as he was a few feet ahead of her.

The place didn't change at first glance—as there still were trees surrounding them from all sides—but there was a structure in front of them, and when Griffin began to remove the tree branches and leaves from the top of a vehicle that was buried under it, within a while, the rest found out that it was a car, dusty and red.

'What is this car about?' William dared to ask.

'My plan-B car,' the man said, looking inside through a window. 'If I had won, I would've come here. Well, I did it anyway. Even though you're alive.'

'Good you didn't add "still", because then you'd have to keep a distance of a couple of yards away from the car,' he said.

'I will keep away from the boot then. So you wouldn't accuse me of trying to kill you.'

'What's in there?' Eleonora asked since she was the closest to it.

'Guns, traps, bombs, and so on.' It caused an inflow of fright on everyone else's faces. 'Don't worry. Not planning on using them.' He raised his arms, which he would outstretch if he could. 'Hope you won't either.'

'We're not murderers. If we ever wanted to kill you—except for the time at the manufacture, of course—you would be long dead, Griffin.' William stated.

Griffin settled on a weak smile. 'I don't know if it soothed me, but thank you.'

They opened the car with the key that Eleonora, Trevor, and William had found while searching through his clothes. As Eleonora had said, she hated the process of doing it, but something good came out of it in the end. Just to check, they opened the boot—the abundance of weapons that could be used to kill without a moment of hesitation scared them, causing their eyes to widen. They realized more and more how lucky they really were. If it weren't for Griffin's disease... It must have weakened him greatly.