Steel: The Transformation

Chapter 23

Chapter 23 

Cleo POV

"Are you sure you're okay?" Alec looked worried as he poured me a cup of tea, this one without any nettles.

"Yes, I'm fine. Are you okay?" I wrapped my fingers around the cup and looked back at him. He nodded slightly and looked out over the kitchen floor. A dark stain was covering the wood floor where one of the Hunters had collapsed. I looked at it and frowned, "So you call them Cleaners but all they really do is collect the bodies?"

Alec chuckled, "Yes, we'll have to sort this out ourselves. We should probably get it done now before it leaves any stains."

"Okay," I took a sip of tea before putting the cup down.

 I grabbed some of the cleaning things from the cupboard and handed Alec a mop, "You do downstairs and I'll do upstairs?" 

He smiled as he took the mop from my outstretched hand.

I poured the slightly pink stained water out in the sink in my bathroom. It created a small line of pink across the white porcelain. I frowned and turned on the tap, letting the warm water wash away the sight of it. As the water poured, my gaze drifted and fixated on the star that was still stuck in the wooden frame of the door. I grabbed it and examined it, the metal was mostly clean and shiny but there were some traces of blood, Jackson's blood. I was just about to put it underneath the running water from the tap when I stopped myself. What if it was something important?

"Hey," I walked down the stairs and found the living room and kitchen looking sparkling clean, there was no way of knowing what had taken place here unless you had witnessed it.

"Yeah?" Alec looked up from the bucket of water he had been pouring into the kitchen sink.

"I found this upstairs," I motioned at the throwing star in my hand.

"Okay...?"

"It's Jackson's blood. Is that important?"

He frowned slightly, "It could be. It would be best to send it off to Central for tests."

He grabbed a plastic zip lock sandwich bag and held it out to me. I dropped the metal star in it.

"I'll give them a call. They should send a messenger to pick it up tomorrow morning."

"Okay," I sat down on one of the stools.

"So what do we do now?" I looked at him for answers.

"What do you mean?"

"Do we prepare for another attack?"

He shook his head lightly, "No I think we are fine for now."

"How do you know?" my voice was insistent.

"Hunters come either on their own or in a sort of pack. We call it pods. A pod of hunters is normally somewhere between four or six."

"So this was a small pod? The three that came tonight?"

"Not exactly. When a pod attacks their leader, the one with the highest level of skills goes in first," he checked to see that I was following his explanation before continuing, "That would have been the Hunter we met in the woods. There was no way of knowing if he was from a pod or if he was on his own."

"So why would the others in his pod try to attack us if he had already failed?" I found it hard to believe why this would seem logical to them.

"They do it out of loyalty. They feel a need to avenge their leader even if that means their certain death."