Chapter 46: Using my Bloodline to Track (1)

That woman wasn’t just going to ignore us like that. We were there to help them. This treatment was beyond unfair.

I was ready to do something drastic, like bust the door open, but Ethan stopped me. He put his hand on my chest, keeping me from going and destroying their door.

"You two can step aside and let me deal with it," he said. "I can use my ability to convince them. They won’t even know what happened."

Right. Ethan’s ability was related to illusions. I still had no idea what he was truly capable of doing, but if he said he could handle it, then I should trust him.

"Alright," I said. "Tom and I will go to that donut shop over there and grab a few."

"We will?" Tom asked, looking at me and shaking his head.

"Yes, we will," I repeated.

The donut shop wasn’t too far, since the city was basically just a large neighborhood. As we walked, Tom kept asking questions, looking concerned about how things were going.

"Are you sure he can pull this off?"

"Trust your teammate, bro," I said. "Besides, letting him handle this allows us to learn more about his ability. You know he didn’t tell everyone everything about it, similar to what I’m doing."

"Am I the only one without secrets around here? Damn..."

We grabbed a few donuts and headed back to the house. Ethan was waiting out front, and even from a distance, I could already see him smiling.

"She’s letting us talk to the witness," he said. "Come on, I was just waiting for you guys."

The woman was much nicer now. She smiled as we stepped through the door, showed us where to go to talk to her son, and even brought us water and Diet Coke.

What the hell was going on? Did Ethan brainwash her or something? I was starting to get a little scared of his ability. Just what else could he do with it? Turning invisible was already quite impressive.

Anyway, her son was on the second floor. He was still waiting by his bedroom window, staring down at the street and over at Maison’s house on the opposite side.

The moment we entered the room, the little boy already knew why we were there.

"You’re here to talk about what I saw the other night, right?" he asked, turning to face us. "I’m not crazy. I really saw something."

The kid was really sure he had seen something, and we trusted him. There was no reason to think otherwise.

I crouched down to his level.

"What can you tell us about that night?"

The boy didn’t look scared to talk about it. It was more like he was glad that someone was finally listening to what he had to say.

Tom and Ethan were listening, too. Tom even had a small notepad and pen in hand. He was truly going hard on this whole investigation thing, it seemed.

"I couldn’t sleep that night," the boy said. "I had a nightmare. But I didn’t want to go and bother my mom about it, so I decided to just stare out the window.

"It’s peaceful, and the sky is quite beautiful here. Nothing was happening on the streets, just like the other times I’d done the same thing. No one goes out at night in this area.

"But then, I saw something leaving Maison’s house through the back. It was a tall humanoid figure carrying him on its shoulders. I don’t know if it was a monster or a human. It was impossible to see anything else, I’m sorry..."

"No worries, mate," I said to him. "Do you know where they ran off to? Like, which direction?"

"Yeah. They went toward the... what’s the name of it..."

"North Fork View Point?" I offered.

"Yes, that one."

That was the same area where the dimensional rift was supposed to be, I thought.

We asked the boy a few more questions, but he didn’t know much else. He was just a little kid who saw something he shouldn’t have through his window. What more could we ask of him?

It was already more than enough. At least we knew the direction the creature went.

After leaving the house, we stopped under a tree for some shade and ate the donuts we brought.

"What do we do now? Should we go and take a look at the other house? Mary’s?"

She was the other person the humanoid creature had kidnapped.

"I don’t think that’s necessary, at least not right now," I said. "The creature didn’t leave a single clue in Maison’s house, so it probably didn’t in Mary’s either. Why bother going there? Let’s just follow the clue we have."

They agreed, so we left the city and headed toward the North Fork Viewpoint.

This area was basically a mountain overlook that gave us a clear view of the nearby river. To get there, people usually drove, of course. But as hunters, we were pretty damn fast, so we just ran.

I’m not gonna lie, I felt a little awkward running like crazy and jumping from place to place whenever necessary. It sure looked awesome, and the people driving by always looked shocked to see such a display of power, but I still felt weird doing it.

Maybe eventually I’d get used to being a hunter, I don’t know.

We reached the North Fork Viewpoint in about three to five minutes, which was pretty fast. Once we were up there, we stopped to take in the scenery for a moment, enjoying the view, the sounds of nature, and the refreshing breeze hitting our faces. It was really nice. I never thought I would go somewhere like that.

As for the dimensional rift, it wasn’t exactly at the viewpoint itself. It was further down near the river. We could just see it from the mountain.

The police were there. They had even built a small cabin next to it that blended in well with the forest.

Only hunters could enter the rifts, but of course, curious people still wanted to go in and try their luck. Normal humans wouldn’t last a second inside a rift without being killed by a monster.

Because of that, they had to station police at all the rifts, especially the ones out in the open, to make sure no normal human tried to enter. That caused the demand for police officers to increase worldwide, along with the budgets for them in every country.

But at the same time, the rifts brought in more money than they cost to maintain. The rare materials found inside were basically a new source of income for the entire country. The countries with the best hunters gathered the most resources, and therefore, they made the most money. It was as simple as that.

Anyway, we didn’t head straight to the rift. It was time to do a thorough search of the entire area and look for clues about that humanoid beast.

With my heightened senses after obtaining the bloodline, I was really excited to get to work. This creature wouldn’t escape my senses.

So, we split and start looking for clues.