A Feast For The Vampires

XXXVII

The second kiss Aurum and Kimi shared was softer and slower, like they weren’t drunk on lust. Afterwards, Aurum led Kimi to his room and watched him retire for the night, a small smile on Kimi’s face.

The moment Kimi shut the double doors, Aurum’s jovial expression gently fell. He pushed his fingers through his hair, walking through the quiet hallway. He didn’t go to his room and went straight to the mansion’s library. Moving nearer to the library’s large double door, he curled his fingers into tight fists and wore a serious, blank expression. Aurum exhaled a short breath and pushed the double doors open. In the bright library sat the Pristines and their spouses.

“Lord Caedis welcome,” Haruna said, moving to give him the files in her hands. “This was all I could get.”

“Thank you Haruna,” he said, taking the files from her. He raised his head and looked at the room. “As you all know, the reason I had called you here is to discuss about the crisis in our town. The Mayor and his council may be looking for ways to find its cause and find a solution to it.” He narrowed his eyes. “But we know the truth.”

Elvira heaved a small sigh. “We might know the truth, but we still don’t know the whole truth,” she said, raising the steaming cup in her hands to her mouth.

“And that’s why these are here,” Aurum said, raising the files. “They’ll be a small start to solve this mystery.”

Yūgen shook his head, his brows knitted, a confused look on his face. “But who could do this? Cadavers don’t eat human flesh and we only drink blood. Could these killers truly be humans?”

“Cannibals,” Meraki said in a calm tone, resting against one of the tall shelves. He folded his arms over his chest. “Humans who eat other humans.”

Anxo snorted. “Aren’t they already satisfied with the surplus amount of food around the world?”

“Obviously, there’s a hidden motive behind their actions,” Tobe said, pushing up his glasses with his knuckle. “But don’t you think it’s scary that humans are behaving like this? We are the ones who are supposed to be the senile demons. They’re killing innocent people. For what? Their hearts?”

Jiaozi shook her head. “This is not normal,” she said under her breath.

Aurum heaved a silent sigh, striding to one of the many tables in the library. He placed the files on the table and spread them across the table. His eyes jumped from one file to another, reading their names.

“Let’s start with this.” He picked up the file that had ‘Mr. and Mrs. Quinn Mikaelan’ written as a headline on it. “Haruna?” he said, opening the file.

Haruna stepped closer to him and clasped her hands together. She stood beside him and watched as he pulled out pictures from the file. He held it before the both of them and her breath hitched up at the image on the picture. She cleared her throat and the room waited for her to talk.

“Before the autopsy, the cause of their death seemed unfathomable. There were no bruises or stab marks to show that they were stabbed or strangled to death. But after the autopsy report had been made, we found out the real cause of their death. They had been poisoned and they had consumed the poison through their mouth.” She scratched her neck. “But the most confusing thing was that we couldn’t match the poison to all samples of various poisons that we had. But now we know what it is.”

Aurum nodded. “Claret.”

“And there was the stabs around their abdomen. It looked like the person had used a force strong enough to stab them so that the bones around the area could break. Their hearts had been missing, and so did their lungs and some other organs like intestines and liver.” She swallowed and watched as Aurum tossed the pictures on the table and they flew onto it, spreading out on the table. “The hospital had put in their cause of death as food poisoning after we found nothing useful to us. We had thought it was some killing of some sort. The government had still set up a task force to find these killers. We had thought that it was the end.”