Chapter 870: Chapter 55- Trinity – Finding Alaric’s Mansion (VOLUME 5)

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Trinity

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The next day we were all ready and set to go on our little find it mission. We were not going to rest until we found Alaric’s former home. And, hopefully, we would find a clue in the process. I doubted that these people were going to be involved, considering what their ancestors were like. Still, they might be able to point us in the right direction.

We gathered for breakfast in the dining hall, told Talia, Rudy and Alexio to stay behind, then left once we were all done eating. Talia was not happy, of course. She wanted to be part of the investigation as much as possible, but I didn’t care. She needed to stay here because this wasn’t a crime scene we were going to. It was the home of a former hunter. And we didn’t know what we were going to find there. Just to be safe, we needed to make sure that she was safe.

The path to the home that we were going to was bright and sunny. Not even Shawn or Dietrich could shadow walk on this path. There were no trees. There were no rocks. There was nothing. And it was not overgrown or anything like that. It was clear that someone was still living in this area. And they were taking good care of the property.

“I don’t get it.” Dietrich was confused when we were several hundred yards into the property. The house should be here. The mansion that I remember should be right here.” He was at a loss. “Someone is clearly still here, but the house is gone. What is going on here?”

…..

“Could it be further into the property?” Shane asked in the most serious tone he had. “Have we not gone far enough?”

“No. It should be right here. I spent enough time in that home to know where it is. I would not forget something like that. This was too important of a place for me to just lose track of or forget about. I lived in this home for several years, I helped make it into what it is. Or rather, what it used to be.”

I could tell that Dietrich was feeling lost and nostalgic at the same time. He was remembering the past and that past didn’t add up with the present. He was having trouble coping with it and it was hard to watch.

“Is it possible that the house is simply gone, and that people don’t like to see this place overgrown? Perhaps his descendants look after the property and keep it clean. Maybe they live nearby.” I was offering whatever advice that I could. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

“No. There are no other homes in the area. And, as you know, we have already traveled far to get here from my place.”

That was true. Dietrich’s place was about twenty miles or so from this location. And the only place that was near here was Dietrich’s. There was nothing else that we had seen along the way. No roads. No barns. No sheds. No homes. Nothing at all. It was just open land here and Dietrich’s castle grounds back there.

“Well, something is going on here. Where did the house go? There isn’t even any evidence that there used to be a house here.” Reece was looking around. “Isn’t that the most odd thing about all of this? Wouldn’t you think there would be a hole in the ground where the dungeon had been. I would think that there would be some sort of ruins that were left behind. Nothing would be this clean and this filled in. Something is going on with this place.”

“You do have a point. There were multiple layers to the dungeon like the basement in this house. It would not have just filled itself back up with nothing to show for it. There is something truly wrong here.” Dietrich was spinning in a slow circle now, looking all around the clearing that we were in. “Someone is hiding it. Someone is doing this. I just know it.”

“Why? Why would they be hiding it? What purpose would that serve?” Shawn sounded calm on the surface, but I could see that he was unnerved about this. It was a strange place, wherever we were, it was definitely odd.

“Obviously, these people have something to hide.” Vincent glared at where Dietrich said the house would be. “There is no other reason for it than that.”

“Agreed.” Gabriel nodded along with Vincent.

“Let us search the area. I am sure that if we go far enough, we will find the spell or whatever they are using to hide this place. If we can find that, then we will be able to break it. Then we can confront these people.” I was pissed off right now. This was supposed to be a simple trip to visit the home of someone that Dietrich used to know. This should not have added to the intrigue of this case. Now that it had though, I was starting to get more and more suspicious of these people. And that meant that I was more and more convinced that they were the ones that were killing all of those people.

I wanted to find this place right now. After seeing this new mystery pop up, I was feeling more and more uneasy. With the schedule that these people were keeping right now, there were going to be more murders happening between tonight and tomorrow morning, depending on where the people were located. And if this group, this family, was involved with it, then I would make sure that they paid for what they had done.

We split into groups for the time being. We needed to make sure that we were able to search effectively. The problem was, we didn’t know how far out we needed to go. Where was the spell hidden at? What would it look like? Was it close to where the house should be or farther away from it? I didn’t know any of those answers, and that meant that I was not very happy.

I decided that I was going to search with my magic. Calling it to my eyes like I did to see the writing that was left at the crime scenes. That would let me know when I was close to the right place.

Reece and I started moving in a quarter circle. The area around the clearing was divided into sections and we were to head out from the center to the woods that surrounded the clearing. We walked back and forth over that area looking for things that were relevant to the case of the missing house.

We were moving slowly since we didn’t want to miss anything at all. So, after what felt like several hours, we were only halfway through our section of that clearing. And we still hadn’t found anything. Things were not looking good for us.

After a while longer, Reece and I made it to the line of trees, and still we hadn’t found anything.

“Let’s check in there. Maybe they hid it outside of the clearing.” I shrugged because it was all that I could think of.

And it was a damn good thing too. After we started to search the woods, I saw that there was a flash of magic light in the distance. That meant that my magical eyes were seeing something that was important.

“There!” I shouted at Reece. “I see something over there.” Taking his hand, I ran all the way over to where the tree was glowing. “Ther-.”

“Shit!” Reece cut me off when I was telling him where it was. “They went a little overboard, don’t you think?”

“Huh?” I didn’t see what he was talking about.

“They carved it so far into the tree that it’s pathetic. The tree is dead now. That was stupid of them don’t you think.”

“Oh.” I shut off the flow of magic to my eyes to see what he was talking about.

Sure enough, there it was. A tree with the rune carved so deep into it that there was dried sap all over it. The sap had dripped out like blood when they mangled the tree.

“Yeah. That is overkill.” The cuts were at least eight inches deep in the big tree. “I don’t know if the tree is dead, but that mark will be there forever.”

“I wonder if this is it. Or if there is more to the spell.”

“I think there is more. This looks like it’s perfectly in the corner of a perimeter.” I was looking back the way we had come and calculating the angle that we were at from the center of the clearing. “I am betting that there is more, one in each corner.”

“Then let’s go.” Reece took my hand and started to move.

When we found the second mark, I knew I had been right. I also called the others over and told them what we had found. With their help, we found the last two marks instantly.

“This is serious.” I looked at the tree that was closest to Dietrich’s house. “They are hiding from you. And you were his friend. Why hide now?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t like this. Let’s head back and talk this over. I want to come up with a plan and come back tomorrow morning. I agree with you Trinity, these people seem to only move at night, so seeing them during the day is better.”

“Understood.” With that, we headed back to Dietrich’s castle to prepare for the next phase of this mission.

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