"Did you catch him?"

Klaus shook his head, jaw tightly clenched. "No. He disappeared into the crowd before I could catch up to him."

"Damn it." Xavier's voice was slightly hoarse, his fist tightening, "Now that he knows we are on his tail..."

The sentence hung in the air like a bad omen, the consequences too heavy to say.

They both knew the stakes: Now, the shapeshifter would grow more cautious, more vicious and...more lives would be lost.

Xavier's teeth grazed his lower lip, a sharp metallic tang spreading on his tongue. His fist tightened, knuckles paling as chaotic thoughts crashed against the wall of his mind, each one more frantic than the last.

'Now this is a race against time. We need to put an end to the shapeshifter as fast as we can.' Xavier could only exhale sharply.

Xavier ran a hand through his air, casting a glance towards the woman in the corner.

His gaze slowly grew calmer.

"Ma'am, I understand how you feel. And we are sorry for your loss."

"No one wishes to witness the death of a loved one. But at the same time, I hope you can aid us with all you know. So we can put this criminal behind bars and put an end to more potential deaths."

Klaus nods his head, pressing on, "Ma'am, by providing us with the needed information. You will be saving more lives than you can imagine."

The woman's silence felt heavy, like a surreal weight pressing against the room.

Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over in thin streams that glistened under the dim crimson rays of the moon, leaving cold, wet tracks down her cheeks.

Klaus caught Xavier's eyes, and both brothers immediately came to an unspoken agreement in the briefest of glances. They remained still, their patience as heavy as the grief that pressed against the woman's chest, as they waited for the storm of sorrow to pass before pressing further.

Five minutes quickly passed by, yet the brothers still retained their eerie calmness. They knew that she would eventually speak up. It just depends on how long that will take.

Within the blink of an eye, another twenty-five minutes easily passed by. The woman's tears finally showed signs of being subdued. She made use of the back of her hand to wipe off the remnant tears.

"He's my husband's twin brother." Her voice quivered slightly before she added, "They went to the same university and..."

"And what, Ma'am?" Klaus questioned with a cold calmness.

"H-he said something." She stuttered, tears trickling down the corner of her eyes.

She was filled with a lot of questions.

'Why would he kill his twin brother? It apparently had something to do with a girl, yet what grudge could have been so great as to kill one's own brother?' She was confused, her heart broken into fragments of shards that refused to fade away, her mind wracked by chaotic turmoils that threatened to break her apart.

Said something. What could a psychopath probably say? Klaus's brows were tightly furrowed, "What did he say?"

Her teeth sank into her lower lips, hard enough to leave a faint line of blood in its wake, and her shoulders quivered with the effort to hold back the tremors that ran across her body. Trembling lightly, she struggled to speak "He said that my husband and his friends did something to her."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"..."

"Her" Xavier was startled, his brows slightly narrowed, his voice a little bit intensive, "Who is he referring to by her?"

"T-this," slightly startled, she added. "I also don't know."

Um. This just made the case a...biit more complicated.

Xavier pressed his fingers on his temples, kneading the skin as if he could massage the puzzle pieces into place, but the tension only thickened, the fragments of the puzzle swirling around his mind like a fog he couldn't clear.

Hmm...He lightly raised his head, "Your husband's twin. Does he have a wife?"

"No." She shook her head, "His wife died in a car accident some few years back. Since then, he had become an introvert, rarely communicating with anyone."

Xavier rubbed his temples, thinking if this had been a cursed spirit case, it would have been easy to point fingers at the dead wife. But this? This was something different.

Klaus's eyes were slightly narrowed, "Ma'am." Seeing that he had garnered the lady's attention, he added, "Did your husband ever mention any kind of falling out with his brother? Any bad blood?"

"Um- No. None that he spoke of anyways." She shook her head, receiving a light nod from Klaus who slowly got onto his feet.

"Alright. Thanks for your time, Ma'am.

"We'll do everything we can to stop him.

"Also...sorry for the loss."

"Thanks." She nods her head, cleaning her face with the back of her hand. She slowly stood up before walking the brothers towards the door. Both of them gave her a light nod before the door got slammed, followed by the sound of legs giving in, and finally, the tears that she had been holding back rushed out, akin to a rampaging dam.

Her sobs didn't escape both brothers' ears. They could only sigh inwardly. As hunters, they had to witness tragedies like this in almost every single moment of their lives.

In the car, the tension hung between them like a fog. Klaus was about to start the car engines when Xavier spoke, his voice barely above a whisper.

"I could have saved him."

Klaus froze. "What?"

Xavier stared blankly ahead of him, his voice flat. "I had a vision. I saw how her husband was killed."

"Xavier, don't start this again," Klaus snapped, his hands gripping the wheel.

"It's true." Xavier's eyes were vacant, his face ashen. "I saw it...before it happened. And I didn't act fast enough."

Klaus's knuckle whitened, as he clenched the steering wheel tighter.

"You did what you could. No one would've believed you, not about...this."

Xavier didn't answer, his mind broken into splinters of thoughts.

If only he had been faster. The thought gnawing at Xavier, a slow, cruel twist in his chest like a drill burrowing deep with each second. The man's death wasn't just a failure- it was a gaping void inside him, a space carved out of Klaus's hesitation.

Klaus's face hardened, a wall of icy difference rising between them, but a flicker of warmth still lingered in his eyes.

"Klaus. You can choose to believe me or not. But the truth is that I had the vision and could have stopped the man from dying."

Xavier's laugh was hollow, more like an amalgamation of a broken echo than a real sound.

"You know that too," He said, his voice brittle as if the truth itself might shatter him, "You are just trying to convince yourself that your brother isn't some kind of monster." His laughter grew denser and louder, "Aren't I right Klaus?"

"Yes...you're right," Klaus said through gritted teeth and balled fists.

"But believe me when I tell you this. You're no monster."

Xavier was quiet for a while before exhaling sharply, "I hope so."

An uneasy silence settled between them, thick and awkward. The words they both searched for stayed tangled, stuck in their throats, too heavy to force out.

Xavier shifted his gaze away from the window. The various shopping malls, hotels, moving cars and citizens dining in restaurants rapidly vanishing from his line of sight.

"Alright, let's get back to business."

Seeing that he had garnered Klaus's attention, he proceeded, "So it seems like our previous assumptions were way off point. And the shape-shifter isn't going after its victims just to have fun.

"Oh, also, it seems that the true targets of the shape-shifter are the husbands of the ladies, who are all in their early thirties.

"Yeah." Klaus nods his head, "...And he seems to be doing it for revenge."

"So we know the motives behind the shape-shifter's action and why he tortures the men's wives in the process. It's all to have his revenge on something they had done to someone close to him." Xavier muttered after a few seconds of organizing his thoughts.

Klaus nodded in agreement, "Yeah."

"Now... All we have to do is to find out who the girl is, the university they all went to, and then send the damn shape-shifter to hell." Klaus said with a wide grin of anticipation slowly creeping up his face.

For a moment there, Xavier said nothing, the weight of his thoughts hanging between them; a quiet chuckle broke the tension- soft, almost bitter, like a man resigned to his fate.

"And I think I know just where that's."