~The Hunter~

He had dropped the bomb on Mrs.Rodriguez.

The mug fell onto the floor with a resounding clank that filled the emptiness of the room. It's handle went flying off, flinging itself over the kitchen counter and into the living room. Grayson was relieved Mrs.Rodriguez hadn't poured any of the freshly brewed coffee into it or the scorching hot liquid would have spilt all over her work pants.

Her expression darkened. "What? How did you know?"

Grayson had shown up at her apartment in the early afternoon not knowing what to expect. She had been back from rehab for a few weeks and though she had stayed for the longest amount of time she ever did before, it didn't mean the end product would be different. If anything, he'd understand if rehab hadn't helped at all this time. Her daughter was gone and it was all her fault. She had as good of a reason as she could to not get better.

There was also the added factor that the last time the two had talked, he went on a long-winded rant insulting her which added salt to the wound that was already bone deep. He didn't know if she'd be willing to return his phone calls, let alone answer the door for him. Still, he took a chance because the success of his search for Beth was dependent on it.

The note the woman at the magic shop gave me implied that Beth's mother had a vision when she touched the rose. Whatever she saw in the vision had to have incredibly useful information Grayson could use to find Beth.

He understood why Beth's mother hadn't mentioned the vision to aid the police on their search for her daughter. She probably didn't want to sound like a raving lunatic.

Grayson cut straight to the chase. He was sorry about what he had said on the phone those weeks ago - not really but she didn't have to know that - and told her that he knew the rose he took from the Beast gave her a vision. When she began to laugh at him, with a straight face, he recounted his own experience with the rose. He described how it felt to be sucked into an alternate reality, having your surroundings peeled back and your senses accumate to an entirely new place. The vision played like a movie before your eyes but you felt the temperature of it, you could feel the ground beneath your feet but you were motionless.

That was when she had dropped the mug.

"I've had my own experiences with the roses," Grayson said, turning away from her gawking and peering at the incredibly organized living room. The only thing that was out of place were four outfits laid out on the couch with an iron resting on the table. It appeared as if he had come over while she was getting her clothes for the work week in order. He raised his eyebrows. It had been years since Mrs.Rodriguez had a steady job.

"You touched one too? And saw who the rose was?" She placed what remained of the mug on the counter, pressing her fingers to her lips. "I thought . . . I thought I had made it up."

"What do you mean?"

"I believed what I saw was real until I got home . . . until I was sober." She scratched the back of her neck and turned to grab another mug from the cupboard.

"Then you convinced yourself it was just part of the trip?" Grayson didn't even want to imagine what she was taking to have chalked up an experience like that to drugs.

"What else was I supposed to think? That I had accidentally stumbled upon a supernatural phenomenon?"

She poured him some coffee and slid the cup to him. Mechanically, she reached into the drawer and placed some sugar packets in front of him. She kept herself busy but he knew her mind was racing. He knew because it was the same way Bethany got when she was thinking. He hated to say it but where Beth lacked physical resemblance to her mother, she had an abundance of the same mannerisms. Their thinking faces, their habit of chewing on their lips, their laughs. It was amazing how he could romanticize these same traits in Beth and despise them in her mother.

"Every rose in that garden is a person then," she said, crossing her arms and leaning into the counter behind her. "He kills them but they don't die . . . Their afterlife is becoming a flower?"

"That is one way to put it."

"What about Bethany! You saw her pretty recently right? She's not -"

"No," Grayson affirmed. "She's not a rose."

"This changes everything. I mean, what does someone with his kind of power want?"

"We don't necessarily need to know how he has this power or even understand it, though that would be nice." He leaned in, a shadow casting across his features. "I came here because I need to know what you saw in the vision. I think it can help me - us - find the Beast and in turn find Bethany."

"Detective Bredan went on the news and said she was a runaway." Mrs.Rodriguez bit her lip, her eyes becoming glassy. "Is it wrong that for a second I believed it? Sometimes, even now, I believe it."

Grayson swallowed the emotions that were clawing up his throat. Her words were enough to set his insides on fire and every time he heard it the fire grew bigger.

"You know what her life was like here. She lost her father in one quick moment - just like that. One second he was here, waving at us as he left to go on a simple trip to the store and the next he was laying on the concrete lifeless."

Grayson stiffened in his seat. He had never heard Mrs.Rodriguez talk about her husband's death.

"It was bad enough. Bethany and her father were inseparable. What does a little girl do after something like that? They look to their mom. They look to see how Mommy handles the pain, they need more love from their mom but I turned my back. She lost one parent in a quick second and she spent the next ten years losing the other one."

"Mrs.Rodriguez - "

"I made her miserable!" she yelled. Shaking her head, she stared at the picture frames along the wall. They were all years old. Beth and her mother had no newer memories worth framing. "Her father would loathe me for what I have put her through. Nothing I will ever do will make up for all the time I took from her or all the pain."

Grayson couldn't agree with that statement more. He, for one, hoped that Beth would disown her mother the second she got back. However, this rhetoric would not give him the information he so desperately needed.

"You could start here. Start by telling me what you saw. You may say she has nothing to come back to but I'm here. Let me help her."

She nodded. "Okay. I'll tell you every last detail."

A woman stood with her back perfectly straight and shoulders rolled back. Her hair was pinned so that no loose strands fell into her face. She wore a dress the color of the sky with a white apron tied around her waist. Her eyes were closed, while she took slow, deep breaths.

Somehow, Mrs.Rodriguez knew her thoughts.

I can do this, was what she was thinking. No - chanting. Over and over, she repeated this phrase to herself. It matched the quick thumping coming from her chest.

Someone walked in the kitchen, ripping the woman from her thoughts. They stood in the doorway, hidden by the dark shadow from the poor lighting. She couldn't quite make out who it was. She didn't want it to be her husband. When she thought of her husband, her palms grew sweaty and she trembled.

"Who's there?" she asked.

"It's me."

Her chest collapsed with the breath she let out. "Oh. I've been hoping to see you, honey."

"Yeah?"

She spun around at the ding of a timer and removed a pie from the oven. It was blueberry, her son's favorite since he was a child. He had requested it for his eighth birthday instead of a cake, the woman remembered fondly. She was hoping the pie would ease the life altering news she wished to break.

"Where were you, anyways? I didn't hear you come back in last night." It was then that she noted her son hadn't stepped into the kitchen. He was lingering in the darkness as still as a plank.

"I . . . Something happened."

She paused waving her oven mitt over the cooling pie. "Are you alright? Come in here, sweetie. I can't see you."

He didn't move from his spot. "You never bake anymore."

"I know. I wanted to - to tell you something and I thought the pie would make it easier. Pie makes everything easier."

"Spit it out then."

She rubbed her forehead, squinting at her son's figure. "I really wish you would step inside. I feel like I'm talking to a ghost."

Her son didn't respond. It made the pounding in her ears get louder. She had to remind herself to breathe. If it was this hard to say the words aloud she could only imagine how hard it would be to actually complete the action.

"I'm leaving your father. We're leaving - if you want. I - I want you to come with me. I know you're grown but please, if you don't want to come with me just don't stay with him."

"Mom . . ."

"I mean it. I have money saved up - money he doesn't know about and can't touch. We'll stay with your grandparents for a while until we find a place. Maybe we'll leave New York. Maybe we can go someplace warm like Florida or Texas. I don't know but I want to start over."

"I can't."

"You can! Of course, you can." The woman's fear was replaced by something stronger: determination. "We both know he's evil and bitter. We should have - I should have never -!"

"Stop!" Her son's voice cut through the air, leaving silence in its wake. "I can't go anywhere. Not with you, not with him, not on my own."

"What are you talking about?"

Her son stepped into the light.

She screamed, falling back against the tray that held the pie. It splattered onto the ground, the berry spearing red across her apron. She covered her mouth with her hands as she stared at her child with disbelief.

Her son had his gaze fixed on the ground but Mrs.Rodriguez could see it all. At that moment, she learned what was beneath the criminal's mask.

It was a beast.

The last bit was a surprise, even questionable, but it wasn't the part that echoed in his mind.

Grayson scoured his brain for something of use in the vision. He needed something that would at least point him to the direction of another lead. Sadly enough, the woman never said her son's name which would have been an enormous help. Mrs.Rodriguez said she felt as though there was more to the vision - that there were fragments of memories left to watch that all came together to explain the woman's death - she just hadn't had the time to view it all. She was, however, horrified to think the Beast had murdered his own mother as this vision implied.

"The woman's face," he said, finishing a thought he had in his head out loud. Yes, he was still having a hard time computing how Mrs Rodriguez described the Beast to look like but what about his mother? There was no chance a face like his was documented and not publicized everywhere for everyone to know about. If he was out there, they would know. But his mom was a regular person. She had to have a record of disappearance or death that could be tied to an address or at least some further information on who she was. Grayson wouldn't be able to identify her on sight but Mrs.Rodriguez could.

"You want me to try and identify the Beast's mother?"

"I don't want you to try," Grayson said, standing up from his seat and zipping up his jacket. "I want you to do it."