13. Thirteen

It was a day like any other.

Lucios and I had walked through my garden. I loved flowers. The way they died and then regrew made them seem immortal—a never-ending cycle of death and life, but all from the same source. Lucios liked them, too, and we spent a lot of our afternoons there.

From the outside, we didn’t look like two teenagers who could befriend each other. But he was the most genuine friend I’d ever known—my brother, who was bound to me by his soul, not blood.

He should have been invincible. And I believed that to be true.

So when I dared him to touch the black ivy, what could have gone wrong?

SNAP OUT OF IT.

Vastian writhed on the floor. Ariel and Chris, thankfully, weren’t home when I was savagely ripped from the bed and tied up. Those morons in black masks were easy enough to put down, but now I was staring at a chain that moved like a coiled snake. It hummed a weird ass energy, and every time I touched it, the fucker melted my fingertips.

Whatever this was, I’d get it off. It had to come off because seeing him like that—I couldn’t fucking take it.

“Tell me how to fix it!” I roared.

Vastian wouldn’t look at me. Or maybe he couldn’t. So I clawed at the thing more. I’d never seen anything like this. Over my shoulder, one of the shit stains that did this stirred. He must have been the one I didn’t kill.

“Blood… my… blood,” Vastian groaned, and his hand shakily pointed.

Damn it.

With all the speed I could muster, I grabbed the man and dragged him over to Vastian. Did he need to drink blood? Was he too weak to fight off whatever that chain did to him? I angled his neck to Vastian; to my surprise, he did not bite him. Instead, he sank his fangs into his wrist. The motion was so slow. I watched with panicked eyes as my companion gestured vaguely to the droplets forming from the punctures.

“Mouth… put it in his mouth.” The words cracked, but I understood his meaning.

The goon coughed and gagged when I pried open his lips and placed Vastian’s wrist there. Once he swallowed the stuff, I gently removed Vastian”s wrist and waited. With wild eyes, I watched everything happen in seconds. The tether glowed a bright white and unlatched itself from his ankle. It slithered between us and snaked around its new victim. Vastian sucked in the largest breath afterward.

My nostrils flared as I picked up a stray pistol and aimed it at the man’s head. “No,” Vastian barked as he pushed himself upright. “Don’t kill him.”

“Why not? That fucker is the reason this happened. The reason you…they hurt you.” I glared at Vastian and cocked the hammer.

“Don’t!” He must have had his superspeed back because his cool hands grabbed mine and lowered the gun.

“No one does this and lives,” I growled, jerking my hand loose.

Now we were wrestling over it. “It must remain on him. If he”s dead, it”ll come back to me!”

I stilled.

In the shit storm of this intrusion, I only managed to get my pants over my ass before I ran downstairs after Vastian. So it didn’t surprise me that he looked at the blood splatter that washed over my chest and face with hunger. I assumed he was still recovering from being drugged and might”ve needed a drink or seven, but he was closer than I think either of us dared to acknowledge. His fingers still laced over my wrist as he tipped his head back. I swallowed thickly when his lips twitched, and he cocked his head.

The other street residents were already peeking through their windows, and the front doors opened. This wasn’t something that usually happened in the residential district. Before long, the enforcers would be on my doorstep, and we’d be arrested. So, as much as I wanted to offer up my body to feed my insatiable Vampyr, that’d have to wait.

“We have to go, come on.” I led him back inside.

He still looked slightly off, but we didn’t have time to linger. Grabbing the first shirt, I slung it on and dug around until I found my satchel. We went back in the kitchen and emptied whatever crap that looked edible into it. Taking his hand in mine, we left the brownstone.

Sorry, Ariel. She’d have the biggest fucking mess to clean up.

What was I thinking?

This was by far the worst idea I think I’ve ever had. Well, recently.

Good ol’ Mom hadn’t seen me since I was sixteen and freshly cursed. Not that she really saw me before it happened.

What possessed me to bring Vastian here of all places? We were better off squatting in the woods like hermits. Better yet, we were probably going to end up in a fucking cell regardless because I seemed to have forgotten that Mom hated me. And then there was the subject of my grandmother, who unfortunately was still living—possibly. That shrew was even worse!

Vastian eyed me expectantly when I stopped on the dirt road.

Once we left the Under Cloud, it was a hop skip, and a fart’s distance to get to my old abode. Mom lived just outside the urban section of Veros, in the farm part of town. No one farmed anymore. Not there anyway. They all lived in rundown shacks of homes on acres of property. I guess there was an occasional cornfield here and there, but Vastian insisted he needed utter darkness to recoup from what the tether did to him. Even though it was not daytime in the real world, he didn”t care.

And this was where my mind said to go.

“Are we to stand out here until daybreak?” He scanned the area.

Facing him, I stared for a few moments. I didn’t know how to prepare him, but I gave it my best shot. Pointing at the house, I said, “There are two witches in there who will eat our hearts and then chop off our cocks for their breakfast. Don’t do anything… untoward.”

He scoffed. “That’s the pebble calling the mountain a rock.”

What terrible twist of the pot kettle was that? I decided not to embarrass my pretty Vampyr, so I gestured for him to follow. “Let me do the talking.”

“As if I have a choice,” he muttered.

So moody.

Mom’s shack was not a shack. It wasn’t a brownstone, a mansion, or anything I could pretend wasn’t just a rundown cottage on a square of dirt. Grass didn’t even grow in this fucked up place. It’s why I always went into the town where the gardens and restaurants were. At one point, I did try to bring life to this hellhole, but all my flowers died like everything else.

Just as my knuckles went to rap against the dull wooden door, it opened just a crack. My mom’s green eyeball poked through the space, and I yelped—on purpose. “Is that a cyclops?”

“What are you doing here?” she asked hoarsely. Someone needed to lay off the pipe.

“I need to shit.” I grinned.

A wet cough escaped through the door, and I shuddered. Mucus wet. Gods, was she finally fucking dying? “Atreyis, I can’t entertain you right now.” Another cough.

“Excuse me, Miss, I am weary from my travels, and Atreyis is bloody rude. May I take a breather in your home? Perhaps I can take a look at your ailment? I do have medical training.”

That beautiful man was such a damn moron sometimes. I didn’t know if I wanted to slap him or kiss him. But she nodded softly, and the door opened. Did he forget that I was supposed to do the talking? And the smug smirk on his face was even more irritating because it was gorgeous. I may have even heard a single pigeon flutter by. Groaning, I walked in.

It smelled like death.

Sour, old, death.

Even though it was in the wee hours of the morning, my mom usually had a candle lit. It was dark, and the air was stale and pungent. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that my grandmother’s corpse was somewhere in there. Everything was dirty. The dinner table had weeks” worth of soiled dishes on it. The single sofa chair had a spring sticking through the cushion. Our fireplace looked like it hadn’t been used in years.

Were those flies?

“I’ve been… unwell. Chores have just gotten away from me.” She staggered to a chair at the table and sagged into it.

My mom was once a beautiful woman. That’s what I always knew. That’s why Dad left, and I remained with her and the shrew. Dad was the ugly one, according to Mom, but I don’t remember much about him except that he packed up his shit after one of her friends was found cuddled up in bed with her.

Tragic backstory. Troubled youth. Bad things. I was just a victim of circumstance. If you could see me right now, I was sobbing uncontrollably and cradling my inner child—all that self-deprecating crap.

Bottom line: it sucked being a kid in this house.

Now that she was well into her fifties, she’d gone primarily gray. Her dark hair was silver at the roots but lacked its usual thickness—stringy bits hung by her sunken cheeks. The skin on her lips had layers of dead, cracked grossness, and I’m sure lettuce was in her teeth. Either that or she had some fungus growing. Holding my arms and rubbing them, I kept close to the door while Vastian knelt, poking and prodding at her.

“So, where’s the old lady?” The wicked witch who loved to beat children. I wasn”t exaggerating either.

“Mom passed in her sleep. I haven’t been able to get word to the gravedigger.”

I actually gagged.

“Yes. The scent is quite noticeable,” Vastian said softly, touching her forehead.

He pulled back one of her eyelids and smelled her. Maybe it was the house, the fact there was a dead old lady somewhere in there, or my mom that made me nauseous, but I ran outside. The worst part was nothing came out. I just heaved and heaved. It felt like my fucking soul was trying to crawl out.

Tears stung the back of my eyes. I hated this place.

And the sun was coming up.