“Much appreciated, mala kukla.” Petrov bent over and heaved Vincent’s limp body over his shoulder. Adam forced himself to avert his eyes. It all looked wrong.
“Call me that again and it will only be a one minute head start, and you,” Ophelia raised an eyebrow at Adam, “normally I wouldn’t do this, but since you had my back recently, I’ll return the favor. I can’t guarantee you’ll make it very far before he catches up to you, but the offer stands. You want out?”
“No.” Adam pursed his lips before he said anything else, staring down at his feet when he realized what he said.You fucking idiot, this was your chance. All you did was plan on escaping. It was the only thing that kept you sane, and you’re saying no?! Do you have a death wish? He’s going to kill you when he wakes up.
Adam shook his head, forcing the thought away. It was whatever Richard did to him trying to rear its ugly head back into his mind. It didn’t matter that he pretty much managed to do everything he planned: get his foot back, earn Vincent’s trust, hell, he even found himself back in town. He could take Ophelia up on her offer and take off running into the night. He could keep going and never look back. It’s not like there was really anything left for him in town anyway.
He could start over. Somewhere new, where no one knew who he was, and just pretend the whole thing was a very long, very vivid detox hallucination.
But he wouldn’t see Vincent again, would he? And he at least needed to make sure Vincent was going to put himself back together.After that, I’ll leave.
“Let’s go home,” Adam told Petrov.
Chapter Twenty-Six - Vincent
Every door he opened revealed another blank room, spattered with blood and viscera like the Whitman’s house. But it felt familiar, like a combination of his farmhouse and something he’d buried beneath endless memories of his own debauchery.I’m dreaming.He opened another door, frustrated to find more of the same display, but there was a drain in this room, some of the blood having pooled around the drain, stopped up with chunks of blonde hair and scalp.
I haven’t dreamed in a hundred years.The thought nagged at him as he closed the door. Vampires didn’t dream—it wasn’t how their minds worked. So what the hell was this? His lower back itched and burned where his skin was still marred by scars from being trialed by Solomon. He scratched at it as he moved to the next door, listening and sniffing the air for signs that he wasn’t alone, but there was nothing. Just quiet emptiness and the wrongness of everything around him. He reached for the doorknob, pausing at the sight of blood on his hands. Why were the scars bleeding?
Vincent reached back, patting his lower back, his shirt slick with blood.That’s not supposed to happen anymore.“Hello?” he called out towards where Petrov’s room was supposed to be.There was a nagging in the center of his chest, a persistent thump thump thump that was more than uncomfortable. It hurt. He knocked at the door. “Petrov?”
The doorknob was missing. He shoved his shoulder against the door, but recoiled as pain shot down his arm. That wasn’t supposed to hurt. He took a step back, taking a moment to rub his shoulder with his fist as he stared at the door. He could barely remember what his dreams were like when he was human, but he had the feeling they were like this. Strange and confusing. He moved to the next door, Matteo’s room, but the doorknob was missing as well, and the button to make the lights in his room flash was gone. Not as though it had been removed, but as though it never existed in the first place.
This isn’t my house.He moved to what should have been Luka’s door across the hall, but again, the doorknob was missing. “Luka?” he called.
Silence.
Dread made his skin tingle and the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He was definitely trapped in a dream, but the why of it eluded him. Dreams were the way humans solved their problems, not vampires. He had no need for whatever part of his brain was firing off this illusion. Holding onto human traits invited trouble, and he had had enough of that.
“I’m ready to wake the fuck up!” Vincent shouted, slapping his hand against his chest as the unpleasant thump continued.
Creeeeaaak. Vincent spun around as one of the doors he had already tried creaked open, filling the hallway with a strangled choking sound and kicking feet. He stomped towards the door, ready to confront whatever horror showhis mind had cooked up for him so he could snap out of it and wake himself up. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew he needed to do something important when he woke up, something that stuck to every part of him like mud.
Vincent pushed the door open, bracing for another blood and viscera nightmare. The sight of Reggie’s room sucked all the air out of his lungs. He grabbed at his chest, the thumping growing harder and louder behind his sternum as he stared into the wrecked room. The mattress had been flipped onto the ground, the walls splattered with blood, all the stuffed animals and toys he’d bought piled in the center of the room, singed as though they had been lit on fire. He wanted to be angry. If he were awake he would have been. But the sight just hurt.
Tears stung his eyes and his knees went weak. He grabbed at the doorframe for support, gasping as his chest became tighter and tighter. It wasn’t enough that the zealous hunters had burned the kid alive. They had to burn all that remained of his memory too.
He was so fixated on the pile that he barely noticed the figures in the back of the room, two men crouching over a third, whose feet kicked and twitched as though he were in the last throes of life. One of the men rose up, stretching his arms over his head before slowly turning to face Vincent.
His black eyes brightened, seeming to warm his wrinkled and weathered face, his arms held out wide for a hug as he grinned at Vincent, the lower half of his face covered in blood. Vincent gawked at the sight of his maker.He’s dead. Solomon has been dead for years.“The prodigal son returns,” Solomon said. His grin faded as he looked Vincent up and down. “But you are not returning as I remember you. You have changed.You’re weaker than you once were.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Vincent growled, his fists clenched at his sides. The wrongness of it all pressed against his skull. Solomon’s accent, some amalgamation of his attempts at modern speech mixed with his East Anglian accent that had fallen out of favor centuries before, sounded like nails on a chalkboard. “You’re dead, I buried what the hunters left of you.”
Solomon removed a stained handkerchief from his pocket, wiping at the blood on his hands. “Yes, I recall you being the reason they found me. You told them where I was.”
“You were out of control. We told you not to mess with a hunter’s family, and you fucking pushed it anyway. You brought them here when you killed that girl. You’re the reason so many people died, not me,” he snapped. He took a step forward. Even if it was a dream, he wouldn’t mind a second chance to take out his rage on his maker.
Solomon laughed. “Do you plan on killing me, child? With your own hands this time? Look at you. You’re not the man I molded. If you were, I’d already be dead. You’ve grown weaker in my time away,” he shook his head, looking Vincent over again. “Your humanity is showing and it is disgusting.”
Vincent swung at him, but his fist passed right through Solomon’s head, leaving him stumbling to the side. Solomon laughed as his figure dissipated, seemingly made of mist. “Shut the fuck up!” he shouted as Solomon’s laughter continued to echo in the room, bouncing off the walls.
“You know that never works with him,” the other crouched figure said as he slowly stood up.
Richard.Vincent steadied himself, trying to ignore the thumping in his chest that seemed harder and louder thanbefore. “I’m done playing with ghosts, get the fuck out of my head!” he snarled. But even as he said it, something felt off about this being just his mind playing tricks.
“That’s the thing about ghosts, Mr. Bellenger, once you know they are there, they become very hard to ignore,” Richard said, taking on an almost soothing quality as he turned to face Vincent. His face was just as smeared with blood as Solomon’s was, but he looked different from the club. His eyes looked sadder, almost pained, his skin beaded with sweat and gray. “Don’t you remember yet? What you did to me?”
Vincent took a step back as Richard unbuttoned the top of his shirt, blood blooming across the front of it as he did, revealing a pattern carved into his chest made up of a series of lines and triangles. “Don’t you remember?” he asked, running his hand over his throat. Blood ran between his fingers as he did, chunks of flesh disappearing and exposing the tendons beneath, his jugular severed and spurting blood weakly down his arm and chest.
