Page 138 of Veil of Death and Shadow

Levi.

Grinning at my own melodrama, I slid the door chain and flipped the deadbolt. No more terrifying myself with scary stories while alone this late at night again. It was lowkey embarrassing how reactive I was tonight.

“You’re breaking the rules, you know,” I grinned, swinging the door open. “Pretty sure we agreed to a minimum of a month between hangouts. I just saw you a couple of we?—”

The words dried up on my tongue at the state of him.

His eyes were wild and drawn, like he was in the deep stages of an alcohol bender, his skin tinged grey and clammy with sweat.

But it was his torso and arm that drew most of my attention. His usual black shirt was torn, the area around his stomach darker and wet. The smooth skin of his forearm was streaked in red.

Blood.

“Oh my god. Levi, what happened?”

His eyes shifted, unfocused until they found mine. “M-Mareena, you’re here. That’s good.” His words were slurred as they rushed out. “Very good. Tried to call first but lost my phone.” His gaze shifted down, brows furrowing. “Is that a . . . vibrator? Who answers the door with a vibrator?” A smug, teasing light flared in his eyes. “Did I . . . interrupt something?

“I—” I glanced down at the vibrator, then back at him. “Levi, you’re bleeding.”

He shrugged. “A bit, yeah.” Then he pressed a bottle which looked about a third full of whiskey to his lips, draining it dry in one smooth chug. There was a crumpled paper bag dangling in his other hand, the one with blood now seeping freely between his fingers. “I might need some of your help, actually. I wouldn’t have come like this, but,” he took a ragged, shallow breath, “I was in the city, and then this happened, and then I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

He swayed unsteadily, and the vibrator thumped on the floor, forgotten, as I rushed forward, reaching him just as his back crashed against the wall. He leaned against it, like he couldn’t fully support his weight on his own.

There was a trail of dark blood through the carpeted hall.

“W-what happened?” I asked again as I pressed my hand to his cheek, unsure where to grab him without causing more pain. “Levi—we need to get you?—”

He dropped the empty bottle, his large hand engulfing my cheek as he pressed his forehead to mine, the gesture so unexpected that I didn’t even flinch at the intimacy of it. “Mars. Sorry, I mean—” He took a deep breath, like he was breathing me in, but then it shifted quickly to a choked gasp as if he couldn’t quite fill his lungs properly, “Mareen?—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Levi,” I snapped, “just call me Mars. What the hell happened to you?”

“No more diet friendship?” His breathing shifted, becoming more shallow and uneven. Too much blood, there was no way a person should be standing and talking with this much of their blood on the outside of their body. “Regular calorie friendship?” A grin tugged at his lips as he added, in a disbelieving whisper-shout, “The good stuff?”

“Regular friendship.” I nodded, my eyes blurring with a film of tears as I tried to put pressure on the gaping wound stretching across his abdomen. Though, judging by the icy fear carving a claustrophobic path through my ribs, I wasn’t sure that I was willing to call anything about this moment good.

His smile swiftly turned into a groan as more of his weight fell against the wall.

“We need to get you to the emergency room. Now.” My hands were shaking, my skin now soaked with blood. His blood. “My phone’s in my room, I’ll call an ambulance.”

I hadn’t seen this much blood since the night we lost Rina—and the relentless similarities between the two scenes made me dizzy as I fought to keep my focus on the present.

“No.” He coughed. “No hospital.”

“Yes, hospital.” I shook my head, trying to understand how this was even a debate right now.

“I didn’t make you go when you didn’t want to,” he said, with the unwavering stubbornness of a child who knew he had no argument to stand on but held to it regardless.

“I had a bruised hand.”

“And?”

“My hand is practically holding together your stomach cavity right now, Levi. There’s a difference.”

“No,” he said, sobering up. He held his hand over mine, adding more pressure to the wound, his eyes holding me with an intensity I couldn’t blink away from. “Promise me. You have to listen. I can’t—no doctors. It’ll be all right. I’ll be all right. I promise.” He stood up straighter as if to prove it to me, but then just slid back down against the wall, wincing. “I heal fast. Lightning fast, in fact.” He chuckled, the sound of it bizarre against the gory scene. “Trust me, you’ll see.”

“There’s a giant fucking hole in your stomach, Levi,” I said again, on the off chance my words landed this time, “you don’t just heal from that. I don’t understand. Were you shot?” The gash was too big for that though, not that I’d ever seen a bullet wound in person. “Please, tell me what happened?”

He grabbed my other hand, where it was braced on the wall, then twined his fingers through mine. His thumb started rubbing circles over my palm, like he was trying to comfort me, likeIwas the one he was concerned about, of the two of us. “Promise me, Mars. No hospital. No doctors. Just you.”

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