Page 20 of Love Bleeds
Chapter Seven
The house lay quiet when I approached. From the outside, it looked almost as if no one had ever lived in it at all. It was a weird illusion, but then, I was in a weird state of mind. As I walked up to the front door, key in hand, I couldn't help but think back to the first day I'd laid eyes on this house, back when I was four and Dad had taken me in.
The memory wasn't very clear, but I remembered feeling overwhelmed by life, kind of the same way I did now.
Turning the lock in the key, I brushed the thought aside and opened the door. Immediately, my gaze fell to the floor of the den. The last time I'd come through here, Damian's blood had stained the floor. I couldn't see any blood now, but maybe that was just because I hadn't flicked on the lights.
Good thing I could navigate this place in the dark just fine.
I made my way up the stairs to my room. My steps seemed to echo, losing themselves in the large house. I found myself looking over my shoulder. If vampires were real, did that mean ghosts were real too?
Nah, they couldn't be. I believed in science, and science said...
Science said a whole lot of things that had been disproven by Talon's or Puck's or Aldrich's actions in the recent months.
Or maybe there was something I was missing. Some logical way to explain everything. I had to approach the problem from a different angle. Science wasn't wrong. Some of ourassumptionswere wrong, that was all, and when we corrected them, when we found the missing puzzle piece that would explain magic and make it all make sense then...
Then what?
My thoughts trailed off.
Even if I found some way to explain vampires and witches, this house would never stop feeling haunted to me.
What was it they said? You can never come home?
I certainly couldn't. Not after what had happened here.
That was fine, though, I only needed to stay for a few minutes. Grab my things and go.
Taking a deep breath, I opened the door to my old room and turned on the light.
The first thing my eyes fell on was the giant The Fox and the Hound poster that hung above my desk. Jared had taken me to the movies for a special viewing once and bought that poster for me after the show when I was six and still trying to fit in around here. Some of my friends made fun of me for having something so childish on my wall as an adult, but I could never get myself to take it down—and why would I? Even now, the sight made me want to smile, even if I didn’t quite manage.
Stepping into the room, I scanned the contents of my desk. The stake Dad had gifted me lay in the bottom drawer. I pocketed it. "Thanks, Dad," I whispered to myself. If only I could go back to a time when I'd simply humored my Dad by accepting gifts like this. Absent-mindedly I tugged on the sweatband that covered the mark on my wrist.
There was a framed picture of my mom in the drawer too. I reached for it, then stopped myself before I could touch. My mom had disappeared when I small. For the longest time, I'd assumed that she'd simply abandoned her post--and me.
But Damian had disappeared too.
Vampires could make people disappear.
How had I never made that connection until now?
I pushed the drawer shut and rubbed at my eyes.
Deep breath, Luke.
I turned away from the desk and toward the shelves on the opposite wall. There was the Lego Millennium Falcon I'd gotten for Christmas one year. One of my most prized possessions, sitting on top of the shelves and gathering dust, alone in an abandoned house.
I don't know what it was about that image that made my eyes sting but I suddenly needed to rub them again.
Damian and I had assembled the Falcon together. He'd been so excited when I'd asked him to help. I'd always called or texted him immediately when I had some cool new merch to show off. Or even if I just saw something interesting on the internet. Even now I sometimes found myself reaching for my phone before I remembered that there was no point in shooting him a message. That he was gone.
Honestly speaking, it was a miracle that I ever managed to forget at all. You'd think that when someone's gone, there'd be nothing where they used to be, but Damian's absence didn't feel like nothing. It was huge, palpable thing that pressed on my consciousness, and when I let it, when I wasn't being careful, it collapsed in on itself like a black hole, sucking away every part of me until there was nothing left but an empty shell.
It was how I'd spent the first couple of days after Damian's death. It hadn't been me in my body, just an imitator walking around in my body, pretending to be Luke.
Looking around this room now, I wondered if maybe nothing had changed about that. It felt like another Luke had lived here, in another lifetime, and I was just the impostor who had taken over.
