Page 37 of The Secret of Pain

I laugh at his words.

"Of course you are." I shake my head. "Give me two minutes and I'll be down."

I grab my jacket and pull on my Chucks. My jeans and T-shirt should be good for wherever we're heading, so I pull my ridiculously long hair up into a messy ponytail and grab my keys, scratching Sushi behind the ears before I head out and down to where Creek is waiting.

Parked just outside of the main door, Creek’s huge truck idles, and I can see him grinning down at me. I pause, the truck is identical to Colt's and I flash back to the other week, when the Dracul attacked me. His face is all I can see, and I'm rooted to the spot.

"Remy, you okay?" Creek’s voice pulls me from the memory, and I shake it off.

"Yeah I'm good." I walk to the truck and pull myself up into the cab. "Just having a moment."

"You went pale as fuck." Concern laces his voice as his eyes look me over.

"I'm fine, really. So where are we going?" I ask, and he takes the hint to drop it.

"Well, that's a surprise. Don't want to ruin it."

"Of course not." I shake my head with a smile and buckle myself in. "Come on then, off on the adventure we go.”

We drive for what feels like an age, catching up on everything he's been up to since he left. The guilt he feels about ghosting me is obvious, so I try not to be too prickly about it, but that betrayal is still there a little, even with me knowing. Apparently emotions and logic don’t go hand in hand. But still, I try to just enjoy having my friend back and hearing about his globetrotting adventures. Training with Hunters on the other side of the world. "Wait, the Van Helsings exist?" I ask, because no freaking way.

"Yeah." He laughs. "The ones I met were absolute pricks. So far up their own ass, as if their name meant something other than the fact that one of them obviously slipped somewhere and let a human know the truth. Even if it’s spun as a myth."

"No freaking way." I sit back and reel. "Dude, they're like famous."

He laughs at me and shakes his head. "Maybe, but you'd hate them. So freaking arrogant, and really not all that great Hunters. Now, the Nagasaki family? Them, you'd love. True Samurai, and they still honor the codes of the old times. I learned a lot from them. Colt, though, he was way too Colt for them." He laughs and I join him, because I can only imagine.

"That doesn't surprise me at all."

Creek pulls off the road we've been on for a while and turns onto a dirt track. "Nearly there."

He looks over to me, and I can't read him, but it feels like I'm missing something. We sit in comfortable silence while we finish the drive, pulling up to a hidden lake. A house is off far in the distance, the whitework gleaming in today’s sun, but obviously run down and abandoned.

The birch trees circle the lake and lead a path up toward the house, and the whole place just feels peaceful.

"This place is beautiful." I sigh, and climb out of the truck.

"It really is," Creek says as he joins me at the front of the truck, the soft cool breeze wrapping around us.

"It feels so… It feels almost like home." I sigh again, because something about this place resonates deep inside me, and Creek smiles at me.

"Something like that. Come on, I need to do some work up at the house, but I brought a picnic for after. I figured you'd be up for helping, keep you busy, and you always were a sucker for being by the water."

"Sounds like fun. Is this place yours?" I ask as we start the trek up to the house, enjoying the sounds of the birds and the ripples on the water.

"Kind of," he says with a shrug. "I know you said earlier you were feeling better, but how has it been? The memory dump, I mean. Have you gotten much back?"

"I mean, I've got a lot of weird stuff back. Feelings and moments, but nothing monumentally life changing. I remember rituals, every one of them, I remember training, and my love of the fight. I've had a few dreams, which I think are other memories, but not much about my actual lives. I've remembered a lot of Hunter lore, random as fuck information, but not much about who I was, if that makes sense?" I shrug.

"It does, it'll come. It’s the same for all of us—it takes time. Just be patient. Ben told you it can take time, right? Trust him. Trust me." He smiles down at me, towering above me now, and it’s still a little strange, him looking like this, so different but still being the guy I've always known.

"Have you spoken to Ben since the ritual? Is he okay?"

"Yeah, he’s fine, and he's been around. He usually stays for a bit after, even when the other Elders return back to wherever they're stationed. He is always the guide for us; we've known him a long time."

"Oh," I utter, unsure of what else to say.

"He thinks something is happening within the Elders, something he's being kept out of," he tells me, and I sigh in frustration, a little confused by it all, because what he’s saying is not too unlike what Colt was talking about before.

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