Page 26 of Blood Loss (The Obscura Saga #2)

LAT H AN

His feet bring him down the street, load him onto the bus, and step back across campus soil, but he isn’t present for the journey. He doesn’t hear the buzz of traffic, or the breathy stops of the bus, or the conversations murmured around him. And he doesn’t know if it’s all an aftereffect of the specialist’s diagnosis, or if he actually can’t hear it.

Because he’s permanently hard of hearing.

The infection that manifested after the frequency attack was too intense, went untreated for too long, and prevented his right ear from recovering, the audiologist said this afternoon. It’s brought Lathan down to forty percent of his natural hearing capacity on the affected side, though this was mentioned in decibel amounts that mean nothing to him.

But ‘it’s okay,’ the doctor said with a condescending smile, ‘you can just use a hearing aid.’

He wrings out his hands of medical overwhelm as he paces up to the front door of the small campus café. A coffee isn’t going to ease his anxiety, but seeing his friends for the first time in months hopefully will.

He orders a drink to have something to busy his hands—keep his venomous urges at bay—and selects a seat at one of the booths. Warm copper hits his tongue as he chews the inside of his cheek and his fangs start to emerge, thinking about his appointment. Not enough pressure to release his venom—though, that’s what he craves right now.

A vampire—with ultrasonic hearing—with a hearing aid. How fucking ironic.

He scratches at the cardboard sleeve of his coffee cup, focusing on the sound. Convincing himself he can hear. He can hear enough.

The barista smiles a greeting as the door opens and Eunice steps in. She mirrors the expression, but it grows into a full beam when she spots Lathan, and her cheerful nature makes his fingers curl away from their anxious carving against his drink.

“Hi!” she squeals, but doesn’t hurry over to him like he expects for her to. She’s still at the door, arm stretched to hold it open. And when Ellie rolls in, navigating through the threshold in a wheelchair, his breath leaves his throat. Only one of her feet touches the footrest.

The other doesn’t exist.

She has a chunky, crocheted blanket draped over her lap, covering what’s left of her amputated lower leg, but Lathan can see the outline of where it ends. Eunice hops behind her to grab the handlebars and push her over to Lathan.

“It’s so good to see you!” she gushes, while Ellie smiles, but looks a bit sheepish behind the blonde bangs of her pixie cut. “Can we sit at one of the tables?”

Lathan blinks himself back into his right mind and averts his eyes from the elf before him. “Of course, yeah,” he says, motioning a hand to the column of round tables across from him.

Eunice turns Ellie to face one of them, shuffles over to remove a chair to make space for her, and then returns to tuck her neatly into the table. Lathan slips from his booth and awkwardly waits for her to accommodate her girlfriend before approaching, itching the pad of his fingers with his thumb nail.

Eunice nearly gives Lathan a hug, but something holds her back, and she does a little dance instead where Ellie can see her. Then she skips off to put in their drink orders. He can’t help but feel as though he’s done something wrong already. I should have sat at a table to start off with.

He toes around the wheelchair and sinks quietly into a seat. “Hey,” he offers Ellie. The last time I saw you, you were on the floor of the locker room. Crying. Screaming. Bleeding out. Do you remember? Or did the shock save you from those memories?

“Hi, Lathan.” She smooths out her blanket, baby pink nail polish atop of grey yarn. “You look good.”

Lathan exhales. “So do you.”

Ellie’s lips curve, and she pats her lap. “I’m still getting used to the new prosthetic. Sometimes it’s still easier to use the chair.”

He presses his lips and nods. He doesn’t have to adapt. He doesn’t have to relearn how to walk, how to hear. He can hear. Regardless of how well, he can. But Ellie can’t walk without a leg. She needs an aid. A wheelchair or a prosthetic limb. A person, like Eunice, to help her.

He looks over at the vampire collecting two drinks from the barista’s counter. I’ll just be burdening Kylo, won’t I? And he can’t handle that right now.

“You saved my life.”

Ellie’s gazing at him, twiddling her thumbs amid the stitches of her blanket. “I haven’t been able to say thank you.”

He swallows dryly, because the immediate thought that clouds his mind is: But I didn’t save your leg.

“I’m just glad I could help,” he says, tasting muck on his tongue, so he sips his coffee to wash it down.

Eunice plops down and sets Ellie’s drink in front of her, then leans against the rim of the table, flicking her braids over her shoulder. “So how’re you? I guess you can hear again, huh? I can’t believe it affected vampires like that!”

“I’m fine,” he says too quickly and shifts in his chair. “Lasted like a week or so.”

“That’s not too bad, I guess,” she says—with how chatty she is, she must not be able to fully wrap her mind around losing that sense, and her job in Ridley kept her from experiencing it. Lathan’s grateful for that—and jealous.

“And how’s Kylo?” she asks, and side-eyes her girlfriend.

Lathan stays quiet for a moment, also eyeing Ellie. It takes her a few seconds, but she nervously speaks up, averting her eyes.

“I want to see him, too. It’s just still…”

“It’s fine,” Lathan says, despite the heaviness in his chest. Because she does remember, then. All the feral wolves. And how Kylo was one of them. “He’s not here, anyway.”

Eunice pouts, her brows melding with confusion. “What do you mean? The term already started.”

Lathan dissociates, his eyes locked and bleary on the drink in his hand. “He’s in a rehab program in Arizona.”

The girls are quiet, but Eunice’s glossy lips part. “Whoa,” she eventually breathes, and Ellie clearly doesn’t know what to say.

Lathan just nods, otherwise unmoving. “He’ll be back in a few weeks.” Unless he needs to extend his program , he keeps to himself. Unless I’ve fucked him up so badly that he has to stay longer.

They’re in increments of thirty days, typically, these initiatives. He learned that from doing his own research after finding stardust in Kylo’s dorm desk. It’s expensive to stay long-term, and isn’t as common, but does happen. Thirty days without him already seems like an eternity—but Lathan’s also grappling with the idea that it may be longer.

It may be indefinite.

◆◆◆

The apartment is still empty. He’s filled a couple cabinets and a few shelves in the fridge with everyday items, but nothing beyond the basics. He hasn’t had much of an appetite—the venom poisoning suppresses it.

The only piece of furniture he’s moved in the unit is the solo desk, dragging it from the bedroom into the living room, beside the windowed balcony door. He pretends it’s for the view, since the oceanfront is on the horizon. But it’s not.

He spends a lot of his time on the plain couch. It’s where he sleeps, too—he doesn’t like going to bed alone since knowing why Kylo stopped spending the summer nights with him.

He sighs as he sinks into the cushions. Ellie didn’t complain once this afternoon, and here he is unable to grapple with his own reality of his hearing loss.

I’m not worth it , he thinks. I’d just be taking away from someone who actually needs it.

The vibrating melody of his phone startles him. He combs his hair out of his face with his fingers as he fishes the device from his pocket.

And then drops it loudly on the floor when he sees David’s name on the screen.

His heart shambles, hooking the breath right from his chest. Why are you calling me? Is something wrong with Kylo?

The prospect makes him twitch, nearly collecting his phone.

No. You wouldn’t tell me if there was. You would blame me. And you’d be right to.

The buzzing stops. Replacing it, a single, quick hum as a notification appears.

He’s recording a message.

Lathan feels nauseous. He watches, unblinking, as the seconds pass, showing how long the message is. He can’t talk to him. He can’t talk to either of Kylo’s parents. They disowned him. And he shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s painful.

‘Without them, what are you?’

The screen fades to black; the message has ended, logged in his voice mail. Minutes have passed, and Lathan only realizes when the sun has begun to set.

He has to force bile back down his throat as he reaches a shaky hand to pick the phone up again and play the message.

“Uhm. Hi, Lathan. It’s David. Kylo’s dad. You’re probably in class, or studying right now. Maybe that’s a good thing, so I can say this to myself instead of a live audience…”

Lathan pinches between his eyes so hard it’ll surely bruise. Hearing David’s voice makes his heart race the same way it did back in the hospital in Arizona, when he was yelled at. Accused of whoring out his son.

When he lost the only semblance of a family he’s ever had.

He can’t do it. He can’t listen to what David’s recording is about to say. He rips the phone from his good ear, closes the message, and deletes it.

And then he’s on his feet. Sliding opening the balcony door. Stepping out onto the small platform. Leaning over the railing. Looking down, down, down to a quick death, if he dives headfirst .

Students walk below, some hand-in-hand, some alone, some with bags of books, some with nothing but the clothes on their back and a coffee in their hand. None of them expecting the violent demise of a vampire at their feet.

“Godsdammit,” he growls, the predecessor to a sob. And to keep himself from leaping anyway, he shoves the soft belly of his forearm in his mouth and bites down, clawing back into the apartment living room as his venom blazes up his bloodstream.

‘Without them,’ his mother taunts the child she never truly loved, looking down at the young boy Lathan never grew out of being, ‘what are you?’

“Nothing,” Lathan cries, curling into himself—and around the little kid inside him—against the hard floor. “I’m fucking nothing.”