Page 4 of Driven by Dragonblood (Blood Born #3)

Patrick

H ands on hips, I stared up at the pull-down ladder and its frayed string hanging overhead.

I’d been back home for going on six months, and while I’d managed to clean out Dad’s—now my —house, I’d yet to tackle the attic. Dad had been a pack rat, and I couldn’t begin to imagine, nor did I want to, the mess I would find beneath the eaves.

“It’s not going to get done on its own.” I pulled on the string, unfolding the wooden stairs.

The apparatus shifted as I climbed, groaning beneath my weight like the sky did outside with its constant rumbles of thunder.

Regardless of their weakness, the stairs allowed me entrance into the chilled space that smelled like mothballs and stale air.

Rain slashed at the roof attached to the exposed beams above me and dirty windows on either end of the attic that didn’t allow enough light for me to see.

Had this storm hovered over the apartment building I’d moved out of back in Boston, rather than the Arizona two-story house I’d been driven to make my own, we would have been knee-deep in snow.

As it was, the weather was warmer than normal, giving the parched earth some much-needed water.

I pulled on another string above my head, this one attached to a bare bulb. Pale yellow light attempted to dispel the gloom.

Floorboards creaked beneath my feet as I surveyed the hoarded mess around me. Dust motes tickled my throat, causing me to cough while taking in the boxes of who the fuck knew what, old pieces of furniture, and odds and ends Dad had most likely picked up at estate or yard sales.

Green bins of Christmas decorations from when Mom had still been alive stacked on my right, faded boxes with peeling masking tape on my left.

Patrick was written in black marker, Mom’s curved loops easily recognizable to me, even though she’d been gone for over a decade, thanks to aggressive breast cancer.

A couple of dead flies lay on the top box, and feeling I had too much in common with their dried-out husks, I flicked them from sight.

Through meds and years of study, I’d gained control over my unstable mental health and had learned to hide the madness inside me from the world.

And even though I’d received my doctorate in psychology and treated patients for over a dozen years, I continued to fight for a sense of belonging, a way to fill the dark void inside me that sometimes made me question my sanity.

As far as everyone in my life was concerned, I was normal—whatever that might actually be.

I’d had an easy, middle-class childhood with decent enough role models as parents and no serious trauma.

Our small family had enjoyed family meals at the scarred oak table down in the kitchen.

Christmases beside the artificial tree standing upright alongside the bins on my right, the fake branches covered in balls and tinsel from whenever Dad had last managed to wrangle the thing to the living room for the holiday season.

There’d been no emotional torment, no wounding event that had hindered my growth into adulthood.

But a restlessness that felt like a separate entity lay buried deep inside me.

I’d gone into psychology to figure out what was wrong with me but hadn’t ever gotten a clear diagnosis.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it other than to consider myself a driven person, always seeking out the next task to execute and goal to attain.

However, no matter how much I accomplished, a sense of lacking remained, and I strove every day to rid myself of its clutches.

A flash of lightning lit the dim attic for a split second before thunder rumbled loud enough that the house shook around me. We needed the rain desperately, but the weather matched my mood.

A little gloomy. Overcast, a complete lack of sunshine.

But what else was new?

I had hoped moving back and opening a practice of my own would give me what I’d spent two decades searching for in Boston, whatever that might be. Nothing satisfied or filled the emptiness in my soul that drove me toward fulfillment of some sort.

My savings dwindled, so I’d put in an application at the mental institution that had been built here in town a couple of years ago, while working on my plans to rent office space on Main Street. While my location finally felt right, the deficit inside me remained.

I needed…something.

Getting laid always took the edge off for a short while, and it had been some time since I’d last had a woman beneath me. But no one ever felt like they belonged.

Turning my thoughts toward cleaning out the attic, then heading into town to find a willing partner for the night, I reached for the closest box. I unpeeled the tape, open the flaps, and pulled up short.

Hesitant, I fixed my eyes on the leather-bound journal atop countless others, my brain quieting while my insides strained to reach out and relive the past I’d buried, as innocent as it had been.

I’d forgotten about the memories I’d written—and had asked Mom to toss them out with the trash when I’d packed up to leave home for college.

She’d been stubborn to a fault, never one to listen, so I should have expected to find these still around, collecting dust.

My hand shook as I reached for the final diary of the childhood I’d left behind when I’d driven eastward.

The spine cracked as I leafed through the thick pages that had cramped writing filling every bit of space. Mostly ramblings about girls, sports, and grades, but some of the secrets I’d kept from everyone, parents included, lay inside the warped pages.

All children had imaginary friends—but mine had been too real.

Held substance. Carried on full conversations with me.

I’d been in seventh grade when I’d first heard the word schizophrenia, but that mental disorder didn’t match the darkness that billowed like smoke inside me, as if a separate being was held captive inside my body.

As though the discovery of my old written words had zapped me like a defibrillator, heat came to life in my core, spreading outward until my limbs tingled.

My back itched.

Feet grew restless.

Teeth clenched, I tossed the diary into the box, my gut like lava, but my mind set on ridding myself of this part of me for good as I thought I’d done years earlier.

“I am in control,” I stated my life’s mantra through clenched teeth and carted both boxes of my old ramblings downstairs.

The awareness of something other from my childhood lingered, unbothered by the repeated words that helped me silence the madness and envision it behind walls that no voice could penetrate.

I coaxed flames to life in the fireplace that had only ever seen action on Christmas Eve.

Fed my past to the gold and orange flickers above embers that glowed red.

One by one, the diaries disintegrated into ash, forever gone from existence. But the strange consciousness beneath my breastbone remained, alive and needy, threatening to erupt and devour my humanity.

Jaw set, I strode upstairs to get ready for a night on the town, tiny and somewhat backward as it might be compared to Boston. A shower rid me of dust and filth from having cleaned all day, and crisp jeans and an ironed button-down made me feel semi-normal again, even though I felt anything but .

Two hours later, I stumbled back through my front door, a fiery redheaded woman attached to me like a leech.

She smelled like flowers, and her mouth tasted like hope.

Attraction at first glance had prompted me to initiate, chemistry enough that my sleeping dick had shown interest in someone for the first time since returning to Arizona.

She agreed to take things to my place.

And here we were, both of us halfway to drunk, fucking on my living room floor.

A hissing built in my ears, like a whispered admonishment that I was making a mistake, but I buried myself in the warmth of the woman’s welcoming arms, deciding she would do just fine.

Might even be worth keeping around for a while.

Maybe we could grow together. Find a new beginning of our own, one where the hollowness that haunted me wouldn’t seem as stark—or dark.

She could be my sunshine, I decided once I lay gasping in her soft hold, her fingers sifting through my hair, her long legs still wrapped around my waist.

Yeah, this could work, I told myself.

The hissing went silent, but I didn’t trust that so-called imaginary friend from my past hadn’t reawakened and planned on sticking around.