Page 4 of Missing Piece (Neon Scars #2)

A dam saw a bright light when he opened his eyes. I’m waking up dead.

“That doesn’t make sense. How do you wake up dead?” a thickly accented voice asked.

Shit, when you’re dead, the other ghosts can hear your thoughts.

He wanted to find that unnerving, but it was as though his emotions had clicked off.

He kept staring up at the bright light, waiting for something to appear in it.

Was it someone dead like him? God? Lucifer?

Maybe his mom had been wrong, and it was the Indian gods that were the true religion. That’d be a trip.

“Ah, he does not realize he is talking again,” the accent said.

“Ketamine does that. You should have heard him on the car ride over here, absolutely bonkers monologue,” the second person said.

Ketamine. That was a drug he had been offered by a dealer once when the supply of oxy was running low in town. Why did he do ketamine? 99% of the time, he would have settled for a shit ton of Tylenol 3’s. Not ketamine. It wasn’t even the same class of drug.

He rubbed the sleepiness from his vision, squinting at the shadows moving in the bright light overhead. If he was dead, he certainly wanted to know it sooner rather than later.

He couldn’t help but be disappointed. When he dreamed of death during his withdrawals, it was always a fade to black and then nothingness. He wasn’t expecting this.

“Is he actually waking up this time? Or is it more rain cake?” the accent asked.

“Rain cake? Are you having a stroke?”

There was a laugh. “No, no, he sat up one hour ago, very urgent. He say he need to bring cake in from the rain. And boop, right back to sleep,” the accent said in an amused tone.

His vision focused on the light and the shadows in it. It wasn’t some celestial being taking shape. It was a dead stink bug caught in a ceiling light fixture.

Huh. Either the afterlife is cheap and lazy or I’m not actually dead.

Adam raised his hand in front of his face, opening and closing his fist a few times to make sure it was actually his hand.

The skin of his fingers felt swollen and tight, probably a sign of dehydration from drinking way more liquor than he intended.

“Where am I?” he groaned. He rolled onto his side, the muscles weak, and pushed himself up on his hands. It wouldn’t be the first time he woke up in a strange place. At least this time he was indoors.

He rubbed away the bleariness so he could at least see what kind of bed he was lying on since it was too soft to be a jail mattress.

The sheets were black, matching the pillowcase, and incredibly soft.

His head felt heavy and weird enough that he considered just laying back down and sleeping off his hangover, but he probably needed to make sure he was okay.

He couldn’t remember wandering off to anyone’s house.

But then again, if I took ketamine, that’d do it .

“Have Luka stand outside,” a voice said. “I might need him.”

Luka. That name sounded familiar, floating just out of reach in his drug-hazed mind.

Adam forced himself upright, his abs aching as he did.

A towering man near the door caught his attention, his face sharp and stern, gazing back at him with his head cocked.

He gave a quick nod to the blond man beside him before shrugging his shoulders and shutting the door behind him as he left.

Who was that guy? He almost resembled a Russian gangster.

“You’re awake,” the blond said with a grin, clapping his hands and rubbing them together as he strode over to the bed.

Adam searched his mind. He knew this guy. He was certain he did. “Vincent, right?” Adam asked, rubbing his temples as drowsiness tried to drag him back to sleep. “From the club?”

The blond nodded, his steely gaze wandering down Adam’s torso.

Adam glanced down, widening with realization that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

He didn’t remember taking off his clothes.

Come to think of it, fragments were starting to surface—going outside to smoke, then…

nothing. His heart skipped a beat as he lifted the blanket in his lap, seeing that his jeans were gone as well. “What the fuck?”

“What do you remember?” Vincent asked. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and sat down on the edge of the bed, his smile falling into an unnerving smirk.

Adam ignored Vincent. He lifted the blanket higher to peer down at his legs.

More specifically, his ankles. His stomach twisted into a dozen knots at the sight and he grabbed Vincent’s arm as hard as he could.

“Where the hell is it?” he demanded, his jaw trembling as anger made his temples begin to throb.

“What do you remember?” Vincent repeated, seemingly unfazed by Adam’s grip.

“Where is my goddamn foot?” Adam snapped. “What did you do with it?”

A shrug from Vincent. “Your prosthetic? Yes, that was quite a surprise when I was getting you out of those wet clothes,” he said. He leaned towards Adam, his stare glancing back down at his shirtless torso. “If you ask me nicely, I’ll give it back.”

“Go to hell,” Adam spat. Vincent was still smirking at him, pupils glimmering like he was having the time of his life. Screw this guy. Adam squeezed his other fist, his jaw clenched so tight it made his headache worse. “Give it back.”

“Ask me nicely,” Vincent repeated, inching closer.

Adam swung as hard as he could, fire spreading up from his knuckles as Vincent’s nose crunched beneath his fist. Vincent didn’t even flinch, he just turned away, his hand coming up to his nose.

It wasn’t the reaction he was expecting, but he knew for sure the guy’s nose was broken.

That was good enough. Heat poured from his face, just like it did every time he was angry enough to hit someone.

It didn’t help that being sober made his anger boil up faster, but for once he didn’t mind.

At least the redness in his face could hide his embarrassment.

This bastard took his foot. His goddamn foot.

Only his parents knew about his condition.

His shame. He spent a year and a half in physical therapy making sure he had mastered walking with the prosthetic device before even attempting to go out in public again.

No one could know about it. It made him weak.

Lame. A bigger embarrassment to himself and his parents than he already was.

It was one thing to have an addict as a son, but a disabled one at that?

Even if he hated his parents, he couldn’t pile on the embarrassment like that.

Then they’d really disown him.

“Give. It. Back.”

Vincent lowered his blood-drenched hand from his face. “It’s been a long time since a human has made me bleed,” he chuckled. “You are a delight, Adam Nolan.”

What the hell is wrong with this guy? Adam clenched his fist, ready to hit the blond again. He opened his mouth to demand his prosthetic back again, but the sound of faint crunching made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Vincent’s bloody hand shot out, gripping Adam’s jaw hard enough to make his teeth ache. He was fast. Frighteningly fast. Adam grabbed at his wrist, trying to pull his face free. “That’s your one freebie, Adam,” Vincent said, glancing down his arm to meet Adam’s stare.

Adam froze, staring at the face in front of him.

Vincent’s bloody nose was shifting, cartilage moving and crunching audibly back into place.

Adam’s stomach lurched. The blue in Vincent’s irises looked brighter, and the white of his eyes drowned in what looked like a swirling blackness.

For a split second, it was as if they were both frozen in time. Staring.

I’ve seen this before …A fragment surfaced through the ketamine haze. A woman. Brown hair. Black eyes like ink spreading through water. Long, sharp teeth. The memory felt distant, like watching a movie through frosted glass.

The corners of Vincent’s mouth twitched, slowly curling into a blood-smeared grin, revealing four long, sharpened fangs in the place where his upper eye teeth had just been.

More memories crashed back: Vincent’s hand on someone’ s neck, a sickening snap, a body crumpling to the asphalt.

Adam reared back, Vincent’s slick fingers falling away from his jaw, and he slammed back against the headboard, making his vision blur.

It didn’t matter. He swung his fist back out at the human shape— no, not human —in front of him and felt that satisfying burn again in his hand as it connected with some part of Vincent’s face.

He didn’t wait for his sight to adjust as he scrambled toward the other side of the bed, a strange feeling of heaviness on his good ankle barely registering as he did.

He just needed to put distance between him and the blond with the messed up face.

He reached as far as could, seeing his damp clothes and his shoes on the ground just inches beyond his reach, complete with his prosthetic sticking up out of his shoe. So close. But metal dug into his ankle as he reach, accompanied with the sound of a chain moving against the bedframe.

Shit.

Adam cried out as Vincent yanked hard on the chain, dragging him back from the edge of the bed.

He propped himself up on his elbows, trying to maintain some composure as he avoided looking down at his stump.

At least Vincent left the silicone prosthetic sleeve on.

It only made him feel slightly less embarrassed and pissed off.

Adam stared up at Vincent, breathing hard through his nose.

Those eyes. And the teeth.

The memory of the woman became clearer of the dancer from behind the club. Beth. He’d snapped her neck.

“Y-You killed that stripper,” Adam blurted, unable to tear his stare away from Vincent’s face.

“Dancer,” Vincent corrected calmly. “They’re called dancers. Stripper has such a negative connotation. And I did not kill her.”