Page 48 of Missing Piece (Neon Scars #2)

E very door he opened revealed another blank room, spattered with blood and viscera like the Whitman’s house.

But it felt familiar, like a combination of his farmhouse and something he’d buried beneath endless memories of his own debauchery.

I’m dreaming. He opened another door, frustrated to find more of the same display, but there was a drain in this room, some of the blood having pooled around the drain, stopped up with chunks of blonde hair and scalp.

I haven’t dreamed in a hundred years. The thought nagged at him as he closed the door.

Vampires didn’t dream—it wasn’t how their minds worked.

So what the hell was this? His lower back itched and burned where his skin was still marred by scars from being trialed by Solomon.

He scratched at it as he moved to the next door, listening and sniffing the air for signs that he wasn’t alone, but there was nothing.

Just quiet emptiness and the wrongness of everything around him.

He reached for the doorknob, pausing at the sight of blood on his hands. Why were the scars bleeding?

Vincent reached back, patting his lower back, his shirt slick with blood.

That’s not supposed to happen anymore. “Hello?” he called out towards where Petrov’s room was supposed to be.

There was a nagging in the center of his chest, a persistent thump thump thump that was more than uncomfortable.

It hurt. He knocked at the door. “Petrov?”

The doorknob was missing. He shoved his shoulder against the door, but recoiled as pain shot down his arm.

That wasn’t supposed to hurt. He took a step back, taking a moment to rub his shoulder with his fist as he stared at the door.

He could barely remember what his dreams were like when he was human, but he had the feeling they were like this.

Strange and confusing. He moved to the next door, Matteo’s room, but the doorknob was missing as well, and the button to make the lights in his room flash was gone.

Not as though it had been removed, but as though it never existed in the first place.

This isn’t my house. He moved to what should have been Luka’s door across the hall, but again, the doorknob was missing. “Luka?” he called.

Silence.

Dread made his skin tingle and the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

He was definitely trapped in a dream, but the why of it eluded him.

Dreams were the way humans solved their problems, not vampires.

He had no need for whatever part of his brain was firing off this illusion.

Holding onto human traits invited trouble, and he had had enough of that.

“I’m ready to wake the fuck up!” Vincent shouted, slapping his hand against his chest as the unpleasant thump continued.

Creeeeaaak . Vincent spun around as one of the doors he had already tried creaked open, filling the hallway with a strangled choking sound and kicking feet.

He stomped towards the door, ready to confront whatever horror show his mind had cooked up for him so he could snap out of it and wake himself up.

He wasn’t sure why, but he knew he needed to do something important when he woke up, something that stuck to every part of him like mud.

Vincent pushed the door open, bracing for another blood and viscera nightmare.

The sight of Reggie’s room sucked all the air out of his lungs.

He grabbed at his chest, the thumping growing harder and louder behind his sternum as he stared into the wrecked room.

The mattress had been flipped onto the ground, the walls splattered with blood, all the stuffed animals and toys he’d bought piled in the center of the room, singed as though they had been lit on fire.

He wanted to be angry. If he were awake he would have been. But the sight just hurt.

Tears stung his eyes and his knees went weak. He grabbed at the doorframe for support, gasping as his chest became tighter and tighter. It wasn’t enough that the zealous hunters had burned the kid alive. They had to burn all that remained of his memory too.

He was so fixated on the pile that he barely noticed the figures in the back of the room, two men crouching over a third, whose feet kicked and twitched as though he were in the last throes of life. One of the men rose up, stretching his arms over his head before slowly turning to face Vincent.

His black eyes brightened, seeming to warm his wrinkled and weathered face, his arms held out wide for a hug as he grinned at Vincent, the lower half of his face covered in blood.

Vincent gawked at the sight of his maker.

He’s dead. Solomon has been dead for years.

“The prodigal son returns,” Solomon said.

His grin faded as he looked Vincent up and down.

“But you are not returning as I remember you. You have changed. You’re weaker than you once were. ”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Vincent growled, his fists clenched at his sides.

The wrongness of it all pressed against his skull.

Solomon’s accent, some amalgamation of his attempts at modern speech mixed with his East Anglian accent that had fallen out of favor centuries before, sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

“You’re dead, I buried what the hunters left of you. ”

Solomon removed a stained handkerchief from his pocket, wiping at the blood on his hands. “Yes, I recall you being the reason they found me. You told them where I was.”

“You were out of control. We told you not to mess with a hunter’s family, and you fucking pushed it anyway.

You brought them here when you killed that girl.

You’re the reason so many people died, not me,” he snapped.

He took a step forward. Even if it was a dream, he wouldn’t mind a second chance to take out his rage on his maker.

Solomon laughed. “Do you plan on killing me, child? With your own hands this time? Look at you. You’re not the man I molded. If you were, I’d already be dead. You’ve grown weaker in my time away,” he shook his head, looking Vincent over again. “Your humanity is showing and it is disgusting.”

Vincent swung at him, but his fist passed right through Solomon’s head, leaving him stumbling to the side. Solomon laughed as his figure dissipated, seemingly made of mist. “Shut the fuck up!” he shouted as Solomon’s laughter continued to echo in the room, bouncing off the walls.

“You know that never works with him,” the other crouched figure said as he slowly stood up.

Richard. Vincent steadied himself, trying to ignore the thumping in his chest that seemed harder and louder than before. “I’m done playing with ghosts, get the fuck out of my head!” he snarled. But even as he said it, something felt off about this being just his mind playing tricks.

“That’s the thing about ghosts, Mr. Bellenger, once you know they are there, they become very hard to ignore,” Richard said, taking on an almost soothing quality as he turned to face Vincent.

His face was just as smeared with blood as Solomon’s was, but he looked different from the club.

His eyes looked sadder, almost pained, his skin beaded with sweat and gray.

“Don’t you remember yet? What you did to me? ”

Vincent took a step back as Richard unbuttoned the top of his shirt, blood blooming across the front of it as he did, revealing a pattern carved into his chest made up of a series of lines and triangles.

“Don’t you remember?” he asked, running his hand over his throat.

Blood ran between his fingers as he did, chunks of flesh disappearing and exposing the tendons beneath, his jugular severed and spurting blood weakly down his arm and chest.

Vincent’s back began burning as he realized he was looking at the same pattern that had been carved into him when he was still human. The same pattern that was painted in blood at the Whitman’s house. Have I really blocked all of that out?

“It was you—” A strange fear shot through Vincent he hadn’t felt in years. A fear of death. Of himself. Dying. “You were in the cage next to me.”

The memory hit him like ice water. Richard hadn’t just been in the next cage—he’d been Vincent’s first feeding, his first kill. Except Vincent had been too new, too hungry, too desperate to do it right. Instead of draining him, he’d…

Richard smiled as blood began to soak into the front of his jeans, giving Vincent a condescending golf clap.

“Yes! There you go. Now you’re figuring it out.

I guess I wasn’t important enough for you to make space in your little head for me after all this time, but I can forgive that.

Being a new vampire is hard, especially when you’re hungry,” he said, taking a step towards Vincent.

“And you made me, Mr. Bellenger. That kind of gift allows me to permit you a certain amount of, oh, let’s call it wiggle room, for forgiveness. ”

He’s lying. This is a dream. This is all some sick game my mind has come up with.

Vincent took another step back, trying to put distance between himself and Richard.

He grabbed at his chest, his chest becoming tighter as the thumping became harder.

It was his heart. His human heart. The heart that had died a hundred years ago.

He’s lying. I’ve never made a vampire. I swore I never would.

But the pain in his chest told him otherwise.

In those early days, before he knew any better, before Solomon deemed him worthy to take under his wing, he had tried to help someone, hadn’t he?

A man from the south who broke in a matter of days…

a man Solomon delighted in making scream for hours on end just because he thought it was fun.

A man Solomon had left alone with Vincent after turning him, scared and ravenously hungry, willing to do anything to quiet the beast screaming in his head.

“You survived?” Vincent gasped, still clutching his chest.

He looked back to Richard, but the bleeding man was gone.

The only thing left in the room was the man on the ground, his body slumped against the wall as his chest barely moved, each labored breath accompanied by a disturbing gurgle.

He was dying, but Vincent couldn’t hear a heartbeat from him.

He could just barely smell blood. All of his senses were dull again.

Like a human. He took a cautious step towards the man, the dread and fear rising up his neck and making his scalp tingle.

“Which ghost are you?” Vincent asked, trying to look at the face that was obscured by stringy hair dried with blood.

The man let out a weak groan, his hand drifting to his bruised side.

I know him too. He looked down at the man’s shoes.

Dirty sneakers, covered with blood and what looked like vomit, his jeans torn and ripped up one side, exposing a metal joint where an ankle should have been.

A wave of nausea and dizziness dropped Vincent to his knees.

“Adam!” His teeth shifted, forming into fangs, his eyes vibrating as they turned black.

The thumping in his chest ceased, suddenly making him feel breathless and hollow as an untenable grief burned away the remnants of his human heart.

He dug his fingers into his sternum, as though that would stop the molten grief from bursting out of him.

I can’t lose another one. I need him. “Adam, please, hold on,” Vincent gritted out, reaching out to touch him.

Adam whimpered, flinching away from Vincent’s touch. He slowly lifted his head, revealing his quivering blue-tinted lips, his face even more battered than the last time Vincent saw him. His eyes were half-lidded, frightened and filled with terror, like he didn’t recognize Vincent.

He’s dying.

“I’m going to get you help.”

Adam’s expression didn’t change. He slowly opened his mouth, moving his blue lips silently.

Vincent leaned forward, desperate to hear what he was saying.

Yellowish liquid began to pour from his mouth, spilling down his bloody and broken body and pooling beneath him as he continued to stare at Vincent like the monster he was.

Vincent recoiled as the smell hit him. Gasoline. No. No, not again. Not like this again. This is a dream. A fucked up dream. Wake up, Vincent. Wake the fuck up!

Adam closed his mouth, his fright fading as he stared at Vincent, waiting for him to do something.

Everything in Vincent’s body told him to keep moving, to get away from the man covered in flammable liquid, but he was frozen as he continued to stare at the face he had suddenly become too fond of too quickly.

He’s mine. He said he was mine. I can’t leave him like this.

Even in a stupid dream. The thought was almost laughable.

It would have been laughable just a few years ago.

But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t leave Adam.

Not in real life, not in fever-dream, not ever.

Not even if he was covered in something that would kill them both.

Vincent leaned forward again, wrapping his arms around Adam’s limp body, fighting his instinct to run, choking on the scent of gasoline that burned his nose and eyes and throat.

“I’m here. I’m not letting go,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to Adam’s.

His skin was so cold. Too cold…like he was already dead.

“Then you both die,” Richard’s ghostly voice said from behind him.

Vincent smiled to himself as Adam’s arms weakly wrapped around him. That’s fine, he thought as he heard the click of a lighter.

Then the flames began to burn.