AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah?”
“I mean what I said. Don’t hurt Liam, or I’ll hurt you.”
Then he was gone, and I was all alone. Okay, so apparently, Liam was fiercely protected. Fair. Totally fair. Everyone loved him and took care of him. That was a good thing. I was a little jealous, to be honest. The only people I’d ever had who cared for me like that were Ian and Raven, and now I only had Raven, and even then, only part of the time.
I hated that I’d lost so many friends, and I hated about how much life had hurt me. Most of all, I hated the way that Liam had revealed the truth to me. It was a horrible sort of truth, and I hated it. Why had my roommates felt the need to harvest hearts? Who did that?
When I’d trained to be a hunter, it had been simple and straightforward. A hunter’s job was to hunt. It was to slay. It wasn’t to torture or to maim. We put down the creatures we were hunting, and that was it.
That was supposed to be the end of it.
The walls of the mansion felt like they were closing in on me, and suddenly, I felt very trapped. I knew I wasn’t allowed to leave, but I needed to. I needed to get out of the house and just run. I could run now that I was a vampire. I could run before, but it was going to be different now. I could feel it in my bones.
Making my way to the front door, I grabbed a trench coat and a big hat, along with an umbrella. Then I headed outside. The sun wasn’t quite up yet, but it would be soon. I wanted to go to my apartment and just be. I needed some time to think, and to be alone. I didn’t bother leaving a note. I’d just make sure that I was back before sunset. There was no chance that Liam was going to wake up: not because he couldn’t, but because he was a heavy sleeper.
I walked away from the house, and as I distanced myself from the mansion, I didn’t look back. Instead, I just focused on moving through the Grove, making my way through one space and then another. One street turned into a different one. Finally, I was back in the park at the front of the Grove, and then I was through the gates.
Now that I was a vampire, nobody seemed to look twice at me or notice me. I wasn’t sure what was worse: being hunted or being ignored entirely.
The sun started to come up, and I hurried through Ashbury back to my apartment. I wanted to get there and just go inside and relax. Maybe I’d take a nap or look through old photo albums...I didn’t know. I just wanted to be in my own space and wear my own clothes. I just wanted to feel like myself again.
I wouldn’t stay long: just the day. Still, it was going to be nice to be able to be alone. The mansion was incredible. It was luxurious and beautiful and nice, but it also was stiff and clean and it wasn’t a place where I really belonged.
My life was m
essy.
My world was messy.
The life of a vampire was supposed to be messy, but judging by what I’d seen, it was mostly just hanging out collecting things. Helena seemed to collect girls, judging by what Raven had said, and Liam collected memories and fights. He loved to fight. He was good at it, too. Lex collected postcards. Michael collected knives from all over the world. Everyone had something that gave them at least a little bit of meaning, but me?
Well, I mostly just wanted a place where I could enjoy the silence. I was very tired. It had been a long week, and my entire world had been tossed around and thrown into the fire. First, I found out that my best friend was a vampire. Then I found out that she was living with the man I’d been hunting. Then that guy turned me into a vampire and gave me an orgasm. Oh, and I was his mate, according to him.
It was a lot to bear.
When I reached my apartment building, I stood for a minute and looked up at the building. It was falling apart. The bricks were worn, and a lot of them were crumbling. It wasn’t a place that should feel like home, yet it did. It wasn’t just a random home. It was my home. It was a place where I could just be me. It was a safety place.
I took the stairs two at a time and when I reached my door, I realized that I didn’t have my key.
Shit.
How could I have been so dumb? I could go back downstairs and see if the office manager was in, but I doubted it. He never liked to hang around much, and he definitely didn’t like dealing with the residents. I pressed my hand to the door and sighed. Well, that had been a huge waste of time. I could break the door in, I thought, but that would bring a lot of noise and attention I didn’t need or want.
Then, on a whim, I turned the knob.
To my shock, the door swung open easily. Why had it opened? I always locked my door. It was something I had never once forgotten to do. In a world of monsters, you couldn’t be too careful. I already lived in kind of a seedy place. I didn’t need to bring more trouble by not closing or locking the door.
Standing in the doorway, I sniffed the air.
My home didn’t feel abandoned the way it should have. After nearly a week of me being gone, it should have smelled stale or empty, but instead, it smelled...
Occupied.
“Hello?” I called out, closing the door behind me as I stepped farther inside.
It was stupid.
You were never supposed to call out when you went into a house or apartment. That was the fastest way to alert people that you were there. Then again, I was there, so what was the trouble? I walked into the living room, but there was nothing there. Nobody. The couch was just as plain and boring as it had been before, and my trunk with weapons was still serving as a coffee table.
