Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
ECHO
I’d fucked up. I’d fucked up so majorly, epically bad.
If I hadn’t been so far up my own ass, I would have realized that my not-vampire had been trying to work with me before I’d stormed out.
Once I’d gotten home, ripped off all my clothes (but carefully putting my new sweater on the bed, obviously.), and taken an epic anger shower, I settled into a calm-down bath and stewed.
As I stewed and soaked away the lingering soreness in my back from that kick, I kept asking myself the same question:
How dare he? How dare Vale kill his way into my life, fuck me silly, send me home, then murder his way back into my heart, ahem, back onto the scene once more?
Yes, I knew I was oversimplifying things, but please allow me the artistic license, okay? I was in a tub getting wrinkly and plumbing the depths of my soul. It tends to make a guy dramatic.
And how dare he expect me to act remotely sane or rational after seeing such a bloodbath? Why didn’t he chase after me? Why did he just let me leave after telling him to go fuck himself?
Twice! He let me leave twice!
That sweater was mine forever, and Vale could go fuck a cactus if he thought otherwise.
And so I was left wrinkly and remorseful in my tub, thinking that maybe I should have heard Vale out.
I’d just been so scared. Not of the death and dismemberment; whoever had attacked me and Vix had it coming to them. I’d done literally nothing wrong, and Vix? How on earth could someone like that ever do anything bad enough to get on a strike team’s radar?
Sure, I’d been scared in the moment, but I’d experienced far worse in my life. No, I’d been scared because Vale was about to do something more horrible than anything I could have possibly imagined.
He was about to force me to feel something real.
Something I’d have no control over. Something that could open the possibility for a loss so huge I’d never recover.
I’d panicked. I’d freaked out, picked a fight, and run away.
I didn’t want to die currently. I wanted… I didn’t know what I wanted, but I didn’t want to have done that to Vale.
The look on his face as I’d said, “Then I’m out.” It was horrible. It was empty, and not like the emptiness of a cookie jar levels of empty, but more like staring into the void. Like, once you drop something in there, it could never be retrieved again.
I’d hurt him. I knew it like I’d known about his secret.
God fucking dammit. I didn’t know what Vale was or what he’d gone through, but I knew he didn’t deserve to be hurt.
You see, I had a twin void inside myself, and I knew what it took to get one.
And folks, it wasn’t endless amounts of stickers and ice cream at the local fun-o-rama.
Sigh.
I sank under the water and stayed there, being morose as fuck until the image of Vale being forced to go to a kid’s fun zone came to me. I sat up and choked out the ocean’s worth of water I’d snorted up my nose from the sudden laughter.
I wanted to see that. I wanted to see it more than anything. I wanted to see Vale, so haughty and prim, so snarky and sarcastic, being subjected to the brightly colored chaos and cheer of such a place.
He would hate it so much.
I continued to hack out water because my body wanted to live, even if I wasn’t sure how much I did.
Once I was reasonably sure my lungs were empty, I got my softest towel and bundled up in it before hunting down my fuzzy slippers.
Then I ate bread and butter on the couch because I’d forgotten to go to the grocery store—again.
Tomorrow I’d find Vale. Tomorrow I would fix things. I didn’t know how because I didn’t know what I wanted, but fix things I would.
Maybe I’d find someone brave enough to yell at Gareth about giving me my phone back too.
The bells started to ring out the hour, and I smiled. Finally, something was going my way. If the bells were ringing, it meant the hunt was still on, even though I’d missed out on last night’s fun. Well, I wasn’t letting it happen again.
I stood up and stretched out my back, allowing my towel to fall to the ground, showing off all my naked glory to any peeping neighbors.
It was too bad that my weird magic resistance affected Vale’s healing.
At least I got something out of it, though.
Otherwise, I’d be nursing a broken rib or two for sure, and that would have made my next activity suck donkey balls.
I made for the dusty tote under my bed, where my second stash of bell-hunting equipment was—because are you really a hunter if you only have one stash?
Once I’d fished it out, I threw on some dark clothes and raced to my car.
I didn’t know how many traps I had that were still operational since I’d missed the fun last night, but it didn’t matter.
I was going in late as it was. It was dark, and the fight would be in full swing. I was going to have to improvise.
I took a chance and parked closer than I usually did, trusting that the darkness would disguise any recognizable details about it until after the fight was won.
I crept as quickly as I dared, hoping I could catch the first phase of the hunt.
The bell hunt had two phases: outside the tower and inside. Each had its own levels, with the fight growing more difficult as you got closer to the tower.
I excelled at the first phase. When I was having a good night, I usually managed to snag half the hunters and sneak inside during the chaos, skipping all the levels outside, which mostly involved reaching certain marker points in the yard based on the terrain.
My sneakiness meant that none of those markers meant jack shit to me.
Once inside, I only had to contend with a few hard-core townies and magic users.
We always got some tourists, but almost none of them ever made it inside the actual tower. The violence and chaos sent ninety-nine percent of them running. If one did make it inside, they never made it out again, and no one remembered they were ever there.
Except me, of course. Somehow, I always remembered.
The levels inside the tower did matter to me.
I had to utilize traps over sneakiness because the space was small and the fighting was intense.
The levels were the lobby with the tiny gift shop, the spiral stairs, and the bell room.
I didn’t make it past the lobby much, and I’d only ever glimpsed the bell room once.
When I reached the churchyard and got a look at the scene before me, I sighed with relief. No one had breached the tower yet.
The only way in was through the massive wooden door, and it was closed tight. No one could fly into the arched holes in the top of the tower, and no one could climb it from the outside. After dark, the only way to the bells was by going inside and climbing the stairs.
The townies and tourists thought there was a force field or something stopping people or drones from entering through the top where the bells were, but I could see the magic humming in the air.
There were layers of spells overhead. I didn’t know shit about magic, but I could see and feel the different colors and vibrations denoting each spell, all aimed at keeping anyone from getting higher than eight feet up the tower outside.
Some spells were non-lethal, but some would fry you to a crispy critter.
People learned early on that it wasn’t worth it to try.
I don’t know how we came up with our self-imposed, unspoken rules and traditions, but every year, there seemed to be something new we all agreed would be what we did.
I heard that the no-climb/no-fly zone was created when some asshole flew a drone up to the bells and disabled them in minutes while the minmaxers—or magic users; I use them interchangeably—were busy duking it out.
I don’t know for certain because I wasn’t there.
It wasn’t a solid rule that would lose you the game if you broke it. If someone managed to make it to the bells from the outside and disable them, then they’d win the hunt. But the magic users would probably throw up even more spells to keep it from happening again.
From what I heard, the magic users got incredibly butthurt when the drone took out the bells. They actually worked together to decide who would do what to keep it from happening again, which was a miracle. All minmaxers were notoriously bad at working together for the hunt.
I only had a few seconds to get a lay of the land—it was downright dangerous to stand still for long in the churchyard during the hunt. You were just begging to get picked off.
I could see that several of my traps had been triggered the night before, and three of them currently held unwilling victims in their grasp. I was also pretty certain the hopefully unconscious person near my dart trap had been subject to the homemade sleep sap I’d decided to test out this year.
What? I couldn’t test it on myself, could I? If I accidentally offed myself before winning the bell hunt while prepping for it, that would be the dumbest thing ever.
No, I was saving myself for death-by-hot-guy, thank you very much.
The plant toxins I’d used for the blend were mostly harmless anyway, so whoever triggered the trap was probably fine.
I saw an area where a series of my traps still lay undisturbed in the cemetery portion of the church grounds, so I made a beeline for them. The safest place for me to stand was in the midst of my traps since I knew where they were, but no one else did.
I picked my way to the tower door, staying low among the headstones. A lot of people didn’t like going near the headstones, but I considered them fair game. The people in the graves were dead, and their troubles were over. Why on earth would they stick around to haunt people if they didn’t have to?