Chapter 25 All My Friends Are Dead
All My Friends Are Dead
Four days later
My hands shook as I dialed my parents’ number. I was almost surprised I still remembered it, to be honest. I’d been here for so long, my mind felt scrambled most of the time.
But that was about to end.
The phone rang. And rang.
It’s three in the morning, I told myself. They’re just asleep, but the sound will wake them up.
And then finally, it clicked, and a robotic voice sounded.
The number you have dialed is no longer in service…
I looked back down at the screen to double-check, saying the digits out loud. Yeah, that was their number, the one they’d always had.
I tried again. And again. Still the same message.
Dread took root in my guy. Why would their number not be in service? Had they moved? Decided not to pay for a landline anymore?
I racked my brain and my mom’s cell phone number finally surfaced, and I tried that one next.
…no longer in service.
Okay, maybe that one wasn’t right. But I was pretty sure I knew my dad’s number.
The number you have dialed is…
There was no way I was getting all these numbers wrong, and it didn’t make any sense for my parents to have changed all their numbers in the past four and a half years.
I opened an internet browser, my fingers slipping as I tried to type their names in the search engine.
But nothing came up.
Another thought crossed my mind—what if Accalia had tricked me? What if Victor was on his way here and she’d purposefully gotten my hopes up, just so he could punish me?
I took a look at the time. It was still only seven minutes past three. I supposedly had fifty-three minutes left, so if it was a trap, I was going to make every one of those count.
I didn’t have Nellie’s number memorized, but she’d always been pretty active on social media. I went to MagikGraph and tried to log in.
No record of an account with this email address found.
Ugh, this was so annoying. I went to try to sign into my email account but again got hit with a message that my account didn’t exist.
I growled in frustration, not knowing whether this was because of prolonged inactivity or if this was Victor’s doing.
After quickly making myself another email address, I created a new MagikGraph account so I could try to find Nellie, but I nearly gasped when I saw her last post was from around four and a half years ago.
Right before I met Victor.
Something wasn’t right. Had the world stopped for everyone else that night, too?
I started to pace, and Ember slipped between my legs as I walked. It was his dinner time but I couldn’t stop. I entered in Kaleb’s name next, and I cried out loud when a post from four and a half years ago popped up, written by his friend.
Please join us for a memorial service celebrating the life of Kaleb Evandell…
Bile crept up my throat as I continued reading, but there was no mention of how he’d died.
I exited MagikGraph and went back to the internet browser, searching “Nellie Delmar” and “obituary.”
Nellie Delmar, beloved daughter, sister, and friend, passed away unexpectedly…
About four and a half years ago.
I ran to the bathroom and began throwing up all the Sanguis Vita I’d had earlier. Nothing made sense—my parents’ numbers were all disconnected, Nellie and Kaleb were dead…
I had seventeen minutes left of my hour and spent it messaging as many people as I could think of who knew me, hoping someone could explain what was going on.
With two minutes to spare, I turned the phone off and plugged it in behind the console, safely tucked away. Then I hopped back on the couch where I’d been one hour ago, my heart racing as I pretended to read my book.
* * *
Victor came as usual the next morning, seemingly oblivious to my contraband and illegal activities. I tried to act neither too cold nor too nice, because if I deviated from how I’d been in either direction, he’d be suspicious.
When he left in the evening, I sat back down on the couch with my book, waiting impatiently until my hour of transgression.
When it finally hit, I gave myself an extra thirty seconds, just to be safe, and then bolted up to the console, taking out the phone and powering it back up.
I went to my new email account first, hoping to find some replies, and bit back my disappointment when I saw that my inbox was empty. Well, it was the weekend, so maybe people were busy.
I checked my DMs in MagikGraph next, and was relieved to find one from Conan, Kaleb’s werewolf friend and someone I’d played Starlight Dominion with, waiting for me.
What the hell happened to you? You just upped and left Noctis and didn’t tell anyone where you were going.
Kaleb started handing out fliers to try to find you, even after the school said you withdrew and weren’t technically missing, and then you didn’t even show up to his funeral. Not even sure why I’m talking to you.
Oh… oh, no, he… he’d been looking for me. Kaleb had died because I’d opened my big mouth and made Victor aware of his presence. Died because he’d had the misfortune of knowing me. And then he’d cared enough, knew enough about me, to not buy that I’d just dropped out of school and skipped town.
Kaleb… oh Kaleb, I’m so sorry…
I offered up a prayer to Hecara and Orithiel, asking them to guide and care for his soul while silent tears streamed down my face.
Victor had killed him. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind, because it couldn’t be a coincidence that those closest to me, those who would notice my disappearance the most, or those who knew what happened that night, were dead or missing.
I hated lying and using my condition as an excuse, but I didn’t want Conan to think I was that cruel, that heartless, to just ditch Kaleb like that.
I had some medical complications from my heart transplant and
went back to Elmaris for a series of surgeries, and then I went home to recoup.
I was in and out of it for weeks and didn’t even find out about Kaleb until
the funeral was over. It’s taken me a while to get my life back
together after learning what happened.
A little blue dot next to his profile told me he was still online, and he messaged me back a few minutes later.
Fuck, I didn’t know about that. Are you better now?
I am, thanks. I still don’t know what happened
to Kaleb, though, because no one will really talk to me.
How did he die?
His parents were told he’d been in a car accident, but another friend of ours swore he was attacked by vamps. But you know how it is here—non-cits are second class. If we end up as vamp food, the authorities don’t care.
Especially when it was the authorities who were committing the crimes.
Do you remember my friend Nellie, the merfolk?
She died too, and I can’t believe she’s gone.
Yeah, she OD’d, apparently. The Premier even set up a special memorial fund to help students struggling with addiction afterwards.
I felt like I was going to throw up again. Nellie had experimented with bruum—who hadn’t? But she’d never done anything harder than that, and you couldn’t overdose on bruum.
And if Victor’s “memorial fund” didn’t say guilty conscience, I didn’t know what would.
My skin felt clammy as the realization sunk in—Victor had really killed my friends. Killed Nellie because she knew he had taken me, and killed Kaleb because he had been looking for me.
And possibly killed my parents…
Thanks for reaching out, and sorry if I’m keeping you up.
Oh, no worries. I’m actually finishing my Ph.D. at Umbris, so I’m on Noctis time. I’m at a dig right now, but maybe when I’m back, we can catch up? My Starlight Dominion crew could always use a new member.
My breath caught in my chest, and I let out a sob as this small thing broke me. This innocent invitation back into my old life, back when I wasn’t just a shell of a person, a living doll for all of Victor’s wants and needs. When I had a best friend, a boyfriend, a family…
Sure, I’d love that. Good luck with your dig!
* * *
The days with Victor crept by even more than usual as I counted down the minutes until I could have my phone again. I still didn’t know where my parents were, and I’d stopped contacting any more people when I realized that if word somehow got to Victor, he might kill anyone who knew I was alive.
At the very least, I had the chance to research more about mate bonds. Because no matter what Victor said in the afterglow of sex, he didn’t really love me. I didn’t think he even liked me. Not really.
Everything I’d ever heard about mates, which was all anecdotal since I didn’t know any mated couples in real life, had said they were perfect for one another in every way possible.
Not that they didn’t fight or have differences, but that they were what the other person wanted and needed in a partner.
And Victor barely tolerated me when I was just being myself.
When I’d asked him for a video game console, he’d looked at me like it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard and made some snide comment about how gaming was for children.
Even the books he’d bought me, while great to have, were just the classics—vampire classics, mind you. When I’d mentioned a series of graphic novels by a seraph writer that I loved, he’d scrunched his nose in disgust and refused.
And what did I know about Victor, aside from his overwhelming need for control? I’d taken some of my phone time to research publicly available information on him, and while I knew it was all superficial, it certainly painted the picture of a man I would never have chosen for myself.
He enjoyed the opera and was a big supporter of the Noctis Symphony Orchestra, which, okay, was fine.
I’d played the clarinet in school, so I had an appreciation for classical music.
But I preferred pop for the most part, and Victor thought my favorite artist, Sirena Murphy, was vapid and talentless.
Oh, and apparently, he’d almost been good enough to qualify for the Midnight Polo League, and the team would allow him to practice with them sometimes, whereas I didn’t care at all about sports.
He’d watch ironball games on his phone beside me in bed occasionally, and even as starved for entertainment as I was, I couldn’t be tempted to join him.
In almost every way aside from sex, which even then was more my body’s need for touch than from real chemistry with Victor, we didn’t make sense. Why would the gods have partnered us up?
I began my search anew that day, and a few pages in, found a sweet video someone had made for their parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, a couple who were mates. The werewolf woman and the merfolk man sat on a couch, his arm around her, as she rested comfortably by his side.
Their daughter was interviewing them.
“Tell us how you two met,” she started.
The man looked at his wife, his cheeks turning a little pink, the sparkle in his eye making him appear much younger than he probably was.
“Let’s see… it was at the Hunter’s Moon festival in Fenmoor.
I was driving through, and thought I might stop by to watch the shift.
And then all of a sudden, this beautiful wolf with the prettiest gray coat I ever did see runs right up to me, and she just sat on my feet, and wouldn’t let me go all night.
Finally, the sun rose, and when I saw her as a woman, our eyes locked, and…
” he sighed, his expression soft. “Everything just sort of fell into place.”
“I knew right away as my wolf,” the wife added with a chuckle. “I caught his scent, and the drive to claim my mate brought me straight to him. You can sense these things better that way, but he didn’t realize until I’d shifted back.”
“What do you think connects two Magiks as mates?” the daughter continued.
The wife shrugged. “Some say the gods choose, while some scientists say it’s just a random phenomenon—something about gene diversity, that sort of thing.”
“But if you ask me,” the husband said, giving his wife a quick kiss on the crown of her head. “It’s a decision made by the heart. You just gotta know how to listen.”
The video ended, and I snorted a laugh, wiping the tear from my cheek. A decision made by the heart… what kraken shit. Because my heart wasn’t…
My heart wasn’t…
I broke out in a cold sweat.
My heart wasn’t mine.