Page 4 of Those That Don't Exist
Doctors didn't know the specific cause of the injury, which had needed stitches, but in their eyes it had healed fine, andwas one of my minor injuries. They were stumped when I complained of ongoing pain, passing it off as a trauma response. After a while I pretended it no longer hurt because they weren’t going to do anything.
It subsides after a while and I lie back down. Turning onto my side, I clutch my wrist, folding my arms in towards my chest. Tears start falling from my eyes even though I try my hardest not to let them. The images of the dream that woke me play front and centre in my brain once more.I don't know why I call it a dream when it's truly a nightmare.
I try to shove the images away, forcing myself to think of nothing but my breathing. It doesn’t help. As I slip back towards unconsciousness they return full force.
We’re cruising down the highway, I’d finished my third and penultimate year at Bay University hours before, leaving Froan city behind to spend time at home.
Dad is driving, having made the four hour drive to come and pick me up. We’re singing our hearts out to our favourite road trip song. Neither of us has a particularly good voice but it's a tradition of sorts. Each time we make this journey we put it on as soon as we pass the city signs.
It’s dark out but still stifling hot as the summer has kicked in full force. My dad prefers the air that blasts through the open windows to the AC so our voices are carried out with the whipping wind.
Despite my best efforts of taming it into a ponytail my red hair whips around my head like fire. It’s not late but the road is quiet. We’d decided on dinner in the city to allow the traffic to die down. Not that the road out to the west of the Island is ever very busy but the work traffic has gone for the day and we’re able to cruise along without any hindrance.
As we clear the mountain pass out of Froan Bay and are on a straight section of road, Dad turns to me, asking if there’sanything I wish to do over the summer, and for my upcoming twenty second birthday. We’re chatting through various plans for a while when suddenly something catches both our attention through the windscreen. Time slows.
A figure is standing in the road, a black silhouette against the headlights of the car. Dad brakes but it's not enough, we’re going to hit the person. My vision blurs but I feel all of it, the swerving, the impact, the car rolling, the spike of dread filled adrenaline as I’m thrown about. I try to steady myself by pushing my arms against the roof. Nausea hits in a tidal wave as we finally stop.
I smell blood. There’s wetness on my face and on my leg, is that the source? My stomach retches. My eyes are still screwed shut as my brain won't stop ringing around my skull. Fuck this hurts.
Then there’s a sharp stabbing at my wrist and a scream explodes from my throat.
I wake up for the second time tonight and decide enough’s enough. I won't be sleeping anymore. I get my breathing back under control again, turn on the lamp beside my bed and pick up a novel from the floor. I start to read, escaping into a different world so I don’t have to think about the memory, come nightmare, that is the night I lost my father. As soon as dawn breaks I get up, put on work out gear and head to the gym to go through my physio routine.
CHAPTER 3
TY
This is pointless. I’ve been watching her for weeks now and she has shown exactly zero signs that the venom had any effect. Which is honestly a relief. If she had turned it would’ve been so fucking dangerous, and I would’ve had to add kidnapping to my repertoire alongside the stalking. As it stands, keeping her under watch any longer feels pointless. But I’m doing as I’m told, watching her for at least a little while each day.
I’m currently a few tables down from her in the study section of the library. It’s busy so she won’t notice me. She’s studiously reading, taking notes occasionally on her computer. She looks like every other student here.
Adicious is refusing to believe his experiment has failed, and still refuses to clue me in on why he’s chosen this particular female, or how long he expects me to continue creeping on her like this.
I’m not invested in this venture at all, if you couldn’t tell, but the longer it goes on I can’t help wondering why he thinks it will work. Granted the last three had died within hours and this one has lived but it's never been possible to turn a female this way.
Males of my kind could be turned no matter what their lineage was. They could be one hundred percent human, onehundred percent Fae, or shifter, or a mixture of all three and all it would take is one venom laced bite. Females, on the other hand, had to be born with the DNA from both parents - both needed to have fangs at the conception. Girls still had to be infected when they reached adulthood but the lineage was important. If human, or otherwise, females just seemed impervious to our venom. Why it worked like that I didn’t know. Science might be advanced enough by now to find out but no one would be doing the research. After all, we no longer existed.
Is Adicious just that desperate for a mate? Our female population had been decimated in the war, and they’d been outnumbered 10:1 already to the male members because of how easily we were created. The few remaining were already mated, and fiercely guarded by their packs. And as far as I was aware, no children, let alone girls had been born in the four decades since the war ended.
Granted I’d spent several years too high, or too drunk, to take notice but that news would’ve spread fast. Even with the packs now forced to exist underground we had ways of communicating with each other.
No, if Adicious wanted a mate he would need to make one, and I guess as he was straighter than a ruler he needed a female.
I can understand his want. His power as a pack leader was strengthened through our blood bonds - those who served him - but it was only those leaders who were in mated pairs, or poly groups, that seemed able to fully embrace our magic.
If Adicious was into guys I’m sure he’d have made one of us his mate already.Shudder.Thankfully for me, and the rest of the guys, we clearly didn’t do it for him, but maybe this female sitting down the long table from me did. And maybe he had some delusions that whatever deity gifted the magic to us supernaturals was going to change the rulebook and grant him one.
With that thought I turn my gaze from his latest project back to my own work.
The destructive nature of the war had meant we’d lost track of many during the fighting. There were several hundred names on the missing or unknown list. I wanted to track down the truth of those who’d resided here before the war and either lay to rest their ghosts or bring them home. I’d met a few lucky ones, who’d escaped the death camps, in the years since fighting had stopped. They’d been officially recorded as dead by the authorities - whether to make their figures look good or because the guards on those camps hadn’t wanted to admit escapes had been possible I wasn’t sure. What I did know was that meeting those males had set a burning need inside me to look into the members of my old pack. If there was any chance a single one of them was still out there I want to find them.
The university had higher access to record offices and archives. Over the last year I'd traced dozens to a confirmed grave but one was looking more hopeful. I’d found enough evidence others in the pack had been tasked to do the actual tracking, I was still waiting to see if my hunch over the records was true.
Then this summer Adicious added this little pet project to my duties, slowing my work. But, if he let me continue to be here at the uni, instead of any of the other duties he dished out to the rest of the guys, I’d watch and report on her all damn year.
CHAPTER 4
AURORA
