The Lost Girls || Bbangsaz

XI

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     Hyein heaved the dead-eyed Goth boy over her shoulder and carried him to the river, where she dumped his body. I was long past caring what would happen to the people we left behind. It used to bother me.

     Killing had been one of the hardest things to get used to when I first turned, but I found a system that made it easier for me. These days, I hardly gave it a thought anymore. Just part of the food chain.

     Hyein took us on a meandering route through a residential neighborhood, close to where she used to live. A toddler with haunted eyes sat on the uneven steps of a front porch wearing nothing but a full diaper and drinking Mountain Dew from a bottle. She watched us pass without so much as a flinch. Too young to already be so jaded.

     I recognized the area but didn't want to confirm my worst suspicions about where we were going, so I kept my mouth shut while we trudged toward a more wooded part of the neighborhood.

     A small forest grew wild behind the houses on this street, unable to be leveled because of the wetlands at its center. At the end of the cul-de-sac, overgrowth swallowed the remaining sidewalk. The rooftop of a house peeked over the tangle of short trees and bushes out front.

     It wasn't until she pushed open a gate choked with ivy and vines that I recognized the place I'd thought of as a second home while I'd been alive.

     The white siding had turned gray. Fat flakes of peeling vinyl littered the ground like ash. Broken windows smeared with dirt watched over the scraggly yard like dead, filmy eyes. A crooked shutter creaked in the wind. Not even the haunted house that went up every Halloween on the east side of town could as effectively create the creepiness that oozed through every crack. It wouldn't have surprised me to learn that actual ghosts had taken up residence there.

     "What happened to your house?" I walked up the front steps where I'd once spent long and lazy summer days drinking lemonade.

     The dry wood splintered beneath our feet.
Hyein gave me a look that could've melted the skin off my bones. Apparently, her anger hadn't cooled a bit since our happy reunion. "A kidnapping and double murder tends to bring down the property value."

     Hyein and I both lost enough blood the night we became vampires to be ruled a double murder without our bodies, and since Hyein's mom left the slider unlocked, the investigators determined we'd been kidnapped. If Hyein hadn't followed me, everyone would've assumed I'd been a runaway. Which had been my original plan when I left her house with a backpack full of clothes.

     My spine stiffened. "I hope you're not seriously suggesting I take responsibility for this."

     Hyein whipped around and grabbed my throat, her movements so swift it took me by surprise. Pain radiated through my neck, and a burning sensation fused the muscles in my back to my spine as she snapped my bones. "If you had stayed at home instead of sneaking out of my house to meet your boyfriend, none of this would've happened. Do you even know what life was like for my mom after we died? She blamed herself for our deaths. She never got over it."

     I didn't know because I made it a point to never look back. I chose death. This was my eternity now. And taking on more regret wouldn't do a thing to change that. Haerin broke Hyein's wrist, forcing her to release her hold, and my neck healed within a minute. I tilted my head from side to side as the lingering soreness drained out of me.

     "Please don't tell me your mom still lives here," I said.

     "So nice of you to ask about my mom, but you're about thirty-fours years too late to give a shit." She clenched her jaw, wearing her molars down to nubs as she looked like she was fighting an internal war with herself. "She died ten years ago. I couldn't even go to her funeral because I'm attached to wherever you are, and you were in Texas."