Ashes of the Future

Chapter 17

It had been a long and wild night, so wild that Vykter had flat out collapsed outside Elise's house. Him and Elise had done what they always did best, ignored all their problems and drank away till they could no longer, while Lela and Nathly mourned alone, everyone else too busy sorting out the new additions.

He wasn't fully gone, some part of him was awake. Glancing down at his stab wound, Vykter felt himself start to slip as his blood leaked onto the side wall of Elise's house. Vykter had planned on heading home, both of them too drunk to realize that was a terrible idea, but he was attacked before he could barely get through the short cut they had created between his and Elise's house a while back.

That was until Damiron's figure draped past the house, his feet dragging behind him as he placed a cigarette gently onto his lips.

Before he could begin to light it, the sound of his name echoed through the night, repeated and repeated like a chant. The darkness made it near impossible for him to figure out where the source of the sound was, a shadow slumped against Elise's house catching his eye.

Realizing it was Vykter, he continued to walk. Damiron had realized what Elise meant when she said him and her friends really wouldn't get along. After hearing Vykter cry out his name again, he couldn't carry on. The desperation in Vykter's voice hit something inside Damiron, took him back to a time when he scavenged for help off of anyone.

He didn't speak, nor did he make eye contact with Vykter, he simply lifted Vykter's limp body into his arms, following his wishes of being portaled home.

As Damiron began to patch him up and carry him upstairs, Vykter started to mumble something, his words too slurred for anyone to understand.

"Stay." It was the one audible word Damiron could make out, as he lifted Vykter's bed cover across, prepping for the placement of Vykter.

Surprisingly, Damiron did stay. He wasn't sure why he did it himself, but he did, pulling a chair up from the side of Vykter's room to the edge of his bed.  All Damiron could think about was why the killer didn't finish Vykter off, no one had just been injured yet. But here Vykter was, a survivor of an attack.

If Vykter hadn't of been hurt, Damiron would've been gone by now, rather being in the comfort of his own home than the dark domain of Vykter's. Damiron began to check over Vykter for anymore wounds, cautious that the killer hadn't truly let him off, his hands wondering to Vyker's tightly curled hair.

Removing himself from the edge of Vykter's bed and back to his chair, Damiron could only wonder if Vykter lived with his parents. He was old enough to not live with them, being twenty years old, but he never really saw any of their parents in fact.

Damiron stayed silent anyway, trying not to make any noise in case his parents were in, and began to nod off himself.

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Kecia had somehow ended up back at The Yung's house, desperate for the attention of Britni, after a sleepless night at Lela's. All she could think about was Freya, every time she closed her eyes her soft, young face appeared, her brain curious as to what Freya would look like now.

For a moment, she just stood, lifting her gaze upon the blandness of each building, each house being almost exact replicas of the others, a slight difference in each one to differentiate them. Kecia wasn't sure how she had noticed the differences, her brain had become more focused on the smaller details recently than the bigger picture.

Falling upon the speaker's button, Kecia hesitantly pushed down, and lent forward, speaking Britni's name.

Much to her surprise, her words were replied to, by the familiar voice of a girl, questioning Kecia's reason for being here.