The Missing Boy

Chapter 33 - Smoke

"This is so fucked up." Miles says as Axel rests next to his smaller frame. They're on Miles' bed. The two left the mansion as soon as Elias and Axel had finished talking and Axel told Miles everything when they reached his home. Axel's too afraid to go to his own house in fear that he might see his father. He doesn't know how he's going to react. And the endless possibilities scare him.

"I'm so sorry this is all happening to you. I don't even know what to think." Miles says in utter disbelief at Axel's earlier words. "You don't deserve any of this."

Miles can feel his shirt dampening from Axel's silent tears and rakes his fingers through his black hair. Miles kisses the top of his head in an attempt to comfort the broken boy.

"I hate them both." Axel says.

They don't argue against it.

When Miles wakes the next morning, he finds the other side of his bed to be empty but still slightly warm. It's almost as if Miles can feel the remnants of a kiss on his forehead. He must have left just now.

His blue curtains dance in the light breeze, his window left open after Axel no doubt climbed through it. Miles goes to the window and watches his boyfriend walk down the road, not even sparing a glance at his own home.

••••••••••

Axel's father never worked on Saturday's. Richard only ever came in on a Saturday once and that was the day of the crash. But usually on Saturday's he rests at home.

That's why Axel doesn't go home.

He goes to his father's lab. And for the first time since coming back, he goes down the same route as before.

He's on the road of the crash and when he closes his eyes and takes a deep, shaky breath, he can remember. It hits him all at once. The moments flash before his eyes in a blur. He's cursed with this forever. The memory of his death. The one memory that will never fade.

He tries to envision it. His dead body on the ground, Elias picking him up and his father watching.

When he opens his eyes he's shocked to find his own body on the ground. A group of people gathered around him. He sits up abruptly, staring at the faces of the strangers around him.

"Are you ok son?" Asks the man nearest to him. "You fainted and seemed to hit your head quite hard on the pavement."

"I'm fine." Axel says, shaking his head and feeling the dull ache already begin to subside.

"You sure? I can call an ambulance."

"No. No need. I'm fine, thank you." Axel quickly gets to his feet and tries not to run from the crowd that carefully watch him leave.

A small part of him hopes that all of this is a lie. That his father doesn't know about vampires and the venom. That Elias had lied. But when Axel breaks the lock on the door and enters the lab he sees a test tube with his name on it. His blood from his father's blood test and beside it another test tube with his venom in it. The venom Richard had extracted from the blood sample.

In a glass cabinet there are another dozen vials of the clear liquid. The colourless venom of just one vampire, her name Louisa Clarke, her blood now useless.

Axel muffles his screams as he opens another door in the lab. The sad victim. A middle aged vampire, the woman named Louisa Clarke, tied up in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of her. She's dead, a tiny figure, and if Axel were to cut her now, no blood would drip from the wound. She looks like a prune, dried and wrinkly. Now Axel knows what death looks like too.

Axel can't figure out who is worse. Elias or his father.

They are more similar than he thought.

His anger is incandescent, a fire underneath his skin and in his blind fury Axel harshly throws everything off the counters, causing them to crash loudly onto the floor. He punches his hand through the glass cabinet, his cuts already healing and smashes every test tube of venom onto the ground. He continues on his violent rampage, the pain only encouraging him to do more harm.

His eyes are no longer the colour of the clouds before the storm. They are the storm. The raging sea and the strikes of lighting. The bullets of rain and the roaring thunder. Axel is a storm. And there's damage to be done.

By the end the floor is slippery with the clear liquid and sharp with glass. A dangerous trap. But his fury isn't satisfied, not enough damage has been made. The mess in the lab doesn't equate to the mess that has become his life. Sharp and slippery won't cut it. Fire and smoke will.

Axel turns on every gas tap in the lab and waits until he's almost suffocating before lighting a cigarette.

•••••••••

The burns on his body will heal, the birth of pink new flesh already forming on his arms and cheeks. He sits back on a park bench and watches the building go up in flames. A cigarette between his smile.

His clothes are ruined. Some of the material has fused itself into Axel's new skin which he will later have to pull out. His hair is singed. The burnt ends will no doubt need to be chopped off. He will miss his long midnight locks but a hair cut was overdue. Axel has always admired Elias' long black mane. Now Axel hates his own and can't wait to cut it all off. The air around him seems to be stained with the smell of smoke. The type that chokes your lungs and burns your throat.

I've been through worse.

Perhaps that's what immortality is. Going through something bad then going through something worse and somehow living through it.

At least that's what being a vampire allows you to do.

The fire reflects of his grey eyes making them red. The fire burning the building the same as the fire sizzling through his veins.

This is the damage his life equates too. Rumble and ash. Fire and smoke. Easy to destroy. Ten times harder to rebuild. Can't be saved.

The flames will continue to eat away at the lab, and this may satisfy Axel for a while. But Axel had learned from Miles that satisfaction is a false illusion. He'll never feel better.

Revenge won't make him feel better.

But it will for just a little bit.

And that little bit is enough.