Chapter 24 The Symbol
The Symbol
Liam’s POV
I ran out to the corridor but I couldn’t find her. She had been gone for just a few seconds, how come she wasn’t in the corridor?
“Liam, where are you off to?” Dylan asked but I couldn’t answer him.
I wanted to teleport but a tenant opened her door. I rushed immediately and pressed the elevator button, it opened and I went inside, heading for the first floor.
The door rang and opened, I stepped out and ran towards the entrance but no one was there. I walked up to the security man.
“Good morning, the lady that just came in this morning, has she left?” I asked.
“Which lady?” He asked, looking genuinely confused.
“An elderly woman that should be in her late forties? She said you told her about my friend that got injured?”
“Mr. Novak, I sincerely don’t know what you are talking about. I haven’t received any visitor today.” He said. “And, I don’t know about your friend getting injured.”
“Fuck!” I shouted and ran back inside, realizing that Dylan might be in trouble. I wasn’t mistaken about the woman. She was the same woman on the street. But how did she become Dylan’s aunt?
I used my heightened senses and I heard the sound of the wrappers tearing. No! Dylan please. I looked around and didn’t see anyone, then I disabled the CCTV camera with my power and teleported to my door. I opened the door and looked at the chocolate box, Dylan was two chocolates in, the dark packaging torn back, sitting on the couch with the box open on the table beside him.
I rushed to him immediately.
“Stop.” I took the box from beside him and the half-eaten piece from his hand.
He looked up at me in anger that preceded an argument. “What are you doing?”
“Where did she say she bought these?”
“What?”
“The chocolates. Did she say where she got them?”
He stared at me. “She said she picked them up on the way over. Liam, give them back.”
“Did she say where specifically?”
“What’s wrong with you, huh? Give me the chocolates.” He stood up, reached for the box and I moved it back and he stopped reaching and the look on his face shifted to irritation. “You need to stop this nonsense.”
“Dylan…”
“Liam!” He put his hand out, palm up, waiting. “I understand that you’re cautious. I understand that last night was frightening and that you don’t trust easily. I also understand that you have reasons for all of it that go back further than I can fully imagine. I understand all of that.” His voice was controlled but the edges of it were fraying. “But she is my family. She has been my family my entire life and you grabbing food out of my hand because you have decided she is a threat is not caution anymore. It’s possession and it’s becoming a lot.”
I looked at him for a moment. Then I set the box down on the counter, not returning it, and I went back to my chair and sat.
“That woman isn’t your aunt,” I said. “She’s a vampire.”
“Can you stop this nonsense?! My aunt is a vampire? Make it make sense.” He yelled.
“What would I gain from lying to you? The security man confirmed that nobody has entered the compound since today, are you not going to believe him too?” I asked.
He watched me for a moment, reading the concession, and then the tension on his face was gone and he sat back down.
I watched him from across the room and said nothing. I just let the silence sit between us without filling it.
“I need to think of a way to get those people, if we continue like this… We will have to live in fear for the rest of our lives.” I said, rubbing my palm on my forehead.
“I need to call my mom and ask her if aunt Sera is in town.” Dylan said, almost picking up his phone.
“Dylan, let me think of what to do. Your mom might get worried and I’m sure you don’t want that.” I said.
He sat back, seeing reasons with me. Dylan started scratching his neck continuously.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I am.”
We sat together for a while after that. The television was on without anyone really watching it. I kept my awareness on Dylan.
Suddenly, his head started dropping. A sudden, complete drop, his chin hitting his chest, his body going slack against the back of the couch.
“Dylan!” I was off the chair immediately. “Dylan!”
I reached him and put my hand on his shoulder and shook once, then harder. His head lolled slightly to the side. His breathing was deep like his body was getting switched off.
I pressed two fingers to the side of his neck but his pulse was still steady. His heartbeat was normal. Nothing about his physical state suggested that he was in danger, just that he had become unconscious.
I straightened up and looked at the box on the counter. He had eaten two before I stopped him.
I picked the box up and turned it over in my hands, reading what was on the packaging. No brand I recognized, shop name printed clearly, just a small logo pressed into the corner of the dark wrapping in a foil stamp too small to read easily under the apartment light.
I took it to the window where the streetlight came through the gap in the curtain and held it up.
The symbol was small. A circle with a line through it at a diagonal, and inside the upper half, three marks in a pattern that was not decorative.
I became completely shocked and the cold from the window glass pressed against my hand and the rest of the room ceased to exist for a moment because the symbol was pulling something up from a depth I didn’t visit often, a specific corridor of memory from a time so far back that most of what surrounded it had already gone inaccessible.
I had seen that symbol before and everything about it was dangerous.