Aston's Story (Vanish #2) (6 page)

11.

Abandoned streets and forest and stretches of country road
lead me through the night on my way to Auna’s apartment. I’ve filthied another
suit. I don’t give a shit. I seem unable to give a fuck about anything right
now. I can see those bodies piled before my eyes and feel a swell of ego for
having won, but I fail to see the trophy in it all.

Aston, you’re a champion.

And you’re worthless scum.

There’s an uncomfortable swirling of heat and cold tingling
at the surface of my body, stretched all across my skin with its painful needle
pricks stabbing my fingertips and toes. The stinging continues as I approach
the apartment building, rising like a gravestone against approaching dawn.
Auna, I’ll never find you. I've come to mourn.

My feet rise and fall on the stairs and I can't feel them
anymore, the pins and needle pricks subsided into a numbness. I enter her
hallway limply dragging along, the adrenaline has reduced me to a ghost. So
many dead, lost on my account, but I'll be the one haunting in the aftermath.

I'm at her door. My hand raises before my face now, pale as
paper, and cold. I don't feel the wood as my fingers press against it. I lean
forward to push the door open. It creaks as it swings.

Christ, I see her.

My grieving eyes have placed the apparition before me. I
fall to my knees and weep. Auna, I’m so fucking sorry, I can feel it in my
bones.

She steps up to me, her bare toes curl beneath my eyes in
the carpet. I’m too cognizant of this delirium, it’s torturous. Her skin is as
I recall, color and touch, while my fingers wrap around her ankle. It’s too
real.

I peer slowly up her leg, my eyes sliding along her thigh
across her waist and further, to her eyes, staring through some shock at me.
Shock of her own, shock she’s returned with.

I pull my hand back and scurry away, until I can use the
wall to stand and lean.

“Auna,” I say. Her name has brought her back. Jesus Christ,
she’s here.

“Aston,” she says. She’s staring at me, at my appearance.
She sees the disheveled and filthy suit, the stubble and the bags beneath my
eyes, which I’m sure now show how wired I am. In it all, she sees through me. I
can see it in her eyes, same as that sparkle she’s always teased, that she
knows what I’ve done. The horrible things I’ve done.

“Where’ve you been?”

She steps into me. She places her hand against my cheek and
it’s a blessing and a curse she’s given me. The warmth is a reminder of the
affection I’ll never have again, her eyes promise. My guilt has assured it. The
bittersweet touch taps against my cheek before falling away. “Hell.”

The diamond in her eye falls into a darkness where she’s
forever locked it away from me. “Hell,” I repeat. Not with Al. Not with Rage.
Not with the motorcycle club.

“I learned something about the place in my visit,” she says.
She steps into me, raising herself to her toes, pressing her mouth against my
ear. “It’s in all of us.”

She steps past me, and I feel another presence. I turn.

Rage.

He steps towards me, aggressively pumping his body before
Auna places her hand against his chest. It would be pointless to beat me, Rage.
It’s already happened. Just moments ago.

They leave, and I remain.

12.

The tires screech against the street beneath me, the one
that stretches out into the country that expands westward from Westwood Valley.
It’s the one that leads into the town behind me, where a stack of bodies
smolder in the wreckage of my plots, a mansion sits empty of the Moores who
reside there, a family I never belonged to. Maybe I’ll find a family. Probably
not. I’m not fit for such things, I think. I’m a shadow, stretched out behind
the facade of the world facing the sunshine, ignoring the night. I won’t be so
ignorant. I know that now.

I’ll see what this world has to offer, alone.

Goodbye, Auna.

*

See it from all
sides. Read the other two books in the Vanish Trilogy...

Rages’s Story

Auna’s Story
coming
soon

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