Two Months
Lucian
The farmhouse was barely furnished. Cobwebs clung to the ceilings, intertwined between the cabinets. It was quiet—still. Empty pots were piled in the sink.
Lucian sat on a wooden chair in the middle of the living room, surrounded by dust and spiders. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. His button-down shirt was stained and muddied, no longer white but a dull brown. The sleeves were rolled to his elbows, exposing calloused hands—earned through hours of farm work meant to distract him. The same way he had worked after the passing of his family.
It was his distraction.
At this point, he told himself the same thing every day:
It's time to move forward.
This was his purgatory, and he would stay in this limbo forever if it meant Jules was safe. Sometimes, he wished the Rogues would come and kill him—maybe then they would finally be satisfied.
Repetition and ritual were what kept him alive. If he kept his eyes focused and his mind steady, he would be okay.
Lucian learned the bar's hours within the first week.
It opened at four. It closed whenever the owner decided he'd had enough of watching men rot in public.
The liquor didn't work the way it used to. It never really had—but Lucian drank anyway. Glass after glass, letting the burn scrape his throat, letting the bartender believe it mattered. Humans laughed too loudly there. They complained about wives, weather, money. None of them noticed the blood on his knuckles or the way his hands shook when he set the glass down.
He learned how to mix blood with liquor—how to drown himself in a drunken haze. That became his ritual: work until the sun rose, or drink until it did.
Tonight, he headed to the bar and stayed long after he'd been welcomed. At first, he remained silent, swirling a toothpick around his glass, a cigarette burning between his fingers.
"I see you here an awful lot," a red-haired man beside him said.
"Well, I'm here an awful lot," Lucian replied flatly, rolling his eyes at the feeble attempt at conversation.
When he turned his head, he noticed a couple seated at a distant table, hands intertwined. They looked painfully in love. His stomach twisted.
Lucian slid off the stool, pushed a twenty across the bar, and left.
When he opened the screen door at the farmhouse, he immediately grabbed a bottle from the counter and poured the alcohol down his throat, chasing it with a small mug of blood. He had begun killing livestock instead of humans—the town was too small for people to start disappearing. He mixed the blood into his drinks or fed when necessary. Combining the two killed two birds with one stone.
He could feel himself slipping, and there was no one there to catch him.
He paced across the old wooden floors.
One, two, three, four, five—turn.
One, two, three, four, five—turn.
He had boarded up all the windows to block out the sun and decorated every inch of the house with gold candelabras, leaving it dimly lit and lonely. Lucian spent hours wondering what Jules was doing—whether he had made the right choice by leaving her.
He had cut off all communication with the Coven to prevent anyone from infiltrating their plan.
When the sun rose, he sat in the empty living room and wrote letters. He wrote to Jules. To his sister. To anyone who had ever meant something to him.
It was his only connection to the outside world—no matter how painful it was.