Chapter Seventeen

THEN

 

It was the pounding in his head that woke him up. As if an entire marching band was drumming along between his ears and using his brain as a punching bag. Even the thought of opening his eyes seemed like a chore. They fluttered a couple of times before stretching open into little slits, but the light that filtered through the openings was like a slice to his retinas and he recoiled his head under the duvet in self-defence.

After a couple of deep breaths Lyric tried again, slower and one eye at a time so as not to assault his senses with too much stimulation too soon.

As his vision focused and fuzzy images slowly took shape, he was struck with the panicking thought that he didn’t know where he was. Furrowing his brow, he blinked again in an attempt to force his eyes into submission. After a third attempt, the panic subsided as his parents’ apartment came into sight. The light that assaulted his bleary eyes was coming from the balcony doors which were wide open, a light breeze billowing in and ruffling the curtains.

He stared at the open Mediterranean-style balcony doors and felt puzzled that they had been left open after he had gone to bed. Lyric never left the doors open at night as it would be too easy for someone to climb up the fire escape and break into the apartment.

He tried brushing his concerns off and lifted himself to a sitting position, but the pain in his head only intensified when he shifted, and he almost cried out as he collapsed back down on the bed. How did he have such a searing headache? He didn’t remember drinking nearly enough alcohol to warrant the pounding in his head.

When he raised his hand to rub at his temples, he noticed it.

At first, he wasn’t sure what it was that coated his palms and fingers, and froze for a moment until his brain caught up with what his eyes registered. His heart followed suit, thumping away erratically inside his chest. His eyes blurred over with tears, but he was too afraid to use his hands to rub them away.

He lifted his other hand for inspection and saw that both were saturated with what appeared to be thick, red stains. The texture and coppery scent was unmistakable.

Blood.

He tore back the bed sheets in a panic. His gaze darted frantically around where he lay, worried that it was him who was bleeding, but although there were some random smudges on his bare chest, he didn’t seem to be cut.

Lenox.

He swung his legs around and over the edge of the bed and stood up before ripping himself around to stare at the other side of the bed, petrified at what sight might be waiting to greet his wide eyes.

But the bed was empty.

Except for the blood.

Lyric yanked the sheets right off the bed to see the deep red stains beneath. There was an abnormally large pool of blood smeared next to where he had been lying. It petered out into smaller wisps and splodges, almost as if someone had dumped a bucket of something from high up above the bed and let it splatter around, drenching the sheets and spattering an obscenely large space around it.

“Jesus!” he cried out, recoiling from the bed until his back hit the wall behind him.

His breath hitched in his throat and his skin tingled from head to toe as he squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to wake himself from this apparent nightmare.

But he wasn’t dreaming. It was the sound of his own shallow and erratic breathing that forced him back into his body as he let go of the vain hope that he was still asleep and in the middle of some terrible dream.

He forced his eyes open to stare at the mess at his feet and counted slowly back from ten, forcing the panic back down inside him and trying to stop himself from shaking.

“No…” he murmured to the empty house around him, praying that it was some sort of sick joke. Perhaps Lenox was only hiding and waiting for the right moment to reveal himself and his practical joke and bathe in the hideous hilarity of the situation he had created.

But Lyric knew that was not the case. His gaze darted around the bedroom as he waited for the punch line that he knew would never come. The longer he stared at the blood on the bed and the splatters on the floor, the more a sort of twisted familiarity sank in.

He remained rooted to the spot until his breathing had returned to normal and the clouds in his mind had begun to clear. He steadied himself against the wall, the wheels in his head turning as a plan was formulated.

“No…” he repeated to himself. “Not again…”