The Garden of What Once Was

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Forcing herself to look up at him and his freakish yellow eyes, she demanded an answer from him, "How did you know I already asked Reed to prom?"

"I'm everywhere. I know everything, I see everything, I hear everything," He answered with bravado, seemingly proud of his stalker capabilities.

"That was fucking redundant," Aiko scoffed, too annoyed at this crazy stalker of a vampire to watch her tongue.

"It gets my point across," He shrugged, instantly grabbing a hold of his shoulder after making the move.

A hiss of pain escaped his mouth. This sound didn't go unnoticed by Aiko, but she thought nothing of it, as she was only concerned with getting him out of her dorm. She never liked having strangers in her room, especially murderous strangers. Fortunately, it seemed Reynard was intent on leaving. He stood up slowly with his body teetering to the left. As he made his way to the window, he kept grabbing various pieces of furniture, almost like he was dragging himself. When he grabbed hold of Aiko's desk, the vase of dead roses fell to the floor. Neither Aiko nor Reynard took notice of this, as both of them were too preoccupied at the moment. One with getting to the window, the other with trying to figure out how she would get Reed to go to prom with her without using the information Reynard had given her.

Finally, after more effort than necessary, Reynard reached the window. While he unlocked the latch, he spoke to Aiko, "Go to his dorm in two hours. I'll be watching you. A minute late and you're both dead."

When Reynard disappeared this time, Aiko made no move to yell obscenities at him. She just walked over to the flowers and the vase lying on the flower. Then, without much thought, she bent down, picking everything up and chucking it out the window. There was no use in keeping the roses Reed had given her when their relationship had come to this pathetic point. Their relationship was being barely kept alive by need, not want. And for that, she never would forgive Reed. None of this would have happened if Reed had wanted Aiko instead. Their lives wouldn't be threatened, she wouldn't be frantically tearing her room apart in search of hidden cameras or microphones possibly planted by Reynard, and Reed wouldn't have fallen in love with the human that was bringing him all this trouble.

... ... ... ...

Once the clock hit 7:30 PM on the dot, that human who had smitten Reed was rushing back to her dorm. Despite the High-tiers' efforts to get Ember to hang out with them a bit longer, she was determined to return back to her dorm before 8 PM. The timing was absolutely crucial to her plan, as there was only a small window of time when the guards took their breaks in patrolling Lunette's campus. While they ate their donuts and sipped coffee, Ember would be sneaking into Abaddon's office and erasing her name from the list of Predator and Prey participants. Usually, her plan to get herself out of the game wasn't so dangerous, as she normally hacked into the Web Frame system to delete her identity from the regional P&P logs. Unfortunately, Web Frame had put up a firewall that even she couldn't bypass. Now she had to manually delete her name from the Lunette log, something she wasn't so sure about doing. If she was caught, the likelihood of her secret being exposed was quite high. Nevertheless, she still had to at least try. For, if she didn't, she would be forced to attend the Predator and Prey game on Friday after school ended. The outcome of her attending that game was certain, her secret would be discovered. It would be the same exact outcome if she was caught in Abaddon's office too. Both options could end the same way, that was what she kept telling herself as she slipped on Repressor Gear, a clothing brand specifically designed to hide a person's heartbeat from vampires. Her dad had gifted it to her when she enrolled in Lunette. Yes, it was an odd gift but it came in handy now. Though, it was quite small since she had grown a lot since freshman year, but she still managed to pull it on, just barely being able to breathe fully.