Siren's Mark

Chapter 62

𝔸𝕧𝕒

I slink down behind the bar with my back to the window. My eyes have already absorbed enough nightmare fuel to last me at least five years of therapy.

"I'm very disappointed in you, Kieran," Asmodeus says with a disturbing laugh. "I thought we were friends."

I hear a thud as Kieran lets out a guttural cry that chills me to my core. He screams through a series of coughs, gurgles, and chokes. The noises alone make me gag.

"Do you hear that?" one of Asmodeus's men asks.

Crap.

I cover my mouth with my hand in an attempt to stifle my gagging.

There's silence for a moment as I tightly hold my breath. I don't know if they can hear something as quiet as my breathing from where they are outside, but I don't really want to take that chance.

"I see you called in reinforcements," Asmodeus says with a laugh. "Tsk tsk, what a bad boy. I guess we're out of time then."

Kieran continues to wheeze and moan as I begin to hear a faint sound in the distance. After about thirty seconds, the sound becomes clearer—it's the wailing of police sirens.

I finally let out a breath.

Thank God.

ℤ𝕒𝕟𝕖

I see flashing red and blue lights outside Pike's as I pull into the car park. I pull hard on the parking brake and exit the car in a quick motion.

"Ava?!" I call, my eyes searching the lot for a glimmer of purple hair.

"Excuse me, sir," a police officer says as he approaches me. "This is a crime scene, we need to close off the parking lot. You can't be he-."

I grab his wrist and speak before he attempts to shake me off.

"I'm supposed to be here," I say, eying his coworkers behind him. "Tell your mates I'm authorized to be here."

The policeman nods and shouts, "He's alright."

I open my mouth to call for Ava when I spot her kneeling on the pavement with a blanket around her shoulders and a group of emergency workers surrounding her.

Fuck.

"Ava!" I yell, sprinting towards her. "Baby, are you okay?"

I drop to my knees to meet her on the ground. She's covered in blood.

"I'm okay," she says through tears, pulling me in for a hug.

I feel anger rising in my chest, but something interrupts the feeling.

I don't smell her blood. I don't feel any pain from her. Since I woke up and found her side of the bed empty, all I've felt is fear. Whose fear, I couldn't really say for certain, but I didn't feel anything else.

My eyes travel to the group around her. Four paramedics are tending to a muscly bloke on the ground who is covered head-to-toe in blood. It takes me a moment to recognize the man is Kieran.

His skin is stained crimson, strands of hair are pasted to his forehead, and there's a plastic tube down his throat. As the emergency crew raises him up on a stretcher, his eyes flicker open and he looks at me. He gives me a wink and a half-hearted smile as he's lifted into the ambulance.

"Where are you taking him?" Ava asks. She writes down the address and we agree to follow them to the hospital.

"What the hell, Ava?" I ask. "What happened?? What were you thinking?!?"