Chapter 4:

She's gone.

The words leave a bitter taste in my mouth, like batteries, as I say them to myself. She was my everything for the past five years. And now she's dead.

Because of my stupidity. Why am I always fucking things over? God, I'm such a screw-up.

Leaning over to where her slump body lay, I take one last look at her beautiful grey eyes, and as I close them, I begin to convulse into silent tears, the kind that the body knows to reserve for the dead. The pain in my heart makes the bullet wound in my leg a mere paper cut. A paper cut that burrows through bone.

Although shakily, I manage to stand up on my good foot, and very gingerly hobble my way to the closest emergency exit. I see one down the hall, past a sea of hysterical hotel guests. Chin touching my collarbone, I quietly make my way as quickly as possible to the exit when an EMT stops me in my tracks.

“Hey, man, you're bleeding.” a thick southwestern accent informs. Looking up, I notice that he's the one talking to me.

My voice is hoarse when I whisper, “She's gone.”

“Who's gone, son?” His dark brown hair stands on end, I can tell he's been on the edge since he arrived.

“Renata. Renata Marie le Roy.” The world turns monochromatic as I hear, “We need a stretcher, stat! This guy's about to blackout.”

My eyelids feel like a thousand pounds as I open them, and my brain takes note of my surroundings. An enormous window on my right-hand side overlooks the Vegas strip from a distance. Against the plain white walls hung a picture with a blue-and-white ribbon and the words Mount Leland Memorial Hospital. Caring When it Counts.

Looking down at myself, I see an IV dripping into my right arm along with a hospital tag latched firmly onto my wrist. Looking down, I see the lumpy white bump of a cast on my left foot that reaches up towards my knee, but stops midway. Maybe it's the drugs that the doctors gave me, or the shock that's happened over the past few days, but I honestly do not feel the throbbing in my leg from the bullet.

A nurse, possibly in her late-20s, comes in, wearing a similar blue-and-white themed uniform. With pen and clipboard in hand, she greets, “Good morning, Mr. Smith. How are we feeling?”

With a surprisingly low, creaking voice, I respond, “I feel like complete and utter hell! Within the past 24 hours, I saw my girlfriend of five years get killed right in front of me by some gang or secret society or some crazy shit like that, and it's all my fault! And then I got shot in the leg by the same group of people! I'm only 23 years old, and I'm scared for my life that they're gonna find me and finish me off, and that I may not ever be able to use this leg ever again. So how the fuck else would I be feeling?!” If I could see what I looked like now, I'd probably look extremely red in the face, with tears running down my cheeks, but I don't care.

The look on her face is the poster child for pure shock. Her face behind the clipboard, she slowly lowers the board down. “Sir,” her voice shakes, “I'm sorry for your loss, but these are just standard procedure questions. You're gonna have to calm down, or I may have to give you a dose of light sedatives, to help you remain calm.”

Realizing how much of a dick I must have been, I close my eyes, take a few deep breaths, and regain composure. “No, I'm sorry. It's just that this past day or so, I've been dealing with so much, and I needed to vent out my emotions to someone, and I didn't care who it was. You don't deserve that; you were doing your job, and you probably take that kinda shit from everyone here from time to time.”

The nurse lets out a small, but twinkling laugh, then suddenly clears her throat. “Mr. Smith, there's someone here to see you. Is it okay if he comes in?”

“Sure, no problem. Thank you so much.”

As she leaves, a tall, lanky man with flaming red hair enters, his long black overcoat cutting the air. Careful not to wrinkle it, he takes it off and hangs it on the back of the chair at the side of my bed, revealing a long-sleeved black shirt, equally dark dress pants, and Victorian-era boots. As he sits, his ringed hand grips the railing of my bed.

“Hey, Alexander. Dude, you look like hell.”

“Yeah, waking up at 3 in the morning to catch an early flight from Ontario to Vegas really takes it outta ya” he shoots back, his baritone voice dripping with the weight of an exhausting 48 hours. He puts his hand on my shoulder, his frown deepening. “I'm sorry about what happened. About Renata.”

“Thanks.” It was the only word that I was able to choke out.

Heaving a heavy sigh, Alexander's eyes dart around the room, then back at me, then circles the room again. His boots are tapping against themselves, his trademark fidget.

“Hey, O?”

A sniffle. “Yeah?”

“I know you've gone through hell the past couple of days, but there's something that I have to tell you, something that may sound completely crazy, but it's been nagging at my mind ever since the... incident. You may get angry at me, and I understand that, but you have to believe me; it's crucial that you do. Sometimes we are afraid of the truth, but --” He pauses, realizing that he's rambling, takes a ragged inhale. “I'm a necromancer.” he blurts out.

I look back at him, into his emerald eyes, and like two bullet trains, confusion and incredulity collide in my already crowded brain. “Wh-what?” I sputter. “A necromancer? As in 'raising from the dead?' I knew you were crazy, but this?” My heart pounded rage through my veins, and I could feel them pop up under the skin on my neck. “Are you fucking kidding me?! You're just a cruel bastard, aren't ya? I just saw my girlfriend die yesterday, and you come in and say that you're a goddamn necromancer?!” I shout, a slight Irish accent coming out with every syllable I spit at him. “You're dead-ass wrong for that, man!”

“I knew you'd be angry, but I knew I had to tell you. It's the truth,” Alex says quietly as I finish my tirade. “I'm telling you the truth; you're literally the first person I told about this secret, and ya wanna know why? Because you're my best friend. I knew that if I told anyone else, they would've sent my ass to the nearest looney bin, or worse, lock me up. Then the media would stretch this completely outta proportion and say make the assumption that all Goths are like this. Why give in to their ignorance, and risk making everyone else like us look like villains?”

With every word and point he makes, I study his eyes hard, and a million more questions flood into my head, giving me a migraine. I rub at my temples as he adds hesitantly, “Which leads me to have to tell you something else too. I'm... immortal. One of the spells I found in a book when I was younger was a spell that granted me the ability to live basically forever.” As if my brain weren't already occupied with dealing with Renata's death, and Alexander's secret, but my friend decides to blindside me with another whopper.

“You're just fuckin' with me,” I wanna say, but when I look into his face, I swallow the comment. I can feel the squish as the words clump together in my gut. I take a deep breath. Exhale.

“How does something like this even happen?”

“Well, I was around 25 at the time when I found this book on my way home, and --”

The nurse reappears. “Excuse me, Mr. Smith? The doctor says that you're free to go home now. Here's the prescription of painkillers for your leg.” She hands me a dark brown bottle , and as I examine it, I hear the tiny rattling of the pills inside.

“Thank you, ma'am.”

START TYPING HERE, KATRINA!!!