CHAPTER SEVEN

Bo

"Bo! Damn it Bo! Heal already!" Kenzi yelled at me as we walked back into our house. I threw my jacket up against the wall, stalking straight into the kitchen. I turned on the tap and scooped water into my hands, splashing it in my face to wash off the blood from my skin. "We can find you a nice dude who'll be more than willing to give you all the chi you need!"

"Shut up, Kenzi!" I snapped wincing when my fingers brushed against an open cut.

It had been two weeks since Lauren left and since then I hadn't been feeling very much like doing any kind of succubus upkeep. I just found myself suddenly repulsed by what I was again. So that meant no healing and no feeding.

So having my face battered by a client's angry ogre of a boyfriend didn't really help me out much.

"Bo!" Kenzi said, leaning against the counter beside the sink. She took a second to collect herself, her eyes locked on me. I wiped my face roughly with a paper towel and winced when I tugged on the skin. I knew I split my lip and had at least one cut on my right cheek bone and a black eye, but I was alive. That was good enough. "Bo, I know you don't want me to ask this, but is your sudden decision to be a fae punching bag because of the blonde who pulled a Houdini disappearing act recently?"

"It has nothing to do with Lauren." I lied, looking at my best friend as I tossed away the soggy paper in my hand. She didn't believe me, giving me the 'you suck at lying' look. I turned away from her and stalked towards the front room.

"I know she hurt you, but that's no reason to—" I whirled on her then, all the emotions I'd felt for a fortnight came welling to the surface. Kenzi stopped and looked into my eyes, surprised at the emotions stirring within them.

Anger, lots and lots of anger.

But also grief.

And pain.

"No, you don't know." I snarled, fists balled by my sides, tears running down my cheeks and stinging my wounds. "You don't know how she hurt me."

"She did it to protect all of us and even though she didn't say it, you can bet it was especially more about you."

"All the people in my life, everyone who has ever cared about me, everyone who has just wanted to protect me, all of them end up hurting me in one way or the other!" I yelled, losing control over the feelings I'd tried to hold in for a while now. I didn't care anymore.

Lauren was gone now. I had to accept that much at the very least.

I didn't want to.

I really, really didn't want to.

"First with my parents and not telling me who I was, then with Dyson giving away his love for me and now Lauren…."

"Running off to protect you from herself." Kenzi finished my sentence for me "but Bo, it was the right choice for her to make. We saw what she did to several ox-like Fae guards in a blink of an eye, there's no telling what she could've done to you if she lost it while you two were together, especially if you two were in the middle of something being as intimate as you two were."

Since the manticore attack, I'd been terrified of losing Lauren. I'd been afraid for a long time that she would die because of what happened and there would be nothing I could do to stop it. But, when Amelia came and saved her, it was the best thing to ever happen. Lauren was alive, I could kiss her, hug her, feel her again. She was there.

But now? Now there was nothing left but the text message in my phone, and few memories that seemed blurry. Like I was trying to watch a video I recorded in HD and all the play back I got was in regular definition.

Her clothes were still here, some things she left over after she ran from the Ash in the first place. Like her lab coat and a few blouses. I didn't know what to do with them, but I definitely couldn't bring myself to throwing them away. It felt like she would come back and ask for them again. Like she would need them. But I knew she wouldn't.

She was on the run from the Ash and every single fae, maybe even human, who knew what she was.

Which included me.

I stared at Kenzi for a moment, glaring at her, hating her for being logical. So, I grabbed my jacket and walked past her, out the door and into the brisk night air.

I was going to do what everyone had done once in a while.

I was going to drown my troubles in a drink.

Or twenty.

+/+\+

I sat at the bar of some run down bar, unable to manage the courage to go to the Dal. Trick would ask me how I was, I would tell him I was fine and he'd ask me how I really was.

I couldn't have that conversation tonight.

Or any time in the near future.

I sipped the shot of tequila in front of me, not feeling much like drinking now that I'd gotten here. The liquor burned my raw throat and stung my busted lip. In reality, I just needed somewhere to go. Somewhere where no one knew me.

I looked at my phone, scrolling through until I found Lauren's note. I sighed and read it again and again, leaning my head on my fist. My phone beeped twice, a pop up message altering me to the fact that I had at least nine messages in my voice mail.

"Great." I muttered, downing the last of my drink and waving for another one. "Just what I need, more things to deal with." Still, I called my voicemail and waited for the machine to guide me to my messages.

"First message from—"

"Yo mama" my best friend's voice chimed in the awkward pause. I deleted it. I'd gotten that message a week ago and meant to delete it. It was just Kenzi asking what kind of pizza I wanted that night.

I waded through the next two messages without a care, it was just telemarketers telling me to call them back and receive twenty percent off my cable bill. Little did they know I just hijacked the cable. It cost far less. Well, it was free.

"Fourth message from—"

"Me." I froze as my heart did. That voice punched a hole through me and made my chest contract painfully.

Lauren

The machine informed me that she'd called a week after she disappeared. I put my drink down, plugging my free ear and holding the phone tightly against the other.

"Bo." Her voice said softly into the receiver, the wind howled in the background. "I know I shouldn't have called after everything. I just felt terrible for what I did and I needed to explain. But I had to get far, far away from you and everyone else before I could." She was quiet for a while, but I waited. I could hear her breathing heavily, almost silenced by the wind. I downed the shot in front of me quickly, tossing enough money on the counter to pay for the three drinks I had and two more, not bothered to pay with exact amounts of money.

I stood up and walked out, wanting to be able to hear the blonde properly without the noise of club.

"I know I hurt you. But I had more reasons than just what I wrote as to why I had to leave." I leaned up against the wall of the club, listening to the choppy recording. "I can't stay, Bo. I know you'll try to find me, you'll see if Dyson can trace the call, but I can't stay there with you. Not now." A small sob passed through the ear piece. "Oh God Bo, after what I've done…if I had done something to you…if I had hurt you…I don't think I could…I couldn't live with myself." I shook my head, biting back the tears that stung my eyes. "I've lost control, Bo, the thing inside of me is taking over. It's changing me in ways no one could've seen coming, both physically and mentally, and I can't push it back anymore, I don't have the strength." She was crying like I was, crying out the pain of a broken heart over the phone to a machine that didn't give a damn. "I had to put as much distance between us before I disappeared completely."

If only I'd been near my phone. If only I'd not decided to complete ignore any and all calls, I might have had a proper goodbye.

I might have been able to tell Lauren that I loved her.

"I'm so, so sorry, Bo. I can't even describe the agony I'm going through just knowing you'll blame yourself for this. But you have to know that you've made my life worth living since the day I met you. And I know you'll get through it." I touched the locket around my neck, remembering when she gave it to me. "I just…I can never come back, Bo. Not now. Not ever." I slid down the wall until I sat on the ground, my free hand covering my mouth as my heart broke in my chest.

"I'd give anything to see you again." She said softly, her voice weak. "But I have to go now." She whispered "I've got to get moving." She paused again and I held my breath. "I'm sorry. Good bye, my beautiful Callisto. Take care of everyone for me, yourself especially." The line went dead and I exited, leaning my head against the building in the empty street, feeling the tears leaking out my eyes and rolling down my cheeks. I swallowed hard and got up.

I had things to do now.

Grieving could wait.

+/+\+

I pushed open the door to the hideout, hanging my jacket up and taking a deep breath. I was going to apologise to Kenzi for being a real bitch earlier. She didn't deserve to be treated the way I'd treated her. She was trying to help me deal, which I didn't quite get earlier. But I was back to apologise, never the less.

I could do that much.

"Kenzi," I said, walking inside and into the front room. "Kenz I just wanted to say—" I froze and narrowed my eyes in confusion. "Dyson?"

Dyson, Hale, Trick and Amelia were sitting with my human in the front room, all of them with a look of huge concern on their faces, Simba sitting in Kenzi's lap. We'd taken him in after Lauren disappeared, figured it was for the better. Dyson looked up at me while Amelia put her face in her hands.

"Jesus, who died?" I asked, trying to lighten the mood, though that only seemed to make it worse as Amelia' dropped her head to her knees, arms wrapping around her legs. I looked at Trick "seriously! Who died!"He cleared his throat and looked at the male shifter, who grudgingly looked back at me. He picked up a picture from the coffee table and held it out to me as I approached.

"a little more than a week ago, after Lauren took off, the Ash had the remaining Manticore in the warehouse slaughtered out of spite." I looked at him shocked. He shook his head "then, just today, we found this." I looked at the picture and froze. My heart dropped to my stomach.

"No way."

This was not happening, this was so so not happening!

The photo was of a body, several limbs torn from the torso, blood everywhere. Large spikes were suspending the body almost half a metre from the floor, impaling it through the chest and the neck, it's limbs hanging from strands of I don't know what.

I felt sick just looking at it, until I realised just who the body was. Even with the long gashes across the face, a blind man would know. I didn't want to know. I knew what it would mean if this was real.

And it was.

It was the Ash.

Dun dun dun! Oh the drama!

I finished NaNoWriMo two days early like the Mo Fo I am so I started working on this. And I managed to figure out the rest of the story! Yay me!

Reviews for my story are like virgin sacrifices in my temple, a pain in the ass to do, but they bring you good things.