Lucian Draven's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The door burst open. Axel's bandmates poured into the manor's front hall, three of them, shouting their frontman's name. Lucian stood over Axel's body. Blood still darkened his mouth. Luna gripped her phone against her chest, teeth clicking, eyes bright with panic and thrill. The first man to enter stopped cold when he saw the corpse. "He's dead," the man said. His voice cracked. He was young, skull paint smeared like Axel's, a metal shirt hanging off thin shoulders. The other two crowded behind him. One reached for his own phone. Lucian saw the screen light up. Another witness. Another recording. His arc, his band, his future, all of it about to bleed out on the floor. Lucian did not run. He turned toward them and let them see the teeth. "You came to find your singer," he said. "You found something older." The young man raised his phone to film. Lucian crossed the room before the screen focused. He caught the man's wrist and snapped it. The phone hit the floor. Lucian fed fast, drinking until the body sagged, then dropped it beside Axel. The second man swung a fist. Lucian took the blow, grabbed him, and finished him too. Blood ran warm down his throat. The hunger of the kill made him quick and cold. The third man bolted for the door. Luna stepped into his path, smiling, arms spread wide. She meant to help. She meant to please Lucian more than she feared the blood. The man shoved her hard. She fell. Her phone skidded across the floorboards and stopped at Lucian's boot. Lucian caught the last man at the threshold. He drank, then let the body fall on the porch of the dark cottage. Silence returned. Four corpses now. He wiped his mouth and turned. Luna sat up, dazed, reaching for where her phone had been. Lucian looked down at the device by his foot. The screen still glowed. Her recording of Axel's death waited inside it. He bent and picked it up. "Lucian," Luna said. She scrambled to her knees. "Give it back. That's ours." He held the phone above her. For one breath he weighed crushing it. But the young man's dropped phone lay across the room, and he did not know what it had captured before he broke the wrist. He needed Luna now for a different reason. She had lured Axel. She knew this house. She would clean what he could not. "It's mine now," he said, and slid her phone into his jacket. The blackmail was gone. Her power over him died on the floor with the others. Luna's smile faded. She understood. She had traded her leash for a graveyard. "There are four bodies," she whispered. "And more people will come looking," Lucian said. He stepped over Axel toward the door. "So we bury them before dawn. Then we play the next city."