The Monster Who Loved Me Twice

The blood on my apartment door was still wet when someone whispered my name from the other side.

I froze with my keys between my fingers, staring at the strange symbol painted across the wood. It looked like a circle split by three crooked lines, and the moment I recognized its shape, the air turned cold enough to make my breath visible.

I had seen that symbol once before, five years ago, on the basement wall of the house where Lucien Blackwood died.

My keys slipped from my hand and struck the floor.

"No," I whispered, taking a step backward. "That isn't possible."

The whisper came again, softer this time, almost affectionate.

"Adrian."

I knew that voice better than my own. I had heard it laughing across our childhood playground, calling me an idiot when I fell from a tree, and murmuring my name during the nights when neither of us could sleep.

I had also heard it scream beneath a burning roof.

For five years, I had visited Lucien's grave and told myself that the boy I loved was gone forever. I had built my life around that belief, buried my magic, and learned to live with the empty space he had left behind.

Now his voice was coming from the other side of my front door.

I reached for the small silver charm around my wrist and whispered a protective spell, feeling a faint sting travel up my arm as the magic awakened beneath my skin.

The hallway lights flickered.

Then the door handle turned by itself.

I should have run. Instead, I stepped forward and pulled the door open.

Lucien Blackwood stood in front of me.

He wore a black coat that glistened with rain, and his dark hair fell across his forehead exactly as it had when we were younger. His face was sharper now, his shoulders broader, and the careless smile I remembered had been replaced by something colder.

But it was his eyes that made my heart stop.

They were golden.

Not brown or hazel, but a deep, unnatural gold that seemed to glow beneath the hallway lights.

For several seconds, neither of us spoke. I could only stare at the man I had buried in my memories, trying to understand how a dead person could stand in front of me with rainwater dripping from his hair.

Lucien's gaze moved over my face before settling on the scar at my neck.

"You still have it," he murmured.

I stumbled backward, knocking my shoulder against the wall.

"You're dead."

His expression tightened, but the arrogant tilt of his mouth remained.

"That's an interesting way to greet your best friend."

I wanted to slap him. I wanted to grab him and make sure he was real, and I wanted to ask why he had left me alone with five years of grief.

Instead, I clenched my fists until my nails dug into my palms.

"I watched your house burn," I said, my voice shaking despite my efforts to control it. "I watched them lower your coffin into the ground."

"And yet, here I am."

"Who are you?"

For the first time, something like pain crossed his face.

"Lucien."

"Don't say your name as if that proves anything."

I raised my hand and traced a detection rune in the air, allowing my magic to reach toward him. The spell should have revealed the familiar warmth of a human soul, but the moment my power touched his body, a violent wave of cold rushed through my arm.

I gasped.

Something beneath Lucien's skin answered my magic.

It felt enormous, ancient, and hungry.

The hallway lights burst one after another, plunging us into darkness. From somewhere behind Lucien came the sound of claws scraping across the ceiling, although nothing stood above us except concrete and old pipes.

Lucien turned his head slightly.

"Close the door, Adrian."

I could barely breathe. "What is that?"

"Something that followed me."

"Then get away from my apartment."

His golden eyes returned to mine, and for a moment I saw the boy who had once promised to protect me from everything in the world.

"I didn't come here to hurt you."

"You have no idea what your return is doing to me."

"I know exactly what it's doing to you." He stepped closer, his voice lowering as the darkness gathered around his shoulders. "You still love me, and you're terrified that I'm going to make you admit it."

Anger rushed through me, hot enough to push back the fear.

"You don't get to come back from the dead and decide what I feel."

His gaze dropped to my mouth before returning to my eyes, and the silence between us became painfully familiar.

"No," he said. "But I can ask for another chance."

Before I could answer, a sharp cry rose from the apartment across the hall.

A woman's door flew open, then slammed shut with a force that shook the walls. Something heavy dragged itself across the floor beyond it, followed by a wet, choking sound.

Lucien moved in front of me so quickly that I barely saw him cross the space between us.

His fingers closed around my wrist, and the silver charm burned against my skin.

"Stay behind me."

I pulled free immediately. "Don't give me orders."

His expression darkened, but he stepped aside, allowing me to move toward the neighboring apartment.

That small gesture unsettled me more than his commanding voice because the Lucien I remembered would have argued until one of us gave in.

We entered the apartment together, and the smell of blood struck me before I could reach the light switch.

A woman lay motionless beside the kitchen table, her eyes wide open and her fingers curled around a broken piece of glass. Strange symbols covered the walls, each one drawn in dark red strokes.

I recognized the pattern.

It was the same symbol that had appeared on my door.

My stomach twisted as I crouched beside the body, searching for signs of life, but the skin beneath my fingers was already cold.

Then I noticed the message carved into the wooden floor.

THE WITCH MUST OPEN THE GATE.

My blood turned to ice.

Behind me, Lucien stopped breathing.

I turned slowly, and for the first time since he had returned, he looked genuinely afraid.

"Adrian," he whispered, staring at the message. "You need to listen to me very carefully."

A black vein spread beneath the skin of his neck, twisting toward his jaw as his golden eyes brightened.

"The thing inside me knows you're alive."

He seized my hand, and the moment our palms touched, a vision tore through my mind: flames swallowing the old Blackwood house, Lucien screaming my name, and my own hands covered in blood as I drove a blade into his chest.

Then the vision changed.

Lucien stood over my dead body, smiling with a mouth full of sharp, inhuman teeth.

I ripped my hand away, stumbling against the table.

"What did you do to me?"

Lucien stared at me, his face pale beneath the golden glow of his eyes.

"Nothing," he said, his voice breaking. "But five years ago, Adrian, you were the one who killed me.

For several seconds, I couldn't move because Lucien's words kept repeating inside my head, each repetition making the room feel smaller and the air harder to breathe.

You were the one who killed me.

I stared at him, waiting for the cruel smile that would tell me he was joking, but his expression held no amusement, only a terrible sadness that made me remember the boy who used to sit beside me on the school rooftop whenever the world became too much for either of us.

"Take it back," I whispered.

Lucien lowered his eyes to the dead woman on the floor before looking at me again. "I wish I could."

"I didn't kill you." My voice rose despite my effort to control it. "I watched your house burn, and I spent five years believing there was nothing I could have done to save you, so don't stand here and tell me that I caused your death."

"I didn't say you wanted me dead."

"Then explain what you mean!"

A sharp crack came from the kitchen wall, and the red symbols began to glow. The blood covering the floor trembled as though something beneath the apartment was pulling it toward an invisible drain.

Lucien caught my arm before I could step closer.

"We need to leave."

"Not until you tell me what happened."

"Adrian, that woman is dead, and whatever killed her knows you're here. We can argue about our past when we're somewhere safe."

I hated that he sounded reasonable, especially because some part of me still wanted to trust him. I pulled my arm free and raised my hand, drawing a protective circle over the floor with two fingers.

The spell ignited in a thin blue light.

Immediately, something slammed against the inside of the apartment door.

I flinched, but Lucien moved between me and the sound, his shadow stretching across the walls in long, unnatural shapes. For one frightening moment, I saw the outline of something enormous behind him, a creature with curved horns and too many arms.

Then it vanished.

"Your magic is stronger than it was before," he said.

I swallowed. "And you're not human anymore."

"No."

He answered so simply that I almost wished he had lied.

"What happened to you?"

Lucien looked at me as though the truth might hurt more than any weapon I could use against him.

"I died in that fire," he said. "Something found me before my soul could leave this world, and it offered me another chance to live. I accepted because I thought I could come back to you."

My chest tightened.

"You came back for me?"

"I have spent five years trying to find my way home." His gaze held mine, intense enough to make my pulse stumble. "But the thing that saved me didn't do it out of kindness. It wants something, and I think it has finally discovered how to get it."

Before I could ask what it wanted, the apartment door burst inward.

A creature crawled through the broken frame, its limbs bent at angles that made my stomach turn. Its skin looked like wet ash, and its face was smooth except for a vertical mouth that opened from its forehead to its chin.

I stumbled backward as it turned toward me.

Lucien's eyes flashed gold.

"Stay behind me!"

This time, I didn't argue because the creature lunged before I could finish drawing my next spell.

Lucien caught it by the throat and drove it into the wall. The impact cracked the plaster, but the creature twisted its body around his arm and sank its teeth into his shoulder.

He didn't even cry out.

Instead, dark veins spread beneath his skin as he forced the creature away, and the shadows around his body sharpened into long black blades.

I watched in horror as he drove one through its chest.

The creature shrieked, collapsing into a pile of ash that scattered across the floor.

For a moment, the apartment fell silent except for my uneven breathing.

Then Lucien staggered.

I caught him before he could fall, my hands closing around his waist as he leaned heavily against me. His coat was torn, and beneath it, his shoulder had split open, revealing blackened flesh that moved like something alive.

"Lucien?"

"I'm fine," he muttered.

"You're bleeding black!"

"It's a minor inconvenience."

I almost laughed at his ridiculous arrogance, but the sound caught in my throat when I noticed his fingers trembling against my back.

For the first time, I understood that whatever he had become could still suffer.

I pressed my palm against his wound and whispered a healing spell, allowing my magic to flow into his body. The moment our power touched, a sudden flash of light filled the room.

And I remembered.

I remembered standing in the basement of the Blackwood house, crying as Lucien held my face between his hands. I remembered the flames climbing the walls and a strange voice whispering that one of us had to die.

Most terrifying of all, I remembered the silver knife in my hand.

Lucien had looked at me with tears in his eyes.

You have to trust me, Adrian.

Then I had driven the blade into his chest.

I tore my hand away with a strangled cry.

"No. No, that wasn't real."

Lucien's wounded shoulder began to heal, but he watched me with an expression that told me he had seen the change in my face.

"You remembered something."

I backed away from him, shaking my head.

"You knew."

"Adrian-"

"You knew I might have killed you, and you still came here pretending you wanted another chance with me!"

His face hardened, but he didn't approach.

"I came back because I love you, and because the person who altered your memories is preparing to finish what started that night."

"Who altered them?"

Before he could answer, a phone began ringing inside the dead woman's apartment.

The sound came from beneath the kitchen table, where a black mobile phone lay beside her outstretched hand.

I picked it up with trembling fingers.

There was no number on the screen, only a message that appeared as I watched.

STOP ASKING LUCIEN WHAT HAPPENED. ASK HIM WHY HE LET YOU LIVE.

My stomach twisted as another message arrived.

HE REMEMBERS EVERY SECOND OF YOUR BETRAYAL.

I slowly raised my eyes toward Lucien.

He stood motionless in the darkness, his golden eyes fixed on the phone, while the shadows behind him began to move again.

"Tell me the truth," I said, forcing myself to meet his gaze. "Did you come back because you love me, or because you need my magic?"

Lucien's jaw tightened, and for the first time since his return, he seemed unable to find an answer.

Then he stepped closer, lowering his voice until only I could hear him.

"Both."

Before I could respond, every light in the apartment went out, and something whispered from inside my head in a voice that sounded exactly like my own.

"He is lying, Adrian. The monster you love is the reason you survived."

And somewhere in the darkness, Lucien began to scream.

Lucien's scream tore through the darkness, and before I could reach him, something slammed me against the kitchen wall hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.

I tried to call his name, but the words caught in my throat as black shadows spilled across the ceiling, twisting into long fingers that reached toward my face. The silver charm around my wrist burned against my skin, and the voice inside my head returned, whispering with the same familiar tone I used whenever I spoke to myself in moments of fear.

He will destroy you again.

I clenched my eyes shut and forced my magic into my fingertips, drawing a small blue circle in the air. The shadows recoiled, releasing me so suddenly that I dropped to my knees, coughing as I struggled to breathe.

"Lucien!"

Something moved near the broken doorway.

For one terrible moment, I thought the creature had returned, but the figure that emerged from the darkness was much taller, its shoulders brushing the ceiling and its limbs stretching beneath a body made entirely of black smoke.

Two golden eyes opened in its featureless face.

I knew those eyes.

They belonged to Lucien, but the thing looking at me was not the man I remembered.

"Adrian," it said, using Lucien's voice, although every word sounded as though several people were speaking at once. "Come here."

I pushed myself upright, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"Where is Lucien?"

The creature tilted its head, and a row of sharp teeth appeared beneath its eyes.

"He is tired. He has been fighting me for so long, and all because he cannot accept what you did to him."

"I don't believe you."

"You should." It took one slow step toward me, and the floor cracked beneath its feet. "You were the one who opened the gate, little witch. You were the one who called me into his body."

A flash of pain tore through my head.

I saw the basement again, the flames licking the ceiling, and Lucien kneeling before me with blood running down his chest. I remembered the silver knife, the strange markings carved into the floor, and the terrible feeling that something was watching me from the other side of the world.

But I also remembered Lucien reaching for my hand.

Don't let it take you, Adrian.

I stumbled backward as the memory broke apart.

"What are you?"

The creature's smile widened.

"I am the reason your beloved is still breathing."

A sudden burst of golden light erupted from its chest, and Lucien's body appeared inside the smoke, suspended as though invisible chains held him in place. His eyes were closed, and dark markings covered his throat and arms.

I reached for him without thinking.

The creature caught my wrist.

Pain shot through my arm, and my magic flickered as the shadows tightened around my fingers.

"Your power belongs to me," it whispered. "Your blood opened the door, and your blood will open it again."

I gritted my teeth and pulled against its grip.

"My power belongs to me."

The creature laughed, and the sound made the windows tremble.

"You sound just like him."

Then a voice rose from somewhere inside the smoke.

"Adrian, don't listen to it!"

Lucien's eyes opened.

For a moment, the creature's hold weakened, and I saw the man I had loved staring at me through the darkness. His face was strained, his golden eyes filled with pain, but he was still fighting.

"Run!" he shouted.

I could have obeyed. Every sensible part of me begged me to escape the apartment and find someone who could explain what was happening, but I had already spent five years running from memories I didn't understand.

I was not going to abandon him again.

Instead, I raised my free hand and pressed my thumb against the scar on my neck, where a faint line of magic had begun to glow.

I spoke the first words of a binding spell my mother had taught me when I was a child.

The creature shrieked as blue light spread across its smoky body.

Its grip loosened, and I tore myself free, stumbling toward Lucien while the floor shook beneath my feet. The spell was stronger than I expected, but every second I held it in place sent a sharp ache through my bones.

"Lucien, look at me!"

His eyes found mine.

"Adrian, stop! You don't understand what you're doing!"

"Then explain it to me!"

"I can't!"

The creature twisted violently, breaking one of the glowing lines that held it. A wave of darkness struck me in the chest and threw me across the room.

My shoulder hit the floor, and pain flashed down my arm. The binding spell dissolved, leaving only a faint blue spark above my fingertips.

The creature turned toward me.

"Such a stubborn little witch," it murmured. "Perhaps I should take your memories first."

It reached for my forehead.

Before its fingers could touch me, Lucien moved.

He tore himself out of the smoke with a roar, his body changing as he landed between us. Black scales spread across his neck, curved horns emerged from his hair, and his hands transformed into clawed fingers that dug into the floor.

The sight should have terrified me.

Instead, I saw the man who had once stood between me and a group of older boys who wanted to hurt me, the boy who had given me his coat during a storm and pretended he wasn't cold, and the friend who had promised that nothing in the world would ever make him leave me.

Lucien faced the creature, his whole body trembling with the effort of resisting it.

"You will not touch him."

The creature's expression darkened.

"He belongs to me as much as you do."

"He belongs to himself."

Lucien's voice shook the room, and for the first time, I heard something in it that was stronger than possession or anger.

Fear.

Not fear for himself, but fear of what might happen to me if he lost control.

He attacked.

The two figures collided in a storm of shadows and golden light, smashing through the kitchen table and sending broken glass across the floor. I scrambled toward the door, searching for a way to help without making the situation worse.

Then I noticed the symbols carved into the wood beneath the dead woman's body.

They formed a circle around a single name.

ADRIAN VALE.

My blood turned cold.

The murder had not been random. The woman had been killed because of me, and the message on the floor was part of a ritual designed to draw my magic out.

I knelt beside the symbols and touched one of the markings, hoping to discover who had created them.

The moment my skin met the wood, the room disappeared.

I stood in the basement of the Blackwood house five years earlier, with fire roaring around me and Lucien lying at my feet. A man in a dark suit stood behind him, holding my wrist as he guided the silver knife toward Lucien's chest.

I tried to pull away, but my body would not obey.

The man's face remained hidden, although I could hear his voice clearly.

"Once he dies, the creature will have a vessel, and the boy will forget everything."

Then Lucien looked up at me.

His lips moved, but no sound came out.

I watched the knife enter his chest, and the vision shattered.

I fell backward onto the kitchen floor, gasping for breath as the apartment returned around me.

Lucien stood several feet away, his monstrous features slowly disappearing as he regained control of his body. The creature had vanished, leaving deep cracks in the walls and a strange black stain across the ceiling.

He rushed toward me, then stopped when he saw the fear in my eyes.

"What did you see?" he asked.

I struggled to my feet, refusing to let him help me.

"You weren't the only person in that basement."

His expression changed.

"I know."

"There was a man behind me. He controlled my hand, and he made me stab you."

Lucien closed his eyes briefly, and the silence that followed was more frightening than any monster we had faced.

"You remember him?"

"No, but I saw his face clearly enough to know that he was standing right behind me." I swallowed hard. "You knew someone else was there, didn't you?"

He looked at me, and the golden glow in his eyes faded until they appeared almost human.

"Yes."

My chest tightened as I waited for him to explain.

"Who was he?"

Lucien reached into his coat and pulled out a small silver pendant, its surface blackened by fire. I recognized it immediately because I had seen it hanging around the stranger's neck in my vision.

The pendant bore the symbol that had been painted in blood on my door.

Lucien placed it in my palm.

"The man who made you kill me," he said quietly, "was your father."

I stopped breathing.

My father had been dead for twelve years.

And according to the official report, he had died long before Lucien and I ever met.