Chapter 120: Running Away
Cassandra~
I wasn’t just running—I was escaping.
Vereth blurred behind me like a fever dream through the cab’s rain-streaked rear window. The city was a cacophony of steel and neon, a place pulsing with secrets and monsters. And I had just walked away from the only one in that city who had ever looked at me like I wasn’t one.
Sebastian.
It was 11 a.m. when I made the decision. The sun was high, mocking me through the cracked blinds of his bedroom. He was sleeping—thanks to the vial I’d hidden in my bracelet, a dose potent enough to put a vampire like him out cold. He hadn’t even stirred when I kissed his forehead and whispered sorry.
I ransacked the place. Not out of greed—out of desperation. I hadn’t brought a single thing with me to Vereth. No clothes. No food. No money. Just blood on my hands and an order to kill. That time, I had Kalmia with me, so I didn’t need any of those things. I grabbed a worn duffle bag from his closet, stuffed it with a few of his shirts, one of his leather jackets, and two pairs of jeans that hung low on my hips. In the kitchen, I snatched energy bars, bottled water, canned stuff. From his wallet, I took enough cash to keep me moving. I hated doing it. But love wasn’t going to pay for a fake ID or a bus ticket out of this hell.
Vereth wasn’t built for people like me to vanish. It was a glass-and-gunmetal city, where even the shadows had eyes and my name sent a chill through the vampire underworld. Most people feared me. A few wanted me dead. No one offered favors.
But fear has its uses. And I knew who to threaten.
In an old pawn shop tucked between a tattoo parlor and a defunct nightclub, I found a vampire named Mikhail who owed his life to my blade once upon a time but I had let him live. I didn’t ask how he got into the business of forging identities. I just watched him sweat when he saw me walk through the door. Within an hour, I had a new name, a fresh ID, and a one-way ticket to a coastal port city where nobody would look twice at a girl with blood in her past.
"Don’t come back," he said as he handed me the documents.
I didn’t plan to.