The Roads That We Explore - 2. Chapter 2

It was following him. Again. That creature.

Always with eyes that glowed in the dark and a low growling purr. At one time he would have called this thing a cat, but since he had started down his path...he couldn’t rightly call it a cat any more.

Swallowing heavily, he worked to lay out the protective runes along the door of his room, working to stop the creature from coming at him again. He had told him how best to protect his home. How to protect himself against the creature. But still he wasn’t sure if he was doing it right. He couldn’t exactly remove the book downstairs from it’s alter that he had set it up on for such a stupid reason. Especially since if he did, he would have to restart the current round of rituals all over again.

And getting some for the damn plats for the first ritual were a bit of a bitch to get, to be nice about it.

Shaking his head, he muttered the right words and watched as the runes glowed before they faded away, making him breathe out a sigh of relief. “Safe.” He twitched. “For now.” He looked over at the woman who was resting on his bed, a drip keeping her hydrated and fed. “I think it wants you. But why?” he asked her. She said nothing, the bit of purple hair laying by her nose fluttering with each of her breaths. Her makeup had long been smudged, looking a lot like she had been partying instead of trying to get away from his kidnapping. “Two days. Two fucking days of being stalked by that think…”

He stood up and stalked around the rather large master bedroom he had holed up in. He had hidden away in his family’s old house. He still owned it, but he couldn’t really live in it after it had been closed after their murders. He had never really gone through the process of it getting declared a cleared murder scene, and it worked for the moment. He had had to move from the last house after the last batch of rituals, finding that the amount of death he had done calling some not so good attention.

Especially since the nun that he had chosen for that last ritual had turned out to have a history of prostitution and had turned to being a Jesus Bride. He had postponed that last step to the next moon, but he had gotten rid of her, pack up his shit and get out of town when her disappearance had been found out about. He had also quit his part time job with a need to head back home for a while.

He had found that the master had a fireplace that was still working perfectly and a bathroom that had pipes that got rid of water so he could take baths with hot water heated over the fire. He had more than enough room for a study area and a small kitchen set up with camping gear near the balcony of the bedroom. He had gone down to the basement, which had been his bitch sisters area, and used it for his alter, smirking as he had painted the walls with the right marks.

He tossed a sneer at the woman on the bed as he continued to pace, shaking his head free of the thoughts. “I need to figure out what to do with you now. You aren’t the right one. But if I try to just dump your dead body somewhere, that thing will probably attack me,” he grumped. “You had to be friends with that fucking user didn’t you? Someone who remembers the Before. Fuck my life up.”

He turned around and stared at the balcony door that he had closed against the winter coldness. He shuddered at the eyes that glowed from outside of the window. He nearly ran over to the door and pulled the curtains closed. He would use his portable charger to make sure that his phone didn’t die and set an alarm instead of using the sun to wake up. He decided that he didn’t want to see the eyes all night, light be damned.

Pacing the room again, he checked the nutrition bag that made sure that the woman he had currently didn’t die because she didn’t have the needed nutrients.

He went back to pacing, knowing that he would need to do something with her very soon. He was starting to consider where to drop her off, knowing that his usual dropping off point was a bad idea, but he still had to move fast. As soon as the sun rose, and the creature left for the day, he would get rid of her and hope that the beast that followed him was there for her, and not for some other reason.

Such as a revenge plot by one of the women that he had kidnapped and used in the rituals.

Pushing aside that thought, he finally figured out where it would be best to drop her off, deciding to go with a small clinic. It never opened until nine, and the people who worked there never arrived until after eight to set things up. With the sunrise closer to five than eight, he figured he would have enough time in gathering her up after giving her a shot, carry her out to his car, and drop her off before he ditched the car after cleaning it out.

Writing it down as he paced, he finally sat down before the fireplace, battery powered lantern close as he looked to the covered windows. He wondered if this was the night that the creature that growled like a cat but wasn’t a cat would finally try to attack him, runes of protections or not.