Page 63 of Hollow

“I know you’re freaking out, but⁠—”

“But nothing,” Dimitri interrupted. “It is over. I always knew remaining here was a risk. Of course, they would come back for me. It was foolish to believe otherwise.”

“And it’s even more foolish that he thinks he can take you,” Jack said, blocking Dimitri’s path. “I told you that you were safe here, and I meant it.”

“Maybe I should leave, flee,” Dimitri said frantically. “But where would I even go where the Hearst family would not follow?”

“Nowhere,” Jack said, blocking Dimitri’s path and pressing his hands onto Dimitri’s shaky shoulders. “This is the safest place ever. First off, I’m here, and I’m a force of nature. Secondly, the woods are protected. Gordon couldn’t find us if he wanted to.”

“You cannot hide in here forever.”

“I mean, I could, but I won’t need to.”

“You do not understand, the Hearst family has infinite resources. Gordon will not simply give up.”

“I already told him what will happen if he tries anything,” Jack said. “Trust me, he might act tough, but⁠—”

“He does not fear you,” Dimitri interrupted, recalling all the years he’d spent bound to the Hearst family. Decades forced to serve them, to track monsters for them, to watch his own slaughtered for sport. And it all started when a young Gordon Hearst found Dimitri’s family. “He fears nothing.”

“I have met many of mortals who present themselves untouchable,” Astaroth said, curiously studying Dimitri’s frazzled reaction. “Wealth, power, hubris, it’s all bravado in the end and never serves them the invulnerability they believe it will.”

“We’ll put an end to this,” Jack said, grabbing Dimitri’s hand. “I will put an end to this.”

“This could prove entertaining,” Astaroth said, then took his leave, rushing off through the woods quite abruptly.

“I need rest,” Dimitri said, pulling his hand free from Jack and going to his room, where he lay for hours unable to sleep.

He could sense Jack on the other side of the door, silently guarding him, offering his comfort even if Dimitri couldn’t find peace.

After finally dozing off for a little while, nightmares of his past clawed at his mind. He was dragged into horrid memories mixed with fears of what might come now. Dimitri watched his family get slaughtered again and again; he watched Jack strung up by the Hearst family and burned alive. The roaring laughter woke him, and Dimitri jumped up with a terrified shout.

“You okay?” Jack burst into the bedroom, groggy and stumbling forward.

He must have slept outside in the hallway.

Dimitri frowned. “You are too kind.”

Jack gave him a silly grin. “You can talk to me.”

“Join me.” Dimitri patted the mattress, his expression so somber it must’ve been the reason Jack hesitated. “I wish to tell you of my family, of how the Hearsts found us.”

Jack’s shadowy face took on a very serious look, and he quietly sat on the bed beside Dimitri.

“My mother had already passed by this time,” Dimitri said, recalling he was nearly fifty when Gordon had invaded their woods.

As the youngest of his siblings, he hadn’t known his mother as well as they had. Barely a teen when illness had taken her.

“My father had roamed the lands for over a thousand years, convinced he’d seen the worst humanity had to offer over the centuries,” Dimitri said, fighting back the tight pinch in his throat as he spoke.

A sad whimper almost escaped, but he refused to cry. He’d cried far too many tears during his captivity. He wouldn’t allow the Hearst horrors to bring him to tears yet again.

“When the hunters came, they started with my father burning, bleeding, and breaking him in more ways than I could ever fathom.” The coldness in Dimitri’s tone helped him distance himself from the memories, to ignore the fresh images of his father’s severed head propped onto the hood of a truck as a trophy. “Until that day, I believed Leshy truly immortal. It was then that I learned we were only everlasting in the sense of longevity. We could be slain like all the other creatures of the forest, like the forest itself.”

The wails of wildlife caught in the crossfire echoed in Dimitri’s mind. Trees shrieked as their memories burned down to cinders, lost forever. Dense, black smoke poisoned the skies.

“I had four siblings, all of whom were…” Dimitri paused.

His throat tightened, and tears welled in his eyes, but he refused to break down. After a shaky breath, Dimitri steadied the tremble in his body.