He Used My Blood Then Chose Me novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: The Rings

He didn't leave.

He walked to the inner door with the Eyes under his arm and stood in front of it like a man reading a sign.

Ren was on the floor against the wall with his hand pressed to his head. My mother was on her knees by the bed with the stick broken in two pieces beside her.

Min-jun was standing in the middle of the room with his hands at his sides.

Luca looked at the three holes in the door.

They were set in a triangle, each one the size of a ring, and he looked at them the way you look at a lock you already have the key to.

He took the rings off his right hand.

The first one slid off easy. It was the biggest, the one he wore on his index finger.

He set it into the top hole.

It fit.

He turned it once with his thumb and it settled, and something inside the door clicked.

The second ring came off his middle finger. Smaller. He set it into the left hole.

It fit too.

The third one was the smallest. It had been on his ring finger for twenty years and the skin under it was pale and dented.

He worked it over the knuckle.

This one took longer. He had to twist it.

I stood there in the middle of the room and watched him do it, and I thought about my great-grandfather's hand, and whose finger that ring had come off.

It came free.

He set it into the right hole.

The door opened inward.

Not swinging. Sliding, slow, without a sound, like it had been oiled yesterday.

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