Chapter 1
I’ve always had this low, nagging feeling in the back of my skull that I was meant to be damned. Not in some dramatic, fire-and-brimstone way—more like a quiet inevitability. Like gravity. Like rot. I never pictured eternity, though. I never imagined I’d end up eternally cursed.
And yet—here I am.
Forever twenty-four. Forever addicted. Forever alone. And, let’s not sugarcoat it, still a complete fucking asshole.
1982 was the year everything started to tip. The year the air felt charged, like one wrong move would send the whole thing up in flames. Every night buzzed with this manic electricity—like we were all balancing on the edge of something massive, something irreversible. None of us knew whether we were about to become legends or corpses. Most nights, it felt like the difference didn’t matter much.
I was twenty-four—Frontman of The Dark Wings. Lead guitarist. The voice screaming out of dive bars and alleyways, soundtracking every burnout, every runaway girl with smeared eyeliner and a death wish she didn’t quite know how to name yet. We weren’t just a band—we were a fucking movement. The kind you didn’t just hear, you felt. In your chest. In your teeth. In the way your clothes reeked of cigarettes, sweat, cheap whiskey, and something darker you couldn’t wash out.
The Sunset Strip was burning itself alive. Mötley Crüe was starting to claw their way up, Ratt slithering through every bar like they owned the place, and we were right there with them—shoulder to shoulder in the filth and the glam. Our name lit up marquees outside The Roxy, The Whisky, and the Troubadour when the gods were feeling generous. Kids wrapped around the block in our shirts, screaming lyrics like prayers, begging for chaos.
We never disappointed.
Ashes in Heaven. Grave Dancer. Blood Velvet Serenade. We didn’t write songs—we carved anthems straight out of our own rot. Louder. Darker. Filthier. A little more Sabbath, a lot more hell. And people felt it. Labels hovered like vultures. Producers showed up backstage with coke-stained smiles and empty promises. We were right there—one hit away from immortality or total implosion.
Back then, immortality was just a metaphor.
Now it’s a sentence.
I don’t spend much time looking back on my mortal life. Nostalgia’s a useless drug—it just makes you ache for things that don’t exist anymore. Besides, not much has actually changed. I still haunt clubs. Still chase whatever chemical or body promises to make me forget myself for a few hours. Still fall into bed with any ditzy blonde who looks at me like I’m a bad idea she wants to try anyway.
The only real perk of being undead is that I can’t overdose anymore. The junk out there won’t kill me—just makes me wish it would. It dulls the edges, never quite enough, and leaves me hollow all the same.
My head is pounding as I sprawl across the couch, the room spinning in that familiar, punishing way. I’m cataloging every bad decision from the night before when the front door slams open hard enough to rattle the walls.
“COREEEEEEY!”
Brittany’s voice—loud, shrill, and already grating—cuts straight through my skull. She stumbles in, dropping some wasted hooker directly onto our apartment floor like a forgotten purse.
I groan. “Ugh, Brittany. I’m trying to reflect on my own stupid life choices in peace.”
“Sorry,” she slurs, barely apologetic. “Can you help me with her?”
I don’t even argue. I just flick my wrist, let the power hum under my skin, and send the girl into a deep, dreamless sleep. By the time she wakes up, she won’t remember us, the apartment, or the fact that she narrowly missed discovering what goes bump in the night.
Sometimes the chaos we create for ourselves is just fucking exhausting.
Britt retreats to her room—no doubt already plotting whatever disaster she’ll drag home next—and I stare at the ceiling, chuckling to myself. Things really were easier before she bulldozed into my unlife. I don’t regret running into her back in 2008, not really. But there have definitely been moments—long, loud, destructive moments—where I’ve wondered why the hell I bothered to help her at all.
Time doesn’t behave normally for us. It stretches. Warps. Folds in on itself. It’s been nearly twenty years since I first laid eyes on her, yet it feels like yesterday and a lifetime ago all at once.
She was outside some bar, loud and obnoxious, running her mouth at a girl I’d been eyeing all night. I was already halfway to making her my next regrettable decision when Brittany swooped in and stole her right out from under me. The second I saw her, I knew. Vampire. No mistaking it. But there was something else there too—something that didn’t feel like the others.
Different.
I forgot about the girl entirely. Just followed Brittany down the street like an idiot.
“Stop!” I shouted.
She spun around, eyes sharp, hair blazing orange under the streetlights like it was on fire. “I’m not interested in anything you’re offering tonight!”
The audacity. Who the hell does she think she is? I remember thinking.
Petite. Loud. Unapologetic. A walking fucking disaster.
Turns out, she felt it too, because she never really left my side after that. We don’t talk about feelings. Never have. They don’t matter much in the long run, and honestly, it feels right that way.
The apartment is too quiet after Brittany disappears into her room.
That’s the worst part about mornings like this—or whatever passes for morning when you don’t technically sleep. The silence.
No crowd. No amps humming. No feedback screaming through blown speakers. Just the faint buzz of the fridge and the distant traffic outside. Pathetic soundtrack for a guy who once had his name chanted by thousands.
I sit up slowly, running a hand through my hair, wincing at the dull throb behind my eyes. The hangover isn’t real—not in the mortal sense. My body repairs itself too quickly for that. But the ghost of it lingers. The phantom ache. The reminder that I tried.
Tried to feel something.
I glance at the coffee table. Half-empty bottle of Jack. A couple crushed red Solo cups. A thin white line still dusted across a glass tray.
God, I’m predictable.
I grab the bottle first. Don’t even bother with a glass. Just tip it back and let it burn down my throat out of habit. It doesn’t hit like it used to. Nothing ever hits like it used to. It’s all diluted now—watered down by immortality.
Being undead is the worst kind of tolerance.
I used to drink before shows because it felt electric, because it made everything louder, sharper, reckless in the best way. Now I drink because it fills space. Because it’s something to do between sunsets.
I stand and pace the living room like a caged animal. The walls feel too close. They’re covered in old posters—The Dark Wings in our prime. Black leather. Smudged eyeliner. My guitar slung low like it was part of my body.
There’s one framed platinum record hanging crooked near the hallway.
I stare at it for a long moment. Platinum Corey Reeves. Sold-out Corey Reeves. Immortal-in-the-metaphor Corey Reeves.
I huff out a laugh. Now I’m just immortal in the literal sense, and no one’s lining up around the block for that.
The band dissolved in ’88. Imploded, really. Egos. Drugs. Fights. The usual rock-and-roll obituary checklist. At the time, it felt like tragedy.
Now it just feels like trivia.
The world moved on. New bands. New faces. New frontmen screaming about the same old shit in tighter jeans. The Sunset Strip isn’t ours anymore.
I drag a hand down my face and glance back at the table. The white line practically winks at me.
“Why not,” I mutter to no one.
I lean down, roll up a bill out of instinct more than necessity. I don’t even need to breathe, but I do it anyway. Old habits die harder than people do.
The powder hits. Sharp. Cold. Useless.
For a split second, there’s that illusion of clarity. Of control.
Then nothing. Just me. Still me. Still twenty-four. Still stuck.
I drop back onto the couch and stare at the ceiling. There’s a crack running through the plaster like a lightning bolt. I trace it with my eyes and think about 1982 again. About the way the crowd used to surge toward the stage like they were trying to drown us in their devotion.
Back then, I thought the worst thing that could happen was fading out.
Turns out the worst thing is sticking around.
Forever.
The thing no one tells you about immortality? It’s boring. Painfully, monotonously boring. The chaos starts to feel rehearsed. The sex predictable. The drugs decorative.
Even the blood—and that was supposed to be the big, dark twist of the whole story—becomes routine.
I sit up again, restless. The energy doesn’t build properly anymore. It just hums under my skin like static with nowhere to discharge.
Maybe that’s why I still go out. Why I let Britt drag me into clubs packed with humans pretending they’re wild. I chase the noise because the silence is worse.
Because in the quiet, I remember that I peaked at twenty-four, and I’m never getting older than that. I take another swig from the bottle and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Poor me,” I mutter sarcastically. “Tragic, eternally hot rockstar with superpowers. What a fucking burden.”
I smirk at my own reflection in the dark TV screen. Same sharp jaw. Same arrogant mouth. Same eyes that once made girls cry backstage and write my name in black lipstick on bathroom mirrors.
Still good-looking, dangerous, and completely unsatisfied.
There’s a knock on Britt’s door down the hall—music already thumping from inside her room. She’s getting ready. Loud. Dramatic. Alive in a way that’s almost irritating.
She still feels things. I’m not sure I do. I push myself off the couch and head for the bathroom. Splash cold water on my face out of habit. Stare at the man in the mirror who hasn’t aged a single day since Reagan was in office.
“I should’ve died in ’82,” I murmur quietly, but I didn’t and now I’ve got eternity to figure out what the hell to do with that.
Behind me, Brittany yells, “You better not be moping, Reeves! We’re going out!”
I roll my eyes.
Yeah.
We’re going out, because sitting here thinking about what I lost is worse than pretending I never cared.
Her door flies open like it’s offended by being attached to hinges.
Music spills down the hallway—something obnoxiously bass-heavy and modern. Not real music. Not guitars. Not sweat and feedback and blown-out amps. Just digital noise.
“Are you seriously sulking?” Brittany calls, leaning against the wall with one hip popped like she’s on a runway instead of in our shitty apartment.
“I’m not sulking,” I snap from the couch without moving.
She steps into the living room and looks me over. Bottle in hand. Coke dust still faintly on the glass tray. Old band poster behind me like a shrine to my own ego.
She raises one eyebrow.
“You’re staring at your platinum record like it’s gonna apologize.”
“Fuck you,” I mutter.
She laughs. Not kindly.
“Wow. Touchy. Did someone wake up and remember they’re not famous anymore?”
That one lands.
I sit up slowly, narrowing my eyes at her. “I could be famous again tomorrow if I wanted to.”
She crosses her arms. “Then do it.”
Silence.
We both know I won’t.
The world isn’t the same. The scene isn’t the same. And I’m not the same—even if I look it. Being undead kind of kills the whole tortured-artist mystique when you literally can’t die.
“I don’t need that shit,” I say instead, waving vaguely toward the wall.
“You don’t need anything,” she shoots back. “Except maybe a personality that isn’t stuck in 1982.”
I scoff. “1982 was superior.”
“You were mortal in 1982.”
That one hits harder than the fame jab.
I stand up, irritation prickling under my skin. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I know exactly what I’m talking about,” she says, stepping closer. “You get like this every few months. All broody. All ‘poor me, I peaked before MTV ruined everything.’”
“It’s not about MTV.”
“It’s about you not knowing what to do with yourself now that you’re not the center of the universe.”
I stare at her.
She’s not wrong, which makes me want to throttle her.
“Go out without me,” I say finally, grabbing the bottle again. “I’m not in the mood.”
She tilts her head. “You’re always in the mood.”
“No. I’m not.”
She steps closer, lowering her voice just slightly. “You hate being alone more than you hate being irrelevant.”
I don’t respond, because again—not wrong.
She studies me for a second, orange hair blazing under the shitty apartment lighting, eyes sharp and too perceptive for someone who pretends she doesn’t care about anything.
“You’re going,” she says simply.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I said I’m not going.”
She smirks. “Okay. Stay here. Sit in the dark. Drink alone. Stare at your framed glory days. I’ll go find something loud and pretty to drag home.”
I look at her sharply.
She grins wider.
“There it is,” she sings. “He lives.”
“Don’t push it.”
“Oh, I’m pushing it.”
She turns toward the door like she’s already leaving. “Try not to spiral into an existential crisis while I’m gone.”
I stand there for a full ten seconds after she disappears down the hallway.
The apartment goes quiet again. The silence presses in. I glance at the door. Then at the couch. Then at the platinum record. Then back at the door.
“Fuck,” I mutter, because she’s right. I hate the silence more than I hate the club, more than I hate watching twenty-one-year-old kids pretend they invented rebellion, more than I hate being just another face in the crowd instead of the one commanding it.
I grab my jacket off the chair. Another quick bump off the tray—useless but ritualistic. I head for the mirror, adjusting my collar, pushing my hair back. Same face. Same swagger. Same dangerous mouth.
“You’re not washed up,” I tell my reflection.
The reflection doesn’t answer. I head toward the door, pulling it open just as Brittany is about to step into the hallway. She looks me up and down slowly.
“Oh,” she says sweetly. “Thought you weren’t coming.”
“I’m not missing out because you think you’re funny.”
She beams. “That’s my rockstar.”
“Don’t call me that.”
She hooks her arm through mine anyway.
“You love it.”
I roll my eyes, but I let her pull me down the hallway, because for all my dramatic bullshit about not caring, about not needing noise or bodies or distraction, I’m not built for eternity alone and she knows it.
