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Until I had risen from the ashes and claimed my revenge.

But once that was over, what was left? The answer was a resounding nothing. I had been accruing more power, killing evil wherever I could just to give myself a purpose, but it wasn’t enough. That was clear to me now. I needed more. Iwantedmore. I was ready to let someone else into my world, but to what extent?

The answer was obvious. I wanted it all. I wanted to open myself up again, to feel what I had once felt, what had been stolen from me by my wife’s infidelity. And my ghost girl was one of the few who knew the sharp sting of that sort of betrayal. Her husband didn’t cheat, but he certainly deceived her worse than anyone ever could, in a way only he was capable of.

I wanted the kind of unrestrained and unconditional loyalty, the like of which I had never had before. I wanted the reassurance of a partner who would never leave me, would never destroy us for the sake of another.

With startling clarity, I realised that was where this pang in my chest was coming from. I had decided my ghost girl wouldfill the hole left behind by my wife’s betrayal, but everything was already beginning to fall apart, just as it had before. I was not the only man in her life, nor would I ever be, because she had already given a piece of her heart to another. And I could never change that.

How could I fix that?

The answer was unclear, but I had time. I would figure it out. Kali was mine, and I wasn’t giving her up that easily. I refused to let fear destroy what I was trying to build for myself yet again, but I would learn from my past mistakes. I would need to do things differently this time around.

I would not…could notfail.

I sensed her long before I saw her. My ghost girl was coming back, and I knew now that forcing her to stay at my side would not work here, so I let my shadows enshroud me in their protective embrace and merged into the darkness. They pulled me away to a safe distance where I could watch without disturbing the scene. I wanted to see how things would play out. I needed to know how to proceed.

I detested not being in control, but these revelations had given me some of that control back. I knew what I needed to do, or at least how to figure that out, and that knowledge provided a sense of comfort and clarity that soothed the rough edges of my nerves that had been keeping me in a state of discord since I’d first discovered my ghost girl.

I could breathe a little easier now that the chaos in my mind was more organised. I settled even further when she came into view. It didn’t matter how many times I saw her, Kali’s ethereal beauty was like a shot straight to the heart. And the groin.

I would have her again. She would fall apart on my cock like a good girl for the rest of eternity.

I couldn’t wait.

Chapter 8

Kali

The longer I sat with a slowly coalescing Chance, the less this new energy running through me called out to his. The more solid he became, the less he flickered in and out of existence, the more secure I felt being near him. Soon, I felt it would be safe to touch, though that was still far enough away that I refused to test our luck.

Waiting with him gave me the time to ruminate over everything that had happened. It was obvious that I was no longer an ordinary ghost. What I was specifically, I still had no idea, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Bianca had given me all of herself in a bid to provide me the power I needed to take our vengeance. Now, I just needed to figure out how to use it. After a while, I determined that the shadows dancing around my skin were a physical manifestation of that energy, the strange new power that I had received by fusing with Bianca.

And with that realisation, I finally figured out Morty’s secret. Chance was right that Mortimer must have been killing those people, but now I had discovered his motive. He was sucking them up, adding their essences to his stores of power to growit, cultivating the energy into something magnificent, albeit terrifying.

But I had already suffered through one murderous bastard, and I wasn’t about to add another one to the list. Mortimer was a problem I didn’t know how to solve, but I would need to in order to keep both myself and Chance safe.

But safe from what, exactly? My body heated at the memory of the way he’d fucked me into the grass, the newly required ability to feel all of those sensations again driving me to heights I had never before experienced. A part of me wanted to do it again. I’d never had a hate fuck before, but it was definitely something I was willing to repeat if the opportunity arose.

My gaze flickered back to Chance, and guilt threatened to swallow me whole. Here I was imaging fucking another man, amurderer, no less, when the man I had secretly loved for so long was right there, suffering after just confessing his love for me amidst the most heartbreaking of scenes. Still, my thoughts drifted to yet another man, this one still alive and very much engraved in my brain. Rhodes. Sweet, beautiful Rhodes, with his floppy curls and bubbly personality. His brilliant smile flashed in my mind, and I wanted to see it again. I wanted to do more than just look, too.

I was going to Hell. If I wasn’t already there.

Casting all thoughts of other men aside, I refocused on Chance. He was moving a bit more now, which was more than what I had been capable of after going through the same trauma. He was strong, stronger than I had ever been. I took comfort from the knowledge that he would make it through this okay. He would be irrevocably changed, but he would survive.

Well, that wasn’t the right word. Or was it? We weren’t alive, but we weren’t gone, either. This was merely a different plane of existence, a new form of life that did not require a body and sustenance. Or, at least not the same type of sustenance. Theshadows gently caressing my skin were proof that we could still consume for energy, only with a different result.

Maybe, now that I had broken through the barrier that had contained me to my grave, this existence wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I could finally carve out a little slice of happiness, of peace, that I couldn’t have whilst trapped.

Hope, unlike anything I had ever experienced before, filled me, patching up the cracks and chips of my soul that the circumstances of my death had caused. With Chance here, I no longer felt so alone. There was potential, possibilities in abundance, and the innocent joy only freedom could provide.

Yes, I decided. Everything would be better now.

With a smile tugging at my cheeks, I settled in for the long haul as I waited for my best friend, the man I had loved for a lifetime, to come back to me.

∞∞∞

I had dozed off. Boredom had quickly overtaken the excitement of newfound hope, and my brain had shut down. I didn’t dream because I didn’t sleep, but I had found myself in a state of consciousness-limbo.