Page 114 of Grave Beginnings

Tightness lingered in my chest, Angel’s presence keeping the heaviest wave of anxiety away as I catalogued the man’s many injuries. Not that the ME wouldn’t give me a long list down the road, but sometimes seeing it all helped put together the puzzle pieces and reveal the whole picture: beaten, bled, and burned. At least part of that while he was alive.

“Do spells…” How did I ask without sounding like a total, clueless piece of shit? “Require torture?”

Angel squeezed my hand. “Some of them, yes.”

“They almost always require blood,” Wade agreed.

“And fire?”

“Could be a cover up,” Angel offered. “Can you sense him at all? Get any information from him? Or is it just a shell now? Without any actual memory?”

I sucked in a deep breath, praying silently that whatever made this man who he had been had escaped the horrors. A whisper of something lingered, and I wasn’t certain if it was an actual voice or simply a sensation of one. I stepped closer to the window—my reflection showing apprehension as I raised my hand to rest it palm open on the glass—and focused on the zombie. Not zombie, I reminded myself. Victim. Someone had done this to him, and as always, it was my job to be his voice.

A connection flared between us, sharp and electric. I gasped as the DB turned his head to stare directly at me, locking my gaze with his vacant one. Only, it wasn’t completely vacant. Images crashed into me, fragmented and chaotic: running—at first it seemed a normal jog, then one of racing for his life filled with panic, then pain and blood, terror, screams drowned out by chanting and candlelight. A fire that grew, and pain that erupted into pure torture.

I ripped my hand from the glass, stumbling back into Angel, who wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Holy fuck.” I gasped for air.

“What did you see?” Wade asked.

“Give him a minute,” Angel said.

The DB stared at me, and I sensed for a few seconds that something of who he had been remained. No. That was beyond cruel. One of the things I always reminded myself when viewing a body in a morgue was that it was only a shell. What made them who they were was gone. Was it me holding him here? Had I dragged him back, or had part of who he was been stuck inside the rotting flesh because of the spell?

I stepped up to the glass, putting both hands on it this time and meeting his gaze. “Give me what you need for me to know,” I said. “And let go. There is no need to hold on to this pain.”

The connection flared, my world swirling in an array of images. I knew what he’d looked like before the murder. The idea of his name trickled through my mind, and a long glimpse of his last few hours, as painful as they’d been. He recalled something wriggling through the dark as if the spell summoned it. A symbol etched through the night and a pinprick of stars overhead to unleash something. Only, the DB hadn’t been alive when it finally came through, and the memories stopped abruptly. His death had turned off the brain’s connection.

I blinked away the horror and let out a long breath. The DB tumbled. Whatever magic had held it together vanished as it fell into a heap on the floor. It lay unmoving, strings cut, the last dregs of mortality severed.

“What happened?” Wade asked.

A chill filled the room. Even Angel turned his head to gaze to our left. Could he see the man like I could? A ghost, as he was see-through, but he looked unhurt now. Free from the human remains, he was young and handsome.

“Do you remember your name?” I asked, needing to clarify the snippets my memory gave me.

Roan Michaels.The voice in my head wasn’t mine, but I nodded.

“Thanks, Roan. Can you remember anything about those who attacked you?”

He frowned, his expression morphing for a few seconds into something exaggerated and filled with terror.

Ex.

An ex was involved?

“What is your ex’s name?” I tried.

Brandon.

Fuck. It was too much of a coincidence to think there was another Brandon involved in all this. First, he’d tried to beat me to death in that field, then I’d found bodies there. It had to be one and the same.

“Brandonas in Brandon Cassidy,” I asked to confirm.

Yes.

“Thank you, Roan. Do I need to do something to help you move on?”

The ghost stared at me for a long moment, his form flickering like a dying light. Then, without a word, he closed his eyes and vanished, taking the chill with him. I sucked in a sharp breath and leaned back into Angel’s arms, my heart racing.