Page 2

Kali

H ow could I have ever thought Chance was in league with Blake? I’d known the eldest of the two half-brothers for longer, had trusted him implicitly, yet I had let Blake taint our friendship and let it chip away at the trust I had for him. Trust that was earned fair and square.

Not only that, but I’d let my trust issues get in the way of speaking to Rhodes about Bianca, and now she was dead.

I didn’t actually believe anyone would have shown up to investigate on time to save her, but at least her family, her little sister, wouldn’t have to worry and wonder.

She’d had concrete answers that would give her the opportunity to heal from losing her sister, especially in such a gruesome manner, but I had let my fears get in the way of that.

I would have to rectify my mistake. I couldn’t let my personal fears cause any more harm. Blake was going down, and I would get justice for us all.

But first…

‘Kali?’

My smile was weak and wobbly, but it was the only effort I could muster. ‘Hey, you.’

His inhale was shaky, and he looked like he was about to collapse. ‘Hey, back.’

‘He got you, too, huh?’ I asked, then immediately wished the earth would open up and swallow me whole. What the fuck was I even saying?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

‘Kali, I… Shit.’ His voice broke as he tried to move toward me, but he was stuck. He hadn’t quite disconnected from his body just yet. Something was still keeping him attached, and he frowned down at his floating feet in frustrated confusion.

‘You need to accept that you’re dead now, Chance.

It’s the only way to move away from your bones,’ I informed him, my voice void of all emotion.

I didn’t sound like myself. It was like listening to someone else talk, but my mind was struggling to comprehend all that was happening.

‘Even then, it’ll take some time before you can move very far. ’

He seemed rather dumbstruck momentarily before his expression went slack as his mind spun, piecing things together. ‘Are you… buried nearby?’

I nodded numbly. ‘Out back with the other girls.’

He cursed again, glaring down at his younger brother.

The man who had now betrayed us both was hacking away at Chance’s body like he did with all of his kills.

I wasn’t sure why he cut us into pieces, since he was only burying us in the backyard, but it was his ritual all the same.

I had wondered briefly if he would follow the same MO with Chance since he was the complete opposite of his usual victims, but I got more information about Blake with this particular kill than I ever had before.

It wasn’t just about the victims, it was about the method.

He enjoyed breaking us into smaller pieces.

Sick fuck.

‘How many?’ he asked after tearing his gaze away from the gruesome sight.

He wilted where he floated above his body, and I understood from first-hand experience how disturbing it was to witness.

It was horrific watching him do that with other people, but to your own body?

If I still dreamed, it would be filled with nightmares.

‘Of his victims?’ I asked, and he nodded the clarification. ‘I don’t know. There have been dozens of us, but I don’t know how many came before me.’

‘Oh, Kali…’

The sheer, unadulterated heartbreak in his voice almost had me crumpling, but I refused to let the weight of Blake’s actions crush me. I couldn’t let them crush Chance, either, because it was clear to see how much he was struggling with his murder, and rightfully so.

‘Later,’ I told him, ending the route he was about to go down before he could go any further. This wasn’t the time to get into things.

But he didn’t seem to hear me. His eyes had latched back onto what Blake was doing to his hollow corpse, and he swayed where he levitated above it all.

He was seeing things he could never unsee.

I had watched his smile as he’d died, a peace in his expression I was shocked to see, but this was something far beyond the scope of what we as people should ever have had to experience.

To bear witness to one’s own mutilation, the desecration of our now-empty vessels after death was its own, malicious form of torture.

It bit. It clawed. It tore out the innocence from our very souls and shoved us into a limbo of madness that hovered just over there, not quite tangible but very much present.

Though now, I was almost certain I had touched it, and it had touched back.

I didn’t want that for Chance. Not him. And yet, it was too late. He had joined me in purgatory, condemned to face eternity to either wither away into a forgotten memory like the others, or to seek vengeance like me.

Which path would he choose?

Would he forsake me, now that he knew the truth? Would he discover that his own journey disconnected from mine? Or would he stay by my side, my vendetta now ours?

The truth hit me harder than I was prepared for.

I didn’t know Chance like I once had. I wasn’t even sure how long I’d been dead.

By the grey dotting his hair and the wrinkles around his eyes, it seemed I had been gone for quite some time.

He had visibly aged, and that time spent apart meant I didn’t know him as I once had.

We weren’t strangers, but we weren’t close anymore, either. So, where did that leave us?

I kept my distance as he watched Blake work, needing to offer reassurance but unable to do so.

Chance’s body was no longer recognisable in the mess.

I felt every ounce of my being screaming to reach out to him, but not only because I wanted to comfort him, but because this new power that had awoken inside of me was screaming to be fed.

I didn’t want to accidentally absorb him like Bianca, so I stayed by the stairs, right beside the cop who was whimpering in the corner, trying to make herself small enough to evade notice.

It wouldn’t last. She was his victim, regardless.

But maybe she could be the one I could finally help. If I talked to Rhodes, or maybe I could find Gloria, I could let them know what was going on so they could inform the police. Except… the woman was the police.

Had they started to put the pieces together? Were they finally onto him?

My current priority was Chance, however.

I needed to help him acclimate to his new reality.

I would find someone to help when I felt it was safe to leave him for a little while.

He wouldn’t be able to follow with his essence still tied to his bones.

He, in particular, would struggle with that.

Chance had always been a wanderer. Free-spirited was putting it lightly.

He wouldn’t do well being bound to one place, let alone this place, with all its negative energy and malicious intent.

This land would have been a prime location for his career as a paranormal investigator, but now that was behind him, and he had become the very thing he had investigated in life.

I wasn’t sure how he would handle that. Death was a massive change that took time and patience to come to terms with.

Not only that, but he had left so many people behind who loved him dearly.

Poor Ashe. Poor Mikey. I wasn’t sure how close he and Gloria were now, but I knew that they had got along well before, so she was likely to mourn him, too.

I wasn’t completely certain how his parents would take the news. I had a bad feeling that they would be more concerned with the social decline a second disappearance in the family would cause, not to mention their youngest son being responsible.

My lips twitched as I held back my smirk at the prospect of Mallory and Calvin getting what was coming to them once this all came to light, because it would, and soon.

Now wasn’t the time to smile, however, so I squashed it before it could spread.

I didn’t want Chance to think I was taking pleasure in the horrors still unfolding, though he wasn’t focused on me.

His spirit was dragged along against his will while Blake compiled the pieces of what used to be his body, ready to transport to the surface to be buried.

He wouldn’t do so immediately, which he made clear when his cold, soulless eyes found his next victim huddled up in the dark.

No one could say he never took an opportunity when it presented itself to him, and he did so now with malicious glee.

He dumped the gory mess of Chance’s body in plain sight, close enough for her to touch and definitely close enough for her to get a good look despite the darkness of the dingy basement.

She gagged, choking on her tears and the bile as it rose up her throat.

She bent over as far as she could to expel the seemingly meagre contents of her stomach, but Blake only laughed like it was all one big joke, perfectly tailored for his entertainment.

When he grabbed the shovel from beside the stairs, still muddied from when he’d used it to bury Bianca, we all breathed a sigh of relief.

The cop sniffled, still trying to stay quiet and unobtrusive, but it was pointless.

She had caught Blake’s attention, and she was already in his basement of doom.

There was no skating under the radar for her. Not anymore.

What I found the most interesting, though, was that she couldn’t see me.

She was showing no signs of an ability to sense me, which I took to mean that she wasn’t close to death.

Not yet, at least. That was the pattern that was emerging.

Bianca had noticed me when she was about to die.

Rhodes was already dying. So, how was Gloria sensitive to ghosts?

I wasn’t sure I would ever fully understand the rules of our existence, especially when they kept changing.

Since there wasn’t anything I could do to communicate with the poor woman, I turned my attention back to the man who could see me, only to find him already watching me.

I tried to discern what he was feeling, but his expression was shut down.

He was hunched over as if the weight of what had just occurred, what he’d just been forced to endure and witness, was trying to crush him.

His eyes were devoid of the light that had drawn me to him all those years ago, instead gazing ahead dully like he wasn’t actually seeing anything.

If a ghost could look peaky (more than a ghost naturally was), that would be it.

I was still too wary to take a step towards him in case I accidentally absorbed him, but it was clear he needed someone. I just didn’t know how without putting his soul at risk.

‘Chance…?’ I called out tentatively.

‘He did that to you?’ he asked in a lifeless tone.

The question was expected, but still gutted me all the same.

I didn’t like to dwell on the specific details of what Blake had done to me.

I wasn’t like the others. He tortured them, sure, but it was mostly physical pain they had to endure.

The worst methods of torture he used on me were emotional.

Psychological. He used my love for him against me, twisting everything I had ever known, making me question my entire life, including myself.

When he finally killed me, it was only after he had broken me.

My mind was in shambles just as much as my body, and I didn’t know up from down.

I loved him, but I didn’t. I yearned for him, yet I burned for his suffering.

I had put the pieces of my psyche back together after my death, but I could never be the same as I was.

He had irrevocably turned me into a different person, and I mourned the woman I had been before.

Yet, at the same time, I was glad to be rid of her.

She was na?ve. Ignorant. Gullible. Far too trusting, and pathetically desperate to be loved, enough so that I had latched onto the only source of love I had found, completely ignoring the red flags that I couldn’t see until it was too late.

When Chance finally processed his death, perhaps he could see how lucky he was that he had avoided those sick, twisted mind games. I wouldn’t bring it up, though. Not unless he asked, and certainly not now.

‘My death was brutal, yes,’ I admitted guardedly.

It was a harsh truth that broke something inside him, but I didn’t want to lie.

This was my… our reality. There was no easy way to transition into death for us.

It was thrust upon us before our time, and we could either let it break us or make us stronger.

I had chosen the latter. Would he? Or would he crumble beneath the malignant power of Blake’s actions?

Chance’s shuttered expression suddenly twisted with rage, his previously dull eyes burning with the fire of injustice.

They latched onto me, and I felt the force of it like a physical caress, the power of his emotions calling to me as like called to like, and I waited patiently, hopefully. His next words would decide everything.

‘I want to kill him.’ His tone was so low and deadly that it almost reminded me of Mortimer, only his fury would scorch everything in its path compared to Mortimer’s biting, icy wrath. ‘I want to make him suffer for what he has done. I want him to pay for the suffering he has caused you.’

I blinked, taken aback. ‘Me?’

He cocked his head to the side, a curious glint overtaking the fire, though it was no less intense. ‘You really don’t know, do you?’

I took a step back, suddenly nervous, almost to the point of fright. But I halted my retreat and asked the question anyway. ‘Know what?’

He cast his eyes downward as if he we saddened by my ignorance, but then they lifted again to pin me in place with the depth of emotion shining through. ‘That I would do anything for you, Kali. I would raze the fucking world for you.’

I couldn’t move even if I’d wanted to. I was rooted in place, trapped by the energy rushing between us, eager for more, desperate for the clarity that was coming. I didn’t know if I wanted it. Didn’t know if I could accept it.

But I pushed for the answer, anyway. ‘Why?’

‘Because,’ he began, sincerity shining through, alongside something I was afraid to name, but he was not. ‘I love you. I always have, and I always will. You are the only woman I have ever loved, and I don’t care if you don’t feel the same way. I am yours to command, mind, body, and soul.’