Page 86

EIGHTY-SIX

AMETHYST

His words and the intensity of his gaze play on a loop in my mind. That moment with Xero was a glimpse of the version of him I’d always wanted.

Part of me wants to believe he’ll always be there for me, while another part remembers how he wants me destroyed.

Watching Xero banter with his peers was strange. Watching him eat an entire meal was even stranger. There’s a part of me that will always believe he’s a legend or some otherworldly creature, because my first experience of him was through letters and then the phone.

Even when I first saw him in person, it was as a Grim Reaper-type specter. My mind is still catching up with the fact that he’s alive—a flesh-and-blood man with friends, family, and food needs.

My chest tightens as I struggle to make sense of my feelings. There’s hope, undeniable and foolish, battling with the fear that he’s playing with my heart. And underneath it all, a longing I can’t quite shake.

I want to trust him, to believe he’ll protect me, but doubt gnaws at my resolve. If he’s lying, if this is all just another game, I don’t know if I’ll survive.

After eating, Jynxson and Camila left to complete a mission, while Xero returned me to the training room via a different route through the catacombs. On the way, he picked up a bunch of supplies, including handcuffs, ropes, and zip ties.

We’re walking through a hallway composed mostly of skulls. In between the spaces are femurs and other arm and leg-related bones, but they’re not bound by mortar or cement. When I ask Xero, he explains they’re arranged in an interlocking structure which mineralized over the centuries.

“Am I ever going to get a tour?” I ask, my voice echoing across the walls.

“Once we’ve dealt with the immediate danger,” he replies with a smirk.

All the warmth leaves my body at the reminder of Lizzie Bath’s fate. I’ve never seen anything so dehumanizing or inhumane, and the thought of being taken and abused so brutally scares me more than getting the electric chair.

When the training began, I forced myself to compartmentalize the video and focused on defending myself from potential attackers. Now I’m struggling not to suffocate under a creeping sense of dread.

“You’re going to kill them, right?”

He gazes down at me through those cold, pale eyes. “Slowly.”

“You won’t stop until they’re all dead.”

“I won’t.”

I exhale a long breath. “Good.”

He nods.

“What?” I ask.

“Most civilians would urge me to capture them and call the authorities,” he says.

“Justice only exists for the powerful and rich,” I reply. “The police in Beaumont City don’t give a shit about anything except themselves. X-Cite media should have been reported the moment its website went live. Someone should be able to trace them through the payment processor, but they’re still out there, murdering people for entertainment. They need to die.”

He pulls me into his side. “Yes, my vengeful little ghost.”

“When are you going to stop calling me that?” I mutter.

“The day you finally tether your soul to mine.”

My feet make an abrupt stop. “You still want to get married? ”

His eyes narrow. “And you don’t?”

I glance down at my shoes, my insides twisting into knots. How do I explain to Xero that I don’t want to be tied to anyone when there’s a chance I’ll be abandoned to the wolves? I only agreed to get married because it was the request of a man about to die.

“Shouldn’t we deal with the immediate danger?” I mumble.

He laughs, the sound resounding through the hallway of skulls. Shivers skitter down my spine and settle into my bones, making me wonder if I’m swapping one form of peril for another. At times like this, it’s easy to remember Xero has probably killed more people than everyone in X-Cite Media put together, not to mention him having torn out a woman’s still-beating heart.

“You forget that I am the immediate threat. I’m the phantom who sneaks into rooms at night and punishes the unworthy. I’m the killer in the dark.”

“So, I should marry you or die?”

His fingers slide around my throat, and he eases me against the wall. Dozens of forgotten human remains push into my back, making my heart pound so hard that its vibrations reach his fingers. Xero glares down at me through incandescent eyes, his angular features exaggerated in the dim light.

“The sooner you realize you belong to me, the sooner you’ll stop fighting your fate.”

“Which is?”

“You and me, together for eternity.” He leans so close I can smell my spearmint toothpaste on his breath.

I squeeze my eyes shut, my jaw clenching. “But I barely even know you.”

“You already have my heart,” he snarls, his lips grazing my ear. “You came to me as a little damsel, begging to be saved. You bared your pretty soul and gave me a taste of your paradise. You don’t get to take that away.”

“This is insane,” I whisper. “You can’t expect me to commit after you terrorized me for weeks.”

“Is that right?” He releases my neck and pulls back.

My eyes snap open. Xero is already six feet away and striding down the corridor .

“Xero?”

He doesn’t answer.

I glance from side to side, wondering if I should follow this maniac or find my way back to Parisii Drive. Then I remember I’m soon to be homeless. Not to mention there’s a snuff movie company after my blood.

What the hell am I doing? Xero is my only chance of getting out of this alive… Although I’m not sure what horrors he has in store for me afterward.

“Xero?” I jog after him. “Wait.”

He breaks into a run and disappears around a bend, making my heart plummet to the uneven ground. If I think too closely about what’s beneath my feet, I won’t stop screaming for a month, but the people who built the catacombs had to have a place to store the body’s smaller bones.

I pick up my pace and give chase through the hallways, all the while trying not to think of skeletons. Phalanges, ribs, pelvises, spines, vertebrae, clavicles, coccyxes, teeth. Why do I only see skulls?

Xero runs up ahead, his large body a beacon of darkness in an already creepy corridor.

“What are you doing?” I yell, my voice carrying to goodness knows where. “Stop.”

He darts left, and I pump my arms and legs, trying to keep up with the insane maniac. If this is his indirect way of telling me I need him to stay alive, he’s made his point. Xero is the devil I know, and I should stick with him until he’s vanquished the worst of my enemies.

My steps slow toward a gap in the wall that leads to a narrow, unlit hallway. This is where Xero disappeared, but it’s so dark here that I can only see the first few feet of its interior. The walls here are made of much smaller bones. I barely passed biology, but even I can tell that they’re humerus, radius, and ulnar bones with ghostly fingers filling in the gaps.

“Xero?” I whisper.

“In here, little ghost,” he says from within the dark.

“Come out.”

He doesn’t answer .

“This isn’t funny,” I snap, but he remains silent because he’s trying to prove a point.

I wrap my arms around my middle, wondering what the fuck I ever did to end up trying to coax a serial killer out from the depths of a catacomb? If someone hadn’t posted that video of me and sent the link to Mom, then I would be safe in my own home.

If Xero hadn’t chased me through a cemetery and fucked me over a grave, then there would be no video. If those men hadn’t stormed my house, then Xero would have continued tormenting me from the crawlspace. If I hadn’t gone viral on social media, then I wouldn’t have attracted X-Cite Media. If I hadn’t posted about Xero in the first place, then I never would have gone viral.

Woulda, shoulda, coulda.

It’s me.

It’s all my fault.

No one put the pen in my hand and forced me to write to a man on Death Row. That was all my doing. I felt dead after getting ghosted by every agent who received my query letter and Rapunzelita manuscript.

Getting acknowledged by Xero made me feel alive. Now I’m using him for protection. Even I can tell I’m being a mercenary bitch. My heart sinks. Am I going to spend the rest of my life relying on others? It’s no wonder Mom got tired of dealing with my BS.

“Xero, I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to dismiss your question,” I say.

Silence.

“But I don’t know if I want to get married to anyone.”

More silence.

A cold breeze blows through the deserted hallway, making me shiver. I hug myself tighter and take a step into the narrow space.

“What do we know about each other, really?” I ask into the void. “Marriage is such a huge commitment, especially since neither of us is under a death sentence.”

Except me. X-Cite Media wanted it to be me in that snuff movie, getting assaulted, abused, and executed. I only escaped their clutches because of Xero. And now I’ve made him run away.

Shit .

How on earth do you tell a man you don’t know him well enough for a lifelong commitment, yet still want him to risk his life to save yours? Putting it like that, I sound extremely entitled.

I take one step into the dark, followed by another and another, until I’m surrounded by the absence of light. Even the atmosphere changes from dry to moist, making me wonder if I’m inhaling the water clinging to the bones.

Every inch of my skin prickles into goosebumps, and every hair on my body stands on end. I have never, ever purposely stepped into the unknown, yet I could be following Xero into the pathway to hell.

Raising my palms a foot in front of my face, I continue through the dark. When my fingers reach another wall of bones, I grope around to find a bend.

“This isn’t funny,” I mutter into the abyss.

My voice no longer echoes because the walls are getting thinner. After rounding a sharp corner, I look over my shoulder. Part of me expects to crumble into salt or vanish in a puff of smoke, but all I see is more darkness.

Needle-thin spikes of terror prick my skin, making my insides thrum. What if this is the mouth of a labyrinth? What if the monster waiting within these walls of bone is someone other than Xero?

“Where are you?” I scream.

The tunnels absorb the sound. I imagine them also stealing my breath because it’s turning shallow. Until this moment, I hadn’t considered I might be claustrophobic. Maybe it’s just a fear of mazes or a fear of being buried alive, but if Xero doesn’t come out in the next few seconds, something inside me will crack.

“Alright,” I say through ragged breaths. “This has gone on for long enough. I’m turning back.”

It’s a bluff. I know it, Xero knows it, and so do all the spirits trapped in the bones. Even my limbs know I’m bullshitting because I keep moving forward.

What happened to Lizzie’s body after we turned off the video? Did the actor defile her corpse? From what Jynxson said, it sounded like the video wasn’t even finished.

I want to kill those men. Every single one of them. The bastards who broke into her home, the monsters who raped her, the devils who arranged the evil spectacle, and every sick fuck who paid to watch an innocent woman’s degradation and death. They should all face a fiery fate.

But I can’t do any of that without Xero.

Hell, I can’t do anything without him.

“You win,” I say into the dark. “I’ll stop rejecting you and denying we have a connection. Before I met you, I was just existing–hardly even living. But you pulled me out of a stupor I’d been stuck in for years. You picked me out of thousands of women, and I was too numb to appreciate what we had was special, and I’m sorry.”

When Xero still doesn’t answer, I continue.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. I took you for granted because I’ve never had to work for a single thing in my life. Now, I get it. I’m lucky to have you.”

My chest squeezes, and my eyes sting with tears. “And you’re right. I was ungrateful. You already do so much for me, and I haven’t given you a word of appreciation. And I’ll understand if you want to leave me here to fester.”

I suck in a deep, shuddering breath. “Thank you, Xero. You’ve saved my life more times than I can count, and I’m not just talking about the men who want me dead. Before you, I was sleepwalking through the years and living vicariously through a character in a manuscript.”

Still groping through the narrow hallway, I continue onward.

“And I like you a lot, but I’m not sure if it’s love or limerence. I…” I clear my throat. “Put it this way. I don’t have the best track record with men, but it feels different with you. Sometimes, you can love a person, but they never really existed. They were just a figment of your imagination. I don’t want to do that to you.”

Pinpricks of light seep through the bones, making my heart skip several beats. I quicken my pace through the narrow hallway and turn a bend to find the corridor opening up into a man-made tunnel, complete with fluorescent lights.

“Xero?”

This time, I don’t expect a reply .

“Just be patient with me, okay? I need time to sift through what’s real. Sometimes, I can’t even believe you exist.”

When I step out into the tunnel, strong arms encircle my waist from behind, pulling me back into a hard chest. My breath hitches, and tingles shoot down my spine.

Xero’s lips graze my ear, infusing me with a bolt of warmth. “I promise you, I’m more real than anything you’ve ever known. Take all the time you need, little ghost. I’ll still be here once you’ve sorted through your feelings, but you must never leave.”

“Alright.” I melt against his larger body, my muscles liquid with relief.

“But it’s time to go,” he says.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask.

“Back to Parisii Drive. I just got a text from one of the operatives stationed outside. Your mother has brought a removal company to empty your house. We need to intercept them. Now.”