Chapter 18 The Present
All it takes is closing my eyes and a little focus. Then the fight in the hospital, between the boy and the wraith, pushes into my mind so vividly I can almost taste the electric tension crackling between them.
That’s how I know he’s still alive.
His energy hits jagged and sharp. It’s frantic, relentless. Not desperate, but driven. The wraith, on the other hand, feels like rot—powerful, invasive rot. It seeps into death and spreads decay until nothing remains. Even from here, it scrapes at the edges of my mind like claws on glass.
I blink, and the world snaps back into place. The car. The others. Cassian’s arm still clamped too tightly around me.
“He’s alive,” I whisper.
Nathaniel looks at me through the mirror. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” I nod, one hand clutching my stomach as something inside me tightens and pulses. “And I need to help him. Now.”
Cassian’s grip tightens. Just slightly. He doesn’t want me to go. But I’ve already made up my mind.
I glance at each of them, just for a moment, then pull the buzzing in my belly to the surface. I shape it, control it, hold it captive.
“I’m going to teleport,” I say. “See you when it’s over.”
And then I’m gone.
The energy inside me bursts outward like stone splitting along a fault line. For one breathless instant, I am everywhere and nowhere.
The car vanishes around me. I feel Cassian’s arm grasp at empty space.
Then: light. Heat. The scent of copper and ozone.
And impact.
I burst into the hospital hallway like I’ve been launched from a slingshot fueled by rage and instinct. My boots skid across the tile for a heartbeat before I catch myself.
The air hits me first. It’s scorched and buzzing. The kind of thick, electric heavy thing that makes it clear the fight is getting deadly.
Then I see them.
The boy is fighting like hell. His scythe slices through the air in arcs of raw, blinding light, tendrils of it coiling and lashing like a living storm.
But there’s a heaviness to his swings now, a slight hitch in his stance.
His arms are veined with silver-blue wounds, glowing faintly, and his knees keep dipping like they might buckle.
And the thing he’s facing—
The wraith towers over him, her body fractured and reassembling itself in bursts of sickening motion. Limbs twist the wrong way. Her mouth stretches open in silence, but I still hear the scream, cutting through my mind like broken glass.
She senses me. Turns.
And so does he.
His head jerks up, sweat and smoke streaked across his face. For a split second, relief flickers. Then it’s gone, buried beneath something harder.
He’s angry.
What the hell for?
“No,” he croaks. “You weren’t supposed to—”
But he doesn’t finish. And I don’t ask.
Because whatever he meant, whatever plan I just shattered by showing up, it’s too late to fix it now.
The wraith turns fully.
And instinct takes over.
I raise my hand. The fire buried in my veins surges up like it’s been waiting for this moment. This time, it doesn’t resist. It flows with me. Through me.
A silvery-black light spreads across my fingers, crawling up my arms in jagged, painless veins. The tiles crack beneath my feet as I step forward.
“Well, goddamn,” I mutter. “Wouldn’t want to be you right now.”
The wraith, true to her brainless, murder-happy nature, charges.
She forgets the boy entirely and comes straight for me.
“You,” she hisses.
I don’t flinch. “Me.”
I don’t plan what happens next. The power moves before I do. It rips through me, too big to hold back.
I don’t just meet her charge.
I obliterate it.
My hand slams into her side before she fully reforms, and she screams like I just taught her what pain feels like.
“Skye!” the boy shouts from somewhere to me.
But all I hear is the rush in my ears. All I feel is this wave tearing through my body.
The hit knocks her loose from herself. She doesn’t fall, gravity means nothing to her, but her limbs scatter, break apart into smoke, and try to reassemble around me.
Only this time, I’m faster.
Her movements used to blur. I couldn’t keep up.
Now they crawl. Like she’s underwater and I’m not.
So when she tries to pull herself back together, I don’t let her.
I lift my hand again, not waiting for instinct, but choosing it. Calling the power instead of being dragged by it. It spins down my arm, darker now, heavier, like liquid fire.
Then it lashes out. A whip of light slicing through the smoke of her chest.
She screams, fractures, and slams into the wall behind her.
To my surprise, the wall cracks.
Like that blow didn’t just hit her. Like it hit reality, too.
The boy sees it. He staggers, all that light smeared across his ribs, staring like he doesn’t recognize what I’ve become.
“Skye, this is—”
I don’t hear the rest.
Because the wraith starts screaming. And this time, it’s loud enough to drown the world.
I don’t stop to think.
I stalk toward her as she tries to reform again. I’ve never felt this strong in my entire existence. Every step lands like thunder. Every breath carries fire. I’m going to make it count.
“Stay down,” I whisper, swinging my hand in a crescent arc.
I’ve got her. Right here. Right now. I can end this. I feel it.
I’ll kill her and fulfill my mission from Death. Once I do, I’ll be free. I’ll focus on haunting Mark. I’ll make his life a living hell. And the only thing standing in my way is this monster.
The arc slices through what’s left of her torso. She actually stumbles. Her entire form flickers, the outlines warping like a candle flame caught in a storm. Her shriek follows a split second later, sharp enough to burst blood vessels in my nose.
So close.
One more hit like that and it’s over.
“Skye…” the boy breathes. I glance over my shoulder and see him staring, awe in his eyes. Actual awe. Like the little bastard finally stopped being mad at the universe and decided I’m worth admiring for saving him.
No problem, kid. We’re even now.
But just as I raise my hand to finish it, she shifts.
Not forward. Not back.
Down.
Into the floor. Into the walls. Into the shadows.
She sinks into the floor, into the walls, into the shadows. Slipping through dimensions I can’t watch, she reappears behind him.
Behind the boy.
“No!” I scream, flinging out a hand.
I try to teleport to her, to reach the boy before she does, but I’m not accurate enough. The distance is just enough to cost me a second. And in that second, she moves.
By the time I make it, she’s already halfway formed behind him. Smoke and claws twist into shape, limbs too long, jaw unhinging wider than anything human. She’s not fully solid yet. Not yet. I could strike now. End her before she finishes manifesting.
But she’s already reaching for him.
And he—
He’s too hurt to run. Too slow to fight back. If she lands even one hit, he’s done for.
I have a choice.
I can kill her. Right now. Stop her from ever hurting anyone again. Fulfill my mission.
Or I can protect him.
Only one is guaranteed.
And I...
I move.
Instinct overrides everything else. I teleport again, fueled by rage and panic so sharp it nearly splits me in half.
One breath I’m just out of reach.
The next, I’m between them.
Her claws tear into me instead.
I feel them rip through skin and muscle. My lungs seize. My ribs snap like branches. The force of the impact lifts me off the ground and slams me into the wall. Pain blooms white-hot through every nerve.
“Skye!” the boy shouts, stumbling forward as I collapse to the floor.
I taste blood. Everything in me screams. The fire in my veins flickers, once, twice, and then dims.
But it doesn’t go out.
Because even now, with half my body refusing to move and black dots swarming my vision, I raise my hand again.
The wraith turns her attention back to me, and I see her hesitate.
She knows.
She knows I’m capable of destroying her.
I spit blood onto the floor and smile through the agony.
“You’re afraid of me,” I whisper. “Like you fucking should be.”
And just before my vision starts to dim, I see him.
Cassian.
He bursts into the room, Talon and Nathaniel right behind him. They crash in disheveled, wild-eyed, and ready. Cassian’s limping, but it doesn’t slow him. He moves like a wild animal.
The second he sees me slumped against the wall, bloodied and barely upright, his entire body shifts.
The wraith turns toward him with something like curiosity, until her smoky head twitches and a strange sound rips from her mouth.
It’s not a screech this time. It’s not even rage.
It’s words.
“…You again.”
Her shape distorts, as if recoiling and coiling at once.
“Like cockroaches,” she hisses. “The three of you.”
Cassian raises his dagger, teeth clenched.
“You’re the cockroach here,” he growls. “Ugly thing.”
That gets to her. She grins, a hideous, nightmare grin—and readies to strike.
“I should have torn you out of existence when I had the chance.”
Her smoke coils out, like vines seeking blood towards him.
Cassian jerks his head back and slashes at them, but it barely helps. There are too many. They’re too strong. And worse, they’re not even attacking.
They’re probing.
The tendrils don’t strike. They slide. Curl. They move like a noose, slipping close without ever touching. Cassian shifts into a defensive stance, grip tightening around his dagger, but his expression shifts. Something cold. Stunned.
He feels it too.
She’s not trying to kill him.
I don’t know what she’s trying to do, but something tells me it’s much worse.
All at once, the room drops in temperature, lower than ever. The tiles frost over. My blood slows. The air around Cassian fractures like a mirror, and the moment those tendrils graze his skin, he goes still.
“Cassian!” I try to yell, but my voice is threadbare. A ghost of sound.
His eyes are open. But he’s not here.
She’s doing something to him.
Something eerily familiar.
It takes a moment to register.
She’s searching him the same way I searched Nathaniel’s soul.
When I saw the storm of his emotions.