Chapter 44
Xander
(One Year Ago)
AN UNSETTLING YET SOMEHOW FAMILIAR horrified scream filled the air amid cars honking as I materialized on the balcony Kendyll had texted me.
I was confused when I didn’t see Kendyll but only an older man.
He bent down to pick up something off the ground by the railing.
I was wondering if I had the wrong balcony when I saw what the man now held.
Kendyll’s phone.
The fading scream that had stopped seconds ago suddenly rang clearly in my head. It was a sound I’d heard countless times upon waking to find Kendyll fighting off a nightmare. I froze for one terrified second, sure I was wrong. My mind had to be jumping to wild conclusions.
Yet, unable to think past the horrible thought, I vanished and rematerialized outside on the street below.
It was fine. I was fully prepared to find a different source for the screams. It was probably just a car accident. I’d go back to Kendyll’s room to find her waiting on me. I’d kiss and tell her how silly of a worry I’d had, which we’d both laugh at. I’d—
I appeared in the middle of the deserted street, and I sucked in a sharp, agonized breath.
My ability to stand vanished as I crumbled to my knees on my own guttural wail, crawling across the bloody pavement toward Kendyll’s lifeless, contorted body.
Catsper mewled and wailed while pacing back and forth around her.
“No!” I cried, tears streaming down my cheeks. I scooped Kendyll into my trembling arms and placed a shaking hand to the back of her head. The spot I touched caved in and squished beneath my fingers, drawing another painful sob past my lips. “No! Kendyll, please. Fuck! Please, no!”
This wasn’t real. This wasn’t fucking real. She’d just texted me. We’d just talked. We’d just been together that morning. She was just alive. This wasn’t real.
“Please,” I begged and pressed my forehead to her bloody one. “Please open your eyes for me, Ghost. Please. Fucking please!”
Every window on the hotel at my back and across the street shattered following my desperate plea.
Glass shards rained down on us, and strangers inside and out scurried away to avoid getting blasted with the sharp shards.
I merely curled my body around Kendyll’s limp one, shielding her from the assault.
I pulled back to look down at her face, noticing Catsper stared at her, too.
He yelped and whimpered the most terrible sounds as he zipped and darted all around where I held her.
But I couldn’t pay attention to him. I stared at her and could almost pretend she was just sleeping.
If not for the blood coating her lips and running down her chin or gushing through my fingers at the back of her head, I could almost convince myself that she was just resting.
A nearly transparent white haze floated up from between her parted lips.
It expanded and grew next to where I knelt on the ground until the buoyant, white wisps shaped themselves into the shape of Kendyll.
There she stood, her ghost, looking around in confusion.
After a few seconds, she peered down at me with her lifeless body still cradled in my arms.
Her eyes widened and lips parted before her shoulders slumped. “So this is what it feels like to be a ghost.”
Her soul continued to tether to her body through the ethereal matter flowing between her spectral form and her physical body’s open mouth.
This was typically when ghosts decided what they’d do and where they’d go before the connection severed, freeing them to the next point and sometimes, taking their memories of their death, too.
I couldn’t get my voice to work. I just stared up at her with tears streaming down my face.
She slowly drifted closer and crouched on the ground across from me, her body between us.
Her lip trembled as she reached out her hand toward my face, but her fingers passed through me.
I choked around another sob and reached up to touch her spectral hand, funneling energy into her so that I could feel even a whisper of her touch against my cheek.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“Why are you apologizing? You—You’re fine.” I tried to force a smile. “Everything is fine. We can still fix this. I know we can. Get back into your body. Hurry.”
I’d never seen a ghost cry, and yet tears gathered in her ghostly eyes before dripping down her cheeks. They vanished the second they fell into open air. “It’s too late, Xander. I can feel it. I can feel … that I’m beyond saving.”
“No you’re fucking not!” I yelled around another tearful wail, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing her hand harder into my face. “Don’t say that!”
She lifted her other hand to cup both sides of my face as much as she could, and I peeled my burning eyes open to stare at her. She searched my face with a devastated smile, which only broke my heart into more pieces.
“I’m sorry I spent so much time running. If I had known this …” She shook her head. “I wish we had more time. For the things we planned and promised. For … Biluo. Boba tea. Us. I’ve always … you, Xander. Always … telling you late.”
Her form flickered, and her eyes fluttered shut with the threat of not reopening.
“It’s not too late,” I rushed to tell her. “It’s never too late for us, Kendyll.”
Her gaze was unfocused and words slurred. “I … can feel … a pull. I can hear … a man calling … me.”
Her voice grew fainter as she spoke, and her spectral body was becoming increasingly transparent. Whatever her soul was deciding on doing from this point, it prepared for that final departure. Her soul prepared to leave me.
“What if … a ghost … forgets? What if … forget you? I … run again.”
I shook my head hard and tried to speak loud so that she could hear me beyond the pull on her spirit. “Then I’ll wait until you remember. I will fucking chase you, find you, and wait for you, Kendyll.”
“I’m … scared, Xander. Want … you.”
“Don’t be scared,” I told her. I held her physical body closer while staring hard at the fading light of her spirit. “I’ve got you, Ghost.”
I’ve fucking got you.
Gritting my teeth in determination, I held up two fingers in front of her ghostly body.
My eyes burned with the truth of my demonic nature.
Shrouded under the cover of shadows, I raised my two fingers and made quick work of drawing a sigil in the air.
The space glowed gold in the wake of my movements until the demonic sign now shined in front of Kendyll.
I flung my two clawed fingers toward her, the glowing symbol darting into her ghostly form like an arrow.
Her spectral body rippled, and when I pulled the two fingers back in my direction, like a fish on a hook, her ghostly body shrank into a white orb before funneling into my chest. Her soul warmed my skin, making my eyes close in both anguish and fierce love.
My one ghost.
My one soul.
She really was mine now.
I should’ve been happy to at least have her ghost to be with once she settled in death and found enough energy to reawaken as a spirit, which could take days, weeks, months, or years.
Every ghost was different. But my heart continued to break in grief.
My tears continued to fall onto her cold body.
My world had been taken from me. My life had been stolen.
The icy pain carving up my insides suddenly ignited into hatred and rage. Breathing hard, I slowly looked up at the balcony where Kendyll had fallen from. Where I’d seen that man.
Cradling Kendyll’s lifeless body, I stood back to my full height. My wet face had become an eerily blank mask that might’ve even rivaled Coldin’s.
There was nothing left now.
She was fucking gone.
Hell was all that awaited, and like a quiet storm rolling in, I prepared to deliver it.
My body hummed with the power of my malice and from the energy I’d gained from those who’d witnessed and reacted to my unchecked emotions, which had shattered the windows around me. I was a fucking powerhouse right now, and there was only one outlet for it to go.
I disappeared into shadows and reappeared on the balcony where I should’ve met Kendyll.
I should’ve appeared here to find her backlit in the setting sun with a smile fixed right on me.
I should’ve met her there where I could’ve told her how absolutely beautiful she looked and led her into the wedding to upstage everyone there. I should’ve fucking been there.
But instead, he was.
The man wasn’t alone anymore.
Terrance and a woman, who I assumed was Mrs. Cartwright, were with the man right inside the balcony doors. The man held his hands up, trying to calm Terrance down, pretending there had been an accident.
“What accident?” Terrance demanded. “Where’s Kendyll, Dad?”
“Kendyll?” I asked, letting my disembodied voice carry into the room like an echo in a chamber. I stepped into the room and let the balcony doors slam shut before the curtains swished closed violently. Shadows rolled off my body, descending the room into complete and utter darkness.
The three humans panicked, their fear adding to the fuel of my power.
“You want to know what happened?”
My eyes glowed brighter, and all three adults found my golden demonic eyes within the darkness.
Screams followed, and I smiled my fanged grin at the horrified sounds they produced, allowing that smile to become visible to their limited sight.
My attention snapped to the man staring blindly around the dark room.
Snarling, I barked, “Tell them what you did.”
“Help!” the woman screamed. “Someone, help!”
With an irritated grimace, I sent shadows to bind the woman and her son. The wisps restricted their movements and covered their mouths. Mrs. Cartwright tried screaming against the restraints, but it was useless.
“Tell them what you fucking did, you goddamn swine,” I ordered the man once more.
“I didn’t—I didn’t do—Ahh!”