And then—
A crash.
The sound of impact is deafening. Metal collides, a sickening crunch splitting through the night. I feel it in my ribs, even though I’m not the one in the car anymore.
The guys…
I try to turn, to see if they are okay, but I don’t even get the chance.
Because she descends.
I attempt to move—to do anything—but my shoulder is a ticking time bomb of pain, and my limbs? My limbs are on strike. My scythe lies just inches away, but it might as well be on the other side of the city.
“No more running,” the wraith hisses, voice like a shattered window dragging itself against chalkboard.
She gets on top of me, pressing down, her entire form shifting and writhing, like she’s still deciding what shape she wants to take. I see flickers of something beneath the shadows—twisted glimpses of the woman she was before. A different breed of monster. Yet a monster regardless.
I gasp, struggling, my pulse thundering.
“I'm going to eat you,” she snarls. “You will be mine.”
I’d make a joke about it, but this is not funny anymore.
It’s terrifying.
Her clawed hands snap around my throat. I choke. My hands fly up to fight back, but it's like trying to strangle a block of haunted ice.
And suddenly, I am right back there.
My ex-husband's hands—No. Mark's hands.Hishands wrapped around my windpipe, squeezing. That look in his eyes, the way he wanted me gone, like I was a goddamn inconvenience. Reporting me missing, blaming me for his financial scam, branding me Duvall’s whore. Burying me underneath my Gran’s beloved willow tree.
No, no, NO—
Rage hits me like a baseball bat to the soul.
A violent, scorching wave of raw refusal rips through every nerve in my body. My fingers twitch, my vision warps, and suddenly—
I'm not lying on the asphalt anymore.
I am somewhere else. A couple feet away.
It takes me a second to process what just happened because my brain, much like my life, is too shaken for logic. But then it hits me.
I’ve just teleported.
Just like the wraith has before. The wraith stumbles forward, her claws still clenched around the air where I had been seconds ago, which is now occupied by nothing. Her head jerks up, theshadows writhing around her shifting violently. And—for the first time since she crawled out of the hellhole that spat her back—she hesitates.
I exhale, sharp and shaky, a little drunk on adrenaline.
“I won't be suffocated twice, you bitch,” I hiss.
Above us, Pain lets out a piercing screech as it circles overhead.
My scythe. I need my scythe.
I lunge for it, my fingers stretching—
Too late.
