Page 56 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
Searing heat.
Blackness blooming.
Everything’s black.
Thick. Suffocating. Like being drowned in velvet and silence.
Then I feel it.
A ripple.
Like thunder... without sound.
Something ancient waking up.
A whisper—not in my ears, but inmy bones.
And then, screaming.
Not mine.
Theirs.
The dark cracks open.
I blink through the blur—vision doubled, body limp, head pounding.
The wreck is chaos.
One of the goons is on fire—actual fire—not flames that burn, but ghostlight blue and cold as the grave. He’s screaming, rolling, slapping at his chest. It won’t go out.
Another man’s being lifted into the air—by nothing. His limbs flail, mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping forbreath as he slams—once, twice, again—against the broken ribs of the ship until he goes limp.
And there, in the center of it all, Elias.
NotmyElias.
Not the man who kissed me in the moonlight or held my hand like I was the only tether he had left.
This issomething else.
A spectral storm.
His coat whips behind him in a wind that isn’t blowing. His eyes glow like lit coals. His face is a mask of fury, all shadow and teeth and impossible, primalrage.
Heroars—and the tide answers.
The waterrises, slamming into the wreck with unnatural force, sweeping two of the men clean off their feet. One disappears under the surf. The other scrambles, but Elias is already there, appearing in a blink, his hand phasingthroughthe man’s chest.
The man convulses—and drops like a stone.
Mr. Grey stumbles back, the relic clutched tight to his chest.
“You’re not supposed to—” he gasps.
Elias lifts his head. His voice is a growl made of centuries.
“Iwasburied here.”
