Page 119 of Misrule
“Roxanne, wait!” Knox called. “Please. I’m begging you.”
Flipping him off, she walked on, and vowed to forget the day she’d ever met Knox Harrington.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bitter cold threatened to swallow him up and freeze his body just as his heart had frozen. Blackness surrounded him, except for one, pristine white glimmer. The shine gleamed through the darkness of the black décor—walls, floors, seat covers, evenclothing.
It struck Christopher then. Other people were there, sitting in the pews, faces grief-stricken and silent. He saw them in monotone vignettes, as if the edges of the scene refused to fully crystallize.
As if the reality of the situation was too unbearable.
Nothing made sense. Not the vicious temperature that seemed only to touch him. Wasn’t his boy in black shorts, sandals, and a summer T-shirt? Didn’t Rebel have on a summer dress?
Didn’t Meg…Christopher squinted. Where was she? He didn’t see her anywhere. Everyone else was there, but not his Megan. Frantic, he glanced all around. He wanted to move, wanted to run through the aisles, go from pew-to-pew, until he found her. She must be playing hide-and-seek with one of their kids.
His legs wouldn’t work. His attention kept straying to that white glimmer. Now, when he looked at it again, a bloody handprint marred the perfection.
“Megan!” he yelled. “Megan, baby, where you at?”
His voice sounded horrible, a combination of hoarseness, fear, and anguish.
“’Law, I want MegAnn,” CJ said around sniffles.
“Megan!” he called again, spying Mortician. “Mort, where she at? Where my woman?”
“Prez, fuck,” Mort murmured, his tone filled with the same pity so clear in his eyes.
Panic filled Christopher. “MEGAN!” he boomed, wild desperation creeping into him. He raised his hands. Blood coated them, dripped from his fingertips, ran down his arms. “No, no, no! Megan, baby, please?” he begged. “Come to me, please. I need you. You my everything. Where you at?”
“Her there, ‘Law,” CJ cried, pointing to the white sheen that became horrifyingly clear.
A coffin. Megan was in a coffin?
He shook his head in denial. Finally—finally—his legs allowed him to move. He didn’t feel so heavy and rooted to his spot. His hands trembled, but he had to show his boy that their MegAnn wasn’t in a casket. She was somewhere in the church, alive and well and vibrant. And loving him as no one else ever had or ever would.
He lifted the lid. No! No! No! No!
She was there. Still. Lifeless. Pale. Dressed entirely in white, like a little princess from one of the original Grimm’s Fairytales.
Forever young.
“Megan!” he cried, falling to his knees. “Megan, baby, wake-up.”
Through his tears, he saw a big, blond man, position himself in front of Megan. He glared at Christopher.
“My baby girl is with me now. You lost her. You failed her. Mystic took her from you. How could you let that happen? You never deserved her.”
Big Joe’s vision morphed into Mystic’s, the president of the Imperials. The one who’d taken Megan and hid her from Christopher, until it was too late. When Christopher finally found her, she was dead, her mouth frozen open as if she’d tried to gasp for breath but hadn’t been able to receive the life-giving oxygen she’d needed.
Mystic grinned at him. “Wasn’t me, Caldwell. You did this to her. You!”
With a furious growl, Christopher lunged at him, but Mystic disappeared. Instead, Christopher landed right next to Megan’s coffin. His bloody handprints laid against each of her cheeks, and marched down her white dress, ending at the bump in her belly.
Not only was Megan lost to him...Mystic had been right.Christopherwas the reason she was dead.
Megan had been pregnant.
Christopher screamed.
