Beyond - Volume 1 (YA Paranormal Romance) (29 page)

“Luckily, they brought you to me alive, as I asked. Now I can finally finish my work, but in the old fashioned way. Regularly, without spirit form. I’ll savor every drop of blood you shed. You’ll pay for what you’ve done,” Sam says.

No, this is not good news. Sam’s going to h
urt Damian. Or worse, kill him.

I can’t let this happen. I have to use the watch. I have to become a spirit. I will kill myself.

I can hear the clangs of the magazine that’s put into a gun. With trembling fingers I fidget with the button of the watch and turn it on. Nine. This has to work. I don’t have any other choice. Eight. If I can see ghosts, I can become one. Seven. I know what I have to do. Save him. Six. I can’t let him die. Not again. Five. My heart is banging so loud I can feel it in my toes and the tips of my fingers. Four. I won’t let anyone slip away again. Three. Worst case scenario: we both die. Two. Hopefully I can save him before it’s too late. One.

***

They say that, when you die, your whole life passes in front of you like some kind of movie. The memories from the day you were born, from your youth, until the here and now. Every painful and happy moment, all mixed together. The love for your family, the sensation of your feelings, the keepsakes of your loved ones. Like you’re in a movie theater and you’re watching fifteen hundred different clips of movies all together at once. Without popcorn, I might add. And finally, you see a bright, white tunnel leading to the blinding, warm light. Heaven, I think, whatever that may be. But after what I’ve been through, I wonder if I can even go there.

***

When I force my eyes to open again, I’m in the realm of shadows. The same place I’ve visited multiple times when I fainted. But this time I’m alone. In front of me is my own body, bending awkwardly through my knees and my head is face down on the ground.

I lift my hand. I can move
, now that I’m really dead.

I’m completely transparent
. Light blue radiation comes from my body, seeping out like a smoky fluid that drips off. I shine and glisten, just like the night sky. Nowhere do I see veins or bones. I can see right through myself.

I feel powerful, like I can take on the world. Energy fills my soul
, and I want more. Now I understand what Joey meant when he said it was addictive. My limbs feel weightless. There’s no gravity. I can do anything.

There’s no spirit near. Around me I can see the contours of the building and the room my body is in. The walls are completely see-through, everything gray and transparent. Nowhere are there real walls, floors or roofs. Everything is translucent, like I can see the entire world from this place.

From the corner of my eye, I see Sam, loading the gun, focusing on Damian. Everything’s happening in slow motion. I can see every muscle in his body move, every fiber of his clothing twitch, the mechanical connections in the gun and his blinking eyes.

Not a second longer do I think before hurrying into action. I walk to the door and try to push against it. My hand disappears right through it.

I force myself to go on, even though it’s going against all I am to want to walk right through something. But I have to. Neither of us will die today, not for good.

I shut my eyes and move through the door. Surprisingly enough, I did it in one go.

There are the men, the woman named Amber, sitting in the wheel chair, and Sam. The barrel is aimed at Damian’s head.

I can do this. I’m like him. I must be able to do this. He
can’t die.

I run to
them and notice I’m faster than the world around me. Their movements are so slow that I can see everything happen right in front of my eyes. The bursting sound of the trigger that’s pulled echoes through the office.

I have to save him. There’s no other way. This is the only outcome. I throw myself in between them. I’ll catch the bullet for him.

Between my fingers I clench the still smoking bullet.

I caught it!

I see the expression on Damian’s face change, but it’s slow and barely visible to the naked eye. Or at least, a dead eye. Then I push the bullet into Sam’s shoulder. I dig it in deep, pressing so hard that I can see the blood gushing out of him. It feels wonderful, this much power. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. This guy has done me, my friends and family so much harm, now he’ll suffer the same.

But I can’t kill him. It’s not my job to finish this. Damian’s the one who’s hurt the most. Damian’s goal in life was to avenge his mom. I won’t take that away from him, no matter how much I’d like to.

I snatch the gun from Sam’s hand and see his eyes flicker slowly. Then I pull the trigger on our first captor. Then the second one. Nothing will escape my wrath, not even the woman.

I point the gun at her, but when I pull the trigger, it only makes a clicking sound. The bullet doesn’t come out. It’s empty.

I throw the thing away and smack her with my bare fist, right in the face, so she won’t come to for a long time.

Everyone slumps to the ground in slow motion. Except for Damian.

I see his eyes try to follow my movements, but they barely can. I stand in front of him and see the smile appear like a morning sun. I haven’t seen that in a long time. I want to say something, but nothing comes out of my mouth.

So I’m a powerful ghost who can move objects and control them, but I can’t talk. Then Sam’s much more powerful.

Suddenly I realize there’s a time limit to all of this. I can only be a ghost for two minutes, else my brain will die from lack of oxygen. I have to spring into action quickly, but I realize it’s already too late. I should’ve set my watch to reanimate me in two minutes, but I forgot.

Panicky, I point at the room where my body is. With creeping movements, I sway my finger back and forth to tell Damian it’s his turn again to rescue me.

Everything’s so annoyingly slow. Only after what seems like a minute to me, he comes into action and his legs move at a lazy pace toward the room. I see him pulling the door handle, but it won’t open.

My time’s almost up.
I know it, for sure.

Damian walks to one of the guards that kidnapped us, fishes in his pockets and takes out a bunch of keys.
The terror must be reflecting in my eyes, because Damian seems to be going faster.

I see Sam trying to get up
, and he crawls away across the floor to an adjacent room.

Damian runs back to the door and pushes every key he’s got into the lock until he finds the right one. It takes such a long time that I keep floating back and forth between the office and the room my body is in.

Then Damian pushes the door open and stumbles inside. His jaw drops and he stops moving when he sees Jianyu, whose body is covered in bruises and deformed bulges. He trips forward and stays put beside the body. His head is down, but his sobs are going right to my soul.

I stand behind him, put my hand on his shoulder and point at the watch on my wrist. He looks at me, turns around to look at my lifeless body and starts turning the buttons on the watch. No time for grief. The clock keeps ticking
, and it will decide my fate. In my ears I can hear the clock ticking as slowly as the humming sound of a clapper in a church bell.

Then I feel a heavy suction power that seems to come from both underneath and above me. It swallows me whole. My soul will disappear. Wherever I may go.

***

When my eyes open again, I don’t know where I am, hell or heaven maybe. In front of me is a beautiful face that looks like one of an angel. A hand caresses my cheek. It’s very bright around me
. My sight’s getting less hazy, and I gasp for air.

I’m not dead
, and this is no angel. It’s Damian.

I throw myself into his arms, embracing him as tight as my weak muscles will allow me to. His warm hands gl
ide over my back, and I sniff his hair, the scent so familiar and calming. Never before has it been such a wonderful feeling to be in his presence.

My chest hurts
, and I have this feeling that I’m going to burst open. I bend sideways and cough so hard my blood splatters on the floor. All my muscles are stiff, and I have trouble getting to my feet when Damian pulls me up.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” he says
, supporting me under my armpits.

He brings me to the door, but my ribs feel bruised
, and I can barely stand up straight. Everything feels black and blue, and I still see double.

When Damian pulls me through the door, Sam is nowhere to be seen. The door across from us, to another room, is wide open. He must’ve crawled through there, because there’s a trail of blood on the floor.

Then I hear the slamming of the front doors of the building, and I know we’re not alone anymore.

Damian wants to go after Sam, but I say, “Don’t, not now. They’
re coming. We don’t have time.”

He stays put
, but his nostrils flare. Damian walks to one of the dead guards and takes his gun from him. I look at the men lying lifeless on the floor, their bodies pierced by the bullets from the gun I fired. I pulled the trigger and sentenced them to death. And I enjoyed every part of it.

The woman looks unconscious. I
n the other room I hear Sam’s painful cries, which give me a satisfactory feeling.

Damian pushes his shoulder underneath my armpits and drags me to the door.
By shooting off the lock with the gun and ramming his foot against the wood, he forces the door of the office open. In front of us is a balcony with two sets of stairs on either side. From the front door, hordes of guards storm inside.

Damian starts shooting at the staircase where the men walk up. Everything feels so unreal. Some of them are hit in the feet and drop to the floor
. Others kneel to avoid the raining bullets. We stumble down the other staircase.

With the men at gunpoint, Damian and I walk out
of the building. We run as fast as we can. My lungs can barely take it, but I hold on. We’re in an unfamiliar city, but we must keep running. Away from the people who wanted to murder us without any reason.

It’s become dark outside
, and I’m sure the guards will have trouble following us in the middle of the night. After running ten blocks, Damian stands still. He sees I’m exhausted and still coughing up blood. To our left is an alley. He helps me go there, and together we go behind a few dumpsters big enough to hide us.

Worn down, I slump against the dirty wall and think about what I’ve done. I jammed a bullet into Sam’s shoulder. I killed two people. I knocked out a woman in a wheel chair. And I’m in love with someone who just shot a
bout half a dozen guards.

I never thought my life would turn out this way when I moved to Piney Hollow. I chuckle. What a miserable joke.

This is our little world now, mine and Damian’s, where the memories of our horrifying experience keep haunting our minds. So many things happened in the last couple of hours that I barely know where to start to understand it all. This is not the place. I can’t think here. We’re too much in the open.

Minutes pass, feeling like hours,
while we’re hidden behind the dumpsters, keeping our mouths shut. My eyes scan the alley and the road, looking for the men that hunt us. They don’t pass the alley, and I don’t hear anything strange or suspicious. It seems like we lost them.

“I think it’s safe,” I say, while glancing at the world behind the dumpster. When I look back at Damian, for the first time in what seem
s like a half an hour, I realize he has red eyes and is staring at the wall ahead. His look predicts thunder. In his eyes I see the tears of death. Only now does he have time to work through his loss.

He gets up. He seems furious, like he could burst out in screams any moment. I
don’t dare look at him, and I step aside a bit to make room for him. I don’t know what he’s going to do right now. It’s like there’s this electrical aura emanating from him, and I feel like he’s going to explode soon.

Damian quickly turns around and kicks a dumpster hard a few times. The kicks are so powerful, the lid flies open and junk tumbles out onto the ground. He really puts his all into it.

“Damn it!” He kicks a few more times and grabs some of the clutter, throwing it against the wall so hard it flies up into the air and lands down on the ground with a smack.

I just stare at his destructive behavior. He’s not focusing his anger on me, but I
still feel his pain. I have no idea what to do to calm him or if there’s anything anyone can do.

After a while
I know he’s gotten tired, because the kicking and throwing become less and slower. Then he stops and sinks down to the ground on his knees. His hands are pressed against his face. I haven’t seen him cry in the open like this before.

“Damian …” I say, and I
kneel down next to him. I put my hand on his back, which is going up and down with soundless whimpers. Tears well up in my eyes. It’s not that I knew Jianyu so well, but I miss him too. And I think it’s horrible that he’s been killed. But the worst part is the sorrow of the people who survive him.