CHAPTER ONE
Revenant… More like ravenous.
Food. Oh my God, one burger was never enough. Double the French fries, will you? Add four hot wings. No, make it six. I started eating like the world was about to end and there would be no food left. I ate like a cow and looked like a gazelle. My body simply refused to acknowledge that I was feeding it fats and carbs, everything drenched in oil. I lost weight, in fact. Now I understood why Francis Saint-Germain was so slim. He was a revenant, too. All summer, the other guys – GC, Pazuzu, and Sariel – spent their mornings and evenings in the underground gym Sariel had built himself after he got his new, sweet place in Limbo, getting jacked. Francis and I had given up long ago. No matter how much we ate and how many hours we lifted, it just wouldn’t happen. Our revenant, ravenous bodies stayed the same. Immortal and eternally slim. Not a bad deal, if you think about it. Except… I would’ve liked to grow a booty like the fitness girls I followed on Instagram…
Sex. Oh my God, I had four lovers who could keep at it for hours, and sometimes it was enough, other times it wasn’t. My body craved, craved, craved. To be touched, to be possessed, to be fucked. I wanted love, lust… I wanted pain.
Be it food, or sex, or booze… Be it Pandora’s special herbal cigarettes, or Sariel’s stinky pills – the ones he acquired in the Third Circle of Hell, – it was never enough. Because I didn’t feel as much as I used to feel before the Great Old One took my lifeless body between its slimy tentacles and breathed life back into my bones. My senses were heightened, my taste buds exploded in pleasure when greasy pork, heavy mugwort smoke, or gooey cum hit my tongue, but my brain, my stomach, and my pussy always screamed “more, more, more”. They were in lack. I was in lack. My whole life, my whole eternity would be spent in lack. It was a curse. And a gift.
I had nightmares.
A cold blade slashing through my chest, twisting to tear my insides. Mud. Warm, wet mud crawling with worms awaiting their feast of flesh and marrow. A thin, white sheet of already drenched material to protect rotting bones and tissue from their hungry little mouths. It didn’t last long. The cheap fabric fell apart before my graying skin did. And then I was… free breakfast, lunch and dinner for the creatures that had turned my hasty grave into an all-inclusive resort. Two snacks a day, too.
I’d wake up screaming.
I had nightmares.
Cold, long appendages crawling up my legs and stomach, wrapping around my torso, my neck; dripping suction cups attaching to my face, my closed eyelids, tangling in my hair, leaving trails of slime behind.
I’d wake up crying.
After what had happened down in the cavern, after I’d climbed my way back to the dim candlelight Francis tended to day and night, I refused to sleep for days. I went two weeks without sleep, then my guys insisted I was immortal, not invincible.
“Do you still have nightmares?” I’d asked Francis.
He shook his head and evaded the question. “It gets better, I promise.”
I had to get used to it. What was done was done, they had all chosen for me, and there was no point in giving them hell about it anymore. I didn’t speak to Klaus and Patricia for a month after that. I’d never been close friends with Joel and Lorna, so it was easy to ignore them. The only reason why I still kept my guys around was because they had cocks, and as it turned out, I was a huge fan of cocks that could fuck me raw…
Okay, who was I trying to impress?
I’m not that badass… I’m not a heartless bitch who fucks a false god, a demon, a Fallen One, and a revenant for fun.
I was in love with them.
It wasn’t their cocks. It was them… Their hearts, their souls, their eyes, their hands holding mine…
Revenant. Ravenous. I was hungry and thirsty for their love, their attention, their adoration, their validation… I was hungry and thirsty for them to see me, to see Mila Morningstar, the girl I’d always been and hoped to always be, not the undead, not the idiot who’d let Valentine Morningstar go, not the useless human who wasn’t a human anymore and couldn’t fulfill a simple prophecy and rid the world of the scariest, most terrifying Grim Reaper that had ever lived. Not that, any of that. This. I wanted them to see this.