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Twenty-Nine † Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
Last Updated:
2020-08-27 08:23:02Related chapters
Drop-Dead in Love Thirty † Rest in Peace
Shock filled up Kat's chest. More tears leaked from her eyes, her throat going tight with the sobs she couldn't let out.She didn't wipe her cheeks, though. She couldn't. The spiral of disbelief within her didn't allow her to do much else. She just watched, speechless and hurting, as Calix touched the gash on his cheek and had his fingers come away with an unmistakable trace of red.All kinds of dark emotions flashed in his face. The transitions were subtle, but Kat felt them moving with her like sceneries changing in a train window. From paralyzing incredulity that slackened his features to painful realization that made his eyes glisten. Then came defeat. Resignation.He fell to his knees, his breathing shallow and labored, his damaged fists digging into the dry grass. At that moment, Calix seemed more like a ticking bomb than ever. Even with all the intensity emanating from him, Kat could tell that he was shutting himself in, closing himself from anyone and anything. He was trying w
Last Updated : 2020-08-28Drop-Dead in Love Thirty-One † To Hell With It
Kat woke with a gasp, clutching her chest where her heart pounded like crazy. In an automatic reaction to the fright that surged in her, she turned to her side to find Calix, only to see that the space beside her was empty."Calix!" she called out in panic before she could fully get up. "Calix?""Here."Groggily, Kat got to her feet and saw him standing by the window. Relief washed over her like sunshine. "Thank God. I thought you left or . . . something.""I was waiting for you to wake so we can leave." The corners of his lips lifted in a small wry smile. "I do not feel comfortable here."Kat was all for staying a bit longer since it was only eleven in the morning, but she figured it was about time she listened to Calix. If he said he wasn't comfortable, then something must be off. So, she quickly washed up, gathered their stuff, and headed out the motel room with him following silently behind her.This whole 'silent' thing became a constan
Last Updated : 2020-08-30Drop-Dead in Love Thirty-Two † From the Cradle to the Grave
"How many times do I have to tell you?" Kat asked exasperatedly. "Stop picking your scabs!"Knowing that this reminder would soon be followed by a stinging slap, Calix lowered his hand, which he'd just brought to his face to scratch his cheek. "Sorry."She continued glaring at him, even as he turned his attention back to the boxes in front of them. The past three weeks had allowed his wounds to heal, but in that period he'd also developed a nasty habit of picking and peeling his scabs because he found it to be 'calming'.There were a lot of things he found calming, actually. And fortunately they weren't as gross.First on that list of calming stuff was doing laundry, the frequency of which Kat had narrowed down to twice a week. After being taught how to operate the machines down in the apartment common area, Calix had wholeheartedly shouldered the chore. When she'd tried to help him, he'd only shooed her a
Last Updated : 2020-09-01Drop-Dead in Love Thirty-Three † Bottoms Up
Calix made a face. "Huh?"That expression mixed with his single sound of confusion summed the situation up pretty well, but Kat was too caught up in her breakthrough to acknowledge it."Hear me out." She held up both palms. "Dad always told me that it was nearly impossible for Mom to have a baby, to have me. She had a problem with her uterus, I think." She paused when she caught his eyes glazing over. "Are you still following? Wait, do Hellborn women give birth?""Of course they do." He looked slightly offended. "You think Hellborns grow on trees?""Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised. But anyway," she emphasized the word when he opened his mouth to retort, "Mom had a tough pregnancy. I mean, I was lucky. What if . . . what if I'm the only one who made it?"As soon as the question left her mouth, all her excitement drained out. She felt stupid for being so smiley about the revelation. Heck, it wasn't even a real revelation. It was nothing but a theory. A depressing one, at that.Kat slid
Last Updated : 2020-09-03Drop-Dead in Love Thirty-Four † Dead End
Five hundred bucks. That's how much Ulysses charged access to the VIP lounge. Five hundred bucks. Per person.Paying that not only made Kat a thousand dollars poorer, it also caused some delay, which allowed Damien to waltz inside undisturbed. Now she and Calix had no idea where that turd went.The layout of the lounge didn't help, either.First off, it shouldn't even be a lounge. In Kat's eyes, this area of the club was more an entire hotel floor. It was a series of hallways with private rooms, made extremely fancy with crystal chandeliers, plushy red carpets, cream-colored walls gilded with gold, and a mirror ceiling that did nothing to help them navigate.Now Kat and Calix were strolling around aimlessly, clueless on where to start, trying to use the lights as a guide. However, the tiny orange sparks were scattered around the place, as directionless as they were.When she asked him about this, he just said, "The lights are guides, not pointers. There are many factors that affect th
Last Updated : 2020-09-05Drop-Dead in Love Thirty-Five † Fade to Black
The vase clattered onto the floor, right from Kat's trembling hand. The mirror showed that the spot Damien was standing in was empty, which meant that she was alone here.So who was this person in front of her, smiling and watching her coldly?Kat's composure crumbled altogether. Her knees were going weak, threatening to give way any second. As though relishing her broken bravado, Damien—or whatever this thing was—smirked. It contorted his handsome features, making them look . . . wrong.There was a very tense pause.Her heartbeat echoed in her ears. She inhaled slowly, gathering every bit of courage she possessed. Before she could chicken out, she spun around and ran for her life.In an unbelievable speed, Fake-Damien leapt towards Kat. To avoid his outstretched hand, she let gravity take hold and allowed herself to fall forward, propping her arms in front of her. However, before she could land on the floor, he managed to touch t
Last Updated : 2020-09-06Drop-Dead in Love Thirty-Six † Death by a Thousand Cuts
Kat should've known that when her delusions started with her college dating fails, it would all be downhill from there.And she was right. The whole business of getting stood up in a date was the mildest. Right after it, she was thrown back to the scene that started it all: the day of her death.Only this time, she was as close to death than she ever had been.The asphalt was cold against her cheek, sleek with the blood flowing from her busted temple. Her arm was bent at an awkward angle. People began to crowd around her, but only their feet were visible. She tried to lift her head, to see beyond them and the front of the Range Rover, but what she saw made her regret it.The cloaked figure. The Punisher.Kat expected it to be Calix. She knew it was him originally, and she'd taken comfort in it. However, the face under the mask was Auric Johnson's, pale and smirking. Then, it changed to Rita Arellano's. In a dizzying flicker it shifted again, morphing into the beautiful features of Nave
Last Updated : 2020-09-08Drop-Dead in Love Thirty-Seven † Skeleton in the Closet
Kat's spontaneous road trip with Calix to Moapa Valley wasn't so spontaneous anymore, as they had to postpone it for a day.While she no longer felt like absolute trash, a little bit of that nausea was still sitting at the back of her throat like a bitter aftertaste. Maybe it was because of what lied ahead of them, or the fact that half of her bodily functions had stopped for a week.Either way, Calix was the witness to it all, and for this reason alone, she couldn't quite look him in the eye.
Last Updated : 2020-09-10
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Drop-Dead in Love Eighty † End Game
† TWENTY YEARS LATER †To open or not to open. That was the big question.Calix stared at the cardboard box on his bed. He'd shut himself in his room in the Circle of the Councilmen, right after going to the mortal world to retrieve the box Kat had left at her father's glass case with his ashes. For twenty years he'd been going back there to continue what was supposed to be tradition, and for exactly that long he'd ignored the box.And even though for some reason he'd taken it home, he still didn't know what to do.He sprawled onto the cotton sheets, closing his eyes momentarily. He couldn't quite believe that he'd done that. Since Kat's death, he'd been avoiding everything that remotely related to her, and still that hadn't been enough to bury the pain.And how could that be possible? She was the first thing he'd see when he opened his eyes in the morning, the last thing he'd think of when he'd crawl to bed at night. Th
Drop-Dead in Love Seventy-Nine † To Die For
"Kat!" Calix's face sharpened in Kat's blurring vision. "Kat, stay with me.""I'm not going anywhere," she assured him, surprised that her vocal cords even worked. Her throat was parched; she couldn't even swallow. "Not going. Not leaving."The battle had long been settled. It seemed that the moment Aldonra vanished, her hold on the corpses had gotten lifted too. All of them were laying on the battlefield again, more damaged than before. They took many of the allies with them, though, and that made Kat wish she had done this sooner."Amicus!" Calix was yelling. "Amicus, help!"Footsteps rumbled around Kat. Around her, people started to gather. She could see Thisbe's horrified and concerned face, an expression that mirrored Byron's. Lady Gethen and Lord Odion stood next to their son, both of them looking devastated. Amicus loomed into view, taking out his assortment of medicine with trembling hands. The confidence he had on his face when he'd attende
Drop-Dead in Love Seventy-Eight † The Ultimate Sacrifice
Aldonra's constant struggle as they over the mouth of Sygnus brought fresh bolts of pain in Kat's back, but she didn't let go. She kept her arms locked around the queen's waist, letting momentum and gravity take over and swallow them whole.Amidst the deep, rumbling hum coming from the void, she heard was Calix's muffled protest, the scratch of the sandy ground as he struggled to get to his feet."Kat!" he called out, and she only had time to see his fearful, bloody face before she and Aldonra disappeared over the brink.Darkness. There was only darkness. It was thick and opaque and encompassing, coating Kat's skin like a breeze, or like thin satin. It was almost unnerving how it had an actual texture, coupled with the gravitational pull of the endless vertical tunnel that grabbed onto her ankle like a vice.She looked up as her hair whipped around her face. The mouth of the void was ascending far away from her in an unbelievable speed, yet she kept falli
Drop-Dead in Love Seventy-Seven † Drop Dead
"NO!" Kat's voice echoed in the vast field, raw and brimming with rage. "NO!"She lost Gregor all over again, only this time, it happened right before her eyes. It was another death, a different level that spared nothing. No remains. No memory. Nothing. And he didn't deserve that. He didn't deserve anything that he'd suffered through. He'd only been caught in between the choices of the woman he'd chosen to be his wife and the tainted child they had who shouldn't have existed in the first place.Kat staggered forward, tears flooding her eyes and flowing down her dust-speckled cheeks. The emotional blow itself was enough to make her want to sink into her knees, but she ended up lunging towards Aldonra.She knew she was going to get destroyed in the process, but she didn't care. Her anger was the only thing that mattered. Broken. Everything inside her was broken and burned and now she had to release the embers. She tried to shoot a line of flames at Aldonra, but her shaking hand and her m
Drop-Dead in Love Seventy-Six † Hell Hath No Fury
Fear made Calix's journey out of the throne room feel like an out of body experience.He had only a vague memory of leaving, of sparing the enemies who were alive and stirring in their spots on the floor. He extended his wings and set off, far away from the scene, towards Kat.His worry, confusion, and the shock of the revelation were solidifying in his chest, growing heavier and heavier as he swerved around the grand hallways. The medallion dangled from his neck, but he couldn't see it, couldn't really feel it. But its presence, the knowledge that it was there, dissolved him into nothing but a mess of disbelief and denial.The only time he regained some semblance of a connection to reality was when he arrived at the damaged courtyard.The allies were rallying around the fountain, binding the surviving enemies with handcuffs and taking the fallen in the more stable areas in the garden. His parents were at the stairs, sporting wounds but not in immed
Drop-Dead in Love Seventy-Five † The Last Bow to the Queen
"Demons," Amicus muttered, reining in Nyx as she continued to howl and fidget in her leash.Apart from the wolf and Amicus, everyone else was frozen, even the Demons. They looked at the four with their unblinking human-like eyes, standing in their path like they were meant to stay there all along.And perhaps they were. It was most probable that they had been assigned to guard the paths leading to Sygnus. They were just obstacles to be dealt with, but that didn't make their presence any less bothersome, especially for Kat, who had never seen these creatures before.But that wasn't entirely true, wasn't it? She had seen Demons before. Or at least a part of them. She'd seen their hands taking the souls at the gates for evil mortals. She'd heard them make noises, felt their presence at the other side every time she and Calix went to such missions.However, nothing could have prepared her for the sheer physical and emotional torture that they brought upon her.Kat knew perfectly that the f
Drop-Dead in Love Seventy-Four † Over Their Dead Bodies
Calix froze at the sight of Idris and his small army. Not because he was particularly scared of them, but because Idris pointed at him and put him under some sort of a paralyzing spell.Shock, disbelief, and anger fueled him up, but all the energy that those emotions ignited all fell flat when he realized he couldn't move. He fought to stay upright, his weapon still in his hand as his arms got pinned to his sides. His breathing was restricted because of the stiffness in his chest.However, even with all this, he looked Idris straight in the face fearlessly.
Drop-Dead in Love Seventy-Three † Face Down
Being in the Underworld had been nothing but bad, but at least Kat got to see the cute dogs.Okay, there were not really dogs. They were called shadow wolves. Their furs were purely black, as dark as . . . well, as shadows. Also, they were only cute because they behaved well and rather intelligently, not because they looked like normal dogs. For starters, they were the size of a small bus, with fanged mouths that could swallow an adult. They also had three eyes, one positioned at the forehead and all of them glowing red like a stop sign."Do not pet it," Amicus warned sternly as his shadow wolf named Nyx, sniffed her hand. "You do not want her to lick you
Drop-Dead in Love Seventy-Two † Kill Switch
As it turned out, the only way to enter the palace was the sewer lines. These were located at the back end of the landscape, right behind the forest line around the gardens.Calix and his parents found their way just fine, and with zero problems. The northern neighborhoods seemed abandoned, with all the windows shut and doors locked. Odion's ability to manipulate force had allowed him to put a shield on all of them, and Gethen extended her glamour on them too.The journey was more than surprisingly fine, but the destination was quite horrid.The entrance of the sewers alone was not pleasant. Grime covered the walls, and the metal lid of the gigantic pipes were rusted and covered in what looked like black slime. Calix couldn't quite imagine himself charging into battle through these paths."Is this really our point of entry?" He winced at the middle pipe that Odion had just opened. "Maybe there is another way in.""No, son." Gethen crinkled her nose and beckoned him forward. "This was o
