Nameless Ghoul

Chloe

Chloe wasn’t sure how she should do this. After all, it had been a long time and a lot of water had passed under the bridge since the last time she had seen him. She’d done all of her raging and crying and wah-wah-wah, life-isn’t-fair for the last nineteen years and she knew it wasn’t his fault, but still.

He was the reason that she was here instead of living the perfect life with her perfect career and her perfect husband and her perfect kids.

Completely unexpectedly, the subject of her years of anger was right here in front of her, close enough to touch. But when she saw him? When she really looked at him? She remembered he was just as much of a victim in all of that business as she was. Her apprehension melted away and she admitted defeat. Even though he was the one who had ended her life, she realised she forgave him.

She looked closely at his sleeping form. He had a few more scars than the last time she’d seen him. His hair was longer and he was thinner and more wiry, but there was no mistaking it was him. She wondered what had happened to finally send him here, to the Veil.

He probably wouldn't remember when he woke up. They were usually a bit fuzzy and confused, so she would need to coax it out of him gradually.

Truth be told, she never thought that she would come face to face with her killer again, especially not while she was working. Fate had a strange way of throwing you a curve ball though, she thought.

His eyes were doing that twitching thing that happened when you were dreaming, and she knew this was a sign that any second now he would be awake. She took a deep breath and psyched herself up for processing him.

***

There was something he remembered here, something teasing the far reaches of his memory. It was the scent of the familiar, something from long ago, something that had changed him...

Itzal’s eyes flew open as he gasped in a lung full of air. Although, that wasn’t right? Was it?

He sat bolt upright, his hands flying to his throat, his eyes wide in confusion. The light here was grey, it wasn’t bright, and it wasn’t dull, it was just a grey glow. An ethereal fog lingered all around and stretched as far as the eye could see. His fingers skimmed the skin of his throat and something felt off.

It took him a few seconds to realise that the collar he had worn for twenty years or more, the symbol of his enslavement and the barrier between him and his true self, was gone.

He realised he wasn’t alone. His confusion was making his reflexes slow and he looked over to see a dark-haired girl sitting quietly on the ground, not far away, watching him. Their gazes met and his heart picked up speed as he was transported back to a time not too long after he was first summoned.

It felt like his wrist was broken. Maybe it was, but he had so many other injuries to catalogue that it didn’t seem too significant. He rolled onto his side and groaned as almost every part of him seemed to protest at the movement. Santos had lost his shit last night, and he had been on the receiving end of it.

A summoning hadn’t gone too well. The demon had rejected Santos’ terms for a deal, and Itzal had taken the brunt of the preacher’s violent temper. He was always volatile anyway, but this had been a whole other level. No amount of alcohol or offering himself and trying to please him had worked to calm him down and he’d unleashed his pent up rage onto Itzal completely.

Itzal was hurting.

A small noise caught his attention and he looked over to the chair where he spent his time reading or watching movies. He did a double take as there, inside Itzal’s warded room with him, was a girl.