Death. What happens after it? What lies beneath the surface?
Poor Arielle Daniels stumbled through dangerous hoops to figure this out. She wakes in a new place--the Void--and discovers that what waits after death are layers, dimensions, and sadly...
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"Where are you, huh?"
His head spun, his mind was a blur, and he barely remembered driving there—but Benny didn't care. He'd arrived, parked, inhaled and exhaled, then knocked down the door. No one or nothing would stop him from his revenge. He was ready for business, ready to confront the creature that dared take a life so dear to him.
"Why did you kill Kylie?" He hiccuped, and swished the liquid in his whiskey bottle, thirsty for another gulp. "Or should I say, why did you make her kill herself? Because she wouldn't commit suicide, no. She wouldn't."
In his other hand, he clutched the silver flask tight, bracing to uncork it at any second, should he sense something ominous surrounding him. But so far, all he felt was a slight wind on his back, battering into his scratch wounds, sending flickers of pain to his extremities. He regretted not wearing a jacket, because he had no doubt he'd be freezing once that damned spirit showed up.
I won't show weakness. Not here, not tonight.
He perked up as the alcohol swirled in his belly. "Is this your... M.O.? Your pattern, huh?" He chortled and took another swig of whiskey. The beverage burned down his throat and he smirked at how powerful it made him feel. "I'm on to you, you asshole. You sick piece of shit... that's what you do. Haunt... terrorize... and make people murder themselves. You think it's fun, huh?" He resisted the urge to throw his bottle across the room. It was half-full, and he'd need more liquid courage soon, he knew. "Kylie was right; you are a demon."
He didn't want to believe it, at first. Sure, there were sinister spirits that played tricks and loved to taunt and scare, but demons? Straight from the depths of a hellish world he never wanted to think about? Not something he'd stumbled upon before.
But on their way back from the house, earlier, Kylie had been rambling on and on about exorcists and whether or not the FBI would pay for them.
"We've got excellent evidence," she had said, her tone still trembling with fright, her fingertips stained with Benny's blood. "I'll have to push a little, but this is significant. It could help solve the case. If there's proven demonic activity here, maybe we'll get a crew up in Columbus to check out Stella's destroyed trailer, and maybe even Jade's mansion..."
Benny's upper lip curled at the recollection of Kylie's voice. The feminine but deep melody that escaped from behind her beautiful lips was a treasure. The sound haunted him before, and would forever haunt him now, because he'd never hear it again. Never get a chance to tell her that he loved her, he always had, he always would. That her scent stuck inside his nostrils and whenever he slept with another woman, it was her he envisioned, her he imagined touching, her soft skin he smelled, her eyes he poured his own into.
And he would forever blame himself for her death. After all, he had insisted on investigating at night, on visiting a house with a blurry background, with a mysterious history, with little records of what had happened within its walls over the past few centuries. If there had been murders, suicides, unsolved cases... the likeliness for nefarious activity grew.
