Page 82 of Mortal Desires

Blood gushed from the wound, dripping down the witch’s clothes. The man in my hands realized what kind of end waited for him and his struggle against me became frantic.

I was smiling, thinking about taking my time killing this one. Torturing him like I never cared to torture someone… when my world stopped.

A gunshot wiped the smile right off my face.

I looked to my side, ready to ask where Pilar got a gun, but I wasn’t afforded such mercy.

I dropped Adrian, he stumbled free, and I ran to my wife. We were so close and yet in that second it took me to get to her I watched my worst nightmare play out in slow motion.

Cassandra’s body dropped at the same time the gun she held firmly in her hand clanked onto the concrete floor.

My wife fell too… slowly… yet impossibly fast. I watched as her body lost life and as she fell onto the floor like a doll.

I was on my knees when I reached her, pulling her into my arms with a scream from the depths of my being.

“Pilar, no Pilar…” I gagged for the first time, trembling as I held onto her small body.

Her eyes were losing light, her cheeks now pale. I pressed my hand on her torso, but her blood drenched the floor.

I wailed like a lost creature. I wanted to destroy the world that was taking her from me and yet I couldn’t move from that spot.

She was shaking as she grabbed something in her pocket, a little parcel that she thrust into my hand.

“Home,” she said.

It looked like a spell, maybe that was how she planned on going back to the manor after this. I didn’t care, nothing mattered anymore. I dropped the parcel into the blood.

“Pilar, mi amor.” I brushed her hair out of her face, my bloody hands painting her cheeks. “Pilar, stay with me.”

She nodded, making a promise she couldn’t keep.

The Morales family was good. Pilar was the best, she’d ascend.

I held her close to my chest waiting for the moment the lights of heaven would take my wife from me. My soulmate.

She gasped for air and I sobbed like a baby. I felt, at that moment, the smallest I had ever felt.

I was nothing without Pilar Morales. I was a thing until she came along.

My pleas were nothing to the universe. I was a god that had no one. There was no mercy for creatures like me. I didn’t protect her. I couldn’t save her.

I held her in my arms as I counted her last breaths.

One. And the next was even weaker.

Two. I could feel her heart slowing down and cursed existence for giving me such a gift and then taking it away.

Three. Her last breath broke me.

Anger and resentment burst from my chest as I held the lifeless body of my wife.

She was gone, and she would be gone forever.

Unless I stopped her from ascending.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t good. But I never gave a fuck about what was right.

I didn’t have it in me to care. She couldn’t go, they couldn’t have her.