Driving in a car again felt weird. I had ridden in cars and trucks quite a few times since I met the Chasse family, but being in the driver’s seat felt so alien now. My eyes ran across all of the gauges, dials, buttons, and the screen display that looked like a small TV mounted to the dashboard. I knew I had been out of the normal world for a few years now, but I felt like I could have been driving George Jetson’s car with how high-tech this thing was.

  As I got onto the first major highway, it was then that I became very thankful for the navigation system built into the screen. I knew how to get to Alex’s apartment on foot, but driving was another thing entirely. I know the underground caverns and sewer systems like the back of my hand, but if you asked me to drive somewhere… I felt like someone’s grandma just driving in circles, lost as hell.

  Splitting my attention between the road and the screen, I was able to punch in the name of her apartment complex and let the thing do its job. As I follow the blue line on the screen, trying to ignore the grating voice of the GPS alerting me to upcoming maneuvers I’d have to make, I realized how thankful I was that I didn’t ever have to drive in this city. These roads were straight up chaos.

  If only the monsters of this world that feared me so much could see me now. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing driving in this traffic as I got closer to the downtown area. I might have to call Carter and Eleanor and tell them to write something into the weakness section of the bestiary. They can put right underneath the part that talked about silver not affecting me. If anyone wanted to cause me mental pain and slow me down, put me behind the wheel of a car in St. Louis traffic.

  I knew I was driving slow compared to the rest of the cars, and nowhere near as chaotic, but it wasn’t until someone whipped past me violently and slowed down just enough to make sure that I saw them give me the finger. I cut my attention from in front of me so I could look to see what this stranger was doing. It had to be something important if they were trying to get my attention from the road. But no… just someone flipping the bird to an incompetent driver.

  “Man… FUCK THIS!” I said to myself as I focused back on the navigation system.

  Another thirty minutes to an hour of white-knuckle driving, a few bad but quick decisions, and I was finally out of the car again. My time in the supernatural world, not utilizing technology like this in my day-to-day life, became very apparent. I didn’t realize as I was driving, but the GPS led me straight to the front entrance of Alex's apartment complex. However, there was nowhere to park right in front. Once I passed the building and realized I’d have to find somewhere to park this hunk of shit, I had to ignore the GPS trying to reroute back to the front entrance. Eventually, I just kept driving in one direction until I saw something that resembled a parking lot. I committed to it and planted the vehicle there with a thankful exhale. I killed the engine and slammed the door behind me, locking it closed.

  I planted my feet on some pavement and had never been more excited to be on foot again. Not for my safety, but that I would kill someone through sheer incompetence.

  “Fucking car!” I grunted my frustrations. I was thrilled to be out of the car finally, even though it had only been a little less than an hour of actual driving. I had supernatural senses… but something about driving amidst so many cars, not knowing where I was going, and the strange sensory overload had me in a weird state of panic.

  I don’t know… maybe I was just being a bitch because I hadn't driven in so long. People on these roads were freakin’ animals. A wave of relief washed over me as I was thankful to be on foot again. I’d have to talk to Alex because if she were more comfortable driving, I might have to make her the party responsible for getting us out of this city, at the very least.

  As I got closer to Alex’s building, I prepared my thoughts for what I was going to talk to her about. Telling her how my conversation went with the Chasse family was a given, but I’d also have to iron out the details about Autumn. I knew that Alex was already aware of the complexities, but speaking them out loud and trying to figure all this out was a different matter entirely. I was so lost in thought that I wasn’t really thinking about anything else as I made my way up to Alex’s balcony the usual way. I scaled the side of the building in scant shadows where I knew I could hide and remain undetected. Once firmly planted outside of her balcony door, I cracked it open just as I always did. But something was different.

  It wasn’t until I had fully slid the door open that I realized the usual material that was blocking the light was gone. Normally, a combination of aluminum foil, tape, and blacked-out curtains created a multilayered barrier to keep out any hint of sunlight. However, now I could see through the glass and into Alex’s apartment like you could in any of the other apartments.

  I froze in my tracks, increasingly aware of the change to her apartment. I didn’t realize it, but my grip had tightened significantly on the balcony door handle. I could hear microfractures in the grains of wood from clutching the handle so tightly.

  Why would she have taken off all of the cardboard and aluminum foil? Without the relic, she had potentially lost her immunity to the sun. I still wasn’t sure about that, but…

  I stepped inside quickly, closing the door behind me. Once inside Alice’s apartment, I realized how illuminated it was with the morning sunlight. Every window to the outside world was free and clear of anything that was used to block it at one point. All of the incoming light left Alex’s apartment like an open book. It was clean of clutter, but dusty. There was a light layer of dust on things that hadn't been touched. Places she didn’t really use or move around during her normal nightly routines. Certain places were cleaned off, places I knew I had sat or moved, but most of it was covered in that same layer of dust. For the first time in who knows how long, the apartment was washed in daylight.

  It was at that point that I realized there was no noise inside her apartment: no heart beating, no light steps… nothing. A deep feeling of anxiety passed through me as a bad thought slithered up. My mind started racing as the worst-case scenario started running through my mind. Where was Alex?

  A deep sensory pulse reverberated out from my mind as I scoured the city for the redheaded vampire's location. This burst of my Primeval senses was different from any other that came before, when I actively used this power on my own. There was more detail in the images that returned to me with the pulse than ever before. I could see buildings, cars, and people as clear as the day they walked in.

  The pulse was something greater than ever before in my panic and grim fears, fueled by an intensity that I had never known. However, just as fast as the panic had appeared, so did it leave as I felt Alex’s presence.

  I could see her silhouette above me on the roof. I realized she wasn’t standing, but sitting. It was hazier than the rest of the world that came back to me, but she was there. Although I couldn’t explain it… she felt starkly different than everything else. But… maybe that was just because it was she that I was searching for. Even though everything else had more detail, she was still the subject of the search.

  Probably too fast for daylight hours, I rushed back out of the balcony door and scaled the side of the building in full view of any potential onlookers. I pulled my body over the high edge and slung my feet up to the roof. As soon as I cleared the side of the building, I almost had a moment of confused panic when I didn’t see her. I did a quick series of jerking head turns as I looked for her. I must have been in such a panic that I just completely overlooked her, because I really did not see her for a second. I felt my heartbeat pounding in my ears like a war drum. Then an itchy dread crawled all over my skin as if I had stepped through something thick and heavy, like cobwebs filled with venomous spiders.

  However, once that feeling passed, and I calmed down, I turned around, and there she was. She was just on the other side of a large industrial-looking air conditioning unit. She was sitting right on the edge of the roof, feet dangling over the side of the building. The sun had her fully illuminated in broad daylight, shocking me. I really thought that she would not be able to be in the sun anymore after relinquishing the relic and all its benefits.

  I still felt a little strange. It wasn’t often that I got so frightened by things, but I had really been worried that something had happened to her. Between Autumn’s constant fearful questions and my own moments of terror, I almost felt human again.

  She heard me coming and turned to greet me with a smile. Her green eyes were so bright in the sunlight, and her hair didn’t seem as bloody in color, but more of a natural red as the sun passed through it. She didn’t say anything at first, only watching me as I approached the edge of the building where she sat casually. She looked happy… content.

  “I was starting to worry about you,” I said as I leaned against the perimeter barrier wall of the roof where she sat atop.

  “Why is that?” Alex asked in response.

  I shook my head as I said, “Autumn was worried about you. I guess after we destroyed the relic, she lost her connection to you. She said she couldn’t even feel you in the bloodline anymore… whatever that means.” I didn’t fully understand the vampire lore, and I wouldn’t pretend as if I did.

  Alex only nodded, still smiling peacefully as she looked away from me and back towards the city. She stared deeply into the sun that was rising into the sky. She almost looked in awe or something.

  “Autumn was hoping she could see you one last time before we leave. I think she needs… guidance. Coming from you would probably be good…” I was trying to say before Alex cut me off.

  “I can’t do that,” Alex said with disappointment. Her eyes averted down toward her legs after she said it.

  I didn’t say anything at first, just watched her. She stared at her legs for a few minutes. I kept trying to think of something to say, but it was a hard situation to get a grip on.

  Then, she looked back up to me and said, “She has you… I won’t be of any help to her. I’ve done enough as it is.” Alex’s words were soft and far away.

  She was not angry in any way, like she was annoyed that Autumn needed help from her. It was more like a continued personal assault on herself for what she had done. Still viewing saving Autumn as an unforgivable act. I could understand, but I also saw it in a different way than she did.

  I could tell she was buried deep inside herself, caught in that place where thoughts turn inward and refuse to come back out. So I didn’t say anything. I just climbed up onto the edge of the roof and sat beside her, close enough that our shoulders almost touched. I let my legs hang over the edge the same way hers were, a silent mirror, offering company instead of questions. We sat like that for a while, letting the moment breathe, waiting for whatever words she was carrying to finally find their way out.

  Eventually, that calm expression settled back over her face. We stared out over the city together, the sunlight stretching into the distance like something too big to ever hold onto. From the street below, we probably looked strange, two figures perched on a rooftop, unmoving, but up there, it felt right; almost safe. The world seemed quieter than it should have been, like the city was holding its breath along with us.

  She leaned into me without warning, arms sliding around my torso as she pulled herself close in an awkward, almost uncertain way. There was nothing forceful about it, just a need for contact between us. She felt softer than I remembered. Not weaker… just gentler, like the hardened edges of her had been worn down by everything.

  I wrapped an arm around her back and caught her forearm with my other hand, holding her there. In that moment, nothing else mattered. Just the warmth between us. The understanding. We were bound by the same broken truth… monsters wearing the memory of human skin… and somehow that shared weight made the silence easier to bear. I still felt that ugliness churning inside myself when I thought back to my human life. But when I looked down at Alex, her face pressed against my chest, I didn’t see it in her anymore. Not like before. It was as if something had already started to change… she had changed somehow.

  As we sat there, I noticed pale flakes drifting through the air, caught in small spirals of wind as they passed over the roof. Snow, maybe. Or something pretending to be. None of it seemed to touch her, but I felt it settle against my shoulders erratically, as it had chosen me.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” she said softly.

  The words didn’t fit the moment, which made them hurt more.

  I shifted just enough to look down at her. She didn’t move away. If anything, she leaned into me more, trusting me with her weight in a way that made my chest ache.

  “I never thought I’d have something like this,” she continued, voice low and unsteady. “Not after I’d already accepted what my life was going to be. What I was.” She swallowed, fingers tightening slightly where they clutched at me. “Being with you… It made everything easier to survive. Just a little. Enough to breathe.”

  Her face tightened then, the calm finally cracking. Pain flickered across her features, raw and unguarded.

  “But this life…” she said, and the word trembled. “The things you’re tied to. The forces that circle you… It’s deeper than I ever imagined. I thought I understood suffering before I met you… My suffering was all I knew, and I had grown in it… mastered it. I thought I knew how bad it could get.” She shook her head faintly. “I was wrong.”

  She drew in a slow breath, as she needed it to keep going.

  “When I changed… when that relic took hold of me, it didn’t just make me stronger. It was a double-edged sword,” she admitted. “It showed me something I thought I’d lost forever. The sun, standing out here like this… being a part of this world again.” Her voice wavered. “I never thought I’d feel that again… feel this again,” she motioned between us.

  She paused, and I could feel the weight of what she wasn’t saying settle between us.

  “But it came with a price,” she whispered. “Not just Hunger’s voice in my head. Not just her trying to steer me. It was the need. The constant pull of a greater hunger than the one I had forced to obey. It wore me down little by little… in subtle ways.” Her hand trembled in mine. “Every day got harder, and at some point… it stopped feeling impossible to give in. Promises I made to myself… lines I swore I’d never cross were starting to blur. I started telling myself I could make exceptions. That I could justify certain things. That maybe… maybe it wouldn’t matter if I made exceptions with this new power.”

  I shifted back slightly, the weight of her words pressing down on my chest. She moved with me, careful not to break the connection. She didn’t let go of my hand. Our fingers stayed intertwined as she turned to face me, needing me to see her… to really see her as she sat there, laid bare.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  And for the first time since I’d known her, Alex looked truly afraid of something.

  “You’re talking about saving Autumn?” I asked her.

  Alex only nodded. Then she took a reluctant breath and said, “The old me would have never done that. Even if I thought it was to give her some kind of life… The oath I swore to myself back then would have just let her pass on. That’s what I wanted so much back then, before Hunger started seeping into my decisions. I know that Autumn gets a chance to continue to live, but it’ll be a cursed life just like mine… the same life I didn’t want.”

  What was starting to worry me with what Alex was saying was that she was talking in the past tense about certain things. It wasn’t the fact that she was still hung up on this decision she had made, but she was talking about everything in a way that made me think she was planning on doing something… something I had also tried many times in my early years. The elusive Plan B.

  Alex looked up to me with sad but peaceful eyes, the green brighter than they’d ever been before, but in a human way.

  “I’m sorry that you never got to know me when I was still human. Even the version of me you knew from before was never the true me. Just like I know this person sitting in front of me is not the real Sam. This is who you’ve become after everything that’s happened. This is the you that has to carry this great burden… with no escape. I think if we ever got the chance to meet before all of this… if we were born at the same time… Maybe there could have been something real. Something natural.”

  “Alex, what are you talking about? You’re honestly starting to worry me,” I told her as I felt a rising unease in my chest.

  Alex was talking in a way that reminded me of a person who had no hope. But her face and her expression were very peaceful, like she was finally at rest from all of the struggles she’d been facing. Her words didn’t line up with her expressions.

  More of that snow was floating around as a new gust of wind whipped it all back up again, and I used my free hand to wipe some of it off my jeans. When I tried to brush it away, it smudged and smeared across my pants in a way that was very not snow-like. It was weird, but before I could focus on it, Alex’s voice caught my attention again.

  “But these were the cards I was dealt. And this is the life I lived. I don’t regret meeting you, Sam. I’m so glad that I got to help you… to be a part of your story, killing that Primeval beneath the city. I know you’re going to be doing things like that longer than any of us realize or can understand, and I’m truly sorry that you don't have a choice as I did.”

  There it was again. She was speaking in the past tense again… and it was really starting to… my attention shifted.

  The sun had climbed just high enough for one of the rooftop shadows to finally give way. Light slid across the concrete in a slow, creeping line until it struck something metallic near the corner of the roof, only a few feet away. The reflection flared bright and sudden, a sharp flash that caught me straight in the eyes.

  I flinched and squinted, shifting my head to escape the glare. That was when I saw it.

  A familiar rectangle of metal sat face-up against the rooftop, tilted at an odd angle where it rested against a piece of broken debris. The edges were unmistakable. A picture frame. Around it, scattered unevenly across the concrete, were thick patches of the same white stuff that had been swirling through the air all morning.

  For a moment, my thoughts snagged and twisted.

  Snow didn’t make sense. Not anymore. The city had already shed winter, most of it anyway. What little snow had been left had melted into dirty slush days ago, reduced to a few stubborn chunks of ice hiding along shaded curbs. It wasn’t cold. Not like that. And this wasn’t slush or ice. This was light, powdery, and clean in a way it shouldn’t have been if it were old snow.

  I looked down at Alex. She had shifted closer again without me noticing, her head resting against my chest, her weight leaning into me like she was anchoring herself there. I held her for a second, still trying to reconcile what I was seeing, when my eyes drifted lower, down to my pants.

  There was a pale smear across the fabric, gray instead of white.

  I rubbed my fingers through it absently. The residue lifted easily, clinging to my skin. With one arm still wrapped around Alex, I raised my hand closer to my face. Up close, it didn’t sparkle or melt. It didn’t feel cold.

  It crumbled.

  My stomach dropped.

  This wasn’t snow.

  It was ash… fine and flaky, like something that had been reduced down to almost nothing.

  My chest hitched as my heart slammed hard enough to rattle my ribs. A low, ugly mix of dread and panic rose into my throat, thick and choking. My Primeval heart surged, every beat louder than the last, as pieces began snapping together in my mind. Heat rushed through my veins, whatever passed for blood in this body pounding like it was trying to warn me.

  I felt small all at once. Like a terrified kid again, frozen in place, knowing something was wrong but having no idea how to stop it.

  It didn’t make sense. Alex was right here. I could feel her breathing. Her weight. Her warmth.

  And yet… ash covered the roof.

  My eyes dragged back to the corner where the metal frame lay, where the ash had gathered into thicker, heavier piles. My arms went slack around her without me meaning to, the fear finally taking shape… becoming real.

  Alex loosened her hold on me and gently eased back. She already knew what I was about to do. Her expression was reluctant, and something like an apology in the small, sad smile she gave me. She followed my gaze toward the corner of the roof, then slowly turned her eyes away, back toward the city skyline.

  She felt distant then. Like she was letting me go.

  Letting me see it for myself.

  I slowly, unsteadily pulled myself away from the edge of the roof and turned around. My boots scraped softly against the concrete as I stood, the sound too loud in the sudden quiet. Each step toward the corner felt wrong, like I was walking into something I already knew I couldn’t undo.

  I couldn’t have explained what was happening inside me if I tried. My thoughts lagged behind, dull and sluggish, while something deeper… older… had already reached its conclusion. My body shook in sharp, uneven bursts, tremors running through my arms and legs, my hands barely responding to what I was telling them to do. There was no pain, no injury. This was grief and fear working their way through muscle and bone, overwhelming everything else.

  When I reached the corner, I dropped to my knees.

  The picture frame felt lighter than it should have as I lifted it, and the ash slid away in soft streams, drifting down like the last remains of something that had already been lost. Beneath it, the image stared back at me.

  My jaw locked so hard my teeth ached.

  I knew that photograph. I’d seen it too many times to count, sitting carefully on her bedside table like it was sacred. I remembered the first time I noticed it in her apartment, how it had stood out among everything else she owned. Her most treasured thing. Alex and Jerry, frozen in a moment from decades ago, long before any of this had happened to her.

  She looked younger in the picture. Fewer tattoos, but still unmistakably her; ink already claiming her skin even back then. And the longer I stared, the worse it got, because the girl in the photo looked closer to the woman who had been sitting beside me on the roof than the Alex I thought I knew. Her hair held the same muted tone it had now, not darkened from blood or sharpened by time or hunger. It was softer… real… human.

  My gaze dropped to what the frame had been resting on. The debris wasn’t debris at all. It was clothing, crumpled, half-melted, reduced to brittle black shapes. Fabric that had once been something else, something worn by Alex. I couldn’t tell what color it had been. All of that was gone, burned away until nothing remained but char and ash.

  The weight of it hit me all at once. It felt like something massive had been dropped onto my chest, crushing the strength out of my legs. They gave out before I realized it was happening, and I slumped sideways into the low concrete barrier that ringed the roof. It stood about four feet high, solid and unforgiving, and I was grateful for it in a distant, numb way. Without it, I would’ve gone straight over the edge.

  I slid down the wall, my back scraping against the rough surface, until I was sitting there in the middle of the ash. It coated my clothes, my hands, my knees. I clenched my teeth, fighting the tight, burning knot in my throat that was trying to force its way out through my eyes.

  My breaths came apart, breaking into short, ragged pulls of air that didn’t feel like they were doing anything. Panic took hold… raw and unfamiliar, even in this monstrous body. Not the sharp, focused kind I’d learned to live with, but something deeper and more helpless. Something human.

  And I knew, with a certainty that hollowed me out, that I was already too late.

  I looked up, and I saw Alex now standing directly in front of me. I hadn’t seen her move from the roof edge, but I now knew that she didn’t need to move physically because we weren’t in the physical world. I started to understand why this roof seemed so quiet, why the people on the street seemed to move just a little bit slower than they ought to, and why Alex looked so different. This wasn’t a reunion before we left for Dallas. No, this was like the time I met Annabelle Wicklow on the other side before she fully passed on.

  Alex had finally gotten what she had wanted for so long. That death that she begged for at times, just as I did… She got it.

  That’s when I realized that she needed the relic gone to do it. When she came and asked me to take it and destroy it, it was something that had to happen. Something she needed done so she could finally end the life that she never wanted. She needed me to do it… So that way she could do this.

  I slowly lifted my head and connected eyes with Alex, who was standing over me, staring down with a sad smile. Even though she held that sad expression, it wasn’t about what had happened or for herself. Even with that sad expression, she looked at peace. The sadness was for me.

  “Alex? What did you…?” was all I could get out in the moment.

  Alex slowly stepped beside me and eased herself down onto the ground to lean against the wall at the edge of the roof, just like I was.

  She reached beside and picked up my hand again and held it to her face. It was warm. She felt so real, like this was really her, not those flecks of ash that hadn’t dispersed into the rest of the city like dust on the wind.

  “I couldn’t leave yet… not without talking to you first. I wanted you to know that this had nothing to do with you. This was all about me,” she assured with a strong conviction. “I’ve been dead for a long time, Sam… from the moment they took my life from me. The thing that woke up in the graveyard of all my friends… that was not me. It was the thing born after that. That’s never who I wanted to be. I should have gone with all of my friends. And they’ve been waiting for me for a very long time.”

  “Why couldn’t you tell me? I could have been here…” I tried to understand… But it was just too much… too unexpected.

  “I couldn’t tell you. If you were around, you would have tried to talk me out of it,” Alex knew the truth of it and spoke it openly. “Once the relic was gone, I knew what I had to do. And I didn’t want my last few hours with you to be one long argument that you could never win. I already knew… All the way back when I first realized what I had become after I got the relic. I started feeling the pull of Hunger on me, and it made my resolve slip. Once that happened, I knew it was only a matter of time before I had to get rid of the relic… and end it once and for all. Once everything happened with Autumn, there was an undeniable certainty at that point. I had become something beyond control, even if it’s been small things up to this point. I didn’t want to be what I was turning into… what I was.”

  I didn’t know what to say; part of me was still confused as fuck. Sitting here talking with Alex, or her spirit… soul, whatever… it was hard to really get a serious grasp on what was happening as everything was unloaded on me so fast. I felt shell-shocked.

  “That’s why you can’t help Autumn,” I said in weak understanding.

  Alex nodded, “I’m just not going to be around anymore, not for much longer, anyway.” Alex said as she shifted her eyes to something else.

  I followed her stare, and I saw someone standing there who made this all feel so familiar. It was me. The Death version of me. Just like when Death appeared in front of Annabelle and me when she saw her husband, Michael.

  Now, as Death stood before us, I had a pretty good feeling who Alex was seeing. I looked back at Alex, who was crying, though these were not the tears of blood I was used to. These tears were completely clear, and they rolled down her face in a steady stream.

  Alex looked at me and smiled through the tears. “I know that’s not Jerry,” she said, cluing me in to who she was seeing Death appearing to her as. “But he’s going to take me to him. We’ve been talking for a little while before you got here… and he’s helped me to… understand some things.”

  I glanced back and forth between Alex and Death, trying to figure it out. Was he working against me or something? Why did he do this? Why did he allow this?

  I stared daggers into Death, “Leave!”

  Alex’s face slumped at the same moment that Death did something that I could only describe as dematerializing. He faded into a strange silvery mist that blew away with the wind.

  Alex sighed, “I knew this would hurt you, Sam… but it's time for me. I know you won't understand… not fully… not for a while. But I died down in the pits when that Elder hit me. I should never come back. I knew when we went down there what I was planning. I was going to throw myself at the biggest, baddest monster we could find. I wanted to go down swinging… and look what it got me. More monstrous power… more of the same. It was the same thing that neither of us ever wanted,” Alex urged with passion.

  I shook my head, knowing what I thought about her assistance down in the pits back then. I knew she wanted to go down in a blaze of glory or something. She didn’t want to just off herself, she wanted to be killed as she fought against something greater than herself. But now… after the aftermath of it all, it was different. I guess in a way, she got what she wanted that night. She died down there… but was revived by Primeval powers. Then she was transformed into something even darker than she had ever known.

  “You're going home, Sam… it's where you should have been for a while now. Just like me…” Alex added. “I know now that I wasn’t exactly right in the way I lived my life when my family was still around. If I had the time like you… I think I would do things differently. But you still have that time, Sam.” Alex had essentially doubled back on everything from before.

  She had told me to linger in the shadows and protect them from a distance without ever showing myself to them. Now he was implying the exact opposite.

  “I’ll be with you, Sam… every day until you finally find your rest. Then… we’ll meet again,” Alex caressed my hand as she held it to her face while I sat there numbly. “I’ll introduce you to Jerry… my parents… all of them. I saw a glimpse of something your… friend,” she spoke of Death, “showed me. It’s… beyond what I ever thought. He’s told me things… things I can do to help you,” she tried to explain, but I didn’t care right then.

  Fuck Death… he was allowing this shit to happen to me… allowing this to stand when I had done so much for his cause. I knew that Alex had made this decision… but… Death was Death… how could he not see this coming and warn me?

  No… he saw it. He just chose not to.

  I shook my head in anger… frustration, and a deep sadness that I had rarely known. The only time that came close was the moment I decided I had to leave Dallas for good to protect little Caydee.

  “Don’t be mad, Sam. I’m happy… I’m finally free of it all. All the darkness, all the hunger, the urges, the anger… all of it is just… gone.” Alex said it with a weightlessness that only came from a great burden being turned into nothing but a memory. “I’m going home. We both are… If you ever want to talk to me… just talk. I’ll be listening, I promise.” Alex leaned into me as I sat there with the same thousand-yard stare I had plastered over my face for the last few minutes. She placed her lips on mine and lingered there for a moment or two, kissing me with a loving and deeply connected intimacy.

  When she pulled away, she was smiling again. Her green eyes had tears running from both, and she said, “I’ll miss this… but Jerry’s waiting. He’s been waiting a long time. Don’t keep your family waiting any longer. And don’t keep Autumn waiting. She’ll need you, Sam. Help her, because she’s going to be a big part of your life. They’ve got a lot to do… but when you’re ready… after Dallas… find her for me… take care of her. Do for her what I can't.”

  With that, Alex stood up and slowly stepped back towards a gathering cloud of silvery particles that formed into the image of a man I had never met, but had seen in pictures. It was Jerry… the Death version of Jerry.

  Alex moved close to him and wrapped him in a warm hug that looked like two people who’d spent years apart… finally reunited. It lasted a whole minute or so. Then, when Alex pulled away, so did the image of Jerry. It walked away with her as Death remained in place, looking like me.

  Was that actually Jerry? He was walking with Alex, but Death was still standing in the same place.

  “Thanks for taking care of her, Sam,” the… real Jerry… spoke.

  I was taken aback by what I was seeing.

  Was I seeing another soul… in the afterlife who had been dead for decades? How was that possible? Where had he come from? Had death allowed Jerry to step back into this plane of existence just to help usher Alex into the next stage? Was this normal… or was it special?

  Alex looked back at me one last time as they slowed. She said, “You’re special, Sam. You have a lot to do… and you’re going to live for a very long time. Just… don’t forget me,” Alex asked strangely. “I won’t forget about you.” She smiled.

  Then, without any warning, Alex and Jerry walked a few more steps away from me, fading away as they walked through a sheet of water that separated where they were from where I was. They lingered in my vision for just a moment… but in a few quick seconds… they were gone.

  I sent out rapid pulses of my Primeval sense, surging the power out to feel for her… but there was nothing. However, I was feeling her before, whenever it was just her spirit I was linking to… was gone. Alex… was no longer in this world or the adjacent one. She had moved on.

  I looked over to Death, who was wearing my face. He looked at me with a weak and sorrowful smile. In that moment, I truly think he was trying to relate to me somehow. I stared back with so many emotions that I didn’t know how to voice anything without exploding.

  Thankfully, Death faded away into that same silvery mist and was a vapor in the wind. At the same moment, the world shifted, and that strange feeling that passed over me earlier passed again, and everything went back to normal. The strange silence of the city was broken, and I heard cars honking horns and squealing tires across the city. Sirens wailed out, and voices could be heard all inside the apartment complex.

  Even with all this new incoming sensory input… something inside of me was cut off from the world. I fell into a silence inside my head. In that moment, while the world carried on with its screams of daily routine… I sat in the corner of the roof… completely… and utterly… alone.