The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 6 by Bella Forrest (books for men to read .TXT) 📕

“I feel strange, as if there’s something missing inside, but I guess we won’t know the true damage until later,” he replied. “How are you feeling?”

“Like hell,” Alex said grimly. “Everything hurts. But at the same time, everything feels numb.”

“Hopefully, it’ll ease with time,” Virgil whispered, clutching his chest.

Alex thought about the survivors of Starcross, and how some of them had wandered through the camp like zombies, their eyes vacant, never recovering from the loss of their stolen half. He wondered if he’d end up like them.

“Elias!” Alex called, searching inside himself for the piece of soul he’d accidentally taken. The pulse of it was weaker, the connection seeming to fade by the second. When he could no longer feel it, he began to panic. “Elias, are you there? Elias?”

Movement in the rafters above drew Alex’s attention. A waterfall of shadow poured down, and Elias appeared before them. Only, he was not quite the shadow-man he usually was. The black vapor of his being had thinned, the stars dimming across his galactic skin, bright flashes exploding inside his being, like suns turning into supernova before burning out completely. His starry eyes were dull and listless, his flowing form barely hovering above the ground.

“Elias, is that you?” Alex whispered.

The shadow-man flashed a faint grin. “Still here, mon cher… just about. Who knew death could hurt this much? I’ve avoided it for so long, I thought it would be easy when the moment actually came,” he wheezed.

“Elias, you’re not going to die,” Alex said. “You used a lot of energy to save us both, but you’ll recover—you always do.”

Elias shook his head slowly. “Not this time, amigo. I think I hear a bell tolling, and it’s tolling just for me,” he murmured, still smiling.

“You can’t go,” Alex insisted, feeling a flutter of panic in his chest.

“Ha, I knew you’d come to like me, Alex Webber,” Elias teased. “It took me stopping that mist from tearing you to pieces, but we got there in the end. You love me, you really love me!” he cried dramatically, putting on his best spoiled-actress voice.

Alex chuckled, though he was too sad to give it much energy. “Maybe I’ll even miss you a little bit, one day, when I’m by myself, expecting you to drop down from the ceiling unannounced,” he teased halfheartedly.

“You never know, I might just be watching,” Elias said with a wink. But Alex knew he wouldn’t be. Where Elias was going, there was no coming back.

Siren Mave appeared a moment later, pushing through the front door. With a sigh, she shuffled over to the spot where Elias floated, her eyes watery, her mouth set in a sad line. Sniffling, she pushed her horn-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of her nose.

“Come on, you wastrel, it’s time for us to go.” Siren Mave spoke softly, conjuring an orb of black magic between her palms. It held the stars inside, the constellations swirling in a bright white stream that melded into a circle as the orb span faster. “In fact, it’s time for all of us to go,” she said, ushering them all outside, where nothing was about to tumble down on top of them.

“Thank you for finding me,” Alex said, choking on the emotion that clogged his throat. “You might have been vague and annoying, but we did it, didn’t we?”

Elias grinned, his teeth flashing. “We sure did, kiddo.”

“You did an excellent job, Alex,” Siren Mave chimed in. “We couldn’t have asked for a better charge. Nobody thought you’d ever walk through that gate, and none of us could have known you’d be precisely the one to finish this, for good,” she added, flipping the orb onto one hand, while reaching out her free hand to shake Alex’s. He took it wearily, a shiver running through him as he felt her deathly cold palm.

Meanwhile, Elias was fading away, turning almost entirely see-through, until Alex could see the water gardens through his body. Their time together was at an end, and though it had been a turbulent journey, to say the least, Alex was sorry to see the shadow-man go. Siren Mave too. The world would seem just that little bit too quiet without them.

“Alrighty then, let’s get this show on the road while there’s still something left of me to sashay away with,” Elias said, his voice barely a whisper.

“Quite right. Wouldn’t want to rob you of your dramatic exeunt, would we?” Siren Mave teased.

“Never,” Elias replied.

“Siren Mave?” Alex piped up, finding his voice.

The squat woman glanced at him. “A final request?” she asked.

He smiled. “Something like that… I was just wondering, what do I do with the book? It didn’t return to the vault on its own.” He gestured to the tome tucked under Virgil’s arm.

“Ah, yes, the book. You may keep it, or put it back—it’s up to you,” she said. “It is yours, in essence, to do with as you please. Is that everything?”

Alex hesitated, having so much more to say but little time to put his thoughts into words, as Elias was fading more and more by the second. “That’s everything,” he said finally.

Elias had faded into almost nothingness, and his voice was like an echo. “Find peace, Alex Webber.”

With that, Siren Mave’s orb grow bigger and bigger, until it blocked them from view. It spun faster, sucking their bodies into the center, before closing in on itself with a loud snap, sending out a blast of air that swept Alex’s hair back.

Looking at the empty space where Elias and Siren Mave had been, Alex refused to cry, though a bubble of emotion welled inside him. He would let it all hit him later, when the dust settled and he could accept that it was actually over. Instead, he thought about what Siren Mave had said about the book, and the potential it held, with all its mighty spells. It might be handy to keep around, he reasoned, but knew there was too much temptation between its covers. As powerful