Rogue Descendant (Nikki Glass) - By Jenna Black Page 0,69

to the head, either from the shovel or from the side of the car. It’s also possible my head was thrown against the side of the trunk so hard that my neck snapped.

Whatever exactly happened, it killed me.

One moment, I was hurtling around in the trunk of the car, the next, I was nothing but a consciousness in the dark.

Having been dead once before, I knew exactly what was happening this time. I could feel my body, but I think I felt it in the way that an amputee sometimes feels a lost limb. I was aware of its existence, and I felt physical sensations, but I was utterly paralyzed, unable even to breathe, though my nonexistent lungs screamed for oxygen. My similarly nonexistent eyes felt like they were open, but I could see nothing but impenetrable darkness.

As far as I could tell, there was nothing above me, and nothing below me. I felt physical sensations, but only within myself, nothing from outside my body. No sensation of my weight resting on something, no heat or cold or breeze or movement.

Phantom adrenaline flooded my system as my phantom lungs continued their desperate screaming for air. I knew I didn’t really need to breathe, knew that my body was right now dead and had no needs whatsoever, but that primal need to flee, to fight, to survive was louder and more urgent than any logic. I honestly don’t know which is worse: the feeling of suffocation, or the soul-tearing, uncontrollable panic that feeling engenders. There was a very good reason that even the immortal Liberi feared death, even when they knew they would come back from it.

The last time I’d died, my body had been completely destroyed, burned to ashes. The seed of immortality meant that I eventually grew a new body, but it had taken days for that to happen, and the time I’d spent in the dark, airless confines of death had felt more like years. I was fairly certain I wouldn’t stay dead as long this time. I might have thought that knowledge would make death easier to bear, but it didn’t.

I suffered, and it felt like it would go on forever.

I came to to the feeling of someone’s fingers sliding off the skin of my neck.

“She’s dead,” a voice said, sounding like it came from far away.

I sucked in a frantic breath and opened my eyes, but whoever had been feeling for a pulse had already pulled away, and there was enough background noise that no one seemed to hear. Which was probably just as well, because it gave me a little time to gather my wits about me.

I took a moment to appreciate the luxury of breathing, practically hyperventilating in my effort to get as much air as possible into my lungs. The duct tape over my mouth hampered my efforts to fill my lungs, and I lost a few seconds to incoherent panic before I finally calmed down enough to assess my situation.

I was still in the trunk of the car, but I was crumpled awkwardly against one side of it, my head pressed against it, bending my neck at a painful angle. The trunk had been so badly mangled by the crash that I didn’t at first realize the car had come to rest on its side. There was no way anyone could have pried the trunk open, but one side of it had buckled enough to create a sizable opening, which was letting in a steady patter of cold rain. I guess whoever had been checking my pulse must have crawled through that opening to get to me. Or perhaps been dangled through by someone holding his legs.

I was probably lucky I’d ended up wedged in like I was; otherwise, I might already be at the morgue. I imagined coming back to life there might have caused some serious issues for everyone involved. I was probably going to startle the hell out of some people even now, and I bet the guy who’d declared me dead was never going to hear the end of it.

The thought might have been amusing, except I had some clue how weird things were going to get when I made it known I was alive. I twisted around so that my neck was no longer in such an awkward position, and twisting like that was enough to show me that any injuries I might have sustained in the accident had already healed. I was utterly exhausted, which I