Land Of The Beautiful Dead Novels & Stories

He ripped the thick chain from my bruised neck with his bare hands. As the broken chain fell from around my neck to the ground, our eyes met, and I felt something unusual. An odd feeling I had never experienced before. It made me forget that I was in pain and the great misery I was going through. I could also hear the soft sound of the ocean creeping upon the shore and its calming, splashing sound, followed by a lady's ethereal whisper. "You found him," she said. I then found myself slowly drifting away. For ten years, I have prayed to the goddess of the moon and wished to die within my sleep. Now it's happening, and I'm scared. I wanted someone to hold my hand and tell me I was going to a b

"Sorry, we forgot to mention it. The doctor said that a man's body can still respond for up to three hours after death. Don't worry. It should go back to normal in about half an hour. Once you two are finished here, we'll announce the union of our families!" I nodded shakily and watched them leave, regret already creeping in. "You bastard. Even dead, you're still messing with me! I should've just drawn lots and married Felix. At least I could've been happy for three years!" Everyone was still outside waiting for me to finish, so I sped up. I stripped off Raphael's clothes, kept my eyes shut, and got it done fast. Maybe it was my nerves, but something felt even stranger. His skin had been cha

Walked into the forest with the weight of one more death added to the count I was keeping. Mira. The tracker. How many more before this ended? My hand found my stomach, pressing against the swell there. The baby kicked once, firm and insistent. *I'm sorry,* I told them. *I'm so sorry you're being born into this.* But I wasn't sorry enough to stop. Wasn't sorry enough to go back. I was just sorry I was good at it. ******* The Deadlands earned their name. We crossed into them three days after the mill, after sleeping rough and eating rougher and always, always staying ahead of the hunters I could feel closing in behind us. The moment we stepped over whatever invisible line separated living ter

Debris battered her—logs, stones—leaving bruises that bloomed like dark flowers across her ribs and hips. Finally, the current weakened, depositing her onto a gravelly bank lined with twisted, leafless trees. Lyra crawled from the shallows, coughing up water that tasted of earth and blood. Her body trembled, every muscle screaming as she collapsed face-down in the mud. The Dead Lands. She'd heard the pack's elders whisper of this forsaken stretch—barren soil poisoned by ancient curses, where no wolf tread without madness creeping in. The air hung heavy, thick with the scent of decay and something sharper, like ozone before a lightning strike.

I didn’t want to make excuses or blame anyone else, either. The responsibility belonged to me, and I was going to carry it. I folded the document, then looked directly at Lily. “Blood Moon has considered execution, but death is mercy,” I revealed, and a ripple ran across the crowd. Lily finally looked up, and I could see the fear evident in her eyes. I knew why she was scared, though, because she knew exactly what was coming. The Deadlands. It was a supernatural wasteland beyond recognized pack territories. A place wolves whispered about but rarely discussed openly.

DAWN’S POV I was seated in the throne room, watching as the elders and gammas of my pack whispered among themselves, unable to believe that their alpha was dead. I assured them that he was dead, but they demanded to see his body. "I want to see his body! How can we believe he is dead without seeing his body?" one of the gammas said, with a tinge of desperation in his voice. "You don't need to see his body. Trust me, he's dead," I replied with a cold tone, trying to hide my smile.

And in this lifetime, we'd never see each other again. Once my phone went dead, the only thing left for them was my maggot-ridden body and the farewell gift I had so carefully prepared.

It tries to send the memory through her knees, her hands, her throat. Maya lets it arrive. Then she steps left. The dead follow sound and motion. They do not think. They do not plan. They do not fake low and attack high. They are patient appetite in a ruined suit. “Behind?” she whispers. Clear within twenty feet, LUS says. “Lovely.” The dead man reaches. Maya lets him commit, shifts inside the arc, hooks her foot behind his ankle, and drives the crowbar hard into the side of his knee.

VERZI POV WE FOUND HER! Goodness, we found her! She is alive, very much and alive, and as beautiful as she could ever be. I wanted to strip all of my clothes and dance naked, that's how fuckin’ happy I was. I wanted to be angry, mad that she didn’t even put in some effort for us to find her, that she didn’t seem to be concerned about us or the fact that she was ravishing while living as Isabella Jones from some deep levels guarded Cerberus.