Chapter 141: Let Me Take Your Body

Leitana squeezed her eyes shut tighter, the world narrowing to the cold barrel she could feel hovering somewhere near her temple.

Then the voice came, soft and haunting at the same time, right next to her.

Let me take your body.

Leitana’s breath hitched. She understood instantly what it meant.

Possession. A last, desperate hand reaching from the other side. No time to think if it was holy or damned. No time to be afraid of what it would do to her soul.

She gave the smallest nod.

A violent shiver ripped through her like ice water poured straight into her veins. Her muscles locked, then spasmed. Her spine arched hard enough that her bound wrists scraped raw against the zip-ties. A low, involuntary sound tore from her throat, half sob, half gasp.

Jim tilted his head, amused. “Time’s up, sweetheart.”

He stepped back half a pace. “Raise her up and walk her forward.”

The two goons hauled her roughly to her feet. Her legs shook, but they obeyed. She stumbled forward three steps, then stopped where he wanted her, center of the bare concrete, facing him, maybe ten feet away. The others were screaming behind her now, Lafu’s raw “No!”, Marco’s furious curses, Stacy sobbing heavily under her breath.

Jim raised the gun again, the barrel settled on her chest.

“Anything you have to say to your friends?” he asked, with the same mocking smile.

Leitana… now Celeste inside her didn’t answer with words.

She simply opened her eyes.

They weren’t Leitana’s warm hazel brown anymore.

They were wrong, her pupils blown wide, irises flickering with something pale and glassy.

Jim frowned. “What the…”

The gunshot cracked through the air.

The body moved, impossibly fast. A sharp twist of the shoulders, a lean to the side, and the bullet tore through her left shoulder instead of her heart. Pain exploded, white-hot and searing, but the body didn’t drop. It staggered once, blood blooming dark across the fabric, then straightened.

The others exploded into screams.

“LEITANA!”

“NO!”

“YOU FUCKING BASTARD!”

Jim laughed, but it was nervous now, uncertain. He lowered the gun and flicked his wrist toward the group. “Next. Let’s do the loudmouth now.”

The linebacker moved toward Marco, reaching for the knife at his belt.

But on the floor… the body rose.

First to one knee. Then to both feet.

No stagger. No wince. Blood soaked the shoulder of her shirt, dripping steadily, but the body stood perfectly straight.

The room went deathly quiet.

Jim’s smile faltered.

Celeste cocked her head slowly to one side, studying him. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. When she spoke, the voice was hers… and not hers. Leitana’s gentle timbre layered under something colder, raspier.

“You always liked an audience, Jimmy.”

Jim’s grip tightened on the gun. “What the fuck…”

“You made me watch myself die once already,” the voice continued, soft and venomous. “You filmed my assaults and you used me.”

Everyone stared in shock. They had not expected her to be standing and talking like she was not just shot.

Jim took one instinctive step back. “This isn’t funny. Whatever trick…”

“No trick.” She smiled, small and terrible. “You killed me. You let them hold me down while you laughed.” A pause. Blood bubbled at her lips with every word. “Now I’m here. And I’m not leaving until I finish what you started. That’s your rule, right? To always finish what you start.”

Jim raised the gun again, his hand trembling slightly. “Stay back.”

She took one step forward anyway.

He fired again.

The bullet missed her entirely because her body had already moved, a fluid sidestep that carried it closer.

Jim’s face drained of color. “What the hell are you?”

Celeste in her body stopped five feet from him. Close enough that he could see the way her pupils didn’t react to the bare bulb overhead, close enough to smell blood and something else, something cold and wrong.

“I’m the liability you couldn’t control,” she said quietly. “And I’m still here.”

Behind her, the others stared in stunned silence, horror and confusion warring on their faces.

Jim’s hand shook now. “Shoot her!” he barked at the goons. “Both of you… now!”

The linebacker and the scarred man raised their own weapons.

But before they could fire…

Her body moved.

Inhumanly fast.

She lunged at them, her bound hands, still zip-tied, somehow caught his wrist mid-raise. There was a wet snap. The man screamed as the gun clattered to the floor and his arm bent backward at an impossible angle.

The second goon fired wildly. The bullet grazed her side, tearing her cloth but she didn’t slow.

She grabbed him by the front of his shirt, lifted him off his feet with impossible strength, and flung him against the far wall. He hit with a sickening thud and slid down unconscious, head lolling.

The other goon, clutching his ruined arm, tried to scramble away. She seized him by the collar, spun, and hurled him against the opposite wall. He crumpled on impact, out cold.

Jim turned to run but it was too late.

Celeste, wearing her body, closed the distance in two strides. Her blood-slick hands, still bound, wrapped around his throat from behind. She yanked him backward until his spine arched painfully.

He clawed at her arms. “Get… off…”

“You said if you start something, finish it,” she whispered into his ear, voice pure Celeste now, low, intimate, lethal. “I’m finishing it.”

Her hands tightened. Started to twist.

But Leitana surged forward.

No.

No, Celeste. Plis. No killing.

Celeste's grip loosened, just enough.

Instead of the final snap, she slammed his head forward into the concrete wall. Not hard enough to kill but hard enough to knock him unconscious. Jim went limp instantly, face-down, a fresh gash across his forehead leaking blood.

Then Silence.

Then Leitana's body swayed.

The glassy light in her eyes flickered… then dimmed.

She looked down at her own shoulder and chest, at the blood soaking through everything.

A soft, pained human sound escaped her.

“Celeste…?”

Her knees folded.

She collapsed forward onto the concrete, blood spreading beneath her in a dark halo.

The ghost-light vanished from her eyes.

They were brown again. Leitana’s eyes were wide, terrified and exhausted.

She blinked, looking around at her friends, at the unconscious men, and at Jim.

Then her gaze found the pale figure standing a few feet away.

Celeste, separate again, stared back at her.

Celeste said nothing and just disappeared, fading like smoke

Leitana’s head dropped to the floor.

Her breathing was shallow and ragged.

Lafu’s voice broke first. “Someone… someone untie me! Now!”

Marco was already thrashing against his ropes, tears and fury on his face. “Leitana… hold on… hold on!”

The room erupted into desperate motion, her friends straining, and shouting, trying to reach her while she lay still in the spreading pool of her own blood.

And somewhere far above the city, in a glass-walled office, The Devil felt it, the exact second her heartbeat stuttered.

The blindfold slipped from his eyes on its own.

Lucius and Killian both took one look at his face and stepped back without being told.

Ravial’s voice, when it came, it was not human.

“Now.”