Death's Mantle 2

by Harmon Cooper

  “Be careful how you speak to me,” he said. “Especially when I don’t have the others with me.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  Gaspard took a step forward, and Lucian did the same.

  “So you’ve killed two of our own,” Gaspard said. “Anything you care to say about that?”

  “Are you on the Committee for Death Hunters too?”

  “Very well,” he said, ignoring Lucian’s snide remark. “Then we can move on. I believe you know why I’m here.”

  “If my predecessor wanted me to know where he was, he would have told me. He could be anywhere, in any world. Places that I don’t even know about. There’s really no telling. Why is that so hard for you to understand?”

  “The Committee is starting to view your lack of cooperation as insubordination.”

  “I’m not trying to be insubordinate,” Lucian told Gaspard, throwing his hands up in the air. “I really don’t know where he is. If you want to find him, one of you should use whatever power you use to keep finding me on him.”

  “Your movements are predictable; it is easy to find you.”

  “Okay, well his movements should be predictable too. He has been Death a lot longer than I have, and if you and the Committee have become so good finding me, surely you must have kept track of him and have a general idea of where he would be. All I know is that he likes deserts. That’s what I have found out.”

  “He likes deserts?” Gaspard’s eye twitched. “That’s all you been able to uncover in that home of his?”

  “You can come look for yourself if you’d like.”

  “I have more important things to do.”

  “Yeah? Me too.”

  “I have had the mantle for several hundred years now. You will speak to me with respect.”

  “I don’t have to respect you; I don’t have to respect the Committee; I don’t have to respect anyone. We are all in this alone, and even if you have formed a little group that gets together and investigates things, everyone is in this for themselves. If you were trying to do something beneficial for all of us, you would figure out a way to smooth over the differences in the disputes that our kind has had with the angels.”

  “Those…” Gaspard shook his head. “There is a lot that you don’t know, and even more you will never understand. Some disputes are necessary.”

  “Masters of war kind of shit, huh?” Lucian asked with a shrug, feeling agitated, both from what his brother had just done and the sudden intrusion. “Well, let me put it to you like this: if, for some odd reason, my predecessor comes to me, I will tell him that you are looking for him. I will keep trying to find him, but you and I both know that if he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be found.”

  “That’s not really why I’m here,” Gaspard said as he smoothed his hand over his robes, a sinister smile parting his lips. “Well, not exactly. I’m not here for your same excuses. I’m here to give you a deadline. You have four days. Find Cuthbert and tell the Committee of his whereabouts, or have him come to us. If you do so, our little interactions will be done. If you do not find him, as the minority leader on the Committee, I will see to it that the punishment we have already laid out is administered. Four days. We’ll meet you here unless you instruct him to come to us.”

  “You really want to make me give up my mantle, don’t you?” Lucian asked, his prolonged claws starting to tear out of his knuckles.

  “Cooperate, or face the consequences.”

  “For some reason, I think that the Committee leader, the blonde-haired guy…”

  “Lord Lifton.”

  “Yeah, him, the one that sort of looks like a preppy Witcher. For some reason, I would think that he’d be interested to know that you’re threatening me. Or the lady with the black eyes.”

  “Mastima,” Gaspard said, his teeth grinding together.

  “I think she’d be interested too. What was her role again?”

  “Investigator.”

  “Then why isn’t she here? I want to work with her. She is, after all, an investigator, right?”

  “Four days,” Gaspard said gravely as he started to turn away from Lucian.

  “I will do what I can do, but there’s really nothing else I can tell you here. If Old Death wants me to find him, he will find me.”

  Gaspard paused, offering Lucian a sinister grin. “Then you’d better hope he finds you.”

  A portal began to form behind Gaspard as he held up four fingers, reminding Lucian of how long he had.

  Lucian responded with his own number, one that only took a single digit.

  Chapter Nineteen: Taj Mahal

  Hugin and Munin spun off toward the sea, swirling around each other before dipping into the water and coming back out.

  Now seated on the cliffside bench, Lucian watched the two with envy, wishing that life were that simple.

  There had been a time when he was younger than he’d felt the same about a family pet named Sparky, whose main job alternated between looking cute and keeping the family company. Sparky was cared for, well-fed, never had a working day in his life.

  Sparky was stupid, but lucky.

  “A demon feeling sorry for himself?”

  Lucian’s shoulders tensed as he turned to see Danira standing behind him in her white and gold armor, a glimmering radiance about her. Everything about her glowed, including the blue band that stretched across her eyes.

  “It’s complicated,” he said, turning back to the sea.

  She came around the front of the bench, her wings shrinking before she sat next to him.

  “Why are you always at this spot?”

  “Why do you keep calling me a demon?”

  Danira smirked. “Because that’s what you are.”

  “I feel the same way about this spot.”

  “Come again?”

  “I don’t know. The connection made sense in my head, something about not being able to change what we are. In a nutshell: I feel at home here, so something about this spot makes me feel like who I am. Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind today. Also, stop calling me ‘demon.’ How many times do we have to go over this?”

  “But it’s what you are.”

  “So you’re saying that I’m the same as the parasites that you and I have fought together? That I’m no better than them? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Danira hesitated.

  “That’s what I thought. Also, what did I do to deserve becoming a demon? Can’t you look at the life I lived or something and see that I wasn’t too bad of a guy? If I was such a bad guy, would you be hanging out with me now?”

  “All fair points,” she finally after a long pause, a pause which made Lucian suddenly feel bad for calling her out. “Consider it a term of endearment.”

  Lucian laughed. “Calling someone a ‘demon’ is a term of endearment? I’ll never get you.”

  “There’s not much to get.”

  “Four thousand years of baggage and you say there’s not much to get?” He waved his hand at this suggestion. “I can’t even imagine some of the things you’ve seen or been through.”

  “Speaking of which, are you ready to go?” Danira said, standing.

  “Go where?” he asked as his crows returned to him.

  “I told you that I would take you somewhere.”

  Danira reached her hand out to Lucian, turning it over, a golden energy spiraling above her palm. “Do you trust me?”

  “Fuck it,” Lucian said, placing his hand on hers.

  They flashed away, and it was only as they began to lower that Lucian realized that they hadn’t really teleported, they had actually blasted off into the air, Danira’s wings at full span as they barreled toward the ground.

  They stopped just in front of a rectangular pool of water, revealing the Taj Mahal’s reflection.

  “Whoa,” Lucian said, turning and seeing the famous tomb with its four minarets framing the white marble structure.

&
nbsp; He suddenly felt foolish; if he’d wanted to come to the Taj Mahal, he could have come on his own, yet here he was, his mouth agape as if he were a tourist.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Danira asked. “That’s what it looks like, you know.”

  “What what looks like?”

  “Heaven.”

  “So a bunch of white buildings that resemble mosques with reflecting pools in front of them?” Lucian asked, skepticism in his voice.

  “Some places, yes. Anyway, I told you I would take you somewhere, so I figured I would take you here.” She shrugged. “It’s better than the places you take me.”

  “Yeah, I can see how the Taj Mahal is better than my ex-girlfriend’s apartment. But I don’t know, that beach in Portland is something else. You’ve got to admit that.”

  It was morning in India, a haze on the horizon, the groundskeepers busy sweeping some of the stone steps with short brooms. There was another man at the end of the reflecting pool using a net to scoop something out of it. There were women working on the grounds as well, all of them in rags, the parts of their arms and legs Lucian could see no thicker than twigs.

  “What do you know about the Taj Mahal?” Danira asked him.

  “Wasn’t it built by some guy for his dead wife? Something like that? I think we went over it once in world history class. Or maybe it was a question at a pub quiz. My ex used to like to go to those.”

  “Shah Jahan was more than some guy,” Danira said, her smile thinning. “He was a powerful leader, the fifth Mughal emperor, who reigned for almost thirty years.”

  Lucian looked back up at the gleaming white structure. “And that’s when he built this?”

  “I was a midwife for Mumtaz Mahal, his wife,” Danira said, continuing her explanation without answering Lucian’s question. “The Shah was so distraught after she died giving birth that he obsessed over this building for the rest of his reign. Twenty-two-thousand laborers, and over a thousand elephants to transport the marble from other parts of India, not to mention donkeys, yaks, and other animals that took part in the construction of this building. The town of Agra was so vibrant then,” she said, sweeping her arm behind her toward what Lucian assumed was the city that surrounded the Taj Mahal.

  He turned back to the famous structure, finding it cute that Danira had mentioned the animals taking part in the construction, as if they’d had a choice.

  “All in all, with the outer buildings, it took twenty years to finish the structure. I was alive during that entire time. I watched it go from a plot of land that was given to the Shah by a rich businessman to what it is now.”

  “And you were still a midwife?”

  She nodded. “I was good at what I did, and it was while I was away that the Shah’s wife died giving birth. There were many that thought that had I been there, I would have prevented her death. But if I had been there, then the world wouldn’t have this. And there’s no telling if I would have been able to help her or not. It’s easy to speculate about things after the fact.”

  Danira floated up, and Lucian joined her, both of them heading toward the entrance to the tomb.

  They lowered, Lucian noticing just how finely the marble had been carved, almost as if it were made of paper. There were small portions of the ivory white stone that seemed to be deteriorating some, but the structure was otherwise solid, and while he couldn’t feel temperature, it looked like it would be cold inside.

  “Shall we?” Danira said, gesturing toward the entrance.

  The entrance was closed, but that didn’t stop either of them from pressing through it, where they entered a U-shaped hallway that wrapped around to a set of tombs.

  Lucian looked up at the dome ceiling, feeling the ambiance of the place.

  “Their bodies aren’t really in the sarcophagi,” Danira told him, gesturing toward the two tombs in the heart of the room. “They are much further below, in another chamber.”

  “To build all this for love...” he said, feeling the power of the space, light reflecting through the carved marble adding to Danira’s sparkle.

  “Indeed.”

  “He got to see it completed, right? The Shah.”

  Danira nodded. “I believe he could see it from Fort Agra.”

  “Was that where he lived, then?”

  Danira shook her head as they hovered above the tombs, something completely sober about the place, a serenity that Lucian could feel down to his very core.

  “The Shah became quite ill in 1657, a year before it was completed. One of his sons, a wicked man the locals called Alamgir—which is Persian for ‘Conqueror of the World’—took his father’s throne and imprisoned him in Fort Agra for the rest of his life. I suppose the Shah could see it from there, and I do believe there were a few times when he was allowed to visit, but they kept a close eye on him.”

  “His own son did that to him?”

  “It was a trying time to be alive,” Danira admitted. “Under the Shah, things were generally peaceful, and the people of Agra and other outside laborers were constantly consumed by the completion of this structure.” She looked up at the dome, her voice echoing, or at least Lucian felt like it was echoing. “And then he became sick, his son took over, and everything started to fall apart. The economy changed, people became crueler, wars broke out. I died during this period. Of old age, thankfully. But it is a constant reminder to me of how fragile our lives are, the things that tether our lives to others, and how quickly they can be disrupted. Anyway…”

  A bladed tail tore through one of the walls, marble flung into the air as the tail dug deeper into the structure again.

  An explosion, followed by a purple ball of flame, engulfed the inner dome, Danira grabbing Lucian just in time, both of them bursting out of the top.

  They looked down to the courtyard to see what Lucian knew to be a Death Hunter, his arms wide at his sides, the man holding two swords, a tail lifting over his head like that of a scorpion.

  “Friend of yours?” Danira asked.

  “Not in the least bit,” Lucian said.

  The man drove one of his swords into the ground, a wild grin taking shape on his face.

  Parasites began to boil out of the stone, stingers, fists, tendrils, and tentacles all aimed in Lucian and Danira’s direction.

  Lucian barely had time to blink as one of the stingers tore into his body, driving him into the ground. He ripped the stinger apart with his claws, and pulled what was left of the demon bug out of his body, his armor instantly forming, cascading down his arms and up to his body as his skull mask took shape.

  A parasitic limb hit him so hard in the back of the head that he stumbled forward, Lucian getting to his feet just as another one delivered an uppercut that sent him flying into the reflecting pool in front of the Taj Mahal.

  “He can conjure parasites?” Lucian asked under his breath as he blasted into the air.

  He went with his carbine, unloading his magazine at incoming tendrils as he tried to track the instigator, the Death Hunter.

  With a wave of his free hand, he created a sphere of injurecrows, all of them heading to the ground below. He called upon his two crows as well, Hugin and Munin spiraling off, followed by his cape.

  Lucian clicked another magazine in and continued firing at the parasites below.

  Explosions sent debris into the air, his airborne IEDs doing their damage as his cape whipped by, engulfing a parasitic arm and preventing it from reaching Lucian.

  And even though he knew that he couldn’t actually destroy the Taj Mahal, Lucian felt some despair as Danira crashed into the dome, the angel flying out covered in bits of marble, a portion of the structure giving way as one of the minarets fell.

  Lucian returned his focus to his actual enemy, the Death Hunter, momentarily ignoring the parasites that the man had summoned.

  To deal with the demon bugs, Lucian called upon Grim Mecha, his replicant nodding after his hardened metal body formed.

  Electricity sparked out of Lucian’s han
d as he soared forward to the other Death, tackling the man from behind and forcing a shock through his body.

  The Death Hunter’s eyes flared up; his razor-sharp teeth swelled in size as he tried to take a bite out of Lucian.

  Lucian’s response was to send a fist straight to his chin, his knuckles bouncing off as if he’d struck a springy rubber wall. The man’s tail grabbed Lucian by the throat and tried to pull his head from his body. Luckily, his armor protected him, Lucian thrown backward instead, straight into a circular bush.

  A half dozen swords appeared around Lucian, all stabbing into the ground at once, pinning him by his arms and legs.

  Lucian mentally called his crows to him, Hugin and Munin swirling in the air above him and instantly diving into his shoulders, ripping his arms from his body.

  There was no pain associated with this, but he winced anyway.

  As soon as Lucian was able, he sat up, his arms starting to regrow. His shoulder-mounted cannon took shape as well, firing at any tendrils that got close to him as he waited for his new arms.

  A blistering blast cut into the Death Hunter, Danira now with her futuristic weapon in her hands, firing at him repeatedly, the angel stabilized by her wings.

  “That’s my kill!” Lucian said, even though he knew that she couldn’t hear him.

  He had no idea what benefits, if any, she would receive from killing the Death Hunter, but he needed the Soul Points.

  The bone legs sprouted from Lucian’s severed arms, both of them prying themselves from the ground. They crawled over to his legs and worked to pull the swords out as well.

  In the meantime, Lucian conjured more injurecrows, which he sent toward both of the battles taking place, the one between Danira and the Death Hunter and the one between the parasites and Grim Mecha, who continued to hold his own.

  “Come on, come on,” Lucian said as his arms finished up. Once they were ready, he went for his plasma blowtorch, which he let charge for just a moment before pulling the handle on top of the energy weapon.

  The beam of power cut into the Death Hunter, throwing him off guard, the man looking over his shoulder at Lucian as he spun away.