Lucian snorted. “I don’t know if I would call them that…”
“You get my point, and if you don’t, let’s move on anyway. I have a hairball that may make its presence known at any moment, so please be aware.”
“So… You’re a cat now?” Lucian asked as he scratched the back of his head.
“No, I am a bloody panther. Kidding. I have always been this cat, well, it has always been me. Or…” Old Death bobbed his head left and right for a moment, his ears flitting back. “No need to get too deep into that philosophical conversation, not yet anyway, not until the hairball comes! Ahem, I’m still getting used to being in this body, like I said.”
“So… you aren’t dead?”
Old Death laughed until he started hacking up something. He arched his head forward, coughing up a hairball, a disgusted look on his face. “Bleh. There, that’s better. We are both dead, Lucian, never forget that. I just haven’t fully died yet. This cat is all that is left of me now. I wish I’d made him a bit larger. But I suppose this vessel will do.”
“What about Leliel?”
“I don’t know how she’s going to feel about me becoming a cat, but we can scratch that itch—pun obviously intended—when we get there. I’m sure she’s alive, and if that’s the case, she will show up here at some point. Perhaps I will leave with her then. Who knows? It would be nice to have a body again.”
“Is that even a possibility?”
“Maybe, but we can talk about that another time. What a fight on the beach, eh?” he asked, excitement flashing across his eyes. “A glorious skirmish indeed. And it worked. That will be the battle that starts the war. And once the war is over, then we will be able to rebuild, to restructure and prevent those at the top from pitting those at the bottom against one another. I sense some hesitation from you, some skepticism, but rest assured that this is the right way forward. It couldn’t have gone better, well, aside from Azazyel showing up, but I had a feeling that pigeon-livered mutton-shunter would be there. Now, you were lamenting earlier about your angel, if I recall, so I’m sure you can appreciate what I’m trying to do here. Maybe try to look at it in that frame of mind.”
“I wouldn’t say I was lamenting…”
“Spare me,” Old Death said, his tail flickering. “I know what it’s like to be in love with Life. And it took quite some time for mine to eventually come around. You know, similar to your situation, she was the first that attacked me. Leliel, that is, but that was so very long ago.”
“Way back in the 1700s, huh?”
“End of the 1700s. I’m not that old,” Old Death said with a growl.
“Take it easy…”
“I’m merely joking. And as for the growl, I’m still getting used to being a cat.”
“You haven’t been Ezra this entire time?”
“If I had wanted to, I could have taken over his body, like I’m sure you can do with your own creations,” he explained. “But I didn’t spy on you or anything. I was quite busy. The angel and I had a lot of frustrations to get out, and I’m not saying that we spent most of our time together getting our jollies off, but we didn’t not spend most of our time together getting our jollies off.”
“Good to know,” Lucian said, not able to hide the smile on his face.
“Ezra was a backup plan, really,” he said as he looked himself over.
“So then you never really wanted to die, huh?” Lucian asked. “You gave me your mantle, you made this big show of being ready to go, but then you got yourself kidnapped by the angels so you could reunite with Leliel. Am I piecing this together correctly?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Old Death told him. “It was my intention to pass, but then I got the feeling like I should give it one more shot. So I did, I got myself captured. And I got to be with her once again, and I thought that that would be it, that I would be reabsorbed into the spiritual world, or perhaps imprisoned forever. I knew that if I were to be imprisoned, that I would only last so long before my power petered out. You see, in my previous reincarnation, and in the same reincarnation that you are currently in, your power will dwindle if you don’t occasionally go out for the hunt, regardless of what that hunt is,” he said, his tone of voice changing. Lucian got the feeling that he was referring to taking down Death Hunters. “So, I may have just fizzled out at some point, but then you came, which I must thank you for yet again. It really lit a fire under my old ass! I would like to live a bit longer, at least until the end of the war. Maybe longer after that.”
“As a cat?”
“Until something else comes about,” Old Death told him. “It is strange, if you think about it. I am now alive in one of my own creations, and I no longer have to feed myself to stay alive because my creations are all tied to the world that I created, which is a part of your mantlecore.”
“Yeah, I wish you had told me about this mantlecore thing.”
“All in due time.” Old Death twitched his head to the left quickly as Hugin and Munin flew by, both of them dipping into the water. “So now I exist because you exist.”
“I have a question for you,” Lucian said after a long pause. “You didn’t quite give me all of your mantlecore when your title was handed over to me, otherwise this world would have collapsed. Does that mean I am weaker than you were? Does that even make sense?”
“Your mantlecore is hardly splintered. It took a lot of my core to make this place as vast as it is, but in the process of transferring it to you, yours was hardly affected. We can thank my predecessor for that. He rarely created anything; the old chap had been at it for a long time, meaning his mantlecore was quite pure. There are others of our kind out there, perhaps ones that you’ve already encountered already, whose cores have been splintered many times, reducing their overall power. But that’s not the case with you.”
“Good to know,” Lucian said. “Because I have a feeling that I still have a bunch of battles coming up, and I’m going to need all the power I can get.”
“Sadly, I believe you aren’t wrong there. But I will be around to provide guidance, and enjoy your toys,” Old Death said, yawning. “I am allowed to play video games, am I not?”
Old Death eventually decided to take a nap, Lucian figuring he’d get on with his day.
His form first took shape on top of Katy’s apartment, his eyes naturally falling to the Dunkin’ sign across the street, the sun’s reflection bearing down on the orange and pink advertisement. Lucian tried to remember what had been advertised on the billboard before but couldn’t.
Deciding he was going to make this quick, he dipped down into her apartment, noticing that she had a candle going on her breakfast bar.
He couldn’t smell it in his current form, but he imagined it was either vanilla, based on the color of the candle, or something related, like warm cookie or chestnut.
Lucian ran his hand over the flame, noticing that he didn’t feel any heat, nor did his movement cause a small waft of wind to irritate the fire.
“Yeah, I knew that was coming,” he said once Hugin twisted in front of Lucian, giving him a funny look. “But it’s good to test, right?”
Katy came out of the bedroom in a La Salle University shirt that was large enough to cover the house shorts she was wearing. She waved her hand, blowing on her fingers so her peach-colored nail polish would dry. Her stats appeared in the air above her head and faded away:
Name: Katy Weston
Date of Birth: 11/18/1994
Date of Death: 10/24/2097
Katy’s phone rang, her eyes darting across the living room and straight through Lucian.
She pressed through him, Lucian wishing in that moment that he could at least smell her, that even something as small and as simple as that would make him feel alive.
Katy tapped the speaker button, a man’s voice filling the room. “Hey, it’s me.”
“Hi, Uncle Steve.”
“You holding up all right? I meant to call you yesterday, but…” There was a pause on t
he other end of the line. “This news hit me hard. I know your father and I weren’t so close, not in the later years anyway…”
“He always spoke fondly of you,” Katy said, her eyes filling with concern. “I’m glad you reached out, really.”
“I just wanted to talk to you on the phone before I see you at the funeral. I thought that would be best; no sudden surprises…”
Lucian started to float upward, passing through the building and returning to the rooftop. It was good to see that she was okay, but it pained him to remember that he’d been the cause of her father’s death, and that he’d caused the parasite that followed.
At least it was gone for now, hopefully for good.
Lucian’s crows were just joining him when he pressed his pinky and thumb together, appearing in his brother’s backyard, his cape swelling around him and giving his shoulders a sympathetic squeeze.
His Grim Mechas formed, the three fanning out. Lucian waited for his armor with its metallic sheen to grow out of his skin, and once it did Lucian summoned his surveillance crows, followed by his sentry tripods, all nine of them scurrying off.
He knew he would need to travel like this from here on out, that there seemed to be more entities after him by the day, be they Watchers, injuresouls, angels, or Death Hunters.
Hugin dropped in front of him, the crow returning from a quick check of his brother’s home.
“Your family is here,” Hugin said in its genderless voice, Munin buzzing next to it.
“All of them?”
“Your mother too, but Lucian…”
“It’s fine, I’ll be alright seeing them all together,” he said, waving his crow’s concern away.
The sun was still out, not a cloud in sight. It was a pretty day, most of the ice from a recent freeze retreating into the shade.
There was something hopeful in the air, and as he glanced back toward the lemon sun, Lucian envisioned Danira coming down from the sky with her enormous energy weapon, the halo of energy radiation around its muzzle.
He recalled the first time they’d met in his backyard, the battles they’d had, and the point where it seemed like they were going to grow closer only for everything to fall apart.
Lucian gazed down at his feet, noticing he wasn’t casting a shadow as he should have been.
It struck him at this moment that he really was some type of abomination, not much different than the demons that he hunted.
But Lucian shook his head at that thought, realizing it came from a negative corner at the back of his mind, a corner that should be shunned, forgotten, painted in a brighter color.
His goal was to save his brother, and to do so he needed to grow stronger.
Yoshimi had said that she would help, so there was that, and while he spent the next few weeks growing stronger, he would have to navigate a minefield that he himself had helped create.
He had to constantly be on guard, powered up, ready for anything that came his way.
It wasn’t going to be easy, but neither was sitting in his living room on his deathbed playing video games only to have the Grim Reaper come for him, then to somehow save the Grim Reaper and be given his mantle.
Lucian smirked at that.
He had come a long way, and this was just the start.
He glanced over his shoulder one more time to make sure that his security detail was in place, and once he did he floated into the back of his brother’s home, straight through the back wall.
Samantha and his mother were in the kitchen, Jen playing on the couch, the television on and playing a Disney movie.
“Bob had a saying about that,” his mother told Sam. “‘You win some, you lose some, but most of the time, you barely break even.’ He always said pithy little things like that, you know how he was. He would sort of take a saying that was already out there and give it this little twist, you know, to the end of it. Oh, look at me, I can’t even think of another example right now. He did it so often. You know, I should’ve written those things down,” she said, her voice trailing off.
“It’s okay,” Sam told her as she stirred something over at the stove. “I’m sure they’ll come to you when you need them.”
And that was the moment that Lucian’s heart stopped.
His hand twitched; he suddenly felt like he was being suffocated, like the walls were closing in.
“Please, no,” Lucian whispered as he focused on their death dates.
Name: Samantha Reese
Date of Birth: 07/15/1986
Date of Death: 12/01/2020
Name: Sylvia North
Date of Birth: 05/04/1950
Date of Death: 12/01/2020
“Oh my God, no…” Lucian was barely able to mumble as he turned in the direction of the couch, seeing Baby Jen’s death date as well.
He fell to one knee, his cape trying to keep him up and failing.
Name: Jennifer North
Date of Birth: 08/17/2017
Date of Death: 12/01/2020
His brother stumbled up from the basement, his eyes halfway open, the parasite visible under his shirt, one of its tentacles attached to the back of Connor’s head.
“I’m getting hungry, ladies,” he said with a big grin that was the exact opposite of the gaping expression Lucian was currently making.
Name: Connor North
Date of Birth: 11/01/1980
Date of Death: 12/01/2020
“Just let us finish up in here,” his mother said playfully. “Unless you want to come help.”
Lucian staggered to his feet, completely supported by his cape now, Hugin and Munin helping him stand as well.
Upon reaching the back door, he turned back to his family, again checking to verify what he had seen, that it was true.
Their death dates had changed to match Connor’s.
They were all scheduled to die on the same day, less than a month away.
The end.
Back of the Book Content
Reader,
You know the drill by now. The success of independent books, like Death’s Mantle, are directly tied to the number of reviews the book receives. This helps the book get picked up in algorithms, and placed before the eyes of other readers.
Please take a moment to review Death’s Mantle Book One if you haven’t already. That’s where the story starts and it’s the first thing people see when they look at the books. If you are a fan of listening to books as well, the narration, performed by Andrea Parsneau, is something to behold. It moved me so much that I momentarily forgot that I’d written the book (dumb, I know).
So grab the audio if you’d like.
After that, please review the second installment.
I’ll wait.
Now continue for some musings.
Health Scare
It wasn’t long after my dad died that I really became concerned with my own body, hoping I could detect any signs of a future ailment.
During a yoga class, I noticed that there was a lump on the bottom of my foot.
Being the millennial that I am, I immediately went to Google to see what this lump could be.
And of course, I stumbled upon an article that said the lump might be a sign of cancer.
I began monitoring the lump, pressing my foot against it whenever I could, judging if I was just thinking it was there, or if it was really there. The thing was, when I touched the bottom of my foot, I could feel it.
But if I stood, I couldn’t feel the lump.
Eventually, I made an appointment with the podiatrist, and since I live in Connecticut, that meant making an appointment within Yale’s medical network. Alongside my wife, whom I scared with my potential foot cancer self-diagnosis, we drove to the outskirts of Bridgeport, to a medical complex near a movie theater.
I remember at the time thinking that this was sort of convenient. Go to the doctor for minor surgery or a checkup, and then catch a flick afterward.
We came to the podiatrist’s office on the second or third
floor, I can’t remember, and I signed in.
After waiting in a room with a couple other guys, all of whom had some foot issue that I wasn’t able to decipher by the looks on their faces, I was called by the nurse into a private room. She did the usual, taking my weight, my blood pressure, and then asked what was going on.
“There’s a lump on the bottom of my foot,” I told her, showing her the bottom of my foot.
“You should take your shoes off.”
“Right.”
Once I did so, she examined what I assumed was the lump, didn’t say anything, and left, telling me that the doctor would be in shortly.
The doctor eventually came, and after a brief conversation, he took a look at my foot.
“It’s a callus,” he said bluntly.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I had foot cancer.”
“You don’t have foot cancer. It’s a callus,” he said, getting an instrument that looked sort of like a cheese grater.
The doctor proceeded to scrub the bottom of my foot, which didn’t feel like anything at all considering the thickness of the callus that he’d just diagnosed.
As he did so, he told me that he was once a runner, and that’s how he got into the feel of podiatry. He also told me I didn’t have the frame of a runner.
(Gee, thanks.)
“You’re good to go,” he said, showing me his foot shaving instrument again. “Next time, you can order one of these when this happens.”
My wife and I went to a diner afterward, because we love going to diners, both of us relieved that I didn’t have foot cancer.
A month or so later, I got a bill in the mail for $180.
Rather than complain about how broken the American healthcare system was, I paid the bill, vowing to go to a salon next time and get a mani-pedi instead of paying a doctor almost two hundred dollars to shave the bottom of my foot.
Lesson learned.
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