by Cara Wylde
Headmaster Colin moved aside. Instinctively, Lorna stepped in front of a Grim Reaper. The woman looked at her for a moment, her black gaze intense and searching, then bowed slightly in front of the new Reaper. She gave Lorna her scythe. The moment the mage girl touched the foreign scythe that had been reaping souls for the past two hundred years, it turned to shimmering dust.
“Good luck,” the Righteous Reaper said, and offered Lorna her place.
“Thank you.” And just like that, Lorna Chiaramonte was a Grim Reaper.
Following her lead, all the others did the same. In minutes, I was the only one left, and it was painfully obvious… I had failed. I did my best not to cry. My fingers tightened around the handle of my scythe, and my sharp nails dug into my palm. I kept my head high and turned to meet Headmaster Colin’s gaze. He was looking at me with infinite sadness, and that did it. A single tear rolled down my cheek.
“Now what?” I asked in a choked voice.
He shrugged. “Now you go after him. You find him and try to retire him. If you can’t…”
“That’s it. There’s no future for me.”
“Mila,” he whispered. “The Academy will gladly welcome you as the only specialist in inter-dimensional dream travel.”
“In two hundred years.”
“In two hundred years,” he confirmed.
I couldn’t have it. I wouldn’t have it. I felt everyone’s eyes on me, and I hated it. GC, Paz, Francis, and Sariel were silently begging me to look at them, but I couldn’t. For now, I couldn’t follow them. They’d have to wait for me. Would they? Maybe if I had the guts to meet their eyes, I’d have my answer, but I was too afraid. So, I turned on my heels and started toward the door. The former Grim Reapers had teleported away, and I was the only one who was delaying the ceremony. The two shrouded figures were waiting for me to leave, so they could reveal their faces and grant the new Grim Reapers strength, power, and immunity to death.
I’ll find him.
He found me first.
He materialized right on the threshold. Valentine Morningstar, in his frightening glory. For a fraction of a second, hope made my chest swell. Then I saw the others. They were materializing one by one, teleporting from God knew where. Twenty-one Grim Reapers in dark cloaks torn at the edges. They all had their heads covered, but one could tell they were rugged and dirty, as if they’d just returned from a warzone.
“My daughter.” He spread his arms wide, and his skeleton-like body glowed stronger.
“You’re here.”
“Not for you.”
He pushed me aside, and since my body was already falling apart, I didn’t fight him. The strange Grim Reapers followed him. One of them removed his hood, and I gasped. His blue eyes met mine. He looked exactly like… No.
He was Sariel. Not my Sariel, but an older, crueler version of Sariel. My Fallen One had never killed anyone, although, on his bad days, he’d tried to get rid of me a couple of times. This Sariel… he’d killed plenty. One could count the dead bodies he’d left behind by counting the wrinkles around his eyes and lips.
The others removed their hoods, too, and I recognized Lorna, Pandora, Klaus, and Caspian instead of Merrit. GC’s curly blond hair was dirty and disheveled. Pazuzu’s red eyes were shooting out literal flames. He didn’t even look my way. When Francis grinned, a set of sharp, long teeth came into view. Not like a vampire’s, though. Those were the fangs of a person who ate…
I shook my head, closed my eyes, and hoped that when I’d open them, they would all go away and this whole thing would prove to have been a nightmare concocted by my disintegrating brain. No such luck. When I opened my eyes, Headmaster Colin was yelling and throwing spells at the intruders, which they easily blocked with the blades of their scythes.
“Out! Keep them out!”
Lorna and Klaus stepped forward to help him. Meanwhile, the other Reapers formed a protective circle around the two shrouded figures. I understood they had to protect them. We all had to protect them.
“Move out of the way, old man. This is futile. My Reapers have done this before, they will do it again.”
Morningstar was after the two people on the large throne. Which meant…
No… Those are… Life and Death.
He wanted to kill Life and Death. Not the concepts, not the metaphors… the actual living beings that were Life and Death. And we couldn’t let him. Forgetting that I was in no condition to fight, I jumped into battle headfirst. My scythe blocked someone else’s scythe, and when I looked up, it was Lorna. Not my Lorna. This one was leaking blue energy from her eyes, and her grin revealed rotten teeth. Her long black hair was a mess of dirt, leaves, and twigs. She looked like she’d been sleeping in a hole in the ground for the past couple of decades. I fought her with all my might, but she was stronger than me. At this point, pretty much anyone was stronger than me. She pushed me off her, and I fell into someone’s arms.
“You have to go,” Paz said. “Save yourself.”
“N-no. I can’t leave! This is my war, not yours!”
“Look at me.” He grabbed my jaw with a strong hand and made me look into his eyes. “You’re too weak. Anyone here can kill you. Anyone! And you can’t die!”
“Why not?”
“Because believe it or not, you’re still the only one who can do something about Morningstar. Go!”
He pushed me inside the circle. And I knew I could teleport safely from here, but I didn’t want to. I wasn’t going to leave them. Francis was fighting with his doppelganger, and Merrit was throwing energy balls at Caspian. Klaus came face to face with his own version of himself and freaked out so hard that he almost fainted. Headmaster Colin and Lorna were busy keeping Morningstar away from the circle and the throne.
The throne…
I turned to the shrouded figures. Something was off. Their hands were on their lap, but… not four hands. Two. Unnaturally apart, like the black one had stuck her right hand out, and the white one her left.
“You could do something if you wanted to,” I said. I didn’t know how to address them, or whether I was supposed to address them at all. Fuck that. “They’re fighting to protect you, and you’re just…”
The white figure raised her hand, grabbed the front of her shroud, and pulled. When the white piece of fabric fell, the black one fell, too. As if they were knit together. Because they were…
They were knit together… the two women. I covered my mouth with both hands to stop myself from screaming. Conjoined twins. Life and Death were conjoined twins, glued to each other not only at the hip, but at the waist, ribs, and shoulders. They had four legs, but only two arms. Death had long black hair, blue eyes, and parchment skin covering her glowing bones, and Life had long white hair, silver eyes, and pale skin that covered full, healthy flesh. They looked young and gorgeous, but every time I blinked, I had the impression that their features changed. They looked feminine one second, and masculine the next. Hermaphrodites.
“What do you think…” Life started.
“… he wants, dead girl?” Death finished.
“To end your reign.” They had two necks, and one necklace that hung around both. At the end of it, a vial the size of my fist with a creature inside it. Its body was made of smoke that shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow. A hundred arms, and a hundred legs. It kicked and screamed, yet the sound of its struggles didn’t reach my ears. “And release Time from your clutches.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
They were fighting with all they had, but they were losing. Before my eyes, things I never thought possible were unfolding. My GC threw his scythe to the side and shifted into a golden bull. His counterpart did the same, and now two humongous bulls were circling each other, forcing everyone to give them space. Paz stopped fighting the demon that looked just like him, and I thought he needed to take a breath. He spread his arms, looked up at the tall ceiling, and let out a loud growl from the bottom of his chest. The hair
s on my nape stood on end. I had no idea he could do that. The ceiling collapsed to the ground, and it was fortunate that Klaus was paying attention. He pointed his hands at the splintered stone and wood, and with a grunt, made the deadly ruble hit the back wall. Through the open ceiling, a buzz of a thousand wings invaded the throne room. Instinctively, I grabbed the black and white shroud, and threw it over Life and Death to protect them. A swarm of locusts swiped over our heads and attacked Valentine and his Reapers. After them, a hot wind that brought sand as sharp as glass blinded them and forced them to take a few steps back.
Holy shit! It was the first time I saw Pazuzu use his true demon powers. Now, the only problem was that the other Pazuzu had the exact same powers, so he pulled the same trick. Angels fought angels, demons fought demons, mages fought mages, and locusts fought and ate other locusts in a cloud of dust and sand. It was insanity!
Was it me, or was GC growing in size? My false god was full of surprises, too. The golden bulls backed away slowly, grew twice as big, and lunged at each other, head down, horns at the ready. When they collided, the whole building trembled.
I was holding on to my scythe, looking around me, trying to understand what was happening and what I could do to help.
I saw Sariel facing the other Sariel. There was a difference in their case, though. His doppelganger was an archangel that had never fallen. His beautiful wings spread wide, he flew up to the sky, and through the round crack in the ceiling, he rained arrows of solidified light onto those below.
“Oh my God!” I screamed and threw my own body over the conjoined twins I now knew was my sacred duty to protect. Arrows stuck in my back. With a pained whimper, I reached around and pulled them out one by one. They came out with strings of skin and flesh wrapped around the arrow heads. “Not to worry,” I whispered to myself. “It’ll heal.” Wishful thinking… My body was more like decomposing than healing.
It was the Fallen One’s turn. What he did next… I realized not even he was aware that he could do. Rage took over Sariel. His blue eyes turned black, and the stumps coming out of his shoulder blades grew into twisted leathery wings. His feet turned into hooves, the new shape tearing his pants from the knee down, as well as his shoes. When he opened his mouth, flames poured out of his throat. Hellfire enveloped Sariel the Archangel. As his wings burned, he screamed in pain and made his escape through the ceiling, only to return later.
“Holy mother of…” I couldn’t believe my eyes. So that was the true face of a Fallen One. After all, Sariel Gracewing wasn’t a creature of Heaven anymore. Hell had claimed him. I was almost afraid of him.
“You have to get out of here.”
I jumped when Francis grabbed my arm, and almost punched him in the face. It took me a minute to realize he was my Francis, not his evil doppelganger.
“You’re bleeding,” he yelled at me. “And you’re not healing!”
“I can’t leave them.”
He looked at the shrouded figures that hadn’t moved a muscle. It was as if they didn’t care about what was happening around them, didn’t care whether Morningstar got to them or not. We were busting out asses to protect them, risking our own lives, and they simply sat there like statues.
“I’ll make sure they’re safe,” he said.
“Why aren’t they doing something? They are literally Life and Death!”
“They keep the world in balance. Their very existence makes our existence possible. I will protect them with my life. Go!”
“Francis…” He was just a revenant. He was strong and agile, but he couldn’t summon locusts, shift into a beast, or breathe fire.
“I’ve got this.”
He gave me a reassuring smile. In the next few seconds, before my eyes, his smile turned into a sneer. His mossy green eyes turned yellow, his pupils became long and thin, his nose flattened, and his chin elongated. Green and yellow scales appeared on his cheeks and forehead. As he held his legs and arms close to his body, he started turning into a snake from the neck down. A huge, fat snake with spikes along its back. A forked tongue emerged from between the thin lips, along with a hiss.
I yelped and jumped a few feet back. The snake didn’t attack me, though. It coiled itself around Life and Death, and anyone who wanted to get to them, would first have to defeat it. Him. Not an ‘it’, Mila. This is Francis. Your Francis. And now I knew. That was why, in my dreams, his eyes were often yellow.
What this meant was that I could do it, too. I could shift into a snake, since I was a revenant and a… it hurt to say it… a daughter of Yig. The Father of Serpents, Professor Lovecraft had called him. I understood so much now.
I focused on my own body and willed it to do something – turn, convulse, shift. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried harder.
“You can’t,” Francis hissed. Actually hissed. Not an exaggeration. “You’re too weak and young.”
“Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!” I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t help any of them. I was useless.
There was one thing I could do, and that was to run. Teleport. But where?
Yolanda.
* * *
She was in her room, on the floor, surrounded by drawings, colored pencils, craft glue, and a few pairs of scissors. She had her back to me and was hunched over something she was working on. Corri was helping. Since I knew I couldn’t take my pixie to the Great Hall of Life and Death, I’d tasked her with keeping Yoli company. They’d become best friends by now.
“Mistress, what a surprise! Come see what we’ve been working on.” Her brown eyes widened with excitement. “It’s awesome! Yoli just taught me about cosplay, and it’s my new favorite thing.”
Yolanda looked up. There was something in her innocent blue eyes, a mystery that was just within my grasp.
“And we got a new friend,” Yoli said, giggling. She pointed at a small aquarium she’d made out of an old salsa jar. There was a tiny spider inside, on a bed of sand in which she’d planted a flower. “His name is Pete. From Peter Parker, you know.”
So cute. She doesn’t realize the flower won’t survive. But the spider will. The creature had built a web between the walls of the jar, and the thing was already full of insects Corri had probably caught for him, because Yoli would never hurt a fly.
And then it struck me. It struck me so hard that I almost doubled over and laughed at my own lack of simple fucking awareness. Yolanda was the weapon.
“You don’t look so good.” The joy in her eyes was replaced by concern. She stood up, her project abandoned on the floor. “Oh my God, you’re bleeding! And you smell so bad it’s not even funny. Wait. Shouldn’t this have been fixed by now? You’re a Grim Reaper, immune to death and… well, rot.”
I couldn’t look away from the thing she’d been working on, gluing, cutting, and polishing.
“What is that?”
“Oh, it’s my scythe! I know I can’t have a real one, but Mom and Dad promised they’ll let me go to Comic-Con with Hailey and her older brothers, and I want to go as a Grim Reaper. A real Grim Reaper. I modelled this after yours.”
She picked it up and handed it to me for study. It looked pretty good. The handle was wood, and the blade was made of some kind of foamy material she’d pained silver. She’d even gotten the red runes right. It was a decent replica of my scythe.
It was all coming together. The pieces of this whole fucked-up puzzle. I looked at her, then at the toy scythe. I looked over at the tiny spider in its kingdom of glass. I remembered what GC’s grandfather had told me in the heart of the Himalayas: “When you want to get rid of someone, anyone, well… except for some cosmic monster, there’s one weapon that will never fail: a pure heart and a hand that has never hurt a thing, not even a fly. The loss of innocence is the weapon.”
Was I going to do it? I had to.
Would she have the courage to do it? She had to.
“Yolanda, you have to come with me.” The tone of my voice signaled this was serious.
/> “What happened?”
“It all went very wrong, but you can make it right.” I gave her back the toy scythe. “Let’s see what this baby can do.”
She looked at me confused, but when I motioned for her to get under my cloak so we’d teleport, she did it.
Bringing a child into battle. Father was right. I am a villain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
There was blood and ruble everywhere. Neither side was winning. I guess it made sense since the good guys and the bad guys were, essentially, the same people, and had the same powers. The only ones who’d registered any progress were evil Caspian against good Merrit, and good Sariel against evil Sariel. Also, evil Morningstar against good Mason Colin.
Headmaster Colin was lying on his side, still breathing, but struggling to get up. Valentine was facing Francis in his snake form. The massive serpent stood his ground, his strong body wrapped around the throne of Life and Death, his head hovering above the ground, dodging Valentine’s attacks and spitting venom.
I ran to Headmaster Colin, pulling Yolanda after me. I had to push evil Klaus out of the way, then good Lorna helped me get rid of evil Pazuzu. She threw a wave of blue energy that knocked him on his ass.
“Are you okay? Sir, get up.”
“What’s a child doing here? Who is she?”
“She can help us.”
“Mila, get her out of here.”
I pulled him up, and I could swear his weight dislodged my shoulder.
“Can you stand?” On your own, I wanted to add.
“I’ll have to, because…” He turned his head to the side and took in a deep breath. Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.
Offended, I made sure he was stable, then put some space between us. Did I really stink that bad? If I was to die today, this was an undignified way to go, indeed. They said: “live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse behind”. First two – check. My corpse wasn’t going to be pretty, though.
