A Merciless Year One

by Eva Brandt

  I didn’t know how long I forced myself to fight the inevitable, but in the end, I couldn’t continue my battle. An icy numbness settled over me. A feeling of comforting calm enveloped me, reminding me a little of my mother’s embrace. She had been so much warmer than this, but the change was oddly soothing.

  Helpless, I let myself drift and closed my eyes. I knew I would never open them again. But maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be so bad.

  I was wrong—on both counts.

  When I came to once again, I didn’t know what I expected to find, but it certainly wasn’t… nothing. I appeared to be in a strange void, floating through the darkness like a piece of space rock adrift through the universe. At first, I was so confused I just lay there and waited for something to happen. I snapped out of that pretty quickly and tried to move around. My limbs felt stiff and heavy, but they obeyed. It didn’t make much difference, since the only thing I could do was spin around through the darkness like a demented starfish.

  Time passed. I screamed, cried, and clawed at myself. I couldn’t feel any pain, nor could I taste the salt of my own tears.

  If this was death, it really sucked. I’d expected more fire and brimstone from hell. I supposed that the devil must’ve gone with the ‘less is more’ option and had decided on a new approach. Or maybe everyone who’d made guesses on the afterlife had just been wrong.

  After what seemed like forever, a light shone through the darkness. The rays zeroed in on me and surrounded my body, gripping my arms in a tight, but gentle hold. An unfamiliar voice echoed in my head. “Delilah St. John, awaken!”

  I didn’t hear the words, and yet, somehow, they registered, in some part of my consciousness that transcended time and space. Instinctively, I followed the command. I had no idea who’d uttered it, but anything was better than being stuck in this in-between.

  The moment I cracked my eyes open, I wished I hadn’t been so hasty in making my decision.

  I was lying on a stone slab in an indistinct, empty room. A dark-haired woman stood by my side, her figure glowing ominously in the gloom.

  Her dress seemed made entirely out of black feathers and she was holding a wickedly sharp sword in her hand.

  Her companion was even more unnerving. The creature in question was a gigantic skeleton. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female and its clothes were blurry, swirling shadows, which gave me no clues. But I couldn’t be bothered to care about irrelevant details like that. I was too busy worrying about the scythe that floated in front of the skeleton and the threatening light in its fiery eyes.

  I wanted to believe they were cosplayers who’d taken the wrong turn and missed the most recent Comic Con, but I knew better.

  There was nothing fake about the terrifying auras they emanated. That sword had seen blood and death, and that scythe reaped people, not crops.

  No, it couldn’t be. I had to… I had to stay rational about this. I had to find out what was going on.

  “W-What is this?” I asked shakily. “Who are you people? Am I dead? Am I hallucinating?”

  The skeleton lifted a bony hand, stopping the avalanche of words. “We’ll answer all your questions, but first, you must take a moment to allow your soul to settle. The process you went through is very taxing on a mortal. You have to calm down.”

  What the actual fuck? Allow my soul to settle? What did that even mean?

  “No offense, Mr…. Whoever You Are, but I don’t find you or your friend very calming.”

  I had a vague idea on the possible identity of the skeleton, but I wanted to be wrong. God, I hoped I was wrong.

  “That’s understandable,” the woman replied, her voice mellow and soothing. “A soul who has tasted death will always sense deities associated with it and will be leery.”

  “D-Deities,” I repeated like an automaton. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. “This is… This is all a bad dream, isn’t it? I fell asleep on the deck. Or I got sunstroke and I’ll wake up in the hospital. This can’t be happening.”

  The woman shot me a strikingly compassionate look. “I’m afraid it’s the truth. We’d have liked to break it to you a little more gently, but the types of methods we use always require a degree of forcefulness.”

  I stared at her, torn between confusion, grief, and rage. In the end, the rage won out. “I think I noticed your forcefulness when I drowned, yeah. What did we ever do to you? Why did you kill me and my family?”

  “We weren’t the ones who attacked you,” the skeleton answered. “As far as I’m concerned, it wasn’t your time to die.”

  “Then, why? I don’t understand…”

  I trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. Thankfully, I didn’t have to say or ask anything else.

  The skeleton took a step forward and bowed lightly. “Let us start with the beginning and introduce ourselves. I am the Grim Reaper and this is the Lady Morrigan. We are both aspects and avatars of death, although in very different ways.”

  Their names shocked me, even if I’d already guessed at least part of their identity. The Grim Reaper was actually a thing. The Celtic goddess of war, fate, and death existed. How had I gotten myself into this mess?

  I hugged my knees to my chest, feeling impossibly naked in my bathing suit. The stone slab felt colder than ever before, but I tried to ignore it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said. I didn’t really mean the words, but it paid to be polite to deities. Or at least I thought it did. I’d never met a god before. It was a day for new experiences.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Delilah,” Morrigan replied. “We both wish it had been under different circumstances.”

  Right. My death. Here was my chance to get some real answers. “What exactly happened?”

  “Your yacht drifted a little too close to a very dangerous location, an island that held a school for demons,” the Grim Reaper replied. The Academy of the Devil, it was called. The island was involved in a battle between groups of angels and demons. Lucifer Morningstar was one of the leaders involved in the fight. The shields around the school attempted to keep him out and he forcibly cracked them, leading to a backlash of magic that created the tidal wave.”

  Well, fuck. I didn’t even know where to begin with that one. A school for demons? The Academy of the Devil? A battle between angels and demons? Lucifer? This was crazy.

  I supposed that, if death deities existed, anything was possible. Still, it was a little hard to believe.

  The Grim Reaper seemed to read my mind. He waved a bony hand and his scythe started to spin. I yelped and instinctively pulled away. I needn’t have worried, since the weapon was no danger to me.

  Instead, the scythe sliced straight through the fabric of reality. It shouldn’t have been possible, but the sharp edge ripped apart the air between me and the dynamic duo. Ghostly figures slid out of the hole like noxious, icy fumes. They coalesced into an image of the ocean, as it had been the day of my death.

  I could see myself, talking to my mother, and then picking up my e-book reader. I could see my parents, arguing below deck. As night fell, I caught a glimpse of my father checking the engine.

  And then, the source of the problem became obvious. The image shifted, revealing the massive figure of a four-winged angel. He looked bestial, but in a divine way. Whenever I’d thought about angels in the past, the image that had come to mind had been similar to what I’d seen in Renaissance paintings. He was nothing like that. He had four faces—only one of them humanoid—and four wings. Somehow, though, he was beautiful, not monstrous.

  He was also holding a fiery blade in his hand, and he brought it down again and again on a set of transparent shields. The moment the protective magic cracked, a wave of power swept over the ocean.

  The yacht holding my parents and me was destroyed in seconds. I was surprised I’d remained cognizant for as long as I had.

  “So… Lucifer,” I whispered. “Satan is the one who killed my parents.”

  “He’s the one who caused the boating accident, yes,” t
he Grim Reaper replied. “Your bodies were never recovered.”

  Helpless tears burned at the corner of my eyes. “Why are you showing me this? Are you trying to make things more difficult for me?”

  He shook his head. “Of course not. We’re merely giving you the explanation you need and you asked for. You might deem it cruel of us, but life is just as cruel as death, if not more so.”

  He had a point. “Okay. Assuming I believe you, why are you talking to me in the first place? I mean, I doubt two aspects of death regularly visit every person Satan killed.”

  “Indeed. We’re here to give you a chance to live again. In a way. Your mortality is gone, but that doesn’t mean your story is over.”

  His cryptic words did nothing to clarify the situation. He seemed to be contradicting himself, but he wasn’t. God, this was complicated.

  Having noticed my confusion, Morrigan began to elaborate. “We can’t send you back to where you were. As Delilah St. John, you died, and there’s no coming back from that. But your parents aren’t beyond our aid. There is a way in which you can help them, a method that will allow you to save them.”

  The three latter words sliced through my haze as neatly as the Grim Reaper’s scythe. “How?” I croaked out, stealing another glance at the image. Our boat was no longer visible, but when I reached out, the ocean turned into a memory of the three of us, the way we’d been before everything had gone wrong.

  I was only eight and I was kneeling underneath our Christmas tree, opening my presents. My mother sat behind me, watching me with a warm, indulgent expression. My father was helping me with a stubborn ribbon, all the while making funny faces at me. “Oh, this one’s interesting. I wonder what it’ll hold.”

  “It has to be a new Wii! I was good and Santa promised.”

  “Of course he did. And we know Santa always keeps his promises.”

  The new gaming platform was indeed in the box and my child self let out a happy cry. “I got it! Mom, we have to make some great cookies for Santa next year to thank him.”

  “Of course, sweetie,” my mom replied. “We’ll bake them personally. Santa will love them.”

  Watching the happy scene, I felt like I was drowning all over again. If I could’ve had any gift now, I would’ve liked one more day—one more hour to tell my parents I loved them. But I couldn’t, so I picked the next best option. “What can I do?”

  “You can become their guardian angel,” the Grim Reaper replied bluntly.

  “Guardian angel?” I repeated. “You can’t be serious…”

  “Of course we are,” Morrigan answered. “You see, Delilah, angels were created by The Supreme Being and their nature transcends that of mortality. The Celestial Realm is one of spirit, not flesh. A lot of angels never test out their physical bodies, although they have the ability to summon one at will, if they need it.”

  “But there’s a different category of angels, an exception, if you will,” the Grim Reaper continued. “On occasion, humans can be given the chance to become divine beings. We are offering you this opportunity. You can still save your family, Delilah. You can earn your wings. You can be a guardian angel.”

  My head was spinning as I processed the full weight of what he was saying. On one hand, I wanted to jump at the chance. It was an alternative to dying and I could be with my family again. And yet, I couldn’t help but find the whole thing very sketchy.

  “Why? Why would you make me this offer?” There had to be a catch. People didn’t just come back from the dead. This felt an awful lot like a deal with the devil—which, considering what had brought me here in the first place, was a very sobering thought to have.

  “It’s quite simple, Delilah,” Morrigan offered. “Lucifer and his family are the guardians of The Infernal Realm. The Heavenly Host watches over The Celestial Realm. The Mortal Realm needs a champion too, and that person has to be you.”

  My heart fell at the serious expression on her face. “Lucifer… He’ll just keep killing, won’t he?”

  “We don’t know what will happen. He might. He might not. But regardless, there always has to be a balance. We’re in charge of protecting that. Right now, Lucifer’s new queen has heavily tipped the scales in favor of The Infernal Realm. In the long run, that might be disastrous. Heaven and Hell have struck an uneasy peace throughout the past couple of centuries, but that can easily change.”

  Dark fury rose up inside me at her words. I didn’t know if I could be a protector or a champion. I’d been unable to protect my family or myself. I was just a regular girl, with a regular life.

  But I wanted revenge, and the deities of death were giving me the perfect way to get it. Heaven? Hell? I didn’t care about that. I wanted Lucifer to pay for what he’d done.

  And first and foremost, I wanted to save my parents.

  “All right. I’ll do it. Where do we start?”

  The Grim Reaper and Morrigan shared a long look. Their silence gave me a bad feeling. If they were reluctant to tell me something, after everything they’d already shown me, it had to be bad.

  “Well, that’s the thing,” the Grim Reaper said at last. “Before you can become an angel, you have to go to Watcher Academy. It’s a school created for fallen angels, for Lucifer’s closest friends, former soldiers and companions.”

  In the image still hovering between us, the view of my happy family vanished. Lucifer reappeared, this time surrounded by a host of fallen angels.

  What the fuck?

  Truth and Duty

  I’d never given much thought to my prospective university life. When I’d been younger, I’d had all sorts of plans and ideas on my future career, but all that had faded into a strange haze as my parents’ marriage had fallen apart and my life had turned into a strange shell of its former self.

  Thinking back, maybe it was for the best that I didn’t have any grand dreams. I would have probably had trouble reconciling them with my new truth, with what I found at Watcher Academy.

  I expected something straight out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yes, this was a school for fallen angels and yes, it was located somewhere in Heaven—supposedly—but I wasn’t fooled. Sunnydale always looked like a perfectly normal, harmless city too—until vampires, hellspawn and other dark creatures spilled into it like carnivorous locusts.

  My new school was nothing like that and I didn’t realize what I’d gotten myself into until I stood in front of a set of glowing gates, dressed in nothing but my bathing suit.

  I stared down at myself and felt the urge to cry returning with a passion. In the big picture, walking into a school in nothing more than a bikini was not that bad. But at that moment, it was just a reminder of how utterly alone I was.

  I took a deep breath, refusing to be so easily crippled by a small detail. “You’d think that an all-powerful deity would have enough sense to give me clothes before sending me to school, but apparently not,” I muttered.

  I could have sworn I heard a low chuckle echo in my ears, but I decided to ignore it. The Grim Reaper had made it clear that this was my task to handle and the price I had to pay if I wanted to help my family.

  Since the Grim Reaper was no help and displayed no intention of showing how to get into the school, I walked up to the entrance of the academy. There was a wing-shaped symbol hovering above me, and for some reason, it felt mocking. Pushing back the absurd thought, I pressed my hand to the glowing metal of the gate. I didn’t expect it to work, but maybe not every magical gate needed a password in a secret language. My hand lit up and I felt a tug against my heart. Light enveloped me, the gate vanishing into an avalanche of unbearable white.

  For a few seconds, I was afraid that I would once again be lost in a formless, ethereal world and wake up in an entirely new kind of nightmare. Maybe I’d even realize that this whole guardian angel thing had been a crazy dream. A small, treacherous part of me would have preferred it.

  But that moment passed quickly and before I knew it, I was waking up in the middle of a sunny orc
hard. I lay on the ground, stretched out on the softest, greenest grass I’d seen outside a commercial. The soft perfume of flowers tickled my nostrils and when I inhaled, I could have sworn I felt a little more alive.

  It would have been an idyllic setting if not for the alarming, vicious shouts that echoed through the air.

  “No! That’s not the way you’re supposed to attach that limb! Lucifer help me, how are you so hopeless?”

  “Well excuse me for skipping anatomy for the past a thousand years. I had more important things to do.”

  “Yeah? Like what? Turning the academy into your own personal porn stash?”

  Baffled by the exchange, I got up and considered my options. I highly suspected the academy they were talking about was the dreaded Academy of the Devil, which meant these people were likely Lucifer’s minions. My best bet was to avoid them. But on the other hand, this was my chance at facing the people who’d attacked my parents.

  On some level, I knew it was stupid. I knew that there was nothing I could do against a group of fallen angels. I hadn’t come here seeking vengeance. Presumably.

  But I’d never been that good at doing what people expected of me, and forgiveness wasn’t my style. Truly, I was the worst possible choice for a ‘savior’ in the history of time.

  The memory of the Grim Reaper’s explanation still floated at the forefront of my mind, poisoning me to the very core. With a furious hiss, I stalked in the direction of the voices.

  Oblivious to my approach, the men continued to argue. “I really don’t think you should criticize me on my tastes for pornography. You’re the one who came up with this ridiculous idea in the first place.”

  “Actually, that was Sariel.”

  “What can I say? Alyssa was very convincing.”

  I wanted to eavesdrop for a while longer, to find out what made these people tick. Maybe that way, I would understand why my parents had died, why so much pain and loss had been necessary.