“On the ground!” he shouted. “Everyone get on the ground right now!”
Some people raised their hands to their heads and slowly lowered themselves to the floor. Others dropped like they’d already been shot and pressed their faces to the cold tile. Selene did neither. She simply remained where she was, watching the proceedings with cool eyes.
The humans felt fear. Of course they did. A man waving a gun was a rather frightening thing. Tricksters all around the lobby fed off the chaotic emotion.
She watched Jack’s face grow flushed and fuller as he feasted on the energy in the air. It was a gluttonous act, to feed off a human like this, but they were all beasts pretending to be tamed. Gods weren’t benevolent creatures who wanted to help humans. They devoured, they meddled, they did their best to turn the course of time in a way that benefited themselves.
“Hey,” a voice hissed behind her. “Get down. The man has a gun!”
Selene would recognize that voice anywhere. It was the voice that had lured her out of her shell, convinced her she was so much more than just the ugly girl people were afraid of.
But the tone was wrong. He wouldn’t have asked to help her. He would have just shoved her onto the ground and stepped over her as he raced toward the man with the gun. Her Ronin would have destroyed anyone who threatened her well-being, even if only for a few moments.
She squeezed her eyes shut and reminded herself this wasn’t him.
It was the choice she’d made for him, all those years ago. He hadn’t wanted to be a monster in the closet for the rest of his life, and she hadn’t wanted him to be the living nightmare of people’s dreams. But he would have stayed the beast for her. He would have lingered in the shadows beside Selene until he withered away into nothing.
She’d made that choice. She’d decided this was the only way for them to go on. For him to become human, to release all the things that bound him to her and every memory of anything they’d done together. And while he lived a life among the humans, she would stay here.
Alone.
“Can you hear me?” he whispered again.
She looked over her shoulder at him, watching as he slithered across the cracked marble floor like a snake. His fingers grazed her ankle, and it sent a bolt of lightning shooting through her body, like a god had kissed her. Perhaps, in a way, a dead one had.
“Hey,” he said, “My name is James. What is yours?”
God, he’d even taken another name. She didn’t know what to do with that. Face frozen into a mask, she shrugged and replied. “Selene.”
It couldn’t hurt for him to know her name. What would he do with it? Those memories were gone. It wouldn’t trigger anything other than maybe a faint tickle in the back of his mind that he would ignore.
“It’s a pretty name,” Ronin, no, James said. “I don't know what’s going through your head right now, Selene, but I really need you to come down on the floor with me. That man is going to notice you aren’t following orders, and if we all do as he says, we’ll get out of here alive.”
“Will you?” She didn’t include herself in their numbers. Selene couldn’t be killed by a bullet any more than a Trickster could. “Are you so sure about that, James?”
“Now isn’t the time to be a hero. Get on your knees or lay on the floor like he’s asked us to do, and I promise you, we’ll get out of here. Together.”
Those were the words that did it. Ronin would never have promised her anything that he didn’t know for certain would come to pass. The man had been a lot of things, a lot of evil things, but he’d never been a liar. In fact, Ronin had been the most truthful man she’d ever met in her life.
Selene blew out a breath. “I can’t do this.”
“You can and you will. Life is worth living, Selene.”
Haunting words, because they were so eerily similar to ones she’d told him so long ago. He just didn’t remember them.
What would James do if she told him his history? Would he laugh and say she must be off her rocker, or would he believe her for a few seconds that he was the one who’d brought about the end of the world? That everyone walking around him had no idea he was the Ronin who had destroyed so much of what they loved?
Finally, she looked back into his eyes and watched him flinch when he saw the decayed half of her face.
Ronin had never flinched away from her like that. He’d seen her flaws and thought them lovely.
Mouth twisting with an emotion she didn’t want to name, Selene stepped forward and walked away from him. His fingers slid from her ankle, this time letting her go.
“Doom-and-gloom?” Jack called out from the other side of the lobby. “What are you doing?”
A few of the other Tricksters paused to stare at her as she strode toward the man with the plastic gun. They wouldn’t stop her. Everyone knew who she was and what she was capable of. They wouldn’t want to interfere in case she tried to kill them. Every death god could. But the whispers started up and echoed until they wriggled their way into her head.
“What is she doing?”
“I thought Jack said it was safe to bring her here.”
“She’s going to start a riot.”
“What is happening?”
They didn’t need to know that she was shattering from the inside out. The other gods saw her as this impossible creature who no one could touch. They saw her as an animal who longed for the darkness and constantly desired blood on her hands.
She’d lived that life, and it was lonely. Desolation was only fun in the planning but not the execution. By the end of the world, she’d realized just how boring the planet would be if it were just her. That’s why she had stopped. Because even though she wanted to feed upon souls for the rest of her life, they were far more vibrant and enjoyable while they were alive.
Her footsteps clicked on the ground, and she tucked her hands into her pockets to look as peaceful as possible. The man with the gun whirled.
“Hey!” he shouted at her. “You’re supposed to be on the ground.”
“Why would I do that, Ethan?”
He blinked at her in surprise, jaw falling open. “H-how do you know my name? I don’t know you, do I?” He tried peering underneath her cloak, but gave up when the shadows clung to her skin.
She’d let him see her face when the time was right, and that wasn’t now. All she wanted right now was for this to end.
“No, you don’t know me,” she replied. “But I do know you.”
He pointed the gun at her head. “Not all that smart of a move there, doll.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Ethan. I know that you came here from your apartment on West End, because you feel as though the world has forgotten you. Your intent was to come out here, kill as many people as possible, and go out in a blaze of glory. Isn’t that right?”
His eyes widened with every word. “How do you know that? Are you inside my head?”
“It would be easier if I were a figment of your imagination,” Selene replied with a chuckle. The poor man was already allowing her to feed off him.
His soul struggled against the confines of his body. It reached for her, sensing that there was a death so close, and it wanted her so badly.
The white mist undulated around him, visible only to her eyes as a death goddess. She held up a hand slowly and reached a finger out toward it until it could tap against her skin in a brief touch of icy cold.
She’d rarely seen souls like this. Most people clung to life and the soul feared what she would do with it. She hated having to fight them, to pull them out of the meat suit of the human body, and drag them to their resting place when they thought she was some kind of avenging creature.
This soul wasn’t like that. Ethan’s soul regretted everything it had done and thought the only way to atone for this was to die. But his mind didn’t want to enter death, because he was afraid.
So very afraid of what it would feel like to let go. He didn’t want to go alone, thinking he might hide in the ba
rrage of souls coming with him.
Maybe, just maybe, if one of the other souls was good, he could go to Heaven with it.
“You poor thing,” she whispered, stepping closer to him and staring into his eyes. The shadows clinging to her face lifted. His eyes widened even further with horror as they traveled over the weathered lines on the right side of her face. “It’s not so bad, you know.”
“What?” His voice wavered on the word.
“Death. That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it? You want it so badly you can barely breathe, but you are so frightened of it. I’m telling you now, Ethan. It’s not so bad.”
His grip on the gun tightened, creaking with the force of his hold. “You don’t know that. No one knows that.”
She stepped close enough that her voice wouldn’t carry to the other people. Selene rarely did this. The closeness to another person made her skin itch and heart burn with an age-old betrayal that only the heat of another body could awaken.
But she did it for this man who threatened the one she had loved once. Still did.
“I do know. I am a goddess of death, sent to you in this moment. You have two choices right now, Ethan. Allow me to collect your soul without sending all these people with you, and it will be an easy afterlife. However, if you fight me, I will punish you for all eternity. Don’t think I can’t do it. I can. I have for many people over the years, and I have all the time in eternity to learn what you fear.”
He gulped. “Ma’am, I don’t know if I made you up in my head or not, but if you don’t step away from me I’m going to give you a third eye in the center of your forehead.”
“Guns don’t hurt me. You can’t hurt me at all, even if you tried. But I warn you, attacking me is the first step toward your own madness.”
For a moment, she thought he might actually listen to her. They rarely did. Humans were an unusual blend of kindness, insanity, and selfishness that always drove them to do things that no other species would ever do.
But she thought maybe this one wasn’t like the others. Maybe he would give up at the last second, hand her the gun, and allow her to collect his soul without kicking and screaming into oblivion.
He didn’t.
Ethan lifted the gun and squeezed his finger on the trigger. Before he could pull it back the entire way, Selene reached out and stroked her finger down his jaw.
The first moment of death was always eerily beautiful. He hesitated for a moment, breath wheezing out of his lungs, then all the tension drained out of his spine. His eyes cleared of anger and hatred. All that remained was a sense of inner peace and reality that there was more after death.
She loved this part. The moment when the human realized she hadn’t lied at all. That she was going to take care of them and guide them into a place where they would be at peace. Even if it was a version of their own hell, at least the soul knew it was getting what it deserved.
The white mist of his soul drained out of his pores like his body heaved a great sigh. It wrapped around her hand and pooled in the center of her palm. Bright and glowing, the soul solidified into a single diamond.
“Hello, Ethan,” she said, closing her fingers around the stone. “You’re in good hands now.”
Stomping footsteps advanced upon her and Jack hissed, “What do you think you’re doing? This is supposed to be a feast for all of us.”
“It’s not anymore.”
“You better start killing people left and right then, because all of these Tricksters are going to attack if you don’t.”
Selene shook her head. “He’s off limits.”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“Fine, he’s off limits. Why are you saying this?”
Selene shrugged her jacket off her shoulders and let it fall to the ground. “I’ll give you a feast, but make him leave first.”
“How do you want me to do that?”
“Figure it out, Trickster, or everyone goes hungry tonight.”
Jack snarled but nodded at one of the other Tricksters. Selene waited until she heard the sound of a struggle and James shouting incoherently. The doors to the bank closed again.
Voices bubbled up, nervous words, people wondering what the woman was doing. Was the gunman down? Were they saved?
Little did they know, they were about to have their questions about the afterlife answered by the goddess of death herself.
They would feel fear today, more than they ever had in their lives. And the Tricksters would feast.
3
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
~ Edgar Allan Poe
Selene pressed her palm to the shattered glass panel, gently holding her hand in place while a blue scanner skittered over her fingerprints. There weren’t many places that still had electricity like this. But when she’d started the end of the world, she’d made certain she would have a place for herself.
On the outside, the building appeared to be nothing more than an abandoned chicken factory. It used to house thousands of the animals, all packed into crates no bigger than their bodies and screaming into the eaves. Perhaps that’s why she liked it so much. The emotions of those animals stuck to the walls like glue.
The panel at her hand beeped and a small metal plate on the wall lifted. She slipped through the small space. It closed behind her with a whoosh of stale air.
Selene had always liked this home more than any other. The ceiling stretched four stories above her, all open space now that the walkways had fallen down. There used to be areas for storage, but the end of the world had shattered the tentative hold the floors had and sent them crashing to the ground. A metal staircase hung precariously by a single metal bar nearby. She never climbed it, but thought it a rather interesting decorative piece. Someday it would fall, and she wasn’t certain if it would bring the ceiling with it.
The danger made this place a little more interesting.
She picked her way over fallen debris to the middle of the room where light filtered weakly through the holes in the ceiling. Dust swirled in giant orbs at her movement, stirred to life when everything else she touched died.
With a wave of her hand, the illusion of an ancient chicken coop disappeared. Her home was hidden behind a veil of magic so strong even other gods would have a hard time seeing through it. Of course, the reality wasn’t all that different from what she hid.
The only change to the room was shelves lining every single wall. Each one housed a tiny box, long and thin, that slid into a square hole perfectly made. They were the homes of souls, which didn’t take up that much space in the grand scheme of things.
A circular platform appeared in the center of the room with a small rod in the center pointing straight up. Selene made her way over to it while pulling the tiny soulstone out of her pocket.
“Here we are, Ethan,” she said. “This is your new home. Now, let’s take a peek inside that head of yours.”
Her favorite part of gathering souls had to be this moment. She’d always had a strange fascination with how others lived their lives. Hers was rather dull in the beginning, then rather sad, all culminating to a moment of peak power, then dwindling back to sadness. But others lived lives full of magic, and they never knew it until after they died.
The soulstone fit perfectly on top of the rod where a small notch had been carved long ago. Selene wasn’t even sure who made the contraption, only that it would show her all the memories of the soul placed inside it.
Right on cue, a vision of Ethan as he’d once been flickered to life on the other side of the circle. A small, white scar traced down the side of his jaw.
“Where…” He looked down at his hands, flipped them over, then looked up at her. “Where am I?”
“You are in my home. Do you remember what happened to you?”
He blinked a few times, dark eyes searching for an answer in his mind before they slowly cleared. “I do. I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“You are.”
/>
The long, slow sigh that wheezed from between his lips was one she was eerily familiar with. He didn’t know how to process the realization that he was actually dead. That the end of his life had finally come, and this wasn’t what he had thought it would be.
The question came as she expected. He asked, “Why are you here with me?”
“I told you, I’m a goddess of death.”
She watched him process the words. It was never easy for anyone to understand that the way they’d been raised their entire lives was wrong. They wanted to find the angels, the gates, but the truth was standing in front of them. And sometimes, the truth was hard.
Finally, he nodded. “Okay. Okay, what now?”
“I measure the weight of your soul. Particularly the good actions against the bad. And considering you ended your life while trying to kill a lot of innocents inside a building that provides the ability for people to buy food and drink, it’s not looking good for you.”
To his credit, Ethan didn’t try to justify his actions. Instead, he simply nodded at her words and accepted the fate. “I understand.”
“Do you really?”
“I do, ma’am.” He folded in on himself, wrapping his arms around his waist and leaning his weight forward over his hips. “I’m sorry for what I did. It was wrong, but that doesn’t justify the actions.”
An image of Ronin as James in the bank flashed in her mind. How afraid he’d been for her, not himself, because even the Ronin he was now didn’t want her to get hurt. An age-old rage flooded her mind and made her tongue taste of ash. She’d tried to destroy the world for that man, because no one would accept him. Because everyone wanted to hurt him. And look at where that had gotten her?
But still, she wanted to make this man pay for threatening Ronin’s human life.
“Why did you do it?” she asked. It was the only question she could think of that might spare him her wrath.
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