She poured all the happiness and love into Samantha’s mind. Every single speck of it that Selene had absorbed from being close to them, all at once.
“The kind of love you showed him is a pure, glimmering starlight,” she whispered into Samantha’s ear. “It was like hearing a single, perfect chord of music after a lifetime of silence. And now he knows what it’s like to be loved by something soft. By someone who wants nothing from him but to love, and be loved in return. You’ve given him a kind of magic.”
The door to the room opened behind them, and a heavy footstep paused in the doorway. “Samantha?” James’s voice shook with heavy emotions.
Selene pulled away, hiding her face and stepping back into the shadows as if he might not have seen her. But it didn’t matter, because Samantha looked at her with light in her eyes.
“James,” Samantha said. “Kiss me goodbye.”
His face crumpled, but he staggered to the bedside and managed to press a gentle, shaking kiss to his wife’s lips.
“Anna?” Samantha asked.
“I didn’t think she should see this.”
“Good,” Samantha whispered. “Give her my love, and let her know that she is watched over by more than just one angel. Take care of her, James. As I have taken care of you.”
His heart in his eyes, he nodded as he stared back at his wife. He ran a hand over her head so gently he might not have even touched the strands of her hair. “We’re going to get you fixed. I’ll ask a favor from my friend. Any cost. You’ll be all right.”
Samantha looked over his shoulder at Selene, and smiled. “I’m not going to be okay, James. But someone already promised to show me something beautiful. I’m looking forward to seeing what she has in store for me.”
“What?” James glanced over his shoulder and finally noticed Selene standing in the corner. “You?”
“Always,” she replied, stepping forward into the blue light of the blinking machines. She refused to look at him, or the betrayal in his eyes. Instead, she looked at Samantha whose gaze was filled with hope. “Are you ready?”
“Thank you for keeping your promise,” Samantha said, holding out a hand for her to take.
James lunged forward, holding her hand in his own and turning a pleading gaze to Selene. “Stop,” he said. “You can’t do this. Whatever it is you think you’re doing. You were the one who gave her back to me. You can’t take her away.”
It hurt to deny him something which felt like it should have been simple. But she was a goddess of death, and she could only prolong what the body wanted for so long. Souls were her domains, and sometimes, they couldn’t stay in their forms any longer.
She shook her head. “I can’t do anything to stop this, James. But I can take care of her now.”
“Why? You’re supposed to be an angel. You’re supposed to help me.”
Were those tears pricking her eyes? Why did they sting like a thousand needles?
She couldn’t grant him the wish he wanted. She couldn’t let his wife stay here any longer or she would lose the soul. It would wander for all eternity, and that wasn’t fair to Samantha or James. His wife deserved a happy ending to this cursed land.
Selene reached forward for the dimming soul inside Samantha’s body. Her hand passed through James’s easily, because it wasn’t his soul that she wanted. Instead, she pulled out the glimmering light that was Samantha.
The woman stepped out of her body with a lightness that only good souls contained. She was beautiful in her death as she was in life. Her hair was longer and perhaps a little lighter in color. Her eyes sparkled with mirth and where her heart used to be, a glowing ember of new power sparked to life. She was a soul that would last a millennia if she wanted to. There was a lot of love and good in her.
Selene knew she’d made the right choice, even when James’s frame shook on a sob. He couldn’t see his wife’s soul, only the body that slowly cooled to the touch. One of the machines began to scream.
In contrast, Samantha continued to smile. She couldn’t see anything other than what Selene wanted her to see in this world. And Selene didn’t want her to go with any anger or fear. Instead, she made the room look exactly like it had before. James melted out of existence until there was nothing left to Samantha but a quiet hospital room.
Samantha cleared her throat and asked one final question. “Are you really an angel? He said you were, and I never believed him but…if you are, that means I must be going—” she pointed up.
For the first time in her life, Selene lied as an answer to that question. “Yes, I am. You’re going to a good place. A better place.”
She reached out her hand for Samantha to take and tried to ignore the agonized sobs rocking out of James’s body. As she walked out of there with her newly acquired soul, she heard James’s parting words like an arrow through her back.
“I don’t ever want to see you again,” he growled.
And with that, she resolved that he never would.
8
We loved with a love that was more than love.
~ Edgar Allan Poe
“Selene?” Mutt called out. “Where are you?”
The same place she’d been for the past few days, although she was surprised the soul had managed to find her. Had she left Mutt out of her soulstone? Honestly, she couldn’t remember. She’d been living in something like a daze, and she couldn’t quite remember what had happened.
Years had passed. She’d let time waltz by with its lover, fate. Over and over again, she saw the world change. People died, souls asked for her help, she turned them away.
Nothing really changed all that much on the human realm. Plagues started by Tricksters washed away those remaining. It seemed, even without the end of the world happening, the gods were finishing her work.
Selene might go down in history as the person who had begun the apocalypse, but her brethren were the ones who were the real monsters. At least she’d tried to stop this. They didn’t care at all.
Footsteps crunched behind her. The sound was wrong. Souls weren’t able to do that, not unless they had a body.
“Mutt?” Selene asked, then turned around to see who was behind her.
Jack stood there with his hands in his pockets. He’d lost weight, cheeks gaunt and arms a little too thin. His clothes hung from his shoulders, baggy and ugly. He’d never looked like that before, not that she could remember.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Why are you alone in a graveyard?”
“It seems fitting.” Selene stood up from the gravestone she’d been carefully restoring. The small chisel in her hand dropped to the ground as her numb fingers finally registered. “I’m a goddess of death. This is where I should be.”
“You haven’t collected souls in a long time.”
“I haven’t had any need for them.”
He gestured down the path behind him, the one that would lead back to the city where they both had fed for years. “What do you mean you don’t have need for them? That’s not our purpose. There are thousands of wandering souls. They need you.”
“No, they don’t. They need to find their own way now. Just as I have found mine.” She hooked a finger over her shoulder, and even that movement made her tired. “I will continue to honor them, the ones who I still have, and find places for them so that they can be reborn into this world. And when the last soul is gone, then it will be my honor to go with it.”
He stared at her as if she’d grown horns. Shaking his head, Jack blew out a breath. “I can’t believe you. The woman who started the apocalypse. The one who ended the world. You’re going to give up so easily?”
“I’m not giving up, Jack. I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago. Look around us! The world is still dying, no matter what I do. And it’s not because the humans are aimed for destruction or that this planet has always been a ticking time tomb. The problem was us all along. We aren’t meant to be here, Jack. Leave this place for the humans,” she
paused to suck in a deep, tired breath. “This has always been their home. Not ours.”
He stepped forward and she realized something was terribly wrong. The shambling movement nearly sent him to his knees before her. She gasped, shot forward, and hooked his arm over her shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him, pressing a hand to his forehead. “What have you done?”
“Nothing,” he said, coughing into her hand. “Maybe that’s why. I can’t keep hurting these people. This place wasn’t meant for that, I agree. We’ve…we’ve caused more trouble than we’re worth.”
“Sit down.” She guided him to a gravestone and propped him up against its side. Kneeling in front of him, she looked him over.
Jack was in bad form. She’d only seen another god die once, and it wasn’t precisely a happy thing. They weren’t meant to die. They weren’t really meant to live either, so the universe got confused when one of them ceased to exist.
He lifted a hand for her to take. She slipped her fingers through his, noting how badly they were shaking.
Jack coughed again, then said, “You once told me you could make me have a soul.”
“That was a threat, Jack.”
“I don’t want to go,” he whispered. His voice shook with emotion and, perhaps, fear. “I don’t want to be a Trickster anymore, either. I don’t want to hurt people, but I don’t want to leave just yet.”
“No one does.”
How many times had she had this exact conversation with humans? They saw her face, the threat the scars held, and they begged her to allow them to stay. Just for a few more minutes, just a heartbeat more so they could say goodbye to loved ones. So they could whisper a few more secrets and things they might have forgotten to say.
She had never thought to have this conversation with a god. She’d never wanted to have it with anyone. But, somehow, having someone she knew so well die in her own arms made this all hit a little too close to home.
Jack drew her closer, hand shaking so badly that she had to hold it with both of her own. “We’ve been friends all these years. You can’t deny that. Now I’m begging you, Selene. I’m begging, see? I’m on my knees. Don’t let me go.”
“Why wouldn’t you want to? There’s nothing left in this world for us. We’re all slowly killing it.”
“Because I’m afraid.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I’m really afraid, Selene. So I need you to do this for me. Don’t let me go. Not yet.”
“Taking a god’s soul is not normal. We shouldn’t—”
He interrupted with her a barking laugh that bordered on hysterical. “Shouldn’t? Selene, when have we ever done anything we should have done.”
She sighed. There wasn’t a good response to what he said, because he was right. The gods had always taken and taken until the world ended. Why couldn’t she take just a little bit more?
“Fine,” she whispered. “Fine, just…come here.”
He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She did the same with him, holding onto his thin frame which shook from shivers even though it wasn’t at all cold. He was dying, and there was something she could to help him.
If he wanted to watch the world die and linger here alone with her forever, then so be it.
“Will it hurt?” he asked.
“No.”
“Where did all the other death gods go?” The question burned in her heart, blistering and scorching against her neck where he’d pressed the words. “Just tell me, before I die.”
Much had happened in the years since she’d seen Ronin. Selene had been fixing the world along the way. Trying to make up for all the things she’d done to him. The death gods had wanted to stop her. She was going against the very fabric and grain of how they were made. They didn’t want her to fix the world. They wanted her to do what she was born to do.
“I killed them,” she said, face pressed against his shoulder. “All of them.”
“How?”
The screams echoed in her mind. “Every way I could think of.”
“Did they suffer?”
“More than you.” Selene pressed her face closer to his still warm skin and wished her life had been a little bit different. She wished she didn’t have to watch everyone she cared about die. And she wished that they didn’t have to linger on because she didn’t want to let go of them. “Relax, Jack. I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt.”
Drawing deep upon the power within her, Selene dragged his magic out of his body with one swift pull. His physical body arched in pain for a second before it fell limp in her arms.
Killing a god was easy. Keeping him around wasn’t. She fed the ancient magic a little bit of her own power, hoping it would keep him alive. She didn't have that much left to share. But for Jack, the Trickster who’d always somehow made her want to smile, she could spare a little.
The magic convulsed in her hands then solidified into a stone that was pitch black in her hand. Not a soulstone, because he didn’t have a soul. But something similar that she could then carry around with her and pull him out when she wanted him.
“Stay there for a while, Jack,” she murmured. “You’ll need to gather your strength for a bit. I’ll take you home with me, feed you a few of the strong souls, and you’ll be just fine.”
She didn't want to give up any of her good souls. They were the ones she would make sure came back to life. But the murderers and the thieves she had a plenty. They were food for her, and now, for Jack as well.
Tucking the stone in her pocket, she bent down to pick up the small chisel she’d let fall to the ground.
Cold made the hair on her arms stand up.
“I wondered when you were going to make yourself known,” she said, straightening and searching for Mutt. A coil of mist kicked up from her feet. “Mutt, come out.”
Finally, she heard a tiny whimper from behind one of the gravestones.
“Mutt,” Selene said with a sigh. “What are you doing?”
She rounded the stone to find her friend seated next to it, curled up in a ball with her knees to her chest. Mutt looked up at her with big, watery eyes, and Selene knew yet another blow was about to land.
“What is it?” she asked again. “What is happening?”
“He’s dying,” Mutt whispered.
“Jack’s going to be fine.”
“Not Jack.”
It felt like she’d taken out Selene’s heart and stomped on it. There was only one other person that Selene would care was dying.
She didn’t know how to breathe anymore. Her lungs had seized, her body quaked, and somehow it was as though the world stopped spinning. She couldn’t imagine one without Ronin in it. Was this finally the moment when the end actually happened?
There wasn’t a home for her without him. Just knowing that he’d been alive all these years was enough to keep her going, but now? What was she to do without him?
She shook her head, trying to clear the dark thoughts so that she could focus on what Mutt was saying. “Ronin?”
“What are we going to do?” Mutt asked her. “I just remember him from before. He was always so strong, so powerful. I don’t know what to do with him dying.”
Those days were long gone, when she and Ronin had helped these people. Mutt had been just a child, but she remembered how abused Mutt was before they had taken her under their wing. She was like a daughter along with a friend. But it was the first time she’d ever thought of Mutt as young.
Selene bent down and placed a hand on Mutt’s ephemeral shoulder. “Is he asking for me?”
“No.”
“Is his daughter with him?”
Mutt nodded. “She leaves the room every now and then.”
Selene tried to measure the years but couldn’t imagine that he was dying of old age. He hadn’t been that old, and she hadn't been gone for that long. “Plague?” she asked for clarification.
“Something like that. The Tricksters thought up something new, some virus that makes people drow
n in their own blood. His lungs are failing and there's nothing the doctors can do. They won’t even let him stay in the hospital, because he’ll infect other people.”
“Where is he?”
But she knew where he was. She didn’t have to hear Mutt’s answer to know he was at the old house, the one where Samantha had lined the walls with love and light. He wouldn’t want to leave that place. Not without a fight.
A sudden surge of power filled her, and she blinked out of existence. One moment she was in the graveyard, the next, she was standing in the front yard of the little white house that had seen better years.
Someone had removed the bike she remembered their daughter, Anna, riding regularly. Now, a white picket fence outlined the property and a shutter hung from one nail. But it was still a white house, the roof was still good, and the windows were still clean.
Inside that building, the man she loved was dying. And Selene refused to let him die alone.
As if in a trance, she walked through the yellowed yard. Her footsteps crunched on grass that had long since died. Any life left wilted in the wake of a death goddess, soaking into her skin as more power she could use.
The front door creaked under her hand, but no one called out to ask who was there. The interior of the home felt like a tomb. She might have thought she was too late, if she hadn’t heard a cough from the back of the house.
The floor was carpeted with a thick, plush green. It softened her footsteps as she walked down the hall. The walls were covered with pictures of James, Samantha, and Anna. Smiling photos of a child who was young and hadn’t seen what the world could bring yet.
Then smiling photos of a tired man and a sullen daughter, alone in the world. Each photo seemed to get happier as the years passed. The picture frames holding a timeline of their life as they grew up. A dance recital. A graduation. A home of her own. All stages of life as her father helped guide her through the world.
He’d done a good job. She looked like she’d grown into a woman that Selene quite liked.
A door at the end of the hall opened, and Selene backed into the shadows of another. Light streamed from beyond. Anna stepped out, taller now and so much more an adult than she had been the last time Selene saw her. Anna left the door open and moved into what Selene assumed was a kitchen, or perhaps a bathroom.
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