Keira Grim: The Final Breath Chronicles Book Two

by V. B. Marlowe

  I didn't want their executions to be on my hands, even though, if the roles had been changed, they would have done it to me. Still, I needed to make an example out of them.

  "They can stay under one condition." Everyone looked at me expectantly. I was coming up with this off the top of my head. "They have to serve as guards at night. Every night. I don't want us getting caught off guard like we were the other night with the Watcher. That means you'll have to get your sleep during the day."

  Moor and Nokomis nodded. They knew better than to argue with that.

  Bram looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. "That's it?"

  "Yeah. I don't think they'll do anything like that again." From the looks on the other Grims' faces, they agreed with Bram.

  Naomi stood beside me. "Keira, how are we supposed to trust them?"

  "Don't worry," Kuro said. "I'll be on watch with them."

  Bram walked over to Kage , and I readied myself to pull him off the boy. Bram knelt and tugged at the arrow protruding from his chest.

  "No," Colden said. "The proper way to remove an arrow is to push it all the way through the back."

  Bram nodded. "That's good to know." Then he reached down and pulled the arrow from Kage's chest with a loud grunt.

  Kage sat up, screaming and cursing in pain, then he lay back down with his hands over the wound.

  Bram pulled Moor by the hood of his sweatshirt and dragged him outside. Moor could have easily fought back to defend himself, but he didn't. We followed them outside. Bram threw Moor down on the lawn. We knew what was about to come , and no one uttered a word to stop it. This punishment was deserved.

  Bram pulled his foot back and kicked Moor square in the stomach. He then sat on top of him and pummeled him in the face until his fists were red. When Bram stood up, Moor's head fell to the side. He moaned faintly, but I knew it would be a while before he would be able to move without any help.

  Bram turned to Nokomis, who had been standing nearby watching in horror. Her eyes widened and she put her hands up defensively.

  "Please—" she began, but Bram cut her off.

  "You're lucky you’re a girl. Don't you ever speak to me again," he said before storming away. I'd never heard his voice filled with such hatred. From the look on Nokomis' face, it looked like as though she would have rather been punched than hear those words. I could fix that for her.

  I stepped up to her and she flinched. "I, on the other hand, have no problem hitting girls." I pulled my fist back and landed a punch dead in the middle of her face. I felt the bone from her nose crack. Nokomis yelped and doubled over clutching her face.

  Naomi pulled me away. I shook my hand. I had never punched anyone before and it hurt.

  Josh walked up behind me and put his hand on my back. "Keira, that was awesome!"

  "Only because she deserved it," I emphasized.

  "She deserved worse than that," Dorian said as he caught up to us.

  "Yeah, she did," I said, "but I don't want to be responsible for what happens to them if they get sent back to Nowhere."

  22

  The following morning I had plans to go speak to Celeste again. Under Dunstan's orders, Colden was coming with me. Bram didn't like it. At first he had insisted on coming along, then, because of what had happened the other night, he thought it would be best if he stayed and made sure everything was okay at home. Colden climbed into the passenger seat of the Mercedes as I started the engine.

  I turned the AC on full blast. I missed the constant chill of Nowhere. It was too hot in the human world. "I never got the chance to thank you. You saved my life the night before last."

  Colden nodded. "No problem. I still think you went too easy on them , though."

  I didn't think so. Nokomis and Moor had spent the entire night walking up and down the street with their scythes. They would spend the day sleeping. All three of them had injuries that would take their time healing. I thought they'd learned their lesson.

  "But," Colden continued, "mercy is always an admirable quality in a person. Personally, I would have decapitated all three of them."

  I laughed, but Colden's expression remained serious. "Don't you ever smile?"

  He glanced at me briefly before staring back out of the window. I slammed on the brakes because I'd gotten too close to a stopped car at the red light.

  Colden put on his seatbelt. "What's there to smile about?"

  "A lot of things. How about just being alive and enjoying life?"

  He looked at me again. "We live totally different lives, sweetheart. If you walked in my shoes, you wouldn't be smiling either."

  We fell silent , and I tried to think of something to say just to make conversation. "So, is there a girl that you like on the Outskirts?"

  He laughed at my question. "You mean am I all Romeo and Juliet with someone like you and Bram or Naomi and Chase?"

  I smiled and glanced at him from the corner of my eye. "What do you know about Romeo and Juliet?"

  He shrugged his right shoulder. "I read."

  "Really?"

  "Yep. Mostly the classics."

  "So did you like Romeo and Juliet?"

  "I liked the ending. It was realistic. Doesn't everything end up that way? In death."

  I shook my head. "Bram and I are not Romeo and Juliet, by the way."

  "If you say so."

  "You still didn't answer my question," I reminded him.

  Colden sighed. "No, there's no girl that I like. I find it all to be a waste of time and energy."

  "Why's that?" I asked.

  "I don't have time for it. My brother Nigel's in love with a girl in Litropolis. She's all he thinks about. When they're not together , he's miserable. I just don't see the point. Our life is so uncertain, why get attached?"

  I didn't want to argue with him any further. I wasn't so sure how I felt about love myself. We rode the rest of the way in silence.

  I pulled into a parking spot and turned the ignition off. "What did Dunstan have to say about all this?"

  "He says what these Grims have going on is the perfect arrangement. Something he'd like for our people. We don't belong in Nowhere. We don't belong here. But we definitely don't belong on the Outskirts. It's a dead-end graveyard where we all die and have to scavenge lifestones just to live some kind of life. I'm tired of it. Dunstan's tired of it. Our people deserve more."

  I gave him a small smile. I could understand that. I had no idea what it was like to live that kind of life. We weren't rich, but we had all our needs met. I understood why Colden seemed so angry and bitter all the time. Hopefully Celeste would give us some helpful answers.

  Inside, I didn't see her. I hoped she was working that day and that we hadn't made the trip for nothing. No one else could see us, so asking another employee about her was out of the question.

  "Let's go to the back," Colden said. I followed him through the swinging doors that led to the rear of the store.

  A narrow hallway filled with boxes on both sides almost to the ceiling stretched before us to the left and the right. The hallway was dim. We took the right because there were two lit rooms in that direction. In the first room , a heavy-set bald man sat in front of his computer typing away. In the next room , we found Celeste sitting at a table eating a sandwich.

  "Lunch break?" Colden asked as we stood in the doorway.

  Celeste's eyebrows raised as she swallowed. "Yeah. What are you guys doing here?"

  "We have some questions that need to be answered."

  Celeste shook her head. "I've told you everything I could tell you. I can't help you guys any more than I already have."

  I pulled out a chair and sat at the table across from Celeste. Colden preferred to stand. I wished he would sit because him standing above me made me nervous for some reason.

  "Look. We don't want anything from you," I said. "We just want to know how you manage to live here and survive. How you stay safe from your Lord of Death."

  Celeste took a deep breath. "We live off t
he grid at a compound , and our Lord of Death is in charge of things. Our colony is a rebel colony. That's all I can tell you. If your Lord comes looking for you and connects you to us, that puts us all in danger and I can't let that happen. We've been here for five years without incident , and I can't mess that up."

  I understood her concern. "Tell me about him."

  Celeste took another bite of her sandwich. "Who?"

  "You know who. The man you work for," Colden said. I wished he weren't so curt. The last thing we needed was for Celeste to shut down on us because of his attitude. We needed answers and Celeste was the only one who could give them to us. "How does your arrangement work? Because we want in."

  Celeste put her sandwich down. "His name is Marshall , and he doesn't consider himself a lord anymore. He's our leader , and our people respect him greatly."

  I told her about Dunstan and his doctor's blood transfusions.

  "Oh, our method is way more simple than that. Marshall has developed a serum. He injects it into our necks once every three months , and that's it. We can be seen when we need to be seen. We can become invisible when we want. We can see and prevent deaths ahead of time."

  "That is awesome," Colden said slowly. I thought I even detected a very slight smile on his face.

  "But," Celeste said. " A a nd this is a very big but, it takes away your immortality."

  Colden shrugged. "My people have never had immortality."

  But mine had , and losing it would be a big deal. Things were a lot easier when you knew the outcome could not be death. Immortality was a huge thing to trade in.

  "Marshall has a similar system to the lifestone exchange. Every time you save someone, you get the years of life they've already had added to your years. We don't worry about expiring."

  "We want in," Colden said quickly. Of course he did. It was a no-brainer for his people. They didn't have anything to lose, but full-blooded Grims did. Our immortality was priceless.

  Celeste glanced over her shoulder at a clock on the wall and began to put her things into a brown paper bag. "You can't. I'm sorry. We can't take in anyone else."

  "Why not?" Colden asked. "Isn't it the more the better? The more of us you have, the more deaths you can prevent. Why would you turn that down?"

  Celeste clutched her bag and leaned in close to us. "Listen, I wasn't supposed to tell you about any of this. I wasn't supposed to bring Leighton to your house to help your friend. I'm already in enough trouble as it is."

  She stood , and her chair screeched against the floor.

  "Then why did you tell us?" I asked her. "No one forced you to. When we asked you questions, you could have said nothing. Why did you give us this information if you weren't going to help? Really, there aren't that many of us." There were only seventeen of us Grims. Hybrids were another story. There were hundreds of them, but I couldn't think about that. I had to think about the Grims.

  "Why don't you look like Grims?" Colden asked, which I didn't feel was a really important question in that moment.

  "Dye. Contacts. We need to blend in. Not all of us changed our appearance. It's optional. If I came across other Grims, they'd be thrown off by my appearance." She looked at me and rolled her eyes. "Or so I thought."

  "Please," Colden pleaded. "At least talk to Marshall. Who wouldn't want a few more soldiers added to their army?"

  Celeste scratched her neck. "It's not just that. We have to work, trade, and barter to provide for ourselves. Having more mouths to feed is really not an option."

  "We'll pay our own way. We're young and capable. We'll all work and we'll do whatever you need us to do around the compound," Colden said.

  Celeste shook her head again. "I'm sorry. I can't help you. I'll continue to leave you food on Wednesday nights, but please don't come into the store anymore. There's nothing left to discuss."

  As Celeste left the room, Colden and I stood. Without warning, he shoved the table against the wall, sending napkins, cutlery, and odds and ends flying.

  "Colden, it's okay. We'll find another way," I said.

  "There's no other way. I'm going to get my people onto that compound if I have to fight my way in."

  Later that afternoon, Naomi, Chase, and I went for a walk. We'd found a place by the lake that we'd designated "our spot " . ” I told them everything Celeste had told Colden and I earlier.

  Chase whistled. "That seems like a good deal, except for the whole being able to die thing. I mean, all our lives we've gotten used to the fact that we can't die until we run out of years. I never pictured dying from a car accident, sickness, or anything else."

  "It doesn’t matter anyway," Naomi said. "It seems like Celeste has made it very clear that she won't help us."

  "Well, Colden says that he's not taking no for an answer," I said, swiping at blades of grass on my jeans.

  Naomi scoffed. "Colden. That dude is crazy. He takes himself way too seriously. Bram hates him—or should I say, hated him, until he saved your life."

  My cheeks felt warm. "He did save my life. He's cool in my book—but he is definitely intense."

  A caw came from somewhere over my head. I looked up to see a large black bird descend from the tree we leaned against. Black as night with a large beak. A raven. We had those all the time in Nowhere. They were to us what pigeons were to the human world. I hadn't seen one raven since we'd been here.

  The raven looked at us and crowed. Another raven landed beside it. It crowed again and others came. It was as if it were calling the others. Soon there were a dozen, cawing and surrounding us. This wasn't normal behavior for a raven—they usually avoided us.

  Chase stood first. Slowly and carefully. "I think we should go home. And maybe we should run." Naomi and I rose slowly , and the three of us sprinted from the park.

  I tried not to look back for fear that would slow me down. I wanted to know if the ravens were following us. The shadow that hovered us told us they were. Against my better judgment, I looked up. Above us, there were at least one hundred ravens, forming a long tail in the sky and squawking at us.

  Chase pulled ahead of Naomi and I. "Come on! Faster!"

  I pushed myself to keep up. Naomi lagged a little behind. "Come on, Nay!" I yelled. We were two blocks from the house. I hoped we could make it.

  "Where'd… they… come… from?" Chase said as we ran.

  We all knew where they'd come from. This was not a coincidence.

  Naomi screamed. Several of the crows were now diving down toward us. One clipped me with its beak on my forehead.

  I held in a scream as the sting set in. I pulled my hoodie over my head and kept my face low as I ran. Another raven went for the back of Chase's neck. I brushed it away, but not before it had left a spot of broken skin.

  The rest of the way , we tried to keep the vicious birds off us by brushing them away with our hands, which resulted in several pecks and cuts.

  Once we turned onto my street, we saw that several of the Grims were out on their front lawns, including Josh and Dorian.

  "Get in the house! Get in the house!" Chase screamed as we ran toward them.

  They looked up to see the cloud of ravens coming toward them and scrambled toward the front doors of the houses. We rushed across the grass of our own lawn. The front door was so close, yet seemed so far away. Dorian held the door open, just wide enough for us to slip through.

  Chase pushed Naomi and me forward as he paused to watch the birds.

  "Chase, come on!" Naomi yelled.

  He followed us into the house as Dorian slammed the door. I tried to catch my breath as I listened to the squawking and scratching on the other side of the door.

  Bram bolted down the stairs. "What the hell's going on out there?"

  "Ravens are attacking us," Naomi answered.

  Bram frowned. "What? Ravens don't do that."

  "Yeah? Tell that to them," Chase said in between breaths.

  Bram barreled toward the front door. I was afraid that he was going to open it , but
instead he went to the window and peeked through the blinds. He swore and pulled the string to draw the blinds up. We could see nothing but ravens pecking at the glass. There were so many of them now that , they had the entire window covered.

  "C-can they break the glass?" Josh stammered.

  "No," Bram answered quickly, but I wasn't sure about that. I ran upstairs to look from those windows. Just like the window downstairs, each window was filled with ravens, even the sliding glass door that led to the back yard.

  "What do we do?" Naomi asked.

  Bram looked around. "Nothing. We're just going to wait them out. They have to go away sometime."

  "But what if they break the windows?" Dorian asked.

  "They won't break the windows!" Bram yelled at his brother. Then he softened. He had been doing that a lot lately. "They won't break the windows," he said in a gentler voice. "Everyone should grab their scythes just in case."

  I ran to my bedroom and grabbed my scythe from where it leaned in a corner. I stopped in front of the mirror to take a look at my forehead, which was now throbbing. There was a tiny scratch there. It felt like it should have been worse.

  I met the others back in the hallway.

  "We should stay away from the windows," Bram said, probably forgetting that just a minute ago he'd said there was no way the ravens could break the windows.

  Dorian covered his hands with his ears. "How do we make them go away? I can't take this."

  I agreed with him. The multitude of them were tapping away at the glass and the noise was almost unbearable. What did they want?

  I jumped at the sound of glass shattering downstairs.

  "Get to the basement!" Bram yelled.

  We followed him to the trapdoor that led to the basement—the same one we had hidden in just a few nights ago. I heard the flapping of wings and things being knocked over.

  Suddenly a pecking sound came from the room we were in. There was a small window on the side of the basement. The window was dirty and cloudy—too foggy to see out of, but I knew the ravens were there.

  They had us trapped. If they broke through that glass, we would have nowhere to go to get away from them.