Okay, my gaze traveled through the masses until I spotted Ryan fighting with a demon twice his size. I was about to tell Sky to fly to him, but she was already doing so on her own. The demon threw a punch—his fist was twice the size of Ryan’s head—and he went sailing through the air, knocking into two others. He got up slowly and shook his head. “Ryan!” He looked up, and I extended my hand out to him, using my other to hold onto my scythe and Sky both. The two demons were looking at him like he was a target. His hand grabbed mine—one of the demons reached for him and I had to let go of Sky and swing my scythe out. I sliced into his chest. Ryan jumped on behind me and we were back in the air.
“I had everything under control,” he clarified, and I looked back at him—my eyes moved to his chest where I saw no chain. My heart plummeted. I kept holding on to a way to save him, but my own power reminded me that he’d already lost to life and death—everything. “There’s too many of them,” he added, and my eyes roamed over the chaos below us.
“All we can do is keep killing them until Grim kills Marcus,” I said.
“Will that really be enough?” His words sent a chill up my spine.
Another chain started pulsing to me—exactly the way Tess’s had and I followed it until I saw the woman it was connected to—human. I thought that everyone had managed to get away, I guessed wrong. What was the pulsing? Was I supposed to save her… I gripped my scythe. She wasn’t supposed to die today. Her chain was trying to turn into a fuse when it wasn’t supposed to.
She screamed, scrambling to her feet until she was backed up against the bricks of the library. Demons with horns and red skin surrounded her. They were average size men and women, but there were a lot. “What is it?” Ryan must have noticed I had gone tense. His eyes followed to where I was looking. I looked down at my scythe and wondered… I was starting to realize how similar my power was to Grim’s, yet it was different, but…
I visualized what I’ve seen Grim do before and closed my eyes. When I looked at my scythe again, it was a chain in my hand. It moved like a snake and before I knew it, it was slithering out of my hand and racing toward the demons. One by one, it wrapped around them until it rounded them up in a circle. I gripped what part of the chain that was left in my hand and yanked. The chain ripped through them—it was disgusting and satisfying all at once for me.
“Really.” Ryan took a deep breath. “What are you?” he was genuinely asking me, and I couldn’t give him an answer that I still didn’t know myself.
Something rammed into Sky while we were distracted—she let out a furious cry. I looked around to see a shadowy figure slipping around us, it looked like a shadow in the form of a dragon. Ryan was yanked off Sky and I was too late to reach for him, then I was knocked off right after.
Sky shrieked in fury as she whipped her tail out to smack the dragon—her tail went straight through it. I looked up to the one that held me in its talons as it took me higher. In my head, I imagined what I wanted my scythe to be and soon after, it became a golden sword in my hand. I stuck it into the shadow and unlike Sky’s attempt, my sword destroyed it.
Only I didn’t think it through, and now I was falling from the sky. Grim was there to catch me in the air—he was always there to save me. I smiled at him, but it quickly turned into an ‘oh crap’ look when I saw Fear coming at us with a sword. It was out of nowhere and somehow, I instinctively moved my sword up to block his attack.
Then, Grim was placing my feet on the ground as Fear attacked again. He turned on me, and Grim faded in front of me to block him. Fear hissed—he was desperate to end me just to get back at me for not being what he wanted and for piecing Grim and Killian back together. But most of all, he wanted to make Grim suffer.
Rixen jumped Fear from behind and was lifting him into the air. He didn’t get far, though. Fear ported on him. I searched the sky for Sky and saw red when I caught sight of a shadowy dragon biting at her while she landed close by. She couldn’t fight something she couldn’t touch. I ran to her and my sword was inside the shadow before it even knew it was a goner.
My heart caved when I took another look around us. Dragons were fighting alongside Reapers, yet the demons kept coming through the portal. Denver was being overrun with demons.
Chapter Eighteen
Killian
I watched Melanie go to help Sky and in my head, I chanted, “I see her, I can feel her, she’s safe.” That was the only way I could concentrate on what I needed to. I always sensed her, no matter what I was doing.
I grew tired of this game of cat-and-mouse with Fear. Marcus’s death was crawling all over me—humming, burning, ready to ignite. Even though he was meant to die, it didn’t make it easy since he was merged with Fear. He kept porting on me every time I was close, and he would keep doing so because he knew the moment I get my hands on him… First, I needed to take his portal chip away from him, but he was always popping up when I focused on another demon or Melanie. What made it worse, he had a witch spell him with some sort of invisibility spell.
I relaxed and concentrated on finding him through Marcus’s death. When I was meant to kill something, I could always find them by that link, but I couldn’t keep them in one place like I needed Fear to be. My essence brightened when I found him in my mind and I faded to a rooftop. The only person I saw was Melanie’s friend, Tess, but I knew he was up here.
Her eyes widened when she saw me, and she started backing up as I hurried to her. “No more running,” I told Fear just as he became visible behind her.
She screamed, and I pushed her to the side right before his tail moved after her—it still hadn’t healed from Melanie chopping a good chunk of it off. I stepped on it and reached for him, but he pulled back.
“Still not tired of protecting them?” It always came back to that with him. He couldn’t understand my willingness to protect lives that weren’t meant to die. “If not, then do you really have time to worry about killing me?” My essence flooded with darkness, giving away my anger. So, he thought by distracting me with all these lives that it could protect him from his own death? I was a damned good multitasker.
Melanie was right, I was vain.
There was a tug in my chest, a pulling, a wrongness—someone was close to dying and they weren’t supposed to, but even so, they could still die under unexpected glitches in fate. Like this situation right now, it wasn’t supposed to happen, yet it was. There was a major shift in lives right now, and I couldn’t sit back and do nothing.
Not when it was my job to keep it right—balanced, restore it to how it should be.
Fear smiled, knowing the demons were sparing his life with every second they pulled me away from him. I willingly turned away from him and stepped toward Tess. She scrambled back and squealed. It made Fear laugh.
“It’s funny, really, you spend an eternity looking after mankind, guiding the dead, and ridding us—the evil ones—from the world and all you get in return is screams and terrified looks.” He made an example out of Tess, and her eyes moved over him in realization.
I scooped her up and faded. I took her to her bedroom and placed her on her feet. Her eyes were full of uncertainty as she looked at me and it didn’t bother me—I knew the way I looked as Grim would be frightening for any human and that had never once bothered me, until the day I met Melanie.
Melanie’s fear of me had been the only one. She unraveled me and filled me with dread at the thought of showing her a part of me. That was why I held it off for so long until I couldn’t anymore and became Grim in front of her for the first time… and when she had left me and drove off that night out of fear…
She ripped my heart out.
But she was the only one with that kind of control over the way I felt and now when she looked at me, I knew there was nothing but love, admiration, and even desire… I’ve noticed the look on her face when I used power around her… she even loved me this way and what I could do.
Her thoughts were the only thing that mattered.
>
The heaviness in my chest was getting stronger and I faded again. Demons were all around the car I faded next to. A family of four was stuck in the car in the middle of the road. When I looked around again, I saw that they weren’t the only one. The traffic was starting to back up and before any of them had a chance to turn around, demons surrounded them.
I changed my scythe into a chain and whipped it around to hit the demons. It got them away from the car and a second later, I faded and sliced through every one of them until not one was left standing. I moved through the vehicles, killing demons and trying to make a way for them to turn around. They were just as afraid of me, though, as they were of the demons.
Ron, a Reaper, joined in to help me out. Around us, the souls of the demons we’ve killed were piling up—they were like clouds of darkness moving around, but none of us had any time to send them to Satan’s Flames when we were too busy killing more of them.
Another Reaper moved in beside me. “Go, we’ll protect them. You take care of Fear so we can end this for all of us.”
I nodded. In moments like this, I was reminded all over again that I wasn’t the lonesome Reaper that I once was. I had Reapers—a family I created, in a way. I had a home. I had demons around me that lived for the same thing I did.
And now, I had Melanie.
She was the very reason why I needed to end this.
Chapter Nineteen
Melanie
Sky was in the air, biting off heads and limbs while I stuck to the ground. I alternated between my scythe and turning it into a sword. I was getting quicker at it and my body was showing no signs of fatigue. My power must be feeding off Grim’s through the cloak—he had been right about it.
Something jumped me from behind, and two ogre-looking demons stepped in front of me. I switched my scythe into a sword and impaled one in the stomach. I couldn’t get the sword back out, and the ogre didn’t even look affected by it. Whatever was on my back laughed—it was a she—and covered my eyes with her hands. Then one of the ogres must have punched me because it had enough force to throw me onto the ground with the she-demon still on my back.
She swiveled around until she was the one on top, and I was too stunned by the punch to do anything. I looked up to the demon and the pain in my jaw suddenly became less important as her mouth opened to the size of my head. I panicked, grabbing her shoulders and neck careful not to get close to her razor-sharp teeth—her face was all mouth now, it was messed up.
I looked to my right where my sword was and couldn’t even risk taking my hands off her to get it. Saliva dripped onto my face and I gagged. Now, I was good and worked up, the queasy feeling in my stomach was all I could take. I gritted my teeth and sent power through my hands. She screamed as my power lit up her skin. She tried to get away, but I wouldn’t let her—her face went back to normal, her eyes rolled back, and her entire weight sagged over me. She was dead.
I pushed her off me and grabbed my sword. The ogres were waiting their turn, and I was plenty pumped up to do it with all this adrenaline coursing through my veins. One was behind me and I swiveled around to face him before he could do me any harm. This ogre’s chain was a dark orange and the length of it told me he had a lot of years left—if only he hadn’t decided to come here. I decided to take a chance and do what I wanted to with Marcus before he kicked me out of the dream.
His arms were coming out to grab me but I dodged him easily and grabbed his chain in the process. I brought it to the ground and held it there with my feet. I gripped my sword with both hands just as the ogre went at me again. I slammed the tip of my blade down over the chain, breaking it in two. The chain lit a fuse where I broke it and not even a second ticked by before it was at the ogre’s chest. His eyes widened as he gasped, falling over dead.
I smiled, knowing the truth now. I could kill Marcus myself.
I was yanked back by the hair and dropped my sword in the process. I scrambled to gain my footing, but the second ogre lifted me up to my feet, bringing his hand to my neck. He moved me around to face him as he held me up and laughed—his belly jiggled in the process. I kicked at him but he wasn’t affected. I tried reaching for his chain but I wasn’t close enough to where it floated from his chest so I went back to holding his hand over my neck in an attempt to ease the pressure there.
“Hey, ugly as fuck!” Ryan yelled, and the ogre turned his head to face him the same time I did. Ryan was running at us and I knew he was going for a football tackle. My body tensed up because I could already tell how it was going to go. The ogre was easily seven feet tall or more and when Ryan hit into him; he bounced off his belly. The ogre laughed again as Ryan got back up ready to go at him again.
“Ryan, stop!” I coughed, starting to feel the pain in my neck. “Hand me my sword!”
But the ogre took one look at my sword and went after Ryan with me still in one hand. Ryan’s jaw tightened as his eyes leveled on the ogre’s grip on my neck and went at him again, but he didn’t get anywhere because the ogre’s free hand went straight for his neck.
He lifted Ryan up next to him and now we were side by side in the same awful situation. We exchanged a look that spoke volumes, something like “we are so screwed”. “Melanie, your power,” Ryan told me, and my eyes widened. Oh, yeah, I still had it! I felt my hands heating up over his that held me by the neck, but before I got the chance to use it, a sword burst through the ogre’s chest. His eyes rolled back and blood splattered us in the face. The blade continued to move up his chest and into his face, splitting him. We fell to the ground and Fear ported on top of the ogre’s shoulders right as the body was beginning to fall. He was jumping at someone—I realized it was Grim when the ogre’s body finally fell to reveal him on the other side.
Grim took hold of Fear’s leg as he was trying to port and slammed him to the ground. His boot was on his neck before Fear got the chance to move. Fear grunted and hissed trying to move.
Grim’s eyes darted to Fear’s hand and I saw the portal chip he was holding—Fear was about to use it. Grim’s sword went through his hand and Fear hollered from the pain. The portal chip shattered as Fear’s blood coated its remains. “Demons!” Grim’s yelled—his voice was like thunder, intimidating and frightening. Most of them stopped fighting with the Reapers and dragons and saw Fear beneath his boot—a lot of them suddenly looked wary. “Go back through the portal and live another disgusting day of what you call life or,” he brought up his sword—it changed back to a scythe, “become a part of my scythe and know what it means to be killed by me.”
I saw Fear’s chain floating around but couldn’t see Marcus’s—it must have been underneath him. There was a dark expression in Fear’s eyes as he gazed up at Grim, almost like he was still expecting to get out of this. I wanted to snuff that last shred of hope—he more than deserved what was coming and where he was going once he died. Grim’s eyeless sockets were peering down at him—I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but his thoughts couldn’t be much different than the dark ones filtering through mine.
One minute Fear was on the ground, under Grim’s boot, and then the next he was up on his feet—eyes murderous as he charged at me. But Grim was toying with him, letting him have a bit of hope, thinking he’d get his way. A black chain with Grim’s blue essence snaked around Fear’s torso and arms, and he screamed in fury. His tail started to move, but Grim was in complete control of everything.
My hands were twitching, begging me to do something—the feeling was so fierce that I was moving before I even knew it. I spotted Marcus’s chain—it was so small now that it was almost completely at his chest—and smiled. This was it, it was the end for him. I felt Grim’s eyeless gaze on me, he was probably wondering what I was doing—why I stopped right in front of Fear. He wasn’t the only one that wanted to hurt Fear in some way.
Fear jerked in the chains. “You can’t do this to me!” he was practically screaming in my face, I was so close. I took it all in with a smile, like his end was my euphor
ia, but I wanted Marcus in despair. The way he was now wasn’t good enough for me, not after everything he’d done.
“Finally,” I blew the word out. “You reap what you sow.” He didn’t look afraid, it still looked like he wanted to murder me and everyone in his path. I didn’t like it. “Do you even realize where you went wrong?” I asked him.
He laughed in my face, making me breathe in the smell of him—his filth. My anger was at a new high. “You took nine years of my life!” I screamed in his face. “You took a life that wasn’t meant to die—you killed him just to spite me when you couldn’t kill me and all this—everything you’ve done and the reason you’re about to die, Marcus… do you realize it was all for something that I never was… Do you realize you were wrong?”
He smiled and my tears were starting to form—I wasn’t going to cry, I couldn’t, not in front of this smug demon that didn’t understand he was a monster. “And…?” was all he said.
“Melanie…” Grim was behind Fear as he called to me. I met his eyes. “He doesn’t have a shred of humanity; he won’t ever see the error in his ways which is why he’s a dead man.”
As Fear tried to turn around and face Grim, I gripped Marcus’s chain in my hand. His eyes widened as he looked back at me—good, he could feel it. “He’s only strong because he’s Fear, let’s see how he feels without him.” Grim’s eyes were on my hand, but I didn’t think he could see what I could and he cocked his head to the side.
I pulled the chain and Marcus screamed. We all saw why when I forced him out of Fear. He fell to his knees in front of Fear, his blond hair falling into his face as he lunged for me, but I jerked the chain and he fell to his knees again. “How’d you…” Grim muttered, then he changed his focus to Fear—he looked different without Marcus now, more monstrous without any hints of a man or Marcus’s traits on his face. He wasn’t trying to fight the chains that bound him, either.
'Til Death We Meet Again (A Grim Awakening Book 3) Page 17
