The Reaper's Embrace
Page 15
There was none of that this time.
“Son of bitch,” Brent said quietly.
We stood, side-by-side-by-side at the creek’s edge, staring at what was left of the Hume homestead. I fixated on the log cabin that was a pile of rubble now. It looked like it had been partially burned to the ground. The scent of charred wood was aloft. Whatever happened here in Beattyville, Kentucky, had happened within the past day or so.
“Do you think Marin’s lackeys did this?” I asked as I fingered the tops of Dudley’s velvety ears to ensure he was still close.
Brent raked his fingers through his dark hair. He was quiet at first. I expected him not to say anything at all but instead cross the creek and begin surveying the remains of his former home.
He spoke in a soft baritone I didn’t recognize. “Even after his death, he haunts us, doesn’t he? It’s like he’s worse now in death than he ever was in life.”
I let Brent’s sad words linger on the brisk, wintry air. He was hesitant to step across the creek, so Dudley and I went first. It took several long strides to reach the abandoned, rusted out car that I had first seen his nieces and nephew playing in all that time ago. The car didn’t look any different. The house behind it did. We carefully approached what was left. The front porch remained, and so I put both feet on the first step and looked out across the demolished home. Everything was silent, even the birds who still hadn’t flown south for the winter. Even Brent’s footsteps as he crossed the creek and joined me on the front stoop never made a sound. Nothing existed here. It was forgotten. Alone.
“What’s that?” I pointed across the rubble at something moving in the woods.
Brent was sprinting around the home’s remains before I finished my sentence. Eidolons move faster than any living thing that I knew of. I couldn’t keep up with him, and I couldn’t hope to, either. He stopped short of entering the woods, and after a few seconds, I skidded into his backside, running as fast as my short legs would carry me. The collision didn’t send him off balance. As I started to dart around him, his left arm closed around me, stopping me from pushing ahead.
Once I understood why he stopped, I didn’t fight him. My body went rigid. Fear moved through my veins. What I had seen moving was not a living being. It was a white baby blanket covered in little ducks. The blanket was tied to a tree branch, flapping in the winter breeze. And it was stained in blood.
Had Marin sent his cronies to destroy the former rebel camp and the Hume homestead, he would order any evidence of a massacre removed. As we moved closer, walking as closely as possible, we spotted limbs on the ground that once belonged to living beings. We stepped around them, and the trail of gore led us deeper into the woods and past the flapping, bloody baby blanket.
My heart was in my throat. I could not look at the blanket. I wouldn’t. Yet even though I made sure to keep my distance from it, a little wisp of blanket brushed my shoulder as if to ask me for help. I nudged closer to Brent, whose hand was nearly crushing mine. Brent wasn’t scared of what was still lurking. He was scared of what he knew he’d find. And he was right to be scared when we came upon a neatly stacked pile of bodies or what was left of bodies.
A note had been pinned to the shirt of one torso. Blood pooled around the remains. Leaves crunched under our boots. The air, which had grown colder, nipped at my nose and earlobes. But my chest…my chest burned with heat.
Brent leaned forward and read the note. I had already scanned it.
“This wasn’t Marin’s work,” I said as a whisper in case there were any around. Dudley stood next to the remains of the house, sniffing.
“Trivials,” Brent growled.
“You’re right,” said a voice from the shadows between two large trees. I didn’t need to hear more from him to know who he was. Some voices, however little you have heard of them, are recognizable. This one was Neema’s punk rock follower from Denver named James.
I checked for Dudley. Somehow he sensed the threat. The little dog knew. Hopefully the Trivials wouldn’t find him hiding underneath a beam of wood from the old house.
Brent started toward James, but I stepped in front of him, my back pressed to his heaving chest. He would rip the Trivial apart without asking questions first. In this new, fragile world between Marin’s tyranny and new leadership, our actions had to stay rational and justified.
But Brent’s aggressive move was enough to show us that this Trivial was not alone. In fact, as Brent and I glanced from side to side and forward and back, we realized something dangerously grave.
“We’re surrounded,” I said when I spotted about thirty Trivials move from the woods. Had Brent counted more? Had he spotted others?
I had said I was scared of what we’d find, not of what was out there, but I now felt crippled with a real, visceral terror. Trivials could do to us what they had done to the rebels and Brent’s family. Trivials were soulless Stygians. They were not bound to Styx’s rules. Therefore, they could manipulate, attack, torture, and toy with anyone. Worse, they had abilities to manipulate their bodies into spider-like nightmares. But most horrifying of all was the Trivials could not be killed through the ferrying of their souls. There was no soul to ferry. They had to be ripped apart, limb from limb, until they were rendered useless. Being a Master Scrivener and Eidolon only got us so far when there were more than two dozen Trivials converging around us.
“Been following you. When I realized where you two were headed, I called on some locals take care of things here,” said James. “Figured we needed them out of the way so that you can begin paying for your crimes, Eidolon Hume.”
Brent’s hand gave mine two deliberate squeezes. This was not a command to run and hide in the woods like he had told me to do the night the Watchmen cornered us in this very spot. This was him asking for help, for us to use our talents that Hades had given us.
Match. We’d have to. And we’d have to hope it was enough to bring down a gang of soulless Stygians.
Chapter Sixteen
“Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels,
will entertain the vilest of schemes to save its orderly face.”
—Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
There were many reasons why Matching could be our greatest defense against nearly thirty Trivials. There were many reasons why Matching could be our downfall, too. I remembered the battle at Wrightwick. While I didn’t take on any Trivials, I did take on Gizmo, a steroid-infused Eidolon nearly twice the size of Brent’s spectral beast, while Matched with Chad, and we barely lived to tell our harrowing story. Going against an Eidolon who was more powerful than a Trivial was tough, so it stood to reason going up against thirty Trivials would pose as much of a challenge.
Brent edged nearer to me when more Trivials—male and female—emerged from the woods. They circled the remains of his homestead. The pyre of his family’s ashes and clothing lay at our feet. We had to stand our ground. We had to fight fast and without mercy.
My nerves turned into frost the instant Brent pulled me into him, bring the two of our humanly bodies together into one. In the center was my raging inferno with a shell of his ice as a handful of Trivials charged us.
While fighting Eidolons and Watchmen, there was the hope of scaring them into a retreat, that their will to live far outweighed their hunting instinct. Trivials were not such creatures. They lacked emotion. As Chad had said, they were sociopaths, and sociopaths were fearless warriors.
But then, so were Brent and I. At least I had to believe that until we buried the mass of motherfuckers in the ground. Having learned my new skillset out of necessity, I had no time to think about my heat or how Brent’s nearness made me both sick and comforted. I didn’t notice that my heat had taken over. In so many ways, I was a machine. And Brent was, too.
Together, we made our first battle cry as a last-ditch effort to thwart a fight. The earth beneath our feet rumbled. The screech echoed for miles. Humans might hear it and wonder what crazed animal was out in the woods.
Two launched themselves at us, and with one swing of our arm and howl, they were thrown back, but not at all stopped. They ran at us again, and another group came at our backside. This was not a fight where we’d go head-to-head, one at a time. They would converge on us like a pack of wolves.
Brent, we can’t stave them off, I thought, knowing well he was in my head, listening.
We have to run, he replied.
My blood curdled. That was not the reply I wanted, even if it was the correct one.
Run? They’ll chase us. What happens if they…
My thought was cut off when three bodies slammed into us. Matching seemed to be the impenetrable weapon that would save the world. Or so I had hoped.
We collapsed to the ground, nearly crushing the pile of his family’s ashes. The ground quaked just as it had when we roared. I didn’t lose my closeness with Brent, however. We remained together, stuck like glue, but above us, ten or more Trivials closed in.
What now? I asked because my beloved would know. He knew everything. He was the top Reaper in Styx. He’d know. He had to. Didn’t he?
Brent didn’t say anything. A growl started in our chest, the sort that vibrates bones, and it grew in intensity until I was sure we’d explode outward. I realized what was happening a moment before the Trivials, their eyes readying for the kill and their spider-like limbs bending and writhing in anticipation. Our Eidolon jaws stretched long and wide, and I felt the Eidolon’s hunger. Our lungs emptied entirely before we took in one long, massive inhalation. This was the Eidolon’s deathblow. Once the victim is within range, drawing out their soul is unstoppable. But Trivials didn’t have souls. How would this work?
Brent, this won’t… I grew still when I spotted all ten of the Trivials’ eyes grow vacant. They were mesmerized, or so I assumed. Why else would they grow still and not strike? Each one seemed paralyzed not from fear. But from what?
Brent had hunted Trivials on behalf of Marin. He had taken them down, one by one. He knew what he was doing. But I didn’t know, and not knowing had me crippled in fear. My heat wasn’t nearly as high as usual. Was that bad? Would that hinder Brent’s abilities?
A moment into their paralyzing trance, I realized what Brent was up to. He had not intended to draw out their souls because there was nothing to take. His powerful inhalation had put them into a trance to immobilize them, and then he would move in for the bloody kill.
We were on our feet and tearing into the bendy, awful limbs of the enemies before there was chance of a second wave of attack. Blood, bones, and screeches vibrated against the mass of trees. Brent and I moved so fast that there was no opportunity for them to fall out of their trance and strike. Ten of them went down in seconds. Bodies, minus their limbs and heads, plopped into the river of blood at our feet.
Ten were down. Twenty more Trivials to go. The only Trivial I couldn’t spot now was James. He had disappeared into the woods, it seemed.
There was a long, weighted pause between our enemies and us. This was the moment when they could run and avoid a similar fate, or we could run and keep from killing more Stygians. I felt an inkling of desire from Brent to run. Neither one of us wanted to continue the bloodbath that Marin had begun. That era had ended. A new world should rise from Marin’s ashes.
They aren’t going to fall for that again, Brent said in reference to his clever trick. Now we fight. Use your heat.
Oh, that! I had forgotten as I fell into the backseat of the battle. Now I did what I had always done to stoke the inferno. I simply let it unravel within me. Anger had always helped, and I was enraged over what these Trivials had done to Brent’s family. Still, as I did what had always worked for me up until this moment, I found the limit of my skills.
Sure, I was hot and probably too hot to touch. But that nuclear power that I had witnessed from Errol and then successfully achieved on my own, over and over, was dormant. I tried. I imagined Chad’s face. I imagined Marin’s when he melted Errol. I even thought of the day Errol had Dudley shot to show the power of the Phlegethon. Even that last thought, one I was sure would set me off, did nothing.
Ollie… Brent’s voice was riddled with concern. Are you alive in there? Sleeping? What the hell?
Uh, well. I can’t do it, I said as we took notice of the Trivials closing in around us. There was a circle of them, moving slowly toward us with more focus this time. They would not strike like the other ten. They would come at us all at once and tear Brent and me apart before tormenting us to our graves. That would surely be a painful death, and after everything I had survived, it would be a shame to go down by the Trivials’ will.
What’s wrong? Brent nudged as I tried to grow hot.
I don’t know exactly.
A reason would have been helpful. A reason would’ve directed us to some sort of solution. But I didn’t have one except that maybe I was tired? Maybe deep inside, I had given up?
The Trivials drew nearer. Each one seemed to be licking his or her chops to do us in. By all rights they should’ve. Marin had ordered Eidolons to kill them. Brent had been one of them. I was an innocent caught in the crossfire.
“Stop!” I screamed at the Trivials. “We don’t want any more blood to be spilled.”
I realized, after the fact, that speaking was meaningless. And it showed my fear more than it provided any real resolution. Brent was kind enough not to point that out, but if I thought of it, so did he.
A group of Trivials to our right lunged at us. The group to our left followed a moment later. We had ten more Trivials on us, trying to tear into our union and rip it apart like they would our bodies. Brent screeched, stomped, and tried to send them hurtling back, but the effort all but failed. Two were thrown off of us. They were right back without losing their balance or speed. Our body swung and staggered as teeth and hands tore at us. The horror felt like daggers piercing skin, teeth clutching flesh. If we were injured badly, I wouldn’t have been able to tell with them converging on us like a pack of starving zombies.
The sheer weight of their ten bodies was enough to bring us to our knees. As Brent had said, they wouldn’t give him enough space to put them in a trance and then tear them to pieces. That trick was old, worn, and meaningless now. The proof of this was in the third wave of Trivials, adding ten or more bodies to the ten already piled on top of us.
Brent, what now? Fear was getting the best of me at this point. I had never been subdued by twenty ravenous monsters. Even with Brent’s nearness, I could not quell the panic rising like wildfire in my veins. If only I could have turned that fear into my own nuclear fission, we would be able to escape this. Brent had to have another trick up his sleeve.
Brent’s silence, however, spoke the truth. My heart tightened. If they successfully ripped us into pieces, what then? What would happen to our souls?
We are left in no-man’s land, Brent grunted as we fought and struggled. Ollie, break off from me. Go hide. This doesn’t need to involve you.
Never! I wished I could scream it out loud. I’m not going to leave you, Brent. Ever.
He would die without my help. But that wasn’t the only reason I stayed. As I imagined him fighting this battle alone, I imagined my fear of him starting to unravel. Some of that pent of anxiety began to fall away, replaced by resolve and sheer protectiveness. He would not become a victim of the Trivials. He would not be left to rot in no-man’s land. Being killed by a Trivial meant living as a ghost, in a vast emptiness, a vacuum where there is no end, no beginning, and where light cannot exist. It was a place where you go in knowing love and warmth and happiness, but never able to acquire it. The forgotten.
He was willing to die for me. Again.
I would rather fight for him.
My heat began to expand in my chest like a blossoming flower, pulsating outward as it unf
urled. Yes, I would fight. I would not become forgotten, and neither would Brent. We would go down in a nuclear blast if necessary.
Good, darlin’. Brent noticed even as his shell of ice struggled to keep the Trivials at bay. Keep going. Keep fighting.
And I did. Once the inferno began, it was impossible to stop. It grew from my chest to my stomach, legs, and arms. With the rise of heat in my body, the Trivials struggled to maintain their grasps on us. Those daggers and teeth weakened. They continued to fight, of course, but their strikes were not as effective. I kept going. I kept burning hotter and hotter. With Brent’s protective shield around me, I was safe to push my power as far as we could stand it.
When I had first tapped into this gift at Wrightwick, I felt like I was going to blow the earth to smithereens. The compactness of energy in my body could not be contained. My skin felt stretched thin, like paper, and one fissure would set the nuclear weapon off. This time was not different. As my rage and power intensified, I felt myself overcoming Brent. The outer shell of ice and death split in two and left me standing in the middle. In some ways, he was made obsolete. Where the Trivials could attack his frostiness, they could not stand against my heat.
Their nips and bites weakened until they felt like gnats against my red hot skin. They continued to fight. They would not stop even if I melted them first. Trivials were fearless as they were reckless with their bodies. Where one went down, another stepped in for him.
They howled and screeched when I let out my own blood-boiling cry. It was my final warning. Back off and live or prepare for annihilation. Once my power rose to its apex, there was no stopping it. I had to let out the rage of heat. I had to, or I would succumb to it. It was them or me.
Hold on, Brent!
I felt him hunker down, letting my show take over.