The Reaper's Embrace

by Abigail Baker

  “Do you think they got a hold of it?” Puck added.

  My mouth tried to form words to answer him. What could I say? If the Trivials hadn’t gotten a hold of the Interceptor, then they were likely in Lethe. If they were and broadcasting from Marin’s former desk, then we—no, Styx—was in serious danger.

  “There’s no way to know,” I finally admitted. “I can’t tell you if he’s speaking through Styx’s usual radio signal or the Interceptor’s.”

  “Interceptor?” Puck looked confused.

  “It’s the device I designed to override Styx’s broadcasting signal. It’s what I used to make that speech you saw. I was going to use it again…to make another speech.” However, as I said this, the voice on the phone from the Trivial’s broadcast gave me pause.

  “We destroyed Head Reaper Marin,” James said with a wicked grin. “We destroyed him and his bodyguards and the Deliveryman. We have control of the headquarters of Styx. We now know that Stygians like Brent Hume and Olivia Dormier are responsible for the genocide of Trivials. These two Stygians are exactly as Head Reaper Marin once said—they are traitors to Styx’s ideologies. They must be destroyed, and we will see to it that it happens.”

  “Motherfucker,” I hissed. They had beaten us to the Interceptor or Lethe—it didn’t much matter. They just did what I had hoped to do in a few days. Only, I wanted to break the news and ask for peace, not more death or bloodshed, not even against those who would want me dead.

  “I’ve been in contact with other rebel cells. One of them out of Buffalo told me there’s a mass meeting planned for this weekend,” Puck said as he followed me back to the campsite. “They’re meeting on the Island of New Orleans. I think all of them are.”

  “It’s Ile d’Orleans,” I corrected, but I was more interested in the other location he mentioned. “Buffalo?”

  He nodded.

  Buffalo had been home to Azim and Clover, a rebel pair who had helped me two years ago. Could it be that they would be in Quebec, too?

  “Should I wake the others? Should we move out now?” For some reason, Puck deferred to me. I could only assume this was because of what I had done to Marin. I hadn’t the heart to tell him it was dumb luck that I figured out how to destroy him in the eleventh hour. I didn’t know what I was doing until I was doing it.

  “Yes,” I said. “Get everyone ready to leave. I’ll tell Brent the news.” I turned away from Puck and ran to Brent’s side. He was still asleep, so I roused him with a soft nudge to his shoulder. Normally kisses to his neck would have been my go-to method, but right now I couldn’t sort through my rage to do it.

  Brent sat upright. He was as alert as he would have been if he’d been awake and on patrol. Still, his eyelids were heavy even as he tried to force them open. “What is it?”

  “Puck just shared a video with me,” I said, quietly. “It’s not good.”

  “How not good is it?” That was a reasonable question.

  “Well…so not good that it ranks in…catastrophe.”

  “That’s really not good.”

  “Not at all.”

  He rubbed his eyes and then raked his fingers through his hair. “What exactly is this catastrophe then?”

  I waited for him to set his undivided attention on me. When I was sure he was listening fully, I told him the details of the broadcast and that the Trivials seemed to have waged a war on the two of us specifically. And I added, for good measure, that they either used the Interceptor, assuming it was still working, or they were inside Lethe making the broadcast.

  “Motherfucker.”

  “We need to fix this right now.” I stood and offered him my hand.

  He climbed to his feet. And then, after a pause, he sighed. “If it’s not one thing that wants us dead, it’s another.”

  “Welcome to life.” I slung my shotgun around my shoulder and grabbed my backpack.

  “At least we’re in it together, eh?” He pulled on his down jacket, the same one from Wrightwick. It hadn’t garnered a rip or stain since that fateful day. The same couldn’t be said for us.

  “There isn’t anyone else I’d rather be in this shitfest with.” I rose onto my toes and kissed his chin, enjoying the feel of his soft beard against my lips. For a moment, I felt the need to run from this closeness. I let that fear of him have a second to surface before I tamped it down again. Three steps forward and one step backward.

  By the time we collected our belongings and marched back toward the camp, it was clear that everyone else was awake and readying for departure, too. Some were hurling handfuls of dirt over campfires. Others were throwing on backpacks and jackets. Sue Ellen and her three children, however, remained still, no bag full of their belongings.

  Brent gave the children hugs, kissed their cheeks, and told them they couldn’t keep Dudley. The dog probably would’ve enjoyed staying with them seeing as he never left their sides. I couldn’t leave him, though. So, he stood with me, watching the children carefully.

  Brent turned to Sue Ellen, who wore defiance like armor. There would be no conversation about leaving. She and the children would remain at the Hume homestead or what was left of it.

  “I’ll only ask one last time. Please, will you come with us?” he said as the sun started to shine its rays through the forest trees. Fog hovered against the ground.

  “I’m sending you with our cell, the one Wallie and I have been training for decades. I will not let my children see any more of this world. They will stay with me so I can continue to protect them.” Her chest rose and fell with a deep breath.

  “I understand.” He pulled Sue Ellen into a hug. “We’ll set things right so that your children don’t need to be shielded anymore.”

  And that was it for good-byes. We, along with the twenty rebels who included Puck, set off for Quebec City one last time. I wasn’t positive the entire group would be able to stay together for the remainder of the journey northeast, but I knew in my heart each of them was set on helping us fix what had been undone in Styx.

  Brent, Dudley, and I survived riding the motorbike all the way to Vermont. Riding in the early winter was not ideal, especially for anyone not used to the cold. I was worried Brent might find it more uncomfortable due to his southern, hot-blooded roots, but if he did, he said nothing. As for Dudley and me, we lived for the winter. Cold air brought us life. It cooled my internal furnace that had only recently become manageable. Even though I could control my heat now, I still loved cold, humid air. Dudley grew up in the cold. It was what he knew. Hot was not his favorite temperature.

  The rebels we had acquired in Kentucky kept pace with us. Some rode in old pickup trucks that groaned and creaked. Others uncovered old sedans that looked like they had been buried under leaves for years, only now to be resurrected for duty. We remained a tightknit group on the highway. We stopped together. Ate together. And if anyone saw us who didn’t know us, they’d think us some sort of southern thug gang. So it was no surprise that when we stopped for breakfast in northern Vermont, we were met with anxious stares from the patrons of Cracker Barrel.

  The hostess sat us as far from other guests as possible in the back corner of the restaurant. The ten of us settled around a several tables pushed together. Dudley sat at my feet like always, posing as a well-trained service dog. Each of us had already ordered drinks. Glasses and mugs of water and juice and coffee covered the table. Not a single alcoholic drink was in sight, but the group carried on as if it were the wee hours of the morning and we had been drinking all night long. Sugar does that to Stygians. Well, not me, since I don’t eat sugar. I prefer good coffee, which I had in unlimited cups.

  After the Reapers roared over a joke, one I didn’t get, one of them called Jake turned to me and smiled. Jake wore a short beard and a gray newsboy hat. He spoke with the same Southern accent as Brent, but he looked like the sort of man who spent his life sailing the ocean up in New England. Then again, all of the rebels, even the females, looked like salt of the earth Southern folk. Pe
rhaps that was what living in the shadows and on the run from the government did to a band of rebellious Grim Reapers.

  “Did Brent ever tell you about the time he got caught in Mr. Lolo’s Donut Shop in town?” Jake said as the rest of the crew chuckled. Some of them shouted, “Yeah, yeah, tell her, Brent!” and others sniggered like they were in on a dirty secret.

  “I don’t believe he has.” I sipped my coffee.

  “Ollie doesn’t need to hear about that. It was almost seventy years ago, for Hades’ sake,” Brent replied. He was laughing too, playing up that he didn’t want to tell the story because in these cases, it was always more fun to hear it from someone else’s perspective.

  I had gathered that this crew of rebels had been longtime friends. The Humes had been the center of the rebel cell, one that brought them together, but their loyalty to each other rooted far deeper. They had grown up together, lived together, laughed and fought together. They were the reason Styx was a good place. They did their jobs, and they made life worth living in the meanwhile. These were Brent’s people—his kin. I enjoyed being pulled into their circle, even if I had little to say or stories of Brent to share with them.

  “Ah, so listen up, sweetheart,” Jake said. “Your Brent here was barely dry behind the ears the day we broke into Mr. Lolo’s. Now, everyone in Beattyville knew that Mr. Lolo’s had the best doughnuts. Right?”

  Several hummed and rubbed their bellies. The brunette female Reaper named Allison, who sat next to me and offered me her sausage in exchange for my pancakes, nudged my side with her pointed elbow. I liked Allison. She drove one of the pickup trucks like the devil was on her bumper. She had told me she liked my dreadlocks. Delia, I was sure of it, would have liked to have a word with Allison about the subject.

  “Mr. Lolo’s had a machine that would fill doughnuts with cream or jelly. Whatever you want, they’d fill it.” Jake made a face like he was remembering those doughnuts. The rest of the group did too, and it seemed like they were holding a moment of silence for the Lost Doughnuts of Mr. Lolo’s.

  I gave Brent a look. He was, like our allies, paying his respects.

  Then Jake went on, “Seeing as we’re Reapers, we’d get doughnuts filled with as much shit as we could. And we had always talked about stealing that machine.”

  “Manny almost did by accident,” said Puck. Manny was not from Kentucky but moved there when he was a kid. Tan and handsome and an utter gentleman, Manny was from Puerto Rico. He was the only one of the rebels who didn’t have overgrown hair or a beard. Manny, as I had come to learn and love, enjoyed style and overthrowing governments. He would get along swimmingly with Delia.

  “I thought Lolo wanted it cleaned,” Manny argued as the group laughed. “Ollie, what these brutos didn’t say is that I worked at Mr. Lolo’s for a few years.”

  “Sounds like the perfect gig for a Reaper,” I said with a smile.

  “Sí. Made enough to live.” He gave me a wink.

  “One night, Manny and Brent got into all the leftover donuts from the day. They left, but Brent didn’t have enough,” Jake went on. “Brent snuck in hours later, but there were no doughnuts.”

  “I’d just like to intervene here,” Brent said as he turned to me. “I didn’t steal anything. Manny and I had talked about the doughnut-filling machine, and I just wanted to try it out.”

  “That’s stealing, bro,” Manny sniggered.

  “It was an experiment,” Brent volleyed.

  “So Brent tries eating straight from the doughnut-filling machine. Puts his mouth right on the nozzle and gets so damn drunk that he passes out on the floor of Mr. Lolo’s.”

  “Not surprised,” I said. “Did he get caught?”

  “Nah.” Manny waved a dismissive hand. “I opened the shop that morning.”

  “But he never lived it down. The day Baby Brother Hume got shit-face drunk off the doughnut-filling machine at Mr. Lolo’s in Beattyville.” Jake rubbed his chin as he and everyone else laughed at Brent’s expense. “That wasn’t long before Marin’s ban on sugar.”

  “Or the Level of Offenses,” said another.

  “Or the Purge,” I added.

  The mood turned grim. Laughter faded into silence. The only sounds were of people nearby quietly chatting and the clink of cutlery against plates. Everyone at the table hung their heads, thinking of that List of Offenses and what it had done to our loved ones. Without Marin’s list, some of them would still be alive; some would still be around to help maintain Styx’s balance. Our lives would not be pockmarked with their losses.

  After a long moment of silence, Jake reached for his glass of orange juice. Only one sip remained. He lifted it in the air. “Here’s to the nights we’ll never remember and the friends we’ll never forget.”

  We all grabbed our drinks, whatever they were—water, juice, or coffee—and raised them high. We drank to Jake’s toast. But when we lowered our glasses, it was Manny who spoke.

  “And here’s to Ollie for melting that motherfucker to kingdom come.”

  “Hear, hear!” others added as some slammed their glasses down in agreement.

  “Here’s to our future,” I remarked, because we still had a long way to go. We needed every little bit of good luck on our side.

  After breakfast, we browsed the gift shop inside Cracker Barrel because Brent insisted on it. He spent all his time in the candy section buying as many old-fashioned treats as his pockets could hold. Puck, Manny, and a few others joined him in the impassioned frenzy—no candy went untouched. They rationed out their money and exactly how they’d carry the stash. I found it charming, but underneath that, I was reminded that once again we were in a restaurant planning to return to Quebec City to make the world right. How many times would we have to do this? How many more times could I stand to do it if it was asked of me?

  Thus far, each restaurant visit had been followed with success. And I was careful to remind myself of that. But I was tired of the routine. Getting up in the morning, drinking a cup of coffee, and then taking the dog for a walk was good, honest routine. Rushing back into the headquarters of death, but not before a proper breakfast, was not, in my opinion, the sort of routine I longed for. There had to be other reckless, wild children in Styx that could take my place, right?

  As I started to consider the option, my phone rang. It was Delia.

  “How are you?” I asked first because I needed to know everyone was okay.

  “Just fine. Though I can’t say the same for you.” Delia went on telling me about the Trivial’s television broadcast. She had been trying to call me since then, but to no avail.

  “I haven’t gotten any messages or missed calls,” I said.

  “Not surprised. They’re listening to us, I’m sure of it.”

  The hairs on my neck stood on end even though Delia’s attitude toward being wire-tapped was rather flippant. “Listening?”

  “Through the phone.”

  “How?”

  “That Interceptor thing. Papa Bear told me all about it, Teacup. They’re surely using it.” The idea had occurred to me that the Interceptor’s reach could tap into the cell phone network, but it was not something I had arranged for. The only other Stygian who I met who was capable of creating or reworking an Interceptor was Azim from the Sisters Café in Buffalo. But Azim was a Reaper and a rebel, not a Trivial. And I didn’t know if Azim and his girlfriend Clover were even alive these days.

  “Where are you?” Delia was being short, which worried me.

  I glanced at Brent, Manny, and Puck, who were at the cash register sliding bills across the counter to cover the cost of their sugary treasure. “We’re not far from the city. Where are you?”

  “Not far either.”

  “Did Papa insist on following us?”

  “Of course he did, silly. You’re easy to follow, though. We could probably find you in the middle of a Phish concert.” I could hear her smiling.

  “Out of all those hippies, you could find me?” I laughed.

/>   “It’s the freckles. Although, we lost your trail in the middle of the country. You two must’ve gone into hiding somewhere in Kentucky. But once you popped back out of the woods, you were easy enough to follow.” Delia’s voice sounded too close and clear for it to be through the phone. I glanced around, thinking that she was nearby, but there was no six-foot redheaded Scrivener to be seen. Brow furrowed, I turned my attention back to Brent and Puck.

  “Who’s with you?” My heart began to race. The sudden tightness of my lungs put on my guard.

  “Neema. Daddy Warbucks. Those Trivials aren’t. Don’t know where they went. Neema seems worried. Said something about not trusting them.”

  I knew why Neema was worried, but I wouldn’t tell Delia the gritty, awful details. I shook out my nerves to keep them from taking over as the memory of those body parts on the Hume’s land came to the front of my mind. “Did you hear from Wrightwick?”

  “The Trivials who were loyal to Errol insisted on staying to protect Wrightwick. Turns out dear Errol made them promise this before he left last month. But that’s no big deal. We don’t need them anyway.” I heard a strange noise as Delia spoke. She gasped. So did I.

  “Did you hear that?” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s them. I knew it. Those little pale hairy bastards!”

  “We know you’re listening.” I changed the tone of my voice to show that I knew what was happening as Delia’s grumbling faded into the background. “What do you want?”

  “Chaos,” a voice said that wasn’t Delia’s, even though it was a female.

  “Who are you?” I threw a hand in the air to catch Brent’s attention as I pinned the phone to my ear.

  “You know who we are.” The woman’s voice was higher pitched than Delia’s, and she sounded not much older than a teenager. “You better hurry up and get back to Lethe. You left the door wide open for us to come in and play, Scrivener. Hurry now. You might want to tell your boyfriend that he shouldn’t buy so many SweeTarts and Gobstoppers.”