The Reaper's Embrace

by Abigail Baker

  “But I’m afraid as we made our way here, they captured Delia and Nicodemus from me,” Neema confessed.

  “Do you know where they are?” I asked, panic trying to overtake me.

  “They are in there.” Neema pointed down the hallway where we were headed, even though every single one of us dreaded entering.

  “Do you think they’re still alive?” I shuddered, thinking of my two beloved friends inside Lethe, alone, waiting for help. I refused to consider that they were dead like the poor souls in this hallway. My heart told me they were alive. Neema’s red eyes confirmed she felt the same. But were they okay? I could not tell.

  “They won’t kill them until they get what they want,” Neema clarified.

  “That must mean they’re still alive,” Papa said.

  “For now,” Neema added. She was right, too. They could already be dead, their severed limbs spread out in a macabre death scene. I wouldn’t accept that possibility, however. They were alive, had to be, and we would save them, clear out Lethe of the Trivials, and restore Styx.

  “We need to move now. You feeling better?” I asked Brent who still looked a little uncomfortable and downtrodden from his brief meltdown. He nodded.

  “Are we ready?” I asked the rest of the group.

  No one was quick to shout “Yes!” and run straight through those doors and into the heart of the stench from hell. Truth is, neither was I. I understood Brent’s meltdown and the masses retreating back from where they came. Rebellions weren’t simple. They couldn’t be predicted. What some thought would be a protest and nothing more was turning into a nightmare they would not endure. They were not weak. They were simply unprepared.

  For those of us who had faced the demons of our world, monsters were par for the course, and we didn’t like it. But some of us had to be the ones to forge ahead. If not, then the Trivials would win and, in turn, so would Marin from the depths of his grave. There were fighters and destroyers of the status quo like us and the peacemakers and rebuilders like those walking back to the Fontaine de Tourny.

  Brent was tired of being a fighter, like me. But we had no other choice.

  “Look, this is going to suck,” I said. “All I ask is that we don’t kill the Trivials. They were wronged too, like the Scriveners, like all of us. Let’s get in, subdue them, and end this. Okay?”

  “Not exactly the most inspiring speech,” Neema added, her arms folded across her chest.

  “I’m not William fucking Wallace.”

  She rolled her eyes like she expected more from me. I didn’t have anything else to give that didn’t need to pour into saving the world. There wasn’t time for thoughtful words or rallying the troops. That would come another day or another revolution.

  “Let’s go,” I said and spun on my heels to head straight into hell for what I hoped would be the last time.

  …

  For those of us who had already spent time in Lethe, stepping into a hotel hallway donned with elegant brass sconces, wallpaper, plush, detailed carpet was not as much of a surprise as it was for the others. Lethe looked much like Le Château Frontenac, the most photographed hotel in the world. If humans happened to sneak into Lethe, which according to Brent had never been done, they’d think they were lost in a forgotten wing of the hotel. The only difference was that Lethe was fully underground in Cape Diamond. No windows. No light. This place was a crypt where Death lived and breathed.

  The sweet stink of rotting flesh lingered. My nose had grown used to it, however. I didn’t feel the need to retch or cover my face. The fact that I didn’t worried me. Had I become so used to death that the putridness of it was normal for me?

  My team followed closely behind. Brent, then Papa, Neema, and a handful of other Stygians who weren’t put off by the bloody body parts.

  “Where do we go?” asked Neema.

  It was a good question. I didn’t know. Lethe didn’t come with placards on the walls giving direction to points of interest. All I knew from my still-foggy memories of this place was there was a central point where everything happened. It was where my trial was held, where I came face-to-face with Marin for the first time.

  “We need to get to the Heart,” Brent said as he thumbed through his little timeworn journal. That was the very journal I had found, the one he used to navigate around Lethe after leaving and returning, since Marin had always stolen Stygian’s memories of everything that happened within his realm before they left him. We’d used that journal to find our way into Lethe to save Brent from execution. It was a gift. And now, as he pointed to the map he had drawn decades ago, it was, again, a gift to our cause.

  “We head down this way.” He gestured down the hallway. “Then make a left toward the center of Lethe.”

  “Let’s go then.” Neema shoved past him.

  “I suggest we stick together,” he said.

  They disregarded his suggestion by forging ahead. At that moment, I felt something eery in the air. I could not see it. The sensation was a wave of energy, pulsating against my eardrums. My legs grew weak as if they had lost control. I didn’t fall. Neither did anyone else around me.

  Neema and our followers braced themselves against the hotel walls. They looked at the ceiling, then at the floor. We did, too. What was this? What could possibly send us off-kilter like we had one too many drinks?

  “They’re coming,” Papa said, rubbing his ears.

  I heard them a second after Papa spoke. The whispering. The scuttle of many feet over the carpet. When I had first encountered the Trivials in Montana, they had used mind tricks to create a real-life nightmare in the forest. I had been alone. I had heard feet running over leaves and voices echoing from one side of the forest to another. They had intended to terrify me and leave me, if they had their way, in several pieces in front of my cabin.

  Trivials knew how to strike up fear in the bravest of us. They were better at it than Eidolons because they didn’t leave us in a pile of dust if they killed us. They left us dismembered.

  The lights from the sconces flickered, sending us in and out of darkness. Some Stygians cried out. Some shouted to keep together. I watched Neema looking up the hallway at us and back to the other side where surely the Trivials would emerge.

  “Brent,” I said as I grabbed his sleeve, “you have to lead this group. I’m going with Neema.”

  “Hell no, darlin’.” His hand was curled around my bicep. He did not let go even as I tried to pull free.

  “We have to. They need us. But we can’t do this side-by-side. Not yet. You lead them. I’ll lead the others.” I had not taken orders from Errol Dennison during the attack on Wrightwick. I would not take orders from Brent, either. We could work as a team, one that needed to split up because between us, we were the only two with true experience in Lethe.

  “I don’t want to leave your side,” he whispered after pulling me close enough to kiss me.

  I understood his fear. I felt it, too. Losing Brent in Lethe after all we had been through would crush my world. But I remembered someone who had told me that rebellions aren’t about the individuals but the greater purpose. Right now, it was not about us. I couldn’t be. Not yet.

  “We can do this. I know we can,” I said because I had to keep saying it, over and over until my entire being embraced those words.

  Brent’s blue eyes turned red in a flash of Eidolon power that, unfortunately for him, wouldn’t sway me this time. But as his hand unraveled from my arm, I realized he wasn’t trying to change my mind. He was in agreement. The red in his eyes told me he didn’t like it.

  The flickering sconce lights extinguished for good. I lost my connection—both visual and physical—with Brent. Suddenly, the space around me felt vast and endless. We were more or less in a cave. Without light, there was no way of knowing which direction to go.

  Screams filled the darkness. Stygians cried to fall back or to leave.

  “Cell phones!” shouted someone.

  Yes. I dug into my pocket for mine, hop
ing that I had enough battery charge to get us to the Heart of Lethe.

  “Hurry!” some urged. “I’m scared!” others said.

  “Dormier!” Neema shouted from down the hall. “What now?”

  “Hold on!” I replied as I pawed nervously at my pocket.

  In the darkness, touch was the only way to find my bearings. My hearing intensified, listening to every grunt, groan, complaint, squeal, or breath of my allies. I recognized some sounds and whom they belonged to. Papa and Brent made distinct noises. Others were foreign.

  “Found mine,” I cried out just as put my hand on the rectangular device. I ripped it from my jeans pocket and fumbled to find the button to bring it life. One push and a little area around me illuminated like it was under a floodlight. I couldn’t see much more than shadows of the Stygians nearby. I spotted Papa’s white T-shirt and Brent’s blue flannel. I noticed the wallpaper and floral carpeting.

  Then I noticed something else that hadn’t been in front of me before.

  Ignoring the need to appear composed like a leader should be, I screamed.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “What happens now that change has come?”

  —HermesHarbinger.com, December 21st

  As I screamed, the lights from other Stygians’ cell phones illuminated more of the darkness. And when they did, they joined in my terror—standing between us was the thing I saw back in Montana. The spiderlike humanoid peered through the shadows at us. His limbs were elongated, thin, and spindly. They bent at the joints in grotesque directions, completely inhuman in appearance. His dry lips smirked like he had a wicked secret.

  “Oh my Hades, what is it?” screeched someone.

  “Trivial?” another shouted.

  The Trivial’s lips parted into a crooked, yellow smile. His eyes darted from one side of our group to the other. There was no knowing how many other Trivials joined him, dark as it was.

  I tucked my phone back in pocket and tensed my body as I prepared to lunge at him. That effort was halted when the spiderlike beast put a hand around my wrist. He squeezed hard enough to make me yelp, but I wasn’t hot yet.

  “Let go!” I howled. But I didn’t need to. The Trivial’s hand unraveled from my wrist the instant Brent latched onto his neck. In the darkness, it was difficult to see what happened next. Blood, like hot water, poured across one side of my body. The screech of an Eidolon’s death wail caused my ears to vibrate. Screaming from frightened Stygians quickly filled in on the chorus.

  The spotlights from the several illuminated cell phones petered out one by one until we were all in complete darkness again. I knew what Brent was doing. He tore the Trivial apart, limb by limb.

  Were there more? Was this Trivial the guy who was sent to make a threat, a sacrificial lone solider?

  I felt another hand on me. Then another. More and more. These weren’t hands from my allies. They weren’t those of Scriveners or Reapers. They moved in silence. They used mind trickery to their advantage. I knew the touch of a Trivial even if they thought I was oblivious to it. The contact was cold as ice, much like an Eidolon’s, but there was no life in it. There was no soul attached to their bodies.

  I fought, trying to summon enough heat to thwart them. I tried calling out for Brent. But in the darkness, full of fear and uncertainty, I just couldn’t gain my bearings. When I had entered Lethe to challenge Marin, I knew the threat. He was the target, and he didn’t make it too difficult to find him. The Trivials, on the other hand, wanted to run us through a haunted house of horrors before destroying us.

  My heat began long into the struggle. My knees started to buckle as hands upon hands pulled me to the floor. Papa and Brent and Neema and all the others were likely fighting too, trying to stay upright, trying to stay alive. I heard them grunting and wailing. I heard bone on bone collisions and bodies hitting the walls of the hallway. There was a battle in this pitch blackness, one I couldn’t see but could hear.

  So when I looked down to see red light pulsating off of my hands, I used them like glow-in-the-dark battle-axes. I swung one out and latched onto an arm. The heat from my touch instantly burned the victim’s flesh.

  Brent let out a growl before saying, “Ollie, that’s me!”

  “Shit!” I let go and found another body to grab onto.

  “Ollie!” Papa cried out.

  How did I grab both Papa and Brent and not the attackers?

  Again, I found someone else. The person was female, judging by her yelp. A pair of red eyes glowered through the darkness, and I knew instantly who I had found.

  “What’s the matter with you, Scrivener?” Neema hissed.

  I didn’t understand. The enemies’ hands were pulling me to the floor. It was clear from the sounds of those around me that they were fighting to stay standing, too. I felt splats of blood against my skin, so it must’ve come from battling. How did I keep finding all of my allies and not the Trivials?

  The sconces lining the hallway flickered back to life and I learned what was actually happening. The Trivial that Brent had attacked was indeed dismembered. I had gotten that right. However, there were no other Trivials around. No hands on my body. No hands on anyone else’s. The entire fight seemed to have been an illusion, trickery on the part of our enemy.

  Then I saw what sent my heart soaring wildly into the back of my throat. Trivials were indeed here. They had to have been.

  “Papa!” I wailed like a child. His soul stood outside of his limp, collapsed body, which was crumpled on the floor. He wasn’t bloody, and his limbs were intact. But his soul, much like Eve’s soul that fateful night, stood next to what had been his living body. He looked confused as he glanced between his corpse and me.

  “Papa?” My tears were instantaneous. I could barely see his soul through them. I tried to reach for him. I tried to see if I could touch his soul to offer comfort or to hug him. “Oh God, no. Papa! How? How could this happen?”

  This is how Trivials killed. They destroyed us and then left our souls in half-ferried in no-man’s land like Brent’s brother Wallie and his friends.

  Everyone remained silent. They must not have known what to do. Even Brent, who knew the ins and outs of Styx, didn’t know. He stood in shock like everyone else.

  I dove to Papa’s body, hopeful that there was some way I could still save him. I had saved Brent just before making my final attack on Marin. I could bring him from the brink. I would. I would not rest until I found a way.

  Papa’s soul watched as I pawed at his body. I found his forearm, ripped his sleeve back, and cupped my hand over it. My fingers barely encircled half of his arm. My entire body shook between sobs and panic.

  My hand turned red, but not to burn him. The power I forced into my hand was intended to heal. I didn’t know exactly what I had to do to heal. With Brent, it had just happened as if deep down, my inner soul knew what to do without receiving instructions. He’d been on the brink of death, and my hands had, almost of their own accord, tattooed a lotus healing mark on him, bringing him back. My power held its own consciousness.

  Something moved through me to Papa. It was love. Pure love. It was the desire to bring him back so that he could finish what he had started. I would do this for him after everything that he had done for me. I hadn’t been able to save Mama. She went to her death willingly and in spite of my pleas. But this time, I wouldn’t let Papa go. He had to be here with me.

  “Ollie.” A hand touched my shoulder. I shoved it off. Brent wouldn’t distract me.

  “Papa, I’m going to save you,” I said through heaving tears. “I promise.”

  Saving Papa was all that mattered now. Not saving Styx or ending the Trivials’ uprising. I would pull him back from death. I would resurrect him.

  Inside, I called on Mama and Errol to help me. I called on my power.

  “Ollie.”

  “I can do this!” I barked at Brent.

  “You…” The remainder of his comment faded into nothingness.

  “Pap
a, come back.” My hand pumped energy and life into him. I tried. I tried so hard that it felt like my bones would shatter from the pressure. “Please!”

  “You can’t do it,” Brent whispered in my ear. Only now did I realize that his chest was pressed against my back, and his arms were wrapped around my waist. “No one can. I was just on the brink when you healed me. He’s already gone.”

  “Not even me,” I said with defeated resignation, like this failure was because of my shortcomings and not because such rules were unbreakable. “But the River Phlegethon?”

  “It’s not here. It wouldn’t be enough anyway.” Brent’s voice was so soft and heavy. He knew the agony running through me. He must have felt me quivering from the inside out.

  “No,” I sobbed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No.”

  My body shook harder as grief set in.

  “No!” I flung Brent off me and held on tighter to Papa’s arm.

  Brent’s voice remained soothing. “He’s not coming back.”

  I looked into Papa’s sagging face. The Reaper I knew was not there. Everything about him looked different. He was vacant of life, vacant of the characteristics that made him my favorite living companion all these years. A thin line of blood trickled from his neck, not pumping, but oozing slowly. I knew what that meant. His neck was severed, sliced so cleanly that his head remained, balancing preciously. I didn’t dare touch his head.

  I couldn’t hold onto him now. I sat back on my heels, tears pouring rivers down my cheeks, and let his body be. I feared if I touched him again, his head would topple from his massive shoulders, an image I couldn’t bear to witness.

  Instead, I met eyes with his soul that stood next to me. I somehow found my strength and rose to my feet. Even in death, Papa’s soul stood a head taller than me. He was the same Stygian I loved.

  “Papa,” I whimpered. “I’m so sorry.”

  It’s okay, babygirl, he said, not with his voice but with his expression. Papa no longer had a voice now that he was gone. All I could go by was the emotions in his face.