Grim

by Thea Atkinson

  And it did. Mere moments later. Twisting agony branded itself onto my rib cage and brought me to my knees.

  CHAPTER 15

  I was outraged both at the pain and at the thought that there was no way I'd be able to follow the ambulance to the hospital while I was hunched over, clutching my rib cage with a fierce grip because I could barely breathe through the pain. It seared through me, twisting the muscles between my ribs as the brand worked its way through my tissues.

  I was gasping and panting for air when I saw the silver tip of cane appear on the floor in front of me. The silver tip moved in and out of my vision as it tapped against the linoleum floor. Whoever held onto it was trying desperately to get my attention.

  I looked up to see Azrael looking incredibly out of place in the 70s style kitchen. He looked nothing like the old man I'd last met and instead appeared as the gorgeous, pale skinned man he'd let me glimpse back in the cathedral. Far too beautiful to be real, and yet I knew he was. He had shed the facade of the old man with red wool socks and Birkenstocks. Instead, he let me see that lush charcoal hair again and that blue eyed gaze that could've been hard chunks of ice if they weren't so alive and vibrant. He looked for all the world like a Wall Street investment banker might look, complete with pinstriped suit and narrow red tie.

  My gaze flicked from him to the shriveled pile of desiccated flesh on the floor in front of me. I lurched over to a chair, and pushed my bottom onto the seat. I had to grip the back of the chair to keep from falling off it again as I found solid seating. Bile rose to my cheeks and I had to swallow it down past a burning in my throat just to choke out a few words.

  I knew why he was here. And I wasn't happy about it.

  "I don't have time for this," I managed to cough out before another spasm twisted through my ribs.

  The tip of his cane tapped closer.

  "There's no need to worry about the old man," he said. "The death of his doppelgänger indicates he's going to be just fine."

  "He's not just some old man," I said, biting the words through the gasp that was trying to steal my breath. "He's family."

  "He's not family," Azrael said. "You keep forgetting that."

  Silver moved against linoleum with short double raps. It was easier for me to watch the movement of that crutch he had rather than look into his face. There was something distressing about looking at him full on. It was too familiar and haunting to stare at too long, and it made something in my throat ache. I almost wished he had decided to wear his Birkenstock's and old man grey hair. At least then, he only looked lit up from the inside; this particular facade seemed to pull light toward him and throw it back like a reflective disco ball. If I squinted, I could see prisms dance around the edges of his body. Looking at him full on actually hurt.

  "I have to go," I said. "He needs me."

  "You're quite wrong," he said. "He needed you, and you were there. Now all he needs is a little bit of fluid. A little bit of what humans call medicine, and a little bit of patience. More's the pity."

  I clutched at my rib cage, trying to cradle the pain away. "What do you know about what us humans need?"

  He made a sound that could have been a tutting noise if he had been an old woman. "You say that as though you still think you're one of them."

  I had to grit my teeth through the next wave of pain. It was all I could do to hold onto the chair and suck in air to brace myself.

  Azrael seemed unimpressed with my fortitude. Instead he seemed to take great pleasure in the way I was groaning out loud.

  "Pity you couldn't keep to your choice of not getting involved," he said, and I imagined I heard harps playing beneath his words. I thought he might be doing that on purpose, and I hated him for it.

  "Screw you," I ground out.

  "And you seemed so determined before."

  I gazed up at him through the bangs of my hair, all the better to filter out some of that incredible light. I didn't want to see him looking dazzling. I wanted to see him looking how I felt. Ragged, hateful.

  Another spasm moved through my rib cage. I winced and whatever I had been hoping to say to him, got strangled off in my outcry.

  "Too close to the heart," he said, but he certainly didn't sound unkind. To the contrary. He almost sounded sympathetic. "That's what's making this brand hurt."

  "Can you make it stop?" I said, taking in short, shallow breaths. I hated the simpering sound in my voice, but I'd take any port in a storm.

  He hunched over in front of me and looked up into my face.

  "I'm not the one putting it there," he said as though I should know that, but at least he lifted a cool wet cloth to my cheeks. I wasn't sure where he had gotten the thing; I certainly hadn't noticed him going to the sink to run the water over a cloth. At the moment, I didn't care where it came from. Just that it felt soothing against my fevered skin. He swabbed my cheekbones and temples gently, pressing the coolness into the hottest places before letting it linger on my forehead.

  "You could've told me," I said, panting through another spasm. "Shit, won't it stop for God sake."

  "Told you what?" he said. "That your grandfather had been diagnosed with an aneurysm?"

  My head snapped up at that. Gramp had known? I might have actually been surprised if I hadn't recalled Callum's question to him the night before: whether or not he had told her. Her obviously meant me, and the topic obviously meant the aneurysm. But that Azrael had known? That was disconcerting. I felt more than a little betrayed.

  "Well it's comforting to think that everybody knew he was a ticking time bomb except me," I said bitterly. "But I was talking about you telling me some of the more crucial things I needed to know to get through whatever this is that you thrust upon me."

  "You say that as though you would have listened to me."

  "You could have tried me."

  He gave a long, low sigh. He took the face cloth from me and balled it up into his fist. I saw the corner of it dangling from the bottom of his clenched fingers like a tail, and then it was gone. Its disappearance was so quick that it left me wondering if I had seen it or felt it in the first place.

  "Do you remember our meeting in the church?" he asked me. "Do you remember what you told me?"

  I nodded, miserable. I remembered it well. "I said I had a choice."

  His index finger went beneath my chin and he tilted my face to his, but he didn't speak. Instead, a strangely familiar electric shock went through my skin and traveled down my spine, sending little waves out along my shoulder blades. It was as though his touch ignited something deep in my cell memory of the sensation of outstretched wings and in a heartbeat I imagined having them. They were broad and white and soft like gossamer. For another heartbeat, I wished they were still there. Then I realized that he was probably manipulating me the way he manipulated the existence of that face cloth.

  Even as I realized it, I noticed the tingle was gone. The burning in my ribs eased up just a bit. I was able to breathe better.

  I imagined that sensation was his way of telling me everything he wanted to say and I pulled away from him, gripping the edges of the table so that I could stand on my own two feet.

  "I still do have a choice," I said. "But it would've been nice to know what I was up against."

  He shrugged. "Had you shown any interest, I would have given you information. I would've told you everything I thought you needed to know."

  "Right," I said and couldn't help the sarcasm in my voice. "Because you're so forthcoming."

  He leaned his cane between the shoulders of the chair and used it to stand. He crossed his arms over his chest.

  "You've always been difficult, Ayla." There was a gleam in his eye as he said it, as though he was both impressed and frustrated at the truth of it. "You might have forgotten your original incarnation, but I haven't. I've known you a long time."

  "Spare me," I said. "I really could care less how well you know me. What I really want to know are those things you could've told me when you firs
t branded me."

  "Still stubborn," he said. "I told you it's not me branding you."

  "Semantics," I said. "What are you keeping from me?"

  "So now you want to know," he taunted.

  "You have a terribly human nastiness to you," I said. I wanted to hurt him somehow. "For an angel."

  As though to prove my point, he glowered at me, but it didn't reach his eyes, and so I doubted he was really angry.

  "Your first reap was originally a fallen virtue, like you," he said, and I could swear a smile was playing at the corner, but he didn't give into it. "You do remember what a virtue is responsible for, right?"

  I took very deliberate steps over to the refrigerator and yanked open the door. I stood there, letting the cool air from inside bathe my heated skin. Even my collarbone felt like it was on fire.

  I could hear him groan behind me and peered over my shoulder. He stood there with both hands on the top of his cane. I had the feeling he was forcing his demeanour to look patient but inside he was seething with impatience.

  "What?" I said. "Did you ask me something?"

  His lips went into a straight firm line before he lifted his cane from the floor and laid it on his shoulder. "I don't have to give you any information, Ayla," he said. "You're the one asking. So do you want to know or not?"

  I sighed. "No. But I suppose I need to know it."

  I might have managed to make it all the way over to the fridge, but I couldn't continue standing. I sank down in front of it on my hands and knees, feeling incredibly nauseous for all that. I rolled my head sideways to look at him.

  "A virtue is given the power to intercede in the human realm," he said. "Under the right circumstances, and under enough desire and prayer, they can implement things that change outcomes."

  My gaze flicked to the doppelgänger. "Are you saying that the power I inherited from that maniac in the church--"

  "Fallen one," he said correcting me.

  "Are you saying that the power I inherited from that fallen one in the cathedral allowed me to change the outcome of my grandfather's death?"

  He lifted his shoulder as though it might be possible, but that he didn't want to commit himself.

  "And are you saying," I continued. "That once the outcome was changed, I just sort of naturally reaped the doppelgänger?"

  "And have inherited some of his inherent skills as well. Wonderful isn't it?"

  "Peachy," I said and managed to find my way onto my bottom and bring my knees up. However I had managed to reap the doppelgänger, I was that much closer to earning back wings I didn't even care about getting back, that much closer to returning to a place I didn't remember, and now I had earned some sort of supernatural aspect I didn't know how to use. The whole entire thing was making my head spin so hard, I was nauseous. I hung my head between them. That felt better. Not perfect, but at least the dizziness was easing. Come to think of it, some of the pain was dissipating too. I could actually take in a long breath without wanting to scream.

  "Careful," he said. "Your human body is still susceptible to regular old human things. You don't want to pass out."

  "Very helpful," I said.

  "I would like to be very helpful to you," he said. "You have so much to learn if you want your wings. Not every creature will be as easy to reap as that one."

  I waved my fingers over my head in surrender. "One thing at a time," I said. I couldn't even think about collecting up another entity. The pain of accidentally reaping this one was still riding my nerves.

  "Which thing would you like to know first?" His tone was impossibly patient and I looked up at him through my elbows.

  "You could have warned me."

  There was a flicker of something else behind his gaze, but I didn't understand it. He looked over his shoulder at the desiccated doppelgänger.

  "I didn't think you needed me," he said. "Doppelgängers are such stupid things. They have but one task: to warn of death or doom. It's the same thing, really, metaphorically speaking that is."

  I felt rather than saw him settle into a chair closest to the fridge and cross one leg over the other. I peeked up to see him balancing his cane across his lap. I half expected him to wave the tip at the dead thing on the floor and gather it up into some dusty bag. Instead, he watched me quietly as I tried to work out the truth of what was going on.

  "My grandfather's doppelgänger," I said. "He didn't even bother to hurt me."

  He laughed out loud. "Hurt you?" He said. "I told you they were stupid things. They are opportunistic, parasitic creatures. A doppelgänger wants to live. To do so, even for a short time, it gets its energy from a host that is under threat of death. If the host lives after it bonds, as you saw with your grandfather, the doppelgänger simply passes from existence. But if the host dies, the doppelgänger lives for another season. It finds another host. Why would it want to hurt you? It would gain nothing from it."

  I thought about the doppelgänger hovering over Sarah. "So you're sure they can't hurt their host?"

  I lifted my head to look at him. His mouth twitched twice. When he swallowed, I could see the muscle movement of his throat and tell it wasn't a conversation direction he wanted to take.

  "I suppose one of them can do harm under the right conditions in order to ensure its continued existence."

  I looked at him through narrowed eyes. "What if it's been empowered?"

  "Empowered," he said with a laugh. "Who would do such a thing? First, it would take a lot of truly nasty spell work and black magic. It can actually be fatal to the person feeding it, since they have to use their own blood to power it."

  He pursed his lips together, as though he wanted me to think he had given it all considerable thought and come to a conclusion. "No, a doppelgänger wouldn't be able to harm anyone."

  "One attacked me," I blurted out. I might have felt a sense of victory at throwing the information in his face, if it wasn't such a painful thing to recall.

  He gave me a strange look. "That's not possible."

  "You just said it was possible."

  "Under the right conditions."

  "But what if the conditions are perfect?"

  His sigh was one of resigned impatience.

  "Doppelgängers are tied to their host. What host would go to such lengths to empower it with physicality when to do so could only mean death? If it gains corporeality, and the host doesn't look like it's dying fast enough, the doppelgänger will take action to make it so in order to continue existing. So either it kills its host or the strain of giving it corporeality kills its host. Either way, the host dies."

  He gave me a suspicious eye and I couldn't meet it. I had a terribly foreboding feeling in the pit of my stomach. The sandwich I had eaten earlier felt like a ball of glue. I didn't think Sarah had been giving me the full story earlier. She let me believe that her family was empowering the doppelgänger when all along it was someone else. Someone who felt she needed an extra layer of protection.

  "What if the person was using their doppelgänger to keep someone from harming her ?"

  "A pretty ridiculous and desperate thing to do." He squinted at me. "And that person would have to have a lot of power."

  Desperate. That certainly described Sarah.

  "What if that person was a necromancer? Would that be enough?"

  Those beautifully ice blue eyes nearly disappeared beneath the narrowed slits of his eyelids.

  "A necromancer is a despicable thing," he said. "The world is better rid of them."

  He lifted his cane from the floor and nudged me in the rib cage where the brand had seared into my skin, and while I had thought he was going to let slide on my seeming desperate interest in a necromancer's safety, he didn't.

  "Maybe you don't understand exactly what's at stake," he said. "Both a doppelgänger and a necromancer are supernatural creatures. Your job is to reap them. Not to study them."

  My stomach was already feeling queasy again, I was beginning to make connections I didn't app
reciate and that terrified me. I prayed the conclusions I was coming to were wrong. I wanted him to tell me differently.

  "Just answer the question," I said.

  "I am answering the question because there's only one answer. If a doppelgänger is being powered by a necromancer to find physicality, you have to understand where that power is coming from."

  The gluey ball in my stomach expanded. "From death?"

  He nodded slowly, a patient teacher to a rather slow student. "A necromancer has only one true power. To raise the dead. If your doppelgänger is being powered by a necromancer, and it's gaining corporeality, then what do you think the end result will be? What do you think will be fully physical when the doppelgänger finally decides to end its host's life and extend its own?"

  Water flooded my cheeks. I had a horrible image of retching up that big ball of glue and choking on it. My hand went to my stomach instinctively, trying to keep it calm.

  He cocked his head at me. "Do you know such a necromancer?"

  The way he looked at me, I had the feeling he not only knew the answer, but had known it all along.

  I nodded just as slowly and he shrugged as though to say there really was nothing more to discuss.

  I didn't need him to explain to me that the doppelgänger had sensed Sarah was in danger and had used it to its own advantage. Whether or not the danger came from a preordained decision she was going to make about using it for protection, she had done exactly that and now she was causing her own demise.

  Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. It was enough to make my head hurt.

  "That's exactly what happened," I blurted out.

  He tapped his cane on the top of his shoe. "Then if your necromancer is using it to protect herself, not realizing that by giving it power to become physical and harm anyone who would harm her, she's making it worse."

  Finally. We were coming to the part I didn't really want to hear. Right back at square one: killing another supernatural creature whether I wanted to or not. I wondered where the next tattoo would appear on my body.