by Nicky Graves
“He’s not limited to the human race,” Lawson said. “He’s everywhere in the universe.”
“Which is why you need to bond with the stone,” the Supreme Elder said.
“I know you don’t want to give the stone to Azrael,” I said. “I get it. But there has to be another way.”
“The stone has already chosen you. You have less than three days to save your family,” the Supreme Elder said. “If you truly want them saved, you have no choice.”
“If I bond with the stone, won’t Azrael take his revenge by killing my family?”
“I’ve sent Ranger to keep an eye on them,” Lawson said. “You focus on bonding with the stone and learning how to use it.”
“Let me get this straight. I have to bond with a crystal that belongs to a guy who wants to kill me in probably some painfully gruesome ways while Ranger watches over my family?”
“If you want to word it that way, then yes,” the Supreme Elder said.
I glared at him and then Lawson. “If Azrael kills me, am I dead? Like no more reaper immortality for me?”
“You would die,” the Supreme Elder said. “None of us can survive his scythe. But there are no other choices for you. I will not give you the stone unless you promise to bond with it.”
“And you will ensure my family’s safety?” I questioned.
“I can’t promise you anything,” the Supreme Elder said. “But with Ranger watching your house, they should be fine.” I could hear the distaste curling his tongue when he spoke of Ranger. “I will also increase guard coverage to watch for Azrael.”
“This seems like a short-term solution,” I said. “What happens after?”
“The Elder Council will discuss,” he said. “As a reaper bonded with a life stone, you will be given highest priority. Because if we keep you safe, we keep the life stone safe.”
It wasn’t much, but I sensed this was the best I would get from the Supreme Elder. He didn’t seem like the negotiating type.
“Do we have a deal?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said. “What do I need to do?”
The Supreme Elder pulled the stone from his pocket.
“How come you can touch it?” I asked.
“It knows I don’t want to bond with it,” the Supreme Elder said. “Hold out your hand.”
I did, thinking the Supreme Elder would place the crystal in my hand. Instead, Lawson grabbed my hand and dragged a knife blade across my palm.
14
The Supreme Elder dropped the stone onto my bloody hand before I could pull it from Lawson’s hold.
“Thought it would be less stressful if you didn’t know I was going to cut your hand,” Lawson said with an apologetic tone.
The sting of the cut had me swearing up a storm in my head. However, soon the stone began liquefying and mingling with my blood, leeching into my body. Any mask of calm I wore shattered.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked.
“We’re speeding up the bonding process,” the Supreme Elder said.
“It’s going into my body. This isn’t bonding. It’s a parasite!”
In a moment of panic, I shook my hand to get the blue liquid off of me. But it clung to my skin. And then it was gone. Inside my body. And the cut that had been bleeding closed, not even leaving a faint mark to show where it had been.
“How do you feel?” Lawson asked.
“Freaked out!” I said. “And furious!”
“Besides that,” the Supreme Elder said as if bored.
The Supreme Elder placed his hand along mine. He closed his eyes and was silent for a moment. He then stepped back. “She’ll be fine. The process has begun.”
“What process?” I asked.
“Bonding,” he said.
“Why do I feel like I’m in for another surprise?” I asked.
“Cuthbert, take her home,” the Supreme Elder said. “I have to get back to the council.”
“Wait,” I said. But he was gone. I looked at Lawson.
“It will be okay,” Lawson said.
I shook my head. How was it going to be okay? The king of reapers wanted what was flowing in my bloodstream. And I only had Ranger to protect my family. Sure, he was formidable, but against Azrael and his blanks he was as dangerous as a pesky fly.
I shouldn’t have agreed.
When I began shivering, Lawson hugged me into him, his hands rubbing my back as he whispered reassuring words. But they were just words.
And then he said, “With the stone, you can save your family and yourself.”
I looked up at him. “How?”
“Azrael wants the stone to make him stronger. It means the stone can do the same for you.”
“I can use it?” I questioned.
He released his hold from me. “Yes. Just like Azrael.”
“Do you know how it’s supposed to work?” I asked. I had no time to waste. I needed to know how to use the stone and quickly.
“In theory, yes. There are many types of stones out there that are similar in respect to bonding like the life stones.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“I’ve heard of a dimorphous crystal that was bonded to an incubus.”
“What’s an incubus?”
He paused. “Let’s forget that example. Let me think a moment. I’m sure there was another one I heard about.”
I pulled out my phone as he was lost in thought. Incubus. I typed it into the search field. “A male demon believed to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women. Well, that’s disturbing. These things are real?”
He looked at my phone and grimaced. “Yes. And so are succubus. Women demons who . . . I don’t think I have to spell it out. But that’s an old description. The people aren’t always sleeping.”
I noticed he was uncomfortable, which I found amusing. It brought relief to my stratosphere-high stress level. And for a moment, I wanted to think about something else besides my problems. “I suppose you never had to endure a sex ed class in school. They probably didn’t have such things when you were in school.”
“We were lucky if we went to school,” he said.
“Did you?”
He nodded. “In a way.”
“What way?”
He pressed his lips together before saying, “Let’s just focus on the stone.”
Once again, Lawson grew moody when the subject of his past came up.
“Well, I don’t feel any different,” I said. “What did the crystal do to the incubus?”
“It’s not the same stone, so it won’t do the same thing.”
“His did something sexual, right?” I asked, earning me a scowl.
“Young girls like you don’t need to hear stuff like that.”
“It’s beyond weird to hear you call me a young girl when you look only a few years older than me. I get that you’ve been around for a while and that I may be a young girl to you, but there are girls younger than me getting pregnant. The world isn’t the same as it was when you were actually my age. I don’t need you to shield me from topics. I need you to be straight with me so I know what I might be getting into.”
He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. “I guess you’re right. In my time, you’d probably be married already. But you’re still too innocent to hear anything about incubi.”
“You think I’m innocent?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Maybe he was right. Hell, I’d had to look up what an incubus was. So, while I might be ignorant in some things, I was not someone who was delicate and would faint at hearing the crystal gave the incubus . . . what would a dimorphous crystal do? Di- was Latin for two, right? So, dimorphous could mean two or duality.
“The crystal gave him two penises, right?” I asked.
“Stop,” Lawson said.
“Just tell me. You can’t bring stuff up like this and not expect me to ask.”
He looked at the ceiling and I thought he was going to try to avoid me, but then he said, “He can sp
lit into two beings.”
“So that he can sleep with two women simultaneously,” I surmised.
Lawson didn’t say anything.
“Unless it’s not about sleeping with multiple women,” I said. “Maybe one half likes women and the other half likes men. Or . . . maybe he wants to just really pleasure the one woman with two of him. Unless she’s sleeping and so therefore she gets no pleasure. Does she wake up, or does he have her under some sleeping spell?”
“Stop,” Lawson said again.
“You know that makes him a rapist in any case.”
Lawson shifted, stranding me once again in his studio. Hmm. I may have pushed him a little too far.
But now that I knew his buttons, it was becoming easier to do.
It was a few minutes later that Boomer appeared. He yawned and then scowled at me. “I was sleeping.”
“Reapers sleep?”
“Of course we do. Well, most of us do. Me, especially. I like sleeping. And Lawson kicked me out of bed. Something about not being able to do something. And that I was supposed to help somehow. I have no idea what he was raving on about.”
“I was trying to figure out how the dimorphous crystal the incubus had bonded with works. I think the topic freaked out Lawson, and I wouldn’t let it drop.”
“Oh. The dude splits in two. Loves crashing sleepovers. He’s a sick bastard.”
“Why couldn’t Lawson tell me that?”
“He’s old-school. I embraced the orgy decade. Free love and all that. So, you bonded with the crystal?”
“It’s inside of me.”
“Really?”
I held out my hand. “Lawson cut me, and the crystal seeped inside and then closed the wound.”
“Gross.”
“Yep.”
“So, now what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel any different.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” Boomer asked.
“I don’t know. Aren’t you supposed to tell me?”
We stared at each other for a half second. “You’re a pain,” he said.
“And so are you. What is the purpose of this stone besides making Azrael ridiculously more powerful?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, the dimorphous crystal gave the incubus the ability to split. Does my crystal even have a name?”
“Yeah, it’s don’t-touch-that-or-Azrael-will-rain-terror-down-on-you.”
“Not helpful.”
He shrugged. “Why are you here?” he asked, looking around the studio.
“Lawson brought me here. Do you know where we are?”
“New York.”
“Really? In the city?” I asked, moving to the window again. It was still dark beyond the streetlights. But I had never been to New York before and was curious.
“Yeah, Lawson used to live here after he moved from England.”
“He lived in England?”
“Yeah. Died in that nasty plague. Then he eventually moved here. I’m not sure why he still keeps this place.”
I wasn’t sure why either. It wasn’t like there was anything in the studio besides a punching bag. He could easily have that in his pod in the dead zone.
“He doesn’t have an accent,” I said.
“He’s been in America for a hundred years or so. I guess his accent changed.”
I supposed it could happen. “Since you’re here, we can train. The stone is supposed to help me, right? Can you teach me how to shift now?”
“I don’t know how to teach that,” he said. “You just do it.”
“Not helpful,” I said, my irritation already growing.
Boomer rubbed the back of his neck, looking at the floor. “I guess . . . well, you think about where you want to go. And then just go.”
I tried not to roll my eyes, but the reflex was too strong.
He muttered a curse. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just something that is in a reaper. It’s instinct. You just know what to do.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’m thinking about my house. I want to go there.” Nothing happened. I was still standing in the studio with Boomer. “Now what?”
“Now, go there.”
“I tried. Obviously it didn’t work, because I’m still here. Do you think Lawson is still mad at me? Is there a way to bribe him to come back? He’s been shifting longer. Maybe he has a better way of teaching people how to do it.”
“You made him uncomfortable. You did this to yourself,” Boomer said.
I sighed, knowing he was right. I should’ve never pushed Lawson. Now I was stuck in a studio with Boomer with a blue stone flowing through my veins. A demon watching my family. And the king of death who will want to kill me for the stone. Nothing was going my way.
So, without further complaints, I again tried to do as Boomer had said. I tried to somehow shift to my house using nothing more than the feeling of wanting to go there. There were no new sensations that I could detect, no unearthly force propelling me to my house. Nothing.
“Maybe the stone needs more time to adjust to my body,” I said.
“Possible. But unlikely. As far as I know a crystal retains its power in whatever form. It’s most likely that you are too weak to use it.”
“Then why did it bond with me?”
“No idea. I wouldn’t have.”
“Life stone, please take me home,” I said. “Even if it’s just to get away from Boomer.”
Nothing happened.
Boomer raised a brow. “I don’t think it works that way either.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try something else. I’d like to go to sleep one of these days.”
He wanted to sleep? After running into the Grim Reaper, being threatened, paralyzed, and then prodded by doctors; after searching for Lawson only to run into a vampire; and after bonding with a life stone, Boomer was the one who needed to sleep?
“Then take me home,” I snapped at Boomer.
“I’d rather not spend eternity shifting you where you need to go.”
“The feeling is mutual. Speaking of eternity, I met a vampire.”
Boomer leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. His legs stretched out before him as he made himself comfortable. “And did your vampire-loving teen heart swoon?”
“No. I just thought it was interesting. Lawson didn’t seem to like him.”
“Gee, I wonder why. Could it be that bloodsucking vampires kill people, creating more work for us?”
“I’m just amazed they’re real.”
“Yep. They’re real. There’s a lot of nasty stuff in the world. And that’s just on Earth. Think about all the other blood-sucking creatures in the other realms.”
“I’d rather not.”
“So, are you going to shift or what?”
“I’d like to.”
“Then you better hurry. Because I’m not hanging out with you all night.”
“Then help me.”
“There is no help for you,” he muttered.
“I heard that.”
“Good. Then I don’t have to repeat myself.”
We glared at each other.
Obviously we were both out of sorts.
“Just go back to bed,” I said. “I’ll figure this out myself.”
“Not happening. The last thing I need is Lawson breathing down my neck.”
I closed my eyes, hoping I’d be directed by the stone. But nothing happened. Still, I waited. What else was I supposed to do?
It was about ten minutes later when I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Want to go for a walk?” I asked.
“No.”
“Please.”
Boomer sighed and stood. “Fine, but only around the block.”
I was about to head to the door when Boomer grabbed my arm, shifting us to the sidewalk just outside.
“We could have walked downstairs,” I said.
“I’m at a content stage in my life,” he said. “Not having to
use stairs makes me happy.”
“You’re an odd guy.”
“And you’re not odd?”
I shrugged.
As we walked down the sidewalk, I realized I wasn’t prepared for the cold. A shiver escaped me.
“Want to go back?” he asked.
“No. Want to take me home?” I asked hopefully.
“No.”
With his hands jammed in his pockets, he followed me around the block. “Well, this sucks.”
“Do you feel any calls of death?” I asked. “Maybe the stone needs to be around a dying person to activate.”
“Doubtful.”
“It’s worth a shot, right? Tap into your death radar and see if you can find anyone.”
“There’s no such thing as a death radar. And Lawson said to stay here,” Boomer said. “They should have never given the stone to you. No one else got a crystal while they trained.”
“That’s because you were already dead. You could train right away. So, now that I have the stone, you should be able to train me.”
“If you can’t even shift by yourself, it’s rather pointless.”
“Fine,” I muttered. “Can you go back to Lawson and tell him I promise not to ask any incubus questions?”
Boomer grumbled something and then touched my arm, depositing me back in the studio. “Stay,” he said as if I was a dog. He shifted.
I didn’t have to wait long before Lawson returned. His jaw was set hard, meaning I had to play it cool or I’d never get out of here.
I didn’t say anything, which seemed to surprise him. He relaxed his rigid stance.
“Boomer said you wanted to try to shift.”
“I’ve been trying. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.”
He shook his head. “It’s been a long night. I’ll take you home. Just get a good night’s sleep and we’ll try tomorrow.”
“Okay, I’ll skip school,” I said.
“I forgot about school,” he said with a groan.
“I’ll skip,” I said again. “There’s no amount of punishment that Mom can give me that could be worse than Azrael coming for me or them.”
He shook his head. “No, go to school. For now, pretend everything’s normal. I want to check in with the Elder Council anyway. Hopefully the Supreme Elder will get the council’s support against Azrael. It might take a while to persuade them.”
