Serpent's Storm

by Amber Benson

  “I’m so glad,” I said, automatically, scratching behind the pup’s ears, while I distractedly searched the room for Sumi.

  He’d been in sea serpent form when the device had been destroyed, so he shouldn’t have been hard to spot, but after scanning the room twice with no luck, I had to accept the fact that he was gone, probably having shifted back into his human body and escaped in the flurry of activity that’d consumed the Hall when the wormhole restriction had been lifted. Still, I had a funny feeling this wouldn’t be the last time I tangled with the mischievous Japanese Sea God—

  “Callie!”

  My thoughts were interrupted by Clio’s singsonging voice as she burst through the melee and threw her arms around me.

  “You’re okay,” she bellowed, squeezing me as hard as she could. My shoulder and hand protested against the attack, but I let her go on and squeeze as hard as she wanted.

  “I’m all right,” I said weakly, remembering Hyacinth’s pythonlike embrace.

  Speaking of Hyacinth, I was happy to see that both she and Frank had been trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys by a contingent of Bugbears, who thankfully were out of the Devil’s command now that we’d wrested Hell from his control. Hyacinth, livid with fury, shot daggers at me with her eyes as they dragged her away, kicking and screaming.

  Frank was a different story entirely. There was no antipathy in him as our gazes locked, and I found myself feeling kind of sorry for the man again. He had been used by Sumi and Hyacinth, but that didn’t free him from responsibility for his actions. He’d made his choices and now he was going to have to answer for them.

  “Hey, I’m really pissed at you,” Clio said, her voice abruptly cutting into my thoughts as she punched me hard in my bad shoulder, trying to get my attention. “You threw me in that elevator with Mom and then you just left me there. I could’ve killed you!”

  Rubbing my poor dislocated shoulder, I apologized.

  “It was the only way I could keep you guys safe,” I said sheepishly. “If I’d died, then you guys would’ve lost your immortality and you’d have been sitting ducks.”

  Clio nodded, but I could tell she was still furious with me for ditching her. She opened her mouth to say as much but was silenced by a kiss from her boyfriend, Indra, who had snuck up behind her while she fumed. A few months back, I’d labeled him Mr. Sex on a Stick—and the nickname hadn’t been far from wrong. Even covered with drying blood, he was definitely a hunk. It made me a bit uncomfortable to see him macking on my baby sister, but if it gave me a “Get Out of Jail” free pass, then I guess I was all for it.

  “I was lost without you,” Indra breathed into Clio’s ear, and as my sister melted into her lover’s embrace, I chose that moment to disentangle myself from their reunion and move into the swarm of bodies surrounding us. Now that the wormholes had been reopened, more and more people who had helped to fight against the Devil’s aborted coup were coming into the Hall of Death to celebrate. As I pushed through the crowd, I knew there was someone I needed to do a little explaining to myself—and I needed to do it sooner rather than later.

  I found Daniel helping Tanuki replace the drawers in the apothecary cabinet. The rotund man looked worn out—the face I’d only seen filled with laughter was now a mask of grief. I reached out and patted his shoulder and he jumped, before realizing I was a friend, not foe.

  “I’m sorry about Suri and the others,” I said—and I meant it.

  “They fought very valiantly,” Tanuki said softly. “And it is better to die fighting than to become a traitor like me.”

  The large man’s face fell and he started to cry.

  “What’re you talking about?” I said, rubbing his arm. “There was nothing else you could’ve done.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t look convinced.

  “You could’ve given my sister the files she wanted, but you stalled her, hoping help would come.”

  “That’s true,” Tanuki said. “And then you arrived. As if in answer to my prayers.”

  “See,” I said, smiling at him. “You did right by me and everyone here in Purgatory.”

  “Thank you,” he said uncertainly, “I will get the drawers returned to their proper places before the day is over. I swear it.”

  I almost told him not worry about it, to just relax and we’d get things settled later, but he looked like he needed to keep his hands busy, so I simply nodded.

  As Tanuki returned to the epic task of collecting drawers, I took a deep breath and wheeled around to face Daniel. I had expected anger, maybe even tears, but the cold veneer of civility he wore was enough to chill my heart.

  He knows, I thought, guilt sweeping through me. He knows what I’ve done.

  “Thanks for the cape,” I said, launching into the most benign sentence in the universe, when what I really wanted to say was: I’m an idiot. I love you.

  “May I see it,” he said, holding out his hand for the cape. I gave it to him, and the moment he touched it, it shifted into the Cup of Jamshid. No wonder it’d protected me from the promethium. The Cup was what gave Death his/her powers—and it was the only thing that could’ve saved me from my immortal weakness. Even now, without the Cup’s power, the burning sensation in my gut had started to return.

  “Here, drink from it,” Daniel said, offering me a sip of my own salvation.

  “Wait,” I said, holding up my hand.

  We stood there in silence, neither one saying what we should’ve, both of us guilty of glossing over what we were really feeling. I opened my mouth, ready to plunge into the abyss, but Kali saved me from the executioner’s ax. She was covered in gore and viscera from head to foot—and frankly she looked like she was in her element. She grinned at me, showing off her pearly whites.

  “So, Boss, what’s the first order of business?”

  I stared at her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She rolled her eyes heavenward.

  “Still a dumb old white girl, no matter what title you give her,” she said, shaking her head.

  I looked to Daniel for confirmation and he nodded.

  “But what about the Challenge?” I asked, my head spinning. I had no interest in fighting anyone for anything.

  “I’ll be overseeing Hell, re-collecting all the souls you let out . . .”

  I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my palms.

  “Okay, hold on, are you saying I’m Death now? And that you’re the new Devil?”

  “The nitwit has so much to learn,” Kali snickered. “Our Jarvis will be a very busy man.”

  “But how . . . ? How did all of this happen?” I said, totally lost by this new turn of events.

  “First, drink from the Cup,” Daniel said, forcing the thing into my hands. I hesitated, then lifted it to my mouth and felt the warm nectar flow from my lips down through the rest of me, permanently squelching the promethium’s fire. I would be all right again—or at least until the next time I ate a jewel filled with the stuff.

  “Can you explain, Kali?” Daniel asked, “I need to return to Hell so I can relieve Jarvis and Cerberus from guard duty.”

  Kali winked at me.

  “Oh, I’ll tell white girl everything,” she said. “You’d better believe it.”

  “Daniel, wait,” I called out as he turned to go.

  He stopped, his eyes heavy with raw emotion as he looked at me.

  “I have to go, Calliope,” he said, finally letting out the breath he’d been holding. “We’ll talk later.”

  I watched him leave, my heart breaking into two jagged pieces.

  “Kali?” I said, grabbing her wrist to steady myself. She seemed surprised by my touch, but she didn’t shrug it off. “Can you tell me who Daniel is?”

  “What are you asking me, white girl?” she said, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  “I just want to know who he really is,” I said, my shoulders hunching with exhaustion. “Yes, he’s the Devil’s protégé, I know, I don’t care, whatever. I want to k
now about before then—who he was and how he came to be under the Devil’s control.”

  “We should be celebrating.” Kali sighed, her sari stiff with dried blood, the pungent scent of iron floating around her like a perfume.

  “Please,” I begged.

  “He was just a man, Callie. He sold his soul for immortality and was cursed to be the Devil’s plaything . . . until you released him.”

  “And the Devil knew he could be Death?” I asked.

  Kali sucked on her teeth like she’d eaten a raw lemon, but then she nodded.

  “I would assume so,” she said. “That was why he offered Daniel the bargain, right? Does that answer your question?”

  “Sort of,” I replied, though I’d sensed Kali was holding something back, something important she wasn’t supposed to tell me. Looking at the proud warrior Goddess, I decided to leave things alone for now. There’d be plenty of time in the future to pick Jarvis’s brains about the subject.

  “Let’s get you in a bath, white girl,” Kali said. “You smell like sick.”

  I snorted.

  “Um, have you smelled yourself recently?” I asked, the beginnings of a grin stretching across my face.

  “Ha!” she said, shaking her weapon at me. “I always smell as fresh as a daisy. That’s your stench overwhelming mine, nimrod.”

  I decided being called “nimrod” was one of the nicest things anyone had said to me all day.

  As I stood there, a disgusting dirty mess of my former self, and surveyed the chaos swirling around me, my soul was full of wonder. Around me, all the minions of Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell were working together, each doing their part to set the Hall of Death back to rights again. As badly as I stank, I had no intention of going anywhere, not even for a shower. My place was here, among my people; it was where I belonged. My father had known it, he’d seen it was my destiny, and he’d given me just enough rope to hang myself.

  No, that wasn’t exactly true.

  Even though I’d fled from the family business my entire life, my fate had been sealed from the day I was born—I was meant to be Death. It was my calling.

  I was my father’s daughter.

  I was Calliope Reaper-Jones.

  I was Death.

  epilogue

  I’d spent most of the last forty-eight hours on-site at Death, Inc. The building was a mess, files and workspaces in disarray, the Hall of Death utterly ransacked, the Executive Offices filled with dead Bugbears and a very pissed-off bald woman. The consortium of Death, Inc., employees—Transporters, Harvesters, and other office drones—worked tirelessly to get the place cleaned up and back in semiworking order. I’d done what was needed here and there, ignoring my aches and pains as the Cup of Jamshid plied its magic on me. I had no interest in being anywhere but where I was—and no matter what Kali or Jarvis said, they couldn’t tear me away from the office.

  Finally, once things seemed to be progressing reasonably, Jarvis convinced me to take Clio and my mother back to Sea Verge. I hesitated, not sure it was fair to leave him and Runt in charge of everything after all they’d been through, nor was I sure I could bear returning to the place where my dad had been killed, but I had to do something with my mother, and the mansion seemed like the obvious choice.

  We settled her into her suite of rooms, but we all knew there was little hope of recovery. Without my father, she was like a ghost of her former self. She just sat in a white upholstered Chippendale chair, staring out the plate glass windows overlooking the sea. Clio and I both tried to draw her out, to engage her somehow, but her gaze remained locked on the waves as they crashed into the jagged cliffs below.

  Then, the next morning, we woke up to find my mother gone, a note left on the seat of her Chippendale chair written in her spidery cursive. It read: I’ve gone to the sea.

  Thinking of Starr, I explained to Clio about my run-in with the Siren and how I didn’t think Mom had committed suicide—her immortal weakness was snoring and I doubted there was much of that going on in the ocean—but instead, I believed that she had returned to her family. Clio had a hard time understanding why our mom felt comfortable leaving us to clean up the mess alone, but I knew better.

  My father had been what tied her to this life. With him gone, there was nothing left to hold her to Sea Verge.

  I couldn’t fault her for grief.

  With my parents missing, the house was terribly empty, and I found myself roaming the desolate halls, the scent of Daniel filling my nostrils as I steeped myself in memories of our time together. I kept my wanderings limited to the inside of the house, unwilling to venture outside where my dad had died. I just didn’t have the heart to deal with any of that yet.

  Neither Clio nor I was inured to the loneliness of Sea Verge, so when she asked if it was all right if she went and stayed with Indra, who was I to say no? She left her room as it was, but stuffed her laptop and enough clothing into her bag to last her more than a few weeks. I wasn’t worried about her disappearing like my mom. I just knew she needed to get away from the house in order to heal, that it was the right thing—just like my mother’s leaving had been—and that I should be happy she had Indra to help her pick up the pieces.

  I sat on the front steps as Indra, in a very mortal move, came to pick Clio up in his red miniconvertible, one that had white racing stripes painted down its sides. As I watched her pile her stuff into the backseat, I realized that while I wasn’t looking, my little sister had turned into a beautiful young woman. It made me want to cry, but tears were unbecoming to Death, so I composed myself, and by the time she’d come back up to give me a bone-crunching hug, the tears were nowhere to be found. With the innocence of a child, she asked me if I wanted to go stay with Indra, too, but I assured her I was fine at Sea Verge. Besides, how would it look if Death went and hid out at Indra’s house like a crybaby?

  When she was gone, I went back to my old bedroom, where I’d slept the night before, and curled up on the comforter. I thought of my apartment in New York and how it wasn’t really mine anymore. That that part of my life was over and a new chapter had already begun.

  I lay there for what seemed like hours, thinking about the implications of what all this meant, and then I heard a knock at my door. I’d assumed it was Jarvis, but when I got up to open it, I found Daniel waiting across the threshold.

  “May I come in?” he asked, his dark hair unkempt, a day’s worth of stubble on his face.

  I gestured for him to enter, not sure I trusted my voice. He sat down on the end of the bed and I curled up by the pillows.

  “Can I turn on the lights?” he asked. I nodded, not realizing I’d been sitting in the dark. He got up and turned on the bedside lamp, flooding the room with a pale yellow electric glow. He went back to sit at the end of my bed, the light casting shadows across his face.

  “Calliope—” he began, looking down at his hands.

  “I know,” I said, interrupting. “We need to talk.”

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, his ice blue eyes neutral.

  “I’m staying in Hell,” he began again. “It’s where I’m needed now that the Devil’s been deposed.”

  “Runt said Cerberus had him and the Jackal Brothers guarding the North Gate.”

  That elicited a hint of a smile from Daniel.

  “Yeah, it’s kind of an amazing sight.”

  I smiled.

  “Okay, so you’re staying in Hell—”

  “And you’re needed in Purgatory and on Earth,” he said. “You have some pretty big shoes to fill.”

  I have the Ender of Death to deal with, too, I mused—but I didn’t share that thought out loud.

  “And things haven’t really been going that great with us lately. You’re not happy, Calliope, and you cheated . . .”

  There. He’d said it. The thing I’d been dreading for the past forty-eight hours.

  “It wasn’t really my fault,” I started to say, but he held up his hand for silence.

  “Calli
ope, you’ve wanted to be a free agent for weeks now,” he said, his gaze returning to his hands. “I thought we had something important, something that was worth fighting for, but I was alone in that—and after everything that’s happened, I just don’t think I trust you anymore.”

  It was like having a nail driven through my heart. I felt light-headed, and the dark spots that descended on my vision made it hard to see.

  “Then I understand,” I heard myself saying. “If that’s what you really feel.”

  Inside, I was screaming at myself, begging me to ask for Daniel’s forgiveness, to tell him that I loved him more than anything, that I just hadn’t understood that until he’d gone away.

  But my internal pleas fell on my own deaf ears.

  Daniel nodded and stood up.

  “Then I guess that’s it.”

  Nausea burbled in my throat and I felt faint. I took a deep breath to stay my racing heart and then I said:

  “Thank you, Daniel. For everything.”

  His eyes went dark, but then he shook his head, dispelling whatever emotion he’d been feeling.

  “You’re welcome, Cal,” he said.

  We stared at each other, drinking in the last dregs of what could’ve been, and then he walked to the door. I watched him go, but as the door closed softly behind him, I let the words that had been running through my head silently slip between my lips:

  I love you, Daniel.

  Ace Books by Amber Benson

  DEATH’S DAUGHTER

  CAT’S CLAW

  SERPENT’S STORM