by S. L. Naeole
“Lark will be listening for you. If anything comes up, if anything happens, you will call for me.” Robert was pushing up the tie he was wearing with the dark gray suit I’d chosen for the funeral—I told him if he was going to be mourning my death, he might as well be doing it in something I picked out—and was looking in the mirror at my reflection as I watched him. “Promise me, Grace. I won’t lose you on the day of your funeral.”
“I promise.” He nodded and turned to press a chaste kiss to my forehead.
“Thank you. I won’t stay longer than necessary.”
I followed him downstairs where Graham and Lark were waiting, Graham in the same black jacket and dark gray pants he’d worn to Stacy’s funeral, while Lark wore a dark navy sheath dress with a black belt. My eyes started to well up with tears.
“What’s with the waterworks?” Graham asked as he reached into his pocket to pull out the handkerchief that Lark had most likely placed there.
“It’s just…you all look so nice. I’m glad that you’re not dressing like bums to my funeral.”
Lark couldn’t help but smile, her face lighting up at the rather dark humor of the situation, while Graham smiled at the irony. They both hugged me and left, leaving Robert to say his own goodbye.
“I don’t understand why you can’t tell him-”
“I promise, when the time is right, we will let him know that you’re okay.”
“Could you…could you at least make sure that he’s doing okay?” I asked softly, my hands gripping onto the lapels of Robert’s jacket. “I mean, with Janice being in the hospital, and Matthew, and the funeral…I’m scared for him.”
“I’ve been checking on him every day, Grace. He’s holding up as best as can be expected, and he’s staying strong for Matthew and for Janice. The Kims have been very helpful, especially now that they both share the same suffering. But I will do my best to speak to him so that you may know yourself.”
He held me close to him, our bodies touching yet feeling very far apart as what lay ahead wedged itself between us. Robert was going to have to pretend that I was gone. The dress-rehearsal of what was to come.
After he’d left, I sat down with Stacy in the kitchen. I grabbed a piece of toast that had been sitting on a plate next to her and began to slather it with some butter and honey. She looked at it with disgust.
“How can you eat that stuff?”
“The same way you can take a bite out of people.”
“Yeah, but I need to eat people. You don’t need to eat butter. It’s totally bad for you.”
I looked at her and raised a rather perplexed eyebrow. “What? I’m sitting across the table from someone who eats people, there’s a crazed angel out there stalking me, my mother was Death, my husband is Death and is destined to kill me, and you’re telling me that butter is bad for me?”
“Well, since you put it that way, here-” she grabbed the box of butter that sat on the counter “-have a whole pound of it.”
I laughed. There really wasn’t anything else to do. Her bewildered expression only added to the hilarity of the moment and she soon found reason enough to laugh herself, and the two of us enjoyed a rare moment together as the friends we once were.
How easy it had been for us when there were no complications other than simply being awkward teenagers. So much had changed over the course of less than a year, and it was hard to believe that we were once so completely innocent of what the world truly held.
“Do you…” I began, but found that I couldn’t quite say the words.
“Do I what?”
“Do you ever regret speaking to me? Becoming my friend?”
There, I’d said it.
“Of course not! My God, what would my life have been if we didn’t become friends?”
I looked at her and the only word I could come up with was “alive.”
“Boring, that’s what!”
She obviously had a different idea.
“Grace, I was the only girl in a family of six kids. I went to school, I came home. You took away the monotony and I can’t thank you enough for that.”
“But look at what’s happened because of you knowing me. You got sick again. You had to choose between dying and becoming something that a lot of people call a monster. You dated Graham!”
A lazy toss of her head and a soft chuckle followed. “No one knows for sure if me getting sick again had anything to do with being friends with you. But even if it did, it didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do. I didn’t have to choose to become what I am, Grace. I know you probably don’t agree, but I think that this was how it was supposed to be. I believe one-hundred-percent that everything happens for a reason, and meeting you was just one of the pieces of my life’s puzzle falling into place.
“Without you, I’d have never met Lark. Yeah, things between us kinda suck right now, but they’re getting better. I’m learning how to forgive because of it. And yeah, I dated Graham, but he’s not a bad guy. You liked him too, remember? If nothing else, it’s shown me that not everyone’s ‘perfect guy’ is really perfect for everyone.
“He wasn’t for you, definitely not for me, but for Lark he’s like Prince Freaking Charming. And let’s face it, your Mr. Right? Yeah, he’s definitely not right for me. I might not be alive and all that but I still prefer someone with a bit more beating beneath his chest, if you catch my drift.”
She waggled her eyebrows at me and I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. “How do you think you’d do with a human boyfriend?” I asked as I stood up to get a glass of water.
“Well,” she began, looking thoughtful, “as long as he wasn’t some kind of sick, perverted freak, I think it would be safe to say that I wouldn’t eat him, and that’s as good as I suppose it’s gonna to get for me. Besides, I’m only nineteen. I’ve got what, another eon or so before it’ll be acceptable for me to start dating? By then I’ll totally accept that whole cougar thing and maybe I’ll find someone who’ll accept the whole popsicle vagina thing.”
There was water in my mouth.
Was.
Now it lay in droplets all over the table…and Stacy.
“Popsicle vagina?” I wheezed.
Stacy’s face bore the look of innocence, but I could see the laughter brewing inside of her. Her eyes told me everything and soon, she was guffawing as though her life depended on it. “God, Grace. What did you expect? That turning into a people-eater would somehow delete my vagina or something?”
I shook my head rapidly, but blushed as I realized that what I thought was something far worse. “I knew it wouldn’t get deleted…just maybe a bit more…dangerous?”
I didn’t think her laughing could get any louder, but it did. What was once a guffaw was now a full blown bray. “Dangerous? Really?”
“Well, you remember that movie, where the girl was turned into a vampire and instead of biting them with her teeth she…well, you remember!”
“WHAT?!?!”
That did it. Stacy’s laughter went atomic. She began to pound the table, causing the metal legs to curl out beneath it and bending the center until it looked like a four-legged spider. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you actually believe the stuff they put in the movies. Oh God, I’m hurting here.” She gripped onto her sides as her laughter reverberated throughout her body.
She had a point.
I stood up to get more water, and heard the bending of metal as Stacy righted the table, leaving only a few tell-tale dents. I sat back down and saw that she had placed a sheet of paper on the table in front of her.
“What’s that?” I asked, looking over her neat handwriting.
“It’s that list you gave me, remember? Of the doors that were in my head? I’ve been trying to make heads or tails of it but I keep coming up empty. I must have Googled about a billion different combinations but I’ve come up with nothing.”
The doorbell rang and with a sigh, I stood up to answer it, Stacy at my heels in case anything hap
pened. There was no peephole, and so I had to trust that whoever was on the other side wouldn’t leap through and attack. Slowly, I opened the door and felt my jaw unhinge a bit.
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought it was more polite if I rang the doorbell.”
I let the door swing open as the figure who stood before me walked in. He looked different. His hair was cut short, the auburn color somehow appearing darker. He wore a rather plain looking shirt over a pair of torn jeans. He looked unkempt and…normal.
“Sure. Come in. You don’t need to ask for an invitation,” Stacy mumbled, her arms folding over her chest. “Do you think you should be here, Lem? After everything that happened the last time you were here?”
“Considering that I’m the only one available to inform you that Isis was Samael’s partner and that her death has now removed from you the threat of interference from our kind, then yes.”
I felt my breath catch in my throat, and my heart stutter at the news. “Are you for real?”
“Well, I’m not lying. Obviously.”
“Yes, yes I can see that,” I said, feeling faint and needing to sit down. Stacy was beside me in a heartbeat, and she kept me from flopping onto the couch like some kind of dying fish.
“I thought that this would be good news,” he said, concerned that my reaction wasn’t lining up to his imagined one.
“No. No, it is. I just…I guess I didn’t think it was possible.”
“You didn’t think what was possible?”
My eyes rose to his and I frowned. “That Sam would choose a woman as his partner. Even though he wanted me to think differently, he wasn’t in control of anything, and I just can’t believe that he’d let a woman call all the shots.”
“Samael wasn’t who you thought he was, Grace.”
“What did I know about him to begin with?” I snorted.
“You knew enough to affect him. He was a weak and he didn’t like having that pointed to him by one of his own kind, much less a human. But you pointed out every single one of his weaknesses, and you did it knowing what he could do to you.”
He took a tentative step towards Stacy and me, but a deep, nearly thunderous sound seemed to rattle within Stacy and he stepped back. “I can’t stay long. I only dropped by to let you know what I’ve learned.”
He turned towards the door and I heard my voice call out to him to stop. He turned, slowly.
“Yes?”
“Why did it have to be you? Why couldn’t Ameila tell me? Or Sera?”
“Because I am no longer welcome amongst them as I have been dropped from my place as a Seraphim.”
My gasp was louder—thank God—than Stacy’s chuckle. “Why?”
A somber smile passed over his face. “You needn’t concern yourself over it, Grace. Just know that you’re safe now. The danger of you dying has now passed.”
“I never cared about the…danger to myself,” I argued before he opened the door. “I only cared about what happened to my friends and family.”
He stopped, his hand poised above the doorknob. “The fate of those that have passed was a much better one than what awaits us all when you die.”
“Why are you saying that?”
“You know why.”
He started to open the door, but I rushed to him, grabbing a hold of his shirt and yanking, the fabric tearing as he turned to face me.
“Tell me why,” I pleaded.
“You know why. You know what your mother was.”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“You are in the wrong role. You were never meant to be born human. You were never meant to be born mortal. If you had been born as N’Uriel had, it would be you receiving the call to be Death. It should have been you and not he, but because you have not, and you’re the last of Avi’s offspring, when you die, the world will soon follow.”
My head shook violently. It wasn’t true. What Mrs. Deovolente had told me wasn’t true; I wasn’t going to believe it. “You’re lying.”
“I wish I were. You were born for a purpose, Grace, but something went wrong and now there is no saving this world. Your birth was supposed to be the beginning of a new age of our kind. Instead, it’s triggered the end of all of us.”
Everything inside of me seemed to be breaking down. I felt my knees give out, and I collapsed onto them, the hard and sharp burst of pain that shot into me through them doing nothing to shock me out of the stupor I was in.
The last thing I remember hearing before I gave in to the guilt was Lem’s rather sardonic laugh. “It’s rather ironic, really. You cannot take on your role because of what you are, and yet you’ll be the most successful at it, bringing on the death of every living person and creature in this world with one singular act on your part. It’s rather remarkable. Imagine, you, the entire reason for the apocalypse. If ever there was a reason to feel guilty, that would be it.”
PIECED
We all live in our own individual worlds, tiny little environments within one large stew of an existence. When your own world falls apart it’s merely absorbed by the one around you, and you soon find yourself completely lost and alone. Even when you’re surrounded by people you know, whose faces bear the look of deep concern and worry.
“Grace?”
Their voices call out your name and you fight to respond but you have no will. You succumb to the depression of hopelessness.
“Grace, can you hear me?”
You will feel the ground beneath you move. It shakes you with a conviction to unearth you from your premature grave.
“It’s like she’s not even there.”
There is nothing but the shallow feeling of cool suffocation as you allow the dark edges to finally creep over you and take you from the world of consciousness and drown you in a mock world set up to soothe you and placate you as the rest of the world goes on without you.
“I’ve tried to enter her thoughts but she’s shut everyone out. I don’t even know if she can hear us speak.”
I can hear you speak. I can hear you all speak. It’s just pointless to acknowledge it anymore. Asking questions and desiring answers has been my problem since the very beginning. Death. So much death.
“Grace, if you can hear me, blink your eyes. Do something.”
What is blinking? What purpose does it serve when your eyes can’t see anyway? Everything I thought about this world is wrong. And everything I thought I had accepted after the fact is also wrong. Everything that I saw with my eyes, in my mind, in my heart, were all wrong.
“She’s not blinking, she’s barely breathing. She’s just staring ahead like some kind of zombie. Should we get a doctor? Should I call Dr. Bro?”
What can the doctor do? He fixes bodies. He can’t fix fate.
“No. He wouldn’t know what to do. What happened, Stacy? What happened while we were gone?”
When did the air get so cold? How did I end up in Robert’s room?
“You let him back in the house?”
“I didn’t have a choice! She opened the door and he walked right in. I wasn’t going to start a fight with him; that’s the last thing she needs!”
Warm hands on my face…
“Grace, love, please just look at me.” Silver eyes were staring into mine, but they could see nothing. They would be met with their own reflection.
“She’s in shock. What did Llehmai say to her?”
“He told her the same thing that you said before, but then he told her that she was the one who was supposed to have taken over or something, and that if she dies then-”
“Then the world will die, too.”
“You knew?”
“No. Not really. I’ve heard bits and pieces, but…mythology is part truth, part fairytale, and since I received my call, I believed that what I’d heard was the fairytale part. This isn’t the first time Grace has heard of this, you know. But she didn’t really believe it; she didn’t have any reason to until now. None of us did.
”
“So is it true?”
There was silence. Unnatural, intentional silence.
“It is, isn’t it?”
“I cannot say whether or not it’s true. If it were true then my receiving the call would have been a mistake, but the call never makes a mistake.”
The warm hand was holding my cold one. Everything around me felt like ice. Even the words were tipped with chilled points.
“How do you find out for sure?”
“I have to ascend.”
“A-what?”
“Ascend. I have to go up to the first circle and speak to them, ask the first of my kind what is going on. Grace’s circumstances are so unique that I’m not certain anyone outside of the first four could be able to explain to me anything without it being tainted by half-truths. My grandfather will accept me there, and allow me my questions.”
“Wait, you need permission to ask a question?”
Oh Stacy, why so surprised by the levels of restriction?
“I’m not like the others. I came out of a human womb; I’ve killed one of my own; I’ve broken too many laws of my kind to count. It doesn’t matter what my call is; I’m still at the bottom of the totem pole here; the hierarchy is resolute.”
“But one of those dudes is your grandfather, right?”
“It doesn’t matter. We can all tie our origins to the first circle in some way, but very few of us have a direct relation to those of the first circle; the punishment for the Grigori helped destroy several generations of angels. Even Llehmai is nearly half-a-dozen generations beyond the first four.”
“Well, how long will it take for you to get permission?”
The bed sank beneath me.
“It could be minutes, it could be days. The world is unsettled, and if what Ambrose told me is true, the world is about to be thrown into absolute chaos; what has been going on these past few weeks will seem like heaven compared to what they’ll do.
“If the children of Miki are staging a revolt then others might feel induced to do so as well. The creatures that have kept themselves out of human sight in order to maintain their own existence will feel empowered to break the laws we’ve set for them and this world is not prepared for that. Humans are not prepared for what is truly out there…and it is our fault.”
