The Reaper's Kiss

by Abigail Baker

“Give us Scrivener Dormier, and we won’t turn your names to the Head Reaper.”

  “We can take them,” a rebel growled, itching for a good fight.

  “What is going on here?” cried out a bellhop, who was the only hotel employee brave enough to take us on. “What is this? A protest?”

  “We’re here on business,” Garik replied.

  “No one told us there would be—”

  Garik interrupted the bellhop. “Olivia, get everyone you can into Lethe. We’ll take care of the Watchmen and the little guy.” Rebels filled in behind him, matching the numbers of loyalists. And the bellhop, taking a cue, stepped back from the confrontation.

  Once the human was out of the way, the masses charged. The wave sent Marin’s loyalists back into the hallway of souvenir shops and polished wood paneling while the rest of us stormed down the stairs leading into Château’s basement. Marin and anyone in Lethe had to have heard our trumpeting footfalls.

  At the bottom of the stairs was a set of double-doors with a push bar and an explicit Employees Only sign. A pair of Reapers kicked the door in ahead of me. I followed as the rest of the insurrection filtered through, two at a time, on my determined heels. I veered left, down a hallway bordered in brick.

  This was my chance to show Styx where to find their Head Reaper. I thought of that tiny camera pushed through the buttonhole of my jacket. Azim and Clover were nearby transmitting the uncovering of Lethe. All I had to do was rip the door off its hinges, and Styx would finally have a place to go to barter with Death.

  In the basement, I made a quick right around the colossal boiler locked behind a chain-link fence. I gazed down the long brick hallway with three fluorescent light fixtures hanging above. At the end was the door to Lethe.

  And my spirit—my confidence in Brent’s map—deserted me at what I saw.

  “It’s a brick wall,” screamed a Reaper after he threw himself against it.

  “This is the door, Scrivener?” another demanded. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  I said nothing—no explanation or reason why I thought we would face anything other than a brick wall here. I couldn’t remember anything that went on in Lethe—no one could. And Brent’s journal didn’t mention this part. I had assumed there would be something that marked an entrance. A window. A vent. Hell, a scrap of chalk so we could draw the damn door onto the wall and go through like magic.

  I stared blankly at the barrier. Had Brent been at my side, he would have half-deathed me through it. It was that simple.

  But I was a Scrivener. My power didn’t transcend Deathmarks and burning through cups of coffee. And the Stygians at my side didn’t wield the kind of power that Brent possessed. There were no Eidolons to help us. Just incensed Reapers and one Scrivener.

  I grew faint. The churning acid in my stomach threatened to erupt.

  “What is this?” a male Reaper jumped in front of me, blocking my view of the brick obstacle. “You lead us into a dead end. This isn’t Lethe; this is a mistake.”

  “What is going on? You promised us you’d lead us to Marin.”

  I was aware the camera focused on their disappointed grimaces. The world watched. I put a hand over my chest, careful not to block the view of those viewing from afar. I wouldn’t cover anything—not even my failure.

  “Why won’t she say anything?”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s doing. This is a mistake.”

  The complaints increased in volume as more Reapers crammed into the narrow tunnel. My followers turned venomous, when moments ago they had been unbreakably united in my cause. Amazing how quickly they turned.

  When shouting wasn’t enough, they started pushing and shoving each other. I was forced out of the wrestling match by a set of hands. So, I stumbled to the wall. I glared at it. Those red bricks and gray mortar betrayed me.

  “Everyone quiet.” A baritone roared over the pandemonium. No one heeded the demand.

  I touched the brick. It was cold like my hand.

  “Olivia,” Garik barked over my shoulder. “You said you could get us in.”

  When I didn’t reply, Garik spun me around to face him. His fingers cut into my biceps. “I should not have let this happen. This is it. Marin will have our heads for this, and it’s your fault.”

  A rebel’s mace-like fist sliced through the air and caught Garik’s chin. Garik let go of me, but pain and embarrassment lingered.

  “Give her space to figure it out!” The rebel put a mitt around Garik’s neck. “Did you think that Marin would’ve left the gate wide open? This is Lethe, not a goddamn revolving door.”

  I couldn’t stand to face the deluge of stares that crowded the tunnel. The brick wall in all its imperviousness was a preferable opponent. Again, I turned to it with as much disheartened gloom as before. The rebel and Garik continued exchanging heated words and then fists, as the rest of the following Reapers chimed in with their own criticisms and physical blows.

  I put my hands to the wall. It was as cold as brick wall below ground should be.

  But my hands were not.

  “Let’s get picks. We’ll bust through it if we have to,” said a voice that sounded a million light-years away.

  “He’ll have his guys on us before we can get anywhere. That’s why we needed Hume. He could’ve gotten us in quickly.”

  Stale basement air made breathing laborious, but I filled my lungs with a deep breath. It calmed me. Mama had always said breathing was nourishment for the soul. “Be mindful of your breath, babygirl,” she had told me time and time again. She knew something I didn’t. So, I held the air in my expanded lungs, feeding the cells that made up my body.

  My hands turned from a rosy blush to crimson. The heat travelled toward my wrists as if gravity was pulling it through me and into the ground. But the power didn’t stop at my wrists.

  Inch by inch, the sleeves of my green jacket flaked away into smoke and ash, receding up my forearms as hotness advanced like a victorious infantry. The display danced past my elbows, setting a course for my biceps and shoulders. Had I burned through the jacket and the rest of my clothing to stand naked before the rebels, I wouldn’t have cared.

  I gave my hands another inspection. They were no longer that striking, shimmering red, but indigo and my fingertips a blinding white. My fellow rebels backed away, coughing from the smoke and intensity, unable to stand the heat my hands were giving off.

  So, how could I stand it?

  Could the brick wall syphon off my heat?

  My attention lingered on this manifestation. I stood in wonder. As I tried to pry my hands from the wall for fear I would melt the foundation of Le Château and raze it to the ground, I couldn’t.

  Instead, I stepped forward. My boot toes didn’t strike the wall as they should have.

  I took another step. Still, I didn’t come into contact with the barrier. And when I felt liquefied rock under my hands, I understood.

  My God, I’m melting the wall.

  I’m walking straight through it.

  But how far would I go? How long would my heat hold out? Would it give out or would I turn into a miniature supernova right here at the juncture between life and death?

  I continued onward as flaming brick surrounded me. And I laughed. Holy Hades, I laughed. I gazed out at my blue and white hands instead, wondering when they would dissolve.

  All fascination for this new power vanished when I looked ahead of me.

  There was no more of the wall left to melt. It was gone. A crystal chandelier gently swung back and forth, illuminating blood stains on the cream and gold damask wallpaper. This had to be the entrance hall to Lethe. And in the center of the Victorian nightmare, smoke plumed around three slack-jawed, blond men in red jumpsuits and black military boots.

  Son-of-a-bitch.

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Scrivie,” said one of the three, with a half-cocked smirk. Those gray eyes had become too familiar.

  Chad. The Eidolon.

  I pivoted back to
the passageway I had created, set for a full-on retreat. But Garik squeezed through the narrow opening, his clothing and skin smoldering as they scraped along the molten walls. My heart was a lead weight. Only one body could pass through at a time, setting up these Eidolons for a self-serve banquet of Grim Reapers.

  In so little words, I was fucked. So was everyone else.

  I slowly turned back to face the adversaries licking their chops for dinner.

  “Me-oh-my, the Scrivie burned her way through Lethe’s door,” said Chad, the leader of the clowns from the bowels of hell. “Good to see you again, ma cherie.”

  His friends sniggered, though they held the stance of two alert Marines.

  “You should’ve knocked before barging in,” he said.

  Garik stepped beside me to allow more Reapers to move into the room, but none of them walked beyond me to challenge these three. Their fear was rampant, and it must have smelled delightful to these fiends.

  “Let us through,” I said with a warble in my voice.

  Three sets of empty eyes grew wide. They didn’t expect this, did they?

  “If you don’t have an invitation, you don’t get in.”

  “I’m asking you politely to move out of the way.” The longer I held out, the more Reapers could funnel into the vestibule, and that meant a bigger problem for these guys. Strength in numbers, right?

  Chad’s leer revealed a set of rotted teeth, not from smoking too much, but from never putting a toothbrush to enamel.

  I swallowed hard as I tried to keep my mounting concern for my loved ones under control. If I allowed myself to think for a second that they were dead or in great agony, I would not be able to carry forward. I needed to keep focused if I were to ever see anyone again.

  Moreover, my breath—I had to use it.

  I glanced at my sides to see who would be my frontline soldiers, but in that instant, the two sidekicks altered into shadows and sprang onto the damask wallpaper, leaving Chad grinning down at me like he had a perverted secret. I shuddered when the dark shadows peeled off the walls and dove into the bodies of two of my allied Reapers.

  The Reapers stiffened, electrocuted with vile energy. They were possessed by the pair of Eidolons. I knew what that felt like. Brent had done it to me when he half-deathed me through the door on the roof. It was agonizing, like being frozen from the inside out.

  The possessed stretched their hands out before them, worked by the will of the Eidolons. One at a time, they snapped their fingers in half. Bone popped out of flesh. This was knuckle cracking taken to eleven. The sadistic glee in their smiles was not theirs, but their waterlogged eyes told me of their anguish.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  “Sure, Scrivie.” Chad’s mad eyes flitted between the possessed. “You heard the Scrivie. Stop them.”

  The half-deathed Reapers jumped to attention and saluted, while the rest remained paralyzed in fear of what they would do to us. When Brent had half-deathed me into Lethe, I never imagined it could be used for such wicked purposes. What made Brent different from Chad and the other Eidolons was that he used this Eidolon skillset for good and Chad and company used it for terror.

  “Yes, sir,” they crooned and together plucked shards of cooled, jagged stone from the floor and put the weapons to their necks.

  Rebels shrieked. Some reached for their friends’ hands. Blood fizzed from the incisions as the half-deathed Reapers dragged the weapons across the jugular veins in their throats. Everyone cried out in a fury and dismay. Blood sprayed the walls, adding another layer to the macabre decor. I threw my hands over one of the Reaper’s wrists but was tossed back. Garik caught and steadied me. In his face, I saw the same disgust and shock that undoubtedly filled my own.

  Once the deed was done, the Eidolon sidekicks finally leaped out from their victim’s dying bodies to stand in their own flesh alongside Chad. The victims fell to the floor as mutilated rag dolls. Unlike Eidolons, Grim Reapers could be easily injured. Knowing they wouldn’t survive their forced suicides, and fearing these monsters had the power to possess us all at once, I was sure if we lingered, we would follow the same fate.

  I was their guide into Lethe. I had to help and put aside my own fear. After drawing in a focusing breath, I stepped up to the ringleader of this mind-fuck. He deserved death for what he made me do to Eve, for what he did to Gerard and Brent and undoubtedly Mama and Papa. He deserved an eternity in Erebus for what he asked his colleagues to do to innocent Reapers.

  I couldn’t kill him, but I’d make him wish he were dead.

  “Let us through,” I said through my teeth, drawing energy from each inhale.

  Chad stared into me, with my slow, exaggerated death playing in his eyes. He bent forward and put his hands on his thighs to bring his nose inches from mine. The stink of rotting teeth wafted from his cracked lips.

  I balled my hands into fists, knowing from the hotness of my arms that my hands had returned to that blue and white intensity. He wanted to play? I’d play. I’d play until every good part of his body was well-done Eidolon meat.

  Chad’s pale skin rippled with putrid, black lines. Inkiness pushed through his pores and grew thicker until his body was cast in shadow.

  Chad wanted me to see the transformation, to fear it. I had seen this power in Brent. Today, the power was not my friend. But I wouldn’t succumb to the panic scorching my gut.

  I stepped toward Chad as I had when I burned through the brick wall. I brought my nose an inch closer to the skeletal remains of his nose. “Don’t make me embarrass you, Chadwick.”

  His eyes narrowed. His jaw unhinged and dropped low enough to ingest my head whole if he wanted. But he didn’t. Nor did he use his strength when I hooked my blistering hands on his dropped jowls, feeling not the gelatinous texture as I had from Brent, but bone and flesh simply masked by lightlessness.

  “Your performance doesn’t scare me,” I said.

  His friends whooped like two wolves watching their pack leader yield to a field mouse. The will to live can sometimes outclass any villain, even this piece of shit.

  I released my grip on him once my fingers melted away a sufficient layer of flesh. His jaw snapped back. No longer shadowed, Chad gave a sneer that barely camouflaged his humiliation. He looked over the Reapers filtering into the room and then at his nattering comrades.

  “He’s afraid of the Scrivie. Whacha ’fraid of? Think she’s gonna incinerate you?” one taunted. “Look at him. He’s afraid. Of a Scrivie.”

  Their combat boots came off the floor. They crashed against the walls by the will of Chad’s swift hands. The wallpaper ripped, plaster crumbled. As the clowns slid down onto their buttocks, they sniggered like naughty schoolchildren. I wished they would shut up, because I had a feeling Chad would make Scrivie mincemeat of me if pushed one footstep further toward complete disgrace.

  Chad’s crooked mouth pulled up to bare his fetid teeth when he returned his attention to me. I refused to give him more time to intimidate me or my allies. I had had enough of his antics. My limit had been reached. He stood in the way of Brent’s liberation.

  I was still sufficiently hot enough to do damage, so I threw my entire weight into Chad, cooking the flesh around his neck where my hands held him hostage. Thrown off balance and falling to his knees, Chad couldn’t regain his feet as I drove heat and rage into my attack, melting flesh and muscles and tendons as I cried out. His comrades didn’t rush in to assist him; perhaps they were afraid, or they simply didn’t care. Whatever the reason, their distance and Chad’s weakness renewed my confidence.

  He thrashed and fought back as best as he could, but it seemed that my fight outdid his. And had I no goal but hurting Chad, I would’ve held on until he was a pile of Eidolon mush beneath me. But my loved ones had little time, if they had any left at all.

  When Chad attempted to grab my hair, the only part of my body that wasn’t hot, I leaped to my feet and ran for the hallway that he and his buddies had been guarding.

&nbs
p; I didn’t look back. It would be stupid to assume they wouldn’t make chase. However many Reapers got past them, I couldn’t bear to know. Had I turned around to see who lived and who died, I would have tripped, losing precious seconds in the final push into Lethe. Brent and my parents were my focus, my purpose, and I would get to them as hastily as my feet and luck permitted.

  No matter how determined I was, knowing the rebels were right behind me gave me strength. They kept pace, having blown by the Eidolons. I was grateful for that.

  I knew how to get to the trial chamber. I had memorized Brent’s diagram for this very reason. I saw it in my mind’s eye, clear, sharp, and winding us deeper into Lethe’s core. But shrieks of our fallen companions and the cackles of the Eidolons nipped at our backsides, jeopardizing my confidence. I couldn’t tell if the Eidolons were five or fifty feet away, but it sure as Hades wasn’t far enough.

  Lethe’s hellish Victorian décor added to the chaos. It looked no different than Le Château’s human-made magnificence. Had I not melted through a brick wall and challenged one crazy Eidolon and his goofy sidekicks, I would have believed I was in an underground extension of the hotel lobby. Crystal sconces adorned the mahogany walls casting a glow on the paisley carpet. Any moment, I expected humans to pop out from one of the many doors that we flew past.

  Garik grabbed my elbow. “They’re gaining on us.”

  Hair-raising screams nearly drowned his words. Some rebels didn’t make it past the Eidolons. And those who did pushed against us like a panicked mob trying to escape rising floodwaters.

  I made a right turn that dumped us into a room similar to Le Château’s foyer. According to Brent’s map, we had reached the central chamber. Here there were no bellhops or clerks. Instead, hundreds of faceless human souls milled about, guests of Lethe who waited, not for a hotel room, but for deliverance. I saw some of them for a second time—souls who had journeyed from Kentucky to endure yet another extended, arduous stay in what seemed to be half-hell for Stygians and souls both.

  I was the first to score through them, determined not to let anyone get in my way. My lungs strained. Feeling abandoned my feet. A bump of an elbow jarred me. To my right was a Reaper. At my left was Garik. The surge of rebels had multiplied, and none of them shied away from the souls, the Eidolons, or the distant double-doors that stood twenty feet high, looming like a mahogany death chasm over the center of Lethe.