The Reaper's Kiss

by Abigail Baker

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “So, do live and be happy, children dear to my heart, and never forget that,

  until the day when God deigns to unveil the future to all mankind,

  all human wisdom is contained in these two words: ‘wait’ and ‘hope’.”

  —Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

  The concrete wall to my right rumbled. The red haired guard, a head taller than me, gripped my arm tighter. I had a feeling he was as uneasy about going into the high security wing of Lethe as I was.

  We travelled through the scantly lit hallway until we came upon two cloaked figures standing guard in front of a steel door. Gaunt hands peeked out from under their dark robes. I stole a glance at their faces as we slowly passed between them.

  Skulls, with rotted flesh festooning their nose cavities and jaws, smiled down on me like a killer clown smiles down on his victims. Faint gold dots in eye sockets tracked me as we walked by. Had I made a wrong move, the pair would surely react with speed and agility that didn’t fit a skeleton. It was better not to test them.

  A bellow came from behind the door straight ahead of us. It sent me stumbling back into one of the cloaked sentinels, who then thrust me forward, closer to the door, and whatever nightmare was behind it.

  The guard let go of me, and I didn’t consider running, with the two sentinels at my back. Instead, I watched him march to the door and knock. The portal swung open before he’d removed his knuckles from the steel.

  I froze.

  “Scrivie,” snarled Chad in his red jumpsuit. “Come to play marionette with me?”

  “The Head Reaper ordered time between Hume and the Scrivener,” said my guard.

  “The Head Reaper has softened, has he?”

  “It’s none of your business,” I said.

  “Ah, in fact, it is. I’ve been dying to get my hands on Big Bad Brent, I have. Now that I’ve got him, I’m not going to let you slip in and flirt back his better half. Why not play with me instead? I’ll mind my manners.” Chad filled the doorway with his broad shoulders. The hemorrhaging slashes across the legs of his red jumpsuit, though, proved he feigned his strength.

  “Did Brent do that to you?” I asked.

  A proud smirk crept across his face. His gray eyes twinkled. “I like you, Scrivie. You’ve got enough sass to make me work for it. I hear you might be sticking around. If things don’t work out with Hume, maybe you’ll give me a chance.”

  “Only if you promise to let me give you a red-hot hand job.”

  I caught him off his game. He didn’t know what to say, but his lips seemed to want to spit out a million things. My lips pulled into a wicked smile.

  “I didn’t get to ask earlier,” I said, “but was your mother angry when she named you, Chad? Such a…prep boy name for such an ogre.”

  He looked fit to snap me in half. “It’s a family name.”

  “I kind of saw you as a Mongo.”

  “You overheated slit.”

  “Chad!” the guard barked.

  “What?”

  “The Head Reaper said to let her see him.”

  “If I put that scrawny thing in there with him, he’ll mistake her for dinner and eat her alive. Doesn’t Big Boss want to save that show for tomorrow?”

  “Orders are orders.”

  “Orders are orders, hm?” Chad pursed his lips. Those morbid gears were turning.

  The guard held his ground.

  Chad yanked me to his chest with the speed of a cobra’s strike. I yelped from the collision with his hard body. But it was overshadowed by the guard’s cry when the sentinels shoved him into the blackened room where Brent was held.

  Chad clapped a hand over my mouth and put his lips to my ear. “Easy now. Look and listen to what Marin has done to your playdate, Scrivie. Then tell me if you still want to see him.”

  In the darkness was a rustle of movement. The guard tried to backpedal out of the room until Chad gave him another heave forward with his boot. A growl hidden in the shadows rattled the hinges on the open metal door to the room. It grew louder and more commanding as the guard’s whimpering intensified. This spine-tingling din wasn’t from a mortal creature. It was as if the crust split open and from earth’s bowels spewed the black beast that Styx dreaded.

  Chad’s grasp slackened. He pitched me into the darkness, too. I spun around. The sentinels peered over Chad’s shoulder, smiling on me as I made for the door.

  “Thanks for babysitting him, Scrivie. He’s a damn handful.”

  The door slammed shut and latched. I threw myself against it. A fluorescent light flickered on above me. The buzz was deafening. I looked at it and gave it a silent thank you, but I couldn’t give the monster standing before me a similar show of gratitude.

  I flew back to the door and pounded the steel. “That’s not him. Let me out.”

  “That’s him. That’s always been him. He’s naked and unmasked. Have fun.” Chad’s cackling punched out a beat with his smug footfalls as he walked away.

  “Come back.” Fear choked my throat.

  The fiend snarled behind me. I flipped around and placed my back against the cold door. The redheaded guard was nowhere. Just like the Watchmen in Kentucky, he was just…gone.

  I stared at the thing Chad claimed was Brent. The concealing black mist seemed to have dried up, and this humanoid creature was what lay underneath. Muscles stretched like a massive cord of rope from his feet to his neck, accentuating his nude form better than any of history’s grandest sculptors.

  But his gray skin was pulled so tight it looked unbearable. If he moved, would he split his own flesh? The chains clamped around his wrists, ankles, and neck sparkled in the light.

  After several gasps, I gathered the courage to gaze into his face. His eyes didn’t sidetrack me from the silvery tissue stretched over his muscle-less skull. There was no sign of the healthy human-like man I once knew. His face lacked for definition, merely a skull covered in taut plastic.

  But I knew the face.

  “What have they done to you, Brent?”

  He released a wheezing growl like crowds of people were lodged inside his throat wailing to break out.

  “How could they have done this so fast?”

  I’d stood up to Chad and Marin. I could stand up to this perverted remnant of Brent, too. I peeled off of the door. I would have no way to fend off this creature with my hands bound together. Nevertheless, I stepped toward him. He didn’t budge, but his growling quieted, and it reminded me of the tranquility after the crash of a wave on an empty beach in the summer.

  The slate canvas of his chest lifted and dropped with his choppy breathing. He tempered himself as I tempered trepidation.

  “I came to tell you that I love you, because I didn’t say it before you jumped into the car and drove off yesterday.”

  Those pectoral muscles popped when he curled two massive hands around my neck. The chains rattled. Though his touch was gentle, for now, his hands were riddled with tension, wavering between breaking my neck and caressing it.

  He compressed my throat. His strength was unfathomable, far greater than anything I had ever known or seen, and he struggled with containing it.

  “I’m not afraid,” I said again before I lost my chance. “Let go.”

  He drew air through the hollow of his nose. At the same time, oxygen flowed through my open throat. Relief washed over me. His fingers crept to my cheeks. They overlapped around the back of my head, cradling it in his grip.

  “Marin offered me a plea deal,” I whispered. “Wants to make me Head Scrivener, but I’ll have to get used to shitting with him watching, because he won’t ever let me leave Lethe.”

  “Take his offer,” he said in that sweet Kentucky accent that had me longing for simpler days, when he sat outside my living room window in his taped boots and flannel.

  “My parents didn’t. I won’t be able to live with myself if I give in to him.”

  “Your parents were shorts
ighted. They wanted to make a point.”

  “I want to make a point.”

  His hands clamped down. I winced, and he quickly eased off. His power was unreal, untamed, and I shuddered to think what he could do to me if he unleashed it all.

  “I won’t be anyone’s puppet.” With each tear trickling down my cheeks and over his hands, his withered face grew softer and more human.

  “Then you’ll give up?”

  “I’m not giving up. I’m giving in.”

  The stretch of his brittle skin as he sighed turned my stomach. “They won’t destroy me, no matter how they try, but you will if you don’t take his offer.”

  “You said I should wait until the time is ripe. That’s now. I feel it. I know you do, too.” I paused when I found his cerulean eyes staring back underneath a flat brow. I didn’t know every detail of this new face, but I saw his struggle.

  A quiet pause of shared, but relieved, understanding danced between us before I rose onto my toes to bring my lips closer to his. He turned his head away.

  “You don’t have to,” he said, softly.

  “I want to.”

  “I saw your face when you came in.”

  I wanted to say something that might ease his humiliation. I pressed my lips to his chest since he wouldn’t let me kiss him properly. A tremor ran through him. His hands found my shoulders and pulled me from his body.

  As Marin had done, Brent held me captive as his eyes burrowed into my thoughts. Whatever he was searching for, I knew he’d found it when he covered my lips with his. And I melted into him as I had so many times before. His hands found their way down well-known curves. He paused on my hips. This wasn’t a touch of a man, but a being so mighty he shook the walls of Lethe with a bellow. He was not just a Grim Reaper for Grim Reapers—he was so much more.

  My knees buckled. He caught me. We lowered to the floor. The chains jangled as he sat down and placed his back against the wall. The skin on his chest stretched across his impressive musculature when he lifted my hips over his. I sat motionless in his lap, feeling his power between my legs.

  “What did Marin do to you, Brent?”

  His thin lips turned down, and with the motion fresh wrinkles, like those of a newborn child, materialized in his cheeks. Brent didn’t appear old. He was reborn. His skin hadn’t yet matured into a protective armor. “He’s almost reduced me to my original form. I’m Death without a human mask. Call me a demon if you want. That’s what everyone else says.”

  I blinked away a few tears. He caught them with his thumbs.

  “You’d recognize me if I threw on a black hooded cloak and carried a scythe.”

  “I don’t much like that look. Too Goth.”

  Those blue sapphires wandered aimlessly over my face as he chuckled.

  “I don’t get what you’re saying, Brent. What exactly are you?”

  He breathed, like it was the first big inhalation he had ever taken. “Eidolons aren’t evolved. Most Reapers are born looking human and forever appear human. They eat, sleep, mate like humans. Eidolons are born unable to talk or exist in sunlight. We’re a perversion of Death. We have to earn our human identities. We should’ve stayed a perversion, forgotten and voiceless, but Marin saw power in us. He used it. He taught us to speak, to fight, but only if we worked for him. Now that he has broken me down, he can take my humanity away.”

  “How could he do that?”

  “Marin’s a Reaper. A very savvy Reaper.”

  “Then how does he have so much power? You’re far more powerful than any Reaper I’ve ever met. And—”

  “You’re far more powerful than any Scrivener I’ve met. But he has you in a headlock, too.”

  I frowned. “I can burn down doors. Big deal.”

  “I’m not sure what power lies inside of you, but if you don’t take Marin’s deal, you’ll… we’ll never find out what that is.” He put a hand to my cheek, and I leaned into it, though his words chilled me to the core.

  “You melted the rock, didn’t you?” he quietly asked.

  “I huffed and I puffed and I burned the door to Death down.”

  “I knew you could.” He laughed to himself. “Marin must be shitting himself. No Scrivener has ever done it…burned through Lethe.”

  He tilted his head down, casting dark shadows over his face. I put a mitt against his cheek. Silvery hide, delicate and strained, gave way to a steely glow that highlighted his eyes when the color should have swallowed their luster. He was beautiful, even if he didn’t believe it. Brent was perfect. Raw. Feral.

  “Promise me you’ll take Marin’s offer, Ollie. We will never get our chance to stop him if you don’t,” he whispered with our lips a hair’s breadth apart.

  “He neutralized me. I can’t use my power in here,” I said.

  “I know. And I’m no longer ready as I am. He’s got us exactly where he wants us.”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me how to get back my heat.”

  “If I knew, Ollie, we wouldn’t be here right now, believe me.”

  “So we’re screwed.” I didn’t like being a loser, especially against Marin.

  “Yes,” he said softly.

  I scraped my bottom lip with my teeth, shedding it of any lasting bitterness, and kissed him. I didn’t pull back to inspect his alien face. There was no sense in it. This creature was Brent. I loved him. I would experience him as his true self.

  And I would wake up tomorrow with that honor tattooed across my soul.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “I will proudly give all to see Him fall.”

  —The Rebel’s Oath

  “Mama!” I screamed from across the courtroom when I spotted her emerald dress. Paying no attention to who I knocked over, I elbowed my way through the crowd until I reached her.

  She threw herself around me. I gladly breathed in her patchouli perfume and delighted in it, though I shook furiously from what was about to happen to us. Her hands patted my shoulder blades and spine before she gripped my biceps and jerked back.

  “You’ve lost weight,” she said. “You’re too skinny.”

  “Stop it, Mama. I haven’t lost any weight.”

  “I’ve raised you since you were a week old. I know when my baby has gotten too skinny. You need to get a good meal in you.”

  “Too late for that,” I whimpered. My eyes betrayed me as they poured tears.

  She hugged me tighter, nearly until I couldn’t breathe. And I returned the embrace with equal love. I was relieved to be in her arms but terrified for what awaited us in Erebus.

  “Where is Papa?” I said into her shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I haven’t seen him in hours.

  “Stand here,” a guard said to Mama and me, pulling us apart with a strained grunt. “The trial will commence shortly.”

  My stomach, heart, and lungs leaped into my throat when I spotted Garik being led into the courtroom and straight up to us. They got him, too. Underlying his strength was a glint of horror in his expression. Garik was a strong leader and not just any Reaper—Head Watchman. He had seen and done things that were vampires on his good conscience.

  A shudder ran through me. Mama noticed and tightened her grip on my hands.

  “Be strong, babygirl.”

  “I want to get this over with,” I said.

  “So do I,” said Garik as he settled in next to us.

  I eyed the Romanesque courtroom of skull-covered walls. It was crammed with wooden chairs encircling a judge’s bench. Chattering Reapers packed the open spaces. They fired the three of us slanting glances. I had a feeling they’d been paid a few Obols to be here.

  Across from us, a giant tapestry had been haphazardly strung between two Doric columns. Woven into its autumnal colors was the blindfolded goddess Justice balancing a set of weights.

  I didn’t bother to glance at the cameras, but I did look at Mama. Her face was strong, emotionless, and exactly what I expected. Papa might have been the physically
stronger Reaper, but Mama possessed a force that I admired now more than ever.

  “Stand for Head Reaper Marin,” a Reaper announced from the back corner.

  Marin stepped into the room in his standard outfit of black slacks and a turtleneck. His pallid head glistened in the incandescent lights. Everyone—except for the three of us—followed his lead when he sat down behind the judge’s bench.

  Wood groaned as everyone settled into his or her seat. A hush lingered as Marin adjusted items on the desk. I eyeballed the brass pocket watch he pushed toward the left-hand corner. He shifted the watch to the right and then the left. When it was exactly where he wanted, his eyelids turned up to the spectators, and my pulse accelerated.

  “Bring in Eidolon Hume.” Marin’s voice carried across the deadened room.

  From a back corner, a collection of Reapers dove out of his way as Brent, still that frightening skeletal face with gray skin, trudged toward us. Garik and Mama quickly turned away after accidently looking this demon in the eyes.

  Despite his wretched appearance and his bloody navy blue jumpsuit, Brent strode to stand before Marin like an imprisoned king. My gaze called to him, hopeful that he would look at me. But he wasn’t the Reaper who had once belted out The Cure. Brent was steadfast and intense like the beast of legend.

  “You are Scrivener Dormier’s assigned Grim Reaper,” Marin said. “You’ve known this since you pilfered your list from the Registry Vaults.”

  Whispering swelled through the courtroom when Marin paused.

  “Stand across from your assignee, Eidolon Hume.”

  There was a catch in my throat when Brent’s cold eyes swept over me. He took up his position as Marin had demanded, refusing to look me in the face.

  A familiar figure entered from the same door that Brent had walked through. In his red jumpsuit, a bright contrast to Brent’s navy blue, Chad the Eidolon marched to Marin, clicked his combat boots on the floor, and saluted.

  “Take your position across from your assignees, Chadwick.” Marin flicked his hand with dispassion. He was disappointed in his Eidolon. And he should’ve been. Chad had failed to protect Lethe. He lost face because of a petite Scrivener. The truth made my eyes sparkle with triumph, even now.