The Reaper's Sacrifice

by Abigail Baker

  The fate of the world required that David cross over. It always happened. Like photosynthesis or the rise and fall of the tides. This was nature correcting nature, bringing about equilibrium in the human population. Someone had to die today.

  But why did this seem so wrong? My Deathmark—the skull—was responsible, even if I wasn’t.

  Chapter Two

  “In 1920, Scriveners represented 55% of the Stygian population. Today, Scriveners represent 15%. Correcting this imbalance is crucial.”

  —HermesHarbinger.com

  Papa’s truck was a powder-blue jalopy with a rusted-out frame that begged for proper shocks. Despite the smell of oil, we loved the vehicle. Papa enjoyed it for its reliability. I liked the ride because it was large enough to carry my drawings and then some into town for Kalispell’s farmers’ markets and festivals.

  But in our rush to my cabin in the middle of the woods on the outskirts of Glacier National Park—more remote than my Kalispell tattoo parlor—every bump, jolt, or thrash from a rock or tree branch in the dirt road made me hate the vehicle for its insensitivity to my sickening worry about the mysterious Deathmark on David’s arm.

  Papa rolled his fingers over the wheel, rocking it back and forth as we dodged trouble on the mountain path. He didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t care to maintain conversation when all I could think about was whether my Deathmark could be stolen or if had I fallen into a fugue state and tattooed David without knowing it. If someone had stolen my mark, I’d face-palm a skull on every Reaper from here to hell and back. I would do it without regret. I would—

  “Ollie,” Papa interrupted my scheming. “Don’t cry. It’s probably a fluke.”

  Not even realizing I had been, I ran my forearm across my eyes and then set to tracing geometric patterns on my pant legs with my fingers. Normally, Papa would’ve chided me for the habit he deemed annoying, but considering I was about to unravel into fury, he probably thought it was best to avoid the subject. My fingers danced faster and faster as tears dripped.

  I had lost so much in two years. Mama, who had been my strength and guidance since my childhood, had been executed in front of me. Thanks to the memory erasing that happened when you left Lethe—Head Reaper Marin’s home base—I couldn’t recall the instant when Mama was sent to the Afterlife, but my heart did, and it played games with me, whispering melancholy hints from that wretched day.

  I didn’t even have my best friend Eve anymore, as Chad’s presence reminded me.

  I feathered the lotus pendant that held Eve’s soul with my fingers. I’d first met Chad when Marin had sent him to force me into tattooing a Deathmark on her, and thereby calling her Grim Reaper, as a way of getting at me. But I had discovered my Master Scrivener powers at the moment of her death, so instead of using my tattoo gun, I’d angrily burned a Deathmark on Nicholas Baird, Eve’s Reaper, with a touch of my scorching hands. The result was that she’d been ferried half-in, half-out of her body. It was similar to my situation, where only her assigned Reaper could finish the job, but he’d skipped town after my Deathmark stunt. News on the street was that Nicholas Baird was still evading his Eidolon Reaper. So instead of leaving her soul partially anchored to her body, Brent had ferried all of it into my pendant as a way of protecting her until we could track Baird down and make him finish the job so she could be at peace.

  I never took the pendant off. Ever.

  Papa, Dudley, and Eve’s silent presence were the only companions I’d had since Head Reaper Marin had had Mama killed and had forbidden my lover Brent to see me for eternity. No phone calls, no letters, not even Skype. Our budding relationship had been brought to a screeching halt when Brent challenged Stygian Laws to save me.

  Taking a page from Eve’s Reaper, he’d ferried part of my soul into his body. Since he was the only one who could finish ferrying me, even Marin couldn’t touch the half of my soul that he held. Then he’d bargained with Marin to leave me alone, and had become the Head Reaper’s slave as a result. Marin knew Brent was powerful, so to have that power at his beck and call was too tempting. He’d left us alive but had forbidden any contact between us. Beyond missing Brent’s smile and touch, missing the chance to kiss him just because I wanted to, I couldn’t even properly thank him for his bravery.

  So part of my soul doesn’t belong to me. I’m bound to Brent Hume, but I cannot even look upon him. Should he die, I die.

  In addition to Brent, Eve, and Mama’s absence, I was banned for life from Québec, the city I had loved and called home.

  I shook my head and came back to the present, only to find my father still staring at me, waiting for a response.

  “I’m not crying. Stress makes my eyes water,” I said.

  “I know your tears.”

  “It doesn’t count if I don’t know I’m doing it.” I forced my fingers to stop moving by splaying them over my thighs. Heat radiated through the cotton. My hands used to get hot as irons—part of my evolution from regular Scrivener to Master Scrivener. Over the course of two years, I’ve learned to control this heat, tame it even. Now, my fingers just move nervously fast when I’m agitated, like I’m drawing very important pictures with air and overactive imagination. It is a safer alternative to the heat, but it is another symptom of being a Master that I don’t understand yet.

  “It’s no big deal.” Only Papa’s lips moved. His jaw remained set.

  “Don’t you remember the Book Club meeting you went to last month, Papa?” The Book Club was actually a cover for a rebel meeting. I never went, for fear of word getting back to Marin, but Papa always told me all about them. He went regardless of the danger of being caught, despite his overabundance of caution where I was concerned. Papa just didn’t care about his own safety, I guessed. Maybe in some way he hoped the Watchmen would take him so he could be sent to Erebus like Mama and the rest of the rebels. “They think Marin has spies waiting for us to make a move so he can kill any possible rebels associated with us, and still have Brent in his control. What if this Deathmark—whoever’s it is—was made by one of those spies trying to goad me into resurrecting the rebellion? That explains Chad’s appearance today.”

  I was panting after my long-winded rant. My anxiety ramped up to a critical level.

  Papa’s silence spoke volumes. He hadn’t thought about these spies, and now he was.

  I rubbed my pounding forehead and looked in the side-view mirror to see my tired emerald eyes and pale, freckled complexion. I grabbed the tie holding my hair at the crown of my head and ripped it out. Brunette dreadlocks cascaded down my shoulders, causing my headache to weaken slightly.

  I closed my mouth and my heart for the remainder of the seven-mile drive.

  When we reached my cabin, I slapped my hands on the dashboard and scanned from one side of the wooded lot to the other. Better to be vigilant than not. All looked quiet, but then Watchmen were silent as ghosts at times. I rolled down the window and leaned out as we turned into the yard and came to stop.

  My legs were numb, but they carried me to my cabin door where I stood wearily, eyeballing the front yard, which was nothing other than a field of pine trees and a narrow dirt road. There were plenty of places for someone or something to hide. My humble home had quickly turned from a place of safety to one of foreboding uncertainty.

  Papa slid out of the truck and plucked his Remington twelve-gauge from the dash after Dudley leaped to the ground and darted toward my cabin. Papa carried the same tension he had been wearing since our rebellion, and though I had grown used to it, there was a layer of something more that hinted at bad news.

  “You have the gun. What for?” I asked.

  “Get inside. Both of you.”

  Dudley was at my heels, eager to push through the front door and waddle underneath my bed. “I thought it was no big deal, Papa?”

  “It isn’t,” he bit out. “Saw a bear over in the trees.”

  My hand was on the cabin door when he broke into sprint toward this supposed bear. Northern
Montana was home to grizzly bears. It was possible he spotted one, though I knew he would never have the heart to shoot one unless it was racing toward us in seek-and-destroy mode. With his shotgun stock against his shoulder, Papa had cleared a hundred feet in no time.

  “Who the fuck are you?” His customary welcome echoed inside the wooded cathedral.

  Bear or human or Stygian, I didn’t care as I sprinted between trees, leaping over a log, my boot soles skimming pine needles and twigs. When I reached my father, there was no chance of seeing over his broad shoulders, so I dashed around him and skidded to a stop.

  “Papa! It’s just Leo.”

  Leo, my human neighbor from across the valley, stared cross-eyed down the muzzle of Papa’s shotgun.

  “I-I-I heard your truck coming up the road,” the forty-year-old forever-bachelor stuttered.

  “Why are you following us?” Papa’s finger looped the trigger.

  Leo’s gaze shifted to me in a silent plea for help. If anything was true about life, it was that Leo was a decent, but odd, man. He preferred his reclusive home in the woods to one in town with a wife and children. Most people shunned him, calling him a hermit. But I tried to engage him in conversation whenever I saw him. Hiding away in the mountains was sometimes the only means of survival for some souls.

  “I went for a hike this morning, Mr. Stone,” he said, “and saw some strange folk sniffing around Olivia’s cabin. Was coming by to tell her about it.”

  “Did you happen to see a tall, blond guy wearing a black suit?” I moved carefully around Papa and his Remington.

  Leo looked off to one side as he pondered my question. His eyes jittered back and forth. “Sure did. He was the one who noticed me.”

  My heart was in my throat. If Chad saw him spying on my house, he might use him against me, or do away with him altogether. I wouldn’t put it past the Eidolon. “He saw you?”

  “Yep. Oh, I have something for you.” With a smile, Leo reached for the shoulder straps of his backpack. Papa’s gun was back on his face, flattening Leo’s wide nose into a pancake.

  “What you doing, Leo?” Papa grumbled. Though Leo couldn’t see those suddenly yellow Reaper eyes of doom because he was human, I did.

  “Nothing serious, Mr. Stone. Just some provisions.” He turned around, disregarding the shotgun. Stuffed safely inside his bursting-at-the-seams backpack were jam jars and bags of cured meats. He palmed a jar of something pickled, though I couldn’t be sure what, and a plastic bag of dried meat.

  “You brought her bacon?” Papa glared down his nose, attempting to sniff out a ruse.

  “No, Mr. Stone, it’s moose jerky. Told Ollie I’d bring her some when it was ready.”

  “That why you were at her cabin this morning?” Papa asked, dragging us back to business.

  “Oh, no, no. I was going for early morning hike like I always do. It’s a good time to catch worms, you know. Never better. They’re all over the place, on trails and trees—”

  “Leo,” Papa interrupted, “summarize.”

  “Well, worms are good for catching fish. The fat ones come out in the morning. And—”

  “About the people you saw around Ollie’s cabin, and what you were doing here,” Papa’s voice boomed inside the canopy of pines and awnings of lichen.

  “The people…um, they were pale, very pale. Kinda looked like ghosts, but not really, especially that blond one you mentioned, Ollie. I’ve seen ghosts, and they aren’t white. But if ghosts put on a white sheet, these people would look like them, except they weren’t wearing sheets.” And that was Leo’s summary.

  Unlike Papa, I liked my peculiar neighbor. He had been the only human to welcome me to Kalispell in the two years that I lived there. He often shared his homemade foods—pickled wild turkey gizzards were his favorite—and other curious fare only a woodsman would eat. Sustenance and conversation were Leo’s ways of connecting with others when he saw fit to interact with the world. I didn’t mind his chats, as erratic as they were, but I sure did mind the food. Who the hell stomachs turkey gizzards and likes it?

  Leo.

  And Dudley.

  Papa didn’t have patience for Leo, or anyone, these days. Although no one could see it but me, Papa was fragile without Mama by his side. This made him grumpy and more aggressive than ever, precisely why I was thankful Leo couldn’t see Papa’s gold death-stare. Humans couldn’t see our peculiarities for what they actually were. A trick of the mind, they’d assume, or they’d fail to notice altogether.

  “We got all we need, Leo,” I said. This time I put my hand on Papa’s bicep, lowering the Remington that was still aimed for Leo’s frontal lobe. “They were probably lost hikers.”

  “That happens around these parts.” My human friend didn’t look convinced. He was as paranoid as he was sweet. Suspicion seemed to be a common theme amongst us mountain-dwelling folk. Trust no one, and you’ll live another day.

  “Thanks for the moose jerky and pickled… What is this?”

  “Pickled moose liver,” he said with pride.

  A smidgen of vomit caught in my throat as I forced a smile. “Lovely.”

  …

  “Maybe I did tattoo that skull onto David. I mean, I haven’t been very lucid recently,” I said to Papa as he leaned into the little wooden chair of my dinette table. He was a giant sitting at a child’s table playing tea, except that he chugged Coca-Cola. “Maybe I did it while I was in one of those dream-states with Brent.”

  Eidolons had the ability to give both humans and Stygians nightmares. Horrific nightmares. Sometimes, though not often, Brent visited me that way. And because he was one of the most powerful Eidolons in Styx and held part of my soul in his own body, he was starting to communicate with me through them.

  I never had any say in when he’d visit. He’d simply appear amidst a backdrop of blood, darkness, and fear. All I ever wanted to do when he did arrive was run into his arms and cry away the last two years of being apart. These nightmares were a very odd combination to experience while I slept—being terrified and ecstatic at the same time.

  “I doubt it,” Papa replied. “Couldn’t have been you. There was something off about the artwork, Ollie. It didn’t have your touch.”

  “What other explanation do you have, then?”

  “Chad.” His thick fingers curled into a fist.

  “Okay, but Chad is an Eidolon. No matter how skilled he may be, he can’t administer a Deathmark.” My stare hardened on my father, who was once so stoic, so solidly built inside and out. With a softer midsection, arms not quite as ripped with muscle as they used to be, Papa was not as jazzed about life as he was about a good fight. Each day, month, and year that went on without Mama destroyed more of his will to live. I wasn’t enough to pull him back from despair, but as I would do with anyone important in my life, I did my best to keep Papa buoyant on the turbulent waters of grief.

  “Do you think we should tell a Watchman about this?” I asked after listening to the sound of Dudley slurping from his water dish and my father crackling the empty metal soda can.

  “Absolutely not,” Papa intoned. “We keep those idiots out of this. We aren’t supposed to know about these spies anyway. No such thing as rebel cells since your insurgence and exile, right?” The rebel cells were completely annihilated after my insurrection. Or so Marin hoped. But just in case, he sent spies to snoop around the world looking for any secret rebel cells that the Watchmen failed to spot.

  I sighed. “Point taken. No such thing as rebel cells.”

  He crushed the soda can into a disk, turned toward the small refrigerator, and yanked the door open, rattling jars of huckleberry preserves from last autumn when we drove south to Missoula—still within my exile boundary—for a father/daughter getaway.

  “Got anymore soda?” he asked.

  I looked at my dog. There was a curious strain in the mutt’s expression, like he wanted me to stop Papa while he still had his wits about him. Sugar made Grim Reapers drunk. Last thing we ne
eded was for Papa to get tanked on Coca-Cola. “I’m out. Sorry.”

  The vein in Papa’s forehead popped like it always did when he’s tense or angry.

  “You want some coffee instead? Or water?” I wanted to avoid the inevitable.

  “Sugar…” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s the only thing that keeps my head on straight these days.”

  “I know, Papa. I know.” I put my hands over his, noting how our skin colors were so different—his warm chocolate and mine light and freckled. Visually, we were so opposite. Internally, we were one and the same, suffering from our mutual exile and the longing to have it all back—Mama, Brent, the other half of my soul.

  He exhaled noisily. “I should go back to your shop and do a quick investigation before it gets dark. Just to make sure these…spies weren’t sniffing around.”

  “I’ll go with you.” I was on my feet before his knees locked.

  “No. Lay low for now.”

  “But I have a client this evening.” This guy wasn’t a Deathmark target, so I was thrilled to work on him. I had heard through my sources that he gave good tips. I’d finally have the dough to get that memory foam dog bed for Dudley if the man lived up to his reputation.

  “I’ll tell your client you fell ill. Don’t you worry yourself. Please, stay inside and keep your eyes peeled. I’ll be back before dark.” He gave Dudley a scratch behind the ears. One of the thousands of reasons why Papa meant so much to me was that he adored everything that I treasured, and he clung to the past as strongly as I did.

  With Papa, I wasn’t alone. And being alone in my world was a chilling notion.

  He slipped out the door. The rumble of his beat-up truck left Dudley and me behind. Small as my cabin was, it was an empty football stadium without my father. At that moment, it was an unfamiliar space, even though I had lived in this very same six-hundred square-foot cubicle for two long years. It felt foreign. The enemy with four walls and a roof.