The Reaper's Sacrifice

by Abigail Baker

  The best I could do was nod.

  “I haven’t contacted Marin for decades. Your arrival here was presented to me as a mentorship, by your father Stone—at least that was the message I was delivered from…Percy.”

  I was consumed with bewilderment. Marin was a master of manipulation, which I knew, but this scheme of his seemed far more complicated than necessary. “Why go to all the trouble?”

  “My guess is that he wanted last night’s attack to bring us all down in one fell swoop so he could have access to the Phlegethon. Considerin’ how he has struggled to hide other secrets, it isn’t a surprise he’d make such a move.” Errol’s gaze locked on me as he spoke the last half of his statement. I knew what the look meant. He was asking me to consider our conversation about the possibility that Marin was a Master Scrivener, and in his gaze was a plea to keep it to myself. For what reason, I didn’t know. It seemed there were benefits to sharing the information with everyone, most of all Brent.

  “We should tell Brent,” I said in defiance.

  “Tell me what?” Brent was onto our nonverbal exchange.

  “Errol thinks Marin might be a Master Scrivener, not a Reaper.” It was best that I said it before Errol changed the subject. “I don’t know what to think about it, but it’s worth considering before we do anything drastic.”

  Brent’s smile cut through his beard as he obviously tried to digest what I had just said. “Why would you think that?”

  “Behaviors that I noticed before he created Lethe,” Errol said, glaring at me.

  “He erases our minds when we leave Lethe. What if he is a Scrivener, and that fact is exposed there, and that’s why he wipes our memories?” I added.

  Brent vigorously shook his head. “Not possible. He has to cross over thousands of souls each day. He couldn’t do that if he was a Scrivener. Imagine what would happen if he didn’t? There would be billions of souls collecting around Lethe. It would destroy Styx. No. No way.”

  “But it’s worth considering,” I added. “I’ve heard that no one actually watches him cross over souls. He does it in private if he does it at all.”

  “If he was a Scrivener,” Brent said, “could he hide that for several decades? Why isn’t Styx collapsing as we speak?”

  I wagged my head. Marin was not infallible, that I knew, but he was clever, and he thought things through. But in the end, going against the order of things would always bite someone in the ass. For Marin, perhaps his previously well-thought-out plan was crumbling around him. Perhaps he was clawing his way out of the black hole he had created. This attack on Wrightwick was a chance for him to gain the upper hand, at least for a little while longer.

  But I was sure that my suspicion was valid, even if I hadn’t worked out the details yet. Marin was hiding something big enough to justify killing Master Scriveners and fellow Stygians, fortifying his position underground. It was enough that he erased memories for it.

  “Maybe,” I said in response to Brent’s questions, “Styx is already collapsing. We just haven’t seen the worst of it yet.”

  Brent’s reaction wasn’t one filled with rigid denial. When I expected him to refute my claim, he instead gave me an “I hope you’re wrong” look. Because if I was right, we were amidst what would be for us, and for humans, a certain Armageddon.

  “We need to get back to current matters, Olivia. What happens tomorrow is of no matter until we get through today.” Errol folded his arms across his chest, matching Brent and me, oblivious to what I had suggested and Brent had just come to realize. “What’s been decided is final. Percy’s punishment is death. We will take care of her today.”

  I threw my hands up and paced inside my small corner of personal space. “Why are you so quick to do away with her?”

  “Time is not on our side,” Errol said with no emotion. “We must take care of this now. Unless you are willin’ to die in her stead?”

  I held his stare for as long as I could before he saw the truth. It wasn’t long before I turned away, hissing.

  Men and their rules of war. They wanted more blood to make right the blood that had already been spilled. Why did this perspective seem so wrong today when yesterday I would’ve been the first to finish Percy? I had softened, that’s why. I had gotten what I wanted—Brent—and now I was ready to frolic through the valley with flowers in my hair and a peace flag pinned to my shoulders.

  “I have a suggestion.” Brent’s thumbs hung from his jean’s pockets. He didn’t look like an Eidolon having a discussion about putting someone to death, but rather a thirty-something lumbersexual waiting for his microbrew at his favorite Colorado brewery. “Put a Deathmark on Percy, and let me take care of her. She’s a Trivial. The ferrying rules for them are different than they are for Scriveners and Reapers. Anything I do is going to be far more humane than melting her.”

  “She has nae soul to take. You’d have to rip her apart. That’s nae better than melting her,” Errol pointed out.

  “I don’t need her on my assignee list to do away with her. But with a Deathmark, I don’t have to rip her apart like all the others,” Brent explained, and I realized from his words that the Trivials weren’t privileged to the same rights and benefits as other Stygians. Death didn’t assign them to anyone’s list. In Styx, Trivials simply didn’t exist. This had to be why I didn’t know of them before and that Marin could keep this genocide secret. The truth sickened me. “Let me do this. Please.”

  Errol forced air from his nostrils. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”

  …

  “I don’t want to die,” Percy wailed when Brent approached her on the veranda. Her neck bore the mark of Death that Errol had tattooed on it—a coiled snake, its forked tongue pushed through its sneer. The ink still oozed blood. The tattoo machine hadn’t yet cooled. “I don’t want to die.”

  With my stomach in my throat, I watched, not because I wanted to see Percy pay for what she had done not just to me but hundreds of Stygians, but because I couldn’t peel myself from the nightmare of someone else’s execution. I personally knew what she felt and feared. Her vulnerability sickened me. I could’ve so easily been in her place. I had to wonder why I was gifted clemency when she wasn’t.

  Percy’s emotions ran so high they brought on a dull pain in my gut. She was terrified. And I was terrified for her. I had faced my execution in front of Styx, and Marin had been kind enough to say he’d let me live, giving me the option of banishment before Brent had half-ferried my soul. She wouldn’t get such leniency, and for that, I ached.

  Tears poured down her pallid cheeks. She may have been incapable of true emotion other than self-interest, but she was very, very good at faking it.

  “Don’t cry, child. There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Brent soothed.

  Nicodemus placed his hand on my shoulder to stop me from following them. In my peripheral vision, Errol held the tattoo machine at his side. Delia stood beside him with her arms folded over her chest. Everyone else had been ordered to leave.

  Percy scampered down the veranda’s steps as Brent followed.

  “Please, Eidolon Hume.”

  Brent walked with a gentleman’s stride rather than the advance of an executioner. He brushed Percy’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. The Trivial shook. Her bottom lip quivered.

  “I’m scared,” she whimpered.

  “No reason to be. Nothing to fear, Percy. Death is as natural as living.”

  Her breaths settled ever so slightly. She seemed to believe him.

  “Let’s go for walk. Would you like that?” he said.

  “Just a…a walk?”

  “A walk. That’s all.” He offered her his arm, which she took after several tentative tries. “Tell me about yourself. What’s your favorite…”

  Brent’s voice faded as he escorted Percy into the pear and peach orchard. She uncoiled from a frightened child to a young woman at ease on the arm of a caring friend.

  “What do you think he’s saying?” Delia whispere
d.

  Nicodemus’s hold on my shoulder grew heavier. I put my hands over his for comfort.

  What he was saying to Percy didn’t matter. No one should be privy to the words a Grim Reaper shares with his victim anyway.

  Squinting, I watched Brent’s swagger, and how he held Percy’s hand as if he were a careless teenager strolling alongside his girlfriend. Percy even giggled. How quickly she forgot what he was. Even I forgot as I watched them move through the orchard, now so distant they were dots against a watercolor of mountains.

  With the sun silhouetting them on the crest of a hill, Brent put both hands to her cheeks and lowered his lips to hers.

  I tightened my grip on Nicodemus’s hands.

  Percy reached for Brent’s neck to pull him closer, but then her thin arms dropped to her sides. Her body went slack. Brent lowered her to the ground until she was stretched out over the grass like the corpse she was.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.”

  —H. L. Mencken

  “Why, if you’ve been recruitin’ allies for the rebellion, did you come here alone? We could’ve used more help.” Swinging a wrought iron fireplace poker like a walking cane, Errol paced from one side of the wood-paneled dining room to the next.

  Brent slouched into a dining chair fit for a king. He appeared exhausted. Just the same, Chad sat across from Brent, part of his flesh not yet healed from the molten prison Errol had cleverly fashioned for the Eidolons.

  “It’s simple,” Brent said, scratching his beard. “I believed Olivia was in danger.”

  I shifted in my chair after hearing him call me Olivia. The name didn’t feel natural from his lips. Chad gave me a sidelong look. I hadn’t seen such a look before, but I knew what it meant. It was the kind of expression that a jealous sister gives the sibling who always gets the most expensive, thoughtful gifts at Christmas.

  “Why would I let them hurt her? She’s a Master—one of only a handful left. She’s irreplaceable.” Errol didn’t hide the contempt in his brogue.

  “As her assigned Reaper, it is my job to protect her. Even from afar.”

  “What about the rebellion?” Chad said. “Can we talk about that, instead of how Dormier’s shit doesn’t stink?”

  Nicodemus, who sat with Dudley at his side, sneaking the dog table scraps from what remained of our breakfast, exchanged eye rolls with me.

  “As much as I’m loathe to admit it, Chad is right. Can we talk about the rebellion, please?” I said, with enough authority to capture the pair’s attention. “What’s our next course of action?”

  Errol tossed the poker onto the table with a clank. “With all respect, lass, you lack the knowledge to assist with our plan. Let us take care of it.”

  Nicodemus covered my hand with one of his. He knew the boundary Errol crossed.

  “I lack knowledge?” My insides bubbled as Nicodemus tried to offer calm. “Tell me the story of when you stood face-to-face with Marin, challenged him in front of Styx, and lived to tell the tale. Tell me, Errol, please. I’m eager to learn.”

  His pacing slowed, but his face was as grim as ever. “I did not mean to offend you.”

  I had been agitated ever since Percy’s death. Errol’s chauvinism was the trigger my temper craved. “I don’t need protection. I don’t want it. What I do want is to give Stygians what we’ve been wanting for decades, and that’s a new government. So do you think you two could let go of your past so that we can bring Marin down once and for all? Or do the rest of us need to do it without you?”

  By now I was standing with my legs rooted in bitterness. Nicodemus’s hand held mine, only this time with encouragement rather than mollification. The one cheerleader I didn’t expect, but welcomed, was Chad, who gave me his smiling endorsement when I glanced his way.

  “I’m with the Scrivie. Let’s go back to Quebec and give Marin hell,” Chad said through his grin.

  “Maybe it’d be best if we explained what happened between us, before we discuss the plan,” Brent said after a bout of silence. “I think she deserves to know.”

  As I waited for the story, I folded my arms over my chest.

  Brent leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. “Nic, Errol, and I plotted our own little rebellion a year or so before the Purge. We believed that Nic would be the obvious replacement for Marin. One of the few things we did agree on was that Styx wasn’t ready for the rebellion then. Our plan fell apart, and we were forced to go into hiding. Some of us anyway.”

  Short and sweet. I preferred business that way.

  I turned to Nicodemus, who had remained silent for the duration of this meeting. “What exactly does that mean for a rebellion today?”

  Nicodemus didn’t look happy with this conversation. Nevertheless, he smiled warmly at me, a stark contrast to the acrimony in the room. “What is in the past is no longer relevant. Let us look ahead. Considering our situation, we must act fast. It’s time that Stygians get their new government.”

  “Haste will not do us any good,” Errol said with a bite.

  “It’s the best strategy you have, it is.” Chad ran the pads of his thumbs across his fingernails. “Once Marin knows you aren’t eliminated, which will be soon, he’ll attack again. Likely harder.”

  The destruction of Wrightwick and the Scrivener library full of our history and lineage seemed all that Marin was after now––or perhaps it was all he’d ever wanted. Even if we left the rebellion for another day, it was on us to stop him from destroying Wrightwick.

  “I will let the rebels I’ve been working with know we are planning an attack. With any luck, they’ll be there as backup when we return to Québec. But I wouldn’t count on them for help,” Brent said. “We do this with or without them.”

  “Errol, will you join us?” Nicodemus asked, since the Master Scrivener was the only member of this team of insurgents who had yet to chime in on our plan.

  He lingered quietly, his narrowed green eyes moving between us. “We’ll have to land in Toronto and drive the rest of the way. I’m certain Marin has his Watchmen observin’ the airports in and around Québec City and Montreal. I’ll get the details arranged for the six of us, but I’ll need a few hours.”

  My heart rate quickened as the reality of what we were about to do crashed down on my shoulders. “We’d be crazy to go back with just the six of us. We should bring the Trivials at the least, especially if the rebels can’t meet us in Québec.”

  “The remainin’ Trivials must stay back and guard Wrightwick in case Marin has already sent backup,” Errol said. “Marin will expect retaliation, and the smaller the group we are, the longer we fly under his radar. You dinna seem to mind confrontin’ Marin before. What’s the difference now?”

  He had a point. I had run headfirst into Lethe to save Brent and Mama and Papa. I’d had no qualms about what that would take or what I’d lose along the way. Second chances were far riskier. With second chances, a person knew the pain of loss.

  I knew the risk. I wasn’t prepared to lose what I had recently been bestowed. But the alternative to do nothing was simply unacceptable.

  …

  “You’ve changed,” Brent said as we sat on a bench in the corner of what was left of the orchard, with a blanket of stars peeking between the strips of misty souls. I remember a similar moment in the flatlands of Colorado—the night I left had Brent to run back to Québec City to save Mama and Papa. Such a bold, silly mistake wouldn’t be so easy to make now. Besides, there was no one person to save.

  Errol had made airline arrangements for the following morning. We’d be on Canadian soil in less than twenty-four hours, and back in the thick of Marin’s territory.

  “Did you expect me to be the same?” I asked.

  He laced his fingers with mine, a feeling I wasn’t used to but adored nonetheless. “While I don’t agree with his assessment, Chad told me you’d gotten soft.”
<
br />   “Complacent is more apt.”

  “There’s a difference between honest complacency, and waiting for when the time is right.”

  That was a philosophy I could get behind.

  He threw his arm around my shoulder and inched closer. “What hasn’t changed is your humanity. I’ve missed that about you…among many other things.”

  My head lolled against his shoulder. For two years, I had survived in spite of constant anxiety. Those elevated levels of misery had become a new, comfortable norm. Now that Brent was here with me, I was able to see firsthand the stress I had been carrying for two years, and with its departure came great relief. Only problem was that my relief manifested itself in exhaustion.

  “It’s my humanity that tricks people into undervaluing me,” I said.

  “Well, as much as I want to punch Errol in the face—for a myriad of reasons—I also understand why he seeks to protect you. I want to do the same.”

  “What about what I want?” I lifted my head and turned toward him. “What if I want to protect you or Papa? Am I not allowed to because I need to be protected?”

  “This is what I mean.” He ran his fingers across my cheek. “You’ve changed. You have more fight in you. But you still have your humanity. How do you do it?”

  I pursed my lips. “Not sure. I’ve spent my time in isolation, resenting everything I’ve been through.”

  “I know that sentiment well.”

  “I know you do,” I said, my hands playing with the softness of his fleece sweatshirt.

  “I suppose,” he said with a sigh, “my desire to protect you comes from wanting you…us to live in a world not run by Marin.”

  I wanted the same for him and for Papa and others. This was precisely why I was willing to go back into Marin’s den and finish what I had started.

  Once again, here we sat amid the peace of the landscape, in the eye of a super cell storm. But my promise this time around was that I wouldn’t lose Brent.

  Countless emotions moved across his face. I felt them all as if I were inside his heart and mind, experiencing each one with him. I suppose in a way I was, seeing as part of my soul belonged to him.