by Cara Wylde
But maybe she wouldn’t have to see the face of a Grim Reaper at all. I’d given Yolanda a family, an adventure, and I felt like it wasn’t enough. She deserved more. She deserved to live forever. Damn it. I’m starting to get ideas…
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Time had run out. Graduation was taking place in the dining hall, which had once again been converted to suit our needs. The dais where the professor’s table stood was empty now and turned into a stage. Parents and family members were sitting around beautifully decorated tables and waited for the ceremony to start. There would be a party after.
My parents weren’t here, and neither were Sariel’s. Stepan and Lena had insisted to come, but I’d managed to convince them to stay at home with Yolanda.
“I’m nervous as it is,” I’d told them. “Trust me, this isn’t a day of joy for me. It’s more like the day I’m going to find out if I failed or not. And if I did fail, I don’t want you there to see it.”
Also, I didn’t want them here to stare into my greenish face – I was doing my best to cover the color of impending death with tons of foundation and concealer, – and see how my blue hair was falling in clumps. I looked like a zombie. No matter how much GC, Pazuzu, Sariel, Francis, and even Corri had begged me to go through with the ritual again, I’d refused. I wasn’t going to sacrifice another soul to the Great Old One. Not even if Paz brought me the most wretched soul in the world. Not even if he brought me the Devil himself. I was done feeding the monster. And if I had to rot on my feet and turn into a puddle of goo and bones, then so be it. Fine. It was either a place among the twenty-two Grim Reapers, or nothing.
Headmaster Colin started to call out names. Of course, we all graduated. No one ever failed Grim Reaper Academy, because only the brightest minds were accepted in the first place. The moment of truth would come later, when the headmaster would announce the new generation of Grim Reapers. Those were the first twenty-two students on the scoreboard. I was among them. But that didn’t mean anything. Not in my case.
“Klaus Severinus Hamelin. Mage. Merciful Death. Come here, please.”
Klaus stepped forward, and Headmaster Colin handed him his scythe. Only the ones who’d become Grim Reapers could have their scythes back. Standing on the stage, in my flowery dress and long, black robe, I felt uncomfortable without mine.
“Lorna Chiaramonte. Mage. Righteous Death.”
Lorna winked at me. “See you on the other side.”
“Francis Saint-Germain. Violent Death.”
It was funny how Headmaster Colin didn’t mention what Francis was. He knew, of course. But what would he have said? Revenant? Undead? Zombie? The tiny, seemingly unintentional slip went unnoticed.
“Merrit Castegny. Mage. Violent Death.”
Damn it. He made it, but Caspian didn’t. How is that fair? Caspian was a mage, too, and a much nicer person than stupid Merrit.
“Pandora Darkmoor. Demoness. Neutral Death.”
Even now, I couldn’t understand how Pandora had been placed in the Neutral Death Cabal. There was literally nothing neutral about her.
“GC Apis. False god. Violent Death.”
GC pumped his fist in the air. I laughed, and I wasn’t the only one. At least he was excited. Earlier, Francis had accepted his scythe from Headmaster Colin like he’d accepted a death sentence. Well, in a way, it was a two-hundred-year sentence, and it had everything to do with death.
“Pazuzu Eremus. Demon. Violent Death.”
Paz threw me a charming smile and went to collect his scythe. It was almost over, and they knew it. They were looking forward to it. Once we’d all take our places as Grim Reapers, we could be together again.
“Sheba Hellflame. Demoness. Righteous Death.”
Kitty and Sammy didn’t make it.
“Raziel Celest. Angel. Violent Death.” A pause. “Sariel Gracewing. Fallen One. Merciful Death.”
The very first Fallen One in history to become a Grim Reaper. If anything, Sariel should have been proud of himself. When all odds were against him, he’d just worked harder and made it. I hated his parents for having refused to come and bear witness to his success.
Headmaster Colin called out a few more names until he finally got to me. I was the last one.
“Mila Morningstar. Human. Violent Death.”
Human. Yeah, sure. The second I stepped closer to him and he gave me my scythe, his twitching nose said I was no human at all. Frankly, I’d tried to cover the stench of death with a fuckton of perfume, but it hadn’t quite worked. I found a place between Francis and Lorna. Francis had the best poker face in the world, and Lorna… I just wanted to piss her off.
“Jesus, woman!”
“You know you love me,” I chuckled.
“Feast and party,” Headmaster Colin said, addressing the guests, the professors, and the newly graduated students, then turned to us. “Your job is not done yet.” He motioned for us to gather around him in a perfect circle. “I will take you now to the Great Hall of Life and Death, where you will…” He hesitated, and I wondered if it was because of me. “Well, you know what you’ll have to do.”
He lifted his right hand above his head, made a swirly motion, and a cloud of shimmering energy fell upon us. That was how a powerful mage with centuries of experience teleported twenty-two people and himself to a place no one could point on any map.
I felt slightly dizzy. Everyone else was fine, so I knew it was because of my poor health. I also hadn’t eaten in days, my body finding it more and more difficult to digest and process food. I basically lived on water. I leaned on Francis’s arm and looked around me.
We were in a long hall with a tall ceiling and pillars on both sides. It led to a door in the far back – the only one in sight. Headmaster Colin started walking toward it, and we followed him. The walls were covered in detailed tapestries that depicted humans and supernaturals at various stages in life. Here, a baby was born. There, a man and a woman were getting married. Strong men were working the fields, and curvy women clattered about in small kitchens, children and cats pulling at their skirts. A little farther, an old man was begging a cloaked figure with a scythe to give him more time. But the scenes weren’t all rural. There were people in tall office buildings, and people in cars, some driving happily on long, winding streets, others smashed in terrible accidents. Heaven and Hell were depicted, too. Choirs of angels sang songs of praise, and demons schemed and plotted how to release chaos into the world above. I saw the Seelie and the Unseelie courts, each with their births, marriages, and deaths. The whole universe was painted on these walls, and for a moment, my greatest sadness was that I couldn’t stop to take it all in. I felt like the meaning of all things was hidden behind these images, if only I could halt, decide that I didn’t need to know what was behind the door we were headed for, and study each and every detail for hours. Unable to help myself, I lingered. I was the last one to arrive at the door, which Headmaster Colin opened, and I could barely see over my colleagues’ heads.
The room was large and empty, aside from the wide chair in the middle, which was occupied by two people covered in shrouds. I couldn’t tell whether they were men or women. One had a black shroud, and the other a white one. What caught my attention was that the two pieces of flowy fabric overlapped where the two people’s shoulders touched. They were sitting very close together. In front of them, facing us, were the twenty-two Grim Reapers whose places we were going to take. I counted again. Twenty-one. Morningstar wasn’t here. My heart sank and my knees almost gave out.
Headmaster Colin moved aside. Instinctively, Lorna stepped in front of a Grim Reaper. The woman looked at her for a moment, her black gaze intense and searching, then bowed slightly in front of the new Reaper. She gave Lorna her scythe. The moment the mage girl touched the foreign scythe that had been reaping souls for the past two hundred years, it turned to shimmering dust.
“Good luck,” the Righteous Reaper said, and offered Lorna her pl
ace.
“Thank you.” And just like that, Lorna Chiaramonte was a Grim Reaper.
Following her lead, all the others did the same. In minutes, I was the only one left, and it was painfully obvious… I had failed. I did my best not to cry. My fingers tightened around the handle of my scythe, and my sharp nails dug into my palm. I kept my head high and turned to meet Headmaster Colin’s gaze. He was looking at me with infinite sadness, and that did it. A single tear rolled down my cheek.
“Now what?” I asked in a choked voice.
He shrugged. “Now you go after him. You find him and try to retire him. If you can’t…”
“That’s it. There’s no future for me.”
“Mila,” he whispered. “The Academy will gladly welcome you as the only specialist in inter-dimensional dream travel.”
“In two hundred years.”
“In two hundred years,” he confirmed.
I couldn’t have it. I wouldn’t have it. I felt everyone’s eyes on me, and I hated it. GC, Paz, Francis, and Sariel were silently begging me to look at them, but I couldn’t. For now, I couldn’t follow them. They’d have to wait for me. Would they? Maybe if I had the guts to meet their eyes, I’d have my answer, but I was too afraid. So, I turned on my heels and started toward the door. The former Grim Reapers had teleported away, and I was the only one who was delaying the ceremony. The two shrouded figures were waiting for me to leave, so they could reveal their faces and grant the new Grim Reapers strength, power, and immunity to death.
I’ll find him.
He found me first.
He materialized right on the threshold. Valentine Morningstar, in his frightening glory. For a fraction of a second, hope made my chest swell. Then I saw the others. They were materializing one by one, teleporting from God knew where. Twenty-one Grim Reapers in dark cloaks torn at the edges. They all had their heads covered, but one could tell they were rugged and dirty, as if they’d just returned from a warzone.
“My daughter.” He spread his arms wide, and his skeleton-like body glowed stronger.
“You’re here.”
“Not for you.”
He pushed me aside, and since my body was already falling apart, I didn’t fight him. The strange Grim Reapers followed him. One of them removed his hood, and I gasped. His blue eyes met mine. He looked exactly like… No.
He was Sariel. Not my Sariel, but an older, crueler version of Sariel. My Fallen One had never killed anyone, although, on his bad days, he’d tried to get rid of me a couple of times. This Sariel… he’d killed plenty. One could count the dead bodies he’d left behind by counting the wrinkles around his eyes and lips.
The others removed their hoods, too, and I recognized Lorna, Pandora, Klaus, and Caspian instead of Merrit. GC’s curly blond hair was dirty and disheveled. Pazuzu’s red eyes were shooting out literal flames. He didn’t even look my way. When Francis grinned, a set of sharp, long teeth came into view. Not like a vampire’s, though. Those were the fangs of a person who ate…
I shook my head, closed my eyes, and hoped that when I’d open them, they would all go away and this whole thing would prove to have been a nightmare concocted by my disintegrating brain. No such luck. When I opened my eyes, Headmaster Colin was yelling and throwing spells at the intruders, which they easily blocked with the blades of their scythes.
“Out! Keep them out!”
Lorna and Klaus stepped forward to help him. Meanwhile, the other Reapers formed a protective circle around the two shrouded figures. I understood they had to protect them. We all had to protect them.
“Move out of the way, old man. This is futile. My Reapers have done this before, they will do it again.”
Morningstar was after the two people on the large throne. Which meant…
No… Those are… Life and Death.
He wanted to kill Life and Death. Not the concepts, not the metaphors… the actual living beings that were Life and Death. And we couldn’t let him. Forgetting that I was in no condition to fight, I jumped into battle headfirst. My scythe blocked someone else’s scythe, and when I looked up, it was Lorna. Not my Lorna. This one was leaking blue energy from her eyes, and her grin revealed rotten teeth. Her long black hair was a mess of dirt, leaves, and twigs. She looked like she’d been sleeping in a hole in the ground for the past couple of decades. I fought her with all my might, but she was stronger than me. At this point, pretty much anyone was stronger than me. She pushed me off her, and I fell into someone’s arms.
“You have to go,” Paz said. “Save yourself.”
“N-no. I can’t leave! This is my war, not yours!”
“Look at me.” He grabbed my jaw with a strong hand and made me look into his eyes. “You’re too weak. Anyone here can kill you. Anyone! And you can’t die!”
“Why not?”
“Because believe it or not, you’re still the only one who can do something about Morningstar. Go!”
He pushed me inside the circle. And I knew I could teleport safely from here, but I didn’t want to. I wasn’t going to leave them. Francis was fighting with his doppelganger, and Merrit was throwing energy balls at Caspian. Klaus came face to face with his own version of himself and freaked out so hard that he almost fainted. Headmaster Colin and Lorna were busy keeping Morningstar away from the circle and the throne.
The throne…
I turned to the shrouded figures. Something was off. Their hands were on their lap, but… not four hands. Two. Unnaturally apart, like the black one had stuck her right hand out, and the white one her left.
“You could do something if you wanted to,” I said. I didn’t know how to address them, or whether I was supposed to address them at all. Fuck that. “They’re fighting to protect you, and you’re just…”
The white figure raised her hand, grabbed the front of her shroud, and pulled. When the white piece of fabric fell, the black one fell, too. As if they were knit together. Because they were…
They were knit together… the two women. I covered my mouth with both hands to stop myself from screaming. Conjoined twins. Life and Death were conjoined twins, glued to each other not only at the hip, but at the waist, ribs, and shoulders. They had four legs, but only two arms. Death had long black hair, blue eyes, and parchment skin covering her glowing bones, and Life had long white hair, silver eyes, and pale skin that covered full, healthy flesh. They looked young and gorgeous, but every time I blinked, I had the impression that their features changed. They looked feminine one second, and masculine the next. Hermaphrodites.
“What do you think…” Life started.
“… he wants, dead girl?” Death finished.
“To end your reign.” They had two necks, and one necklace that hung around both. At the end of it, a vial the size of my fist with a creature inside it. Its body was made of smoke that shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow. A hundred arms, and a hundred legs. It kicked and screamed, yet the sound of its struggles didn’t reach my ears. “And release Time from your clutches.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
They were fighting with all they had, but they were losing. Before my eyes, things I never thought possible were unfolding. My GC threw his scythe to the side and shifted into a golden bull. His counterpart did the same, and now two humongous bulls were circling each other, forcing everyone to give them space. Paz stopped fighting the demon that looked just like him, and I thought he needed to take a breath. He spread his arms, looked up at the tall ceiling, and let out a loud growl from the bottom of his chest. The hairs on my nape stood on end. I had no idea he could do that. The ceiling collapsed to the ground, and it was fortunate that Klaus was paying attention. He pointed his hands at the splintered stone and wood, and with a grunt, made the deadly rubble hit the back wall. Through the open ceiling, a buzz of a thousand wings invaded the throne room. Instinctively, I grabbed the black and white shroud, and threw it over Life and Death to protect them. A swarm of locusts swiped over our heads a
nd attacked Valentine and his Reapers. After them, a hot wind that brought sand as sharp as glass blinded them and forced them to take a few steps back.
Holy shit! It was the first time I saw Pazuzu use his true demon powers. Now, the only problem was that the other Pazuzu had the exact same powers, so he pulled the same trick. Angels fought angels, demons fought demons, mages fought mages, and locusts fought and ate other locusts in a cloud of dust and sand. It was insanity!
Was it me, or was GC growing in size? My false god was full of surprises, too. The golden bulls backed away slowly, grew twice as big, and lunged at each other, head down, horns at the ready. When they collided, the whole building trembled.
I was holding on to my scythe, looking around me, trying to understand what was happening and what I could do to help.
I saw Sariel facing the other Sariel. There was a difference in their case, though. His doppelganger was an archangel that had never fallen. His beautiful wings spread wide, he flew up to the sky, and through the round crack in the ceiling, he rained arrows of solidified light onto those below.
“Oh my God!” I screamed and threw my own body over the conjoined twins I now knew was my sacred duty to protect. Arrows stuck in my back. With a pained whimper, I reached around and pulled them out one by one. They came out with strings of skin and flesh wrapped around the arrow heads. “Not to worry,” I whispered to myself. “It’ll heal.” Wishful thinking… My body was more like decomposing than healing.
It was the Fallen One’s turn. What he did next… I realized not even he was aware that he could do. Rage took over Sariel. His blue eyes turned black, and the stumps coming out of his shoulder blades grew into twisted leathery wings. His feet turned into hooves, the new shape tearing his pants from the knee down, as well as his shoes. When he opened his mouth, flames poured out of his throat. Hellfire enveloped Sariel the Archangel. As his wings burned, he screamed in pain and made his escape through the ceiling, only to return later.
“Holy mother of…” I couldn’t believe my eyes. So that was the true face of a Fallen One. After all, Sariel Gracewing wasn’t a creature of Heaven anymore. Hell had claimed him. I was almost afraid of him.
