by Cara Wylde
“Oh my God, thank you! Thank you!”
“The god you’re thanking had nothing to do with it,” Francis chuckled. I could tell he was in pain.
“I’m not thanking Yig.”
“Not even now?”
“Never.”
“You’re a Grim Reaper,” Sariel said.
I shook my head. “I didn’t retire him.”
A shuffle from behind us. The shrouded figures stood up slowly, and somewhat clumsily.
“Come here, dead girl,” Death said.
“And you, child.” Life motioned at Yolanda to step forward.
I took Yoli’s hand, and we both stood before Life and Death.
“Mila Morningstar,” Death said as she placed her hand on the top of my head. “I grant you strength, long life, and immunity.”
Long life meant that I was under Death’s protection for the next two hundred years, so Yig could suck it. He wasn’t getting any blood sacrifices from me anymore, and neither from Francis. I felt my lungs expanding, forcing me to take a deep breath. My body mended itself from the inside out. When Death removed her hand, she left me standing a different person. I was strong, healthy, and I smelled normal again – like my mint-scented shampoo and my rosehip body milk. I could swear I was a head taller, too, or maybe I just felt like it because my spine had elongated on its own. It felt amazing. In fact, for the first time in my life, it crossed my mind that I, indeed, had a spine. And with a spine came focus, confidence, and responsibility. I was a Grim Reaper.
Life caressed Yolanda’s cheek with the back of her hand, wiping her tears and tucking her blond hair behind her ear.
“Your time will come, little one.”
Yoli sighed. “I’m human. I have, maybe, seventy or eighty more years to live.”
“You’re not just any human. You’re a human with a scythe, and it wouldn’t be the first time a human with a scythe proved everyone wrong.”
Yoli shrugged. She was exhausted, and by this point, all she wanted was to go home. Life gave her a smile and a pat on the cheek.
“You’ll do great things, Yolanda Aleksiev. Greater than your cousin.”
And, I swear to God, when I heard that, a burden lifted off my heart. For the first time in what felt like forever, no one was expecting anything form me. I wasn’t the Chosen One anymore, I wasn’t the girl everyone looked up to and tried to guess how she’d pull it off in the end. I was a Grim Reaper. One of twenty-two. And it wasn’t that special, it was just right.
“Come on,” I pulled at Yoli’s hand. “I’ll take you home.”
Headmaster Colin nodded at me. He stayed back with the other Grim Reapers. Death had some strength, long life, and immunity to give away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Between reaping all over the world, Heaven, Hell, and the known pocket universes, and stopping to breathe and contemplate what had happened and how we’d gotten here, my boys and I found time to make up. I was still living with Sariel in Limbo, but when we were on the road – and we were on the road all the time – hotels were better.
A deluxe suite in Paris. I could see the Eiffel Tower from the window, but I didn’t have time to admire the view. We had to make it quick, before our scythes started glowing again, calling us away. Paz, as possessive as ever, drew me in his arms and kissed me desperately. From behind, I felt someone’s arms wrap around my waist and pull me away from the demon. He flipped me around, stealing me from a growling Paz, and my blue eyes met blue eyes. Sariel. He sank his hand into my hair and pulled my head back to expose my neck. I gasped. Since when was the Fallen One so daring and competitive? Since he’s grown dark wings and demon hooves. Paz had finally found his match. GC came to claim a piece of me, too, and soon I had three men all over me, pushing me toward the bed, pulling at my clothes, undressing me, kissing, biting, and shoving each other when one dared to try and take more than his share. As usual, Francis settled on the couch and watched us lustfully.
“I love you, goddess,” GC whispered in my ear as he entered me from behind.
“How can you love someone like me?”
They knew everything now, but not because I’d told them. Because they’d known all along. Not the details, but the general idea. They knew about Yolanda and how I’d made her map the parallel dimensions for me. How I’d sent her to find my mother, then dragged her in the middle of a bloody battle that wasn’t hers.
“You did what you had to do,” Sariel said, his hand coming to rest on the nape of my neck. He pushed me slowly toward his hard cock, and I closed my eyes and wrapped my lips around the engorged tip. “It’s not like we’re saints.” And he laughed.
Paz was stroking himself, waiting for his turn. GC fucked me hard and fast, causing me to swallow more of Sariel’s cock, until I almost choked. It was an exhilarating feeling. I could take it. We’d broken a few beds like this, the five of us. Sometimes, we forgot how strong and fast we were, and we ended up having to pay the hotel extra for the furniture we’d damaged. An unexpected orgasm shook my body, and just as I was building up for the second, GC came with a grunt. Annoyed, I sat up, pushed Sariel onto his back, and mounted him. I rode him until I came once, twice. The Fallen One watched me mesmerized, his hands roaming all over my hips, stomach, and breasts, as if he needed to touch and feel every inch of me. When he came, he pulled me down and held me to his chest.
I wanted more. Like a cat, I stalked toward Paz. The demon’s green eyes turned red with anticipation. We kissed, and I felt his cock rub against my stomach.
“How do you want it?” he asked.
I grinned. “Where…”
His gaze darkened with lust. He turned me around slowly, and I moved on my hands and knees, chest on the mattress. From this position, I could see Francis. The revenant never touched himself when he watched me get fucked by the other three, and patiently waited for his turn. He never asked, and he never said what he wanted or how he wanted it. He let me decide, let me give him as much as I desired of myself. This time, however, as Paz used two fingers to prepare the only place where I was still a virgin, Francis pulled his cock out and started stroking himself firmly. I couldn’t take my eyes off that big, beautiful rod. I licked my lips. Soon, he’d be inside me, and oh, Francis could fill me so deeply and fully, that fucking him was always the cherry on top.
The demon positioned the head of his cock at my puckered entrance, and I dragged in a breath. If I were still human, it would’ve probably hurt, but seeing how I wasn’t, the feeling was a mix of forbidden pleasure and complete surrender. My knees almost gave out. I felt like putty, and Paz had to hold my hips in place so I wouldn’t melt on the bed. It was like nothing I’d felt before.
“So tight and delicious,” he murmured.
I made eye contact with Francis as Paz moved in and out, slowly at first, then picking up the pace. The pleasure building inside me was out of this world. I moaned, screamed, and thrashed, moving my hips to meet the demon’s. Francis sat up, and with his pants around his knees, came over to the edge of the bed.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said. He grabbed my hair and made me look up at him as he rubbed his cock faster and harder. This was new… Him wanting to finish before me. Francis had never been selfish. “Open your mouth.”
I did, and his hot cum hit my tongue, most of it spilling on my nose, cheeks and chin. I swallowed what I could, but I was so close myself that I could barely focus, could barely breathe. I cried out when an orgasm like no other took over my body, almost making me disconnect from the here and now. Paz came deep inside me, and it struck me that I finally belonged to them, now, to all of them. Body and soul, with not a piece of me that they hadn’t yet claimed and fucked.
I fell on my face, exhausted. My four lovers cuddled with me – a pile of arms, legs, and too much hair getting into everyone’s mouth. Someone pulled a duvet over all of us, but it didn’t work out great since it was made for two people, and we were five.
“You knew, and you were never angry with me for lying to you?” I asked.
“Hmm… you just omitted a few things, didn’t straight up lied to us,” GC said.
“You did what you had to do,” Sariel added. “It’s okay. We know it wasn’t easy.”
I sighed. I fixed my gaze on the ceiling. A few dark spots were proof that insects had died there by the hand of some former occupant. Deluxe suite my ass. The truth was that Paris wasn’t great when it came to hotels. Now that I was more than well-traveled, I knew there were places in the world that actually understood what luxury meant and did it right. But Paris had its charm.
“I ruined someone’s life,” I mused. “I know I did. But somehow, I’m not sorry. Because it was the only way out for me. For us.”
“It’s not your fault the only weapon that could kill Morningstar was not a blade, or a gun, or poison.”
“A little girl…”
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up.” Sariel ran his fingers through my hair, soothingly. I moaned, aroused by his touch. He grinned. “Again?”
“Again.”
EPILOGUE
She came to me as I exited a rundown building in the South Bronx. Drug overdose. Usually, Neutral Reapers dealt with these cases, but I was called instead, so I did my job. I jumped down the last few steps casually, waiting for blade of my scythe to glow red for the next reaping, hoping it would be somewhere nice and sunny this time.
“Mila.”
I looked up. She stood before me, tall, slender, and beautiful. Her hair looked darker in the faint light of the dirty streetlamps, but it was her.
“Mom?”
“My baby!”
She opened her arms, and I hesitated for just a second before running to her. I abandoned myself into her warm embrace and didn’t fight the tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. It felt like I was hugging her for the first time in my life. Since I couldn’t remember her holding me as a baby, this was the first time.
“You’re here.”
She buried her nose in my blue hair. “You know I’m not really here.”
“You’re trapped in the other dimension, I know. And I can’t do anything about it.”
She held me at arm’s length. “It’s okay. I can visit you whenever I want.”
“Why didn’t you come see me? Yolanda told me you’ve mapped all the inter-connected dimensions, and you can go anywhere you want. Why did you leave me?”
She smoothed down my hair. “Baby, I couldn’t. You thought I was dead, and you had a new family that could offer you a normal life. To barge into it would’ve been selfish of me.”
“No.”
“I want what’s best for you. Always have. And look at you now.” She beamed. “You’re a Grim Reaper!”
“I am.”
“I’m proud of you. And as much as I would’ve loved for you to live as a human…” She paused, then continued with newfound determination. “To be a human… I must admit that the idea of you living forever does give me some peace of mind.”
“You know…”
“That you’re a revenant? Yes.” She kissed my forehead. “Yolanda told me. It’s okay. It’s not your fault. You did what you had to do to survive.”
“You know what I’ll have to do after the two hundred years are up.”
She nodded. “It doesn’t matter. You’re all that matters.”
“I don’t know…” I stepped away from her. “I don’t know if I want to live forever when you won’t. Even if you’re not here, with me. When Yoli won’t… Lena and Stepan, as horrible as they were to me… Hell! Not even Paz and Sariel are immortal. They’ll live for a long, long time, but not forever. And what? Will I just end up with GC and Francis until… when? Until the next apocalypse?”
“What are you saying?”
“This whole immortality thing doesn’t make sense to me.”
She was silent for a minute. She wrapped her arms around herself, and I realized that even if she wasn’t technically here, in my world, she could feel the cold. I took off my cloak and put it around her shoulders.
“What if I told you there is a way…”
I cocked an eyebrow. “A way to… what?”
“Make Yolanda immortal. Make anyone you want immortal. Me, Sariel, Paz… your father from the other dimension.”
“Your husband is not my father.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“It’s impossible.”
“What if it’s not?”
“Mom… Yolanda is human. Humans die. It’s the order of things.”
“It doesn’t have to be. I found something. Not here, not in our inter-connected universes. Somewhere far, far away. Far outside most dream jumpers’ reach.”
My heart started beating faster, but it wasn’t excitement. It was apprehension. I could feel it in my gut. She was about to say something that would send my world spinning. Again.
She pulled out something wrapped in an old newspaper. As she unrolled it, pieces of mud fell on her shoes. It was a plant.
“Do you know about Gilgamesh?”
“One of the first Grim Reapers…”
She nodded. “There’s this story about how after he served his two hundred years, he went on a quest to look for immortality. He was a hybrid, the result of the love affair between a fay and a human woman. Neither fays, nor humans are immortal, so he found he aged rather fast for his liking. He didn’t find immortality, but he found the next best thing: a plant that could keep him young forever, if he administered it regularly.”
“Did he?”
“For a while, yes. But the batch he got didn’t last forever. When he was left with not a single leaf of his life-extending plant, he went to get some more. And never came back.”
“A hybrid. Hybrids dream.”
“Yes.”
“You went there, and you found Gilgamesh’s plant.” She nodded, but even though what she was telling me should have made me dance with joy, it didn’t. On the contrary. A chill ran up my spine. “Mom, where did you find this plant? What’s this universe that’s so far, far away that most dream jumpers can’t reach it?”
She smiled mischievously. “Well, why don’t you try to guess?”
“No.”
She took the plant in her hand and held it into the dim light. “This comes from a world where there’s no life, nor death. Only existence. Eternal, unbridled existence.”
“The home world of the Great Old Ones.”
She looked into my eyes. “Exactly.”
“Then I know why Gilgamesh didn’t make it back the second time. Mom, you have to promise me you’ll never go there again. It’s dangerous.”
She groaned, as if disappointed at my reaction. “Is that the first thing you can think about? That it’s dangerous?”
“N-no.”
“Then speak your mind!”
“I can finally banish Yig. Our world… its world. I can open a portal between them, and…”
“Not you. You can’t dream travel, remember?”
“Then who?”
She handed me the plant. “When Yolanda turns eighteen, brew this into a tea and make her drink it. It will buy her one hundred years. I will bring you more.”
“Mom, Yolanda…” I shook my head firmly. “She deserves to have a normal, peaceful life. What you wanted for me. She can have it.”
“Mila, do you think the only reason you found Yolanda was because she had to kill Morningstar?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but immediately realized I would’ve gotten it wrong.
“It was never a coincidence. It was destiny. You found her because she has bigger fish to fry.”
“The Great Old One.”
“The Great Old Ones,” she corrected me.
We held each other’s gaze for a while, and I finally conceded. I wrapped my fingers around the muddy weed and nodded at Katia Angelov. She nodded back.
; “Until next time, baby.”
“Until next time, Mom.”
END OF BOOK FOUR
Exclusive Second Epilogue:
Yolanda
In many ways, I was a normal teenager. I went to school, helped my mom around the house, did my homework, went out every weekend with my friends. On holidays, I insisted to work at Lena’s Diner - the family business, - even when my mom and dad didn’t want to hear of it. I was supposed to learn, not work. It was sweet of them.
But in many other ways, I was far from being a normal teenager. I spent my nights traveling through parallel dimensions, and every now and then, I even hung out with Grim Reapers. Don’t worry, it wasn’t because I was that cool. My cousin was, though, and she’d introduced me to everyone she knew in the supernatural world. Yeah. My cousin was so badass that everyone knew who she was. You guessed it. Mila Morningstar. Violent Reaper, revenant, daughter of the greatest Grim Reaper in the world. Former, actually. I’d taken care of that years ago, when I was only eleven and didn’t know much about this world. Now I was turning sixteen, and I still felt like I didn’t know that many things…
Usually, Mila took me out for my birthday. Every year, we’d go watch a movie in Hell, - because they had the best horror actors and directors, - or she’d teleport me away, and we’d go shopping at one of the supernatural malls, or go buy cake and cookies from the Seelie Court - because the Seelie were crazy good bakers. This year, she’d asked me to meet her at some random café in town. She didn’t teleport there, she walked. And for the first time in years, I saw her dressed in normal clothes. She didn’t have her scythe with her, either. Her hair had grown significantly longer, and she was still dyeing it blue.
“Happy birthday, kid!”
“Thanks.” I couldn’t hide my concern. When Mila wasn’t being herself, it was always a bad sign.
“What’s up?”
We ordered tea and coffee before I answered her question.
“You know, the usual. Another year, another step toward death.” She laughed out loud. “What’s up with you?”
