by Jayce Carter
And there, staring back at me, wasn’t the face I recognized. It wasn’t the dark hair and the green eyes I knew so well.
Instead, a dark figure hovered there, and the undeniable truth hit me.
After all the years of trying to understand what I was, of wondering where my skills came from, the answer was there, and it was one I wasn’t ready for.
I was a reaper….
Chapter Twenty-Three
My knees hit the ground hard, the sharp rocks and sand digging in. Yet, oddly, I liked that, embraced the spark of pain. It reminded me that I was still alive, that I was there, that I was me again.
When I’d been in that other form, I hadn’t been able to touch the real world—I hadn’t been a part of it.
Sure, I didn’t love the pain in my knees or the way my cut hand got dirt in the wound, but at least it was something.
I lifted my head and peered past the men—I didn’t really want to see how they looked at me anymore—to find Lucifer leaning forward, for the first time fully invested in what had happened.
And the way he smiled said he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.
He rose and walked to the edge of the barrier, then raised his voice as though addressing the crowd despite his gaze not leaving me.
“We have a winner. In a rather surprising turning of events, the winner of our competition and the recipient of any favor I am capable of giving is Ava Harlin, our not-so-mortal guest of honor.”
Murmurs from behind him started up—then again, a mortal had just won their precious competition—but a lifted hand by Lucifer silenced them.
“You planned this,” I accused.
Lucifer nodded at the barrier, and it fell. He stepped over the line of rocks, then reached out his hand.
I took it, ignoring that I probably got blood and dirt on him. He pulled me to my feet, staring down at me with far more interest than made me comfortable.
“So I’m going to guess you got what you wanted?” I asked.
“I did, Ms. Harlin.”
“And why did you want it? What did you get out of all of this?”
He released my hand, his lips curling into a cruel and calculated smile. “We will see.”
And that did not make me feel any better.
* * * *
My hand ached, and, for the first time, I wished I’d had a chance to see Kase. Nothing like a little vampire blood to chase away the injury.
Funny, since it wasn’t all that long ago that I had recoiled at the thought of him healing me. It seemed I’d realized there were a lot worse things in the world than a few drops of blood, especially if they managed to do away with the wound.
I wasn’t sure if that was a positive change or not.
I hadn’t looked at or spoken to any of the men. Lucifer had sent me off with a guard right after he’d declared me the winner, and I’d gone without lifting my gaze.
Fear gripped me. I recalled how I’d looked in the mirror Grant had created, how my reflection had shown nothing of who I had always seen.
How could anyone accept that? I couldn’t, and for that reason, I’d not met the gazes of any of the men.
The idea of them seeing me differently created this pit in my stomach, a fear that something I’d found might be gone.
What would I do if I found disgust in Troy’s eyes when he looked at me? If Grant watched me with suspicion, or Hunter flinched from me?
Even Kase, who didn’t seem startled by anything, might not touch me with the same gentle stroke of his fingers after seeing that. I’d risked everything for them, and they might have decided I wasn’t worth it anymore.
Reapers weren’t immortals. They weren’t like anything else. It would have been easier to accept I was some sort of freaky hybrid of an immortal, but a reaper?
The things Gran had said before came back to me, when she’d said I was more than I realized, that I wasn’t supposed to be. She’d been right.
Too bad I hadn’t listened.
A knock on the door came a moment before a guard came in. “It’s time.” His tone came out careful, respectful, his gaze hesitant.
It was an entirely different reaction than I’d had before, when I had been stared at like a new chew toy. The mortal in hell, the one who sat to the side of Lucifer for some reason. The guards had been amused at best, but now?
Now he gave me the same suspicion given to the far larger and scarier folks.
I nodded, walking past the guard at the door. He moved backward to leave more space between us, as if he didn’t want to risk coming into contact with me.
A muttered insult rested on my tongue, but I kept it in.
It wasn’t this guard’s fault that I was in a testy mood, and taking it out on him would be unfair. He had one job—to take me to the stupid official audience where I would ask Lucifer for my favor before the end of the entire party and competition ordeal.
And what I was going to ask, I still had no idea. I’d expected for Hunter to figure that out, since he understood what a person should ask. However, since I’d been the one to land the killing blow on the reaper, I was awarded the actual favor.
I was still dressed as I’d been during the fight, during the night before. In short—I was a mess. Penis robe and all.
At least I didn’t turn back into my normal old self naked, as Hunter did. Then again, Hunter became that smoke creature, but it was still a real creature. When I transformed, I hadn’t been just another form of my same energy. Instead, I had been something entirely different.
It was odd to not have Persephone at my side. While I didn’t love her cheery nature or distractibility, I’d grown used to it. When I reached the courtyard, I spotted the woman in question there, in her seat, trying very hard not to look at me. She’d still attended—she’d just not wanted to walk with me for the first time.
That same unease that had haunted me since realizing what I was crept into me again. Persephone, who had managed to see good in the devil—who I was pretty sure had no good in him—had written me off. She had chosen to avoid me, to not look at me, as if I were suddenly different.
I am, aren’t I?
I walked forward, spotting on the other side of Lucifer extra seats filled with none other than the black team.
Even still, I tore my gaze away before seeing any of them clearly. I knew where they sat, saw Kase, Grant, Hunter and Troy all looking well enough.
I wasn’t brave enough to face them, not yet.
“Approach,” Lucifer said, crooking his fingers.
I tucked my hands into the pockets of my robe, missing those moments before when the spells tattooed on my arms had kept me hidden.
Others stood around, faces I’d seen over the last few days, including Fredrick, Colter and the acting Magistrate.
All of them eyed me as if trying to understand me, as if trying to see what they’d missed before, trying to see the monster beneath, the one I’d hidden.
“You have won a favor from me. It must be something I am capable of giving. It must be something with a definable consequence. That means you cannot ask me to give you a good life. You could ask for two million dollars. You can ask me to kill someone, but you cannot ask me to make you immortal, unless you were asking me to find a person to turn you into a specific type of immortal. Should what you ask be impossible for me, I will tell you, and you will not forfeit your right to the favor.”
“That’s a lot more caveats than I thought would be involved in a favor from the devil,” I said.
“I am a careful negotiator. And, no, you cannot ask me to make you king of hell or the devil. I’ve had people ask, and as that is a birthright, it isn’t something I can give away.”
I snorted. “Trust me, I don’t want your job.”
“Good to know. Now, Ms. Harlin, the question falls to you. What do you want?”
I didn’t know. Nothing came to mind. Nothing seemed important enough. I could ask him what I was, but even if I had a good idea now, I doubted he knew much more than I did. I
could ask about the shadow, about the thing I’d come looking for, the reason behind all of this, but he hadn’t seemed to know. I could ask him to take care of the shadow, but according to his rules, it wasn’t a definable consequence if he didn’t know who the shadow was.
“Can I wait and ask for my favor later?”
He nodded. “You have one year to claim your favor. Just prior to the time running out, I will call you here again for a last chance, and you will be given a method of transport here in case you come up with a favor in the meantime.”
It wasn’t ideal, but at least I’d have time to think.
I opened my mouth to tell him my choice, that I wanted to wait, when a scream echoed out from behind me.
He lifted his gaze, a quick motion that showed the first real moment of surprise from him.
I twisted to find chaos engulfing the people behind me. The crowd shifted like something alive, and the movement was so varied that I couldn’t identify what was happening at first.
It was violent, fast and coated with splashes of red.
After a moment, my eyes narrowed in on one grouping, on a tall female demon who raked her claws against the throat of another. She moved from one to the next, her motions fluid and lethal.
Her eyes, it took me a moment to realize, were black. They were the same as Olin, as Paul, as Troy when he’d been taken over. The only explanation was that the shadow was here and infecting immortals.
That was the piece I needed to fit the rest together. At least twelve other immortals in the group were in the same frenzy, casting chaos through the crowd, forcing others to defend themselves.
Still, in such a small area, there wasn’t much of a defense any one person could put up.
I backed away until something grabbed my arm. I twisted, fist drawn as if a punch from me would do anything, but Troy grabbed my hand.
The time to worry about what he thought about my revelation could come later as the screams increased.
“Let’s go,” he said, yanking me backward.
“Their eyes.”
Grant came up and nodded. “I saw. We need to go, now. Lucifer has already bolted and when the devil leaves a party, it’s time to go.”
And, for once, I couldn’t agree more. We rushed backward, past the thrones, past the tree, away from the bloody chaos of the immortals.
“Can’t you create a portal now?” I asked Grant.
“Lucifer hasn’t removed your tracer yet.”
“Of course he hasn’t,” I griped, feeling like it was yet another time Lucifer had screwed me over.
He was on my list of least favorite people.
“Gran,” I said, trying to pull to a stop.
Troy would have none of it, my useless objection nothing to his strength. “Gran can take care of herself,” he reminded me.
Which was true, I guessed.
We took the staircase up to put distance between ourselves and the violence, but as we turned a corner, a vampire I didn’t recognize but had seen with Kase and Colter appeared. Those eyes of his made me shudder, especially when they locked on me.
Kase moved past me, nothing but a blur, before he hit the vampire.
Troy didn’t give me time to watch or worry. He pulled me the other way, but our paths of exit closed quickly. A demon with wings landed on the edge of the walkway and Hunter took on that one. A creature stood farther down that Grant incinerated on the spot. A man who looked like the one who had tried to plant me forced Troy from my side.
Everywhere we went, more of those immortals with the black eyes stood in our way until only Grant and I rushed from one spot to another. He seemed breathless, and I recalled what he’d said about how magic worked.
What happened if he ran out? He could do away with most of the things that opposed us with a flick of his wrist, but his words became slower, clumsier, and when we turned a corner, he stumbled.
Two lumbering, twisted beings blocked our path.
Grant cursed, then opened the closest door and shoved me in.
I tried to go back, but he was quicker, closing me in. He uttered a quick spell and a shimmering light engulfed the wood. I knew before I even tried that he’d barred it, but I pulled anyway.
The idiot had put himself on the wrong side of that spell!
I knew, of course, that he’d done it on purpose. Grant, despite his failings, would have kept himself on the outside to give it every last bit of fight he had.
I screamed his name against the spell, the door, the frustration of being locked in with nothing I could do about it.
I tried to reach for my other form, for the power I’d found, but it didn’t work. Was there a limit when I could use that? Was it my fear?
All I knew was I couldn’t seem to grasp for that burning sensation that had consumed me before.
I slammed my fist against the door when I had nothing else to do, nothing else to try.
“Well, well,” came a voice from behind me, one I’d heard but didn’t immediately recognize.
I twisted to find Lilith there, a smirk on her lips that was exactly like Lucifer’s.
I could have thought it was a coincidence that I’d ended up in her room, or that she was hiding like me, but there was no way to believe something so innocent.
I took one look into her eyes, into the sadistic pleasure on her face, and got the same feeling as I had when I’d faced her—or the pieces of herself she’d left in others.
Lilith was the shadow, the thing that had been stealing spirits, that had driven the immortals mad, that had nearly killed me in my dreams, and here I was, stuck alone in a room with her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“So it was you?” I asked, not bothering to play dumb.
“You can’t be as surprised as I am about you.” She walked with a confidence and gait that was downright impressive. If I didn’t hate her so much, I might have liked her. “I couldn’t see you before, just glimpses of this dark mist, just a feeling as you shoved the slivers of myself I left in others back, when you removed me entirely from that werewolf.”
“Are you wanting an apology for that?” I crossed my arms, knowing damn well that there wasn’t anything I could do if she wanted to kill me.
“I didn’t understand what you did or how, and when I heard Lucifer had a guest, when I heard rumors of him looking into the missing spirits, I’d though it might be connected. Of course, one look at you, and I put that thought aside. How could you, some useless mortal, be the thing plaguing me?”
I wasn’t so useless when I was fucking up your plans, was I?
“So you set up all of that out there just to get me alone?”
She shrugged. “I have my skills, but I’m not as strong as those bodyguards you had. Besides, this way things stay quiet. They’ll find your body, blame it on one of those poor possessed immortals, and no one will be the wiser. A good tactician knows her strengths.”
I took a step backward when she took one forward, a game of me trying to keep enough space between us for something else to happen. Anything. “You know what you’re doing could shatter the entire balance between the worlds, that you could destroy everything, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“So why do it? Because last I checked, you lived in the world, too.”
She tilted her head, as if surprised by what seemed an obvious question to me. “I’ve lived a very long time, half-breed, and I’ve learned that just because something is doesn’t mean it should be. This world was built on subjugation. From the start, when I refused to do as I was told, I was cast out and someone more biddable put in my place. From there it spread like an infection, and now the entire world is built in the image of kneeling, domesticated mortality.”
“So you want to destroy everything because you were a jilted lover? Really?”
Her eyes flashed, a moment of anger before it smoothed away. “Hardly. I just want to free everyone.”
“You take people over. You make them do things they
never would otherwise. How is that freedom?”
“Because I don’t make them do anything. I don’t whisper in their ears or force them into anything. I take away that control, those rules they’d taught themselves to believe in. You say they’d never do those things because it makes you feel better, not because it’s true. What I make them is what they really are without a lifetime of rules placed on them. I reduce them to their true nature.”
I thought back to Troy, to the way he’d snarled and roared, to how he believed her lies, that that was all he really was, down deep, and I rejected it. I knew Troy. What she’d done wasn’t freeing him—it imprisoned him. “You can use all the excuses you want, but you’re nothing but a kid who wants to flip over the boardgame because they’re losing.”
She let out a harsh laugh. “Do you know what ousted you? It wasn’t until I saw you in the arena, when I saw what you became. A reaper hybrid has never been before, but it took seeing that to make me realize you were the mist I saw, that you were the only one capable of doing what you did, of reaching inside a person and yanking out that sliver of me. Nothing else could sever that bond, especially without destroying the original spirit. If only you hadn’t tried that, I would have left, thinking you nothing important.”
“So what now?”
Lilith curled her lips into a chilling grin, one that made my blood freeze. There weren’t many options for what that meant.
She lifted her hand, and a flame danced in her palm. “Hellfire,” she said. “You had a taste of mine before, didn’t you?”
Without meaning to, I touched the scarred skin she’d left me the last time she’d tried to kill me. Sadly, it was looking like this time would be far more successful.
“It won’t hurt for long,” she assured me, an almost sad tone to her voice. “It’s an unfortunate thing to have to destroy you, really. Killing something that has never been is a travesty, but you’ve left me no choice. I’ve spent too long planning for you to ruin everything, and you are the only one who could ruin it.” The flame grew taller in her palm, stretching up toward the ceiling, the temperature of the room increasing.