by Cara Wylde
“How about we teleport to the orphanage with Christmas presents?” Lorna asked me at lunch.
“Shh!” I looked around me. She’d plopped down next to me, but the VDC table was mostly empty. My boyfriends were late, stuck in line at the open buffet. “Someone might hear you.”
“Come on! This Saturday.”
“You know I’m busy on the weekend.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Busy fucking. Haven’t you had enough? Nympho. Anyway, why don’t you tell them? You’re all in love and all that, mushy-mush-mush. You can trust them, right?”
I shrugged. “I can, but I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That they won’t agree.”
“Of course they won’t. It’s a crazy, selfish plan.”
“You’re on board with it.”
“I’m a crazy, selfish bitch.”
I sighed. What did that make me?
* * *
This year, I was going to participate in the scythe demonstration, and it was going to be epic. As the only girl in the Violent Death Cabal, Mrs. Charon placed me in the middle of the boys, giving me the lead role. I was dressed in a pearly white gown, with a long, transparent veil covering my blue hair. I wasn’t clear on what the idea was, but I sure looked like a bride, and the guys looked like bridegrooms in their black tuxedoes. GC, Paz, and Francis looked especially dashing, and I hated that Sariel couldn’t join us. Rules were rules. He was in the Merciful Death Cabal now, and he had to participate in the demonstration he’d prepared with them.
I was nervous. All eyes were on us, and especially on me. In my white gown, I stood out. Lamia, Paz’s mom, gave me a bright, encouraging smile. As far as she was concerned, I was perfect no matter what I did. Andromeda and GC Apis the Second were just as thrilled. Francis’s parents didn’t look very impressed. Saint-Germain Senior had a sour expression on his face, which said he didn’t want to be here at all. His young wife was busy drinking glass of wine after glass of wine. It didn’t seem to me like she’d landed in a happy marriage. On the other hand, I was pretty sure her belly was rather round under her red dress. Was Francis going to have a little brother?
“Don’t even think of saying a word,” Francis whispered coldly when he caught me staring at her belly.
I didn’t. Was his father going to kill this child, too, when he got old and handsome enough, so he could throw him to his god and preserve that blossoming youth? Oh, he’s angry I didn’t accept his invitation to join the cult and meet the other revenants who serve Yig. He could die of bitterness for all I cared. If only he could die…
We took our positions on the stage, me in the middle, and the boys around me in rows. The live band started playing a classical tune, and I started swaying gracefully, my scythe held high above my head. When the music picked up, we all swung our scythes through the air, as if attacking an invisible enemy. We retreated, one step back, swayed again. I twirled, the lacy hem of my gown brushing the floor. GC, Paz, Francis, and Caspian danced in circles around me, moving their scythes up and down, slashing the air, then retreating again. They did this a couple of times, then everyone took a few steps back to give me space. I knelt, placing my scythe on the ground in front of me, my palms flat on the floor, and my forehead between them. I was like a swan preparing to sing her last song. Slowly, with my eyes half-closed in reverence, I peeled myself off the floor, leaving the scythe where it was. The music had turned soft and grave. I bent back as far as my body would allow it – which was quite a lot thanks to the flexibility I’d gained in bed, – then moved forward, opening my eyes and looking straight ahead. This was the last part. The majestic ending. All I had to do was…
The lights went off.
Instinctively, my hands went for my scythe. When I wrapped my fingers around the handle, I noticed it was buzzing and vibrating. It anticipated danger.
In the dim flicker of the lights, we all saw him. A black cloak hanging off a glowing skeleton, two deep blue eyes, the runes on the blade of his scythe bleeding red. He was looking at me. My father.
I stood up, knees slightly shaking. It was a good thing the long skirt covered them. I hadn’t seen him in so long, and now he was making one hell of an appearance. He didn’t look human anymore. Well, not human… nephilim. The skin on his bones was thin and transparent, like parchment. He stepped up to the stage. I looked at him defiantly. He grinned.
“You didn’t invite your own father to the Yule Ball. I’m disappointed.”
“What do you want?” Because, for sure, he wanted something.
“I’ve missed you,” he said, mockingly. Then he turned toward the students, parents, and professors at the tables. “Your world will perish soon,” he started in a low, mysterious voice. “The reign of Life and Death is nearing its end. There are worlds out there that know no Life, nor Death, and they are free. You all are living in a cage, trapped in an endless circle of birth, growth, and decay. No more. I will set you free, if it’s the last thing I do. This world is too precious to me to abandon it. So, I’ve come to tell you: set your affairs in order and prepare to be saved, released into eternity. Soon. I will come back soon.”
His words fell like bricks in the silence of the ball room. What the fuck was he talking about? I couldn’t even imagine what was going on in his head. Was he trying to scare us, or confuse us? To what end? Maybe he thought we’d all forgotten about him, and this was just to remind us he was still here, hiding in the shadows, still posing a threat.
The movement of his cloak told me he was going to teleport. Not so fast! I swung forward, and the blade of my scythe went through a disappearing edge of his cloak, like a hook, just as he vanished. I teleported with him. My feet firm on the frozen ground, the wind blowing my veil away… I looked around me and saw we’d landed in the middle of a frozen lake.
“Good. You’re here.”
“You wanted me to follow you?”
“I made quite an entrance back there. Did you like it?”
I scowled at him. “Didn’t impress me.”
The wind was howling, raising flakes of fresh snow around my ankles. I squeezed my scythe, and the handle and blade grew warm, hungry for blood if I chose to fight. But I knew this wasn’t going to be a confrontation. He knew I couldn’t hurt him, just as he couldn’t hurt me.
“What did you mean? The reign of Life and Death is nearing its end… What are you planning to do?”
“Free you. Free all of you…”
“That’s just nonsense. A story you tell yourself to justify your taste for power. You talk about Life and Death as if they’re… people.” He still looked like a glowing skeleton, which meant he didn’t do it to impress. He was actually stuck with it. Someone told me long ago… I couldn’t remember who. There’s only one other creature that looks like him. Death herself. If Death was a creature, then Life had to be a creature, too. I’d posed this question a few times to different people, but no one was able to answer me.
“And if they are,” he said, “do you know what that means? It means they’re the real gods or goddesses of this world. Ruling from the shadows, holding Time captive, laughing as we all dance the same dance over and over again… There’s no end to our suffering. There’s no end when we’re born and we die, we’re born and we die…”
It was the discourse of a madman, but there were details I couldn’t help noticing. What he was describing… If this was our world, and there were worlds were no one was born and no one died… What he was describing was the universe of the Great Old Ones. No Life, no Death, Time running free. But what about the people? There were no people. There couldn’t be. Only monsters.
“What are you trying to do?” I asked in a weak whisper. I was afraid of his answer. No, wait. He’s just going to say he wants to set us free. “Do you even understand what you’re trying to do?”
“Come with me, Mila. You’re not like the rest of them. You’re my daughter. Let’s do this together. You and me
, breaking the Wheel of Time, saving everyone…”
I shook my head. “Come where? You found a place, haven’t you? A parallel universe where this has already happened.”
His eyes shined brighter, and that was the only answer I needed. I took a step back.
“I can’t dream jump anymore. Have you forgotten? You killed me, and now I’m no longer human.”
He let his free hand fall at his side. He was holding his scythe in the other, and the blade started glowing read. A call to reaping that he ignored.
“Human,” he said. “Humans and hybrids can dream jump. It’s a gift like no other. People travel the world to see how others live, see what others have that they don’t. They learn, they steal, they go back home and share with their own people. Jumping through universes is the same thing, but on a greater scale.”
And that was when it dawned on me.
“You wanted to convince the Council to pass a law against relationships between humans and supernaturals. Because humans and supernaturals create hybrids, and hybrids dream.”
He smiled. “Close. Few hybrids can dream travel.” He made a bored gesture to wave them off. “Humans finding out about the supernatural world, and that they are, in a sense, supernatural themselves… Now, that’s the real threat. They outnumber us. Always have. Imagine a world of people who can cross to other dimensions the moment they shut their eyes. Imagine a world of dream jumpers who can switch places with their doppelgangers. Humans are stupid, you know that. Reckless and unpredictable. What would they do with such powers?”
I shrugged. “You don’t know. Maybe you’re underestimating us. Them.”
“One doesn’t just give powers like that to the uneducated masses…”
“Who are you to decide?”
“You know who I am.”
“Oh, I know who you are, but I don’t know who you think you are.”
He huffed and turned on his heels. He didn’t walk away, though. Not yet.
“You can’t stop me.”
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the crisp, freezing air. My lungs protested, which took me by surprise. Then I remembered almost four months had passed since my blood sacrifice. I groaned internally, suddenly less interested in Morningstar’s shenanigans.
“I will try anyway,” I said, just to make sure he didn’t have the last word. “It’ll help me sleep better at night.”
He nodded. “Until next time, daughter.” He teleported away.
Oh, fuck me! Why am I cold? I lifted my arm and sniffed under my armpit. Aloe Vera deodorant. Good. The rotting process hadn’t started yet. God, I hate my life. On second thought, this whole thing about freedom from Life and Death didn’t sound that bad. I could bet Yig wasn’t complaining. I started walking in the opposite direction, my eyes scanning the forest up ahead. I had to get back to the ball, finish the scythe demonstration, but I didn’t feel like it. I needed a moment to myself.
“I can’t just let him destroy the world, that’s for sure,” I started talking to myself out loud. “I should just tell the Council what he told me and let them deal with it. Hm.”
I reached the shore of the frozen lake and stepped on solid ground. A white fox ran out of the trees, startled. She stopped a few feet away from me and turned to study me curiously, one paw in the air. All dressed in white, on a white background. I might as well have been a ghost.
“What’s your opinion about the Wheel of Time, little fox? About Miss Life and Miss Death? I bet neither of them is married.”
The fox sniffed the air. Seeing as I was safe, she trotted toward me, stopped at my feet, and sniffed me again. She stuck her tongue out and licked her snout.
“Really?!”
Foxes ate dead things. I huffed and teleported back.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was an ambush. I didn’t want to meet my revenant brothers and sisters, yet they wanted to meet me. Or more like Leopold Saint-Germain and Francis Saint-Germain Senior wanted to introduce us, so it was done. When I followed Francis, GC, Paz, and Sariel into the cavern, – Francis pushing the blindfolded girl we were about to throw down the well, – the first thing I noticed was that all the tunnels were lit. A knot formed in my throat. As we approached the main cave, a murmur of voices echoed down the narrow corridors, and I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Francis, what did you do?”
He turned to me, his mossy green eyes soft and pleading.
“I couldn’t stop them. When my father and my grandfather want something…”
“I’m not going in there.”
“It’s just a few people, I promise. Close family friends.”
“You don’t understand. I’m not part of your cult, okay? I’m not going in there.”
I started down the tunnel, back to the beach. The boys shuffled behind me, unsure of what to do. A muffled cry from the girl and a curse from Sariel. Quick steps. Francis must have pushed the sacrifice into Sariel’s hands for safe keeping, so he could catch up with me. A few more strides, and I’d be out in the open air.
“Mila, please!”
I snapped around to face him. The late December wind blew my hair back and caressed my collarbone. God, I was freezing! On second thought, though, winter was good for my rotting body. It slowed down the process.
“There’s a cult down there,” I pointed angrily toward the dark mouth of the cave. “A group of insane murderers who’re worshipping a monster from another dimension as if it were a god.”
He furrowed his brows and bit the inside of his cheek. “He is a god, Mila.”
“No, it’s not.” But Francis didn’t know what I knew. I hadn’t told my boyfriends about what I’d found out from Morningstar the night of the Yule Ball. In fact, I hadn’t found out anything. It was all insinuation. Either way, I refused to call the thing in the well “he”. “It’s different than us, it can do things we can’t, but that doesn’t make it a god. And I will not be part of its cult. So, kindly tell your dear family friends to fuck off, so I can push that bitch down the well and go home for Christmas.”
Almost everyone at the Academy had gone home for the holidays. Klaus and Lorna had left the morning after the Ball. Only Patricia and Joel had had to stick around and help with the cleaning. The bitch I was talking about? Drug dealer. Paz, who had a special built-in radar for sinners, had found her for me. She’d been dealing to high school kids. The world was going to be a better place without her. Or so Paz said… Or so they all said, because it was the only way to convince me. They needed me alive more than the world needed her, that was for sure. God, what have I become? God? Maybe I shouldn’t… speak your name.
“I’m sorry,” he said, defeated. “What’s done is done.”
“You couldn’t keep them away? You couldn’t stop them from coming? For me…”
“I tried, believe me. My grandfather…”
I dragged in a painful breath. “Your grandfather is an asshole.” I threaded my fingers through my blue hair, pulled harshly, and to my horror, ended up with a clump of it in my hands, a bit of bloody flesh hanging from the roots. “Shit. You have me cornered.” I couldn’t wait a minute longer, let alone a day. If I didn’t go into the cavern, they’d get bored of waiting and just go away. Right? I couldn’t verify my theory when time wasn’t on my side, though. I’d waited long enough. Too long. “Fine.” I stomped past Francis. “But this doesn’t mean anything. This is just me buying myself another three or four months.”
“They won’t bother you again, I promise.”
“Hold your promises, Francis,” I growled. I was super pissed off at him. Usually, I was pissed off at GC or Pazuzu, who were experts at getting on my nerves. “I’m not sure I believe in them anymore.”
He followed me in silence. We reached the opening to the main cavern – tall and wide, filled with candles and people in black cloaks. GC, Pazuzu, and Sariel were waiting for us there.
“Well, let’s go in, shall we?”
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I exchanged a glance with Sariel and saw the sadness in his blue eyes. I briefly wondered if he’d assisted to one of these meetings before. But why would he? He wasn’t a revenant. Maybe only to support his friend… Does friendship even run this deep?
I made my way through the small crowd that had gathered around the well. Leopold and Francis Senior were there, at the front, holding candles and chanting something under their breath. When they saw me, Leopold offered me a smile, and Francis Senior simply nodded. I fought the urge to roll my eyes at them. At everyone. Roll my eyes at how stupid this whole thing was. Francis took the blindfolded girl from Sariel and brought her to me, then took a few steps back. He pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. By their standards, I was probably dressed inappropriately. Blue jeans, an old T-shirt, and a leather jacket. GC, Paz, and Sariel were dressed normally, too, but they’d retreated at the back of the cave, sensing they didn’t belong here. As if anyone would have ever wanted to belong here.
I looked over the people Francis had called “close family friends.” They all had their heads covered and eyes cast down. With dripping candles in their hands, they chanted the same mantra the two Saint-Germains were chanting. “Ya kadishtu n’gha.” They looked young under their hoods. As if the moment they’d entrusted their souls to Yig, the creature had made them invisible to Time.
I sighed and said the words, too. “Ya stell’bsna y’bthnk orr’e syha’h. Ya kadishtu n’gha.” I walked the girl to the well. Yig’s tentacles were reaching hungrily over the edge, spilling onto the floor, feeling their way around, searching for the prey. One of the slimy things found my left foot. I stood frozen in place, staring at the tentacle, waiting to see what it would do next. Would it recognize me as one of its children, or wrap itself around me and drag me down into the pit? For a second there, I hoped. “Not her,” Francis had yelled at the monster the fateful night I’d come down here for the first time. And the monster had listened to him.