The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL)

by Amber Benson

  Clio wasn’t surprised when Kali volunteered to stay behind and take care of the newly arrived Vargr. Anyone could see she took great pleasure in killing the beasts, ripping off their heads, and feeding on their entrails.

  It was decided that once she’d taken care of the remaining Vargr she’d wormhole out of Sea Verge and hopefully draw whoever was monitoring the wormhole network, letting the bad guys chase her until the rest of them could get to a safe place.

  The new Vargr had descended upon them so quickly they really hadn’t been able to strategize. Their cobbled-together plan consisted of going to a pre-arranged meeting point so they could regroup and question Starr.

  It wasn’t an amazing plan, but it would do in a pinch.

  The meeting point was a long drive ahead of them, at a place Jarvis thought would be safe, but even this wasn’t a guarantee. If Sea Verge could be breached, then nowhere was truly safe.

  Clio hit the main road going seventy, the wheels screeching as she made a hard right turn onto the asphalt. In the rearview mirror, she saw Daniel’s car easily keeping pace with her own and she was happy to notice he had a lead foot, too.

  “I think we got away,” Noh said, catching Clio’s eye in the mirror.

  Noh was right. Except for Daniel’s car, the road was empty. No sign of pursuing Vargr, irate Hindu Goddesses, or missing-in-action sisters. Clio hoped this meant the enemy had encountered “the force of nature” known as Kali and were already being turned into lifeless meat puppets.

  In death, a Vargr returned to its human body—unless its head was removed from its body and then it stayed in animal form. Kali had wanted to make a point to the Vargr’s master, which was why she’d been ripping Vargr heads off left and right. She wanted Uriah Drood to know she meant business—and if the human police discovered these aberrations, these supernatural monsters that had no place in the human world, well, she didn’t really care.

  Still, the thought of the human police finding, and then freaking out over, all the half-human, half-Vargr bodies strewn across Sea Verge’s front lawn worried Clio. The need for secrecy had been ingrained in her since she was a small child. Letting the human world know what you were, and the powers you possessed, was the ultimate of sins.

  “How far away is it?” Clio asked Jarvis.

  She only had a quarter of a tank of gas, which meant she was going to have to stop to fill up again soon.

  “It’s not terribly far—” Jarvis started to say, but the words were ripped from his mouth as the car suddenly shot forward, rocked by a massive explosion that came from behind them.

  The velocity of the shockwave made the car start to fishtail as dirt and debris from the explosion filled the air. Clio spun the steering wheel hard, using all her upper body strength to keep the car on the road. She slammed her foot on the brakes, the car coming to a jerky stop, but still facing the right direction.

  “What the hell just happened?!” Clio yelled, her whole body shaking with adrenaline as she turned around in her seat.

  “Guys?”

  Noh and Jennice were both staring out the back window. Clio followed their gazes and her mouth fell open…where Daniel’s car should’ve been was only a fiery, smoking crater. The shock was so great for a moment no one said a word, and then out of the silence, she heard Noh say:

  “I think Daniel’s car just exploded.”

  fourteen

  CALLIOPE

  I used Jarvis’s computer to send Daniel a song. I knew it was cheesy, but I wanted him to know I was thinking about him. Even if everything worked out badly and I ceased to exist, I wanted him to know his face would be the last thing I remembered as I disappeared.

  It’s funny what imminent destruction will do to a person. It clears out all the cobwebs in your mind, lets you see things the way they really are for once in your life. No more bullshit. No more false perceptions colored by our own egos: just the truth in high definition.

  I didn’t just love Daniel. I was in love with him—which was a very different thing. I’d been fighting off this need to love another person my whole life, something I think stemmed from my not-so-healthy fear of loss. I’d lost my best friends in a car crash when I was a teenager, and now I’d lost my dad, my mom, my crazy-ass homicidal sister…Jarvis and Runt had been in harm’s way more times than I cared to think about—and the list just went on and on.

  I’d met Daniel in the middle of all the insanity and I’d fought my feelings for him with all my energy, pushing him away and emotionally beating him up every chance I got. I guess unconsciously I was just trying to prove he would go away, too, if given half the chance.

  I’d made our relationship about sex because sex, to me, was safe. It was just a physical battle of the bodies. Two people intermeshed for a few minutes and then a release…and then disconnect.

  No feelings, just fucking.

  I was a big, fat coward. I was scared of love. I was scared of Daniel…and I was scared of taking responsibility for my actions.

  To that effect, I’d hidden behind my own immortality, so I didn’t have to deal with what frightened me. You can only be laissez-faire about something that’s “a given” in your life. I could rail against living forever because it was a luxury I didn’t have to think about. I’d wanted to be a normal girl because I knew I was never going to be one.

  I’d been living in Oblivious Land for a long time, in denial about so many important things in my life. All I wanted now was a one-way ticket out of there—and it seemed like dying might just be that ticket.

  So I sent Daniel a silly little Dolly Parton song to tell him all of this. I wasn’t sure if he would understand, or if that even mattered. It was enough to know how I felt and to own those feelings for the first time ever in my life.

  “Time to go,” Marcel said. He was crouched down beside me in the bushes, his face inches from mine.

  The situation was not funny. Not even slightly funny, but I felt a hysterical laugh burbling up from my belly. I was able to contain it, so long as I didn’t look at the object of my inappropriate hilarity, which was the black shoe polish Marcel had spread across his cheekbones and nose. He’d tried to get me to do the same, saying something about how we were on a Black Ops mission and camouflage was essential, but I politely declined the proffered face blacking.

  Though she was as much a part of this “mission” as I was, Marcel hadn’t offered Runt any of his shoe polish camouflage. I guess he thought her fur was dark enough already.

  Runt had spent the past hour nestled against me, her head hidden inside the crook of my arm. I wasn’t surprised to discover that her physical wounds were almost healed, but there was still no sign of her voice…and from what Jarvis had said, there probably never would be. I wanted to cry when I thought about her beautiful voice, lost forever, but I held my emotions in check. If I lost it, I would only be making it harder for her. So, I needed to stay strong for both of us.

  “You think he’s asleep already?” I asked as I sat up on my knees, trying to get a good look inside.

  Marcel nodded.

  “I do.”

  We’d been camped out in Purgatory for the past three hours, watching and waiting. I’d never been on a full-fledged stakeout before, but freezing your butt off while nestled inside a prickly bush wasn’t my idea of a “good time.” Of the three aspects of the Afterlife—Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory—I liked Purgatory second least, or second best, depending on how positive I was feeling at the time.

  Except for the gargantuan brimstone skyscraper housing Death, Inc., Purgatory was a wasteland, devoid of indigenous life, and windy and miserable as all get-out. True, here and there you could find nomadic camps of escaped denizens from Hell who thought braving the Purgatorial badlands was better than being brutalized down in Hell, but other than those brave few, it was an empty landscape, drab and inhospitable.

  No one in their right mind would choose such a desolate existence, one so far removed from all the modern conveniences—malls, 7-Eleve
ns, fast-food joints, movie houses, yoga studios—so I had to assume the head of the Harvesters and Transporters Union was a total nut job. Because here, in this wasteland, was exactly where Uriah Drood had decided to build his compound.

  If his “home”—and I use the term lightly here—was any indication of the wealth the union possessed, then I was definitely in the wrong business. The place made Sea Verge look like a McDonald’s Playland. It was sprawling, with one main house and five gigantic outbuildings, a tennis court (because who doesn’t like to play tennis in a wasteland?), and a stable someone had retrofitted into a massive garage.

  The main house was crafted entirely out of glass, the large plate glass walls letting you see the lavish furnishings you would never be invited inside to inspect all up close and personal-like. The outbuildings were vertiginous rectangles constructed from high-gloss aluminum, but the pale blue light that infused all of Purgatory did nothing to illuminate their beauty, making them seem flat and drab instead of shiny and new.

  I was very curious to find out what Uriah Drood was housing in those towering outbuildings, but we didn’t have time to sneak a peek at them. Our goal was to get inside the main house and squeeze Drood until we got every last drop of information out of his protuberant gut.

  “I’m sick of waiting,” I said, standing up and shaking out my left leg, which had fallen asleep. “Let’s do this thing.”

  Before we’d left Sea Verge, Jarvis, Marcel, and I had conferred on the best way to infiltrate Uriah Drood’s compound. Since Jarvis had been inside the place—when the Harvesters and Transporters Union had originally threatened to go on strike, he and my dad had spent a tedious afternoon trapped inside Drood’s conference room before the first round of negotiations began—he was the only one who knew all the glass walls were spelled so anyone could enter the house, but only those with a special counter-spell could leave it.

  I thought this was an illogical way to protect your home, but Jarvis explained that Uriah Drood was like a spider and his home was just a giant web in which to entangle his prey.

  This made me feel better.

  Not.

  Marcel had taken Jarvis at his word. If he was going to be dealing with a spider, he was going to go in prepared. He’d suggested we hit a hardware store before leaving for Purgatory—and the first thing he’d put in our shiny metal shopping cart, after he’d loaded up on shoe polish, of course, was a can of bug spray. I’d gone for the more “subtle” approach: a length of rope, a palette knife, a ball peen hammer, and a pair of supersharp wire cutters. I had a good idea of what I was going to be doing with my newly purchased tools and it was not pretty.

  I’d also purchased a dark brown leather tool belt, one that snapped into place around my hips and made me feel like a DIY version of Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. I’d coiled the rope and clipped it into place on the left side of the belt, then I’d slid the remaining tools into various other loops and pockets, so I jangled when I walked. I think Marcel was amused by my purchases, as was the gawky dude with the bright orange smock who rang us up at the checkout counter. He’d eyed my palette knife with what I thought was suspicion, but then he’d surprised me by asking if I wanted a “real” knife instead of the blunt one I’d chosen.

  I might’ve taken him up on the offer, but I thought there was something rather ironic about using a painting knife to inflict pain—and I especially liked the idea I was turning torture into an art form. It appealed to my baser senses.

  “Yes, now is the time,” Marcel said as he stood up, leaving the cover of the bushes.

  Silent as a cat, he began to steal toward one of the large plate glass walls, crossing the ten-foot gap separating the bushes from the house without incident.

  “Here we go,” I whispered to Runt as, tools jangling at my hip, we left the safety of the bushes to follow Marcel’s path to the house.

  When we caught up to him, he placed a finger to his lips, the universal symbol for silence, then, fascinated, I watched as he focused his energy on the window, lifting his left fist into the air and plunging it into the glass. Logic predicted his hand would shatter the pane, but logic wasn’t working. As his flesh hit the pane, the glass transformed from a solid state into something resembling a clear gelatin mold. Marcel looked over at me and grinned, arm half deep in the gelatinous substance.

  “Shall I?” he asked.

  I watched as he pressed the rest of himself through the gelatin, disappearing into the interior of the house. Once inside, he turned and waved at me to follow him.

  I looked down at Runt.

  “You ready for this?” I asked.

  She wagged her tail and I took that to mean, “yes.”

  With Runt at my heels, I closed my eyes and walked quickly toward the plate glass wall. I tensed, expecting the gelatinous substance to envelop my body—but this didn’t happen. Instead, my nose and forehead smashed into an unyielding wall of glass.

  “Ow!” I yelped, as a caromed off the glass and fell backward onto the ground.

  Barred from entering the house, I’d been left out in the cold emptiness of the Purgatorial wasteland. Immediately, my fingers went up to my nose, the hot wetness they found there making me woozy.

  “Runt?” I called, the hand covering my lower face muffling her name so it came out as “Rub.”

  I was worried she’d been hurt, too, but then I looked over and saw her face pressed up against the other side of the glass. She’d made it inside with Marcel, but she didn’t look very happy about it. When she caught my gaze, she began to paw at the glass, fighting to get back outside to me.

  That’s when I remembered what Jarvis had said about Drood’s compound being like a spider web—you could get in, but you couldn’t get out.

  I felt discombobulated as I climbed to my feet, and I had to fight the urge to give up and sit back down again. Instead, I took a tentative step toward the glass, my legs like shaky noodles not wanting to hold me up.

  “I’m all right,” I called to Runt, giving her a reassuring smile—though my nose hurt like a sonofabitch and I had the beginnings of a massive headache.

  With a frantic energy I could feel even from outside, she continued to paw at the glass, her tail slapping against Marcel’s leg in her panic.

  “It’s okay,” I said, as I knelt down across from her and pressed my palm against the solid pane of glass. “I’ll find a way in.”

  Runt snuffled, trying to get closer to my hand, but the glass made it impossible.

  I felt awful. I was supposed to protect her, but here I was, on the other side of the glass, totally unable to help her if something bad happened.

  Marcel said something to me, but I couldn’t make out the words. I tried to read his lips, but discovered I sucked at lipreading. Finally, he pantomimed I should go around to the front door and meet them there.

  I very much doubted I’d be able to get in that way, but I figured anything was worth a shot.

  Following Marcel and Runt’s lead, I walked around to the other side of the house, happy the building was made of glass, so I could keep an eye on Runt.

  I’d expected Drood to have guards, razor wire, spotlights…anything a normal person would have to secure their home. But there was none of this, just a dark and empty house waiting for us to enter it.

  Spider web.

  The words echoed in my head.

  Short and rotund with a baldpate and pale, bluish-tinged alabaster skin, Uriah Drood liked to wear expensively tailored suits that made him seem sleeker than he actually was, their dark silhouettes giving him a rather spider-like appearance, though I’d never noticed the resemblance before.

  Marcel and Runt had stumbled into his web because he didn’t think they were a threat. They were more like flies, or roly-poly bugs he could dispose of easily and without thought. I, on the other hand, frightened him.

  That I frightened anyone was kind of amusing—that I frightened someone like Uriah Drood was amazing.

  He may have blocked me fr
om entering his house for now, I thought. But between the three of us—me, Marcel, and Runt—I’m sure we can find a loophole to get me inside.

  I caught sight of the thin man with the weasely face and red hair just as we were nearing the front entrance. He was standing just beyond Marcel and Runt’s field of vision, his body tucked into a shadowy doorway leading off into another wing of the house. I could see him clear as day—and I could also see the curved knife he was jauntily tossing back and forth between his hands. I raced to the glass and started to pound on its transparent surface, screaming at Marcel to look behind him.

  The glass stood between us, making my words unintelligible. Marcel stared at me, trying to understand what I was saying. I stabbed the air with my finger, trying to get him to turn around, but it was too late, the man had already launched his attack.

  I was trapped on the wrong side of the glass, unable to do anything but watch as Weasely Face raised his knife into the air and slashed down, shearing off Marcel’s arm just below the elbow.

  Blood streaked across the glass, blurring my view as Weasely Face drew back his knife to attack again. But Marcel was ready this time, twisting out of the way, so Weasely Face’s blade sliced through empty air. Marcel dodged another thrust of the knife, jumping out of the way as Weasely Face pressed forward, attacking with unheralded violence.

  With his uninjured hand, Marcel reached into his pocket and pulled out the bug repellent he’d picked up at the hardware store. Still sidestepping Weasely Face’s frontal attack, he used his teeth to pop off the bug spray’s lid, depressing the button with his thumb and shooting a stream of clear liquid directly into Weasely Face’s eyes.