I arched my eyebrow and shook my head with a smile. “That’s not the only place she has teeth.” When his smile dropped and the color faded from his face, I laughed.
___
Ryan got himself into bigger trouble a few weeks later. It was becoming another job of mine to hunt him down and stop him from doing something stupid, but he was always doing something before I got the chance to prevent it.
The question I have with him this time: How the bloody hell did one guy get to every wife and concubine in a Demon Lord’s harem in a matter of minutes?
The demon was over nine feet tall and was called a lord for a reason: he was beastly. He wasn’t an entity, though, but still powerful. The Demon Lord had dark skin and an incredible mass of muscle, and horns way bigger than Fear’s. He wore silver cuffs on his wrists and ankles, and only wore something similar to a kilt. His face was that of a giant cat.
When I arrived, the demon had Ryan tied up, hanging by a chain around his neck. All of his wives sat on their knees behind him in amusement. It appeared they enjoyed making their lover upset. I sighed and shook my head. “I think you’ve punished him enough,” I said to the Demon Lord. Ryan looked like he had taken a good beating. He probably came here asking for it. It didn’t even look like he tried to put up a fight.
Cat eyes landed on me, and he laughed. “I won’t be satisfied until he’s dead. He slept with my women!” he yelled in Ryan’s face.
“I don’t think he’s the only one to blame.” I looked at the women and they huddled together, playing innocent all the while their eyes held the truth. “Besides, he can’t be killed. You know that.” Ryan gave him a cocky grin even though his face was blood-red from being choked.
“I don’t care.”
“I guess we aren’t doing this the easy way.” I jumped in the air and broke the chain with my scythe. Ryan fell to his knees and quickly removed the chain around his neck.
“They were begging for it. I only gave them what you couldn’t.” The women all gasped while Ryan grinned. I didn’t even get the chance to sigh because the Demon Lord went after him. I faded in between them and pushed him backward and lifted my scythe. I watched him study my blade and I saw the fear. “Do you want to die today?” I asked the Demon Lord. What he didn’t know was there was no way I could kill him today since he wasn’t meant to die. He didn’t know I was bound by my own nature, only Ryan did and he wasn’t saying a word. He just wore a cocky expression as he gazed at the other demon.
Once we were back at my castle, I smacked the back of his head. He grabbed his head and glared at me. “What was that for?”
I glared back. “Why are you being so reckless? Yes, you can’t be killed, but that doesn’t mean you don’t feel pain and with the right spell, we know a merge can be broken. Don’t piss off the wrong person.”
He walked ahead of me. “This is me now. It’s my nature—I want to corrupt things; I want to provoke things into feeling fear so that I can feed on it. I want to kill and if I’m not killing, then I need to be the one receiving pain.” He turned and looked back at me. “I can’t fight it, if I do, then he pushes himself out and we all know the things he’ll do is much worse than what I do.”
I stepped forward. “I get it, you are Fear now.” I sighed and placed my hand on his back. “But we have eternities to figure out how to deal with your burdens.”
He was quiet for a long time before he finally said, “Can we not tell Melanie all the things I do now? I can’t stand the thought of her knowing the sick things I do…”
“This is Melanie you’re talking about; nothing is going to change your friendship with her.” I made sure to add the friendship part in there so that he remembered she was with me. “And you can’t keep it from her. One day, she’s going to be here again.”
His expression turned dark for a second. “I know the truth, ya know.” I arched an eyebrow at him. “That she was meant to be with me first, in her human life.”
I sighed. Damn those stupid angels. How the hell did he find out? I didn’t think they’d find him just to tell him that… He was one of the Devil’s entities, they have no hold over him. “Are you asking for trouble?” I asked him.
He nodded eagerly. I knew what this was about. He still needed relief from Fear’s hold. “Let’s go. What are you waiting for?” he asked me. I kicked him in the gut and he laughed and coughed, and went at me again. Again. And again.
Until the darkness quietened inside him.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Killian,
Alex’s wedding day is finally here. I can’t believe my kid brother is already twenty-five. His soon-to-be wife is amazing, sweet, and nice—total opposite of my brother. They balance each other out well.
Seeing them so happy puts a smile on my face, but it’s also depressing. Tess and now Alex have their own family and we are… well, ours is on pause.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all these years is that, while missing you, I truly understand how much I love you.
Love, Melanie
Melanie,
It must be in the air because Lincoln recently married, too. He moved out of the castle and made a place in the woods with his wife to have privacy. Ryan and Penny won’t say they’re dating, but I’ve found them more than once in the woods by mistake in positions that say otherwise. They have a unique relationship. She knows what he does to satisfy Fear and she still goes to him. If it’s not love, then it’s at least something special.
Dragons are in their mating season right now, so it’s not even safe to go outside because you never know what you might see… Maybe Rixen will catch Sky this year. He hasn’t yet, she doesn’t make it easy on him.
As for me, I’m still waiting for the day I come for you and while missing you, I know how much I will cherish you.
Killian
___
Killian,
I finally bought the house I’ve been eyeing the past few months. I wasted away a good chunk of years in that tiny apartment and now I’m regretting it, but I guess I just got caught up with work and living… It’s a simple three-bedroom house, but it’s more than enough for me and I can finally get my things out of storage.
Alex and Sarah are trying for a baby. Rylan is almost ten and his little sister, Hope, is going on three. Tess is bringing them over to spend the night while she helps with unpacking. They love their auntie Mel-Mel, and I could never hate them for calling me by my old childhood nickname that their mother started when it’s too cute coming from them.
____
Jed Rose has so much hair and he’s a little butterball. Did you see him through the necklace? I hope you saw the picture I took of him with Rylan and Hope, at least. And I’ve been pretty good about keeping my pictures away from the necklace so that you can’t see what I look like now. I look the same, just older… and getting wider (hopefully wiser, too.) LOL. Comes with age, they say…
Hope keeps telling everyone that she’s going to marry Jed. He’s already taking hearts straight out of the womb. If he’s anything like Alex was during his teenage years, Lord help us.
Tess has her hands full with her two already, I don’t want to imagine teenage years for her. They’ve been teaching me Chinese, by the way.
Wo Ai Ni. I love you.
All these babies make me realize I’m aging and that means I’m that much closer to being with you.
___
In life, we knew there was a beginning and an end. People get sick and eventually die, but I spent all these years waiting for my own death, that I had forgotten—or maybe I had never thought of losing someone I loved because I’ve been wrapped up in wanting my own. I ignored the change in Mom and it never hit me until her test results came back. She had lung cancer. She never smoked a day in her life.
I sat beside her in the doctor’s office as the doctor informed her. I didn’t move, but I felt her hand latch onto mine. I was scared. I lost many patients on the way to the hospital, I surrounded myself
in death—it came naturally to me while waiting for my own to come. So, I knew how it looked. I saw the families panic and grieve, I saw the patients take their last breath… but this was terrifying, and now the fear of death came crawling back. I forgot how scary it was to know you were going to lose someone.
Mom and I had a strange relationship. We loved each other, but we have always been at odds. She never wanted me to live a lonely life. Why did I always picture her nagging about the way I lived my life until the day I died? Why didn’t I think that I would lose her first? I loved her. I loved her nagging, I knew it meant she cared even when it crawled through my skin. I was forty and she was sixty-two now, that number seemed too small. It wasn’t enough for her.
She hadn’t even retired yet. She was still working… she needed to enjoy another twenty years and retire, she earned it…
“I will tell Alex tonight,” she said, gripping my hand. We were already walking out the hospital. I didn’t remember getting up from the chair. I looked at her—really looked at her. How could I have not noticed it sooner, how much she had aged? Her skin was a yellowish color, and her eyes were sunken in. She was a shell of the woman that raised me. Everything was right there in front of me now that I let myself notice.
She was a grandma now; she couldn’t be sick. When she brought her hand to my face, I realized it was because I was crying. “Don’t cry. This is a part of life. I knew something wasn’t right with all this coughing. I don’t feel the same anymore, but there’s still time. It’s still in the early stages, I have time to see Alex give me another grandchild.” She nodded her head with determination. “I’m sure.” She smiled with tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” I cried. Sorry for not giving her the things she wanted me to have in this life.
She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry.” She hugged me quickly and her sorry only made me cry even harder because without saying it aloud, we both knew what we were sorry for.
___
Killian,
You already know the results, don’t you? You knew this would happen long before I wrote it in a letter. You know when she will leave us…
Will you promise to be the one who ascends her? Let her see you, Killian, show her what I could never tell her.
I don’t want to lose her, I love her.
I can’t handle this day.
***
-Killian-
All my Reapers have a day when they’ll leave and retire. Demons lived several centuries, but they weren’t immortal. They all die one day. I was always recruiting new Reapers; I didn’t care what kind of demon they were, if they were willing and decent, I gave them a chance and bestowed my power onto them.
I expected Penny to retire soon, I could see the look in her eyes as she finally started to show age after all these centuries alive. She would leave, but I wondered if leaving meant that she would stop going to Ryan as well. I didn’t know what would happen to him if she stopped coming around. I knew they both ran from different things, but I saw comfort between them.
***
-Melanie-
Mom hadn’t lied. She sat on the hospital bed holding her second grandchild. Another boy, Allen Rose, who made me an aunt for the fourth time. Tess and I always considered me as Rylan and Hope’s aunt, only I knew that I would have been their aunt by marriage if things had been different and Ryan had survived and I never met Killian.
Mom was bald from her treatments, she was pale and super thin, but her smile was bright holding her grandbaby. Cancer had taken a toll on her the past year and a half, but we all knew she was reaching her end. She was in the final stage—the chemo took her as far as she’d let it before she gave up on it—and my heart couldn’t stand seeing her in so much pain. She had been determined to see her grandchild, and she did just that.
That must have been all it took because three days later, she became unresponsive. A part of me died that day with her as I watched her breaths grow fainter and fainter until her chest rose for the last time. Alex and I were the only ones in the room with her, Sarah and the babies were in the waiting room. The first thing Alex did when she died was bring me into his arms and hug me. Alex was a grown man now, he no longer needed his big sis to comfort him, instead, he was the one who comforted me.
I watched both our parents die in a hospital bed. This part of life was sad.
But, I knew Grim Reaper was here and he’d take her someplace better than here.
***
Killian
I saw Alex, and I knew he was comforting Melanie in his arms although I couldn’t see her. I dreaded this day for a long time for her, but it was something every human went through.
Tina rose from her body as a ghost. The first thing she did was glance toward her kids. She had a mixture of emotions on her face before her eyes fell on me. As a ghost, she already sensed who and what I was, but when I left Grim’s state and became Killian, her eyes widened. She still recognized me after all these years. She wouldn’t forget the man she thought broke her daughter’s heart.
Without words, I walked to her and placed my hands over hers. While I helped her away from her dead body, I fed her my memories and the truth of her daughter. Tears escaped her eyes as they continued to widen as I filled her head with images. When I finished, I dropped her hand and gave her a moment. Her hands went to her mouth. She finally understood her daughter after all these years. She walked over to Melanie and tried touching her as she cried.
“My baby, Melanie, oh, I had no idea,” she went on and on. “I’m sorry for never believing you.”
“She understands,” I spoke for Melanie because her letters were filled with all the reasons why she knew her mom couldn’t believe her.
Tina looked back at me. “I’m sorry to you as well. And most of all, I’m sorry that you can’t be with my daughter yet.” She smiled. “Take care of her for me.”
I nodded and became Grim again to open the passage to Heaven. She glanced at her kids one last time before stepping through the portal. There was a smile on her face.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Killian,
Age is no longer on my side. I have wrinkles and I’m a little depressed about it, just because I know you are still the same. The kids still tell me I’m beautiful, though. Even at this age, I get asked out occasionally, that should count for something.
_____
Jed started pee-wee basketball today. He looks so cute in his jersey.
_____
Rylan is graduating high school today. Tess cried the entire time which only made me.
_____
I started taking blood pressure pills today. I ache more than anything anymore. The changes I feel in my body remind me I’m that much closer to being with you, but I’ll admit, I’m afraid after all these years. How much has changed? How much have I changed?
____
Rylan is a doctor like his dad. Hope is about to graduate now, and Jed is already in his second year. Allen is in middle school. I know I talk about them so much but in this world, they are my world. It’s sad, yet bittersweet as I watch them grow up.
***
Melanie,
Penny stopped coming to Ryan altogether after she retired. She was aging, and instead of spending her last years with him, she chose to leave.
Ryan doesn’t show if he’s bothered by it. He’s still getting into trouble and I’m still there to get him out of it.
Sky laid eggs, but it will still be another century before they hatch, though. Dragon eggs take a long time.
***
Killian,
The arthritis in my hands is getting worse. At my age, everything on my body is falling apart. I fear the day when my arthritis gets to the point that I can no longer write to you.
____
The kids had a surprise birthday party on my sixtieth birthday at Alex’s. I may have rubbed off on Rylan because even in his thirties, he’s still a bachelor and has no plans on settling down. Hope spoke the truth the day Jed wa
s born when she claimed him hers. When he entered college, the two of them started dating and neither cared that she was the older one in the relationship. And Allen’s my amazing little painter out of the family.
____
Maybe it’s old age or maybe because I’ve been thinking about it lately, but I no longer hold a grudge against the angel, Faye. She made the wrong choice, but her choice was for our happiness. She had no idea things would turn out the way they had.
Nothing’s changed. I still love you as much as I did the last time I saw you. No, even more so. Always more.
___
I stopped writing the letters once I reached eighty. My body was slowly failing me, and with it, I became anxious. Even so, my heart was at peace.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Alex
I sat beside Melanie’s bed as her last breath drew near—no, it was her last. Cancer took her the same way it did our parents, only she managed to outlive the age they both died.
When I looked at my sister, my heart ached. All I could see or feel was loneliness. She never dated, never married, or had kids. All she had was me and my family, Tess and her kids. Thinking back, she always seemed happy, but how could she when she lived her entire life alone. She loved her nieces and nephews like her own, but it was plain to see she wanted her own.
Even in death, I couldn’t understand her.
She made me promise not to let Jed or any of them around when we knew it was time for her to go. She refused to stay in a hospital, said she didn’t want to die in one like our parents did, so a nurse took care of her in her home.
My head dropped, and I closed my eyes when the nurse stepped out of the room to give me a minute alone with her. I wiped my hands over my face and no matter how hard I tried not to, I couldn’t keep my emotions buried. I couldn’t stand the way she chose to live her life. Now, I regretted not trying even harder while we were still young to get her to live more. Did she pretend to smile when we were around or was she genuinely happy? I wanted to understand her, but she never tried to help me and Mom understand.
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