The Reaper's Embrace

by Abigail Baker

  But I would have to do it.

  To save Brent, I had to save myself first.

  “You need to go now. And you’ll go alone.” Neema pointed at the hedges where she had vanished a moment earlier. She carried a weight in her voice that worried me. Then again, like any servant to her master, she was propagating the attitude that her master was to be feared. Master Xiangu wasn’t my equal. She was more. She was a Goddess who had been a Master Scrivener for centuries. I had only matured into my Masterhood in the past few months. I was a baby in comparison. Neema wanted to remind me of that. Be humble. Be respectful, Neema seemed to say without speaking.

  I turned to give my allies a forced smile. Each looked as worried as the next. I pretended that they smiled back before I forged ahead to meet with the one Stygian who could save me from Death or hurry me along to it—the one whom I knew wouldn’t hand over a future without my earning it.

  I rubbed the lotus pendant as I walked through the hedges, weaving in and out of overgrown branches jutting in the path. Dotting the greenery were baby pink flowers that winked at me as I passed by. On the path, smooth pebbles caressed my tired feet. It was unmistakable how the air grew thicker and more fragrant with flowers and life as I walked toward salvation.

  Neema had called the Acheron the river of pain, but as I walked beside it, I felt it like a presence, calming me. I wondered why people feared death. If this was what waited for us on the journey between life and the Afterlife, I had to believe that the journey was a gift.

  I turned around to get one last glimpse at my friends and Papa, but the hedges and flowers hid them. A part of me was sad that I couldn’t see them now. They were not far away, yet they still felt a million miles from me. And it was then that I understood that even with friends and family by our sides, some journeys are meant to be completed alone.

  And boy, I was alone, here in paradise.

  It seemed as though I walked a full mile before I reached the end of the tunnel of hedges and pink flowers. The pebbles on the path gave way to a circle of plush, soft grass. Tree branches dipped over the circle. Purple and yellow flowers hung from the ends of the branches. I wanted to reach up and touch the flowers, possibly smell them, too.

  I stopped on the edge of the circle. Sitting on the opposite side in black robes, silken black hair twisted into a bun, dark eyes locked on me, was the Master Scrivener I had been seeking for weeks. She was as stunning as I had imagined her to be.

  I didn’t know how to address her or if I should wait until she spoke. Neema had said I would be tested. I dropped to my knees, rested my hands in my lap, and bowed my head. In many ways, this was all I could stand to do, for I was exhausted and weary. My heart and head and body ached. Death would be welcome if it were handed to me now because I wasn’t even certain I could recover from everything I had endured.

  What kept me going was that I had made promises to so many people—Papa, Mama, Eve, Brent, Delia. Most importantly, I had made a promise to myself. I couldn’t let Olivia down. Not yet.

  But I was tired. Oh Hades, so tired.

  Tears surfaced before I could do anything to stop them. They fell loosely and freely down my cheeks. It took everything I had not to let my chest and shoulders heave as I quietly sobbed. I had to break down before this Master Scrivener, to tell her my story from beginning to end. I needed her to understand and to show me compassion. I needed her forgiveness because I was still struggling to forgive myself for all the havoc I had kicked up in two long years.

  Her black robes brushed my knees, and I looked through glassy tears to see her staring down at me. Trapped inside my own grief, I hadn’t seen or heard her move. Maybe it was silly to look inward at this moment. Maybe she would chide me for it.

  Master Xiangu knelt in front of me. After observing me for a moment, she put her fingers to my chin. Her eyes, those pools of darkness, stared into me, reading my emotions. I didn’t dare look away, but I didn’t dare challenge her either.

  “I know you,” she said in a soft, delicate voice. “I saw you in a dream.”

  I struggled to remain silent, offering the type of respect I felt was appropriate. But I gazed upon this Scrivener. Age had formed lines of wisdom around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. But age didn’t take her beauty. Xiangu owned her magnificence.

  Unlike Errol or Marin or even Brent, Xiangu carried a charisma that was more extraordinary than I had ever known. Being in her company felt like a rare gift. I suppose this is why I couldn’t help it when I began to speak through my tears.

  “I’ve made a mess of things,” I confessed. “I tried to save one person, and the whole world came crashing down. Had I known… Had I been able to see this mess…”

  She reached a hand into the waters of the Acheron and pulled out a pure white cloth. She wrung it out, then wiped my brow with it as a loving mother might, as Mama would’ve. As I’d suspected, I felt no pain when the water touched me. It was soothing. “You speak as if any other path would’ve been better than the one you’ve chosen.”

  “The point is that I chose this one, and too many people have died because of what I’ve done. The guilt is too much.” My left hand was covering my right forearm where the Deathmark resided, and I didn’t realize this until I looked down to avert Xiangu’s gaze.

  “Then you aren’t here to heal your Deathmark?”

  “No. I’m here to remove it because…” I had to stop and think.

  Was my will to live going to abandon me now? Maybe due to exhaustion. Sometimes we can’t continue to climb that mountain no matter how important it is to reach the top. Throwing up our hands and walking away is a choice that feels like a victory in its own right, even if it means ending the dream. I was staring into the black eyes of my mountain peak and I wanted to give up. I wanted to ask her to help me cross over so that I wouldn’t have to go back to the mess that I had left in my careless wake.

  The Acheron. It isn’t the River of Pain. It’s the River of Acceptance—of one’s death.

  I’m not ready.

  Her hand fell away from my chin and rested in her lap. I shook my head to clear it and stared at her fingers lying flat on top of the black robe. There was an urge to grab her hands and beg. I wanted to scream, Listen to me and the hell I’ve been through. Help me, please. Help me find a way out of this.

  I chose to focus on the creases of her interlaced fingers as I wondered if she had tattoos herself, perhaps even at one time a Deathmark of her own. How I would’ve loved to have been bestowed a Deathmark less grim than the skull. A peacock feather was far more pleasant to wear in the face of death.

  “I want to make things right,” I said after many long, quiet minutes. “If that means I need this Deathmark healed, then yes, I am here for that very reason. If I cannot make a wrong right, then let this mark run its course.”

  Xiangu rose to her feet. She did not back away or begin a speech about the reasons we shouldn’t give up on ourselves in the darkest of moments. As she remained silent, I chose not to look up from the bottom seam of her robe that fanned out over the grass, covering her feet entirely. Did she have feet? Did she float?

  But something called me to eventually turn my attention upward and gaze upon the Master Scrivener. Before I did, I wiped the tears away with the heels of my hands. I blinked until my eyes focused on the Master standing above me.

  Who I saw was not Master Xiangu, though.

  I blinked several more times. This person could not be standing before me here in Xiangu’s territory, could she?

  My heartrate quickened. Incredulity held my tongue for only a moment and then, then I stuttered, “E-Eve?”

  Chapter Eight

  “Coffee is my life! Well, that and men.”

  —Eve Cassidy

  Blonde strands from that overgrown pixie cut hung in front of those seafoam green eyes of my human friend. She wore Xiangu’s black robe, which on Eve Cassidy, a punk who normally wore tight black jeans and shirts that fell off one shoulder, was strange
.

  “Eve?” I had to ask again after I found a way to lock my knees and stand to meet her face to face.

  She put her hand over my lotus pendant. Her fingers were warm with life. The connection brought on a new rush of grief that hit me like a hard, raging wave. I yearned to throw my arms around her. What I knew was that this Eve wasn’t the human whom I had attempted to save two years earlier. This was Xiangu. It was her test.

  Still, what else was I supposed to do? What did Xiangu want of me?

  “I’m sorry,” I whimpered. “Sorry I couldn’t do more to save you, Eve.”

  “Do you remember the time we first met?” she asked in that familiar French Canadian accent that made me homesick for Le Nektar, her freshly brewed coffee, and idle conversation about life and pixie fashion.

  I laughed, thinking of our past together. Eve had started work at Le Nektar in Quebec, a new, trendy coffee shop that had sprung up one day between my apartment and the tattoo shop where I’d worked. I had stumbled in one cold winter day, snow covering my jeans up to my knees. Eve had been having a tough morning trying out new coffee drinks. I’d ordered a latte. It had been the worst latte I had ever drunk, but I admired Eve’s determination. She wanted to become a barista, and she wouldn’t let a failure here and there get in her way.

  “You knew I hated that latte,” I said, chuckling.

  “You were the only one nice enough not to say anything. You even came back.” Her fingers moved from the lotus pendant and dropped to her side, hanging lifelessly.

  “You needed a cheerleader.” Standing before Eve, at least the illusion of her, brought on the one emotion I couldn’t eliminate or run from. Guilt. It started when I was born into this life of marking unwitting people for death.

  But the chance to look into Eve’s eyes one more time was too enticing. I needed to hear Eve say, “I forgive you, Ollie.”

  When I lifted my gaze, I looked into another set of eyes that demolished my desire for forgiveness. I jumped back, nearly losing my balance.

  I knew the Deathmark. I knew the face even if I had only seen him for a few short minutes two years ago.

  Nicholas Baird.

  Exactly like Eve had, he stood before me in Xiangu’s robe, his face still marred with my Deathmark. The palm print burned into his face was a clear, angry skull, the first inadvertent step in my journey into Masterhood. I didn’t look upon him with fear as I had that horrible night Eve died and my life changed forever.

  This time I hardened myself.

  “I know what you’re doing,” I said in a strong, fearless voice. “You’re testing me. You’re trying to get me to prove my worth.”

  Nicholas’s angry grey eyes grew heavy with judgement. “What makes you believe that?”

  “You want to see how I react to the various souls that I’m responsible for, to see if I care about everyone I’ve influenced in some way.” My stance burrowed into the ground like tree roots. Xiangu would have to work harder if she wanted to break me.

  Nicholas pivoted away and began a slow, measured return to the opposite side of the circle, exactly where Xiangu was sitting when I entered this mindfuck. Upon turning around to sit, the Reaper was gone and Gerard, my beloved original Scrivener mentor, stared through his thick, black-rimmed glasses at me.

  “Stories of your arrogance are true.” Gerard repeated the words he had first said to me when I arrived in his shop to begin my mentorship with him when I was sixteen. “I am not surprised you think so highly of yourself. Like a child, you gain a little experience and believe that you are a Master.”

  “I am,” I argued. “I’ve proven it.”

  “Master?” He cocked his head. “You’ve melted a few Reapers and have a red and black rebel sticker on your Stygian ID. Those things do not make you a Master. It comes from far more life experience than you’ve lived, Dormier. Masterhood is not what you can do but how you see your world.”

  “I may not be at your level, Xiangu, but I am on my way. Given the opportunity to live long enough, I will prove this to you.” Heat, as it always had, began to surface in my neck and chest. Soon it would writhe its way into my arms and hands. Since I was still wearing my leather motorcycle jacket, this power remained hidden. But she sensed it, that much I was certain.

  “That’s why you’re here. To live,” Gerard said.

  “I wouldn’t seek your help for any other reason.”

  “It is pure ego to think I’d hand over the gift of life effortlessly.” His hands folded in his lap, displaying Xiangu’s gestures through the facade. Gerard never sat with such elegance. He was a grumpy, old-school tattoo artist. He was anything but polite.

  I held my stance, keeping my head high. “I didn’t think that coming here and demanding you heal my mark would be enough. I knew you’d ask for something in return—whatever it is, I don’t know. I need you if I’m going to live.”

  “It’s a terrible place to be in the shadow of another who is your only choice. I’m the only one in Styx who can give you what you seek.”

  I prepared for the next in her lineup of tests. She would soon turn from Gerard into Mama. I felt it coming. Xiangu would go for the worst of all of my losses, and then she’d end it with my proudest—Marin.

  Shielding my heart from the impending shock of seeing Mama again, I folded my arms over my chest. I would want to throw my arms around Mama, to kiss her cheek, and stare into those violet eyes surrounded in freckles and ground nutmeg skin. I would show Xiangu a side to me more vulnerable than the side that loved Eve.

  My heart pounded wildly in my ribs. It, too, was ready. And it would explode if she didn’t do it soon.

  When she—or Gerard—stood again, there was a catch in my throat.

  I was ready.

  Xiangu’s transition from Gerard into her next test didn’t happen swiftly like the others. This transition was methodical for obvious reasons. Once Gerard’s glasses vanished and his gruff face diminished into the pale, clean skin of another one of the Stygians I had affected, I understood Xiangu’s methodology.

  She’d get me with Mama another time.

  “You are much like me, Scrivener Dormier,” said former Head Reaper Marin. There was no skull Deathmark tattooed on his face. He appeared to me with clean, bald skin and those empty black eyes. Had I not been the one to melt him into slime, I would’ve fallen to my knees in horror. But now, I feared nothing about his presence. My hands hadn’t yet forgotten the feel of him disintegrating beneath their power—flesh from muscle, muscle from bone. I would never forget it.

  “I, too, walked into this place and asked Master Xiangu for help with a problem, albeit a much different problem than your own,” he said, casually strolling toward me. “I stood where you stand now with as much fire and anger.”

  “I’m guessing you’re about to tell me how if I’m not careful, I’ll end up the same corrupted leader of Styx like you.” I refused to back up as he came closer.

  “You are as smart as you are proud, Dormier.”

  I squared my shoulders, even though my insides quivered violently.

  “My story began differently than yours,” he said, unbothered by my resistance. “I sought Master Xiangu for a second chance. She provided me with one after I passed her test. That began my quest to the seat of Head Reaper.”

  I breathed deep as I allowed myself to dip a toe into this game. Curiosity is a dangerous vice. “Xiangu helped you become Head Reaper?”

  “She afforded me the tools. Everything after that was my doing.”

  “She knew you were running Styx when you weren’t even a Reaper.” Heat rose into my neck. “She knew you weren’t crossing souls over like you should’ve been.”

  Marin stopped in the center of the grassy circle. His hands dangled at his sides.

  “She knew and did nothing?” This time I walked toward him, breaching the outer rim of the circle. “Did she know about the Scrivener Purge, too?”

  By now, my red skin must’ve been obvious because my cheeks
were hot. I damn well didn’t care, either. There are some things about this world that still horrified me. Master Xiangu’s apparent connection to Marin’s corruption was one I did not expect. Errol had spoken of her as someone who had suffered from the Purge’s effect on our kind. She was forced into seclusion, forced to hide her skillset at the fear of being hunted by the perpetrators of the Purge.

  Marin didn’t reply even when I moved toward him. He didn’t budge when I came close enough to touch him. And he didn’t even blink when I put my hands on either side of the collar of his black cloak. “It’s true, isn’t it? She knew you ruined Styx. Why would she let that happen?”

  The wrinkles in his milky forehead twitched ever so slightly. That was the only thing about him that displayed a reaction or emotion.

  “Why?” I screamed through gnashed teeth.

  There was nothing about this alliance between Marin and Xiangu that I liked. Nothing good had come from it, only more power and from that, more corruption. That my kind possessed the wickedness to collude and then destroy nearly every living Master Scrivener and many regular Scriveners was nothing I could wrap my mind around. Power seemed the only reason. Power meant security. Power meant getting exactly what someone wanted, when they wanted it.

  Scriveners were no less corrupt than any other. We weren’t all pious, and we weren’t all immoral. Like me, we were a mix of both, and sometimes, some of us leaned too far to one side.

  Marin never bothered to give me a reply. I unraveled my fingers from his robe and backed away. This was not a retreat. This was not giving up.

  “You look surprised to learn about the unsavory side of life,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I never believed this world was made of rainbows and sunshine.”

  “Then why do you look shocked?”

  “Why would she allow you to destroy Styx like you have?” I asked, my rage melting into sadness.

  “She had no choice. I made sure she kept quiet on the matter.” Marin’s visage quavered. I saw a flicker of Master Xiangu’s face before Marin’s expression steeled. “I had ways of keeping Stygians quiet. She did not have enough power to speak.”