by Kresley Cole
Trapped there. A nest of serpents. A nightmare.
One vine reared above her like a viper, plummeting down to gore her. She twisted and rolled, dodging it. Again the vine struck. She eluded it, but she was getting slower.
“There is no shame in surrender,” I told her, as a past Empress had once assured her victims.
Death had cut through the battalion I’d sent his way, and now was coming for me. All according to plan.
I watched him nearing, readying to take my head. Hatred, hatred, boiling. In the midst of this frenzy, another memory of my grandmother’s voice floated into my head: You take after Demeter, a goddess who was not to be crossed. When someone stole her daughter, she was so enraged, she refused to let crops grow, starving the entire world. Evie, there’s a viciousness in you that I must nurture. . . .
Flanked by protective thorns, I screamed with a godlike rage, and the whole world seemed to tremble.
I screamed for Jack and Matthew. For Finn, and even Selena. I screamed for my family and friends I’d lost. For this entire ruined planet.
I screamed because I was about to embrace the red witch once again.
I am the red witch! Would a future Empress see an image of this grisly scene and recoil? No. Because I’m going to win the entire game!
Kill them all? With pleasure.
When my scream ebbed, I motioned Death closer with both hands, nine wriggling fingers. He couldn’t know that my soldiers had bored out the side of this hill and the underpinning of the asphalt that stretched between him and me. A few steps closer, and he would plummet, hurtling through a chute to be trapped below with Lark.
“Afraid to strike? Come to me, Death. Touch me again.”
He approached as if in a trance. “Ease your wrath, and I won’t kill you today.”
I laughed, a throaty sound.
He reached my trap. The roadway crumbled; before he could escape, he dropped. At the last second, he stabbed one sword into the asphalt. He clung to his anchor as vines snaked up his body, curling around his shoulders and neck to drag him down. One of them struck his helmet free, revealing his perfect face, his grimly determined features. He showed no panic, not even when vines tangled over his head, across his mouth.
I stared into his glowing eyes. In a rush of dizziness, I remembered a time when they were bright in the night, looking down on me like stars. Just before his lips met mine—
Wham! Ogen tackled me with the force of a freight train. How?!
We crashed into the ground, with me breaking his fall. Ribs snapped. My head was flung back, cracking my skull. My vision wavered, my army stunned.
How had he escaped my poison and the pressure of those trees?
With the last of my strength, I sank my claws into the tough hide of his neck, injecting him with toxin until my fingers went numb.
He wrapped a hand around my throat, squeezing harder and harder. The Devil’s strength wasn’t fading?
As I stabbed Ogen frantically, I glimpsed Death with a blade between his teeth, climbing up from my trap.
Victorious.
Now it was Death’s turn to laugh. “Ogen is one of two players immune to your poisons. Come, Empress, ask yourself: why else would someone like me ally with someone like him?”
Under Ogen’s grip, something deep in my neck popped. My arms fell limp beside me. I couldn’t feel them. As my lids slid shut and consciousness faded once more, I heard Death grate words to Ogen in that foreign language.
What was the Reaper saying . . . ?
“To match your eyes.”
I gaze at the gift Death presents: a golden collar studded with emeralds. My sworn enemy is trying to woo me, has already declared his intention to take me to his bed.
I’ve been with him for four days, recuperating from his sword blow.
He sits next to me on my pallet in the tent we share. “Do you like it?” he asks, reaching forward to stroke my hair from my forehead. At the contact, his amber irises lighten, beginning to glow.
Death touches me at any chance, will shudder with want just from brushing his thumb over my bottom lip. He seems to relish baring his hands around me, snatching off his hated gloves the second he enters our dwelling.
“It’s beautiful,” I answer with honesty. He must have purchased the piece at the bazaar we passed earlier. I wish I could touch the gold, but my arms are bound behind me. Death wants me, but he does not yet trust me.
Though I am almost healed, I haven’t determined my strategy with him. I know I must escape him, but he has met up with his ally, the Devil. That brute guards the tent whenever Death leaves.
“The gift is very kind.”
“Kindness has nothing to do with it.” His lids grow heavy as he grazes the backs of his fingers along my jawline, then across my collarbone. “You are mine, Empress. You deserve fine things.”
His. Death’s. He intends to take me to his home far in the frozen north, far from my home of winter grasses and endless fields. As alien as this desert.
“Allow me.” He moves to put the collar around my neck, lifting up the length of my hair. Once he fastens the clasp, he presses a lingering kiss to my nape.
When I shiver, he groans against my skin, “You like my touch.”
Gods help me, I do. The hands that deliver death with such ease are beyond tender to me.
He moves closer, facing me. “Ah, creature, for that reaction, I shall buy you jewels every day.”
How different this must be for a boy who has killed everything else he touched. How many new experiences he can enjoy with me alone. I’ve caught myself wondering what it would be like to be possessed by him.
Still, when I am completely healed, I will strike.
Only one can win.
I woke to the sound of metal being pounded and the smell of wet dog. It was nighttime, and I was tied up once more, lying on a dry sleeping bag.
Direct from another disturbing dream.
One of Lark’s wolves lay before me, its snout inches from my face, eyes gazing into mine with that unnatural intelligence. Or rather, its eye, singular. Hello, Cyclops. Probably the mangiest of the three.
The other Arcana had made camp beneath a bridge and lit a fire, seeming to dare anyone to attack.
In addition to posting the guard wolf, they’d bound my elbows tightly behind my back, making it impossible for my claws to reach the rope. I still had difficulty moving in general, but at least feeling had returned to my limbs. Unfortunately, that meant I experienced every second of regeneration as bones reset and regrew, as skin fashioned itself anew. My thumb was a fleshy nub.
I tried to call on my powers—like the Empress in my dream, I was ready to strike—but they were tapped out. Damn this rain! Even if I could manage spores, they probably wouldn’t be strong enough to kill this trio.
I gazed past Cyclops to find Ogen and Death beside the blazing fire. The two horses rested nearby. No sign of Lark or the other wolves.
Ogen squatted next to the flames. In the firelight, his eyes were even more revolting. Around his diamond-shaped pupils, those greenish-yellow veins bulged. They were the color of sickness, of infection. Uneven before, his horns were now the same length. I squinted. There were two raised scars across his back. As if something had been cut from him.
Without hesitation, he placed his arms directly in the fire to stir the logs. Immune to fire and poison? Would’ve been good to know.
I’d failed to defeat them today, with my full arsenal and a devious plan. Against me, they were invincible together, as Death must know.
Unless I could get him out of his armor.
Tonight he’d shed his helmet and breastplate. As I watched, he used his sword blade to carve a line of metal from the side of the latter. He handed that metal strip over to Ogen, who plunged it into the flames with his bare hands. The Devil blew on the fire till it climbed high.
Why hadn’t Death let Ogen kill me? What plans did he have for me? Obviously not the same ones as he’d had in a p
ast life.
Lark reappeared, briefly parting the curtain of water running off the sides of the bridge. Her arms were full of wet firewood, and her other two wolves each carried a log in their jaws, dropping them at Ogen’s feet. She told Death, “The falcon can scout for another couple of hours, but then she’s got to sleep.”
A weakness. Her animals could only go so long. Yet another Arcana who needed to conserve.
“Very well.” Death couldn’t have sounded less interested.
Lark tugged down her poncho hood as the wolves shook out their sodden fur. “You almost done?” she asked him.
Ignoring her, he began tinkering with his breastplate, tightening screws on the sides of it. Had I somehow pierced the armor? Maybe they were repairing it.
When that strip of metal glowed red, Ogen removed it from the fire. Placing it on a nearby boulder, he hammered the piece with his fist, flattening it.
Leaving Ogen to his work, Death put his breastplate back on, then leaned against the embankment. His helmet was close at hand. I watched as he sharpened one of his swords, running a stone over the edge again and again. He seemed soothed by this repetition.
Lark sat nearby. When I caught her gaze, she flashed me a wounded look—as if I had betrayed her—then turned away in a huff.
I worked myself into a sitting position, tilting my head to study Death. How different he was now from the boy I’d dreamed of. He looked about six or seven years older and much harder, even more ruthless.
Death lifted his sword and eyed the edge in the firelight. “What are you looking at, creature?”
“A stone-cold killer.”
“Shouldn’t be such a new sight.” He lifted his other sword to sharpen. “I’m sure you pass a mirror every now and again.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“To my stronghold. If you survive the next week.”
“Where is it?”
He didn’t deign to answer.
Okay, so if his lair was a week’s journey away from the Hierophant’s, that could mean Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, either of the Carolinas.
“What are you planning to do with me?” What was I planning to do with me? If I could escape, I supposed I’d start for the Outer Banks once more. Give myself the time I needed to grieve all I’d lost, and fulfill my promise to my mother. I’d sworn I would get to my grandmother, find out why the earth had failed, find out if I could help it.
For all I knew, Death might be taking me in the right direction.
To carry on my mission without Jack and Matthew? The idea sent anguish ripping through me, worse than any physical pain I’d ever known.
The Reaper finally faced me, resting his weapon across his lap. “I plan to make you suffer, up until the moment I decide to cut off your head.”
His confidence was disturbing. I decided then that I would do anything to deprive him of that pleasure—and of my icons. I’d rather Joules have them. “And when will that decision be?”
“Every morning when I wake, I’ll ask myself, ‘Is this the day I decapitate the creature?’ If you retain your worthless life by that night, then you’ll know my answer. And so it will be every day.”
I narrowed my gritty eyes. “Why do you hate me so much?” I noticed Lark was listening intently, acting like she was absorbed with rearranging her pack.
“Because I know what you are.” He clasped the hilt of his sword as if he could barely refrain from attacking me. “You have others fooled, but I know you better than you know yourself.”
“Then tell me what I’m really like.”
“You’re selfish, weak, cowardly, and disloyal. You blame Fauna for her duplicity when you are no better, a seductress who lures men to their doom.”
I strained against my bindings, wishing I had power left. “Was I weak when my vines were dragging you down to a hellish end? Was I cowardly and disloyal when I fought to avenge my friends?”
“Your friends—or the mortal you professed to love?”
“Both.”
Death’s lips curled. “Deveaux wouldn’t have wanted you if he’d known what you were truly like. He wouldn’t have bedded you, and he certainly wouldn’t have given his life for you. Yet another you doomed.”
I’ll spend my limited time left doing what I want . . . Jack’s voice, his grin as he said it . . .
Limited. He’d died three nights later.
All my fault. I should have sent him away. Because I hadn’t, a strong, proud man was gone.
Death was right. I was weak and selfish.
I turned away, lying with my back to him, casting my mind back to the last moments I’d seen Jack. As if I were in that mine, I could feel the rocks hitting the water, punches to my stomach. Boulders had plummeted—well before Ogen intensified his attack.
Flattened like a sandcastle.
Had Jack even made it to shore with Matthew? My bottom lip trembled. Maybe Matthew never woke up before he drowned.
Through watering eyes, I stared out at the veil of water, like the one at the cave entrance where Jack and I had been together.
That perfect moment in time.
Tears began to spill, and I couldn’t stop them. All but sobbing, I tried to muffle the sound. As much as I hated Death, I hated myself for crying.
“Ah, the sound of that.” When Death chuckled, I glared over my shoulder.
“You were right, Fauna.” With a smirk, he reclined, hands tucked behind his head, eyes glowing in the night. “This is much better.”
22
DAY 264 A.F.
BUMFUK, EGYPT, FOR ALL I KNEW
“I can feel your eyes on my ass, perv,” I said over my shoulder. For the past six days, whenever Death’s helmet was off, I would catch glimpses of an unnerving hunger in his expression. How could he be so disgusted with me—and struggling against attraction?
I twisted around to find him comfortably riding his horse, an ill-humored stallion he called Thanatos. He was flanked by Ogen on foot and Lark on horseback.
Sure enough, Death’s molten gaze was locked on my backside as I trudged shoeless and parka-less over a stony flat. My bare feet were sliced. Yet if my blood revived plants, they yellowed and withered, because I was still flagging.
All this abuse he’d dealt my way ensured that my body was constantly playing catch-up to regenerate. I’d already fallen twice this morning. Again, Death had tied my elbows together so I couldn’t break my falls. My shoulders were numb, and I felt like I hadn’t caught my breath for the better part of the last week.
Death raised his brows, unashamed to be caught ogling. “Just because you’re a gutless harlot doesn’t mean I won’t find your . . . attributes attractive. I might be immortal, but I’m still a red-blooded male.”
Attributes? Was that why he’d kept me alive? Each morning, I had asked him, “Have you decided whether you’re going to kill me today?”
He’d always answer, “Not yet, creature.” Each night by the fire, Death used the tip of one sword to carve barbs in that flattened metal strip from his armor. Though I had no idea why, he seemed very pleased with himself, would gaze at me as he worked. Was his attraction intensifying . . . ?
“Harlot? Who talks like that? Father Time, meet the Flintstones.”
“You are bold, considering you were roundly defeated and all your people were lost.”
I gritted my teeth against a scream. The idea that he bore my friends’ icons burned inside me like the Alchemist’s acid. Death always wore those gloves, so I hadn’t seen the markings. But I knew he had to have them because Lark’s and Ogen’s hands were clean.
“I have suffered loss,” I told him. “But at least I know what it’s like to have had those relationships. I had trust and caring.” Love and passion with Jackson. I would hold those memories of him close for the rest of my life, short as that might prove. “And you—you’ve got Ogen.”
Hearing his name, the Devil lumbered closer to me. If Death looked at me like he wanted to sleep with me, Ogen
looked like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to sleep with me—or suck the marrow from my bones. His foul appearance was equaled only by his stench.
“You believe you had trust?” Death scoffed. “Arcana rule number one: trust no one.”
I stopped to face him with a look of realization. “No wonder you’re so good at this game. It’s all you’ll ever really have.”
“You know nothing about me. Take care that you don’t provoke my wrath.” With a last sneer, he rode forward.
Death would soon regret his decision to spare me so far. For the last several months, I’d wanted to kill him because he was so bent on killing me. Now I craved a bloody revenge, one that would make the red witch proud.
If I couldn’t take out this trio by myself, I figured I had two options.
Catch Death without his armor, which wasn’t likely.
Or get help. In that case, my first step was escape. I might have worried that Death would just read my thoughts and foil any attempt. But I believed the link between us had been broken. Severed with Matthew’s passing. Don’t cry. Don’t give him the satisfaction. . . .
So far there’d been no opportunity to get away. It wasn’t like I ever had privacy. Lark accompanied me each morning to wash off, her wolves trailing us like chain-gang guards. When I was alone with her, she always looked like she wanted to tell me something. Information there for the taking? But I hadn’t yet been able to bite back bile and cozy up to her.
“Yo, boss,” Lark said, her eyes going red. Falcon-cam. “We got a pretty big river ahead.”
The fog began to thicken. Soon I could hear the sound of rushing water. With each step closer to this unseen river, Ogen grew antsier. I’d learned the Devil was more afraid of bodies of water than Matthew had been. I doubted the beast could swim.
Fifteen minutes later, we reached the edge of the rapids; all four of us came to a halt, staring at the surreal scene. The violent currents carted along pieces of houses, a huge satellite dish, and a . . . car. A red Volkswagen rocketed past us, the steering wheel spinning as wreckage hit the tires.