by Amber Benson
There was one positive thing. Our hellhound pup, Runt, was still down in Hell with her three-headed dad, Cerberus, the Guardian of the North Gate of Hell. That meant she wasn’t at Sea Verge, and that if anything bad had happened there, then at least she was okay. I couldn’t see Cerberus letting anyone touch his little girl as long as he was guarding her. This thought gave me the first glimmer of hope I’d had in hours. It wasn’t enough to dispel the depression settling over me, but it was a beginning.
Hyacinth was a good thinking companion, silent and ever watchful, never pushing me to pull myself together, letting me take all the time needed to find my way back on my own terms.
“What was my dad’s plan?” I asked as I picked at a piece of marsh grass, shredding it. “I mean, his contingency plan if anything bad happened.”
“I was to bring you here and call out Watatsumi from his coral palace,” she said. “He would give you a gift, one you might need to assume control of Death.”
“What gift?” I asked as I fingered the jewel the old man had given me.
“The one you’re holding in your hands right now,” she said. “It will help to restore the power of Death to its rightful owner.”
“What will I have to do?” I said, not sure how one jewel and one girl could fight both the Devil and my sister.
“You must make sure the Devil is not allowed to install Daniel as the head of Death, Inc. He has groomed his former protégé for many years to usurp your father’s position from you. If he were to succeed, then the Devil would control Daniel and, through him, Death—which would be disastrous.”
After all those years in service, I’d guessed that the Devil might still have some control over Daniel. It only made sense, especially in light of what I’d witnessed between him and my sister.
“Why? What does the Devil have on Daniel?” I said. I was really hoping Hyacinth had the answer. I’d spent many nights quizzing Daniel about his past, but I’d never been able to get much out of him, especially when it came to why he’d been the Devil’s protégé.
“I don’t know the whole story, only the gist of what happened,” Hyacinth said.
“Tell me,” I said, standing up and walking off some of the pent-up energy ricocheting around inside me. I paced in front of the shoreline, anger fueling my movements as I waited for Hyacinth to tell me what she knew.
“Your friend—” she began, but I interrupted her.
“He’s not my friend anymore.”
Hyacinth nodded, conceding.
“The Devil knew exactly who the young man was, and what possibilities lay in his future, so he went all out wooing Daniel, promising him Heaven and Earth in order to steal his soul. I don’t know what compelled Daniel to accept the Devil’s offer, but he did and he was bound to Hell for all eternity unless . . .”
“Unless what?” I asked, my feet crunching the marsh grass with viciousness.
“You saved him, Callie,” Hyacinth murmured. “By allowing him to make the ultimate sacrifice—his life for yours.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I offered, but Hyacinth shook her head.
“And that’s why the Devil’s bond was broken. Daniel sacrificed willingly, in the moment, to save you, an innocent. He was not compelled to protect you; he did it of his own free will.”
“But now he’s doing what the Devil wants—”
“Yes,” Hyacinth said, interrupting me. “And he must be stopped at all costs.”
“I promise to do what I can to protect Death, Inc.,” I replied, “but I want to go to Sea Verge first. I need to speak to my dad, see what he wants me to do.”
Hyacinth pursed her lips then nodded.
“You will need someone to take you there. Wormholes are no good to you,” she intoned.
I could only think of one person I trusted enough—and who was powerful enough—to help me. I closed my eyes and screamed the first name that came into my brain out across the heavens.
“Kali! I need your help!”
A crack of thunder skated across the sky and my senses prickled as the air filled with electrical tension. The ceiling of sky remained intact, but a skeletal arm of lightning broke through the clouds and shot toward me, sizzling as it passed within a few inches of my head. The lightning struck the marsh, igniting the dry and brittle grass with a pop that made me and Hyacinth scurry out of the way. I waited for the fire to ramp up in intensity and start spreading, but it didn’t act how I had expected. Instead, it flamed upward, a column of undulating orange and red flame flickering wildly as it funneled smoke into the atmosphere.
There was a loud crack like the sound of an iceberg calving on a lonely stretch of the Arctic Ocean, and then Kali was standing before me, wrapped in a bright purple sari, henna tattoos covering her olive body from the nape of her neck to the tips of her purple-painted toenails. Around her throat hung a fiber necklace strung with tiny human teeth that glinted like opals in the fading sunlight.
Her dark hair was tied up at the crown of her head, revealing a streak of oxidizing blood that ran across her cheek and down to her collarbone. At first, I thought it was Kali’s blood—that she’d been wounded and had bled out—but when I realized she was intact and unblemished, I knew it must’ve come from someone else. Then I noticed the rest of the blood on her sari that the deep color of the fabric had camouflaged from me.
We both spoke at the same time:
“Kali, you came—”
“You’re safe, white girl—”
I was so ecstatic to see my old friend, I grabbed her in a giant bear hug, which she totally slipped out of as fast as she could, her dark eyes narrowed in an angry glare that sliced at me like a sharpened knife.
“Uhm, this is my boss, Hyacinth—” I started to say, but she interrupted me.
“I was in the middle of kicking some serious ass, white girl,” she seethed. “So this had better be damn important.”
I swallowed hard.
“Jarvis is dead and I think my dad may be, too. I can’t use the wormhole, so I need someone to take me to Sea Verge.”
Kali’s mouth fell open.
“The little faun? They got him?”
I nodded, a tear spilling from the corner of my eye before I could wipe it away.
“I need to find out what’s happened to my family—”
Kali shook her head.
“Your mom and dad—along with your dad’s lawyer, Father McGee—were taken hostage at Sea Verge earlier today. We were under the assumption you might be with them—”
I walked over and took her by the wrists.
“Then I have to go there and help them,” I whispered, holding her wrists in my firm grasp. “Please . . .”
Kali rested her chin on her chest, unable to look at me.
“There’s a war on, white girl. And now that we know you’re still free,” she said, her voice hoarse, “you gotta stay out of harm’s way.”
“Kali, please,” I said, begging.
Torn, my friend sighed, her brown eyes ringed with exhaustion.
“All right, white girl, I’ll make you a compromise. I’ll send your spirit back so you can see what’s happening—”
“Thank you,” I said gratefully, knowing it was the best I was going to get.
“Don’t thank me, dipwad,” she glared. “Just keep your lily-white ass out of trouble.”
“I hate it when you call me that,” I laughed, releasing her wrists so I could wipe away the tears of gratitude.
“Then don’t be a dipwad, dipwad,” the Hindu Goddess replied matter-of-factly.
“You said there was a war on?” I asked. “What’s happening?”
“Your sister and her minions are colluding with the Devil and the Ender of Death to take over Heaven, as you may or may not know,” Kali said, gesturing to the blood on her sari. “This is from fighting a whole horde of Hellspawn outside of Purgatory. And you better believe my ass when I say it’s been a bloody mess. They’ve overrun the building and taken prisoners, ho
lding them hostage so they can lord it over us.”
“And Sea Verge?” I asked.
Kali shook her head.
“We’ve been out of contact with them since this morning. We sent Clio over to do reconnaissance once we heard there had been trouble—”
I grabbed Kali’s shoulders, almost shaking her.
“Watch the sari, white girl—”
“You said you sent Clio. That means she’s not with you now . . .”
I trailed off.
“She was with Indra, but she volunteered to scout out Sea Verge for us,” Kali confirmed.
“She was with Indra?” I sputtered. “Wait, you mean she was with Indra . . . like having a sleepover with him with him?”
Kali shoved me aside and walked over to the water.
“I don’t go messing in other people’s nasty business, white girl.”
“Okay, totally doesn’t matter,” I offered, following her over to the water. “As long as she’s all right—”
“I didn’t say that, either, dumb girl,” Kali shot back, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t know what Clio’s found, because we haven’t heard from her, so I don’t know if she’s A-okay or not.”
“Take me there, then,” I said. “Let me find my sister.”
Pulling a razor-sharp blade from her cleavage, Kali faced me and plucked my hand from my side. She raised it high into the air, holding the knife out with her other hand. I watched, transfixed, as the steel blade caught the light, reflecting the mottled sky.
“You know what happens next, Death’s Daughter,” Kali said—and then she plunged the blade toward the meat of my palm. At the last moment, she slowed her momentum, letting the blade only kiss the skin as it drew a straight red line of blood across my hand.
She dropped my wrist and pressed the blade into her own hand, the blood burbling up like an oil slick. She wiped the blade on her sari before resheathing it in her bodice, leaving another bloodstain to dry on the matte purple fabric of her dress.
“I have to sever your body from this plane, hold on . . .” She grabbed my bloodied hand and squeezed, our blood comingling like we were two children completing a blood brother ritual.
“Ow!” I cried as she ratcheted up the pressure, the tiny bones in my hand cracking like kindling being thrown into the flames of a fire. I could feel the cartilage and tendons being ripped out of place as Kali twisted my hand in hers. The last time this happened, the pain had been so intense that I’d blacked out. This time, I was prepared for what was to come, so it wasn’t as bad.
“Close your eyes, dipwad,” Kali hissed in my ear, yanking my wrist with enough force to dislocate it. I did as she asked, shutting my eyes so tight you couldn’t have pried them open with a crowbar. My hand ached like a bitch and I was sure the Goddess of Destruction had permanently crippled me, but I didn’t care. I was grateful for her help.
“Thank you, Kali,” I whispered, my body going numb as a subarctic wind whipped by from out of nowhere and enfolded me in its wintery embrace. My body became light as a feather and I drifted in the air, my fragile soul floating on the back of the wind. I spun in the air, faster and faster, until I was a human top dancing on the slipstream.
As the wind dropped and I felt myself falling, I ignored my fear. It was a controlled fall and I relaxed into it, consciously working to ease the tension from my muscles. I hit the ground hard, my left hip taking much of the brunt of the fall, but there was no pain.
“Get up!”
Adrenaline coursed through my veins, making my heart beat like a metronome set to an “extra fast” tempo. My eyes flew open and I found myself lying on my side in the backyard of Sea Verge. Only, it wasn’t me anymore. At least, it wasn’t my body—my body was back at the marsh in New York. My soul was here at Sea Verge, enmeshed with someone else’s soul.
And that someone else was my dad!
I was filled with joy—my dad was alive and kicking! I couldn’t believe I’d listened to any of those false pronouncements, that I’d let them trick me into thinking my dad was dead. I wanted to tell them all where to stick it, but I put my anger on hold to deal with more pressing matters: namely, why was my dad lying on the ground in the backyard with the Ender of Death standing over him?
“I know what your weakness is, Death,” Marcel said as he stood over me/my dad, grinning like an idiot.
I wanted to kick the guy right in his pointy little eyeteeth, but I wasn’t in control of my dad’s body, so I was forced to sit back and, like a passive spectator, do nothing. It was pretty frustrating, but I told myself to relax, because it was a futile waste of energy to get worked up about it. Luckily, my dad seized the moment himself, rolling away from the Ender of Death before crawling back onto his feet.
“You are the Ender of Death,” my dad said, lifting his hand to wipe away a smear of blood from his nose. “It’s your job to know my weakness.”
Apparently, there’d been some kind of fight before I’d gotten there—which was where the bloody nose came from. Once my dad was standing, Marcel lunged, but my dad sidestepped him, slamming his fist into the Ender of Death’s cheekbone and giving the crazy man a nasty-looking cut on his cheek.
Wait a minute, I thought, something clicking in my brain. I saw that cut on Marcel’s face back at my office. But if my dad had just given it to him . . .
And that’s when I understood that Kali, the crazy Goddess, had sent me back in time. It shouldn’t have surprised me because it had happened to me before. Frustrated, I wondered if she’d even realized what she’d done, but I didn’t have time to linger on that thought because the Ender of Death was attacking me/my dad again.
“I am going to fulfill my destiny right here and now, Death,” Marcel said, both fists raised as he smashed into my dad, sending him sprawling back onto the ground.
This time my dad just lay there in the grass, looking resigned.
“It doesn’t matter what you do to me. My daughter will find you and destroy you.”
It took me a minute to realize my dad was talking about me. I was shocked. He was putting his faith in me, the daughter who’d shunned his work and run away from home so she wouldn’t get suckered into the family business. I’d never done anything to earn his trust, but here he was giving it to me anyway.
“I will give your daughter a chance to relinquish her power,” the Ender of Death said, nonchalantly pulling at the bottom of his T-shirt. “I will offer her a way out, but I hope she will not take it. Then she will die by my hand, just as you will.”
My dad began to laugh, his whole body shaking with it. He was tickled by something the Ender of Death had said, but for the life of me, I couldn’t have told you what. Actually, I wanted to tap into his brain and see what was so goddamn funny, but I found that it wasn’t an option.
“What’s so funny?” Marcel barked, assuming he was the butt of some secret joke. Fueled with anger, he struck my dad in the shoulder with his foot. I felt my/my dad’s shoulder bloom with pain and I suspected the Ender of Death had broken our collarbone.
This was crazy. Why wasn’t my dad fighting back? Why was he allowing Marcel, the insane Ender of Death, to hurt him?
I got my answers in rapid succession:
“Don’t hurt him!”
My dad turned his head and I saw my sister Clio and my mother kneeling in the dirt a few feet away. My mother was sobbing and her head hung forward so I couldn’t see her face. Beside her, my dad’s attorney, Father McGee, looked on, his face composed. Clio, defiant as ever, knelt at attention, hatred oozing from every pore in her body. Her left eye was a swollen purple mess, and a fierce blow to her face had split her lower lip almost in two. Standing on either side of them, keeping them restrained with papyrus rope, were the Jackal Brothers.
“Quiet, Clio,” my dad started to say, but one of the jackal-headed bastards took matters into his own hands. He slammed his fist into the side of Clio’s neck and she slumped forward, dazed.
“I’ll ask you again,” Marcel sa
id, leaning in toward my dad’s face for maximum effect. “Why are you laughing at me?”
My dad shrugged.
“I laugh because you will never win. It’s very simple. Calliope will kill you and then the next incarnation of the Ender of Death will be called up and she will fight them, too.”
It was nice to hear how confident my dad was about my prowess as a killer, but I thought he was going a little overboard—I was as much a crack assassin as I was a Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist.
Ha!
The Ender of Death sneered at my dad, not liking what he was saying one teensy bit.
“Well, then,” the Ender of Death replied, “it’s a pity you won’t live to see it.”
Marcel turned on his heel, making his way over to where the Jackal Brothers stood with their hostages.
“Let me have it,” Marcel said, extending his hand. With horror, I watched as one of the Jackal Brothers drew a clear-bladed scythe from a sheath at his hip and laid the iron handle in Marcel’s outstretched palm.
So this is my dad’s weakness, I thought, staring at the scythe. I’d never have guessed that something so simple could end my dad’s immortal life forever.
Marcel turned around, a smirk lifting the corners of his mouth as he walked back over to where my dad waited.
“Good-bye, Death.”
He lifted the scythe high in the air, the diamond blade so clear I could see the sun—a tiny orange ball shimmering on the horizon—through it. Time froze and then began again, but in slow-mo, so that I could enjoy the delicate curve of the scythe as it sailed through the air toward me/my dad.