Serpent's Storm

by Amber Benson

  “Vargr,” Sumi said. “They belong to the Devil.”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, one attacked me and Jarvis on the subway this afternoon.”

  Sumi raised an eyebrow but never got a chance to question me further because the pack leader—a huge black beast with bright yellow corneas floating inside bloodshot sclera—chose that moment to attack. There was no warning howl, just the sound of its talonlike claws ripping through the dirt as it sprang forward, all coiled energy and aggression.

  Sumi opened his mouth as if he was going to yell at the creature, but no sound escaped his lips. Instead, an arc of fire poured from his mouth, sailing across the sky and engulfing the Vragr midair. The creature screamed—the sound so piteous it chilled me to the bone—then dropped to the ground like a stone, its frantic yelps growing in intensity as the fire burnt through its black pelt. The acrid stink of sizzling fur and flesh filled the air as it died.

  Now that their leader was an out-of-commission Vargr shish kebab at Sumi’s feet, the other beasts broke rank and attacked. There were four of them left, too many for Sumi to take on at once, and besides which, they weren’t just mindless beasts; they knew exactly where and what the old man’s weakness was:

  Me.

  I suck at hand-to-hand combat, I thought miserably as one of the Vargrs broke free of the pack and came bounding in my direction.

  I knew I was on my own, because Sumi didn’t even glance in my direction to see how I was faring. I guess he figured I was immortal, so I could stand a little mauling while he took care of the other three.

  “Go away, beastie!” I cried as the creature barreled toward me.

  Beside me, Sumi spewed another arc of fire at the creatures, but they’d learned from watching their leader get baked and stayed just out of the fire’s reach.

  A low growl sounded in my left ear, demanding my attention. I whipped around to find the Vargr who’d been sent after me crouching at my feet, a long string of drool hanging from its massive jaws. I froze, my eyes riveted by the sheer power radiating from the beast—and it was then that I noticed the heavy teats protruding from the soft fur of the creature’s belly.

  Great, they sent the bitch after me, I thought bitterly. A bitch for a bitch.

  Dammit, just knowing the beast was a female—who might have little Vargr kiddies waiting at home for her—changed the situation. I didn’t care that the creature wanted to rip my throat out. I mean, I was immortal, so it would hurt like hell, but I’d survive.

  “I know you may have kids somewhere,” I sputtered, trying to get my words in order. “What’s gonna happen to them when my friend over there turns you into doggie flambé?”

  This only elicited a growl from the bitch.

  “Okay, fine, I just wanted to put that out there—”

  Interrupting me midsentence, she leapt forward, the sheer weight of her muscled form forcing the two of us to the ground, where we tussled like angry children. She bit at me, her serrated teeth sheering the skin off my forearm, exposing a strip of bloody muscle directly to the night air. I screamed. The pain was awful. I could hardly catch my breath as the nerve endings in my arm flared in response to the injury.

  “DROP DEAD!” I shrieked as the Vargr went for my throat.

  Instantly, my whole body was enflamed with the same pulsing white-hot heat I’d experienced earlier when the other Vargr had attacked me back in the subway car. My limbs went numb and my skin burned like fire—then a moment later it was as if my entire body had been plunged into a bathtub full of ice water. I ached as the power slowly drained out of my body and I was left shivering on the ground, breathless. The pressure on my sternum increased tenfold as the bitch’s body ceased moving, flattening me into the ground with its mass. I gasped and tried to roll the beast off me, but the deadweight was nearly impossible to shift.

  “Damn,” I cursed under my breath, marshaling the energy I had left in hopes I could shove the bitch’s body onto the ground. But before I could exert myself, Sumi was above me, lifting the dead body off so I could breathe again.

  “Thank you,” I said, wheezing.

  Even though I was now free from the beast’s weight, I was still having trouble catching my breath. I realized that something inside me had to be out of whack, so I looked down and instantly saw what the problem was: the entire left side of my chest was concave where it should’ve been convex.

  Instinctively, I reached down to press my fingers against my rib cage, then quickly pulled my hand away, nauseous at what I’d discovered. I knew without being told that the bones had been crushed beyond recognition, leaving only shards that slid easily underneath the rubbery skin of my chest.

  I felt like someone had hit me with a Mack truck, then left me on the side of the road to die slowly.

  I groaned, my arm still aching where the skin had been ripped away by the Vargr’s teeth, but when I checked it, I saw that the flesh was quietly re-forming itself over the wound, knitting together as if it were made out of wool instead of living tissue.

  Suddenly, the sky went dark, the clouds overhead blocking out even the meager light from the moon. A lone bolt of lightning cracked the heavens in two, slamming into the ground in front of me as I scurried backward, trying to escape its reach. The sizzle of electricity frizzed out my hair and made my teeth sing in my head as the energy discharged into the ground around me.

  When I looked up again, Sumi was squatting beside me, and together we watched as a man and a woman, both in black Victorian mourning clothes, strode across the dirt. They had come on the heels of the lightning strike, but they moved independently of the strange weather as another lightning bolt struck the ground behind them. When the smoke cleared, two more women in Victorian mourning garb were in lockstep with the first couple.

  My eye was immediately drawn to the man, to the shock of white hair that stuck out in frothy bursts from underneath his watered-silk top hat. There was a skeletal bent to his tall frame, and the round, smoky glasses he wore made it impossible to tell if he had eyes or not. He carried a tiny platinum bell, which he rang as he walked, four sharp bursts that called out to the dead, beckoning them homeward—even though I counted five dead Vargr, not four.

  The three women who followed in his wake pulled long-handled butterfly nets from their backs, making preparations to capture the souls they were obviously here to collect. All three women wore high-necked collars with cameos fixed at their throats and had empty coal sockets for eyes—but that and the color of their clothing were the only things they had in common.

  One of the women was more than six feet tall with a flaming nest of red hair that encircled her head like cotton candy. Another of the women was very tiny, her birdlike fingers almost too small to grasp the neck of the butterfly net she was holding. The last woman was my height, blond hair curling around her face in ringlets as she pulled a silver-lidded jar from her pocket and slid it open, all while still holding the butterfly net rigidly in her other hand.

  I didn’t recognize any of them from my previous encounters with the Harvesters.

  The man pulled his own butterfly net from his shoulder, holding it aloft like a sword while the little bell did its work. Behind me, the other three Vargr lay in various positions on the ground, their limbs splayed at whatever odd position they’d assumed when death had claimed them. In response to the bell’s call, pale swirling tendrils of soul pooled out of the bodies, eddying around the emptied corpses like tiny hurricanes. The blond woman waved the jar in the air, attracting the souls’ attention, compelling them forward. They oozed toward her, making a beeline for the honeyed substance inside the jar, but the other Harvesters moved swiftly, swooping in and capturing the souls with their nets before they could reach the jar.

  The blond woman caught her soul last, using the butterfly net in her hand like a scythe, then she screwed the top back on the jar and curtsied.

  “Long live the Reign of the New Death,” she murmured, the sibilant hiss of her words setting my teet
h on edge.

  That’s nice of you, I thought, amused by the women’s display. But I’m only part Death right now. No “long live” anyone just yet.

  The other women curtsied, too, and the man bowed, then they turned toward the water as if they could walk across the sea like it was a paved roadway.

  “Wait!” I said and the four stopped, stiffening at my demand. “You only collected four souls. I want to know why you didn’t collect the soul of the Vargr my friend, Sumi, killed.”

  Only the blond woman turned to face me, her blackened eye sockets giving me the chills.

  “You will only see us when you have made the kill yourself, Madame Death,” she said. “To remind you of the power you hold over those who cannot defend themselves against you. You have no need to see us collect the others.”

  “Oh.”

  That was all I could think to say in response.

  “May we go?” the blonde asked, looking at me askance. I nodded and she curtsied again, turning her back on me and joining the others. Then, as the clouds dissipated and moonlight flooded the sky again, the four soul collectors faded away into nothingness.

  “Shit,” I murmured when they were gone.

  The realization that I had just unintentionally killed four Vargr without using a weapon any stronger than my own words forced me down an even thornier path, one that I did not want to tread. With only a presentiment of how terrible the end of the path was going to be, my brain started to reel—and it was then that I finally understood the full magnitude of what I had done, of what I had become: I am now a mass murderer.

  And I killed all of those people on the subway.

  Here, I’d been thinking someone was out to get me, framing me for those innocent humans’ murders, but instead, I’d been the true culprit. I thought back to the moment on the subway when I’d first experienced the numb feeling, the pins and needles of hot and cold shooting through my limbs—and I understood that it must’ve correlated exactly with the very moment of my dad’s murder. That was when the power of Death had been split between Daniel and me, but since he’d been surrounded by immortals in Purgatory, he hadn’t had a chance to abuse his power. I, on the other hand, had been murdering innocent people left and right for hours . . . and hadn’t even noticed.

  For a moment, a glimmer of hope knifed through my fevered thoughts: Why hadn’t I seen the Victorian soul-collecting mafia back on the subway car? Did that mean I hadn’t killed all of those people? Maybe I wasn’t a murderer after all? But then I remembered how dark it had been in that subway tunnel, my night vision not yet having kicked in, and I had to concede that I probably just hadn’t seen the Harvesters making their rounds because of the blackout, though I had heard their bell.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered as I sank to my knees, my legs giving out as the truth of what I had done overwhelmed me.

  I was a loose cannon. I had killed indiscriminately and obliviously—two words that could deftly be applied to all the mistakes I’d ever made in my life. I wanted to cry, to scream at God, to ask why he/she had done this to me, but nothing came: no words, no tears, nothing . . . absolutely nothing.

  As if none of what had happened had just happened, Sumi pointed to my chest:

  “You’re healed now.”

  I looked down. He was right, my rib cage looked normal again, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to disappear, to have someone put me out of my misery so I could cease thinking. I didn’t want to keep company with myself anymore . . . but I knew I didn’t deserve the freedom of nonexistence, either.

  No, what I deserved was to spend the rest of my immortality thinking about what I’d done to all those people so I’d never do anything like it again. I honestly didn’t feel so bad about the Vargr because they’d been gunning for my throat and were hardly what you’d call innocent.

  But for the human murders, I deserved to be punished for all eternity.

  If I make it that long, I thought dryly.

  Sumi patted my arm. He must’ve sensed the dark tone of my thoughts and was trying to make me feel better. As stunted and indifferent as this “kindness” was, it did make me feel slightly less like a shit heel.

  “We should go,” Sumi said as he helped me to my feet. “The food will be cold.”

  “I wish I could be so glib about all this death stuff,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Life and death are merely a spiral with no end and no beginning,” Sumi replied sagely. “Though he who controls it controls all.”

  I sighed. It was like dealing with Yoda, only without any of the little green creature’s charm.

  “I’m not feeling all that hungry anymore,” I said, but Sumi didn’t answer. He’d already started walking again—and since I didn’t want to be left to my own devices after my latest “murderer” epiphany, I trudged onward, following his footsteps in the dirt.

  “What did the Vargr want?” I asked as I caught up to my guide. “I mean, what were they gonna do to us?”

  “They were sent to slow you down, incapacitate you so you would not be capable for the challenge.”

  I nodded. It made sense.

  “What I don’t understand is why the Ender of Death is involved in all this?”

  Sumi shrugged.

  “Your sister offers him things, things he cannot get on his own—your dad on a silver platter, for one—and I bet other gifts will be forthcoming.”

  “Like what kind of gifts?” I asked. Then jokingly: “Maybe I should get in the gift-giving business myself, so everyone’ll leave me alone.”

  “The Ender of Death is the yin to your yang, Little Death,” Sumi said. “He wants whatever it is you don’t want.”

  “I don’t want to be Death.” I shrugged. “That’s what I want.”

  “Then,” Sumi sighed, “the Ender of Death wants to be Death.”

  “But he can’t,” I cried. “It’s impossible. He’s not one of the chosen ones—”

  “Stranger things have happened,” Sumi replied as he chewed on the end of his thumbnail. Obviously this conversation was making him nervous for some reason. “The Ender of Death is so close to Death that it might be possible. A faraway possibility, but still . . . a possibility.”

  I felt Sumi’s eyes settle on me then and it was a strangely uncomfortable feeling, like he hated me but needed me at the same time. His dark eyes seemed to plumb the very depths of my soul, searching for something inside me. It was a feeling I didn’t enjoy one little bit. Finally, I looked away and the spell was broken.

  “Let’s go,” Sumi said, and without another word, we continued onward toward a better-traveled stretch of the road.

  After a few more minutes of walking, we stepped out of the night and into another world, one inhabited by powerful streetlights illuminating every detail of the scenery we passed. Soon the last remnants of the marsh gave way to human dwellings and I stopped feeling as nervous as I had back in the darkness. At least now, between the lights and the houses, no attacker could sneak up on me again. Still, I continued to scan the road as we went, wary that something far worse than the Vargr would decide to come keep company with us. I’d been reacquainted with the Afterlife long enough to know there were a lot of nasty creatures out there, ones who made the Vargr look like miscreant puppies on a puppy holiday.

  Not a very nice thought.

  My disquiet did ease some as we walked between the rows of tiny cottages, but not because my spidey senses felt any less tingly. No, my brain had just found something more intriguing than fear to find purchase on: the surreal architecture we were encountering.

  The dwellings we passed may have resembled tiny Maine fishermen’s cottages in their simplicity, yet these homes were anything but simple. With much forethought, they’d been built upon gangling stilts that hoisted their frames high above the reach of the water to prevent against flooding. There was something skeletal about them, spooky even, and I moved closer to Sumi as we walked among them, catching one leg of my gray tights on an errant piece of
his grass skirt and shredding the cotton fabric beyond repair.

  “Wow, this place is crazy-looking,” I said, pointing at one house in particular. It was more than three stories high, but only about ten feet across. I marveled at how it was able to stay upright on its stilted foundation without falling over into the waiting water.

  As if I’d asked a question, Sumi answered:

  “We are here.”

  Then he stopped in front of the strange house I’d just pointed to.

  “No way,” I said.

  “Yes, way,” Sumi retorted.

  Then the little old man in the grass skirt stepped off the road and started up the rickety steps, disappearing inside the gaping front door of the deformed house.

  fourteen

  I stood out in the fog, my wet body chilled to the bone, trying to decide what to do. I couldn’t stay out in the cold all night—it was freezing—and besides that, I was starving. I hadn’t eaten in hours and my stomach was making frustrated gurgling noises deep in my belly as a reminder to feed it.

  “Dammit,” I said under my breath as I stepped off the asphalt and onto the dirt path that led to the rickety front steps. I felt like I was walking into a horror film, one of those H. P. Lovecraft, attack of the frog/fish people scenarios with all the atmospheric fog and creepy fishermen bidding you to leave town before it’s too late.

  I didn’t want to end up in Davy Jones’s locker, but I also didn’t want to stand out in the fog like a nincompoop, either.

  “Wait for me!” I called as I placed one foot on the bottom step and grasped the wooden railing for support. As soon as my fingers wrapped around the splintered railing, I felt a jolt of electricity shoot up my arm. A painful current zapped through my body, completing some unseen circuit, and I gritted my teeth against the pain. My hand was riveted to the wooden rail—and no matter how hard I tried to pull away, my fingers remained frozen in place.