The Last Soul
Lena Hillbrand
Copyright © 2016 Lena Hillbrand
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real person, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Chapter 1
Earth’s Last Living Soul
The reaper stood with feet planted wide, raising a scythe to harvest the soul of earth’s last living human. The scythe had been a gift from Lucifer himself, but its once lustrous cherry handle had dulled. The blade no longer glinted with malice, even when raised to strike. Blood caked the base of the handle, and rust had long ago covered the long blade. Its curved, sharp edge was matted with hair and bits of dried skin, but the reaper didn’t notice.
Victory was hers.
Bracing against the hot wind that brought with it the stench of decaying flesh and wisps of fetid smoke, the reaper swung her once glorious scythe at the pockmarked neck of her final conquest. The last living man on earth.
A nearby murder of crows screamed and wheeled into the sky. The reaper heard their distant commotion and watched them circle overhead for a second before she realized she was on her back. She leapt to her feet, her hood dislodged and her white hair streaked with the vile black grime that oozed over the cracked roadway. An angel stood between the reaper and her prize, her scythe hanging by its neck from his hand like a dead chicken.
“Not so fast,” he said, smirking as he slowly spun her weapon in front of him like the blade of a windmill. She could identify an angel at once by the white leather uniform, like some kind of demented stripper costume. This one had an infuriatingly symmetrical face, with golden skin, narrow eyes, and sleek black hair.
“Get out of my way,” she snarled, wiping sticky ooze from her fingers into her hair. “It’s the last living body, what are you going to do with him? He can’t repopulate the earth. You’re too late. Face it, cherub, you lost.”
“We’ll see, when the last soul has been collected,” he said. “While you reapers have been obsessing about finding the living bodies, we’ve amassed an army in heaven you can’t even fathom.”
In the years leading to her final living harvest, she’d struck down dozens of living bodies, thinking each one must be the last. Sometimes, she went months without seeing a living body attached to a soul. And though reapers continued to send their dark master the souls still wandering an earth that appeared uninhabited by living bodies, they remained always on alert to the possibility.
“You should see hell,” she said. “Even a pretty-boy angel like you should know that humans always choose vice over virtue. I can lure them with promises you can’t offer. After all, sweet little angels can’t lie.”
She knew this, because Lucifer had once been an angel. And though he could not lie, he was a master at trickery, a skill he had taught his reapers before sending them to collect souls. Almost fifty years before, Lucifer had gathered his most persuasive reapers and laid out his plan. As plague swept the globe, his reapers could not keep up with the steady flow of souls they had to procure and transport from that world to this. Instead of waiting for every human to die, reapers would clear entire areas by tricking those still living into giving up their souls early. At the end of each day, they’d bring home their harvest and move on to the next block, leaving no soul behind. They simply had to release the souls from the living body, and Lucifer had given each reaper a glorious scythe for the task.
Now, the angel planted the blade of this glorious scythe on the ground and leaned on the handle. “If you had real power, like us, you wouldn’t need weapons,” he said, blowing a lock of hair off his forehead. “But you’re helpless without this. Which means you’re nothing but a puppet with a blade. Satan’s little albino bitch.”
With a scream of fury, she launched herself at him. As they tumbled to the ground, her scythe clattered to the asphalt. A conspiracy of ravens scattered from a heap of fleshless corpses, but the engorged rats, now fearless after years of running rampant, continued searching for missed bits of skin and marrow, their pink tails slithering behind them. The reaper smeared a handful of slime across the angel’s face. He rolled onto her, pinning her to the faded line that ran down the center of the street. The scythe bit into her back and she arched up, at once trying to free herself and ease the grinding ache.
Like all the beings on earth but the one who sat slumped against the wall, the reaper could not be killed. But she could feel pain. The temporary reprieve from it was the motivating factor that sent most reapers to the earth’s surface world. It was the reason that, when Lucifer had made his offer, not one reaper had balked at the thought of collecting souls from the living. And although she would never admit it to this angel, he had hit a nerve when he’d accused reapers of not collecting souls as quickly as they could have. Once all the souls had departed the earth, the reapers would have no reason to leave hell even for a moment. And although a soul could grow accustomed to pain, without a moment’s relief now and then, they all eventually went mad.
“See?” The angel smiled down at her, his perfect square-jawed face streaked with street filth. “What use is that scythe to you now, reaper? You have no power or strength of your own. I’ve mastered you in a moment.”
The reaper bared her teeth in a lewd smile and ground her hips against his. “Oh, master, what will you do with me now?”
A spasm of disgust crossed his face, and he rolled from her and onto his feet. “Watch and learn,” he said. “You think your lies can tempt a human to hell when I can offer an eternity of peace and—”
“Deathly boredom?” she asked, stifling a yawn. Her white hair spread around her like an absorbent halo, street filth seeping into it as she lay before the angel like a blackened offering. Just as angels wore white, reapers, too, had uniforms. She, however, looked like a badass dominatrix demon instead of a poor Elvis impersonator.
“Let’s see what he chooses after hearing both options,” the angel said. “Not just your sales pitch. This way, he can make an informed decision. It’s only fair.”
“I found him first, so he’s mine,” she said. “That’s fair.”
“And I overpowered you and won him back.”
“Fine, give him your boring spiel,” she said, crouching to gather her scythe before joining the angel. She swished spit between her teeth to clean out the street grime so the dying human would find her less intimidating. Already, with garters full of weapons over her leather pants, she looked enough like what she was to strike fear into the heart of most souls.
They knelt before the man. The plague that had ravaged the planet had spared no one. Those who were immune were soon killed by petty jealousies, infighting, and those wanting to use them to find antidotes. Once they no longer had access to cures for simple, preventable illnesses or appropriate care for those suffering minor injuries and accidents, the immune population soon followed the same path as the plague-ridden.
Although the last living man must have some antibodies and a superhuman immune system, he had at last succumbed to the plague. Like others, his eyes were sunken into grey sockets. Festering sores wept freely on his cheeks, leaving pathways of drying yellow crust for flies to feast upon. They buzzed lazily in the sweltering afternoon, settling in to gorge themselves once again when the reaper and the angel stilled before their host.
“I’m an angel,” th
e angel said. “I’m here to take you home to your father in heaven.”
The man’s eyes, still startlingly green and vibrant, moved back and forth between the angel and the reaper. Despite the clarity of his irises, the whites of his eyes had turned a cloudy yellow like a bad egg, and his eyelashes were stuck together by clotted green mucus. A fly crouched at the inner corner of one eye, from which a sluggish trickle of tears and mucus leaked.
“Okay,” the man said, his voice a whispery rasp.
“All you have to do is repent of your sins, and you’ll know everlasting peace.”
The man closed his eyes.
“Now you’ve gone and bored him to sleep,” the reaper said. “Can I kill him yet?”
“Shhh,” the angel said, holding up a hand. “He’s imagining heaven.”
“Bullshit,” the reaper said. “But go ahead. If you bore him to death, I still get his soul.”
“He chooses,” the angel said. “That’s the deal. His body is a vessel. Neither of us want that old thing.”
One of the man’s eyes opened fully, while the other stuck halfway shut with mucus. “Will I be sick like this forever?”
“Of course not,” the angel said. “You will be in your true form. Your pain will be over, and you will feel only contentment forever.”
“Boredom,” the reaper said. “It might sound nice now, but it’ll drive you mad. Everything they’ve told you about fire and brimstone is a lie. Come with me, and you can have everything you ever wanted. You can eat as much as you want, anything you want, and you’ll never be too full or get fat.”
The angel frowned at her. But she wasn’t exactly lying. It was true that he could eat and never be full. Some were cursed with endless, ravenous, gnawing hunger. Everyone had their own pains in hell.
“In heaven, you will want for nothing,” the angel said, touching the man’s shriveled leg. “You won’t need food, for there is no hunger.”
“Strawberries fresh from the field, still warm from the sun, swimming in cold cream,” the reaper said, lowering her voice. “Steak so tender it melts in your mouth, still sizzling in its juices. Chocolate cheesecake drizzled with raspberry sauce. Crème Brule. Sautéed shrimp floating in butter.”
“You will know fulfillment without food,” the angel said. “You will feel no hunger, no desire, no absence.”
“You can do whatever you want,” the reaper said. “Anything. Drive too fast, take whatever you want from anyone you want, run down the street naked. You know that story about the sixteen virgins? Ha. You can have a million. You can have orgies with a thousand women, or a different one every night for all eternity. Whoever you want. Whatever you want.”
“Sinfulness and depravity won’t tempt you,” the angel said. “You will no longer want these earthly temptations.”
“You can look however you want,” the reaper said. “Do anything you want. It’s complete freedom. A giant party with everything you’ve ever wanted at your fingertips, yours for the taking. An all-you-can-eat buffet.”
“Okay,” the man said. “I’ll go.”
The angel held up a hand. “Now think about—”
In one swift motion, the reaper stood and swept her scythe across the human’s neck. The end of her weapon ground along the wall behind him, a scraping sound that made her fingernails sing. His head toppled to the sidewalk with a sickening, wet sound and rolled a few feet before stopping. The angel’s mouth opened to speak, but before he said a word, she swept her scythe across the man’s soul, cutting it down for her harvest.
“You cheated,” the angel cried. “You didn’t ask if he was sure.”
“I’d already asked,” the reaper said, gathering up the bewildered, oozing soul. “Before you so rudely interrupted. I could have done that before you even showed up. I gave you a chance. That was more than fair.” With that, she threw her hood up over her filthy hair and turned to go. Rats had already swarmed to the body, and a starving dog had picked up the head. It shrank back into a shadow as she passed, leaving the angel standing beside the last human corpse that would ever water the earth with its blood.
Chapter 2
The Reaper’s Reward
The Reaper dumped the soul unceremoniously before Lucifer. “Here you go, sir,” she said. “The last living soul, harvested.”
“Is that so?” Lucifer asked, a cocky smirk teasing the corners of his full lips.
“That’s so,” she said. “And you know it.”
“What if I don’t?”
She took a deep breath. Of course he would try to trick her, try to deny her the prize he’d offered all those years ago. At the time, they’d thought all the people would be gone in a handful of years, not five decades. But a promise was a promise. As a reward to the reaper who harvested the soul of the last living human, Lucifer had promised the release of the finder’s soul.
Hell was not so different from the surface of the earth now, and reapers could not ascend to heaven even upon release from hell, but she thirsted for to regain ownership of her soul. She would still be a reaper—she couldn’t remember how to be anything else. But she would be able to move between worlds when she chose, not when Lucifer commanded. She would probably still obey, but she had the option now.
She had free will.
She was the only person in all of hell who did, she realized now. As the realization sunk in, she understood fully why he would try to trick her into giving up this unimaginable luxury. At first, she supposed she had imagined it. But as the years passed, it had become a symbolic victory, and somewhere along the way, she had become so entrenched in the hunt that she’d forgotten to consider the spoils. Otherwise, she certainly would have foreseen this last obstacle.
“Can you prove to me, my dear, that this is the last living human’s soul? How do I know it’s not just another festering tube of ooze?”
“You promised to release the reaper who harvested the last soul, sir,” she reminded him. “Didn’t you? And now I have. I’m here to collect my reward.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“You haven’t answered mine.” Ordinarily, she would not have been so bold. But now that the realization of what she would gain had settled upon her, she would battle Lucifer himself to keep it.
Instead of anger, Lucifer showed only mild amusement. “Your reward, is it?” he asked. “And what would you do with this reward? You don’t know how to use it. It could be dangerous in the wrong hands.”
“I want what I was promised,” she said. “I’ll still reap for you. Collect more souls. In fact, I might have some information you would find useful. I didn’t get this one without struggle. You might be interested to know that I fought an angel for him.”
Lucifer threw back his head and let out a bellow of laughter. “You didn’t do battle with an angel,” he said when he’d recovered. “You’d be nothing but teeth and pulp if you had.”
“Very true,” she said. “I only thought you might want to know what he said.”
Lucifer studied her. “I did send my best and brightest to collect the living.”
“Thank you. As soon as you grant my release, I’ll go. Or I can stay and work for you, if you’d rather.” In truth, she was terrified that he’d cast her out. Her only comfort was the memory of his words, tattooed upon her soul like a mantra. The freedom to come and go as you please. He could not go back on his word, because he’d been an angel.
“What did this angel say?”
“I’m not free to tell you, am I? I’m not free yet.”
“You want to be free of me? Of the master who employs you so aptly, gives you the plum assignments. And now you’ll leave, and do what? Walk the earth and pick through heaps of garbage with the rats and mongrel dogs? Find companionship among the vesselless corpses, their eyes running with rot?”
“No,” she said. “Never. I only want the option, and only because I was promised it. Nothing will change.”
“A reaper’s promise means nothing,” Lucife
r hissed, his eyes bursting with white-hot sparks.
The reaper took a step back as he leaned forward. “I’m not lying,” she said, squeezing her hands into fists, helpless to convey her sincerity and conviction.
“You might be lying right now,” he said. “You might be lying, or you might be mistaken. How do we know this is the last man? Where is your proof?”
“You didn’t say we had to deliver proof.” She supposed that Lucifer had his own torments, like everyone else, and one was his helpless fury that he was the only fallen angel, and therefore, the only soul bound by their limitations.
“I thought you were one of the smart ones,” he said, his lips curling into a sneer.
“What kind of proof do you want?” she asked. “You said last time you sent us out that only one living human remained. I found a living human, and I brought you the soul. What more proof do you want? If there was a mistake, it wasn’t mine.”
“Are you saying I made the mistake?” Lucifer thundered, standing to his full, imposing height behind his table. His eyes glowed red with malice, and his tongue flicked out like a snake’s. She could almost see the terrific being he was under his near-human exterior.
“No, of course not,” she said.
He clenched and unclenched his long, bony fingers as he spoke, more slowly this time, as if she were incapable of understanding simple reasoning. “Even if the last human is dead, how do I know that this is the soul of that body?”
“I…I don’t know,” she said. When the soul recovered his senses, he could tell Lucifer, but to a new soul, time could feel like eternity or a split second. His concept of the time that had passed would be no more helpful than that of someone upon waking from sleep. He couldn’t know.
“Did you have a witness?” Lucifer hissed.
“No, but—”
“Then how can I trust you? Do you imagine I’m that foolish, child? Now leave, and don’t come back until you’ve found a witness, or every soul on earth is harvested. Only then will I know that the soul of the last living man has indeed been harvested.”
The Last Soul: A Reaper Novella (Reapers Book 1) Page 1