The Last Soul: A Reaper Novella (Reapers Book 1)

by Lena Hillbrand

  “Are you lost?” he asked. “I can lead you home to heaven. All that is needed is genuine repentance.”

  The soul fell to her knees and clung to his legs the way the demon had clutched at the reaper. Instead of protection, though, she sought salvation. “I repent,” she cried, as if she’d been waiting a hundred years for Kinto to arrive. Perhaps she had.

  The reaper watched while the woman begged to be taken out of her misery, out of the purgatory of plague the souls on earth endured until they were harvested or released by an angel. In all her years of harvesting, she’d never seen a release. She’d seen plenty of angels, sometimes even battled for a particularly repentant soul. But she’d never seen such calm certainty settle over a face, transforming it from a hollow-eyed, disease-ridden horror to a something so serene, almost beatific.

  Kinto gathered the woman into his arms, and the adoration in her face made the reaper’s gut clench in something that wasn’t quite the disgust she expected. At last, the urge to leap from the building and rip the soul away from the angel settled over her, but the accompanying twist inside unsettled her. It wasn’t a territorial urge to cut down the soul, but rather a searing rage that made her want to fling the soul straight into hell and condemn her to the worst torture Lucifer could fathom.

  At the same time, she longed to see Kinto’s face. Did he wear the mask of concern he’d worn when he spoke to the demon, or the one of smug self-assurance he used when he spoke to the reaper? Was he gloating with triumph, basking in her desperate thankfulness? Would he take advantage of that in the way a reaper would? She knew that, in heaven, angels had no desire. But on earth, they could want for things, could hurt, the same way that she could feel things on earth that hell denied her.

  She waited, a sick hope roiling in her stomach, willing him to press the woman onto the ground and have his way with her. Instead, he cradled her in his arms like a prize he would carry to his king and present on his knees, like the soul was a glorious treasure instead of an oozing pustule of scabs and gangrene. And before the reaper could protest, before she thought to challenge him, a gentle glow began around them. Somehow, she knew she could not break his concentration now. She was too late to stop it, and she wasn’t sure she would have tried even if she could. With rapt fascination, she watched the light begin to pulse gently around Kinto and the woman. But instead of pulling down the fabled ladder to heaven, he simply walked away, leaving the street dark except for the sickly glow of the burning rubble heap.

  Half in a daze, the reaper stood and climbed out the window. Behind her eyelids, the unearthly glow still throbbed irresistibly, like it was drawing her in. She stumbled towards where it had been, filled with a hopeless yearning. Whatever promise that light held, whatever magnetic force drew her to it, was unattainable for a reaper. She belonged, and would always belong, to the underworld. And even as she fought the urge to call after Kinto, to fall to her knees and scrape at the asphalt for some remnant of the light, she knew it was a false promise.

  The beauty of it, the lure of it, was more dangerous than all the weapons in a reaper’s arsenal—perhaps even more dangerous than Lucifer’s wrath. She had to find her way back, before the yearning for the light destroyed her.

  *

  Lucifer barely glanced up from the bloody leg he was gnawing upon. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you again.”

  “I found the angel who witnessed my harvest of the last living soul,” she said.

  “I don’t see him,” Lucifer said, sliding one blackened fingernail in and out between two teeth with an obscene amount of pleasure.

  “He can’t come down,” she said. “But I’m sure you know that.”

  Lucifer fished a shred of meat from between the teeth and studied it. Then he sucked it off his finger and smiled at the reaper. “Indeed.” He bit into the bone, crunching it between his bloody teeth.

  “So I brought a demon with me,” she said, thrusting Siki’s twisting form in his direction. The demon let out a tremulous mewl as a dribble of urine escaped her.

  “How clever,” Lucifer said, wrenching at the cartilage between bones. It snapped louder than the bones.

  The reaper renewed her grip on the cuffed demon, who hung limply now, tremors wracking her tiny body. “The angel recounted the story for her,” the reaper said. “She’s here as my witness.”

  Lucifer stopped chewing and narrowed his eyes. “How did you get an angel to do your bidding?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “I simply asked. Now can I receive my reward?”

  “What was it again?” Lucifer asked, tossing the bone into a corner.

  “Freedom to come and go as I please.”

  “Don’t you have that already, as a reaper?”

  “In a way,” she admitted. “But it has limits.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “You’re worried about what will happen once all the souls are harvested.”

  “Well…yes.”

  “What if said I would treat you well, as I always have. Haven’t I?”

  She hesitated a moment. He’d done unspeakable things to all who occupied the underworld, but he’d treated them comparably well in view of some of the other souls. One glance at Siki’s helpless paralysis confirmed this. “That’s true,” the reaper conceded at last.

  “So why change things now? Do you doubt that my magnanimity will continue?”

  “I only want what I worked for,” she said. “I will continue to reap. Nothing changes.”

  “But you want a change,” he said. “That’s what you’re asking for.”

  “I won’t betray you.”

  “Silly reaper,” Lucifer said with a chuckle. “Do you really think I’d put myself in a position where you could?”

  “Of course not. You’re right.”

  Lucifer sat back on his high throne, tapping his palms together while he stared up at the ceiling. She waited, her heart trembling inside her like a cuffed demon. At last, he sat trained his eyes on her. “Alright,” he said. “You know that I never lie. So I will grant you the return of your free will. If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

  “Yes,” she said, nearly collapsing with relief. “Thank you, master.”

  “Ah, but as I can give, I can take away,” he said. “I will need your scythe and your uniform.”

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid that’s the price of freedom.”

  “But I’m a reaper,” she said, blinking with more stupidity than her limp demon. “I said I’d continue harvesting for you until the very last soul is in your grasp. I’ll serve you forever.”

  “Oh, but you were afraid that a reaper’s job was not guaranteed,” he said. “You want forever, but a reaper cannot harvest forever. So which one is it? Make up your mind, silly reaper. You’re boring me.”

  “But…what am I going to do?”

  “Nothing,” he roared. He leapt to his feet, and with one swipe, he knocked her scythe across the room. She fell to her knees, and he lifted her by the back of her uniform, and like a kitten, she cried for mercy. His talons raked through her flesh as they tore the uniform from her. Her weapons clattered across the floor, her boots fell in a corner, shreds of black leather fell around her until she was only a pale form crouched before him, naked and trembling. She drew in a trembling breath, and blackness overtook her.

  Chapter 6

  Hell

  For a time, the reaper thought she was unconscious. But then, she wouldn’t be aware of her unconsciousness. She tried to stand, unsure of her surroundings, but she seemed to be floating, and in the darkness she couldn’t tell which direction was upright. She’d never encountered such utter blackness. She reached out, but her fingers found nothing but more darkness. A cold pressure seemed to surround her. For a moment, she wondered if he’d sent her into space. Nothing hindered her movement, no obstacle or resistance met her searching hands and feet.

  Shivering, she tried to crawl, but forward motion was impossible. She couldn’t propel herself, because she
had nothing to brace herself against. “Hello?” she called. Her voice sounded as tremulous as the demon’s whining inside her head, but she couldn’t hear herself. She could feel the vibration of her voice in her throat and on her tongue, but the darkness swallowed it as it left her mouth.

  She turned wildly one way and then another, searching for something, anything to ground her. Without it, she strained against nothingness. Her legs began to churn, her arms stretching wide to grasp for contact. “Hello?” she called again, louder this time, although no one could hear her. Even if she’d found someone in the darkness, they could not have heard her voice, which didn’t leave her mouth. The word seemed to lose meaning as she screamed it over and over. Without thought, her hand searched for the demon at her belt. Even its reptilian skin would have been something for her fingers to encounter, and perhaps it, too, would have felt the vibrations of her voice. But neither the demon nor the belt remained.

  She continued calling out to no one, running nowhere, panic descending on her with the same blackness that already surrounded her. The words coming from her mouth were swallowed by the unrelenting darkness. Finally, she could scream no more. Only a raw burning remained where her voice had once been. Holding fast to the heat in the coldness of her surroundings, she curled herself into a ball, running her fingers along her own skin as if that could save her, and fell still at last.

  For days, weeks, maybe years, she writhed in the agony of emptiness. She panicked, screamed herself hoarse, ran and fought until she fell into a paralysis of exhaustion, though she was never granted the escape of sleep. She wished for the pain of the others she’d seen, not only the souls burning, but those strung upside down, their eyes dripping blood; the vomiting teenagers and the starving souls that gorged all day; those standing on the platform waiting for the train out of hell that would never arrive. She longed for any of it—for the brutal assaults of her fellow reapers, for the agony of thirst of the mouthless souls swimming through a pristine lake, the stunning impact of an angel sending her head crashing into a brick wall. Anything but the unyielding indifference surrounding her, the black vortex she hurtled through, motionless, for eternity.

  One day, as she tore at her ragged hair, ripping clumps from her head to feel something between her fingers, she remembered the words of her captor. She could come and go as she pleased.

  But how?

  If she could not find the exit, she could not go. She could only claw at her flesh to feel someone touching her, to feel her fingers touching something. She held the clump of hair she’d ripped out, not daring to let it go, not knowing if she’d find it again or if it would disappear, too. She stroked it and thought of his words.

  She could come and go as she pleased. She could come and go as she pleased.

  She could come and go as she pleased.

  *

  In a fit of mindless churning, the ravaged soul slammed against the ground. A wall of blindness crashed against its eyes with such brute force that it slapped its hands over them, trying to block the light that even with hands covering eyes, stunned it senseless. The soul scrambled to its feet, staggered, and fell. The earth beneath its body seared into it like a thousand knifes, like sandpaper grating away its skin. It screamed, tore its hands from its eyes and clutched at its ears instead. The rush of blood, of its own scream, of the wind and the wings of birds roared with deafening force.

  For some time, the soul churned on the ground, overwhelmed by all of it after the long existence in the vacuum. At long last, it grew still to avoid the pain. It lay whimpering and shaking, arms wrapped around its head. For some time, the soul did not move. Then it heard a scraping sound, and looked up to find a fat crow watching it. The bird cocked its head to one side, its beak opening and closing slowly.

  “Hello?” the soul whispered.

  The crow let out an ugly sound and took flight, soaring low along the street and settling on a heap of trash at the corner. The soul did not move again until a large rat with patchy fur nibbled its foot. It screamed with fury and pain, leapt to its feet and stomped the rat in a swift, practiced motion. When the muscle memory receded, the soul collapsed, shaken by the seemingly instinctual kill. While it chewed at the rat’s carcass, it tried to remember…

  Something familiar seemed to tug at its mind, but it could not quite remember.

  When it screamed, it had upset five or six crows. Now, they settled back on their trash heap. But the soul stopped chewing to listen to the new sound that had replaced the crows’ raucous protests. A sound, so familiar…

  The soul froze, blood and fur stuck to its chin, when someone stepped into the street. An upright thing like the soul, but clothed entirely in black, with a hood and a staff with a curved blade at the end. With each step towards the soul, the band of instruments on the woman’s thigh flashed and gleamed. The soul had never seen anything so beautiful—and so familiar. This was right, this was safe, this was something it knew. Something it had known, something it wanted.

  “Hello?” the soul called in its tremulous whisper.

  The woman strode along the street and stopped before the soul.

  Reaper.

  The soul knew the word, somehow. A word somehow both soft and strong. Longing filled the soul.

  “You’re a prize peach, aren’t you?” the reaper said. “White as a ghost, and yet rotten to the core. How are you not in hell already?” With that, the cloaked figure swung the scythe—the word flashed in the soul’s mind as the blade descended—and the soul was back in a familiar, black nothingness. Relief washed over it. The soothing cold froze it in place, made its limbs heavy and relaxed. It floated, not moving, until one day, the familiar edges of panic crept into its mind.

  “Hello?” The word formed strangely on its tongue. Something seemed to be missing from it, but the soul couldn’t remember exactly what. So it said the word again. And again. Louder. Softer. It reached for—

  Its feet churned. It knew it was searching for something, but it could not remember what. Its body flailed in the emptiness, calling, until its fingers touched something soft. It closed its hand. Silky strands slid between its fingers and out again. It screamed, searching for them again, and found them. It closed its fingers tighter this time, yanked, and a bolt of pain jarred its head clear for a second.

  I can come and go as I please. I have to get out of here. There is a way. Lucifer promised.

  But she couldn’t remember who Lucifer was. Or who I was.

  Chapter 7

  The Harvest

  This time, when the soul found itself tumbling against the grating earth, it retained little memory. Again, it writhed in pain at the sensation of the being touched. It screamed in agony at the light, then whimpered softly because the noise of its screams was too loud. Again, it lay for some time, until it grew accustomed to such things. After quite some time, it sat and cautiously peered around. All around it, an acrid smell of heat pulsed from the warm pavement. Bits of ash drifted down, and in the distance, a faint glow lit the sky behind the buildings.

  The soul crouched and raced across the street, fear pounding in its chest and ears. It stood listening to the swelling roar of wind, the rustle of something blowing by on the street. It flattened itself against a building, listening for something…it wasn’t sure what. It only knew it must stay alert. It crept along one street after another, until it found a staircase. This, it climbed until it stood at a railing. Smoky wind whipped its hair and it shivered and looked down at the lock of white hair it held clutched in its hand. It closed its fingers and held its fist to its heart.

  In the distance, something blazed. The soul broke a window and climbed into the building. It found more stairs inside, and it ascended one flight after another, until it stood at a window on the top floor of the office building. Below, across the city, it could see the fire glimmering. It walked around the large floor, peering down from each large window. At last, it curled up on a couch and slept.

  The soul was awakened by a white fire
burning into its eyes. It cried out and hid its face. But after some time, the fire went away. Again, it came back the next day, and the soul remembered this as something familiar from another life. And so it began to grow accustomed to the bright insanity of daytime, though it preferred the muted light of night. Sometimes, it descended to eat, or walk the city and speak to the rats, dogs, birds, and cats.

  One night, it spotted two black cloaked figures and it froze, paralyzed with the certainty that they would hurt it. The soul slipped into a rubbish bin and crouched, waiting. Some strange familiarity made it twitch when it inhaled the stale, greasy smell that mingled with that of rusty metal inside the space. It heard voices, and though it knew the words, they sounded foreign.

  “Lucifer is going to call us back soon,” a man’s voice said. “I don’t know how much longer we can put it off.”

  “I know,” a deep woman’s voice responded. “I don’t know what we’ll do then. Who knows what he’s got in store for us.”

  “And he knows almost all the souls are gone…”

  The woman sighed as they passed the bin. The soul shivered violently, holding back the urge to whimper aloud. “Eventually we got to get the last one,” the woman said as they moved further down the street.

  The soul huddled in the bin all night, turning over the words. Understanding did not come, but it knew they spoke of someone it should know. That they were something dangerous, to be feared and avoided. But the rest was a mystery. What this Lucifer could want with these things called souls, why they were gone…what they were.

  The soul floated through many days and nights, conversing with animals, until one night, it turned a corner and came face to face with another upright being. This one wore white instead of black, and it was much closer than the black figures it had spotted well ahead of time. And it was running straight for the soul.