The Reaper's Sacrifice

by Abigail Baker

  After what I had seen in my life, from Brent’s ghoulish prowess to facing down the Head of Death live on Stygian broadcasting, by all rights I should be fearless. But there was one bit of advice Brent had once shared: Experience in battle is not always for the best—we know what we will face. True to those words, I didn’t like knowing the details of my world, what could be lurking, what probably was lurking, and what likely wanted to do me harm for any number of reasons.

  I was no longer the bold Scrivener who had raced headlong into combat, or the dark woods or the back of my closest without a care for what I might find.

  I sat down and draped the twelve-gauge shotgun I named Miss Piggy, a trusty Mossberg loaded with buckshot, across my lap, polishing the steel barrel like a good backwoods resident.

  With Dudley at my side on our porch and a cooler full of Moose Jaw beer, I held vigil for Papa’s return until the sun started to fall behind the rise of the mountains.

  Chapter Three

  “One-hundred Eidolons exist across the globe. Roughly a handful of Master Scriveners are alive today. #bringbackourscriveners”

  —HermesHarbinger.com

  Lulled to sleep by the buzz of frogs and crickets, Dudley was sprawled in front of the space heater I had set out for him on the porch. His peaceful rest made me wish I could snooze so effortlessly, too.

  Papa had called an hour earlier to tell me there were a few “things” to wrap up with the shop, code that the Watchmen had come by to randomly interrogate us, like they had always done. That particular part of my post-revolution world had become par for the course. Everyone in my circle got randomly questioned on a regular basis, no matter his or her history or background. So it was no surprise that Papa ran into the Watchmen back at my shop.

  Another possible reason for their presence came to me. My Deathmark was on someone I hadn’t tattooed, which meant that I would not get credit for the marking. Without credit, it’ll look like I failed to do my job, and because of my background as a rebel, I wouldn’t put it past Marin to consider that a high-level offense. Would I be called back to Québec for a trial? Were spies looking to frame me—or, as I’d said earlier, push me into resuming my rebel ways? Or was I uneasy for nothing?

  Shivering from the autumn chill, I pulled the zipper of my black leather coat up to my chin. Miss Piggy sat lifeless in my lap. I began another round of surveillance.

  First, check on Dudley. He was asleep, his hind legs quivering from the cold. I cranked up the space heater. That would warm him through and through.

  Second, survey the yard. To the left, my orange motorbike leaned against a tree, the matching helmet hanging from the handlebars. Circling us, skyscraping pine trees swayed, creaking and grinding in the easterly breeze. And high above were traces of black firmament cutting through the millions of souls on their last earthly journey toward Québec and then the Afterlife—each one loved by someone, each one with a beating heart not so long ago. Since I lived in rural Montana, where there weren’t nearly as many souls to ferry as in the city, I occasionally got to see the stars, the moon, even Venus and Jupiter. Sometimes during the daytime I spotted puffy cumulus clouds and, like a child, I could make out animals and other objects in their shapes.

  I didn’t share my discoveries with Papa, though. He never looked up anymore.

  Yawning, I checked my phone. It was rounding midnight. I slept more than I was awake nowadays, which for Dudley, the lazy mutt, was the perfect arrangement. But my sleep habits weren’t healthy ones. And at the moment, I was beginning to feel the heft of exhaustion tugging on my eyelids. I could not fight it, even with coffee and other anti-sleep aids as my weapons. It would come, and it would drag me headfirst through a twelve-hour nightmare.

  Painful as it was, the nightmares were my only means of connecting with Brent. Wherever I happened to land in my dreams, a tall, dark shape followed my every move. The presence stood over my bed as I slept, and followed me when I attempted to escape it. I couldn’t get away from the massive darkness, yet I wanted to draw it closer because, somehow, my heart knew it was Brent.

  I started to drift off, and then I felt him watching me.

  Ollie, he said in that old world Kentucky drawl. Ollie, hear me?

  “Brent?” Within this dream, I sat rail straight in the plastic lawn chair as crickets chirped nearby. He’d never been able to speak directly to me in the dreams before. My eyes welled with tears on hearing him again. But the dark presence I had come to know as Brent was nowhere. He had never failed to show himself in my dreams since we’d parted. And I was still asleep, right? From one side of the yard to the other, I searched. Nothing. “Brent, where are you?”

  Ollie… His voice was closer, but he wasn’t there. I miss you. His voice broke.

  My eyes watered. Immediately tears poured rivers down my cheeks. It didn’t take much to make me cry these days. But this…his voice, the anguish in just three little words, was enough to crack me wide open. “I miss you, too. Where are you? Are you here? In Montana?” Please, please, be here, Brent.

  He grew silent, but was near. I waited for the entire world to grow still in anticipation of his reply.

  What do you miss most? he asked.

  Somehow I laughed at the question, which felt too common and boring for this method of interaction. I rubbed my eyes in the vain hope he’d appear before me as the Kentuckian backwoods lumberjack that I loved. “I miss the way you feel against me. I haven’t forgotten.”

  How could I forget? Electricity had buzzed between us. Little sparks jumped from my body to his when we were close. That was not a feeling that could ever be forgotten. And it was one of the rare things that kept me going. I had to believe I would feel this again one day, and I would lose myself in it for eternity.

  “What do you miss about me?” I asked.

  If I listed everything, then you’d laugh at me. If I told you I missed everything, darlin’, right down to those freckles on your cheeks, would that be enough? Too much? Invisible fingers, icy, as death should be, fluttered across my forehead. There was nothing there for me to see. Brent was so close but still millions of light years away.

  I’m trying to bring change, he said, moving from anguish to business. But it’s not happening fast enough. I’ll need your help soon. Are you ready?

  “Just tell me what you need.”

  Soon. His presence, usually dark and ominous, grew faint. He didn’t feel as powerful as he once had, and that terrified me. Nonetheless, I’d rather have him near, even if for only this moment. I wanted to grab ahold of him, dig my fingers into the flesh around his wrists, and pull him straight through the dream wall between us. I wanted to but…I couldn’t.

  “Will I ever get to see you again?” I had to know the answer, and I held onto the question and my hope like a vise, like I was holding onto him alone.

  You’re being set up. Don’t trust them…

  “Brent, what do you—”

  Don’t trust them, Ollie.

  “Who?!”

  Coldness trickled like rainwater down my shoulders and spine.

  They’re coming for you. They’re here.

  “Brent?”

  The dark landscape was still. Dudley lifted his head and blinked at me.

  “Scrivener!” screeched a voice that was not Brent’s. It wrenched me from the dream I longed to hold onto for eternity.

  Startled, and quick to lose my balance in the plastic chair, I was positive the voice wasn’t in my head this time, that this time I was very much awake. I recovered my balance just in time to see Dudley’s head turn in the direction of my motorbike, confirming that he heard this new voice, too.

  “Stay, Duds,” I commanded, even though he rose to stand with me, prepared to follow like a loyal friend. He gave a whine of protest but didn’t budge.

  I picked up Miss Piggy and guardedly stepped into the yard, shotgun stock pressed into one shoulder.

  “Ollie!”

  My name was as crisp as the snapping of brush
wood under my boots.

  “Over here!”

  I cocked the shotgun. Now the voice sounded like it could have been Brent’s. But the body it originated from was not. Surely not. We were forbidden to see each other. I wasn’t one to follow rules, least of all Marin’s, but this rule I held to because it meant life and death and an eternity in Erebus—what we called hell. Marin had Brent on a tight leash—part of their bargain to keep me safe—and if he found out we’d been in contact, he’d kill both of us. And I’d no longer test fate with such precious gifts.

  “Over here,” the voice howled from behind the tree bracing my bike upright. This time it sounded raspy, familiar again.

  “Leo?” I stretched my neck to get a better look at a human standing between two pines. The size and width was male. Leo’s size even. But why would he taunt me? He was a woodsman, not a jokester.

  In hellish surround sound came laughter, not of one person but several, more than I wanted to know. My heart slid into my stomach.

  I dug in my jeans pocket, retrieved my cell phone, and hit “call Papa.” After one ring, I stowed the phone. Papa would know that ring was my appeal for help. At least, I hoped he remembered our agreed-upon signal.

  “Leo, please, don’t mess with me,” I said. “I’ll shoot if I have to.”

  “Leo is your neighbor, yes?” The man, who now sounded like a stranger, was closer. He had moved around the trees, another ten feet toward me, but I didn’t see him do it, even though my eyes never left his shadow.

  “Who are you?” Adjusting to the moon’s glow through gaps in the souls, I scanned the surrounding woods for the others I’d heard. But everything was still, save for the hum of crickets and the arrhythmic croak of a toad. The laughter had died. The hairs on the back of my neck told me that several people lingered nearby though.

  “Is Leo your neighbor?” he asked again.

  “Is he okay?”

  “He says hello, Scrivener.” A round object trundled from the shadows, bobbling over pine needles and twigs until it came to a stop.

  At my feet was Leo’s head, frozen in a grisly death howl.

  I leaped backward, aimed the gun, and fired at the man, because my natural reaction was to fight back with ballistics, not to scream or shudder in terror. The shot struck a pine tree, splintering bark. I missed my opponent by mere inches.

  I intended to fire more rounds, but a sudden, icy fear stilled my body. With unnerving confidence, the man stepped out from behind a tree and stretched his arms and legs until they reached abnormal length. Once they were long enough to prove he was either far from human, or he had an ability to trick my mind, his elbows and knees bent. I had never seen anything like it, not in real life and not in those horrid nightmares I had shared with Brent.

  While I was transfixed by what I was witnessing, my brain tried to make sense of it, to rationalize it.

  When the creature dropped to the ground face-first and scurried toward me with the same agility and speed of a wolf spider, I snapped out of it and fired again. He zigzagged around every gunshot and disappeared inside a cluster of pines a few feet away.

  Peppered with several kinds of emotions—fear, anger, guilt, and a deep desire for vengeance—I dared to glance at Leo’s head. The poor man—the poor soul.

  “Dudley, inside.” I started toward the cabin. Papa would be back soon. He’d know my phone call was the telltale cry of danger.

  Steps from the door, I heard rustling from my left. I halted and whirled toward my yard, my back to the cabin, with the gun aimed. That dreadful scurrying thing traveled from right to left so fast, I could only see movement and little else. I tracked it with Miss Piggy, nearly full circle, until I spotted a blackish figure standing in my cabin’s doorway. I blinked once. The shape vanished.

  Dudley was the only living creature standing there now. His tail tucked and ears back, he waited as I struggled to clear the last feet to the cabin, while laughter and chatter evolved into many voices spanning from one side of my yard to the other. The noise of snapping twigs dotted the eerie soundtrack.

  With the gun aimed from my hip, I backed slowly toward the door of my home as countless unseen eyes bore down on Dudley and me. My knees threatened to buckle. Instinct urged me to hide. I wanted to beg for the nightmare to end. But as Papa had taught me, I steeled myself instead, halted my retreat, and reestablished my hold on the gun.

  “Whoever you are, I’m going to fuck you up six ways from Sunday for killing Leo!” My words echoed, repeating the quaver in my declaration.

  Rushed footsteps too heavy to be Dudley’s and too light to be human surrounded me. A sharp blow to the back of my head sent me pitching forward. Miss Piggy dropped to the ground, and I collapsed next to the gun. Eyes watering, I rolled onto my back, desperate to see who or what struck me.

  Four people stood above me, backlit by the moon. I couldn’t see their faces, but three of them were male and the other was a petite blonde. Their eyes would’ve glowed yellow if they were Reapers and red if they were Eidolons, but they did neither. So what were they?

  One male knelt at my side. My gasps quickened when his hand touched my brow. The moon glow revealed only half of his face, but I knew he and his comrades weren’t human or Reapers, and that he was the spearhead of the assault, the one who displayed his surreal yoga stretches a moment ago.

  “W-who are you? Did you put that Deathmark on David?” I regained minimal feeling in my body, but it wasn’t anything of consequence—I flopped from one hip to the other. To my utter astonishment, I spotted a black monster in the woods nearby. I had seen it before, two years before. Eidolons looked like they were concealed beneath armor made up of our worst nightmares. I blinked to force the hallucination away because there was no chance that he was here to save me just when I needed him, was there? Brent was light-years away in both in spirit and body.

  Yet there were those inhuman eyes, a cutting ruby red against the darkness. He was a shadow made of muscle and bone. Death in the flesh, which only Stygians like me had the unfortunate privilege of seeing. There was only one Eidolon in the world who would come to my aid.

  A second was what it took for him to clear fifty feet. Spectral fingers coiled around one of the aggressor’s throats, and the other seized his waist. He was like a child pulling the legs off of a bug—there was no exertion, or concern over the extermination of a life. The shredding of flesh and cracks of bone punctuated inhuman screams. Blood fanned out, a crimson waterfall. Two of the males were down.

  This display of raw power should’ve been enough to drive the others back into the woods, but the girl, her long blonde hair flapping in the breeze, turned her attention on me. She lunged, claws spread, and landed on top of me, knocking what little air I had from my lungs. Nails tore at my skin. The night sky, the trees, and the bloody fight whirled around me.

  From over her shoulder, I watched a hand clamp around the last remaining male’s neck. He yelled for help. The girl reared back. The light of my cabin gave me a glimpse of her face. She was young, pretty even, while scowling. But she fell into shadow when Brent stepped alongside us, clutching the man by a hand around his neck. The man’s feet dangled inches above ground.

  “Wanna play, doncha?” my defender growled, speaking as Death itself.

  “Run,” the man urged the girl.

  My red hands pulsed with molten danger, jogging my memory of my Master Scrivener abilities. I hadn’t enough feeling in my hands to notice before.

  “Go!” the man shouted.

  But the blonde stared, captivated by me. Like a victim of a beautifully deadly animal or plant, she wanted to watch my macabre lightshow, and she would’ve allowed a strike if I took one. Determined not to kill her, but to subdue her physically, I grabbed a hunk of her hair before she had a chance to run. Blond fibers blackened in my grip. A fetid tang burned my throat.

  This was all she needed to return to reality, and she promptly yanked herself free, half of her tresses burned off, and darted into the sha
dow of the woods. I didn’t have the strength to chase her. I fell back to the ground, sinking into the pooled blood around my head as I looked at my champion. Brent’s lower jaw unhinged as a python’s would, and the din of ancient screams pulsated against the mountainside.

  I threw my hands over my ears, squeezed my eyes shut. Brent’s move was the precursor to the Eidolon’s method of crossing over vile souls—he’d inhale, and his breath would rend a spirit, ripping it from its body one molecule at a time. There was no need to see or hear the rest.

  After seconds, the forest quieted. Trees rustled serenely. An owl hooted from some distant corner, witness to the butchery. I tried not to sound troubled as I gasped for air. Hades knew I didn’t need Brent to mistake me for the enemy.

  Brent? Is he actually here?

  A finger tapped my shoulder. I jumped, wrought with anxiety and disbelief and a shitload of head pain. I kept my eyes closed. I had to compose myself, to set aside emotions that were two years overripe. And I had to accept the headache that raged from the back of my skull to the front.

  “You okay?” the Eidolon said in a baritone that sounded so mundane compared to that of his beastly alter ego. And it lacked something else—that Kentucky drawl.

  “Brent? Is it you?”

  “Ha! Never was, Scrivie. Never want to be, for that matter.”

  Scrivie? What the…? I peeked around my arm. “Fuck me sideways!”

  “Are you sure? I can if that sweetens you up.”

  Chadwick the Eidolon—wouldn’t. Ever. Beyond ever.

  “You’re naked,” I scoffed, careful to keep my gaze on his sunken gray eyes and that despicable smirk. The knot on the back of my head was still sending out excruciating signals, leaving me hopeful that maybe I was hallucinating, and Chad was actually Brent.

  Drenched in blood, Chad gave his body a proud once-over. I’d never forget his face—hard brow, soft cheeks, gray eyes, and a cockiness all its own.

  He was holding a severed hand that was still writhing.

  “God-motherfucking-dammit!” I roared, ignoring how much screaming hurt, and I struggled to sit upright, let alone stand. “Why are you here? Put some damn clothes on.”