The Reaper's Sacrifice

by Abigail Baker

  “I certainly don’t want to get my clothes messy when hunting Trivials.” He ran a hand through his shaggy, dishwater blond curls. “I like the cool breeze on my goods.”

  “I hate you.” And I did, with as much intensity as I loved Brent.

  He wrenched me to my feet, nearly dislocating my shoulder. “Ah, cherie, tsk, tsk. Those who hate others hate themselves.”

  “No. I’m pretty sure I just hate you.” Though my knees were gelatin and my balance unreliable, I summoned the strength to stand. I wasn’t weak because Chad’s manhood was out in its glory, or I was curious as to its size and function (because I wasn’t). Believing I saw Brent for the first time in years had brought a happy spark to my emptiness. But instead, I was standing before his lesser peer, the demoted Right Hand of Head Reaper Marin. Chad was a wretched example of an Eidolon, and I despised him for the hell he’d put my family and me through. While I couldn’t remember what had gone on in Lethe, according to the Stygian live broadcast that Papa had recorded and shared with me months afterward, I’d learned that it had been Chad who sent Mama to the afterlife on Marin’s orders, to punish Brent, Papa, and me for our rebellion.

  But what Papa did not notice in that recording was something I’d caught in that moment after Mama’s death—an actual emotion in Chad’s eyes, something like regret. Perhaps it was a trick of the camera. Then again, maybe he did have feelings. No matter. It wasn’t enough to make me to want to buddy up to him before, or now.

  If Papa saw Chad now, if he simply picked up on his scent, Chad would go down in a blaze of my father’s broken-hearted fury. At least, Papa would try to bring him down, but, trouble was, he likely couldn’t stand up to an Eidolon, even one as pathetic as Chad.

  Grimacing and trying hard not to mistakenly glimpse at Chad’s undercarriage, I howled, “How can you stand to be naked while holding that?”

  He held up his trophy, inspecting it. The fingers wriggled. Blood streamed from the wrist bones and torn flesh. It was the world’s most realistic Halloween prop in the hand of the world’s most insufferable Grim Reaper.

  “How does a human die from your Deathmark if you didn’t put it there, hm?” he asked. “That’s quite a skill. Did you do it telepathically? Or did someone do it for you?”

  I hadn’t considered that possibility. Fugue state, yes. Sleepwalking. But putting a Deathmark on a human with my mind? Bah!

  “I don’t see a scythe pin,” I said, to put off the subject until I had time to let it germinate. “Are you a lowly Watchman now, here to arrest me?”

  “Nope, and I’m not one of those spies all the rebels are yapping about. Damn conspiracy theorists.” He smiled with the kind of pride that begged a hard fist to put it out of its misery. The severed hand soared over his shoulder from a careless toss. “That’ll stop moving eventually. Trivials, those rats, don’t kick the bucket as cleanly as other Stygians.”

  “Trivials.” I set aside my desire to see Chad limbless and bleeding for what he had done to Mama. I’d ignore the fact that he also had just saved me. “They’re Stygian?”

  His laugh ricocheted, and even that deserved a sucker punch. “Unfortunately.”

  I looked at the pile of body parts he had left behind. Some pieces still wriggled with life. A dislodged eyeball rocked back and forth, like an olive whirling around a salad bowl. I had officially walked into my own horror film, rife with the latest and greatest special effects.

  “How come I’ve never heard of Trivials?” I said, more to myself than Chad.

  “Most Stygians don’t know anything about ’em. We don’t talk about them, like humans don’t talk about their mentally ill family members.”

  I grimaced. “How do you become more of an asshole the more I talk to you?”

  He shrugged. “I am what I am, Scrivie. Trivials are soulless Reapers. Zombie Reapers, if that makes more sense to your politically correct half brain. They’re everything Marin hates. A waste of space.” He pointed at my head and sniffed. “You’re bleeding. Want me to lick it clean?”

  “Eat shit.” I put my fingers to my scalp, feeling the cut and the wetness of blood. “And keep talking.”

  He cocked an eyebrow but, oddly, did the latter. “They are regular Reapers who are born without souls, like sociopaths. So without souls, they are just bodies that can be manipulated. They feel little to no pain. They don’t do anything to further Stygian society. They degrade it.”

  I knitted my brow. “So they’re like animated dolls?”

  “Grotesque ones.”

  “Is that why they move like they do?”

  “They were trying to scare you. They don’t give a damn about you, Scrivie. It’s a game to them.” He sighed. “They don’t die like normal Stygians. They have to be torn apart, and even then…no guarantee. Marin has had us Eidolons rounding them up for the past two years. Not so trivial when they’re always one step ahead of us, though.”

  As much as I disliked deferring to Chad’s knowledge, I had to know details, because “rounding up” didn’t translate to a peaceful activity. “Rounding up” was reminiscent of the Scrivener Purge years ago, when they “rounded up” all of the Master Scriveners, including my biological parents, and sent them into Erebus, a.k.a. Stygian hell.

  “They’re going around picking off weak Stygians just because it’s entertainment to them. Like playing video games.” He gave me a once-over with his gray eyes. “They’re fond of those who have half of their souls like you. The crème de la crème.”

  My heart rocketed into my throat. It was a figurative horse pill to swallow that I was weaker than I used to be, before I lost part of my soul to Brent. The horse pill doubled in size seeing that Chad knew about my vulnerability and was, in some fucked-up sense, my protector because of it. Likely Marin had sent him to watch over me. As long as I was alive, I was leverage Marin could use to control Brent.

  I waited for him to share more information, because replying to his comment would show concern. He stared and, agonizingly, something in me knew he was picturing me naked. I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Brenty-boy has been helping in the roundup, you know,” he added.

  “He has? Why?”

  “Marin made him an offer. Help round up the Trivials, do away with them, and he’ll shorten his atonement. The fewer of them there are, the more Marin can focus his administration on other important things.”

  I gave the pile of horror movie special effects a glance. An eyeball still rolled from side-to-side. Soulless Stygians. Interesting. And Brent was hunting them alongside Chad to reduce his penance. If what Chad said was true, then I was one degree of separation from Brent. Chad was the link. Lucky me.

  Then again, he’d stopped the Trivials from doing whatever they were going to do to me, which sounded like it would have been awful. But Marin rounding up Trivials felt wrong, even if they were…soulless. Even with their recent attack on me, I couldn’t simply accept Marin’s genocidal assault against them, when he’d done the same to my people, the Master Scriveners, because of a rumor that only a Master Scrivener and an Eidolon together could kill him. So several years ago, he’d gotten rid of the least useful race to him, since regular Scriveners could still impart Deathmarks. Marin had kept me alive, even though I was a Master, because it gave him a way to control Brent.

  Was this how genocide begins? Fear of the unknown, the unfamiliar?

  I gave Chad a stern look, not embarrassed to eyeball whatever came into view. Because, truth was, he was in my corner of the world. I didn’t give a mole’s ass if he thought my raised eyebrow was some sort of interest—he would learn his place, and that only for tonight was he my protector. Tomorrow, I’d find a way to protect myself. This Master Scrivener didn’t need a helping hand for the long term.

  “Did you even bring clothes? Because your little one-eyed Willie is winking at me,” I said.

  Chad shot me a look before he fetched his clothes from behind a tree, mumbling, “You could’ve thanked me for my trouble.
All you had to do. But that’s how Scriveners are. Selfish, ungrateful folk.”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket, saving Chad from my mounting, and oftentimes out-of-control, rage. I retrieved the phone just as Dudley trotted out of the cabin and sat down in the doorway.

  “Papa,” I answered.

  “You safe?”

  I glanced at Chad when he bent over to pull on his boxers, hairy asshole illuminated in the pale autumn moonlight. “Ugh…yeah. But don’t bother coming over now. I’ll meet you––”

  “Put Chadwick on.”

  I stiffened. “How…how do you know Chad is here?”

  “He came by your shop. I sent him over to check on you. He do good?”

  “You sent him?” Had I awoken in some demented version of Oz? Chad had ferried Mama to the Afterlife. Why would Papa even speak to him, much less trust him with my well-being?

  “Had no other choice, Ollie. So he watched out for you?”

  “Uh…” I ran my fingers across the gash on the back of my head. Papa’s trust in Chad was something to question later. “Yeah, he chased off the threat,” I said, avoiding use of the word Trivials for now.

  “Good.”

  “But why would you even talk to him, after what he did to Mama?” I asked.

  Papa paused. “Let’s just say a messenger I’d trust with my baby girl’s life and my own told me I could. And I didn’t have any other options. Now put the scumbag on.”

  Brent. Brent was the only messenger Papa would have trusted when it came to me. While he was forbidden contact with me, apparently he could sneak a message to my father.

  I gladly handed the phone to my partially nude, death-dealing protector who was strutting toward me with his suit jacket and shoes bunched in his hands. “Stone wants a word.”

  Chad put the phone to his ear. “How are you on this fine evening, Reaper Balanchine?”

  “Shut the hell up, boy!” Anyone in a ten-mile radius undoubtedly heard my father through the phone.

  “Don’t have to be so rude after I saved your little girl,” Chad added and, strangely, Papa’s voice quieted. I couldn’t make out a word of what Papa was saying, but after several long seconds, Chad’s smug face went neutral. He said nothing, not even a “yes” or “no” before he tossed the phone back to me.

  “Papa?” I said into the phone, but got no response.

  Chad pulled his white Oxford shirt over his shoulders.

  “What did he say?” I asked him.

  “Trivials were at your shop, too.” He kicked on his wingtip shoes.

  “Tell me what they did.” I grabbed his forearm. The muscles in it flexed beneath my grip before he jerked away. I glanced at my scarlet hands and then at his strained face. Oops.

  He climbed inside his suit jacket too fast for me to inspect the burn, but the sweetness of singed flesh told me I had gotten in a good scalding. My ego did a victory dance to see him fight not to reveal how badly it stung. That was for Mama and Eve. There was plenty more if he required it.

  “Need to be at your shop ten minutes ago,” he sounded un-Chad-like. “Have a car?”

  I glanced at my motorbike. “How do you feel riding bitch?”

  Chapter Four

  “We have atoned for the sins of our Leaders. Who will come forth? Who will rise from these ashes?”

  —HermesHarbinger.com

  The 350cc motorcycle wasn’t designed to carry Dudley, a six-foot Eidolon, and me, but it held its own as it putted down the shadowy country dirt road toward Kalispell. One would think a Grim Reaper would regard such a mundane journey sans fear. Chad gripped my waist, a terrified child holding onto his mother. Jabs of my elbows into his ribs didn’t put any space between us. It was easy to assume that he was getting fresh, feigning anxiety to cop a feel, but the nail marks cut into my sides told a different story. Chadwick the Eidolon was scared of two wheels, pavement, and thirty-five miles an hour.

  Dudley, however, was content. His head poked out from the tank bag I had customized to hold the thirty-pound dog. He never fussed when I saddled him into it for a jaunt into town. The wind in his massive, floppy ears was surely heavenly.

  Illumination from the strip mall parking lot cut through a patch of swaying trees. Deathmark Body Art was sandwiched between a Subway and the Suds and Soap Dry Cleaners. The lights inside my studio were dim.

  I rolled on the throttle as we turned into the parking lot. Chad bailed before we came to a complete stop. The bike’s back end groaned in relief. I dropped the kickstand and lifted Dudley from his saddle.

  Chad hurled the shop’s door open as Dudley and I followed. I drew in the smell of iron. Blood was an all too familiar scent to a tattooist, but not in such extreme quantities. My legs gave out. The floor tiles felt like jagged granite under my knees. Chad had me on my feet before I could take in more of the chilling scene.

  “Get out of here.” He shoved me backward through the shop door.

  I stumbled, in too much shock to fight him.

  Chad’s eyes were a disturbing Eidolon red. “Go to your bike. I’ll be out in a moment, I will.”

  And that was it. With Dudley at my shins, I was outside again, breathing the evening mountain air. The shop door slammed in my face, and the dim light inside snuffed out. Chad had shut off the lights for a reason—so I wouldn’t see more of the blood splattered over the white walls or so he could better see me and revel in my dismay at facing another scene like the one I had witnessed back in Salon de Tatouage in Québec.

  His reason didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if I could forget the unnerving tableau, or a day would go by that I didn’t replay the visual gore every time I stepped into my Kalispell tattoo studio, visions of blood smeared across the walls flooding my mind, along with my former boss Gerard’s last look of horror before he died.

  Was the blood in Deathmark Body Art Leo’s? Or worse…Papa’s?

  Drunk from mind-blurring shock, I staggered to my bike, Dudley brushing my left leg as if to escort me. Though my lungs screamed for it, air refused to ease through my constricted throat. Dizziness intensified, a relentless whirling dervish lodged between my ears. I hurled myself against the bike and heaved over its side. Nothing came up except for hot tears and a ribbon of spit. I coughed. And I tried again to give my stomach—and soul—release. But nothing. I ran a sleeve across my lips.

  The bell over the tattoo shop’s door chimed. Chad’s eyes were brimful of rage, but draped over his shoulder, dragging his feet over pavement, was Papa. I’d assumed he couldn’t care less about others, but Chad, who was nearly carrying Papa, made straight for me.

  Papa’s hands cupped my cheeks and directed my gaze to meet his. “You okay?” he asked, struggling to stand.

  Relieved, I pulled him into an embrace. “What happened?” I whispered.

  “Trivials attacked Stone after that phone call,” Chad said, giving my shop a sidelong glance. Whatever was inside, whatever reason for the disdainful glance, I had to know.

  As Papa leaned against my bike for support, he handed me an envelope sealed in red wax, the standard epistle of the Head of Death.

  “I found this,” Papa wheezed.

  “Is it from the Trivials?” Chad asked.

  “No, it was here before they ambushed me.”

  I ripped open the envelope, careful to avoid the bloody smudges on the paper. Letters that made words and sentences filled the page, but there was only a small, distressing sentence that meant anything to me.

  “It’s a summons to return to Lethe,” I said under my breath. Lethe was Marin’s home base, which, interestingly enough, was located deep in the supernatural caverns underneath Le Château Frontenac in Québec. Historically, Lethe was known as the river of forgetfulness. Marin’s version of Lethe also ensured that Stygians going in and out didn’t remember what happened there.

  When I took in Chad’s rumpled brow, I felt assured that the letter wasn’t of his doing. It certainly wasn’t Papa’s doing, either. Then I realized by their worried
expressions that a summons directly from Marin wasn’t commonplace.

  “Whoever delivered that”—Papa jabbed a finger at my summons—“didn’t do that.” His thumb pointed over his shoulder at my studio. I had smelled iron on his hands, but now I saw the red smudges on the windows. My head whirled thinking about what I was missing standing outside of my shop, and what I had seen years ago inside Salon de Tatouage. The sight of blood spatter would never leave my memory.

  “Don’t go in there,” Papa said when I made for the shop’s door.

  Perhaps my father wanted to protect me, but I had seen things far worse in my lifetime—I had even faced Chad down in the innards of Lethe, even if I didn’t remember the details. I had stood up against Head Reaper Marin, seen my death in all its uncompromising wretchedness, and I came back with part of my soul to show for it. Be it blood or something far more gruesome, I could stand to see what was inside my shop. I just wouldn’t like it.

  Chad, Papa, and Dudley were on my heels when I threw the door open, the bell angrily ringing, and went for the main light switch. A glow swathed the room. Shadows dotted the walls. And yes, blood—gallons of it—tarnished everything. This picture I knew all too well.

  The thing glaring from across the studio was what stole the air from me.

  “Oh, my God,” I muttered.

  “I told you not to come in here.”

  A reasonable person would’ve heeded Papa’s advice. But I had to see for myself. Had I not, I was positive Chad and Papa would’ve never told me that finger-painted in blood on the far wall was a floor-to-ceiling mural of a snake coiled around a skull. And next to it was written You’re going to die, Scrivener.

  “The Trivials?” I asked Chad, voice breaking.

  “Indeed. Trivials.”

  …

  Two years ago, I had departed Lethe, the portal to the Afterlife carved deep inside Cape Diamond’s bedrock, without stopping off to say good-bye to my apartment, Mama and Papa’s home, or even my favorite coffee shop, Le Nektar.