The Reaper's Sacrifice

by Abigail Baker

  I was unsure of what this was leading up to, fearful it wasn’t going to end well for anyone in Wrightwick, let alone us.

  He reset his jaw after admitting this. I reset mine. “When I saw you fired-up, your eyes washed out white as you struggled to fend off Gizmo, I was heartbroken to think that I ever told you to move on from me, or suggested that you give up on us. All the same, I want you to be happy.”

  He finally turned to look at me. The first time I had seen his eyes in Le Nektar Cafe in Québec, I had been won over in the best way. Now, with the sun shining directly into his cerulean gems, I could clearly see his sadness. This was something I couldn’t heal with my Scrivening. My words and conviction were all I had.

  The backs of his fingers feathered my tear-soaked cheek. “Your life came crashing down the moment I stepped into it. You’re better off without me, Ollie.”

  I paused, unsure which of a million things I wanted to say first. How could I tell him that he was wrong? How could I tell him that I destroyed my life without his help? How could I thank him for agreeing to serve Marin’s sick and twisted demands on my behalf? And how could I tell him that no person meant more to me than him?

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” I said, edging closer as I took in his face, every angle, every curve, and fell in love again. “I haven’t forgotten how you feel, your smile, the sound of your voice. Everything about you kept me from giving up for two years. Why would I throw any of that, or you, aside to be with Errol?”

  His lips brushed my forehead, down my cheek, and stopped a hairbreadth from my parted mouth. My insides stirred. My skin rippled in anticipation.

  Were my words enough? Did he believe me?

  “I love you,” I said, voice quivering. “I would never ever betray you.”

  “It’s not betraying me if I give you my blessing. I’m not good for you anymore.”

  “You don’t get to decide what is good for me or what isn’t. I decide. I want you. Only you. You’re wasting breath by trying to push me away for some stupid reason you have in your head. Stop.” My voice grew in strength as I spoke, much like that day when I got on live Stygian television and introduced myself to the world. Funny how strength emerged in the moments when you really needed it. “I love you, Brent. I always will. You don’t get any say in that. You only get to decide if you’ll accept it or not.”

  For what felt like an eternity, Brent stared at me. The sun poured over him, begging me to look upon the man I had seen in my dark, haunting nightmares. He, too, drank me in with his eyes, like a lover who was bidding his beloved farewell. And it was then that I realized that running into his arms and planting my lips on his was not the best way to reunite. How could we jump to anything more intimate than relearning the intricacies of each other’s faces? We had so long to make up for, years of time to remember the reasons we came together.

  As pleased as I was to be face-to-face with Brent, I pulled his hips down between my legs because I wanted to recall the way he felt against me. The time had come for more intimacy, and I was ready and had been for two long years.

  He lowered his chest to mine, clapped his hands over my wrists, and put his mouth lightly against mine. Savoring his breath, sweet from desire, I kissed him deep, relearning the rigidness of his teeth, tasting the tang of his probing tongue.

  Brent’s curiosity matched mine. His mouth found my neck, lapping at the flesh of my throat. His hair fell around my chin and mouth as he travelled down to my chest, which rose and fell with a swift cadence. He stopped there and lifted his animalistic gaze to meet mine.

  On the next intake of air, his hands hooked around my dress’s collar and ripped it open from top to bottom. It fell away to expose my breasts—and even the bandaged wound from Gabriel, nearly healed. Brent’s pupils narrowed. Before I reached up to snag a tuft of his hair and yank him to my mouth, his lips were around one breast, drawing on my nipple.

  Euphoric, I threw my head back and delivered more to his mouth as I dug my nails into his scalp. His fingers found my other breast and cupped it.

  I hungered for so much more. This wasn’t sweet intimacy. There was carnality in me that wanted him on his back, naked and available. I yanked on his hair to pry his mouth from my breast, but Brent was unyielding, latching on with his teeth.

  I gasped.

  “I’ve missed that greatly,” he laughed.

  I slapped my hands against his chest and shoved him back. This time it worked. He sat on his heels, bringing me with him as his arms gripped my waist so tight it hurt.

  “Let me lead,” he growled as our lips smashed together in a struggle for authority.

  With the heels of my hands, I pushed against his shoulders, only to be snapped back against him. He wouldn’t permit me any control. Brent wanted to prove himself. Our first encounter in years would be a marking if nothing else, a consummation to announce to the world that I belonged to him forever.

  Realizing that, I gave in. And when I did, I felt his hot flesh and hard muscles against me. I opened my eyes to see that he had wrangled free of his shirt. My breasts were crushed to his chest.

  His unbuttoned jeans sagged around his hips and revealed his hardened member in all its glory. I had seen him naked before; nothing about him was new to me, but he still made me press my tongue against the back of my teeth in desire.

  One of us needed to be ravished in haste. If it wasn’t me, it would be him.

  I grabbed him by the neck and whirled him onto his back with a force greater than my small frame should’ve allowed. There was only so much passivity I could stand. This was my moment to taste him like I never had.

  My lips covered part of Brent’s erection. He tensed. I’d control him if only for this moment. I’d savor his sweet flesh. With each pass of my lips and mouth or flick of my tongue, Brent contracted in spasms that filled me with pride. I was marking him now—showing him that we were bound.

  Learning his shaft—the way it felt in my mouth, the rage of blood that made him stiff with passion—ended before I would’ve liked. Too soon, he directed my hips above him. I balanced on hands and knees, poised, wracked with anticipation. Brent aligned my hips with his, but he didn’t draw me down. With a catch of my breath, I made the first move, filling that part of me that had yearned for him and him alone. It was all I could do to sit still as his heartbeat thudded inside me, his hands gripped my body, and his power radiated from my groin outward. It was enchantment in the form of flesh and blood, born of years upon years of want.

  Once I breathed, movement followed. The stroking passes of his body inside me had me transfixed. The faint sound of my screams echoed as if they were those of another woman in another room, being ravished with the same breathtaking sensations.

  Body flexing with each stroke, Brent sat up as I rocked us. His mouth found my throat again. His tongue and lips moved frantically over my neck as we agreed on a tempo. In concord with my shrieks, he grunted and moaned.

  Our pace increased, but it didn’t need to. I was on the outer reaches of orgasm already. Something as simple as another lap of his tongue would catapult me into that blissful place.

  Hints of satisfaction rippled toward my center. I had to hold onto him if I didn’t want to lose myself forever. I tightened my grip on his back, digging nails into his flesh for traction, and bit down on his shoulder to feel the meatiness of his muscle as I cried out.

  Brent joined me. One arm snagged my dreadlocks and the other clung to my hip as we moved. But it was his member that had me shuddering in a mixture of elation and relief. This was what we had been waiting for—unity in a moment so profound and so unique, it bordered on surreal.

  My body throbbed. My mind gladly dipped down to that point between my legs that still convulsed. Breathlessness left me dizzy. I slowed our pace until I came down from the high. In the same moment, Brent’s grip on me loosened. His head dropped against my shoulder.

  Feeling protected in his arms, wishing I could hide there forever, I felt a su
rge of tears. He was finally home, my family, the man I needed. I cried so hard that my head ached and my eyes burned. I couldn’t hold onto two years of pent-up emotion anymore.

  Rage, prejudice, regret, want, resentment, jealousy…I wanted it gone and poured out over my lover’s flesh so I could start anew. It gushed out of me with the same wracking heaves as when I had been forced into exile, lonely and scared.

  But this time I was happy, so fucking happy.

  After a long, silent pause, Brent’s hands found my cheeks and pulled me far enough away so that we could see each other. His eyes, blue as ever, the same eyes I had seen so many times before—in my lowest points, in laughter, in fright—grounded me now.

  He smiled, and through a veil of tears, I smiled back.

  Chapter Twenty

  “One in five Scriveners survived the Purge.”

  —HermesHarbinger.com

  “I liked that dress on you. Sorry it’s ruined,” Brent said as I tossed the hippie frock aside and slipped into a pair of jeans.

  The numbing elation of sex had faded. My body hurt like a bus had slammed it.

  “As dresses go, I liked it, too.” I reached for the only clean shirt I had left: a black tank top. Just as I was about to pull it on, Brent moved with fast-as-light speed and tossed an arm around my waist. He laid his fingers over the scar from Gabriel’s attack.

  I melted into his closeness, wishing he’d never let me leave the cage of his arms. “Gabriel attacked me. You would’ve been proud though. I still ran a half a mile before I realized what had happened.”

  Brent’s attention was locked on the scar. It matched the scar on my rib cage where Nicholas Baird had attacked me two years ago. I was beginning to look like a pied animal. Was it white with pink spots or pink with white spots? One of these days, I would own this evolving look. For now, I felt a little self-conscious.

  “I should’ve been here to protect you from them,” he said.

  “Doesn’t matter.” I put my hands to his bare chest, the muscle beneath unyielding to my touch. “Errol said something strange last night about Marin. It scares me.”

  His hand traveled down the scar and cupped my breast as I breathed with relief. A gentle squeeze reignited feelings in me that would take a lifetime to satisfy. Everything was so fresh that even his hand on my skin forced my knees to buckle. Thank Hades his clutch on my waist was so tenacious.

  His lips covered mine before I could tell Brent that Errol, and now I, too, were worried that Marin was actually a Scrivener. Brent didn’t care about what he didn’t know, as his tongue passed over the bridge of my teeth and then between them just as ardently it had as moments ago. This time, I put my arms around his neck to maintain stability.

  “We should get downstairs,” I said between kisses.

  He backed me into the vanity table and twirled me around to face it. Bent forward, I balanced on my hands as I watched Brent in the mirror, just as naked as before, the muscles of his abdomen flexed. His erection pressed against my jeans.

  “I’m not done with you yet, darlin’.”

  …

  Brent’s hand was on the small of my back as we stepped into the solarium, or what was left of it anyway. The bodies had been cleaned up. The blood wiped away. Still, Wrightwick looked like a horde of Alpha Betas from the nearest university frat house had ripped it apart during a massive party. Sunlight beamed through the panels of fractured glass, though, illuminating the Manor with renewed hope.

  Side by side by side stood Errol, Nicodemus, Chad, and Delia. Surrounding them were the remaining bruised and beaten Trivials, mingling in clusters. There was a weight of anxiety in the air. Eyes upon eyes stared Brent and me down as we made our way across the solarium.

  That the number of Scriveners matched the Reapers in the room wasn’t lost on me. How could it? I had always been the minority, the odd one out. For once, and hopefully for good, there was a semblance of parity. We were equal in numbers.

  “Well, well, it seems you two had quite the morning glory.” Not surprisingly, Delia was in a red pencil dress, her hair curled elegantly, and her lips as bright as her frock. Her heels were a mile high, so that she rivaled Brent’s lofty height. “You love birds had me curling my toes as I listened in. Maybe next time you could welcome a little company to the shindig.”

  “I’m not rested enough to please two women yet, Delia,” Brent said through the corner of his mouth.

  She rolled her eyes, which were outlined in cover-model perfect makeup. “Oh, sweetheart, you wouldn’t have to worry about pleasing me. I have a different fare in mind.”

  I did a double take when she set her gaze on me. Of course I suspected it, but—

  “Wouldn’t that be just lovely?” She winked at me. “Girl parts are so charming.”

  “Delia, it’s not the time for this,” Errol chided. “We have serious matters to tend to.”

  I opened my mouth to start a conversation that felt awkward before it even commenced, but two Trivials hustled past Brent and me. They carried a person between them. The small, thin blonde’s hair was matted and dirtied.

  Errol looked past Percy and her two captors at us. “While you two were…indisposed this mornin’, we interrogated Percy. She has confessed to workin’ for Marin. She informed us that Marin set out to take us all out at once. He has always been connivin’, but he’s gotten stupid and reckless over the years.”

  Percy’s sobs echoed over Errol’s speech. Without the assistance of the guards, she wouldn’t have been able to stand. She hardly looked like a seventeen-year-old Trivial, but one old and weathered.

  “Our tribunal has ruled on her fate, but as they are, the rules of war offer Brent a chance to defend her if he chooses, since he brought her here,” Errol said, resentment boiling off his tongue.

  Brent pulled me a little closer to his hip when the guards turned Percy around to face us. Her skin was mottled, eyes swollen from tears, lip busted at the corner. The shiner from the day before had darkened and set into her sunken eye socket.

  “Will you defend her as your ally?” Errol asked Brent.

  “That’s the thing, Errol. I didn’t bring her. I came on my own to see that Ollie was safe. Percy is nothing to me,” Brent said.

  “She said otherwise.”

  Brent shrugged. “I’m not surprised. She’s been playing us all.”

  “Very well. Then I will melt her to do away with her.” Errol made his approach, one that seemed more eager than regretful. There was callousness in his face, like he saw nothing wrong with taking a life, no matter how awful the individual was.

  Percy’s scream withered into sniveling when Errol grabbed her arm. I didn’t like her even now. But not liking someone wasn’t a reason to destroy her. Even Marin deserved a level of compassion in the face of his crimes.

  I sidled to Percy’s side, careful not to get too close, so as to speak out against this strange form of justice. “I’m not okay with this. Maybe Percy was wrong for betraying us, and maybe she was coerced by more persuasive words, but she doesn’t deserve to die.”

  “His house, his rules,” Brent said.

  “You can’t let this happen.” I glared at the Master Scrivener, but not before locking eyes with Percy. Her stare was so brittle that another blink would split her in two. She couldn’t defend herself even if she wanted to—she was too weak to try. “Even Marin showed me mercy. How could you not do the same?”

  Brent pulled me back with a gentle tug.

  I circled to face him. “Percy should live.”

  “It’s not up to me,” Brent quietly said.

  “Olivia,” Errol interrupted. “She’s a spy who started a battle that nearly destroyed Wrightwick. She knew the punishment she risked, and she chose to deceive us.”

  “You mean to tell me that you lack the compassion to spare her? Is that what Master Scriveners do to prisoners of war? Is that—” I stopped when Errol stormed toward me. He stopped short of plowing through me and into Brent.

&
nbsp; “Let’s speak in private…the three of us,” Errol said to Brent and me.

  With no formality we retreated, filing one-by-one into the hallway as if we were the jury off to deliberate. If we were a jury, it would’ve been more humane than what was happening.

  With squared shoulders, I followed Errol, with Brent behind me, until we wound our way into the library—the only place that hadn’t sustained damage. We congregated in a circle underneath the Scrivener mural.

  Errol raked his fingers through his hair, a sign he was uncomfortable because of my challenge. “Percy confessed to sendin’ Marin samples of the River Phlegethon for years and givin’ him detailed instructions on how to attack Wrightwick. She’s a Trivial, and as such, craves chaos. I shouldn’t have trusted her.”

  “Marin doesn’t want people rising from the dead, though,” I stated. “What exactly does he want with the Phlegethon?”

  “Marin also doesn’t want to die,” Brent interjected. “He wants an insurance plan.”

  Brent’s supposition was easy to accept, given what little I knew of the Head Reaper. Marin was the type to hide ill deeds behind his supposedly good intentions. I bore firsthand witness to that. Yet the strange commonality that we all shared, even the Head of Death, was that we didn’t want to die. The desire to live was in each of us, only some of us went to greater lengths to sustain life.

  “Percy and some others approached you two in Montana and killed your friend, Leo,” Errol went on to pressing matters. “Her roots go too deep. We have to cut her down now, or she’ll return to Marin.”

  I harrumphed at the revelation. “So she painted the two Deathmarks on my shop wall. What about the copycat Deathmark on David? She couldn’t do that, too, could she?”

  “No, she couldna. That was someone else’s doin’. But she knows my Deathmark, an’ Marin surely told her yours. A nice way to implicate me,” he hissed. “With Percy’s help, Marin set you up, Olivia. He said he sent you here to make peace because I demanded terms, am I right?”