Ember

by Jessica Sorensen

  “You’re that Grim Reaper. The one who’s tormented me since I was four,” I say, enraged.

  “But you never did meaningfully tell me to go away, except when your dad made me. But you were just a child and your mind was bendable.” He pauses, grazing his hand down my thigh. “I tried to warn you about your dad so you could help him. Do you know that? Do you know how much I love you?”

  “You tried to force me to kill my mom,” I seethe. “That’s not love. And you don’t even know me.”

  “I only did that to your mom to help you,” he whispers mellifluously in my ear. “I just want you to quit fighting who you really are. If you’d just give in to the insanity, instead of fighting it, life would be so much easier. And we could be together.”

  “I almost killed her,” I growl. “I stole my mom’s life to save my own.”

  “Don’t be ashamed of it. It’s in your blood and your dad did it many times. Trust me.”

  “Do you know where my dad is?” I ask sharply. “The detective—or the Reaper—whoever the hell she is, said he gave in to insanity. Does that mean he’s dead? Or is he one of you? I need to know. Please, Cameron. Please tell me.”

  Ignoring me, he angles my head back and looks deeply into my eyes. “We’re perfect for each other. Imagine it, alive in death, writing beautiful words together… And I promise I’ll never hurt you,” he whispers, slowly laying me on my back. “I just want to help you.”

  “No one can help me,” I say. “Especially…”

  He covers my body with his and my words evaporate. I no longer know what I want—what I feel. His hand travels up my shoulders, up the side of my neck, and resides on my cheek, while his other hand explores the bare skin on my hip. “I could help you, if you let me. I could make all that sadness go away.” He licks his lip as he presses his body against mine, converging with every part of me. “Let me take it all away forever.”

  My arms fall helplessly to my sides. Tell him to get off!

  “Ember,” he purrs, sliding his hand through my hair. “Let me in.”

  My knees fall apart, allowing his body closer, and a moan escapes from my lips. “Cameron, don’t.”

  He tips my chin up. “What if I told you I could take away every ounce of pain you have and would ever feel? Think about it. You could have the perfect life.”

  I shut my eyes as he kisses my neck and my body arches to his will. “That’s not possible. Death is pain. And death exists everywhere. Besides, nothing is perfect...”

  “It is possible, all you have to do is say yes.” Keeping his body sealed to mine, he finds my hands and pins them above my head, rendering me helpless. “Give me permission.” His lips touch my cheek, the corner of my mouth. “Please, give me permission.”

  My lips part open, and I feel my willpower crumble to dust as I realize it might be easier to give in. “You have permission to do what you—”

  “Ember, don’t.” Asher’s voice jerks me back to earth. “Don’t promise him anything.”

  A grin spans Cameron’s face. “Asher, my dear friend, you’re just in time for the feast.”

  “Get away from her, Cameron.” Asher demands. “You have no right to be touching her like that.”

  “And neither do you.” Cameron looks like he’s enjoying himself.

  I force my gaze sideways to Asher, storming across the cemetery ground with his hands clenched into fists. His face is bruised, his knuckles are scrapped raw, and the scar beneath his eyebrow ring is more defined.

  “What’s… what’s.” My lips hitch shut.

  “Get off of her.” He’s so close, but still so far away. “Or I swear to God I’ll—”

  Cameron leaps off me, leaving me paralyzed on the ground, and meets Asher in the middle. “Or you’ll what?”

  “You’ve broken rules,” Asher growls. “A lot of them.”

  Wrath thunders in both their eyes and they charge for each other. The sky rumbles and the ground quakes. Like mist rising from a lake, a black cloak forms around Cameron and swallows him up. Asher lets out a derailing screech, springs in the air, and black-feathered wings snap out from his back, sending pieces of his shirt flying. The collision of their bodies is like a train wrecking with another train.

  Suddenly, my legs bound to life and I waste no time jumping to my feet. A tornado of feathers and mist swarm the cemetery as Cameron and Asher move like lightening, moving so quickly my human eye can barely detect them. For a second, I stand stunned underneath the tree. An angel and Grim Reaper? An angel and a Grim Reaper?

  “Ember!” Raven’s voice draws me back to my other problem.

  She’s back in the shadows of the cemetery, curled up next to the angel statue. I run across the grass toward her, waving for her to run. “Raven, we have to get out of here—” I fall face-first into an open grave. Cold skin touches mine and my insides quiver. I push up and blink down at Mackenzie Baker. Her blonde hair is covered in dirt and red lines track her neck and wrists. It hits me like a shove off a cliff. My mind races back to Cameron’s house, the bands on her neck and wrists.

  “Oh my God,” I breathe. “You were dead the whole time… I can see the dead.”

  Dirt sprinkles down on me and I flip over to my back. Raven looms above the shallow hole, with blood in her hair, blankness in her eyes, and a handful of dirt in her hand.

  “I love you Em, I really do,” she says. “But you can’t save me anymore. I have to give in.”

  A shovel of dirt rains down on my head. Shielding my eyes, I struggle to my feet and press my fingertips into the dirt.

  “Please don’t make this harder than it already is, Em,” Raven pleads, with a shovel in her hand. “If you would have just given up back at the fire, I wouldn’t have to do this to you. You could have saved me from this burden.” She scoops another shovel full of dirt and drops it down on my head. “But now you’re going to be buried alive, and remain there until you break.”

  “Raven.” I hurdle onto the side, burrowing my boots into the moist dirt. “Think about what you’re doing for just a second. You don’t want to do this.”

  She plucks out a twig from her hair and drops in down into the hole, watching it fall all the way to the bottom. “Of course I don’t. What I want is a happy life, with a mother who isn’t crazy and a friend who can’t get near anyone. What I want is to go back in time and never leave that party with Laden, so I could erase what it felt like when he had me pinned down to the ground… erase the feel of his filthy hands on me…” she trails off, staring up at the sky.

  Extending my arm as far as it will go, I stretch for the edge of the hole. But my feet slip out from under me and I collapse back onto Mackenzie’s body. Forcing myself not to lose it, I push off her and stand back against the wall. Gradually, I clumsily climb upward. Finally, I heave myself over the lip and roll onto my back on the grass.

  Raven bounds on top of me and pins my arms down to the side. I whip up my knees and vault her off. She slams against the angel statue and lets out a groan. “What’s happening to me?”

  “Nothing. Just stay here, okay.” I pat her shoulder and race through the headstones toward the Reaper and the Angel of Death.

  Cameron has Asher restrained on the grass and is clutching at his throat. “Tell me, Angel boy, what has it been like being alone all this time? Apparently pretty bad for you to be breaking the rules.”

  I squeeze my eyes and stop short of them. “I want you to go away, Cameron.” It hurts to say it, like a vine of thorns inside my veins.

  Silence enfolds and I crack open my eyelids. Cameron is still on top of Asher, but his hand is hanging lifelessly at his side. “Don’t say things you don’t mean, Ember Rose,” he advises. “Think about the last time you wished me away.”

  “I want you gone,” I demand in a steady voice. “I don’t want death haunting me anymore.”

  “You can’t get rid of death, princess,” he says sorrowfully. “Death is endless.”

  It frightens me how much his words ma
tch mine. “Then I guess I will outrun it for as long as I can.”

  Cameron climbs off Asher and dusts the dirt and grass off his hands. He lowers the hood of his cloak, so I’m looking directly at him, not the Reaper. “You know I only did it to bring you to me. I only push so you’ll give in to me, not to the others.”

  My heart thumps in my chest as he stops in front of me. His blonde hair glows palely in the moonlight and sadness caves his eyes, like the first time I saw him.

  “Why were you really here that night?” I ask, with a shiver. “When I saw you digging up the grave?”

  His fingers twitch, longing to touch me. “I already told you, looking for a family jewel.” He gently touches the tip of his finger to the hollow of my neck. “Turns out you had it.”

  “My grandma’s necklace…” I trail off, confused. “Why do you want it?”

  He smiles miserably. “And I’m sorry I took it, but I had to. Besides, it wasn’t yours to have in the first place. It belongs to my family.”

  “Then why did my grandma have it?”

  “Because she stole it from us.”

  My eyes widen. “Cameron, tell me—”

  He shushes me with his finger across my lips. “I don’t want to talk about that right now. I want to talk about you and me.”

  “There is no you and...” My eyes digress to Asher, lying in the grass, encompassed by black feathers. “Did you kill him?”

  “He can’t die, princess.” Cameron frowns. “Unfortunately.”

  “Why did you kill Mackenzie? And Laden. And I’m guessing Farrah is probably on the list too.” My legs beg me to run, but my desire to know the truth overpowers.

  “I didn’t kill Laden. Asher did,” he says. “And Mackenzie and Farrah died from the same human’s hand, not mine. And if you listened closely to her story, you probably could figure out the culprit.”

  “Her dad?”

  He shrugs. “That’s for you to figure out, if you want to. I just collect the souls. And I’ll admit, I didn’t try to stop Mackenzie’s death. I wanted her to suffer for all the times she was rude to you.”

  His misconstrued logic is a puzzle to me. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “I know you don’t understand.” He cups my cheek, emitting both ecstasy and sheer terror throughout me. “But that day when I saw you in the cemetery, I knew I had to have you and that I would hurt anyone that ever caused you pain.”

  “Your little friends,” I point over my shoulder at the forest, “hurt me. Do you know about that?”

  “I can’t help that without breaking more rules. But it can all be over if you want it to be. All you have to do is agree to be with me—want to be with me. And then I’m allowed to help you.”

  “And what? Become a Grim Reaper and start collecting souls and killing people?”

  “There’s more to it than that,” he says, his eyes blazing. “More to you than what you realize and you’re in for a rough and painful life until you realize that. But it can all be over if you’ll just give in to your Reaper blood.”

  I compress my hands into fists, and will myself to deny his request, even though a small part of me wants it. “I’m telling you to leave, just like I did when I was four.”

  His face falls and his eyes flash with anger. Lightening zaps across the sky, but I refuse to look away. “Is that what you really want, Ember?”

  I swallow the refusal building in my throat and make myself want it. “That’s what I want.”

  He bites down on his lip so hard blood drips down his chin. Then he cups the back of my head and pulls me in for a rough kiss. I taste the blood on his lips, the foul darkness of death, but a flicker of something substantial is hidden deep inside him, like a seed in the center of an apple.

  He releases me, breathing fervently. “I’ll pay for that one forever.” He backs toward the gates, his eyes locked on me. “They’ll come for you—the rest of the Reapers. They won’t stop until they get you to crack.”

  “Then I’ll tell them to go away too.”

  “That won’t work on them, sweetheart,” he says gravely as he sinks farther into the shadows. “The Anamotti aren’t quite as easy-going as me.” Then with a swish of his cloak, he alters, sprouting wings and shrinking into a raven. He circles around my head, before disappearing into the night sky.

  My body aches to fly away with him, be free, shed my skin, become one with the night.

  Asher makes a noise and I rush for him. “Are you okay?” I ask, not daring to touch him.

  His shirt is torn from his cuts, and bruises cover his beautiful pale chest. His black hair is disheveled, his lip is split, and his striking feather wings are crooked, the feathers scarce.

  “I’m fine,” he assures me with a weak smile.

  I crouch down in front of him. “Does it… does it hurt?”

  His eyes unite with mine, zealous and hungry. “Nothing could hurt at this moment. You just sent him away.”

  “I’ve sent him away before.” I brush stray feathers from his arms and then rest my hand in the curve of his shoulder, feeling his warmth. “But he came back.”

  “I know.” His hand finds my hip. “And he’ll find a way to keep coming back until you completely surrender to him—they all will.”

  “What did you do to them?” I ask. “The other Reapers—the Anamotti. Detective Crammer or whoever she is?”

  “She’s a Reaper—all the Anamotti are. They're the Reapers who have banded together to eliminate the Grim Angels, even though it’s forbidden to touch them. And I took care of them, for the moment, but they’ll be back.”

  I note his hands on my hips, wondering if he’s allowed to touch me. “You mean, until they make me lose my sanity.”

  He nods, his eyes never parting from me. “That’s the point of all this, yes. We are all cursed to this world until you do.”

  My knees sink to the ground. “Cursed?”

  “Our curse to this world,” he explains. “It’s our punishment for our part in the Battle of Death. The Angels of Death and the Grim Reapers are bound to the earth by the existence of the Grim Angel. And it’s only the Grim Angel that can free one of us back to our homes.”

  “But aren’t the Grim Angels supposed to create balance, so no one can steal souls?” I ask.

  “They are, but they will break the balance. The Reapers have been working to weed out every Grim Angel that exists, until there is only one left standing. And that one is the one that will have to pass the test. If they can live their life enduring the Reaper and Angel blood, then the Angels of Death will gain back their power over the souls and be freed from earth. If they give in to the insanity of the Reapers, then the Reapers gain control over the souls.”

  “But I thought Reapers collected the evil souls and the Angels collected the innocent.”

  “That’s how it’s used to work,” he says, reaching for me, like he wants to touch me, but withdraws his hand back. “But the rules were broken and a bet was made. Now whoever wins, wins all the souls.”

  “But if Reapers could collect any soul,” I glance at the tombstones, “then it would be bad.”

  “It would probably be worse than you can even imagine.” His voice weighs heavily in the air.

  “How many are left?” I ask, gripping the grass, fearing the answer. “How many Grim Angels still roam the earth?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. There used to be a lot, but the Reapers have been singling them out and the many have died of old age. The longer they exist, the scarcer the Grim Angels bloodline is.” He winces as he adjusts his weight. “And the Reapers must know how few there are, because over the last couple years, they’ve been really determined to hunt them down, even though they’re not supposed to.”

  “That’s what I don’t get,” I say. “If they’re not supposed to, then why doesn’t someone stop them?”

  “It’s up to their leader to punish them. Or we could go into battle,” he says. “But Michael, my father and the rule
r of the Angels of Death, won’t allow us to bend any rules under any circumstances.”