Chapter Thirty-Seven
You See, What Happened Was...
“What just happened?” I said in a hysterical laugh as we landed in someone’s home in mine and Dave’s old spot in Tennessee.
I’d finally done what I wasn’t able to do for an entire year. My checklist was completed, her soul was resting, waiting in my scythe. I’d finally completed a goal that I’d had so long ago, but not in the way I’d expected, and it wasn’t going to stay that way.
“You fucking killed her,” Drake said in a deep, angry tone beside me.
“What would you have rather seen? Her body taken, to be tortured by Demons.”
“No, but I just want to punch you right now,” Drake said, walking right up to the fridge and punching it relentlessly.
“DRAKE! STOP!”
“YOU KILLED HER! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU KILLED HER.”
“She told me she would rather die than let him have her soul, and I promised I would fulfill that. But I never agreed to take it to the researchers,” I said with a smile, and Drake perked up. Time for part two of my master plan
“But wait, if you don’t plan on taking it there, what do you plan on doing with her soul?”
“Well, it might take a while to find the perfect body, but…” His eyes went wide. “Hear me out.”
“So, do you remember like when we were learning about humans how we learned how sometimes a soul will reappear and get a chance at another life.”
“Barely. That was a long time ago, and because it had to do with up there,” he said, pointing, “...I didn’t really pay attention.”
“Well the story said that sometimes God liked to give a soul another chance if they had a life that was cut short. Instead of creating a new soul, he’d let that one enter another body. It’s called it being an ‘old soul’. An old soul is just a soul who gets more than one chance at life. They get to live in another body but it’s the same soul,” I smiled.
“Go on.”
“Well, when I was out collecting souls at the hospitals last year, sometimes I’d see human bodies that were kept alive by machines long after the soul had gone. I’m going to put her in one of those. I’m going to make her an old soul.”
“You can’t play God, Cendall, and it’ll never work. Even if you could somehow get her soul out of your scythe and inside the body, what makes you think she’ll stay put there? What were you thinking? How do you even know if the old soul thing is true, and I’m sure the soul is put into a baby not a freaking adult.”
“I’m going to try, damn it. Now, are you going to help me or not?” His face strained as he seemed to be debating it.
“Shit,” he said, and I knew he’d help.
“Thank you.” I hugged him. “So, first things first. From the stories, God, being almighty and all, was able to just place the soul into a new body after he pulled it from the original. We’re not quite that powerful.”
“But an extractor is.” Drake smiled. “It’s the only thing I know of that can pull a soul out of our scythes, and place it into another container.”
“You’re a genius,” I said to Drake as I wondered if this could really work.
***
“Don’t do something stupid now Steve,” I said as he went to reach for his scythe.
“What do you want, Traitor?” Steve said, and I winced. That word still didn’t sit quite right with me.
“Listen, all I need is an extractor and the code for that extractor.”
“What would you need that for? You’re no longer a Reaper. What purpose does it have to you? You’re the reason the alarms are going off,” he bellowed in a raised voice. He was about to try and play hero, something I didn’t have time for. I let the light shoot out of my hands, and he went flying back into the many drawers of souls behind him. They burst open, and I watched as the souls left their containers. This would be a big mess for someone else to clean up later.
“Did you have to hit him so hard? Drake asked.
“Would you have rather fought him?”
“No, but I would have if needed. What are you going to do when everyone is finally informed of your little trick and they’re able to defend against it, like they do against Guardians? You’re element of surprise surely won’t exist anymore after this. I’m not lecturing, just don’t forget about your other skills is all I’m saying.”
“I won’t.” I didn’t know what I was going to do when this stopped working, but I’d use any edge I had until then. It didn’t always work anyway. I felt a shiver roll down my spine as my body reminded me of a once distant time it didn’t, a moment when I’d almost been forced to electrocute myself to death. “Since you don’t like my tactics, you can get the code out of him yourself,” I said to Drake as I pointed to Steve’s assistant whose mouth was propped open. Drake rolled his eyes and dragged him into the back room.
“Give me a few minutes with the lad.” He gave an evil smirk. “Keep watch?”
“Sure,” I mumbled as I looked around. It had been so long since I’d been here. I thought back to the first time I brought a soul here. Steve’s smile had been so warm then as he brought out the extractor, pulled out the first soul I’d collected from my scythe, and placed it into one of the drawers behind the counter. I’d been in awe of the power the extractor had, as it was the only thing known to us that could handle a soul besides for our scythes. It was the extractor’s job to pull the soul out of scythe and then take it to its final resting place, which is why we needed it now. It would be the only thing that could take Lacie’s soul out of my scythe and, hopefully, put it into whatever body we found. I felt a wave of frigid air roll over my shoulders just as I turned to see Dave’s dad walking in.
The light left his eyes when he saw me. He walked over to where I was standing next to Steve, who was still out cold. He stepped over Steve’s body, and I readied myself to be struck. It was my fault his son was dead. I closed my eyes, and he instead, gripped me up in a tight hug.
“I’m so sorry.” My shoulders sagged, and I began to sob. This made Dave’s death become too real.
“It’s not your fault,” he said in a whimper.
“Yes it is. He was helping me. All of this is my fault. Please hit me. I deserve it, and I’m so sorry.”
“I would never hit you, Cendall,” he said as he pulled away and lifted my chin. “Whatever you guys were doing, I know it was for a greater purpose. He told me that before he left.”
“You’ll never get to see him again, though, and that’s my doing. He won’t get to marry his one, and I’ll never get to see his smiling face or pay him back for everything he’s done for me. For the years of helping me get through training and always just being there. I tried to tell him not to get involved, I really did, but…”
“No buts. He believed in whatever you’re doing, Cendall. You have to continue or all of what happened would be in vain. If Dave believed in it, then so do I, and if anyone can prove strong enough to carry on and do it, it’s you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said one more time.
“Grab what you came here for and get going. I’ll clean up what I can here. Promise me though, that whatever this is, you’ll come back and tell me what happened.”
“I don’t think…”
“I want to know, and you will succeed. I have to know you succeeded and what this is all for in the end, okay?’
“Okay.”
“It’s nice to finally see you both on the same side,” Dave’s dad said to Drake as he came from the back with four extractors in his hand. “Now, hurry along. They’re coming.”
“Did you get it?” I asked Drake. He nodded, and we ported out.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Laciestein
Three days and multiple deaths later, I finally found a body that I thought would be suitable.
“You really think this will work.”
“It has to.” We walked up to the female human’s hospital bed.
“And you think, of all the peo
ple in this hospital, this is the best suitor,” he said as he looked down with a disgusted expression.
“She has no family and is brain dead,” I countered as he pointed to the scars in the crevasses of her arms and legs.
“I can heal that once Lacie is inside. Listen, I’ve been waiting around, watching people die all week. This is perfect. She has no one here, and her soul was gone before she came in. She’s brain dead, just a shell being kept alive by that machine over there,” I said as I pointed to the ventilator.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I just need to make sure. What about her face; her left side is completely caved in.” And he was right; it looked like she’d come face to face with a shovel and lost.
“Drake,” I said in an authoritative tone. “She is the one. I will heal the rest. Trust me, now get out the extractor.”
“Shit, Cendall. Are you sure? I mean, if this doesn’t work, Lacie will end up a wanderer.”
“It’s going to work. I can feel it, so stop questioning me. You’re just making me nervous. Put the extractor up to my scythe on three, and then I’ll take the soul from that and place it into the body. Then, I will heal her. It has to work.” I felt a tear leave my eye as my hands started to shake. I needed to get a grip if I wanted this to work. My hands began to sweat as I pulled out my scythe. The ruby in the center was cloudy, telling me Lacie’s soul still lay inside. “Now, you go in there, you hear me?” I shouted at the stone that held Lacie’s soul like she could hear me. “Okay.”
I took a deep breath to match Drake’s. He brought out the extractor.
“One, two, three...” I counted, and he entered the code that he coerced out of the guard. The extractor illuminated and opened. He placed it on top of my scythe, aligning the ruby stone with the open capsule on the extractor. Lacie’s soul seeped out of my scythe and into the capsule. It closed quickly once her soul was securely inside. I let out the breath I’d been holding. Step one was completed, now the difficult part.
I took the extractor over to the human’s body. I placed my hand on her face to double check that nothing was there. Like the other thirty times I had checked, no soul lay inside. My hands began to shake as I placed the extractor over the corpse. I propped open the girl’s mouth and took another slow, deep breath. Now or never. I re-entered the code Drake had just put into the extractor and slammed it onto the girl’s mouth, so Lacie’s soul could enter the lifeless form. Alarms started going off from the various machines. We only had seconds before nurses rushed in and interrupted the process.
I lifted the extractor away from the girl’s mouth and slammed her lips shut. Did this really work? The flat line alarm I heard next told me it didn’t. I watched as Lacie’s soul began to seep from the pores of the human. Shit!
“NO!” I shouted as I placed my hands over top of the human. Orange light left my fingertips as Lacie’s soul battled to get past the radiant glow. I tried to force it back into the human’s body, but it kept colliding, over and over, trying to escape around it.
“You go in there NOW!” I shouted as the light from my hands became so bright that I closed my eyes to protect them from the harsh luminance. I felt my knees become weak as the power pulled from my being. Suddenly, everything let go, and before I hit the ground, Drake caught me.
“Cendall, the light is gone. What happened? Did it not work?” I opened my eyes and regained my balance as I crept to the hospital bed. My eyes scanned the room, and I didn’t see her soul hanging around, so that had to be a good sign, right? My shaking hand reached out to grab the human’s wrist.
“Is she in there, Cendall? Is she gone? Please don’t tell me she’s gone.”
“No,” I sobbed as relief washed over me the second I felt the ping in her wrist. “She’s in there. We did it.” I frantically began to unplug all her wires, and Drake picked her up before we ported out.
We ported back to the cabin in Tennessee, and I laid her on the bed in the master suite. She was still out, but her body was beginning to heal. Her face no longer caved in on the right side, and the scars were practically gone. I smiled as I looked down at her. Lacie was really in there. We really did it. Yes, she looked different, but she was alive. I lay down next to her, and let the exhaustion take me.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Miracle
“I have boobs.” Lacie said as she grabbed her chest and sat up in the bed.
“Famous first words,” I laughed as she shot out of bed and ran over the mirror, turning sideways and looking back. The smile told me she approved of her derriere as well. An eerie feeling crept over me as I heard Lacie’s voice come out but my brain was confused to why it didn’t fit the body she was in. The only thing that was similar in fact was the hair, as this body’s was blonde as well, but that was where the similarities ended. New Lacie, like she’d already noticed, had double D boobs and a thick ass. She stood five-foot-nine and had aged at least seven years. I hadn’t looked at the file of the human who had previous been in this body, but I’d guess she had been twenty-four or twenty-five.
“Not bad. I mean, I look like I’ve have a rough life riding a pole, but I’m alive. But how?” She turned to look at me.
“Long story.”
“You never cease to amaze me, Cendall. When we talked, I had no idea this is what you had in mind.”
“When we talked, I didn’t either.”
“Who knows about it?”
“Just you, me, and Drake.”
“You haven’t told Trevor?”
“I haven’t seen him,” I said as a sharp pain flared in my gut at the mention of his name.
“Oh... do I even want to ask?
“We didn’t quite see eye-to-eye the last time we spoke.”
“And that’s different than normal how?” she laughed.
“We’ll just say he didn’t agree with me going down to get you yet.”
“It hurts, but it’s expected. Not a rule breaker, that boy.”
“I didn’t really give him a choice. He couldn’t come, so we left.” I left him there alone, after we’d agreed to try together. My hands began to shake.
“Ah, well at least I know he did care.” She smiled. “Cendall, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Well, when I was being drug away, I opened my eyes for a moment, and I thought I saw Dave.”
“Dave is gone.”
“I’m so sorry, Cendall.”
“Did anyone tell Chloe?”
“Not yet.” Truthfully, I’d forgotten that I wasn’t the only one who was grieving, and not knowing was much worse than grief. I’d have to go to her.
“Drake is out there. If I leave for a minute, can you go sit out there with him until I get back?”
“Yeah. It’s just, I feel weird being in this,” she said as she waved down her body. “Am I going to ever get my old body back?”
“I don’t think so. You were dying, and this was really the only solution I could come up with.”
“Okay... I just, you know, miss it?”
“That’s a pretty normal reaction.” I laughed awkwardly.
“Eventually, I’ll just forget what I use to look like and get use to this, right?” she asked, but I didn’t have an answer for her.
“Do you want to forget?” I asked.
“No.”
“I’ll give you five,” I said as I felt her tears coming.
***
“Is she awake? Is it her? Is she okay?” Holy questions, but the worried frown told me I needed to not answer sarcastically.
“She’s great. She just needed a minute. Don’t freak out when she comes out here, alright?”
“Okay.” I went into the other room and quickly jumped on the computer and onto Lacie’s old Facebook page. I printed off a picture of her and put it into one of the picture frames that held a family on the mantle.
“What is that?” Drake asked.
“She doesn’t want to forget.” He nodded in understanding.
The door cr
eaked open, and Lacie took two steps into the hallway and looked our way. Drake raced to her immediately and picked her up in a hug, holding her high in the air as he swung her around. A huge smile stretched across her face as he softly brought her back down to his lips and gave her a gentle peck.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he whispered into her lips as they faced each other. At least someone would get their happy ending.
Chapter Forty
Loose Ends
“Oh god no,” she said as soon as I ported in front of her in her room. “Cendall please don’t tell me.” How’d she know my name? I guess they had probably talk about me, and figuring I’d just appeared out of thin air was likely her greatest clue.
“Yes, I’m Cendall and Chloe, I’m sorry, but Dave is gone.”
“What do you mean gone? Like on vacation or what?” No point in dragging this out.
“No, like he’s no longer with us. I’m sorry,” I said, unsure of what to do with my arms. Was I suppose to hug her? I didn’t know her. I did save her life way back, but she didn’t remember that. She just stared blankly back at me. I went to reach for her, but she collapsed onto the floor and began to sob uncontrollably. I wanted to join her, but I couldn’t. I needed to be strong for the both of us, and for Dave. He wouldn’t want her going through this, which was why I needed to do what I came here to do. I squatted down to her level and put my arm around her shoulder. She leaned into me.
“What happened?” she asked between deep breaths.
“There was a fight, and I’m so sorry Chloe. I tried to save him, but I was too late.”
“This can’t be happening! He’s a Reaper. You guys don’t die…what am I going to do without him?”
Death's Dilemma (DHAD #2) Page 17