“I could say the same for you,” Raven gasped.
Blackwell snorted then twisted the knives. “Yes, you could.” He yanked out his daggers. Then, strangely and gently, he guided Raven onto the floor.
“H-How?” Raven gasped as black blood pooled around him and began steaming like boiled oil. “H-How?” Lifting his wet hand to his face, Raven finally saw his true colors. His blood wasn’t maroon but black as night.
“Blood and power,” Blackwell answered him. “Those are the only two absolutes.” Raven’s broadsword was still skewering him, sticking out of his chest, so he slowly pull it out of his stomach. “Blood and power. That was a lesson I just learned, relearned—courtesy of Azazel. You know Azazel, right? He was the green-eyed guy that you stabbed, when you ran away from home.”
“Yeah,” Raven said, chuckling through the pain. “I remember him. He was kind of an asshole.”
“Yeah,” Blackwell chuckled too. “Yes he was. A little bit.” Still pulling the sword out of his stomach, he grimaced little. But when he finally finished sliding out the reaper blade, he sighed with relief. “Whew.” He shook his head at Raven. I’m glad that’s over. Then Blackwell began examining the blade. “It’s a shame. I think you had a knack for this.”
The reaper blade was thirsty. Its black-edged blade was coated in Blackwell’s oily, black blood, and it was beginning to soak into the blade, like it was a sponge. And as it finished its drink, the blade turned a jet-black color before shifting into the shimmering black of polished onyx. Finally it dimmed again, returning to its natural flat-black, grainy texture. Still holding the blade, Blackwell smiled a little before shifting his attention back to Raven.
“Raven,” he said. “You know what? I’ve always admired you. I don’t think I’ve ever told you that—I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody that. But… selling your soul, sacrificing everything you have… for love. It’s actually quite admirable. You know, most people speak about love like they know—like they really know, but they don’t, not really.”
Blackwell twirled the reaper blade around a few times then moved closer to Raven. “You know… a true, pure love is actually quite rare. And it’s only when love’s truly tested that anyone really knows how strong it really is. I mean, that’s the only way to really test the strength of anything, isn’t it? To test it, to challenge it.” Blackwell was drifting and shook his head, trying to refocus himself.
“Anyways though.” He continued and squatted down next to Raven’s gasping, dying body. “What I’m trying to say is: you were given a gift, a purpose. And you should be thankful for that.”
Unable to move, Raven’s eyes slowly slid over to Blackwell as the rest of him lied there, frozen, dying, and bleeding out. Though Raven couldn’t speak at the moment—and regardless if he was dying or not, he was sure that Blackwell’s words were nothing but bullshit.
Blackwell laid the sword next to Raven. Then, as Raven gasped for life, Blackwell—strangely and with compassion—grabbed the reaper’s claw and held on to it. “Raven, your ex-wife, Megan, the one you sold your soul for—leased actually, but anyways, she’s good… she’s happy. That was what? forty… forty-one years ago? So, that would make her roughly… forty-one-years-old.” Blackwell shook his head, disappointed in himself. Forty-one, that should have been obvious. “Anyways, she’s got two kids—good kids, one’s seventeen. The other’s nineteen. She started a little earlier on that one, in my opinion, but it turned out okay.”
Raven continued to helplessly gasp for air while he tried to pay attention to Blackwell’s words. He should have been angry, but he wasn’t. He was dying. My wife, ex-wife, (he could hardly remember her, who she was) but… she always wanted kids. Strangely enough, as Raven lied there dying, his forgotten memories began returning to him.
The pool of black blood—from both of them but mostly from Raven, expanded around them and was everywhere. Blackwell’s beloved suit was covered in it, and while he was usually a stickler for neatness, he didn’t seem to care about the mess at all. He continued. “And she still loves iced tea and lemon meringue pie. And she doesn’t remember why—she doesn’t know why, but… she still loves old episodes of All in the Family and Mister Ed.” Blackwell smiled at that and felt Raven’s claw twitch in his hand. “And the beach, she still loves the beach. They went to Hawaii for their honeymoon.” Blackwell continued speaking, and Raven’s memories grew more vivid.
And while Raven still couldn’t speak, his thoughts came alive. Oh, how she loved the beach, but we never made it to Hawaii. We were poor back then, and we always said, ‘Next year,’ but eventually, next year never came. And we were poor. When we got married—it was a small wedding, at the courthouse, it was... And our honeymoon, if you could even call it that, we had our honeymoon at… nowhere special. Huh… Hawaii. I’m glad she made it, that she finally got to go… even if it was with someone else—someone other than me, in another life.
Blackwell continued. “Her husband… he’s a couple years older than her, and he’s an architect—hence the early marriage and baby-making—but they’re still together… and happy.”
Good, Raven thought. She deserves to be happy, and she always loved babies. Her eyes always sparkled like the stars, like Mea’s eyes do when she laughs, and she was always… I bet she’s a great mother, and she’ll be a great grandmother too, one day. Raven’s breathing became even shallower, and he was now making a low gargling sound each time he tried to inhale. His eyes were dilated and seemed almost frozen, stuck staring at the ceiling.
And Blackwell continued and continued holding on to Raven’s claw. “They’re happy. Megan, her husband, their children; they’re one big happy family. The boy plays soccer. The girl, she wanted to join the military, the army.” Like me? Raven thought. “But her mom talked her out of it.” Thank God. The wars, the wars I fought in, the things I did to… no, not for my daughter—her daughter… Good for her, for them. Raven’s eyes drifted over to Blackwell’s. The devil, my killer, Blackwell almost looks sad.
Blackwell looked away and went back to talking. “Huh, you know, as crazy as it sounds… I think some part of her was—is—still holding onto you, as if some of your shared memories clung to her and were still sticking to her… like they were part of her soul or something.” Blackwell paused then matter-of-factly said, “You know, actually, it’s not that crazy. Since information can neither be created or destroyed—it’s called Hawking Radiation, after Stephen Hawking, it’s not necessarily unfeasible that Megan—even in her new life, post-reincarnation that she…” Blackwell paused and looked down at Raven. Raven’s breathing was raspy, and his lips crusted. Yep, he was still dying. And Blackwell realized that he was drifting again.
“Anyways…” Blackwell shook it off again and continued. “She’s… her and the kids are good. And the guy… he’s alright—kind of nerdy and a little too right-wing for my taste, but he’s okay. He’s a good guy, and he’s good to them.”
Good, Raven thought, that’s why I did it. I just wanted her to be happy, to have the life she always wanted, the life she dreamt of… even if it wasn’t with me. And if Raven could have smiled, he would have. He couldn’t, so he wheezed instead. His vision continued blurring, and the shadows were swallowing the edges of light in large gulps. I’m dying, and it’s okay—it’s better this way. And better that she’s happy rather than the alternative: her lying in a hospital bed, dying and brain-dead, with a breathing tube down her throat, the way she was when I left her, when I sold my soul—why I sold my soul, to save her.
Blackwell started up again. “So,” he said, “I kept up my side of the bargain—a new life for her in exchange for your soul. And I’ll admit that you kept up your side of the deal too, for a little while at least. But… I just wanted you to know that she’s good. And regardless of… this, she will not be harmed. There won’t be any retribution for your betrayal—not from me, not to her. Even though you broke your side of the deal, I will stay true to my commitment and continue holdi
ng up my side of the bargain.”
Blackwell looked into Raven’s eyes before quickly looking away. Then, faint as it was, he felt the dying reaper squeeze his hand again. Though he couldn’t tell what it meant, Blackwell nodded to him anyways.
“I just,” Blackwell said, stammering and strangely sad. “I just wanted you to know that—that she’s good, and that I will hold up my side of the deal. It was important to me that you know that, before you die.”
Still dying, Raven’s breaths were now nothing more than short, shallow huffs and barely noticeable. Still, he held onto the strength and breath for one last word before his life faded away. “Mea.”
“Yes,” Blackwell sighed. “Mea. I must admit that she was quite fond of you, and I do think that she’ll miss you. And that, that is a shame.”
Pausing for just a moment, Blackwell nodded to himself. Then he grabbed Raven’s broadsword, plunged it into Raven’s chest, and stood up and walked away.
CH 36: Final Countdown
Staring up at the night’s sky, Lilly pursed her lips momentarily, her face concentrating and tense. “Go now,” she commanded her banshees, her hand fluttering off to the side. Still her eyes were fixed on the blinking star that was growing larger and drawing nearer by the second.
“I would like some privacy with my old friend,” Lilly explained. “Now leave us.” Her wispy banshees obeyed, and the smoky snakes blew away with the wind.
Lilly had other ideas. Grinning, she hopped off the terrace and strutted inside. Glancing down at where the two shriveled corpses had been, she said, “Boy, you guys lucked out.” What kind of poison did I give them? she wondered again, still unsure. The bad stuff, right? Or did I give them… She gave up trying to remember and shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know, whatever—who cares.” Then she stomped off, into the penthouse.
The corpses; they were no longer pale, blinking cadavers. They were dust—dust mixed with powdered gold, and they were slowly dissolving into two sparkling pillars of gold and silver glitter. All-in-all, they didn’t look unlike the teleporter lights from Star Trek.
Lilly continued onward and inward, into the penthouse. Walking across the expensive Persian rug like it was the red carpet of an awards show, her toes squished in and out of the plush Merino wool that felt almost as soft as her skin did.
Marbled pillars lined her path, and a golden spiraled staircase stood off to her left. To the right was an elegant sitting-room lit up by a fireplace and a crystal chandelier. The chandelier hung high above the room and rained down sparkling beams of heavenly gold.
At the end of her path, there was a wall—a wall covered with a large canvas painting edged in a basic wooden frame.
The painting was hypnotic—in a strange, weird, hard to describe, sort of way. It was covered in paint droplets that were drizzled and dropped and scattered all across it. Dark and disturbing, elegant, unique, and beautiful; it was an illegally gotten, priceless Jackson Pollock painting that never quite made it to market.
The painting. Black and red paint droplets and streams of darker ones overpowered the gentler yellow and blue colors. The dark swirls and randomness reminded Lilly of something, her banshees. Yes, dark and disturbing, it was.
But what intrigued her the most was the texture. Some of the heavier paint droplets had clumped together on the canvas and created tiny mountains over the lesser colors. The darkness overpowered the light. On the other end of the canvas, other streams of colored droplets created different patterns--varying in both their softness and volatility of the colors and in the thickness and clumpy-ness of the paint droplets. Black streams, blood-red splatters, yellow-and-blue swirls that melted into purple hued lakes. It was chaos. It was euphoria. Emotions that Lilly imagined were swirling inside the creator himself, at least that’s how Lilly saw it. Still, the thing she found most odd about the painting was how the darkness always seemed to overpower the lighter colors. A tsunami within a midnight hurricane swallowing a peaceful beach at sunrise.
Lilly felt the ground shake and smiled. She’s here. Then she went back to studying the Jackson Pollack painting.
The darker colors were obviously dropped after the lighter ones, but… she noticed that some of the paints were smeared. Whether the smearing was intentional or just a product of randomness, she didn’t know. In the lower left quadrant of the painting, in a very small section, heavy blue drops mixed with the thin yellow ones while even smaller white and red droplets mixed together on the fringes of the blue and yellow ones. The streaks almost looked like a tiny rainbow that was transforming into a mountain. Small, colorful, and almost bright; but surrounded by darkness and chaos—like hope, Lilly thought.
Lilly could hear Mea’s approaching footsteps, but she still didn’t turn around. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Lilly asked rhetorically. She wondered whether the artist was truly mad or if he saw something else in the world that everyone else didn’t. Perhaps he was one of the few sane people in the world, and the rest were crazy. Or, perhaps Lilly just liked the painting because she liked chaos and disorder. Did she? Or did she just see chaos and disorder as a byproduct of life? Lilly shrugged and thought, I don’t know, but they’re all going to die anyways.
Lilly was still admiring the painting, but her tail had other ideas. Emerging from who-knows-where, it poked through the back of her slinky black dress, through a small slit just above her tailbone—to be sure to not to reveal too much. The tail seemed to be focusing on Mea. The barbed onyx spear. Its tip was like that of a black spear, but its barbs ruffled out one-by-one. Soon it started looking like a jagged version of a rattlesnake’s tail, and it started to rattle like one as well. Then, more like a cobra than a rattlesnake, it swayed in front of Mea and looked as if it was about to strike Mea.
“Don’t,” Mea commanded as she aimed one of her blade at it.
Hearing Mea’s voice, the sound of scraping metal, Mea’s blades sharpening against each other, and her own rattling tail; Lilly huffed and finally turned around and faced Mea.
Mea was clad in her armor with her wings flared out, and she had a sword in each of her hands. Mea’s face was hard and humorless. And that made Lilly smile, and the flakes of red in her eyes glimmered like shards of shattered rubies.
Lilly liked the angry Mea, but her tail didn’t. Ruffling and rattling louder, it grew restless. “Stop it,” Lilly barked over her shoulder at her rustling tail. “Don’t,” she ordered it, and her tail listened, and its rattling simmered down.
Lilly returned her focus back to Mea, studying her before grinning again. “There you are,” Lilly said. “The old you. I like it. So, have you come to join me? to join us?” She playfully added, “It’ll be fu-un,” then she crinkled up her toes on the plush Persian carpet.
“No,” Mea said. “I’m going to stop you. Look… you said it yourself, that they—the mortals—are going to end up killing themselves. If that’s so, if that’s what you really believe, then let ‘em do it. Let the mortals destroy themselves. We don’t need to interfere.”
Lilly was still studying Mea, Mea and her sad words. Slightly confused but with a devilish grin, Lilly asked, “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” She almost sounded sincere.
Mea thought about everything that had happened today: Lilly popping up in her class, her slashing Lilly’s face, finding out that Azazel was her brother, killing three muggers, dreaming about the great flood and Lilly leaving her for dead, Raven revealing that he knew that she looked like his dead wife, Ryan telling her that she was going to die, visiting the stone tower, Vincent kissing her, and now… and now this. Mea finally said, “It’s been a long fucking day.”
Lilly giggled then reflected on her day. She visited Mea, got an Intro-to-Biology syllabus, drank an iced mocha, got her face cut, visited the Wolf, killed those two drunk hobos in Los Angeles, had her banshees kill those five Greek bastards—and that other homeless guy by the HOLLYWOOD sign, chopped off Michelle’s and Timbon’s heads, killed the penthouse couple, saw her little M
ischa… and sent her home, and now… and now this—and she still had to make a visit to the stone tower. “Yeah, definitely. It’s definitely been a long fucking day.”
The two women smiled at each other, and the tension broke. “Lilly, it’s been a long day—you said so yourself. We don’t have to do this. Let’s just… Let’s just not do this. Okay? Let’s just… go somewhere and talk, like normal people.”
Lilly smiled again then turned back towards the Jackson Pollock. Chaos and disorder, was it really necessary? She turned back towards Mea again. She looked sad. Yes, it was—wasn’t it? Waiting a split-second that felt like an eternity, Lilly finally answered Mea. “No.”
Mea had her answer and nodded. Okay. Now they both knew what was coming next. The barbed, onyx spear shot out and over Lilly’s shoulder, at Mea. But this time, Mea was ready. She side-stepped it and brought down her blade, sending the spear blasting off and into a wall at the far end of the penthouse, splattering venom as it passed—all over the place and like a sizzling trail of acid.
“Try again,” Mea snipped.
“Owe.” Lilly easing backwards and away from her beloved painting as her snipped tail wildly sprayed venom around like a rabid firehose. Stupid tail, so messy. Lilly huffed then yanked it off and tossed it aside. Her lip curled, and Lilly almost looked like she was about to say something but…
In a flash of light, Mea shot forward, and her foot slammed into Lilly’s chest, sending her blasting into the wall and, in the process, destroying the priceless painting that Lilly loved so much. And as Lilly slammed into the painting and through the wall, crushed marble and powdered drywall filled the air. The cloud of white dust swelled and swallowed Lilly within it. And Mea stood in-front of it and waited for Lilly to reemerge.
Emerge she did. No longer draped in her swaying, shimmering black dress, Lilly was now clad in her black and red body suit, complete with her fluttering red ribbons dangling and dancing from her wrists. A new, red tail and its new sharpened tip swayed behind her while her leathery black wings scrunched up and compressed over her back. Her nails were talons, and her lips were pursed and angry. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
The Long Night of the Gods: Lilith Awakens (Forgotten Ones Book 2) Page 29