Looking at the beak, Lucian sharpened it and curved it downward ever so slightly, making it just a bit longer. As he did so, one of the dummies rose from the ground.
With a flick of his wrist, Lucian fired the crow at the dummy’s chest. The crow spiraled through its body and came out the other end.
The hovering sphere returned to Lucian’s hand.
He examined it for a moment, paying particularly close attention to his creation’s eyes, which he pressed just a little closer together, so it could theoretically get a better view of what was directly in front of it.
Lucian’s smartphone appeared in his hand.
He floated the crow back into the air and sent it to the other room. A video feed appeared on his smartphone as it zipped through Old Death’s living room.
It was a strange merger of man and machine with a touch of magic, the crow knowing exactly where Lucian wanted to go without Lucian having to control it.
He watched the video feed as it went down a spiral staircase into a large library.
With a thought he recalled it. The crow returned to Lucian, hovering above his palm.
Lucian pocketed his smartphone and conjured a beer. He took a sip from it, the crow rotating as he gave his creation the ability to check people’s stats.
He even gave it a small amount of sentience, enough that its eyes quivered, his creation now looking at Lucian in a familiar way.
“I will give you more later,” Lucian said as he took a sip from his beer. He walked back toward the balcony and gazed out at the city on the horizon, his crow hovering above his shoulder.
Figuring it was worth exploring, Lucian floated up into the air, his beer bottle vanishing. Lucian’s robes started to spiral beneath him as he rose even higher. He pressed his arms back, aimed at the city beyond.
He blasted through the air toward one of the flying vehicles, his crow keeping up with him. Lucian reached the vehicle and landed on top of it, looking inside to see the driver was missing.
Lucian also noticed that the vehicle was unlike anything he’d ever seen before, the frame of the car from the early twentieth century, a line of light beneath it, hollow inside, nothing powering it.
Glancing toward the ground below, he started to lower himself toward the homes that surrounded the city. He dropped down into the first home and let himself in, finding that it too was empty, a light shining within the place that made it appear from the outside as if someone was there.
“What is this?” he asked the crow.
His crow’s retractable claws lifted from the top of its form.
It moved through the abandoned home, searching for things, and returned with a bit of cloth, which it handed to Lucian.
Lucian looked the cloth over and even held it up to the light, hoping it would give him a better understanding of his surroundings.
“Let’s keep going.”
Lucian exited the home and rose back into the air, his robes spiraling around him again as he took off toward the city.
He flew even higher into the air this time, his crow still beside him, turning when he turned, lowering when Lucian lowered.
The city dazzled from above, full of life and sparkle, the lights meant to draw people in, to catch their attention. But as Lucian descended into the city, flying between the buildings, he found everything to be empty, from the vehicles hovering in the air to the glitter below.
It was all fake, nothing more than an elaborate set.
He landed at the top of one of the saber-shaped towers and entered through a rooftop entrance.
His crow zipping around him, Lucian walked down a stairwell to find more of what he’d already seen on the outskirts of the city. The space was empty aside from the occasional floating light near the window to make the place appear as if it were inhabited. There was no smell, no dust floating in the air, and aside from the fact that it was cold, there really wasn’t much sensory data he could pick up.
“Why would someone go to all the trouble to create this?”
Lucian’s spherical creation buzzed around again, its eyes glowing brighter to light his path.
After taking another look around the space and checking out the floor beneath him, Lucian returned to the rooftop.
A chair appeared.
Lucian took a seat and looked out at the city, following the stretch of glittering light that led all the way to Old Death’s home, which was cut into a cliffside.
Lucian hadn’t noticed that when he’d left, more focused on where he was going than where he had come from.
And thinking this made him wonder about his family, how his brother was holding up and how his mother was doing. Lucian had been so busy dealing with taking Death’s mantle that he had forgotten what he had been before, and the people who cared for him.
At least that was how he felt at that moment as he stared out at the desolate city.
His only recourse was to get powerful enough to save his brother, and if he could do that…
Lucian nodded.
He would need to try to find Yoshimi.
She would know more about what to do with the angel situation, and where they may have taken Old Death. Lucian assumed they had taken him to heaven, but just saying that made him feel a little funny.
He had never been that religious, and to think that there really was a heaven and angels who fed off hope turned what Lucian had been taught as a child upside down. Yet before he went to Yoshimi, Lucian would need to do several things, from leveling up to creating some seriously powerful weapons.
He recalled seeing Old Death reading a book, and figured it wouldn’t hurt to check his library. Perhaps there was more information on injuresouls as well.
Lucian had gotten lucky that only two had come for him back at the mental hospital.
He had a feeling that had he stayed around longer, it would have brought more attention.
Old Death said that they were hungry ghosts, and while Lucian wasn’t quite sure how this would lead to them killing him, he figured it would be a sort of feeding situation.
He shuddered as he thought of this. He recalled the injuresouls’ bandaged skulls, what it felt like when they touched him.
It was an icy feeling, cold in the same way he felt when he was drained of his power, as if a hand had slowly pressed through him, freezing his spine.
That settled it.
Lucian would recharge and then he would start working on weapons. He’d visit his family, hit up another mental hospital, and try to get a better grip on growing his power.
Now that Lucian had a way to increase his power rapidly, he would take full advantage of it with the hopes of growing strong enough to go after even rarer parasites.
Lucian was curious as well.
He didn’t know how to contact the Council of Death, but he figured they may be interested in what had happened to his predecessor.
So that was another thing he would eventually figure out: how to get in touch with other Deaths, even if the old man had warned him against it.
Yoshimi had been kind to him, and maybe like Old Death said, people just had Death misconstrued.
Not feeling like returning to his bedroom, Lucian brought his bed to him, the bed forming in the air on the rooftop. It lowered, and then figuring it couldn’t hurt, Lucian lifted it again so that it floated.
He crawled into bed and got under the blankets, his robes disappearing.
His crow landed on his chest, staring at him fondly.
Even though it had a cold, robotic face, Lucian smiled at the device. He placed his hand on it, patting it as he would a dog.
He yawned as he watched moving vehicles on the horizon, his vision blurry, sleep coming over him.
Chapter Eighteen: Things Fall Apart
The next morning bloomed into existence, the sky still dark.
Lucian stepped off his floating bed and walked to the edge of the rooftop, a cup of coffee materializing in his hand.
He took a sip of the coffee, and
glanced down to the streets below, everything around him dark aside from the lights of the buildings and the flying vehicles.
He briefly recalled the surreal dream he’d had, one in which he was able to save his brother, rescue Old Death and become who he was supposed to become.
It gave Lucian hope.
The city before him had been created by his predecessor. It wasn’t an alien world. Lucian didn’t know where it existed, but it was entirely Old Death’s creation, of this he was certain.
And if it was a creation, that meant it could be modified in some way.
Lucian lifted his hand, and the night turned to day.
It didn’t even take much power; he simply had to will the night away.
The brightness caused his crow to shudder.
“You don’t like the light?” Lucian asked the spherical creature, which floated off to his left.
The crow shook itself, reminding Lucian of the way a dog behaved once it got out of the water.
He turned his palm around and the crow floated over to him, hovering, Lucian lightly placing his fingers on it and admired his creation.
“I’m going to have to invent more than one of you,” he said, and as these words left his lips, a second crow appeared.
The first one moved to meet it, and once it was satisfied, both of them turned to Lucian, tilting their heads to the right.
“A new friend,” Lucian said as the second crow faded away. “Don’t worry, you will be my first one, the best one.”
The crow made a sound that was somewhere between a whir and a cluck.
“You’re right, we should get started for the day. Let’s return to Old Death’s home and see if he left us any breadcrumbs.”
Lucian pressed his thumb and pinky together.
The two of them reappeared in the home, the great windows letting in a ton of light.
“Maybe that’s why he always kept it dark,” Lucian said, as he dimmed the sun by moving a dark cloud in front of it.
He took the spiral staircase down to his predecessor’s library.
As he made his way down, Lucian tried to remember the name of the book that he’d seen Old Death reading.
He recalled the conversation they had about the book, and how it detailed some guy’s trip to heaven, but he couldn’t remember the title. Once Lucian and his crow reached the room, his spherical creation took off toward the bookshelves, intuiting that Lucian wanted it to search them.
The compartment opened on top of its body. The mechanical arm started taking books out, dropping them onto a table, and rapidly flipping through them.
“I guess it’s as good of a time as any to give you some help.”
Lucian’s new crow appeared, joining his first crow, both searching through books rapidly, the occasional thunk signaling that they were looking through a new book.
Lucian moved to a few of the books that had been set near an old leather sofa in the corner. They were written in a language he’d never seen before, but as soon as he opened them up, the words morphed into English.
It was about something called the Progeny of Light.
Lucian thumbed through the pages, not finding anything that would help him figure out more about getting into Heaven.
It wasn’t the first time he chuckled at this thought; Lucian was literally planning to go to Heaven to find Death, a man he hardly knew. But it felt right, it felt like it was the right thing to do.
Lucian and his crows searched for quite a while before an idea came to him.
“Books about Watchers,” he said aloud, recalling that Old Death had mentioned that the book was also about a group of angels called the Watchers.
A stack of heavy tomes fell onto the table in front of him, kicking up a cloud of dust. As he looked over their spines, Lucian saw exactly what he was looking for.
“Bingo.”
He called over to his crows, the pods stopping for a moment, turning to Lucian, and then turning back to their task. “Okay, suit yourself, keep looking,” Lucian said as he opened the Book of Enoch.
Sure enough, Old Death had highlighted certain passages.
He’d even written a few notes.
It took Lucian a little while to go through all the passages that his predecessor had highlighted, but eventually, he was able to cobble together some information.
One of the main ideas Old Death was focused on in the text was an entrance to Heaven known as the South Wind, which was put on Earth to give angels a chance to escape if an evil angel known as Azazyel, leader of the Watchers, ever returned.
The only problem was, Lucian still didn’t know where this entrance was located.
But at least he had a lead.
“Guys,” he called over to his crows, his spherical creations buzzing back over to him. “One of you can stay; the other is coming with me.”
His crows looked at each other, and what Lucian knew as his first crow came forward, the other moving back toward the bookshelves.
“Good. We’re looking for information on Watchers and the South Wind,” Lucian reminded his creation.
The second crow nodded, getting back to work.
Lucian pressed his pinky and thumb together and disappeared instantly, appearing at his brother’s home. Connor was down in the basement, his legs kicked up on a table, a dazed look in his eyes.
His phone rang and he ignored it.
Lucian saw the addiction parasite attached to his brother’s body, his arms tensing as he equipped his Glock.
He knew it wasn’t going to work; the semi-translucent creature with the strip of mustard yellow in its body didn’t even seem to notice him. That didn’t stop Lucian from trying anyway, his bullets passing right through.
His brother’s phone rang again, this time a different ringtone. Connor went for his phone immediately. “I’m ready,” he said as he pressed the speaker icon on his phone.
“Good,” a voice said out of the speaker. “I’m in the usual spot.”
Connor stuffed his phone in his pocket and stood, wobbly at first, then getting his balance. He made his way up the stairs that connected the basement to the first floor, and once he was there, he slipped into a light jacket.
Tuck came over to him and he shooed the cat away.
Connor paused at the door, and took his phone out again, looking down at it. Lucian hovered over his shoulders as his brother wrote a message to Samantha, letting her know that he loved her.
He stared at the phone for a moment in a stupor, his thumb eventually pressing the send button.
His brother got into his work truck, starting it up. “Dammit, you,” he said, wincing at a pain in his lower back as he backed out of the driveway.
Lucian was now in the truck with him, watching his brother with sadness in his eyes. “I wish you could see me,” he said, feeling tears welling in his eyes. “I wish you could, man.”
Connor turned on the radio, eventually choosing a station that played top forty pop hits.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited at a stoplight, licking his lips, his eyes darting back and forth across the road.
There was something paranoid about the way he drove. Connor was always a few miles below the speed limit, glancing all around him at every stop sign, sniffing and rubbing his nose against his arm.
The song changed to some overproduced pop song and he turned it up, tersely nodding his head along.
Connor got on the Yankee Division Highway and took Andover Street to an apartment complex not far from Northshore Mall.
The place reminded Lucian of some of the rowhouses he’d seen in Philly. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot that looked like they hadn’t moved in years, including two that were on cinderblocks, one filled with aged magazines and torn envelopes.
Connor braked a little too hard, bouncing forward some, cursing at his own stupidity.
He got out of his truck and glanced around again, licking his lips, hocking a loogie into the dead grass.
Once he saw that he was in the clear, he walked along a cracked sidewalk to a home at the far end of the complex with a dirty welcome mat in front of its door.
He knocked; Lucian heard the sound of someone moving inside.
Rather than wait with Connor, Lucian pressed through the door to find a guy with a shaved head looking out the peephole, a gun tucked in the front of his baggy pants. The man had a cross tattoo on his right temple and a crazy look in his eyes, almost as if he were feral.
Name: Kenny Emerson
Date of Birth: 07/02/1986
Date of Death: 04/16/2037
“It’s him,” Kenny called out.
“Let him in,” a voice from the dining room said.
Lucian turned a corner and saw another man sitting at an oak table, a small plastic lunchbox in front of him. The man wore a Patriots hat and a shirt with a small athletic wear logo on the sleeve. He was a little heavy, with hairy arms, unkempt hair sticking out of his hat, and chapped lips.
“I’ve got you,” Lucian said as the man’s information took shape before him. The man was almost two years past the date he was supposed to pass.
Name: Tim Austin
Date of Birth: 06/29/1991
Date of Death: 09/13/2017
The peach-colored parasite attached to the man’s body came to attention, eyes rising out of its flesh.
His cape flaring up around him, Lucian floated to the second floor, dipping his head through the ceiling and looking down at what was happening, as the parasite searched around the room for him.
“Hey,” Connor said, approaching the table and taking a seat.
“What’s up, man?” Austin asked. There was something strange about the way he was looking at Connor, almost as if he were trying to root something out.
“Yeah, I’m good. You?”
“Just chilling as usual.”
“Great. Glad to hear it. Well, I need the, um, usual.”
“I’ve run out of vikes,” the dealer said.
“You called me,” Connor said, agitation in his voice.
“Chill,” the dealer told him. “I called you because I want you to be the first to get some of this stuff,” he said, opening up his lunchbox.
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