In Eden's Shadow

by Amanda Churi

  Mabel lay there, processing Embry’s words and staring at the scarce white splotches in disbelief. What? That was what it meant? All this time?

  “Wow…” She was so beside herself that the swarm of butterflies surging up in her heated chest broke through her mouth, creating the faintest of laughs. After all they had been through, all Eero had battled inside and out, there was still a piece that had feelings for her… Which meant…!

  “Embry! I might be able to…!”

  She patted Mabel’s head. “Yes, but you will need this as well to succeed.” She again reached into her chest, pulling out another item nested within. Mabel had been so overjoyed that she had not seen it—but she was confused by exactly what she did see.

  “An empty vial…?”

  “If you stood in mirrored worlds, you would see something inside. When the Proxez raided the base, I watched from afar, and this, I knew I had to save, much like that rose—especially when I saw Eero fragmenting.” She pushed the vial into Mabel’s free hand. “These precious, angelic souls are from Seek’s body herself, willingly trapped so that Eero may eat them. Please… Make sure he does. These spirits will aid his soul in fighting the larger fledglings to soon come, so if he intakes these—”

  Mabel didn’t need to hear more. There was a chance! A small, miniscule, microscopic one, but it was there! “Get me back to him…!”

  Embry obeyed without question, scooping Mabel up and elegantly prancing down the hall with large, delicate strides. She took her sweet time as Mabel’s heart thundered, wanting her to go as fast as her hinges could bend, but she was too absorbed in her twisting, unsure tongue to say a thing. This could have been the end—she didn’t want to spend it hating Eero and certainly didn’t want him to never remember all they once shared. She had to show him… Tell him everything no matter how upset he got, and she had to bring him back! The real him!

  “E-Eero!” She cried his name as soon as they turned into Justus’ overturned workshop, but no other words managed to escape. Seeing his altered form again instead of that lovely young man startled her racing emotions, especially when she saw Eero standing beside a cleared work table with a roll of unsanitary instruments laid out next to him—nails, saws, needles, clamps…

  “Help her strip, Embry,” Eero ordered bluntly. “The faster we get this over with, the better.”

  Mabel’s fear-locked body let Embry proceed. She seated Mabel on the cold metal table, but Mabel just hunched over in a fog, hardly moving a limb as Embry delicately undressed her. Eero’s eyes were fixed on Mabel the entire time, but there was a chill behind his gaze—just watching, evaluating every square inch of her and calculating how to best proceed with whatever was planned.

  “There you go,” Embry cooed as she laid Mabel on her back. She took the rose and vial from Mabel’s clenched hands, smiling again. “Just remember what I told you, and stay strong… Everything will turn out better than you think.”

  Mabel scoffed, finding a weak smile of her own. “Alright… And hey, Embry?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why change to please others? If you can’t enjoy just being yourself, then what’s the point? Sometimes, it’s just better to be weird—screw conformity and efficiency.”

  Embry’s eyes sparkled graciously, twinkling in a certain pattern that Mabel had never seen. “Affirmative.”

  Eero irritably snorted from the corner of the room. “We good?”

  Embry winked at Mabel before backing away, regrettably switching places with the demon.

  “Alright, the best way to go about this is through mergence,” Eero flatly stated. He hovered his hand over Mabel’s sweltering chest. “Just a fair warning: it will be painful.”

  Mabel released a single, ragged laugh, her eyes reflecting the jumping electricity above. “I’m not a baby. You don’t have to prep me.”

  “Could have fooled me.” He pressed down lightly on her stomach, pushing in with his palm while closing his eyes and focusing on the work ahead.

  But Mabel didn’t feel pain now—she couldn’t feel anything but a fluttering warmth flooding through her when his surprisingly tender hand began stroking her abdomen. I need to let him know, she reminded herself. Let him realize and remember… Before that little spark… Little glow is gone too. “You know, I always wondered if it would happen someday… But this is not how I ever imagined you laying me down.”

  Her slack eyelids peeled back a bit more, surprised to find Eero with a dumbfounded face. “Where the fuck did that come from?”

  Mabel awkwardly grinned. “From what I had thought about many times before, even when you started going insane.”

  “Well, I’m happy your atrocious body never tainted mine any further than you already did.” He ran his hand from her stomach down to her thighs; a nervous chill raced up Mabel’s entirety and seized her body with an electrical jolt. “For the record, you would have never been able to handle a demon—just saying.”

  Mabel sighed. This was definitely not going well—and damn, he really didn’t mind shattering someone’s self-image. “Is it even worth it…?”

  “Is what?” he grumbled, averting his eyes and continuing his inspection.

  She didn’t want to say it. She wanted to break through to Eero with every fiber of her being, but the wall between Eero’s ego and reality was so ridiculously solid that she felt she had yet to even make a chip. “Is it even worth trying…?”

  “Oh, with what?! Let me guess, trying to get your ‘precious’ back?” He whisked a rusted hand saw into his clutch. “For fuck’s sake, get it through your head: he’s gone, you hormonal female. You’ll never get him back.”

  She didn’t know what to say for a moment; her eyes instead rolled in search of her removed armor, finding the frail rose and powerful vial amongst the heap.

  In her already melting body, another wave of heat raced through—one of anger. “No. I will—”

  “No, you won’t,” he sharply corrected. “Now shut up and let me—”

  She smashed her fist down, making Eero step back. “NO. You listen, and you listen well! I know you’re in there, Eero! Remember everything we’ve gone through! All the journeys! Through Italy, through time… Castles, caves, forests, you were there with me every step of the way! Don’t forget those nights laughing in our bunks—our training, when I would kick your butt and make you black and blue! Don’t forget how I can eat you under the table—or how I snore like a drunk! Hahaha…!” She snorted up the leaking tears and snot, struggling to control herself. Her next words were so frail they were hardly words at all. “Just… Don’t forget me. Don’t lose those memories… We’ve already lost our friends… Ryze, Aponi, Kevin, Laelia, Tah… Griffin… Don’t let me lose you too… This future was supposed to be all ours. I have nothing left if you’re gone, so don’t leave me alone… Please…”

  Eero crossed his arms. His golden eyes went black. “Alright, you done yet?”

  His passivity drove a nail through her pounding heart. “Can you really be this cruel…? Heartless? Do you have any concern for anyone but yourself?”

  “Yes, yes, and no.”

  Mabel ground down on her teeth, bracing herself. His mind was an unbearable storm of hatred, confusion, and above all, deviousness. It was a land that she shouldn’t have wanted to explore, but there was no other way to find out what was really going on in his head—or way to get through—and it snapped her. “WHY WON’T YOU LISTEN TO ME?! Why won’t you let one word I say pass through even a millimeter of that thick skull?!”

  He stepped up to her face, looming above and blocking out all light. “Because last time I did, you killed me.”

  “Well, you look pretty fucking alive!”

  “NO, YOU KILLED ME! Ruined my afterlife! Took away everything with your manipulative, feminine ways, and it’s all your fault, you complete and utter bitch!”

  “Oh, shut up! You ruined yourself—!”

  His hand clamped around her throat, compressing her windpipe and holding
her down. His growl was growing, biceps trembling as he kept himself from pushing down and killing her in one go, but his eyes were devoid of color and life, so narrowed and angered that he could not see past his fuming emotions. “No… You did it all… Everything… It’s all your fault, Maeve! And I will never, ever forgive you!”

  “H-how so?!” she choked out. “If that’s true, then r-remind me just what I supposedly did! Tell me what the heck I could have done to—!”

  Screaming in outrage, he smashed his skull into hers, ending the conversation.

  Twenty-four

  The Golden Years

  D-DID HE REALLY JUST—?!

  She was so livid that the gates keeping her short temper under control were blown clean off their hinges and into the next dimension, leaving a heaving, hateful girl standing in their place, thirsty for the blood of her enemy. “You… Why you…! You stupid god dang satanic piece of crap! What the frick makes you think that you have any right to lay a hand on me you rotten, good-for-nothing, pickle-pussing, grasshole, barnacle bag of ducking spit—”

  Her violent, filthy rant faltered as Mabel’s air supply lapsed, her head whipping back and forth in surprise. Wait a minute, how was she thinking—cursing aloud after that? In fact, how was she awake?

  “And how did I get in a desert?!” Grumbling in an uprising panic, she got to her feet, searching to get a better idea of just where she was. It was the middle of a crisp, clear night, all stars and no moon. The temperature was atrociously low despite the arid climate, dipping far beyond Mabel’s comfort level—and the fact that she was still naked certainly did not help.

  There was nothing around to see, nothing but a few gnarly shrubs and brittle, twisted trees lacking a single living cell. Scratching her head, Mabel continued to turn in circles, unsure of what to do. Whatever this was, it was clearly not in real time. This was some delusion worked up because of Eero’s headbutt, but it felt too real… Too familiar.

  She had to force a laugh as she threw her hands up to the sky—a cackle so distorted and stressed that it should have belonged to someone in an asylum. “Ha… Alright, I’m done! Happy? You win! I don’t even care about poking my foot out from under the covers anymore! Come and take me away, demons! I’ve never been readier to be done with all of this witchy-voodoo crap!”

  “Master, why not finish her?”

  The voice drove ice into Mabel’s burning spine, whisking the mage around. She was surprised when she saw them, having just looked there a moment ago, yet there they now stood with a human sacrifice at their feet.

  “N-no! Please!” a peasant woman screamed, bound at the hands and feet with rope. She was squirming on her back like a worm, her deep, crisscrossing abrasions pouring blood over the cracked earth—and those two just stood, pondering over her dying body as though she was a board game. “Let me go, I beg of you!”

  Eero’s eyes flashed a tempting purple—not gold—as he lifted his animal-like lips in a hungry snarl, smiling as he leaned closer. Hissing like a foul serpent, Coruscus slyly slunk down to its prey, gently tracing her beaten body and making a deep incision right below the collar. A wavering wail broke the woman, her misery only pulling another snicker out of Eero’s crazed smile and heightening his enjoyment.

  “STOP! JUST STOP! I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING! I DO NOT!”

  “We know,” Eero chortled, his words drawing a pained, disbelieving gasp from the victim. “But it’s been hours since I’ve had a good meal.”

  “Wha—?!”

  Coruscus flicked up and slashed her neck wide open, quelling her protests and leaving the woman grieving for air. The ferocious demon took a respectful knee, curiously overlooking her fading life before leaning in and tilting his open jaw above her squirting veins. The skin at the corners of his mouth cracked like porcelain, falling away into mist as his chasm ran all the way up to his ears.

  It wasn’t the wound that killed the woman first, but the sight as her eyes rolled back in her head and her neck slacked to extremes.

  “Oh… Not like that!” Eero rumbled. He brought his slicing teeth so close that her receding pulse still managed to splatter blood into his mouth. With a massive inhale that vanquished all air around him, a puny white wisp was ripped from the severed skin, squeaking and thrashing as it tried to hold onto its human body. Eero’s drawn-in breath strengthened, even pulling up granules of soil until, finally, the soul lost its grip, flying into Eero’s jaws that immediately clamped shut.

  A longing sigh followed Eero’s meal as he rose to his monstrous height, flashing a disapproving frown at the body. “It’s got a foul aftertaste.”

  Reeve dipped her head. “Apologies. Any life force squandering around out here has little value to any world.”

  Eero grumbled beneath the breath that he had too much to give, placing his hands on his hips and staring off at a city alight by torches in the distance—one so high and mighty that Mabel wondered if it was a mirage. “Tomorrow… Tomorrow, we catch her.”

  “But why not tonight?” Reeve wondered softly. “My powers are enhanced by darkness; they will best hers without a problem.”

  “Because a mere fight is not the goal. We can’t only defeat Maeve physically; we have to shatter her reputation too, and what better way to do that than by forcing her to expose just what she is in front of Canaan’s greatest city? They won’t see a fire-spouting brat as a savior, that’s for sure.”

  Reeve’s masked face slightly fell. “I see…” Her attention turned to the woman’s empty carcass. “What do you wish to do with her?”

  Eero snorted. “I really don’t give a damn. I’ve got to find a tastier soul, or I’m liable to faint from fatigue tomorrow mid-battle.” Lashing Coruscus, he hustled off into the night, abandoning the ice spirit.

  Mabel waited, watching him go from the corner of her eye while staring at Reeve’s composed self, surprised. She had never met the ice spirit since she had fled the past like a coward, but seeing the original Reeve—just what inhabited Tah—it boggled the Receiver. Tah was always quite mute, no pun intended, but the spirit of ice and darkness itself? She behaved… Submissively… Convinced of her inferiority to the idiot that was off chasing his stomach like all men did.

  “To think you filled little Tah and gave her such rage…” Mabel said aloud, unable to keep the irony of it all in her head. “How? What… Happened?”

  Reeve’s downed head rose, her piercing blue eyes meeting Mabel’s dead on. The sight locked Mabel’s feet to the soil, incapacitating her of movement, but Reeve never replied. Mabel was positive that the spirit broke through whatever illusion entrapped them; but then, Reeve suddenly looked away from her and back toward Eero’s departing figure. A lost sigh whistled through the slits in her mask… A cry…

  She could have as many pity parties as she wanted, but the moment that Reeve’s attention averted elsewhere, Mabel yanked her body free from its petrification and sprinted for her life, never looking back. She ran in such a panic after Eero that she almost tripped with every step. The scenery was pulling past her in a blur, each terrified step offsetting Mabel’s pulse more and more until she felt trapped inside her own body, seeing the world whiz by while her heart rate dropped so low that putting down a foot became an earth-shaking thud.

  What’s happening?! What is this?!

  The intensified weight on her frame lifted without warning, betraying her already waning balance and throwing her to her knees. A hack of spit and pain shot from her lips; a curtain of shivers collapsed on her trembling body. Her fumbling hands maneuvered themselves to her waist, protectively clutching herself as Mabel lifted her exhausted, frightened head, watching Eero in a fog. He stood in a dried estuary of sorts; the desert trees were wrung of every drop they held, dried and crisped through heat and starvation; even so much as brushing past a twig made it fragment and fall. The hollowed trunks were close, hardly allowing passage. The scene was ominous… The entire situation was, completely devoid of life in even its most basic form. The dry air just
rested, not rising nor falling; no wind passed, and not a sound was made, not even by Eero.

  Even in the presence of nothing, something intrigued him, making him swivel his neck and nose to all corners of the globe. Coruscus swayed dauntingly behind him, simultaneously turning its head in the opposite direction of Eero’s to cover him at all angles.

  Eero’s sharp, scaly ears suddenly expanded; Coruscus snapped in the direction of Eero’s steered head as the demon leaned toward the center of the forest with a sickened shudder. His solid legs pushed him forward while his eyes lost focus. He shoved aside trees with his inhuman strength, crushing limbs and running with heavy footsteps, but his forceful nature didn’t seem to come out of anger, rather an urge. Curious, Mabel picked herself up and followed closely. His bulky frame nearly filled up her entire range of vision, but she wasn’t drawn to look at anything besides his back.

  The dark scars where his wings had been torn out were far more visible now than in the future. Directly beneath his shoulder blades, there were irregular bulges, a map of blood bruises surrounding the shoulders and lightly tracing his spine. How… How long were you really asleep…?

  They had only been walking for a handful of minutes when Eero huffed with surprise, coming to an immediate stop. Mabel looked up at his fixated head, hesitantly crawling out from behind his back to get a look for herself.

  A gasp of awe from her was inevitable, but once Eero managed to process the sight, he dove for cover behind the nearest brush pile, peeking out with the widest eyes Mabel had seen on him yet. He actually looked frightened.

  Well, Mabel guessed that made sense; after all, the sight was so mesmerizing that it should have uplifted even the darkest of spirits.

  The dry chill of the land was quickly transforming into a perfect combination of humidity and warmth just beyond their reach, but it did so very abruptly, drawing a borderline that separated life and death. The forest floor was a blanket of bright green moss, a small, trickling creek of crystal-clear water tumbling down a hill of smooth rocks and throwing up a soft spray of starlight. Blossoms of every color across the spectrum were growing right before Mabel’s eyes, the trees breathing and dancing to their own free wind. Even the rose bushes were without thorn; plants had no need for defensive measures here, their buds and roots metastasizing into the decimated land, reviving it. Photons and granulated stars filled the air with oranges and whites, some emerging leaflets and stems bearing pallets of autumn while others emanated spring.