My heart leapt when I realized they weren’t moving. Adjusting the lens, I managed to zoom in closer, and I instantly felt queasy. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?” Unending asked, giving me a panicked look.
“He killed them. The priestesses.”
I could see them clearly. All fifty of them were impaled on wooden stakes and mounted high in the middle, their robes drenched in blood. I couldn’t remember ever hating anyone as fiercely as I hated Shezin. For all his faults, the Spirit Bender was not a coward. He would’ve taken us on. But Shezin… he knew he was no match for Unending. He’d spent too much time there with limited knowledge. He understood that Unending was a true Reaper and that there weren’t enough tricks in his book to delay or avoid the inevitable. This told me he was indeed vulnerable. That he could be killed.
Most importantly, it told me that he was aware of our ability to find that soft spot and mercilessly pierce it until he died.
“Your priestesses are dead,” Unending shouted. The Dainians were taken aback. Some of them sobbed, likely friends or relatives of the deceased. My heart broke for the nightmare we’d inadvertently unleashed upon them. But this was more or less like peeling a band-aid off a wound. Best to do it fast. It would hurt, and then it would heal. “Shezin killed them because they dared to speak up. How many other lies has he used to maintain this farce? How many priestesses went into that temple to serve him, only to find their end at the hands of a bloodthirsty fraud?”
We were kicking off a revolution. By the afternoon, the streets were packed with Dainians—men, women, children and elders alike. They walked in a peaceful procession, gathering more people and swelling the flow toward the temple. “And now, time for the grand finale,” Unending whispered, then looked to the giants. “You, stone creatures and guardians of this realm. For too long you have slept while Shezin pinned his crimes onto your good names. You built his bridges, and he spoke ill of you. For countless nights, the Dainians looked up to the mountains and thought, there they are, the monsters who stole and ate our children. Will you let this go unpunished?”
The giants trembled with anger, their heads shaking slowly. With every movement, rocks crumbled off to tumble onto the ground. Some made it into the river, splashing waves of water over the banks and washing the nearby streets.
“Then what will you do? For eons, he has been preaching lies from his temple. His temple! Built with stones from your mountains!”
That was the final straw. The giants stood and quietly gathered around the western edge of the city, where the temple gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. One of them bent over and across the outer neighborhood. With a single, simple move, the stone behemoth brought his fist down and crushed the temple into the ground. It crumbled like a sandcastle under the ocean’s furious foams. It fell apart, and then it was nothing.
“Shezin must face the people. He must face the truth, and he must face judgment,” Unending declared.
“And to think that eighteen hours ago you were just that crazy lady shouting in the middle of the city,” I chuckled, and she gave me a playful nudge. They saw her as a powerful Reaper, the first of her kind, and a force to be reckoned with. I saw that and so much more, for it was Unending’s more playful and vibrant side that had always resonated best with me. Here we were, trying to convince an entire city and its mountains to give us Shezin.
And here we were, succeeding.
The end of the second trial began to appear before my eyes as the stone giants plucked Shezin from under the piles of rubble and threw him over to us. He screamed as he fell toward the square. Embry was panicking. “Aren’t you going to help him, break his fall?”
“Why?” Unending asked nonchalantly, as Shezin landed with a sickening thud, his scream cut short by the sheer agony of one too many broken bones.
Embry couldn’t look, but the others stood horrified by the sight. I followed their eyes and found him in the middle of the square, plastered over the stone pavement, his body contorted in an unnatural position, his skin pierced with splintered bones in several places. “So that he may receive his judgment,” Embry murmured.
“Oh, he can receive his judgment as he is,” Unending said, then walked over to him. “Hi, there. You’re a hard man to reach.”
I joined her, struggling to hold back bile as I looked down at Shezin. His blood pooled beneath him. His head was… crooked. He was barely breathing. He would heal eventually, but it would take a while. And to think he’d gotten the drop on us back at the temple. It was almost insulting.
Unending searched for his scythe. When she found it and took it away, he moaned, crying and protesting in muffled croaks. “You wanted this?” my wife asked, as cold as the stone giants themselves. “Sorry, you lost that privilege the moment you decided to abuse the most precious gift Death ever gave you, you pathetic sack of broken bones.”
“No…” he hissed, barely able to move his broken arms.
“Hold on,” she mumbled, stepping away from Shezin for a moment. I watched her, knowing Death had just reached out to her. She motioned for me to join her, and she pressed her scythe against my forehead, whispering a death magic spell. Almost immediately, Death’s voice came through, sounding clearly in my head.
“Have you found him?” Death asked.
“I have. And I have your memories, too,” Unending replied, telling her about everything we’d learned about Shezin, from the people and from Shezin himself, culminating with the revelation about the murdered children. Death listened quietly, and I could only imagine what was going through her head at this point. “You removed your memories of him because you were in love, and you couldn’t bear existing with him still swimming in your mind.”
“I see…” Death sighed. “Perhaps you can leave the memory baubles somewhere safe, where a Reaper can find them so he may return them to me. I’d like to see for myself.”
“Of course. Shezin is mine,” Unending said. “He almost played us, but we got to the people. Once they learned the truth, it went pretty smoothly from there. An organic awakening, you might say. Anunit wants us to kill him, as you know, in order to complete the second trial.”
A moment passed in silence as I looked around us. The Dainians were waiting. The stone giants were waiting. Shezin was speechless and hurting beyond belief. This world had entrusted us with delivering justice against the false god, and I didn’t want to let them down. They deserved this form of retribution. It was the only closure they would ever receive for the children they had lost.
“Do you believe he deserves death, Unending?”
“I believe so, yes,” she replied. “This man committed heinous crimes for too long. He must be killed. But you made him immortal, and I didn’t see a mention of loopholes in any of your memories. I know you wouldn’t have made his immortality unbreakable, however, so there must be something, some way for us to kill him.”
Death sighed. “In that, my dear, you are correct. Frankly, I’m stunned I ever got this far with a living creature. I’m ashamed, as well. But all that aside… yes, you can kill him. You said I gave him a scythe?”
“You did, yes,” Unending replied.
“Look at its blade. Do you see anything that perhaps shouldn’t be there?”
She turned the scythe over a couple of times until she identified a small rune etched into the base of the blade. “I see it, yes. It’s ‘kari-mari,’” she said. “The word for broken.”
“There you have it. Now, go ahead with the mission. Let us see where this takes us. I admit, I am even more curious about the third trial now,” Death declared, and I felt suddenly lonely as she left the telepathic connection.
Unending and I stared at each other, baffled and thrilled at the same time. For a while, I had thought this would be much more complicated. Fortunately, the universe had sung a song in our favor, for once. My wife smiled, then gazed at the Dainians around us. “You shall receive your justice. I promise.”
Without hesitation, she kneeled besid
e Shezin, clutching his scythe.
“The thing about Death is that even at her best, she can still be devious and twisted,” Unending muttered. “She made you immortal, and you’re probably thinking I have no way of killing you.” She stopped for a second, just to observe his weak smile. “You’re probably thinking that… meh, you’ll heal, and I’ll burn you alive and try all sorts of ways to kill you. It will hurt, but in the end, you’ll survive. But as I was saying, Death can be devious and twisted. She would never give you absolute immortality. She never gave it to me, so why the hell would she give it to you?”
Gradually, the humor faded from his pale face. Unending raised his scythe in the air.
“Death embedded the word for ‘broken’ into the blade. It makes this weapon perfectly capable of killing you. It was her little loophole. Maybe a part of her knew, deep down, that you would eventually disappoint her. You do have that air of future failure about you. Anyway, Shezin—you have lied to these people for too long. You have fed on their grief and forced them to kill their children. You have murdered innocent priestesses out of spite and anger. Immortality is not something you deserve. You don’t deserve any life at all.”
“Please… no…”
“I imagine the innocent children said the same thing,” Unending shot back, then drove the tip of the scythe deep into his chest. He gasped, his eyes bulging. The crowd murmured around us. His mouth filled with blood, and he gurgled and coughed. Crimson glazed his chin as he gave his last breath, and Unending rose, unceremoniously reaping his screaming soul. He vanished into the beyond, and she walked away with a sneer of disgust on her lips.
“You are free, now,” I told the Dainians, my heart beating a little easier now that the world was free of Shezin. “For us, he was just an inconvenience. For you, I’m afraid he was so much more. It will take time to heal these wounds, and I am deeply sorry for what he put you and your ancestors through.”
“Thank you,” one of them murmured.
“You saved us,” Embry said.
Unending shook her head. “You saved yourselves by choosing to open your eyes to the truth. We were simply conduits. Nothing more, nothing less. From now on, you must choose your idols wisely. Do not let anyone else fool you into thinking they’re gods.”
I held her hand as the Dainians gathered around to praise and thank us for delivering them from true evil. I had a hard time looking away from Shezin’s corpse. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for him, and I figured he would’ve been a good man at first. Death must’ve had a serious reason to fall in love with Shezin, a mere mortal.
But as time passed, his mind became fragile. He wasn’t designed for eternity. None of us among the living truly were. Shezin struck me as the extreme negative example, whose very soul rotted. He had too much power, too much time on his hands, too much trust from the people around him. He’d taken advantage of them. He’d twisted good and evil to suit his whims.
Ultimately, he’d paid the ultimate price. Shezin had lost everything, including his life. Over the years, the memory of him would fade away, and a day would come when no one would remember his name. No one would remember who he was. No one would care.
Astra
We found shelter in the Black Heights, just as Brandon had advised. Most of the caverns were uninhabited, so we picked the most isolated one with easy access to the mountain peaks. We spent the night there, taking turns sleeping, feeding, and catching up with Mom and Richard. Their memories about their time in the cells were still fuzzy, but I trusted they’d remember more eventually. They had been heavily medicated, and there were things that not even my magic could resolve. The mind needed to heal on its own.
I worried about Isabelle, Voss, and Chantal, but both Mom and Thayen assured me we wouldn’t leave this place without them. I’d found myself strangely reassured by Myst’s promise to help us. I didn’t feel as alone or as helpless as before.
Toward the morning, I left Thayen with Mom and the others. I walked past Dafne dozing off in Jericho’s arms, then Richard and Soph—both of them snoring soundly—before making my way through the eastern tunnel that led to the ridge. Up there, the air was cold and fresh, and I spent some time looking around, trying to understand how this place could exist by feeding on our life force. It made me sleep more, but it didn’t empty me. It didn’t kill me. In fact, it felt more like a lease agreement of sorts. The environment syphoned energy off me, I recovered through sleep, and the next day, the cycle would begin again. What did I get in return, exactly?
Not much. Just anguish and extra helpings of anxiety.
But we’d made progress. We were better now than we had been yesterday. Wiser as well. The alt-Shade was not unfathomable, though it was an enigma that required a resolution, and quickly.
“What’s on your mind?” Brandon’s voice startled me. He appeared up the ridge, about twenty yards from where I’d settled. I whirled around and found myself frowning at the sight of him. Two black cuts crossed his sharp jaw. Five more on his right arm.
“Haldor’s whip?” I asked, looking at the wounds.
He shrugged, without much care of such things. “I’ll be fine. Darkness heals. It’s light that could very well kill me.”
“Where have you been?”
Brandon chuckled. “Were you worried about me?”
“Don’t be silly,” I retorted, rolling my eyes. It was hard to ignore the rampant beating of my heart, though. I hoped he couldn’t hear it. “Myst made it out of there.”
“I know. I watched her disappear, that selfish waif. Her sister leaves, and suddenly she’s destroying heaven and earth to find her. Eesh,” Brandon grumbled, sitting beside me on the flat chunk of black stone. “How’s Pink Lady?”
“Is that what you decided to call my mother?”
He nodded. “And you’re Pinkie.”
Yes, I’d heard that one before. It had been slightly annoying at first, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about it anymore. Perhaps it was starting to grow on me. “She’s okay. Recovering. She doesn’t remember much. Though you could just help us fill in the gaps instead of appearing and disappearing, helping and then screwing us over,” I said. It made him laugh, and there was something almost childlike about him that brought a smile to my lips too.
“I suppose Myst has finally found the courage to tell you more about us,” he sighed deeply. “Berserkers and Valkyries, I mean.” It was my turn to nod. “Did she tell you about the Aesir?” I shook my head, finding it harder to take my eyes off his profile, his stern but elegant lines. Everything about him exuded strength and silent anger, yet the sapphire blazes in his eyes and the curve of his lips were more playful. “The Aesir are companions we take. Spirits of creatures that come from the realm of the living.”
“Ah, so dogs do get into heaven,” I mumbled, slightly amused and pleased at the same time.
“And cats. And wolves. And every single insect. All life moves on in one form or another. In Purgatory, we call the ones who stay with us Aesir. They’re our partners for eternity.”
“Does Myst have one, too?” I asked, though I was dying to know about his Aesir. I’d noticed that Myst was alone, while Haldor… I dared assume the shadow hounds could be his Aesir. Or, better yet, Brandon would tell me so I’d stop assuming.
“She does. But she left it behind in Purgatory,” he said. “You’ll have to ask her why. My Aesir is a wolf. A big direwolf named Hammer. The other Berserkers working for HQ here lured him away from me. They took him. And now they’re holding him as leverage, forcing me to do their bidding wherever possible, since I rejected their initial request to join them. I never wanted to leave Purgatory, Astra. They made me.”
I stared at him for a solid minute, and he didn’t say another word. He’d used my real name for once, and I took it as a sign of truthfulness. He was serious. I felt him peering into my very soul, but I didn’t flinch. I had nothing to hide.
“You’re trying to tell me that you’re one of the good guys?”
I asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far. I’m a Berserker. Darkness incarnate. But I do not wish to harm innocent people. I’d rather punish these bastards I’m forced to work with,” he said. I wanted to believe him. It was an odd sensation to want something like this, but I couldn’t deny its persistence, either. I wanted to trust Brandon because of all the fakeness around us. I needed him to be genuine, since everything else wasn’t. “You know, I’ve been to The Shade for them. I can move between realms. The Valkyrie can’t. I’m not sure why. The Berserkers who came here found a way, and they made it possible for me, too. Anyway, I’ve been to your island. I gathered intel for HQ.”
“Who is HQ?”
He crinkled his nose. “I’m not sure yet.”
“You said you couldn’t tell us, not that you didn’t know,” I replied.
“Pardon me for being a stickler for mystery. Truth is, I get my messages from them through the other Berserkers. But the intel I gathered… I deliberately skewed it. I compromised some of the DNA samples they had me lift off your people. It’s why the clone dragons and fae are susceptible to the elements that they’re supposed to be impervious to. You see, whoever HQ is, they have no idea about your realm, in particular. I doubt they’ve ever been there. They’re familiar with the living, just not The Shade. I’m not sure why.”
“Could they be Berserkers?”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s one of the things I’m trying to investigate. I was doing a pretty good job of playing them, too, until you showed up and forced my hand.”
“Forced your hand how? You chose to help us, Brandon.”
He stilled, his gaze softening for a moment. “You’re right. I chose to help.” Getting up, he took a deep breath and stretched his arms. “Just know that I have no intention of harming you or your friends, but I will do what I must to keep Hammer safe. He doesn’t deserve this. His soul is tied to mine. If he suffers, I… well, you can guess how that one goes.”
A Shade of Vampire 89: A Sanctuary of Foes Page 22