Water dripped down my face as I came to. I blinked past a thick haze, a headache stabbing at my temples. Moving in slow motion my brain struggled to register what my eyes captured. Shadows fell from crates and packing materials stacked all the way up to an immense factory ceiling with glass windows painted black to block out the light.
Wind echoed through the cavernous space, hitting my bare skin like ice.
A dark mass shifted to my right, and I flinched, breathing raggedly. I was tied to a workbench, my arms and legs strapped tight with rope. My head was a boulder as I lifted it up. Blood. There was blood all over me, streaking my jersey. Bile climbed up my throat at the sight of my right forearm, the gruesome aftermath of a shark bite, torn muscle and bone sticking out. The sweatpants David had given me were absent, exposing the cheeky lilac panties I’d worn underneath. My right leg was mauled by two deep slashes. Panic drove me into a frenzy, and I tugged at the restraints, releasing a cry.
Two massive hands pressed my shoulders back down.
“I wouldn’t move if I were you.” Death’s hooded head bent over me. Nothing could hide the pure wrath in his voice. He was pissed.
“You’ve been poisoned. I slowed it temporarily from entering your heart, but you won’t last much longer if you flail around. I have to remove the rest of the venom.” He stuffed a wad of cloth between my lips. “This will hurt. Stay awake.”
His head lowered over the wound on my arm. Horrified, I understood what was next and let out a strangled scream against the gag. His teeth were like razor blades piercing into my skin as his hot mouth clamped down onto my flesh. Breathing raggedly through my nose, I tried to sit up, but his powerful arm splayed across my chest and gripped the edge of the table. He drank hard and fast.
The pain throughout my body was indescribable, knives picking me apart. I longed for it to end, begged to be put out of my misery as the torment peaked and unleashed its fury.
Something warm and wet ran across my wound. His tongue.
The pain that demanded to be felt faded to a dull ache. Through half-opened eyes, I watched my forearm stitch itself together, leaving only a small trace of blood behind. Drained of energy, my head thumped back against the workbench. Dizziness hit me like a baseball to the face and everything spun into splotchy, distorted images, like the carousel from the carnival, except with creeping shadows closing in to consume the horses. Life ebbed away with the promise of peace, only to flood back in with a sharp shake into awareness.
“Hey! Hey! ” As if Death’s thunderous voice wasn’t enough, his hands were shaking my shoulders. “Wake up!” He grasped both sides of my skull. “Open your eyes, Faith. Open them now. Come back to me.”
Just five more minutes.
“No, not five more minutes! It is not time to sleep!” Death barked, as frantic as a creature with so much control in his voice could sound. “Faith, listen to me. You need to stay awake. You’re not dying on me, stupid human. Not tonight.”
He gave my jaw one last firm shake and yanked the cloth out of my mouth. I managed to pry my eyes open.
“You came for me,” I croaked.
Liquid fire dripped onto my cold lips. Blood. His wrist bled profusely, blood as black as the demon’s. He pushed his skin against my mouth, but I clamped my lips shut and thrashed my head to the side.
“You’re drinking it. All of it. You’ve lost too much blood.” He pried my jaw open with his gloved fingers, forcing the liquid down my dry throat until I choked it down. It wasn’t coppery like normal blood, but instead thin, and it tasted almost . . . sweet, the perfect candy. Suddenly, I needed more. I drank vigorously, fighting back a moan as the taste of his blood transformed into a charge of heat that licked down my spine. I could feel myself becoming stronger.
My mouth filled with one more swallow, when he pulled his wrist sharply away. Realizing what I’d been doing, I tried to spit out the remains of the black substance, but he clamped his hand over my mouth, holding me against his steel frame.
“Swallow it, or you’ll die,” Death snarled. Then he muttered the unthinkable, “Please, Faith.”
The blood slid down my throat like warm sugar.
Death released me and shifted a step back, as if I were about to explode. Shadows crawled over me as invisible hands undid the rope knotted at my wrists and feet.
I swung my bare legs over the edge of the table, adrenaline rushing in my veins. My senses were tremendously intensified, and I struggled to adjust to the new world around me. Blood, dust, and mold overpowered the air. Rain struck the roof of the warehouse, louder and louder, hammers striking the inside of my skull with each pattering drop. Pressing my palms against my ears, I suctioned out the noise with a wince.
“Is the rain extremely loud or is it just me?”
“You’re shouting.” I couldn’t see him, but I knew he hung back in the darkness somewhere behind me.
An uncomfortable amount of energy buzzed through me, and I could no longer stay in one place. Taking off in a hurtling sprint, I raced around the warehouse, the world blurring around me. I leapt over wooden crates, weaved between construction material, and smashed my fists into a sheet of metal, denting it without any pain.
I soared up a spiral of stairs to the high platform above and braced myself on a railing at the top, looking down at the hooded man below. He stood in the same spot like a statue.
“Holy crud, this is awesome!” I exclaimed. “Are you seeing how fast I’m running? I’m like a cheetah!”
“Get back down here!” Death barked, the fury in his voice startling enough to form goose bumps all over my arms. “You are high, not invincible. If you hurt yourself, I will not heal you again.”
I shimmied my shoulders to the music in my head, giggling.
“Somebody’s grouchy!”
“I’m warning you, Faith.”
“If you want me,” I purred with a smile, bracing my hands on the rusted railing, “you’ll have to catch me—” My stomach floated up into my throat as the railing broke and gave way. I tumbled over the side of the platform with a scream. The cement floor zoomed in, and I braced for a deadly impact that never occurred. Death had moved across the warehouse in a blink of an eye, cradling my fall with his arms before I hit the ground. I stared up at him in shock, hard muscles surrounding me like steel.
“I knew you liked me,” I said and bit down on my lip to suppress another delirious giggle.
Death set me down with a foreign curse, crowding my space with his intimidating size. I could feel the effects of his blood wearing off as the euphoric humor of the situation slipped away. I finally had the good sense to try to put distance between me and him and took a step back, when Death’s large paw of a hand shot out, gripping the fabric of my jersey, and plucking me a foot off the ground. My gaze leveled with his veiled eyes, and I stiffened.
“Do you have any idea,” Death grated in his thickened accent,
“how close you came to getting yourself killed tonight?” His usual velvet tone had yet to show up, replaced by that feral growl that carried through the storehouse with ease. “All because you provoked that demon. And now you have the gall to try and provoke me?”
I struggled to focus on what he was saying since his scent was so intoxicating it engulfed my senses. Leather, cherries, a yummy cologne with traces of—
Yummy? Sobering up, I tried to tear myself free from his fingers.
“Get your hands off me. Would you have rather seen them take me away?”
“You are a fool !” he roared. “A little monstrosity in emo clothes!
Things could have ended much worse for you in that alleyway!”
“I won’t apologize for defending myself!”
He dropped me to the ground, and I landed awkwardly on my butt. “Put your pants back on.”
A single step forward. That’s all he had to do to put me on edge.
His body language was lethal, a raging force of nature aimed to fire.
I crab-walked a few inches back, cold concrete rubbing against my bare legs. I scrambled to my soggy socked feet and backpedaled into the workbench, snatching my discarded sweatpants from the floor, while also making sure the Chicago Bears jersey didn’t ride up and expose my ass cheeks more than it already had. The sweatpants were torn at the leg and saturated with rain and blood.
My brain suddenly revisited the alleyway, when Death splattered my world red. He didn’t have to use weapons. With only his mind and his talons, he could have slain all of those creatures. He’d chosen to use a blade because it was messier, because it was in his nature to destroy. He could effortlessly rip me to pieces.
Leaning back against a row of shelves, I shimmied the cold wet fabric up my legs the best I could and tightened the drawstring at my waist. The effects of his blood had faded, replaced by fatigue and fear.
“You saved my life,” I trembled out. It was all I could manage to say with the blistering sensation of Death’s hidden gaze.
“Saved?” His laughter was low, sinister. “What a polite way to put what I did. I slaughtered every last one of those demons. Tore and cut them to pieces.” Tendrils of darkness curled outward from his massive frame, as if they wanted to attach to the shadows behind him, or maybe, I feared, attach to me. “You’re not much better off than you were in that alleyway. Now you’re alone. With me.”
My knees wobbled at the hunger laced in his cryptic words.
“What are you?” I asked. “A vampire? A werewolf? Demon?”
“A nightmare.”
He slunk closer, taking his sweet time. Behind my back, my hand fanned for a weapon—anything I could get my hands on. I gripped something cold and heavy. A pipe of some sort. It immediately vanished from my hand.
“Too slow, cheetah,” he mused dryly.
We were in a blocked-off area in the warehouse. I had nowhere to run. Nobody would hear my screams. Death crowded my vision, claiming my space like night suffocating day, until I was overcome by his toxic presence. Heat shelled off his enormous frame; the sweet aroma of cherries fragranced the air like a lure.
“The creature I conversed with,” he said gruffly. “The raven demigod. Have you seen him before?”
“No,” I choked out. Just thinking about that thing made my skin crawl. “Thankfully.”
“Have you painted him? Seen him in a dream? Think hard.”
“I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
Death’s hooded face peered down at me. I fidgeted under his gaze, sweating like a whore in church.
“Who is he to you?” I asked when the silence became too painful. “I sensed a bit of hostility.”
Leather creaked as he clenched his hands. “That’s none of your goddamn business.”
Touchy. “Silly me, I thought we were having a conversation.”
“You were wrong.”
I maneuvered away from the table, distancing myself from him.
Sucking in through my teeth, I said, “You’re right, it is none of my goddamn business. That demon didn’t show any interest in me at all.”
Death’s body remained static, a cobra in the grass about to strike.
I didn’t even think he was breathing, which was incredibly unnerving. Watch your fucking tone, he didn’t have to say.
You won’t do shit, I didn’t respond.
His spine straightened. Had he heard me?
Death took a few unhurried strides, circling me like a predator.
I rotated my body, never giving him my back. He feigned a lunge, causing me to screech. Booming laughter reverberated off the warehouse as he moved in a blur, emerging from an aura of shadows to my left.
“Who’s the male?” Death asked, the words rasped at the back of his throat.
I blinked a few times and tried to come down from the heart attack he almost gave me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The male you were at the carnival with.” More circling. He’s toying with you. This time, I let him stalk somewhere behind me.
A mistake, I realized, when his hot breath tickled my ear. “The boyfriend.”
I imagined those hidden fangs ripping into my neck and whirled around. He’d already straightened to his full height. “My private life is none of your business. Besides, you won’t answer any of my questions. Why should I answer yours?”
“Me-ow,” he purred, circling again. He didn’t walk. He glided with a pantherine grace. “You’re rather bold, for a human.”
The way he said human settled uneasily in my stomach. It confirmed my assumption that he was playing with his food. He flipped my hair with a gloved finger, and I released a shaky breath.
“I’ll be more careful next time,” I said. “Please, can you take me home? I need to be home.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Yes,” he said, cocking his head like an animal as he often did.
“No.”
It was time to change the subject. Fast.
“What—what are you going to do with me?” I stammered, as he corralled me backward. Wow, brilliant subject change. “I don’t have much meat on me. I rarely eat vegetables and junk food is my favorite food group, so I definitely don’t taste good—”
Death pinned me to a row of steel shelves with a single finger to my chest. A deliberate gesture of dominance, a movement he clearly enjoyed making, but something had changed since the last time. My fear took a step to the side as I ignited beneath his touch. I was attuned to the sinewy muscle rippling the edges of his silhouette—the leather of his right pant leg grazing my bare skin through a hole in my sweatpants, and the glowering burn of his veiled stare fueling the anticipation of his next calculated move.
“If I were you,” he purred out slowly, intensifying the sweep of heat down my front, “I wouldn’t mention your taste again, cupcake.
And I wouldn’t fuck with me.”
Message received. I must have looked like a pop-eyed toy.
He held that gloved finger on my chest a moment longer, before removing it.
“You didn’t have to save me,” I said softly.
He threw off heat like blazing coals. “My, my, your heart is racing.”
My breath hitched. With a cool expression, I stared into the endless shadow of Death’s face. “Did you expect anything different?”
“Of course not,” he said rather silkily. “Though, I know it’s not entirely from fear.” His laugh was low and seductive as sin. “You mortal women and your strange fetishes for mysterious, psycho-pathic men. It’s sick, really.”
A shameful blush warmed my cheeks. Couldn’t defend myself there.
“I’ll tell you a secret, Faith.” He leaned in, and I battled with the urge to move away. “I always get what I want.”
“Not this time,” I snapped.
“We’ll see about that.”
Although he was practically purring again with that deliciously velvet voice, there was a lethal undertone to his words, which I couldn’t overlook.
“From the memory I saw in the fun house,” I began, “I am going to assume you want my soul because it’s special.”
“Correct.” It was obvious he’d held back a snarky remark.
“I’m going to take a wild guess and say you don’t plan on telling me why you want it.”
“Get to your point.”
“You’re doing a pretty shitty job of convincing me to trust you,”
I said, fighting the slight tremble in my words. “That’s what you want me to do, right? Trust you, so that you can do whatever it is you want to do with me?”
He flexed his fingers at his side, as if wanting to unleash his claws.
“You can’t make me come with you, can you?” I challenged.
“You can’t force me.”
I could feel his glare. “It’s in your best interest to come with me.”
“And that best interest is?”
He clasped his hands behind his back. “You ask far too many questions.”
“Because you’re vague and speak in riddles! This is the longest conversation I’ve had with you, and you don’t even want to have it!”
“Do you want what happened tonight to happen again?” Death inquired, in a dangerously calm voice. “Because that’s exactly what will happen without my protection. Once rumor spreads of your existence, monsters you couldn’t conjure up in your worst nightmares will come after you. They’re drawn to your soul.”
“Like you?”
Silence.
“Why me? What’s so special about my soul?”
“I won’t convince you to trust me,” he said, disregarding the rest.
“I’m your only option.”
“I don’t know who you are! I don’t know what you are!”
“Deal with it.”
My jaw tightened. “You saved my life to strike a deal with a little girl. You took advantage of me, and for what? What kind of person takes advantage of a child’s fear?” I was breathing hard, burning with fury. “Or hides his face beneath a hood!”
A low growl vibrated his throat and rolled out like a roar. “You owe me your soul, regardless of my character. This is a dangerous game you’re playing, Faith. I will not play nice forever.”
“Oh, great, this is you being ‘nice’!” My arms rose and slumped to my sides. “Well, what’s the plan now? Why are we talking if you’re not going to give me any answers?”
“Good point.” He jabbed a finger at the workbench. “Stay. I’ll be back, eventually.”
“Eventually! You’re just going to leave me in here? Did you not see those things in the alleyway?”
“This warehouse is a safe haven for you.” At that, Death stalked away with long, powerful strides. I struggled to keep up. “I made sure of it.”
“Wait! Wait! ”
He blended into the shadows, waning away. I lunged forward and gripped the thick material of his cloak. The fabric filled with heat and shadows lurched from him like hands trying to grab me. I tore my hand free from the cloak, the tendrils of darkness surrounding Death still snapping at me like snakes.
In a blur, Death’s gloved hand shot out and clutched my throat in a vise grip. His massive frame resurfaced from the shadows, and the snakes evaporated. “You stupid girl!” he snarled in a merciless hiss, fingers crushing into my neck. “Never touch me!”
But I couldn’t process a single thought, except the instinct to stay alive. I grabbed onto his wrist to free myself and touched a gap of his uncovered skin.
A sharp jolt of energy went through me. Grief hit me in a cruel wave. The loss, it was endless. I was him. Pain. Crushing, suffocating pain. Everything in my body compacting together, constricting in raw torment and wrathful hunger . . .
Then there was light, beams of sun spreading out in front of my fastened eyelids. The pungent smell of manure and aged straw permeated the humid air. Flowery weeds brushed my cheek as I peeled my eyes open. I sat up and blood drained from my face.
A farm. I was on a farm, but it wasn’t a farm from my century.
The fields were manned by men who wore outdated beige tunics, baggy shirts, and worn-out trousers. They plowed into the dirt as if it was all they knew, melting beneath the sweltering heat of the sun. Past rows and rows of olive trees stood a proud Romanesque villa built of stone, surrounded by various leafy fruit trees, flowers, and shrubbery. Fountains rippled in an exquisite, enchanting garden straight out of a storybook.
Movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention. My eyes darted to a boy sitting a mere ten paces away from me. He was squatting under the shade of a blooming tree, which draped over us both with its long, emerald green arms. The boy wore a baggy toga tied at his waist that exposed tan skin. His athletic build suggested he was older at first, though his profile was soft, childlike, marking him around twelve or thirteen. Curly golden ringlets of hair fell into his eyes, concealing them in shade. As I noticed the blade the boy held in his hand, he suddenly turned his head over his shoulder in my direction, those mud-streaked locks curtaining over his features.
Could he see me?
A smooth, feminine voice spoke out in a foreign language from behind me. A young woman looked right through me with gentle emerald eyes, and only then did I know for sure I was invisible in this world. She was around my Aunt Sarah’s age and the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Soft features cradled by unblemished olive-toned skin and mermaid liquid-gold waves cascading to a narrow waist.
This time, when she spoke, I oddly understood her. “I was picking olives for a snack, when I saw you racing down the rows like the farm dogs were nipping at your bottom.”
I twisted around for the strange boy’s response and leapt back.
The boy! It was him! Death! Or, at least, the trick he’d used to approach me as a child. I’d know those mismatched green eyes anywhere. Except this version of him was different, which made me question exactly where I was. His hair, for starters, wasn’t black. His expression wasn’t cold and void of emotion. He’d yet to show any terrifying animalistic characteristics or flash any fangs. And although he scared the crap out of me at first, I currently didn’t have the overwhelming urge to hurl myself behind the woman and use her as a human shield.
His features were boyish, soft, undeveloped, and yet a haunting maturity hardened his expression. Sun damage freckles splattered a Roman nose, and the large vertical scar that slashed across his lighter green eye was pinker than the boy’s scar in the fun house, as if the wound had only recently transpired and mended together to form a permanent mark.
The woman walked through me like a ghost. My mind raced as their conversation continued, pieces to a puzzle falling into place. I’d been here before. I’d seen this before. But how?
The boy took off toward the woods. “Alexandru,” his mother yelled, “Not too late!”
Alexandru . . .
I’d been so absorbed in the scene I’d forgotten I was standing here. Then again, everything about this strange place made me feel detached. Compelled to follow, I dashed after the boy with the mismatched eyes.
We came to an opening near a stream with flat moss, where a massive, enchanting willow tree anchored its roots beneath a haloing light. Long weeping branches with oval leaves curved over the ground like wings of an archangel, swaying in the gentle wind.
Alexandru grabbed a cluster of vines at the trunk of the willow and wrenched free a blanket of camouflage. This revealed an aging mirror made of silver instead of glass. It blended into the bark of the trunk as though they were merged into one. The mirror had a chipped frame, the silver scarred with imperfections and growths on the surface.
What transpired next between the boy and the willow tree unfolded like the beginning of a dark, twisted tale, etching into my soul. I would never forget it.
With a sudden jolt of pain, I warped back into the warehouse.
Death breathed raggedly, his strong hand wrapped around my throat like a vise. The air was so cold my rapid breaths clung to it.
“Get out of my head!” Death barked. He clutched my throat tighter. “Get out!”
I wanted to delve further into this world, feel more from this tainted heart, but our connection was fragmenting bit by bit. I couldn’t let go; I didn’t know how. A phantom hand reached into my chest and squeezed as a great weight pressed against my lungs.
His power vibrated through me, released from my eyes in a torrent of tears.
The link severed. And the black veil fell.
