My initial reaction was to say no. After meeting with Death, I wanted to go home to my safe ground. But maybe that was exactly what he wanted, and I was sick and tired of living in fear.
“Hey, chicas!” I turned, just in time to unexpectedly catch Marcy running full force into me. “Fancy seeing you two gorgeous gals here!” She bumped the sides of her hips with mine and Aunt Sarah’s.
“You know, Faith, part of playing hooky is picking the prime day to skip. It was an early dismissal today and Principal Mallory handed out candy in homeroom. Should have just come in, ya boob.”
“My fault,” Aunt Sarah said with a laugh. “I’m the one who kidnapped her.”
“What’s up, Auntie?” Marcy lifted her fist to bump knuckles with my aunt. “Did you get your hair done? Looks fab.”
“Really? You like it?” Aunt Sarah gushed, fluffing her blond hair.
“Went a little darker blond this time. It’s supposed to make me look less old, according to Cosmo.”
“Old?” Marcy jerked back. “Excuse me, I will not accept such negativity in my presence. You could literally pass for a superhot college girl. The color is a total vibe.”
Marcy and Aunt Sarah caught up, while I stood in silence. The shock and panic of two of my loved ones here with Death lurking around settled sourly in my gut.
“This is Nathan, by the way.” Marcy motioned to the handsome boy approaching us with a funnel cake in his hand. With his surfer boy blond hair and twinkling blue eyes, I instantly compared him to Thomas, which made me even more sick to my stomach as I harked back to Thomas being taken away with Malphas. “Faith, you know Nathan, right? He’s on the basketball team and lives down the street from me.”
She gave me a knowing look to play along, and I bit back a laugh. Ever since Marcy witnessed Nathan washing down his truck last summer with his shirt off, she’d had huge heart eyes for him. Nathan’s knack for hitting three-pointers was legendary in Pleasant Valley. The kid was smart too. He was in a few of my AP classes.
“Sure, I know Nathan,” I said with my best I’m friendly and outgoing smile. Fake it till you make it, right? “Congratulations, by the way. Word in the hallways is you already have a full ride to the University of Kentucky.”
“Thank you,” he said with a bashful smile. “I’m excited for November, gonna make Coach proud my last season. You should come out and see us when we’re home.” He smiled at Marcy. “It’d be cool to see both of you in the stands.”
“We would love to!” I enthused.
Nathan seemed kind and down-to-earth.
“So,” Marcy said, stealing some of Nathan’s funnel cake, “you guys going on the haunted hayride later?”
Our hayride shone vibrant neon green in the night, decorated with glow-in-the-dark pumpkin signs with spooky faces.
“Woo-hoo!” Aunt Sarah bounced up and down on her stack of hay. She shook my shoulder playfully. “Aren’t you excited?”
“Excited as hypothermia will allow.” I pulled the ends of my sweatshirt sleeves over my hands and fisted the fabric closed in my palms. Had I known it would be this cold at night, I would have packed a parka. And a space heater. Better yet, I would have stayed in bed.
The freezing temperature wasn’t the only reason for my foul mood. Aunt Sarah and I sat all the way in the back of the second cart with Marcy and Nathan. In the first cart, attached to ours by a few questionable rusty bolts and chains, were a few more teenagers from our high school and a man dressed in all black with his back to us. I scowled. Instead of a cloak, Death wore the same hoodie and leather jacket with the popped collar that he sported earlier. He had appeared out of nowhere, of course, but only I seemed to notice.
I glanced over at Marcy and Nathan. Catching my eye, Marcy jabbed a finger discreetly at Nathan’s crotch and raised both her eyebrows with wide eyes. Then she winked with a sly smile. I laughed, immediately understanding.
Apparently, she anticipated Nathan had a nice you-know-what.
“What are you two giggling at?” Nathan asked in a joking tone.
“Nothing,” Marcy and I said at the same time, laughing harder.
“Weirdos.” Nathan rolled his eyes and stretched his arm behind Marcy. She cuddled into his side, and I thought they’d make a great couple. She seemed genuinely happy with him, which made me happy.
There were a few stops along the ride and a few corn mazes to choose from. The cart jerked to a halt at the easiest maze, near the beginning.
“Meet you at the other corn maze?” Marcy asked, offering me a stick of gum as she popped one into her mouth and stood up. “This one’s supposed to be less scary.”
I threw up a peace sign. “Text if you need me.”
“Kay-kay.”
They got off the hayride.
Aunt Sarah laughed. “They’re finding somewhere to hook up, aren’t they?”
“Oh, one hundred percent.”
The hayride trudged up a hill past a shadowy pumpkin patch. I did a double take. In the first cart, ahead of us, Death gave a dramatic yawn and lounged with his long legs up on the barrels of hay beside him, so that he hogged all the seats. It bothered me beyond belief that he was following me around. I knew in a way it shouldn’t, since he had saved my life and all, twice, but that didn’t change the fact that the guy was an egotistical a-hole who’d lied to me. He’d made it clear his protection wasn’t offered entirely out of kindness too.
Death lit up a cigarette and took a drag, letting out a lazy puff of smoke, which hit Aunt Sarah and I directly in the face.
“Pretty sure you aren’t supposed to smoke on a hay ride, buddy!”
I hollered.
Aunt Sarah smacked my arm. “Stop it,” she hissed. “He could be crazy.”
She had no idea.
Spiderweb-tangled lanterns hung from the branchy trees, casting the path in an eerie light. The hayride passed a sign that hung over us marked in crooked red letters: welcome to hell.
Evil laughter erupted from the trees. The bumpy cart slowed at a graveyard, which smelled of a barbecue, blanketed by a layer of creepy fog. Loud organ music played through static speakers and spasmodic bursts of fire shot out from torches.
“You have met your death!” announced a booming voice. Out came a lanky man dressed as the Grim Reaper. The costume was meant to be serious, but the cloak looked more like a silky spa robe than the cape of an evil entity. In his hand he held a ridiculously small plastic scythe. If it were any smaller, it’d be a gardening tool in one of those mini toy Zen gardens. “Thou shall not pass! I want your soul! Arrrgghh!” The man lifted his skinny arms to the sky and people hidden poorly in camouflage banged garbage can lids for the effect of thunder.
Deep, hearty laughter exploded from the hayride. My eyes darted to Death as he slow clapped. “Fantastic interpretation,” he mocked.
“Such realism. It’s like looking in the mirror!”
The cart wobbled forward. The stereotypical scary music continued, and the tractor rolled to a stop in front of a small stage, cutting its engine. The stage was set up to look like a little girl’s room, with a small bed, a bubblegum-pink comforter and pink-lemonade walls.
Painted a darker shade of pink, a prominent closet door was nestled in a corner of the bedroom.
Lying on the bed was a girl around my age, modeled after a little girl. Her golden-blond hair was up in pigtails with wire that kept them up in a wacky U shape against her pillow. She wore a frilly magenta dress that went to her knees and high socks, and in her hands, she clutched a teddy bear that resembled my own childhood bear, Mr. Wiggles.
As I observed the stage, a solid knock came from the girl’s closet door. “Momma, is that you?” the actress promptly asked. A masculine cackle of a laugh replied. Visibly afraid, the girl squeezed the bear tighter to her chest. “Papa! Papa! Help me! The clown is here again!”
Hell no.
Papa, aka a brawny guy with a beer gut, threw open the girl’s bedroom door.
“What’s the matter this time, Little Sophie!” he bellowed, followed by a belch that made our whole cart laugh.
“The monster is back!” Sophie shouted back, clutching the teddy bear even harder. “It knocked on the door again! I’m not lying, Papa!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever! I’ll check again, if it will get you to finally sleep.” The dad stomped across the stage like a drunk T. rex and threw open the closet door, sticking his head in to look around. “See?
No monster.”
“I heard it knock,” the girl insisted.
The dad walked toward her daughter’s bed, shaking his head theatrically as he placed his hands on his hips. “What am I going to do with you, Sophie?”
A guy in a terrifying clown mask stuck his head out of the open closet door, covered his mouth with a white-gloved hand, and shook with silent laughter. I gripped the railing of the hayride with white knuckles as the clown held out a knife, bringing it back as if to stab the father.
The girl shrieked. “Behind you!”
The father spun around, but the clown had already ducked back into the darkness.
With a growl, the dad closed the closet door and turned to look over to the daughter. “There, are you satisfied now?”
With a menacing giggle, the clown came charging out of the closet with a large knife, stabbing the father over and over. Fake blood and gore exploded from the father’s clothes. As the clown lunged for the daughter and dragged her across the stage screaming, the lights went off. The music went off. Then it was silent, besides a hurl of frigid air, which made my teeth chatter.
I found myself looking over at Death in the other wagon. His hooded head was already turned toward me, and he watched me from underneath his shadows with his arms spread out on either side of the railing. He inclined his head toward himself, as if to tell me, If you’re scared, angel, come over here.
I shook my head once. Drop dead.
He snickered out loud. He’d heard me.
Despite a few glimpses into his past, I knew very little about Death. I found myself increasingly curious about him. The count-less souls he’d collected over the centuries. The people who had died at his hand. How did someone cope with everything he’d been through? How many friendships had he broken, and enemies had he made? How many times had he fallen in love, had he married?
Did he have kids? How many women had he kissed? How many women had he—? Dang, I really didn’t want to think about that, but there was no way to unthink it now. Did he enjoy being the Grim Reaper? Did he know God? Gods? Elvis?
No, Death said. I assumed that was the answer to knowing Elvis, but I was too mortified to care. He’d read my thoughts again. Now I had to promptly bury my head in the sand like an ostrich.
“He-he-he!” a voice exclaimed from behind me. I whirled around to find the clown from the stage right in my face. With the loudest shriek I could muster, I catapulted across the wagon and fell onto another stack of hay, plastered against the wooden rails parallel to the other wagon.
“Sure you don’t want to hop over into this cart?” asked the velvety voice of my supernatural stalker. I swiveled around, coming face-to-darkness with Death on the front wagon. He leaned over the railing toward me, his voice dropping to a husky murmur. “I’ll keep those pesky clowns away.”
“Your personality does tend to repel everything with and without a pulse.”
“Ouch.” He tapped his gloved fingers against the wooden railing.
“And to think I was going to let you sit on my lap.”
“Stay away from my niece,” Aunt Sarah snapped, and suddenly I was yanked back from the edge of the wagon and disposed onto another haystack, landing inelegantly in the process. My mouth gaped in utter confusion, as she now stood fearlessly between Death and me. “Leave us alone. You’re not welcome here.”
Death freed a stunted laugh and looked away from us. “Way to kill the mood.”
“You can see him too?” I asked.
“I asked nicely,” Aunt Sarah continued, her focus locked on the Grim Reaper. She snatched an ancient-looking cross from the back of her jeans and held it up. “Next time, I’ll cast you straight back to Hell with Lucifer, where you belong.”
“I’d rip your throat out two words into that spell,” Death said.
An awful sensation rotted in my gut as I looked between the two of them in puzzlement.
“What’s going on here?” I demanded. When both of them played the quiet game, I looked pleadingly at my aunt. “Aunt Sarah?”
I gestured at the ancient cross in her hand. “Do you have something to tell me?”
The tractor came to a halt in front of a large sign that read haunted corn maze in neon lights. The small group of teenagers on the ride poured out of Death’s cart, screaming and giggling.
Aunt Sarah clenched her jaw. “I’m a demon hunter, Faith.”
“A slayer? Like . . . Buffy? I thought you owned a bookstore!”
“It’s kind of a side hustle.”
I could not believe what I was hearing. “How long have you been hiding this?”
“There’s a lot we have to talk about, Faith.”
“Clearly! You know, at this point, nothing really surprises me!
Angel of Death, this is my Aunt Sarah, demon hunter. Aunt Sarah, this is the Angel of Death.”
“Hi,” Death said, then cleared his throat. “I mean, yo.”
I faced Aunt Sarah. “He’s a psychopath.”
“It’s an art, like anything else,” Death said.
“I was under the impression he was just an asshole,” Aunt Sarah quipped.
“You two spoil me with compliments.” Death tipped his head back over the railing behind him, lounging without a care. “Faith, your aunt and I already know each other. She and Lucifer crossed paths once or twice—”
“Shut up,” my aunt snapped at him. “Shut your mouth, or I’ll stick this cross so far up your ass—”
She stopped midsentence, as Death picked himself up and rose to his incredible height. He raised a huge boot to the railing at the back of his cart, then the other, and balanced impossibly on the edge like a cat. His leather jacket had evaporated into darkness, shadows billowing out from his frame into a long regal cloak, which whipped around in the night. At the sight of his looming frame, Aunt Sarah backpedaled a few steps, and me with her. With a sinister laugh, Death took a single long stride, stepping over the gap between our carts. He jumped down in front of us, metal clinking underneath his cloak as the cart shuddered from his weight.
“If you think I feel threatened by a little pocket cross,” he growled in that deep, lilted voice, “you’re gravely mistaken.” With a slight swish of a gloved hand, his enormous scythe appeared at his side, gleaming in the night.
Aunt Sarah gripped the cross tighter, and I could see her fingers were trembling. “I’m not afraid of you. I have the power of the Ancients by my side.”
Death cocked his head. “I was wondering what that smell was.”
“Lucifer knows better than to send you to harm a hunter of the Guild,” Aunt Sarah said. “The Elders will find out, and who knows, maybe this will be the last straw. Maybe you’ll get your wings sliced off again. Unless you want the flight of a penguin, I suggest you leave us alone and go prey on someone else.”
“You’re clearly out of the loop.” Death weighed the staff of his scythe in his gloved hands. “I’m not here for you. I’m here for her.”
Aunt Sarah looked at me in quiet horror. “What?”
“Faith died, I spared her life with a deal,” Death explained,
“and now she owes me. It’s time for me to collect what is mine: her soul . . . and her. Attempt to break this arrangement, and you will only be damaging your niece in the process.”
Aunt Sarah kept her attention daggered to Death, like he might attack her at any moment. “Why didn’t you tell me about this, Faith?”
“Because I prefer my bedroom over padded cell walls? How was I supposed to know you were so well acquainted with the supernatural world?”
“I’m so sorry you had to find out this way,” she said. “I can’t tell anyone what I am. Not even my own sister. As for you, Fallen, my niece and I are getting off this ride. If you follow us, I will condemn you to Hell.”
“By all means, go for it,” Death dared. “It’s a little nippy outside anyway.”
“If you’re after the book, you’re wasting your time,” she added.
“Faith knows nothing about it, and she doesn’t know where it is.
Nobody does.”
“A book,” I echoed, suddenly recalling what Ace had told me in his séance room about me leading those who sought the book. “The Book of the Dead,” I said, recalling the name. “You’re talking about the Book of the Dead.”
Shouldn’t have said that out loud.
Panic filled Aunt Sarah’s expression. “Who told you about the Book of the Dead?”
“If I had to guess, she learned about it from a warlock, Ace,”
Death answered, sounding entertained by my aunt’s panic. He maneuvered his scythe in a skilled movement and rested it on the back of his shoulders with his arms draped over the pole.
“I don’t understand,” Aunt Sarah said. “What do you want from Faith?”
“All you need to know is I need my property, unscathed. I will not leave here tonight without her. Faith’s already attracted creatures to her essence, it’s only a matter of time before she gets herself killed.
Doesn’t help that she acts impulsively and trips over particles of dust.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“She doesn’t belong to you,” Aunt Sarah seethed, “and she certainly doesn’t belong to him!”
“I’m afraid you can’t make claim to her anymore.” I could hear the cruel smirk hidden beneath Death’s black veil and blood pulsed in my ears in anticipation of his next words. “Only I control the Order of the Kiss of Death. See how my name is in the title? If Faith will not conform to me, then she will never see you, or her family, ever again. She would be officially rescinding our agreement, my merciful act of life, and she would therefore fall dead to the ground.
That is my law, not Lucifer’s. And there is nothing you, nor any god or holy object, can do about it.”
I sucked in an unfulfilling breath. I would die if I didn’t go with him?
“When exactly were you going to tell me that?” I shouted at Death.
Death maneuvered his menacing scythe again so that it stood at his side. With a wave of his hand, the weapon evaporated away.
“Surely you didn’t think you’d deny my right to your soul, and then be sent on your merry way?”
“Your trustworthiness grows by the minute,” I spat.
“As does your attitude, little mortal,” he purred. “Maybe you should consider the fragile state of your soul and pay me some respect.”
“You’ll get my respect when you deserve it. So never.”
Death released a low hiss in my direction, and then his hooded head snapped toward my aunt. He made a small gesture with his gloved fingers. Dark wisps of matter wrapped around her hand and made her palm snap back, revealing a bottle clutched tight in her fingers.
My heart leapt to my throat as Aunt Sarah visibly strained against Death’s power. He snatched the bottle from her fingers and analyzed its contents.
“Well, well. You really were going to condemn me back to Hell.”
He clucked his tongue disapprovingly and dropped the bottle to the ground, crushing it underneath his heel. “Sarah, since you have made it abundantly clear you won’t be cooperating and will continue to get in my way, you’ll understand why I will now drag you to Hell.
Feel free to take up your dissatisfaction of my methods with Lucifer.
I’m sure he’d love to reconnect with an ex.”
Before I could process that last part, a shadow dropped from the trees around us, and then another. I could see the outline of their huge bodies as they slinked toward us on all fours. I pressed against the railing as they approached the ride. There were two of them, brawny creatures with wide hunches and enormous clawed paws.
Iridescent eyes with striking shades of red, orange, and yellow, which flickered like flames in their irises. Their lips peeled back into snarls, long, ivory fangs like a wolf’s.
“Hell hounds,” Aunt Sarah said with horror, clutching my hand.
“Those are definitely not dogs.” I backed away from the rail, reeling over what would happen to her if she were taken, what they would do to her in Hell. “Death, don’t do this. Please, if you have any compassion left in you—”
“I don’t,” he said, the tails of his cloak flogging the air as the wind kicked up. “Unless . . . ”
I looked to Aunt Sarah, and there wasn’t a flicker of fear in her face. I could see her mulling her options over, until she came to the same conclusion as mine. Slowly, she shook her head at me. “No.”
“I can stop this,” I said, squeezing her hand.
“No, no, you don’t understand, Faith.” Desperation misted her eyes. “You don’t know what you’re agreeing to—”
“Argh!” A bird plunged into the night and attacked Death, fluttered its wings violently around him. The raven from before.
Aunt Sarah and I huddled together, attuned to the massive hell hounds outside of the hayride, which had begun howling. With a terrifying snarl that was more intimidating than the hounds, Death made a lunge for the bird, but it moved with an unnatural speed and darted out of the way and rocketed toward the trees. Death snapped his head toward the retreating path of the animal and vanished into a black mist.
My aunt ripped her hand free from mine, her gaze set on the hell hounds. Her fingers curled into her palms, and now I had an overwhelming urge to stop her from doing whatever it was she was about to do.
“Run!” she shouted at me. “Get out of here! Now!”
Panic struck me hard, and I briefly locked eyes with one of the massive creatures below us. Fire ignited within its pupils like two endless pits.
“I can hold them off with magic!” Aunt Sarah threw out her hand, and with a single foreign command, the hell hounds fell to the ground whining and writhing in obvious agony. I stared at her in shock, my chest heaving up and down.
“This is all my fault, Faith,” she said. Her color had drained to the point that she looked visibly fatigued, and I put two and two together and realized it had been from that spell. “I lied to protect you and your mother, but I’ve put you in danger. You have to run.
You have to fight him. I’ll come find you, I promise.”
“I’m not leaving you!” I cried.
“Put your name to good use tonight, kiddo.” She released me and jumped off the hayride, sprinting back down the path from where the hayride had come. The hounds broke free from whatever spell they were under and scrambled after her as she screamed, “Run!”
My brain spiraled. I tried the gate of the hayride, but it wouldn’t unlock. With my heart in my throat, I jumped off the side of the cart and winced as my ankles took the weight of my body when I hit the ground. I took off, running into the haunted corn maze brightly lit by floodlights.
The truth was I still didn’t know what kind of creature I was dealing with. Death was unpredictable and unstable, but I knew I had to keep fighting.
Moving fast around a corner, I crashed into a body.
“Faith?”
“Marcy!” I could have cried in relief and instead pulled her into a hug. Her normally sun goddess tan skin had washed away to a milky white, and every inch of her trembled so hard her teeth chattered. Had she seen one of the hell hounds? Or worse, had she seen Death?
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What happened?”
“Nathan and I, we were hooking up,” Marcy began shakily, casting a look behind her. “We heard this rustling and growling, so started running. When I looked back, Nathan was gone. I followed the hayride path to here and when I got to the entrance of your maze, Thomas was there.” She pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “He went into the maze, so I-I followed him. He didn’t look right, Faith.
Like he was really sick, or on drugs, or . . . ”
“Or none of the above,” Thomas said.
Marcy’s eyes went wide as my heart slammed into overdrive.
Slowly, I turned. Thomas Gregory stood on the path. His skin had lost any trace of its usual tan, his cheeks slightly hallowed in, and the bones in his face too sharp, too angled. His blond curls were now jet-black, and his once vibrant blue eyes had dimmed to a bottomless ocean. I probably wouldn’t have recognized him had he not been wearing his usual black-and-silver varsity jacket.
“Thomas,” I said, prying the name from my tight throat.
He moved toward us, and I couldn’t move. There was no way we could both outrun him.
“My body accepted the demon mark,” Thomas said, as if to clear the air, “so they gave me two choices. I chose to live.” His laugh was short, sarcastic. “If you can call this living, I guess.”
Guilt wrenched me apart all over again. I’d failed him.
“I need you to do me a favor, Faith,” Thomas continued, prying the words out like they were painful. “I-I’ve been terrible to both of you, but you’re the only two I can rely on.”
“Can somebody tell me what the hell is going on?” Marcy asked.
“I feel like I’m missing something here.”
Thomas ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I can’t go back to my old life. I can’t ever see my family or my friends ever again. It’s not safe for me to be around anyone right now.”
“What do you mean, you can’t go back?” I could see the raw denial and confusion in Marcy’s face as she tried to comprehend the situation. “What happened? Your mother is worried sick!”
Thomas grimaced at the mention of his mother. He clutched at his head and winced. All at once, the darkness swallowed the whiteness out of Thomas’s eyes, suffocating the blue eyes of our childhood friend.
“Fuck! Stay back!” Thomas stretched out his jaw and roared gutturally, and his once charming smile held a mouthful of fangs.
Fangs that dripped a black substance that matched the endless void of his eyes.
Marcy edged away from Thomas in fear. I could see myself in her reaction as she rapidly tried to make sense of what she’d just seen. In that moment, Thomas had looked otherworldly. Demonic. She cast a frightful look in my direction, and I silently confirmed it.
“Please, don’t run,” Thomas panted once he regained his bearings. He spat dark liquid to the ground like it disgusted him. “I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.” When he looked up at us, oily black tears were leaking from his eyes, and my heart clenched.
“What do you need?” I asked softly.
“My mom, she’s not going to handle me being gone well,” he said, swiping under his eyes to erase any trace of emotion. “She’ll blame herself. I need you to tell her it’s not her fault. Can you do that for me?”
“Thomas, you’re scaring me,” Marcy whispered, hugging her arms to her chest. “Whatever’s going on, whatever trouble you’re in, let us help you.” She took a wavering step forward, reaching for him.
“I can talk to my father. He has connections, he can get you help.”
“You don’t understand!” Thomas exploded as his pupils expanded over the width of his eyes again. He’d lost enough control that his demon had slipped through, so I lunged forward to pull Marcy back. Thomas somehow remained in control and covered his face in shame. “I need you to give my mom that message. Please.
Please . . . ”
“I will.” I had to be strong and help him. “I’ll tell her.”
“Thank you.” When Thomas removed his hands from his face, his expression was pained, vulnerable, a ghost of his humanity still intact. “Marcy, I’m so sorry. For everything. I took advantage of you.”
He bowed his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “You deserve so much better than what I could give you. Which is why I’m letting you go. For good.”
There was a tightness at the back of my throat as Thomas retreated away from us. If only I hadn’t gone to Main Street that day, if only I’d gotten far, far away from Thomas the moment I had that vision of his death. Then, maybe, he wouldn’t have had to suffer this way.
“Thomas? Tommy, wait!” Marcy ran after him, but Thomas moved in a blur and vanished into the cornstalks. She stopped at the edge of the path, hyperventilating. “Tommy!”
“Marcy?” It was Nathan, Marcy’s date for tonight. He cut through the cornstalks and caught Marcy in his arms. There were bloody scratches all over his face.
“Thank God you’re okay,” Nathan said and hugged her tight.
“There’re these things in the corn maze. Rabid dogs as big as wolves.
Everyone is freaking out. I was looking all over for you.”
Marcy swayed as he released her, a blank expression of shock on her face as Nathan encouraged her to leave with him. It killed me to leave her like this, without explaining everything I knew. The adrenaline shooting through my system told me it was time to keep moving. I had to separate myself from Marcy and Nathan. Thomas had said good-bye to protect the people he loved and now I had to do the same. My heart couldn’t bear anybody else dying tonight. Not after what had happened to Thomas.
As Nathan looped an arm around Marcy’s shoulders to help steer her down the path, I stepped deeper into the cornstalks and hid until they left. Marcy would be okay. She didn’t need me to protect her.
Once the coast was clear, I guardedly made my way back from which I came, to the beginning of the labyrinth. I had to find Death. If I could talk to him alone, I could convince him to spare my aunt.
Maybe I could appeal to him to see if there was anything he could do to save Thomas too. Yeah, as if Death would care.
Fear shackled my feet to the ground. The entrance to the maze was gone. In its place stood cornstalks I knew weren’t there before.
Freaking out at this point, I pushed through the wall of cornstalks to try to find the entrance of the maze, but the cornstalks never ended and became too tough to climb through. The stalks cut my skin and I smacked at the occasional sensation of a bug biting my arms, until I found my way back to the dirt path in the maze. The path of broken cornstalks seemed to go on forever.
With only the sounds of my breathing and a backdrop of crickets, I edged forward.
A train whistle blasted in my ears, and I jumped a foot into the air.
It was just a speaker in the haunted maze, but it was enough to get me going again. I sprinted down a narrow path to my left with the crazed effort of a madwoman, until my throat started to burn. There were no signs. No people jumping out to scare me. Just me, alone, in the corn maze, like some re-created nightmare. By the time I reached a fork in the path, I nearly fell to the ground from exhaustion.
“Have some hearts, my precious!” shouted a witch who leapt from the stalks. She held a rubber, bloody organ in her hands. I released a scream as another, taller person jumped into the path dressed as Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th series. He waved around a chain saw without the blade, while the witch held the most ridiculous expression, refusing to let me past as she cackled.
“I get it, I get it!” I shouted. “I really don’t have time for this!”
I pushed her to the side and ducked beneath the guy’s chain saw, racing down the path. almost there! read a wooden sign attached to a pole on my right. Then I passed another one that read just kidding! and hit a dead end.
“This can’t be happening,” I gasped.
Whispering, along with the faint noise of footsteps behind me, sent me whirling around. Nobody was there.
A headache pounded against my forehead. I gripped both sides of my skull. Sweat pooled at the back of my neck and slid down my spine, my breaths mere gasps of air. I shut my eyes, willing my thoughts to relax. I couldn’t black out. I wouldn’t.
Faith. Death’s silky voice slithered into my skull. He was furious.
My eyes burst open, and I looked around once more. For a moment, the world was slightly fuzzy, like a dream. When I pinched myself, I felt the pain fully. I looked around and realized the haze was a thin gray glittering fog pouring into the path. I thought it was from a fog machine, except it smelled peppery, like an herb of some sort. As I inspected the sparkling mist in bewilderment, my vision blurred, and my head felt droopy on my neck.
To my left, a shadow slinked through the cornstalks.
“Thomas?”
Rustling. Deep, psychotic laughter. My spine straightened.
Frozen in fear, I told myself they were only workers on the farm hidden in the maze. Then animal noises growled behind me, and I thought otherwise.
I turned, stunned to find David Star’s receptionist standing in the center of the path. Tiara. She wore a tight all-black business outfit, her striking red hair the color of summer cherries beneath the bright football stadium floodlights. I gazed down at her fingers.
Blood dripped down the lengths of them, and her nails were unnaturally long, like talons.
She strutted toward me, red stiletto heels carefully balancing on the compacted ground. I retreated against the cornstalks. Her image wavered for a sliver of a second into something else, something monstrous, and it was too fast to process.
A small, hostile smile lined her red painted lips. “Hello, Faith.”
“Why are you here?” I asked, fighting to focus on her face as she grew closer. “What . . . what is that fog?”
“What, this fog?” Tiara lifted her closed hand. With a sharp exhale, she blew a puff of gray glitter fog into my face. I inhaled the contents out of reflex, and it burned all the way up my nostrils and down my throat. Thrown into a coughing fit, I doubled over. She started to cackle, her high-pitched giggling hitting me like knives jabbing into my brain.
“Look at you,” she said, her voice distorted. The cornstalks shifted colors from purples and blues to neon green and pink, tripping me out. “A pathetic girl, drooling over a man. Don’t you see what you really are? You’re nothing, nothing to him. All he’s doing is using you, playing with you like all his other pets. Like the insignificant, wretched little whore you are.”
Any other night, her words would have cut me deep. “You know, I’m a nice person, but just because my name is Faith doesn’t mean I’m a pacifist.” I rolled up the ends of my sleeves. “Kicking your ass is long overdue.”
I wound back a fist and connected with Tiara’s sculpted cheek.
She shuffled back, clutching her face in astonishment. I came at her again, but Tiara disappeared in a blur. A clawed hand grabbed me from behind, drawing blood. I kicked out, nailing her in the leg and twisted around to backhand her across the face.
Tiara recovered fast and struck back, much harder, landing a blow to my stomach that knocked the wind right out of me. She got a hold of my shirt with those talon-like nails and shoved me to the unforgiving ground with an inhuman force.
“You stupid bitch, you don’t deserve him! He’s a prince, a god!”
Black swallowed the whites of her eyes as her face altered, sharpening into an unrecognizable creature with ruby irises. “I’ll be damned if I let you take him away from me!” Tiara moved toward me like a snake, but abruptly stopped. She scanned our surroundings. “Ah, I thought they were never going to show up.”
My whole body ached as I tried to get a deep breath. “They?”
“My friends,” Tiara said with a spiteful grin. “Death can’t know it was me who killed you. No hard feelings, I hope. I don’t share.”
She turned and darted into the corn.
“That’s what I thought!” I shouted, shaking a wounded fist in the air. “You better run away!”
“Do you know where the Bad Man is?”
My skin prickled.
I had not been left alone.
Straight ahead was a little blond-haired girl with two French braids. She stood with her back to me and sang under her breath. My eyes locked on the blood soaking her shirt, the teddy bear clutched tightly in her pale hand by her side.
“What the . . . ?”
“He wants your blood, he wants your flesh,” the little girl sang.
“Your soul is gone, your brain is dead. Don’t you see? His eyes, they hunt.
His mouth, it bites, his nails, they cut. Blood. Blood. Blood.”
I found the courage to stand up and slowly tiptoed the opposite way. “Can’t say I’ve heard that nursery rhyme before, but I’ll take your word for it.”
“Please, don’t leave me.” The girl’s head bowed, and she started to sob into her hands. “The Bad Man is coming!”
I halted. Her voice sounded so familiar. “Who are you?”
“I’m you!” the little girl sobbed.
I staggered back.
The girl’s eyes were identical to mine, her facial features identical to mine as a kid, except her skin was suctioned to her face like a skeleton, and her lips were purpling.
“You’re not me.” This was a figment of my imagination. It had to be. “You’re not real.”
Her smile was two rows of rotted teeth. “Of course, I’m you, dummy! I’m you after you died!” As she approached, the bones in her legs shook like delicate pins threatening to snap. A piece of her skin slowly slid off her cheek. “You don’t remember me, do you? I remember you, and I remember him too. Death. He said his name was Death. Blood. Blood. Blood.”
A violent chill overtook my body. I shut my eyes, willing the hallucination to go away.
“Why won’t you look at me? Look at what you would have been!”
“Leave me alone!”
“I’ll haunt you forever, Faith! You’ll never be normal, you died!”
I opened my eyes as the girl cackled, blood seeping from her rotten teeth. My face fell as her image distorted again, into an ugly creature with scaly gray skin and cloudy eyes that bore into mine. When I tried to get away, my feet chugged at a sluggish pace, like running in a dream. I tried to call out, but I couldn’t, as a heaviness overtook my limbs. Nothing felt real. A screeching noise that resembled a shriek resounded through the field, followed by a thunderous roar. The creature before me ceased any movement, snapping its head toward the direction of the sounds, and I felt ripped free from an invisible hold on me.
I took off, staggering and zigzagging at first in a drunken state.
It took a few moments for the fuzziness in my vision to dissipate enough for me to gain speed. When I did, I thought for sure I would collapse. Grasping my second wind by the throat, I burst with energy and gained enough strength to finally run at full speed again.
“Faith! Faith, where are you?”
My aunt’s voice. She sounded so far away.
“Here!” I wheezed out, coming out onto a path and turning down another maze route. Her voice came from all directions.
Unable to amplify my voice, I continued to cough as loud as I could, expelling some of that gray fog from my mouth. “I’m right here! I’m in the maze!” almost there! mocked the same wooden sign I’d seen earlier.
I’d gone in circles.
“Help,” I panted out, wiping at my bleary, tear-soaked eyes.
“Help! Aunt Sarah, I need you!” I couldn’t catch my breath, the constant sensation that someone was watching me beckoning a panic attack as I scanned the cornstalks on either side of me.
A man emerged into the pathway. Alexandru Cruscellio.
He wore his gladiator uniform, the one with various intricate designs carved into lavish armor, held together with brass hooks and leather. He was enormous, almost filling the width of the path with rippling, sun-kissed muscle. He appeared exactly as he did in Death’s memory.
He stalked closer with a leopard-like grace, and I couldn’t move.
His face was so alike David’s, but even more perfect—a sculpture chiseled from stone, angular cheekbones, skin unlined by wrinkles or imperfections. A strong Roman nose, and full, sinfully pouty lips, curved into a sly smile. His unusual eyes were two lustrous shades of green with vertical slits for pupils. The irises altered underneath the stadium lights, like metamorphosing kaleidoscopes, flickering between mint and lime in the one iris, and emerald and moss in the other. Despite his wicked features, I found him magnetic—unequivocally beautiful.
He stopped in front of me and just stood there, staring at me in a curious way. I gulped, and my mouth became cotton. I tasted bitter acid which made me long for something to drink, anything to quench my thirst.
“No more running, Faith,” Alexandru said. The voice was recognizably Death’s, but the intonation didn’t sound quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“This is impossible,” I said, retreating back. The closer he got, the more detailed he became, down to the slave bands around his ankles. His feet left imprints in the ground.
“In my world, nothing is impossible.” He held out his hand like an offering. His fingers were long and calloused, his palms large and masculine. I pictured Death’s leather gloves and knew they’d fit perfectly over those powerful hands.
“I feel . . . strange.” I kept my arms locked at my sides, straining to concentrate on his face as the cornstalks shifted colors again.
“Don’t you find me attractive, Faith?” Now he was standing right next to me like a jump cut.
My mouth felt bone dry, my lips cracking from the frigid air. “I don’t understand. I watched you change, in the arena. You’re not this man anymore.”
His head cocked. “I’m anyone you want me to be.”
“Am I dreaming?”
“Don’t you want to touch me?” His voice was a low purr, as his lips hovered over my cheek. The instant he touched my skin, I was drowsy again, leaning into him. His fingers lingered on the zipper of my sweatshirt. The bare skin of my arms hit the frigid air as he slipped my jacket off. “I want you, Faith. Take your clothes off.”
I drowned in his exotic eyes, itched to touch his smooth skin. I pressed my hand against the plate on his chest. The metal wasn’t cold, as I’d expected it to be. In fact, it didn’t feel like much of anything, if that even made sense. This little puzzlement sobered me up.
“You’re not real,” I said, coming fully to the realization.
“I’m not real?” He grinned, ran the tip of his tongue over the edges of his top teeth. “Of course, I’m real, cupcake.”
His voice. His voice was what triggered it. A spell broke. Clarity hit me at full force, and the small hairs on the nape of my neck lifted. I shunted him away. “Your voice,” I said, pointing at him with accusation. “You don’t have his accent. You’re not him.” Coughing, I clutched at my T-shirt and reeled backward. Smoke expelled from my lungs, as tears forcefully streamed down my face. “Show me—
show me what’s true! ”
Alexandru blinked, and his eyes clouded. Like a mirage, his image shimmered away, and his face altered, transforming into a frightening thin creature with pale skin and yellow teeth. The creature had various tics and twitches, as if it couldn’t stand still. A terrifying grin was permanently engraved into its features, as if its lips were pulled up by invisible fishhooks. I knew it was male from its bared genitals.
“What a clever girl!” it shouted with glee. “You found my fault!”
An identical creature materialized beside the first monster. This one was narrower and possibly female. “You were amazing, baby.”
She approached the other creature and they started to kiss in a graphic PDA of lizard-like tongues, groping, and saliva. Then they broke apart and looked at me at the same time.
The male transformed back into to the image of Alexandru.
“Dinner is served, my love,” he said.
The hideous female started toward me.
“Don’t forget your appetizer, bitch!” Aunt Sarah sprang into the path and hurled herself into the one creature, knocking it to the ground. She was saturated in blood, most of which wasn’t her own, with two deep lacerations cut into her bicep. She was weak, profusely sweating. Still, she was able to bury a dagger into the female’s throat, ripping through cords of muscle and tendons, severing its head.
Fake Alexandru released a snarl and lunged for my aunt, tossing her damaged body like a rag doll farther down the path.
My eyes bulged out of my head. “Don’t touch her!”
Its attention swiveled to me. The Alexandru clone moved in a flash, jumping right in front of me as he released a heinous screech.
“Fine, I’ll eat you first! After all, you’re the prize!” The creature clutched my throat with bony fingers and opened its nasty mouth. I felt paralyzed as its jaw dislocated to become unnaturally wide, so I could see down its putrid throat. Needlelike teeth lengthened from rotted gums, and—
Suddenly, a curved blade cut upward through its middle, and the creature gurgled a strangled noise. Rotten skin crackled and burned.
Death’s cloaked frame rose behind the creature in a whirl of shadows, his gloved hand gripping the curved weapon penetrating the creature. “Fun’s over,” he hissed. “I don’t like to be imitated.”
He removed the blade and sliced the air again. The creature rippled, transforming from Alexandru back into its true form. With a hand still clutching my neck, the demon crumpled, and I with it.
The creature’s ugly head slid off its wrinkly body before hitting the ground in a slop of flesh. I held back a scream.
Another hideous creature identical to the others pounced into the pathway, hunched low and jaws wide open. It took one look at Death and its violent expression fell away in disbelief.
Dropping to its knees, the creature gasped with a forked tongue,
“Your Highnesss. We didn’t mean to interfere with your . . . dinner?”
Death stalked in the direction of the kneeling beast. “Tell me who sent you,” he commanded like thunder.
“Who sent us?” The creature laughed anxiously. “Nobody, my lord. We were well within our hunting grounds—”
Death kept coming at him.
“Please, please, don’t!” shouted the creature. “I’ll do anything you want! Have mercy! No, no—!”
I turned away, squeezing my eyes shut as Death lashed out. A sickening wet noise followed by crackles like embers from a fire cut through the air. Boots lumbered against the compacted ground.
“Are you all right?” Death asked. I knew it was bad when he genuinely sounded concerned.
All I could do was focus down at the ground, to avoid looking into the eyes of the beheaded male creature in front of me. My chest tightened, like I needed to scream to release the terror locked inside me.
Death clenched the hilt of the knife at his side so hard the thick leather of his gloves creaked. I had a feeling he wanted to keep ruthlessly stabbing these things. Instead, he withheld his monster and gestured with his hand. The corpses around us burst into flames that licked at my skin, until a bed of ash lay beneath my fingertips.
He spoke again. I tuned him out. Tuned everything out. A buzzing filled my ears, a sweet, blissful tune detaching me from the rest of the world.
A hand clamped down on my shoulder.
“Faith,” Death said in a sharp tone. “Answer me.”
“How do I know you’re real?” I mumbled at the ground.
“Illusions always have a fault. Once you control your fear and focus, they shatter.” His pause hung in the air as he lowered to the ground beside me. “Look at me.”
I tilted my head upward, gradually sliding up the length of Death’s cloak to his shadowy face. He was his usual scary self, all right. I focused on his clothing, the shadows snaking around his body, and concluded that it was really him.
“How did they find me?” I croaked.
“Same way I found you. Your soul attracts our kind. Its innate purity stands out amongst the other mortals’.” He methodically cleaned the bloody, jagged knife with a cloth. The way he’d easily grouped himself with those creatures, his kind, made me sick to my stomach.
Realizing I had forgotten about my aunt, I tore my gaze ahead to the path, where her body once lay.
“Where’s my aunt?”
“Don’t worry about her.” He twirled the clean blade between his fingers and tilted his head down at me. “She’s alive.”
And in Hell, he didn’t have to add. My insides crumbled in fear that I would never see her again, but I knew Death well enough at this point to know I wouldn’t get much more out of him. “What were those things?”
“Wraiths, or Tricksters.” He sheathed the weapon in his belt and stepped closer, the edge of his cloak and his leather combat boots in my line of vision. “Wraiths are a species of demon who feed on human fears. They use herbs and a hallucinogenic fog that expels from their mouths to guide their prey to a state of delusion. Then they mimic their prey’s darkest fears, and occasionally, their deepest desires, until they go insane. It’s their favorite playtime. You missed the grand finale—where they tear you limb from limb and crack open your skull to get to your brain. Fear makes the brain taste sweeter. Luckily for you, I didn’t pack any popcorn, so I cut your grand finale short.”
“Did you know this was their hunting ground?” I demanded through tight teeth.
“No, I did not know,” he said with a solemn voice. “Wraiths are senseless slobs and tend to leave behind a mess. I highly doubt they would be offered a farm like this to hunt. Especially on Halloween, with kids frequenting the area.” He paused. “Why are you holding your arm like that?”
As I became aware of my sore arm, I thought back to Tiara. I bridged the connection between her and this attack, and it dawned on me that she might not have been a Trickster.
“Oh my God,” I choked out. “She tried to kill me! Your insane gargoyle receptionist tried to kill me!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tiara Reid!” I shouted. “Tiara was here, and she tried to kill me!
She must have bribed those creatures to do it!”
“Not possible. Wraiths are slaves to their master.”
“Then Tiara made some deal with their master! I’m telling you, she was here, Death. She told me that the moment she met me, she wanted to get rid of me, but she didn’t want you to—”
“Nothing you saw in this maze was real, until a few minutes ago,” he said. “You’re in shock.”
A sudden onset of anger pierced through the numbness within me. “Are you kidding me right now? I know what I saw! She wasn’t like the rest of the Wraiths. She was different. She was here. So were Marcy, Nathan, and . . . Thomas . . . ”
Death said nothing as he prowled around the open space.
“Why won’t you believe me?” I felt childish, like I needed the validation of him being on my side, as if that would suddenly make this night a little less insane.
“Your mind was altered by hallucinogens,” Death said in a dismissive, apathetic tone. I could tell his patience was wearing thin.
“We don’t have time to keep chatting. You are not safe here. We need to leave.”
“Unbelievable.” I shook my head with disdain. “You’re taking Tiara’s side. Why, because she’s been your slam piece for a couple hundred years—?”
“Enough!”
My vision blurred with tears. I tore my gaze away from him and gripped the ash beneath my hands. “Am I supposed to thank you? One monster killing another to avenge his property? You’re my savior. My hero!”
“Get up. You’re acting like a child.” When I didn’t move, Death grabbed me roughly by the back of the shirt and lifted me off the ground. I tossed a handful of ash into his veiled face, making him free me at once with a curse.
Screw him. I was already too far away to hear what he shouted after me. I tore into the corn and avoided the trail altogether. Death was never on my side. He was a deceiving creature just like the rest of them, whose disregard and hatred for mortals was imbedded deep in his veins. His dismissal of my aunt’s life did not go unnoticed either.
For all I knew, this twisted fuck was toying with me again, and she was already dead.
In a moment of weakness and raw fear, I thought of the only person left who could help me. I summoned his name in my mind, and the air grew colder. “Malphas!”
The leaves of the corn cut through my flesh as sharp as blades, leaving behind thin cuts on my hands, face, and the skin exposed from the rips in my jeans. Reaching an end of the crop, my Converse hit compacted ground and I entered an open space in the maze.
Twirling in a circle, Death’s laughter rumbled from all around me, and my skin erupted into gooseflesh.
“Did you really think you could escape me?”
I whirled around, to find Death standing a mere foot from me.
“Christ!”
“Wrong.” Death looked taller and more menacing, if that was even possible. I backpedaled away from him. “Maybe you haven’t noticed,” he continued in a gravelly manner, blackness swirling around his frame as he fully manifested, “but I’m everywhere. Pull a stunt like that again, and I’ll make sure you never forget it.”
The wind kicked up. He stalked around me with a pantherine grace, the lapels of his cloak billowing out and revealing the muscular frame of the creature clad in black underneath. If he wasn’t my villain, I would have admired the peep show. Right now, I was trying not to soil myself. He circled me again, like a jungle cat analyzing its favorite meal and making sure it was unmarked by any other predator.
Once he was satisfied with whatever he was inspecting, he came to a halt in front of me. We stared at each other in silence. Every breath I took was labored.
“Cupcake,” he said.
“Death.”
He prowled closer. Too close. A part of me wanted to run the other way with my tail between my legs, and another part of me betrayed any logic and wanted to continue what we’d started the night before.
“You don’t want me as an enemy, Faith. End this. Come with me.”
Deep down, I knew those Wraiths paled in comparison to what Death could do to me. Everything about him was lethal. His build, his voice, his touch.
“I never wanted you to be my enemy,” I said, clutching at my chest as my body quaked uncontrollably. “I never wanted . . . any of this. I’ve never felt so alone and isolated in my life. And you . . . you wanted me to feel this way. You toyed with me, like the manipulating creature you are!”
“Choose your next words wisely.”
“Maybe you gave me a second chance at life because there’s some good in you,” I found myself saying. “It doesn’t have to be like this.
Maybe we could come to another agreement. Maybe . . . maybe . . . ”
“We could be friends?” His laughter had a sinister edge, and he began circling me again. “Don’t hold your breath. We’re well past friends, don’t you think?”
His power skimmed my neck, a phantom caress that was dangerously enticing. The feeling snuck up the column of my neck in calculated, tantalizing kisses. Although I fought to hide my reaction, his concealed eyes clung to my every movement, intensifying the effect on me. My mouth parted. I gave in to him, and the slow burn of his influence sank hotly into my skin as if it belonged there.
Coming to my senses, I fled to a different spot in the clearing and wiped my neck with disgust, trying to pretend my entire body wasn’t quaking with desire.
“Don’t do that ever again,” I hissed.
A low, sultry snicker. “Why must you fight me?” In sync, we moved clockwise, changing positions in a dangerous dance, while remaining on opposite sides of the clearing. “Take a hard look at the past few weeks. See any rainbows or unicorns? Wake up. Nothing will ever be the same. You belong in my world.”
“I pity you, Death.” A single tear slid down my face, and I wouldn’t let him see a single more. “I wish I didn’t, but I do. I pity you and all the tragedies you’ve been through that have made you this way.”
“You think I didn’t choose to be what I am today?” His voice was stark, cold, cruel. “You think life forced me to become this? Was I dealt a bad hand, Faith, like all the villains you mortals fabricate?”
The void between us closed. “Do you have any idea the sins a man has to commit to spend an eternity cursed as a monster? Would you like to know how many people I’ve killed? How many times I’ve devoured your kind, watched the light drain from their eyes?
How many times I’ve loved it? I’ve simply lost count. But don’t be mistaken, I chose to be this way.”
Our stares bored painfully into each other’s, until he turned his back sharply on me. I couldn’t breathe. I’d accessed a part of him he kept tucked away in the darkest corner of his mind.
“It is a choice we all must face,” Death said, and his voice vibrated with conviction. “A crossroads. There will come a time in your life when you have to decide if you are the person you want to be, and if not, you have the power to change. If you don’t make that change, then you risk losing who you’re meant to be. Look at me closely. And tell me, is being a monster such a terrible thing? Because I find who I am now far superior to who I was.”
I was rendered speechless, reeling over his profound words.
“I don’t think you’re a monster,” I said. “You’ve forgotten you’re not alone. Hiding your pain behind a mask just means you’re human.”
In what seemed like an instant, everything changed. A force heaved into me, and the earth groaned as my feet slid across the ground like I was skating on ice. Red circles and various designs emerged from the dirt in front of me. Death stood rigid at the center of the clearing, right in the middle of the intricate pattern on the ground.
“What’s going on?” I exclaimed.
“It’s a sigil,” he growled with a curse, his head moving as if he were reading a message on the ground. “I’m imprisoned. The lines are immaculate.” He lifted his hooded head and bellowed a thundering roar. My eyes widened at the shadows crawling out of the cornstalks, how they barreled toward the sigil and tried to break through it.
Feathers rustled and the shadows dissipated.
“Looks like the cat is caged this time,” said a mocking, cultured voice. I whipped my head to my right, and a scream caught in my throat. Malphas, the raven demigod, materialized outside the sigil.
A thousand thoughts rattled my brain. Malphas had his hands clasped behind his back, a position of calm authority, as if he had full command of this situation. And his eyes were black as coal, unpredictable.
“Father,” Death said, a speckle of panic in his menacing voice.
I looked between both men. “Father?”
“I told you, Faith,” Malphas said with a venomous smirk. “I am the only one capable of stopping Death. He is my son, after all.”
My gut plummeted. Physically, Malphas appeared young enough to be Death’s older brother. I questioned whether this was another game from the Wraiths, like I so desperately wanted it to be, but I knew in my gut this was real. Which meant Death had killed his own father in the gladiator arena.
“Whoa,” I said. Talk about some serious family issues.
I stood rooted in my spot, reliving the horror show in the alleyway. The demons chasing Thomas and I down Main Street, crawling down the buildings in hordes, with their beady black eyes and porcelain skin. All of it because of a vendetta between a father and son.
“I never imagined I’d trap the Prince of Darkness,” Malphas continued. “It was a risk indeed, but all thanks to you, an easy task, lovely Faith Williams.”
A monstrous noise arose from Death. “Touch her, and I’ll rip your head off! You have two fucking seconds to break the sigil!”
“Oh, how I’ve been waiting for this moment,” Malphas said with a fiendish, evil smirk. “I knew it would only be a matter of time before you screwed up. Honestly, all your power, and a girl is your undoing? It’s quite pathetic, son. Dare I say, cliché.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Death said, and I could hear the tremor in his deep voice. “Killing her won’t change what I did.”
“Do not lecture me about morality when you stand in the gray.
For two thousand years, my soul was imprisoned in the Underworld.
You could not fathom the pain and suffering I endured. All while you paraded around with Lucifer, all while you were treated like celebrity amongst the mortals!”
Our surroundings pulsed with electric currents as Malphas’s anger amplified to a wrathful roar. His ravens soared high above us, circling the floodlights like vultures.
“The long wait was worth it, though,” he continued, calming himself with graceful precision. “It seems I couldn’t have arrived at a better time to stir up the balance between good and evil.”
His ominous words rattled me to the bone.
“I was a child!” Death thundered. “I was a child and a slave to those Roman games you put me through. Ahrimad took advantage of my innocence—”
“You made your choice,” Malphas said coldly. “Your words, not mine.”
“I have no remorse for you,” Death snarled, each word like poison in his mouth. “You took . . . everything I loved and destroyed it.
You should have stayed dead.”
Malphas’s face tightened with rage. He began uttering a chant, the words amplifying as he lifted his arms toward the night. The sigil pulsed to a violent rhythm with scarlet flames. Death stiffened, the shadows lingering around his frame pressing against their unyielding confinements.
“You’ll find I am not the only one who won’t stay dead,” Malphas said. “There is another who hungers to be freed. To free him, I will need to borrow your scythe. Hope you don’t mind.”
With a menacing roar unlike any animal I’d ever heard, Death thrashed in the circle, hurling himself into an invisible barrier. He dropped forcefully to one knee, then the other.
Anxiety squeezed at my heart. Death would die because of me, because I called on Malphas. I had to do something. I had to intervene.
“Stop!” I exclaimed. “Please, stop! I didn’t want this! I didn’t want you to hurt him!”
Malphas wouldn’t listen.
“Come on, come on!” I shook out my fingers and flexed them as if it would charge the mysterious power within me. “Do something!”
With no luck, I barreled into the sigil, and I heard Malphas’s shout from the outside. Pain crippled me instantly, coiled and twisted as if I was being torn apart from the inside. Deeper into the lines of magic, pressure crushed against my skull, but my will was stronger. I reached a shuddering hand toward Death, just beyond the barrier of magic containing him at the center.
“Take my hand!” Tears surged down my face as my fingertips flickered to life with light, slowly burning an opening into the center sigil. “You’re not dying on me. Not tonight!”
Death’s gloves tore and talons slid out. With one last heave of strength, he slashed at the barriers remaining between us. The inner sigil exploded, and I was flung out of the lines with a blast of painful jolts up my legs and spine. I knew Death had saved my life again as the whole sigil spewed out ferocious red flames.
Death’s shoulders slumped; his movements turned lethargic. The beast beneath the cloak stirred, growling and hissing.
Death weakly lifted his head, hands gripping the earth. Our eyes connected through the darkness concealing his features, and in that painful moment, I knew this was good-bye.
A strangled cry ripped free from Death’s throat, as an orb of light ripped out from his body. The glow hovered in the air as bright as a blue flare, and then flung itself into the night. The shadow of Death’s face waned away as he collapsed forward, hitting the ground at a dead weight.
“DEATH!” I lurched to my feet to run into the sigil again and was jolted once more. Malphas’s once onyx-black eyes blazed the same shade of scarlet as the sigil’s lines. When I tried to escape the clearing, he pointed at me with a casual outstretched hand and suddenly I was consumed by a crushing, clawing pain from inside my skull. I screamed as it only amplified, my vision strobing in and out, before the sensations expired, and I hit the ground in utter exhaustion.
A grin spread over Malphas’s mouth. A tormentor proud of the pain he’d inflicted. “Not so fast, girl,” he tsked. “You and I are not done here.” Wind swept over the clearing and smothered the red flames to smoke, as Malphas strolled into the sigil and squatted down, reaching toward Death’s head.
“No!” I cried out at the top of my lungs. My limbs were like dead weights as I tried to get off the ground. Tears rushed from my eyes.
“Please, don’t, Malphas! Don’t hurt him anymore! He’s your son!”
The Raven God seemed to pause.
Moving my mouth, I forced myself to speak. “I didn’t want this.
I didn’t want you to hurt him.”
“This is exactly what you wanted, darling,” Malphas said in his composed, raspy voice. “Remember, you called to me. You wanted freedom.” Malphas reached around Death’s body and grabbed his fallen scythe. His expression flinched, the corners of his eyes tightening with rage. The branches of the willow tree along the staff and the blade seemed to illuminate briefly against his touch.
In a dazed blur, my eyes drifted to Death and his lifeless body at the center of the sigil. I imagined this was all pretend. Any second now, he would get back up. He’d become my unlikely savior again and remain the unstoppable force I’d painted him as.
But he was so still, and I felt so cold.
It’s cruel when we listen to our hearts only after we lose someone forever. All the things I couldn’t say surfaced and ripped me apart from the inside out. Through the manipulation, the games, and trauma Death had caused me—whether it was right or wrong—I had fallen hopelessly in love with the monster beneath the hood. I was in love with the Grim Reaper.
Now he was gone. He was dead. And it was all my fault.
“The great darkness is coming.” Malphas stood over me with Death’s scythe clenched in his hands, rain trickling down his stony face. His eyes were dead black, vacant . . . possessed. “Ahrimad shall rise again.”
My vision tunneled as the world shuttered to black like the end of a film roll.
