The Gifts of Mortality

Chapter 5, part one

With Samil gone, Rachel perches herself on top of the table they had been standing in front of and waits for her orders.

The head of the International Immortal Affairs Bureau holds the room's attention. Asha Ward is one of the women being teleconferenced on the screen. Inside her box, she lifts a yellow legal pad and her eyes skim the notes she'd taken from Samil's questioning.

"Well, we have a working theory now on how Mr. Cleaver is doing this," she says. "But we still don't know how to stop Avonni. Finding and having Samil destroy a magic-imbued object that may or may not exist seems like a long shot."

"Our best bet would be to kill Death directly," one of the men in the room calls out.

Ward's eyes flick up from her notes. "Yes, it would," she agrees. "How should we go about doing that?"

"The myths of cultures all around the world include quite a few methods for killing a god," the same man says with a shrug. "Shouldn't be too hard."

Ward nods on the screen. "Yes, we have multiple methods we could try, but we may only get one shot. How should we choose which one to try?"

The man hems and haws. "Um, well, you all are the experts, aren't you? Don't you know?"

"Of all of humankind, we know the most about the immortals, but most of our knowledge is from humankind's various and often contradictory mythologies. Every culture has a story of a mortal killing a god and none of the stories agree. These mythologies tend to tell more about the culture they're from than share anything useful about the gods," Ward says. "And as Samil just showed us, our myths may not be the most trustworthy sources."

She sets her legal pad down and stares down her computer's camera. "We'll need to be a little more scientific to figure out how to kill Avonni when we find her and Cleaver. There's a chance we'll need to ... experiment. We'll need to keep Samil around."

Ward pauses to let the weight of her words sink in for the others on the call and in the room. When no one protests, she looks at where Rachel is on her screen and addresses her. "We'll only test methods on Samil as a last resort. Agent Hall, just keep him occupied until we actually need him. Unless we need him. Tell him to search for the object the ring might be from.

Right now, our focus is on finding Cleaver. Avonni will be with him and his people, moving around. If we need Samil, we'll give you a call."

Rachel feels a knot form in the pit of her stomach, but she nods and leaves the room to follow her orders and head out on her wild goose chase.

Samil is sagging in his seat at an empty desk, swiveling back and forth in the chair with his gaze on the floor. His facial expression looks as worried and dejected as Rachel feels, so she makes an extra effort to keep her face neutral as she walks up to him.

When her feet enter the field of the god's vision, his head turns toward her and he bolts to his feet. The back of the chair he'd been slouching in thumps against the desk at the suddenness of his movement.

"So what's the plan? What can I do?" he asks.

"We're going to find the object Cleaver's ring is from. If it exists."

"Oh," Samil says, his brow furrowing. He looks like he's going to say more but doesn't.

Rachel can't stop herself from sighing. "I know we only have an outside chance of finding it, but it's our best bet right now," she lies. "We're going to look through digital collections of a few of our bigger museums in case it's in one of those."

Samil frowns. "Most magical items are in our city, though."

"And quite a few of the magical items humans do have are in private collections here. Like I said," Rachel says as she begins to lead Samil back to the office she'd been placed in when she first arrived, "we only have an outside chance."