A Book of Dust and Breath

Chapter Thirty Four

The sun dawned over a landscape so startlingly white it hurt Max's eyes. He found Lily in the Kitchen, humming "White Christmas" and breaking bread into tiny pieces. The hint of a smile on her lips faded when she saw him in his coat, sunglasses in hand. "Today? On Christmas Eve?"

"No rest for the wicked. Delwyn coming over today?"

Squaring her shoulders, she arranged the smile back in place and nodded. "Yeah. She'll be here soon. But that doesn't mean you should be out drinking beer and partying with the other radioactive superheroes. Hurry back."

He laughed. "Not radioactive, I swear. And I promise I'll come back as fast as I can. There is nowhere on earth I'd rather be." Leaving her with a kiss, he headed out the back door and kicked the Harley to life with a little more force than was strictly necessary.

Harriet had handed him a pile of pink slips that morning that would have been a week's worth of work in other times but as attacks and human deaths increased every day, two reapers had been recently lost. He wanted to complain, but how do you whine about someone's demise increasing your workload? You don't. You do the work. You do it well. You avoid facing the same fate.

He'd glanced through them, started to leave, and anchored himself in the void again. "Harriet?"

"Mmm?" She mumbled from behind the tumbling piles of paper. She even had stacks on the floor now.

"How close are we to a full imbalance?"

She stopped writing and met his eye. "You forget a lot, but I presume you remember Russia?"

"Same lifetime."

She shrugged. Lifetimes came and went in the void. Harriet's version of time wasn't terribly linear. "If that happened now it would tip the scales."

"Irreversibly?"

She smiled. The expression was so foreign on her gnarly old face it rendered her nearly unrecognizable. "In all these years you haven't figured it out?"

"What?"

"God can work anything to His end. There is no action a created being can take that would render His Plan unworthy."

He frowned. "Then why does it matter what we do?"

Her smile faded. "You'd trust your own choices for yourself over your Creator's choices for you? You really are dumber than a box of rocks." She turned back to the computer and began pounding on the keys and Max returned to the physical world.

He drove too fast on the icy roads, ignoring the looks of people who must have wondered what kind of lunatic would ride a motorcycle in the snow.

His first reap ran. He caught the guy buy hair and dragged him, screaming, across the divide. He quieted in Azrael's presence. They always did.

Azrael said nothing of a personal nature. Max didn't expect him to. The attempt at some kind of normalcy on Thanksgiving had been a one-time deal and a disaster at that.

His second reap staggered away from her body dazed, unsure how the man who had been beating her for two decades could have finally killed her. Max took her hand and gave her over to Death.

So the day went. Death worked overtime that Christmas Eve, heedless of those left behind who would grieve every holiday season for the rest of their lives. Well, no. not heedless, exactly, just powerless to make it hurt any less and aware that the alternative was far worse.

When he returned to his own home he found it lit up with colorful lights. A crackling fire danced in the fireplace. The aroma of freshly baked cookies hung in the air. His beautiful wife slept on the couch, curled around the growing globe of her belly.

Delwyn sat in the chair next to her.

"You stayed all day?" he asked.

"What else would I do?" She stood and stretched. "They linger close. She feels them, but has no name for the feeling."

"She's not the only one," Max admitted.

The companion nodded, understanding. "They can't touch her, Max. Eventually, they'll get bored and move on to easier prey."

He'd send them all back to Hell to burn in the lake if he had his way. He changed the subject. "Delwyn, is Daniel well?" Max hadn't seen his friend since the Thanksgiving fiasco.

"I've heard nothing to the contrary," she said. "I'll be near if you need me."

"Thank you, companion. For your protection, but also for your friendship."

Her dark eyes crinkled at the corner. "I know why you married her, reaper. She shines."

Alone with his wife, he knelt and kissed her warm, slightly parted lips.

She stirred and smiled up at him. "Back from Krypton already?"

"Had to get here before Santa came."

"You're pretty naughty. He might just leave coal in your stocking," she teased in a sleepy whisper.

"I wouldn't even care. If I've got you he can't give me anything else important." He led her upstairs and tucked the warm blanket around her sleeping form and thought about how utterly impossible it would be to return to life as it was.