VELCOME.... ADD THIS DELICIOUS BOOK TO YOUR LIBRARY, IF YOU DARE!
OH, AND DO MAKE SURE TO VOTE AND LEAVE LOTS OF CUPCAKE FEEDBACK FOR YOUR DEAR FRIEND KAT. OR ELSE... *motions to Death, who is hanging upside down from the ceiling by a chain with a sock in his mouth* *He waggles his eyebrows as if he kinda likes it*
HUGS & KNIVES.
Instagram/Twitter: katrocks247
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When I first jumped through a portal to save Death, I landed right into the Unknown.
Not so gracefully, might I add, since I specifically remember landing in a thorn bush. But there was nothing in-between home and there. Just a quick transition between realms that had left me a little breathless. Point A straight to point B.
This time? Well.
Walking through that second portal felt like stepping off an edge of a nightmare into an endless, dark abyss. The was no light, no ground, no sky, and no sound. Nothing but a petrifying blackness and the all-consuming fear that came with the sensation of falling from a high height. My stomach climbed upwards toward my throat, a silent scream unlashing from my mouth as my body kept rolling over at the hands of a cruel momentum through a path I could not control.
I thought I would die like this. Caito, the mysterious Guardian of the Unknown, had lead me through this portal. He had struck a deal with me. I had three days to collect Death, or else I was his internal prisoner. I know, I just couldn't escape the clichés, but I had a strong feeling Caito's deal was a big heap of bullshit, seeing as he'd basically shot me out into the universe to never be found again.
I fell, and fell, and fell down the black void.
I thought of Death in this madness. I focused on his details as though I were painting him in my mind, the sharp, masculine lines of his hauntingly beautiful face. How his catlike eyes seemed to draw you in like a lure. He'd mastered the art of hiding his emotions from the world, but his eyes never could hold back a sliver of the truth.
In sheer desperation, I reached my hand out toward the abyss, knowing it was impossible grip onto nothing, but nothing was all I had to hold onto. The last thing I'd expected was for something to brush my fingertips. Uncertainty soared through me as I stretched my hand out further, and a gloved hand firmly grasped mine.
There was an explosion of echoing sounds, like rushing through a tunnel. My heart hammered uncontrollably as light burst through the dark, momentarily blinding me. The smell of sweat and gym equipment brought on an instant feeling of nostalgia, and when my eyes adjusted, I realized the source of the bright lights were florescent gymnasium bulbs across the cavernous ceiling above.
A shadow figure loomed over me. The fluorescents seemed to halo around his head, his face slowly coming into focus like a hazy dream. I could hardly breathe.
"Are you going to get up at some point, or are you just gonna' hold my hand with that stupid expression?" Death asked.
Dazed, I planted my feet and let him pull me up. Death. Death was standing two feet away from me. My heart was pounding a mile a minute, my eyes greedily soaked in every inch of him, like I feared he would vanish at any moment. He wore an expected all black ensemble of a long-sleeved black t-shirt, joggers, and trainers. Tattoos snaked over the exposed skin of his neck and curved up the side of his tanned face. His hair, styled in a messy fauxhawk, was the shade of obsidian, and his sinister eyes glowed with an otherworldly power.
"You're alive," I breathed out.
The slashes of his dark brows angled inward.
Seeing him like this, like the way I wanted to remember him, felt like a blissful break from the truth. The haunting memory of Death's dying corpse in the mausoleum created a surge of emotion within me.
I blinked past tears in my eyes and rushed toward him to throw my arms around his torso, hugging him as tight as I could. He stiffened with his arms hung slightly up in the air on either side of him, as if he didn't know what to do with the embrace, but I didn't care. He was alive. He was alive.
"You smell like you," I muffled into his shirt.
"I think you hit that mat a little harder than I thought." Death peeled me off of him as if he were disgusted and held me at arm's length. I didn't miss slight amusement curving his full mouth, as his hands slid down my shoulders and fell to his sides. "Delusional or not, you have three more rounds. And remember, if you "forget" to clean your swamp ass sweat angel off my mats again, I'm going to make sure that next time, you leave behind a sweat kiddy pool, and I'll make you swim laps in it. Got it?"
"I missed this," I said with a wistful smile.
His mismatched green eyes narrowed into slits. "Missed what?" he continued in his usual Trainer from Hell aggressiveness. "Missed being disciplined? Because believe me, I have a long list of punishments that I have no problem ticking-off right this second, cupcake."
"Cupcake," I whispered, on the verge of tears again.
He gave a low hiss. "Alright, you're freaking me out now. Get your ass to the fucking Graveyard."
He started to walk away from me, and that's when I noticed I no longer wore Romeo's fighting outfit for me, but instead an outfit I had worn during a training session with Death. I heard a slight ringing in my ears, which made my body tremble ever-so-slightly. My head snapped up, Honing back into the task at hand, I lurched forward to grab the sleeve of Death's shirt and stopped him from walking.
"Wait," I said in an assertive voice, having no idea what I was doing, or if this would even work. "This is going to sound crazy, but none of this is real, Death. It's a memory from your past, and we're both trapped in the Unknown. You were stabbed by Ahrimad in the mausoleum. You fell through the portal. I jumped in after you. Now I need to find your body. You have to help me."
Death turned to face me fully and tilted my head up with a gloved finger, staring intensely into my eyes. "What a little faker." He brushed past me and bent down to pick up a water bottle, uncapping it, before handing it to me. "Drink some water and shake it off. Your enemy won't give you a break because you bonked your little noggin, and neither will I."
Blood rushed to my ears as I watched him stalk away.
I sprinted forward to stand in his way. "Did you not hear anything I just said?"
"Of course, I did, you were complaining about your headache," he answered, and my stomach dropped. "Which won't stop you from round seven in the Graveyard, or a finisher of a hundred burpees." He grinned a little crookedly at me with his sharp teeth. "Give me any lip, and we're going for a night run until the sun comes up."
"Death, please, please listen to me," I said urgently, reaching out to clutch onto both of his gloved hands. A gesture that he thankfully didn't bite me for. "You're unconscious in the ripples of the Unknown. Your life is flashing before your eyes. But I can save you. I can save you, I just need you to tell me where your body is, so I can––"
His body disintegrated into ash beneath my fingers, the shock of it making me reel back with a gasp. The ash swirled in the air and evaporated into nothing.
I thought maybe he had just sifted through the room like he always did. I expected him to pop up behind me or something, but he never did. I was alone. He was gone.
"No," I croaked out, shaking my head in disbelief as I frantically looked in every direction of the gymnasium. "Death? DEATH!"
I looked down at my hands in horror, adrenaline making my vision dizzy. Was this my fault? Had I turned him to ash? Had I ruined my only chance to communicate with him? I looked up and realized the gymnasium walls were melting away and leaving behind that endless black void.
I'd failed. I'd failed, and I'd had him in my arms. He was so real, everything about him was so real. What kind of cruel place was this? Panic climbed down my throat, my chest heaving up and down. The my world quite literally was crumbling down around me.
A sharp ringing in the room made me spin around, and I honed in on my reflection in the mirrors on the far wall of the gymnasium. In the mirror, I held Caito's gold coin, and when I titled my head down, the conduit was now in my palm, as if it had been there all along.
I fell to my knees with the coin clutched to my chest, struggling to keep it together as the room decomposed around me. I shut my eyes tight, willing my chaotic thoughts to slow.
I thought only of him.
The ground gave out from beneath me, my scream muting as I entered the dark void for an instant, before daylight broke through. I kept falling. Falling from a high height toward a body of water, my arm coming out to shield my face at the last second, as I plunged into freezing cold water.
I panicked instantly from the shock of what was happening, the murky water burning my eyes and the back of my throat. The water moved with the fierceness of dangerous rapids, dragging me down its currents. Rocks sliced into the skin of my hands and my face and the temperature of the water had knocked all the air out of me. My brain screamed for oxygen, and my arms instinctively went out to try and surface.
It was like some innate part of me took over as I punched at the water, energy surging around me in hot bubbles. Another instinctual slam of my fists, and I rocked forward and surfaced, gasping for air. Coughing up water, I managed another rough scream for help. I was right about being in a rough area of what looked to be a river, and swimming against the currents like this was sucking every last bit of energy I had out of me.
A voice bellowed in the distance.
I turned my head toward the sound, catching a glimpse of a man running along the edge of the bank, when suddenly I hit another swirling patch of violence. The river gripped my heavy clothes and dragged me back down like a force of evil.
This time, my skull slammed against something hard and unforgiving.
I instantly lost consciousness.
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!!!!!!!! I KNOW.
WHAT ARE ALL THE FEELS RN? TELL ME EVERYTHING.
ALSO, HOW MANY YEARS HAVE YOU BEEN READING DEATH IS MY BFF??? I'M SO CURIOUS ABOUT THIS....
SCREAM CUPCAKE IF YOU WANT MORE!!!!!
Or don't. But just know you're lame, and I still love you.
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