HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
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I stepped through the doorway into a dark, cavernous room. I knew it was large because of the way my shoes echoed on the floor and the shadowy outlines of tall structures ahead of me. I inhaled a woodsy, almost smoky scent, and it felt vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn't pinpoint what it reminded me of.
"Death?"
Gold flame erupted along a giant chandelier above, candles igniting along the walls in rapid succession like a chain reaction. I could now see the shadows of tall structures ahead of me were shelves. Bookshelves, as a cavernous library unfurled ahead of me.
The floor was all black marble in here, reflecting the golden light from the chandelier above in a hellish glow. The bookshelves seemed to go on and on forever in all directions with intricate golden designs along the shelves. But what really fascinated me was the large circular portion of the ceiling above the massive chandelier. It imitated a perfect stary night. A night without any city lights, the stars so clear and beautiful it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.
I felt the sensation of eyes on the side of my face and turned my head, realizing Death was standing off to my right. He watched me with a steady gaze, his facial features unreadable. He almost looked lifeless, like a statue, if not for the slight glow to his catlike eyes in the dim room.
"Your thoughts are impossible to deceiver," Death said at last, his head tilting slightly, revealing he was in fact not made of stone. "Tell me what you think of my library."
"I think it's beautiful," I decided, still taking it all in with awe. "And kind of scary..."
Just like you.
He said nothing. When I glanced over at him, his eyes had darkened marginally, his face still like stone, and I could tell he didn't like my answer.
"Are these books all yours?" I asked, trying to break the odd tension I had caused.
"Many of them." He clasped his hands behind his back, the panels of his face still hard as steel. "I've been collecting literature all of my existence."
"How long has that been?"
Death strode toward me, his posture nimrod straight and his black royal cape making him look dangerous and powerful. "Never ask death its age," he said.
"Sorry," I muttered.
His mouth turned up on one side, and I realized he'd been teasing me in his own emotionally detached way. "I've been collecting books for over thirteen-hundred years."
I waited for him to say more, when I realized he was waiting for a reaction out of me.
Oh, right. He doesn't know I know he's ancient as fuck.
I mustered up a laugh. "Thirteen hundred years, now that's funny." I gave him a double take. "Wait...you're serious? Wow. I mean––wow."
I hoped I'd sounded shocked enough that my whole rouse about being an actress he'd hand-selected for his court might have been a good cover after all. But alas, Death was so uninterested in my horrible performance that he was picking lint off his shirt.
"You've telling me you've been collecting books for almost eighteen-hundred years?" I wondered.
Death made a clicking sound with his tongue. "Well, collecting maybe isn't the right word. I borrowed them."
My mouth fell open. "You stole all of these books?"
There had to be thousands upon thousands of books in here.
"With Greed and Envy come impulses to steal what others have. Books seem to satisfy the urge."
"It must be nice to place the blame of all your poor decisions on your Seven Sins."
Death arched a brow at me. "I can assure you, whoever I took them from are long gone now and have no use to them."
"Because they're dead."
His mouth quirked just a little, but he didn't grin. "Some of them arrive here without me doing anything at all. One day a new shelf appears and then the next..." He opened his gloved hand. "Poof. It's filled."
"Poof," I repeated incredulously.
Death slinked somewhere behind me, and I could feel his power like something sinister and silky lingering in the air. "You see, Faith..." He placed his gloved hand over mine in a heart stopping moment. Lifting my hand in his, he outstretched my arm and pointed my finger toward the starry ceiling. "Good books, they go to Heaven," he whispered at the shell of my ear. He lowered our hands together toward the ground. "Bad books go straight to Hell."
I glanced down at his gloved hand on my wrist, knowing he could crush my bones without any effort at all. "I didn't know books have souls."
"Oh, I wager there are many things I know that you don't, sweet Faith." I could hear the grin in his voice, feel his warm breath at the side of my neck, and I thought about how he logically shouldn't have any warmth to him at all. His gloved thumb sliding down from my wrist to my palm, which he rubbed in a slow, tantalizing circle.
I shivered, and I realized my breath was caught in the air. The temperature of the room had plummeted.
"Are you cold?" Death asked, and it came out like a delicious purr.
I turned toward him.
His green eyes always wicked, and his crown of bones stark white against his longish black hair from candlelight on the wall beside us. He lifted his hands and traced an outline of my shoulders, down my arms. Then he pulled back and snapped his hands in the air in a small, quick movement, as if shaking dust off a carpet. Black fabric unfurled from nothing from his hands like rippling black shadow, transforming into black cape.
"May I?" he asked, holding up the cloak. "Wouldn't want you freezing to death now, would we?"
I gave him a skeptical look, before nodding in agreement. He looped the cape-like garment around my shoulders. It was heavier than I thought it would be, made of the softest fabric I'd ever felt and instantly blocked any chill from my body. But it was Death who seemed to warm me the most, as he started tying the silken tassel of the cloak together.
"In your letters, in the dining hall," Death said, and I struggled to concentrate on his words as his gloved fingertips buttoned the cloak two notches from the tassel to secure it in place. "You mentioned Hell would need to freeze over for me to kiss you." He let his hands fall away from me, but the heat he'd left behind lingered. "Understand, Faith, that can always be arranged. It would take a much greater hurdle to keep me away from what I want."
His eyes were intense, brimming with something dark and almost challenging. I imagined most women would have missed the threat behind his velvety words and mistaken them as seductive.
Feeling like I needed to take a stand, I took a step away from him and undid the cloak at my neck, letting it fall to a pool on the floor. "Likewise."
Death's tongue touched the top row of his fangs. His low, sinister laughter tickled some deep part of me. "You are lucky we're alone. If anyone saw you treat my generosity like you just did, I would have made an example out of you." His gloved hand moved in a small motion and the cloak on the floor evaporated into shadow. "I've beheaded a person for less."
I put my hands on my hips. "Kind of an unstable thing to admit out loud, but okay. I'll file that one away for later."
Death's lip lifted in a small snarl, and I realized he was annoyed he hadn't gotten the reaction off of me he wanted. "Your head is so small and dainty. It's perfect for your tiny brain."
I narrowed my eyes up at him. "Is this how the dead flirt?"
"Surely you don't imply the transition between wooing someone and bedding them?"
"Should I get a dictionary?"
"Yes, go fetch one. You have the vocabulary of a harlot."
"Ah, I get it. You just keep getting a meaner until the other person cries. Well, you're as tall and good looking as you are unlikeable."
He looked at me like I was the saddest thing he'd ever seen. "You use humor to distract from your cringeworthy virginal awkwardness."
"Excuse me, Your Highness. I'm not a virgin."
"Sure, and I piss sunshine."
"You know, you were a virgin at some point, too. In the stone age."
Death lifted his chin, the epitome of arrogance. "When I grew up, the laws of consented marriage and the ways of life were much different than they are now. Aristocratic families would marry off their daughters at twelve and their sons at fourteen––"
"And women were complacent and housewives. Yeah, yeah, I get the picture."
"They certainly weren't uncouth little toads like you."
Now I scoffed. "Even bathed in riches, I imagine you'd have great difficulty finding a wife."
"Well, you're wrong. I have been married." Death instantly went quiet, like he realized he'd said too much, or maybe the wrong thing, and suddenly it was very tense and uncomfortable.
"She must have very mean and well-versed in vocabulary." I didn't know why I'd said it, but I'd hoped I didn't sound jealous. When his head turned toward me, his eyes seemed a little more readable. And sad.
He kept walking down the aisle.
"You were very lanky, I bet," I continued. "When you were a virgin."
"Never. I've always been this dreadfully strapping."
"Gotcha, gotcha. So, what you're saying is, you just popped out of your mother's canal with cannon launchers for arms?"
Death stopped in his tracks, so that I walked ahead of him a few paces. I looked back at him and frowned. The two of us frowned.
"That was a weird thing to say," I decided.
Death sauntered past me with a leering look down my dress. "What an odd, silly virgin."
"Why is the Angel of Death so concerned with my maidenhood anyway?" In literally every single version of his stupid self. "Don't you have better things to do? Like help your court navigate through your barely lit castle? Or moan in a Victorian graveyard?"
"Would you like to hear me moan in a graveyard, Faith?"
My mouth felt dry. "It's the last thing I'd like to hear."
He flashed his fangs at me. "You're breathtaking when you lie."
Death ran the sharp top of his glove against the spines of a row of books. I watched his eyes darken as they scanned the shelf. He started pulling out book after book, which he threw carelessly over his shoulder or let fall to the ground. He took a step backward and reached into the empty space on the shelf, coming away with a smaller but thick book. "Ah, here we are. Lucifer's least favorite book."
Coming forward, I grabbed the book from his hand. I read the cover of the title. "The Bible? Really?"
"You think the Devil would relish in the recognition," Death said. "It's practically a biography about him. But no, he'd prefer elaborate rumors by mouth, which worsen with each retelling."
Death strode into the doorway. I hesitated going deeper into the demon's den, but I had to know if this was something I was supposed to see. I strode forward, the bookshelves closing in behind me like some kind of sealed fate.
Inside, the spacious, fascinating room unfolded itself. They were more bookshelves, but the space was seemed more personalized. Dark carpets indifferent novelties on display. Looking around the room, I couldn't see Death anywhere, but I could see a stairwell with a candle lit from somewhere above. I followed the stairs two floors up with an eerie feeling weighing down in my chest and came to a doorway to another private room, where there were glass cabinets on display against the far wall.
"Death?"
I meandered around the room, my eyes snagging on a cabinet. Inside, there was a small wooden box, maybe about the size of my fist, with a latch on it and intricate design on the top. I felt a sensation of dread from deep within me and felt the need to turn over my shoulder. But there was nobody there.
"Death?"
Where the hell had he gone now?
I forced myself to keep looking around the room, which lead to me standing in front of another glass cabinet. My I swept over various memorabilia, coins and knickknacks that looked out of place in this time. I sought out something that would remind me of Rome and Alexandru.
I missed that side of Death. Things had felt so much safer in the memory, but I knew that was the last thing that Death and felt back then. When his father ruled his life, and his soul was a slave to the gladiator games. My eyes fell on small golden clasp behind the glass. I lean in to get a better look, realizing the design on the clasp was familiar to me. Malphas had worn it on his purple toga in Death's memory in Rome.
The hair at the back of my neck stood, and suddenly I had a twisted feeling in my gut. Something moved in the reflection of the glass and when I looked up, and for a short, heart stopping moment, I thought I saw an image of Alexandru. His hair was blonde like I remembered, but his face was wrong. It was cruel and set in rage.
"It belonged to my father."
I nearly shat my gown.
Death stood in the shadows beside the cabinet, peering around it with his mismatched green eyes like a creature watching its prey. It was an incredibly unnerving look.
"I'm sorry?" I asked.
Death pointed his hand toward the cabinet and closed his fingers into a fist in a graceful movement. When he opened his hand, I could see the raven pin was now resting in his palm. I couldn't stop thinking about the reflection in the glass and if I was hallucinating now.
"This brooch, it belonged to my father," Death explained, bringing my attention back to the brooch. "My mother gave it to him as a gift, and he never took it off. I despised this thing."
"How come?"
Death laughed in a mirthless way. "It always looked like the raven was smirking at me whenever he beat me."
When I looked up at him, he was still staring down at the brooch in his hand, but his face had lost all humor and any emotion at all, like a slate of stone.
"Why do you keep this if it brings you pain?" I asked.
Death's otherworldly eyes flicked up to mine, and he didn't say anything for a long moment.
"My father was a merciless creature," Death said in a low voice, his eyes distant. "I wasted so much time hating him, wishing he was dead, blaming him for everything that went wrong in my life. When I was finally free from him, I felt no peace. The hate in me only amplified. As if something worse had taken his place, or had been there all along."
He pinched the pin between his fingertips. It turned to shadow and reappeared inside of the cabinet. I could tell he was deciding whether or not to keep telling me all of this.
"For centuries, I thought about melting down the damn thing or obliterating it to nothing with a spell," Death continued, "but what would it really change in me? Rid of this little trinket, and I'll still rarely sleep. If I do, I'll never dream. Only nightmares. Like the one where the ravens sit on my chest, holding me down. I never can wake up from this one, you see. Not until I admit I have become my father."
I just knew I couldn't defend Death this time, and after meeting Malphas back when Death was still part mortal, that was a frightening thought to have.
Death gave a great sigh, like he was bored of this conversation. "You have a lovely neck."
"I'm sorry?"
"Your neck. It's lovely." He strode past me, lifting a hand as he went to graze side of my throat with the pointed tip of his gloved finger.
I turned to follow him retreat with a frown, my hand resting on my throat where the phantom caress of his talon remained.
"You know, you don't have to constantly remind me you could kill me at any second," I said, making his steps pause. "We could have normal conversations."
He clasped his hands behind his back as he studied a bookshelf between two cabinets. He reached out and selected a blue leather cover. "Now that sounds like a very boring interaction, Faith," he purred.
I crossed my arms over my chest. "Well, get used to it. Because it's the only interaction we'll be having from now on."
Death turned toward me, his eyes slitting, like he was making a lethal decision. "I'm not sure I like the sound of you commanding me." He raked the length of me with those poisonous eyes and pulled his bottom lip between his fangs. "Do it again."
My face felt a little hot, and I tried to focus back in on my purpose. "Why did you really take me here?" I asked.
Death dropped the book in his hand into a shadow on the floor, and I looked back at the bookshelf to see it sliding back into place on the shelf on its own.
"Where were you last night?" Death countered, the question jarring me into full alertness. His face was like a blank sponge now, soaking in my reaction.
I tried to remain calm. Of course, last night I'd been eavesdropping on him and Ace with Romeo's magical Tarnhelm on.
"Last night is a little vague for a time frame," I said, "considering it's always night here and there's never any light. Hard to tell time around here. As one can see, I have many complaints about your castle and I can list them easily."
Death poked at a fang with the tip of his tongue. He strut toward me like a cat, until I had to bend my head back a little to look at his face. "What if you had to lie because your life depended on it? Was that best you could do, Faith?"
"I'm not lying." I pulled my shoulders back a little, my gaze locked on the shadow of stubble on his jaw. "Last night, I was in bed—"
He tipped my chin up with his thumb. "Look me in the eyes, angel."
But looking him in the eyes is the most difficult part. They were so beautiful, yet intimidating, and otherworldly. Even with future death, a different quite gotten used to them without getting a little nervous. "I was in bed. Sleeping —"
"Yes, that's usually where people are when they sleep. Did you sleep well?"
"Well, I mean—comfortably rested —"
"It's really an easy question. Just get right to the point."
"No, I didn't."
His eyes lingered briefly on my lips with that grin returned, and he said nothing for a long moment. "Are you nervous? You look flushed. Fidgety."
"When you stare at me like that, yes."
"Why?" His words were coming out like a drawl. A lazy, taunting drawl. "Do my eyes scare you?"
"They're not exactly...comforting."
His eyes widened mockingly. "You're afraid of cats?"
"No," I said, firmly planting my feet to stop this stalking game. "I'm afraid of what you did to me in your courtroom."
His mouth quirked up a little. "Ah, so you're worried I'll randomly look into your soul as I question you?"
"You act like I know what you're capable of."
"You don't even know what you're capable of." His eyes gleamed as vicious as his grin, and when he took another step toward me, I stepped back, my butt hitting a cabinet behind me.
"I'm getting a little tired of these vague riddles."
His smile held that edge to it. "Mhm. Which is exactly why they're so fun."
"At your age, you should really try being more direct."
When I tried to move to the side, away from where he'd cornered me, his arm shot out and caged me in. Our faces were close, so close that I could smell the woodsy, herbal soap he'd recently used. His eyes lingered on my lips, the intentions behind them unfamiliar in the sense that the hunger within them seemed more dangerous. But when he bent down just a hair, as if to kiss me, I couldn't help but close my eyes and throw caution to the wind. Our lips never touched. Instead, he moved his mouth to the side of my face, until his lips brushed my ear.
"I know you didn't dream last night," Death whispered.
His words raked down my spine like a knife. My eyes widened. I could hardly breathe, and my whole body was trembling. "What did you just say?"
Death stepped back from me with a wince, clutching his temple. Darkness was pulsing off the shoulders of his royal cape. When he lowered his hand, his complexion had paled significantly, and I could see a mist of sweat across his hairline. The change in him happened so fast. He rolled his neck, blackness consuming his eyes, just like it had in the banquet room the other day.
Steal her... Kill her...
Death turned to look over his shoulder at the darkness spreading out behind him. "You're skipping over all the fun things," he growled.
She would taste so good, though...
"She would be delicious," Death said, having a casual crazy conversation with his shadows.
Imagine her blood spraying all over your clothing...
I edged back away from him, heading toward the staircase. Clearly he was having some sort of deranged episode. "Alright, well, you keep having this convo. I'm going to go get you help."
Death gripped the cabinet beside him. His talons extended, ripping into the black leather of his gloves, and dug into the wood of the cabinet like it was made of butter. The trinkets inside shifted from his weight and shadow burst from within them, filling the glass. I watched as the darkness absorbed into knives and sharp weapons from within the one cabinet.
"I don't need your help," Death purred, his voice deepening behind something feral and animalistic. He was profusely sweating now, his body visibly shaking, and his grin displaying fangs like razor blades. "But... I would like to test just one thing."
Shadow exploded from the cabinet, a single knife bulleting toward me so fast I couldn't process it. My hand went up to protect myself, but my power didn't answer and the damage was already done. I looked down at myself in shock, my hand trembling as I held the hilt of the blade embedded through my corset into my stomach.
Death sagged against the cabinet, like he couldn't stand upright all the sudden. He got one look at the knife in me and turned his head into his arm, laughing hysterically. It was frightening and psychotic.
My adrenaline spiking so high I could feel very little pain except an uncomfortable pressure. Something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong. My power hadn't answered me.
I started to crawl across the floor, fighting to keep my breathing under control.
"She bleeds red," Death growled to himself, his mood shifting from amusement to anger. "She doesn't remember the library. I was wrong? How could I be fucking wrong? I'm perfect..." He continued to rant unintelligibly in that deranged state and started whimpering.
What the hell was he going on about?
I got up to run,clutching the hilt of the blade in my stomach, but Death was already standingdirectly in front of me, blocking my way to the stairwell. My heart nearlyburst from my chest.
He'd moved so fast. Faster than he did when he manifested,faster Death had ever moved in front of me. And it was because he was inhis half-form now and he'd succumbed to whatever episode had triggered in him.
His eyes were pitch black like the shade of his skin, his crown gone, leaving his obsidian shoulder-length hair in wild disarray. Those two vicious black horns curved down the sides of his skull, curving up like blades.
"I'll take that," Death growled. His hand lifted in a small movement, and suddenly the blade in my stomach ripped free from my body and landed in his hand. I stumbled back with a gasp, clutching at my stomach with both hands as blood pooled from the wound.
"What's the matter, angel?" Death asked, his head cocking to the side. He looked at me like something else had completely replaced him, something lustful and malevolent and so beyond rationality. "Can't feel your power?"
My feet backpedaled, stumbling over each other as Death prowled toward me. He moved his talons in a small movement, a tingling sensation crawled up my arms, unveiling two black cuffs around my forearms that weren't there before.
"I have to admit, I thought you might be stronger." Death reached for his cape and freed it from his shoulders, letting it fall to the ground as he glided toward me in an otherworldly way. "It seems those two cuffs I mended especially for you did the trick." He rested the tip of the bloody knife that had been in my stomach against his bottom lip as he thought to himself. "This feels almost...unfair?"
A plume of darkness rose over his shoulder. Lick her blood off the knife. Make her bleed all over these floors.
Death whirled around and threw the blade at the wall, where shadows scattered fast. "Don't you see I'm tormenting her?" Death snarled. "Shut the fuck up and don't rush me!"
Death blindly threw out his hand back toward me, blackness pitching into me as I went flying back. Shrieking, I soared through a stone archway and landed on marble. My body rolled, pain exploding all over my body. I stared at the black cuff on my forearm, squeezing my fists together as I tried to call upon my power and burn through them like I had before. But nothing was happening, my power didn't respond.
I looked through the banister marble bars and froze. Death's corpse was standing on the library floor below us, looking up at me. His blonde hair caked in black blood and his eyes so hallowed in. I griped the banister and tried to pull myself up with tears in my eyes, every part of my crying out. His corpse was gone by the time I lifted myself up to stand.
Suddenly something squeezed deep within my chest, a sensation I'd never felt before. My eyes widened as I fought to breathe. It felt like a forbidden part of me, that had never been touched was now held in a chokehold. I felt a tug in that place within me, and my body flipped completely force of it and slammed down onto the ground like a rag doll, pinned.
Victorian Death in his all his monstrous glory towered over me, his eyes black and violent like the shadows that surrounded him in uncontrolled chaos. What terrified me the most was his face, how it was now utterly empty and so cold.
"Wait," I begged him. "Wait, please don't––"
Death lifted his monstrous hand, and I felt that squeeze tenfold from within me as it choked out all of my breath in an instant. I realized with horror it was my soul. He was gripping my soul.
"Did you really think you were in control, Faith?" Death said, his voice so detached it was as if he wasn't in there at all.
I was fighting to gain back the ability to get a full breath, my lungs screaming for air. My entire body was controlled by him, that pulling sensation in my chest like an invisible hook inside of me as I levitated off the ground. My legs kicked out wildly, trying to break free from his power, but it was no use.
Death was lifting me so far off the ground that I was levitating higher than him. My eyes widened and horror speared through me in a confusing betrayal. Death's corpse stood behind the Prince of Darkness with his hand resting on his shoulder. And his mouth dripping with black blood as he grinned at me.
"You're right, you're not an angel," the Prince of Darkness said, his mouth moving in sync with Death's corpse over his shoulder.
He was levitating me back now, toe of my shoe scraping against the railing off the balcony. I flailed out with my legs, tears pouring from my eyes as I frantically looked back over my shoulder at the far drop to the black marble library floor.
"Angels can fly," Death said.
His power released my soul, and I fell.
The library walls swallowed my scream like an endless vortex. When my body hit the unforgiving floor, I heard the sickening cracks of everything fragile inside of me crushing in agonizing pain. The short and shorter wheezes of my breath like a cruel countdown, tears leaking down the sides of my face. I couldn't move, but I could feel the warmth of my own blood cradling my limbs beneath me.
The stary ceiling above seemed to swirl with my vision as darkness quickly closed in to nothing.
***
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