LONG STORY SHORT, I HAD COVID. #NOT #ZE #VIBE
THEN I GOT BETTER AND I STARTED THIS CHAPTER, AKA THE HARDEST CHAPTER I'VE PERHAPS EVER WRITTEN LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOO. (Bear with me on this chapter it's a little convoluted lol.)
So please give this chapter a vote and leave lots of feedback to show your love for my return!!! :)
I'd learned a lot about myself since entering the Unknown.
First, nothing is as it seems. That one goes without saying. I never anticipated these memories feeling so real that they sometimes made me lose my sense of reality.
Second, it was impossible to be happy for any length of time. Not here. Not in this twisted place with the constantly pressure of time, the unrelenting fear of, well, everything, and let's not forget the lingering threat of Caito and those damn Forsaken. Thank God, they hadn't been a major problem lately.
Third, I realized how relentlessly strong I was.
Seeing Death dying in the mausoleum had been the hardest thing I'd ever experienced. Dying sucked and all, and I definitely hadn't processed that entirely, but I was able to Uno-Reverse-Card that right away. Death was a different story. Bringing him back was no easy task. The only thing that kept me going was reminding myself that the Three believed in me, that I had some higher purpose to keep going. I had to keep going, I had to be strong and keep pushing forward.
My fourth lesson was how wrong I was about the third one.
The truth was, I wasn't always strong, and I only became my strongest to survive. Isn't that how it works, anyway? Strength is survival. It's the innate courage that weighs down your bones and keeps you standing when everything in you just wants to collapse. It's the resiliency that crawls across your skin and clings like a shield as you face a difficult choice you were unprepared for.
No, I wasn't always strong. How could I be? I wasn't perfect, I had emotions, fears––a whole lot of fears, and my heart was still more vulnerable than I wanted it to be. Like right now, how quickly my walls had dropped, and my heart had cracked wide open. All the pain I'd kept in leaking through my chest. Not this. Anything but this.
Anything but the first memory I'd encountered in the Unknown. Anything but a dream that what was once real in my world. Just as I remembered him, but somehow not the same, I stared at my Death in shock, waiting for everything to shatter again. For him to be gone once and for all and to face my worst fear of all. Losing him forever.
I was still registering how I'd even gotten here in the first place. I'd been fighting Victorian Death, and then Death's corpse had appeared and kissed me. He'd kissed me, and now I was here, in what, a new memory?
No, something about this felt different than a memory. The colors in Death's modernized gym looked drained, and it was so cold. Moving felt like shifting through water and my breath clung to the air like frost.
"Too loose or tight the tether," the Three Crawlers' voices feathered my ears, "both souls lost, forever."
I looked down at my myself, my eyes widening as I noticed the slight aura glowing off of my frame. No, the memory had not changed. My soul had traveled here, and my body was elsewhere. Was I unconscious? My body must have still been in the last memory at the castle, where Ace still was.
Shit. Ace.
Shit, my freaking body! It was with crazy demon-blood-addict Victorian Death. If I woke up and my arm was getting gnawed off by V.D I'd be so pissed.
But I didn't have to think about that right now. What I needed to focus on was the current setting in Death's modern gym with Modern Death mismatched eyes flicking up from his book to narrow at me. He was still lounged back on his metal chair with another propping up his legs.
"What part of again isn't registering for you?" Death asked, the annoyed growl to his voice all-too familiar. "Get your fists going on the bag, cupcake."
Who knew that cupcake could cut through my chest like a blade. If this was my bridge to Death's unconscious, I needed to think of a way to get through to him. The fact that I even needed to walk on eggshells in this drove me right over an edge I didn't even see coming.
No way am I punching this pretend bag in this pretend gym playing along with this trainer from hell shit again.
How exactly was I supposed to get anywhere with Death's unconscious when the whole world could just dissipate into nothing at any moment?
So, I uttered the one word that would trigger Death in all eras the most. "No," I said in a loud voice.
Death's mismatched eyes slit toward me, his jaw cracking his gum. "No?"
My pits instantly started to sweat.
I put my fists on my hips. "Listen, I've done a lot of stuff lately that I haven't wanted to do. Real difficult stuff. However, if you think I'm doing twelve rounds of boxing and the Graveyard again, hear me clearly when I say: I ain't doing diddly squat, partner."
Still holding his open book, Death shifted in his seat to face me a little more, the look in his eyes promising a thirty-mile run.
Damnit, even Modern Death was one intimidating bastard, but this little bridge to his unconscious hadn't collapsed yet so that must have meant something, right?
"While I'm at it," I continued, since I was already on a roll, "you're a big arrogant bully who chews gum like a big arrogant cow."
"Oh yeah?" Death spat his gum viciously into a trash bin. The damn thing fell over and rolled and now it had a dent in it. From his gum.
"Yeah," I squeaked, and the words just kept nervously rolling like a runway freight train. "And what the hell is up with your shirts? They're so tight it's like...they're painted on. We get it, you've got like zero percent body fat and gorilla steroid shoulders, and believe me, I've obsessively noticed. Speaking of obsessive tales," I pointed vindictively toward his Moby Dick book, "the whale kills the whole crew. Except for that one guy. So now you can stop pretending like you're even reading the damn thing."
There. That about caught up to all the insults Victorian Death had roasted me with.
Death shut his book with a resounding slam, the sound echoing the entire gym.
He's not even blinking, I thought, drowning in those darkening emerald and mint eyes.
A slow, catlike smile spread along Death's mouth, until his lips peeled back from his fangs. Throwing his head back, Death boomed with wicked laughter. The sound was like sin brushing against my skin, and I couldn't help but brush my arms to try and get rid of it as he lazily stood to his full, massive height.
"Let me remind you how this works," Death said, rolling back his one shoulder before he prowled toward me too fast for me to put anything between us. "I tell you to do something, you don't get to say no." He stopped to stand so close to me that I had crane my neck back like he was a freaking skyscraper. I couldn't deny how gorgeous he was in every aspect of the word, in every past of himself. Seeing him up close stole my breathe away like my lungs were meeting him for the first time, every time.
"I'm the master, you're the apprentice," Death continued to berate me, cutting into my ogling thoughts. "You might not like my methods, but I know this shit like the back of my hand."
"Glove," I corrected.
His head cocked. "Excuse me?"
"Glove." I pointed vaguely at his hand. "Glove, technically. Um...never mind, continue."
Death gave me a long, vicious look that made me want to blend into the wall. "We don't have time for you to be futzing around and talking back like a child. I thought I'd made that clear from the beginning of this training."
I downcast my gaze at the harshness of his words. "Ok, alright, I understand––"
"No, I don't think you do," Death said, blood rushing to my face as he picked my chin up with his finger. "Outside of this gym, you don't get redoes, Faith. You don't get white flags to raise or time outs, or mercy. The decisions you'll make could be life or death. Your enemy isn't going to throw out a fucking picnic blanket and have mac and cheese with you. Or try to kiss you in a goddamn horse barn in Rome."
My breath escaped me in a fast exhale, and I could hear my pulse thudding in my ears. Was it possible I'd imagined it? That it was a coincidence how his words had made me instantly picture Alexandru, the distant but familiar ghost of the Death before me. That golden blonde hair and his kinder, harmless eyes. The way his mouth turned up in mischief as tricked me into riding Cruentas around the farm. How he'd kissed me in the hallway of his family's home and how the oil light flickered over his strange expression afterward. That blank, eerie expression that made me think maybe I'd gotten through to Death's unconscious.
"What did you just say?" I whispered.
Death's jaw tightened. "If you won't listen, then I won't repeat myself. You know what you have to do." Then he turned on his heel and headed back toward his chair.
I reached out to my side with a finger gun and shut my eyes, firing my light into the punching bag. I happened to hit the target as the punching bag flew off the chain and burst into flames. Death pivoted sharply on his heel to see what I'd done and then looked slowly over to me with a long, unflinching 'what the fuck?' look.
"You were there," I said, my voice wavering. "You were there when Alexandru kissed me in the hallway."
The dark slashes of Death's brows twitched inward for a moment. The strangest expression washed over his face, and once again I had the eerie sensation that I was getting somewhere.
So, I pushed him right over the edge. "Are you really jealous of yourself for kissing me?"
Death faced me completely, legs planted wide. "Let's get one thing clear," he growled, baring his teeth a little. "You kissed him. Not the other way around. You kissed his cheek, and you lured him in like a siren to a sailor."
I bit down on my lip to hide my amusement. "Can you blame me? He's kind, caring, and he complimented me many times. In fact, he thought I was a seductress."
Death's smirk was vicious. "Men say many ridiculous things when they want to get between a woman's legs."
"Not to mention, he's blonde," I added spitefully.
A muscle in Death's jaw twitched. "Good for you, Faith. Seems you know exactly what you're looking for in a man. A big blonde oaf, who doesn't know a pussy from a hot dog roll."
I watched Death's broad back as he retreated back toward his chair to sit down, my fists tight in frustration. Damnit, why did he always get the last word like that?
"Get back to punching, toothpick arms."
A cold sensation washed down my back. The punching bag was back where it was before, and the fire was gone like something out of a videogame.
I thought about how Death's corpse had appeared in Victorian Death's bedroom, how he shouted again had echoed into this current stream of conscious.
"Why did you interfere?" I demanded. "You brought me here, didn't you? I was holding my own. I was doing everything you taught me."
Death stopped in his tracks before he met his chair. In the reflection of the mirrors in front of him, I could see his expression flattened to a frightening cold slate. I feared I would lose this moment, that I would do just as the Three had told me would happen if I got too close to him on this bridge.
"I know you're in there," I said, my voice shaking ever so slightly, "I know you've been watching me because you just admitted it. And I know you just tried to save me. Which doesn't make much sense, considering what you did to me in the library..." I took a wary step toward him. And another. My eyes trained on his reflection in the mirror as I waited for something anything to switch on that he understood me. "I know you're in there somewhere––"
"Stop." Death squeezed his eyes shut, his whole face trembling. I could hear his knuckles cracking as they curled into fists. "Don't come any closer."
"Why?" My voice was a mere whisper, the intensity of the moment making my hear race like something big was about to happen. "Tell me why you're pushing me away..."
I reached for Death's shoulder, the heat pelting off his frame so real that it brought tears to my eyes, and the moment I touched him something shifted in the room. The drained, washed-out colors of the room swirling with shadow.
"I told you to choose you!" The rigid boom of Victorian Death's voice startled me into silence, and my breath spiked with fear. He stood in front of Modern Death, wearing his crown of bones and that billowing black cape draped over his broad shoulders. The sharp panels of his clean-shaven face so beautiful he looked almost alien. "This is what he wanted. You're going to give him exactly what he wants!"
"Giving who what he wants?" I asked, inserting myself right into the intense moment between Death and, well, himself.
Victorian Death snapped his head in my direction and gazed at me as if he'd never seen me before. As if I hadn't just fought him in his own bedroom and helped him take a bath. "Well, I see you've brought a little friend into our private conversation," he said to Modern Death.
"I don't invite her to anything," Death said. "She meddles into everything I do, kind of like a racoon."
"Oh, I know you didn't just call me a––"
"Sush." Victorian Death made a small gesture with his hand, and suddenly my mouth was covered by shadows. I grasped at them with my fingertips, but they wouldn't move. As I yanked at the shadows in panic, VD ran his tongue over his bottom lip. "What a shrill, annoying voice, but her thighs look tender in those stockings."
Death stretched his neck to the side until something cracked. I thought he might attack Victorian Death, but instead he just scowled. "You'll probably have better luck than I ever had. She practically sat on Blondie's face five minutes into meeting him."
"So, she's a dirty little whore," Victorian Death commented, tilting his chin up with that damn arrogant eyebrow.
"Mmm-mm—mm!" I shouted, jabbing a finger toward VD. "Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mm!" I pounded my fist into my hand over and over again, light sparking against my palm.
Victorian Death frowned. He looked over at Death like he was expecting a translation.
Death pulled his bottom lip between his fangs to hide a grin. "Faith says, she doesn't like her left thigh as much as her right one."
"MM!!!!!!"
Death rolled his eyes and made the same hand gesture Victorian Death did earlier. The shadows pulled off of my mouth and absorbed back into his palm.
"What the hell, asshole!" I shouted at Death. "You're supposed to defend me against Darcy from Hell over here! I'm not a fucking rotisserie chicken!"
Victorian Death rolled back a shoulder, blackness webbing from the sides of his face toward the center. The room considerably darkened, too. "That foul language incites a part of me that would truly enjoy ripping her soul with my teeth."
Ruh-roh. VD was getting that unhinged look in his face. I imagined now was the time for Death to fan out his arm and gave me a hard nudge to stand behind him. But instead, he was watching me with a very similar dark look in his eyes and he had that eerie expression on his face again.
"You don't want to hurt her," Death said. "Not really. But he does."
"Who?" I asked.
"That monster," Victorian Death answered, like it was obvious. "We gave it our soul, now it's always just beneath this handsome skin. The cold, unfeeling predator that is never satiated. She's looking awfully delicious now. She looked even better on that library floor, bathed in her own blood."
My body felt stiff, the dynamic between the two Death's shifting and the room plunging a degree colder.
Modern Death gnashed his fangs together. "We didn't mean to do that––"
"Of course, we did." The Prince of Darkness' head turned toward my Death, his mouth curved in a vicious grin. "The monster does not care if her face is as soft as hers, or if she makes our dead heart pump with blood once or twice. We know what we are. We know what we always will be. And we know what happens when we wish for anything more."
"You can still hear her screams." To my left, Alexandru now stood, his face wretched with sadness. He wore his gladiator armor, his hands and the sleeve of his toga-stained dark crimson. I looked back and forth between him, Modern Death, and Victorian Death, surrounded by three fragments of the same man. "We were so young, you would have had a second chance at happiness."
Modern Death tilted his head at Alexandru's words, his otherworldly eyes flinting. "Mortals die," he bit out. "It's what they're born to do."
"Happiness is a brief moment of delusion," Victorian Death added, his exotic eyes trained on Modern Death's face. "Pain is a stain on immortality. She was torn apart in seconds, and yet you can still hear her screams."
In the distance, I could hear a woman's cry of distress. Suddenly Modern Death squeezed his eyes shut, his gloved hands pushing into his ears. "Stop. Stop! Anything but this...."
"But it didn't stop," Alexandru said, stalking around Victorian Death. When he strode out the other side, he transformed. His hair was dark and short, and his eyes were black as coal. Malphas. Victorian Death arched a casual brow, whereas Modern Death wore a reaction of pure fury.
"You knew I would break you one day," Malphas said to Victorian Death only, as though picking apart the weakest link first, "but you never thought I would betray you. Not like that."
"A child should really trust his father," Victorian Death agreed, feigning concern.
"I did what was best for you," Malphas said. "You know the truth now. You know what Ahrimad did to our family and to your mother."
"I know what you've told me!" Modern Death shouted at Malphas' back, making him turn around. "I know all you do is lie. All you've ever done is lie until it became my truth!"
"I watched that siren sing that snake to sleep, and I should have known," Victorian Death muttered, shadows fanning out from his shoulders and dripping onto the floor. "Her lullaby was not meant for him, but for me. I was the devil she sought to destroy."
We wanted to be good once. They never had faith in us.
Victorian Death strode forward and vanished into Malphas a mirage. Leaving just me, Malphas, and Modern Death.
"You could have been greater," Malphas said, moving toward Death now, circling him like a shark. "We could have had all of Rome in the palm of our hands, but you cared what happened to those mortals in the endgame. What happened to survival, Alexandru? Don't you know what the mortals do in the face of a monsters?"
"They raise their pitchforks, and they turn against us," Death said.
"Just like they did to you in that realm of Heaven. You couldn't stay up there, in that pearly white deceit where they claimed good is exceptional. They smothered your power and tried to mask what you were, but you knew the truth. The truth was beneath your skin."
"I know a cage when I see one," Death said, his eyes distant and his jaw clenched as if he were remembering it all. "You put me in one so similar, once."
"Your cage is your devil's hell, you fool." Malphas clasped his hands behind his back, his black eyes moving right over me as he strode around Modern Death. "There's always a choice, and you manage to always make the wrong one. You were cursed for evil and when you had a choice to purge it from your soul forever, you chose evil again. You escaped your cage, and when a prettier one appeared, you got inside, and you locked the door from the inside."
Something about Malphas' words pierced through that callous façade, and Death suddenly looked younger. Horrified. And all he could utter in response was a muttered, "You're wrong. You don't know me. You don't know who I am anymore."
"Of course, I do. I'm your father. I know you more than anyone."
"You were never a father," Death hissed, his voice rising to a menacing boom as he took a step toward Malphas. "You were a shadow smothering out any possibility of joy! A child should trust his father. He should be safe with his father and able to be a child!"
The air seemed to ripple with his fury, shadows blackening the mirrored walls like ink.
"You ripped my innocence away from me and left me with scars I'll never forget," Death raged to his father. "That I'll never forgive!" He threw out his hand and held his fingers outward, shadows expelling out his fingertip's silhouettes of a child and a prowling, muscular animal––what appeared to be a large wild cat. The boy held a small sword in his hand, but it was no feat against the beast as it pounced on him suddenly and knocked him to the ground. Death flinched and touched his face, his fingers quickly tightening as the scene dissipated and the shadows pulled back into his skin skin. The scar slashed through his lighter green eye seemed to almost glow in the aftermath, and I pictured that wild cat's claws ripping through his face.
Death looked up at me, his venomous expression making me take a step back. Shadows were expelling from his body, sliding across the floor like black water and raising up like curtains. I backed up with widening eyes, watching a wall form between me and him of hissing shadows.
"Death!" I called out, feeling like the distance between us was growing. "Don't push me away!"
Through the gaps in the slinking darkness, I could still see him. He was kneeling on the floor now, his body keeled over and his palms gripping the ground like he was exhausted. Behind him, Malphas transformed back into Alexandru. But his long blonde curls were gone, blackness bleeding from his roots down.
Alexandru was laughing, standing over Death and shaking his head in distain. "You're losing your mind holding on to your past, all while searching for more. That feeling that promised you more than death and misery. It freed you from your torment a long time ago, but it's left you vulnerable, seeking something you can never have. That you'll never, ever deserve."
Alexandru seemed to look pointedly at me through the shadowy wall, and a chill raked through my spine. I saw his features soften, his body shrinking down and his face morphing into a young woman with long black hair and blue eyes. Me. She lowered to the ground and leaned into Death's ear, her eyes flashing with mischief.
"I'll never understand you, what you've been through, who you are," Fake Faith said. "Why should you let me save you if you could never save yourself? You want to die. Die in a dream lost forever."
My eyes widened as I realized what was happening. "Don't listen to her!" I screamed, crying out as one of the shadows sprung from the wall and sliced into my face. "Don't listen to her, Death, she's not me!"
But Death couldn't hear me, his lips pinched together in a grimace. "How?" Death asked in a hollow voice. "How can you help me?"
"Tell us where you are, Death," Fake Faith said. "Give Charon your corpse, and we'll free you. Once and for all."
Death's features pinched in confusion, and I remembered how this world had fallen apart before. "My... corpse?"
"Summon your corpse," Fake Faith demanded, her voice undulating into a hiss, her head jerking to one side at an unnatural angle as a sudden surge of mirrored skin washed over her features. My eyes widened as I saw the slip-up, the realization of what was happening hitting me like an ice pick to the heart. The Forsaken. The Fake Faith was Forsaken and it was tormenting Death.
"DEATH!" I sprinted toward the shadow wall and slammed my shoulder to try and get through it, banging on the wall. My fists connected with it over and over again, light sparking out with each brutal blow and blood pouring from my knuckles. Shadows were lunging from me from the wall, latching onto my skin. I grabbed at the shadow biting into my shoulder and squeezed it hard, an animalistic cry releasing from it as it disintegrated beneath my hand.
You don't belong here. You don't belong here. Give up.
"Stay away from him, you fucking bitch!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, lifting the shadows on my limbs with me as I slammed my light again into the wall.
The gym started to fall apart around me, the ceiling breaking apart in fragments. One piece slammed to the ground beside me, making my covered my face with my arm and the shadows lurched from my skin. When I looked up, the shadow wall completely black, and I couldn't see inside.
"Charon will free you once and for all," the Fake Faith's were saying. "Take us to your corpse. End this once and for all."
My chest heaved as I tried to think of something fast. I shut my eyes and tried to concentrate, my arms outstretching as I imagined gathering every ounce of energy in my body, but suddenly I felt a sharp tug on my hand. It physically tugged me backward, making me briefly glance back over my shoulder.
Looking down at my palm, my fingers curled into a fist and I reeled back my arm, power surging from a deep place inside of me that exploded unlike anything I ever felt before. I threw my hands out with a scream, and suddenly the entire gym shattered like ice. Black plunging fast around me as I fell, fell, fell, landing hard on my back and covering my face fast as fragments of mirror rained down around me.
Rolling onto my side, I tested the extent of any injuries I had and was able to slowly get onto all fours. I got onto one knee, then the other, taking in the space. I was in Victorian Death's library, color washed out of the massive space that had already been the perfect place for darkness to dwell. Except for right now. My entire body was still glowing, and I couldn't control it.
Don't let them see your light.
But my light had a mind of its own, stretching out from my body across the floor like it had a mind of its own. My teeth gnashed together, my nails digging crescents into my palms, as I tried desperately to reel it back in, and somehow, I managed to pull back into my shaking frame and the power dimmed all-together.
But by then it was too late.
I heard noise in this large, seemingly empty library, making my head jerk up. I looked up the ceiling of the library in horror. Above me, that ominous starry vortex stirred like a cauldron. Forsaken crawling out of it like slow-moving spiders with their joints and limbs jutting out at unnatural angles. One after the other they came, my light reflecting their silhouettes. I started to backpedal behind between the shadowy alley of two towering bookshelves, fighting laboriously not to make any noise.
Above, the Forsaken just kept coming, an army of diabolical creatures like a night of reckoning. One of them suddenly swiveled their head toward me, their jaws unlocking in a horrifying screech that shook me to my very core.
"You've got to be kidding me."
I turned to run down the dark bookshelves but didn't make it very fall. I slammed hard surface, my palms smacking against a wet, slippery wall. I looked up with a gasp, my own terrified expression reflecting off the faceless head of a ginormous Forsaken standing right behind me. An uneven jagged cut was spliced along the middle of its neck, making its head look a little lopsided. It staggered forward and reached out as if to grab me, and I screamed bloody-murder.
I felt that tug on my hand again. It made my feet slide back fast, pulling me from the Forsaken by ten feet. The air rippled around me as I struggled to catch my breath. Suddenly a piercing stab centered in my palm and the library collapsed instantly into darkness.
I woke up still screaming, springing up from a fancy canopy bed. Adrenaline and shooting pain made my thoughts race a million miles a minute. My whole-body trembled as I found a large masculine hand in my lap. I followed the muscular arm up to a broad shoulder to black curls haloing over a serene, handsome face. Victorian Death was sprawled out on his stomach beside me, completely unconscious.
With his razor-sharp talon pierced through palm like a knife.
***
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AUTHOR NOTE:
THE AMOUNT OF TIMES I REWROTE THIS CHAPTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good LORD this chapter TESTED MEEEEE, fam.
Listen, I know this chapter is probably confusing as hell. Ideally, I also wanted this book to be a little sexier at this point but I write off the cuff so it's hard to plan these things.
I'm just trying to get all my ideas out and honestly I'm EXHAUSTED and just had to click post. BUT I'm going to try and get something a little more STIMULATING for the next update because you guys have been so patient with the romance-side of things. ;)
xoxo
Gossip Death
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