HAPPY HALLOW-WEENIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I'm allowed to be a day late I TRIED!)
What did everyone dress up as?????
My boyfriend and I dressed up as DEATH AND FAITH! You'll find our photos at the end of the chapter!!!
PRE-READING IMPORTANTE NOTE:
Hi guys!!!! Just letting you know I made the executive decision to remove Caito from this book.
It was way too complicated in my brain trying to figure out what to do with him. There is enough conflict already and it kind of takes away from the story to have another death-like character/enemy when right now Victorian Death is very villain-esque enough.
So basically, the Forsaken still exist and they're still lost souls that seem to be turning into creatures in this Limbo-world of the Unknown. But there's no "king of the Forsaken" anymore. There may be some more relevancy to other characters with the Forsaken though....
Hehe
Kat
<3 <3 <3
Don't forget to VOTE and leave lots of feedback if you love this book!!! Also, please share this book everywhere you can, it helps me and my writing so much!!! xoxoxoxo
"Then I was in Death's library, but it was in the in-between, not the library in this memory," I said, rehashing the story to Ace all over again with large gestures. "It was infested by Forsaken. They were crawling out from the ceiling and horrifying. One of them had this crazy scar across its neck. I'm sure these things try to eat each other or something disturbing like that..."
Across the table from me, Ace blew on his large helping of mystery soup. I say mystery because according to the servant who spooned it out for us, it was made with the fresh catch of the day. Call it a hunch, but I had a strong feeling the fresh catch of the day wasn't any kind of creature I was familiar with.
"They were like giant spiders," I continued. "Picture a hundred Slender Man, except they're made of that mirror-like skin. How the hell are there so many of them? Are you listening to me?"
Ace paused just before he shoved another spoonful of mystery soup into his mouth. "Like I explained three times in the past thirty minutes, there are unfortunately many lost souls."
"But why that library? Why does it keep going back to that library?"
Ace shrugged, dipping into his soup again. "I don't know, chère. Which is why I suggested we should go to the library after supper and investigate––"
"What if they lay eggs or something? They must be big egg sacs, because the one Forsaken was like twice my size––"
Ace's spoon clattered against his bowl. He pushed his soup away from him and intertwined his fingers, leaning his head on his knuckles to glare at me.
"Sorry," I said. "I just want to find him."
"I know you do, and so do I. But you have been looking for him for a long time, and I'm about your health. You can afford to take a small break with me. So, stop reeling over what you saw and eat. You're skin and bones."
"Wow, thanks."
"I don't have the stomach to eat. I need to figure out what the hell is going on. You said it yourself, time is of the essence––"
"You will be no help at all if you are fainting from hunger, ma chère."
I took a few slices of cheese and a handful of fruit from the center of the table and placed it on my plate. "What I don't understand, amongst a thousand other things in this crazy ass dimension, is why the three Fates appeared like the Forsaken, too. Are they lost souls, too? Doesn't that mean they're dead? Isn't that, like, not a good thing?"
Ace sighed. Breaking off a piece of bread, he reached across the table and shoved it into my mouth as I started to talk again. I scowled at him as he sat back down, before plucking the bread from my mouth and tearing off a piece with my teeth.
Ace pulled his bowl of soup closer and leaned over it, returning to his meal with a smile.
"Here's what we're going to do," I said, and Ace's smile turned down into a frown. "You keep playing your part as Kalace so VD is not suspicious of you. When everyone's asleep, we'll both sneak out of our rooms and meet in the witchy room. You will bring more of that sedative and together we will go into Death's chamber and jab the big cat while he's sleeping."
"You're missing a lot of pieces here."
"Like what?"
"Like the guards that almost caught us last time," Ace pointed out. "Or how Death quite literally does not sleep."
"Surely he hangs out in his bedroom at some point. Doesn't he read? I mean, sure, he's an unstable demon blood addict right now, but he has to at least pause once in a while to crack open a book. He's got like a million of them all over the place. That he "collects.""
"I have no idea what he does in his free time, Faith. Before you came into my life, I hadn't seen Death for centuries. In fact, this is probably around the time parted ways. Any other questions?"
"You're cranky. You should eat something."
"I'm trying to, but you keep involving me in complex conversation––"
I reached over the table and shoved a piece of bread into his mouth. "Good Warlock," I said, patting his shoulder.
Ace gave me a flat look, before tearing off a piece of the bread with his teeth. "Damn, this is really good."
"I know."
"What I'm trying to say is," Ace continued, "I don't think VD would be hanging out in his bedroom chamber to read or sleep."
"Then what the hell would he be doing in there? Sharpening his scythe and laughing evilly to himself in the dark?"
Ace slurped a little louder on his soup, hiding back a laugh. "That's one way to put it..."
We looked at each other for a long moment. I arched a brow.
"Oh," I said.
"Not to make you think of his past, bien-aimé,"Ace said, showing his palms. "I just think if we catch him vulnerable in his bedroom chamber it would be...a compromising situation that you should be prepared for."
"What are you, an incompetent magician all of the sudden? You're a two-thousand-year-old warlock. Can't you just snap your fingers and make the vampire wanna-be go to sleep?"
"You saw how much sedative it took to take Death out, now think about all the magic I'd have to use. There are consequences every time I use my power, you know."
I crossed my arms over my chest. "Cool, so you'll risk my soul being sucked out of my body, so you don't get a little reverb from your magic? What are friends for, eh?"
Ace ran his hand through his white hair. "Consequences of magic aren't always based on the strength of the spell. Sometimes a simple spell can have dire consequences."
"Is that how you messed up your leg?"
He sat up straighter, eyes everting from mine. "No, it's not." And that was the end of that.
I smacked the table. "Alright, so we're not going to solve all of our problems by playing the magical sandman. In fact, we might make them even worse."
"Exactly." A coy look flashed in those violet eyes. "Which is why you need to get the job done and seduce him."
I blinked. "Repeat that?"
"Frankly, if VD wanted to kill you, he would have already. The fact remains, he hasn't, not in a coherent state. Clawing at you like a ball of yarn, instead of biting your head off, does give you some hope of survival when you're alone again with him."
"Wow, I love where this is heading," I said sarcastically.
Ace gestured with a graceful lace cuffed hand. "You get VD all riled up and distract him, and I'll pop into the room and tranquilize him."
"What happened to leaving me with him as a last resort? The psycho threw me over a balcony."
Ace tapped his chin. "The perfect transition into your next conversation with him! He'll love talking about your near-death experience."
"I mean, true, but..." I rubbed my hands over my face. "But seducing? I can't...I mean...I'm..."
Ace leaned in. "Awkward? Lacking a filter? A little bit spastic?"
"I'll kill you, you know."
Ace simpered and placed his hand over mine. "You're thinking too much. No matter what time you're in has there not been a feeling of attraction between you two? He's Death, and you're Faith. The two of you coming together is inevitable."
"Maybe you forgot a few things about me," I said, "but I'm not exactly experienced at seducing. I'm as virginal as a bottle of olive oil."
"True..." Ace nodded in empathetic agreement, making me scowl. "Although inexperience is not necessarily a turn off to men."
"Death has said in at least twenty versions of himself that he's not interested in virgins," I answered. "Which means when he brings me up to that bedroom, if he brings me up to that bedroom, it's probably just to nibble on my arm with those fangs. Like corn on the fucking cob."
"Well, it would still serve as enough of a distraction..."
"Dude."
"What?"
"This is not funny. This Death is not like our Death. I already made that mistake once."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Ace said, drawing my eyes back to his. There was a moment of seriousness in his expression before he smiled again. "Come on, chére. All you have to do is show interest in something macabre and horrifying and he'll lap at you like a cold bowl of milk."
"I can't believe you just said that."
Just then, a plate full of mashed potatoes smacked onto our table. My eyes drew up to our new guest. Romeo was all smiles, cleaned up from the garbage disaster he smelled like before, and dressed in a new court outfit that made him look more important than his normal jester clothes. He wore a long sleeve shirt with a slight red rose tint to it and a golden chain around his neck that dangled a vibrant, encased pink gem.
"Hello, friends," he said. "Am I interrupting something, or can I pop my bum right here?"
"Petruchio," I said. "You look..."
"Dashing?" Romeo did a dramatic turn with his arms outspread. As he turned, I noticed the streaks of pink in his brown hair. "You like my new ensemble?"
"I do. How are you...feeling?"
Romeo sat down on the chair beside me. "I'm feeling hungry, of course. Why else would I be in the dining room with this giant plate of food?" He laughed a little shoveled a spoonful of mashed potatoes into his mouth, though his amusement pinched as he tasted it. "Good Gods, these potatoes are blander than dirt. This must be what paper tastes like." He took a cloth napkin and discreetly spat his food in it. "Will you finish that cryptic soup, doctor? It smells hellish."
Ace pushed the bowl toward him, having clearly lost his appetite. "Go for it."
"I have to perform at the Nocturnal Masqurade tomorrow night," Romeo said, setting his goblet down and rubbing his hands together as though he were starting a fire before shoveling a chunk of meat from the soup into his mouth. "Oh, do I have a thrill prepared. It'll be spectacular. You'll be attending, won't you, blue eyes?"
"Did you just say the Nocturnal Masquerade?" Ace questioned.
"Yes, His Highness is throwing a big event for the arrival of a sizeable group of Fallen angels." Romeo sipped his drink and "ah'ed" loudly. "Say, I owe you an apology," he said, pointing at Ace with his goblet in hand. "I was very drunk before, but now I'm clearheaded and right in the heart. You were only doing your job, sir, and for that, I apologize."
"Thank you," Ace answered. "Could you tell me what year it is?"
Romeo frowned. "Why, it's eighteen-eighty-eight."
Ace paled considerably. "Excuse me," he said. "Something has come up. Faith, I'll meet with you later. To discuss our...doctoral conversation."
"Oooh," Romeo commented. "Doctoral, eh?"
"Ace––Kalace," I called after Ace. "What about the, er, plan?"
"The plan is the same."
Romeo tugged my sleeve to plop me back in my chair. "Alright, enough with that white hair stallion. Say, we should attend the ballroom dance practicing together. We'd look good together as partners."
"The what?"
"Don't worry, I'm an excellent dancer, although I'm sure I won't keep you for long with all the other courts men attending." He drew a card out from under his sleeve. "Here, take this dance card to write down all their lucky names. It was in Cordelia's pocket, but she won't be needing that, now will she?"
Romeo grinned like he had no emotional detachment to what he just said, and it was mildly frightening. I slid the card slowly from his fingers. "Petruchio, are you sure you're alright."
"Never been better. Why do you ask?"
Because Cordelia is dead, and you were so broken, and now you're...not. "No reason. Will His Highness be at this...ballroom practice?"
***
"Sorry. So sorry. Sorry. My B."
I stepped on Romeo's foot again.
"You're doing fine," Romeo said with a sensual smile. "Just try to relax and have fun, blue eyes."
He pulled me close in a waltz that practically left me stumbling after him and knocking into other people, though neither of us cared. His pink shirt was unbuttoned a few notches down, showing off the olive toned skin underneath, and I couldn't help but appreciate the peep show just a little bit. There was a glow to him that almost looked...ethereal, and I noticed how I wasn't the only woman who had took note. The whole room seemed to be aware of Romeo, drawing their eyes in his direction, and he seemed perfectly unaware of his contagious lively energy in his own odd bliss.
Romeo spun me around and around until I laughed, and when we slowed down, a dark shadow of a figure splotched the rainbow of dresses around us. I followed a weighed presence at the back of my neck like a cold kiss to find a familiar face. The Prince of Darkness' stood aloof from everyone else in the dark crook of the ballroom, talking to his stout manservant with round glasses and a long list in his hand. Although Death's face was turned away from mine, I realized he could feel me too, as he turned to look over his shoulder. His mismatched eyes snapped to mine like an arrow, and he froze. The dark slashes of his brows bowed inward. He pivoted promptly away from his manservant and strode toward us.
"If jealousy were personified," Petruchio said playfully at my ear. "Me thinks we've caught the attention of a green-eyed monster."
I faced Romeo, my breath a little labored with overwhelm all of the sudden. "What do you know about seduction?"
Romeo pursed his lips. "Everything."
"How do you seduce a man like Death? Quickly."
Romeo laughed as if he already had the answer. "Reject him, obviously. He'll hate it, but a creature of his age to be contested or he gets ridiculously bored. Make him feel he has to earn your forgiveness, then pull away. Then push back and kiss him, before he kisses you."
"I'm cutting in." The brute command came from a deep, velvety voice that prickled my ears. Romeo ceased his frantic bee dance and snapped his attention to Death. He bowed his head.
"Yes, of course, Your Highness," he said dutifully.
Romeo was quick to sweep another lady off her feet, his newfound suave nature unflinching as he twirled her around the dance floor. My eyes slid to the evil angel beside me, and I harked back to what had happened when I'd touched him in his bedroom chamber and how his mood had almost taken another violent turn.
"You are quick to dance with a grieving man," Death said, and the judgment in his tone clear.
"I wouldn't exactly define him as grieving anymore," I replied. "Thanks to you, I am certain. Seems he disappeared with you and returned a newly charged romantic soul."
"How fatally mortal, to confuse lust with romance."
I felt an uneasy feeling in my stomach. "What did you do to him? Leech away all his sadness?"
"You'll see," Death murmered, and then he offered me his hand. "Dance with me."
"I'm afraid you'll have to get in line. Your Highness." God, I hated saying that.
Death stared at me for a long moment, before gazing over his broad shoulder. "What line?"
I pulled out my dance card from between my breasts and handed it to him. His catlike eyes tracked the movement like a hawk.
"As you can see, I may be free in an hour or so, but by then my calves will certainly be cramping." I reached up to pat his shoulder, ignoring the way his exotic eyes turned predatorially enraged by the belittling gesture. "There, there, I'm sure you find someone else to threaten to cut in half?"
I'd repeated his words to me earlier, after I'd touched him and seen that memory with the mysterious woman in the golden library. I had no idea if he knew what I'd seen, but I did know it had pissed him off that I'd seen any of it.
Death's lips pinched, the bones in his jaw pronating like two sharp blades on either side of his face. "I don't like to be pried into like an old book seamed shut."
"Neither do I, and your defensiveness in unattractive. Good-bye." Turning my head, I wore a bored expression and looked off toward the women fanning themselves on the sidelines of the open space. Though on the inside I was smiling like the Cheshire Cat.
I could feel his unflinching stare as it still lingered on the back of my neck. I thought about how effortlessly he could kill a man. Prickles of fear and something else shimmied down my spine. He loomed over me, his hand settling on my waist, and I let it happen for some maddening reason. He held me in one hand like I was doll, the strength and heat behind his fingers like a charge of electricity through the layers of fabric of my gown. I'd exchanged my old dress for a new one before dinner. Once again, it had been the only one in my closet. Another black gown with emerald accents, and he thoroughly analyzed it in a quiet moment, before his eyes snapped up to my face.
"Not good-bye," he said. "Never good-bye."
He dropped his intense gaze as his gloved hand touched mine, and I swear my entire arm grew hot. He lifted my hand with my card resting on my palm and dragged his gloved thumb over the paper. Shadows bled across it like ink, leaving behind his name in perfect penmanship. His human name.
"One hour," Death said.
Then he turned on his heel. I watched him stalk away with my pulse in my ears.
The next hour, I fiddled around to make myself look involved with the dancing without actually dancing (a difficult task if I wasn't skilled at avoiding socialization.) I couldn't find Death in the room, but I could somehow still somehow feel his eyes on me.
I startled, spilling my punch all over the table. Which ended in me knocking a glass too and shattering it before I could catch it. "Damnit." I gathered a stack of folded up napkins to sop it up, when Death snatched them away from me and grabbed me by the elbow before I wet my dress with the punch.
"Stop. Don't clean it." He snapped his fingers, waving on a demon servant with red eyes and skin to match, who dutifully cleaned up the mess. Once the mess appeared to be taken care of, Prince of Darkness faced me in a cloud of melancholic grumpiness. "Honestly, were you born clumsy, or does your head just sit on a tilt on your neck?"
I tore my elbow from his grasp, refusing to even answer that. Plus, I really didn't have a good enough rebuttal.
"Are you available to dance now?" Death's features were like cold marble, showing no irritation at all. It was only a minor inflection of mockery in his voice that gave it away.
"You know, before you scared the living daylights out of me, I was taking a break. I was about to drink that punch––"
Death ladled a cup of the punch into a glass and handed it to me. I few courts people watched, shocked, as if it was the most mundane thing the Prince of Darkness could have done. I brought the glass to my mouth and drank half of the sugary goodness down.
"You know what that is, don't you?"
I froze. Set the glass slowly down on the drink able. "It's ogre spit, isn't it?"
"No, just lemonade."
I glared at him for a long moment. "Funny. And to think you even need a jester at all."
His mouth twitched, though there was no smile. "May I see your dance card?"
"I left it on my table."
His head tilted. He reached out and plucked my card out from where I stored it between my breasts.
"Hey––!"
"Odd," he said, having fended me off with one gloved hand. "One whole hour of time and these two gentlemen are still ahead of me. Joe Smith and...Hegs Anbacon."
I cleared my throat into my fist.
Death looked up at me, his expression steely and accusatory. Suddenly the card was consumed by darkness in his palm, morphing into black fire that burned paper to ash in an instant. He held out a gloved hand. "Your time is mine now."
Narrowing my eyes, I tucked my hands into the folded skirts of my gown. Death's fingers curled inward, and he let his arm fall. "You hate me."
"No, I don't hate you. I want you to suffer. Truly suffer, like I did. But you don't even care that you hurt me, do you?"
He stared down at me, appearing at a loss of words. "I acknowledged your recollection of my inebriated state."
I stormed toward him and jabbed him in the chest. "That's not taking responsibility. You threw me off a balcony. How do you not understand––" I stopped myself and took a dep breath. "You know what? Forget it."
It might as well have been a conversation with a ghost. I felt like I was losing my mind talking to this guy. Or maybe I was just losing my mind in general. Feeling defeated somehow, I turned to walk away.
"Wait." Black leather clutched my hand, stopping me where I stood. "Don't leave. Stay."
Stay. It felt like I'd been punched in the gut. Death eyes draining to that dull green as he lay dying on the floor of the mausoleum. Just stay.
"I am...apologetic," Victorian Death said, once I slowly turned back around. "I do actually––"He snarled a little, struggling to get the word out—"feel remorse, despite every part of my being repelling the idea. I understand I have hurt you, and I would like to make it up to you."
"How?"
Death cast a look around the ballroom, as though considering his options. "Hold your breath."
He took a fast step back, my arm extending out as he kept his hand in mine. Darkness fanned out from his frame, and before I could react, that black mist shot forward and consumed me too. And in a whirl of dark, we reappeared elsewhere.
And elsewhere was not the place I wanted to be with Victorian Death at all. We were in the castle library, the colossal, shadowy shelves and arched ceilings seeming to immediately swallow me up.
His idea of making it up to me after murdering my ass was to take me back to the crime scene? Wonderful.
"Why did you take me here?"
"To dance, of course." He stepped to the side, revealing the shadowy musicians lined up across the way prepared to play their wicked song.
"You'll be disappointed to learn I can't dance."
"At least you won't fight me on the lead."
Death lifted a gloved hand, and the musicians started to play a slow, almost seductive beat. "I think you will find this one comes naturally."
We faced each other like two foes about to make nice. When he moved, I moved, my mouth falling open a little as my feet had a mind of their own.
"The song is hexed," Death explained. "As long as you do not overthink, your body will know the movements."
The music was flowing through me, and my feet were moving to dance I did not know that we knew together. We moved slow, the closeness of his body, his face, his mouth like a dance with a dark serpent. The high collar of his undershirt and his cravat made him look like a prince indeed, and I couldn't help but get swept away in this hypnotic song.
Our footwork suddenly picked up speed, my gown swishing sharply to the side as Death clutched my waist and leapt, driving us both into the air. My feet momentarily skipping off the ground and hovered long enough that I knew it was levitation before we both floated back down.
Death slowed us down, twirling me once. "Is something wrong?" he wondered with feigned innocence.
"We just––you just." Flew.
"Did you like it?"
My body was still pulsing with adrenaline, and the truth was, I did like it. "Don't do that again."
"Or what?" Death chided around a grin, standing beside me as his arm hooked my waist. Wee strode forward, our heads turned toward each other. "Finish it, I want only your worst punishment."
"I don't want to dance anymore."
Victorian Death pulled me close all of the sudden, our lips so close that his tongue touched my bottom lip, and my breathe caught in my throat.
"It's so hollow in here," Death purred, his eyes burrowing into mine as he strode forward, his thighs maneuvering my legs back as the dance somehow continued. "This vastly empty soul of a library, my morbid beauty. So many books, so many lives, pages upon pages fed through its greedy mouth. But no matter how much life you try to breathe into it, or lessons it could learn, all it does is lay all those words down to die. And the shelves expand, the walls swell as it makes room to eat, trapping time like a vindictive clock. What does it seek next? What more does it want, or will it never be satiated?"
"This library eats at you," I said, somehow understanding his intricate thought.
"Of course it does. Because that's what Lucifer wants. That's why he "gifted" me this forsaken library, this fraudulent replica that ruined me."
My lungs felt cold as I inhaled this new information. "The way you talk about the Devil confuses me. Isn't he your..."
"Master?" Death released me briefly to slink around me again, his eyes gleaming in the dark with a glow that wasn't there before. "Many make the same mistake." His mouth brushed my ear from behind, his hand clasping my waist. "Do you want to know a secret, Faith?"
I stared ahead at a blackened alleyway of bookshelves, hesitating. "Yes."
Death glided around me, the black markings crawling up his high collar appearing to stretch up his cheek just a little bit as he smiled that slow, provocative smirk. "He's afraid of me."
Death spun me out, releasing me like a top. I turned out a few times, and in a whirl of chaos, my feet left the ground again. Shadow lapped against my bare arms like ribbons, wrapped around my dress like another layer of silk. I should have been afraid, though I felt nothing but a thrill unlike anything before. The weightless sensation of levitating was a thrill unlike nothing I'd ever felt before. When I looked down past my shoes, Death gazed up at me like a fiend of the night, his fangs gleaming in a foxlike grin and his eyes luminous. He lifted up his hands toward me.
I crashed back into him, his strong arms catching me and dipping me low, so I arched fluidly to the ground. I looked up into his beautiful face, the swirl of the otherworldly ceiling above the library like a hypnotic cauldron.
I kissed him. Though his lips were frozen shut, they thawed against mine, and he slowly kissed me back. He breathed in deeply, lifting me so we stood straight and picking me up by the waist like I weighed nothing. The drunken buzz of fatal attraction made me sigh against his passionate caress and I parted my mouth, his tongue tasting mine.
Death pulled back with a harsh rasp of an inhale, black lines spreading across his features bleeding out like watercolors, a slow-moving poison. The room dizzied, churning like that kaleidoscope of stars above us, and all the sound in the room muting to a ringing in my ears. I lunged forward and grasped him,
And I went back. Back to where it all began. Glimpses of the mausoleum and the portal that started this all flashed before my eyes. I saw Death with flames in his eyes and Ahrimad with a madness. Death held his scythe in his hands, his arms arcing upward in slow motion as he cleaved Ahrimad in half.
The portal behind Ahrimad rippled as his body disintegrated outward, exploding outward. I saw myself as the gust of power hit my frame, launching me high into the air. The outburst hit Death's massive frame, and he flew backwards with it too, slamming into a pillar and hitting the ground.
The room started collapsing in, marble raining down. Death tried to stand, when the portal caved inward, dragging everything around it within the endless vortex, incliding him. His feet slid across the ground, gravity knocking him hard off of his feet as he hit the ground. He panicked, talons scraping frantically on the ground as the portal hauled him across the floor. He managed to hook his hand around a slate of marble, exhaustion marking his face in harsh lines. He tried to wrench himself up onto it, sweat profusely collecting on his brow and black filaments spreading out across his chest and his face. His eyes sought the room as he held on for dear life, muscles bulging in his shoulders, wind gusting debris all over the place.
"Faith!" he bellowed.
The memory seemed to break into fragments. Quickening pace.
Pieces of broken marble had begun hurling into the portal as it grew out of control. Death's fingers slid from the marble and his body rolled, his body hurdling into the portal just as I'd imagined it. The dark depths swallowed him whole as it calmed at last with satisfaction.
Death landed on his side, elsewhere, and the scene changed with it for me. His eyes peeled open, fatigued, and drained of life. His arm violently shook as he rolled over onto his back, his neck bending as he looked down at himself. The gruesome wound directly over heart, pouring over his chest, seemed to slow.
His chin tilted upward, drawing the perspective up to a cavernous space. The ceiling in Victorian Death's library, with the swirling night.
Death showed no signs of fear or shock that he was here. Grating his teeth together, he bent his knee up and leaned it to the side as momentum to tip back onto his side again. Though it seemed impossible he had the strength, he managed to pick himself up onto all fours and started to crawl forward.
Time shifted; Death was still in the library, but he sagged against a bookshelf now halfway in the shadows. He trembled violently with his shirt tied across his chest. He tried to get up and sagged over onto his side, his eyes were barely open, sweat pouring off of his features as though he were heavily drugged, and there were talon marks all over the wood behind him as though he'd been gripping it through the pain.
The minimal light in the library cast down on his sunken in cheeks, the outline of his skull on his face like a terror dream.
Then there were screams. Screams that should have jarred anybody awake, but Death did not move. He was still as a corpse. Forsaken began crawling out from the cryptic depths of the coiling ceiling. They dropped to the ground like massive aliens, releasing unearthly high-pitched sounds, crawling toward his body like hungry vermin. One of them grabbed Death's foot with a and pulled, and suddenly Death animated into a predator frenzy and slashed out, his dagger-like talons tearing through the creatures like paper and ripping through one of their throats with his teeth in a gruesome display.
One of them jumped onto his back, and Death seemed to sag as though he might faint from exhaustion. He grabbed onto the body of the one mirrored creature and rolled across the ground, wrestling down the monster down so that it wouldn't hurt him. He looked down at the mirrored Forsaken, his head cocking, as though he saw something in its face he had not seen before. His grabbed the creature by the neck with a force that seemed to overtake him, his jaws unhinged like an apex predator, and he inhaled, a cold blue essence tearing from its body. The body disintegrated beneath his hands into nothing.
Death sat back on his knees, staring down at place where the Forsaken once lie with a blank expression. His throat tipped back, and he gazed into the ceiling of the library. Death's blonde hair, so pale it was nearly white, started to breathe back into a golden color, his skin flushing in his cheeks, though the ghost of the blade in his chest remained, unhealed. His tongue captured the silvery liquid dripping from his dry bottom lip, and his head cocked, the colors of the cosmic night swirling in his black eyes like a demon.
He could eat the Forsaken.
***
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MORE TO COME!!! Sorry for the wait, I've been working so much on the manuscript and I have college classes!
HERE'S My #FADE HALLOWEEN COSTUME THAT I DID WITH MY BOYFRIEND!!! (It was his idea because he's amazing. PS.- I did all of his makeup and tattoos and of course that's my scythe! LOL.)
LET ME KNOW IF YOU LIKE THEM WE'RE SO EXCITED TO SEE YOUR REACTIONS!!!
WELL??? WHAT DO YOU THINK OF OUR COSTUMES!! LOL.