Sorry I haven't uploaded in a while!! <3
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I know what you're thinking.
How the hell did I end up here?
Death held me down with his steel-claw of a hand. I could hear his one half: the creature, and its thunderous, vicious growls from beneath the water, and I could hear his other half: the dark angel, and its foreign curses, projected by that mesmerizing deep voice. Together, those two disastrous halves combined into a tsunami of obliteration, a Fallen without any boundaries, and the waves of my demise, in line with that tsunami, were carried away, spilling relentlessly over the rim of the bathtub and flooding the floor.
Any girl my age would have loved my current position.
Seriously.
A drenched wool cloak blocked my vision as Death made a big show of flattening me out like a pancake at the bottom of my tub and straddled my hips. The muscles in his leather-covered thighs squeezed against me, and unfortunately, my teenage hormones were getting the best of me, and I was more aware of his thighs than the fact that I couldn't breathe. I switched my attack from his rock hard arm to his soft cotton t-shirt, which I practically ripped off of his stupid, undoubtedly perfectly sculpted immortal body.
See? The position we were in was truly "fangirl" worthy.
Except for the fact that he was drowning me...
I thrashed my legs out, trying to slip my knee out from under him, but it was pointless. A giant boulder had decided, "Hey, I'm going to sit on you and drown you," and that boulder's name was Death. Well, his pseudonym was Death....
Still a better love story than Twilight.
Time ticked by unbearably slow. For a moment, I wanted this to end quickly. I wanted it all to end. But then I thought better. If he killed me, he would probably have no use of me anymore an would kill my family. Or maybe he would turn me into a zombie. Or a vampire. Did vampires exist in his world? I hate vampires, I thought to myself, but it would be really cool to hang from the ceiling....
Oh right, I was drowning.
Bubbles were now rapidly escaping my mouth. My nails scraped the iron panel of raw, sinewy abdominal ridges of the Grim Reaper's stomach.
Death lifted me out of the water and I gasped for air. There was a lot of irony in that, I know.
"I can do this all night," the monster hissed, a growl erupting from his throat. "All damn night, princess!"
"That's," I gasped out, attempting to laugh but wheezing instead, "what she said!"
Death was silent for a long moment. I could feel him glaring at me.
The monster pinned me to the bottom of the tub again...
And pause.
It's still me, guys.
I'm just breaking that pesky fourth wall again. It's been a while. Present tense is a bitch, isn't it? Really gets you thinking. Is Faith alive? What about Death? Why doesn't he get a say in any of this? Well hey, I'm the sassy, usually likeable and sometimes dense protagonist, and I deserve some love too. At least you now know I'm able to physically type on this laptop for you all and I'm not six feet under.
If you know what I mean.
You see, I've been skipping quite a lot things in this "book" for a reason. I say "book" because who knows where this writing thing I'm doing is heading. For now, it's a blog. Could I ever publish something so personal to me? We'll see, I'm not even halfway done with what I have to say. It just gets boring after a while, typing up all of these little details and events on my laptop, when all I really want do is write about all of the juicy bits of my tale.
Juicy. . .
There's a lot of things you're thinking about right now (besides me shutting up and Death getting back in the picture), like Malphas and that poisonous plant and plot of his. Sketchy, isn't he? Wondering what he was up to while all of that magical, mind-altering crap was happening at Ace's shop? And then there's my aunt Sarah, who's a well-known hunter (which I don't know yet in my story) and is coming to visit me for my birthday. Yeah, she's pretty badass. She'll be introduced soon enough!
But let's not forget Death's pendant. The few things that I currently had against Death, was the knowledge about my soul, and my knowledge about Death's pedant. The fact that my own pendant blocked King Cranky Blanky from reading my mind and figuring out what I knew, was just another big gold star for me.
The suspense is killing you.
But let's rewind again, and press play about thirty minutes after I woke up on Ace's floor, distraught by Death's recent "playtime" with my mind.
So, as you already know, it was less than five days until my birthday. After Trixie had made some bank from a bet about me (at least she's still on my side), Ace had briefly discussed my situation with Death and threw Thomas and I into a cab. I know what you're thinking, why didn't the warlock offer to protect me? Or, I don't know, offer me a damn icepack for my head, which happened to collide with his wall because of his possessed ass?
Because Death, that's why. It was clear he was shaken up by the whole "possessed" thing, and I had never seen someone as pale as Ace was when I awoke from Death's little dream game with me.
Plus, I would have had to strike another deal with Ace to get his help. I was indebted with him enough. I wasn't sure if I liked Ace or not. I was getting the vibe that Thomas felt the same way.
Ace was a strange one.
He told me I was tough before I left his shop, and he even added a genuine, "Good luck," when we parted ways, but there was something in Ace's eyes that was unsettling to me. And as I walked past the shop, those violet, mysterious eyes were trained on mine the entire time.
I couldn't help but regret striking a deal with him in the first place.
Thomas was silent the entire car ride home, fixated on the street shops passing by all the way until we got into the suburbs. Thomas knew not to tell anyone about the Reaper who almost killed him, Leo. He wasn't stupid. Normally, I would have tried to reinforce the fact that he had to be quiet anyway, but whenever I tried to speak, it was as if a wad of cotton had lodged in my throat. So to avoid an anxiety attack, I didn't dare speak a word the entire taxi ride to my house.
All I would think about was the short distance I had to sprint between the taxi car and my front door to be home free.
Would Death seriously hide in a bush or on my porch, waiting for me to get home?
Thomas finally spared me a glance when the taxi came to a stop at my house. His arctic blue eyes looked large, empty and sad. The whole Reaper thing was obviously getting to him.
"You should come inside." I touched his hand. "We can talk about what happened--"
"I can't. I have to get home to practice. I have a meet tomorrow." He opened his mouth to say something to me, then clamped his mouth shut, removing my hand and switching his gaze to his lap.
"Tommy, you need to be careful. You can't just act like nothing happened today--"
"Faith, worry about your own life for once," Thomas snapped, turning sharply towards me. "You're always worrying about other people and you never really worry about yourself. If that thing--Reaper wanted me dead after you saved me, I'd be dead right now. I'm nothing to that thing. I'm home free. You're the one who has to be worried. Death isn't after me, he's after you. And maybe even your family. You are the one who needs to be careful. You are the one who needs protection."
"You are the one who needs protection," Tommy's voice echoed through my skull as I sat on the couch in my living room curled up on a chair, icepack to the small bump on the back of my head. My mother and father were on the couch next to me, intently watching their nightly nine o'clock game show and cuddled up closely. They hadn't even acknowledged my entrance into the house.
"And maybe even your family."
Just like that, a portion of a dense fog lifted from my memory. My parents. Something was wrong with my parents and I hadn't noticed it as strongly until just then. They were more distant, easygoing, and aloof than they ever had been fore. My mother was strict. She was raised by a strict mother. How would she have let me go into the city....alone and not questioned it at all when I got back? Why hadn't I ever thought of this before?
Death.
Death had manipulated my family.
I cursed.
"I'll make him stop! Tell the Spirits, I want to know his weakness. They have to give me some way to get him to back off. He must have a weakness!"
"His weakness is unclear, however, I see another image." Blood beginning to stream from his nose.
"You're bleeding!"
"I am fine, ma chérie." Abruptly, crystal ball in front of us burst into vibrant shades of blue and yellow. "I see an image! It is the pendant around your neck that I have given you. The Spirits activated its power, it is their gift to you. It will help you with your abilities. It will protect your human thoughts from evil, but not your mind. It will grant you what you wish to a degree, but it will be at a price. There will always be a price..."
"What is the price?" I shouted over the whirling wind. The table--the room was spinning faster and faster and faster. "What can I do to stop him?"
"I do not know, I do not know. You must find that answer yourself."
"Mom?" I asked really gradually. "Not even going to say hello? Dad?"
"Yes, baby?" they said in unison. When I didn't respond, they looked back at the television at the same time.
"Mom? Dad? What's my name?"
My mother and father turned towards me again.
They blinked, frowning slightly.
A pin could have dropped in the room and I would have surely heard it.
They didn't know my name. My own parents couldn't remember my name.
"Mom, when I was six years old," I began, standing to my feet, the room seeming to tilt a little, "you struck a deal with the Grim Reaper. Do you remember that? Do you remember?"
"That's nice," my mother said.
When I didn't respond, she returned back to the television like I didn't even exist.
Oh my god.
They were completely and utterly brainwashed.
My throat tightened, and unexpectedly, I rushed out of the room and into my bedroom. Out of rage, I gripped at the pendant around my neck and pulled at it. It felt confining. It wouldn't come off. My heart threw itself against my rib cage over and over again. I pulled tighter and tighter with all my might, throwing myself down onto my bed and wrestling with the chain of the pendant between shaking fingers.
"I HATE YOU, DEATH!" I roared, clawing at my comforters and throwing them off my bed. "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!"
I raced out of the room, knocking into walls, unstable and slightly disoriented. I collected every stupi monthly Star magazine and threw them onto my bed, cutting out every image of David Star I could find. I sat cross legged on my bed, tears streaming down my cheeks, frenetically collecting as many photos of him as I could and piling them up in front of me. I put them all in front of me and stared at them, trying to see past those brown eyes.
And I came to a conclusion.
David Star was mask. A dead, empty mask.
"Sssssssseeek the mirror and you will find, your demon hiding in plain sssssight."
I stilled, locking eyes with my reflection in the mirror. "Who are you?""
"Ssssssshow me what you ssssseeeeek. The truth can only be revealed through me. I am bound to you, Massssster. I will sssssshow you what you ssssssseek."
Unsteadily, I held up an image of David Star grinning at the camera in a pristine black suit. But the second time I asked it, I realized I wasn't talking to myself, but the vanity mirror over my bed.
I figured, what the hell, I was absolutely freaking insane by then anyways. Might as well talk to a mirror.
"Who is this man?" I asked.
"I will ssssssshow you, Faith Williams."
The room was closing in. A powerful force blasted outwards from the mirror and pinned me to my comforter. The room was closing in. A silhouette of a large man, entirely made of the surface of a mirror, crawled out from my vanity on all fours, straightening like a human once his feet reached the carpeted floors. I couldn't breathe. My fingers curled around the pendant at my neck, my breaths in short pants. The creature had no facial features, just a mirror as a face that reflected the terror in my eyes as it leaned over me.
"I will ssssssssshow you the ansssswer you ssssssseek, Faith Williamsssss. But it will come at a priccccce."
My eyes slammed shut.