(Recap)
“You want to know?”
"Tatiana no. It's naut our place."
"Fine, I won’t." She said dusting off her butt and straightening up.
"What the hell? I'm sick and tired of this bull. Either one of you tell me what's going on or I'm going to find out on my own."
"You want to know what's going on?"
"No Tatiana."
"Connor I will not over step my boundaries." They had a staring competition and then he nodded.
"I'll be up stairs." She nodded her head and once Connor was out of sight she turned towards me.
"Come with me." Then she turned around and started walking, without even checking to see if I was following.
Well I did want answers…
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Chapter 27
Tatiana led me to her bike, ya that’s right her motorcycle. Which was parked under a tree well hidden from everyone.
“Here put this on.” She handed me a helmet and I hesitantly put it on, not really knowing what I was getting myself into.
I just stood there next to the bike while I watched how effortlessly Tatiana got on and started the bike up with a roar. I seriously was having second thoughts about this. Getting onto a motorcycle with a woman I met only once and not just that I wasn’t even sure if she was human, in fact I didn’t really know what species she belonged to. I mean, I just saw her stab a freaking smoke blade into a ghost and send it into another without even touching it. Maybe I should just go home and pretend like none of this ever happened.
“Why are you just standing there? Do you still want answers?” As much as I didn’t want to go with her, I really did need to know what was going on, what was happening to me.
So I took that first step and got on the back of the bike. I wasn’t even properly on it when she started to drive.
We drove for a while out of the strange town and into more familiar territory. Soon we were back in my small town, maybe she’s going to take me back home.
Just as I began thinking that she had tricked me, we turned away from the suburbs where my house was, so we weren’t going back to my house, we were heading to the meadow in the mountains.
It was the place that I had last taken pictures, and the place where I had first gotten the call about my mom being taken to hospital. It was also the first place I had seen Ethan outside of school.
“How do you know about this place?”
“Ethan told me about it. He said this was the place where he had officially met you. “
“He told you that?” I asked in a daze. I hadn’t realized that it was noteworthy, well noteworthy for him anyway.
“Yes he did, he also mentioned something about you wanting to be a nature photographer.”
“He seriously told you that?”
“Yes, Isn’t it true?” Tatiana asked uncertain, she turned to look at me as we headed up the mountain.
“Yes it is but why would he do that?” I asked not really expecting an answer. I mean I thought I was just some girl to him back then, not worth mentioning.
“There are a lot of things about Ethan that you don’t know. He obviously liked you back then already.”
“He did?” I asked rather shocked. He never showed it or at least if he did I never noticed.
“Yeah, he did. Come on we don’t want to be out after dark.”
“Okay.” I said absently lost in my thoughts. Ethan liked me back then, why didn’t I notice, was I so clueless. But the way he acted towards me in the beginning… what was that all about? Did he want to keep what he was different a secret?
I looked around and immediately recognized the meadow. The numerous flowers where gone by now, seen as it was fall. It looked so different from the last time I was here. I spotted the dead shrub still in the same place and remembered taking Ethan’s picture right in that spot. I need to go home and see if he’s picture is still there or if he even deleted it in the first place.
We stopped by the river and for a little while we stood watching the fish swim by in silence.
“You are most probably wondering what we are? How is it that myself, Connor and Ethan are able to do the things we can do?”
“Well it has crossed my mind once or twice.” Psst once or twice, more like the only thing I can think of.
“Well we are Reaper’s servants to Death.”
“Reaper’s as in the dude in the black cloak with the scythe that goes around killing people?” She signed as she started walking alongside the river and I slowly followed keeping in step.
“I hate that image, everyone thinks we look like that when in fact we look nothing like that and we don’t kill people… well not all the time. We’re more like… collectors slash delivery boys, kind of like a courier company. We collect the souls and deliver them to death.”
“Wait a sec… I thought Death and The Reaper were one in the same. If you’re the Reaper then who’s Death?”
“We’re not, thank god, you’ve met Death already.”
“I have?” I asked shocked. I would have remembered if I had met Death. I'm absolutly sure of it.
“He’s our dear ‘uncle D’” When she said uncle she made air quotes and then rolled her eyes.
“Wait… What? How is that… but he … So what is Death doing here… on Earth I mean? I thought he lived in a hole or something.” I said trying to make sense of everything.
“Death has always been on Earth, he’s essential for the survival of all living things, including humans. D or Death is one of the four horsemen, the pale or green rider.” She said picking up a stone and tossing it into the river.
“The four horsemen as in the four horsemen of apocalypse. Is that why all the ghosts are showing up? Are we – is it the apocalypse? Is that why you guys are here and… Death? Has the seals been broken?” Okay not what I was expecting, not even close. I remember hearing about the horsemen and the end of days in church. It was said that in the end of days The Lamb of God would open the first four seals, summoning four riders that riders being the Horsemen, to put a kick start on the apocalypse. Death as in The Death is here… in my town… up my street. Oh god I was in Deaths house, all those paintings… Breath, I’m freaking out, I’m freaking out… Okay Vi just breath.
I heard a snort then Tatiana looked over at me and cracked a smile, “The apocalypse? Good one. No, the horsemen have always been around. The seals as far as I know are still intact. The seals that kick starts the apocalypse like you say, can or will only be broken when the riders are together and as far as I know, War was in the Middle East, Conquest the last I heard was in Europe and Famine… he might still be in Africa. Did you know that he is actually the black rider and not Death? He’s horse changes color to blend in, although its often thought that Death is the black rider. I had only learnt that after I had become a Reaper.” She said in a matter of fact way, as we continued our trek along the river.
“And how did you become like this… a Reaper I mean?” I asked, because she didn’t seem like the person to serve anyone, in fact it looked like she would rather die than be a servant to Death.
We stopped by a large boulder and Tatiana was quiet for a while, I had almost thought that she wouldn’t tell me when she said,
“My full name was Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia. The second eldest daughter to Tsar Nicholas Nikolaevna the second of Russia and Tsarina Alexandra. I was born on the 10th of June 1897.”
“You’re a Royal.” I said in awe.
“I was.” She looked a bit sad as she stared at the river.
“You don’t sound Russian.”
“Well I am, accents are a talent of mine. In any case I had to lose my Russian accent because I was so widely known, in my time. In the beginning I went by the name Tina for a while but it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the name my father gave me and it felt wrong calling myself another name, so I went back to Tatiana when people started forgetting my heritage.”
She said as she signed and bent down to pick up another stone. She absently started to play with it. “They always forget.” She said absently turning the tiny stone in her hands.
I said nothing, sensing this was a difficult subject for her to talk about and just sat down on the boulder as I patiently waited for her to continue.
“I belonged to the last Royal family of Russia. You might have heard of my younger sister Anastasia?” She asked as she turned around gave me a sad smile.
“Wait, the princess Anastasia of Russia? I read what happened to your family, I’m sorry. Your family was executed right?”
“We were. You know right before I died, they made us pose, like it was a family portrait. They had brought in the entire family as well as the servants and made us pose, like you would for a photo, carefully placing us. My mother kept trying to comfort my younger brother, but I could tell by the way the guards were acting that things weren’t as they seemed. Our usual guards were replaced by stern hostile looking men. They called us together late in the night for a picture then they brought in a firing squad and shot us.”
“What?!”
“When the bullets hit the wall, the plaster from it fell onto us in a thick cloud covering us. It was so thick I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see. All I could do was hear the moans from whoever had survived the first round of bullets. My parents made my sisters and I sew jewels into our clothes, to keep them safe and to protect us, they unfortunately didn’t have the protection of the family jewels as we did, so they died in the first shooting. The smoke was so thick the firing squad left because they couldn’t see or breathe and that’s when I met him.”
“Who?” I was so engrossed in her story, it was so horrific.
“Death.” She said as she clutched the small stone until there was nothing but powder
“Your uncle?”
“He’s not my uncle that is only a guise. Anyway he came to me and told me that I was going to die, that the guards would come back and finish the job. He promised me that he would save my younger sister Anastasia and my little brother Alexei, if I joined him. I wanted to save the little family I had left. So I gave in, a life for a life mine for my brother and Olga’s for Anastasia’s. It wasn’t long after the deal was made that the squad came back, and started firing again, but their bullets couldn’t penetrate our chests. At first I had thought it was the work of Death but when they couldn’t penetrate our chests because of the jewels my sister Anastasia and little brother Alexei, they were killed before my eyes, stabbed in the neck. I was then shot in the back of my head by Yurovsky and my sister by Ermakov. I soon awoke to my new role as a Reaper, a servant of death, but Olga didn’t. She didn’t make the transition.”
“But D said he would save them.” I said appalled. How could D do that? He truly was worse than an asshole.
“He did, he made them into Reapers too.” She said sadly.
“No… How could he do that? Do you still see them?”
“I haven’t seen them in over eighty years. We were very religious and in their eyes I had sold their souls to the Devil, damning them to a life of servitude to the one being we were brought up to fear and hate. I guess they weren’t far off in thinking that way.”
“Tatiana I’m so sorry.”
“Look, I’m not telling you this for your sympathy, I’m doing this for Ethan. You need to understand that a Reaper has no say over who they Reap, Ethan is as much of a victim as you are and D will use what he feels for you against him.”
“Ethan killed my mom. He-“
“What Ethan did, Reaping your mother, he had no choice. She was eventually going to get collected, if not-“
“Don’t say that, like she was a meaningless item. She was my mother, not an item at Wal-Mart that needed to be collected.”
“There is no other way of saying this. She was going to be fetched, if not by him then by another Reaper, and you treating him like he murdered your mother is wrong.”
“Well he did. She was alive before he did whatever he did. She-“
“She was dying Violet, if he hadn’t to have collected her, she would have turned into one of those thousands of mindless ghosts you see after you. If she didn’t die then she would have continued to suffer, getting weaker, living in that horrible pain. Is that what you want? For your mother to have suffered longer? You knew there would be a time when she would die, why do you act like this is news to you?”
“It was the way she went, okay. I saw him… I saw him take her soul and feed it to his smoke or shadows or whatever you call it.”
“He was safe guarding it. You have to believe me Violet, he had no choice; we don’t decide who we’re to collect, or when or how. We are servants, meaning we follow orders. You weren’t meant to be there, something must of happened, because you’re also not supposed to see us in our Reaper form, but you can. I have never heard of a Somniator that can see Reapers before.” She mumbled almost to herself.
“You guys keep calling me that? What is that?”
“Erm… I think it’s best if Ethan explains that bit.”
“I need to know Tatiana, just put yourself in my shoes for just one second. Wouldn’t you want to know what’s going on?” She was quiet for a while, as she thought.
“Okay fine, I see your point, but I won’t go into too much detail. That is still something I think Ethan himself should do.”
“Okay, just as long as I know something.”
“Okay, a Somniator, in direct translation from Latin is a Dreamer. Essentially a Somniator or dreamer, dreams the memories of ghosts.”
“The memories of ghosts… but all I’ve been dreaming of, is them dying.”
“That’s because that was their last memory and their strongest one. The older the ghost the less they remember about their past, and that memory… the one of their deaths, is the only thing that they can recall. But there are a few that are stronger and they remember everything, but that’s usually when something really bad happened. It’s the ones that forget that you need to fear, especially if their deaths were unpleasant.”
“Oh… why did he turn me into it? A Somniator.”
“It was the only way to save you.”
“Save me?”
“I wasn’t there and that question needs to be answered by Ethan.”
“But-“
“No Violet, there are things not even I can answer. He needs to be the one to tell you what went on that night.”
“Okay…” I said not sensing that she wasn’t going to reveal anything else. Then something occurred to me,
“Why are the ghosts after me?”
“To be honest I don’t know. You’re the only Somniator to be created in over two thousand years; in fact you’re also the longest to have survived.”
“I’m what now?” Longest to have survived, meaning that they die as soon as they’ve been created, meaning I have a death sign hanging over my head.
“You’re the oldest Dreamer to have ever survived. I’m not sure why you’ve survived this long or how is it that so many ghosts are attracted to you, but you’re… different. There’s something… off about you.”
“Off?” I asked a little offended, Food goes off, not people.
“It’s hard to explain, I’m not even sure if I understand it myself, but when the ghosts are around you…. Look for now, we need to keep you safe. Dreamer or not, you’re in a heap of trouble especially with D on your trail.”
“What does D want with me? I don’t get his interest in me?”
“You’re supposed to be dead, you’re the oldest Somniator to have ever lived and Ethan is in love with you. You figure it out.”
“Ethan’s in love with me?”
“Out of all the things I've just said, the one that stuck was Ethan being in love with you? Look even a blind guy can see it, the way he talks about you, the way he looks at you. It’s pretty obvious what he feels for you.”
“Then where is he? Why isn’t he here, with me, protecting me like you think I so much need to be.”
“He would be here protecting you if he could believe me, and you do need protection. I’m not sure why ghosts are drawn to your kind but they are and you seem to be a powerful one. You need to stay away from the obvious places they will be, like the hospital and the cemetery-“
“The cemetery? But my mom’s funeral is tomorrow. I have to go.”
“No, you have to stay alive and the only way to do that is by not going to the cemetery. Now promise me you won’t go there.”
“But I-“ She cut me off by grabbing my arms and looking straight into my eyes.
“No Violet, no but’s. You do not go to that place. It’s dangerous. Now promise me you won’t go.” Tatiana said in all seriousness.
“I-I… w-won’t go.” She let go of me and looked a little more satisfied and relaxed.
“Good, now we need to get you home before your friends call the police. The last thing we need is humans getting involved with this.” She muttered as she straighten and started to walk towards the path that would lead to her bike.
I still had questions, but like Tatiana said, Ethan will have to answer them. I guess it’s something, I now at least know that something is different with me and I wasn't imagining it and what I am and that Ethan was coming back. I also know what he is, what I’m not sure about is why he turned me into this … thing. Am I still human? Or like them? And what did he say to my mom before he... reaped her?
Oh Ethan what did you do to me? I thought as I follow Tatiana down the mountain.