When Death's Away, page 13
“Why won’t any of you tell me the plan?” I asked. I, too, stepped closer to the bed. Samuel gripped Jahanara’s hand as her eyes flashed to me, wide and terrified. “I know the witch said something about overcoming death—and since I’m acting as Death, I’m sure you think that overcoming me is an acceptable solution—but is there a particular type of overcoming that you had in mind? After all, I’ve already agreed to help her, against my better judgement.”
And how foolish an agreement it seemed, now. There she was, helpless, dying. Her body was mere inches away from death and then her soul would be just sitting there, ready for the taking. I would only have to reach out and touch her, taking her soul into me before it fled into the orb that held all of that magnificent power. Human souls. The essence of beings from Elsewhere. Energy that made an individual unique. It was full of such potential. Here was a girl who could do nothing to me if I decided to lean forwards and brush my hand against her forehead.
Indeed, I was only inches away from her. Somehow, I stood where Samuel had been. He had moved away from me, probably for the same reason that the girl now looked up at me with horror in her eyes. It was not unexpected, but it stung. Didn’t they understand? I wasn’t going to hurt her. I was simply going to release her from her pain. I was going to gather her soul, collect it for whatever came next.
I was not cruel.
But I was necessary.
I was Death, and this girl, Jahanara, she was ready for me.
I reached out to touch her, to move her hair back from her temple and to lay my fingers on her bare skin, to initiate the touch that would free her from her obvious agony. My hand got within centimetres from her skin when a sharp, desperate sensation flooded my chest.
I pulled back and looked down, staggering away from the bedside. A knife—a dull knife at that—protruded from my chest, the tip of the blade already tickling my heart. It itched and it hurt. I recognised this sort of pain and it wasn’t the agonising, instantaneous death that I usually experienced and recovered from so quickly. I was bleeding out, all over my suit and my shoes. Well, at least I wouldn’t have to go through the bother of trying to save it. There were just some things you couldn’t clean out.
“That, dear Cal, is why we couldn’t explain,” Life said. She moved to my side and grabbed my arm, helping me into a chair while I watched my blood soak into the ground. I wrinkled my nose and looked up at her. “The threat from you had to be genuine.”
“Great,” I said drily. “So, what, she kills me and all is well?”
“She overcame Death,” Life said. Life frowned, “Or, well, Death’s proxy, which is good enough. As soon as you die, then her transformation can begin.”
“Shouldn’t be long now,” I said as a familiar faintness came over me. I supposed that even a dull knife could have nicked the right artery for me to bleed out this quickly. At least I wasn’t going to spend the next twenty minutes gasping like a fish out of water.
Jahanara was staring at me with that same horror as before. She hadn’t been afraid of me, I realised, but of what she had to do. At least there were some small favours. I didn’t want people to be afraid of me. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her voice was already stronger than before, as if the very act of stabbing me had accomplished what we set out to fix.
“Don’t be.” I smiled at the girl. I wanted to pull the knife out, make all of this go faster, but I doubted that the onlookers would have appreciated that level of gore. So I left it in and waited for the whiteness to appear. “There are not many who have the strength to make such a choice.”
Jahanara licked her lips, a wild gleam appearing in her eyes. They started to change, even as my own vision faded at the edges to whiteness. Her eyes grew larger, slanting, her facial structure shifting to become something that held all the beauty of an immortal predator. Her ears moved upwards slightly, the ends sharpening into points. She had a feral look about her and her teeth sharpened ever so slightly. “There was no choice,” she hissed. “Only desire.”
I blinked once more and the whiteness overcame me. I didn’t get to see the last piece of Jahanara’s transition; I wasn’t going to complain. There was something disconcerting about watching the pieces of someone that were human transition into something that was not. Perhaps it was good that I was a being of Elsewhere, now. Those in the mortal realms wouldn’t have to watch my own, slower, transition.
The whiteness filled my vision for longer than before. Only once had I been in the white for so long, and then, as now, there were faint whispers that met my ears. One of the whispers seemed louder than the others. It was urgent, desperate, distant. It was also wildly familiar, in a way that warmed my very being, filling me with more emotion than I had felt in a very long time.
“Cal.” I opened my eyes to Life staring me down, her face too close, her pupils dilated and her breath warm on my face.
“Ugh,” I said, though I don’t know whether that was reflexive or a true reaction to the situation. Life huffed and pulled back, leaving me to sit up straight in the chair on my own.
“He’s fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “Jahanara, how do you feel?”
Before me, I saw what every young person wishes they could be. It was the human form, idealised. She had healthy, glowing golden-brown skin. Her hair was lustrous and black, shining down like a wave of night. Her eyes were large and brown, drawing you in. She looked like Jahanara, the young human that we had fought to save, but she also looked like more. She was Other, like me. And not like me.
She was Fae.
She fixed me with a knowing look and smiled, showing her pointed teeth. “I feel wonderful,” she said, even her voice somehow more true, more tempting, more melodious. “It’s like the power of the world is at my fingertips.”
Life chuckled. “Very good, my dear. Now, say goodbye to your uncle before I take you to Faerie.”
The newly formed Fae froze with preternatural stillness, her eyes fixed on Life. I saw a flash of a predatory gleam, then she frowned. “No,” she said. “I don’t want to leave.”
“Figures,” I grumbled, still a little wobbly from whatever I had felt in the beyond. “Do a favour and people still complain. Look, kid, I don’t think you have much of a choice in the matter.”
Defiantly, she lifted her chin, a fox staring down Life and Death. Or, well, Life and Death’s proxy. I doubted that I made a terribly cutting figure at the moment. “You don’t have any authority over me,” she said with a particular assuredness that came from being young.
Life, to my surprise, was the one who responded. She bared her teeth, a wolf’s grin spreading across her features. Then, she took a step towards the girl. “Choice is for the mortals, Fae child. Immortal you may be, powerful, young, but you are now bound by your nature. And unless you want to give all of that up to remain in the mortal realms for the rest of your natural life, then you don’t have a choice. You will go to Faerie.”
Jahanara sucked in a breath and looked down at her hands. They were delicate, artistic, and just enough into the realm of perfection to be inhuman. But I watched, and as I did, a flash of brief light flared from the tips of her fingers and then vanished. It was yellow light. Her essence, draining away.
She stood in the mortal realms, I realised. And, like the fetch Dermot Green and his banshee wife Mathilde, power would be stripped from her until she was mortal again. Still Fae, still powerful, but mortal. The longer she remained, the worse off it would be, I imagined.
“Make it stop,” Jahanara pleaded, lifting her gaze to mine, as if I would be the sympathetic one. To be fair, I probably would be, under normal circumstances. It was difficult giving up power, influence, opportunity. Even if she remained and was one of the peak people in the world of humans, it wouldn’t be the same as the power she held now. Not all beings were like that. Vampires, for example, seemed to function the same on either side of the barrier between Elsewhere and the mortal realms. But Fae, apparently, did not.
“I can’t,” I said, voice somewhat cold. “And even if I could, I wouldn’t. I don’t believe that you are forever bound by your new nature, but you do have to make a decision. Stay here, or go to Faerie. Retain mortality and choose, or immortality and follow the path set before you.”
The words, once again, didn’t feel like my own though I instinctively knew them to be true. I blinked and swallowed, shoving down the sensation. When I refocused my gaze, Jahanara had her hands clenched into fists at her sides, her expression defiant and yet defeated. She knew she had lost this battle. She nodded, once. “I will go.”
“My child,” Samuel said, his voice a rasp. He was leaning on the edge of the bed, obviously exhausted. Frankly, I was surprised that he was still moving. He tracked Jahanara with his eyes, surrounded by sunken depths and shadows. He twitched a smile, barely, at her healthy form moving about the small room. “It will be okay.”
Jahanara ignored him. She didn’t look at him, acknowledge him, or even act as though he still existed. And, given the state of his person and his soul, perhaps he didn’t exist on the same plane as she did any longer. She stepped swiftly past him, her movements already graceful and predatory, and extended a hand towards Life.
Life snickered in response. “One of the things you must learn, Fae child, is that there are beings far more powerful than yourself. You should not go about touching them.”
Jahanara sucked in a breath through her nose, nostrils flaring, eyes flashing. I almost thought that she would reach out and take Life’s hand, just for the sake of defying her. But something about the fundamental energy that flowed around Life must have stopped her. For a moment, she looked at me, seeing the shadows writhing around me. I returned her look, remembering just how close I had come to tasting her soul.
She shuddered and turned back towards Life. “I am ready, now,” Jahanara announced, squaring her shoulders.
Life smirked. “I’m sure you think you are.” She twisted towards the wall where we had stepped through to the Goblin Market and it began to shimmer. Another portal, this one producing sparks, appeared.
“Wait!” Samuel cried. Jahanara did not acknowledge him; she just stepped through the portal and Life followed after her. The portal flickered into nothingness, leaving Samuel and I alone in the hut.
Samuel collapsed on the bed, his hands trembling on his knees. “There was so much I wanted to tell her, about her family, about her history.”
“I don’t know that she cared,” I said. Samuel Phipps glared defiantly at me, the sheer strength of emotion coming from his soul overpowering that of his human body. “You must know it was true. The reasons that you had for saving her were not the same as the reasons she had for accepting your help.”
He shook his head. “I… I had hoped…,” he breathed.
I managed to stand, my body recovered from being stabbed, and walked over to sit beside Samuel on the bed. I didn’t offend him by reaching out a comforting hand. We both knew what that would really mean. “One of the things I’m learning about being human is that maybe hope is a good enough cause.”
“You, of all people, would say that to me?” Samuel snarled. “You know what is coming for me.”
I sighed. “The way I see it, you have two options. One, you can collect on the boon that I owe you and demand I ignore your death. If you do that, though, there is no guarantee that Life will offer you the same deal as before. In fact, I think it really unlikely.”
“What do you know of Life?” Samuel snorted. He reached up a trembling hand and rubbed his neck, flinching where his skin scraped against his beard. He soon lowered his hand again.
I tightened my own hand into a fist, more to prevent myself from blindly reaching out and taking his soul as I so desperately wanted to do. “A fair bit, actually. The real question is what you know of her. Think about it Samuel. In all your centuries of living, have you known Life to be consistently fair, good, kind, generous? Or is that side of her nature interspersed with things like greed, fickleness, cruelty, indifference, even disdain?”
Samuel licked his dry lips.
“She is stunning and wonderful and absolutely a pleasure to be around,” I admitted, “but you can’t expect her to be consistent. If you believe that you have a chance, demand that boon of me. But if you don’t, then you’ll wander around in the state you’re currently in. Your soul will continue to try to break free of its bindings. You will be a shade of your former self. You won’t be able to use what little magic you have. You’ll struggle to do things like walking, talking. It won’t be easy.”
Samuel jerked his head in what I believe was meant to be a nod, though it looked more like a spasm. “Life is never easy,” he rasped.
I smiled, gently, this time reaching out and placing my hand on his knee, careful not to touch any exposed skin. “No,” I agreed. “And you would happily fight her for the rest of your days. That’s the thing, Samuel; you may evade me for now, but the true Death? The Death that you expected to meet, he’ll find you, eventually. You would only delay the inevitable, and for what? Your family is gone, you would be living in constant agony, you have lost Life’s favour… what remains for you here?”
“You can’t convince me to kill myself!” Samuel was gasping now, terrified of Death, as nearly everyone was.
“If there’s just one truth I can offer you, then it’s this: Death isn’t the enemy. You don’t need to seek him out; he’ll be there. He is the release from your pain, the light in the shadows at the end of life. He’s not the end of all things, just of this one piece of your existence.”
“Liar. How can you know what lies beyond?” Samuel jerked his knee, and I removed my hand. His soul was straining against his skin, practically calling to me. I felt sweat bead on the back of my neck as I resisted the urge to capture Samuel’s soul right then and there.
I closed my eyes and thought of the perpetual whiteness that I saw every time I died, every time I came closer to the end of my existence. There was… something there, calling me, watching me. I didn’t know what. I didn’t know who. I didn’t care.
“I have died many times,” I said, keeping my eyes closed as I focused on the memory of really feeling things again. “Trust me, I know.”
I opened my eyes and watched Samuel. He was panting, struggling to catch enough air to fill his lungs. His eyes were glazed, unfocused, and he swayed slightly with every beat of his heart. His soul was crying out in anguish, a sound so profound that I could almost hear it. There was nothing more I could do to persuade Samuel. In the end, as Life had said with jealousy sparking in her eyes, it was his choice.
Samuel extended a shaking hand. “My boon,” he ground out, “from you… make it swift.”
An invisible barrier that had been holding me back—the boon, I realised, still waiting to be enacted—vanished. I nodded once, swiftly, and extended my hand to take his.
Then, Samuel Phipps, champion of Life and a man I found that I actually liked, died.
You Only Die Once
Samuel’s soul flowed into me with as much force as any of the others, but I could have sworn that it was richer, deeper. Stronger. Maybe it was the extra time that he had lived, though the essences of those beings from Elsewhere who had lived centuries didn’t have quite that depth of flavour, of power, to them.
I threw my head back and closed my eyes, understanding somewhere in the back of my mind that I was acting like a drug addict desperate for my next fix. And what a fix it was. For a brief moment, while Samuel Phipps’ soul shared my body, I was whole again. I wasn’t confused about what I was feeling. I had an infinity of choices laid before me and any one I chose presented another infinity. I was brimming with potential. With power.
This was what I was missing. It was hard to understand just what sort of thing I had lost when Death released my soul until I was experiencing what it was to have one again. Not even my temporary bargain with Al Capone had felt so strong and true.
Then, just as I was beginning to relish in the opportunities and the possibilities laid before me, the feeling vanished. Samuel’s soul joined the countless others in Death’s orb, leaving me empty and unaware of the paths before me. The power and raw potential was gone. The sureness that what I felt was right and real, that was gone. All that was left was the shell of what I had once been. The emptiness warring with whatever shreds of feelings I had remaining warred within me. More often than not, the emptiness won.
I opened my eyes and lifted a hand to adjust my glasses. My fingers touched my cheek and came away damp. I trembled as I lowered my hand, already desperate for another fix. Samuel’s dead face leered at me, his body slumped where it had fallen from the bed in the throes of death. It seemed to be laughing at me. I pushed the thought away.
Life returned just as I was laying Samuel out on the bed, making sure his limbs were straight and his eyes were closed. She took one look at him then made a sound in the back of her throat that sounded rather a lot like disgust. “Stars, Cal, you killed him.”
I straightened Samuel’s shirt cuffs. “I am unsure as to why you are surprised. It is, after all, what I am meant to do while your husband is on holiday.”
Life pulled me away from the body, flicking a disinterested glance at it over her shoulder. Now that Samuel was dead, I don’t think that Life actually cared what became of his body. There wasn’t much in it for her. She did grab me by the collar and shove me into the chair where I had recovered from dying before. I tugged at my own shirt and suit jacket. It was ruined—bleeding out will do that—but it was the principle of the thing.
“What about the boon?” Life demanded, folding her arms. “You shouldn’t have killed him before—“
“He asked me to make it quick,” I said. My voice had gone back to the flat, empty sound that happened whenever my emotions were pushed to the side. Whatever was happening to me—whether I was actually fluctuating between logic and emotion—I didn’t want to fathom; I grabbed onto the static calm with veracity. “Do you think I’m stupid enough to have killed him without fulfilling the boon?”
