Page 51 of Death is My BFF

Alleyways always work out well in the movies!

At the end of the passageway, more demonic-looking men had formed, until I was surrounded by ten of these creatures. Twelve.

Fifteen. Panic rose up my throat and trapped my voice, leaving me mute—although I had a feeling no one would hear my desperate cries anyway.

“Hello,girl,” said the skinniest one, his voice thick with phlegm.

“Don’t be afraid.”

“Comforting,” I clipped sarcastically.

“She smells tasty,” said another with a Scottish accent. He was the ugliest of them all. As he glided closer, pale lips peeled back from ugly, sharp fangs and an unpleasant inky liquid dripped from his gums. “Kin we git a taste afore master arrives?”

Fear trickled down my spine and my teeth chattered from the cold droplets above. Glaring the creature in the face, I stood my ground.

“Don’t. Touch. Me.” This made it pause, analyzing my lesser frame. He faced the other demons, threw his head backward, and cachinnated.

“What a scary wee lassie!”

The rest of them laughed, too, until the Scottish creature turned back around and saw my withdrawn fist, which fired and connected with his grisly face. His head snapped rearward from the impact, inky spittle flying out of his mouth. White-hot pain pulsated around my knuckles, and within seconds, the creature recovered, although his appearance had transformed—unpleasant features mutating until they were petrifying.

Suddenly the other creatures were on him, holding the Scottish creature back, and I was paralyzed against the wall. He was the largest of the men and dragged them in my direction. A violent grin framed his venomous mouth. “Youbitch!”

He uncoiled his arm and lashed out. Out of reflex, I raised my arm to protect myself and scalpel nails sliced into my forearm, ripping straight to the bone. Springing forward, he shunted me to the ground.

My howl resounded down the passageway as the lacerations on my arm heated up like a welding torch had been pressed into the wounds. Tormenting pain surged through my veins, terminating any thought except instinct. I clamped my hand over the wound to stop the bleeding.

“You idiot!” one of the pale men seethed at my attacker. “Malphas will kill us all now!”

“No, he won’t,” purred a deep, disembodied voice. “But I will.”

A dark mass shadowed the ground overhead as my attacker was snatched up into the obscurity of the alleyway in one fell swoop. His cries were cut off short. A decapitated head dropped to the middle of the demons and rolled, as a deep, menacing laugh bellowed through the rain.

From above came a curtain of obsidian as a cloaked figure dropped soundlessly to the pavement behind another demon. He stood to his full skyscraper height and gripped the creature by the back of the neck, lifting him off the ground. The demon’s porcelain skin became riddled with black veins as his skin grayed and his eyes bulged with suffocation.

The cloaked man tossed him to the side as if he weighed nothing.

“This is the part where you run,” Death said.

Instead, the demons snapped into action, unleashing weapons and charging at him. Death waited patiently, as motionless as a statue. In the blink of an eye, his enormous scythe appeared from nothing at his side, and his cloak pressed tightly against his body, outlining an intimidating physique. Another blade shot out of the end of his weapon as he launched into action, cleaving through the demons. He maneuvered with the elegance of an assassin, rotating his scythe dexterously around his frame in between each strike and vaulting his heavy body into the air in various flips and twists. It was a frightening dance to watch, and he was well practiced.

Death evaded each blow as if it were too easy, eviscerating everything in his line of vision. I thought he stomped out every last one of them, when shadows of more creatures crawled down the sides of the alleyway and leapt into the passage.

I watched in horror as the creatures zigzagged closer to him, catching him off guard from multiple directions. He deflected as much as he could, but he was quickly outnumbered. Soon, they clung to him like parasites, jabbing him with their claws. He staggered back but wouldn’t fall. They barraged him with bullets and other weapons—bit him with their fangs.

I thought he was done for—until he began togrow, his height extending even farther from the ground until he dominated all the lesser creatures like an impending doom. Bones cracked and joints popped. Breathing raggedly, Death snapped to an egregious height again and unleashed a monstrous, animalistic roar that shook me to the core. One by one, the creatures dropped dead around him. Their eyes bulged out of their heads, skin graying, vacuuming against their bones as they gasped for air.

His first strike as a newly formed monster was to snatch a dying raven creature by the scalp and rip out its throat with his hidden teeth. Each demon was dismembered, mutilated, until every inch of that alleyway was speckled with blood and shining with gore.

With his back to me, Death tore off his tattered gloves and flexed his hands at his sides. Those frightening black talons retracted back into his fingers. He began to wither down to his normal height.

I let out a stifled noise.

Death’s veiled face snapped at the sound. He came at me like a bullet. His cloak loosened and spread out as he moved, no longer flush against his body like spandex. His prowling steps halted as he loomed over me, and my eyes glued to that massive bloodstained scythe. I recoiled back against the dumpster, curling my knees into my chest.

“Stay away!” I shrieked. “You’re a monster!”

“And you’re a brat. A simple thank-you would have sufficed.” He dug into the lapels of his cloak and swapped his torn leather gloves with new ones. As he discarded the shredded material, I gaped at the intricate black designs covering the exposed skin of his hands. When he spoke next, his accent had thickened with rage. “You’re coming with me.”

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