Page 88 of Death is My BFF

None of this could be real. How could it? I’d lost everything. I’d killed my own father. Now I was face-to-face with death.

The arena communicated their displeasure. The precious entertainment had paused. I tilted my head down to look at my father’s vacant corpse, perspiration and tears dripping into the dry sand. My eyes squeezed shut as I reined in all feeling, all the pain crushing inside of me, and turned it into rage.

“Youfiend!” I bellowed. “You trickster!”

“How I love the sound,” Ahrimad said, shadows snapping over his shoulders like whips. “You should never have gone into those woods and released me from my prison.” When he strode forward, I tried to retreat away, only my feet did not obey. “I bring only death and darkness to this crippled little realm. But you see, Alexandru, the worldneedscreatures like me. And I must thank you.” He stopped to stand in front of me, my breaths sharp and quick with adrenaline. “For I lived in pure torment in the other world, unable to feed on the mortals, slowly mummifying. My vile heart would give anything for another meal—even risk my existence in equivalence for your help. I simply . . . could not resist another game. The temptation of ruining your pathetic, innocent life fueled my monster—

“Enough!” I shouted, my muscles straining as I finally tore myself from his hold and shuffled away. Ahrimad’s head tilted, as though I’d caught him off guard. “Enough with your raging mania!”

I fisted the hilt of my weapon and drew it with a slice of gleaming metal. “Draw your sword and fight me!”

“Foolish half-mortal. Youdarechallenge Death to a duel?” He laughed low in his throat and lifted his head. My sword wavered as sinister amber eyes blazed beneath the darkness of his hood. “It is a fight you will lose, child.”

“Youforget.” I glided around Ahrimad, our footwork mirroring each other’s. “I am no longer that naïve little boy you met in the woods. And you, my dear friend, forget, my mother was a powerful witch who'd practiced black magic, and I was her protégé.” I planted my feet in a wide stance, gripping my sword tighter. “Draw your weapon.”

Ahrimad kept his blade limp at his side. “Make your move, boy.”

I charged toward him, though he disappeared in a black mist.

The darkness he’d left behind hissed and twirled like a tornado and I was trapped at the eye. Within the shadow, I saw the dead bodies of my family, lying together in a gory, bloody mess. I wrenched free from the shadows with a panicked cry, Ahrimad’s cruel laughter elevating over the crowd’s screams of joy. Why weren’t the mortals afraid? What had he done to them?

Ahrimad’s blade came down in a skilled movement, and I felt off-kilter as I swung out to protect myself. My eyes widened as my weapon cracked beneath the blow.

Ahrimad lashed out, slamming a hurl of shadow into my body.

My body flew across the arena again and I landed hard, my shoulder dislocating as I rolled three times before landing in a broken heap.

The arena exploded into applause, the sand blistering hot against my enraged cheek. Of course, they wanted me dead. The mortals were never on my side, and I was never one of them. They wanted blood.

They wanted death—I thought I had wanted it too. Nonetheless, here I was, fighting to live. The ironic turn of events made me laugh, a lurid, insane cackle, blood oozing down my chin. I planted a foot on the ground and rose to my towering frame at the center of the arena.

“Such a sad, pitiful sight,” Ahrimad said. “You have given these mortals your whole life, and your sanity. Still, they root against you.”

Ahrimad threw out a hand, and my torso hunched inward as though I’d been punched in the stomach. I remained where I stood, paralyzed, as I felt an invisible force climb up my chest and grip within—his power clutching my soul.

“We will give them a show indeed,” Ahrimad said, and then he lifted his palm.

Gasps of tight breaths left my lungs as my feet levitated off the ground. Now the arena had died down, the civilians stunned by the sight. My limbs locked in an inflexible position, my spine arching away from the ground as his power lifted me higher and higher. Dark clouds pummeled over the sky, creating an opaque cover over the sun as the blood rushed fast to my head.

Ahrimad’s laughter bellowed over the mighty wind. His lean, cloaked frame strode upside down in my vision, his hand gripping the sword at his side like an executioner. The weapon glowed amber along the hilt and blade, the engravements forming an inverted picture. Coldness crawled over my skin. The etchings were weeping branches. Branches of a willow tree.

In weeping, find strength in the root.

My father’s final words echoed as I remembered what led up to me freeing Ahrimad from the willow. How as a boy, I’d been drawn deep into the forest and discovered the ancient weapon buried in the ground. How it’d summonedmeof all people, miles out from my home. The blade had rested perfectly in my small boyish palm, and I’d felt . . . unstoppable.

“Any last words, Alexandru?”

My vision dizzied as I tried to attain a deep breath, my spine still curved over the ground. I strained to free my uninjured arm from the tight position locked at my side. “I never imagined Death to be so short.”

Ahrimad snarled and pulled his weapon behind him with the intention to sever my head, but I’d already freed my arm, my hand snapping out in the air. I knew not what I was doing, the sheer will of survival taking precedent over everything else. I imagined the blade in my hand instead of his. I willed it to happen with all my might and everything I had left. On the downward arc to my head, Ahrimad’s features strained, his arms freezing in midair. The blade tore from his hand and landed in my vise grip.

His power released me at once, my body turning over in the air before I landed on all fours.

“Impossible,” Ahrimad whispered, horror lacing his voice. “The blade has chosenyouover me.”

I rose to my towering height, the hurricane of violence in my head silencing doubt. Raw power breathed into me like a second chance, and I cast aside all thoughts but one: Death would not defeat me this time. I drove forward, slicing through shadow as it formed like a wall of darkness around Ahrimad. It grabbed onto my armor, hooking into my skin again with claws like knives to remind me of everything I’d lost. This time, I embraced it.

Ahrimad’s body started to dissipate, waning away into a black mist, but the speed of my wrath was faster. I shoved through the shadow with all my might and thrust my blade forward. A battle cry exploded from my throat as I went down with Ahrimad, the shadows beneath his hood willowing away.

---