Page 93 of Death is My BFF

“Who? Who will kill everyone I love? Death?”

“Death is but only one who desires your soul,” Ace said cryptically.

Panic struck me hard as I tried to pull away from his grasp, but his fingers were like bent steel. One by one, the candles kept going out, as if switched off by a timer.

“Don’t!” Ace exclaimed. “Breaking the connection now will hurt us both!”

I took a few harsh breaths. “Ask them how I can stop the Angel of Death.”

“To have some power . . . over him . . . you must know his past, and you must know his true name.” His hands began to grow limp in mine and the howling wind around us died down. “The link between our world and theirs is weakening. They want to warn you, before it is too late, but I cannot hear their words.” Blood trickled from his nose.

“You’re bleeding!”

“I’m fine,mon chou.” Abruptly, the crystal ball in front of us burst into vibrant shades of blue and yellow.

The remaining candles began to flicker out. The crystal ball’s swirling black smoke cleared.

A frown creased between Ace’s brows. “The spirits tell me you share a similar ability to my clairvoyancy. With touch, you can see into the future and warp into the past through memories. If you can control this, you will be able to use this power without a physical connection. Before we part ways, they want to show you a different truth you seek. A memory of the Angel of Death’s, which will help you at your crossroads. Let us channel your gift and see what you are made of.”

Images instantly flashed before my eyes.

I fell into oblivion, plunging through darkness.

One by one, sparks of light appeared on a wall, candles hung up in beautiful ornaments. I stood in a hot, stuffy corridor, a hallway carved from brown stone, crudely lit with torches and candles.

Ahead of me lay a metal gate.

Studying my surroundings, I saw one other person here with me in this corridor. An enormously tall man, a gladiator. His shoulders and arms were weapons of their own, yet his waist tapered down with lean muscle. A gold military helmet curved around his skull, his face, and a majority of the damp golden mane at the nape of his neck.

Lavish, intricately designed armor adorned his torso and carried on down his right arm like a shield. The same armor also guarded his legs. All of the gear was fastened together with brass hooks and leather that clipped to a thick belt on his waist. The plate on his chest appeared heavier than the other garments, a perfect sculpted cast of what was, without a doubt, this man’s actual chiseled abs.

Despite his ornate gear, the man’s feet were bare. Around his ankles, blisters and scars lingered, wounds from shackles. I happened to have done a project about gladiators in honors history and presented a slide show for a group project on Roman games. I’d learned that although gladiators were pampered with banquets and massages before a fight and after a victory, most gladiators were slaves to the death match.

Metal grated against metal up ahead, and the heavy gate lifted away. Sunlight slanted in and chaos erupted, a roar of a crowd so blaringly loud, I swore the ground beneath my feet trembled. Drums rolled outside in a slow, rhythmic march. The gladiator clenched his hands so hard that veins protruded. He sauntered down the corridor into the rowdy arena with a modest wave to the crowd. I assumed, by his grand introduction, he was not only a slave to the death match, but one of the celebrity fighters.

The gladiator prowled to the center of the performance area and the crowd’s shrieking amplified.

In this place, I had no fear. Based on my experience with the first vision I had, I assumed I could not be seen or harmed, so I felt compelled to get closer to the gladiator. I walked down the corridor toward the arena, and the stone beneath my Converse turned to compacted sand with old bloodstains in various places. Everything about this moment felt real to my senses. The sweltering heat in the air, the humidity as it clung to my skin, the earsplitting noise of the crowd.

People of all ages gathered for the public spectacle, waving rags and other items of clothing in the air. A group of exceptionally giddy women in the front aristocrat area fawned over the gladiator. They jumped up and down with flushed faces, cupping their hands over their mouths to shout. I’d never seen so many people in one spot, sardined together in seating that extended all around the elliptical performance area. In unison, they started chanting the same foreign words over and over again. The longer it went on, the more the language slowly transformed, until I miraculously understood it.

“Dru the Beast! Dru the Beast! Dru the Beast!”

The gladiator, “Dru the Beast,” ventured to the center of the elliptical area and faced off with his challenger, who wore a midnight-black riding cloak.

The fight began as a performance of great skill, but when the challenger ruthlessly mutilated a jaguar, Dru the Beast unleashed his fury, which ended with the challenger knocked to the ground.

Dru the Beast picked up his challenger’s sword and I prepared for this to end gruesomely. To my astonishment, instead of finishing him off, Dru dropped the weapon with a shaking hand, pivoted, and made the choice to walk away. He didn’t want to kill this man.

People in the stands booed and heckled, hurling objects and food into the arena.

The fallen challenger, who was very much awake, held out his arm and his sword slid across the sand. He leapt off the ground and charged at Dru the Beast’s back, his sword charging orange in a blaze of fire.What the . . . ?

Dru twisted around, reacting quickly as he thrust his ordinary-looking sword into the competitor’s heart. I watched, paralyzed, as Dru the Beast freed the hilt of the blade. The competitor collapsed again, and this time, as his head hit the ground, his helmet was knocked off, unveiling his identity. Terror choked out my breath.

The gladiator in the black cape was Malphas. The raven demigod.

His black hair was cut shorter to his head, but he looked exactly the same now as he did in the current world.

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