Page 94 of Death is My BFF

“Dru the Beast” caught my eye as he wrenched his helmet off too.

Shock and confusion slammed into me again, except this time with a force that almost brought me down to my knees. Suddenly, I was no longer detached from this memory. This was very, very personal.

Although his features were much older than in the last memory I saw of him as a boy, I recognized Dru the Beast instantly.

Those mismatched green eyes were a dead giveaway.

The truth strangled my breath. “Dru” was short for “Alexandru.”

Hewas Death. The gladiator with the chain markings on his ankles.

But he wasn’t just Death; no, the betrayal cutting deep into my heart was for another reason. I struggled to understand what my eyes were capturing, what my brain was processing as the truth. How Death’s identity in his past was all too familiar to me in the future.

Although Alexandru’s hair was blond and his eyes were green, the similarities in his features revealed the undeniable. Alexandru was David Star.Deathwas David Star.

Ace was showing me some sort of battle centuries ago between Malphas and Alexandru. Alexandru had killed Malphas in a rage, but why? What had Malphas done to him? Alexandru knelt over Malphas’s body, the words exchanged between them too soft for me to decipher. The raw, pained emotion on Alexandru’s face as he bent over Malphas’s body—it conveyed a deep, complicated grief. They must have known each other well.

I could feel this vision starting to dissolve away, but I held on.

I had to know what was next. I had to understand the meaning of this memory.

Blackness crawled from beneath Malphas’s body. The hair at the back of my nape lifted as I tracked the large shadows across the ground. They stretched along the sand, forming a dark apparition of a man as he rose to a looming height with thunderous laughter.

Ahrimad. From the willow tree memory. His face was shielded by the draping hood of his cloak, except for the crescent of an evil smirk across his pale mouth.

“Do you remember me, Alexandru?” Ahrimad asked. “Trapped in that mirror in the woods?”

I remembered him. I remembered the deal that was struck between this cruel god and young Alexandru under the willow tree.

If Alexandru could kill the person he hated the most, he would have all of Ahrimad’s power. Ahrimad had tried to trick Alexandru by throwing Malphas onto his sword, but what he hadn’t expected was fordeathto be what Alexandru hated the most. I was rendered speechless as Alexandru got a hold of Ahrimad’s sword and destroyed the death deity.

Of course, it was not without consequence. Soon after his sword pierced Ahrimad’s heart, pure agony ripped across Alexandru’s features. He rapidly shrugged out of the heavy equipment. His skin was riddled with lingering wounds, and directly over his heart lay a jagged line of thick scar tissue. He clutched at the area as black filament veins pulsed out from his heart, spreading across his chest.

The darkness spread up Alexandru’s neck to his hair, strands of golden blond fading to jet-black from the roots down. Staggering, he gripped his skull.

With my heart in my throat, I took a step forward. Everything in me screamed to run to Death, despite how pointless it would be.

Strange, how I gravitated toward him, even his past self. Seeing him suffer in this way broke my heart. It was too late, regardless. I saw the exact moment Alexandru lost the fight, as he crumpled to all fours.

He writhed against the earth screaming, bloodied tears pouring from his eyes. His lips and face purpled and I watched him die.

“You will have an endless hunger in your stomach. Nothing will satisfy it. You will have to feed on mortals. An eternal monster unlike any other. Damned to steal away the souls of the living. Damned . . . to live . . . Alexandru Cruscellio.”

Alexandru gripped the sand with his hands and held on. He released a bellowing roar as redness poured from his gums, his teeth expelled from his mouth one by one. Bone like blades sprouted out from the empty roots in his gums. His already vertical pupils were rapidly dilating now, features sharpening and tightening abnormally against his facial structure. He laughed, a lurid, insane cackle, as blood oozed down his chin. Black filaments bulged in his face as he transformed. Transformed into the cloaked monster I’d known all along—

I was ripped back into Ace’s room. The warlock seized in his chair.

“Ace!” I shrieked, lifting out of my seat. His hands held mine so tightly I thought my bones would break. “Oh, God, Ace!Ace!”

“Someone is overtaking my mind,” he wheezed.

The sensation of coldness licking up my spine made me arch forward, as a sharp sting of pain pooled over the skin of my stomach.

My memory snapped to an earlier moment when I’d experienced the same sensation. When I’d first met Death.

“Break the connection!” I shrieked. “It’s him, Death is here!”

“His Fallen soldiers are trying to break through my ward,” Ace gasped out, and his eyes rolled back in his head. “I don’t know how long I can hold them. You can leave this room now,ma chère! Go!

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