Page 4 of The Death God
“Bread?” Rufus croaked, cleared his throat, and squinted at Thanatos.
“Yeah.” He motioned at the oat and honey rolls he’d made. “There is oatmeal carrot breakfast cake in the oven, done in a few minutes.” He took another sip of his sweet coffee.
“Cake? For breakfast?” Rufus snatched a roll from the cooling rack.
“The recipe said breakfast cake.” Thanatos was quiet for a second or two. “Is it common to have cake for breakfast? There is honey and vanilla in it. We were never allowed anything honey and vanilla. We were only given sugar on dessert day.” They’d been given dessert once a week in the house of horrors, most often a snack pack of chocolate pudding.
Rufus shrugged. “I think it depends on where you’re from.”
“So the movies where French people are eating chocolate croissants for breakfast are true?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Thanatos shrugged. “We can have cake for breakfast. I might be French. Who knows.”
“Joshua Riggs? Doesn’t sound French to me.”
Thanatos scrunched his nose. His real name was Joshua Riggs. Or what was real? The name he’d been given when born was Joshua Riggs. Then his father had sold him to the warden, and he’d become Thanatos Sage. He’d been Thanatos Sage for over thirty years. Maybe he should switch back to Joshua Riggs. No, not Riggs. He didn’t want any connection to his father. Joshua Sage. It sounded normal enough.
The timer buzzed on the tablet, and Thanatos jumped. He reached for a dishtowel, folded it, and used it to grab the hot baking pan out of the oven. It smelled good. He’d never had carrot cake, but he’d watched several instruction videos about how to make one. This one didn’t have the frosting many had, and he figured it was because it was for breakfast and should be a little healthier.
“Smells good.” Rufus took another swallow of coffee and reached for a second bread roll.
“Let it cool a little before you cut it.”
Minerva walked into the kitchen. “Oh, fuck, Thanatos. I love you.”
Prophecy followed closely behind her, and he gave Thanatos a poisonous glare. Thanatos checked his death, both because it annoyed Prophecy and because he wished it would show him Prophecy succumbing to an aneurysm in the next five seconds.
Nope, he was still going to die as an old man in his bed. Bastard.
Few got to go out peacefully, and it annoyed him Prophecy would be one of them. He wondered how fast it could change. If he grabbed a knife and stabbed him, would the vision change while he was stabbing or was it already decided Prophecy would live through whatever life threw at him? It could be worth a try. In the name of testing his skill, of course.
He didn’t think Rufus would stop him. Minerva would do her best, though. And no one wanted to clean blood off the floor first thing in the morning.
Jaki’s death had changed the moment he’d met Rufus. Thanatos didn’t know if it was the exact moment he’d met him. He didn’t check Jaki’s death often. Since he could use his skill several times a day, he had checked the people around him in the house of horrors. He’d tried to be discreet about it. If the warden had realized Thanatos could perform more than once a day, he’d be in a never-ending queue of private sessions. He’d taken a lot of beatings while claiming he couldn’t do more, saying he was out of energy, that it took too much of him to check another death. The toll it took wasn’t in the task itself, it was what he saw.
So much death.
He shook his head to try to rid it of his thoughts.
“Why are you shaking your head?” Prophecy’s growl made him jump. “What did you see?”
“Nothing.” He’d never told Prophecy how he’d die. He was rude and believed he was better than everyone else simply because he could remember his prophecies and had better control over them than most other seers had. It did him good to know Thanatos knew something he didn’t. Took him down a peg or two. “I’m going to my room.”
He left the kitchen, but he didn’t go to his room. He went into the basement to Zidane. He’d never met him while he was conscious, but the word around the castle was he was an ass. Rufus had told him it was okay to talk to him. Zidane heard them, and Rufus said visiting him would help him to not feel so abandoned.
“Morning, fairy-boy.” Thanatos snorted. He had no idea how old Zidane was, but boy was most likely all kinds of wrong. It was Jaki who called him fairy-boy, and it had stuck with Thanatos. He patted Zidane’s shoulders. “Do you think if I stab Prophecy his fate will change?”
He checked Zidane’s death. He had several times before. “You’ll still die by someone beheading you in a snowy place.” He sighed. “Pretty gruesome with all the blood on the white snow.” He tried to see more. He never tried to focus on many details when in the house of horrors, but Jaki could center his attention on specific things in the surroundings. He checked the weather around an event in someone’s life, but he could see details around the situation. Not the most useful skill, but you didn’t get to pick. If there had been a choice, Thanatos never would’ve picked death.
Thanatos checked again. “There is someone who has claws for fingers. Hairy hands. Maybe it’s the yeti.”
He blew out a breath, exhausted. “I wish we could find the others. I feel guilty as fuck for hanging around in a freaking castle baking cakes while they’re locked up in another house of horrors. Unless they’re dead of course. Maybe they killed them all when the warden died. Jaki should’ve aimed for his leg instead of his head. Then we could’ve used him. I bet Rufus and Gregory could’ve scared him enough to tell us where the hidden facilities are.”
He sank down with his back against the wall. It was cool down here, and he shuddered as he closed his eyes.
Chapter 3
