Page 29 of A Shadow in the Reaping
Threadbare, colorless clothes float on their thin and featureless bodies. They walk in bare feet. They're expressionless aside from the burden of pulling the weight of the carriage with their throats. They look straight ahead, focused on the fog before them and some destination that's probably worse than my nightmares can imagine. They seem like something between a ghost and a person. Something transparent, yet solid. Something spectral, yet real.
We watch the carriage pass into the fog as I slowly raise my note again in front of the Reaper's face.
WHAT THE FUCK.
"They are souls."
WHAT THE FUCK.
"Reaped souls."
WHAT THE FUCK.
"What did you think happened to reaped souls?"
I glare up at the Reaper with a look that saysobviously not that. I mean,come on, how was I supposed to guessthatwas what happened? I thought reaping was synonymous with death. Nonexistence. Nothingness. Apparently, I was wrong. Very wrong.
We watch the fog consume the coach, listening as the throughbrace leather straps squeak under the weight of the carriage. As the sound fades away into the distance, a black snout appears in the fog, followed by a set of amber eyes and tall, attentive ears. A black jackal stalks out of the mist, trotting down the middle of the road in the opposite direction of the coach. Its shoulder is nearly my height. It turns its head in our direction and sniffs the air, homing its gaze on me without breaking its stride. It disappears into the fog like a lethal shadow.
I hold my note up. This time I hit Ashen in the face with it.
WHAT THE FUCK.
"That's Urtur, our resident jackal."
I move to slap him again, but Ashen catches my journal and closes it before handing it back to me.
"Let's just assume you'll bewhat the fuckingfor the next while, shall we?"
I look up and try to give Ashen my fiercest glare, but there's too muchwhat the fuckstill rolling around in my head and it ends up more like a grimace. Ashen gives me a dark look, one that says he's forgotten somewhere along the course of his immortal life just how messed up this all is. Maybe he never knew in the first place. Maybe he was born and raised taking ghost carriages and playing with giant jackals. Who knows. I've never really thought about how Reapers are made. Regardless, I can tell he's looking at it through my eyes, and what he sees looks batshit crazy.
"Come on," he says. I feel the pressure of Ashen's hand on my back as we start to walk. The warmth seeps through my shirt and meets my cool skin. The wings of my vertebrae feel like tuning forks, humming beneath his touch.
We descend the stairs and I look behind us, twisting toward Ashen to glance up at the facade of the building over my shoulder.URBIGUhangs in gold letters near the roof, the face of a jackal in gold above the door. I turn back toward the road again, looking up at Ashen as I do. With his hand on my back and his body close to mine, he feels like the only reassuring thing about this place. It's in the details that are becoming familiar. The way his dark hair falls over his brow as he looks down at me. The rich brown hues of his eyes that seem to warm when his deeply buried feelings crawl close to the surface of his stoic facade.
I look back toward the path as we reach the bottom of the stairs. Though I try to keep my eyes on anything neutral, like the fog or the black surface of the road, my thoughts are consumed by the souls pulling the carriage. Once witches, or werewolves, or vampires like me. Vampires that once sang about the sea. Werewolves that once hunted in a pack, wild in the woods. Witches that cast spells to heal the wounded, like Ediye did for me. Maybe some were my enemies. Maybe some were friends. Maybe they committed crimes worthy of reaping, maybe they didn't. But I don't feel like this is what they deserve.
I try not to let my thoughts run further, to my sisters, or Vlad, or any others I've known and lost over the millennia to the rules of the Reapers. I try not to wonder what became of Aglaope. But I can still feel the press of her hands on my chest as she pushed me from the cliff, into the safety of the crystalline sea. The urgency in her eyes still claws at my mind, her final words at odds with the sweet timbre of her voice.FindBarbossa Sarno, from the ship. Get a spell. Take the weapon and get revenge.And then the feeling of falling, weightless, watching the blade of fire strike through her chest as I plunged into the abyss. She was already dead by the time she fell into the water after me. Knowing now that it wasn’t the end, it’s hard not to wonder where her soul might have gone or what they have her doing here.
So, I guess it's for the best that I never fixed my rabid trash panda makeup situation, because tears start to gather along the edges of my eyes as we walk. I clutch the notebook and pen to my chest to hide the effort it takes to steady my breath. I try to focus on the cadence of my steps along the road. I turn my head so Ashen won't see the futile struggle to keep a tear from falling.
We don't break stride as Ashen's hand sweeps up my back to rest on the crest of bone where my neck meets my shoulders. His palm warms my bare skin. I swallow a thick and painful knot in my throat as I open my journal to a fresh page.
I'm fine, I write, which is a total lie. I show it to Ashen without looking at him.
"I know," he says, but he doesn't withdraw his touch.
I'm not crying.
"Okay."
I hear the wheels and leather straps of another coach in the distance along a side road in the fog. My muscles tense and I wipe one of my eyes with the knuckles of my clenched fist.
This place is fucked. And I lied.
"I know." Ashen's index finger travels a slow and careful path across my skin as the rest of his hand lays steady pressure across my bones. It's like a weighted blanket, soothing and heavy on my flesh. "Ediye was right about you," he says, his voice low and quiet.
What, about me not belonging here? I think we figured that out in the first ten minutes.
