My heartbeat picks up in pace, same as it had that night.
This was before the human world knew about the existence of supernatural creatures, before I’d known there were such things as vampires and werewolves and witches and reapers.
Back when life made sense.
Being here brings it all back. The pack of vampires, surrounding us. The unholy red orbs that were their eyes. The hissing sound that seemed to be their own language with which to coordinate their attack.
Their hunt.
Hearing my sister scream as they bit viciously into her neck, as they ripped 13-year-old Rosie from her grasp and tore into her as well. The hunter that came in time to save me, but not them.
The demon that followed, with a deal; I could save one of them, either my sister or her child…
And all I had to do was trade my immortal soul.
I wrap an arm around my stomach, wondering if it is possible in this half-existence to throw up. I gag but nothing comes up. This makes sense. There is nothing inside me to come up.
A look of concern comes over Samael’s face, my reaction to the location clearly not one he’d been expecting. Before I can think further, I am in his arms again, and we are rocketing up into the air.
I bury my face in his stupid chest. I hear no beating there.
“My apologies,” he mumbles into my hair, his deep voice little more than a whisper under the roaring of the wind. “It was not my intent to upset you.”
Men, I think to myself as I swallow down nausea. Even the immortal ones are idiots.
This time when we touch down, he does not set me upon my feet, but instead, continues to cradle me. My pride is telling me to demand that he put me down. Some other part of me is telling my pride to shut the fuck up.
I don’t tell him to put me down, though I think I hate him even more now than I did before. We pass beneath pines as tall as skyscrapers, and I take a breath of air that is crisp and green. It is faint, but I can actually smell the air here—wherever this is.
Samael continues to carry me, and I continue not protesting.
“The veil is thinner here,” he explains, mouth close to my ear to be heard over the roar of the wind and the beating of his massive wings.
I can only sigh in response. It is magnificent, this thin-veil air.
We climb higher and higher up the forested mountain side until we reach a tree that stretches so high I can scarcely make out its uppermost branches. It hangs partially out over the edge of a cliff face, and it is to the edge of this cliff that Samael takes me.
He lands with an impact that rattles the earth. Then he sets me down on my bottom with my feet dangling over the side of the mountain, thousands of feet above sea level. As Samael takes the seat beside me, he dangles his muscled legs over the drop as well.
I check my hourglass. Our hour together is almost up. I am not sure whether to be relieved or not. What could he say or do in twenty minutes that could make any difference? Nothing was going to stop me from saving my Rosie. Nothing was going to change my mind.
I stare out at the sea of green beneath us, and I wait for the reaper to speak.
Eventually, he does.
“Do you know what happens to a reaper’s soul when it is shredded?” he asks.
I bite my lip and draw a slow breath. “I guess I just thought it disappears, ceases to exist or something.”
“Some truths hold across the realms and through the planes, and one of those truths is that energy is never lost, created, nor destroyed.”
“The laws of physics always apply?” I ask. “Even to reapers. Is that what you’re saying?”
Samael nods. “Otherwise they would not be the laws of physics, the laws of the universe. But the point is, no, shredding does not mean the soul ceases to exist. Not really…” He chuckles lowly, without humor. “Cessation would be a mercy.”
Now I see where this is going.
“There is a void, Cecilia,” he whispers. “So vast and so dark that not even light can escape it. And from this void comes all things that were, are, and ever will be. It’s here your energy will return to, here where your soul will be dismantled into its most basic elements, stored, and repurposed into something not at all resembling what it once was. It will be millennia before it emerges from the void again. And then its evolution must begin anew.”
He is trying to scare me.
He is doing a good job.
“And for what?” he asks. “Temporary gratification. Mortals think about temporary gratification. Humans think about it. You are a reaper now, and reapers think about the Balance, first and foremost.”
I make a noise in my throat. “Reapers don’t think at all,” I counter. “We don’t think. We don’t feel. We don’t anything. This void you speak of doesn’t sound like that much of a leap from what I already am.”
Anger mingles now with my fear. I continue, “And as for temporary gratification, I do not look at saving the lives of my niece and her child ‘temporary gratification.’ I call it love. But for all your wisdom, you clearly know nothing about that.”
I see anger flare over his striking features as well as he turns toward me, so close that I could lean in and brush his lips with my own…
Or punch him in his stupid face.
“You’re wrong about the void,” he says. “It is worse than being a reaper. It is worse than anything, because it truly is nothingness. You think you know emptiness, young one, but you do not. You haven’t a clue.”
“I am not a damn child,” I snap. “And if I am,
