“Kitten?” Leric asked inside my mind. “Are you on your way?”
“I’m coming,” I murmured aloud and through the bond, instantly ducking under Elder Zeller’s arm as he blurred in front of me again, his mouth moving, but I heard none of it, only Leric’s voice and the constant buh-bum, buh-bum filling my ears. “Is it time?”
“It is.”
I knew I should feel fear, but all I felt was the…pull…inside me to get outside. I blinked when Elder Merrick was instantly in front of me, walking backward; navy blue eyes scanning my face, his face still expressionless, but his lips were moving. I stared at them as I moved out the door, he beginning to walk up the stairs backward while I quickened my pace, my heart rate accelerating the faster my Core thumped. I shook my head at Elder Merrick, feeling dizzy, in a daze, pointing at my ear, stating loudly, “I can’t hear you.” I was starting to sprint up the stairs. “I have to go. Have to go. Have to go. Have to go. Have to go.”
He was managing to keep up with me, jogging backward, eyes trained on my face, and I shook my head. “It’s time.” I nodded, reaching around him for the door handle, thrusting the door open to the main floor, rubbing at my throbbing Core. “Grimm Reaper. I’m a fucking Grimm Reaper. Time to reap. Reap the fuck away. Reap…reap, reap.” And in essence, that was exactly what I was as the Chosen. “I’m not scared right now.” I was running through the halls, Elder Merrick keeping pace beside me, his face stone solid, attention avid on me, but his lips were no longer moving. “Not now. I just gotta…go. Gotta go. Gotta…go.” I laughed on a breathless chuckle, crazed, my mind chaotic as screams of the Damned, the trapped, began to fill my mind as I threw open the back door. “Insane. I’m going to be fucking insane. Another spirit…lost.”
Leric was there on the lawn already, face tilted down toward the ground, white rolls dangling about his face, glowing, his hands rotating, stars flying from them, not hiding his work this time—going to the Temple as I had suspected he had been doing previously for this—as spirit Guardians stood behind him, come from the Temple, a massive black, iron door beginning to form into the ground from his work. “Hurry, kitten.”
“Coming.”
Elder Merrick stopped abruptly when hands grabbed him from behind, and I kept moving, chest heaving, my mid-sized daggers materializing in my hands, already glowing, not sure when that had begun. I raced to stand beside him, staring down at the door. It beat in time to my Core…the Damned, those stuck between living and death, the truly evil which didn’t want to give in when it was their time, inside wanting free. I swayed back and forth to the beat, and my eyes drifted up.
There was a crowd on the lawn, everyone, plus house staff having followed me outside. All staring between Leric, myself, the Guardians, and the door, which even they stared at warily. Elder Farrar was knocking anyone back who started to take a step forward with a blast of his magic, or just flat out shoving them. But somehow, Elder Merrick snuck around the edges. I watched as he crept into the scooped tree line, but lost sight of him as he melded into the shadows.
“Grab the handle,” Leric ordered quickly, the door solidifying further from his working star-fueled hands. “You need to do this the first time now that we’re connected.”
I nodded instantly, no arguments, only the need to get inside. Tucking a dagger in the back of my shorts, I squatted and lifted the enormous wrought iron handle. “Open it?”
“Almost…” Leric’s stars power flew across me like a breeze onto the door, not hitting me, only its destination. “Yes, open it, and prepare yourself.”
My muscles strained and I grunted, shouting with the effort to open it, seeing my own power filter down into the door, the black ugliness of it slowly spreading to white from where I touched it, until the door glowed like the moon, and it flung open, hitting the grass on the ground with a juddering quake. Furious, enraged screams lit the air. Goosebumps instantly covered my flesh as the sounds of the soulful wretchedness in the world pounded.
“Let’s go,” Leric ordered in my mind, no other sound could be heard but the chorus of the Damned beginning to etch their way to the surface, their evil permeating the air, past the darkness. All appeared as they were on their deathbeds in the real world. One armless, another’s throat slit, another trying to squeeze through sporting multiple gunshot wounds in her chest, while another appeared perfectly normal, if only sick, not just Mysticals, but Commoners too. I inhaled heavily as Leric brushed his thumb over my cheek while a dagger, much like my own, appeared in his other hand. “You can do this.” He stepped off into the blackness taking two with him, the Guardians glowing spears pointed toward the door for any Damned that dared to exit or that got past us.
I inhaled again, still feeling no fear, knowing I needed to do this. Compelled to do this. Another inhale, my head tilting back. I sucked oxygen for a moment, opening my eyes to the brilliant morning sky, and saw glowing navy blue eyes staring down at me from high on a tree limb. I blinked up at Elder Merrick as he watched, face completely expressionless, getting a bird’s eye view of what awaited me. And I jumped, grabbing the other two around their necks, taking them down with me…falling…falling…into the encompassing darkness, their screams all I could hear in my head as my powers flared, and I felt their lives rush through my mind as I began dematerializing them, snuffing out their light, their evil, sending their souls back to their dying bodies for their end, my own screams heard as my feet eventually landed next to Leric’s, only bones landing with me, the two gone, then even their bones disappearing back to whence they came.
I was standing on a barren field of red dust, a cloudy permanent day overhead, the sun forever shadowed, red hills on nothing in the distance here in the space of the Barren. And the Damned surrounded us in hordes, limitless masses from what I could see, their thoughts pushing and pressing down on me, their completely deprived thoughts and murderous agendas and merciless deeds. Still shaking from the two I had killed, a rapist and a drug dealer, their heartless acts still churning in my mind, I managed to focus when Leric’s lips pressed against my forehead, fear and anxiety and torment now plaguing my thoughts as the pull diminished since I was here, and he whispered in my mind, “If it becomes too much, just stay near me and I’ll take care of them until you can acclimatize yourself.”
I nodded hastily, rubbing my wet eyes with the back of a glowing hand. “Let’s get this done.”
We moved out from under the cave we had descended down from into the desolate land.
I fought.
I killed.
Each one I took out, their depraved memories flooded through my mind.
I accumulated multiple injuries, their forms here just as corporal as in the real world, only any powers were dead here to them—not us, but they fought. They fought to be freed. They fought to get back to their lives and continue their own brand of evil on the world.
And I fought.
“Who is that?” I asked, my tone dead, our fight done, pointing a bloody blade toward the mountains. Now I knew why the dust was red, or rather, brown. All of the dried blood from previous battles. “That person?”
There was a lone individual standing like a shadow on top of one of the mountains, not coming to fight, but his presence was still evil…malevolent…of the deadliest sort.
“He waits,” Leric answered, his tone also void, breathless as mine was. “When he decides to try to escape, we’ll end him just like the rest.” Per the rules, we only killed those trying to escape. The rest would eventually die with time, the Barren a middle ground for all evil souls between the living to death.