Ember X (Death Collectors)

chapter 19

I open my eyes to the shimmering pieces of stars and a pale crescent moon. I attempt to roll onto my stomach, but a rope detains each of my wrists to a tree and my legs are tied to each other. Out of the corner of my eyes, a fire blazes and feathers and rose petals halo around my head. The wings are still secured to my back, but are bent to conform to the pressure of my body.

“Hello,” I call out. “Is anyone here?”

A woman with a sharp pointy nose and blonde hair appears in my line of vision. “Hello, Ember. It’s so nice of you to join us.”

My eyes narrow at her. “Detective Crammer.”

“Feel like you’re going crazy yet?” The firelight glows in her blue eyes and shadows the area underneath her defined cheekbones, so she looks almost skeletal. “Like you don’t know what’s real?”

“So you’re part of the Anamotti,” I say, winding the rope around my wrist to gain more control. “Or are you a Grim Reaper?”

Her thin lips nearly vanish as she smiles and retrieves a small, silver-handled knife from the pocket of her jacket. She puts the tip of it to my forehead, piercing it into my skin and a warm river of blood cascades down my forehead and eyes. “The Anamotti and the Reapers are one and the same. The Anamotti is just what we go by in the human world to help us stay undetected.” She gestures around her and a group of people step out of the trees. “All of us are Reapers here. Even you.” She smirks. “Partly anyway.”

All of them wear black cloaks, but the hoods are off, showing me their human form. Most of them are unfamiliar, but I recognize Garrick, who mockingly waves at me and winks.

And the sight of a pink-haired girl bruises my heart. “Raven.”

She dreamily grins at me and her sapphire eyes are dazed, like she’s drunk. “I’m so sorry, Em. I didn’t mean to do it. I just couldn’t seem to help myself.”

Madness pricks at my brain as I tug on the ropes until my wrists rupture open and blood pours out all over my hands, the rope, and the dirt.

“Oh, relax for Christ’s sake.” Detective Crammer draws the knife down my cheek and splits open my face. “She’s under the spell of the Reaper because, unlike you, she’s human and can be possessed by him.”

Raven steps forward from the crowd, but Beth thrusts out her hand, shoving her back. “Stay back, you little trollop. You are still to obey my orders.”

Raven blinks and descends back toward the crowd. “I’m so sorry.”

“Raven,” I beg, trying to make eye contact with her. “Don’t listen to her. Run away! Now!”

“It’s pointless to try to get through to her.” Detective Crammer says, lowering her arm. “The power of the Reaper is more powerful than anything, which you’ll soon learn after we get rid of you.”

I raise my chin up and look her in the eye. “You know I can’t die, right? So whatever you have planned for me won’t work.”

She pats the handle of the knife against her palm as she circles around me. “Oh yes, the beauty of being able to suck the life away from the living. It makes it harder to get rid of you, but not impossible.” She cackles, throwing her head back and some of the other Reapers join in. “It also makes you more prone to insanity and more likely to surrender to the Reaper blood, just like your father did.”

“What do you know about my father?!” Craning my arms, I try to get the trees to break with my strength.

“You don’t have super strength.” She rolls her eyes and crouches down in my face. “In fact, you’re fairly close to an ordinary girl, only you’re connected with every aspect of death. It’s not really a gift, so much as a curse. In fact, if I were you, I’d let me put you out of your misery. All you would have to do is surrender to the Reaper and he would take away the pain of death.”

I could stop fighting; erase the pain, taking away death, rupturing the chains that have sentenced me to a life of solitude? All that silence I feel with Asher and Cameron could exist all the time? It’s enticing, yet it’s not, because it would still be death, only in a more powerful form.

“No, I won’t do it,” I say in an even voice.

“Fine, then. I guess, for the moment, you’ll let your Angel blood make your decisions. But I warn you, you’ll give in.” She snaps her fingers and Garrick shoves Raven forward. She trips over her bare feet and falls to her knees at the side of me. Her wings are broken, her dress is torn and stained with dirt, and there’s no life in her eyes. “If you are not willing to surrender, I’ll force you to.” Detective Crammer walks up behind Raven and aims the knife at her throat. She gently cuts a thin layer of skin away and blood trickles out, running down the front of Raven’s dress.

Raven winces, but doesn’t cry out.

“Wait,” I beg. “Don’t hurt her.”

“There’s only one way out of this.” She makes another slim puncture on Raven’s neck.

Death or life. Death or life. What’s the difference? “I’ll do whatever you want me to. Just let her go.”

She carves another small incision along Raven’s neck and the other Reapers cackle, pulling their hoods over their heads and shielding their faces.

“Oh, I don’t want anything from you,” she says. “I’m just going to torture her and then you, until you lose your mind and give into your Reaper blood.”

I thrash my body and jerk on the ropes as hard as I can. “Leave her alone!” I close my palms and attempt to slide my hands through the rope. The rough material claws at my skin, rubbing it raw, but I refuse to give up—give in.

Detective Crammer snickers as she hacks off a small lock of Raven’s pink hair with the knife. “Do you know how fun it was to torture you? Kill you time and time again. Make you think you were losing your mind. You have a bendable mind and so do the people closest to you. Most of them are insane—do you know that? And do you want to know why?”

“Because of the pain of my existence,” I say.

“No, but it’s close,” she replies, wiping the blade of the knife on the front of her cloak. “Insanity is a very contagious thing; it’s easy to get caught up in it. Those who are close to a Grim Angel start experiencing what they go through and it wears them down, driving them insane themselves. Plus, they are susceptible to the Reaper’s torture.”

Raven gags on her own blood as she clutches at her throat. “Ember, help me.”

Detective Crammer grabs a handful of Raven’s hair and moves the knife to Raven’s hairline, like she’s going to scalp her. My whole body trembles as the Reapers close in around me and their eyes begin to glow.

“Just give in, Ember” the detective says, dipping the knife down beneath Raven’s scalp. “And everything—all of it will be gone.”

I stare up at the night sky, thinking about my life. Would everything be better if I was gone? If I just gave up? Died? Maybe. Maybe I would stop taking life from things. Maybe the world would be a better place without my knowledge of death.

I watch as a black figure swoops down from the sky and I figure it’s more Reapers coming to take me away. But black feathers fall from Heaven and dust the air with a peaceful feeling.

The creature moves inhumanly fast, just a blur as it clips the ropes on my wrists with its hand and turns me loose. Then it rounds back, swipes up Detective Crammer by the shoulders, and carries her into the sky. Her painful scream echoes and Reapers push up from the ground, springing to the air, and fly into the sky.

“Passionate when in battle,” I mutter and quickly sit up and untie my legs. Then I rush over to Raven, lying face down in the dirt, and gently roll her onto her back. Her eyes are shut and the blood flows out from the open wounds on her neck. “Rav, can you hear me?”

She sucks in a breath and her eyes shoot open. “Oh my God, I think I…”

Tucking my arm underneath hers, I aid her to her feet. “Come on, we have to go before they come back for us.”

“Too late,” Garrick says, landing just in front of us. His voice is human, but below the hood is a skeletal figure; sharp cheek bones, empty eyes, a soulless heart. “Ember, there’s no use trying. We always win this every time. You wanna know why?”

Raven leans her weight on me, her eyes shutting as I inch us back toward the forest. “Because you mess with the Grim Angel’s head until they crack. You don’t give up.”

He matches my steps toward the forest, his cape like a train on the ground behind him. “Because evil is the one that plays dirty—we are the ones who break the rules.” His arms lift to the side of him and he’s holding the knife. “Therefore, evil always triumphs.”

“Go into the trees,” I whisper in Raven’s ear, nudging her forward. “Now.”

She blinks at me, half there, half gone. “I’m not leaving you… They want to kill you.”

“No, they want to make me one of them,” I say. “They can’t kill me.”

Reluctantly, she slips out from the support of my arm and hobbles into the shadows of the trees, free from the Reaper’s power.

Emptiness chokes up my throat as I march for Garrick with my hands out to the side. “Go ahead, kill me.”

He grins and the fire crackles wildly behind him. “You know I can’t do that. But I can hurt you.” Without zero hesitation from either one of us, he stabs the knife into my throat, severing my skin and my veins. Blood gurgles out and I clamp my hand over the wound as the soothing murmur of the trees and the flowers sprouting from the dirt instantly connect with me and stitches up my skin.

Garrick lets out a slow whistle as he wipes the blood of the blade with his cloak. “That was faster than it should be… No, you couldn’t be… could you…”

While he’s ranting to himself, I take the opportunity to ram my knee into his gut, and then I whirl around and slam my elbow into his face. The contact of bone to bone deadens my elbow, so, using my other fist, I punch him in the nose. A bar fight tactic and it works. Garrick goes down like a sack of potatoes.

Whirling away from him, I race for the forest, but he scurries forward on his belly and his fingers wrap around my ankle, jerking me down on my face. I smash the heel of my boot into his face, but he just laughs.

“You can’t kill death eternally.” His voice is sharp and blood streams down his face. “It was highly entertaining though, watching you try to sift through my thousands of deaths.” I kick him again, but he only laughs harder. “You know, you have a lot more power than you think, you just have no idea how to use it.”

I claw at the ground as his hands move up my leg like a tight rope, while a raven lands in front of me. Then he stabs the knife in my calf and grabs me by the hair, rising to his feet, and pulling me up with him. Pain shoots up my leg as blood gushes down it.

“Help me, please,” I whisper to the bird. “Please…”

It hops from side to side, like it is thinking.

“Please, bird. I have a feeling you can hear me,” I whisper, limping to keep my balance.

I’m about to give up when Garrick’s hands suddenly leave me and the sound of flapping wings sends the raven diving for the woods. Without hesitation, I sprint into the dark forest.

“Raven,” I hiss, searching behind trees and near bushes as I hike deeper into the forest. The stars flicker between the cracks of the branches over my head and I can hear shouts and screams in the distance.

“Raven,” I dare call out as twigs crunch beneath my shoes. “Where are you? It’s me, it’s Ember.”

I keep walking, knowing where I’m going, but worried Raven doesn’t. “Please answer me. I promise no one’s going to hurt you anymore.”

By the time I step into the cemetery, I’m worried she might be lost in the trees. I need a phone and some help so I head quickly for the iron-rod gates. As usual, the cemetery is quiet with death. The trees cast shadows all over the ground and the fence blocks out most of the street lights. My wings are ripped and my skin is soaked with blood and I have a limp to my walk.

I weave through the headstones, careful not to step on them and as the wind picks up, the hinges of the gate squeak.

I’m about to the gate when I hear a whisper and turn in a quick circle, skimming the trees. “Hello… Raven, is that you?”

When someone steps out from behind a tree at the back of the cemetery, a wall crumples inside my body. Dressed in black, he blends with the night, but his hair is as white as a ghost. His long legs stretch out in front of him as he strides across the grass toward me.

“Well, if it isn’t my number one fan,” Cameron says and my insides burst with chills.

Against my own power, I halt next to the statue of the Grim Reaper, like he controls my body now, not me. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

There’s a swoosh and suddenly he’s standing right in front of me, his eyes dark as coals, his face hauntingly poetic. “Don’t pretend you don’t like me, Ember.” A grin pulls at his lips. “You may pretend like you’re not interested in me, but I know you are.”

I shut my eyes, my muscles constricting as I attempt to lift my foot off the grass— trying to get it to move me toward the gate again. “What are you doing to me?”

His eyes sear like cinders, on the edge of life, but not quite dead as he circles me with his hands behind his back. “You are so beautiful. So grown up. So full of life, yet always so full of death.”

My legs quiver with the desire to run. “What are you?”

“Perhaps you should be asking me what you are.” His long finger traces my cheekbone and a dark hunger flares in his eyes, dying to feed. “You really are amazing, yet you’ve been blinded by the fear of death and have never noticed all the possibilities in front of you. If you’d just accept it—”

“I won’t.” I interrupt in a sharp, searing tone. “I’m not giving in to Death.”

“You shouldn’t decide your answer until you understand everything.” He takes my hand and helplessly I follow him as he guides me to the tree.

He nestles us down next to the trunk, wraps his arms around me, and leans me back against his chest. He sweeps my hair aside and puts his lips against my ear. “Never having to fear or experience death. Imagine writing about immortality, instead of death like everyone else. You could be the first.”

“Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson already did,” I smart off. “And so did Spill Canvas.”

“Spill Canvas?” He sounds intrigued.

“It’s a band, you a*shole.” I force out a scream, but it cuts off before it reaches my lips. How could I not see this coming? I’m enraged with myself. Furious. “Cameron, let me go. Please. If you’re a Reaper, I thought you couldn’t possess me.”

“I’m not supposed to… and I can’t possess your mind completely—trust me, I’ve tried. But I can possess your body.” He kisses the tip of my ear, grazing it with his teeth, and then he moves his lips down my neck, before pulling away.

“You were such a strange child. Usually, when they sent me to mess with a child’s head, it was the most droning time of my existence,” he says. “But you were determined not to get rid of me. I didn’t even faze you… it kind of took the fun out of it and was extremely annoying.”

“No… there’s no way…” It clicks in my head what he’s saying.

“And then I had to return years later, due to orders… but you were all grown up and far less annoying and I just couldn’t do what the Reapers wanted me to.” He pauses, considering something. “You know I broke the rules for you. I tried to warn you about your dad, even though I wasn’t supposed to. And then you ran away with me... Admit it—that was probably the most fun you’ve had in your life. You and me, hiding in the woods, while I listened to you ramble to yourself, trying to pretend I wasn’t there.”

“I can’t believe it… you’re that Grim Reaper. The one who’s tormented me for most of my God damn life,” I breathe, enraged. All that time I spent with him in the woods after my dad vanished... that was him?

“But you never did whole-heartedly tell me to go away, so therefore, I didn’t have to.” He pauses, grazing his hand down my thigh. “I tried to warn you about your dad so you could help him. Do you know that? Do you know how much I care for you?”

“You tried to force me to kill my mom,” I seethe. “That’s not caring about someone… And you don’t even know me.”

“I only did that to your mom to help you,” he whispers mellifluously in my ear. “I just want you to quit fighting who you really are. If you’d just give in to the insanity, instead of fighting it, life would be so much easier. And we could be together.”

“I almost killed her,” I fume as he tips me back and peers down with a smile. “I stole my mom’s life to save my own.”

“Don’t be ashamed of it.” He sketches his finger down my cheekbone. “It’s in your blood and your dad did it many times. Trust me.”

“Do you know where my dad is?” I snap. “The detective—or the Reaper—whoever the hell she is, said he gave in to insanity. Does that mean he’s dead? Or is he one of you? I need to know. Please, Cameron. Please tell me.”

Ignoring me, he angles my head back onto his lap and looks into my eyes. “We’re perfect for each other. Imagine it, alive in death, writing beautiful words together… And I promise I’ll never hurt you,” he whispers, slowly moving out from me and then laying me on my back. “I just want to help you.”

“No one can help me,” I say as my head touches the grass. “Especially…”

He conceals his body over mine and my words evaporate into the night. I no longer know what I want—what I feel—as his hand travels up my shoulders, up the side of my neck, and resides on my cheek, while his other hand explores the bare skin on my hip. “I could help you, if you let me. I could make all that sadness go away.” He licks his lip as he presses his body against mine, converging himself to every part of me. “Let me take it all away forever.”

My arms fall helplessly to my sides. “No.”

“Ember,” he coaxes, sliding his fingers through my hair, before cupping my cheek. “Let me in.”

My knees fall apart, allowing his body closer, and a moan escapes from my lips, but not under the control of my own. “Cameron… don’t...”

Hooking a finger underneath my chin, he tips my face up so I have to look him in the eyes. “What if I told you I could take away every ounce of pain you have and would ever feel? Think about it. You could have the perfect life.”

He leans in and I shut my eyes as he kisses my neck and my body arches into him. “That’s not possible,” I say. “Death is pain. And death exists everywhere. Besides, nothing is perfect...”

“It is possible, all you have to do is say yes.” Keeping his body sealed to mine, he grabs my arms and pins them above my head, rendering me helpless. When he looks me in the eyes again, something’s different. I feel weightless, free, like I can finally breathe. “Give me permission.” His lips touch my cheek, then the corner of my mouth as his free hand slips down the front of my shirt and his knee slides up between my legs. “Please, give me permission.”

My eyes shut and my lips part open as I feel my willpower crumble to dust. I realize it might be easier to give in. “You have permission to do what you—”

“Ember, don’t.” Asher’s voice jerks me back to earth—to life—and my eyelids shoot open. “Don’t promise him anything.”

I can’t see him, but the sound of his voice brings me comfort from the madness.

A grin spans Cameron’s face. “Asher, my dear friend, you’re just in time for the feast.”

My eyes widen. “You guys know each other?”

“Get away from her,” Asher demands and I can hear his footsteps nearing. “You have no right to be touching her like that.”

“And neither do you.” Cameron looks like he’s enjoying himself, smoking as he watches my excited reaction to the sound of Asher’s voice.

I need to see him—need to know he really exists. I force my gaze sideways and spot Asher storming across the cemetery ground with his hands clenched into fists. His face is bruised, his knuckles are scraped raw, and the scar beneath his eyebrow ring is more defined and dominant.

“What’s… what’s.” My lips hitch shut.

“Get off of her.” He’s so close, but still so far away. “Or I swear to God I’ll—”

Bending his knees, Cameron leaps off me, leaving me paralyzed on the ground. He turns his back on me and marches across the cemetery lawn, meeting Asher in the middle of the tombstones. “Or you’ll what?”

“You’ve broken rules,” Asher growls, balling his fists. “A lot of them.”

Wrath thunders in both their eyes as they charge for each other, their boots scrapping at the dirt. The sky rumbles and the ground quakes as they reach one another. Like mist rising from a lake, a black cloak forms around Cameron and swallows him up as he swishes it around his body. Asher lets out a derailing screech, springing on his toes, pushing into the air as wings trimmed with black feathers snap out from his back, shredding his shirt into pieces. They slam into one another and the collision of their bodies deafens the night.

Suddenly, my legs and arms return to my control and I jump to my feet as a tornado of feathers and mist swarm the cemetery. Cameron and Asher move like lightning, moving so swiftly I can barely detect them.

An Angel and a Grim Reaper? An Angel and a Grim Reaper?

“Ember!” Raven’s voice draws me back to my other problem.

She’s back in the shadows of the cemetery, curled up next to the Angel statue, clutching her head. I run across the grass toward her, waving for her to run the other way. “Raven, we have to get out of here—” I fall face-first into an open grave and land hard. Cold skin touches mine and my insides quiver as I push up and blink down at Mackenzie Baker. Her blonde hair is covered in dirt and red lines track her neck and wrists. It hits me like a shove off a cliff as my mind races back to Cameron’s house, the bands on her neck and wrists.

“Oh my God,” I breathe. “You were dead the whole time… I can see the dead.”

Dirt sprinkles down on me and I flip over to my back. Raven leans over the shallow hole, with blood in her hair, blankness in her eyes, and a handful of dirt in her hand.

“I love you, Em, I really do,” she says, sprinkling more dirt down on me. “But you can’t save me anymore. I have to give in.”

Shielding my eyes, I struggle to my feet and press my fingertips into the dirt.

“Please don’t make this harder than it already is, Em.” Raven disappears for a moment and when she returns, she has a shovel in her hand. “If you would have just given up back at the fire, I wouldn’t have to do this to you. You could have saved me from this burden.” She scoops up another shovel full of dirt and drops it down on my head. “But now you’re going to be buried alive, and remain there until you break.”

“Raven.” I hurdle onto the side of the grave, burrowing my boots into the moist dirt. “Think about what you’re doing for just a second. You don’t want to do this.”

She plucks out a twig from her hair and drops it down into the hole, watching it fall all the way to the bottom. “Of course I don’t. What I want is a happy life, with a mother who isn’t crazy and a friend who can be near people. What I want is to go back in time and never leave that party with Laden, so I could erase what it felt like when he had me pinned down to the ground… erase the feeling of his filthy hands on me…” she trails off, staring up at the sky.

Extending my arm as far as it will go, I reach for the edge of the hole, but my feet slip out from under me and I collapse back onto Mackenzie’s body. Forcing myself not to lose it, I push off of her and stand back against the wall. I clumsily claw my way upward and finally, I heave myself over the lip and roll onto my back on the grass.

Raven bounds on top of me, kneeing me in the gut, and she pins my arms down to the side. I bring up my knees and vault her off by shoving my feet into her stomach. She slams against the Angel statue, her head hitting the stone hard, and she lets out a groan. “What’s happening to me?”

“Nothing. Just stay here, okay?” I race through the headstones toward the Reaper and the Angel of Death still battling each other in the middle of the grass.

Cameron has Asher restrained on the grass, kneeling on him, and his fingers are wrapped around his throat. “Tell me, what’s it been like being alone all this time? Apparently, pretty bad for you to be breaking the rules.” He presses his fingers tighter around Asher, who slides his hands up Cameron’s arms, desperate to escape.

There are feathers all over the grass and pieces of black fabric, along with broken head stones and tipped over trees. Pain sets in at what these two can do and how much I need to stop it.

I stop short of them, summon a deep breath, and squeeze my eyes shut. “I want you to go away, Cameron.” It hurts to say it, like a vine of thorns entwining in my veins.

Silence settles around me and I crack open my eyelids. Cameron is still on top of Asher, but his hand is hanging lifelessly at his side. “Don’t say things you don’t mean, Ember Rose,” he advises. “Think about the last time you wished me away.”

“I want you gone,” I demand in a steady voice, taking a step toward. “I don’t want death haunting me anymore.”

“You can’t get rid of death, princess,” he says sorrowfully, letting go of Asher completely. “Death is endless.”

It frightens me how much his words match mine. “Then I guess I will outrun it for as long as I can.”

Cameron climbs off Asher and dusts the dirt and grass off his hands, before lowering the hood of his cloak, so I’m looking directly at him, not the Reaper. “You know I only did it to bring you to me. I only push so you’ll give in to me, not to the others.”

My heart thumps in my chest as he stops in front of me and angles my chin up to look him in the eye. His blonde hair is pale in the moonlight and sadness haunts his eyes, like the first time I saw him.

“Why were you really here that night?” I ask, with a shiver. “When I saw you digging up the grave?”

His fingers twitch at his side, longing to touch me. “I already told you, looking for a family jewel.” He touches the tip of his finger to the hollow of my neck. “Turns out you had it.”

“My grandma’s necklace…” I trail off, confused. “Why do you want it?”

He smiles miserably. “And I’m sorry I took it, but I had to. Besides, it wasn’t yours to have in the first place. It belongs to my family.”

“Then why did my grandma have it?”

“Because she stole it from us.”

My eyes broaden. “Cameron, tell me—”

He shushes me by putting his finger across my lips. “I don’t want to talk about that right now. I want to talk about you and me.”

“There is no you and...” My eyes stray to Asher, lying in the grass, encompassed by black feathers. “Did you kill him?”

“He can’t die, princess.” Cameron’s mouth sinks to a sulking frown. “Unfortunately.”

“Why did you kill Mackenzie? And Laden. And I’m guessing Farrah is probably on the list, too.” My legs beg me to run, but my desire to know the truth overpowers them.

“I didn’t kill Laden. Asher did,” he says. “And Mackenzie and Farrah died from the same human’s hand, not mine. And if you listened closely to her story, you probably could figure out the culprit.”

“Her dad?”

He shrugs. “That’s for you to figure out, if you want to. I just collect the souls. And I’ll admit, I didn’t try to stop Mackenzie’s death. I wanted her to suffer for all the times she was rude to you.”

His misconstrued logic is a puzzle to me. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know you don’t understand.” He cups my cheek, releasing both ecstasy and sheer terror through me. “But that day when I saw you in the cemetery, I knew I had to have you and that I’d hurt anyone that ever caused you pain.”

“Your little friends,” I point over my shoulder at the forest, “hurt me. Do you know about that?”

“I can’t help that without breaking more rules. But it can all be over if you want it to be. All you have to do is agree to be with me—want to be with me. And then I’m allowed to help you.”

“And what? Become a Grim Reaper and start collecting souls and killing people?”

“There’s more to it than that,” he says, his eyes smoldering. “More to you than what you realize and you’re in for a rough and painful life until you realize that. But it can all be over if you’ll just give in to your Reaper blood.”

I compress my hands into fists, and will myself to deny his request, even though a small part of me wants it. “I’m telling you to leave, just like I did when I was four.”

His face falls and his eyes flash with anger. Lightning zaps across the sky, but I refuse to look away. “Is that what you really want, Ember?”

I swallow the refusal building in my throat and make myself want it. “That’s what I want.”

He bites down on his lip so hard blood drips down his chin, and then he cups the back of my head and pulls me in for a rough, almost violent kiss as he shoves me against his body. I taste the blood on his lips, the foul darkness of death, but a flicker of something substantial is hidden deep inside him, like a seed in the center of an apple.

He releases me, breathing fervently, running his fingers down my hip and across my stomach, before pulling away. “I’ll pay for that one forever.” He backs toward the gates, his eyes fastened on me. “They’ll come for you—the rest of the Reapers. They won’t stop until they get you to crack.”

“Then I’ll tell them to go away, too,” I tell him.

“That won’t work on them, sweetheart,” he says gravely as he slinks farther into the shadows. “The Anamotti aren’t quite as easy-going as me.” With a swish of his cloak, he alters into a smaller figure, sprouting wings and shrinking into a raven. He circles around my head, before disappearing into the night sky.

My body aches to fly away with him, be free, shed my skin, become one with the night, but I know I can’t.

Asher makes a grunting noise and I rush for him, kneeling down on the ground beside him. “Are you okay?” I ask, not daring to touch him.

His shirt is torn from his cuts and bruises cover his beautiful pale chest. His black hair is disheveled, his lip is split open, and his striking wings are crooked, the feathers scarce.

“I’m fine,” he assures me with a weak smile as he sits up.

“Does it… does it hurt?”

His eyes unite with mine, zealous and hungry. “Nothing could hurt at this moment. You just sent him away.”

“I’ve sent him away before.” I brush stray feathers from his arms and then rest my hand in the curve of his shoulder, feeling his warmth. “But he came back.”

“I know.” His hand finds my hip and he pulls me onto his lap. “And he’ll find a way to keep coming back until I completely surrender to him—they all will.”

“What did you do to them?” I ask, gripping at his bare shoulders. “The other Reapers—the Anamotti. Detective Crammer or whoever she is?”

“She’s a Reaper—all the Anamotti are. They're the Reapers who have banded together to eliminate the Grim Angels, even though it’s forbidden to touch them. And I took care of them, for the moment, but they’ll be back.”

I note his hands on my hips, wondering if he’s allowed to touch me. “You mean, until they make me lose my sanity.”

He nods, his eyes never parting from mine. “That’s the point of all this, yes. We are all cursed to this world until you do.”

My knees sink to the ground. “Cursed?”

“Our curse to this world,” he explains. “It’s our punishment for our part in the Battle of Death. The Angels of Death and the Grim Reapers are bound to the Earth by the existence of the Grim Angel. And it’s only the Grim Angel that can free one of us back to our homes.”

“But aren’t the Grim Angels supposed to create balance, so no one can steal souls?”

“They are, but they will break the balance. The Reapers have been working to weed out every Grim Angel that exists, until there is only one left standing. And that one is the one that will have to pass the test. If they can live their life enduring the Reaper and Angel blood, then the Angels of Death will gain back their power over the souls and be freed from Earth. If they give in to the insanity of the Reapers, then the Reapers gain control over the souls.”

“But I thought Reapers collected the evil souls and Angels collected the innocent?” I ask, moving my legs so I’m straddling him.

“That’s how it used to work,” he says, reaching his fingers for my cheek, like he wants to touch me, but then he withdraws his hand back. “But the rules were broken and a bet was made. Now whoever wins, wins all the souls.”

“But if Reapers could collect any soul,” I glance at the tombstones, “then it would be bad.”

“It would probably be worse than you can even imagine.” His voice weighs heavily and then his jaw tightens.

“How many are left?” I cling onto him, fearing his answer “How many Grim Angels still roam the Earth?”

“I’m not exactly sure. There used to be a lot, but the Reapers have been singling them out and many have died of old age. The longer they exist, the scarcer the Grim Angels bloodline is.” He winces as he shifts his weight, still refusing to touch me with his hands. “And the Reapers must know how few there are, because over the last couple years, they’ve been really determined to hunt them down, even though they’re not supposed to.”

“That’s what I don’t get,” I say, gently touching a cut on his cheek. “If they’re not supposed to, then why doesn’t someone stop them?”

“It’s up to their leader to punish them. Or we could go into battle,” he says as I move my fingers upward to the scar on his eyebrow. “But Michael, my father and the ruler of the Angels of Death, won’t allow us to bend any rules under any circumstances.”

“You said your dad was bad. And dead.” I frown, pulling my hand back. “And that you moved from New York to get away from the memories of him.”

“I did,” he assures me, and then swiftly changes the subject, his powerful, consuming gaze taking in my bare shoulders and my chest curving out of my torn dress. “You look beautiful like that.” He strokes the tip of my fake wing. “When I saw you, I almost had a heart attack. For a second, I thought somehow… you became one of us.”

The wind howls, flipping my wings in front me and throws my body off balance. Asher’s fingers spread over my hips as he steadies me and then hugs me against his chest. I sense the approaching goodbye waiting for me at his lips. We stare at each other, hearts beating, eyes linked, neither of us desiring to move. But the moment is fleeting, like the sound of a weightless laugh, the flash of a lightning bolt, the last breath of the dying.

“You’re leaving me, aren’t you,” I say quietly, running my fingers through his hair. “I can tell you are.”

“I broke the rules and now I can’t stay. I wasn’t supposed to get involved with you—no one is. It’s all supposed to be of your own free will, to prove a point.” Wetting his lips with his tongue, he kisses me, slipping his warm tongue into my mouth and I grip onto his shoulders, digging my nails into his skin, never wanting to let him go.

“But I couldn’t help it,” he says, coming up for air. “When I saw you that night at the party, standing there by yourself, so sad and lost, I knew I had to get to know you. You were the first Grim Angel I met that’s ever done that to me.”

I hook my arms around his neck and breathe in his comforting scent. “Why were you there at the party?”

“I was collecting someone’s soul for Michael.” His hands travel down my spine, pulling the zipper down with him. I don’t know what he’s doing, nor do I care as my bare back gets exposed to the crisp night.

“I just want to see you one more time… like this…” He murmurs, feeling my skin. “I messed up, Ember. I let the person live and took someone else’s soul instead,” he says, slipping his hands into my dress and pressing his palm against my lower back.

“You were supposed to take Raven’s, weren’t you?” I arch into him as he pushes me onto my back. “You let her live and took Laden’s soul instead.”

“I could see in your eyes when you were talking about her that night that you need her,” he says sadly, removing his free hand up to my eyes. “There’s so much sadness in here and I wanted to make it go away.”

I swallow hard. “So you killed Laden, because he was trying to rape her?”

“I wasn’t supposed to take his soul or kill him. I just got carried away,” he says, and I’m reminded again of what I read in the book: passionate in battle. “And the Anamotti used it to their advantage. They took his body and made it look like your dad’s crime scene to mess with your head.”

“And you got in trouble for it,” I say, kissing his palm when he moves it across my mouth. “What are they going to do to you?”

“I’m in trouble for a lot of things.” He lures my chest against his and kisses me with such heat my skin nearly ignites. I rake my fingers through his soft hair and his hands grip my thighs, his fingertips pressing into my skin, wanting everything, but knowing he can’t take anything. The straps of my dress fall down my shoulders and the top of me is revealed to the night. I don’t know what to do or what he’s doing as his slate eyes take my bare chest in.

“The other night… when you and I…” he shuts his eyes and breathes in as he places his hand over my chest, right above my erratic heart. “I’ll never forget what it felt like… how I felt…”

I’m breathing fiercely, because I can tell he’s about to leave me, and I need him, like I need air. “Don’t go,” I plead and he opens his eyes. “Please stay with me. You’re the only one who’s ever made me feel at peace. ”

His lips start to part, but I silence them with mine, kissing him with every ounce of life I have inside me. My bare chest presses against his and the warmth and contact drives me into a frenzy.

“Please, don’t go…” I say between kisses. “Please.”

He bites at my lip, cupping my cheek, giving my tongue a quick suck before pulling away and looking me in the eyes. “I have to.”

The sky rumbles and his eyes travel upward to the dark clouds. His face is masked with pain as the sky begins to drizzle and his long eyelashes flutter against the raindrops. “Michael doesn’t ever let any Angel go when we’ve broken the rules, and besides, you have to do this on your own… I can’t interfere anymore.”

They sky booms again like the snap of an elastic band and I feel it break, my freedom, as raindrops cover my body.

He guides my ear toward his mouth and drops his voice to a low whisper. “Find out everything you can about Grim Angels and the Battle of Death. Find out what happens with the last Grim Angel standing… There’s a part I can’t tell you. And Ember, don’t trust anyone. Ever.” His hand slides down my neck, over my breasts, my waist, searing hot against my damp skin. “Shut your eyes.”

Reluctantly, I close them and cling to his shoulders, wishing I never had to open them again. I hear his wings snap wide and then a delicate flutter as he flaps them. He kisses my forehead, my cheek, my lips, and then like a feather in the wind, he slips out from under me.

When I open my eyes, I’m alone, kneeling in the mud, rain soaking my hair and clothes, the top of my dress pulled down. I refuse to move; I’ll stay here forever in the cemetery with the only peace I have left.

“Oh my God!” Raven screams and I turn around, pulling my dress over my chest.

She’s staggering through the mud toward me. “What the hell happened? How did I get here? Em, I’m… I have no idea what’s going on or why I’m in a cemetery.” She stops just short of me and glances down at her white dress, tattered and marked red with tonight’s torture. Her artificial wings are ripped to pieces and her neck is still bleeding a little.

I stand up and zip up the back of my dress, then grab a piece of fabric off the ground and press it to her neck. “We need to get you to a hospital.” I drape her arm around my shoulder and lead her toward the gate.

Her death is back; standing on the ledge and someone begs her to jump, so she does. Different, but still painful.

“Em, why are there feathers all over the grass?” she asks, resting her head on my shoulder as the rain lets up. “Was it from your costume?”

I make the decision, the thing my dad tried to engrave in my mind since I was young, and what Asher warned me to do—don’t trust anyone. “Yeah, Raven, they are from my costume.”

We walk together across the cemetery, yet I’m in this alone. A pawn in a game between the Angels of Death and the Grim Reapers—between good and evil.

But which one am I?

As if giving me an answer, sirens ring and blue and red lights flash across the dark cemetery as the police vehicles pull up and block the exit. Doors shove open and cops hop out with flashlights in their hands.

“Alright,” one of them yells with his gun out in front of him as he glides through the gates. “Put your hands up where we can see them.”

I obey, knowing I’m in trouble this time. Mackenzie’s body is in a grave and the only proof that I didn’t kill her flew away with the wind.

Raven sobs into my shirt and clutches onto me. “I want this to all be over. Please make it stop. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s almost over.”

A swarm of cops bustle through the gates, spotting their flashlights across the grass and cracked tombs, with guns and batons in their hands. The one that shouted at me approaches with caution, step by step, never looking away from us. When he reaches me, I let Raven stand on her own.

“Ember Edwards, I should have known,” Officer McKinley’s expression instantly turns biased as he remembers the night he picked me up from my house, after my car was found in the lake. “There was an anonymous tip that the body of Mackenzie Baker could be found at the Hollows Grove Cemetery.”

With my hands up, I shake my head. “I don’t know anything about that.”

He spotlights the flashlight in Raven’s eyes. “What’s she on? And why is there blood on her neck? Were you two doing some kind of ritual out here or something?”

“Like a vampire ritual,” I joke unenthusiastically.

He narrows his eyes and blinds me with the flashlight. “You don’t need to get smart. This is Halloween—all the crazies are out tonight.”

Raven blinks and shields her face with her hand. “We were taking a shortcut to our houses through the woods and I tripped and cut my neck on a branch.”

Internally, I sigh. “That’s what we were doing, just barely—heading to go find a phone and call the hospital, because neither of us have our phones.”

The cop reaches for Raven and checks underneath the piece of shirt she pressed to her neck. He pulls a revolted face, moving his hand away. “That’s going to need a few stitches.” He sighs and motions at us to walk with him. “Come on, follow me.”

As we head for the gates, the cops search the cemetery, the trees, behind headstones. A female officer, with her hair braided in the back, wanders toward the hole in the ground where Mackenzie’s body lies.

“Hey, I think I got something over here,” she shouts, with her gun poised in front of her.

A lanky officer, with a bald head, hurries over to the hole and beams the light down in it. I hold my breath and wait for him to announce he found the body.

“It’s just a hole,” he calls out to the others. “It’s probably some high school prank or new fad, like that grave that was dug up a few weeks ago.”

Cameron.

Officer McKinley stops us at the gate and shines the light in our eyes. “You two know anything about this?”

Raven and I shake our heads innocently. “Nope.”

He focuses in on me. “Are you sure that’s true?”

I wonder if he’s a real cop, or the same kind as Detective Crammer. “Yep, it’s true.”

He shakes his head in disbelief. “Well, I’m still going to have to take you in for some questioning. We have to make sure your story adds up.”

We finish the walk to the police car as the rest of the cops keep searching for Mackenzie’s body, but I have a feeling her body may be gone forever. But the question is: who took it?

Cameron? Or Asher?

Raven and I climb into the back of the cop car, each on our separate side, divided by lies, secrets, and distrust. As the policeman drives with his lights flashing, I watch the cemetery disappear from my view, feeling the trail of death follow me.