Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
Endor
Mercy’s neural pathways sucked me in like a vortex. The force was strong. Stronger than it had ever been before.
The darkness surrounded me and the sound of heavy rain was like a booming bass, like a drum that vibrated within every sense of my being.
The light beside me flickered, and without thinking, I reached for it. That singular glow lit the space just enough that I could see a warm hand squeezing mine.
My angel. Valory.
She didn’t say a word, but she pulled herself closer to me. Her fear and worry could be felt like an entity, and I grabbed onto her, pulling her into my arms.
I could only hope that it provided her the comfort she needed. Her arms wrapped around my body and she shook, her breath rapid.
The rain was heavy and the sound of windshield wipers thudding against glass echoed.
“Five more minutes,” Miles’s voice called, tinged with sleep.
The windshield was blurred by rain and darkness.
The faintest red light shone on the glass, smeared and distorted by the crystalline droplets assaulting the car. The radio dipped in and out with static, the singer crooning on amidst acoustic guitars about following someone in the dark.
Mercy’s yawn was like a lion’s as she closed her eyes for just a moment.
She didn’t see the deer until it was too late.
She swerved, trying her best to avoid it, but what was done was done.
Fate had been divined already, and I watched as the car spun out, flipping and rolling until it crashed headfirst into a large tree.
Thunder rolled and lightning struck, the storm around them furious at the unbalance.
Valory’s grip on me tightened and she buried her face in my shirt. I didn’t want to watch, either, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away.
“We need to witness,” I told her, and pulled her face from my chest, despite how perfect it felt there. Valory’s eyes were filled with tears and the pain in her expression was irrefutable. I grabbed her face, imploring her with my gaze.
“I can’t,” she said, her voice shaking. “I can’t watch her die.”
“She isn’t dead,” I reminded her, that deep ache in my chest filled with wretched hope.
She wasn’t dead. I knew that, because if she were, she would not have been lost. She would have been categorized and slotted into her resting afterlife, never to have graced HAD or HHD.
The sound of a pained grunt pulled our attention.
The car smoked, the radio droning on with that sad acoustic guitar that only made it unbearably worse.
The lyrics hit me like a brick as the singer swooned about heaven and hell deciding that they were both satisfied .
As if somehow, even in such a moment, the world knew she would find us.
She would be ours.
“Mercy...” Miles’s voice was thick with pain.
Mercy hung in the balance, held by a seat belt, suspended in the darkness.
Miles reached for her, her head rolling as she struggled to breathe.
His pain was overwhelming. I felt it in every part of my being. My chest, my arms, my legs...
My right leg felt numb and it was very cold.
Miles sobbed. He blamed himself for the accident. If he’d awakened sooner, perhaps...
Though I knew it was divined. Nothing could have prevented this.
It was meant to be this way.
That’s the thing most people do not understand about death.
Like our births, it was all pre-determined.
But life ?
Life was theirs to command. Theirs to live.
And that was the beauty of the soul in its entirety. The fleeting magic that existed within every human being was not infinite.
It was bright and it was powerful, but it must die to be reborn.
Perhaps if Miles had not showed up to whisk her away, she would have gotten in a car herself and drove to find him.
Or perhaps if Miles had not been her lynchpin, it would have been someone else, or something else.
The drive to move her things into her college dorm, with her father.
Coming home from a bar with her friends on a Saturday night.
But it was him. The boy she’d met online. Her best friend.
He was her life, and he was her death.
I gripped Valory tighter, seeking her warmth. It was so bloody cold.
Mercy groaned. “Miles...”
His gaze settled on his phone. It was too far away from his reach, and Mercy can’t reach it, either. His gaze flashed to her seat belt.
“Your seat belt...” he cried. “Can you unhook it?”
“What?” Her voice was disoriented and his... he sounded on the verge of tears.
He fought them, though. He fought the pain, because all he could focus on was her.
On making sure she survived.
The desperation in his gaze, the shake of his hand as he reached for her broke my heart.
Because he knew. He knew death was coming for him.
“Miles...” Mercy thrashed in her seat, until she was set free from her restraint. She crawled on broken glass, reaching for him. There was so much blood.
So much blood...
“Miles...” Her voice cracked and the tears came. “You’re bleeding...”
His hand found hers. He gripped it tight.
“I’ll be okay, baby,” he lied.
I could not tear my gaze away as the coldness set in around us.
And then, like an echo, I heard it.
His prayer.
His voice resonated within me as he prayed to anyone that would hear him, to save her.
No, it was not a prayer.
It was a death wish.
And I knew the moment he was heard, because the scent of sulfur was unmistakable. It was the trademark of a contractor demon. A demon who could only be summoned by the pleas of a death wish.
“Miles... no...” I cried, knowing it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.
What was done was already done.
The deal had already been made.
I didn’t know the contractor that approached him.
Miles squeezed Mercy’s hand as the shadowed figure knelt before him.
Shadowed hands picked up the phone, offering it to Miles.
“The choice is yours,” he said.
But for Miles there was no choice. Not really.
“A soul for a soul. Do you agree to the terms?”
Miles took the phone with his free hand, the blood staining his skin. His nod was almost imperceptible.
“Miles... I can’t... I can’t move...”
I watched with an aching heart as he said yes .
Twenty years old and with the world at his feet, and in a heartbeat, he gave it up.
For her.
Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps some humans did understand what it was to sacrifice a soul.