8. Clay
8
Clay
This mattress is surprisingly nice. It’s got a plush thickness that curves around my body when I flop down on it. Plus, the sheets are so soft. It’s like lotion gliding across my skin. I thought they wouldn’t care about keeping us comfortable since we’re a bunch of criminal supernaturals, but no, the Academy is luxurious, and I’m starting to think maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the realm that I ended up here.
I’ve never spent so much time in one place with this much food and my own room. I haven’t heard my stomach growl once since I got here.
I share my bathroom with only one other person. He keeps to himself to the point where I don’t even know his name. I’ve only caught glimpses of him in the morning while we brush our teeth. I don’t even know what kind of spirit he is. But he’s clean and tidy, and he’s hardly ever here.
It’s so much different than the group home. There was no privacy to be had there.
Of course, my home was one of the nicer ones. The house mom did her best, and no one beat us—small victories. Every single one of us there was a death spirit. My best friend was a Keres, and a Black Dog lived with us briefly.
All of us were death personified. And because of that, we were relatively sheltered from how the outside world viewed us. It’s not like you can send kids like us to school. That’s why we had our own dedicated group homes. It was a revolving door of darkness, saying goodbye to the life you knew when you aged out and trying to figure out how to make it in this world as not just a supernatural but an omen of death.
A figurehead for oblivion.
Now, I tell everyone that my parents are Authentics, which is true, but I don’t tell them that my parents abandoned me as soon as my spirit made itself known.
Imagine their surprise when I became my Reaper at three years old and ushered my grandfather to the beyond.
My childhood is one of those wounds that I prefer to pretend has been tended rather than poking at it and realizing that I am just paper maché on the inside.
I don’t like how people look at me when they learn about my childhood. Yeah, it was lonely, but I wasn’t lying about the ghosts being friends, and I had a few kids who were kind to me. It’s been nothing compared to adulthood. Until I was arrested, I was jumping around from shelter to shelter, trying not to wear out my welcome at the supernatural ones and begging and pleading to whatever God of death I needed to that I could pass as Authentic for a night so I could get a warm meal and a dry bed.
I was typically okay as long as no one saw me without my shirt.
My threads will give it away every time.
It’s stupid, and I don’t want to change who I am or lose my spirit, but I think I’ve lost the anger that came with being arrested and forced to come here.
My room’s soft cream walls blend almost seamlessly into the white ceiling. It’s slightly textured, and there is a giant blob that looks a bit like a scythe.
Scythes. What a stupid stereotype. Reapers don’t carry scythes. Why would I use such an inelegant tool to separate a soul from its mortal flesh? It’s much easier to grow my claws and pluck at the threads that tie the souls to their bodies.
I hear my suite mate banging around over there, and who knows what he’s doing. I gotta admit, I’m surprised a Reaper is in Folklore housing. I thought I’d end up in Mythology, but the designation line between us is pretty thin.
Authentics love to label us, even when we don’t care to.
Being at the Academy will be harder for me than I thought. I need a soul, and the longer I go without claiming one, the worse my energy levels will be. I’m trying to plug it with food, which works to an extent, but my spirit needs nourishment.
I have to be careful, though, because if I get caught again, there is no way they’ll let me stay here. Honestly, this is the longest amount of time I’ve slept in the same place since I was a kid.
I’m not willing to give it up yet.
But still, if I am going to function, I need the energy a soul provides me. I close my eyes, relaxing all of my muscles as I slip into a meditative trance that sends me to the void between life and death. Looking around my small but well-appointed room, cast in a grayscale hue, I let loose a cleansing sigh.
Here, in the void, I can be myself. I don’t have to pretend to be something tolerable, someone safe.
I’m not safe.
I know that on a cellular level. But I still want to try most of the time.
How I am with my friends is not an act. Not really. It’s me manifesting how I want to be on the inside. If I’m bright enough outside, maybe it will cast away some of the shadows that have taken up residence within me.
Before I risk leaving the Academy grounds, I wander, searching to see if any soul is begging to pass on here. Not that I expect one to be, but maybe today, luck will shine upon me.
The morning light casts pretty, white stripes through the dull appearance of the void, and I find myself traveling to the Mythology tower. I search floor by floor for that familiar pull, that calling of someone ready to leave the mortal plane, but nothing has captured my attention.
A different type of pull, this one foreign and new, draws me to the top floor and through a door labeled 402. Immediately, I know I’m in her room.
Stella.
I’m not sure what it is about the Valkyrie that calls me, but I wonder if it has anything to do with her spirit being one that so regularly ends lives, that passes judgment on the souls of others. In another world, another time, I would follow at her heels in battle, ripping the souls from those that she cut down and taking the ones she deems unworthy of Valhalla. Together, we could be a symbiotic pair, and that pleases my Reaper side immensely.
Her room is very white, and even in the void, it’s almost blinding. She’s not here, though. The strange pull persists, an unseen shadow drawing me in, and that is how I find myself in her bathroom. I can see the humidity in the air from the running shower and hear her voice, clear and strong, as she sings.
I’m not proud of it, but I slip, unnoticed, through the door and perch myself on the bench at the back of her shower, watching the water roll down her back and over her round, muscular ass. It doesn’t take but a second for my cock to stiffen uncomfortably in my shorts.
Just because she can’t see me here doesn’t mean I’m not in my body, and fuck, my body has decided it wants to make itself known to her.
What if I left the void and appeared here before her? Would she welcome me?
I haven’t known her long, but maybe she feels this draw to me, too. The inexplicable connection between the two of us.
Would she be the first to be willing to let me touch her without fear of me taking her soul?
It should come as no shock that no one wants to fuck a Reaper.
A flicker in the back of my mind tells me that being here is wrong and that I am invading her privacy. I know that voice is right, but there is a louder voice that tells me she belongs to me and that I am not only allowed but supposed to be here.
I don’t know where that louder voice came from, but I make myself comfortable and follow it since this is probably the closest I’ll ever get to her.
How could someone like her desire to be touched by death?
Her wings are hidden away, presumably so she can fit in the stall, which marks the first time I’ve seen her without them. There is a tattoo of five geometric shapes down her spine, each a series of lines and dots that I can’t make heads or tails of. They stop right at the top of her ass, with one that looks almost like an upside-down diamond filled with smaller ones. I feel like I’ve seen it before.
I want nothing more than to drag my tongue down it.
I am uncomfortably hard, my dick begging me to step from the plane and join her, but I resign myself to watching. I can’t handle the look in her eyes when she inevitably rejects me.
Stella turns around, hands in her hair, her nipples erect, soapy water from her shampoo running down the curves and divots of her body. Her body screams of strength, with defined musculature everywhere I look. She could’ve been carved from stone.
And yet, somehow, she still exudes a sense of warmth and comfort.
Almost as if on autopilot, my hand drifts past my waistband and into my undershorts, my fist clenching my rigid length for relief. I’ve seen plenty of naked women as I wander the void, but it has never affected me this acutely.
What is it about her?
The throbbing beneath my hand threatens to overwhelm my senses, moisture weeping from my tip and nearly screaming for my attention.
For a moment, as if affected by my lust, her hand drifts below her waist and ghosts between her legs, but she pulls it back abruptly and shakes it out like she’s chastising herself.
I wish I had her self-control. I’m unable to hold off from pumping my hand up and down my length, torturously slow, imagining what it would be like to touch her, kiss her, fuck her. It doesn’t take long for me to spend myself entirely, leaving me panting and disgusted with myself.
I didn’t even think to check the void for ghosts wandering around here, and my face flushes with the possibility of getting caught.
I don’t hate it as much as I probably should.
Stella turns the water off and wraps herself in a towel before exiting the opaque shower stall. She calls out to Ryan that she’ll be ready to head down for breakfast in a few minutes, and I want nothing more than to join them.
But I still need a soul.
I race around the Academy and find it lacking, so I swiftly travel to Tioney and snag the soul of an elderly Authentic male in a nursing home. When he sees me in the void, he greets me without fear and passes quickly into the after.
While reaping a soul recharges me, there is one small side effect. Every memory of the male rushes through me, whether it be good or bad, and most of the time, it takes me to my knees. This male mostly led a good and just life, but there were dark moments like there are with everyone.
I feel the heat of his thread branding my chest, starting from my heart and snaking around my abdomen.
Gold. There are pathetically few of those on my body.
I don’t let the after-effects of Reaping hold me down for long, determined to make it to breakfast with Stella and Ryan. I pop out of the void in my room and throw on a shirt, taking off running to the dining hall.
I don’t care if anyone thinks I’m odd. If anything, it keeps them further from me, which means they’ll be less likely to bother Stella when I’m around.
I don’t like her getting as much attention as she does.
I snag a tray of food mindlessly as I scan the area for the Cyclops and Valkyrie. They’re not hard to miss.
“Hello, friends! Beautiful morning!” I call out, sliding onto the bench and crashing my tray on the table. I almost spill my orange juice, but I recover it quickly as I wrench my face into a bright smile despite the lingering pain of the Authentic’s memories radiating through me.
It’ll take a few hours for the ache of his life to be converted into the energy my spirit craves.
“How did we sleep?”
“Fine,” Ryan answers, his voice so soft and quiet that if I didn’t see it leave his mouth, I wouldn’t believe it. His massive frame is wrapped in a tight black collared, short-sleeved shirt. The buttons on the front strain a bit at his size.
I like the Cyclops. He’s kind and a good deterrent if anyone wants to mess with Stella because of his bulk. Not that she can’t take care of herself. If anyone could, it’s her. But I do like knowing she’s got someone like him on her side.
Stella beams at me, and guilt wraps my body in a vice when I am reminded of how I intruded on her shower. I swallow down the bile that rises in my throat at the memory of my indiscretion and promise myself I won’t do it again.
I will not give this female more of a reason to dislike me.
She’s wrapped her gorgeous figure in a black top with so many straps I can’t figure out how she got it around her wings and a pair of black leggings with mesh cutouts. “I slept great, Clay, thanks for asking. You look like you slept well.”
I’m sure my face glows, both from the soul and the unplanned orgasm, and I beam at her. Despite the memories and misdeeds of the male who gave me his soul dragging me down, I want her to see me as a happy-go-lucky friend. Someone she can rely on when she needs her day brightened.
“I did! Feeling like a new male. Totally zonked out after dinner. Classes wore me out.” I slather a piece of toast in butter and berry jam and shove half of it in my mouth, talking around it. “What’s on your schedule today?”
She doesn’t seem to mind that I talk with my mouth full. She does it a lot, too.
Another reason why we are kindred spirits.
She’s eating yogurt this morning with berries on top, and she pulls the bowl closer to her mouth as she eats. “Meditation for Violent Spirits. Do they think learning to meditate will separate us from our spirits?”
“Who knows!” I say, draining my orange juice. “Worst case, you can take a nap as long as you can do it sitting up.” I wink, and she laughs, the sound traveling through me in a way that lights every one of my nerve endings on fire.
She stands up, gathers her dishes to leave, and gives me a blinding smile that has my heart in a vice grip. “Clay, you’re such a bright spot in a dark world.”
That should be an insult for a spirit of death, but I find myself floating the rest of the day.