Chapter 44 Grim
I only departed from Helena after she fell asleep, though I left her a note—again in fucking pink ink—that I’d be back the following night to take her out. Somewhere nice again. At eight.
Left a PS that she shouldn’t wear anything she minded getting ripped off.
What could I say? I knew myself.
About an hour late delivering souls to the Basins but still within the expected time frame, I returned to the Hallowed Halls.
Johann wasn’t at his desk. No bird in sight, either.
It was never my favorite thing to find the old man missing, but I was the one off schedule, so who was to say he wasn’t just brewing a fresh pot of coffee in the apothecary?
Flora’s statue had its eyes closed—so she was still out.
Hourglass in hand, still drunk on Helena, her scent clinging to me, I trudged toward the Basins.
As I neared the White Basin, I slowed, a sense of ill ease creeping over me—and not just because Johann wasn’t here.
The sensation of eyes boring into my spine had me halting.
For a long moment, I stared forward, but then I swung around sharply, cloak, robes, and mist swirling behind me.
My soul withered, cramming itself into the shape of a human heart behind my sternum before giving one hard thud.
I clamped my hand more tightly around the handle of my scythe, having to fight back the surge of terror that banished, in its entirety, my lingering bliss.
A dark figure stood behind me, black robes spilling long around his form, an obsidian crown encircling his head, its clawlike spikes jutting toward the ceiling.
A featureless black mask, half hidden within the shadows of his hood, obscured his countenance.
Red glowing eyes gazed at me through two angry, downward-slanted slits, as though lit by the fires of hell.
Over the decades—the centuries—Lady Green, Lady Red, Sir Blue, and Sir White had all seen fit to drop in for some reason or another.
For as long as I’d been here, though, I’d never met him—Sir Black.
For a while, I’d even started to believe the Black Basin didn’t have a guardian.
That it was just a lawless, prisonlike bog for the souls that settled like silt to the floor of depravity, vileness, and evil.
About that, I’d been wrong.
At least about there being no warden…
The entity, taller even than me, loomed at a distance, his hood cinched to his head by that menacing crown.
Within? Blackness and a face that was no face at all.
In that way, we two were alike.
Never before had I stopped to think about how terrifying it was for those who did glimpse me. To be faced with a horrific specter that had no features. None that could be discerned…
This must be what it was like. To stare into an abyss that stared back, knowing all the while that abyss was there to get you.
I stood frozen for a moment longer, waiting for this… guest to speak or move. To do anything other than lurk… and stare.
“You have business in the Hallowed Halls,” I said at last, and it wasn’t a question so much as it was a prompt. A plea for this being—whatever he was—to end this intolerable standoff.
To reveal what I already suspected his appearance pertained to.
He didn’t answer. But still, an answer came when Cedric stepped out from behind the grim sentry, tugging his gloves more tightly into place like some pretentious asshole getting ready to take his Bentley on a summer drive through the countryside.
I should have known this was his doing…
“I assume no introduction is necessary,” said Cedric, gesturing toward Sir Black as he eyed me darkly, those frozen blues promising retribution even as he offered a congenial smile.
“What have you done with Johann?” I asked. Not that I could do anything for the old man at this point—or anyone.
“Sent him on a goose chase,” Cedric said. “Flora, too. I don’t have anything against them.”
I wanted to believe him.
“How the fuck did you even get out of that drawer?” I growled. Let alone Flora’s lantern.
“Lady Red came looking for me,” he replied. “Unbeknownst to you, she and I have been… friendly for some time now. I suppose I should thank you for introducing us.”
Wait. Was he implying what I thought he was? That I wasn’t the only one with a secret girlfriend?
He was seeing one of The Few?
Fuck me. Did that mean they were Nephilim?
And wasn’t that what I got for shoving him into Basins whenever he happened to get his ass killed and I stumbled across him in the wild?
Unlike me, Cedric hadn’t taken any sacred oaths forbidding such a union.
At least not yet.
Then again, mine included not dallying with mortals. The fine print? Well, it didn’t say anything about entertaining one of The Few.
Suddenly, the Grim Reaper book on the library shelf and the note Helena had found inside made more sense…
As did the second Fated—Mr. Bluford.
Or, rather, Sir Blue.
Could it be… was it possible that getting rid of me had, somewhere along the way, become an inside job?
How many of The Few had Cedric enlisted against me?
Enough, it seemed, that the wizard was about to get his wish.
“I don’t need to remind you,” I said, “that you can’t take the job if I don’t pass it along.”
“But I can apply if you’re found derelict in your duties,” countered Cedric through a bored sigh—like he was tired of thinking ahead of me. “Which you soon will be. Given that you’re about to go quite… well… missing.”
A beat passed in which my soul withered, wilting within me and sinking into my empty gut.
Cedric had me in checkmate. There was no denying that.
While I hadn’t expected my stint in Elysium with Helena to last long, I hadn’t foreseen it coming to a screeching halt quite this soon, either.
“Clearly,” I said, glancing from Cedric to Sir Black and back again, “I’m leaving the Hallowed Halls regardless.
But swear in front of The Few to leave Helena alone, to let her live, to grant her your credited life, and I’ll make the bargain.
I’ll pass the scythe—and everything—to you of my own free will. ”
Cedric gave one short and scoffing laugh. Then he tilted his head at me, a look of dark bemusement crossing those features before they sobered back into veiled rage.
“Two things,” he said. “Firstly, I think you can appreciate how well beyond the point of negotiations the two of us have now traveled. Secondly, since I’ve had my own plans for that life right from the start—something you guessed at, correctly—I can only promise you one thing.
And that is, unlike you, when it comes to Helena, I will do my job. ”
Gripping my scythe between both hands, I started toward him, fully aware I wasn’t going to get close enough to chop his block off and of the fact that, even if I did, it wouldn’t change anything.
All the same, if I was going to go down, it would be swinging.
Every fucking time.
Cedric made no move to evade me. He didn’t have to with Sir Black stepping forward.
Not caring anymore, I took my swing at him, but the angel, the devil—whatever he was—caught the scythe, which he ripped free of my grip like someone tearing a toy from the grasp of a child.
As he discarded the weapon, which misted to nothing, his other metal, black-clawed hand lashed out to snatch me by the throat.
Caught in his grip—more unrelenting even than mine—I pried at his fist with both of my skeletal hands as he hauled me toward his Basin, the entrance to my hell.
Helena. She’d be waiting for me again, and again I wouldn’t show.
Would she think—even for one moment—that I’d lied about loving her?
Why did that strike me as the most horrifying part of this?
Sir Black dragged me to the Black Basin, which, as soon as we got close, loosed tendrils of ebony muck—oily whips that lashed me by the throat as well. They snagged me by the wrists, too—my ribs and spine, which cracked as my assailant bowed me backward over the hungry vat.
Helena, I’m sorry.
Helena, I love you.
“Farewell, Grim,” said Cedric even as I still strained to escape. “You might not believe this, but I will miss you. It’s nice, though, to see you at last heading somewhere where you’re wanted.”
I fought against Sir Black even as he bore down on me, shoving me into the Black Basin, which unleashed more tentacles, all of them finding bones to wind around and tug.
Together, they worked to loosen and unfurl me into spirit form, something I battled with every ounce of willpower I possessed.
That willpower lasted only long enough for me to give Cedric one skeletal middle finger.
And then, just like that, the Basin took me, and the reaper at last became the reaped.