Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
Isabella
“I stopped you,” I answered Julius’s question.
I glared as he stalked toward me. Sebastian was there within a heartbeat, by my side, and as much as it warmed my heart, I knew I didn’t need his protection. At least not from this monster anymore.
Julius held malice in his smile when Sebastian grabbed his head and gasped. “What’s wrong?” I touched his shoulder as he continued his hold with his eyes pinched shut. When I looked around, I saw that his family was doing the same.
“You only prevented it from happening today,” Julius informed me, completely sure of himself. “Even if I couldn’t complete it with the vortex, the end was awoken because of it.”
“It’s true,” Sebastian whispered as he dropped his hands and scowled. “I saw it. I felt it. If you want to know the very day, I know that too.”
My heart dropped.
“Time to go, Isabella,” Julius dared to say. “All that’s left to do is wait, and now that you survived,” his sickened gaze moved over my body, “I want you with me on the other side.”
“You so much as touch her,” Sebastian growled. “You’ve done enough. I’ll protect her from you until there’s nothing left of me!” My blue-eyed Reaper stepped in front of me as a protective shield.
“Which will be soon.” Julius grinned.
Five swords pierced Julius’s chest at once.
He looked down at his chest, then around him as Sebastian’s siblings blocked his sides, clutching their weapons.
“Don’t worry, I’ll leave, and you guys can spend however much time there is left comforting each other or whatever it is you Reapers do.
I just want Isabella.” Pain didn’t bother him if the bored-like tone he had with five swords through him was any indication. He stretched an arm out. “Come to me.”
I did, and Sebastian reached for me. Taking his hand, I reassured him with a smile.
Seemingly confused, he reluctantly let go but stayed a breath behind me just in case he needed to touch me.
I brought my hand up to Julius’s face and slid my hand down until he frowned. “The darkness no longer accepts you.”
“No!” he roared, and my smirk grew wider. The darkness never stirred. It was through with him. “I control it.”
“I control it,” I corrected him. “The darkness and I have grown close over our mutual attraction to a certain blond-haired Reaper.”
If Julius was angry before, he was livid now. I even had Sebastian’s siblings smiling as they stood around him. “You’re mine,” Julius hissed. Something warm flooded my veins at their smiles. Acceptance.
“No, I belong to me.” I turned away as Julius screamed.
I felt the wind move as Sebastian swung his scythe the moment I stepped away. I jumped just as Julius’s head tumbled at my feet. He was still screaming.
“I’ll get rid of this,” Grim said as he picked up Julius’s head. He was no longer fading in and out. “Too bad we can’t kill him, but we can at least send him somewhere else for now.”
“I’ll take the body to The Den,” Payne muttered. “I’m sure they’d get a kick out of having Harvest cut up like that.”
“I’ll take his head to the city,” Grim added, but just as quick as they said that, Julius’s body vanished from their grasp.
Barron cursed. “Should have fucking known.”
“I wonder where he’ll rejuvenate?” Maureen wondered. “Should take him at least a day after losing his head, anyway.”
Someone gasped behind me. Fear iced my veins. What could be wrong now? I turned around quickly and came face-to-face with Sebastian’s mom. She was covering her mouth with her hand. When she dropped it, she revealed a smile. “Sebastian,” she whispered. “Look on her shoulder blade.”
“What—” he started, then stopped. I swiveled around to face him officially worried. He looked like a deer caught in headlights his eyes were so round.
“What is it?” I asked quickly. His eyes were as bright as the smile on his face.
I tugged at the spaghetti-strapped top Sebastian had materialized on me to wear.
“You’re freaking me out.” I just wanted one of them to tell what was wrong with my back.
It wasn’t like I could see myself without a mirror.
“I told you our touch meant something, Izzie. You are my one and only.” His words warmed the darkest parts of me.
“You have a snail on your shoulder blade, that’s what,” Maureen informed me, and I blinked up at Sebastian.
“How…?” All I could think about was getting to a mirror so that I could see it myself. “What does it mean?” I asked two different things at once.
He smiled. “I think it means you’re my soulmate, witch, just like I felt you were.” Damn these feelings and their need to make my eyes tear up with a knowing smile.
“Help me with the castle, will ya boys?” Grim hollered at his sons.
Stepping out the way, Melanie guided me off to the side as we watched them rebuild their home with the power they held.
It was pretty amazing. They only stepped around the ruins, nothing else.
You’d never think they were even doing anything until the castle started mending itself while they watched.
Broken glass restored to whole, becoming windows once more.
Broken piles of rubble became the dark grey brick that made their castle.
The wooden double-doors was there like it was never broken to begin with.
It only took a few minutes, and when they were finished, Sebastian held my hand as we walked back inside.
As I watched his family walk ahead of us, it felt like we were getting the chance to start over. Only I knew now that our moments together had a time in which Sebastian knew the limit to. It depressed me. My heart hurt uncontrollably because of it.
Then, with a kiss, my Reaper left me with his mom as him, his dad, and siblings set out to the human world with every Reaper they had. He didn’t tell me before he left what all had happened while I hadn’t been myself, but some things you could imagine.
His sister Kitty woke up the next day and was informed of what had happened. She, too, headed into the human world to help them, and if it hadn’t been for me, I knew their mother would have been with them.
With promises of comfort and reassurance from Sebastian the day before, I waited, each hour turning into days at a time.
I got to know Melanie during the weeks that followed as we waited for the Reapers to come home. The time spent with her helped me understand why Sebastian was the way he was. His mother was just as bright and heroic as he was.
The devastation was relentless in the human world. The deaths still rose even weeks later from those that were injured from the disasters in different parts of the world.
Despite everything that happened, parts of the world were left untouched and without consequences of the vortex. And it was in these moments that Sebastian would tell me of the humanity he seen between the humans and their willingness to step in and help when tragedy strikes.
I’d only seen him three times since the vortex incident. Each time he came for me, it was only in search of my touch. He needed the energy when his curse threatened him, then he’d go back to the human world.
It was another two weeks when ghosts and deaths were settled down to normalcy as they called it that they all finally came home for good.
They couldn’t help the humans. The only thing they were there for was to balance life and death once more.
It was up to mankind to pick up the pieces while the Reapers dealt with the approaching end.
The vortex that Harvest and I opened had sped up the Apocalypse.
Ten months. Ten months was all I had left to spend time with a man I had just come to love if the end couldn’t be stopped.
It was even less in the human world. Time flowed vastly different between the worlds.
And weeks of those ten months had already gone by while he was in the human world.
When Sebastian strode into the castle with his siblings, I was sitting on the third step of his parents’ stairway.
I placed the bookmark in the book I was reading and placed it on the step as I stood and smoothed out the shirt I was wearing, then I self-consciously did the same to my hair as he caught sight of me.
I smiled, but he didn’t return it so I frowned the entire time it took his heavy steps to get to me. He gripped my wrist, pulled me in as the high of our touch licked over me until the hair on my neck and arms stood on end. “Let’s go, Izzie.”
His words liquified me and pierced me with arousal.
After six weeks, my Reaper was taking me with him instead of leaving me behind.