The sound Interitus makes while consuming the soul is disgusting.It’s a shrill scream punctuated by slurps and moans of pleasure ringing around the park.The squelching sets my teeth on edge.Last, comes the scraping of metal against metal as the soul’s fibres are shredded.
My nose wrinkles at the sight of Interitus’s maw hoovering the translucent pieces up.
Her body lifts from the floor, wings fluttering as she glows like the sun on the brightest winter morning.
All I see is destruction.
She hovers there, bold, macabre and regal, embodying the angel she’s meant to be.And it makes every ounce of my heart ache.
How far she has fallen.
I can’t save her.
I can never save her.
An alarm shrieks out and the park’s field floods with officials and demons.
“STOP THERE.HALT,” an enormous demon shouts.
Gellara tugs me into the shadows.
Interitus freezes, her eyes narrowing.And from across the field, I swear she notices me.Our eyes lock for the briefest moment, her mouth curls into a sneer and then the shadows move.
I should have been quicker.Should have known what she was going to do.Used my light to counteract her attacks.But I stand, astonished, as she carves and tugs on shadows.She wraps the absence of light around her, reshaping her face and bones in subtle ways until just enough of her is glamoured and what stares back at me, isn’t her anymore.
It’s me.
“Oh gods, she’s your twin…” Gellara says.
“Yes.And now the mortals and demons will think it’s me stealing souls.”
Gellara shoves me.“Run.Go.Before they find us.”
But I’m transfixed as Interitus leaps into the air, mist coiling around her figure, showing just enough of her body to look exactly like me.And then she flies, flies, flies, leaving me to take the blame for her ruinous actions.
6
Lucy
Iam ready for whatever death means.
Intellectually, I know it’s not the end.I’ll be new, another iteration of me.A shade maybe, or if I’m lucky, I’ll skip that entirely and pass into whatever comes after.
I’ve studied enough deaths, contracts and papers to know the mechanics.I’ve witnessed enough shades moving through the Veil to know what the transition can be.Objectively, of course.
I suppose I never considered what it wouldfeellike, from the inside.
For a while, I lie in the gloom, waiting… but nothing happens.Nothing other than my incessant intellectualising and solid darkness.
No light, or sound, nor any sensation that I can discern.Though, the longer I stay prone the more there is… substance.
It rises from the murky ashes with fingers and toes.I can sense them wriggling.My cheeks seem wet from Midnight-shaped tears.
It all has matter and weight, too much, in fact.
Much more than a shade has.They are translucent, weightless beings.Like bubbles in the air or a spring breeze brushing your cheek.
This—I—am not that.
