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Nervous, he looked over his shoulder. “Where am I? How do I wake up?”
Ah . . . so he still didn’t realize he was actually dead.
“You’re on a one-way trip, Gerald. Time to let it go, dude. Just consider me your angel of death.” Before he could do more than whimper, I laid my hands on him—holding him so firmly that he couldn’t get away.
He struggled, pleading, but his words fell useless. This was my mission, and whatever mercy or empathy I might possess vanished as my training kicked in. His spirit was no match for my strength.
“Fires of the void, come forth to do my bidding. Cleanse this soul and pass it through your center.” The rite was second nature now—the ritual engrained in the core of my being. Greta had taken me through the rites again and again, and this time, I was doing it on my own, without any help from her.
Gerald let out a sharp scream. “Please, don’t—I don’t understand.”
I let out a sigh. This was the part that confounded me. They never understood—the ones who had been horrendous and brutal. They never understood the nature of cause and effect—that actions brought consequences. How they couldn’t see this escaped me, but then again, if I had no conscience, perhaps I wouldn’t understand it either.
“Gerald Hanson, you sealed your destiny by your actions. The Hags of Fate have made their decree. The Harvestmen have agreed. Prepare to face the darkness of the abyss.”
I closed my eyes, summoning the karmic fire. A purple flame washed over us, raging through his soul, crackling through the mist and fog to electrify his energy. A wisp of ash flew up from his aura, and then another, and then—with a loud chatter of static, the flames raced through his spirit, reducing it to harmless dust. Another moment, and Gerald Hanson ceased to exist, forever obliterated. His soul had been consigned to the final death. Only a fine layer of ash remained poised for a second, then it, too, blew away into the night.
I watched the astral wind sweep away the remnants of everything Gerald had ever been, throughout all of his lives, all of his cycles. The only thing left was a harmless, benign energy. No trace remained of the person he’d been, no sign of the lives he’d lived. And then, with a final, silent whoosh, the lingering energy spiraled up and then returned to the central pool from which all things sprang.
As always, I felt oddly hollow, like a reed in the wind, bending but not breaking. Mournful, plaintive, but accepting of my place in this world.
I closed my eyes, willing Gerald’s memories to fade, although I knew I would never be able to forget them. Death Maidens never forgot any of their kills, Greta told me, even when they numbered into the thousands. Everyone we took out remained as part of our own memories. We were historians, of a sort.
While his thoughts didn’t make much sense to me at this point, I knew there was some reason the Autumn Lord had commanded me to be Gerald’s doom. I wasn’t sure what it was yet, but I had the uneasy feeling that, soon enough, I’d find out.
For now, I was stick-a-fork-in-me done. Turning my back on the ever-present mist and fog of this realm, I leaped back to where Greta waited. I hoped to hell we were done for the night.
• • •
Greta slipped her arm through mine as we journeyed back to Haseofon, the abode of the Death Maidens. She was so much shorter than me that it gave us a Mutt-and-Jeff look, but there, any resemblance ceased.
“You did very well. You’ve adapted quickly.” She smiled up at me and I felt a tinge of pride. “Next time, I won’t need to go with you. You’re graduating, Delilah, although I’ll always be here if you need me.”
“I’ve tried.” I pressed my lips together.
“You’ve done better than I hoped you would, and you’ve learned quickly. I’m proud of you.”
At first, I’d freaked out when I realized that I’d been conscripted into the Autumn Lord’s rule as one of his Death Maidens. But over the past couple of years my naïveté had slipped away little by little. Oh, I’d stubbornly clung to my eternal optimism, to the little girl/kitty cat who didn’t want to grow up. But when Shade, my fiancé, had come into the picture, things began to shift. Half shadow dragon, half Stradolan—shadow walker—Shade existed in the realms of spirits and ghosts. Through being with him, I’d finally grown used to the energy.
And over the past few months, I’d decided to embrace the woman I was becoming, rather than long for the woman I’d been.
Truth was: I felt proud to be pledged to the Autumn Lord. I was his only living Death Maiden, and I was destined to bear his child one day, through Shade as the proxy father. I could never again be the Delilah who first came over from Otherworld. And that was okay. I didn’t have to give up believing in people, I didn’t have to give up simple joys and happiness or Cheetos or my undying fan-girl love of Jerry Springer.
Instead, I fell into a comfortable balance.
“Are we done for the night?” I glanced at the cityscape that unfolded in front of us. Though we were traveling on the astral, we were close to my own world—the streets of Seattle. Both realms were superimposed on one another. I’d gotten used to that, too, and could see them both when I didn’t get too caught up in trying to figure out the logic of it.
Greta nodded. “Did you want to come back to Haseofon to visit Arial?”
I thought about it. It would be good to see my sister—my twin who had died at birth—but then I thought about Camille and Menolly. They were waiting for me to return. And the promise of a mug of hot milk and some chocolate chip cookies was enough to make my decision for me.
“Not tonight, but tell her I love her and I’ll see her soon.” I paused. “Greta, do you know why the Autumn Lord asked for me specifically? To annihilate Gerald?”
She shook her head. “No, I truly don’t. But he was very insistent. He said it had to be you, and he said that Grandmother Coyote had come to him personally to request it. The Harvestmen, they bow to the whims of the Hags of Fate. As does every creature.”
Pulling away, she reached up and stroked my face. “Your crescent—it burns with the fires of Haseofon tonight. You made your first totally assigned kill without any assistance. And so your crescent has shifted and now the Autumn Lord’s fires will forever burn brightly within it.”
