AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I looked at my hands, arms, legs. I touched my face, my neck, my chest, my sides… Every scar, every cigarette burn, every tattoo. It was all there. The map of pain that covered my skin. Most of it was my own doing, some of it… It didn’t matter anymore.
“What am I?”
“Revenant,” Francis said. “It’s what we call those who die and come back to life by the power of a Great Old One and through…”
“Blood sacrifice,” I finished the sentence for him. “Who did you kill to revive me?”
“It’s better if you don’t…” GC tried.
“The Unseelie’s daughter,” Lorna said, and I could hear the anger in her voice.
I looked at her with renewed interest. I looked at all of them with renewed interest.
“Crassus had a daughter?”
“Klaus and I teleported to the Unseelie Court and found her,” Lorna explained. “We wanted to sacrifice him at first, but Francis insisted his god prefers women, and we needed this to work. So, I figured… what would hurt him more? His daughter sacrificed to save your life. She’s gone, you’re here. Mission accomplished.”
“Lorna, you are…” I couldn’t even find the words. “Crassus was just doing his job. Morningstar paid him. It’s the way of the Unseelie.”
She took a step forward, her brows furrowed and her eyes seeping with blue energy and pure rage. “If that’s the way of the Unseelie,” she said in a booming voice that echoed down the tunnels and filled the empty space, “then this is the way of Lorna Chiaramonte. No one touches my friends and gets away with it. No one.”
“... loyal,” I finished my sentence when I finally got the right word. Initially, I’d wanted to say “Lorna, you are evil”, or “Lorna, you are a murderer”, but no. She was all of that, of course, but she was also loyal. They were all murderers, and they were all loyal. The two weren’t mutually exclusive.
“So, you’re okay,” GC let out a breath of relief, smiling. “You’re back, and you’re okay.”
Was I okay? I couldn’t answer that at the moment. My body still felt dead here and there, and I smelled like shit. Now I knew I was covered in three things: the god’s poisonous ooze, the guts of the sacrifice, and my own blood. Oh, not to mention the rusty water that seemed to be a leitmotif in this hellish cavern, and the mud and worms of my grave in the forest.
My grave in the forest…
He’d done it. He’d killed me. Valentine Morningstar, my own father, had killed me.
“Revenant,” I whispered. “That means… I’m not human anymore. I’m… immortal.”
Francis nodded. “You’re just like me.”
“Mila,” said Patty. “I’m afraid the prophecy was never about you. I see it now. A human will retire the most powerful Grim Reaper alive. You’re not human anymore.”
“Patty, the prophecy isn’t real.”
She swallowed heavily. “Don’t say that. Someone must do something about him.”
“I’ll do something about him right now.”
I was naked, covered in blood and tattoos, and I looked more like a zombie than a revenant. Maybe they were the same thing. I knew what I had to do, and I had no intention of taking a shower first. That would’ve been pathetic.
If he could see me dead, then he could see me naked and undead.
I teleported away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Headmaster Morningstar wasn’t in his office. I took my time to look around, touch everything, smear his chair, desk, and papers with stinky blood. I sat behind his desk and waited for him.
I felt at peace now. As I stared at the door, I let myself sink within and feel my own body. My organs were waking up, one by one, healing themselves, the degraded tissues stitching themselves up and becoming stronger. My muscles already hurt less when I moved, and my lungs filled up with air greedily. As for my aura and my string of life… I couldn’t see them, but I knew. Gone were the days when my aura was clear and beautiful. It was the color of mud and poison, it had the weight of a thousand bricks, and it reeked of pain and nightmares. My string of life was tied around my torso like a rope, coiled over and over, determined to give hell to any Reaper who would’ve approached it with his scythe. I remembered that time when Francis and I were partners in the Anatomy of Souls class, and we were practicing seeing each other’s auras and strings of life. His had been coiled around his neck, like a stubborn snake. Mine was the same, maybe even more stubborn than his.
The door opened, and my dear father stepped into the office. He froze in the threshold. I welcomed him with a wide smile. There was dried blood on my teeth, like I’d just murdered someone and feasted on their flesh.
“You…”
