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The show wasn’t over. As Morningstar lunged at her, ready to cut her little body in two, Lorna, Klaus, and Merrit sent a new wave of their combined energies into her scythe. A miracle happened. It must’ve been their intention to turn the toy into a real weapon. It must’ve been Yoli’s pure desire to own a scythe just like mine. It must’ve been both. In her hands, the scythe grew in size – bigger and taller than even my own. The cheap wood handle turned into sturdy Fae’s Alder, and the foam that was supposed to be the blade turned into steel. The runes carved themselves into the top edge of the blade, and glowed red and thirsty for blood.
Morningstar’s scythe and Yoli’s new scythe met. Morningstar’s turned to pieces. Feverishly, the adrenaline of the battle raging in her veins, Yolanda stroke again and cut Valentine deep across the chest. She lost her balance and used the scythe to lean on, the blade too heavy for her to wield again. She was breathing fast, almost hyperventilating. She looked up at Morningstar, barely believing herself what she’d done.
Valentine looked around him in a daze, then down at the wound across his chest. The parchment-like flesh was torn apart, leaving the ribs underneath it bare. He touched the edges of the wound, tried to pull them back together. He wasn’t healing. In fact, the wound was growing, digging deeper inside him, tearing him open. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He couldn’t believe it. He was going to… die.
“Who are you?” He asked Yoli again. “How did you…”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence. The edges of his wound started sizzling, as if the blade that had cut him had been poisoned. His chest and stomach were an open crater, and flecks of dust started flying out one by one. He was burn
ing silently and turning into dust from the middle to his legs, and from the middle to his head, and he was aware of every second of it. He let out a cry of pain as he crumbled to the ground.
Silence fell over the room. Everyone stopped fighting. As the great Valentine Morningstar turned into a pile of sizzling dust, no one dared to breathe. He was gone.
“You did it,” I whispered.
Yoli caught my gaze. “I did it.”
The locusts were long gone, and the wild desert winds the two Pazuzus had summoned had vanished with them. One by one, the Grim Reapers that had invaded our universe teleported away, and I briefly wondered where. How did they get here from another dimension? Had Morningstar taken them with him? Had he become such a powerful dream jumper that he could move others from one universe to another? Questions, questions… Mysteries that didn’t matter anymore, because it was over.
“I killed a man,” Yolanda said, her voice trembling. The magnitude of what she’d done fell like a boulder on her shoulders. She suddenly looked years older. A teenager, at least. “I killed a man.”
“No.” I attempted to take her in my arms, but remembered I stank like a mass grave that had been stuffed full and not yet covered. “You saved the world. Yoli, he was going to bring the apocalypse. The actual apocalypse. Do you understand that? You were always the only one who could retire him, and you did.”
She shook her head. She wasn’t listening to me. “I killed a man.”
Deep down, I wondered if she was ever going to be okay again. She wasn’t a child anymore, she was a hero. But I had the strong feeling that she didn’t want any of it.
“Look what you’re holding.”
She looked at her scythe, which she was holding upside down, the blade acting as a fulcrum.
“It’s yours. And what’s crazy is that you actually made it. With your own hands.”
She lowered her gaze and sobbed. I didn’t know what to do, how to help her.
Headmaster Colin was making sure everyone was fine. GC returned to his human form, and was standing in the middle of the mess, dazzled and naked. He looked at me, and for a moment I had the impression that he didn’t recognize me. He was shaken. Paz and Sariel ran to Francis’s side. I watched them as they helped him up, and I couldn’t believe my eyes that he was alive and he could stand.
The perks of being a revenant…
I ran to them and wrapped my arms around Francis, because I knew he’d never reject me, whether I smelled like roses or rotten meat.
“Oh my God, thank you! Thank you!”
“The god you’re thanking had nothing to do with it,” Francis chuckled. I could tell he was in pain.
“I’m not thanking Yig.”
“Not even now?”
“Never.”
“You’re a Grim Reaper,” Sariel said.
I shook my head. “I didn’t retire him.”
A shuffle from behind us. The shrouded figures stood up slowly, and somewhat clumsily.
“Come here, dead girl,” Death said.
