Page 14

Making love to Tristan was always an extraordinary experience, but now that I’d been given a living body, it was beyond that. It was something I could no longer describe with words of any language; I could only relish every sensation. The feel of his skin against mine, his stubble tickling my face. The taste of him on my lips, the way my heart raced whenever his hands explored me. The sound of his voice pouring into my ear, the strength of him as our bodies came together.

Our souls were already connected. Now our bodies could be too.

“I could cry,” I whispered when we descended from the heavens and melted between the soft sheets of our bed. The windows were wide open, and the cool morning breeze swept through, making the flowery curtains dance. “Tears of joy, I mean. I could totally cry.”

“I remember a few tears throughout the night,” Tristan replied. We spooned beneath the covers, our feet a little cold but our hearts singing in splendid unison. “Nothing makes me happier than seeing you like this, Unending. This is true bliss we’re experiencing, and I intend to make the most of it.” A moment later, he’d turned us both over. I ended up beneath him, sinking into the mattress and giggling as he showered me with kisses.

Birds sang outside, their melodious trills filling the room as my husband and I could not get enough of each other. He loved my mouth with his, then trailed soft pecks down the side of my neck, peppering the occasional compliment along the way. I liked the way he worshipped me. Having a body had made me strangely self-aware, but not in a negative sense. Tristan had been quick to pick up on the changes in my demeanor, making sure not a moment went by that I didn’t know how beloved I truly was.

“See this line here?” he asked, gently tracing my hip with one finger, skin sizzling in the wake of his touch. “It’s the same as your physical form as a Reaper. This steep curve that goes down to what is arguably one of my favorite places.”

I laughed, and we rolled through the sheets once more. I was on top this time, our fingers entwined as I pulled his arms over his head and kissed him with every drop of love I had in me. Tristan’s lovemaking was as diverse as our travels. It could be wild and passionate—and he definitely had a way of making me cry out his name over and over—but it could also be sweet and deliberately slow, which I liked more because it meant I got to enjoy every prolonged second of it.

Judging by how our bodies and souls swayed in the slightly chilly breeze, I could tell we were in for a lazy morning. “I will never tire of this,” I told my husband at one point, while he left wet kisses on my bare shoulder. “Tristan, I’m in no rush to lose this body. It’s incredible. Everything is… enhanced.”

“I’ve never experienced an existence like yours, so I have absolutely no idea what it was like for you before Anunit gave you this body,” he said. “But your happiness is mine, my love. So yes. Let’s hold on to the flesh for as long as possible. Maybe we’ll find a way to get Death to help us later down the line.”

The mention of her name reminded me of the blunder I’d made of the World Crusher’s book seal. I sat up, wrapping myself in the blanket. Tristan watched me quietly for a while, waiting for me to respond. I was certain he could tell something was bothering me. I didn’t like stepping out of sweet heaven and back into the unpleasant reality, but alas, it had been inevitable. “I wonder how she’s faring,” I muttered.

“Who, Death?” Tristan asked, then offered a shrug. “I doubt she has much trouble. I mean, she’s Death, not some run-of-the-mill Reaper. She made the World Crusher, after all. I trust she’ll finally fix that particular mistake, but I’m certain she also wants you to stew a little in the guilt stemming from what happened at the Temple of Roses.”

I turned my head to look at him, nodding as I let his words sink in. “You are probably right. Well said, husband. Eloquent and insightful!”

“That’s what I thought, as soon as I said it,” he laughed. He stood and walked to the bathroom door. What a sight for sore eyes this man was. His tall frame and broad shoulders always made my temperature spike. The way his muscles twitched with every movement made me suck in a deep breath. And the look he gave me as he paused in the doorway made my heart skip a beat. “Would you care to join me?”

A shower with my husband. I would’ve been a fool to reject such an offer.

An hour later, we were settled on the terrace outside, overlooking the western part of the redwood forest. I caught glimpses of a couple of treehouses, but they were some distance away. We had plenty of privacy in these parts. The birds were still competing for best song of the morning, bouncing from perch to perch. They occasionally stopped to sip the cool dew from the opening hibiscus blossoms I’d been growing in ceramic pots on every balcony and terrace attached to our house.

Tristan had brought out coffee, along with a small porcelain pitcher of milk and sugar on a silver tray. Since he could stomach liquids, he didn”t miss an opportunity to have coffee with me. We sipped in pleasant silence for a while, listening to the songbirds and watching the world move below.

I leaned over the sturdy wrought iron edge of the terrace to get a better look, spotting a couple coming from the north, heading west toward the Vale. “You know, this place feels genuinely different,” I said, having thought a lot about how I’d been perceiving The Shade since I’d come into a body.

“It’s about spatial perception, so I’m not surprised. Your brain is processing the visual information differently,” Tristan replied.

“Yeah, but… there’s more to it, I think,” I murmured. The couple I’d been watching seemed strange. They were holding hands, but there was nothing about them that hinted at happiness or love. If anything, they both looked on edge, constantly looking around. The man glanced up—a Mara, I realized as I noted the Calliope physiognomy. His girlfriend was a vampire of The Shade. I’d seen her before. But the man was startled. Our gazes locked for barely a split second before he yanked the vampire’s hand and they walked away, disappearing beyond a cluster of leafy bushes.

Then a young fae crossed the clearing nearby. Chantal. I recognized the silvery succubus shimmer of her skin, a trait she’d inherited from her father, Bijarki. She was as pretty as a summer flower, wearing a short white dress with bold crimson blossoms and crude green leaves imprinted here and there on the smooth fabric of the gently flared skirt. Much like the Mara before her, she looked up at our treehouse.

“More to it?” my husband asked.

“Look down,” I told him, and he followed my gaze.

I smiled and waved at Chantal, but she only gave us a faint smirk and kept walking, suddenly stiffer and in an apparent rush to be somewhere. “That’s odd,” Tristan said, his brow slightly furrowed.

“Right?” I replied. “It’s not just me, then.”

“Everybody has been checked and accounted for since the clone incident, and the portal is usually closed. It’s only opened with Derek and Sofia’s supervision,” he said. “Maybe they’re all on edge? I know I certainly would be if my home were attacked and someone replaced my loved ones with clones.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “You think their odd behavior is the result of trauma?”

“What else could it be?”

That was a good question, and it triggered a thought that hadn’t occurred to me before. I had been so busy being in love with Tristan, eager to enjoy my new condition, that I hadn’t considered the simplest method to double check the situation in The Shade. The living could lie, but the dead were mine for the truth. Except that I’d lost my connection to the Reapers and Death. The downside of having a body.

“Hold on, let me try something.” I pressed the call button on my earpiece. A few yards away, more familiar faces moved through the woods. Some wore cold smiles—the devious kind that made me wary. Others were completely lacking in any form of expression. I wasn’t sure which worried me more. “Esme, are you there?”

Her voice came through quickly. “Yes. Unending? Is that you?”

“My first time on the comms system,” I chuckled. “Listen, could you do me a favor?”

“Anything for you!”

Tristan frowned as he observed some of the people walking right past our redwood. I heard a distant laugh—it held the harsh edge of mockery, rather than the warmth of light humor. I’d learned the difference throughout my years, especially around the Shadians.

“Could you reach out to the Time Master for me?” I replied. “I can no longer connect to my siblings, if you remember.”

“Oh. He’s not around, but I’ll definitely send word,” she said.

“What about Sidyan?”

“He’s out, too.”

“Kelara?”

“On a mission, I think,” Esme replied. The more she told me, the tighter my muscles became, my hands balling slowly into fists.

“And the Soul Crusher?”

“I think he was due to come back to The Shade soon enough, but I’m not sure,” she blurted. It bothered me.

I shook my head slowly. “Kelara never goes on missions away from Soul,” I said, though mostly to myself. “What about Nethissis or Seeley? Weren’t they supposed to be around as well?”

“Yes, but they left,” Esme sighed. “We’re sort of Reaperless for a couple of days. Something ordered by Death, if I remember correctly. You know they don’t always share where they’re going.”

She was right about the lack of transparency, but what mission could Death have for my siblings, considering she was far away, hunting the World Crusher? Something didn’t make sense, and my instincts began to flare up like firecrackers. Pop, pop, pop, my mind snapped as I looked to my husband. “Babe, there’s something wrong here,” I said, after turning my earpiece off. Blood rushed through my veins, perhaps a little too fast. It made me tremble. This was fear. I had never felt fear like this before. It came with the realization that I was vulnerable. No longer the powerful Reaper.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t feel right,” I replied, getting up. The taste of coffee was suddenly too bitter. Something was going on, and until we figured out what it was, I could no longer enjoy the perks of being alive. I tried my best to explain every sensation I’d been dealing with since we’d arrived. To my relief, Tristan understood.

He took my hands in his, squeezing firmly. It helped ease some of the shivers. Even the birds had stopped singing, I realized. It was as if nature itself understood something I clearly didn’t. “You may have noticed something I wouldn’t have because I’m desensitized,” he said. “Maybe you’re more receptive to everything around you because you’re still adjusting to your body. It could very well save both our asses in the end.”

“But what are we dealing with? Why are they acting so strangely?” I replied. “If the people are all accounted for…”

“We‘ll look into it.” He stood, looking worriedly around. “For the time being, I think we should go downstairs and stock up on a few things from the safe.”

“You mean weapons?”

He nodded. “Might as well be on the safe side.”

“You think there are still clones here?”

“I won’t exclude the possibility, which means the two of us are in serious danger. But I don’t want you to make a radical decision until we confirm,” he said. I knew what that meant. He wished for me to hold on to my body for as long as possible.

We rushed downstairs, and Tristan punched the secret code into the safe’s number pad. I heard the click of the lock opening, followed by the shuffling of metallic objects and glass. We each had a backpack to fill with a variety of portable weapons—throwing stars, smoke bombs, and short-radius grenades. I fitted a pair of long knives in holsters across my back, leaving my scythe visibly hung from my belt. Tristan had been kind enough to procure me a couple of nicely fitted GASP uniforms to wear. I wasn’t a Reaper anymore, technically speaking, but I was still an ally.

“It could all just be in my mind,” I said, while Tristan loaded his bag with pulverizer pellets and double-checked a pulverizer weapon before handing it over to me. I’d already slipped about fifty reload units into my backpack. That meant a hundred shots. It was all very unusual for me since I’d always had my scythe and death magic to rely on, but I had seen Tristan and the other Shadians use their weapons so many times. I already knew what every item from my husband’s safe did. “Maybe I’m overstimulated and overreacting, I don’t know.”

“Or you’re on to something. Like I said, I didn’t like the behavior of some of the people we saw this morning either.”

My husband was everything to me, and I was the one who was truly able to protect him—or, I had been, until I’d been given this body. The tables had turned, and Tristan took it upon himself to keep me safe. He wanted me to hold on to this life, to make the most of it and not throw it away for anything. But if push came to shove, we’d both agreed I’d immediately jump out and sacrifice my flesh to be Unending again. If push comes to shove. You’re not there yet.

“How do we go about this?” I asked. My husband knew The Shade best. If anyone could sneak around unnoticed, it was him. “How do we figure out what’s wrong here without setting off any potential alarms?”

I thought about last night’s dinner. For a moment, I imagined that Esme and Tristan’s parents had been clones all along. Kalon, too. Derek and Sofia. What if we’d walked into some kind of hell and didn’t even know it? The mere thought horrified me. Yes, it was too soon to jump to that conclusion. Further study was desperately needed because I couldn’t cope with the dread of having fallen into such a heinous trap. I needed to know one way or the other.

“We should get out of anyone’s sight, first,” Tristan suggested. “South, deeper into the redwoods.” He showed me a pair of hi-tech binoculars. “I borrowed these from Phoenix’s prototype locker back at the base. These babies will allow me a longer range of vision, since we don’t have a sentry friend we can rely on right now.”

“Assuming they’re all clones, you mean,” I murmured, once again horrified by the prospect.

“It’s going to be okay,” Tristan said, smiling. “We’ll figure this out.”

A knock on the door startled us both. My husband looked at me first, then calmly proceeded to close the safe and put his backpack on. He kept the pulverizer weapon in one hand, locked and loaded, as he walked over to the door and opened it.

Esme beamed at us both. “Hey, lovebirds! Good morning!”

“Morning, sis,” Tristan replied with a broad smile, while I measured his sister from head to toe. She frowned at his weapon.

“What are you doing with that?” she asked.

“Just cleaning it,” Tristan replied. I could only imagine what was going through his mind at this point. If this were his sister, I imagined he’d be relieved but deeply embarrassed that he’d basically overreacted by whipping out the big guns. If this wasn’t Esme, however… it meant she had been taken. Or worse.

“Cool. So, I was thinking. Since, you know, you and your gorgeous wife are already getting suspicious,” Esme said, her matter-of-fact tone a disturbing contrast to her words, “that we might as well get it all out in the open now. It’s the polite thing to do.”

My blood ran cold.

In an instant, Tristan roared and brought his pulverizer weapon up. Esme giggled as he fired two shots. Nothing happened. Each time, we only heard the clicks. “We disabled every pulverizer weapon on this island,” she said. I grabbed my scythe and tried to slash her, but she bent backward out of the way, then kicked me in the stomach. I ended up on the floor, pain searing through my torso from her blow.

I didn’t even see how Tristan was subdued, but when I looked up, Esme’s clone was on him, his hands bound behind his back. “I’d have given it a few more days,” she said. “But I should have known from the looks you were giving us last night that you were on to something. Consider me impressed, since no one else has figured it out.”

“You’re not going to get away with this,” I hissed and scrambled back up. I’d lost my scythe, but I still had two long knives I could work with. As soon as I unsheathed them, Kalon’s laughter boomed throughout the entire treehouse. He came down the stairs, while I tried to figure out how he’d gotten in—maybe we’d left a window open or something. I hadn’t heard any glass breaking.

“But we already have,” Kalon’s double said. “Come at us with whatever weapons you’d like. You’re mortal, Unending. You’re weaker than Tristan now, and… well, look at him.”

I did. My husband was furious, a vein throbbing angrily down his temple, but he was helpless. Esme’s clone had done a fine job of immobilizing him quickly. That must’ve been the reason for her ridiculously blunt approach. She’d gone for the shock factor, and it had worked.

“Taeral, can you hear me?” I called out through the comms piece. If the whole island was infested with clones, I couldn’t reach any of them. But I could still get to Taeral and anyone else outside The Shade. I wondered where my siblings really were. The clones had copied everyone living, but they had yet to produce doppelgangers of Reapers. It worried me deeply.

Nothing came through the comms system, though.

“You know we would never have allowed you to communicate with the outside world,” Esme’s clone muttered, shaking her head in dismay as if I’d disappointed her somehow. “Thought you’d be smarter than this.”

“Wait, Esme and Kalon were on Visio when this whole clone debacle started,” I said, my mind working incredibly fast. “How are you here? How were you made?”

“All that was needed was a bit of hair left behind,” Esme’s copy replied dryly. “Our originals left plenty of their DNA behind in their redwood cabin. You really aren’t as bright as we’ve been led to believe…” She sounded disappointed.

“Now, now, darling. Be nice. Unending has been through enough,” a familiar voice oozed into the living room. I found myself transfixed, utterly paralyzed at the sight of Anunit walking into our treehouse. Only, she looked different. Slightly but fundamentally different, which was an odd observation, but it was the only one that made sense.

“Anunit,” I managed, feeling my eyes widen at the sight of her. “I don’t understand…”

“That’s because you haven’t been paying attention,” Anunit replied dryly. My hands trembled, making it harder for me to hold on to the long knives. Our pulverizer weapons had been tampered with. Somehow, the clones had hijacked the safe. Tristan’s was on the floor. Mine had been left by the safe. Both seemed to laugh in my face. I had been a fool. I wasn’t sure I could even perform any death magic that might protect me and my husband. I’d lost my scythe.

“Your eyes,” I said, trying to understand why they weren’t holding galaxies anymore but wild and peculiar blue fires. I was a complete stranger to this picture, and no one was kind enough to explain things to me. “Your eyes are—”

“Back to normal, thank the stars,” Anunit replied, almost laughing. “You have no idea how difficult it is to conceal one’s true nature, especially for creatures of Purgatory.”

It hit me then, where I’d seen the blue flames before. The golden hair. The slightly shimmering skin I’d initially assumed to be a marker of whatever species Anunit had belonged to prior to dying.

“What’s going on?” Tristan grunted, struggling with his restraints. It made Kalon’s clone smirk, and I would’ve liked nothing more than to cut off the bastard’s head.

“She’s a Valkyrie,” I murmured, trying to wrap my head around the monumental deceit into which my husband and I had been pulled from the very beginning. Death didn’t know. She couldn’t have known. She would’ve told us. No, Anunit had played us remarkably well. The implications that followed caused heat to burst in my throat, dread clutching my heart painfully—she’d come across as a Reaper to the point where we’d been able to track her as one. The magic and effort required to pull something like that off was unbelievable. “A being of Purgatory.”

Anunit grinned broadly. “And Unending gets the prize, it seems.”

“She’s not a Reaper,” Tristan joined my conclusion.

“I never was,” Anunit shot back, visibly pleased with herself. “But I made you all believe I was. Death included. It took considerable effort and combined spells, but hey, I pulled it off!” Her good humor didn’t mask the horrific situation we found ourselves in. This had been her plan since day one. The quests. The living body. The revelations. It had all been a part of her agenda. Tristan and I had been the marks, and I knew… I knew my body served as a trap.

It broke my heart to finally understand every decision that had brought us here. We couldn’t have known. Anunit had played this entire sequence, and our complicated relationship, the strife with Death… Damn, she’d gotten the best of us.

“And for the record, my name’s not Anunit. It’s Hrista,” she said. “The real Anunit is no longer available, I’m afraid. Hasn’t been for a very long time. Locked away for the sake of this whole project. The details are pretty boring. And you two are right where you need to be, so I hope you aren’t in a rush to go anywhere.”

It wasn’t a real hope expressed, nor an invitation. It was a statement. A Valkyrie had fooled us, and we were now her prisoners. I had no idea how this would end. I only knew the body I loved and had worked so hard for had suddenly become my prison.