Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ A Touch of Death ❯ Chapter 11

WARNINGS AND DISCLAIMERS: These are all fictional characters and any similarities to anyone living or dead is completely incidental. And anyway, I'm not making any money off of this.

 

This is my NanoWriMo piece, which I managed to turn out in half the time allotted. If you don't know what Nano is, check out www.nanowrimo.org for information and a chance at a really good time.

 

Elixir Design was dark and quiet when they entered, Ms. Anderson standing up sharply and then relaxing a little back into her chair. Her eyes had taken on that odd concentration that allowed her to see everything that was there, and for the first time, Erec was regretting requiring that she cultivate the skill so completely.

“No one has come by,” she said, her voice matter of fact but still a little shaky. “I've cancelled the rest of your appointments for the day, Mr. Cinna.”

“Thank you, Ms. Anderson,” Erec said. “Why don't you take the rest of the day off?”

She smiled tightly and then sat back down in her seat without answering. She was pretending not to notice that his wounds were remarkably healed and that Kathryn looked on the verge of splitting apart.

“Will you be seeing clients tomorrow?” Ms. Anderson asked.

“I'm not sure,” Erec said flippantly. “Don't schedule anything, we'll see how everything works out.”

Kathryn shuddered violently and her eyes suddenly snapped to Ms. Anderson.

“Did you know?” she asked in a low voice.

“Know what?” Ms. Anderson asked crisply.

“Who he is,” Kathryn breathed.

“Kathryn…” Erec began.

“Shut up,” Kathryn hissed. “She deserves to know.”

“Why?” Erec asked. “She has never made a deal with me, she has never signed a contract with me. If she did, I'd tell her, until then, there's no point in her knowing.”

“She's an accessory to everything you're doing,” Kathryn snarled.

Her eyes spun back to Ms. Anderson and one finger accusingly shot to Erec.

“He's the devil.”

Ms. Anderson's eyebrow lifted slightly and then she looked at Erec. He nodded tiredly and the secretary sighed as she turned back to her computer.

“That would explain why none of your appointments ever wants to cancel,” she said. “I'll set some things for tomorrow afternoon.”

Kathryn stared at her with disbelief.

“How can you do it?” she whispered.

Ms. Anderson looked over her shoulder and simply shrugged a little.

“I've known that his dealings aren't entirely part of this world since I started working here,” she said. “He's always been an honest businessman, ask any of his clients. They get just what they're contracted for.”

“Even if it costs them their souls?” Kathryn breathed.

Erec snorted softly and shook his head.

“Honestly,” he asked. “Do you really think anyone is still stupid enough to sign a contract for the price of their soul? Do you have any idea how many lawyers would have to validate the thing for an eternal contract like that? It would be a logistical nightmare. And it's impossible to write them without at least one loop hole popping up that someone always manages to wriggle through. It's been a waste of my time the few instances where I even attempted it. Honestly, I mostly bargain for bits and pieces of people's after life, a few years working for me, a few extra minutes of their lives, that kind of thing.”

She stared at him with disbelief and Erec shrugged a little.

“It takes a lot to decide where a soul is going when you die,” he said. “I told you that. And I very rarely have something I can offer that can counter balance the weight behind how someone has lived their life. That's just the way it is.”

He smiled then.

“I'm afraid making a deal with the devil for your soul is by and large nothing more than a myth.”

 

***

 

“So,” Erec said as he sat down in his chair and leaned back a little, his fingers tented on top of his desk. “Now you know what the phantoms are pieces of.”

“You should told me sooner,” Lathe said lowly.

“I'm sorry,” Erec said. “I really had hoped that the problem would just sort of work itself out.”

“That's always been your problem,” Lathe snapped. “You never want to get involved.”

Erec chuckled.

“Lathe, you really do need to learn that it's better to let people imagine you're involved than it is to really put forth all the effort.”

“They're pieces of you,” Lathe said. “That's going to require us to be involved.”

Erec sighed dramatically and shrugged a little.

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Just what are they trying to do?” Kathryn asked, her anger still simmering just beneath the surface, but her face carefully masking most of it.

“Take over,” Erec said with a shrug. “Run Hell. The usual. They'll snap the world apart to get it, though.”

Kathryn's eyes ran over him and the trim little known office he occupied. It fit, him being the devil, for some reason she was able to believe it. There should have been some kind of shock with that realization, but for the most part, there was just the clicking of the pieces coming together. It was almost kind of obvious when she thought about the hell he'd already put her through. He was responsible for the employ of a gremlin that crashed planes and anything else he could get on board. And a tooth fairy who ended the childhood of the world by punching it in the face. He had a door that opened on the After world and everyone always seemed so ready to defer to him. And he knew entirely too much about everything without them ever knowing it.

Another flick of her eyes around the office. But on the other hand, could someone like Erec Cinna really be the ruler of Hell?

He smiled at her absent mindedly, as if he knew just what she was thinking. She hated it when he did that. He'd been so apologetic at the hospital, promising to return her to her body just as soon as it was safe and swearing to keep her body under protection while she was outside of it. Somehow, that didn't seem like something the devil would do.

“Maybe they're better suited for it than you are,” she muttered.

Erec's grin curled darkly.

“Believe me, Kathryn,” he said quietly. “Better the devil you know than the one you don't.”

 

***

 

There were no more unexpected deaths, no more people falling through the cracks of existence and simply never being. They'd gotten what they wanted, they'd drained everything they needed, and now things in the spiritual world were restlessly still.

The shadows curled together, phantom forms twisting in a rhythm that seemed to have no master as they tangled and shot apart. They rocked back into formation, the shape of a man beginning to filter through the misting black as they gleefully reformed themselves. No more pieces, no more left behind parts, no more not mattering. They were going to be whole again. They'd waited so long for it and now things were finally in place.

A giggle that was too high and too rippling to be anything but insane snuck out into the night and it was like releasing the hold on a dam of madness. The laughter wouldn't stop after it.

 

***

 

“Wait, wait,” Erec said as he shook his head. “I'm not a fan of being the bait. Things never work out well for the bait. It either gets eaten or drowned.”

“If you have a better plan,” Lathe said. “Speak up.”

Erec flashed a guilty grin.

“Pretend that everything's fine?”

Kathryn snorted in disgust and shook her head. Was she really so confident that this man was the devil himself? She was having more and more doubts with every cowardly little comment that escaped him.

“We want to face them here,” Lathe said. “In the living world. Letting them get to us in After world would be a mistake.”

“As if trying to fight them here is overly intelligent,” Erec sighed.

“We just need to find them,” Lathe said.

“And then what?” Kathryn asked.

“I personally made that scythe,” Erec said, his fingers darting out to lightly flick the end of it.

The midnight blade let out a musical little ping and Erec smiled with satisfaction.

“And Lathe's been keeping it in perfect condition since,” he said. “It will cut anything. Even me.”

“So that's the plan?” Kathryn asked with disbelief. “You've cut up phantoms before, but more have always shown up. How is this supposed to solve anything?”

“Because this time it'll be all of them,” Erec said and leaned against his desk. “Look, Kathryn, I'm tired of having to explain this to you again and again. The rules are different when you're dead. Things aren't how you rationally expect them to be.”

“Life was never how I really rationally expected it to be,” Kathryn snapped.

“Then why do you keep expecting death to be?” Erec asked with a smirk.

Kathryn's eyes narrowed and she shook her head. Yes, devil. And here she was helping him. She slumped tiredly and rubbed at her temple.

“Shouldn't we have some…spiritual back up on this?” she asked tiredly. “Like a priest or something? Someone to do some kind of exorcism?”

Erec snorted and rolled his eyes.

“You think it's difficult trying to bargain for someone's soul, you should see the riggamaroll you have to go through to get a real exorcism. I swear, things were so much easier in the old days,” he sighed and drummed his fingers on the desk. “You could buy an exorcism off a priest for a few curse words and a handful of change.”

“Why would you want to be exorcised?” Kathryn asked loudly.

“Free ride back to Hell,” Erec said with a shrug. “It was a quick way to get there.”

Kathryn groaned and closed her eyes.

“Why do I always ask?” she muttered. “What's wrong with me?”

“Being dead messes with a person's head,” Erec offered solemnly.

“I'm not dead!” she yelled back.

“Near dead?” he offered sweetly.

“I can't believe this,” Lathe said lowly. “We're trying to plan some way to keep the entire hierarchy of Hell from toppling and you're bickering like children.”

“She started it,” Erec laughed. “Come on, it's not as serious as all that. If the worst comes to pass, then I'll just remerge with all the pieces I left locked up in Hell and get sucked back down to the throne again.”

“Then what's the problem?” Kathryn asked angrily. “You should be in Hell anyway!”

“Yeah, maybe…”

“He's not telling you everything,” Lathe said flatly. “Returning to Hell would most likely mean that the entire living world would be dragged down with him. And what goes to Hell doesn't easily climb back out, not unless it has a solid deal with the devil.”

“And, unfortunately,” Erec said with a smile. “I won't be making many deals at that point, what with the pressures of running an empire back on my shoulders.”

Kathryn slumped and Erec sighed a little.

“It's never easy, is it?” he said.

Lathe's lips pursed a little and his eyes drifted to the floor.

“What are we going to do with her?” he asked quietly.

Erec blinked and then frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“Because you interfered, the phantoms marked her. They want her now, even if they don't need her, they're going to suck out her life time. What are we going to do with her?”

Kathryn looked between the two of them, Lathe now determinedly not meeting her eyes and Erec staring at her with a confused concentration.

“Possessor?” Erec suggested with a shrug. “That could work.”

“Huh?” Kathryn managed.

“It's easy,” Erec said. “You just…take over another body for a while. It'd be like another job, you know. You'd pick it up fast. I mean, look how quick you managed that gremlin bit.”

“I'm not going to just possess someone!” Kathryn said with a frown.

“Why not?”

“Because it's wrong,” she snapped.

“You'd be surprised how many people really get into it,” Erec said with a distant look on his face. “Just giving up control to someone else.”

Kathryn's eyes narrowed and Erec shook his head.

“No, really,” he said and then smirked at her again. “You mortals really are a race of submissives.”

“We're not making her a possessor,” Lathe said.

He was staring hard at Erec now and something in the look made Erec's eyes narrow and then drop away.

“Why don't you tell us why that plane didn't crash?” Lathe asked softly.

 

***

 

He stepped free from the lingering darkness, his eyes cold and dark but lit with something that could only be described as fire and brimstone. He moved fluidly and scraped over every stone and street that spread before him. Each step was like the hoof beat of a horseman. He was raining down apocalypse, and soon everyone around him would know it.

They sensed it already, and they fell into a kind of uneasy silence as he passed. The world emptied behind him, every living soul finding some place it needed to be as far away from him as possible and every dead thing crawling away with a terrible sense of dread.

Something very bad had just been released and it was going to bring on something even worse.

 

***

 

Erec shuffled in the office, every set of eyes now locked on him as he fidgeted with his desk and tugged open drawers. He scowled irritably.

“I can't believe she threw the whole bottle in,” he muttered.

“They aren't going to let you not tell them,” Rose Marie said, her fingers playing with a few long strands of her hair.

“I know,” Erec snapped and then his face fell and he went back to digging. “The whole bottle.”

“Stop complaining about it,” Kathryn said lowly.

Something was itching over the inside of her skin, a weird stretching nervousness that was tensing her up for a fight. Here were the answers, here was what she needed to know. And she damn well didn't want to hear them.

“It was the whole bottle,” Erec bit out. “That's alcohol abuse, dammit. I have a right to be pissed.”

He finally yanked a flask out of a bottom drawer and slammed it down on the desk.

“And I need a drink for this,” he muttered tiredly, seeming to sort of sink down into his chair as he stared at nothing at all.

A bitter look passed over his face and he angrily smacked the silver flask away, the little metal bottle spinning on the floor where it landed.

“I wish that was true,” he said dully. “I wish that it would make a difference.”

He closed his eyes and then shook his head.

“Look, I don't know one hundred percent for sure why she's how she is. If we had time, I'd try and get a holy connection to take a look at her and figure it out. But as things stand, all I can tell you is that she's got some divine strings attached.”

Kathryn blinked and Lathe's head cocked to one side.

“And what exactly does that mean?” Lathe asked.

“How should I know?” Erec muttered petulantly and then his narrowed eyes slammed into Kathryn. “Maybe you are our holy back up. I wouldn't put it past Heaven to know just how this was all going to happen and stick their damned noses into my business.”

He shook his head irritably and sulked further into his desk.

“God's always doing that,” Erec said childishly. “Always trying to help everyone.”

“Even you?” Kathryn said lowly.

Erec sighed.

“Especially me,” he said and then a tired grin pulled into place. “I'm the black sheep that God can't wait to welcome back to the fold.”

 

***

 

Silent as the grave was nothing compared to the world in his wake. It was like everything just stilled and broke apart in a sudden burst of nothingness. It was perfect. It made him feel powerful.

He was going to merge with himself, he wasn't going to be a random set of broken pieces anymore. It made all the parts of himself hum with pleasure and shiver a little as he moved. He had to pause a moment to tighten his control over the body he'd formed before he could keep walking.

Close. The rest of him was close. They were two sides of the same piece after all, it made sense that they should be rejoined, that they should be combined together. That they should never have been parted.

Hell was going to have its ruler back, whole and complete, and that was all that matter. The life he'd drained boiled in his veins and filled his form with power. It had taken almost too long to figure it all out, to find a way to over power his other part into coming back, but he'd done it. It was simply a matter of being more alive than the other.

Erec Cinna smiled like a death's head. It was simply a matter of out living each other.

 

***

 

“Look,” Erec said. “Even when souls get knocked out of their body, they usually get sucked right back in. It's the way things go. That's where you belong, that's how you're whole, but when the phantoms managed to throw you out, you didn't go back in. Even when you touch your own body it doesn't draw you back in. Something is giving you enough power to keep your spirit form despite having a living body to return to.”

Kathryn stared down at her hands as they flexed into fists.

“I'm not meaning to,” she said blankly.

“Of course not,” Erec said. “I'm just saying that was why I didn't let you run back off and rejoin the living world. You're unique, and I have a very devoted interest to things that break away from the masses.”

Lathe frowned but let the comment pass.

“So you made her a gremlin to see how she'd react,” Lathe said.

“No,” Erec said slowly. “That was more to protect her. You know how fierce gremlins are about keeping watch over each other. They're damned unlucky and no one else is going to watch out for them. I thought by sticking her into the mix they'd help me keep an eye on her so that the phantoms couldn't interfere.”

“But then the plane didn't crash,” Lathe said.

“Yeah,” Erec sighed. “I was wondering how that would work out. Slate's the unluckiest gremlin I've ever met, and that's really saying something. I thought that whatever was charging her would either be overloaded with that or at least countered by it. But nothing. She managed to break a streak that he's been working on his entire life.”

Erec shook his head.

“And if there's one thing that gremlins can't stand, it's a lucky person,” he said. “So Slate couldn't keep her around anymore, not without her throwing off his entire life and most likely screwing up his luck forever. And she wanted out anyway.”

“So you made me be a tooth fairy,” Kathryn said grimly.

“Again, for your own protection,” Erec said. “You saw Amber take a hit. Anything that came after you was going to get a nasty surprise. If she hadn't taken you into After world things probably would have gone much smoother.”

“And last,” Lathe said and then was silent.

“Well,” Erec said with a shrug. “She never really got the chance to see if she's cut out to be a Cerberus. I don't think you actually took her on any jobs with you. I'm sure something odd would have happened.”

Lathe's eyes snapped to her for a split second, and he thought about the smooth way the darkness had glided around her. Yes, something strange had happened, it made sense that some kind of other worldly protection had been involved.

“This seems a little too convenient,” Kathryn said suspiciously.

“So do most things that happen in life,” Erec said and before she could point out that everything that had happened to her in the last three days had very little to do with life, he just smiled again.

“Now you might want to step back from the door, he just knocked Ms. Anderson unconscious and is about to burst inside.”

 

***

 

Over the years, Erec's door had stood up to a lot of abuse. It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that the devil sometimes had some unhappy customers or someone occasionally sent some muscle to try and renegotiate their deal. Not to mention the other worldly beings that didn't always understand just how to work something as simple as a door.

Nonetheless, the spells had always managed to keep the door whole and unmarked—until the moment it was shattered into dust by what could only be called Erec Cinna.

“Here you are,” the phantom said with a smirk that mirrored Erec's. “I found you.”

“Wow, did you think to look in my office all by yourself?” Erec asked dryly. “How clever.”

A brittle chuckle like glass crunching under a boot answered him and the dark man shook his head slowly.

“Enjoy your last moments,” he said. “You're done for.”

“Lathe,” Erec said. “You want to know how to beat him?”

Lathe glanced over and the smile that stretched over Erec's lips was worthy of someone who had once almost toppled Heaven itself.

“Start cutting off life time.”

 

***

 

If anyone would have bothered to ask, Erec could have answered just why he decided to stop ruling over a world of fire and torment and instead set up a little shop in a world that was just as full of torment but always hinted that maybe there was something around the corner to put the fire out. It was boredom.

No one understood just what it really meant to be immortal and have nothing to do to keep yourself occupied. Hell pretty much ran itself now, all it had really needed was his fall from grace to get the place started and then things just took off on their own. There wasn't really much of a place there for him, just a lot of people screaming and begging and doing everything they could to get away. But they never would, there really was no chance of that. Hell was forever for the souls that were tossed into it, and Erec couldn't even begin to describe just how dull it was to know that they were going to spend all eternity being tortured again and again.

He suspected even they had to get bored of it eventually, but some hell spawn had come up with a solution to that by now, he was sure.

So when the opportunity had presented itself, when Heaven had sent its own emissary to the living world, there had been no way in, well, Hell, that he was going to miss out. It had meant breaking off with some of himself, but it had been worth it.

There were a lot of saying about him now, not nearly as many superstitions as there had once been, but a lot of speculation. His favorite was about how his greatest trick was making the world believe he didn't really exist.

To be honest, Erec didn't care whether anyone thought he was a metaphor or not, as long as he wasn't bored, they could believe whatever they wanted. Because even when they wanted to think he didn't exist, he still got their business.

 

***

 

The scythe cut through the air like a wave through the ocean, a trail spreading out behind it that in one way or another would effect the rest of the world. It sliced into the phantom, a scream ripping up into the air as Lathe swung the blade free and rolled out of reach as something long and sharp whipped after him. Kathryn cried out and dove away, her body pressing flat against the wall as something whipped through the room after every strike of the scythe. It was more than the usual cold that followed it, this was something else, something that had been pulled out of a hell that was made of darkness and ice. This cold burned flesh and shattered bones. The scythe swung again and the phantom arched as another burst of thick black smoke filtered into the air.

“Just how much did you take?” Erec asked, his face unbelievably smug as he stared at the thing now wearing his own form. “You were on the right track, but I doubt you planned this well enough. You've been too hasty and you don't have enough built up life time to risk losing anymore. Just a couple more cuts and I'll squash you like the ridiculous fool you are.”

The thing screamed with rage and then it was flying across the office, it's knees glinting against the desk as it knelt in front of Erec.

“Then we'll finish this fast,” it snarled.

Lathe swung again, but this time, the thing was waiting, and it's arm shot out. The blade dug down into one fist as powerful fingers wrapped around it and yanked. Lathe's eyes opened impossibly wide as he was lifted from his feet and tossed easily into a wall, his breath running from his lungs as dark spots danced over his vision. His hold on the scythe loosened, and the thing let out a grunt of triumph as it threw the blade across the room.

Its bloodied hand then snaked through the air to Erec's throat, the devil now staring up with narrowed eyes and a tightly drawn mouth.

“We are better than you,” the phantom hissed. “We've been tempered in Hell while you wandered this place. We've been gathering our strength, and what have you been doing?”

Erec remained silent and the phantom's teeth bared in a dangerous snarl.

“You deserve to be the pieces of us that get thrown away,” it hissed.

“You were nothing,” Erec said lowly. “I didn't even bother to throw you away. I just left you behind.”

The thing screamed with rage, its head thrown back its fingers dug down into Erec's throat.

“And that was your mistake,” it breathed, its form hardening again as it stared down at Erec. “Your last one.”

A ragged smile pulled over Erec's face as his skin grew darker with the lack of oxygen. He shook his head feebly and the words scraped up through his throat.

“You don't really think that, do you?”

His fist slammed into the side of the thing's head and sent it spinning away. Its fingers clawed over Erec's neck, but its grip was lost and it found itself sprawled on the floor as Erec got slowly to his feet. He adjusted his tie and stood over the thing.

“You should have stayed in Hell where you belong,” Erec said.

Lathe panted and tried to push himself to his feet, a thick stream of strangely tinted blood running from the back of his head and then pushing back beneath his skin the instant it broke out into the air. It was a strange feeling to say the least of it. His eyes blinked groggily and Rose Marie's hand lightly petted over his cheek.

“It's going to happen now,” Rose Marie breathed and her head turned a little to Kathryn. “Close your eyes.”

Kathryn's eyes darted to her with confusion but then jerked back to the center of the room as the phantom's fingers locked around one of Erec's legs. Rose Marie sighed softly next to Lathe's ear and leaned over him to shield him from the rest of the world.

“Close your eyes.”

But Lathe's eyes widened, his fingers scrambling uselessly over the floor as he tried to get up. Something dark shivered through the room and they all knew it now.

It had finally happened, the devil had underestimated himself.