The 13th: Destiny Awaits (24 page)

More sounds of thrashing and clattering came from below.

The man opened his eyes. “We can't reach her without the Keeper.”

“She's here.” Ethan tilted his head in Kate's direction. “And you haven't recognized her.”

“I'm just guard of a Black City.” The soldier’s breathing was laboured, and his face grimaced, but the eyes that found Kate's were full of hope. “The Reaper. Oh, thank the Entity.” His eyes fluttered closed and his body become slack.

“Is he dead?” Kate asked.

“No, just unconscious.” Ethan lowered him to the ground. He stood up and looked first over the lacy wrought iron rail then at her.

“I can't do it.” Kate rose up, too. She pressed her back against the wall behind her.

“Kate, of course --”

“No.” Kate shook her head. “I tried. I told you about it. It started to feed on me. And look. Look. They are losing their auras. He is turning them into Eaters.”

“Stop it.” Ethan's hands cupped Kate's cheeks. “Calm down.”

“I can't.” Her jaw clenched. “I can't.”

“Kate.”

“Please, don't make me do it.”

“Who is going to make you do it, silly?” His fingers brushed down her cheeks. “I'm going to do it and you are going to keep me company.”

The laugh of the white creature, louder and more unhinged than ever, bounced among the bookshelves and filled Kate's ears. There was something wild and raw in it. It crawled under her skin and wetted her hairline with perspiration.

She wanted to avert her gaze from the sight below, where a constant stream of soldiers attacked the Eater in a series of never-ending assaults, their spears piercing the white matter, and the small tears exposing blackness beneath it. The black held the whiteness together like stitches and the black blades cut through it like it wasn't there. Somehow, Kate knew the black belonged to Nan. The Keeper was part of the Black City, so it made sense that her aura was black, but then shouldn't the soldiers’ auras have also been black?

Every time the creature shoved back against the soldiers they flew through the air to land on the floor, their armour twisted, their limbs at odd angles, their auras pale.

Ethan's fingers squeezed hers, then he released her as he floated up.

“Don't.” She curled her hand around his, shaking her head, trying hard to hold on to him, to prevent him from doing whatever he had in mind.

“Everything is going to be okay.”

No, it's wasn’t. She knew that as surely as she knew anything. He was going to go down there and he would either be drained of his energy or lose all of his colours and then who knew what would happen to his soul? Would it perish, even though it still had a body? Or would he become an Eater with a body? “Where are all the Keepers and the rest of the city’s residents? They should be doing something.”

“But we are,” a whisper like a gentle breeze reached them.

“Who are you? Show yourself.” Metal wrapped around Ethan's lifted hand, the steel tips pointed forward like a claw ready to strike.

A dark shadow materialized from the wall and took the shape of a woman. “We, the Keepers, can't go against our sister; if we did, we would end up the same as her, giving it even more strength. She is part of the Eater now, that’s why our weapons only scratch it, they are not meant to harm one of our own, even when our own is part of an Eater.”

“Then how can I beat it?” Ethan asked.

“You have to rip away the whiteness until nothing remains but black. Your gloves and your --” her eyes for a moment focused on Kate “-- scythe can do that while our blades can't. That will give our sister a chance to free herself from the Eater's prison.”

“Okay. That means that I will have to kick his butt as hard as I can. I can do that.” A smile flashed on Ethan's face before he wheeled around. He had one leg on the curve of the rail when Kate stopped him with a hand on his arm.

She couldn't let him face the Eater on his own. The thing had defeated her so easily the last time and now with Nanael's power on his side... “We are a team, you said so.”

“Of course we are.”

Of course they were. After everything they had been through, all the fights and misunderstandings, he should have hated her or at least still been angry with her, and yet,
of course we are
. He had been unselfish in his friendship, and all the while Kate had been focused on her own problems, on her shattered dreams. She had been drowning in her self-pity -- unloved, unlovable -- for so long that she hadn’t been able to see what was in front of her. All she had ever wished for and wanted was to be normal and for her mother to get well again so that they could resume their previous lives. The possibility of that had died together with her mother's body. And still she had been clinging to a dream that would never come true. What for? Tyler and Mandy now knew who she was and they still treated her the same, they still cared for her and loved her. She was not unloved, was she? She had just believed that she was.

“Kate?” Ethan's fingers wiped her cheeks.

Even he, he loved her, too, didn't he? She smiled at him and her scythe appeared in her hand. “We will go together.”

“Let's go then.”

Their fingers laced and they jumped down, the soles of their feet landing softly on the ground behind the row of men in black armour.

In the next second Ethan forced his way between the soldiers and leaped on the Eater, a war cry on his lips. His claws dug into the Eater's side, leaving a wide gap of black.

The Eater turned, his brows furrowed and his lip lifted in a snarl. He brandished a white sword, an extension of his arm at Ethan.

Ethan ducked.

This is not going to end well
. Kate swallowed sudden nausea and lifted her weapon, trying to shove the thought out of her mind. She took a deep breath before she lunged forward. She only had to make as many tears into the whiteness as possible. So that she did; as soon as the Eater showed her his back, her blade cut into him, making long black lines and then she darted out of his reach. Maybe there was a chance of them destroying the white thing. They just had to be persistent and careful.

Ethan did the same, with soldiers joining their strategy: cut and duck.

Kate made another rip in the Eater; Ethan followed her example.

The Eater wheeled around fast, he thrust his sword at Ethan, who sidestepped it and bumped into the soldiers beside him. The blond lost his footing and the Eater's hand shot out. He grabbed Ethan's hair and hauled him into the whiteness.

Ethan's red shimmer vanished.

“No!” Kate threw herself forward, scythe first. The blade plunged into the whiteness. She had to tear him open and find Ethan.

The Eater hissed, his free hand gripped the snath and jerked it deeper into himself, bringing Kate closer.

When he turned to her, his white face carried a satisfied smirk. Dread pumped through her veins, and when a film of white shot up the snath, reaching up for her, she knew. She knew: She was going to die.

#

Silence.

Darkness that became a blinding light of rainbow colour when she opened her eyes. She should have perished without the possibility of being reborn, to cease living like she had never existed at all; wasn't that what happened after an Eater got you in its grasp?

She picked herself up -- she hadn’t even known that she was lying down and looked around. She stood in the middle of a bubble whose colours diffused into each other. Where was she?

A silhouette emerged from the wall of the bubble, its colour black. Another one, red, behind her.

Kate wanted to spring toward them, but her feet weighed a ton and it was only with some trouble that she took a step forward. “Are we dead?”

“Not yet.” Nan's arms wrapped around Kate's shoulders and pulled her into a hug.

Kate felt like crying. She was the one who had betrayed Nan, she didn't deserve this, but she couldn't help but hang on her. “I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault.”

“Yes, it is. I was the one who told him where to find you.”

“But you shouldn't have known.” Nan patted Kate's back before she leaned away. “That's why I never told you who I was; so if he tried to extract it from you, you wouldn't know.”

“But I did.”

“Yes.” A gentle caress of Nan's fingers over Kate's hair then Nan stepped away. “And I can't blame you. He's powerful. He has killed two of my protégés and I couldn't do anything.”

“Reapers?” Ethan joined them.

“Yes.” Nan lowered herself as if she was going to sit. An armchair, the same colour as the walls of the sphere they were in, appeared under her. As she sank into the softness of the chair, she gestured to them. “Sit.”

Two armchairs now stood facing Nan. Ethan and Kate occupied them.

“Why didn't he kill me then?”

“Because he wanted to get to me,” Nan said. “He has always wanted me.” She sighed and pressed the fingers of her hand against her mouth in a moment of contemplation. “The first time I met him, he was a man, a curator at the British Museum going by the name of Mr. Sell. He is a descendant of a Keeper --”

“Keepers can have children?” Ethan intervened.

“Yes, it's allowed, but not welcomed. It happens very rarely. Mr. Sell is the only case I know of,” Nan answered. “His origin and the handbook that got passed down in his bloodline served him as an entrance into the spiritual world. We have no knowledge of how he used them before, but after his family's death, he used them to get my attention. He wanted my help to enter one of the worlds through the 13th, hoping to find a copy of his family there. He thought that by threatening to cut the life thread of the Awakener under my charge at that time, I would yield to his demands. But that would have endangered the balance of the worlds.”

Kate leaned forward. “But he doesn't have a body now and he seems more interested in fighting the soldiers than anything else.”

“His memory is gone, devoured by his desire and ambition. All that remained was an urge to find me and get into the 13th,” Nan said. “I wasn't even aware he was an Eater when he possessed and drained James, a ten-year-old boy who was still in training to become a Soul Reaper and was too weak to be able to resist him. I hid the energy of my next protégé, thinking that as an adult she would be able to obliterate him, but at that time he was already too strong. I was never aware that an Eater could become so powerful. None of us were.”

Nan moved to the edge of the chair and her hand covered Kate's. “And then with you... Your mother's charms blurred my connection with you and prevented me from sensing you when your powers awakened. That's why he got to you before I did. I tried to watch over you from afar, thinking of a way to train you without approaching you as the Keeper.”

“Were you there?” When her mother had started to become strange with that weird look in her eyes. “When it happened?”

“Yes. That was his attempt to expose me. And I couldn't risk that, I couldn't help you; the most I could do was to insert suspicion into your father and hope that it would bring him to you.”

“It was the Eater then.” Just as she suspected. “And not my mother who tried to kill me.”

“It was all him.” Nan's fingers gave Kate's an affectionate squeeze.

Kate pinched her mouth. It was all him. The creature who had ruined her life. She could also blame Nan. She should have been there to protect her, shouldn't she? But when she lifted up her head and her eyes found Nan's...

“I'm the Keeper of Balance first and the guardian and mentor of the Soul Reapers second,” Nan said, like she had read the accusation in Kate's eyes. “I'm sorry.”

Kate freed her hands and folded them in her lap. She wanted to blame Nan, she did, but... There were higher stakes in the game, she understood that. And she couldn't change the past no matter how much she wished she could; all that she could do was to look into the future. If they even had one. “What's going on? Where are we?”

“Nowhere, everywhere,” Nan said. “This is the gift of Entity, the space and time that doesn’t exist. The time outside of this orb is frozen, waiting for us to leave the sphere.”

“And die?” Ethan asked.

“If we choose to.”

“Do we even have another option?” Kate asked.

“Maybe, if we work together,” Nan said.

“To merge, you mean, like I had to do with Kate to get into the 13th?” Ethan asked.

“Yes.” Nan nodded.

“Okay.” Ethan jumped up. “I'm all for it.”

“What about you, Kate? Are you up to it?”

“I guess I have to be.” Kate slowly rose.

“You are the Reaper, you are going to be the one leading our action. You have to be certain that you are ready for this.” Nan stood up, too, and the chairs behind them disappeared.

“And if I'm not? Then what? Are we just going to stay here?”

“That or cease to exist.”

“Stop chitchatting already.” Ethan's arms wrapped around Kate's shoulders and he pulled her backwards. “She may not feel ready, but she has us on her side, she'll do just fine.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder, at his gentle eyes that shone down on her, at the curve of his mouth that spoke of care and love. She mirrored his smile. Whatever happened to them, death or oblivion, at least they had tried, at least they didn't give up, because not having tried was the only thing she would have regretted. She stepped backwards, diving into him. The redness embraced her, turning her dark blue into a purple that became black with a violet hue when incorporated with Nan's ebony aura.

The colours moved away to the blinding whiteness of the Eater. It wove around her like ropes, binding her. A scythe, no, a rod with a wide blade on one side and a narrow one on the other was heavy in her hand. Slowly, she lifted her arm and swung the weapon.

A scream pierced the whiteness.

She slashed into it again and again, every cut she made freeing them from it until she could peel it away like ribbons. But it was still everywhere around her, thick and heavy. And after a few short seconds of what looked like shock, it started to close in on her.

“Did you really believe you could best me? A man who even the Keeper avoided?” the Eater's voice echoed in the whiteness. “A man who has overpowered you so easily in the past?”

Pieces of it clinging to her took on a grey hue.