Breath (15 page)

From the baby monitor came the sounds of Lex shifting and babbling.

“Once again, I walked among the living and met with the dead. But this time, I found myself enjoying my role. I threw myself into my work. Just the possibility of my soulmate joining me at one point made my burden easier to carry. I found that I actually liked talking to the dead before they moved on. And I learned how to maneuver your reality’s time enough to allow me to not only do my job but also have some serious downtime.” He grinned. “Maybe I’m just a cosmic voyeur, but I do so love watching you people. You do such fascinating things.”

“You can . . . what, stop time?”

“Eh, time is relative. It was just a question of me finding the balance between real time for me and real time for your world.” Death shrugged. “Piece of cake, once I put my mind to it.”

“Sure,” Xander said faintly. “Piece of cake.”

“Over time, I got to see just how creative you people truly are. I saw when you invented cooking. I saw your first manmade shelters. I witnessed your first burials. That was one of my early favorites.” Death grinned. “Watching you people mature has been eye-opening. And, at times, cringe-worthy. Look at the Hindenburg. Really. Hydrogen? What were you thinking? Of course it exploded. But you learned. That’s what’s truly so remarkable about you people: your ability to learn.”

Xander tried to imagine everything that Death had witnessed over the history of humanity, and his mind threatened to shut down. It was too overwhelming. It was like trying to count the individual waves of the ocean.

“You’ve made some fantastic things in your time,” said Death. “The wheel. Sailing ships. Weapons of all sorts. Paper. Chocolate.”

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned chocolate.”

“It deserves a second mention.”

“You want some? We’ve got a bag of M&M’s in the pantry. Maybe come inside with me,” Xander added casually, “and join me for some chocolatey goodness while you tell me the rest of your story? A sofa’s got to be more comfortable than the railing.”

Humor glittered in Death’s blue eyes. “Still the boy with the chocolate. No thank you, Xander Atwood. One gift given freely was more than I should ever have accepted. Besides,” he said, pivoting around on the railing to better face Xander, “I think you’re far more interested in getting me off this railing than you are in feeding me.”

Busted.

“It’s not just that,” Xander said lamely. “I don’t do well with heights.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Will you come inside?”

“No.”

“Um,” Xander said. “Okay. So. You were saying that you focused on your work and saw lots of cool things.”

Death watched him for a few seconds before he spoke. “Every now and then over the millennia, over my various life cycles, I would take a respite in the Slate.” He smiled thinly. “To recharge, if you don’t mind me using your metaphor. I’d watch the past with fresh eyes. And when I found myself tired or wondering whether you people really were worth everything I’d sacrificed, I’d view possible futures. And then I’d see that one potential tomorrow, when my soulmate and I are together once more. And that would be enough to get me through. To find my balance. Get closer to Zen.”

“A mental health break,” Xander said.

“Yes,” Death agreed. “That, exactly. For a long, long time, the Slate was the reason why I didn’t fight the pull of life at my cycle’s end.” He sighed. “But it wasn’t always enough to help me find my happy place. Hope can be fleeting, especially when between that hope and you is the knowledge of certain agony.”

“Pain sucks,” Xander said.

“Well put. Pain does indeed suck.”

“Do you have any idea how brave you are?” Xander said. “Knowing that you’ll have to go through something unspeakably horrible, all to keep everything alive here? You’re a hero.”

“I’m a fool, Xander Atwood. And being brave can be impossible when there’s no one to appreciate your bravery. And that,” Death said, “is when I realized that I dearly needed something that humans had. I needed a companion.”

“But you said your soulmate hadn’t come through the door with you.”

“Right. And until that happy day actually happened, I needed someone to temporarily fill the spot. Not as a soulmate, but as a companion. Someone with which to pass the time. Shoot the breeze. Maybe play a game of cards.”

Xander could see that; he couldn’t begin to imagine how terribly lonely it must be to be Death. “What did you do?”

“I created a companion.”

“You . . .” Xander felt his eye twitch. “Just like that? Abracadabra, a companion?”

“Well, it took a little bit more than saying ‘abracadabra,’ but yes, effectively.” Death peered at him. “What troubles thee, Xander Atwood?”

“Nothing. Nothing. I mean, your people created my entire world, right? So I shouldn’t be freaked out by you casually mentioning that you created a person.” He blew out a breath. “Sorry. Your story is sort of out of my frame of reference, you know? It’s just a lot for me to take in.”

“No worries. And for the record, it wasn’t a person. My companion was a transmogrifier.”

Xander blinked, nonplussed. “Okay, you just made that up.”

“Well. Yes. I told you as much.”

“No, the word. You made up that word.”

“Sure. To go along with my creation.” Death smiled. “Creative license.”

Xander’s eye twitched again. He desperately wanted a beer, or something stronger, but A) his parents would notice if their stash of booze was depleted and B) Death was still on suicide watch, so Xander didn’t want to leave him alone. “What’s a transmogrifier?”

“A locomotive creature that can change its form into either organic or inorganic matter.” He grinned, and for the first time, Xander saw a relaxed Death, a slacker, a guy who hung out with you and played video games and talked in vague terms about lofty goals. “Specifically, it’s a horse. For the most part. It was as close to a horse as I was to a human. I got the idea from the Botai.”

“The who?”

“The Botai. Nomads in the steppes of northern Kazakhstan. For the longest time, the Botai hunted wild horses. And then one day, a hunter didn’t kill the horse he’d stalked but instead mounted him, bareback. He twined his fingers through the horse’s mane and stayed mounted by pressing his knees against the horse’s sides. And for a few glorious moments, that hunter rode.” Death smiled. “And then the horse threw the rider and bashed his brains in with its hooves. But that was enough to show the Botai what was possible. Within a year, all of the hunters were on horseback. Want to know what began globalization? The taming of the horse.”

“When was this?”

Death cocked his head. “About . . . hold on, I’m counting . . . five thousand years ago.”

Xander breathed. “Jesus.”

“Still not him.” Death’s smile faded. “As I said, I’m old. I’ve seen it all, Xander. I’ve been there, even if I haven’t done that. I’ve seen the best humanity has to offer. And I’ve seen the worst. It’s been entertaining.” He stole a glance at his watch. “And now the show is almost over.”

“You haven’t finished telling me your story,” Xander said quickly. “You created a horse, a transmogri-something.”

“Transmogrifier. A fine steed. Horses are such noble creatures. As my steed would happily tell you, again and again.”

“Tell me?” Xander blinked. “Your steed talks?”

“All things talk, Xander. You just have to know how to listen. Granted, speaking their language helps.” Death paused. “In retrospect, the mistake was giving it a personality.”

“Your horse, um, talks back, I take it?”

“It’s getting the horse to shut up that’s quite the trick.” Death chuckled and shook his head. “Oh, that’s unfair of me. The steed was a boon companion for many and many a year. Out of all of them, it was the only one that consistently told me what I needed to hear, even if I didn’t want to hear it. Not an easy job, by any means.” He smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “I’m not always the best company to keep.”

Xander repeated, “All of them? So you’ve had, what, other transmogrifiers?”

“Of course not,” said Death. “One was quite enough, thank you. If I would have made more than one, they might have gotten it into their heads that they outnumbered me.”

“Then who’s the ‘them’ you’re talking about?”

“My colleagues.”

“So your soulmate made it through the door?” Xander asked. “With more of your people?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what colleagues are you talking about?”

A whimsical smile played on Death’s face. “The ones I made, of course. You know them as the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” he said breathlessly. “From the Book of Revelation! The sun turns black and the moon turns red, the seas boil, the skies fall!” Sheepishly, he added, “Okay, that’s either from the Bible or
Ghostbusters.
”

“The words in the Bible are about us,” he said, “but we’re not from the Bible. The first three Horsemen were humans from Laconia.”

“Where’s that?”

“Greece.”

There was a moment filled only with the sounds of the wind and the static crackling from the baby monitor on the floor, and then the boy said, “The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are Greek?”

“Spartan, actually. Specifically, they were helots.”

“Zealots?”

“Helots. The forced-labor class. You know.” He smiled. “Slaves.”

“The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are Greek slaves,” the boy said under his breath. “They definitely didn’t teach us that in Sunday school . . .”

“The original Horsemen were Spartan slaves, yes. Since then? Well, the Horsemen have come from different ethnicities, from different parts of the world.” He smiled toothily. “I’m all about workplace diversity.”

“Why did you pick three slaves to be your companions?”

He hadn’t. It was the girl who had picked him.

“This was about twenty-five-hundred years ago,” he said. “The helots were poorly treated by their Spartan masters. Beatings, rapes, torture—all of that was quite standard. They had hard lives. And though there were whispers of rebellion, none stepped forward to incite the helots to rise up. Until someone did.”

He could still picture her face, sweat-slick and thin, her eyes feverish, her mouth curled into a ferocious snarl. He had never seen a human more fetching than that girl at that moment—back bent, hands fisted by her sides, ready to fight for her life.

“The girl was sixteen. That very same morning, her older sister died of starvation—ironic, given that the girl’s role was to help in the kitchens and make black broth for the soldiers. And not even an hour earlier, a friend of hers, an albino boy, had died from fever. The surviving girl, in mourning over the deaths of her sister and her friend, didn’t show up to serve her Spartan master. Her master didn’t take too kindly to her defection.”

“She was grieving,” the boy said.

“So? It wasn’t like she could take a sick day. There weren’t any wages for her master to dock. She was a slave, and even though helots had some measure of freedom, they weren’t free to live their own lives. She was supposed to work, and she didn’t. In his fury, her master beat her to death.”

On the railing, the boy’s knuckles whitened.

“She didn’t go quietly,” he said, remembering the sounds of flesh striking flesh. “She fought back, but in the end, it didn’t matter. She fought until she couldn’t fight, and then she took the blows until she couldn’t take them any longer. She died, and her master left her corpse where it fell.”

The boy’s eye twitched.

“You look sick,” he said to the boy. “Don’t you know by now just how cruel you people can be? You’re liars. You’re thieves. Your concern for one another ends at your nose. For all that humans are magnificent, you’re also quite horrific. It’s a fascinating combination.”

“Not all of us are like that,” the boy insisted.

“Maybe not. But at one point, everyone is exposed to cruelty.”

“Not me.”

“No? So you’re the sheltered boy, the exception to the rule? You’ve lived a perfect life, untouched by betrayal?”

The boy clenched his jaw.

“Have you never been treated wrongly? Have you never been hurt by someone you trusted?” He watched his words slam home. “Has that truly never happened to you, Xander Atwood?”

The boy’s mouth opened, perhaps to protest, but a memory too vivid to ignore had already begun to play in his mind.

Death knew this, because he had delved into the boy’s mind from the very start. He watched the boy’s eyes widen as the truth was laid bare before him, and—

A beep shrieked from the monitor, rending the air.

The boy’s face blanked.

***

“Breathe, Xander,” Death murmured.

And Xander breathed.

***

“No,” the boy said slowly, as if waking from a dream. “No, that’s never happened to me.”

He watched the boy for a moment before he continued with his tale.

“After the Spartan master left, I went to greet the newly dead. They were lying there, discarded, their bodies ruined, their essences waiting for release. Just another day on the job.”

He remembered standing there in the dusty storage room, watching the three of them hover over their abused bodies; he remembered the girl’s head whipping up to face him, her ghostly gaze raking him.

“She was so angry, so enraged over her murder. She all but glowed with fury. She was passion incarnate, and she demanded vengeance.”

He could still feel her fists, ill formed and without substance, pounding against his chest as she screamed at him for justice. He could still feel her heat washing over him.

“In that moment, as I stared down at the girl’s bloody form, at the bodies of her starved sister and diseased friend, I was moved by her rage. And so, in that moment,” he said, “I made them an offer.”

Three humans, three different reactions. Fiery Creusa, the younger sister who had been beaten to death, leapt at the chance. She swore herself to him for all time, unequivocally, forever and always. Her eyes had shone like opals as he took her hand.

Dark-haired Philomela, the emaciated older sister, had responded with a measured look and a question on her tongue: What was the price of such an offer? He gave her an answer, and she accepted with a curt nod.