The 13th: Destiny Awaits (18 page)

His laughter died as he moved into the east corner of the room and pressed himself against the ceiling like he was trying to be as small as possible.

She finally had him. And he knew it, she could read it in his expression. She raced to where he was and brandished her scythe, already seeing the room bathed in white light.

He caught the blade and held it between his fingers. His mouth curved into an unpleasant smile. “Don't tell me you thought that you could best me?”

How was that possible?
Kate gaped at him, shuddering.
That shouldn't be possible. It shouldn't.

The scythe shimmered in black light which became a golden translucent glow, scintillating as it rose up in waves, disappearing into his whiteness.

He was feeding on her. She tugged on the scythe, but she couldn't pull it out of his grasp. She silently swore. She tried to de-materialise the scythe, which was now as luminous as the golden light, but it was as if it was stuck. She pulled on it hard, but couldn’t break the hold he had on it. And he only held it with his fingers. Drops of sweat ran down her spine and dampened her shirt. She swallowed.

Her mother's weeping became louder.

She refused to release her reaping tool. She was afraid if she did, it would be like giving it to him. But was there any other choice?

“You are quite tasty. Such a rich spirit but so weak.” The Soul Eater smirked at her as he drew more golden energy out of her.

She already felt the weakness in her body. The tiredness and the soreness. She had to do something. Her fingers withdrew from the snath and she stumbled backwards. Her knees felt like jelly and she was afraid she would fall.

The scythe glimmered and vanished.

“Smart lady.” The Soul Eater descended right before her, less than a step away. His eyes bored into her. “Maybe there is still a use for you.”

“Leave us alone.” She took a step backward, the backs of her legs hitting the edge of the bed. The hair on the back of her neck stood up.
I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” He smirked again, then flew toward her mother. “You see, there's something I want from you.”

Mother disappeared behind the armchair's back, curling into herself, probably. Her soft sobs echoed in the room.

“Get away from her.” Kate's hands fisted against her sides.

“You are weak, too weak to defeat me. But you will have to, if you wish to help your mother.” The white form floated above the armchair, he faced Kate, tilted his head and a crooked smile stretched his mouth. “Or are you willing to make an exchange? I’ll leave if you would be willing to do something for me.”

“Never!”

“As you wish.” He reached down, and touched the top of her mother's head.

A scream pierced the air. It lasted and lasted.

Kate couldn't move. She was frozen to the spot, unable to do anything to help her mother. He was right, she was weak.

The door shot open and two men and a woman in white burst through it. They pushed Kate aside as they rushed to the armchair.

The needle flashed in the afternoon light and the screaming stopped like somebody had cut it.

They walked right through him. They couldn't see him. Kate numbly stood there, watching the whiteness fading away.

“You’d better leave.” One of the men pulled Kate into a half-embrace. He turned her around and led her toward the door.

“But...”

“We will take good care of her,” the nurse said then pushed her out of the room, closing the door.

Kate stared at the brown wood for what like felt like eternity, expecting the whiteness to appear and attack her again. It didn't.

Kate gazed at The 13th Handbook's page titled Soul Eaters. She had pored through the paragraphs under it a hundred times, but nothing written there gave her information about the Eater she had faced in her mother's room. If that was even an Eater -- most Eaters feared the strength represented by an abundance of spiritual energy like hers and avoided it, and they didn’t have distinguishable features either.

She had tried to find entries in the book about colourless ghosts, hoping something would appear under the table of contents and give her some understanding as to why that white ghost looked as he did, what happened to her mother, and why he had harassed her. But it didn't.

She lifted her gaze and looked around her room. She had painted it in white because ghosts' colours were more pronounced against the white, but now, after she had learned about the ghost that haunted her mother, she couldn't stop wondering how many times that creature might have visited her room without her even knowing. How long had he been there, lurking, observing her, learning everything about her? And how long did it take him to cause her mother's insanity? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?

She rubbed her eyes as if that would drive away the stinging feeling that lingered in their corners. If she had noticed him, she might have been able to prevent him from influencing her mother. If she had only believed her mother about the false angel -- but she hadn’t; the first of her failures. It made her feel powerless and incompetent. However, the result of her last failure also left a strange sense of relief: Her mother wasn't crazy, not in the medical sense, and all Kate had to do to make everything better was to get rid of that ghost. Which, as her encounter with him had proved, was easier said than done. How could she defeat him?

She sent a butterfly to Nan, inquiring whether there were other kind of ghosts besides the normal spirits and Eaters. When the answer was ‘no,’ she asked Nan what Soul Eaters were, hoping that she might learn something new, something useful that would help her in destroying the thing.

Haven't you read the book?

I did, but please, indulge me anyway.

They are souls who refuse to leave and are bound to this world with thoughts of revenge and regrets. They allow negative feelings to consume them until they lose all their colours. When that happens they disappear completely. They don't appear in the 13th as other souls do.

And the only way for them to exist is to feed on other souls,
Kate repeated the statement from the book and added to the message,
Can they harm a living human?

It depends. Some spirits can manipulate material things, but only if their energy level is high enough. And those cases are rare
, Nan communicated through the butterfly.
Souls after they are separated from their bodies... their spirit energy is high, but they don't know how to use it; normally they are like babies who don't know how to walk or talk, and they don't have to learn it since the sooner they move on the better.

Because otherwise they lose their colours?

Not really. Colours are souls' auras, their essence; they are imprints of memories and feelings souls gathered during their lifetime, remnants of everything they learned. They don't disappear because a soul overstayed its stay. They fade away when they are replaced with negative feelings that should die together with the body, but sometimes remorse or anger or other destructive feelings don't allow the soul to shed them,
Nan explained.
Since they thrive on other souls, the Soul Eaters’ spirit energy is usually high and since the metamorphosis into an Eater is not overnight, they, unfortunately, learn quite a lot more than to just walk and talk.

Like what?

To move objects, to manipulate people and very rarely -- we only had one case -- an Eater managed to take over a person's body.

Take over a person's body,
Kate silently repeated, a small hope blooming in her chest. Could that be the case with her mother? Could he have been the one in charge of her mother’s body when her mother's fingers wrapped around Kate's throat? Could that be possible? That would mean her mother had never tried to hurt her, that her mother loved her, and that Kate wasn't as unlovable as she thought she was.
What happened to that Eater?

A Reaper destroyed it.

With the scythe
, Kate thought, but was this the only way? She asked Nan.

Yes,
Nan answered.
Only the Reaper's or Awakener's tools can eradicate them
.

Kate thanked Nan for information. She would have preferred to be able to tell Nan about what had happened in the sanatorium, but how could she trust somebody who refused to meet her as a Keeper, face to face?

She rested her cheek against the surface of the desk. There was nobody she could talk to about this, not even the ghosts; it would be pointless, since the ones who knew about Soul Eaters were rare, and they couldn't help her get stronger, which was what she needed to become to get rid of that thing.

Only one person could, besides the Keeper. She grimaced.

Ethan.

#

With a scowl on her face Kate leaned her forehead on the cold steel of her locker. She absently stared at the faint lines of an insult written long ago with a black marker. She had spent almost two hours trying to scrub it away. Today she planned to ambush Ethan, to apologize to him and beg him to start training her again, but... Just seeing him from a distance, the resentment rose up and prevented her from taking a step toward him, knowing that if she did, she would probably say something to him she would regret later. And she was usually so good at suppressing her emotions.

She sighed. So she only gave him a short, stiff nod, wondering how she was going to get better as a Soul Reaper if she couldn't even get past her irritation to approach her mentor.

“Where have you been?” said Ethan’s voice behind Kate.

Kate flinched and bumped her head against the locker before she wheeled around. Her scowl darkened at the sight of Ethan, who glared at her with his arms crossed. Now that he was only a step away, she noticed the dark circles around his eyes and the same harsh lines that marred her father's face and spoke of exhaustion. She would probably have had them, too, if not for the sleeping pills rolling around in her nightstand drawer. She might run out of them soon though, with the way she needed them almost every night. “In school,” she told him in a tone that betrayed irritation over the stupidity of his question.

“You haven't come to our lessons for more than a week now,” he said. “Just because we don't date anymore and I was generous enough to give you some time, that doesn't mean that I fired you.”

Oh, so she wouldn’t have to beg him. That should have been a relief, but... “I quit.” That wasn't what she had wanted to say, but his tone and the ‘generous’ part irritated her and there was this -- she pressed her hand against her chest over the thunder of her heartbeat -- weird tightness in her chest. If he wanted her cooperation, he should be more accommodating. She turned around and collided with a boy. She apologized and darted past him across the hallway filled with students.

Ethan followed her. She could distinguish the squeak of his black sneakers as his soles thudded against the light-blue linoleum. They were coming closer. In the next moment his fingers dug into her arm as he tugged her backwards.

“What?” she snapped at him. Why couldn't he be more courteous, nicer -- as nice as he had been in the beginning?

“Don't run away from me,” Ethan said.

“I wasn't.” Kate pinched his hand, but it only made him flinch. “Now, let go of me.”

People around them slowed down and she could feel their eyes on them.

“We made a deal.” He started to haul her forward.

First he insulted her and reproached her for something
he
did, the hypocrite, then he dragged her around without a shred of gentleness. And on top of that, he also expected that she would act like nothing had happened. She at least had intended to include an apology when she had planned to ask for his help even though it wasn't her fault. “I haven't signed anything.”

He pushed her into an empty lab, where blinds muted the light coming from outside and the sharp stink of acid hung in the air. “Listen --”

“No, you listen to me.” She shook him off. She had been holding herself in check where he was concerned for far too long. “You don't explode on me and then behave as if nothing happened.”

“Why not? You are letting Sandra get away with it all the time.”

But she had never considered Sandra to be her friend, though she had thought of him as a friend. Well, maybe not a friend in the real sense, not after what she had overheard, but she did think of him as her ally. And despite everything, he did mean more to her than a friend would. Maybe that was why his attitude pained her so much. The closer they get to you and the more you love them, the deeper they can cut you. Didn't she have enough scars already? She turned on her heel.

“We have a deal, and I'm not going to allow you to dodge it.” Ethan's hand gripped her shoulder, his fingers clutching her painfully.

“You’re hurting me.” Kate jerked her shoulder forward, but his hand remained wrapped around her like a steel vice, not allowing her to step away.

“I promised that I would help you become a Reaper and that I would teach you everything that you need to know.” His voice softened, and his grip eased slightly, but not enough for her to shake him off. “I will not back out on my promise.”

“And because of
your
promise, I should tolerate your outburst? I don't think so.”

“Kate.” Her name came out of his mouth like a warning, a warning she didn't intend to heed.

She faced him. “Apologize.”

“What?”

“Apologize for your behaviour and I'll think about it.”

His arm fell to his side and he moved backwards. “You don't expect --”

“Yes, I do, and if you want our deal to continue...”

“Apologize?” A small vein protruded at his temple, pulsing. “Me? To you?”

Why was it so hard to accept it? He had been a jerk to her and he should make amends for that. It wasn’t like the apology would have unveiled his deceit. She put her hands on her hips. She wouldn’t go along with him unless he apologized. “Yes. To me.”

With two lines instead of eyes, he measured her in a silence that dragged on until he cut it by spitting out, “Fine.”

“Like you mean it.”

He chortled, a sound without any joy or mirth in it. “I always wanted you to stand up for yourself, but I never imagined that I would be on the receiving end.”

“I still haven't heard an apology.”

He removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighing, then put them back on. A wide, insincere smile, so different from the ones he had bestowed on her not so long ago, curved his mouth as he pressed his hand against his chest and slightly bowed. “I deeply regret the harsh words spoken to you.”

It was not about the words, it was the attitude and the gaze that made her feel like she was worth even less than the dirt on the soles of his shoes, but she graciously stayed silent and nodded in acceptance.

“So we will see each other today after school? Five-thirty?”

“I'm afraid not.” As much as she needed and wished to get better at fighting, she wouldn’t be able to spend an hour in Ethan's company without -- not snapping, she hoped she had more self-control than that -- but doing something impertinent, something that would make him even more cranky and contemptuous.

“I apologized.” He stepped closer and towered over her, the scent of his deodorant invading her nose.

“Yes, you did. And I accepted it. I know that I need the training and I'm grateful for your lessons.”

“But?”

“Tomorrow. We’ll do it tomorrow.” She turned away from him, ready to leave the stuffy classroom.

“Why not today?”

“What's wrong with tomorrow?” Over her shoulder, she glanced at him.

He rubbed his neck before his eyes found hers. “I have a lesson with Sandra today.”

“I'm not helping you anymore; you will have to deal with her on your own from now on,” Kate said before she strode toward the door and through it, feeling quite satisfied with the development of events. After so many failures, she needed a break, just a little light in the darkness, even if it was just a temporary one.