Chapter 17

CHAPTERSEVENTEEN

One, two, buckle my shoe. Three, four, shut the front door. Five, six, pick up sticks. Seven, eight, don’t be late. Nine, ten, start all over again.

A reminder that child’s play symbolized Chaos magic. It only had to make sense to them. It had been an important revelation as to why the Fates gave a Chaos witch her magic at such a ridiculously young age. She’d had to understand that, make the connection. Every time she used the magic, learned something new, it was reinforced.

Witches who relied on order, like Ruby, might have lost time, trying to figure out the best approach to unsnarling and repairing a galaxy of soul threads. A Chaos witch simply plunged her arm into it, fingers seeking, and found the first thread to touch. A soul currently a young girl, whose biggest concern was whether the boy who’d smiled at her in class liked her. But now that young soul was in a perplexing limbo that didn’t feel right, a feeling that would turn to fear as she faced The Pit.

Millions of threads, millions of lives. She couldn’t think of how daunting the task was, how long it might take, how little time Silas might have, or about the souls that were even now falling into oblivion.

She was vaguely aware of Raina and Ruby recrafting the Loom. As they’d noted, the life imbued in the grain aided them in bringing it back together, healing the cracks, re-lapping the joints. Everything in this room had a voice, if they listened. Though beaten up and damaged, the Loom was as immortal as the Fates that guided it. With the witches’ aid and care, it was restoring itself. It knew its job.

Ramona started warping the Loom as soon as they were done, levitating herself as needed to go back and forth because of its height. Not seeing any weights for the purpose of ensuring the tension of the warps was correct, she used her magic for that as well. It was all about energy and feel. There were no marks on the loom, nothing to indicate the sett, the required spacing between the warp threads, how many yarn ends per inch, but there wouldn’t be, would there? She was dealing with lives, souls, tapestry patterns that would change based on what the threads told her, the path they wanted to take, the stories they wanted to tell.

Which meant the warp tension was trickier on this Loom, because it was connected to the universe, and the universe breathed in, breathed out. When it breathed in, it contracted. But that would contribute to the pattern, too.

Over the years, sitting at Crescent’s loom and then her own, she’d thought a lot about the Fates, how they were said to guide souls. She had always thought it a metaphor, but now it made sense. The soul followed a path from birth to life to death, and the weft threads that crossed it connected it to other lives, other experiences, becoming the tapestry that was all their lives. A universe of lives.

The splicing didn’t require as much blood, just skill, and she applied her Chaos magic to it, pulling the cut warp pieces up out of the snarled mess, re-fusing them hundreds at a time, bolstered by the energy Raina and Ruby sent her while they simultaneously kept an eye on what was happening around the cottage, any threat to Ruby’s shielding.

When she got the warp done, she didn’t give herself pause, plunging into felting the broken weft threads. Doing it with only her hands was too slow. She went sky clad, stripping down to bring the threads over her arms, her shoulders, letting them take the sips of blood they needed to reconnect them, and use her as the needed conduit back to their place on the Loom.

On the day she’d given Ruby and Raina that weaving lesson, she’d shown them a pattern could be changed with a touch, a pressure, a different thread.

On some looms, the piece that guided the weft thread through the warps was appropriately called a boat or shuttle. A flat piece of timber, a sword, helped spread out the upper and lower warps, forming the “shed” the boat passed through. She found it when she finished the warping, the golden gleam of the worn-to-silk-smooth wood resonating with an energy that said it had likely been donated by a tree of power at the beginning of time. But it was meant to do a job, and there was no time for ceremony. Even so, she kissed it, said a blessing, then swiftly inserted it back into the warp. Over under, over under.

“Something’s coming.”

Ruby’s sharp tone drew her gaze briefly toward the open doorway. The rippling waters on the beach were getting choppy, the sky starting to darken above it. “Whatever wanted this destroyed knows we’re trying to put it back together.”

Ruby pointed to the scrying mirror. “In more hopeful news, those threads you just repaired and attached, I think a couple belonged to the souls about to take that final step. I saw them act like they woke up from a dream. Confused-looking, but very much alive. They turned away from The Pit, at least for now, though they still seem bonded enough to their Reaper they’re not going far.”

A promising sign that Mikhael and Derek’s theory was correct. If they could reattach enough souls at a swift pace, the building of that momentum in the opposite direction the demon world wanted them to go might help the Reapers break the lock of those marks within them.

She had to redouble her efforts. Triple them. It was too much to hope her sisters wouldn’t notice how that worked. Raina frowned and drew closer, reaching toward Ramona’s arm, where a dozen threads shimmered. “Ramona, it’s cutting your flesh.”

“They need to make contact to talk to me, find their path.” Blood was always the quickest way. Sacrifice.

She felt Raina hovering, wanting to say more, but then Ruby distracted her.

“Incoming,” she snapped.

Ramona glanced toward the windows to see the darkness spawn a legion of monsters she’d seen in a nightmare.

“Soul Collectors,” she said.

“Not today,” Raina said grimly, but her gaze came back to Ramona. “Ruby and I will hold them off, as agreed. You’re the master weaver. But Ramona, don’t…”

“I’ve got this.” She thought of how the Collectors had mangled Silas. “Send them back to whatever hell they came from.” She met Raina’s eyes, then Ruby’s. “Whatever happens, happens. We can’t let them win.”

Then she turned back to her task. She had to shut it all out, couldn’t think about losing Silas, Ruby or Raina. As the two witches ran out the tall doorway, sealing it behind them with a solid thud that shuddered through the cottage, she poured her focus into the threads. Over and under, over and under. Keeping them steady, her energy guiding them to what they needed. The threads she repaired gave her the lives of hundreds, a split-second view of the world unfolding through their eyes before they left her body, looping through the air like slender, determined birds, diving down to weave themselves into the warp.

She hadn’t found a boat, a shuttle of any kind, which made sense as tapestry looms often didn’t use them. But in this case, its absence had told her the Fates did the weaving with the mind, using it or brief touches with their hands to make adjustments to the Loom as needed.

The threads flashed in and out, weaving the lives that had restarted. Their million stories, faces, eyes, laughter, tears, were in her head, against her flesh. She wiped blood off her hands, kept working. Stumbled and fell, got back up. Stumbled again.

When she dared a look toward the scrying pool, she cried out in despair as more souls went into The Pit. But she also saw a percentage of them milling, moving in different directions. Showing that confusion Raina had noted. But when her gaze shifted and the pool accommodated her with a wider view, her heart choked her.

Even at a distance, she knew him. He was getting closer to The Pit, and thousands of souls followed, spread out behind him like a sea of starlight. But he was carrying the crook, not the scythe. Evidence he was still fighting the mark’s hold.

A glance toward the windows showed a storm raging outside. A flash of light revealed a Soul Collector, flying straight for the glinting glass, teeth bared, clawed hands outstretched as if it already had her in its grasp.

Raina intercepted it. Ramona bit back a cry as she risked physical contact, her hands upon it, the black tendrils of the beast covering her as they hit the ground, plowing up sand. Raina reared up, her fangs bared, vampire sharp. The succubus energy glowed, that wild passionate red. Before the creature could use its own debilitating power on her, she’d trapped its life force, was yanking on it, intending to shuck it like an oyster.

Usually Raina used her spell casting to fight a foe. She’d told them, “My skills as a witch give me a creative armory. My main power as a succubus is fucking someone to death.” But in this instance, she’d brought the two abilities together to make her close combat skills even more impressive.

Ruby joined her, thrusting a wicked-looking long blade into the thing, stabbing with deadly precision and frightening speed until it broke contact with Raina and rolled away. Ruby leaped after it, cleaved its head from its batlike body. The Soul Collector’s malevolent energy hadn’t affected Raina. She’d already spun to throw an electrified net at another descending Soul Collector. It wrapped around it like barbed wire and tightened, slicing it into millions of pieces. Ruby took out three more Collectors with a concentrated spell that seemed intended to rearrange atoms.

They’d both learned from the diabolical fighting styles of their Guardian mates. A good witch used anything she could put in her arsenal.

As Ramona continued to weave, keeping contact with the threads, she looked back at the scrying pool. Her heart jumped. In just the few seconds she’d taken to seize those impressions, Silas’s distance to The Pit seemed to have decreased by half.

With a wild, desperate noise, she threw herself back at the thread remaining. No more half measures. She called all the remaining threads in the corner to her. She dug down into the deepest levels of her consciousness, unleashed whatever reservoirs she could find there to connect to those souls, repair the threads, get them on the Loom.

On her own looms, if the weaving became longer than the loom, she fed the excess over a roller. Here, the excess shimmered in the air, disappearing as if through a doorway above the Loom. She could gauge how fast she was going by how quickly that excess was advancing.

Sparks of her magic flew through the air, swirling around her. Her tears of pain baptized the thread, adding to the blood staining them.

The barbed wire Raina had put around that Soul Collector felt like it was wrapped over every inch of Ramona’s body. She wasn’t crying because of that, though. She was crying because she had to do this right, to make it all work again, but every second it took, souls spilled over the ledge of The Pit, into the clutches of the Soul Collectors. Souls lost to the web, to the Loom, to how they might have influenced other threads in future lives. Gone forever.

No one had the right to do that.

Then there was the crime that would strike her even more personally. She wanted to know how Silas would change her own life, her path. She refused to let him be lost to her. Even if she had to give this life to ensure future possibilities, future path crossings, with his.

Silas was getting closer and closer to that Pit. She could feel it, in the way the bands on her wrists throbbed, in how her heart screamed with a pain greater than what was being slashed into her flesh.

There were three Fates for a reason. This was more than the job of one, even with the Loom and its pieces assisting as much as they could.

Help…need help, soon as you can manage it.

She didn’t know how much time passed after she made that call, because that was becoming meaningless except as an hourglass of diminishing sand. Then Ruby and Raina burst through the cottage doors.

A hail-driven blackness concealed everything beyond the threshold. As they backed in, Ruby chanting a protection spell, clawed hands came through it to swipe at them. Raina shot an arc of fire above Ruby’s gesturing hands, a starburst that gave Ruby the extra second to lock the spell in place. As something hit the protection wall with force, Ruby flinched at the impact but held, continuing to chant, her face a dispassionate mask, rigid like a knight’s shield. Raina joined her voice to it, a weaving as intent and thorough as what was happening on the Loom behind them.

The doors slammed shut, the windows sealing, creating a fortress. “Fucking hell.” Ruby let out a breath. “They’ve emptied the demon world on us.”

Which meant they had to be doing something that would fuck up the bad guy plan. When Ramona had time to appreciate that, she would.

Both women had sustained damage. Ruby was limping and Raina had a wound in her side that had spilled an alarming amount of blood on her clothes, but she’d slapped a temporary seal on it.

“That’ll hold for now,” Ruby said, her expression intent, testing the shape of her shield, looking for weak points. “But we’re going to need reinforcements before it’s over.”

“Mikhael and Derek will come as soon as they can. Or send other Guardians if they can’t.” Raina turned to Ramona, blanched. “Ramona.”

They were beside her in an instant, as close as they could get. They couldn’t touch her, but their worry was a physical contact, their alarm coursing over her like a tropical ocean wave. Her magic used the thought to send that sensation through the threads, which was a nice reassurance for them, even if she couldn’t afford the indulgence.

“Tell us how to help,” Ruby said urgently. “You have to get free.”

“Can’t.” She was inside the maze of countless moving threads, passing around and through her as she fed them to the Loom. Reforming lives, their intended paths. The colors were incredible, more than she’d ever seen. So many lives and journeys resuming.

“This is…quickest way.” Her gaze moved to Ruby then back to Raina, peered at them through that maze. “They’re all…connected. The Reapers, the souls… We have to get it done. Silas. Have to do…what’s necessary. Direct your energy toward the Loom. Help the threads keep moving, help the Loom...reinforce it.”

She was going so fast now the threads were sometimes getting in one another’s way, and the Loom was creaking at the force of the energy striking it, the plucking against the tension of the warp.

Though their concern pressed in on her, the frustration, they immediately complied. They stayed out of the path of the threads, but they directed power toward them and the Loom, steadying her guidance, giving the Loom strength.

A thunderous vibration shook the cottage. Ruby staggered, telling Ramona something had hit her shielding with force. Distantly, they could hear the howl of the Soul Collectors. Ruby and Raina had to break off, reinforce the shielding together.

Because the pain was getting too distracting, Ramona projected her spirit into the matter around her. She left her body standing in a growing pool of her own blood.

When she fully re-inhabited that form, she was going to hurt like a son of a bitch. Despair gripped her, knowing she was fooling herself about that, but that was okay, too. All those souls in the dark, crying out, she could hear them through the threads. Their fear. She remembered what Silas said, how he’d take them before the moment of death, if the fear got to be too much. He was gentle, her fierce Reaper.

The souls would remember none of this if she got it right. If they all got it right. A body was made up of all the elements, including Light. She could offer any and all of it to them. Every soul reattached meant one less in The Pit, and maybe, just maybe, if the energy reversal became strong enough, Silas and his fellow Reapers could break the demons’ hold, retake control of the souls and restore them to their bodies.

“You’re going to lose,” she muttered through cracked lips.

Raina and Ruby’s power was back, twining over hers as the threads left her, helping them get to the Loom, strengthening it. They offered her strength as well, though she diverted almost all of that to the souls. She thought of the two of them fighting the Soul Collectors. Warriors, witches, sisters. They knew death was not the worst thing a person could endure.

She managed glimpses of them while they did their part. Set jaws and determined eyes, windows to beautiful, enduring souls. Their command of craft was awe-inspiring. She felt so much love for them, her two sisters who had drawn her into their triangle, allowing it to become the stable force that could do this, give the world back to itself.

She hoped the Fates were okay. She hoped Mikhael and Derek had found them.

In the impressions of the lives lived by those threads, she caught flashes of what was important, the connections that were being woven back into the tapestry. As Raina adjusted the sword to push the wefts tighter together, she hoped those echo memories would hopefully be retained in the pattern, not lost.

The fabric continued to roll off the Loom, disappearing into that slash of light. Somewhere in all of this would be Jem’s sweet lifeline. Ramona couldn’t contemplate Ruby returning to her son’s lifeless body, knowing his soul was lost to The Pit. She wanted to say the Fates couldn’t be that cruel, but that destiny had been taken from their hands. It was in her hands now. Hers, Ruby’s and Raina’s.

She thought of the boat her mother had put her in, to give her a chance to live her life. As she watched the threads weaving through the warp, she knew her mind was the boat. Just like the one that had carried her to Crescent, carrying her forward in her life, so she was doing the same for the souls. The ink on her wrists was concealed by blood, but she knew the words. For only she that has my soulcan engage my sword. Her gaze slid to the sword, holding the warp open to make the weaving move faster.

Her Chaotic energy had expanded to cover everything. She didn’t have to look toward the scrying pool’s image anymore to tune into it; it was suspended in her head. The pool was a channeling tool only. At some point, she’d adopted the Fates’ apparent ability to project what was happening in that pool into their minds, use it to set the pattern while keeping their attention on their task.

Silas was close enough to The Pit she could distinguish his tall, fine form. But something had changed. His cloak flapped, its ragged points snapping, a menacing expression of the male himself. The shepherd’s crook was gone, his scythe so sharp even a look could cut.

That would have worried her, but his eyes weren’t crimson. They were green, burning like hellfire. She imagined the tightness of his jaw, the way the muscles would flex when he was determined to prevail.

Her heart leaped. Her Reaper was digging in, fighting that mark, a battle of one against a force intending to break him for it. He was moving slower, dragging. A harrowing fifty feet from The Pit’s edge, all those souls behind him, he dropped to a knee. She could smell the charring of bone as that mark burned into him, to force him to do its bidding.

No one forced her man to do anything. He’d endured The Pit to protect one single soul.

From the west, another Reaper was approaching The Pit, a multitude of souls on his heels as well. Silas’s head rose, his eyes focusing on that advancing group.

Something dark twisted in the air around him. Then she realized he was doing it intentionally. Like a man grasping the enemy’s blade embedded within him, suffering the pain to jerk it free with his bare hands, Silas siphoned that dark energy out of the mark. He pulled it into himself, to use for his own purposes. But dark energy could only be used for dark purposes, which was when she knew what he was going to do.

Oh, Goddess. Silas. Anguish ripped through her.

He crouched and sprang, hurtling through the air, covering the ground between him and the other Reaper.

The Reaper didn’t look up. His mark had him solidly in its power, leading the souls toward that edge. The first line was mere steps away from the hungry flame.

Silas landed just past his fellow Reaper, rolled and came up on one knee, his head down, the scythe at his side. Gleaming with a golden-red wetness. The Reaper’s body dropped inside its cloak. Such was the sharpness of the blade, the cowl had been severed with the head. The cloth-covered bundle bounced twice and rolled a few feet away.

Like a puppet’s strings being cut, the souls were released. They stumbled, scattered. She bit back a cry as two accidentally fell into The Pit. They clawed at the sky, but no purchase existed on apathetic air.

Silas would have lunged for them, she was sure, but he couldn’t do anything that close to the edge without bringing his souls with him. They were pushing against the scattered ones, trying to reach him. The numbers were great enough to herd released ones over the edge if they came too near it.

Silas had been given no respite from the mark. He remained hunched over, fighting it. The agony of killing a fellow Reaper might give him more strength to resist…or drain it away.

It had been a last resort. You wouldn’t have done it otherwise. Fight, Silas.

Silas lifted his head, stared toward the souls, his grip on the scythe tightening. Then his gaze turned toward the east. Another Reaper was coming, moving ponderously toward that edge with souls in tow. No.

He couldn’t fight what had him, but he’d recognized he could steal enough energy from it to stop the souls’ advance. By killing his brethren. Eventually he would turn the scythe on himself, to protect the souls that only his will alone was keeping out of The Pit.

She gave herself to her magic, to its will. She offered it all her faith, no doubt, a belief that Chaos was the source of all creation, that it could ultimately make things right because no one could control it, not even a Chaos witch. She was merely the channel for it.

She thought of the Fates, here day after day, weaving those lives, the way it was meant to be. For all that people railed against their fate, the choices they were given or opportunities missed, or considered Chaos something to fear, Chaos served nothing but life and love itself. One just had to surrender oneself to it.

The way one surrendered to a Master. The way Silas had been teaching her she could trust him enough to do.

She remembered the Oscar Wilde story about the Nightingale, giving its heart’s blood to create the perfect rose, a rose for a young man to give to his lover. In the story, the young man and his lover were both unworthy, oblivious to the momentous sacrifice that had gone into the gift, the preciousness of it. But the trees, the other animals, the wind and water, they all knew. They always knew, bearing silent witness to pain and joy, carrying it to the hearts that needed to hear its powerful song. Yet the most powerful part of it was delivered in silence, because words couldn’t frame it.

She knew how to finish this. How to free the Reapers. Their soul lines were here as well. All of it was getting sharper, more obvious. A wrenching shriek came from her own soul as she called forth the effort. She brought all the remaining threads toward her at once, opened herself fully to them. The roof was getting taller and taller, as was the Loom, accommodating the cyclone of threads. All those brilliant colors. The threads slashed over her, barely pausing as they took what they needed and plunged toward the furiously working Loom.

Raina, Ruby…keep helping the Loom, the threads… Don’t stop for anything.

She was almost all spirit now. Her body was lying on the floor, below the threads, her spirit dancing above it, twirling. She knew they could see her there.

Dance with me in the storm. I will never cause you harm. Trust me beautiful souls…

She glimpsed her sisters’ faces, the knowledge in their eyes. Ruby’s tears, Raina’s broken expression. She thought she’d spent most of her life alone, but she’d never been alone at all. She had to give her heart to this, for Silas and the others. It was the purpose Crescent had told her to look for.

I was falling in love with him. I wanted to love him forever. I can love him forever. Love was the energy that could never be destroyed.

* * *

What he would give for silence. The mark’s roar was like being trapped against a subway tunnel wall while the train passed. Plus the lament in his heart hadn’t ceased since he’d taken Petruso’s head. The two souls who’d toppled over the edge were more notes of pain. If he could use his other magical abilities, he could have caught them without having to physically approach the edge. But the only magic available to him was what he’d charged into his blade to kill a Reaper. The mark hadn’t anticipated needing to prevent that.

Or that Silas could use his focus on stopping the Reapers to help him fight the will of the cursed mark. A dark purpose used against a dark purpose. His insides had become a battleground, the mark trying to torture him into taking his souls to the edge.

Fuck that. Those souls were his. They’d walk over the ash of his existence before going to that Pit.

Brenner was coming toward Silas, a benign army of souls behind him. His honorable brother, walking toward death.

Silas readied the scythe, grimly determined. Brenner would want him to do it. The alternative was unthinkable to any of them.

A thunderous noise, even louder than the roaring in his head, shook the ground, rolling up under his feet. It sent a painful vibration through the air, rippling the sky above in a sonic wave. The souls jittered with it, many stumbling or falling to the ground behind Brenner.

Everything stopped. The agony that exploded inside him was worse than anything so far. This was it, the end. The cry that tore from him seemed to come from some other creature. Maybe Brenner, because it looked like he was screaming, too.

Amid the delirium of pain, Silas managed to identify the source. The mark was digging in more ferociously than it had before, with a violence that suggested…desperation.

Something was pulling it free. Something determined as fuck, and it was working. The mark was weakening. His own magic was almost…within his grasp.

If he could lay hold of it for even a second, the mark might be weak enough he could Obliterate it and survive the experience, though the latter was no longer a priority. Opportunities offered during an apocalypse were a gut-instinct, few-seconds-window. Sometimes sticking a grenade into the enemy wrapped around you was the way to go. If nothing else, his souls would be safe from that Pit, long enough for his other brethren to hopefully regain control.

Grabbing the shaft of the scythe just below the blade, he twisted it around, shoved the tip at his chest. It went through his robe, between bone. He snarled the spell out loud, trying to give it every bit of leverage he could.

The magic activated, praise God and Goddess. And it felt exactly like he’d shoved a grenade under his rib cage.

Howling, hammering pain, then all went black. He swirled through it, insensible to everything but the smell of raisins, the brush of wavy, flame-red hair with touches of golden sunlight. Lavender eyes.

Then it all disappeared. A long pause. The universe breathes in, breathes out. And when it breathes in, it contracts…

Those words floated through his head. As he slowly regained awareness, of himself and his surroundings, he had the sense it had been a while, not a swift blackout. A lot of things had changed around him. Or maybe he was somewhere else entirely.

He was lying flat on his back, arms and legs spread wide as if he’d been flung. But he felt the comforting hardness of his scythe’s handle in his grip. It was the only comforting thing. Everything else was painful, including breathing.

He couldn’t get up. He needed to get up, to see if the souls were all right. If Brenner was. He’d also have to think about what he’d done. What he’d failed to do. Who they’d lost.

The knowledge was there, threatening to swamp him, and he couldn’t afford to be overwhelmed. Not yet.

Souls often used denial as a coping tool for the agony of change and loss. He’d see if it would work for a Reaper.

A hand gripped his shoulder, a flood of Light energy accompanying it. As it swept through him, he could feel the unimpeded flow of it. The mark was gone, a relief he seized with both hands. The Light energy chased out any residuals, helping his immortal body heal the damage it had done, and he’d done to himself, getting rid of it.

“How do you feel?”

“Like a bug crushed by an anvil.” He wasn’t sure how long it took him to reply. The words came out hoarse.

“Mikhael is helping your friend,” He recognized Derek’s voice. Ruby’s mate. Light Guardian. “Give yourself a minute. That mark was damned determined to take you with it.”

“The souls…”

“We can’t see them, but your friend said most appear to have been drawn back to their bodies.”

Silas tried to lift his head, but it took the courteous strength of Derek’s palm cupping it to help him look. The gathering of souls was down to a milling handful. Still confused, needing additional guidance to get back to their bodies—he needed to deal with that—but no more Pit.

The opening to the demon world had seemed to sit on a vast wasteland, but that had been illusion, to minimize distractions. A rift could be opened almost anywhere. They were actually at the lower end of a Walmart parking lot. Silas lay on the grass behind an eighteen-wheeler with a Dunkin’ Donuts logo, and an RV with a map of the United States on its bumper. The driver had been to all but five states.

Between the two vehicles, he could see the rest of the lot. The store was having a sale on bedding plants. The cheerful array of nodding blooms rested under a vast white pavilion. People were shopping. They couldn’t see him, the Guardians, or the confused souls.

The view was surreal. It confirmed that the reset had left the human world mostly oblivious to the near catastrophe. Until they became aware of the souls that hadn’t been saved.

A woman dancing in zebra sneakers, her hair a ripple of gold. Her gaze, seeing so much. Always a little sad. He’d thought that was because of how alone she’d often been. He thought now it was because of how deeply she understood the power she’d been given.

He put his head against the ash wood of his scythe. Derek’s hand tightened on his shoulder.

“You found the architect of this, then,” Silas said, before the Light Guardian could speak.

“We did. You were right. It was a former Reaper.” Derek helped him up, kept a light hand on Silas’s shoulder as the world righted itself. “The Fates were found. They were already halfway to figuring out how to release themselves, but thanked us courteously for our help. Before returning to their island.”

He could feel it, in the restoration of the communications conduits Reapers used to know the Fates’ will. The Reapers who had survived were out there, connected to him as they’d been before the insidious possession mark. They were like those remaining souls, disoriented but figuring it out.

Maybe like him, they weren’t eager for full awareness. The Reapers who’d been destroyed in The Pit might have been granted a mercy, instead of having to wake up to how many of those in their charge had been lost.

Silas stared at the flowers. His scythe seemed the only stable force in his universe, so he kept holding it. “The women, the witches, they did it.”

“They did,” Derek said quietly. “The Fates chose well. When they restored enough souls to reverse the tide, it broke the strength of the sorcerer’s mark and destabilized the demon power reinforcing it. That earthquake you might remember feeling was The Pit being resealed, and the demons responsible being shut back in it. Our fellow Guardians also sealed the rift that gave the demon world access to the Isle.”

“Good. We’ll take steps to ensure it will never be that vulnerable again.” From here forward, the Reapers would also serve as the Fates’ personal guard. Everyone needed someone to watch their back. Evil was always watching.

You killed a Reaper. You almost took Brenner’s head.Marching toward the Pit, he’d watched at least four more drop into the fire. Including Honora. How many had they lost? How many souls?

“Silas.” Brenner was beside him. Silas frowned as he dropped to a knee, bowing his head.

“What are you…”

“You are Wake commander now. My lord.” The Scotsman’s voice held a wealth of pain.

Silas stared at him. A storm still roared in his ears, but it came from his own soul, not that cursed mark. Stiffly, he put a hand on Brenner’s shoulder. When the other Reaper rose, they gazed at one another.

For his very first act as Wake leader, Silas would give himself, Brenner and the other Reaper survivors a way to exorcise their pain, spill it from their hearts like blood.

“The souls lost were far more than Collectors can consume at once,” he said. “Our Wake will lead an extraction. If there are souls to retrieve, we will do so.”

As Brenner stared at him, Silas knew he was thinking what they’d all been taught. Never go into The Pit. Never enter the demon world. Well, fuck that. The demon world was a place, which meant it was navigable. He’d been there,. And this time he wouldn’t be alone, one against many.

“I will gladly rip souls out of their gullets.” The Scotsman was on board. His eyes brimmed with grief he was trying to suppress. Eventually there would be no tasks left, and they would all have to face the enormity of what Silas also refused to think about right now.

He turned to Derek. “Would you and those fellow Guardians care to accompany us?”

“Try to keep us away.” Derek made that grim declaration as Mikhael joined them.

“I can take you to the best entry point from the Underworld side,” the Dark Guardian added.

“Good.” Reapers were materializing around Silas, responding to his silent call. He didn’t have to look to know who was there. And who wasn’t.

“Silas, do you wish—” Derek spoke.

“No.” Sparks shot off his scythe, sending a ripple of tension through the Reapers. He had risen from the ground in human form, but in the space of that half-asked question, he’d gone to his full Reaper form again. He felt as stripped down as that skeleton made him appear. “We do what we need to do now. The rest is for later.”

He spoke to the Reapers. “We follow the Dark Guardian to the best entry point of the demon realm. Once we accomplish what is possible, we rendezvous at our usual spot. Then we grieve and determine what remains to be done. Yes?”

As the Reapers nodded, Silas turned toward Derek. “Forgive me for not asking,” he said in a measured tone. “Is your son well, Light Guardian?”

“He is,” Derek responded carefully. “Thank you. He is with his mother.”

“All is as the Fates will it.” Silas paused. “The witches have done the world a great service. You are fortunate males. Lead us when you are ready, Dark Guardian.”

When he turned away to speak to Brenner and several of the others, Mikhael met Derek’s somber gaze. “He knows.”

“He’s locked it down, because to let it loose would paralyze him,” Derek said, low.

“Our women are going to need us.” Mikhael’s expressionless voice spoke volumes. “They need us now.”

“They’ll understand he needs us more. As do those souls.”

Silas was obviously already gripping the reins of leadership, giving direction and reassurance. A lifeline for himself, as much as the rest. “The sorcerer was wrong,” Mikhael commented, watching him. “Our witches give as much of themselves to keep the world safe as we do, and trust the powers the Goddess gave them to carry on. They expect us to remain defenders of this world, no matter what is taken from us…or them. So none of us dishonor what, or who, is lost.”

“As Silas said, we are fortunate men.” Derek tightened his grip on his staff. “Let’s go help him. Then we go to our women. I want to hold my son.”