XVII

The rest of the day came and went with the excitement of finally training with Death. I imagined we'd go right into hand-to-hand combat, which was what I'd been looking forward to all along. If there was anything I trusted Death with after seeing him fight in the gladiator arena and in the alleyway against Malphas's underlings, it was hand-to-hand combat.

Unfortunately, the training session began like any other. Except this time, he was alongside me, performing the exercises too, or directly in my face, coaching every step of the way.

"Faster."

"Pull your knees up higher, so they're aligned with your hips."

"Again!"

"You knock over a cone, you pick it back up, and you start over!"

"Fist up, head tilted down. Protect your face at all times."

"Are you napping ?"

"I don't know what that was, but it certainly wasn't a goddamn push-up !"

My back hit the mat with a cringe-worthy wet slap.

This whole "proving myself" thing had spiraled out of control.

"I am absolutely blown away," Death seethed, still in full critical-coach mode, "that you made it halfway through the Graveyard yesterday."

"Actually, I made it one-fourth of the way through," I corrected snootily. In my defense, the Graveyard looked like something straight out of Ninja Warriors or a boot camp, with its monster tires, swinging spikes, ladders, ropes, and a warped wall. It was a miracle I hadn't just keeled over at the beginning.

"Glenn was gracious to you, then," Death said. "He told me you made it halfway through. One-fourth is absolutely fucking pathetic."

I pulled my aching body up so that I leaned on my forearms. "I'm so glad you accept me for who I am. Please, tell me everything you feel!"

"I feel you would lose at an arm-wrestling match against my pinky."

I scanned his muscled frame. He wore a faded gray T-shirt, the lightest color I'd seen him in, with a typical pair of black joggers. Lord Almighty, did he look good . . .

"Are you listening to me?" Death growled.

Oh, right, he was talking. While I'd been blatantly checking him out.

"Yes. No. Maybe. Nes."

"Nes?"

"Yes and no. I—I zoned out, okay? Can't a girl have a little zone-y sesh every once in a while?" I wanted to bang my skull against the wall for how awkward I sounded. "I'm trying the best that I can here."

"Then try the worst you can," Death hissed, "because clearly it must be opposite day."

Grumbling under my breath, I peeled myself off the mat and stood with an energetic hop, feigning a second wind. "You know, you could at least try to empathize with me and interact with me normally sometimes. Instead, you're always in this robot drill sergeant mode." I wiped at the sweat on my forehead, my throat tight suddenly. "I get it, your scythe is gone, and you're big mad . A lot has happened to me too, you know. Things that I don't know how to deal with like you do. I can't just . . . turn it all off."

To my utter disbelief, Death had listened intently to my rant. I waited for him to yell at me to run more laps, but he put his gloved hands on his hips.

"All right, come on," Death said with a jerk of his head to follow him. "Let's take a break."

I stood there for a moment, wishing he'd acknowledged my emotions. At least he hadn't shut me down. I followed him to the side of the room, where a mirror lined the whole length of the wall. I noticed he didn't look at himself as he bent down to get my water bottle.

"Sit down on the floor and start stretching your right shoulder. You keep favoring it. I'll massage your legs."

Our eyes connected, and I swear my heart did a thousand somersaults. "Um. Okay . . . "

What the hell? Did I just agree to Death himself massaging me?

I watched his titanic frame cross the room to get a small black container. He opened the latch and pulled out a massage gun. I felt like an idiot for thinking he'd use his hands or that this would be even remotely sexual. He lowered to the ground in front of me and plopped my leg into his lap.

"You still have that knot in your quad," Death said, deep in concentration as he worked on me with the passiveness of a clinician. "Didn't I tell you to use the roller yesterday?"

"You mean the cylindrical-looking thing with the knobs on it?"

Death glared, and I gave him a sheepish smile. Screwing an attachment that looked like a torture device on the massage gun, he went to town on the knot on my quad.

"Recovery is just as important as the workout," Death said a minute or so later, dumping my leg out of his lap to work on the other one. "Explains why you're moving so slow today."

"Listen, dude, you don't even have to breathe. It makes keeping up with you—oh, I don't know, impossible?"

"Just say the word and I can stop you from breathing too, cupcake." He arched that stupid scarred eyebrow with the stupid hot piercing.

Every day, something seemed to change about him. Today it was his eyes. They weren't shielded by aviators and were therefore slightly squinted against the gym lights. One eye was darker than normal, a deep, woodsy green. His other, the one with the horrific scar slashed through it, glowed a livid mint-green. The only part of his eyes that always seemed to remain the same were his pupils—thin horizontal slits, trapped in their catlike way.

He flashed his fangs in a foxlike grin, and I realized I was staring.

"You like my hands on you?" Death asked in a coarse voice, drawing my attention to his gloved hand resting on my thigh.

I ripped my leg out of his hold and kicked toward him, but my foot went through shadows as he evaporated. He had the audacity to laugh as he reappeared standing in front of me with his hands casually in his pockets. The rich, deep sound of his laughter was something I hadn't heard in a while, and it tickled my ears.

He offered me a hand. "Don't be so uptight."

You're one to talk .

I reached for him, but he pulled his hand back and smoothed it across his hair. "Ooooh, too slow. Oldest trick in the book."

"You would know." Evading his second offer to help me up, I pushed off the ground by myself with a string of curses. "For a two-thousand-year-old dead guy, you're an utter child."

"I'm rarely bored," Death simpered, pleased with himself. As we headed to the refectory, it dawned on me that he was a little too sprightly.

Which of course meant Death was up to no good.

In the middle of the night, I felt Cruentas's hot breath on my face, and I petted his silky coat.

"Hey, buddy," I said in a sleepy voice. "Where do you go when you disappear? Hay Island?"

Cruentas whinnied, making me laugh.

I sat up and decided to get a snack. I was leaning over Cruentas with my hand on his coat to turn on the lamp on my nightstand when he lunged forward and took off, and I went with him.

The world spun . . . and I was thrown into oblivion.

My shoulder hit hard concrete, and white-hot pain exploded in my arm. My surroundings had shifted. I was in a spacious warehouse with a blacked-out glass ceiling, except for a few holes that let in the rain. I'd been here before. Death had taken me here after Malphas's demons had attacked me in the alleyway.

I rolled over onto my stomach and found a weapon beside me.

A hunting knife.

A thunderous roar echoed from somewhere, chilling me to the bone.

What the hell?

My heart was a jammed trigger on an automatic machine gun. To stop my fingers from shaking, I gripped the hunting knife tightly and rose to my feet.

This had to be a test. But Death was nowhere in sight.

I tensed as a creature emerged from the shadows to my left.

Its body was bulging with muscle and covered with black quills like a porcupine. Its ears were flat against its head like an aggressive dog.

As the creature herded me into the center of the warehouse, it fell under a ray of light, and its features came into focus. My stomach churned. Leathery gray skin stretched tight against its bones, and its muzzle was stained with blood. When it snarled, chunks of flesh were wedged between its teeth. And its teeth—God, those razor-sharp teeth—dripped a greenish liquid that sizzled like acid.

A monster straight out of a nightmare. Sweat poured off me. I looked down at my little blade, up at the massive creature, then back at the blade. It was starting to look more like a toothpick than a weapon.

The creature's quills expanded before pressing tightly against its body like armor. It barreled toward me.

"Shit!"

I spun out of the way before it rammed into me with its horns. The creature wasn't very smart, considering it kept running for twenty feet and smashed into a wall.

It charged again. This time, I only barely got away, since the black quills on the side came to life. They reached out and hooked onto me like small fingers, dragging me with it. I cried out as the creature picked up speed and my legs crumbled underneath me.

My arm swung out with my hunting blade, digging into the beast's side. With no luck at stopping it, I ripped the knife from its muscular flesh and stabbed it again. The creature howled, and the quills released. Oily blood slicked my fingers, and I lost my grip. I skidded across the ground, rolling a few times before I landed on my back.

The old lights on the ceiling of the warehouse were spinning, rotating. My vision blurred, flickering in and out of blackness. Everything pulsed with white-hot pain.

I rolled over onto my stomach, lifting myself with bloody hands and breathing hard.

I blinked, as if that would wake me up from this sick nightmare.

I spun around and faced the dying animal. The tendons of his legs were all screwed up and shredded, and his abdomen wound was far worse than mine. I raised the blade to end its misery.

A sob lodged in my throat. In spite of my training, I couldn't cross the line to kill.

The creature let out a raspy howl. Its head thrashed side to side, as if it were fighting an invisible force. The cords in its neck strained. Its skin drained to a light gray.

Horror washed over me as I raised the dagger and plunged it deep into the center of its chest. It didn't explode into ashes. Its eyes softened, then the beast slipped away.

My eyes welled with tears. The ghost of its cries rang in my head, and the fright and sadness at what I'd done spread through my body like ice. I forced myself to stand, keep moving away from the scene, and turn my back to it. Left. Right. Left. Right. My emotions caught up with me, and I started to hyperventilate, collapsing to my knees.

Everything felt slowed down. My wounds, they weren't healing. My tongue swelled. My head lolled on my neck. I fell forward and surrendered to the silent warehouse.

Footsteps approached. I could not move.

The heavy toe of a boot rolled me over.

"Your first kill," purred a voice. "Congrats."

I felt a sharp prick in my arm and shot up with a jolt, inhaling sharply. My hand gripped a hard bicep, and I stared wide-eyed at Death. He was crouched over me, his face shadowed by a cowl, except his short, dark facial hair and the outline of his full lips. He wore black leather pants with various straps for weapons fastened around his muscular thighs and calves.

"You hesitated," he said, dropping an empty syringe into a bag.

I scrambled to get up and shoved at his chest. "Get off me!"

"Now there's a sentence I seldom hear." Death stood, while I forced my legs to cooperate with my brain.

"What the heck did you inject me with? And what––what was that thing?"

"I injected you with an antidote. That was a breed of hell hound, and they're poisonous." I could feel him staring at me as I tried to keep myself together. "You need to table your precious morals and commit to ending an enemy that wants to end you."

"I killed it, didn't I?"

"You got lucky," Death said coldly, stepping up to me. Usually, when he did that, I had to fight the urge to step back. This time, I was fighting the urge to sway forward. "You wasted too much time finding a box of Kleenex to finish the beast off."

My face flushed with heat.

"Heed my advice," Death said firmly. "Give your enemies the opportunity to hurt you, and they will. They will drag you around like you're their bitch, then bury you six feet in the ground like you're their bone. When it's life or death, truly life or death, you don't have time to decide. It's them or you."

"Killing doesn't come second nature to me like it does to you."

"Agreed. I'm shocked you didn't politely ask the hell hound if you could end its life." He had the nerve to smirk. "Aw, does that piss you off? Good. Maybe it'll trigger your power, which I didn't see a single spark of."

"We haven't been training with my power," I grated. "I worked with what I had, which was that ridiculous toothpick of a knife you left me. What the hell is your problem?"

"My problem, Faith, is you. You keep defending yourself, leaving no room for improvement." Death pulled back his cloak, revealing a metal scabbard at his side. "You want to handle something bigger than a toothpick? Then here." He unfastened the weapon and tossed it to me.

I caught it by the handle. It was much heavier than I'd expected. "This is a sword."

"Nothing gets past you." Death tilted his head up. "I've been meaning to give it to you. Go on. Unsheathe it."

The sharp gleam of metal reflected my tired blue eyes in its glossy surface. "It's stunning. Thank you."

"Don't thank me. You'll need it so I don't crush you into the floor."

When I looked up, Death was gone.

I spun around and he was right front of me, twisted in mid-motion as his body cut through the air. I blocked his hard first strike with my sword out of reflex. He carried only a metal bar. He maneuvered it around his body, and I was struck hard enough to stumble back. He halted with the pole tucked under his arm. I followed the line of muscle up his leg to his bicep and broad shoulders.

"Focus," he hissed.

Death punched forward with the bar and performed a series of strikes at the air, corralling me like he was herding sheep. He moved faster and faster, spinning the weapon around his body like it was second nature.

"Get one finger on me, and I'll give you anything you want," Death said. "If I knock you down on your ass, the same condition applies. Yes or no?"

I'll admit that thought of him owing me something for once intrigued me. But I knew better than to fall for it. "Not happening."

He inclined his head to the side. "Scared?"

"I've made enough deals with you."

We started to circle.

He tossed his metal bar to the side with a loud clatter. "You have a weapon, I don't."

"You have claws."

"They retract."

"You have fangs ."

Death paused, baring his sharp teeth like a wolf. "I won't use them either. If only I had a blindfold and binds to hogtie my arms and legs together. Then it'd be pretty even."

I spun and slashed the air. He dodged it easily, laughing low in his throat.

"I hit a nerve."

"And I'm going to hit your dick," I growled, slashing again.

"Dick on the mind, cupcake? At four in the morning?"

I punched forward with my weapon, missing him by a hair. I swung out again. Death glided around in teasing distance, evading me. He was like a cobra waiting to strike. And I was getting dog-tired already.

"Somebody needs a nappy," Death taunted in a sing-song voice.

"Shut the hell up."

His sardonic laugh echoed through the warehouse before he fell into a deep crouch and swiped hard at my feet with his leg. My back slammed into the ground, knocking the wind out of me. Over. Just like that.

"I won't sugarcoat how an enemy would treat you," he said. "Picture the strongest fighter you know. They had to be kicked while they were down to rise up to their greatness."

In his own twisted, ruthless way, I knew he was trying to help me, but I couldn't mask the pure hatred I had for him. "Whose masterpiece are you, then?"

His stare was lethal.

"You said picture the strongest fighter I know," I bit out, "because you know it's you. But you fell from your greatness, didn't you? So, whose masterpiece are you? Your father's?"

Death bent down and fisted my shirt in his big, gloved hand, lifting me off the ground so that we were face to face. "Striptease."

"What?"

"Strip. Tease." This time, he purred it out. "That's what I want for knocking you on your ass."

We stood up together, and he began to stalk around me in a slow, calculated way.

"In your dreams," I hissed.

"You should know better than to back out of a deal with me," Death said in a low, enticing voice. "I won, fair and square. Moving on. Feeling tired, mortal?"

Coldness slipped down my spine at the downgrade to mortal . "Never," I said, mostly out of pride. I regretted my answer as soon as he disappeared into a black mist. I heard his laugh at my back, raspy and deep in his throat.

His mouth brushed my ear. "Look alive."

The lights went off.

Fear clicked into place. There wasn't even a sliver of light in the warehouse, and my heart began to pound like thunder against my ribs.

Welp, we'd definitely never done this before.

I knew that Death was no longer standing behind me. But his sinister laughter lingered in fractured echoes that bounced off the high ceiling. The sound tricked me into turning toward different parts of the warehouse. At some point, I fisted my hands and tried to create my own light. I let out an exasperated noise and rubbed my hands together as if it would make a fire. Nothing.

"Seriously?" I picked up my arm and let it fall with a slap. "Turning the lights off to make me rely on my senses? You're skipping over at least thirty stages of hand-to-hand combat for a novice." I would know, I Googled .

I got no response.

This was another one of the Grim Reaper's games. I felt his gaze on me in the darkness like a beacon. He could see me, but I couldn't see him.

I started to move, slowly, feeling with my senses and hoping I didn't trip over anything. I wouldn't rush. That was exactly what a predator like Death wanted: a runner.

While my vision was gone, my hearing was heightened. I focused on things I hadn't noticed before. The small, occasional crack in my left ankle. The clicks from the vents steadily blowing heat into the space.

No matter how hard I strained to listen for Death's footsteps, I heard nothing. He was too good at skulking in the dark.

I shuffled into something sturdy and nearly fell over. I felt a brief presence at my back and something wet caress my neck. A tongue. It licked up my throat, fangs grazing my skin. I bottled up my shriek, my head flinching away out of instinct, followed by a slow burn of heat that shimmied down my body. I spun on my heel and took a swipe at the air with my fist.

"Your instinct is to react with emotion," Death's deep voice instructed from no particular spot. But I couldn't focus on anything except the idea of strangling him. "This is purely instinctual. Feel me in the room with you."

I let out a frustrated noise. "This is pointless."

"Pointless, until you don't have perfect lighting during a fight. Until you can't see your opponent, but they can see you. And you . . . look . . . tasty ." I felt the air get colder to my left and took that as a hint that he was there and snatched empty air again. Something tripped me, and I lost my balance, crashing to the floor with a grunt.

"That's what happens when you don't focus," Death said.

"I'm not like you," I seethed, picking myself off the ground. "I can't see in the dark."

"I understand this is difficult, but it's not impossible." His voice moved to my left. "Not for you. You may bleed and breathe like humans, but deep down, you know you're different. You feel it."

I stood still. "What am I, Death?"

"Definitely not a creature with night vision." If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was perched somewhere above me. "You can control your power to come and go at will. But first, you need to build mental resiliency."

"Don't I already have resiliency to be where I am now?" I demanded, emotion breaking through my words. "Maybe I should just become immortal. You guys all seem much harder to kill."

"Immortality comes with a price. A price you should fear more than death."

"I'm not afraid of death. Not anymore." I pinched my lips together as those words hit me harder than I expected. "I've been thinking about it. Immortality can be a choice, can't it? Ace must have found a way with magic to extend his life."

"You want to live forever, Faith?" I felt the air shift and drop to a frigid temperature. The closeness of his voice indicated he was standing right in front of me. "I will assume you wish to be immortal in your world. Well then, let me paint the picture for you."

His voice circled around me.

"Imagine all the mortals around you dying while you remain the same. You'll seek a companion in this endless time, someone to fill the void in your heart, but they'll all be temporary and abandon you, until you don't have much of a heart left anymore. Imagine starting over, creating a whole new identity once people begin to notice your differences. You'll have to change your name and appearance constantly, or risk exposure and hunters who seek people with your gifts. Eventually, you'll kill someone." He ran a gloved hand along my braid as he continued his stalking. "Maybe you'll like killing, Faith. Maybe you'll become obsessed with it. You'll lose yourself to the madness of it all. Time will fly by like a merry-go-round at a carnival. It'll just circle and circle, and then one day, finally, you'll see the truth."

I felt the heat of his body behind me, his breath tickling my ear.

"You'll realize how selfish immortality is. How wrong you were to ever want it in the first place. But you're not the person who made that decision anymore. That person is long gone. You killed her."

A life of loneliness, death, repetitiveness. Insanity . . . It wasn't what I wanted. Nevertheless, I couldn't escape the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. Each day, it weighed heavier and heavier, like a foreboding presence, making me increasingly aware of my own mortality.

His gloved fingers gripped my chin, turning my face toward his in the dark. "If you sacrifice your identity out of fear, then you will never recover it again. Isn't that what you fear the most, Faith? Losing yourself?"

Yes. But I also fear losing you nearly escaped.

And it stunned me.

"Do you know what I wished for on my eighteenth birthday?" I whispered. "I wanted to know who I was. If you think I'm anywhere near existing in that wish, you're dead wrong. I can't lose something I never truly had."

My hands felt hot, and when I looked down, flickers of white were leaping from my right hand, lighting up a section of the dark warehouse. It was scorching hot, and as it burst, a small piece of light burned my cheek. I stared down at my hand in horror, and my throat tightened at the thought of losing control again. The more scared I became, the more violently the light ignited.

Death's gloved hand curled around mine, capturing the light.

"This power can rule you," Death said as I watched the light radiate through the cracks of our fingers. "Time and time again, you have allowed yourself to be its victim. But look at it now, trapped in your palm. Do you wish to know where it came from?" He stepped closer to me, keeping our hands together. "It waits in your eyes. Always with you, lingering in your soul. Vibrant, mighty, beautiful. Do you understand, Faith?"

When I just stared at him in disbelief, he tightened his hand around mine.

"I understand," I said softly.

It was me. I was the light.

Death let go of my fist, and my knuckles glowed like a lightning bug. Carefully, I pried my shaking fingers open, palm up. A small orb had formed there, hovering like a calm, compressed star.

I looked up at Death. If he was as astonished as I was, it didn't show. He was great at that. Still, his eyes met mine, steady and intense in our small cocoon of light in the warehouse.

"What are you waiting for? Let there be light, lamp girl," he said. "Imagine it rising and lighting up the ceiling as you release it."

In my head, I imagined the orb rising from my fingertips. It rose so that it hovered a few inches beyond my middle finger, and then it grew, expanding, charging, vibrating my veins. I lifted my hand and pointed to the sky, flinging the light up into the air. The orb shot upward and exploded into webbed electric currents on the ceiling, curling around the old light fixtures above and igniting them back to life.

"I think there's hope for you yet, cupcake."

Death's face had moved closer to mine. Close enough to kiss me.

And then he did.

One of the light fixtures above us burst into flames, cracking a part of the ceiling and crashing down to the floor twenty feet from us. We broke apart as a fire alarm went off. The kiss had been so brief that there was hardly any trace of it left behind except a warm tingle on my lips.

Glenn appeared out of nowhere, nervous and sweaty, with two fire extinguishers strapped to his back like he was a Ghostbuster. "I got it, my lord! I got it!" He circled the flames in a low squat, aiming at the root of the fire with the extinguishers.

"Whoa!" Glenn miscalculated a step and somehow caught his pant leg on fire, which resulted in him rolling around the ground and shrieking. "All . . . under control . . . my lord!"

We watched Glenn put out the inferno we'd caused in silence.

Getting on the back of Death's bike had become instinct. We rode to his building, and he walked me to his penthouse.

At my guest room door, I looked over my shoulder to find his shadowed silhouette hovering at the other end of the hallway. We were spending so much time in the dark that I was adapting to it.

"It won't happen again," Death said.

I knew instantly he was talking about the kiss.

Any feelings he'd resurfaced in me extinguished like the flames before us. "Nothing happened anyway," I replied, bitterness dripping off my tongue. "You don't have to worry about me getting attached. The walls you've built are too high to climb, and now so are mine. Lonely people just love convenience."

He said nothing.

"I need an update on Marcy," I said, crossing my arms. "I gave up everything for her, and I'm sick and tired of your wishy-washy answers—"

"Your friend is fine," Death interjected. "I was notified this morning."

My heart raced. "They found her? Where?"

"Malphas dumped her off at some motel. He got bored of her, just like I said he would. She's safe, unharmed, and her memories have been erased."

I could barely think straight. "I want proof she's okay."

"Here." Death slid out his cell phone and showed me a picture of Marcy climbing the steps of Pleasant Valley High School. The bottom was dated yesterday morning.

"I—I don't understand. You heard about this yesterday? You knew a whole day ago that she was okay, and you didn't tell me? Why wouldn't you tell me right away? You know how worried I've been."

Death went eerily still amongst the shadows.

I couldn't explain it. How it hit me then, like a sixth sense.

He'd kept this news from me for a reason .

I went into my bedroom and slammed the door.