Until Death by E. A. Copen

Author:E. A. Copen [Copen, E. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2019-12-15T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

I woke up soaking wet with a gray sky churning above me, a strange pain in my chest, and water lapping at my feet. It seemed normal enough until I took a closer look at the sky. No stars sparkled, no sun cut through the clouds, and no moon dared show itself. Plus, I hadn’t been anywhere near water when I’d died, which meant I wasn’t in the North Pole anymore.

A massive black cloud floated over me. Eyeballs rolled out from the center of it and blinked at me. “About time you came to. I was starting to worry.”

I screamed, turned over, and clawed my way away from whatever the hell that thing was. The rocky shore I’d washed up on was more of an island. Red clay had turned both the dirt and the edge of the water blood red. A few weeping crimson fruits hung from skeletal bushes at the shoreline. I’d seen the rivers of the underworld before, but not anywhere like this.

“Sorry about that.”

I spun around to see the black miasma was gone.

Guy stood behind me in a three-piece suit, dusting himself off. He glanced down, realized he had an extra arm, shuddered once, and seemed to absorb it. “There. That’s better.”

I swallowed. My mouth tasted like blood and vomit. That’s right, Guy wasn’t exactly human. The black miasma wasn’t what I’d seen when I looked at his soul, which was a good thing since that’d left me half-mad. But maybe that was one of his natural forms, and he had to work to appear human in a place like the underworld.

Either way, he was an asshole for getting us here the way he did. I pushed myself to my wobbly legs, stormed over to where he was, and grabbed him by his suit jacket, shoving him toward the water.

“Whoa, hey! What’s the big idea?” He tried to wrestle loose, but I kicked his shin and he went down. “Dammit, what’d I do to you?”

“What’d you do? You killed me, you jackass!”

“Yeah, but you were just going to die anyway. I thought I explained my position pretty clearly!”

I grabbed his face and pushed it toward the edge of the water. Hungry ghosts clamored to the edge of the shore, black hands reaching out of the river like waves, stopping just inches from Guy’s face. He winced.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t drown you in soul goo here and now!” I shouted.

“Because you need me. You don’t know where the book is or how to read it, and you need that book if you want to get rid of Mask permanently. Besides, it won’t kill me.” He grinned. “And when I get free, do you really want me coming after you?”

Something about the way he said it left me with chills. I released his head. “Fuck you, man. You could’ve done that a dozen other ways. What if that stuff destroys my body? I can’t just jump into a new one like you can. I need that!”

Guy stood and brushed more dirt from his suit.

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