Raven's Breath (The Women of Purgatory) (5 page)

"Hello." Her voice was sweet and soft, just as you'd expect.
Gag.

I stared, taking in her porcelain skin, dark gothic makeup
, and long platinum hair. I wanted to rant and rave, to verbalize all the venomous thoughts pooling on my tongue, but with Death's icy stare boring into me, I quickly gained control of my emotions and introduced myself instead.

"I'm sorry. Where are my manners? Holli, I'm Raven and it's very nice to meet you. Please understand, I meant no disrespect, but gathering missions are a bit...
different
from our usual retrievals. I wouldn't want you to become overwhelmed on your first assignment."

I wasn't sure if Death was buying my concern, but Holli seemed to be.

"Thank you. I'm so nervous to get started, but definitely excited to learn from the best."

Awesome. A
suck up.

I met Death's gaze and knew I didn't have a choice.

"All right. Let me change and we'll head out." I nodded at Death and asked, "Have you given her Reaper ribbons as well?"

"No, but Holli
has perks that should come in just as handy."

Cryptic...Great!

"Fine. Give me five."

I stomped into my bedroom, slammed the door, and ripped a pair of leathers off a hanger in the closet. Five minutes later, I was dressed and standing in front of the mirror, my dark hair and black wings a complete contradiction to the snow-white
angel waiting in my living room. I shook my head and walked out to rejoin the crowd and caught Holli removing her hand from Death's forearm. The gesture was small but spoke volumes.

"You ready?"

"I think so," she smiled tentatively.

I glanced
at Garrett, who was still plastered at the end of my couch. "Lock up for me?" I asked.

"Sure. No problem."

After escorting Death from my apartment he turned and added, "Raven, you should know that until I've officially introduced Holli to the other Reapers, she will remained cloaked––shrouded by my magic. No one but you, Garrett and me can actually see or communicate with her."

With no further explanation he smiled at Holli, wished us luck
and disappeared, leaving me and the
invisible girl
to make our way to the portal fields.

In Purgatory the portals were housed in mausoleums, exactly as they were topside, but here they were laid out in rows of tens, covering an area of about two square miles. Death had said to use portal seventy-five, so after walking to the seventh row, we strolled down five spaces to the mausoleum we were looking for. I yanked open the door and gestured for Holli to enter.

She hesitated. "Where will we end up?"

"I don't know."

"What should I do when we get there?"

"Stay out of my way."

Already sick of the exchange, I pushed passed her and entered the glowing orb. A split second later I was overlooking Tokyo.

Holli emerged and would have slammed into my back if I hadn't moved. "This way," I commanded.

I could see the phenoms circling a building in the distance. There were at least twenty, which was damn odd, seeing as most outbreaks only numbered in the single digits.

"Have you used your wings yet?" I asked.

"Yes. I've been trained."

I glared at her. How could she have possibly been trained if she wasn't supposed to arrive until tomorrow night? I was about to pose my question when she interrupted my train of thought.

"It looks like the longer we wait the more ghosts appear."

Her soft voice annoyed me,
but not as much as the fact that she was right. The cloud of phenoms seemed to be growing.
What the hell?
"Let's go."

I pushed into the sky and felt Holli do the same. Her form was good and she glided smoothly beside me.

The building had a flat roof which made for the perfect gathering point. I landed, tucked in my wings, and stretched out my hands.

Ribbons left my fingertips just as Holli stepped up beside me.
I turned my head and it was as if the world had dropped into slow motion.

Holli stood next to me with a large silver sword raised high above her head. The weapon glowed, its metal engulfed in a purple light which highlighted the etched symbols along its blade. It pulsed, as if alive, and the swirling mass reacted.

I stood and watched the phenoms twist into a vortex and soar towards us. Holli never moved as the souls were sucked straight into her massive sword.

It was over in the blink of an eye; an entire cloud of escaped phenoms gone while Holli retracted her magical weapon.

"I call it The Devourer." She clipped the now small, charm-like knife onto the chain belt that cinched her gown and shrugged like she'd just tucked away her sunglasses.

"The Devourer?"

"Yes. It's one of the perks Death gave me. I like it."

"I can see why."

She had to speak again to snap me out of my daze.

"Do
you think that's all of them, or should we make a sweep of the city?"

"Um...yeah. We probably should," I stammered.

Holli pursed her lips and tilted her head, probably in response to the
under
whelming impression I was giving so far. Who could blame her? One mission and I'd become obsolete.

I pushed off the building and flew into the cobalt sky. The stars twinkled and lit up Holli's wings, making them sparkle. She looked like an angel sent straight from Heaven.

My blood boiled and I surged faster into the night. I may have disliked the idea of her arrival before, but now, with her gliding gracefully beside me, dislike was too mild of a word.

As we darted in and out of Tokyo's famous high-rises I spotted three more clouds of phenoms writhing at the top of three different buildings.

"You take this one, I'll get the others," I instructed.

Holli nodded and landed on the building closest to us. I watched her raise "The Devourer" into the air once more and shook my head
in disgust.

I landed on the next rooftop and immediately flung out my Reaper ribbons. They easily wrapped around the escaped souls and began to retract with the black mass fully in tow. It was the most runaways I'd ever gathered at once.

The large ball of swarming ghosts got closer and closer and I wasn't sure how I was going to get to the next batch without dropping these off first.

That, of course, was when I heard Holli yell, "Do you want me to get the last of them?"

She hovered above me, her hair blowing in the wind and her sword poised at her side. She looked like a warrior princess.

Dammit!

"Yes. That'd be great. I'll head back to the portal with this bunch."

"Okay. I'll be right there." She took off like a shot towards the remaining cloud.

My nostrils flared. I wanted to stomp my foot through the roof of the building, freeing the angry beast inside of me who was clamoring to escape. But instead, I flew back to the portal to  finish my mission.

The instant we returned to Purgatory all the phenoms were sucked into the sky, adding their black inky souls to the dismal gray expanse. I turned to Holli. "We need to let Death know what just happened. I've never seen anything like that before. Usually I've only collected five or six runners at a time," I explained.

"Oh, he already knows. That's why he wanted me to come with you. He told me there would be a lot more souls to gather tonight
."

The angry beast inside me howled, its cry filling my head.

9

I paced my living room after busting through the front door, scaring the crap out of Garrett, who'd decided to wait for me.

"Garrett, I'm telling you, something weird is going on. She said Death already knew there would be a lot more souls to gather this time. How did he know that? He's never been able to predict what we'd be facing topside before."

Garrett slumped into the couch and exhaled a long breath. "I don't know, Raven. Maybe he's figured out a way to use his gazing pool to see the future." He shrugged.

I glared at him and huffed at his lame excuse.

He threw his hands in the air and exclaimed, "Well, shit, I don't know!"

I had to think this through and if Garrett was only able to offer assumptions, he wasn't going to be much help to me. I needed to be alone.

"Well, I guess I'll sleep on it and let you know if I think of anything tomorrow." I gestured towards the front door.

"You kicking me out?"

"Yep."

"Fine, but promise you'll actually sleep and not stay up all night, freaking out about this, okay?"

"I promise."

Four hours later all I could see were the tiny red pixels of my digital clock through squinted eyes––2 a.m. Even after all the brainstorming I'd done, I couldn't come up with a logical explanation to how Death could have known about the extra phenoms. I'd contemplated Garrett's comment over and over. It was widely known Death's gazing pool was a way for him to see topside, but now, I'd begun to wonder if Garrett was right. Was Death's pool somehow becoming predictive in nature?

Exhausted, I flopped back onto my pillow and hoped to get a couple hours of sleep, keeping my promise to Garrett, if only minimally.

Tonight's dream wasn't of Holli, but instead of the runaway ghosts we'd collected and their brethren. I saw massive groups of phenoms in cities all over the world, swarming like bees around rooftops and trees. It was as if they were balloons and someone had cut them free, causing them to float up and up until they hit an invisible ceiling.

Lucid dreaming wasn't a skill I'd honed, but I made the effort to turn around and search the scene for clues. Nothing else stood out or struck me as odd, so after one last look at the cloud of souls, I told myself to wake up.

This was the hard part. Sometimes I'd get caught in-between, knowing I was dreaming and thinking I was awake only to realize I was still asleep.
Wake up!

As my eyelids fluttered, I saw one more thing; Death stood in a candlelit room, holding a large scythe, surrounded by souls.

I rolled over and reached for the pad and pen I kept next to my bed. The dream was cliché, but regardless, I didn't want to leave out anything when I talked to Garrett about this. Maybe together we could take these pieces and complete a puzzle that would somehow make sense. If not...it looked like Holli and I were going to become very busy in the near future.

I scratched down all the details I could recall. The massive clouds of runaway souls, the names of the cities I'd recognized; New York, Seattle, and San Francisco. The shape and items in the room where Death stood. I closed my eyes and concentrated, hoping to remember at least a few more details.

Seconds ticked by and I began to drift back into that space between conscious and unconscious thought.

Holy shit!
My eyes snapped open and I grabbed the pad again, quickly drawing the balloon that hovered behind Death's head.