Sympathy For the Devil

12

Dead. The word clung to my brain like adhesive. A coolness slipped in and out of my throat as my breath became a cloud in the air. More memories of that night rose to the surface as I blinked the harsh memories forward in my mind, yearning to remember everything. Even the awful things. The heat that had filled my lungs and scorched my insides. The coolness that followed after. The silence and calm before the vicious storm. Everything came back to me.

My head was reeling. I have a migraine. I scooted backward as Killian held me still. His grip on me was firm but gentle. He held out a hand for me that I managed to take as I stood up on shaky footing. 

"We should at least show her the truth. I have two perfectly ripe souls right here that I collected before your little 'accident'. Now, you can hardly deny the truth. Perfectly intact souls dispelled from a dying corpse. Their hopes and dreams all fall under an orb of light. So fragile. My touch brings the soul out of the body leaving the corpse to fall." 

"Ankou, you really think that's a good idea? She needs to digest everything that happened first." Killian pointed out as he still had a protective stance that shielded me from Ankou. 

Ankou shrugged lazily as he carelessly tossed the milky white orb that he referred to as a soul back and forth in his hands like a tennis ball. Souls looked like luminescent commas to me. Both souls ebbed and flowed in the palm of Ankou's bony hands. His hands were skeletal and there was no flesh to them anymore. His face which was almost hidden beneath a cloak darker than the shadows looked almost human but more rugged and menacing as the embers beneath his face flowed like there was black light on him and he was at a rave. His eyes, though, they were darkness encapsulated.

I wanted to touch the souls to test the realness of them. I wanted to put them back in their bodies so that they can live again, but Killian held me back with a firmer grip than before. "Don't," He warned. "You cannot touch the souls. They will turn to ash in your hands and the soul will be lost forever wandering hopelessly into the abyss. Only Ankou has the jurisdiction to touch a soul. We only serve as messengers that alert Ankou to collecting a soul through our scream."

"Always so dramatic," Ankou interjected. "But he is not wrong. Only I am capable of touching a soul. It must be my effortless charm." He winked at me as I rolled my undead eyes at him. "I must be on my way. Arawn waits for no man or God. He's all about punctuality."

Ankou made several intricate motions with his hands as cracks of light in the Earth opened up. The Earth rippled and cracked, groaning in pain. A giant black hole tore through the concrete wall as the souls of people screamed out for help. The cries screeched out like bats. At least a billion people or more reverberated in my skull. Their screams pinged off of my head as I closed my eyes and ears from the piercing incessant noise emulating from the black hole in the morgue.

"A little warning would have been fucking nice!" Killian shouted over the screams as he plugged his ear and I held mine praying that the sheet would be tight enough to remain over my body.

"Where is the fun in that?" Ankou let out a dry laugh. "That look on both of your faces is absolutely priceless and I have to find some way to entertain myself for all of eternity."

The words of the souls and the screams jumbled into nonsensical jargon that even with plugged ears, I could not seem to escape from. Killian pulled me farther away from the black hole that dipped into the Underworld before I did a head dive into the abyss and unknown. Ankou managed to slip through the cracks and float away with his Scythe blade carried heavily over one shoulder and the two souls he showed me in the outstretched palm of his other hand. The blade hovered with a mind of its own as it scraped the lining of the underworld and caressed the souls on the sharpened curve of the blade that lined the walls of the Underworld. The cobblestone floor stitched itself back together as Ankou officially vanished from sight.