Era of Wrath (Chrim Chronicles #2)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Wren of West

The white building with countless little windows towered above us. In front of it stood yellow ambulances, some driving away and some standing still. The red words written on the sign above its rotating glass doors were of an unfamiliar alphabet I never learned. People walked through us, unaware of our presence, as we stood there staring at the door. Sheila, with her eagle loyally perched on her shoulder, looked at me and gave me the signal; two fingers pointed at her eyes. I gave her a nod to indicate that I understood. Spreading my fingers, I laid them across my face and tensed my muscles. My skin felt as if it were pulled forward, then ripped off. When I looked back at Sheila, her face was gone and only a skull showed underneath her hood, the same way I now looked. My fingers, too, were nothing but yellowed bones, as was the rest of my body.

Death knows no face.

From all the creatures, only Grim Reapers were truly neutral with the single goal of collecting the souls whose time had come; they did not judge or discriminate, no Heaven nor Hell could interfere with a Grim Reaper's business, for when your time is up it means you're done and that is that. We walked through the white halls of the hospital as nurses rushed through us pushing a bed with a sleeping elderly woman on it. Though she seemed close to death, very old and very sickly, it was not who we were reaping.

We stepped through a door at the end of the hallway and stared at the boy laying in the bed front of us. Next to him beeped a monitor. Dozens of tubes were attached to him, some going inside his nose, other inside his arms, and some taped on his chest. His eyes were closed and his head had fallen against the tall frames on his side. I figured that the woman who held his hand while stroking his brown hair and looked down at him in despair and desperation must've been his mother. Not older than ten years of age, it was not the elderly woman but this child we had come to reap.

Death knows no age.

Sheila reached inside her pocket and took out the hourglass with black sand trickling down. From the looks of it, nearly all of the sand having collected at the bottom, the boy had just a few minutes left. With a mumbling sound he moved his head aside, and fluttered his eyelids. Upon opening his brown eyes, he noticed us standing there. In silence he stared at us, the child didn't even blink. His mother glanced behind her and hunched closer to her son, then said something in their Slavic language, probably asking him what he was looking at. The boy said nothing, but did sit upright and turned to his mother. I moved next to him and lifted my scythe above his head. As I brought it down, the boy spread his arms and hugged his mother tightly, and did not let go until his small body collapsed and his transparent ghost appeared.

Death knows no sympathy.

For a very brief moment we looked at the boy. Then the spiral appeared, stretching on the entire wall behind us, black and white twisting endlessly. It was letting us know that our job here was done and that we had to leave. As we stepped through the spiral, I was almost certain that Sheila felt just as sick to her stomach as I did, despite telling me over and over that she'd been doing this for such a long time that it no longer evoked any emotions. However, even though she had been a Grim Reaper for nearly a century now, I knew that after all this time and experience even Sheila could not help to feel that aching pit in her stomach at the sight of dead children. It was up to the boy at this point, to go into the bright light or remain in the hospital and haunt it. We were not allowed to speak to him or interfere in any other way. We just reaped souls, one poor soul after the other all around the world, and that was all we did. Though it did not seem to be much, being a Grim Reaper weighed so heavy on me that it caused me sleepless nights. Some were old or bad people, and I didn't care for those, but some were innocent and young like this child, and those broke my heart and haunted me in my nightmares.