Saints (SAINTS #1) | ✓

39

ALAN ONCE HAD TOLD her that everything she touched turned to ash if she wanted it to and she had always enjoyed that thought. The power to obliviate things elegantly was one she never knew she had such a need for, but when she took an apple in her hand and closed her fingers around it, the ash raining down from her hands, she smiled,

"Isn't it cool?" Daichi grinned as he threw a heap of grapes in the air.

All of them turned beautiful once they escaped his touch, but when they landed on his skin they rotted.

"Like Tantalus," he said, leaning closer to whisper his next words," far more cruel though. I think having the thing you crave most in your hand and watching it disappear as soon as you touch it is worse than never touching it all."

"Your boss sure is creative," Jasmina said as she let her hand wander across the food as she walked.

Everything dissipated and appeared again a second later, like nothing ever had happened at all. Most of the ghosts there didn't seem like they had any hope left, though some of them still tried to grab anything they could, his growling stomach resounding with his cries as he failed again.

"Let them starve," Daichi said as he followed her gaze, his smile not reaching his icy eyes. "Those who build their fortunes on the crushed bones of children deserve nothing but this."

Jasmina could see a few of them were overweight, but the majority were hollow now, consisting of the bare minimum to survive. She looked at the crying man and after a few seconds his face flashed in front of her eyes, fuller now. He was laughing, eating his caviar, and one moment later he was outside in the freezing cold, laughing as a beggar asked him for food.

"Can I see their past lives?" she said.

"Can you?" Daichi said surprisedly. He realized something then, nodding slowly. "Probably must have been the devil. He must appreciate you to give you that power."

"I wouldn't settle for less," Jasmina drawled.

"As you should," Daichi said, his eyes softer now. He scraped his throat, blinking the rare emotion away and shaking his head. "Anyway, he doesn't think up those punishments, he just puts them in place. His father is the one to think of them."

"And he listens?" she said.

"He has to," Daichi said," there's no defying God." He grinned after. "Unless it's one of those Greek gods of course, we can take those any day. They're too fickle to really do any damage."

"At this point I'm just assuming everything supernatural I've ever heard is real," she said," I wouldn't be surprised if vampires popped up tomorrow."

"I would love to see a vampire," Daichi said as he flashed a grin," unfortunately I've only met the devil until now. The angels think themselves too good to associate with us and the other gods follow their every whims, so we don't interact a lot."

Jasmina actually was looking forward to seeing them all. Diplomacy was one of her strong suits and she was sure she could charm whomever she wanted. If the devil alone wasn't proof of that, the network she had built by interacting with her parents' associates was.

"Ah, time's up," Daichi said as he looked up," I suppose you're going to Victor now."

As if on cue the world around her turned black and she tumbled down, strangely feeling a lot like Alice in Wonderland. She however was no Alice and when she woke up with a forest green sky above her, she knew this was no Wonderland. Victor was standing alone in the grass, trees surrounding him. He was staring at one, almost melancholic, but when he noticed her presence he stopped and turned around.

"You're here already," he said.

"Where are your ghosts?" she remarked," hidden in the forest?"

"No," Victor said," they're all here."

She raised an eyebrow, but he just waved a hand in front of one of the trees, the leaves turning into chartreuse bubbles filled with memories and the rest of the tree turning into skin and bone, a girl stuck in one position forever. Her eyes were glazed over and Victor gestured at Jasmina to come closer, before snapping his fingers.

They were in a room then, everything black except one wall, where a video was being played. It looked like a third person view of someone's life, but it wasn't the girl who was in it. Someone resembling her all too much was smiling and laughing as she got a promotion, her parents' approval, a proposal. Jasmina guessed it to be her sister, but only when she looked back at the girl did she realize she was slowly turning green with every good moment.

It seemed like a virus was taking her over, beginning in her heart and spreading to her neck and limbs, the brown of her eyes drowning in it. She remembered Daichi saying that the people who were locked up here got poisoned by their own envy as they watched videos on loop. The girl choked out blood, confirming her thoughts, but didn't even flinch, eyes focused on the screen. She hadn't even blinked once during it all, but Jasmina supposed she couldn't. Another added part of the torture.

"She killed her sister," Victor said as he watched her," because her parents loved her more."

They were out of the room then, back into the forest, the trees around them eerily silent now.

"At least you decorated it," Jasmina said as she looked around," the trees are a nice touch."

"I didn't," Victor said," when you're new as a sin your mind leaks into your realm, so this is just a sick joke for me." He shrugged. "It was a tree just like these ones that I hung myself on after all."

The stories of the others had all gotten quite clear to her, but somehow Victor's still had remained a mystery in some sense. She wondered where this puzzle piece fitted in the mystery that was him, but at least she was starting to understand more of it. If she had to spend eternity with them, that just seemed necessary at this point. Victor looked at her, expression undecipherable.

"You're not going to ask me why?" he said.

"Are you going to tell me?" she said.

"I wonder," he said softly, eyes stuck on the biggest tree there, a withered one with tears for leaves and nightmares forming the trunk.

She glanced at him, before starting to talk herself.

"I don't have the best relationship with my parents," she said," they've always told me that power is the only things that matter in this world. I've learned that language fluently by now."

Victor looked surprised at her sharing things and a silence passed between them, broken by him a few moments later.

"My father always was too busy with other things," Victor said," his high position in the army, his soldiers there, my mother, my grades. Not me, never me." He shrugged. "In the end he was just the first of many to do so. Whenever people look at me they don't see me, they see someone to pin either their hopes or anger on, a fool, a man made of nothing but his skin color."

The withered tree swayed in a non-existent wind at his words, the trunk turning into a dark brown then which resembled Victor's skin in a sharp way. Victor traced it, almost sadly, and shook his head.

"I never was enough," he said," my mother wasn't capable of showing love, but I don't blame her for that. She always has been a cold woman. My father however, I blame him. He never was there for me, not when that police officer tried to shoot me in the head for walking the street or when I celebrated my birthday all alone in a house with no love."

He stopped talking then, looking at something behind her, and shook his head.

"We'll talk later," he said," you're being called."

"What?" she said, but before she could even form a full question she was tumbling down again.

At this point she had grown tired of being taken wherever they wanted without a clear announcement and she opened her mouth to say just that when she arrived, but the person in front of her silenced her. He was smiling, sitting on a throne befit a king, and the flames around him danced with his every move.

"Azriel."