I lifted my hand, hoping he might feel it.
His hand lifted. He nodded. “Show me.”
I didn’t need to be asked twice. I ran, Brown’s feet rising and falling as if this were my own body. His breath was caught, ragged and weird in his chest. This wasn’t comfortable for him, might even be painful.
I hesitated.
“Do it,” he breathed.
And so I did. I rushed up behind Lavius—silent as only an elf can be, a part of the world around me and leaving no trace behind as only an elf can be, and maybe most importantly, fast as only an elf can be—and plunged the knife deep between Lavius’s ribs, angling the stroke upward toward lungs and heart.
Lavius jerked, yelled.
The impact of that sound of unholy pain threw me out of Brown’s body, shuddering and raw, desperate for escape.
Brown groaned and dropped the knife like it was on fire, then bolted, stumbling over his feet, trying to get out of the blast zone of the ancient horror, the vilethingthat Lavius was made of.
Rossi swung, his bloody fist gripping the clay knife again, his face drenched in thick black blood, one eye gone blind as he bared his fangs and shouted old words, old promises, old curses, old, dark magic.
The clay knife angled down, fast, too fast for mortal eyes to track, and somehow achingly slow.
The blade buried to the hilt, and still he thrust it deeper, fueled by his rage, into Lavius’s throat.
Lavius threw out both arms and shook, shook, his body thrashing while speared in place as if a lightning rod had just skewered him from skull to sole.
The air filled with screeching, howling, darkness.
And then Death strolled into the room.
Chapter 20
“Than,” I said. “Help. Please, help.”
His eyes flicked to me and they were endless, deep, and oddly, not unkind. It was Than, the god-playing-mortal in my little town-playing-normal. But it was more. It was Death.
His god power shifted and flowed around him like a cape of smoke and fire, flickers of light falling like ashes and snow stirred by the heartbeat of power.
“Every living thing ends,” he said, a voice of forever, a voice of time echoing, song, shadows, and light.
No one was moving in the room; it was as if time had broken, the world stalled, the universe halted on its eternal pivot.
Only Lavius was moving, his mouth opening and closing around a silent scream, his eyes wide with terror.
I saw my friend, Than, the god of death, resplendent in his cloak of power.
Lavius saw his end.
“Death is patient,” Than said almost softly. “But death always, always wins.”
Than lifted one hand and that cloak of power unrolled from around him, wings of stars, of darkness, of something so good, it made me ache with wanting to touch it.
Wings that wrapped around Lavius, folded and cradled and covered and smothered until there was no more movement in Lavius’s body, no more pleas on his lips, no more light in his eyes.
He fell, just as slowly as I had, landing hard and solid on the floor.
Death turned his gaze to Rossi, who stood, covered in blood—his own and his brother’s—his expression anger, sorrow, hatred.
“Travail,” Death whispered.
