Prologue
Avery, very long time ago, a skeletal being came to be. A savior for mankind, he became a cloud of darkness fighting against blacker darkness. Death was his existence, so it became his name. He walked alone, ridding the world of evil and guiding the dead to their afterlife.
The Grim Reaper craved flesh, watching people from a distance. He discovered love between humans—the beauty in flesh, and all the ways a body could feel. So he merged with an incubus demon and forever would be known as Killian—the Grim Reaper.
He was still lonely…for it took a very long time for his Melanie to be born, but then she came to him as a human. They met and fell in love…
But this wasn’t a story about them. This was about seven siblings cursed because of their parents.
This was one dark king’s decision, an evil deed, that set into motion future events shaking both the human realm and the Underworld.
That’s where our story began…
Be careful of the darkness, for what lies in it will drag you in and keep you. In its depths, the Devil reigned. On the outskirts of this domain, a bothersome entity resided who had destroyedthe Devil’s evil time and time again. He was called the Grim Reaper, and though he used to be a man without weakness, he wasn’t anymore. His wife delivered him seven beautiful, healthy children. The Devil saw them as his chance for retribution for keeping his evil at bay, for he could never reign over the human world until the day people were more bad than good.
On the day the seventh child was born, the Devil came to them with curses. Each one representing the seven deadly sins.
Grim’s three sons were playing outside the castle when they looked up and saw the Devil beside them. He started with the closest one, uttering the word, “Sloth,” as he pressed his finger against the blond boy’s forehead. He dropped to the ground in a deep sleep. The Devil turned to his dark-haired brother and grinned. “Greed.” The boy’s eyes lit up with the curse. The Devil smiled and went to the third dark-haired brother. He pressed his finger against the boy’s forehead and said, “Wrath.”
Chuckling, the Devil slipped into the house and found three daughters. He went to the brunette, touched her forehead, and whispered, “Pride.” He continued with the remaining girls, cursing each “Lust” and “Envy.” Lastly, the Devil made his way to the seventh child tucked away in her room resting.Leaning over the crib, the Devil grinned and pointed his finger at the child, but the baby reached out and grabbed it. The Devil revealed his horns and red eyes hoping to scare her. She giggled instead. He studied her curiously before placing his finger on her forehead andwhispering, “Gluttony.” Only the second time he touched the newborn, images flashed behind his eyes, visions of him on his knees before an entity he recognized immediately. In the mists of those haunting images was the woman the newborn would one day be. It was all of those apparitions combined that had him retreating from her smile rather quickly, rubbing the place her tiny fingers touched as he did so. The Devil vanished, vowing to make sure that what he saw never came to pass. He took his secret and kept it in his thoughts only.
Sadly, by the time their parents felt the Devil’s presence it was too late. He came and went, leaving behind curses that couldn’t be broken no matter how hard anyone tried.
And so, the Devil’s retribution began. Over a hundred years later, the game of sorts, begged for an end.
Every good story starts off with a man meeting a woman, in this case, a sleeping Reaper succumbed to his curse, and an unlucky someone stumbled across him.
Or should we say lucky?
Sebastian, you sleepy sloth, you are where we will begin…
One
Sebastian
Did you know how many people died in a day?
‘Cause I sure as shit didn’t know. I knew it was a hell of a lot because I was stuck in the human world more than I cared for, guiding the dead to their afterlife, whether it be ascending them to Heaven or descending them to Hell.
I was one of many working as aReaperunder the Grim Reaperwho happened to be my dad.It was a very busy job…
A damn frustrating one too.
My eyes nearly rolled back into my head and I groaned watching the ghost. He sprinted out of his newly dead body and ran for dear life—from me. I hated when they did this. Why would you want to stay with the living when you were a ghost? I could understand the ones that were being sent to the flames, but this guy? He was going to the pearly gates, yet here he was running through hospital walls to get away from me, all the while screaming, giving himself away.
Not that it was hard for me to find him. I could find him anywhere with my Reaper senses.
I yawned, covering my mouth. So tired. Always so damned tired. I stood there a minute and tested my weariness. I was pretty sure I was good for now, but you could never be too sure with a curse.
I had better get this over with, just in case. That was all I needed—to pass out in the human world. I’d have to hear Barron bitch for a century if he had to come fetch my sleeping body in a human hospital. He already hated everything, doing anything, being anywhere; he was just the fun-sucker of the family. Not that he could help it.
Rolling my neck, I faded to where the ghost was hunched down in a janitor’s closet. Fading was something only our family could do. We had our own portal network—a speed travel that could pop us in and out wherever we wanted, literally. If I wanted to pop in on the other side of the wall where the hallway was, I’d fade fromhereand re-fade tothereall within the same second. Or I could go to the Underworld in the same second. It could be anywhere. I could fade in and out of time just to stand behind someone while previously standing in front of them. Typically, it wasn’t ideal to do that in front of humans since they tended to freak out when shit disappeared and reappeared somewhere else. But ghosts were a different story. They were dead already and understanding there was indeed an afterlife.
Now every other demon or monster—whatever,was stuck using a portal chip to transport where they wanted. We were superior that way. HAHAHAHA. Just kidding. I wasn’t that kind of asshole. I could be kick-ass though when I wasn’t sleeping.
“Don’t take me,” the dude screamed, holding his hands up to his face. “I don’t want to leave.”
Sighing, I bent down and removed the hood that was attached to my cloak. Yes,cloak.Dad thought it was a Reaper’s job to wear one. He was also as old as time itself, so there’s that. “Is it the hood?” I asked him. “I try to tell Grim that it freaks you guys out, but I think that’s why he keeps it mandatory.”
