“What are you doing to them?” Maureen hissed at Harvest.
And I felt it. The next worst thing. My Reaper senses picked up the change in the human world. The catastrophes happening, the blips in fate—unexpected deaths popping up all over the map shown inside my head.
One second everything was okay, then everything changed in the human world. Disasters and ruins descended upon the world we, as Reapers, were meant to protect to the very end. Oceans split, lands flooded, holes opened, death arrived, and it was no longer the Grim Reaper that ruled it.
Harvest paved the way for the Devil’s biggest reign—the end of our control on good and evil, but it was just the beginning of his.
Thirty
Sebastian
It was when I caught sight of Maureen and Payne holding their chests that I noticed I was as well. We all felt it happening. “If this was truly the end, why hadn’t I sensed it coming?” I turned to Dad who was trying to stand and couldn’t. I could hardly stay awake myself, but Dad was fading away. He looked up at Maureen and smiled sadly. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have sent your mother away. I didn’t get my eternity with her after all, and now… I don’t even get to tell her goodbye.”
“Stop talking!” Maureen screamed at him with tears in her eyes.
But Dad was onto something. As Reapers, we were meant to understand these things and none of us could. If people had meant to die today, we would have known, but their deaths were popping up all over the place.
Fighting a wave of exhaustion, I hissed. “This isn’t the actual end… not the appropriate one, anyway.”
“Which means…” Dad sucked in a harsh breath.
“It means we can still prevent it!” Payne finished for him as he shot his gun at Harvest.
“Don’t get too delusional.” Harvest rushed toward him, throwing the gun from his hand. It went sailing across the air. “I know you guys are used to winning, but this is a race that you’ll never get to finish. This has been my future since the moment I was created.”
I ran a few steps toward them, but my vision went out. I fought a different battle—my curse. When I found the strength to keep my eyes open and the tunnel vision receded, Harvest was knowingly grinning at me. And that fucking pissed me off.
Payne snorted, sliding his sword from his sheath, but Harvest was quicker, pushing a blade in Payne’s side. Payne sucked in a breath, then groaned. “Just what is it you expect to get out of this new world?”
Harvest never missed anything, but with my dwindling energy, I had missed Maureen sneaking up behind him until he turned, latching onto her wrist. He held the same kind of touch as Isabella. He placed the bracelet on her wrist and looked back at Isabella who was the main source. Her clothes were burning away from the sheer amount of power she was forcing into her body and something began to take form around her. Nothing about any of this was right, and how was she supposed to survive much longer if I didn’t get to her. “She’s all yours, Isabella.” Harvest muttered.
All five of them were down while I rose to my feet over and over, trying to get my brain to function, but black blurred the edges of my vision and the curse called to my body.
Harvest’s eyes were power-hungry as he turned back to answer Payne’s question. “As for the new world, it will be mine.” He pushed Payne back, sliding the sword out before glancing at him one last time. “You won’t fade away like the rest will when it’s complete,” he shook his head and smiled evilly, “but too bad you’re bleeding out.”
Sheer anger had my body obeying my command as I moved toward Harvest.
“Payne!” Joy could speak even though her essence was being channeled. Just like the others, she was on her knees as her essence seeped above her and flowed toward Isabella angrily.
“Vortex,” August gritted out as he caught sight of the huge tunnel forming around Isabella. “You have to destroy it.”
No. “I have to get her out of there first, then I’ll—”
“Sebastian.”I ignored the desperation in Maureen’s voice as I stopped in front of her.
Payne was holding his wound and taking deep gulps of air. “You know none of us want you to make this decision, Sebastian, but it’s the human world and all of you, or her.”
“Killian,” Mom’s frantic voice pierced my chest as she called Dad’s name. I turned around to see her dropping down next to Dad, and tears filled her vision when she tried to touch his face and slipped through him. She must have felt what was happening and came back.
“Love,” he breathed in. “Heal Payne.”
With tears in her eyes, she nodded and ran toward us. “I’m fine,” Payne tried to say, but Mom was already healing him swiftly. “Where’s Harvest?” Payne asked me.
“Above us,” Barron hissed. “He’s waiting for it to complete.”
“He’s actually going to try to take this moment from the Devil,” Maureen whispered in a state of shock. “How does one do that?”
The vortex was a web of colors—each matching my sibling’s essences. Red for Barron, gold for August, pink for Prudence, orange for Maureen, and green for Joy. The maelstromgrew stronger and higher with every second I stood in stony silence. I could no longer see Isabella within it. It masked her and threatened to swallow us all the further it expanded. Up above it, the silhouette of Harvest waited as the gaping hole in our world continued to widen, and once it was complete, the Devil would cross through within reach of the human world. Only as the monster above us waited above the magical current, I realized the monster had every intention of stealing the dark one’s thunder.
