Rage by Jackie Morse Kessler Read Free Book Online Page A

fit atop her closet.
Doesn't matter how,
she decided as she dragged her hand over to the fallen box.
It fit because it was supposed to fit.
    Just like she was supposed to take the box.
    As her fingers brushed against it, the white package turned the red of ripe cherries.
    She couldn't see Death, but she heard the smile in his cold, cold voice. "The choice is made. Open the box, Melissa Miller."
    With those words, heat flooded her limbs, bringing with it newfound strength. Missy, no longer dying, rolled onto her hip and pushed herself up until she was on her knees. The cheerfully red package lay in front of her like a birthday present. She lifted the lid off the box.
    Inside, a sword rested against a backing of ruby-colored cloth. The weapon looked nothing like its more modern cousins; for one thing, it was too short, and for another, it wasn't steel or iron but something redder, like bronze. The straight blade plumped in the middle, with one end coming to a wicked point and the other extending into a hilt. It was the
idea
of a sword, there in its once white box.
    "Oh," Missy breathed, enamored. The sword radiated age and, stronger than that, power, and as she stared at it raptly, she felt something akin to awe wash over her. This blade was no mere sword—it was a Sword, meant to be revered.
    "It's beautiful," she whispered.
    "It's yours."
    "Mine?" Impossible. She couldn't own such a treasure.
    "Yours," said Death. "The Sword is your symbol of office."
    That got Missy to tear her gaze from the weapon in its box and stare at the figure on her bed. He bore more than a passing resemblance to a certain dead alternative rock star, but Missy understood that his appearance was nothing more than a whim. He sat there in a red and black striped sweater, frayed along the hem of one of the sleeves, the collar of a white shirt jutting out along the neckline. His blue jeans were torn and patched; his Converse sneakers looked comfortably broken in. Everything about him, from his outfit to the messy long blond hair, appeared casual, familiar.
    Everything except his eyes. Beneath the startling blue, they were bottomless. She could get lost in those eyes and never know it until she was already far, far gone. His eyes were haunting.
    "Thou art War," Death said, his voice cold and, appropriately, grave. "Thou art the Red Rider of the Apocalypse." And then, warmer: "Rock on."
    Missy opened her mouth and then closed it with an audible snap.
    War.
    She knew she shouldn't be calmly sitting on her bedroom floor, being told by Death—by a very attractive Death—that she was now War of the Apocalypse. She knew she should be terrified. She realized she might be certifiably insane. She understood all of this, and none of it mattered.
    She beheld the weapon in its box, and she longed to touch it, to feel its weight in her hands. No, it wasn't just a weapon. It was power incarnate; it was passion given form. It was glorious.
    And it was
hers.
    "Yes," Death said. "It is."
    It didn't even make her blink that Death had read her mind; this was a day in which the impossible was accepted as commonplace. She stared at the blade in its cherry-red box, and she felt it staring back, assessing her. Accepting her. She was War, and the weapon,
her
weapon, called to her, its voice a metallic song that reverberated in her mind like the clang of steel against steel. It was hypnotic.
    "Pick up the Sword. Feel its weight in your hand," Death said. And then, as an afterthought: "And brace yourself."
    Missy closed her fingers around the handle and lifted the Sword free from its box.
    Emotions slammed into her, riding her body and screaming along her skin. Anger in its various forms took her first, chewed her up and spat her out: fury, scalding and insistent; jealousy, a gnawing hunger; hatred, cold enough to freeze her blood. Happiness, then, had its turn, soothing her where rage had left scorch marks: joy, blissful and light; kindness, a warm balm; the giddy touch of glee;