Spirit Wars by Mon D Rea Read Free Book Online Page B

guess this place does that to a
person. But
it’s Death who raises one hand in the air and arranges his fingers as though
they were squeezing something in them. At the same time I feel pressure
mounting around my neck, my windpipe being crushed like a drinking straw.
    “You
speak as if you have a choice. Have you looked in a mirror lately?”
    All at once the Lachesis monitors switch to the scene inside the
office. I can see the head reaper's back and his surprisingly vice-like hand
still poised in the air, but the figure chained against the elevator wreck isn’t anyone I recognize. My wetsuit
appears to have fused onto my skin and the result is somehow tattery, sort of
hazy and distorted in its own aura of water. Worse, my face is
grotesque, with what appears to be the cheeks and jawline of the missing link
between humans and fish. In fact, I have scales for skin and fins where my ears
should be.
    “In case you haven’t noticed, you're dead, Nataniel Cuervo ! ” Sephtimus shrieks and laughs. It’s twice shocking to hear
my name in this place. For one, I can't remember the last time I was called by
it and for another, the fact that this monster has access to what I thought was
my only remaining layer of identity plunges me to utter despair.
    “I hope you don’t mind but the Fate Weaver has taken the liberty
of dressing you in different clothing. As if you were one of the souls cleared for
reincarnation. But before you rejoice, know that you’ve been reduced to a
slave-wraith – to be precise, a shipwreck fershee, a wailing spirit – until the
time that you
outgrow your usefulness to me.”
    I feel the scream rising in my chest. I’ve been transformed into a
monster, a freak that belongs to neither land nor sea, to neither the living
nor the restful dead.
    “A nonperson in your mortal life, you shall still remain trapped
in this subhuman form for all afterlife!”    
    Sephtimus,
having morphed the fingers of his other hand into overkill talons, rips one
ear-fin off the abomination on the wall as a boy would tear the wing off a fly.
I feel great waves of pain coursing from the left side of my face then
throughout my body, all nerve endings humming at the violence as ice-cold,
silvery ghost blood squirts out of me in jets.
    I shriek - an inhuman, screeching noise at all the abuse I’ve
suffered through
the day - and great rivers of tears course down my
cheeks. My voice has taken on a life of its own in the supernatural world; it’s
now high-pitched and echoey. And I cry out of, more than the pain, the
desolation that grips my heart now that I feel my new shape slowly laying its
claim on me.
    “Shut
it!” Sephtimus screams and behind him all the screens take on the menacing
grayness of a tempest at sea, his voice coinciding with the boom of very close
thunder. I’m taught the literal meaning of the words “zip your mouth” when I
feel hook-pieces instantly pull my fish lips shut.
    “What
manner of man are you that you cower and wail at the consequences of your own
act? Now, THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO...”
Sephtimus enunciates the words while pressing his lips close to my now
amorphous, smoothed-out mouth. The thin strip of his human lips is bent into
the snarl of his mental voice. “You shall be my slave and perform your tasks as
a fershee reaper. More importantly, you shall instruct me on how to walk and
talk like one of your filthy kind . Because I
shall take her soul one way or another like what has been promised. And in the
end I shall squash her like the leech that she is!” The reaper’s eyes
are once more fiery-red. “Do as you are told and I might even let you visit
that hot ex of yours. Samantha, isn’t it?”
    Leave her out of this, you snake! I scream
inside my head. I feel faint, having lost a great deal of blood out of the torn
side of my face.
    “You mortals have called me many things,” Sephtimus roars.
"But one thing I shall not stand is a human accusing me of