Realm Wraith (50 page)

“I don’t even know how I ended up on Earth,” he said. “Or how I became Rayne Mercer.”

He rubbed at his temples, but his fingernails scratched against his skull with enough force to draw blood.

“Ow!” he yelled. The painful stabbing sensation forced forward a memory. Twice he recalled intense agony, being stabbed right through the skull. A strange fixation on a weapon. And an excerpt from a text about a creature he now realized was himself.

“That’s right,” he gasped, remembering. “There was a battle. I pushed the humans too far. And there was a weapon.”

The image cleared in his mind, and he saw massive armies scattering before him. He towered over them in an enormous form, a monstrous leviathan with seven heads, crushing them beneath a howling maelstrom. Their weapons and primitive magic were useless, for he had known far greater pain than anything these mortals could throw at him. And he saw a being, glowing gold on the horizon, wielding a holy spear, the form of a man, yet also a lion. Divine eyes leveled upon him, burning with a desire for revenge. Overwhelming pain followed, an explosion of the senses, his body ceasing to move as it hardened to stone, and then darkness. A thousand years of darkness, a complete loss of awareness.

“Yes,” he hissed. “That weapon had my true name written on it. I died that day. I think I wanted to die. I don’t know why. That spear almost destroyed my soul. I forgot who I was, what I was. I was in Limbo for so long. That awful place.” He started pacing. “My true name?”

“I would speak it,” Tomordred said. “But such a name is not meant to be spoken.”

“Right. Of course not.”

Rayne’s eyes shifted. Something stirred in the darkness, watching him. He didn’t have to turn his head, as his snakes cast their sight for him, and he saw subtle movement across the ice. Like lightning, a serpent shot forth and snatched up a cloud of black soot. He shoved it to the ground, where it took solid form within a black cloak, sprawled there, holding twin blades up defensively.

“Darrigan!” Rayne exclaimed.

“Reaper!” Tomordred bellowed, his tendrils lunging.

“Wait! Stand down!” Rayne stood between them, and Tomordred stopped short. He turned back to Darrigan. “It’s rude to eavesdrop, you know.”

Darrigan dusted himself off, his hands trembling. “When you didn’t return to the rock, I assumed you had died. You—you remember.”

“I wouldn’t say I remember,” Rayne said. “It’s more than just a recollection. It’s a crushing feeling, like I’m drowning in a typhoon. But now I know why this place calls to me so deeply, and why my power connects here.”

“That’s not right,” Darrigan muttered to himself, backing away. “I was lied to—”

“Why didn’t you tell me I was a demon?!” Rayne grabbed Darrigan’s scythe to keep him from fleeing.

“I was told not to! But I only knew you were a demon! Nobody told me you were Nen’kai!”

Silence fell between them. Rayne’s mad fury ebbed, and he stood there, too bewildered to think.
A black rain poured from the dark skies, and he looked up, feeling it wash over his face, confusion and disquiet overcoming his soul as his instincts dulled. The persistent slithering sensation continued to remind him of what he’d become.

“You knew I was a demon,” he repeated. “How long?”

“For well over a millennium.”

Rayne’s face turned stormy.

“Start talking,” he said.

“I wasn’t lying about how we first met,” Darrigan began. “But it was over fifteen hundred years ago, in a small village in northern France. My fascination wasn’t because you could see me. It was because you were a complete sociopath.”

“What?”

“The way you acted—you saw humans as merely prey. You slaughtered your own family. But you weren’t damned for it! You were barely twelve when you died, killed by humans who saw you as a monster. And you were simply reborn as another human, years later.”

“How could such a thing happen?!” Tomordred demanded.

The visions flashed back into Rayne’s mind. A farming village, hunting deer in the forest. A grand palace deep in the desert. He sailed on a great ship through the northern seas, and bunkered down with soldiers in cement barracks. They were not a single lie, but many lives all lived by one soul, never ending.

“I realized you had all the instincts of a demon, but you could not reconcile your own nature with a mortal form,” Darrigan explained. “Demons are not meant to be part of the cycle of life and death, and there was no natural order, no damnation if you sinned. You had no idea that you were a demon at all, which was why you could not free yourself.”

“And it never occurred to you to tell me this?” Rayne asked. “Or get me out of there?”

“I didn’t know what the other reapers might do if they found out! Knowing them, there was a good chance they put you there to begin with. So, I just kept watching.”

The more truth Rayne grasped, the more it added to his confusion. Every life, he recalled slipping deeper into darkness, repressing his own nature to blend in with humans, completely lost. He never understood who he truly was, and it led to emptiness, and misery. But he could not clearly recall each lifetime. It was like watching some pageant where the actors forgot half their lines, and the scenery was made of wet tissue paper.

“There’s so much of it, all lost,” he whispered. “And you just left me there to suffer.”

“No!” Darrigan exclaimed. “I mean, there wasn’t anything I could do at the time. But eventually, I met another, who watched you like I—”

“Another? Another reaper?”

“No”

“Then what?”

“I can’t say. We made an arrangement together. He wanted my help to set you free, and made me swear not to reveal any of this to you, especially not his identity. But he is someone you knew once, he made that much clear.”

“So that’s why you took such an interest. And this arrangement?”

“All mortals are bound between the physical world and the transcendent. When they die, the connection to the physical body is severed, and they are pulled back into the cycle of souls to be reborn. If that person sins, they become chained to the Abyss instead.”

“Right. That’s why Realm Wraiths come here.”

“Reapers like myself can sever and re-forge those chains as we see fit, but it must be done at the moment of a person’s death. So I waited for you to die. The car was a lucky thing; I thought I’d have to wait decades for you to knock off. I interfered a little—had to be certain the car would hit you.”

Rayne remembered the dreamlike sensation out in the middle of the road, and he ground his teeth together.

“You killed me.”

“You were not meant to be alive.”

“You could have at least given me a choice!”

“I did what I had to! And yes, I broke some rules. When you survived, I came to the hospital to finish you off. But you saw me, and I fled. I feared I’d be caught. You became like a Realm Wraith instead. But as long as you had your mortal body, you could never fully awaken. You had to die.”

“You still didn’t have the right! You lied to me!”

“No! Well, yes, I lied about your being a demon. But I swear, I did not know you were Nen’kai. I was misled; it was only when you kept returning here, that I started to wonder. But your aura was too weak to be sure!”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done! Azaznir almost destroyed this place! He would have succeeded if I hadn’t—” Remembering Azaznir brought out more seething hatred within him. He remembered Azaznir’s boasts, and he felt a far buried emotion from something in their past together, something still unfathomable to Rayne.

“Why is it you serve him?” he asked. “And if you do serve him, why would you help me?”

“We reapers did not always serve Azaznir.” Darrigan hesitated. “Countless ages ago, my kind had no master. But he appeared to us one day and declared us all his new minions. He sought our combined strength to add to his own. Some of us were against it, but the majority feared his power, and not wanting to be destroyed, they prostrated themselves before him. He promised not to interfere with our duty of claiming souls. But he called upon us to do his bidding as he pleased.”

“Children, under the thumb of a neighborhood bully.”

“What?”

“It was him!” Rayne spat. “He’s the one that started it all! He’s the reason I went missing! And he used your kind to overpower me!”

The six snake heads roared, leveling their scowls on the smoky demon. Darrigan seized up, eyes squinting in panic. He dropped down to his knees, clasped hands beneath sharp blades seeking supplication.

“You are right. Azaznir summoned us to aid him when he attacked you. He was tired of your battles always ending in a draw, and he wanted the upper hand. We had agreed to serve him; we had no choice!”

“What the hell did you do to me?!”

“All we did was aid him in battle! You were just the enemy of our master; it wasn’t personal! After we overpowered you, he took you somewhere. I swear this to you, I do not know any more than that!” The reaper’s cowering was genuine.

“Then why did you seek my favor? The little tasks, helping me out so I might owe you later? You expect me to believe you didn’t know?”

“Originally, I thought having any demon owe me a favor might have its uses. But as your true identity became more clear: yes.” He bowed his head so low his horns brushed the ground. “The other reapers already condemn me for having dealings with a Realm Wraith. If they find out that Nen’kai has returned, and it was because of me, I’m done for. Azaznir will scorch me to cinders, and feed the rest of me to his hordes.”

Rayne pondered Darrigan’s motives. “You did help me, and I do owe you. Perhaps you can atone for what you did, by working for me.” The words felt strange falling from his mouth, coming from a place beyond the consciousness Rayne knew. He wasn’t even certain he was speaking English anymore.

“Reapers are treacherous beings,” Tomordred warned from over his shoulder. “He already betrayed his former master. Who’s to say he won’t do the same to you?”

“I never truly regarded Azaznir as my master,” Darrigan countered. “I was happier serving no one. But my voice was crushed beneath the overwhelming majority, sustained by fear, and my choice lay between serving a god I did not want, or being torn to pieces by my kin. I chose to stay alive.”

“I don’t care about ruling over your kin. ” Rayne told him. “But leaving them in Azaznir’s hand is too dangerous. He—” The demon god’s threats played again and again in his mind. “Levi—”

“Who?” Tomordred asked.

“My son! Azaznir said if anything happened to Gabriel—”

“Your son?” Tomordred repeated. “That boy whose dreams I entered—his soul felt so much like yours.” He began to shake as he comprehended what he’d done. “Please, forgive me! If I’d known, I never would have—”

“Wait, you mean that boy is your flesh and blood?” Darrigan asked. “I assumed he was adopted.”

“This is serious!” Rayne shouted. “Is he—is he like me?” He looked down at his arm, very aware of the thousands of snakes crawling under his skin.

“I don’t know! The mortal offspring of an ordinary demon is one thing. But the child of a demon god? That’s another matter. He’s too young to tell for certain.”

“But Azaznir can hurt him? Possibly can make him his catalyst? I can’t let that happen! He can’t do that to my son!”

“It might not be too late,” Darrigan said. “If you seek the boy, you will find Azaznir. I can see to it that the other reapers don’t interfere.”

“How?”

“A distraction. They’ll want to take down a dissenter. I’ll buy you time, but you have to go quickly.”

“Right. It’s up to me, isn’t it?”

“I would go with you if I could, my lord,” Tomordred said. “But I find it difficult to leave this place. I am sorry that I could not come to your aid back then. I am sorry I could not search for you in your absence. And I am sorry I did not recognize you as the being who gave me this life.”

“I know,” Rayne said. “Even when you did not know me, your unwavering loyalty was clear. Thick, but clear.”

His eyes shut tight, Rayne sensed the boundary, like a thin curtain woven in tight threads between two intersecting realities. He understood it now. He merely had to reach out and push those threads aside to pass though. His mind reached out to his son, drawing his soul towards him.

* * *

He opened his eyes, surrounded by the world. The sun hung high in the blue sky, illuminating the cottony clouds with sheer blinding intensity. Down on the earth, green foliage and trees rolled in all directions, bordered by tall city buildings. He recognized the pond nearby, and felt a slight sense of fear and embarrassment standing there, surrounded by people, looking as he did. They all walked around him, oblivious to the demonic specter that stood in their midst. Still, he felt concerned, knowing that if any of them could sense him, he did not want to be seen this way. His own son, especially; if his last night alive had been any forewarning, his spirit could be seen, and he did not want to traumatize Levi any further.

His form contorted and shrank, becoming more human, wearing a shadow of the clothes he’d worn the last day of his life. As familiar as his old form felt to him, it brought him no comfort. He no longer felt human, and looking human felt like a lie. Yet he still experienced a fragmented connection to the human life he’d abandoned. He wondered how David and Levi were coping with the whole situation. David would have come home to find two corpses, one being his best friend. And Levi was likely hysterical. Rayne knew he’d done something terrible by just abandoning them like that. But he also realized, being what he was, he could never live a normal human life again. His mere presence would terrorize his own child. The corners of his mouth turned down as he mulled over this fate. Would he ever be able to speak with Levi again?