The Garden of Death (3 page)

“Out!”

I stepped over the threshold and slammed the
door behind me.

Jazmine

I couldn’t believe my plan worked. It was
all kinds of brilliant to place the Nephilim in an alternative
reality where she thought she was married to Asher. Any girl’s
dream, right? Wrong! Instead of creating the perfect paradise for
Eden, I had created her worst nightmare. Imagine waking up to find
out you’re married, but then discover your honey has been
fraternizing with the girl next door the entire time that has
passed. Ha! Her face was classic!

Oh, and thinking of the line about Asher
only meeting the Nephilim a year ago? Oh, I should win an Oscar or
BAFTA or something! That was absolutely brilliant!

When they eat the pie, they will both fall
even deeper under my spell—so deep that it will be almost
impossible to wake up in the real world.

I am such a… “What the hell was that?”

My fingers paused from their typing on the
computer keyboard. That was unusual. What was going on? The whole
house—no, the entire alternative universe—just shook. This was not
good! It meant someone had interfered with my dreamscape.

The house shook again, and I reached for my
teacup, but I was not fast enough. It tumbled to the floor and
shattered, splattering tea all over the leg of my jeans.

I minimized the dialogue window and opened
the camera feed, so I could see what was happening.

“No! That bitch!” That was when I noticed in
the top right hand side of the screen that there was a dark-haired
girl running down the drive and away from the house. The Nephilim
had stepped straight through the wall to the edge of the
dreamscape.

“No, no, no!” This could not be happening!
She could not beat me—she won’t.

I started typing code into the Html screen,
trying to find a way to throw up a barrier or obstacle, but it was
too late. She was out of reach.

Time for plan B.

Eden

My mother always told me to use one of two
reflexes when in danger: fight or flight. I always picked the
flight response when I was angry or frustrated or had just had
enough. It didn’t seem that long ago that I was fleeing from
another fight. It was just a few months ago that I had found out
who my father was. Turns out, my mother and he had a secret affair
when they were my age, and he knocked her up. I’d also discovered
my Uncle Adam had the ability to tamper with memories, so him not
liking my father made my mother forget about him. It wasn’t until
he decided to try to find my mother that the memories began to
return to my Mum. It was as if the mere presence of my father had
triggered something in her blood or her brain and caused the
memories to return. To others, it would be romantic, but the very
thought of it made me want to puke. Also, the mere fact that my
father was Lakyn Blackbell made me want to puke. I had walked in on
him and my mother making out in our hotel room in Melbourne. At
that moment, I knew I had to get out of there.

That was when I ran to the arcade and when
Uncle Adam found me. He then discovered that something was
happening to me… my Trait was appearing. So together, he and my
mother decided to bring me to London to the Michaelite Sanctuary so
they could ‘fix’ me. Yeah, easier said than done. Instead of fixing
me, my uncle, along with my father, set up a business meeting with
the Grim Reaper himself, harvesting the souls of the dead when they
found out what I could do. You see, I have the touch of death.

I met Asher at the Michaelite Academy, and
this is where all this mess started. Just because I fell in love
with a human and ended up killing him because I couldn’t keep my
hands off him, because I couldn’t resist him. Well, it was either
that, or Jazmine was jealous… or both. Either way, there I was
again fleeing from a fight.

I hoped that what Asher said wasn’t true and
that we weren’t in some kind of apocalyptic epidemic, but hope was
all I had, and it couldn’t compete with the nagging intuition I had
that it was true. Somehow, I knew I had caused this, I had caused
all souls to be spat back out of the Realm of Death, and I had to
fix it.

It was time to visit someone I was
procrastinating to see… maybe… like forever.

Asher

I ran down the steps, looking over my
shoulder every few seconds to make sure I wasn’t being followed. As
I reached the bottom of the stairs, I turned, and my sneakers
slipped and skidded on the shiny tiles, and it caused me to lose my
balance. I quickly righted myself before I fell and kept running
toward the garden. I threw open the door and headed out into the
humidity of the garden. I came to a halt and gathered myself to
think. The basement window had to be around to the side where no
one ever went, so I headed off to the right side of the building.
There was a path made of uneven pavers and stones, and I almost
twisted my ankle a few times navigating it at the pace I was
traveling. I reached the end of the stone pathway and stopped just
outside an archway formed by vines. The vines formed a canopy so
dark I couldn’t see more than a few feet from where I stood. The
window had to be down there, deep inside the canopy of vines. I
didn’t know why I was afraid. It was just darkness created by trees
and vines, not a portal into the unknown. There weren’t any
monsters lurking inside. Get a hold of yourself, Asher. If Eden had
seen me then, she would no doubt give me crap for this. I shook off
my internal fear and shoved it deep inside the recesses of my mind
and took a step into the tunnel of twisted vines.

I found it almost funny that I was walking
into darkness, as if the tunnel of vines represented my deepest
fears. I heard the wind whistle through the branches around me,
making them move, breathing like a sleeping monster. A few stray
and untamed branches reached out to me like monster’s claws,
scratching and poking me. I focused my attention on the path ahead.
I cursed myself for not bringing a torch. After a few more steps, I
saw a faint blue glow up ahead. Could it be the window to the
basement? I picked up my pace, and the light grew brighter with
each step I took.

Eden

I didn’t know where I was going, or where I
was at, but I headed toward the nearest underground subway entrance
and made my way down the stairs. I looked for a map that would tell
me where I was so I could figure out where I needed to go.

The map said the station I was currently at
was Wimbledon. I needed to travel to the main line that would take
me to the city and then travel out toward the docks to get where I
was going. I knew the trip was going to take me a few hours so it
would give me plenty of time to think about what I had to do when I
finally met up with Abraham. The trip would also give me time to
think about my fight with Asher. I shivered with anger over the
knowledge that there was a bitch living next door who was after my
man. I hated leaving Asher alone, but I had to do this, I had to
put an end to the destruction that I’d caused. Everything was so
messed up! When the train finally came, I walked on in silence and
sat down away from people. I needed my space, so I didn’t
accidently touch someone, causing them to die. I had already caused
enough damage.

Asher

The light grew brighter as I reached what I
could see was a window. It was low to the ground. I smiled. It was
the window I was looking for. I ran up to the window and crouched
down so I could see inside. I had to blink so my eyes could adjust
to the brightness of the blue light. I was curious as to what was
causing the light, but as I got closer to the window, I gasped when
I realized what it was. The light was overwhelming most of the room
and casting shadows over the bodies huddling around a motionless
figure on a bed in the center of the room. I realized the sleeping
figure was Eden. What were they doing to her? I squinted so I could
see what was happening around the light so I could see who was
emitting the light. Someone was standing over Eden, and the bluish
white light was coming from their hands and flowing into Eden’s
body. I leaned closer to the dirty glass, and I was furious when I
found out who was emitting the light. It was
him
—the
demon—Eden’s father. I bashed against the glass to try to get them
to stop, to get them to look at me, but that was when I heard the
crack.

The ancient old glass of the window I was
leaning on was cracking beneath my weight. The last thing I had
seen before I felt myself falling was my sister’s face coming
toward me. She had her mouth open as if she were screaming at me.
She
was
screaming at me.

“Asher! Asher, what are you doing?”

I could barely hear her voice over the
cracking of the glass. I looked down at my hands. Tiny sutures
spread out from my hands like cracks in the ground of a barren
desert. I didn’t have time to remove my hands from the glass before
I was falling forward. The glass gave way with a moan like a dying
monster, and I tumbled through the small opening into the basement
below. I must have hit my head when I hit the cement ground,
because all I saw were double images of my sister’s face looming
above me before the darkness took over.

Eden

When I stepped out into the light out of the
underground tunnel, I had to blink a few times and look around in
order to get my bearings. I walked down the street to the right,
and when I reached the end of the block, I could smell something
unappealing. It smelled damp, but also like sewerage. I knew I was
close to the river and my destination—the place where all this
started. I could hear the faint sound of seagulls and the horn of a
boat. I broke into a jog and knew I had found the place where
Abraham called me to him in my dreams. When I finally reached the
dock, it was not the same dock from my dreams, the same dock I
stood and waited for the ferry to the Realm of Death. Something was
wrong. I felt it in my bones that this was the right location, but
the dock I once stood on, was no longer there. In its place were a
larger dock and a few warehouses.

“No!” I ran to the end of the pier and
looked around.

“Aye, what are you doing ‘ere, lass? Ya
shouldn’t be ‘ere,” a man working on a nearby boat yelled at me. I
blinked at him, dazed and confused.

“What happened to the old dock?”

“What dock are ya talkin’ bout, lass? This
one has always been ‘ere for as long as I remember since I was a
wee lad.”

That couldn’t be possible. I knew this was
the right place! My blood and my body led me here. The man in front
of me appeared to be in his forties, and he said this dock was here
when he was a kid, so it couldn’t have been built in the last ten
years.

“Are you sure?”

“Aye, I’m sure. You’d better get goin’,
lass. Ya shouldn’t be ‘ere. It’s dangerous.”

“Oh, sorry. Um, thanks,” I muttered as I
slowly backed away. I stumbled and fell backward, and I grazed my
hands in the process. As I picked myself up and analyzed my
scrapes, I realized something was wrong. I was no longer on the
dock with the fisherman. It had grown dark, and there were no
longer warehouses and boats surrounding the docks, but open water.
I walked forward and watched as an ominous fog drifted closer to me
over the surface of the water. What was happening? Then I saw the
light coming toward me through the fog and my heart leapt in my
chest. Yes! He found me! The light looked like a firefly dancing in
the mist. I knew it was the lantern of the ferry driven by
Abraham—the ferry that will take me back to the Realm of Death. I
needed to go back there so I could figure out what had happened to
me, and what was happening to all the souls.

When the ferry emerged from the fog, I stood
at the edge of the dock and waited until Abraham threw the rope and
tied the rickety boat to the pier.

“Eden? What are you doing here?”

“I knew you would come!”

Instead of speaking, Abraham stood in the
boat, making it rock under his weight. He cocked his head and
stared at me. He’s analyzing me. It made me squirm.

“What?”

“You seem different, older.”

“Yeah, well try ten years older. Abraham,
you have to help me. I woke up ten years into the future and found
out I was married to Asher.”

He smirked. “Should I congratulate you or
send my sympathies?”

“It’s not funny. This is some serious shit.
Oh, and did I mention, we’re living right next door to the witch
that killed me?”

“She didn’t kill you.”

“What do you mean?”

“And she’s not a witch.”

I placed my hands on my hips. “Are you
defending her?”

“No, I’m merely correcting you. Jazmine is
not a witch. She is… something else.”

“Yeah, a mega bitch that is after my
man!”

“Look, you know I don’t like to get involved
in teenage dramas and angst. It is not my style. What do you want
me to do about it?”

“I need you to help me figure out what the
heck is going on with me! I died because Jazmine created those
death blossoms out of thin air. Before that, Asher fell on top of
me breaking his soul sphere, so I don’t know if he’s dead, too. He
probably is, because we are both stuck in this hell hole ten years
in the future.”

“Whoa, slow down. You’re making my head
spin. Get in the boat.”

I stepped into the boat without much thought
and sat down before continuing my rant. “Oh, and what the heck is
happening to all the souls? People are returning from the
dead.”

“Yeah, I know. Come back with me, and I’ll
try to explain. You have to see it to believe it. Everything’s been
messed up since the flower situation.”

Great, it
was
my fault. It was just
as I feared. I caused this. Turns out that my death was very
inconvenient for everyone.