(Chapter 24 & 25 were a double update. Make sure you're on the right chapter, lovies!

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P.S- CURRENTLY WORKING OUT A CONTRACT WITH THE EDITOR OF ONE OF MY FAVORITE BOOK SERIES "THE KING'S TRILOGY" BY MIMI JEAN PAMFILOFF TO WORK ON DEATH IS MY BFF REWRITTEN TYSM GUYS FOR SUPPORTING ME YEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Bonjour! If you did not read my note, you suck, and I tricked you by not using bold! LOL. I have updated TWICE! Make sure you are on the right chapter!* <3

You won't risk my life in Limbo, but you'll risk my right now, I thought and wondered if Death had heard it. Maybe Leo was right. Maybe this was your intention all along. But why?

"Don't you get it, cupcake?" Death whispered out loud. "I'm the only one seeing things clearly, here. This is your chance to keeping breathing. You're as good as dead in Limbo, and he's too hell-bent on getting Sarah back to see that. I'm doing you a favor, here. He won't want you to go with me if he knows you're even more valuable to him. Just touching the damn thing will make you more of a holy grail than you already are."

"Gee, if only I knew why. As if you really care about my safety."

"I do...sometimes. And I've already told you what you are plenty of times."

"Maybe in riddles. Maybe in your thick head!"

We started to whisper quickly, as if at any moment, Devin would return.

"Just trust me on this, Faith," Death said. "I wouldn't let you do this if I was not certain. You're much better off here than in the Other Worlds.

"I've never touched that book, Death," I continued. "You lied to him."

"Perhaps I lied, but you can touch the book."

I narrowed my eyes. "And how can you be so sure?"

"I'm not." He smirked, as if that was the perfect answer. "Sometimes I just have to trust my gut."

A gut is filled with souls of the damned and bunch of other untrustworthy things.

"What will happen if I can't touch that book with my bare hand?"

"Legend has it, it has a different punishment to each non-chosen who touches it. One time, I brushed my finger tip against it, and it burned me all over like a bucket of holy water on a nude vampire." He became greatly amused, something I hadn't seen in him in a while. "Hmm... I do hope it would reject you gruesomely, such as combustion from the inside. Isn't this fun?"

My stomach sank quickly like a stone thrown into a lake. "I'm not doing this," I hissed.

"Tell that to the Devil, cupcake. He's too pissed at me not to try this."

"This is your entire fault! You just couldn't let me go with you!"

"Quiet, sweet pea. I hear him walking back."

"What if I can not only touch the book, but I can read it?"

He only stared at me, grinning again.

A door opened and I turned around in my chair. Devin exited from a door on the wall that had not once been there before. It was on the wall that had drawn my attention earlier. The Devil gestured at the wall and a door vanished. The book...had been in there. And I'd felt that pull towards it, just as I was feeling it right now. The sickness that had been lingering in my stomach began to worsen ten-fold. This wasn't nerves. It was something...else.

"The Book of the Dead," Devin presented and placed it on the glass table right in front of me. That was it. No warning. He just placed it there, inches away from me. It small, pocket sized, and made a little thump like a small dogs tail against the leg of a chair. Despite it's miniature size, Death leaned back away it and pushed his swivel chair back. Devin distanced himself as well. He had thick gloves on his hands that were disintegrating right before my eyes with a yellowish smoke.

"You've got to be kidding me," I said to the book, but when I actually opened my mouth, I was still so nauseous that I nearly dry heaved. I took a minute to breathe. "This is the infamous Book of the Dead? It looks like it could be a diary. Death's diary, maybe."

The book's skin was authentic black leather and there were stones swirled in some sort of ethnic design at the front. Four old latches kept its pages together.

This...little leather book was evil's current bestseller? It was just a book.

Then it wasn't.

It swelled six times its original size. Its locks unlatched. Devin moved in my peripheral vision, lingering somewhere behind me.

Its pages were black as obsidian. It watched me. I watched it. Seconds shifted into minutes. I stood up, because it wanted me to. Before my body could brace for impact, it heaved a surge of energy into me. The wind was knocked out of me. I couldn't fall backwards. A phantom yanked me forward, instead. My palms hit the book face down. The pages were hot and turned to liquid, seeping through my fingers like black lava. Had I recently eaten, I imagined I would have emptied my stomach right then and there.

A vapor lifted around me, forming a wall around the book and me and shutting the rest of the world out. Suddenly, I was no longer in Devin's office. I was...somewhere...with and endless darkness. The book hovered on nothing in front of me, still. I felt disconnected from my body, but not my senses. My stomach twisted and churned and my eyes were wide open as the black murkiness on the pages melted away, revealing words and pictures like cryptograms.

Before me, in whatever realm the Book of the Dead had taken me, the pages fluctuated, like a rubix cube shifting each row of blocks until the solution was found. I could now read it in English. There was a jumbled blend of fear and curiosity in my chest. I stepped closer to the book and held it, and it came to life again, feathering out like a rainbow, as if it wanted me to choose what I wanted. Or maybe it was deciding for me...

"Hm, she seems to have feinted," Death replied, "and the book, it's miniature again. At least it didn't eat her." Disappointed, he added, "I was hoping for a little blood, at least. I mean, really, what a flop."

"This is incredible," Devin said, but I couldn't see him. I couldn't see anything. Everything was still...black...and calm. His voice was too mellifluous to be human, smooth like silk. It was as if I was hearing him from a new perspective. His voice was a seducer. "She was pardoned by the book!"

"I told you so," Death replied, from that distant place again. His voice was more velvety now, too, and he spoke so softly I could barely hear him "Neither of us could have expected Sarah to be taken, but at least now we know she is a Pardon. What a dramatic show you put on before; when you 'realized' I stole the enchanted pages to test them on her. Especially considering you were the one who allowed me to test them on her in the first place." He chuckled lowly. "The forbidden spells we can now access... We should have tried this as soon as the Book of the Dead was ours."

"Not so fast, kid," Devin said sharply. "You need your full strength, before we get down to that business. Which is why must take Faith to the Other World with you."

I imagined that got Death's full attention.

"You know better than anyone that a vision told from a warlock is always honest," Devin continued. "Don't turn a blind eye to fate, Death. You would have never discovered Faith had you not followed it. You don't have to imagine of the consequences of you detached from the weapon that helps control your other side. It's visibly affecting you. I'm glad you have the self-assurance to go without her. But as important as she is, I cannot take the risk of you failing to get your scythe back because she did not come with you. What a misadventure that would be, don't you agree?" He paused. "Unless, of course, you value her life more than everything we've planned..."

There was a stretch of silence. The two evil creatures had a good laugh; Death's tampered off stopped first.

"I'll prepare her," the Grim Reaper said.

"Once you you finally have your scythe back, we can finally move heaven and earth to carry out our plans."

My body began to feel torn in two different directions. The Book of the Dead slowly closed ahead of me, and the darkness pulled away from me. My eyes flipped open. I was lying on the floor. I heaved upwards, gasping for air. The anxiety in my chest was heavier than ever, as I came to my senses that I was no longer in that outlandish realm. I was no longer in Devin's office, either... Or the Ikea bedroom.

"Welcome back." Death was sitting a chair ahead of me with his legs spread. Devin was gone. We were in a bedroom that I was unfamiliar with and didn't care to examine. "I'd offer you a hand"–he wiggled his ungloved, marked fingers–"but I think it's wise we keep the touchy feely without my gloves at a minimum. I can be a little...draining." He reached into his pocket and popped a jolly rancher into his mouth.

"You piece of shit!" I seethed. My knees shook as I stood up, and my fingers burned to life. I'd expected Death had ill intentions for me, but I still felt betrayed to the highest degree. Maybe, deep down, I'd expected better from him again. "You tricked me. And I heard everything you and him said. You really are planning on using me for your own screwed up plans."

"You're surprised?"

"No, not surprised."

"Who's to say I can't use what is given to me?" he inquired intensely, as if were interviewing me for a job. "Who could stop me?"

"Nobody, Death. Nobody could ever stop you but yourself."

Death watched me carefully a moment. "My, my... I've broken you down to anger, instead of tears. And now, you've surrendered to my authority over you?"

There was no need to think. I already had my answer prepared. I stepped up to him and flattened my hand on his chest. He stilled. He became confused by this gesture, or maybe he was confused as to why he let it happen. But in that moment, as much as I wanted to lean my weight into his masculine, solid muscled frame, I knew he equally wanted to lean into my small, softer frame. That power over him was more satisfying than I wanted to admit.

"You'll never break me down to anything," I whispered, pronouncing every word with care. From his still perplexed expression, it was as if he were listening to me for the first time. "I own you just as much as you own me."

His eyes washed over me, blackness slowly dispersing from his vertical pupils into the whites of his eyes. That darkness quickly dragged back where it belonged, but it was never too far away. I thought, maybe, he'd notice how hard my heart was pounding through my hand on his shirt, and it was over, but his attention was fixated hard on my lips.

He moved closer. He must have because my mind came to a hush, and it was just Death and I. I studied the piercings and scars scattered across his face like units of untold stories, and fell infinitely and indefinitely into his beautiful eyes. He was a god up close. A masterpiece. A poison. He was everything, and no matter how much I tried to deny it, I wanted all of it, and more. So much more...

"What could have possibly given you that idea?" he asked, his deep voice, with that hint of an unnamed accent, thickened at the back of his throat.

I had to change the subject, fast. I realized I had two hands on the hard planes of his chest, as if I were afraid he'd fall into me. "Sometimes I just have to trust my gut."

I watched tip of his tongue brushed a piercing on his bottom lip. He studied me in a calculated way, silent and unobtrusive. His alikeness to a cat was exposing itself.

"I think it's time you kept me in the loop, Death."

He raised his eyebrows as if to say, Oh, really? And since when can you demand things from me.

"And don't expect me to help you when I'm not obliged to." It took everything in me to move away from him, but he already knew that. Every part of me was shaking. I wouldn't let my attraction to him overrule his cruelness towards me. "Because the next time something doesn't go your way, I'm going to step back...and let it happen. That's what you've finally done, Death. That's what you've finally done–"

He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and yanked me into him. His full lips pressed against mine and my body became charged. We fell back into a soft, a soft chair–where the fuck were we–? Whatever, my legs straddled his lap, my thighs squeezing against him. He kissed me hard, roughly seizing my lips over and over again, altering the kiss each time, as if he'd planned to kiss me many different ways. His pierced tongue slid into my mouth and rubbed hotly against mine.

My fingers slid over his solid chest, up his neck, through his soft hair. His fingers dug into my ass, retracting as his talons abruptly began to grow. His hands moved elsewhere, our mouths hot, tasting, conquering. I could feel his nails dangerously close to my bare skin. Nothing but him. There was nothing but him. I pulled him closer, soon to feel the wrenching weight of rejection. He slid me off of him and put distance between us, panting hard. He had his back to me, braced a hand on the wall.

He moved in a blur, threw open a door, and slammed it behind him. Beyond that door, I heard something crash. Then something else. I jolted every time. I don't know how long I stared at that door, before I finally soaked in my surroundings. A new bedroom. Not the Ikea bedroom, icier. There wasn't a padlock on the door. There probably wasn't even a lock. At some point, after sitting on the bed and staring into an unknown, I walked to the window and pulled open the thick blinds. The view was different from the D & S Towers.

I didn't dare leave that bedroom. The comforter was black, silky, and smelled like Death's cologne, but the bed was far too small to be his. I'd been located somewhere else. Somewhere alone...with him. An apartment. His apartment, I assumed. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Whatever we'd just done, we'd both wanted to do it for a long time. And I feared we both wanted to do it again. And again. And again. Someone that addictive was dangerous and could cut me deep when my back was turned.

But now, soon to be fighting side by side, I was curious if just like the madness of our bodies pressed together, we would be a force to be reckoned with. 

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