HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! 

What's POPPIN'? Hopefully Faith's _____, amirite???? 

All in good time. All in good time.

Twitter/Instagram: Katrocks247

Follow the Facebook group for Death is My BFF for exclusive content and Death HOTNESS!! Link in my bio on Wattpad or you can just search it! <3

Don't forget to vote and leave lots of feedback!!! It helps me get my name out there and get some recognition! I also read all the comments. ;)

            The thought crossed my mind that Death might have been protecting me with these shadow, after I'd been warped into an eerie series of visions. Still,  with no feasible escape or indication from Death that he was "all there," I imagined the small ring of darkness surrounding us was an arena, and me and Death's full form were about to fight to the death.

My mind whirled at that thought, and his talons flexed at his side.

Get a hold of yourself, bitch! It's just Death. Which... is exactly why you are terrified.

"Um, hey," I said, rather awkwardly.

To make matters even more uncomfortable, Death's full form just stared back at me. He worked jaw in an odd, animal-like way.

"Anybody home?" I asked, half-joking. 

"Hungry," Death's demon-creature-beast-thing form growled. The hairs on my forearms rose. Now that was a voice I never wanted to hear again. Hell, every hair on my damn body was standing up, like an audience in a movie theater when the film turns sour and they universally agree to get up to leave.

"Same," I said. Laughing uneasily, I cast another desperate look around us to find one of the Reapers. But all I found was a wall of shadows. "I could really go for some chicken nuggets right now. Or a Big Mac. Gosh, mortal junk food is amazing. It's a shame that I've only been eating healthy food for the last few weeks, so I'd literally taste like a mouthful of grass. If someone were to, you know"–I swallowed– "eat me, or something––"

Death released a low hiss through his fangs. His heavy boot pressed into the blood-stained ground as he took a single step toward me, and I winced at the thought of my blood soon mingling with that dirt.

"Talking too much," I said. "Got it. Message received."

Shadows and darkness kept pulsing from his frame, his wings. I was so afraid that I felt rooted to my spot.

"I don't want to hurt you," I said, my teeth slightly chattering from both fear and the cold. "And you don't want to hurt me, either. I think. Which is exactly why you should shake your head like a cartoon right now and snap out of it."

Great. Now Death's full form had started prowling around me in a slow stride as I spoke. He was shirtless, drawing my attention the night shade of his skin, which hid the tattoos riddling his skin. I mean, can you blame me for ogling? He was a glorious, horrific beauty––a delicious lure shelling out from his skin, a poison of a predator enticing its prey closer. Enticing me. A nightmare that both mesmerized and terrorized. A poison with a sweet aftertaste. His power vibrated of him like an invisible aura. It saturated the air between us with menace, hunger, an undeniable seduction.

I spun toward him, tracking him as he circled me like a shark. "Stop that," I commanded him. "Stop using your Grim power thingy on me."

He sniffed the air. A low noise vibrating his throat. Then he snarled and I jumped backwards.

"Death, it's me," I said, finding it difficult to form a sentence. I could feel control over me, even as I motioned for him to stay back with my raised hand. "It's Faith. You can fight this."

Death honed in on my raised hand and cocked his head, cold, onyx eyes fixated on my fingertips, as if he were waiting for something to happen. Realizing this was my moment to scare him off, I focused really hard to try and get some light beam going. I even started snapping a few times. The snapping thing ended up way too jazzy. Needless to say, Light Beam wasn't cooperating. Now we both knew it.

Death's eyes slid to mine like two cynical slits. Doom settled. He grinned, sharp white fangs filling his gruesomely still-beautiful face.

Death moved in a blur. He picked me up and ran, leapt, bounded off the ground, hurling us both into the night before a scream could even rip through me.

Gone, went the sweet, sweet, blessed sensation of earth, as air whooshed past me like whips against my skin. Heights were a bellowing HELL NO from me, and this was the unanticipated amusement park ride of the century. I wrapped my arms frantically around his corded neck, holding on for dear life.

We landed on a flat portion of the roof of mausoleum. Well, landed isn't really the word. He tossed me away from him like I was a dog poopy bag, and I plopped on the ground, rolling over onto my back. Death loomed over me, horns, wings, demonic looking eyes. A real picturesque monster moment.

"Give yourself to me, mortal," Death hissed, completing the cinematic visual. His voice: monstrous and grating. His talons: large and menacing, and his hand, outstretched toward me. "Give me your fucking soul!"

A squeak exited my mouth. Yep, this was it. This was the end!

Wait a minute, I thought. I did not eat a goddamn salad for multiple days in a row just to die by the hands––er––claws of the very person who tortured me with said green vegetables of sin.

"Back off, Wildebeest!" I shouted, my chest heaving with unfulfilled breaths. I snapped, and my right hand ignited with the tiniest spark of light, which grew into the size of a softball. "Yeah, that's right...bitch! All I have to do is snap!"

I soon realized it wasn't time to celebrate, as Death had bared his outrageously terrifying fangs at me in response. With a small screech that I wished I'd kept inside my ridiculous self, I frantically launched the light at his face. Death's head turned at the last second, and he watched the light burn a wicked hole into the wall behind him. Fissures of light exploded across the door and fizzled out, reminding me of the ward Death had created over the roof of his apartment.

Shadows snaked from Death like little beasts and pinned my wrist back to the roof. When Death turned back around from his inspection of the damage I'd caused to the wall, his mouth had quirked up into a slight sideways smirk.

"Now that's more like it." He worked his jaw again, and his fangs retracted a little into his gums. Each of his black eyes flashed with amusement, before darkness shrunk back into his pupils, leaving behind two rings of green for his irises. "Your grade is a D minus. That's being very, very generous."

I looked up at him, completely dumbstruck.

"I didn't work you all day for weeks, with Olympic-level workouts, for you to wear that idiotic doe-eyed look the moment an enemy is about to kill you. Had I truly not been in control, you would have been chunks of meat stuck in-between my fangs by now. Use your brain next time and not your weird quirks to dissuade monsters."

As Death continued to roast me into another life, I released the breath I was holding. Fury quickly took over as I ripped free from Death's shadows like a mad woman. "You were acting?"

"You were alone," he began, "and the battle was practically won. I seized the opportunity to evaluate your training progress. Or, should I say, lack thereof. Guess your itty-bitty mortal mind absorbed just as much as I originally expected."

"I almost had a heart attack!

"A heart attack?" His eyes flicked to my breast plate with interest. "Stimulating."

Launching to my feet, I raced toward him with a madness to rip his horns off, when he raised in hand in warning.

"Maybe stay over there for now," Death said, his face tautened. "It might not of all been an act."

My mouth fell open.

"I thought you were gone," I said, and stuffed my hands into my pockets, still fuming. "I thought you were––I––you––ugh! You ruined my first introduction to flying. I had fantasies about that and now they are crushed! Pulverized!" I looked around us. "Wait, what do you mean all part of the plan?"

He gazed at me with a stoic expression, but his eyes were absolutely elated. Hellish, monstrous, and elated. "How impressed were you by my entrance in the graveyard? Scale of one to ten. Ten meaning you were uncontrollably wet."

My teeth ground together. "I could kill you."

"With those chicken arms? Doubtful."

I lifted my karate-chop hand. "That's it–-!"

"Shhh." He motioned with a finger to his lips for me not to scream and clutched my wrist to pull me toward him as he retreated smoothly back against a wall, where there was an exit door from the roof. A creature flew past us overhead, and I huddled closer to Death.

"Hi," he said.

"Don't you 'hi' me," I hissed. "Tonight is stressful enough. Nobody needs a little theater show of you pretending you're in permanent Beast Mode. Okay?"

"Alright, alright, relax a little," he said, purring it out at my ear. "The battle was practically won. I seized the opportunity to evaluate your training progress. Or, should I say, lack thereof." He pulled back to analyze my face. "Guess your itty-bitty mortal mind absorbed even less than I originally expected it to."

"You didn't see me with Blade," I argued. "We kicked ass!"

Dark brows, inky slashes against his still midnight skin, arched together. "You kicked ass with Blade? I thought he hated you."

"Apparently, he despises everything and everyone."

"Smart man," Death said. "I'll boost your grade up to a C for this alleged team-up. The rest was trash."

"Wait, wait. Hold on." My chest was still heaving up and down in fright, but also fascination at this untimely moment of conversation. "You believed me. When we parted ways at Ace's library, I thought you were angry with me. But you went to see Malphas, didn't you?"

Any emotion in the planes of his full-form face vanished in an instant. "I did go to Malphas." But not because I believed you, his tone added. I could tell immediately how conflicted he felt about his father's involvement. Had Malphas really joined forces with Death's Reapers and Fallen so easily?

"Why is Malphas here?" I asked.

Death glanced down at me and laughed grimly. "Because I'm losing my goddamn mind?" The rhetorical question came out nasty. "You were right about one thing, Malphas did want to help. He had soldiers ready to go, and he swore a blood oath not to hurt you. Blood oaths are binding for demi-gods."

"Did he try to tell you anything about the willow tree? About your mother?"

Death shook his head once, his jaw tightening. "Our discussion strictly covered tonight's event. The only way I'm going to figure out what the fuck that psychopath wants from you, and how he's finding ways to fill your head with nonsense, is to keep him close. I'd rather him be on our side temporarily, then join Ahrimad."

"Filling my head with nonsense," I echoed, laughing in an insulted way.

"That's what my father does, Faith. Fucks with your head. It's his power." He turned his head toward the graveyard dismissively. "We should head into the mausoleum. The Reapers will be meeting us beneath."

Deciding it wasn't the right time to try to figure out Malphas' intentions, considering he'd taken a large part in the battle won tonight, I dropped it. Besides, there was another pressing issue that he didn't know about.

"Wait," I said, drawing his cynical and now pissy mismatched eyes to mine. "In the graveyard, before your shadows surrounded me, something happened. I had a...vision. About Ahrimad."

Something pulsed in his jaw. "What did you see?"

"Some of the visions I don't understand, or they're in broken fragments that are impossible to follow. But this one was in full clarity." I pictured the wrath I'd seen in his gaze, the way he looked like a parasite eating him from the inside out... It was terrifying. A shiver raked through me at the image. "Ahrimad is weakened," I said, my throat drying as I spoke. "He looked sickky, his skin was pressed so tight against his face. He almost resembled a..."

"Skeleton?" Death prompted. Although he'd listened intently, he didn't seem surprised by this information. "Yes, I suspect even with my scythe, he can't properly feed. My scythe serves as an anchor for his body to remain, for a short amount of time, in this world. His soul is immortal, but he'll need to become permanently corporal in the mortal realm in order to survive here, or else his corpse will deteriorate to the state it's supposed to be in death."

I touched my belt, where unbeknownst to any of the creatures I'd encountered that night, the mini version of the Book of The Dead was tucked and locked away, safe and sound. Yeah, like I could play keep away with this thing from Ahrimad.

"He'll need dark magic to become corporal," I assumed.

"Either that," Death added gravely, "or he'll need a new body to possess."

An awful feeling settled in my gut. I wasn't going to watch Death turn into a mindless monster again. I couldn't. Lifting my chin, I met his gaze fiercely. "I won't let it get to that point."

Death stepped closer, looming like a darkening cloud. "Faith," he said in a deep, commanding voice that I imagined scared his subordinates to the point of soiling themselves. "I don't want to hear that from you. You made a promise to me–"

"Don't get myself killed," I said, saluting him like a soldier. "I know." There was no use in keeping my truths to myself. "But guess what, Grimmy. No matter how much power you have, there some things in this life that will never be under your full control. One of those things is me."

We stared at each other. Him, glaring, which became especially glare-y after the "Grimmy" nickname. For once, he backed down with a small sneer and ran a hand in an aggravated through his hair. "You have so much trouble with authority that you can't even listen to me to save your own life."

"You are my life," I said, unable to stop myself in a way that seemed to keep happening, "and we can't seem to stop fighting enough to figure out what that means... for both of us." A nervous laugh quickly escaped my lips, and I averted my gaze from his. "I mean, Jesus Christ, Death. I never know if you like me, or if you're just prepping your future favorite meal of the century."

"Of course, I don't like you," he growled, as if I'd offended him. "You're the loudest, stubbornest, most annoying little vermin I've ever met––"

"Hold up," I interjected, raising my hand, "hold up. With this whole untimely moment of private conversation in the midst of chaos, and the convenient rain pouring down on us, this isn't at all how it played out in my head."

"You're right, annoying is too soft a word," Death agreed. "Nothing I say or threaten you with has ever stopped you from doing what you want when you really want to do it. It drives me fucking nuts."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "Great to hear it. Is this getting somewhere more positive at some point, or are you taking every opportunity to roast me to ash?"

"The fact that you smell like a goddamn dessert doesn't help much either," he continued, becoming angrier. "It makes it harder to restrain myself when you do everything wrong, everything I told you not to do, because that's what you do best."

"I'm flattered," I said sarcastically, about to make my exit. Tears burned against my will to prevent them. Maybe I would never get an emotional connection from him. "This has been such an educational and healthy conversation, Angel of the Death, but if you don't mind, I'd rather join the Seven again than continue this––"

Death grabbed my hand, and my chest fluttered wildly. His palm dwarfed mine, the coolness of his skin alarming, and his grip firm, but gentle, as if he'd mastered the perfect amount of strength not to shatter a mortal's hand. His mismatched green eyes burned wicked and bright, his blackened fingers slowly sliding up to my pale bare wrist, where my pulse pattered away like a hummingbird's wings.

"I'm not finished with you, Cupcake." Droplets of rain clung to the black curls of his hair that had escaped onto his forehead. It trailed down the panels of the sharp panels of his face in quiet rivulets, pooling to his lips, which parted as the illusion of life pumped faster in and out of his lungs. "Who would ever think, in all the years of my vile existence, I would ever, ever look forward to a mortal annoying me every day. Of course, I don't like you. Heaven only knows, that would be so much less torturous. I haven't fucked, or desired, or even considered another woman since you first sassed my dick off in that pool house. You are the genesis of a madness I can't escape."

My mouth opened in a small gasp, so he kissed me, stealing away the rest of my breath. A touch of pure unrelenting fire melted me to the core. The thrill of his growl against my throat. His legs walked me back, my head tilting up to take in the hellish frame of the fiend I'd grown to feel so strongly for. I lurched upwards with an urgency capture his mouth again , and he bent down to meet me halfway, before he pinned me with our sins against the shadows on the wall.

His hands were rough, deadly weapons cradling my waist. Unpredictable and merciless, just like the man who wielded them. This newfound discovery that he could touch me was a danger unlike any other to my poor heart, his fingers climbing up underneath the tight fabric of my armor to clutch the bare skin of my lower back, before hiking my legs up onto his waist. The masculine scent of him up-close and his power radiating off of him like a dark aura kept my nerves on edge, my heart echoing off of his chest a mile a minute, lifeless black eyes–wait a minute.

I came up for air and looked over Death's shoulder. My eyes widened.

Reaching with my free hand, I pinched Death. "What the fu––?" Releasing me at once, he rubbed at his pec. "My nipple," he hissed.

I jabbed an urgent finger into the air multiple times, implying Death should look behind him, where Malphas stood with his hands clasped behind his back. 

Death cringed, as if just then sensing his father was there. "Yeah?" 

 "Your soldiers were awaiting your command from inside the mausoleum. Nobody could find either of you." Malphas' eyes were carefully everted away from us, in a way that reminded me of a parent who had just walked in on their kid having sex, actually. He gave an irritated look toward the 'Exit' sign over the emergency door, which had an eerie flicker to it and buzzed uncontrollably. "I took the liberty of organizing the next tactical step."

My attention bounced between Malphas and Death, expecting some sort of angsty rebellious reaction from Death. Instead, he asked, "Are the wards down?"

"Yes, but not from any of our doing." When Malphas stalked past us toward the emergency roof door, Death's talons wrapped firmly around my bicep.

"Magic is seeping out from every possible crack of this godforsaken building," Death said, tracking his father's every move with his catlike eyes. "Which means I won't be able to sift room to room. We'll have to methodically comb through the floors and meet up the rest of them. If we find nothing, we form a team and swarm the underground colosseum."

"Obviously." Malphas finally gazed upon us and arched a judgmental brow. "Perhaps the colosseum will be blessed water to douse my eyes with." He walked forward and seeped through emergency door like a ghost, the 'Exit' sign bursting apart like fireworks as we followed suit.

* * *

SCREAM "CUPCAKE" IF YOU WANT MORE!!!!!!!

xoxo ;)

Don't forget to vote and leave lots of feedback!!!! It helps me get my name out there and get some recognition! I also read all the comments. ;)

Twitter/Instagram: Katrocks247

Follow the Facebook group for Death is My BFF for exclusive content and Death HOTNESS!! Link in my bio on Wattpad or you can just search it! <3