Death's Mantle: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Revelations Book 1) Read online

  Death's Mantle

  Revelations Book # 1

  J.A. Cipriano

  Copyright © 2015 J.A. Cipriano

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  I beheld a pale horse and upon it sat Death with Hades following after him. – Revelations 6:8

  Amy 01:01

  “Jesse is that you? Are you playing a trick on me?” Amy asked, wondering what would possess her boyfriend to scale the side of her house and cover her second story window with ice. Then again, he’d been known to do crazier things, like the time he burned ‘I love you, Amy’ into his parents’ front lawn with weed killer.

  She swallowed down the apprehension rising in the back of her throat and scurried across the room toward the open window, careful to avoid the assortment of art supplies and makeup littering the pink carpet. She stepped into a heap of clothing piled under the window and gripped the sill with both hands, peering outside into the gloom. Not only was there was no one there, but it didn’t feel that cold outside either.

  “This isn’t funny,” she murmured, poking her head outside for one last look. “I’m closing the window now.” Amy took a step back and tugged the window down as hard as she could. It didn’t budge. A chill swept through her, less from the cold and more from apprehension. Why wouldn’t the window close?

  She pulled on it again, straining so hard her fingers turned white with effort and the muscles corded in her arms. A moment later, she gave up and sighed as a sudden realization struck her. Normally, she would be able to see her neighbor’s veranda through the window. Even late at night, it was always lit up. Power bills never seemed to mean much to them, especially during the Christmas-light-a-than, and while it was almost spring, they still hadn’t taken down their lights.

  Tonight, she couldn’t see anything through the darkness beyond her window. Teeth chattering, Amy rubbed her hands together before snatching a blanket from the pile at her feet. Wrapped in pink plush, she watched the darkness. What was going on?

  The eerie sound of the wind whistling through the trees cut through the silence of the night and a thin smile crossed her lips as her heart beat furiously in her chest. “I need to stop watching scary movies… well, ever…”

  A sigh escaped her as she ran a hand through her auburn hair and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. The window was just stuck. Nothing to worry about. Tomorrow, when her dad got home from his turn on the night shift, he’d fix it. She’d just use two blankets tonight. She turned, spinning lightly on one bare heel to see a man standing by her desk, brandishing a large knife, its silvery blade glinting in the light of her desk lamp.

  His body rippled beneath the confines of his skin-tight black clothing as he smiled at her, pulling his perfect face into a mask of god-like condescension. His pale grey eyes sparkled with mischief as he slowly lifted his free hand and ran it through his hellishly red hair in a gesture that struck Amy as exactly like the one she’d made only a moment before. Had he been standing there this whole time, silently watching her? She tried to scream, but as soon as the sound started to leave her mouth, he waved his hand. Her scream died on her lips. What had he done? Her eyes widened as her heart nearly exploded in her chest. What was he going to do now?

  “I’ve got a magic knife.” His voice was that of someone who would rip the wings off a butterfly simply to watch its vain attempts to fly. “I’m told that if I cut someone very special, she’ll bleed a river so hot and deep, it will cover the Earth in blood.” He took a menacing step toward her, his free arm swinging casually by his side as he held the knife out in front of him. Horses etched into the crimson blade glinted along the surface, casting a scarlet hue across the room.

  “Wha-what d-do you want?” Amy stammered, backing up until she touched the frame of the window. A sudden burst of cold struck her between the shoulder blades, and she shivered. The hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention as his eyes crinkled, his smile stretching to his ears.

  “I’m trying to find my special girl.” He waved the knife in front of him and sanguine shadows of horses leapt across the walls. “Do you think it’s you? Do you want to find out?”

  She tried to speak, to say anything, but her head swam, and she forgot how to make her mouth enunciate words. Her heart thundered inside her, and the room swayed as his stormy eyes swallowed her thoughts. He took a step toward her with seamless, catlike grace, a devilish smile plastered on his lips. His muscles tensed under his clothing like those of a pit fighter circling his prey as he rendered the distance between them moot and reached out to touch her cheek. The moment he touched her, it was like he pressed an icicle to her flesh.

  He exhaled a breath of mist that licked across her skin, threatening to swallow her entirely. As he trailed his fingers lightly along her mouth, her knees turned to jelly and it was all she could do to keep from collapsing to the carpet. “You may not realize this,” he cooed, breath like winter fog in her ear. “But you are very special, Amy.”

  “Please… please let me go.” Amy swallowed. Her throat was so dry she couldn’t believe she’d managed to get the words out. “I won’t tell anyone you were here.”

  “No one would believe you anyway.” He pulled back, smiling at her with teeth so white they were like hewn marble. Before she could react, he struck her. Pain shot through her body and white light flashed across her eyes.

  Amy collapsed, her body sliding to the carpet in a boneless heap. She lay there, struggling to move, but finding it impossible as the man glanced around the room appraising its contents before grabbing hold of a lamp and tearing it from the wall. He coiled the cord in his hands, his eyes glinting darkly.

  “Trust me, Amy,” the man said with a small chuckle. “One day, you’ll look back on this and realize this was the moment when everything changed…”

  Amy squirmed as he straddled her chest, pinning her arms to the floor beneath his knees. He wound the cord around her arms, tying her to the leg of the desk until she couldn’t move. Tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision.

  The knife lay on the floor next to him, and he gripped it in one hand, pulling it up in front of his face. It loomed in front of her eyes, so huge and all-encompassing the only thing she could see over the edge of the blade were his pale grey eyes.

  “I won’t lie. This is going to hurt.” He leaned in, pressing the point of the blade against the hollow in her neck. “Thankfully, you’ll heal.” He touched her naked cheek once more with the knuckle of his other hand. “Unless, of course, you’re the wrong girl.”

  “Please…” she whispered as he pressed the tip of the weapon into her flesh. She sucked in a breath as pain shot through her and blood pulsed from the spot.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and though his voice was hard, there was a tremor beneath the surface. He traced a line in her skin and scarlet welled to the surface, filling in the lines as he drew a series of concentric circles on her throat with his knife. She tried to scream, tried to cry out in pain, but found she could make no sound.

  Horrible sobbing overtook the man as he stood what felt like hours later. Her flesh burned like fire, pain distilling down her senses into an endless stream of agony. The edge of a smile crinkled the corner of his mouth. “I am only a messenger, and it is time you awakened, Bellum.”

  He reached into his shirt and pulled out a small silver medallion of two snakes joined together in an S-shape. He knelt one last time and pressed the object to her cheek. White flame ra
ged along her skin. The symbols drawn across her body glowed with deep, red light that cast the man’s face in shadow. “When they come for you, and they will come, Amy, tell them my father will have his vengeance.”

  He stood, leaving her to writhe on the floor as he snapped his fingers. The sound was like crashing thunder, and she shut her eyes against the sound of it. When she opened them, he was gone and a soft warm breeze whistled through her window, carrying with it the scent of springtime daffodils.

  Malcom 01:01

  In just fifteen glorious minutes, French class will end , thought Malcom with a crazed glee in his eye, and then I will be free! Free like the whale in that movie!

  He really hated French. It was what he liked to call an exquisite hatred. It started with his distaste for complex verbs. Soon after, it progressed to including, but not limited to, all the stupid little rules. Then, for a while, it settled upon the tongue exercises needed to pronounce the words correctly because it felt like he was enunciating every last syllable through his nose. Now though, what he hated most about French was the several minutes still remaining in class.

  Malcom ground his pencil into the paper, desperately trying to focus on what his teacher rambled on about. After what felt like forever, he glanced at the clock and shuddered. It had been less than two minutes. The pencil dropped from his hand and landed on his desk with a near-inaudible thud.

  Their teacher was a huge elderly woman with breasts so large it was like she was trying to smuggle beach balls under her shirt. It was sort of sad because they, along with her belly, and well everything else, had gotten steadily bigger over the last four years. It was almost like each year left her with a few extra inches around her waist and the need for a whole new wardrobe.

  Her French was slathered across the whiteboard in near-unreadable blue print. She seldom spoke in the classroom, which was for the best anyway because her French wasn’t what one would classify as, well, elegant. She turned and faced the class, her black-as-coal ponytail swinging behind her like a pendulum. She pointed at the board with one purple-nailed finger. This was his cue to copy whatever had been scrawled on the board. Malcom sighed and began to write it down even if he failed to understand it.

  “Mal, do you know what happened to Amy?” When Malcom failed to respond, Ian flicked him in the back of the ear with his finger. Instead of leaping to his feet and throttling him, Malcom merely glared at the boy sitting to his left.

  Like usual, Ian’s frumpy, blond hair was in its perpetual state of disorder, and his navy blue shirt was covered in white cat hair. This matter made their relationship tense at times due to Malcom being highly allergic to cats. It was a little weird too because despite going over to Ian’s house multiple times, he had never actually seen Ian’s supposed cat, Missus Snuffleupagus.

  “You know it’s polite to respond when people talk to you right?” Ian watched him carefully for a moment before cracking a smile. “Or do I need to ask you in French?”

  “Please don’t,” he responded, shuddering at the thought of trying to decipher the words in French. “What’s up with Amy?”

  “She missed class today.” He pointed at the empty desk across the room.

  Malcom was unimpressed. Why did Ian care that Amy missed class? Then it slowly dawned on him, Amy never missed school, not in the last few years he had known her at least. In fact, she had once come to school with a hundred-degree fever because she had insisted missing class was for wimps.

  “I wonder what happened,” Malcom replied, still staring at the spot as a bad feeling wormed its way into his gut. “She was so close to the school record too…”

  “Not sure. I have biology with Jesse, maybe he knows something? Want to come with?” Ian asked, a twinge of hope straining his voice. “He’s her boyfriend after all. He should know something.”

  Malcom wasn’t sure why, but it almost seemed like Ian didn’t want to talk to Jesse alone even though the two of them were good friends. Then again, Ian wasn’t the type of guy who relished complicated human interaction either. His social coping mechanism was much more like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand than not.

  Still, whenever it came to Amy, he always had the tendency to act a little… abnormal. Malcom wasn’t sure how to explain it exactly, but Ian actually became more annoying when Amy was around.

  “Nah, I’m going to try and get some homework done before my next class. I forgot to do the calc assignment. I’ll catch up with you tonight though.” Malcom shrugged. The last thing he wanted to do was watch the inevitably awkward conversation between Ian and Jesse. Their interactions hadn’t always been weird, but ever since Jesse and Amy started dating, things had gotten extremely tense.

  “Well, I’ll let you know what happens. You still coming by after class?” Ian asked, already turning his attention back to his notes and no doubt formulating his own plan of attack for dealing with Jesse sans Malcom. Which, honestly, was a little weird too because Ian was probably the most aloof person he knew. In fact, Ian once joked that if you cut him, he wouldn’t actually bleed.

  So why did he care about Amy missing class? Then again, Ian always seemed to get his panties in a bunch whenever one of his friends couldn’t make it to something. It was almost like he didn’t know what to do with himself when their tiny coterie of friends wasn’t together in its entirety.

  “Yeah, I’ll be there,” Malcom replied, glancing up at the board as his teacher grabbed the eraser. “Dammit,” he muttered under his breath as he furiously scribbled what he could before it vanished under the eraser’s onslaught.

  Once Malcom was free from the chains of French, he found himself shivering outside in the freezing air. “It’s awfully cold for it to be almost spring,” he grumbled as he made his way across campus.

  He felt oddly accomplished with himself for completing another French class even if he had missed copying down half the notes. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure why he had stuck with the language all these years. He’d long since filled his foreign language graduation requirements, but something about stopping before his senior year felt a little like quitting. If there was one thing he didn’t do, it was quit. At least at school… Besides, lots of colleges expected four years of a foreign language, and some small part of him still hoped for a full ride scholarship far, far away.

  He’d be getting the responses to his college applications soon, and the thought filled his belly with dread. Not because he was worried about getting into one of his top schools… No, if he didn’t get a scholarship, he was not going to college. Open and shut. Case closed. Do not pass go.

  As he passed the cheerleaders and the football players who never won a game, not even for homecoming, a smile crossed his face. If Malcom had it his way, dances would be canceled if the football team didn’t win the corresponding game. At the very least, it would keep him far, far away from lame pep-rallies.

  He was almost to his calculus class when he spotted a familiar face out of the corner of his eye. His heart clenched, and his breath caught in his throat as he made eye contact. Kim raised one dark eyebrow, tilted her chin up, and walked past him, her perfect face set into a stony mask.

  “Oh sure, pretend to snub me, but I know when you go home you dream about me.” The words left his mouth before he could stop them. He reached out, trying to grab them out of the air and stuff them back down his throat, but it didn’t seem to work because she stiffened like someone had dropped an ice cube down the back of her shirt.

  “No, Malcom, I don’t… There’s someone else now. You know that.” She tried to take a step away from him, but without meaning to, he’d put his hands on her shoulders. She paused, and he felt a tremor ripple down her spine. He spun her around until they were face to face. He could clearly see how close she was to breaking down and crying, felt her tremble under his touch, felt her breath on his skin.

  “There was always someone else. That was the problem,” Malcom’s voice was calm, but his tone was annoyed as he brushed her ebony ha
ir away from her face. “But in the end, you always come back to me, Kim.”

  “Isn’t there a saying about setting something you love free?” Kim wriggled under his gaze and looked away, her cheeks flushing. “And let’s face it, Mal. As good as we are together when we, well…” She blushed. “We aren’t actually good together. You need a girl who will be your whole world, and that’s just not me.”

  “Kim, you are my whole world. I need you!” Malcom restrained the urge to shake the meaning into her. “Why don’t you understand that? I don’t care about all the other stuff…”

  “But it didn’t feel that way. You were so far away, forever withholding, forever detached. I don’t know why I stayed as long as I did when we were both so clearly unhappy.” She looked up, a brittle, forced smile just touching her lips. “Besides, you were never really willing to let me in, to tell me what was going on with you.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, but all it sounds like is an excuse for cheating on me all those times.” Malcom tried to swallow, but his mouth was so dry. “And here I am, playing the fool and still wanting you back.”

  Kim met his gaze, her almond-colored eyes glistening with unshed tears. Malcom’s heart wrenched. He was hurting her, but he hadn’t meant to hurt her. He pulled her close, the urge to help, to comfort her overwhelming. Their bodies fit together like well-worn puzzle pieces, and for a moment, everything around him faded away. He leaned down and gently caressed her forehead with his lips.

  He felt her pull away from him. She stared into his eyes and stepped backward. She continued to tiptoe backward, still locked in his gaze. Malcom felt his heart ache more with each step she took. She turned finally but looked back, throwing one last furtive glance in his direction. “Goodbye, Mal…”

  Ian 01:01

  Ian was hallucinating, surely. On his way to find Jesse, he had spotted Malcom and Kim arguing from the balcony. It was a little odd, not because Mal’s six-foot-plus frame towered over Kim’s five-foot-nothing one nor because Kim was Japanese, and Mal was pretty much the only African American student at their entire school.