Happy Halloween. I always update this series on Death's favorite holiday. ;)

* * * * * *

Stumbling out of my seat, I hurried towards the back of the restaurant as best as I could in my illusion high heels, hoping that the demon that I was supposed to kill wasn't following close behind.

            Obey.

            Suddenly, as I was weaving between tables, I felt the room closing in on me and fought to keep my equilibrium. Everything seemed to pulse violently to the beat of my heart, a sheen layer of sweat broke out on my forehead. I looked down at my hands as I started to run and felt my claws unleashing.

            Crashing into a waiter, I fell onto a couple's table, knocking over a woman's red wine who shrieked in my ear and irritably leaped up from her seat.

            "You idiot!" she shouted. "You ruined it! You ruined my dress, you stupid bitch!"

            I stared at her, trembling as she continued to shout at me at the top of her lungs, a vein pulsing on her forehead. She pointed at the man across from her and said that he was her husband, that he would ruin me. The people around us grew silent, listening to this insane woman shout at me. There was nothing supernatural or threatening about her, and I was letting a complete stranger yell at me? A human? Embarrass me?

            "I'm not leaving until you pay for this dress!" The woman jabbed me on the shoulder with her finger.

            Kill.

             I looked at her, only momentarily yearning for her weakness. Her humanity. I had once been human, now I didn't feel human at all. I didn't feel...anything, actually. I felt numb. As if someone had taken over my body, I reached over to the woman's bright red dish and cracked it into her chest, watching the red sauce drip slowly from her stomach like a dark bloody stain. I started to laugh a bit crazily, feeling the room tilt again and shifting my weight on my left foot, eying the butter knife dangling off of their table like an uneven seesaw.

            Kill.

            The wife shrieked again and came at me with her head hung low like a bull. She was only a human, slow and uncoordinated. I easily stepped out of the way and gripped her flailing right hand, biting down on it with my teeth until I tasted blood. It was thick and tasted familiar. so I bit into her hand again, taking long pulls of the substance. That made her scream more. We fell to the floor and I punched her in face. I must have gripped the table cloth in my hands as I fell because I pulled it with me, covering her face with it and whacking her through the cloth.  Again. And again. People rushed to try and help her. The harder the hit her, the less I felt.

            And less...

            And less...

             Her husband dove towards me, shouting. All these things seemed to do is shout. They were so weak. How could I have ever been like that? Couldn't they just shut up?

             I whacked the husband blindly in the solar plexus, flipping him over onto the ground with my legs and strangling his neck with my hands. I threw my head back and laughed as he struggled beneath my hands, tears flooded his eyes. My claws unleashed, digging into the flesh of his neck. Blood spurted out all around him, drenching me in the process. Drenching everything. Somewhere, in the middle of it all, I even cut myself just to watch the blood flow out of my skin, grinning.

            And less...

            And less. . . . .

            I was up off the floor, running. This side of me liked to run. I leaped onto a table to get around unmoving, staring people, but they blocked my way. Not one person in the restaurant had screamed besides the couple. Not one person had tried to help them. They were just all watching me with unreadable, dead expressions. Were they under a spell?

            Something was up.

            A hand clasped my shoulder and I whirled around. It was the demon. The demon who Death had told me to kill, and instead I had killed ruthlessly a wife and husband. Killed. "That was quite the show," the demon said, "fellow sister." He then smiled at me with a mouthful of black fangs, his dark eyes falling to the dead bodies that I had left on the ground. They were now rising to their feet, healing before my eyes, and then wheezing for air.

            In a blink of an eye, the room darkened until it felt like we were outside in the night, casting shadows on the wall that slipped over tables and crawled over the floors towards the people surrounding me. I stood, stunned, as the shadows wrapped around the people and formed midnight black cloaks around their bodies.

            "I normally hate newbie's, but I like her. She has a nice uppercut," the woman said between coughs, who I had beaten senselessly to death with my fists muttered. She threw the bloodied table cloth off of her and reached over to yank a butter knife out of her husband's chest cavity.

            "I'm Francine," the woman said, tossing the butter knife casually to the side and laying a passionate kiss who I had strangled moments before. "This is my husband, Ben. You're not the first woman who's stabbed him in the chest with a knife.

            Ben nodded at me. "No hard feelings, I didn't feel a thing. Technically, I'm already dead."

            I couldn't breathe.  

            I ran like hell out of there, until I broke through the swinging door of men's restroom and fell onto the tan tiled floor in a heap of sobs. "I did it! Are you happy? I did it! I killed someone, and now they're a zombie! They're all zombies! Zombies with cloaks!" I cried for a solid thirty seconds, banging my fists against the tile before I stilled, laying my cheek on the ground and curling in a ball.

            Silence.

            Silence.

            Death sighed heavily, slowly turning himself slightly away from me, hiding his privates, and leaning a gloved hand against his urinal. "Well, F me, couldn't you have done this tampon crying stuff in oh, I don't know, the woman's bathroom?"

            "I--I can't believe I just did that!"

            "I don't like to piss with an audience. Can you stand in the hallway for like five seconds and let me finish?"

            I slapped the ground with my hands, sulking. "I killed two people, Death!"

            Death stared at me with a blank look. "You killed two people. Wow. Congratulations, you're now officially promoted from Super P*ssy to Half-Weenie. Now, I suggest sashaying out of here with that cute little butt, or I'm going to aim and fire on your ass." He slapped the urinal with his hand. "Comprende?"

            Now I was angry. "This is your fault for making me kill them!"

            "Right. My fault. It's not like I held your hand while you strangled and beat them to death." Death dropped his raven head against his chest in defeat. "I just wanted to urinate in peace," he muttered bitterly, flushing his urinal and zipping up his pants with a growl.

            Flooded with overwhelming emotions, I lifted my upper part of my body, kneeling on the ground. Did he seriously not care that I had just killed two people and watched them come back to life? "Their zombies now!" I shouted, gesturing wildly with my hands. "There are zombies out there! I killed these people--and--and we have to get out of here! My powers! I must have made them into zombies!"

            Still not acknowledging my words, Death waved his hand once under a sensor soap dispenser. Nothing came out. He did it again. Nothing came out. "Thousands of years on this planet and earthly technology never ceases to amaze me," he said dryly, then smashed his fist into the automatic dispenser until it wouldn't stop dispensing soap. We locked eyes in the mirror in front of him. "You didn't kill anyone and there are no zombies, so stop looking at me like that with those puppy dog eyes. I hate puppies." Death then turned over his shoulder, eyes darkening and losing their playfulness as they drifted over my body. "Come here."

            I shook my head. "No."

            Death's hard features relaxed a little. "I'll wash you off. You have five seconds before I'm mean again."

            Sniffling, I stood up with my bloodied arms outstretched towards him. Death placed my throbbing, bloody hands and arms in the sink, cupped his own hands with water and soap, then scrubbed until every inch of my exposed skin was clean and slightly pink. "I saw what you did to them," he said.

             I looked up at him with a glazed look. "I...killed them."

             "Not exactly. Everyone in this restaurant works for me. This was a setup to prove your skills, as well as a way for you to prove yourself to your reaper brothers and sisters. I tried to make this test feel as real as possible, I now know that you are capable of killing someone. But you were very sloppy, we have to work on that. Easy fix, we'll start tomorrow again..."

            I slapped his hands away from me. "What?" I leaned closer to him. "WHAT?!" I gripped Death by the collar of his dress shirt, bringing his face closer to mine. "This was all a test," I bit out.

            "Precisely. I must say, you did terrible." Death leaned even further into me, our lips millimeters apart. "Don't you want to know what grade I give you?"

            I smiled sweetly for a moment, but it quickly morphed into pure rage. "No, but I want to rip your balls off!"

            Death flinched visibly, gently removing my hands from his collar and turning the sink back on. "That's not going to solve anything, especially since I'm your only protection. Death likes where his balls are, nice and attached to his body, thank you very--"

             I gripped his manhood.

            With short intake of breath, Death gripped my wrist and unleashed his fangs. "Get your hand. Off of me." His black markings seemed to shift along his features as he tried to control his wrath.

            "Make me."

             "Let's not do anything stupid, pumpkin. Remember who you're dealing with."

            "I know exactly who I'm dealing with. A cruel, sexy bastard," I hissed, letting go of him. "Next time you piss me off, I swear, I'll really do some permanent damage down there."

            He smirked down at me. "Promises." Then he leaned towards me, emerald eyes sparkling with wickedness. "Let me break this down for your poor, small little brain. I could have made you kill a human. I still can," he reminded me in allow, husky voice. His fingers traced my jaw. "I could have forced you to kill anyone or anything I wanted, really. But I didn't. Remember that skull ring I put on you? The one that's on you right now that you can't see?" He picked up my hand and gripped it tightly in his, pressing his fingers against an invisible object on my finger that I had forgotten was even there. "This ring, it gives me control over who you kill. Now that you're a reaper, you'll have to kill someone at some point. You'll have to harvest, or else you will die. And you will harvest. Do you see where I am going with this?"

            "You wouldn't--" I started.

            "Oh, you better believe I would force you to kill someone if it meant you living for the big day," he said, then, "I could even make you kill your parents if I wanted you to. But no, I chose to test you with creatures that would regenerated, so that your precious little innocent conscious wouldn't sob over a few dead people that aren't even people to begin with." He dragged his finger down my neck, dangerously sliding it towards my cleavage. "And what do I get in return? A threat of" --he rose a dark eyebrow-- "castration. I may be sadistic, but I do enjoy my genitals where they are. Attached."

            I let what he said sink in a little. I wouldn't admit it out loud, but he had let me off easy.

            "You once said that I was a very bad girl," I reminded him with a coy smile. Then I grew serious. "Bad girls like to do bad things, so I'd watch your step around me. Who knows, you might really...lose a body part." I lowered my eyes to his crotch.

            Chuckling lowly, Death inched closer to me, lifting my chin back up with a single finger tip. "Don't challenge me," he said in his scary voice.

            My eyes drifted over his dark stubble, full lips, and lip and eyebrow piercing. "I never said I was challenging you, Master."

            Death's snicker was dark. "There's something I have to tell you, Faith. I think it's time to tell you what I've known for a while." His exotic eyes delved deep into my own, piercing through my soul.

            "You're gay?" I tried, smirking.

            He smiled back, but it only reached his mouth. "Are you prepared for the worst?"

            There was something about his tone that made my heart start to pound. "Stop being cryptic and tell me."

            "You will die in exactly two months from today," he whispered. "I dreamt of it last night."

            My breath lodged in my throat. "What?" I pressed my hand against my chest, feeling my heart stab at my rib cage, trying to break free out of my chest like a caged tiger. "So, that's it? When people die in your dreams it always comes true?"

            "Always."

            We stared at each other.

            "You're going to kill me," I said.

            "Yes."

             "Then I think we're done here," I said.

            "Done?" His mouth hovered over mine, finger tips pulling me towards him possessively. "There are reapers out there that want to meet you. We're not done. We can't go home."

            "No, you don't get it. I'm done with you. Don't follow me. Come find me in two months." I tried to pull my hand out of his, but he only tightened his grip.

            Death's features grew more sharp, angular, and his jagged fangs lengthened. "Don't follow you where? Where the hell do you think you're going?"

            "Anywhere but here."

            "Oh yeah?"

            "Let go of me."

            He did.

            Death observed me for a while as I rubbed at my throbbing temples. "I should have never of told you that," he said.

            I couldn't breathe again. "I need space."

            He didn't say anything for a while, just lit a cigarette. "Fine."

            "It's not...it's not just because of what you just told me. I thought that I had really killed them. I thought that I had honestly, senselessly slaughtered a wife and a husband. And the worst part was, that I didn't care that I had killed them until after I was done. I didn't...I didn't feel anything." I stumbled towards the other side of the room, leaning against the wall for support. There it was again, the room spinning again. "How dare you make me think I--I killed someone! I'll never forgive you for this. I'll--I'll never speak to you again. This is the last straw, Death." I looked over at him. "Wait, did you say fine?"

            "Yes I did. If you want space, I'll give you space. But only if that's truly what you want." His emerald eyes heated with a neon green flame. "Just don't act like you didn't like it. Killing. You loved killing them. You loved the thrill, just like I do." He placed his hand on his heart, smiling darkly. "You're becoming cold, detached, lost, and powerful and you need me whether you believe it or not. I'm the only one you know that feels the same way. You're battling with things that you're unable to hold up a shield against. You should feel lucky that I'm your shield."

            He took a drag of his cigarette.

            "You're not my shield!" I burst out. "You're the most manipulative, insane thing that I have ever met who just happens to destroy or take away everything that I want and love. That's not shielding me, that's ruining me. You think that we're the same? You're pure evil, and I'm not evil at all. I'm just infected by your evil. You're a leach, a plague, and you're spreading throughout me and you won't stop feeding me lies, and making me feel cared for once in a while, until the day that you betray me, and kill me. You've poisoned me with your stupid pretty face and your stupid seduction.  All you've ever tried to do is control me, and I won't let you get in anymore. You can possess me with paper and inanimate objects all that you want, with your magical rings and your stupid deal with my mother, but you can't physically possess me when I won't let you possess me. If I'm as powerful as Ace said I was, if I fight the plague, I can destroy the plague. I can destroy you."

            The breath was knocked out of me from my own words. This was it, I had finally admitted to Death that I would fight for my life. I would lose myself forever if I physically killed a human being as Death wanted me to, and especially if I continued to be around Death and helplessly love him. I had to escape the man that I loved so that I could learn to live without him, fight without him, and win without him.

            Death took a long drag of his cigarette, blowing out puffs of smoke slowly and gazing at me from under his lashes.

            "You're going to kill me." He let out a low, dry laugh. "This shall be interesting. Tell me, do you even know how to kill me? And what are you going to do now? Storm out of the bathroom and never see me again until two months from now?"

            "That's the plan."

            "That's a foolish plan when you have no money, and almost every demon in Chicago wants to kill you."

            "I'll work around that. You said it yourself, your dreams are always right. That means I'll be alive in two months. Little demons that want to kill me until then shouldn't be a problem, since there's a ruthless, heartless, ex-warrior Fallen Angel I have to worry about."

            At that, he laughed. "You'll get five feet before you come running back to me. You're mine. We're bonded and connected, mind, body, and soul. We'll find each other again. You don't have to speak to me to want a connection with someone who understands you more than anyone else. Ignore me, run from me, and stay silent for as long as you want, your fate is and always will be in my hands."

            "Are you going to get in my way from doing this, Death?"

            Death's jaw tightened. He didn't look happy. "Now that I know you will be alive in two months no matter what, I suppose not."

            "But you're going to continue checking in on me?"

            He looked away from me. "Only when you need me."

            "Honesty game. You're the one that needs me," I said, and turned my back on him, yanking open the men's restroom door. "I think the last thing I need, Death, is to spend my last two months with my killer."

           * * * *

 Please vote and comment if you enjoyed. <3

Facebook group for the DIMBFF series in External Link!

Twitter and Instagram: Katrocks247