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IRIS

  A Devil Have Mercy side story

  by Michael Horton

  IRIS (Devil Have Mercy 0.5)

  Copyright © 2012 Michael Horton

  The following is a short story intended to supplement the Devil Have Mercy series.

  Please visit www.DevilHaveMercy.com for more details.

  The DEVIL HAVE MERCY series:

  Ersatz (Side story)

  Iris (Side story)

  Hypocrite (Book #1)

  Death Eater (Side story)

  Heretic (Book #2, available December 12)

  Heathen (Book #3, available spring 2013)

  Harlot (Book #4, available fall 2013)

  IRIS

  Humans, like reapers, are all unique. No two could be considered identical. This is particularly impressive given the rate at which they seem to spawn; humans appear faster than we are able to shear their numbers. Some are greedy, some are foolish, and others still are wicked. There are transitory moments when I find myself able to understand the Fallen Star’s desires. To purge the evil from this world. To return to a bygone era of gods without devils.

  I understand completely, and in moments of weakness I can even sympathize. To her, this world represents everything she lost. Everything she held dear was taken away, all because her beliefs, at the time, were considered controversial. Had God killed her instead of merely clipping her wings, the Fallen Star might have been called the world’s first martyr. Perhaps then the vitriol for her might have become admiration.

  However, all men have evil in their hearts, just as all men are capable of good. Gods, demons, angels, devils... they are all capable of both cruelty and mercy, of divinity and obscenity. Well, perhaps not demons, but I digress.

  Among these traits, the endless possibilities of whom and what a human can become, all share a single quality. Every man alive, because he is alive, is selfish. Were he not selfish, doing all he can to prolong his own existence, he would surely be dead.

  Every man, at his core, desires only life. He’d sooner live a life of misery than cease to exist, because existence in and of itself in beautiful. For as foolish as mankind can be, he knows this to be fact.

  This is why it surprised me to learn of a man willing to sacrifice his own life, his own beautiful existence, to bring sadness upon others. An office building in NE Sector 31, part of Master Lang’s dominion, was attacked by a suicide bomber. I had the misfortune of patrolling that area when flames erupted from the building. I heard screams, and then nothing, as plumes of smoke rose into the sky. One life to take a hundred—undeniably efficient, but altogether foolish.

  The soul remains in the body for up to an hour after death—that is, physical death. When flesh and bone can no longer sustain a soul, when astral becomes trapped within an immovable shell, we consider that death. When no action is taken within that time, if the reaping for which we were created does not occur, the astral will seek a new host, animate or otherwise. We refer to this “free spirit” as a ghost, though it can escalate to far worse depending on the spirit in question. I believe humans refer to these as instances of “demonic possession,” though that term is used far too lightly for what it entails.

  I arrived well in time to avoid such a scenario, and no ghosts were formed that day, but I was too late to save them all. Their bodies were crushed, burned, impaled by steel beams and worse. Those were the lucky ones. I released my Scythe and sent their souls beyond as I found them one by one, their auras glowing faintly in the wreckage. Five. Ten. Twenty. Too many lives lost to such a senseless act. All of them, save for the bomber himself, held on to life until the very last moment. They wanted so badly to exist, and it pained me to watch them all go. They would have stayed, if they could, only to seek happiness.

  All except one.

  He was a man who had been close to the explosion. I found his remains trapped a shattered wall, a sick mural of bone and charred flesh. The front of his body had been blown away, and I knew he was a man only by what was left of his wide build. His aura was different—it burned brightly, even in death, and it spoke to me when I came to collect his soul.

  “Don’t let me die.” His voice resonated with my astral, and I heard him as though he still lived and breathed and had the organs to do so.

  The air caught in my throat as his thoughts pierced into my skull. I didn’t ask him if or how he knew I was a reaper, but humans often resisted Death enough to learn who I was on their own. “It is your time.” I found myself forcing the words back toward his soul. He wasn’t like the other humans, but I hadn’t yet learned why.

  “I can’t die yet. You can’t let me die.”

  I closed my eyes, listening only to our voices as they echoed through the void. “Tell me why. What is it you lived for? Why do you deserve another chance?”

  I expected him to say nothing. They never had a compelling reason; humans were simply selfish. They wanted to exist for the sake of existing, even if they had nothing to exist for. And indeed, this man said nothing.

  That’s when his aura flashed. His astral spiked, and I felt a single word rip through my body. He spirit burned to be alive for only one thing.

  Revenge.

  Something within my face twitched, struggling to become a smile. Although it was my duty, I truly loathed reaping human souls. It brought me no joy, and nothing interesting came as a result. For a human to want nothing more than revenge, to exist for such a simple and passionate reason, I could finally spare one. There was a way to bring him back, though Heaven’s Law forbade it. I’d be putting my own soul in danger to save one interesting man.

  But if I lived a life of following rules, of strictly adhering to the laws set before me, could I truly say I lived?

  The Fallen Star must have asked herself the same question those many years ago, before she came to earn that title.

  “I am willing to create a partial covenant with you,” I told him. “You will be revived as my vassal, a Black Band. Our souls will be irrevocably linked, and I expect you to behave in a manner befitting a woman of my status.”

  His soul did not respond. Little time remained before he would be lost forever.

  “I need an answer.”

  I worried that perhaps I had waited too long, that his astral had already fled to discover a new host, when his voice finally returned to me. “Do it.”

  I pried the rubble away from his face with the edge of my Scythe. The skin had been blackened and torn in strips along his cheeks, but his eyes still gazed into oblivion from their sockets. The space of my guidance sphere appeared around us, and the mortal realm melted away.

  A rough-looking man stood along the Acheron’s grassy shore to the east. I saw him as he had been before the bomber’s attack. Reconstructing the man’s true flesh would require a large amount of astral. It was unwise to attempt restoration with my limited resources, and with so little time remaining, but I had to try.

  To the west, where I waited, was a barren, red wasteland. He would have to cross the river if he truly wanted to live. His skin, coarse and cracked with age, pulled taut as he glared at me. He glanced to either side of the infinite river before pulling the disheveled hair from his eyes.

  “What are you waiting for?” I asked him. “I wish to save you, but we haven’t all eternity.”

  “Sorry, I just…” His voice, dark and heavy as his expression, trailed off.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He smiled as if amused by a joke—and I don’t tell jokes, so I am certain it was not something I said—and pinched that scraggly goatee of his. “You’re a little girl.”

  “I am aware of how I must appear to you, but know that my age is far beyond what you perceive.” I frowned, thinking of my Crafter’s insistence that child-like reapers were more inconspicuous than others. I was
sure he had his reasons, but my size had only inconvenienced me. “You must think it’s a charming habit, speaking of things you know nothing about, but I’d advise you to avoid such human acts in the future.”

  “And you’ll bring me back to life?”

  I nodded. “If you cross this river, I’ll grant you the revenge you seek.”

  He paused, though only for a moment, before plunking a foot into the Acheron.

  “What is your name?”

  The man arched a brow, but didn’t take his eyes off the river as it climbed to his waist. “Hugh Gardner,” he said.

  I took Hugh’s calloused hand in mine and helped him secure his footing on dry land. He said a word of thanks as he gazed up at the sky. This must have been a wondrous vista for a mortal, idyllic as it was, but I had no time to explain Acheron’s inner workings.

  Well, I had all the time in the world. Hugh’s soul was the one starting to fade. I led him through the process that would hopefully restore his humanity, and he repeated the words as I instructed. An astral storm roared around us as the process neared completion, but doubt shadowed his eyes.

  “Have you changed your mind?” I asked. The look on his face was beginning to worry me as well. I wanted this man to live again, if only to see what he was capable of.

  He remained silent for far too long, face flickering intermittently as his soul threatened to flee, before narrowing his eyes. “You can’t die before I get some answers, got it? If you and me are really bound as you say, then I’ll do everything I can to protect you.”

  You shall prove to be a most useful subordinate.

  I was able to project half my astral into Hugh’s withering soul, and he drank it up like the summer soil after a rainstorm. Things seemed to be progressing smoothly—anyone would have thought so.

  But Father Time showed little mercy to the deceased.

  The guidance sphere dissipated, and the seconds ticked by as they once did. Hugh pulled himself from the rubble, a glow around his newly formed flesh. He stood wearily, naked as the day he was born, examining the black armband adorning his right bicep. It didn’t take him long to notice his hands, degloved and deep crimson for all the world to see. A brightly colored vein twitched along the ligament connecting his middle finger to his wrist. He glowered down at me over the muscle, bone, and sinew that remained of his hands with a deep emotion in his eyes, but I couldn’t name what it was he felt. Fear? Resentment? Hatred?

  My breath quickened. The regenerative glow around his skin disappeared. Hugh lowered his skeletal hands to his sides, either too enraged or too saddened to have any room for shame.

  “I did my best,” I told him before he had a chance to say anything. “You have my word.”

  He released a long, staggered sigh. “I believe you,” he said with a voice more coarse than before.

  “We nearly ran out of time. It’s a miracle I was able to—”

  “I need some clothes.” He glanced down at his palms and winced. “And… some gloves or something.”

  I marveled at the man who rose from the dead without missing a beat. He truly would be a most interesting subordinate.