The Reaping (The Fahllen #1)(33)
Author: M. Leighton

You should be glad that I gave you this assignment rather than keeping you…with me, I remembered Fahl saying to Derek.

“What? Do you- do you work for him?”

“I guess you could say that,” he said distractedly, still pacing, deep in thought. “I needed him to do something for me and this is what he wanted in return.”

The pacing was driving me crazy. “Derek! Stop!”

“What, Carson?” His temper flared as quickly as mine had. “I’m trying to think,” he growled.

“Well, I need some answers. I’m kind of freaking out here.”

“I don’t have many answers for you. Not right now at least. There’s a lot I don’t know either, okay?” His patience had obviously come to an end.

We stared each other down, neither of us ready to budge an inch. After several minutes, I realized that I wanted, needed, more answers and we were getting nowhere fast this way. So, grudgingly, I tamped down my anger as deep as it would go and I began again.

“Alright, look. Let’s start over,” I suggested agreeably. “Would you please tell me about this man and this place? Maybe knowing more about all this will help me make sense of what I’ve seen, of what’s happening to me.”

Derek glared at me, but I could see his temper fading as he considered my proposition. After a put-upon sigh, he said, “Alright. What do you want to know?”

“Who’s Fahl?”

“I don’t really know,” he said. I puffed up instantly, certain he was just being difficult. Seeing my reaction, he merely raised one dark brow then continued, in no hurry to assuage my curiosity. “I don’t know if anyone does. He’s a very powerful man over there, maybe the most powerful. I mean every hell has a devil, right?”

“Over where?”

“Carson,” he began, his tone laced with frustration. “Do you know how hard this is to explain?” I said nothing. Running his fingers through his hair again, another gesture of frustration, he continued. I was grateful he was at least willing to try. “I call it the Darkness. I think different people call it different things, have for thousands of years—Purgatory, Limbo, the Chasm, Misery, a parallel universe. Whatever you call it, it’s the place that’s all around what we can see and touch in this world. It hovers in the dark, always just outside human reach and perception. But it’s real.” He paused. “And it’s evil,” he said grimly.

“How do you get there?”

“I was called, summoned, just like I think you might be one day. There’s no other way. At least not that I’ve found,” he answered then paused. “Yet,” he added emphatically.

“Called? By whom?”

“Fahl.”

“To do what?”

“To make good on your deal.”

“What deal?”

“I told you before, people make different deals, have for…forever I guess.”

“But I told you I didn’t make any deals. What does he want with me?”

“And I told you that maybe you didn’t make a deal, but somebody did. Probably one of your parents. Not just anyone can make a deal for you. Besides, I don’t think that’s all he wants with you.”

I thought of the letter from my mother and an ominous cloud settled over me. “And how do you make good on your deal?”

“Depends on the deal, I guess, but I think with twins there’s always a fight.”

“A fight?” I asked. Derek nodded in answer. “A fight for what?”

“A fight for your life.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, unable to disguise the tremor in my voice.

“Somehow he finds what people need most and he gives it to them. For a price. With twins, it’s like hitting the jackpot. He gets two for the price of one.”

“But I don’t understand,” I repeated, but in my gut I thought I probably did.

“It’s kill or be killed, but either way you lose. If you lose, you can never come back here, never move on. You die, but not really. You’re trapped in the darkness,” he said gravely.

“And if you win?”

Derek laughed bitterly. “No one really wins. You can’t kill a man without becoming the monster.”

I felt like I was about to hyperventilate. I couldn’t kill someone, especially not my identical twin. To look into her face, so like my own, and end her life, condemn her to an existence like those other people I’d seen. No way!

Suddenly, I was overcome with the urge to run, run far and fast. And then hide. Forever if need be. I was certain I couldn’t handle what he was suggesting. Heck, I wasn’t even sure I was strong enough to handle what had happened in the past month. Who could?

Then I remembered the girl in the garage asking me to save her. What if that really was my sister?

“So you’re saying that I’ll have to- have to kill my sister or be doomed for eternity?” I felt the weight of it, the hopelessness of it pour down on me like thick, black tar, drowning out light and air. “Is there no other option? No way to…to…”

“Not that I’ve been able to find,” he said, shaking his head. “Yet,” he said again. “But…”

“But what?” I felt my entire being latch onto the possibility in that one word, the hope of a “but”.

“There’s something that just…”

“Just what?”

“That I just don’t get.”

“What?”

“You’re already dead. If you’re already dead, how can he claim you?”

I felt deflated. I had hoped there would be something else, something more like a loophole that he’d just realized. “I still don’t believe that’s possible. I mean, look at me. Do I look dead to you?”

“No, but maybe that was part of the deal.”

I had no response to that, bits and pieces of Dad’s version of “the accident” flitting through my mind. “So you’re saying that it’s possible that I’m dead and that the only reason I’m here right now is because someone pretty much made a deal with the devil.”

“Pretty much,” he agreed. “At least that’s one theory.”

“There are more?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I need to think,” he said pointedly.

I was silent, mulling over what Derek had said as he resumed his pacing. Then a thought occurred to me. “Why couldn’t he find me?”