Endless Knight(68)

She laughed. “Calm yo tits, unclean one. Those were dry bites. Nonpoisonous.”


I narrowed my eyes. “I will get this cuff off me one day. Keep this up, and you’ll find yourself mummified in vine.”


“Noted. Now, come on, there’s a ton more to see.” She opened the barn door. “Admit it, this place is badass. Some steel baron built it for his wife in the twenties, but she died mysteriously. It might even be haunted! They had cold-war renovations made, so the basement is like a bunker, bigger than Warehouse 13.”


“Death lived here before the Flash, prepping everything?” Must’ve been nice to have time to get ready. “Did he know it was coming?”


“Not the Flash necessarily. He just knew some kind of catastrophe always accompanies the beginning of a game.” With pride, she said, “Boss was mega-rich and used bank to doomsday-prep for everything from snowmageddon to a great flood. My dad and I just thought he was an eccentric billionaire.”


“Then Warehouse 13 is where you keep your garden?”


Lark hastily said, “No!”


I gave her a pleasant smile. “Just a matter of time. So if you’ve been with the Reaper this long, how come you weren’t in that first battle against Joules, Gabriel, and Calanthe?”


“Death and Ogen had only planned to go on a supply run, and I had a foaling mare to tend to. Breeding is my top priority. Look, Death doesn’t hold the animals over me, but I’m not stupid. Where else am I going to find hundreds of tons of hay?”


At the barn door, I gazed back. For all I knew, this might be the largest collection of animals left on earth. She was shepherding them, increasing their numbers. And despite myself, my hatred cooled another degree.

Once she’d locked the barn behind us, we meandered down a brick path past a training yard. Death was there, shirtless in the rain, practicing with his swords. I didn’t think I would ever get used to seeing that kind of strength and speed. His skin was damp, those tattoos rippling as his chest muscles flexed.

What did those symbols mean? Why would he mark himself like that?

Though shot just yesterday, he’d taken no downtime, working past those stitched-up wounds, his enhanced healing clearly at work. “Did you tend to his gunshot wounds?” I asked Lark.

She shook her head. “The human servant I told you about was an EMT pre-Flash.”


When Death hammered a particularly fierce blow against a training post, she breathed, “Don’t you think he’s amazing to watch?”


I didn’t want to. In a sour tone, I said, “Amazing? Maybe like a tornado is.” And this was the man I was supposed to seduce?

In matters concerning boys, I’d always turned to my best friend Mel. I could imagine what she would do about this situation: ogle him thoroughly, then quip, “It’s a dirty job, bitches, but somebody’s gotta do him.”


Lark said, “He’s got that whole I-have-power-over-all-I-survey vibe. Admit it, it’s sexy.”


“Not when I’m one of the things he has power over. And unlike you, I don’t enjoy seeing him out here improving his skills. How do you get past the fact that he’s going to murder you?”


She readjusted her cap. “Boss said he’ll let me live half a decade in safety, okay? In A.F. years, that’s a lifetime.”


“Never going to happen. He intends to win this game and play again in the future, right?” At her confused look, I said, “We age as long as the game spools on. He ages. Your half a decade would put him closing in on thirty for the next round. And this is a young man’s game.” The utter confidence in my words must be troubling to her. “Believe me, he’ll close us out as soon as possible.”


“Unless you do something, huh?”


“Bingo. You want me to forgive you? Then earn it. You’re going to give me Death’s schedule, a layout of the compound, and a map of this mountain. Right after you show me the garden.”


“Oh, am I?” She grinned, as if we were embarking on a new, fun pastime.

“Mark my words, Lark. You’re going to do it today. . . .”


29


DAY 272 A.F.

A week had passed and Lark had given up precisely not shit.

Whenever I demanded answers, she’d just chuckle, telling me, “Stop and smell the roses.” At least she’d been leaving my cell unlocked, not that I could ever ditch my unshakable guard.

This morning I was pacing in my turret, Cyclops snoring in front of the door. Seven days wasted, and I was no closer to escaping, no closer to taking out Death.

Matthew had been of little help. In each of his daily check-ins, he’d told me how desperate Jack was to find me, how much anguish the boy felt that he couldn’t save me from Death. Those check-ins made me crazed to reach Jack. I was worried sick about all of them out there.

If my only option against the Reaper was seducing him to trust me, then I was more than ready to play the up-to-a-point seductress.

Unfortunately, I was rarely around him. Most often he was either training in the yard or sequestered in his “unauthorized” rooms. The one meal Death always appeared for was breakfast, but he was usually engrossed in his newspaper.