Contractor: Chapter - 31A Chapter by Outdated AccountIt had taken more than a few
minutes for the bag to empty out, for some reason the red stuff seemed to be
moving progressively slower as time passed. I was certain it wasn’t that I was
anxious, because I wasn’t, I was by no means in a rush. I was concerned that
Hope had my soul now instead of Dante, and Dante didn’t seem at all rushed to
get it back. I couldn’t feel safe until it was it was out of her hands. I
wouldn’t leave without the transaction happening first, and that wouldn’t
happen until Dante felt well enough to do it. When the bag finally emptied
though I was surprised to see Hope move first and shrug off his arm. “Here.” Hope held out her hand
which was now engulfed in brilliant blue flames. I’d never seen it before but I
was sure it was my soul. I could feel it in my bones. “I can’t hold onto this
anymore, I feel like you’re going to spontaneously combust or something without
it.” “Why?” Amy had left a while ago, so
I had no one to ask but them. “She’s concerned I’ll continue to
act recklessly if the only person I have to worry about is myself.” Dante
reached out and grabbed hold of her flaming hand. “If I’m directly linked to
you, I’ll have to force myself to be more careful.” The fire dissipated and the
room felt darker than it had before. “It’s one of the reasons you’re here in
the first place.” “Well that’s one answer. I hope
that’s not all you had to tell me.” If it was it would have been the biggest
anti-climax ever. “I never said I’d tell you
anything. I said show. Think of that reason as a little fun fact. It’s not all
that important, not unlike yourself. Not to be rude, but the only reason I
haven’t bothered to tell you much of anything about what’s going on is because
you’re not that important.” I couldn’t help but glare at him silently. What
kind of jerk steals your soul to use you in his twisted plot but says you
weren’t important. I mean I had to be important or else I wouldn’t have been
there at all, right? “In the context of the issue that is. To me personally you
hold a significant role in helping me remember to value my life, without which
I can no longer continue my venture.” “Not to be rude, but that sounds
like bull to cover for saying I wasn’t important.” “Believe what you want.” “So when did you intend to show me
these things you keep promising?” “Does right now work for you?” He
yanked the iv from his arm and started walking towards me. “Oh no you don’t.” Hope grabbed
hold of his arm and ended up getting dragged along behind him. It was a little
funny to watch, but had I laughed I have no doubt that I would have ended up
staked to a chair again. “I’m not letting you go anywhere without me again.” “Fine you can come. We are going
somewhere very personal to you, I guess it wouldn’t actually be right if you
didn’t.” Dante put his hand on my shoulder, his touch was much softer than it
had been before. “I’m feeling a little weak still, Hope would you be so kind as
to take us to the tomb?” In an instant I was plunged into
absolute darkness. I could still feel Dante’s hand on my shoulder, but I
couldn’t see it. Without my sense of sight my other senses had to compensate, I
really wish they hadn’t though. Wherever we were, whatever this tomb was, it
smelled of rot and decay. I could hear the sound of water dripping into a puddle
somewhere and I could feel the hard ground underneath my feet. I was wearing
boots so I couldn’t feel it that
well, but I don’t think I would have noticed it at all if my senses hadn’t been
going into overdrive. “Are we in a cave or something?” My
voice echoed off the walls, making me feel a little claustrophobic as they
bounced back to me. “It’s not just a cave, you little
brat, it’s a tomb! Show some respect!” Hope smacked me across the back of the
head. Both her voice and the sound of the hit echoed. I was amazed that she was
showing any kind of restraint, she probably could have thrown me through
whatever walls were around us and made a cave. I still had yet to see either
Hope or Dante display their power however, so I could only guess. “Don’t be so harsh on her, she
can’t see anything yet.” Dante turned to me, I could tell because his eyes were
glowing faintly. Nothing like when I’d first seen them, but the violet light
seemed to suit his gentler tone. “Here.” A blue fire blazed into life in his
hands. It wasn’t my soul, I couldn’t feel the same connection as before. “Is that someone’s soul?” It was a
stupid question, I already knew that it was, so I didn’t let him answer. “Will
doing that hurt it?” “This soul isn’t like yours,
Samantha. This is the soul of a deceased mortal who willingly promised it to
me. I can only take the souls of those who give them willingly, usually after
they die, or those who surrender them through defeat.” He paused for a second.
“I suppose since I’m being forthright for a day I should tell you that you fall
into the second category. By murdering someone you surrendered yourself to
darkness.” I looked at him blankly in confusion. “Hello nice to meet you, my
name’s darkness? Devourer of souls, scourge of humanity, and bane of mortals,
destroyer of worlds? Do I have to spell it out for you? I’m the bad guy.” “Uh huh….” I grunted. “Uh huh what?” “Nothing I’m just letting that sink
in. I just hadn’t thought about it before, what I do makes me who I am. I
killed someone, which makes me evil.” “You too huh?” He laughed a little. “Well I work for you, you’re the
bad guy, so that makes me the evil minion right?” It made sense, to me at
least. “You’re a real conformist aren’t
you, no self-respect.” Dante sighed. “I was almost hoping you’d be as much of a
challenge as Amy is, but I don’t suppose it’d be right to give the bad guy what
he wants.” “You’re one to talk, Dante.” Hope
chimed in. “Mister doom and gloom all the time, it’s like you have a rain cloud
hanging over your head twenty four seven. We all have flaws, and you didn’t
really give her a choice but to conform.” “Thank you… Hope.” I honestly never
expected to say those words, but she deserved them. “You’re welcome, and if you ever
tell Amy that I stood up for you I’ll leave you both staked to the ceiling
until gravity pulls you down.” There was a long silence after
that. I certainly didn’t want to get staked to the ceiling, and I don’t think
Dante wanted whatever it was he knew she’d do to him if he had smart comments
on the matter. However awkward the silence had a benefit, it gave me a chance
to take in the now illuminated room around me. It wasn’t much of a room
actually, it was a very small caved in place. I could see some stone brick work
in some places that marked that it had been built as part of a larger structure
but the rest was lost to what was probably decades of neglect. Whatever this
tomb had been a part of was likely long forgotten. “Well now that the air is clear you
can see why I brought you here.” I could, there were two iron slabs stuck into
the wall that marked the graves of Victor and Agatha Richmond. “Victor and Agatha…” I’d heard both
names before. “Victor, the old Death.” I looked over to Dante for confirmation
only to find a surprised look. “And you’re Agatha.” I pointed to Hope, who just
shrugged. “Who are you?” “Agatha was a spoiled little rich
businessman’s daughter. She died. I’m not her anymore.” I couldn’t see Hope’s
face well by the dim light of the burning soul, but I thought I saw a sad
smile. “That’s what happens when you become a contractor. You still remember
that life, but it doesn’t belong to you anymore.” “And Victor?” I looked to Dante.
For all I knew Dante could have just been Victor in disguise and the two of
them could be married. That was the first thing that came to my mind anyways. “The rich businessman who found out
that he couldn’t buy his daughter’s cure with money.” Hope said it as though
recounting an old story she’d heard. “He died and came back first, saved me
from my sickness, only to have to suffer through my death a day later. Overcome
with grief he brought me back too. We realized later that we would have been
better off if we’d just let the plague kill us and stayed dead.” “Who brought you back?” I was
looking at Dante now. “Only a contractor can raise other
contractors, it’s a competitive business though, so they generally only make
replacements for themselves before they retire and disappear.” Dante gestured
to himself as he mentioned replacements. “The Death before my father went by
Mordred, he was raised by Hades, who was raised by his father Chronos who in
turn was raised by the contractor we call the Old Man. No one really knows of
any contractor older than the Old Man. Soon after we were both raised my father
drained Mordred of all his souls and amassed a large wealth, Hades hasn’t gone
near him since. None of the Greeks really like anyone, so it’s not that big of
a deal.” “How many of you are there?” I was
a little awestruck by her story. Hades was the Greek god of the underworld,
she’d just said the Greek’s as in all
of the Greek gods. “Well there are about six of the
Greeks left, the rest were either killed or their assets were seized by another
contractor, which is pretty much the same thing as dying. There’s Trish, that one
Russian guy… I can never remember his name, he’s a recluse. The Old Man, my
father, Dante, me… ooh and Eleanor, almost forgot about her,” Dante made an
anxious face at the mention of Eleanor. I remembered her of course, she was
pretty much the whole reason I was in this mess. “The McGregors, there’s about
five of them. Bunch of jerks. The warlord guy from Africa, that snobby British
woman that used to sneer at me, though haven’t seen her in a while. Let’s see,
who else, there’s those two Chinamen and their wives… uh... Suffice it to say
there’s a good few of us, but we’re not the most social group so we don’t
really keep in touch.” It took me a while to take it all
in. The lines were all starting to connect in my mind. I was starting to make
sense of the mess of information I had about contractors, how they came about,
what they did. I knew about collectors. What I didn’t know about, or rather who
I didn’t know about, was Dante. He had yet to mention anything about himself
other than that he had been raised to replace the previous Death. “Who are you then, Dante?” I was a
little aggravated that I had to ask a gain. “I am nothing more than what you
see before you.” He held his arms up. With blue fire burning in both hands and
his violet eyes glowing in the dark behind his curtain of black hair, he looked
demonic. There was no other way to describe him. That’s what he wanted me to
think though, and it was all I was going to know unless someone decided to tell
me otherwise. All I did know was that he was still hiding something. “Do I really have to be precise
when I ask you things?” “I have to be precise with you, why
not make it a two way street?” “Who were you? And why are you
hiding it?” That sounded straightforward enough. “The answers to those questions are
irrelevant. The purpose of you being here is to give you a clearer
understanding of what I am, not who I was. Whoever I was is obviously dead and
gone. There’s no point in me telling you about him.” “Really? Are you really going to
try to sell that garbage to me?” What kind of person brings you somewhere to
tell you that they aren’t going to tell you anything? “Is that it then?” “No. It isn’t. You understand what
I am, but I also need you to understand what I’m doing.” Dante held up a shard
of glass, it was hard to tell with the dim lighting, but the only thing I saw
through the glass was darkness. “You recognize this, right? It’s what I got
from Trish, the whole reason we went there. It’s also the reason I had you dig
up that grave. In fact it’s also the reason you’re still alive.” “You see my predecessor, for
reasons he can’t even properly recall, had a special mirror made that could
show someone who they really were. At least that’s what he requested and signed
for in the contract, but the rebellious little soul that was forged into the
mirror had something else in mind. The mirror didn’t just show who someone was
at their very essence, their soul, it became a physically linked copy of
whatever it reflected. Look in the mirror, see your soul and crack it while
looking, you die and the mirror takes the broken bits of your essence for
whoever puts it back together. Like this.” Dante held up a larger plate of
glass with a mismatched assortment of round and jagged edges. He dropped the
small shard above the top and it stuck to one of the jagged edges like it was
magnetized. “Once the true nature of the mirror was revealed, it was ordered
that it be destroyed once and for all. For some strange reason, however, he
couldn’t do it. Through a series of events not known to me the mirror was
shattered and the pieces spread across the face of the earth with a bit of a
tortured soul trapped in every shard.” Dante handed the mirror to Hope who
tucked it away into a bag. She didn’t look comfortable handling it. Even after it
was out of sight she looked uneasy. “Because my predecessor could not
destroy it, it’s my job now. I needed to know where the pieces were hidden away
of course, so I recovered a list of the original locations from the body I had
you exhume. Many have been found and relocated since the list was written
however, so it isn’t as easy as just collecting things on a list. Most of the
remaining pieces are in the possession of contractors like Trish, who have no
clue as to their true potential. I may be the bad guy, but I’m doing the right
thing. For now. I need you to understand that so that I can rely on you,
without having to force you to do anything.” “So, this has basically been a
sales pitch.” I groaned. I was right before, there was no way I would ever get
decent answers. “No. The mirror isn’t my only
concern. I have one other goal…” © 2016 Outdated Account |
Stats
281 Views
Added on June 26, 2016 Last Updated on October 30, 2016 Tags: macabre, novel, full length, serial, death, the grim reaper, grim reaper, business, contract, contracts, contract law, deal, deal with the devil, supernatural, paranormal, fiction, adventure, etc. Author
|