The Garden of Death (8 page)

“I… you surprise me every day. You truly are
amazing, Eden Daylesford.”

I playfully shoved him even though I wanted
to pull him to me and kiss the crap out of him until we both
couldn’t breathe. “Stop. We have work to do.”

“Okay. I’ll deal with you later though.” Oh,
boy.

After I had managed to revive my overly
heated heart again, I looked back to Abraham, and to my surprise,
he had done it. On the horizon, I could see what looked like a
cloud moving closer, but this was no ordinary cloud. This cloud
glowed with an eerie and spectacular bluish-white. It was a cloud
made up of thousands, if not millions, of lost souls.

“Brace yourselves,” Abraham said. He had to
shout over the loud whooshing sound of all the souls. It was like
nothing I had ever experienced before. I grabbed onto Asher’s hand
again and moved closer. The cloud of souls crept closer and closer
to us. I almost shut my eyes to brace for the impact. When the mass
of souls was straight above our heads, I closed my eyes and hid my
face in Asher’s chest, waiting for them to hit or bowl us over or
something, but they didn’t. Nothing happened.

Eden

There was an incredible and loud whooshing
sound that overwhelmed everything, a flash of bright light, and
then it all fell away. I opened my eyes and expected to see the
utter devastation, but all I saw was Abraham standing, watching
Asher and I, and holding his staff, which was glowing.

“That’s it?”

“What did you expect? An atomic bomb?”

“From the noise they made I was expecting to
at least be knocked to my bum.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint, darlin’.”
Abraham crouched down, still holding his glowing staff, and opened
the duffle bag he had brought with him.

“Care to help me?” he asked, looking at each
of us.

“What do you mean?” Asher asked,
confused.

“I didn’t just bring you for a school
excursion. You have work to do. I summoned the souls to my staff,
now it’s your job to transfer all the souls,” he gestured inside
the bag where I knew sat thousands of empty Crystal Soul Spheres,
“into these.”

Asher

He had to be kidding me!

“You want us to do what?”

Abraham sat back on his haunches and put a
hand on his hip. “Well, I didn’t just bring you to stand there and
look pretty, or check out Eden all night. I brought you two kids
here for a reason. Now, get down here and start pulling out Soul
Spheres!”

Geez, Grim was pretty… grim these days, and
grumpy. I exhaled and bent down beside the bag. Eden groaned and
did the same. We each reached in and plucked out a Soul Sphere.

“This is going to take freaking forever,” I
complained.

“Yeah. There must be a simpler way to do
this,” Eden added, glaring at Abraham.

“Nope, sorry. The only way to do it is with
good ol’ fashioned manual labor.”

“You mean, slave labor,” I heard Eden mutter
under her breath. I chuckled and grinned sideways at her. She
caught me looking and grinned back, her cheeks flushed. I loved the
effect I had on her.

I would have leaned over and kissed her, but
someone ruined the moment by clearing his throat.

“Did I tell you how much I detest teenagers?
They’re so… angst filled all the damn time.” Abraham said. He was
still sitting across from us, leaning against his staff. He looked
bored.

“Well, you didn’t have to hire me.”

“You and I both know that I had no choice,
Eden. I had to. Now quit your procrastinating and your whining and
get to work. I don’t have all night. We have to get these souls
into the spheres before he rises.”

“Before who rises?” I asked.

“Crap! I forgot all about him!”

“What are you talking about, guys? Hello,
before who rises? Who’s rising?”

“When I had come here earlier, before I
blacked out, the earth shook. Abraham told me that a newly deceased
person was going to rise out of the ground,” Eden explained.

“A newly deceased person? Are you talking
about the zombie you were rambling on about before?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking
about.”

“You have half an hour until midnight, kids.
Get a move on!” Abraham ordered.

“Is that when zombie time happens?”

Abraham glared at me, and I could swear I
saw him roll his eyes afterwards.

Eden leaned in and placed a kiss on my
cheek. “Yes. That’s when zombie time happens.” She winked at me
before taking a Soul Sphere and placing it over the top of the
staff.

Eden

With the knowledge that the walking dead
were about to rise in less than thirty minutes, I was as nervous as
ever to get their souls to safety before it happened. I realized as
I picked up an empty Soul Sphere that I had forgotten to ask
Abraham how you harvest a soul, but as I held the crystal sphere in
my hand, I suddenly knew. It was as if I had a voice deep inside
calling out to me telling me what to do. It was as if I already had
the knowledge in my brain. I held the Soul Sphere up and placed the
opening over the top of the black crystal at the top of Abraham’s
staff. As I held it there, something amazing happened. The staff
lit up, but not too brightly, and as soon as it happened, it was
over just as fast. A little blue soul shot out of the crystal on
the staff, into the crystal sphere. I carefully pulled the sphere
away from the staff, and a small opening closed up
automatically.

“Huh.”

“Wow. That was kinda cool,” Asher
stated.

“It was.” I smiled. I did it! I officially
harvested my first soul! But the night wasn’t over. I still had
thousands more Soul Sphere’s to fill before midnight and the
soulless beings rose out of the ground and found their way back to
their families. I couldn’t let thousands of grieving families go
through that kind of pain. I looked over at Asher. I suddenly knew
what I had to do. If I were going to harvest a thousand more souls
before midnight, I needed Asher’s help, and there was only one way
he could help me. He needed his soul back.

“Asher, look at me.”

He turned to me, curious and cautious.
“Eden, what’s going on?”

“I need you to listen to me, and hold my
hand tight. Don’t let go, okay?”

“Okay… but Eden…”

“Ssh.” I kissed his lips and whispered, “I
love you,” against them. He closed his eyes and bowed his head
before swallowing and taking my hand in his. I smiled and squeezed
his hand tight before placing my other hand on the side of his face
and my forehead against his.

“Eden, this is no time for a teenager
moment! We have fifteen minutes until midnight!”

“Yeah, I know, Abraham. I have something to
do first.”

No one knew what I was about to do. Good. I
didn’t need them to try to stop me. I reached deep inside me and
focused hard on the words I needed to say.

I spoke the demonic equivalent to “Soul,
return to your keeper. I need his help.”

I felt two things: pain and the ground
quaking beneath me. Then the world stopped.

Jazmine

No! What was she doing! She was ruining
everything! Sure, I wanted Asher’s soul back inside his pretty
little head, because what guy was hot without a soul? Eww! But I
couldn’t let him help her with her plan to stop all the soulless
zombies from returning to their loved ones. Yes, as you may have
just figured out, that was my doing.

How did I do it, you ask? Well, I will tell
you, but now is not the time.

I wanted to walk right into her dreamscape
and stop that little Nephilim skank from ruining my plans… wait,
dreamscape! She was asleep! Ha! Perfect! I will go and find her
sleeping body and kill her. Then Asher will be free of her and will
run to me in his grief!

I stood up from my desk, and stretched my
arms over my head as I made my way down the hall to Eden’s room.
When I opened the door though, to my horror, she wasn’t there.
Well, crap! Where the hell would she be taking a nap this time of
day? I decided to go find Asher. After all, where there’s smoke
there’s fire, or however that stupid analogy goes.

Getting into the boy’s dorm was hard but not
impossible. I had done it before. I knew the way to Asher’s dorm
better than I knew the way to my own. I went back to my own room
and locked the door behind me before heading to the window. I slid
the window up and peered outside. I looked left and right to make
sure no one was around. It was mid-afternoon, and even though my
room didn’t look out over the garden like that skank’s did (don’t
even get me started on that! The bitch got all the best stuff!) my
window was still out in the open. But I had one thing to my
advantage that Eden didn’t. I had a vine. I climbed up onto the
window ledge and slid out onto the outside ledge. Yikes, I hated
heights, but I told myself over and over if I didn’t look down
everything would be fine. I turned around and faced the building
and gripped the vine. I then used the vine, which crept all over
the side of the Sanctuary, to help guide me all the way to Asher’s
window, which I knew to be four windows down from mine. I knew I
shouldn’t have worn white jeans and wedge heels, but they were my
favorite outfit. Leaning close to the wall, I shuffled my way down
the ledge toward Asher’s window. When I made it to his window, I
dropped the trusty vine as I slid the window up. Why was it no one
ever locked their windows around here? I smirked. Dumb old bats. I
hopped over the window sill into Asher’s room, but was disappointed
when I found he wasn’t there. Where the heck could they be? Could
they have gone outside the safety and confines of the Sanctuary? I
decided I would check the garden before doing my research. I had a
plan. I knew exactly how to find them. They couldn’t hide from
me.

As soon as I entered the garden, the
humidity seeped into my pores and made me sweat right away. Good
thing I was wearing waterproof foundation! I ran straight to the
Fate tree and pressed my palm against it. First, I had to stop Eden
from going any further into her dreamscape and to ruin my plan. I
focused my energy on the trunk of the tree, and a vision appeared
before my eyes, like a cinema screen. Only I was able to see the
screen, but if I wanted to show someone, like I had done with
Asher, then I could. The screen floated just in front of me. I took
a step back and watched, waiting for the image to appear. It wasn’t
long before Asher’s face appeared, alongside the skank’s face. She
was leaning in close to him. As soon as her forehead touched him, I
held my palm up and the movie was paused. It was as if I held the
remote to the screen and had the director’s cap on. I could do
anything I wanted to bend anyone to my will. I almost wanted to
laugh as all the evil villainesses laughed in the movies, but I
suppressed it. That was cheesy. I smiled, nodded, and stepped away
from the screen. Now they couldn’t go any further without my
knowing about it.

“Let’s see you pull yourself out of this
one, Nephilim.”

Now all I had to do was find their sleeping
bodies and wake them up before they ruined the world.

If they thought they could hide from the
Angel of Fate, then they forgot one very important thing: the power
of modern technology.

Eden

What was happening? I couldn’t move! The
world had stopped! Was this my doing? Had I stopped time
accidently? Wait, wasn’t that my Mum’s Trait? Had I somehow
inherited her Trait, as well? I couldn’t move my body, not even my
eyes, but my brain still functioned. Whoever had done this couldn’t
have picked a worse time! Seriously! I was right in the middle of
giving Asher his soul back, and they went and froze time! Ugh!

Then I thought of an idea. If my brain still
worked, then my Trait still worked, and all the rest of my angel
abilities. I focused all of my energy on myself and sought out the
power from within. I felt it was brewing. I called it out of me and
felt it rise to the surface until I was seeing purple. I couldn’t
manipulate my power into a physical orb this time, because I
couldn’t move my hands, but I could manipulate it with my mind.
Purple tendrils of power crept down my arms and legs like vines and
spread out around Asher and me on the ground, creating a
spider-like web of purple around us. I had never done anything like
this before, and holding this much power outside of my body was
beginning to take its toll. I felt tired and run down all of a
sudden, but I had to hold it up. I had to keep it going for Asher’s
sake.

Jazmine

I ran back up to my room and opened my
laptop back up. I opened the web browser and googled hotels nearby.
There were a hundred possibilities, but it was a start. I started
with the cheapest and rang each one, going through the list on the
web search. After all, they wouldn’t have that much money to spend
if they did go book a hotel room.

While I waited for someone to pick up, I
looked at the pictures on the website of the first option. It was a
three-star hotel with basic amenities. They wouldn’t need a
freaking presidential suite if they were just hiring it for a few
hours to go to sleep so they could enter the dream world. When the
receptionist finally picked up, she sounded breathless.

“The Premier Inn London Docklands, how may I
help you?”

“Hi, I was wondering if I could hire a room
for the night?”

“Certainly. We only have two rooms left.
Were you after two single beds or a queen?”

What the heck. “A queen, thanks.” If I were
going to venture out to the seediest hotel in the area, I was going
to do it in at least a little bit of style.

“Excellent. Our queen room has a gorgeous
view of the river. Quite romantic. A lot of couples have been quite
happy here recently if you get my drift.”

Gross. Did she really just say that? I
couldn’t really turn up and imply I was single and lonely or a
hooker, after all. I didn’t need this bitch judging me.