“Ana,” Vidhan says. “That’s…I mean. If the Wraith doesn’t work—”

“I’m dead. But it will.” I don’t know how I’m so certain of this, but I am. Then the Reaper, as if on cue, rocks its head towards me. Now it seems to stare right at me.

Am I wrong? Can it see me? Sense me?

“Ana,” Malik says. “Gimme me the word.”

“Do it,” I say.

35

I step through and every muscle in my body seizes. Malik slams the gate shut behind me and my world reduces to the cage. And the monster.

Fear gives way to white noise. I know I’ll never feel fear again.

Not like this.

Close up, the Reaper is nightmarish. It swivels its head mindlessly, muscles bulging and contorting. The stench of it is enough to make me hurl, but I don’t. I don’t move a muscle. Not even an eyelid. I don’t breathe. The Wraith is a weight on my neck. The Reaper drags a trail of blood. It’s dying, I can tell. But it’s not dead yet. A raw, untamed power still beats off the thing. Its nostrils flare. It staggers towards me and my heart pumps. Then it stops. Inches from me. So close, I see my bent reflection in those black eyes sunk into its pink head.

Eyes that roll…and focus…beyond me. Slowly it dawns. It’s the others, over my shoulder, that it hungers after. Not me. It’s blind to me.

A drop of sweat runs down my spine. I feel it traverse every ridge of bone.

“NOW!” Malik yells. I drop to the ground like a lead anchor, just as we planned, and clamp my hands over my ears. Malik opens fire.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

My ears ring. The smoke hangs.

I take a step…and bump into hard flesh.

The Reaper. Dead.

36

The sword makes a chopping sound through the air and I focus on it, and the positioning of my feet, and the weight of the blade. The four of us are high above the graveyard of planes in the black-boulder mountains. It’s late in the day, my third straight day of training, and the moon has risen. We train where the atmosphere is thin, high on a flat spit of rock that juts out over the plain like a tongue. When the air is cool—early mornings and late evenings. We rest only to sleep, eat and drink.

And we begin again.

Every day we train and every night I’m inside the cage in my mind. That moment, standing alone with the Reaper, stays with me. It never lets go. We burnt the thing. We built a pyre and torched it, watched the black smoke rise.

It makes me stronger—remembering.