Dead Reign by T. A. Pratt Page A

“Marla.”
    “I see you got your fingers stitched up. Want me to cut them off again? It could be, like, our thing.”
    Mr. Death held up his hand and examined it. “Flesh is a convenience for me, Marla. You can’t hurt me. I’m a god. I’m Death.”
    “Oh, yeah? Which Death? Sammael? Ankou? The Morrigan? The Shinigami? Mot? Am I getting close? Or are you just some kind of generic Death? Crazy Pete’s Discount Death God, like that?”
    Ayres and the other man started to come in, and Rondeau said, “Ah, ah, hang back there, fellas. This gun’s loaded with a lot worse than buckshot.” They paused just behind the threshold.
    “Those are old names, some of them,” Mr. Death said. “I have answered to all of them. Everyone has a personal relationship with Death, Marla. Every culture sees me differently. Some as a savior. Some as a custodian. Some as a friend. Some as a monster.” He spread his hands. “I encompass all those attributes, and have been know to appear in many guises.”
    “Really? All I’ve seen so far is ‘smug’ and ‘overconfident.’” She nodded to Ayres. “So is he the real deal? You’re a necromancer, so I figure you’d know. Is that why you’re following him like a puppy?”
    “He is what he says.” Ayres was somber as always. “He is the Walking Death, the new god of the underworld.”
    Marla raised one eyebrow. Death looked annoyed. “New god? What, it’s an elected office now? He got three-fifths of the cemetery vote?”
    “Ah, the gods of death are, you might say, seasonal, or—”
    “Shut up, old man,” Death said wearily.
    “Ohhh,” Marla said. “The birth-death-rebirth thing? Like harvest gods and savior gods, shit like that? Out with the old and in with the new? The old god ages, and dies, and is replaced by new blood? So if I just wait long enough, you’ll croak, and get replaced by a new Death, who isn’t such an ass-wipe? So does the changing of the guard happen every winter or spring, or what?”
    “The seasons are long for my kind, Marla,” Death said. “Yet you still try my patience. I’ve come to ask you for the dagger.”
    “Oh, now you ask. How nice of you. Request denied. Piss off back to Tartarus. Eat dust or take a dip in the lake of fire or whatever it is you do there.”
    “You, too, will die someday, Marla Mason,” Death said. “You will enter my realm. Do you really want to be the sort of person I pay special attention to there?”
    “I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it. When I’m on your turf, we’ll see how it goes. But right now, you’re on my turf. And you’re not welcome.” She glanced at Pelham, who hefted one of the mason jars. “Neither are you, Ayres. Or you…who the hell are you anyway?”
    The stranger bowed. “John Wilkes Booth, ma’am.”
    Marla frowned. “The guy who killed
Lincoln
?” She looked at Ayres. “Ayres, you brought John Wilkes Booth back from the dead? I mean, I figured you’d disobey me and raise some corpse, but you raised the corpse of a racist presidential assassin?” She shook her head. “That’s fucked up, right there.”
    “Yes, well, there were circumstances,” Ayres began, and Booth was harrumphing something about Marla impugning his honor and how Lincoln was never
his
president, but Death cut them both off.
    “I came to offer you a deal, Marla. Give me the dagger peacefully, and I will leave your city.”
    “Because your daddy or granddaddy or whatever lost it in a card game with some sorcerer, is that why?” Marla said, drawing the dagger. “Because it used to belong to your family?” She held it up, letting the blade flash in the light, and watched Death focus on the weapon with all his attention. “That’s the rumor I heard anyway.”
    “All you need to know is that I want it,” Death said. “And that I am a god. Give it to me.”
    “You’re stupid for a god,” Rondeau said. “Can I shoot him?”
    “Give me the dagger, Marla, or I will take your city from you,”