The Curse of Tenth Grave

Thus, it wasn’t so much that we had to send Beep away to be safe. It was more that we had to send her away from me to be safe. Her mother. Her matriarch. The woman who bore her. At the bottom of a well, no less. Long story. So the torment of heartbreak I felt was a constant weight on my chest and, unfortunately, my mood.

Second, in an attempt to restore my memories, my departed father crossed through me. When people cross, their lives flash in my mind. When my father crossed, I was flooded with memories of myself through his eyes. I saw the love he felt every time he looked at my sister and me. I felt the pride that swelled his heart to twice its normal size. But as wonderful and surreal and life affirming as all that was, I’d still lost him. He was now safely tucked on the other side of this dimension, a realm to which I had no access. None that I knew of, anyway.

But his crossing was only the predecessor of the second reason for my melancholy state. When my father’s life flashed in my mind, he also made sure I saw what he’d learned since he died. In an instant, I learned secrets of an underworld I never knew existed. Spies and traitors. Anarchists and heretics. Alliances lost and nations won. And wars. A thousand wars that spanned a million years. But the most salient thing he wanted me to see was the fact that Reyes—my husband, my soul mate, and Beep’s father—was a god as well.

A god.

But not just any god. He was one of the three gods of Uzan. Three brothers who knew only death and destruction. Who devoured millions. Who ate worlds like others ate corn chips. Worse, he was considered the most dangerous of the three, the most bloodthirsty, before Satan tricked him, trapped him, and used the god’s energy to create his son, Rey’aziel. Otherwise known as Reyes Alexander Farrow.

So my husband was a god—an evil god—who’d destroyed worlds and obliterated life wherever he went. Who was known across a thousand dimensions as the Razer. And I was married to him.

But there was still so much I didn’t understand. I’d had no idea I was a god. Not really. Not until I learned my celestial name. When that happened, all the memories I had as a god came rushing back to me. I wasn’t supposed to learn my celestial name until my earthly body passed. Until I died and took up my reapery duties. But an unfortunate series of events forced a friend to whisper my name into my ear. Now I had the power of creation itself at my fingertips and only an inkling of what to do with it or how to control it, a fact that set Jehovah, the God of this dimension, a little on edge. This according to His archangel Michael.

Michael and I don’t really get along. He tried to kill me once. I refuse to be friends with anyone who’s tried to kill me.

But Reyes has heard his celestial name. He’s even met the other two brothers. Was lent out by his father to fight with them side by side during a particularly nasty war between two realms. Does he know he is a god? Does he know the most important ingredient his father used while creating him, the one that made him so powerful, was a god? Even if he doesn’t, how much of the god Razer controls Reyes’s actions? How much of him is god? Demon? Human?

In a nutshell, is he good or evil?

All evidence would point to the latter. It was hardly his fault. He was forged in the fires of sin and damnation. Did that affect him? Did the evil that forever burned in his home dimension leach into him as he grew up? As he fought to survive the cruelties of being raised in hell by a bitter fallen angel? As he rose through the ranks to become a general in his father’s army? To command legions of demons? To lead them into war and sacrifice?

After all this time, after everything we have been through, I thought I knew my husband. Now I wasn’t so sure.

One thing I was sure of was the fact that I needed to learn his true godly name. It couldn’t be Razer. That term had to be an interpretation of his true name. Or perhaps a nickname. If I knew Reyes’s godly name, I could do what Satan did. I could trap him, if need be, in the god glass I kept with me always.

I shifted back onto this plane, patted the pendant in my sweats pocket, and turned to the girl beside me. The one who clearly had no intention of leaving.

After forcing my biggest and brightest fake smile, the one made of irritation and paint remover, I asked, “Why don’t you have Rocket read it to you?”

Rocket was a mutual friend who’d died in a mental asylum in the fifties. He was also a savant who knew that names of every human being on Earth who’d lived and died. Ever. Strawberry crashed with him and his sister, Blue, though I’m not sure the departed actually sleep. I hadn’t seen Rocket in weeks, and his place was first on my list of places to hit for the day, now that my one and only case was almost over.

Strawberry crossed her arms over her chest. “He can’t read it to me.”

“Why not?”

I was expecting her to say, “Because he’s dead, and he can’t turn the pages.” What I got was, “Because he can’t read.”

I finally leveled a semi-interested gaze on her. “What do you mean, ‘he can’t read’? He writes the names of the departed all over the walls.”

That was his main gig. Rocket scratched thousands and thousands of names into the walls of the abandoned asylum, all day, every day. It was fascinating to watch. For about five minutes, at which point my ADHD kicked in, and I’d suddenly have places to be and people to see.

She rolled her eyes. “Of course he can write names. Duh. It’s his job. Doesn’t mean he can read them.”

That made about as much sense as reality TV.

“They aren’t there for him to read, anyway,” she added as she picked at the sleeve of my T-shirt that read MY BRAIN HAS TOO MANY TABS OPEN. “They’re for her.”

As intrigued as I should’ve been, intrigue was not as intriguing as one might imagine at six o’clock in the morning. Especially after pulling an all-nighter. I took another sip. Studied the steam rising out of the cup like a lover. Wondered if I should use my powers over the next twenty-four hours for good or evil. Evil would be more fun.

Finally, with the patience of a saint on Xanax, I asked, “For who, hon?”

Her large irises bounced back to mine. “For who what?”

I shifted toward her. “What?”

“What?”

“What did you say?”

“For who what?”

I fought the urge to grind my teeth into dust and asked, “If not for Rocket, for who—whom—are they written?”