And the graveyard held its breath

Everything was ready for the ritual.

The world was waiting for it, it seemed, wheezing out feeble gusts of wind, stirring the battlefield of dead leaves. The clouds were hiding tonight, letting the desolate, dead moon reflect ghostly, cold light onto the cemetery.

All there was, was a soft scraping sound, and the unwelcome interruption of life.

Hermes panted harshly, leaning on the spade. The vengeful moon glinted off his dark arms as he wiped his dusty face.

I peered over the edge. At the pale, sunken corpse lying in the earth.

It was strange. Funeral practices had come so far since my sister's death. If I didn't look carefully, the body in the grave could just be sleeping.

Movement rustled behind me, and I quickly turned to stop Angelo.

"Oh please," He whispered, voice torn. "Please, I just-"

"You do not want to see them like this," I told him firmly, keeping him away, my hands pushing on his rumpled tuxedo.

"Ahem?" Hermes held out a hand and I helped him out of the crater of earth we'd made.

"We startin' soon?" He asked, his accent slowly rumbling over each word.

"In a minute." I glanced at my watch. "First," I turned to Angelo, narrowing my eyes. "You're sure about this?"

"I've never-I'm sure." Angelo stared back painfully through puffy eyes. "I want you to bring her back, please."

Hermes and I exchanged a look, and I saw Hermes' dark gaze flick to the bait for a second.

"It's unpredictable," I said anyways, even though nothing would change Angelo's grief-fixed mind. "She might-"

"I don't care," Angelo hissed out, each word ripped from his lungs.

"They never do," Hermes muttered, murmuring a word and raising his hands.

Suddenly all the candles were lit. The graves were bathed in it, but no light touched the frozen features of our sunken corpse.

Angelo wiped furiously at his eyes, glaring at the hundreds of candles that now glowed with fire.

I breathed in and out, my eyes focused on the ticking clock on the ground. One minute to twelve.

Hermes was moving Angelo, herding him gently into a magic circle. "Do not leave this, understanding me?"

Leaves rustled with a warning wind. The voices didn't bother with threats anymore, they just cursed me softly.

Angelo nodded thickly, and Hermes clapped him encouragingly on the back before taking his place in another magic circle.

The voices tried again, reminding me of the cost of what I was about to do.

Hermes began chanting as the seconds slowly pulled us to twelve.

Looking Angelo straight in the eye, I stood over the girl Angelo had provided. His fraternal twin, Cecilia.

Angelo shivered, but set his jaw firmly, like the angel statue that glowered nobly behind him. I resisted the urge to puke.

If my sister was still alive, I wouldn't have risked her life for anything in the world.

I took a knee behind the prone but still breathing girl, pulling the knife from my pocket.

The clock was two seconds from 12.

I sliced the girl's throat; clean, and the rift appeared instantly.

The world darkened instantly with the Shade. The shorn autumn trees crackled with the sounds of rot and insects.

The angel statue made cracking sounds as it came to life.

In the whoosh of a thousand expired breaths, death appeared before me.

Its rotting flesh pulled back from obscenely grinning teeth, the rest of the face obscured by its cloak.

Cecilia bled out towards him, feebly twitching, and death hungered, waiting.

In the meantime, I crept closer to death, stained with Cecilia's blood.

I reached into death's long net, and scrounged for it.

Shona's soul hummed lightly at me, and I eased it slowly, holding my breath.

The angel statue had gotten off its pedestal, it was now ripping its way through graves.

I heard death's growls and watched as Cecilia gurgled out her final breath.

Something fell out of her as her eyes dimmed, a small butterfly fluttering up, towards death.

"Wait, no!" Angelo screamed as death swung out its butterfly net to catch it.

He stepped out of the circle, I swore.

I knew he wasn't ready!

Death made an inhuman screech and whirled around to me. It saw the butterfly in my hand and roared.

My heart thudded in my chest. Living souls weren't supposed to be in the Shade.

Death would kill us now.

I chanted magical spells as I moved away, staring down the looming figure of death.

Death didn't chant, it flung out a rotted, grey arm.

I frowned, looking around wildly.

Then I saw it, Shona. She was clawing her way up.

Death didn't let me watch in horror, and I dodged right as the shadow fell over me.

The marble angel swung down its sword where I had been standing, and marched towards me, lethal fury in every blow.

Hermes was shouting something, but I ignored him, frantically throwing curses at the marble.

It was ironic how a once lifeless graveyard had sprung to life in the Shade.

I heard the noise of hundreds of bodies suddenly springing up, relentlessly digging up from under the ground.

The sound was unbearable, and I shouted out another spell, freezing the angel.

Then I saw him, Angelo.

I also saw Hermes, fighting off a horde of broken, reanimated bodies.

"Goddamn-" I darted towards Hermes, blasting away the bodies.

He stood in front of Shona's incoherently mumbling corpse.

He shakily caressed her face, stared into her grey and unreal eyes.

Death stood over them, a terrifying parody of their wedding ceremony.

Shona's face changed suddenly. Something twisted back her lips in a mockery of a smile, but Angelo broke into a crazed, wet laugh at the sight.

She gently reached out for him. Angelo leaned into it, sobbing.

"Angelo, don't!" I cried out, abandoning Hermes for a second as I sprinted towards him, hand outstretched to let a spell fly.

Death spread out its hands.

Shona snapped Angelo's neck.

My eyes burned with tears, this was just-

For a moment the whole world jolted and went dark, and I slammed my face into the ground.

"Ah, ow." I gasped out, raising myself up on my forearms.

A cold hand was tightened around my ankle.

I yelped, and kicked off Cecilia's hand, scrambling away.

Hermes was crying out as the dead bit into him, gleefully, unstoppably trying to get just a feel of life.

"Hermes!" I got up and ran towards him, only for Cecilia to claw at my leg.

I kicked her fully in the face, shattering her nose.

"Hermes-I-" I ran, hard, but the wizard had disappeared under the swarm of the dead.

"Oh god, no!" My lungs burned, legs ached, I whipped out panickedly, staring at the gathered dead.

Suddenly I was choking as inhumanly large fingers closed around my throat.

"Please-no-" I choked, kicking helplessly in the air.

Death stared at me unseeingly.

"I was just-trying-to-to help him-" I clawed at its hand, gasping wildly.

Death screeched something.

My mind flashed to my sister's face. Her burned body. My inability to even try to bring-

"Please-" Fire was burning up my throat, important things were breaking, things that couldn't be fixed.

"You have stolen from me, little witch." Death declared, and I fought to breathe. Anything, any little drop of air. "So eager to steal from me? My collection will benefit greatly from your butterfly."

Nothing remained in my head but breathe.

"The debt is paid." It hissed, and I cried immediate, desperate tears, scratching at my bruised neck.

Death released me, dropping me to the ground.

Air had never tasted so painfully, throbbingly good.

I stared around in shock at my surroundings, the frozen angel, the dead staring back at me.

Hermes' broken body lay nearby, unseeing and dulled. Angelo's twisted corpse was next to Shona's unmoving corpse.

"Hermes-" I croaked out, my voice unrecognizable and shattered, like the scrape of ice on ice.

I stood up suddenly, and felt lighter.

My body stayed on the ground, unseeing and wretched.

My ruined throat cut off my scream, and I realized the Shade hadn't lifted from the world.

"And it never will." Death hissed gleefully, admiring a trapped, fluttering butterfly in its fingers. "Welcome to the Shade."

I screamed a deafening, nonexistent screech. I was one of the dead.