Embrace of the Sandman, page 1
Embrace of the Sandman
Death Is Not The End
Ellis Leigh
Embrace of the Sandman
Copyright © 2022 by Ellis Leigh
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EBook ISBN: 978-1-954702-40-0
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-954702-41-7
Large Print Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-954702-42-4
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
Edited by Silently Correcting Your Grammar, LLC
Cover by Stefanie Saw at Seventh Star Art
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For inquiries contact ellis@ellisleigh.com
For all the readers
who understand what true loss is…
Embrace of the Sandman
My death wasn’t right.
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It wasn’t fair or just. My murder was a punishment I hadn’t deserved, and killing me affected my fated mate much worse than anyone could have expected. I am allowed to continue in the land of the dead, not living but not gone, while he lives a half-life. A lonely one, empty of love. I see him. I watch him. I know he misses me every day.
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I miss him too.
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So much.
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Enough to defy Death himself…and find a way to reunite with my mate.
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His friends call him Sandman. I call him mine.
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Chapter 1
The Glimpse
One lesson I had learned since being murdered was that Death was not a beast to be trifled with. The being always had been and always would be sitting between the land of the living and the various afterlives afforded to those who made it past him. And most made it past him. He wasn’t an evil overlord or some sort of demon devouring every being he came across. Death didn’t steal souls; he simply took advantage of those who became confused along the way. Who perhaps weren’t quite ready to say goodbye and lingered a bit too long on his turf. He was far more opportunistic than evil.
Though, occasionally he made an example of the ones he felt deserved the nothingness—the utter and total finality—his appetite afforded them.
Death primarily fed himself on convenience, assisted by the creatures he worked with—the Grim Reaper, Hypnos, and the Keres sisters. I had been assigned the position of Keres when I’d passed over, lingering far too long in the land between. Death had apparently seen something in my soul that better served him than fed him. I had done my duty with him for a century and a half, bringing him lost souls and those refusing to move into the afterlife. Corralling the ones who deserved a true ending. I had fed the beast well.
But even a Keres sister needed a break.
My paws slammed onto the trail through the woods, my claws digging into the dirt with each landing. Propelling my body forward as the wolf who lived inside me followed the pull only she could feel. The one taking us to where we wanted to be. Or at least, as far as I could go without figuring out a way to cross back over into the living realm. Into the world I still missed every single day. The one so very different from where I now resided.
The forests in the land of the dead were nothing like the ones I had lived my life in. The only similarities were tall trees and soft ground beneath my paws as I ran. The old woods—the ones from when I had been alive—had been filled with sounds of life and colors so vibrant, a single patch of flowers could have distracted me for hours. The woods I had run thorough since my death were all gray and dull, the colors flat or lacking. The scents rising from the earth filled with rot and decay instead of life. Everything dead. Everything empty.
The Grim Reaper’s lover had called this place the Reversed because of how the colors seemed backward. How the sky glowed but in an odd, dark sort of way. How the smoke rose from the living things as if Death himself were slowly tearing us apart. A fitting description and a likely possibility.
But one of the things about the Reversed that worked in my favor was the ability to see what the living were up to. Not all of them—not even most of them. We waited to be called on to deal with souls trapped between the living and the afterlife, so it wasn’t as if visages of the living going about their daily tasks filled the Reversed. If you truly wanted to see someone, if there was a living person you had a connection to, you could watch them, though. If you knew where they were in the living realm, you could see.
Thankfully, I knew where the person I wanted to check in on resided.
It didn’t take more than half a day for me to arrive at the proper location, to be pulled by Fate to where my soul felt she was needed. Still in wolf form, I slowed to a walk and then a predator’s creep as I grew closer to my quarry. As I tried and failed to place the sounds coming from up ahead. Whoosh-thwak. Whoosh-thwak. The strange noises were strong and loud, obviously coming from outside of any structure that would have muffled them. That meant my target would be out in the open. Ready to be seen. Soon. Just a few more steps. I trembled with anticipation, wanting so much to run and jump at him. To announce my presence and see the man smile my way. To feel the joy of reuniting with him.
Impossible, but I couldn’t stop the desire from building.
I crept from around a stand of trees and nearly whimpered at the sight before me. The man I had been seeking, the one I had run such a long distance for, stood outside a small, boxy house with an ax in his hands. That had been the sound—the whoosh of the ax swinging through the air and the thwack of it hitting the chunks of wood he had been splitting. He stood in all his glory, shirtless and strong as ever, chopping pieces of wood smaller and smaller.
Memories slammed into me as I watched him, moments from my time in the living realm I usually kept locked away because they hurt too much to think about while living my non-life. That same man as a boy, running through the woods with me. Swimming in the river that ran through the parklands. Both of us young and silly and such good friends. He’d taught me how to survive the wilderness on our first camping trip together, had helped the younger humans in our group learn the importance of fire when living in the wild. I remembered the beginning of our lives together, and while the pain of all I had lost still came, the memories seemed worth it with him so close to me. They seemed necessary.
I settled in to watch and let my mind wander back to the before. To first hand-holding moments and stolen kisses. To hours spent under the sun in fields of wild flowers. To the happiness and comfort only he could have provided me. To the joy I had once known.
Whether minutes or hours later, not long after the man had headed inside the little house, the sound of a car pulling up drew my attention and brought me back to the present. Such an odd thing to hear—I hadn’t seen a vehicle that wasn’t about to crash since I’d died and ended up in this realm. But the car didn’t crash. It came rolling to a stop on the driveway instead. My vision into the living realm seemed clearer than usual, so I paid attention. I even slunk closer, unable to ease my curiosity, a feeling of familiarity making my instincts slip into defensive mode. Two people stepped out of the vehicle as I watched, a man and a woman. Both unremarkable and yet worrisome. I watched as they climbed the porch steps and walked to the door. As they knocked. As the door swung inward and the man I’d come to see appeared.
The vision of him—no shirt, jeans slung low on his hips, barefoot—caused more memories to infiltrate my mind. Clips of the two of us together with him dressed like that. Of how warm all that exposed skin would be. Of how he would tug me into his arms and—
I whimpered, but thankfully, no one else heard the pitiful sound.
“Corbinan,” the woman said, addressing the man in the door. My hackles rose, both at how familiar she seemed to me even though I couldn’t remember from where, and at the use of his full name. He didn’t like people calling him that. Never had. He much preferred his nickname. “It’s so good to see you.”
The man—Corbin—crossed one ankle over the other and leaned a shoulder against the doorframe, blocking their entrance. The epitome of nonchalant.
“You’re wasting your time.”
His tone sent a chill up my spine, the venom dripping from every word sparking something inside my mind. Something forgotten but dangerous. I inched closer. Needing to see. Wishing so much to run up onto that porch and stand between them.
The woman smiled, the expression turning my stomach and stoking a rage within me that I remembered but couldn’t place the root cause of. I had been gone too long, had been in the realm of the dead for too many years to count. My memories of my life before—of anything not having to do with Corbin—had eroded. I didn’t remember her, but I knew she did not have good intentions.
“We want you to come home,” she said, a fake, overly sweet tone in her voice that had me on high alert. Had me concerned for Corbin’s well-being. “It’s been so long—”
“One hundred forty-seven years, eight months, and twelve days.”
The woman jerked back, her smile falling. “What?”
“You sai
More memories, ones I’d tucked deep down in my mind, flooded back. The pack, the day Corbin was forced to fight for me, the five women showing up to our little cabin in the woods. The pain that came as four of them piled on me. I had been dead a long time and had taken joy in watching the end of those four women’s lives over the years. I had stood back and allowed my Keres sister to exact my revenge one by one so they would never find their peace in the afterlife.
The last one stood at the door not twenty feet away from me. The fifth woman who had come to enact my death on that day so very long ago. The ringleader. Memories bubbled up, becoming more solid. Twisting my gut and filling my empty form with rage. She had been the pack Alpha’s chosen mate, not fated like Corbin and I had been. When the Alpha had put a claim on me—had told Corbin he had a right and a responsibility to take me to his bed—my sweet man had fought for me. Her jealousy had boiled over, and while Corbin had been defending me, she’d come to take me out of the equation to keep her position of power.
I remembered.
And I was ready for her to die for what she had done.
Without thought or planning, I rushed forward, teeth bared and growl rumbling through the quiet woods. I jumped over the railing and landed a mere two feet away from my quarry. I didn’t stop, though. I let my momentum push me up and forward, reaching high. One leap, opening my mouth to take her head with me. One bite was all it would take, so I slammed my jaws closed…
But I didn’t connect with my prey.
I blasted right through her form, gaining not a single response from any of the living people on the porch as I twisted in midair and fell to the ground. Instead of ending up on the other side of them, though, I found myself in what looked like a cave. No house, no porch, no people—just a new place that was dark, damp, and awful. I swung around, still growling, trying to regain my bearings. To figure out what had just happened and how I had been transported to such a place.
The answer came with a chuckle, Death’s own Hypnos practically being birthed by the shadows. Fitting for such a dark being.
“You know that’s not allowed.”
Such an arrogant bastard. I shifted to my human form, thankful in the afterlife that my shroud came with me so I did not have to stand naked before him.
“She deserves to die.”
“Your sister is gone, so if you want that woman dead, you’re going to have to do the dirty work. The right way—you can’t kill her like you would have in the living world.”
Guilt, heavy and dark, landed on my shoulders, and my stomach turned at the very idea of what I would have to do to seek my revenge. At the idea of stealing a soul from the living realm that wasn’t ready to cross over. It wasn’t something I had ever done. I collected and moved souls; I didn’t snatch them.
“I don’t think I can.”
Hypnos huffed an irritated sound. “You and Grim—both so weak. Our job is to kill—”
“Our job is to assist people moving from the plane of the living to that of the dead.”
“And occasionally devour their souls to feed our own.” He stepped closer, crowding me, lowering his voice but making sure I heard him loud and clear. “You may have always seen yourself as above the other Keres sister because she was so much more violent and aggressive with her feeding, but you do the same thing.”
“I don’t enjoy it.”
“But you still do it.” He took a step back and sighed, picking at his nails as if bored. “Tell you what. I’ll help you if you help me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll take care of the woman for you—you help me figure out how to kill my witch so she can join me here.”
His witch. The one from Mackinac Island. The young woman he had become obsessed with. The one related to Grim’s dead witch lover.
Hypnos was playing a dangerous game with that one.
“I won’t kill for you,” I said, knowing nothing good would come from going up against witches. Especially not Grim’s witch and her family. Those were powerful beings.
Hypnos didn’t like my response. “Then I guess you’re on your own. But know that I’ll be watching you.”
With a flick of his wrist, I went tumbling backward through a darkness I had never experienced before. Within seconds, I had landed almost right back where I’d started. I spilled out of Hypnos’s weird time and space tunnel onto the grass in front of the house. The daylight no longer brightened the forest, night and shadows reigning instead. I looked around, breathing hard as the reality that Hypnos had somehow moved me to a different realm within the land of the dead making my head spin, the changes around me not helping matters.
Everything looked different.
I saw no sign of the woman, no sign of my mate either. The house wasn’t silent as if he had retired to sleep, though. It sat empty and almost…dead. All signs of life had been whisked away. There was no ax, no pile of logs, and no remnants of sawdust near Corbin’s wood-cutting stump. No cars in the driveway, no lights on inside. I had no idea what day it was, how many hours or weeks I’d spent in that little hellscape with Hypnos, but understanding the passing of time would not change the end result. My mate had disappeared.
Chapter 2
The Threat
While time in the land of the dead passed much differently than it did in the living realm, it still mattered. Still carried a weight and a sense of importance as it flowed around us. It took me an exorbitant amount of time to find Corbin after I’d lost him at the forest house. Far too many days and nights spent hunting my realm for signs of him, howling up to the moon to ask for her assistance.
Once again, the fated connection between Corbin and me directed me westward across the United States, leading me by our bond until I made it to a little valley in the Carson Range just outside of Reno, Nevada. Why Corbin had chosen the region, I had no idea, but from the first moment I once again laid eyes on him, from the second I saw the little log cabin in the woods so much like the one we had lived in before my death, I felt at home.
The man had found a place to stay that reminded him of our life together.
I couldn’t stay all the time—I did have work to do for Death—but I enjoyed my time curled up in the woods. Spent as much time as possible keeping watch over him. Observing Corbin living his life was something I did well. Whenever I found myself near Reno, I kept my eyes on him and his home in the forest. And while I watched, I did my best not to whimper or cry. Oh, how I missed him. But his life seemed comfortable, almost joyous at times. He deserved that.
Watching him also made me realize just how much he’d grown since my death. He was so much more adult. Even with seventy years under our belts as a mated couple before my murder, we had still been kids in a lot of ways. He wasn’t a kid anymore. Corbin carried an air about him, one of danger. Of power. He rode a motorcycle around town—something he’d started after my death—which only fed into that sense of danger. Only amplified the grown man aspects of him. The don’t fuck with me vibe he gave off.
All signs of the youthful boy with the sweet smile who had brought me wild flowers every week just to see my eyes light up were gone. I missed him, but I had to admit, this rougher, tougher version of Corbin appealed.
After a particularly gruesome and long soul retrieval for Death that had taken me halfway around the world, I hurried back to the small pocket of happiness outside Reno. Lost in my memories of my life before, I crested a hilltop and spotted the little cabin and the man I couldn’t seem to move on from sitting outside. I nearly sighed at the vision, knowing he’d remained safe while I’d handled business for Death. He’d lived his life while I’d been sent to do the job that kept me living this odd non-life. That kept him in my world.
