Deathless

Chapter 1: Jackson

Death smells the same everywhere. Whether walking through the filth and rat-infested trenches in France during the First World War or the antiseptic and plastic halls of a modern hospital in England. It doesn't matter what's happening around it, however horrifying or benign, the underlying scent of death never changes.

I should know. I've been smelling it for over a hundred years.

Walking through the busy hospital, I make my way to the intensive care ward. I know this route. I've stalked these halls a thousand times and visited this room over a hundred. There's probably only a handful of hospitals in the entire world whose halls I haven't graced.

When I reach the small, private room, I quickly glance down at my phone. A couple of flirty texts from the curvy red-head I'd met last week, and a few more from my ex in accounting. Skimming and then quickly disregarding the messages, I shift my attention to the time. I have five minutes. I double-check that the Scythe app is active and slip into the room, safe in the knowledge that no one living can see me until I set it back to being inactive. The inside of these rooms are the same as always, the faint sounds of machines beeping, textured beige walls, and uncomfortable plastic chairs. Lying on the bed is the frail form of a woman. Her illness has stripped so much from her bones and flesh that she looks decades older than her years.

Her name is Eva Nightingale. I know, because it's my job to know.

In two of the three chairs that surround the bed, sitting silently, their eyes red and swollen from crying, are the two most important people in Eva's life. In one chair sits Roisin Gardner, a woman in her late thirties who has known Eva since they were gap-toothed toddlers. She sniffs and rubs the back of her hand across her face to collect her tears.

But it's the girl sitting next to her that my eyes linger on, that makes my chest feel compacted like a vice is squeezing my heart. I know who she is. I know her name's Millie and that she's Eva's daughter. Except for a moment, just a second, I think she's someone else. And I can't breathe. I know it's not her. I know because my first love died over a century ago. Still, I move to the chair on the other side of the bed, sitting opposite her. And I take her in. Deep chocolate brown hair falls around her shoulders in waves, her naturally creamy skin stripped off warmth by sadness and lack of sleep. She's about my age, or at least the age I appear to the world.

She's not Camille. She's not Camille. She's not Camille. I replay the words over in my head like a mantra. Until wave after wave of stirring memories darken and fade. Until the smell of ash and dirt, the feel of my limbs on fire, and the sight of a blackened husk of a church on the horizon, flatten back into the corners of my mind. Where such thoughts and memories belong.

My phone beeps and I know it's time. I'm yanked back into the present, into what I'm here to do, and clarity descends like a gift.

I look at the woman in the bed properly for the first time. Her hair is the same dark shade as her daughter's, but clipped tightly to her skull. Her skin is not so much pale but an absence of colour, the blue of her veins visible underneath translucent skin. Through lips that are dry and chapped, her breathing is rough and coarse.

Getting up from my seat, I move to stand above her. This close, I can't ignore the pain written across this woman's face; the time lost, a body ravaged, the dreams dashed. I feel the sadness of that, the weight of it as always, but I know why I'm here. What I need to do.

I check the countdown on the app. I have nearly ten seconds. I move my hand so my fingers are over her wrist, just above her pulse. The heart monitor slows down a fraction. The girl looks up, her beautiful leaf-green eyes turning wide. I feel an ache in my chest and sigh. When the app beeps, I place my fingers on the woman's cool skin. The heart monitor steadily slows down until it's just one long beep.