O Death ⇉ Paul Lahote

sixteen

When Heidi's eyes finally opened, tears falling down her cheeks as she slowly rolled over onto her side. She looked at her wrists and ankles, noticing the dark marks in both places. She wasn't entirely sure how they got there but they ached a little as she looked around the empty room. She wasn't sure where Paul was, but she had a feeling he wasn't too far away.

Heidi slowly walked through her empty room, towards the door, walking out of it to see Paul directly in front of her. Feeling as if her heart was about to explode out of her chest, she ran towards him, her hands instantly resting on his forearms before moving up to his face and resting on his cheeks. "It's me, she's gone. She's gone, Paul."

Tears fell from both of their eyes as they tightly embraced one another and held each other for several minutes, refusing to let go, almost afraid that if they did – one of them would disappear and it would be back into the nightmare they had just survived.

After everything they'd been through – one of the first things the pair did was get out of La Push. They stayed in Alaska for a few months to recover and have some much needed alone time and somewhere in those months, they fell in love.

Heidi and Paul went on to have four children, three sons and a daughter; Isaac, Jeremy, Christian and Amelia.

The death curse never returned to Heidi and she was finally able to live her life to how she wanted to, but she did have to live with constant reminders of what Ereshkigal did while in her body, but she did have Paul with her to remind her that she was good, and she was okay.

Heidi tried to make contact with her parents once after the curse had been lifted but she never got a reply, and when her children asked about her parents and if they could ever meet them; their mother would simply say that her parents were somewhere happy and perhaps one day, they'd all be able to be together.

Twenty years down the line, Heidi and Paul had settled down in Anoka, Nebraska. With wide open spaces and fields that went on for miles, it was everything they'd wanted. It gave them the sense of peace they had back in Alaska all those years ago and both felt it was the perfect place to raise their children.

Basking in the sunlight of her backyard, Heidi felt a chill she hadn't felt in twenty years. Without turning around, she spoke up. "It was always going to end like this, wasn't it?"

Behind her was Ereshkigal, completely unharmed by all the things she had been put through while being purged from Heidi's body. Walking slowly to stand beside Heidi, she brushed a piece of hair away from her face. "Yes, child. Nobody ever gets out of this bond alive."

Heidi nodded, her eyes watering as her bottom lip quivered. "Please don't take my children, Ereshkigal. I'm begging you. Whatever happens here, you leave my children." At the mention of her children, a tear finally made its way down Heidi's cheek – if anything happened to them, she could never live with herself.

This was her sacrifice to make, not theirs.

Ereshkigal almost gave her a look of sympathy as she brushed away Heidi's tear with a finger. "Your children will not be harmed, Heidi. That I can promise you." With her other hand, she began to create a darkness around both of them, the smoke-like substance surrounding both of them.

Heidi nodded and closed her eyes, allowing the darkness to engulf her as Ereshkigal smirked. After all this time, she always won.

Once Heidi had been consumed, her five year old daughter came rushing out of the house, looking for her mother. Amelia stopped in a heartbeat when she saw Ereshkigal standing in her backyard.

Ereshkigal quickly noticed the child and gave her a small smile, winking as she placed a finger over her mouth and made a shushing noise before disappearing – never to be seen again by the Lahote family.

When asked where her mother went by her father, all Amelia could say was that she was in another place and she didn't know exactly where her mother went.

Nor did anyone else, it was almost she just vanished into thin air.

Ten years to the day after her mother's disappearance, Amelia awoke to a dark figure at the end of her bed, smiling at her with glowing eyes and she instantly recognised the figure as the same one who had taken her mother all those years ago.

"Are you ready to follow in your mother's footsteps, Amelia? She's been waiting for you since the day you were born."

Note

And we finally finished O Death – only took me two years and three months but we got there eventually. Sorry this final chapter wasn't as long as I would've liked it to have been but honestly, I just wanted to get it done as quickly as possible.

Sadly, there won't be a sequel to this story – once this story is done, it's done.

Thank you all so much for all the love and support you've given me for this story, it means the world to me.