by Rhea Watson
But we looked the part, each sporting the same uniform as the other males: jeans and a button-up, all in dark, muted colors. Hazel, meanwhile, stood out like a fucking beacon. Swirling my cocktail in the plastic cup, I scanned the crowd slowly, taking in the array of colors and sizes, textures of female hair and expressions on the males’ faces, until I found her and Declan.
Neither knew what the fuck they were doing on the dance floor, but when the humans jumped and threw their arms up, so did they.
It was rather endearing, actually. This was Hazel’s first experience with a modern-day nightclub, same as us, and she appeared to be having a good time. Cheeks flushed a light bronze, her eyes glittered like starlight beneath the club lights, her white waves wild and free. Each bounce unleashed a cloud of her scent, hitting all three of us hard despite the maelstrom of other smells in the windowless space.
And that dress. Ruby red, sleeveless, to her midthighs. Skintight and slinky, every curve on display. The neckline arched delicately over her ample cleavage, her breasts propped up tonight as if to fit in with the other females. Hazel needn’t try to look like anything or anyone but herself; my body responded just as eagerly to her in shapeless reaper robes as it did for that dress.
Speaking of eager… Desire throbbed through our pack bond when she flipped her hair, then spun in place, laughing freely, head thrown back in wild abandon. My cock stiffened, and I adjusted it as discreetly as I could in the darkness, not needing the entire club to know I had a raging hard-on.
Declan coiled an arm around her waist, dragging her flush against him so that his mouth found her neck. She arched into him, her fingers trailing through his hair before she spun out, cautious as always not to show one of us more physical affection than the other. A smirk tugged at my mouth, and I downed the rest of my drink. She needn’t worry about such things; I could watch Declan fuck her, right here, right now, without an ounce of jealousy.
Well. Maybe a bit. Because I’d want to be in the thick of it with them.
But a pulse of possessive annoyance thrummed through our bond when another male wandered too close to her, sidling up behind Hazel like he was about to grab her. Declan moved in before I could, locking eyes with the human briefly over Hazel’s head. Ten seconds of unbroken eye contact had the male backing off—all without the reaper noticing.
Good. Looking like that, so damn scrumptious, positively delectable, Hazel would attract the attention of every hungry male present.
But she was ours.
Although I had no interest in jumping around the mass of sweaty humans, Hazel’s smile was just too beautiful to ignore. I sauntered forward, eyes locked on her, eager to nibble down her throat just as Declan had—
Until I felt it.
A breath on the back of my neck.
I stiffened.
Desire gave way to heightened vigilance, and I whirled around, searching for the source with a keen eye and flared nostrils, finding nothing but the brick wall and a few cobwebs rustling in the corner beneath a speaker. An air vent broke up the red pattern, metallic and dark grey—a possible source for the rush of air, only this had felt purposeful. If I hadn’t felt that vent’s breath before, why now?
Tossing my plastic cup aside, I rotated slowly in place, studying the club with more intention than I had previously. Eyes pierced me from all sides; someone was watching.
But who?
Humans filled the space to bursting, and they were all looking for something. Another human. A drink. A distraction. The odd one glanced my way occasionally, but their quick scan was nothing compared to what burned into me now. I stopped on my third cautious circle, every sense on fire, and glared at the brickwork.
Nothing.
Nothing but a good seven feet of empty space between me and the wall, the vent, the speaker, the shivering cobwebs…
Without a care for who might see me, I crossed between realms, leaving the mortal behind for the celestial.
And came face-to-face with a bloody man.
Our noses mere inches apart.
Both our eyes widened. Surprise punctuated the sudden meeting, replaced swiftly by adrenaline, the urge to fight hitting me for the first time—ever. Hellhounds in the past had always thrown the first metaphorical punch, but as I stared into the green eyes of a man, this thing who wore the flesh of a human covered in bloody symbols, I pulsated with aggression.
I wanted to rip him apart.
Because how likely was it that there were two such creatures afoot?
A shock of inky-black hair sat neatly styled atop his head. A strong jaw. Pale skin—probably from blood loss. Anemic, lean, slim, his body reminiscent of human fashion models. Half the bloody runes on his angular face appeared to be scarred over, carved into him long before tonight. One just below his left eye seeped red, fresh and angry.
Was this the thing Hazel and Knox had seen?
The wretch Hazel had fretted over for days, fearing for the soul he’d stolen away while we had all worked so diligently to save them?
I cocked my head to the side, the obnoxious music muffled on the celestial plane, the tangled scents of humanity dulled.
“Tell me, creature,” I crooned, my thin smile making him gulp. “How fast can you run?”
Because I can run much, much faster.
The threat hit home, forcing a few choked stammers out of him. Every inch of exposed skin bore the brunt of his blood magic, yet he appeared well-dressed and modern in a fitted blue suit. The tip of a neatly folded checkered kerchief stuck out his breast pocket.
A beast of this world, then.
I lunged. He staggered back into the wall—and clear through it. An enormous red symbol illuminated the moment he made contact, painted onto the brick, a cluster of distinct sigils encased in a massive circle. It swallowed him whole, the brick suddenly fluid and flexible, but then firm to my tentative touch. Bloody. Red stained my fingertip when I pulled it back to inspect, the scent metallic enough to make my mouth water, to compound the battle-lust inside.
The air sizzled with a strange buzz, unfamiliar even with my extensive experience on the celestial plane. Unsettling, this new sensation.
Highly unwelcome.
Fury suddenly raged through our pack bond.
“Was it him?”
Only Knox could produce something so profound through our connection, something that could cut me off at the knees and divvy me up into little pieces. I shrank instinctively as he approached, striding through the celestial plane as the nightlife carried on without us. Distantly, I spotted Declan and Hazel; my packmate’s anxiety hitched, intermingling with Knox’s wrath, and an uneasy look flashed across his face. Hazel, meanwhile, appeared totally oblivious, her expression jubilant, joyful, dancing her little heart out.
“Not knowing precisely what he looked like to you, I believe so,” I remarked with a nod to the bloody symbols on the wall. Knox took it all in hurriedly, a lone, fat ice cube jostling around his glass tumbler of scotch.
“Demon?”
“Hard to tell.” Having stared into the eyes of many a demon, I should have known in an instant. Instead, indecision percolated around my skull. That angular face reappeared in my mind’s eye, clear as day, the bloody carvings slightly muddled, and I plucked at minute details, highlighting them, emphasizing them. I did it frequently with memory work—usually it made things clearer. Not this time. “He… He had no scent.”
“Yes.” Knox sniffed at the artwork, scowling. “What I thought as well. No ash. No hellfire. No blood—save what was leaking out of him. Not black either.”
“Agreed.”
A confident swipe of his fingers through the exterior circle broke the barrier, any lingering magic rendered useless. “Human blood again.”
“I don’t think he was human.”
“No. They’ve no access to the plane.”
“Not many do.”
“Gods do—”
“And they bleed gold like angels.”
Knox grun
ted in agreement, then stepped back to stand alongside me, the pair of us examining the symbology in silence. Frustration gnawed at me; I so despised not having an immediate answer for any and every problem we faced. Most of all, I loathed not being able to steer my alpha in the right direction. He looked to me for guidance, for confirmation that his decisions were the right ones—the best ones available. Here, we were equally at a loss.
And, frankly, that pissed me the fuck off.
“It’s a portal,” I mused. Given our lengthy stint in Hell, I suspected Knox knew that as well as I, but sometimes working through problems aloud had its benefits. “Personalized to him, most likely. Even with the circle unbroken, it did nothing when I touched it.”
“Blood magic,” Knox muttered.
“As Hazel thought, yes.”
We both sought her out, turning and watching her dance with Declan. Right then and there, she appeared so ordinary. Well, not ordinary. Stunning. Magnificent. Beauty beyond compare. But without her scythe, her robes, her sullen demeanor, she seemed… young.
Free.
It was a good look for her.
Longing strummed through the bond, and I knew Knox shared my sentiment: she deserved to look like that more often.
“If he is a demon, perhaps he’s hiding his scent, his lineage, maybe even his blood through the carvings,” I said slowly, softly, working through it for myself as I went along, “and then we both know that when they get a taste for someone, they obsess.”
A muffled snarl echoed from my alpha, tip to tail, fire sparking in his dark gaze. “You think he has a taste for her?”
“Or you.” I shrugged. “Why else would he be here, watching us?”
Glaring, Knox shot back his whole drink, then tossed the glass aside. It collided with the brick, shattered on impact, shards raining down at the base of the useless portal.
But… why would a demon need a portal? They could access the celestial plane with the same ease as Knox and me—
“She goes nowhere alone,” Knox declared. When my eyebrows lifted incredulously, he cleared his throat, a whiff of uncertainty in our bond—hastily quashed by a hellhound who seldom questioned his own judgment. “For her own protection.”
“Ah. Yes.” I swallowed a grin. “Of course.”
“We don’t know what that thing is,” he carried on, for once unaware of my teasing, “but blood magic is old and foul… accursed. It could harm a reaper.”
This time I let my amusement shine, peering at his gruff profile with a smirk. “Unlikely. Reapers are quite indestructible, but until we get a firm answer on what he is, we should keep an eye on her.”
When my alpha finally tore his gaze away from Hazel, frowning, I offered him an innocent shrug and a hapless smile. “I suspect you will be wholly up to the task, Knox.”
He rolled his eyes at the implication. Declan and I had been cajoling him as subtly as we dared lately; we all felt one another’s desire for her, and no amount of glaring and brooding from Knox could make us ignore that. As a pack, the bond highlighted our deepest desires, our strongest impulses, our sharpest feelings.
He felt for her just as strongly as we did, perhaps even more as alpha.
If he didn’t, he would have offered Hazel up to that bloody lurking fuck in some ludicrously orchestrated scheme just to be rid of her.
Then, in her mysterious absence, oh, look at that… our freedom. What a funny coincidence.
Instead, his first thought was to guard her. Protect her. Like she was already our mate, all of us on the same page at last.
Not that I had a problem keeping a closer eye on the most beautiful woman in the entire fucking galaxy, but as a reaper, she was virtually untouchable, especially when her kind were said to heal like shifters. I hardly feared for her physical safety.
And yet, demons were expert torturers. One needn’t skin a victim alive to scar them for eternity. A few choice words, day in and day out, would do the trick.
As we crossed back into the human realm, sticking to the shadows to not draw attention to our sudden reappearance, I thought it best we told Hazel of the carved man’s celestial loitering tomorrow. After the dancing, the laughing, the drinks, the news would absolutely ruin her good mood. Tonight, she deserved a moment’s reprieve from a life of death and darkness.
“Come on,” I mused, nodding to the dance floor as Knox grimaced, like he already knew what I was about to say. “Let’s go not let her out of our sight, shall we?”
I then cuffed him by the sleeve and dragged him, quite literally, onto the dance floor, which, if Knox’s expression said anything, was akin to the foulest pits of Hell.
Until Hazel tumbled into him, a little off-balance in her heels.
And when he caught her, steadied her, Declan and I exchanged a knowing look: the end was near for our alpha, and if he just let himself, he was going to love it.
23
Hazel
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d danced.
It had to have been during the war—on a bit of downtime, someone with a radio, me and the other nurses in my unit whipping out a jitterbug, maybe even a jive. But since I’d come back, there had been no dancing for me. Rarely any laughter. Music came in passing, or when I had the odd moment to sink into my old records.
Tonight was brand-new for me, just like it was for them.
And as I hopped onto a barstool in the far corner of the underground club, perspiration on my brow and my thirteenth drink in hand, I couldn’t help but wonder why I hadn’t done this sooner.
Maybe because I hadn’t wanted to do it alone.
We never used to dance alone. Never. Always with a partner, something that had been painfully absent since my soul returned to reap.
At Sampson’s Corner, I had three.
Well, two willing partners and a hulking reluctant one.
My lips wrapped around the little red straw bobbing in my cocktail, and I slurped back a drink that tasted almost identical to apple pie. Sweet yet tart, with a dash of cinnamon and a hint of spice. Delicious. Thirteen deep and only now, after midnight had come and gone, was I starting to feel the tingly effects of alcohol. Tipsy. That was what one of the girls in the bathroom had said, how she described her level of inebriation.
I hadn’t been drunk since the war either. In fact, none of us were even sure a reaper could get drunk. Shortly after we had arrived at the nightclub, Declan suggested we give it a whirl—test my limits. Had tonight taken place two months ago, I would have staunchly refused, possibly even seen it as a ploy: get me drunk, toss me aside in a moment of weakness, then make a break for it.
But Declan matched my every drink with one of his, and slowly, as the hours sped by, his cheeks had become rosier, his gorgeous woodsy browns less and less focused, his moves on the dance floor less precise.
Not that said moves required much precision. It was an awful lot of bouncing around these days, screeching to mash-ups of popular songs. Those humans who did snag a partner danced far closer than we would have back in my time; some even looked like they were fornicating, grinding hips and writhing together, sweaty clothes the only thing keeping them from actual sex.
Gunnar had given these modern moves the odd try, but never with a straight face. His snark had suggested he couldn’t take any of it seriously, a notion I echoed even with all the booze circulating my system. He had five drinks to go before he caught up with me and Declan, and Knox…
Well, Knox was two ahead, favoring the club’s scotch selection, and yet somehow seemed the most sober. As the four of us settled into a corner, the hellhounds loitered around me and the humans gave us a wide berth on this side of the bar. Hardly surprising. While we dressed the part of clubgoers, Knox’s size alone was deterrent enough. Drunk men navigated the crowd of scantily clad women all night, but only two had had the courage to approach me.
Not that they ever got a word out, mind you.
One look from Knox had sent them scampering.
But none of
that mattered. Knox had been scowling at them tonight, not me. Declan had no qualms in looking like an absolute loon on the dance floor, shamelessly copying the humans around us. And Gunnar had been pleasant, quippy, always there to catch me should I teeter off-balance in shoes I usually shunned.
Tonight, in this basement, surrounded by so many humans it should have felt stifling, it was easy to forget. Forget the stress of training and the impending trials. Forget the shifting dynamics between me and the pack. Forget the bloody beast who had stolen a soul. Forget the fact that I hadn’t danced in ten long years, that I hadn’t smiled this much in just as long.
For the first time in a painfully long time, I could be present. I could enjoy the moment.
And if all the other drinks on the menu were this delicious, I could—maybe—get drunk. Then I might just forget everything—for a night, at least.
“Tequila time!” Declan announced in a singsong voice, wriggling between Gunnar and Knox and plopping four dangerously full shot glasses on the bar top. When his packmates offered him near-identical raised eyebrows, he shrugged and flashed us all an adorable smile. “I heard the humans say it on that show… The one where they travel and party—”
“Every reality show on that network, then?” Gunnar said with a slight roll of his eyes. I leaned in for an experimental sniff, confirming that the crystal-clear liquid in the glasses was, in fact, a very strong tequila.
“Where are the salt and lemon wedges?” I asked, certain that the bartender would have offered them. Halfway down the crowded bar, I caught one of the servers in all black sweeping quartered lemon wedges off the counter with a scowl. Declan, meanwhile, scratched at the back of his neck, briefly just a lost, tipsy little puppy.