by Riley Archer
The Nightclub
Café Underground was an ultraviolet madhouse. I had built an image in my head of a discreet place tucked behind old stone with secret passwords spoken in hushed tones. A place where I could leisurely snap photos of its semi-sparse patrons.
But no. If there was a sneaky assault camera out there somewhere, that was what I needed. People piled through the door in hordes until a long line formed against the outer brick. I had no idea how I was supposed to keep track of all of them. Electronic dance music pulsed so hard that it rattled my brain and pulled on my heartbeat.
I’d hidden away in a conveniently placed bush, but I shouldn’t have bothered. If I’d splayed myself over a curb, I’d have fit in well enough. Not to mention a stabby branch was pressed against my butt cheek, and smaller ones were tangled in my hair.
If I didn’t hate Damian before, I sure hated him now.
My wrist cramped from holding up the burner phone, and I readjusted, taking care not to accidentally stop the video. It was nearly impossible to make out faces on the screen, but maybe Damian had some technically gifted pals who could assist him. My concern for the whole thing was wavering.
I’d changed into something more normal for the occasion—a simple white button-up and a pair of distressed jeans because my stealth ensemble was too painfully obvious—and it didn’t complement the chilly night. My body ached all over from limited movement, and my mind had dulled from boredom when a gorgeous face caught my eye. Not just any gorgeous face.
Otto’s. Twice in one day? I’d count myself lucky if it didn’t stink worse than microwaved fish.
He skipped the club’s line entirely. The bouncer nodded and let him in like he was a VIP—or at the very least, a welcome regular. I’d never pictured Otto as a big partier. I’d also never pictured him wearing tightly fitted pants with a soft V-neck T-shirt, but here we were.
Why would he be entering a club that was allegedly full of reaper hunters?
My patience was a fragile string, and it had been snipped. I dragged myself out of the back of the bush and earned several thin scrapes over my arms along the way.
I ruffled my hair and approached the bouncer with a hand in my back pocket, shielding Mr. Sparky, who was sandwiched between my jeans and the small of my back.
“Hi.” I batted my eyelashes.
It was a wasted effort; he didn’t bother to look at my face. His gaze veered much lower, and I followed it down to find the devious bush had undone several buttons. I was thankful my taste in bras was a tad more mature than my taste in socks, though a flame of irritation warmed my spine. I forced a grin, and the big dude moved aside to let me in.
“Thanks,” I said with false sweetness before I stepped behind him.
I was tempted to reach back and zap the perv. I was equally proud and disappointed that I hadn’t, but there were other things to worry about. Number one was the whereabouts of a Japanese American Grim Reaper, and number two was the location and identity of alleged reaper killers. Weird crowd if you asked me.
Humidity and the scents of aftershave and sweat hit me in full force. Fast music bounced off the walls, and I was certain I’d shortened the lifespan of my eardrums. Limbs were flailing, couples were canoodling, and curved VIP booths in the back were full and barricaded by golden poles and fuzzy red barriers—a fancy way of saying, You can’t sit with us. If those guys were the secret coven, they were worse than me at being covert.
The blacklight bar to the left had no available seats. I didn’t see Otto anywhere, but I saw a hallway in the vicinity of the rich-maybe-witch folk. When I got there, a girl with stick-straight platinum hair stopped me.
“Um, excuse me,” she said, one finger in the air. “You can’t go back there.”
Like hell I couldn’t. “You’re kidding! This isn’t the way to the restroom?”
“Uh, no.” She sank back down and sipped a rainbow drink with a curly straw. Her booth was a group of tame schmoozers.
I wondered if they thought it was fun to spend the night staring at a dance floor. I was close to judging them as I meandered away, but when a rowdy girl accidentally punched a loitering creep in the face when the song changed, I realized it wasn’t the worst way to spend a night.
Anyway, I needed to trick my body into thinking I was on assignment. Reaper Collective elevators parked in the thin dimensional layer compatible with passed spirits, which was why reapers were invisible to human eyes until we stepped into more grounded reality. It was easy to burst the dimensional bubble into the land of the living, but stepping behind it was another matter. If that part was simple, spirit elevators wouldn’t exist.
I leaned against a poster-covered wall and closed my eyes. Spirits, spirits, spirits, I inwardly hummed. Not the alcoholic kind.
I practiced the method I’d learned from Damian to reach into dimensional spaces. It was some controlled breathing hocus-pocus laced with stark determination. It took several minutes, but I felt the buoyant barrier; instead of reaching into it, I sidestepped into it like I was doing the cha-cha slide.
I recognized the slight gravity shift, the difference in pressure inside my head. I was in. Score. To test it out, I walked over to the spiky-haired bartender and yelled several atrocities. Neither he nor the thirsty fellows before him even flinched my way. I was smug; I could admit it.
I swaggered over to the elitist hallway. Before I stepped through it, a change in scenery flickered in my peripheral vision. A fuzzy but unmistakable shape of a spirit elevator filled a darkened corner. A logo was etched into the center—a framed diamond with embellished words arched around it.
I wouldn’t have been able to read it if I hadn’t obsessed over that very symbol, over the place it belonged to, for the past several years. There was no question. It said Black Diamond Gentlemen’s Club.
The club, and the person who had murdered me, was connected to reapers.
What were the chances that Otto—the first being I had seen after my death—had gone that way?
I had enough fire in my belly to convince myself I was a dragon. I took one marching step in the direction of the place I intended to use my destructive breath on when I was yanked backward.
If it was Ash, she wouldn’t escape my fist this time.
I didn’t get a chance to see who it was because they clamped my arms behind my back and thrust a bag over my head.
Then something hit me hard, and my world went black.
11
The Kidnapping
My brain throbbed, and my eyes burned. To top it off, it smelled like I was surrounded by mold and dirt. Cold dust filled my nostrils and clogged my throat. I couldn’t see through the dark burlap sack shoved over my face, so I closed my eyes and let my other senses work their magic.
Itchy rope bound my wrists together and my ankles too. Hushed voices murmured nearby. From the slight echo and the hard ground beneath me, it seemed I was in some kind of cement dome. And that musty death smell?
I had been goddamn kidnapped, and I was in a goddamn cemetery. My captors planned to kill me in a place where my corpse would fit right in. My pants were suspiciously loose, which meant Mr. Sparky was MIA. I was on my own. But maybe if I stayed quiet and figured out their plan, I could wiggle my way out of this. No, not maybe. I would get myself out of this. I was unexpectedly close to finding my original killer, and I planned to do it before I had a second one.
Stubbornness as firm as stone balled in my chest. At the same time, burlap tickled the tip of my nose. Oh no. I inhaled deeply to keep the sneeze in and repeated the word pineapple in my head. The dry walls of my throat contracted.
I sneezed and coughed at the same time. I might as well have just screamed, Look at me, killers. I’m awake!
Footsteps—definitely wearing boots; these reaper hunters meant business—thudded toward me. I was gonna look these losers in the face. I hurled myself to my knees and whipped my hair back, flinging the burlap sack from my head.
“Stop where you are!” I
shouted, staring down two surprisingly young criminals donning crimson robes.
They were definitely still in their teens. One boy and one girl, both with auburn hair. Maybe they saw themselves as Red Riding Hood twins, seeking vengeance on all supernatural beings. If so, they were living proof that fairy tales could be dangerous. They glanced at each other.
Between me and them was a skeleton resting on a raised stone altar, candles and crystals surrounding its bony contours. What a creepfest.
“Sarah, Jake,” a crackly voice said from behind them somewhere. These teeny-bopper gravediggers sure had run-of-the-mill names. “What’s going on?”
Sarah and Jake made way for a short, plump woman wearing deep purple wraps. Her face was covered by a goat skull mask, likely derived from a real carcass, but the skin I could see on her neck and hands was grayed and sickly. Stubby fingers with rotten nails gripped a shiny black staff.
“The reaper is up,” the one I guessed was Sarah said.
“You’re making a mistake,” my voice was clear. “I’m a Reaper Collective employee.”
“Are you, dear?” the goat lady crooned. “In that case, bring her here.”
Sarah and Jake looped their arms through my elbows and lifted me up. The brats were surprisingly strong.
“I’ll accept your apologies if you return my weapon, pronto.”
“Weapon?” Jake asked. “What weapon?”
We entered a stuffy room with stand-up gurneys. A six-foot-something figure, wearing burgundy robes and the goat skull that was all the rage down here, fiddled with the straps on one. Dark droplets speckled the thoroughly stained ground. Each breath in here carried a sharp coppery flavor that gave me visions of fear and blood. My heartbeat slowed to a faint pause, and in that tiny moment, it didn’t feel like I was surrounded by air but the exhales of a thousand suspended screams.
This was not just any torture chamber. Reapers had met their final end here.
Wow. If I wasn’t about to die, Damian would be so pleased I’d found his elusive coven. Well, when he didn’t hear from me again, he’d probably be pleased anyway.
“This weapon?” The plump death lady lifted Mr. Sparky from an antique desk covered in vials and multicolored stones. My burner phone was on there too.
“That’s the one,” I said with a lifted chin.
Sarah and Jake pushed me forward, and the tall figure caught me in a gaunt clutch.
“No!” I fought like a fish out of water.
The underlings rushed in to help. I managed to get a good knee into Sarah’s gut before I was plastered against the beaten backboard.
“Reaper Collective is looking for me,” I said, breathless. “They’ll rip this whole crypt apart.”
“No, I don’t think they will.” The lady cackled and handed the tall figure my taser. “They have their hands quite full. What does a low-ranking reaper really mean to them, hmm? But don’t worry, dear. You’ll serve a greater purpose one way or another.” She shuffled away, and her evil ducklings followed, leaving me alone with her mask twin.
She sounded way too smug. Reaper Collective had their hands full of Glitches, and she knew it. Did that mean this coven had something to do with the Glitch call? If so, then they weren’t just killing reapers; they were intentionally forcing souls to glitch. But for what purpose?
The dots were there. I just had to find a way to connect them.
I gasped when the masked figure jabbed my side with the taser. When he pressed the trigger, it felt like every cell in my body had stuck a fork in a wall socket. It sparked and jammed and left me shaking. If I were adequately hydrated, I would’ve wet myself.
I had a newfound respect for Damian. If I had been him in that warehouse stairwell after I lit his face, I’d have killed me.
Goat man was going to do it for him though. Each time the taser bit into a new piece of skin, I clenched my cheek so hard that it bled. My tongue locked between my teeth when a dagger’s sharp tip etched searing circles into my forearm. I wasn’t going to satisfy this sadist with my screams even though I couldn’t hold back the whimpers that crawled out of my throat. It felt like my insides had been singed and evaporated. A warm buzz filled my core and flowed out of me like it was leaving my pores—probably a side effect of being zapped like a mosquito and carved like a turkey.
When my traitorous toy sparked against my jugular, it was curtains.
I felt like a beaten noodle when my consciousness faded back in. My autonomy had all but left me; my eyes simply rolled behind their lids when I tried to open them, and my breath was shallow. I sagged against the straps of the gurney. Something with a modest weight hung from my neck.
Unbuckling. I was being unbuckled. Someone flipped me over their shoulder and carried me away. Am I being rescued?
No, I was being laid on the slab I’d last seen occupied by a skeleton.
The old witch had a note of excitement in her crackly voice. “We found the Daughter of Grim. Eleanor, call the High Priest. We must bind the power until he arrives.”
There were more people now. I could tell because at least six voices chanted around me in Latin or something. Whatever hung from my neck rested on my sternum, and as they chanted, it became heavier and colder. It soon felt like a block of dry ice was perched on my chest and causing a nasty rash of frostbite. It burned like a mother. It also felt like a monster had stuck a straw in my gut and was sucking out my energy. Maybe that skeleton hadn’t been dead very long after all. Maybe it had been another reaper turned into a Slurpee. If these jerks saved their big guns for whoever the Daughter of Grim was, I felt sorry for her.
I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. I was paralyzed against the slab, vocal cords and all.
The chants quieted a degree as if a few people had stepped away. The chants that remained became terser. Something was going on. Something—
The chanting stopped and made way for shouting. There were clangs and fizzles and the sound of rolling basketballs.
I pried my eyes open and saw Damian taking his Neo cosplay to a whole other level. He dodged spectral waves of red light that flowed from the witches’ hands. He swung his scythe around like it weighed nothing.
Torture victim or not, I needed to get the heck up and help save myself.
The source of my frozen chest was a pulsing crystal necklace; the crystal was the size of my fist. When I paused to inspect it, a goat-headed witch reached for me, and I rolled off the slab and smacked the ground. I landed next to a pile of bones. Freaking ouch. From above, a staff came down at me like a giant foot, and I lifted my carved-up forearm to protect myself.
But nothing struck.
The skeleton-turned-bone pile had become an assembled skeleton again. Ribbons of red light weaved around it, and it shielded me, blocking the staff with its ulnas.
Sheer surprise gave me enough adrenaline to scramble away. The witch who had reached for me was in a full-on fight with the skeleton now, and the red light that gave the skeleton movement was attached to the crystal hanging between my boobs. Were these mofos trying to possess me or what?
Oh well. I was in no place to question a lifesaving miracle. I hobbled toward Damian as best I could. The animated skeleton dismantled a fibula and was using it as a bat against the witch. Damian had beheaded all but the two young ginger witches. They currently cowered in each other’s arms with their heads held in place by the inner curve of Damian’s scythe.
I’d been there. They might have been evil little shits, but I still felt sorry for them. Sort of.
Damian used his movie interrogator voice. “What’s the purpose of your coven?”
Jake cried and shook his head.
Sarah sobbed, “We don’t know. We’re apprentices. They barely tell us anything.”
“Necromancers?” Damian asked.
Both kids nodded.
“Explains how useless they were without a bunch of corpses handy. What’s this coven’s name?”
“Daughter of Grim.” Sarah clenched her eye
s shut. “We’re known as the Daughter of Grim.”
Well, color me confused.
I dragged myself to Damian’s side. I propped my elbow on him for support, but I tried to make it look like we were partners. I did my best impression of interrogator Damian. “Who is your High Priest?”
Their eyes went wide in terror.
Jake’s Adam’s apple bobbled. “We wouldn’t know that! Only Guardians know that! We can barely raise a dead rat, and that’s when we’re working together.”
The protective skeleton closed in on us. It somehow ended up knocking out the witch, probably because it could reform itself after every blow. I decided I was gonna call it Bones. Cliché, but right on the nose.
Jake and Sarah refused to look at my new friend. For some inexplicable reason, their avoidance made me angry.
“I have a feeling you two aren’t telling us everything. And if you are, then it seems you don’t have anything of use left to tell us …”
Damian’s hand twitched on the handle of his scythe. He was either playing along or he was truly merciless.
“Okay! Okay!” Jake’s voice cracked from puberty and stress. “We don’t know who he is, but he’s a Grim Reaper. He’s part of Reaper Collective. That’s all we know. Please, don’t kill us!”
My insides went cold. Again. Damian moved his scythe away. The kids’ shoulders relaxed, but when Damian pointed, they tensed back up.
“Get out of this coven. Don’t practice necromancy unless you want to rot from the inside out. Got it?”
They nodded fast enough to unscrew their heads from their spines.
I exhaled. My body cried like I’d been tossed into a human-sized dryer with a short fuse, which reminded me. “And go get my taser!”
When they scrambled away, Bones knocked on my shoulder with a detached hand. Then it handed me its detached hand. Okay then, pal. I patted the fleshless fingers. Skeletons had a weird way of expressing friendship. The saving-me part was nice though.
Then Bones thunked me on the top of the head with its separated phalanges and hobbled away.