Table of Contents
Death Wish
Copyright
Other Books by Harper A Brooks
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
About the Author
Copyright © Harper Brooks
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes only.
Editor: Midnight Library
Cover Design: Yocla Book Cover Design
Interior Design: Cover Me Darling
Formatting: Athena Interior Book Design
SHIFTER ORIGINS
The Hunt
The Curse
THE REDEMPTION SERIES
His Haven
Do it. You have to.
I repeated the words to myself as I slid off one of my leather gloves. A man lay at my feet, clutching his chest and gasping in the middle of the dimly lit parking lot. His watery blue eyes bulged with panic as they fixed on me, and for a moment, I wondered if he could actually see me standing over him, about to end his life.
Scolding myself, I pushed away the irrational fear. Of course he couldn’t see me standing here. Reapers weren’t visible to the living. We came from a different plane, the other side of the veil. But still, even with that knowledge buzzing around in my head, my hand shook as I reached out to touch him.
Why was this so hard for me? After almost a year working for the Styx Corporation, I still struggled with this part. I had tried all the tricks Simon taught me during my training. Told myself I was relieving this man of his pain. Told myself it was his time to die and it had to be done. Told myself I couldn’t get emotionally involved. I had been given an assignment, and I had to carry it out.
Yet in the back of my mind was a nagging voice telling me that this man crumpled on the pavement, his newly bought groceries scattered about, was more than the picture, name, age, and basic biography on my tablet’s screen. Surely he had a family who would miss him. People he loved and who loved him. Did he really deserve to die now, by a heart attack, in an empty grocery store parking lot, alone? It just didn’t seem right.
One touch. That was all it took. I just had to touch him with my bare hand, and his life would be over. Just like that.
Hesitating, I glanced around. The man’s Honda was one of the only cars left in the parking lot. Jumping in and out of the living world and the afterlife made it hard to keep track of the time, but from the darkness already blanketing the sky and the lack of patrons at Super Mart, my guess was that it was almost closing time. Maybe eight thirty. Pretty late to be picking up groceries, but that wasn’t any of my business.
Looking at my tablet screen again, I skimmed over the man’s information. Tristen James Williams. Age forty-one. Level two sorcerer. On a measuring scale of one to three, he had reached only the middle skill grade of his power.
I stopped there, knowing that if I read his bio, I might find something to squelch the rest of my nerve, like if he had children or a wife waiting for him at home.
How did Simon and the other reapers do this?
As I looked down at Tristen J. Williams, the middle-aged man—maybe a father and husband—meant to have many more years to his life, now writhing in pain, on the verge of death, my chest clenched with sympathy for him.
He had chosen a spot for his Honda under one of those parking lot lights, and the old thing flickered, making an odd sizzling sound every time it turned back on. Even in the sputtering light, the purplish blue of his face was obvious. He let out a terrible-sounding half cough, half gag, and my heart sank.
He was suffering.
I had to do this. I was helping him in a way, wasn’t I?
Yeah, that’s right. I was helping him. I had to keep telling myself that.
I closed my eyes, reached out again, and pressed my fingers against Tristen’s neck. The warmth of his skin against my own was comforting but brief. In the next second, a familiar coolness crept in, as did a silence I knew all too well. No more frantic gasps for air. No more breathing at all.
Cracking an eye open, I saw his spectral form standing before me, confusion flitting across his face. Even though he was a spirit, he didn’t look much different than his profile’s picture or the dead man on the ground. Besides the slight opaqueness to his skin, the only differences were that he was suddenly clean shaven and his graying hair was combed away from his blue eyes. A neater, healthier-looking version of his living self.
His gaze darted over me, seeing me for the first time. “Who are you?” he asked, a tinge of annoyance in his voice. Then he looked at his body lying by his feet. He didn’t jump in horror, like I expected. He didn’t even appear surprised. “What’s going on?”
I tensed. Even after doing this hundreds of times, I was still terrible at this part. Was there really a “right” way to tell someone they were dead?
I hesitated a little too long before settling for the least jarring way I could think of.
“Uh, hi there. Mr. Williams, right? Tristen?” Awful. Just awful. Maybe I needed to ask Simon for a quick refresher in my training. Six months of it hadn’t been enough apparently.
Swallowing hard, I held out my hand for him to shake. “My name is Jade Blackwell, and I’m here to help you cross over. Because, well, you’re dead.” When Tristen only stared at my offered hand, I retracted it and quickly pulled on my glove again. “You died of a heart attack. I’m sorry. Really, I am, but I was sent here to—”
“I’m dead.” It was a statement more than anything else. But again, there was no shock or grief in his eyes. Only a harshness that took me by surprise, as if he didn’t believe I was telling him the truth.
Forget the fact that he was standing by his unmoving, unbreathing body.
“You are,” I replied. “Dead, that is.”
“Dead.”
“As a doornail.” I mentally slapped myself for that one, but he said nothing. “I’m sure this all must be strange to you,” I went on carefully. I didn’t look like the typical grim reaper seen in the movies. There was no ominous smoke behind me. I didn’t wear a black hooded cloak. No scythe or animated skeleton. Nope. Just an average-looking woman, in her late twenties, dressed for comfort in jeans and a tank, and who thoroughly sucked at formalities.
Just me.
After tucking the tablet in my back pocket, I retrieved a piece of chalk from the front one. I pasted on my best customer service smile, hoping I didn’t scare him. “But as I said before, I’m here to help you cross over.”
I walked to the end of the Honda and drew the circular symbol in chalk on the blacktop that opened the spirit door between worlds. As a reaper, chalk was my best
friend. Sure, I could use any kind of drawing implement I wanted to draw the door, but chalk was easy. It never ran out like ink. It never needed a sharpener, and best of all, it washed away with the rain and could be erased easily, so no risk of humans accidentally tumbling into the afterlife during their daily stroll.
When the last line and symbol was drawn, the chalk glowed orange, proving that my drawing skills were efficient enough. The door was open. At least that part was easy. Now all I needed to do was get Tristen to hop on in. In the other side, he would go through his orientation, the one all souls went through after they passed. At least, that’s what I was told. That part sounded like a lot of bullshit to me.
Because I had been next in line to be one of Styx Corp.’s reapers, my death experience had been different than Tristen’s and everyone else’s. No spirit guide and orientation mumbo jumbo for me. I didn’t get the same treatment, so I didn’t know exactly what happened to other souls when they crossed over. All I knew was that when they were deemed ready by whatever higher being was in charge of this rodeo, the souls were then transferred to their afterlife, where they were expected to live out the rest of their existence. That’s where I lived and where Styx Corp. was located, in a dimension that ran parallel to the living one, designed only for supernaturals. Humans had their own. And for those special cases, like for the murders and rapists of the world… Well, I’m sure they had their own place in Hell, too. I didn’t see them again after crossing them over, and I didn’t ask any questions.
“You did this to me.” Tristen’s suddenly hostile tone made me turn around. He stood there, body rigid, with raw hatred burning in his eyes. “You killed me.”
I leapt to my feet. “What? No, I didn’t.” But that was a lie, wasn’t it? I had killed him. Had taken his life with the touch of my hand. I wasn’t going to tell him that, though.
“Put me back,” he said, the edge in his tone hinting at a threat. “Now.”
“I can’t put you back. That’s not how this works.” I tried to keep my voice calm, but annoyance prickled the back of my neck. “I know this is hard for you right now, but if you come with me, everything will be explained and—”
His hand shot up, and he started mumbling, voice low and strained. His brow creasing, he began to repeat something to himself over and over.
Oh great. He was having a breakdown or something.
“Tristen…” I began cautiously and stepped closer. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
Whatever Tristen was trying to say, it looked like he was struggling to get it out. He kept trying, his lips moving at a feverish speed, too fast for me to read. What did come out sounded more like gibberish. Nothing I could recognize or understand. Greek maybe. Or Latin.
Wait, what kind of supernatural did his profile say he was again?
My answer came within the next second. An invisible force smacked into me strong enough to slide me backward a few feet and take me off guard.
He had hit me with some kind of knock-back spell.
That’s right. Tristen James Williams. Age forty-one. Level two sorcerer. The middle grade. I’m sure if we were both alive and he had landed that hit full-on, it would have packed way more of a punch. Although powers transferred over into death, it was going to take him a little while to get used to the new state of his body and get a handle on those spells again.
For that, I was thankful. I didn’t have any special abilities to match his. Whoever I was when alive made me a pretty scrappy fighter in the afterlife, but that was the only skill I had retained. Besides that, all a reaper really had was the touch of death, and that didn’t work on someone who was already dead, like Tristen.
Despite my many protests, Styx Corp. didn’t give us weapons.
The sorcerer repeated his incantation several more times with no result, his words becoming more jumbled as his frustration grew. He shouted a couple more spurts of nonsense before finally giving up and running at me full speed.
I tried to jump out of his path, but I was too late. He tackled me onto the ground. Pain exploded as his weight slammed into me, and my head hit the pavement with an audible crack.
Tristen was no little guy. Technically, I couldn’t die because I was dead already, but things could still hurt like a bitch. And God did this hurt like a bitch. Colors danced before my eyes. I struggled to chase them away.
He gripped my shoulders and shook me. Hard. “You stupid fucking bitch! You put me back! You put me back now!”
Something sparked in the deep recesses of my mind, something I couldn’t quite place or understand. Fear surged from it, too, my heart pounding against my ribs as if I were still alive.
“I’m going to make sure you regret doing this to me,” he said through clenched teeth. “I may not be able to kill you, but how about a crushed windpipe? You talk too much anyway.”
The moment his hands clamped around my throat, fury ignited, whipping through me like a wildfire. I slammed my fist into his gut with every bit of strength I had.
He rolled off me, clutching his stomach and groaning.
So much for me handling this like a professional.
I stood up slowly, my head still whirling. “Look, buddy. Wrong move. Like I told you, I’m here to help you. Not fight you. You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”
He jumped up and grabbed for my ankles, but I danced out of the way. He swung. I ducked and followed with an uppercut to the chin. He staggered back, clutching his jaw and spewing more curses and threats at me.
Was I really going to have to pull this guy through the door kicking and screaming?
When he came at me again, I got my answer. I spun, coming way too close to falling through the spirit door on the ground.
Shit. I had to be more careful. I shifted my weight, off-balance, and toppled forward into the Honda’s rear door. Suddenly, Tristen was on me, pinning my body between his and the car. Even with his brute force, the car didn’t move, not even an inch—the result of us no longer being a part of the living plane. But I felt every ounce of his two hundred and thirty pounds crushing me. Even felt the cold metal of the door against my cheek.
Shifting slightly for a better angle, I threw my elbow back as hard as I could. It connected with his ribs. As he doubled over, I pushed myself off the car and kicked him square in the stomach.
He staggered back, stopping just short of falling into the spirit circle, and teetered back and forth to keep his balance. His arms whirled like a windmill, but he managed to stay standing there on the thin edge.
The circle shimmered, as if sensing him close by.
I needed to get him through that door. But it was clear he wasn’t going to go on his own.
I knew what I had to do. Not one of my brightest ideas, but it would work.
I hoped so anyway.
Before he could completely regain his footing, I crouched low and rushed him. He tried to move, but I was too fast. We collided, all the air rushing from my lungs in one whoosh. He grabbed for my shoulders, clawing at me, trying to use my body for leverage to help himself back up, but there wasn’t anything he could do.
We were falling.
He screamed.
A bright orange light flashed around us as we passed through the door. Then, there was nothing but infinite blackness.
Just as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, another bright light flared, leaving me momentarily blinded. I winced against the harshness of it then blinked quickly to regain my focus. I wasn’t falling anymore; I was floating. At least I thought so. Even after passing between planes multiple times, I still couldn’t quite explain this part of the process except that it always made me uneasy. Good thing it only took seconds to cross over. A very terrifying few seconds.
My ears popped. The light muted and shifted to gray then dark blue, gaining more colors rapidly. Shapes appeared next, twisting and dancing as they took form. I recognized the vague outline of a large structure in the distance. A building. It was getting closer. I rem
embered the Super Mart’s parking lot where I had opened the spirit door and pushed Tristen through. That had to be what it was.
More wobbly forms came into view. But before I could try to make sense of them, the ground rushed up to meet me and smacked against my backside hard enough to make me howl. At the same time, the night sky tumbled into place over my head.
Then, everything stopped.
Well, except my head and stomach, which both spun in opposite directions. Nausea rolled through me, and my temples throbbed. Not a pleasant combination, but one I could deal with. It was better than dry-heaving for hours afterward, which had been the result the first twenty times or so I’d done this.
The door had spit me out directly on the other side of the veil. Since the afterlife ran parallel to the living world, it was night here, too. I lay on my back, staring up at the sky. It was the same velvety black it always was, littered with too many stars and a full yellow moon. The daytime was always similar. Comfortable temperature, pale blue sky, and lots of sunshine. Mimicking the most beautiful and perfect day on earth. Completely artificial. I hated it.
When I sat up, another wave of queasiness hit, and I grumbled. For possibly the millionth time since I’d died, I wondered why I had been the lucky one to get this job. There were only ten reapers in Styx Corp. Seven in charge of crossing over all the human population and three in charge of supernaturals. Humans outnumbered supernaturals a hundred to one, hence the uneven department sizes. I was one of the three and had been stationed in the Western Hemisphere, working in North and South America, Canada, and the Caribbean countries.
When a reaper was Released from their job, either by choice or by force, the next soul to die got tossed into line to replace them. That was what had happened to me. I had managed to win the reaper lottery.
Lucky me.
Really, I shouldn’t complain. It was common for spirits to become bored of an eternal afterlife of no responsibility or problems, and so they took on work. Not for pay; money isn’t needed when you’re dead. Just to keep busy. I had only been here a year and understood how easy it was to fall into a cycle of monotony. I saw it all the time. Being a reaper saved me from that. And special cases—like with Tristen—certainly kept me entertained.
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