by Jayne Faith
I held my hands away from my body, fingers wide, to show I wasn’t hiding anything.
“I trust you won’t try to slice me in half this time,” I called.
My pulse kicked in anticipation.
He approached until he was about eight feet away and then stopped and regarded me for a moment before he spoke. At least, I assumed he was looking at me. His eyes were hooded in shadow, though the bit of moonlight revealed the planes of his cheekbones and jawline.
“I wasn’t aiming for you,” he said.
I crinkled my nose. “What?”
“I was aiming for the Baelman behind you. You’re lucky I hit it, too, or you wouldn’t be standing here. I injured it badly enough to halt its attack. Then it must have realized you weren’t its target.” His voice had a pleasant baritone timbre to it, and the hint of an accent I couldn’t place.
“What the hell is a Baelman?”
“That thing you finished off. Nasty creations, aren’t they?” He shifted, slipping his hands into the pockets of his jacket. His stance was wide but easy, and I relaxed a little.
“That demon-man I killed last night was—wait, creatures? Plural?” Suddenly all that Tex-Mex fast food wasn’t sitting so well.
“Unfortunately for your friends, yes.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “Oh, shit. There are more killers.” Deb. She was still in danger. I started digging in pockets for my keys, but I couldn’t seem to find them. “My friend, she went back home. I can’t leave her alone.”
“The witches are safe for the moment,” he said.
I inhaled sharply, and my head whipped up at the near sound of his voice. He’d moved closer, only three or four feet away.
“Only one Baelman at a time can exist in this dimension. It will take some time for another to come through.” His mild tone implied no urgency, but somehow his calm amped up my agitation.
I licked my dry lips. “How can you be sure?”
“I’ve been dealing with them long enough to know. Odd that I haven’t caught wind of any for the past few months, though. In any case, the replacement for the one you killed can’t enter our world until the next new moon.”
I hesitated, considering whether I should believe him. “What were you doing at Jennifer’s house, if you weren’t there to kill her?” I demanded.
“Tracking the Baelman.”
“Why?”
The soles of his shoes gritted against the sandy dirt as he shifted slightly, his only subtle display of discomfort so far. “We don’t have time to get into that now.”
I filed it away to probe later.
“Those things, they have some kind of blackish-blue magic,” I said. “The one in my yard last night tried to fry me with it, like a fire-breathing dragon.”
“They contain a good quantity of one type of underworld magic, yes, but they can’t wield it, only vomit it out as you saw. They’ve got too much demon DNA and not enough human in them to truly craft magic, thank the devil for small favors.” He made a derisive noise that wasn’t quite a laugh.
Underworld magic. It wasn’t a term I knew, and it piqued a spark of interest.
“You’ve got blood-red reaper magic, too. Is that also underworld magic? How’d you get yours?”
“Yes, the blood-red magic is necromancy energy. But most necromancers don’t have magical aptitude, so it’s rare.” Then he gave me a strange look, as if I were a child who’d asked a foolish question. “Reapers don’t possess or wield magic. The maroon energy is a type of underworld magic that comes from where death and life aren’t supposed to touch, but they do anyway. When life and death meet in unnatural ways, sometimes underworld magic emerges, sometimes skills of necromancy. In rare cases like yours and mine, both. ”
I shoved my fingers into my hair and gave it a little tug. The blood-red magic didn’t come from my reaper? I’d been assuming this new power came from the reaper. But it didn’t. It was mine, earned from my near-death experience. And if I somehow managed to exorcise the reaper soul? The magic would remain. It put my situation in a new light. I wondered how many of my other assumptions might be wrong.
I had so many more questions, but I had to reorder them in my mind since I knew the threat to Deb and the others wasn’t gone. “I need to know more about this Baelman. How do we get them to stop targeting Deb and her friends?”
“We?” He quirked an eyebrow.
“Me. Whatever.” I made a frustrated noise in my throat. “Okay, I need information. Are you a Baelman hunter? Why is that thing targeting witches here? Why did you want to meet with me in the first place?”
He lowered his lids partway, and I thought I detected the hint of a smile in the twitch of his lips. “I’ll make you a deal. A question for a question.”
I made an impatient wave of my hand. “Fine. Whatever.”
He turned and began strolling toward the side of the plateau that overlooked the city. I watched for a second, confused, until he looked over his shoulder and beckoned me with a flip of his fingers.
At the stone bench near the edge, he sat and eased back, crossing one ankle over the other knee as if settling in to watch a movie. As if we had all the time in the world. My hands clenched as irritation rose through me. I didn’t have time. Deb and her friends were still in danger. I needed to find my brother and get him out of the vamp feeder den while there was still something of him left. And, oh yeah, there was a ticking bomb inside me.
But I contained my frustration and sat down next to Atriul.
“What kind of name is Atriul, anyway?” I asked.
“That’s the question you want me to answer first?”
“Uh, no. Start with the others.” And for the love of life, talk faster. I had people to save and shit to do.
“I’m not a Baelman hunter, not in the sense you’re implying. I track them for . . . my own purposes.” His gaze slid over to me. “Now your turn. What reaper are you?”
“No idea. The thing eating my soul didn’t exactly introduce itself. Why, did yours?”
He straightened, and his head whipped around at me. “You’re still human?” He said it so vehemently it sounded like an accusation.
My eyes wide and my heart thumping, I returned his stare.
“Yeah. At least mostly.” I swallowed. “I take it you’re . . . not.”
He was still staring. “I’ve inhabited this body for over five decades.”
This man was not more than fifty years old. He couldn’t be much over thirty. I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m not human. I’m a reaper walking around in a human shell in a dimension I don’t belong in,” he said with bitterness edging his voice.
It struck me that he was disappointed. He thought we were alike, but apparently we weren’t.
“So Atriul is . . . ?” I trailed off.
“The name I was given when I came into being. As an angel of death.”
My chest seemed to cramp. “How did you come to inhabit a human body?” The words came slowly, reluctantly. I had to ask it but dreaded the answer.
“I don’t know, exactly. A glitch when I went to cut his soul free.” His voice had gone flat, dead. “Suddenly I was in the body of a man, and over time . . .”
“You ate his soul.” I drew away from him as my insides felt like they were plummeting.
“It’s not as if I wanted to. I couldn’t stop it from happening.” He plucked at his jacket with his hands as if he loathed the thing. “I don’t want to be here, stuck in this body. I don’t know how to get back.”
I jumped at his defensive anger. Swallowing the revulsion I felt at the knowledge that this reaper next to me had dissolved an innocent man’s soul into nothing, I tried to keep calm.
“That’s why you sought me out? You thought I’d know how to get back?” I asked.
His face still and hard, he didn’t answer.
“Back, or . . . gone,” he finally said. “Or at the very least, I figured you wanted to get out o
f here. I thought we could find the answer together.”
I couldn’t help cringing at what he might be suggesting. Some sort of mortal double-suicide that would release two reapers back to the in-between?
I jammed my fists into the pockets of my jacket and hunched my shoulders against the cold, looking out at the lights of the city. So this was what happened to me. It must have been. I’d died, a reaper had come to claim my soul, and some cosmic glitch had joined us instead.
“What’s the name of the man you killed?” I asked, not caring if the question offended him.
“I didn’t kill him. He was already dead, and I came to reap his soul.” He took a breath as if trying to calm his own agitation. “His name was Rogan.”
I couldn’t help wondering how Rogan had felt when a reaper had invaded his body. Did he have any idea what was happening to him? How long had it taken for the end to come? Was there any pain when his soul was extinguished?
“He was a mage,” Atriul said.
I looked at him in surprise. “Did you retain any of his abilities?”
He nodded, looking uncomfortable. “But I only have the knowledge we shared before he . . . It’s not like I have his complete set of skills or experience.”
I blew a harsh breath out through my clamped teeth. “I’m not going to let my reaper kill me. I can’t. I have to find my brother.” I stood. “If you get any bright ideas about how to stop—well, how to stop what you did to Rogan, you know where to find me.”
I started trudging back toward my truck, suddenly too drained and disappointed to try to carry on any more conversation with the reaper who’d killed an innocent mage.
“Ella, wait.”
I turned to see him hurrying toward me, his duster billowing.
“What?” Alarm pinged through me as I watched him speed up.
He grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the south edge of the mesa. “A Supernatural Crimes cruiser and an unmarked car are coming this way.”
Damn. My ankle monitor.
Chapter 12
I STARTED TO run with Atriul, but then pulled up short, twisting my wrist out of his grip.
“Go ahead,” I said when he turned in question. “I’m not doing anything wrong, and running away will just make me look guilty.”
He gave me a short nod and then sped over the side of the plateau, disappearing into the dark as if he’d leapt off the edge. I angled toward my truck, ambling casually, as the two vehicles came into view.
They crunched to a halt nose-to-nose with my pickup.
The doors popped open, and two SC officers stepped out of the cruiser. I recognized Barnes’s blond hair and Lagatuda’s tall frame in the unmarked car.
Great.
I leaned my back against the driver’s side of my truck.
“You didn’t bother to show up when I nearly died taking out the killer for you, but you follow me up here in the middle of the night?” I called as Barnes marched toward me.
“Relax,” Barnes said. “Your friend called us. He said you disappeared.”
Oh, shit, I’d forgotten to let Damien know I was okay, and I’d left my phone in the truck. He’d probably been frantically trying to reach me for who knew how long. I swallowed a groan as I realized I’d brought this headache on myself.
“Uh, well, thank you for your concern,” I said. “I was just about to head home.”
Barnes planted her hands on her hips, scrutinizing me. “Seeing as how you seem to have made a fast recovery, we look forward to interviewing you at the station first thing tomorrow.”
“I have to go to work in the morning,” I said, feeling petulant about this entire situation.
She pointed at my boots. “You want that thing off? Show up at the station.” She gave me a hard look and then turned on her heel.
Lagatuda had stayed by the car, and the officers had kept back too. The tall detective flipped his fingers in a little wave, and he and Barnes got in. Both vehicles flipped U-turns and disappeared.
Heaving a sigh, I pulled open the pickup’s door and reluctantly picked up my phone. Seven missed calls—from my friends and from Lagatuda. A bazillion texts from Damien and Deb. I sent them a message saying I was fine and on my way home.
I tipped my head back against the headrest, let out a long moan, and then started the ignition and bumped back down the dirt road.
When I arrived at my apartment, Damien was stalking the living room with his phone in his fist.
“Ella—” he started and then just rolled his eyes, passed a hand over his brow, and blew out a loud, exasperated sigh. “I’m glad you’re safe. Now tell me where the hell you were and what the hell you were doing.”
After everything he’d done for me and the scare I’d given him, I owed him the truth. I told him everything I knew about Atriul. I also repeated what he’d told me about the Baelmen, and how the threat wasn’t gone.
“Do you have any way to contact this Atriul again?” Damien asked.
“No,” I said sheepishly.
“If he’s tracking the Baelmen, we need to work with him. He can tell us when another one appears. Maybe even where it’ll come through. If we know ahead of time, we can take the offensive.” Damien’s eyes took on a gleam. I knew that look. It meant he wanted to dig into his research.
I pulled the palm of my hand down the side of my face, feeling stupid for not thinking of it myself. I really should have gotten the guy’s phone number. “Yeah, you’re right. My bad. I’ll figure out how to contact him.”
“Okay. Let’s get to bed. It’s going to hurt when the alarm goes off.” He sat down heavily on the sofa and turned to fluff the pillow I’d left there, obviously planning to spend the night. He looked up at me. “Actually, you should take another day off. I can tell you’re still weak.”
I shrugged. “Eh, I’ll be fine.”
I hated missing work. I needed to be on the move. The thought of calling in sick to lie around my apartment recuperating made me want to yank my hair out.
I tossed my keys on the table near the door and rubbed my eyes as I headed toward my bedroom.
“Seriously, Ella. You’ve been through a lot, and you’ve got more sick time.”
“We’ll see in the morning,” I called and then closed the bedroom door before he could protest.
My alarm went off at my workday wake-up time, but instead of taking a jog and running through my calisthenics, I dressed, hollered through the door at Damien in the shower that I was going out for a quick errand, and then stepped through the front door into the cold morning.
White puffs of my breath fogged the windshield of my pickup, and I shivered as I waited a minute for the engine to warm up. I knew Barnes would be pissed I didn’t come in, but I needed to take care of something else more than I needed to get grilled by her. Even more than I needed to get rid of the damn monitor strapped to my ankle.
I drove to the nearest Supernatural Primary Care Clinic—it was a national chain that had gotten its start on the East Coast, and lately it seemed like there was one popping up every few miles around here. Deb would be horrified that I went to a doc-in-a-box instead of someone she referred, but I needed a boost of healing, and this would do until I found a regular healer. I tried not to groan at the thought of the additional expense of routine healing. I’d never used magic enough to reach the point where I was accumulating the negative effects. But at least the insurance I had through work would cover part of it.
I pulled into the parking lot in front of the clinic, which was in the strip mall next to Albertsons. A man and woman sat next to each other in the waiting room, both of them wolf shifters by their wild tawny eyes and the way my magical senses tingled in their presence.
I checked in at the counter and then picked a chair on the opposite side of the room from the couple. Shifters tended to make me edgy, and I knew they wouldn’t appreciate me crowding them anyway.
A few minutes after the shifters were called back, a nurse came for me. In the exam room, we
quickly ran down the usual questions about my general health and possible symptoms of the damage caused by crafting. I had to skirt around some of them—I wasn’t about to try to explain the reaper soul.
The witch who came in to heal me was a strong Level II. She was young, not much older than me. She asked me about the extent of my recent magic use, and I gave her as much information as I could without actually mentioning the Baelman. She had me lie face-down on a contraption that was like a souped-up massage table while she lit a few spell candles, and then she explained that next she would place various crystals along my spine. I could hear her moving around me and whispering the words of healing spells.
Still exhausted from too little sleep and lulled by the pleasant warmth of healing magic, my gaze on the tile softened as my muscles seemed to melt into the padding of the table.
When she was finished, I turned over and sat up. Energy surged through me, and I felt like I could go outside and sprint ten miles. But there was something else, too. The soul-hunger I remembered from standing over Amanda’s body with her soul still tethered gnawed at my insides like acid. It was so strong I could barely focus on anything else.
“You’re an unusually fast healer,” she said. “I expected a lot more damage from the recent crafting you described.”
I could see the curiosity in her eyes—she’d probably felt something unfamiliar within me. I stiffened as the world flashed over to the gray of the in-between and then dissolved back to the world of the living. A ghostly aura seemed to glow around her, and I felt the reaper thump with excitement inside my head. It wanted to reach out and . . . oh shit, I was seeing the woman’s soul and the reaper wanted it. Badly.
“Yeah, I’m a fast healer,” I echoed, forcing my eyes away from her and down to the floor. I edged toward the door and grasped the handle. “I should run, or I’ll be late for work. Thanks so much for the healing.”
I checked out and nearly sprinted outside.
In my truck, I sat gripping the wheel hard and taking deep breaths.
“You can’t do that,” I gritted out harshly through clenched teeth. “You can’t go after the souls of living people like they’re your own personal buffet. We’re not going to hurt the innocent. And we’re not going to add any more souls to your little collection, so you can just get rid of that hope right now.”