Winged Reaper

by Shelley Russell Nolan

  I avoided his eyes, looking over his shoulder and focusing on the white car pulling into the car park beside Sam’s unmarked. The doors opened and four men climbed out and went around to the back of the car. The driver’s tall frame looked familiar but he was too far away for me to pick out his features. He opened the boot and the others crowded around him.

  ‘Tyler.’

  I glanced back at Sam and the depths of care and compassion in his eyes caught at my heart. He took both of my hands in his and squeezed. ‘I can’t help you if you won’t let me in.’

  I shook my head, hair falling forward and covering my face. He let go of one hand and pushed my hair back behind my ears. ‘No hiding, remember?’

  I wanted to close my eyes, to concentrate on the scent of him, so clean and crisp, the strength residing in the hand holding mine, savouring the moment before I ruined it by lying to him yet again. With a shaky breath, I gave him a nod. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you everything.’

  Sam’s shoulders relaxed and he gave me such a beautiful smile it was all I could do to stop myself from bursting into tears. My mouth was dry and I swallowed a couple of times, delaying the moment I would destroy the last thing that was good in my life.

  ‘I was ...’ I scrambled backwards, dragging Sam with me, eyes wide as a golf club swung at his head. It missed him by an inch and he reacted quickly, jumping to his feet and pushing me behind him.

  Mottling covered the faces of the three men standing on the other side of the table. In the background, I could see the driver leaning against the bonnet of his car and his swarthy features came into focus.

  Talaom.

  The three Wraiths came around the table, all of them brandishing golf clubs.

  Sam backed up, still keeping me behind him. We were nearing the edge of the lookout, a log fence standing between us and a steep incline covered in trees and shrubs and dotted with large rocks. We could break our necks trying to navigate it on a good day, let alone with Wraiths after us.

  Sam tried to move us sideways, but one of the Wraiths blocked our path. The other two spread out until we had one on either side and one directly in front. They hefted their clubs and attacked. Sam pushed me to the ground, standing over me as he ducked and weaved. He managed to avoid two of the clubs but the third clipped him on the side of the head. He grunted and staggered, but didn’t fall. Two of the Wraiths swung their club at his legs, while the other aimed for the torso.

  Sam grabbed the club aimed at his middle and wrenched it out of the Wraith’s hands, but the other two clubs collected with his legs and he fell to his knees. I struggled to get up but Sam pushed me down with one hand, swinging the club he’d managed to snatch in the air in an attempt to ward the Wraiths off.

  But they didn’t feel pain. The two still armed with clubs swung them at him while the third dived forward and rammed his head into Sam’s stomach. Sam landed on his back and the other two Wraiths raised their clubs, ready to bring them crashing down onto his unprotected head.

  ‘No.’ I flung myself across Sam, one hand gripping my necklace and the other outstretched as I summoned up every ounce of aether I could, and channelled it into my necklace. My ears buzzed and my skin tingled as I sliced my hand through the air, lightning streaking out of my fingertips in a horizontal line. Their bodies jolted when the lighting cut into them and black shards blew out of their throats, flying through the air towards us.

  The Wraiths’ stolen bodies reeled, then hit the ground with sickening thuds.

  I collapsed on top of Sam, shielding his face with my arm. When the rain of soul shards ended I struggled to lift my head, looking for Talaom. He stood by the open door of his car, watching, smiling, and gave me a wave.

  ‘Malia sends her love. She’ll be in touch.’ He threw something on the ground in front of his car before climbing in and speeding away, a plume of dust kicked up in his wake.

  Sam groaned. I dropped my head back onto his chest and was reassured by the steady beat of the heart beneath my cheek. I closed my eyes, content to lay there and listen to his heartbeat.

  I felt his arms come around me and smiled as he held me tight, unable to resist the urge to nestle in even closer. Regardless of how I got here, I knew this was where I belonged. The world faded away and I was happy to let it. Just for now, this moment, exhausted and unable to move, I wanted to drink in the feel of Sam beneath me, the warmth of his hands on my back.

  Too soon, reality intruded. Sam groaned again and rolled me over on my side before he struggled into a sitting position. ‘Tyler, are you okay?’

  I fought to open my eyes to look at him. My eyelids were so heavy, they kept closing of their own volition. I stopped trying to open them and sighed as I felt Sam manoeuvre me around so my head rested in his lap.

  ‘Open your eyes, Tyler. You need to stay with me.’ Sam changed position, the muscles in his legs flexing, and I frowned as my head rolled from side to side.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but I need to get my phone out of my back pocket so I can call an ambulance.’

  ‘No,’ I forced my eyes open and met his worried eyes, ‘no ambulance.’

  ‘Tyler,’ he frowned down at me, ‘something is seriously wrong with you.’ He held his phone in one hand and stroked my face with the other.

  ‘You look worse than me,’ I said. Blood trickled down the left side of his face from a nasty gash on his temple.

  Sam didn’t answer, his eyes never leaving mine. ‘I’ll be fine. You’re the one I’m worried about.’

  ‘You don’t need to be. I’m just really, really tired. I’ll be fine once I get some energy back.’

  ‘Energy, like the lightning you shot out of your fingers,’ he said, shutters coming down on his expression.

  I winced. ‘You saw that.’

  ‘Saw it. Don’t understand it, but can’t deny it worked.’ He pointed at the three dead bodies the Wraiths had used. ‘Mind telling me how you managed to blow the stuffing out of these guys with a wave of your hand?’

  I sighed, and took the first step towards losing him. ‘My necklace allows me to harness aether, the psychic energy created by all living things, and use it as a weapon against Wraiths.’

  ‘Wraiths?’

  ‘Dark reapers who can temporarily reanimate dead bodies.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  I stared up at him, surprised by his bland tone. ‘You’re taking this extremely well.’

  ‘What did you want me to do, rant and rave and tell you what you’re saying is impossible and there’s no such thing as Wraiths or dark reapers?’

  ‘That’s kind of what I was expecting, yeah,’ I said with a frown.

  ‘I just saw you annihilate three zombies with a lightning bolt. At this point I’m open to anything.’

  ‘Oh.’ This was not the way I thought this conversation would go.

  ‘Could your old necklace kill zombies too?’

  ‘They’re Wraiths, not zombies, and this is my old necklace.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it.’ Sam traced a finger along my collarbone, and then picked up the necklace. ‘As I recall, the other one looked like it belonged on a heavy metal rocker. This one suits you better; it’s beautiful and yet mysterious, almost otherworldly. It looks delicate but it’s deceptively strong, like you.’

  I dropped my eyes, disconcerted by both his words and the way his hand kept stroking my collarbone. ‘It … ah … changed after I managed to link with it.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Sam withdrew his hand and gazed into my eyes. ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  He helped me sit up, and immediately my head started spinning. He wrapped both arms around me and I leaned into him, eyes closed, as I waited for my equilibrium to return to normal. Although, snuggled as I was in Sam’s arms, I hoped it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. I did not want to move out of his embrace and face the rest of the questions that must be filling his head. He was being kind and considerate now, but that would change when he knew I was up to a more r
igorous interrogation.

  But with what Sam had witnessed, and what I’d already told him, there was no point trying to hide what I was anymore.

  17

  ‘I’m a reaper,’ I said, ‘I reap the souls of people who are dying.’

  Sam stiffened. He eased me back from his chest and peered down at me, eyes narrowed to slits. ‘You’re the Grim Reaper?’

  ‘He’s my boss. At least, he was my boss up until I refused to reap a soul for him and sent him back to the Underworld.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’ I gave a bitter laugh. ‘Everything is so messed up, and it all started the night I went to buy a packet of Oddfellows.’ I gave him a sad smile when his eyes narrowed.

  ‘So you were at the service station that night, when the dead drug addict killed the truck driver and the owner?’

  ‘She was a Wraith, and she killed me too.’

  Sam went still for a moment, and then he let me go and stood. I bit my bottom lip as I watched him pace in front of me while running his hands through his close cropped brown hair.

  After a moment he stopped pacing and pulled me to my feet. He steered me around the dead bodies and led me back to the picnic table. He got me to sit down and stood in front of me.

  ‘Tell me everything.’

  I looked into his hazel eyes, the eyes of a homicide detective, and told him about being murdered before I was recruited and then resurrected by Grimm, and the task I’d been given. Throughout it all his eyes never left mine, his expression remote, giving nothing away about how what I was saying made him feel. The only time he reacted was to clench his fists when I told him Chris Bradbury was the lost reaper Grimm had ordered me to find.

  My voice faltered as I described the night Grimm had come for Chris’s soul, and how I’d had to sacrifice my mother’s soul to save him. ‘Only, she wasn’t my mother after all. She was Malia.’

  ‘The sister of the guy you said is stuck in Demania, Hell?’

  ‘Oh my God.’ I scrambled off the seat. ‘She sent these Wraiths.’ I pointed at the black shards littering the ground around the three dead bodies. ‘Talaom said she’d be in touch and threw something on the ground.’ Legs shaking, still not recovered from taking out three Wraiths in one go, I wobbled as I moved towards the car park.

  Sam took my elbow, steadying me as I searched for the object Talaom had thrown towards me. He spotted it first, scooping up a basic mobile phone. He inspected it before handing it over to me. ‘No numbers in the contact list. No way of tracing anything back to her.’

  I nodded, grateful when he wrapped his arm around me and helped me over to his car. I leaned against the bonnet as I told him the rest of the sorry tale, voice catching when I explained Chris’s role in my mother’s death.

  ‘So that’s why you broke up with him.’

  I shook my head. ‘We were never together, not really. We were more like partners, thrown together by the need to fight Grimm.’

  Sam didn’t say anything and I looked up at him. He was gazing out over Easton, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Then he cast his eyes over the three dead bodies. ‘I need to call this in. The longer I leave it, the harder it will be to explain.’

  ‘Okay.’ I gulped, not looking forward to being involved in another police investigation. ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Say?’

  ‘About what happened here? It’s not like I can tell them the truth.’

  ‘You told me.’

  ‘That’s different. You were here, and you deserved to know the truth.’

  ‘What changed your mind?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I frowned, not liking the flat tone or the hard stare he was giving me.

  ‘I’m wondering if your decision to tell me the truth has anything to do with needing a new partner, one who wasn’t involved in your mother’s death.’

  I stiffened. ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘What else am I supposed to think?’ He shrugged. ‘You can’t trust Bradbury anymore, so who else can you to turn to except for the dumb cop who has stupidly let his feelings for you get in the way of doing his job.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I said, eyes stinging. I resisted the urge to wipe them, not wanting him to see how much his accusation stung.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t trust Chris anymore. But I have always trusted you.’

  ‘Then why is this the first time you’ve been honest with me? Why did it take me nearly being taken out by a bunch of zombies and watching you zap them with lightning for you to finally confide in me? Explain to me how you suddenly confessing comes on the heels of you breaking away from Bradbury, but isn’t connected to him in any way.’

  ‘I didn’t want to get you involved. The Grim Reaper, Malia and her followers, they’re dangerous. I was trying to protect you.’

  He banged his fist on the bonnet, making me jump. ‘Damn it, Tyler. I’m a homicide detective. It’s my job to do the protecting.’

  ‘Exactly. You’re a homicide detective and I’m a reaper. You deal in facts, evidence. Would you have believed me, if you hadn’t seen it for yourself? ’ I shook my head. ‘Either way, I didn’t want to draw you into my world and put you in this position.’ I waved a hand at the dead bodies. ‘They came after you because you were with me.’

  He took hold of my shoulders. ‘No more trying to protect me. I can take care of myself.’

  ‘Like you did today?’

  ‘I might not be able to shoot lightning bolts out of my fingers, but I’m not helpless. Now that I know what I’m dealing with I can take precautions.’

  I threw my hands up in the air, scrambling for a way to get through to him. ‘It won’t be enough. The bodies the Wraiths take over are already dead, the only way to hurt them is to go for the soul, and no amount of guns or precautions can stop them. Only I can.’

  ‘We’ll figure it out, but first I need to get you out of here before someone else decides to visit the lookout.’ He tapped away on his phone and held it up to his ear.

  ‘Bradbury. Get your arse to the Mount Pilbeam lookout. Tyler needs you.’ He listened for a moment and then barked into his phone. ‘No time to explain. Just get here, and come alone.’ He hung up and met my eyes, no doubt reading surprise in them.

  ‘I don’t like him, don’t trust him, but he’s the only one who knows enough about all this reaper stuff to have a chance of protecting you while I sort this mess out. When I’m done I’ll come get you and together we can work out a plan of attack, because I am sure as hell not sitting back and letting a bunch of zombies have free reign in my town.’

  I nodded and the tension left his shoulders. ‘Do you really think you can put Emily’s soul back in her body?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  He went silent for a moment, rubbing his chin. ‘What’s it like, reaping a soul?’

  ‘At first I was terrified, didn’t want to do it at all, but I realised these people needed me. Their souls would be left to wander the astral plane if they weren’t reaped, or worse, taken by one of Grimm’s dark reapers. And for the most part, they seem at peace. I get a sense of well-being and it kind of soothes me, almost makes up for watching them die.’

  ‘So it’s not so bad, being a reaper?’

  ‘Not so bad.’ I didn’t tell him about the penalty for reaping a soul I had not been called for. The idea of discussing the pleasure that engulfs me immediately afterwards made me shift uncomfortably, even if it was immediately followed by pain. There were some things about being a reaper Sam did not need to know.

  Before Sam could question me further, Chris arrived at the lookout

  He gave a low whistle as he took in the scene. ‘Do I want to know what happened here?’

  ‘No.’ I wrapped my arms around my torso and bit down on my bottom lip before immediately letting it go. It throbbed from earlier teeth marks.

  ‘Tyler can fill you in on the way down the mountain,’ said Sam. ‘I need you to g
et her out of here before the police arrive.’

  Chris raised one eyebrow. ‘You are the police.’

  ‘Yeah, so do as I say before I change my mind and arrest you both for withholding evidence.’ He held up a hand to forestall any more of Chris’s questions, and turned to me. ‘Be careful and stay with Bradbury. I don’t want you on your own if any more of the Grim Reaper’s zombie pals turn up.’

  I grimaced and he took my hand. ‘Promise me you’ll stay with Bradbury until I can come and get you.’

  ‘Fine, but don’t take too long.’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ He leaned forward and brushed his lips against mine, a soft promise that lifted my heart despite the problems we were facing. He squeezed my hand and stepped back as I reluctantly climbed into Chris’s car. I placed my handbag at my feet, dreading the coming drive, not ready to discuss my relationship with Sam.

  To distract him, I pointed at his sling. ‘Should you be driving?’

  ‘It’s an automatic.’

  He backed the car out of the park and steered us onto the start of the winding road that lead down the mountain before he spoke again. ‘I can’t believe you told Lockwood about Grimm.’

  ‘How else was I supposed to explain killing three Wraiths right in front of him?’

  ‘I’m sure you could have come up with something, if you’d really wanted to.’

  I sighed. ‘I didn’t want to lie anymore. Everything has gotten out of hand, and it was time he knew the truth.’

  ‘How much did you tell him?’

  ‘All of it.’ I twisted in my seat to face Chris before I told him what had happened with Malia. Tears ran down my cheeks. ‘I got Emily killed, and I need Sam’s help to get her back.’

  Mouth drawn in a firm line, Chris glanced at me. ‘What happens now?’

  I held up the phone Talaom had tossed on the ground. ‘I wait for Malia to contact me and force her to give up Emily’s soul. Then I rip her out of Emily’s body and hope like hell for a miracle.’ I don’t know what I would do if the transfer didn’t work a second time.

  ‘Have you been able to track down Killian?’ He was my last hope for finding a way to force Malia to give up Emily’s body and soul.