by Carmen Fox
Africans died. That was the way the world worked.
Except it wasn’t. In the infant years of human civilization, there was no one tribe that kept the Grim Reaper busier than any other. Back then, death had been the crapfest it was today, but at least it had been an equal opportunity crapfest. Lives still mattered.
By six p.m., my job was done. The last two names on Gardiner’s list had been a cinch to read, and luckily for them, neither would visit the afterlife any time soon. Better still, two good prospects for Gardiner’s business should make him happy.
By the time I pulled into my driveway, the sun was casting a full shadow around the wonky tree outside my bedroom. Almost every night, its branches knocked against my window, and almost every morning, I vowed to cut the whole thing down. I never went through with my threat. The oak was gnarly, asymmetric, and downright ugly, but it had character. I liked things with character.
Back in my living room, I confirmed that Gardiner’s payment had been deposited in my account then turned on the television set to keep up to date with the Africa situation. Not ten minutes later, the phone rang.
“Can I have your findings?” Gardiner asked. “Who gave you the strongest sense of impending death?”
What a vulture, betting money on people’s deaths.
Or was I being too hard on him? Most people were ignorant about their health issues, but if Gardiner was one of the few who’d been diagnosed with an illness, an acerbic attitude when dealing with death was to be expected.
I adopted a deliberately pleasant tone. “Callo and Grinder are sadly going to die soon. Neither of them is what I’d call insurable.”
“What about the others?” He didn’t sound grateful in the least. “How about Remo?”
“Remo? Do you know something I don’t?”
“What? No, of course not, but he is the wealthiest name on the list. We’d love to insure him.”
I hated admitting to failure, but then, it was all in the delivery. “At this point I can only confirm these two names. What I do isn’t an exact science, you understand.”
Gardiner breathed rather loudly for a few seconds. “Well, if that’s the best you can do, I will have to accept it. Thanks for trying.”
He hung up, a dissatisfied customer by the sounds of it. Why, I didn’t know. Hadn’t I saved him big bucks by telling him not to insure two millionaires? Paying out on their deaths could take a toll on his business. A thank you would’ve been nice. By Hades. Some people’s behavior was so far out there, it had to be getting frostbite. Good thing I’d made sure Gardiner’s payment was safe and sitting pretty in my account.
CHAPTER THREE
With work done and feeling a little tired, I snuggled into my seat and picked up the controller of my games console.
“I warned you,” a deep voice said.
I twisted up from the sofa, knocking the device to the ground, and took two, three careful steps back.
Maximus Remo stood under the large arch separating my living room from the dining room.
Maximus freaking Remo.
In my freaking living room.
My chest clamped tight around my lungs, forcing me to take shallow breaths, but I kept control over my facial expression by sheer will alone.
A black coat had destroyed his nakedness, although his equally dark pants at least still hinted at the shape of his legs.
“How did you get in?” I asked as soon as I’d found my tongue.
His eyes held neither color nor shine. Two matte black circles took the place of his irises.
He wasn’t human. I had no clue what he was, but human wasn’t it.
One mystery solved, another mystery raised, and this new one was a doozy.
“Let me rephrase.” I tucked my fists into my hips. “How the hell did you get in?”
“Do you want me to lie, the way you lied to me?” His accent was rich and rocky. Maybe Russian or Hungarian. Maybe even more exotic.
I stepped closer. “Who are you? What are you?”
He bared his teeth in a bizarre smile that barely deserved the name. “You’re playing games still, eh?”
His voice held a sharpness that could have cut, but I was the Reaper’s daughter. Whoever he was, whatever he was, he was out of his league.
“No games. You aren’t human.” Of that, I was sure.
He leaned his head to the side, his lifeless eyes offering no clue to the thoughts behind them.
“You really don’t know? Ha!” He jerked his head. “You commit an act of war, and you don’t even know?”
“What act of war?”
“You work for the Council, no? But I don’t.” He slammed his hand against his chest. “Never again.”
Oh, crap. A Shadow Walker. He was a Shadow.
Was he?
Did Shadow Walkers live among humans? Did they even look human? Hell, did they look like him?
If they did, I had royally messed up. The fact that he stood in my living room despite the double-locked door certainly spoke to that. If he sicced the Council on me, I’d be toast.
“There’s no need to involve the authorities, is there?” I made an extra effort with my smile. “It was a misunderstanding. I didn’t know who or what you were. Honest.”
“I see. Okay. You are forgiven.”
“Really?”
“No.” He leaned forward. “I heard your conversation on the phone. You said my name.”
I inched away from him. If he was a Shadow Walker, it would explain the scent of death enveloping him. He and his kind visited death upon those who threatened the world order, before carrying their souls off into the Eternal Night. The despots and dictators of the world who took their reigns too far would one day find themselves looking into Remo’s handsome face.
“You violated my home.” The smoothness of his voice didn’t suit his words. “I do not tolerate spies. I kill spies.”
“But I’m not a spy.” I waved him off with crisscrossing arms. “Listen, I took a job for a human who mistook you for a human. See? I’m like...a private detective, if you will. I didn’t even know you are what you are.”
“You’re a bad liar.”
“I’m a great liar. But this time, I’m telling the truth.” He had to believe me, because if he didn’t, I’d just landed my dad in a big pile of crap.
“You expect me to believe the cockamammy story?”
“Cockamamie, you mean.”
“Cocka—what?” He took a few more steps toward me.
I swallowed hard and shifted back, out of his reach. “—mamie. Anyway, it’s not. Listen, let’s forget this happened. Okay?”
“You will tell the Council where I live. They will send more spies.”
“No. I’m not going to tell the Council a thing. Honest.”
My back struck the wall, and Remo’s face hovered inches from mine. Those dark eyes of his no longer appeared empty. Something stirred in them. Something...familiar. The scent I’d caught of his essence earlier had a visual counterpart that drew me every bit as much as his unreachable soul.
“How do I know this?” His breath was hot, his aura cold. “The only thing I know about you is you fill up a bikini well.”
His hungry expression stole my breath. He was a contradiction on every level.
“But it’s not enough to let you off the hooks.” Carefully rolling a strand of my hair around his hand, he then tightened his fist, forcing my face closer to his.
He’d probably intended the gesture to hurt more than it did.
In many ways, I was immortal. Disease and age wouldn’t affect me. Yet, even though I was resilient, killing me wasn’t impossible. Either way, I certainly wasn’t immune to pain, and Remo looked like he was capable of inflicting a lot of damage. Without the Council’s oversight, who would stop him?
“I’m not a member of the Council.” I placed my hands on his chest and pushed.
He didn’t budge.
“Lies.” He barely breathed the word, so low was his voi
ce. “More lies.”
“The Council doesn’t even know I exist.”
He let go of my hair and, with his hands on either side of my head, trained his gaze on my face. A pinprick of red sat at the center of each eye, like flames a thousand miles away. Was this the core I’d been trying to find?
“Why does the Council not know about you?” He stood so near, the small hairs on his chin fell into focus. “You know about them.”
“I know someone on the Council. That’s how.” I bent my knees to slip out from under his arms, but he pressed his weight against me.
“What are you?” He ran his nose along my neck and hair, taking deep breaths. “You smell good.”
By Hades, I might not be human, but I was only a woman. And this man, this Shadow, felt good against my body.
I cocked my head and shot him a loaded look. “Vanilla shower gel. You like?”
“No. Underneath it. What are you?”
Okay, so he wasn’t interested in me as a woman. His bad.
Despite my urge to wrap myself around him, I gave a bored sigh. “I can’t tell you. Now stop this.”
He leaned back a fraction, just enough to stare at me. “Can’t or won’t?”
“How do I know you won’t rat me out to the Council?”
The red in his eyes loomed larger now, enough to let me feel the heat of the flames.
He was danger and sex origamied into the sculpture of a man—maybe too much for me to handle after all. Was he going to hurt me? Possibly. Was I making an ass out of myself for flirting with him? Oh, most definitely.
“I could rat you now.” His mouth twisted. “You said you will not tell them the address. If you want me to believe it, you will give me information about you.”
“You mean, you won’t tell them about me, and I won’t tell about you? Mutual blackmail?”
“Yes.”
Dad had warned me over and over not to reveal my existence to anyone. Breaking my promise because a Shadow Walker demanded it would be the worst kind of betrayal.
“I’ve already told you I live hidden from the Council’s watch.” I shuttered my expression to show neither hope nor unease. “That’s all the mutually assured destruction you need.”
For a minute, he studied every facet of my face. Would he accept my proposal? How could he not? He’d probably move anyway, take on a new name—because that was what I was going to do.
Dad would be upset. Be careful, my little star. Not just a statement of concern, but a full-blown warning. The Council ruled over the world with an iron fist that could easily crush me.
“Acceptable.” Remo pushed himself off the wall. “But do not cross my paths again.”
“Or you mine,” I said with all the bluster I didn’t feel.
His mouth rearranged itself into what I assumed was a grin. He swaggered toward the door, where the ceiling lights didn’t reach, and within seconds, he was gone.
If I’d needed proof of what he was, I’d just gotten it. A real-life Shadow Walker.
I smiled.
Hot damn.
CHAPTER FOUR
The phone rang. I glanced across my mattress with bleary eyes and waited for the alarm clock on my nightstand to fall into focus. Who the hell was calling me at three in the morning?
I slapped for my cell and answered. “Hello?”
“Dab? That you?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“It’s Mary, dear. You and your father saved my life last year.”
I should have recognized her by her melodious voice.
“Hi, Mary.” I sat up against the headboard and rubbed my eyes. “Are you okay? The Council haven’t tracked you down, have they?”
“No, dear. As far as they’re concerned, I’m still as dead as a mummy.”
“It’s nice to hear from you, but it’s the middle of the night here.”
“It’s about your dad.”
I knew she’d been sweet on him! “If you want to speak to him, you should try again next week. Sorry.”
“When’s the last time you talked to him?”
“Earlier today. Yesterday, I mean. Why?”
“This is bad, Dab. I don’t know what to do or who to talk to. I’ve just had a visitor from the Twilight. You know, a real one.”
She had a gift: She could communicate with ghosts—although more often than not, her visitors turned out to be figments of an overactive imagination.
I coughed away my doubt. “What did the visitor say?”
“I’m not sure if it makes any sense, but according to her, souls aren’t being reaped. She says your dad has disappeared.”
I snorted. “Hardly. He’s really busy. That’s it.”
“Oh, okay. It’s just...” She breathed loudly. “You’d probably know this better than me. Well, I just wanted to make sure. You’ll call me once he’s back? My visitor is very upset, and I’d like to reassure her.”
“Sure. No problem.”
We ended the call with banal niceties. Dad wasn’t the type to neglect his duty. If souls weren’t being reaped, he simply had too much work on his hands to deal with everyone in one night. He wasn’t Santa Claus, after all. So why was Mary’s ghost visitor so spooked?
I got up and headed into the living room to turn on the twenty-four-hour news channel. On the screen, scared faces fled down dusty tracks with little more than blankets and pots on their backs. The next footage showed a group of victims piled on top of each other outside the ruins of a garage, each groan a plea for my father to take away their pain. None of it made for easy watching. This was humankind at its ugliest.
Dad was a fast worker, so the situation had to be even more dire than the pictures on TV told.
I made myself a cup of coffee, grabbed a tub of yoghurt, and headed back to the sofa. The cameras focused on medical staff busy easing the pain of victims in front of the crumbling remains of a house. Most of these people looked too badly wounded to have survived the explosion.
One woman was crying, hunched over her twitching husband. Both were covered in dirt and blood. Unless they’d lived in a bubble, the man would’ve seen too much carnage in his life to make it into the Glory without my dad’s help, so where the heck was he?
He wouldn’t just jet off to take a vacation, especially not without telling me. Was it possible he’d shacked up with a woman somewhere? Yeah. No. Not my dad.
I turned over to a different news channel. Everywhere the same images. Refugees walking toward hope, while people lay deep in blood and pain across the region.
Dad, where the hell are you?
THE REST OF THE NIGHT turned into a nightmare. I called friends, searched the Internet for traces of Dad’s whereabouts, and examined images of the dying like a hungry psychopath. On TV, doctors arrived and transported the injured away, and who knew, maybe a handful of people had dodged a bullet. But this wasn’t how the world was supposed to work. Humans had to die so that others might live. That was the tradeoff.
My calls to my dad using my magical runes had had no more success than Mary’s repeated attempts to squeeze her dead informants for news.
My father had disappeared.
The rumble in my stomach wasn’t from a lack of food. The chill in my neck didn’t come from the presence of a Shadow Walker. The world had come unhinged, and I watched it unfold like a human—stunned, and essentially helpless.
By early morning, most news outlets had reported on the ‘glorious’ developments. Coma patients whose machines had been switched off continued to breathe. The latest terrorist bomb had claimed a few children, but most adults survived. A miracle, they called it.
I tossed my throw-pillow at the chipper reporter on the screen. No one understood that death wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. In the Western world, we had morphine to dull the pain of dying. Others across the globe weren’t that lucky.
I took a shower to clear my head and put on jeans and a sleeveless top. Dad wasn’t doing his job, and he wasn’t answering my c
alls. The number of people who could help me had dwindled to zero, or at least zero-adjacent. I had exactly one avenue left to explore. One way or another, I had to secure the Council’s help.
My nerves fluttered like leaves in a storm during my ride to their HQ, but my mind was made up. Kind of. Dad’s dire warnings always struck home, and none more so than the ones about the Council.
At ten p.m., I parked my Chevy two blocks from HQ, which was located inside the local mall. On the secret upper level, to be exact. Dad used to tell me of his hours spent training here, and of the machinations and backstabbing that went on, so much so that I could practically picture the layout.
Hundreds of people congregated inside the mall. Some whispered in excited voices about the many miracles they’d seen on the news, but most were too self-absorbed to occupy themselves with existentialism. Grandmother Annie’s birthday present or little Oscar’s new outfit seemed more pressing.
I slipped into the bathroom, dissipated, and focalized on the Council’s top floor, inside a corridor. From there, I followed the voices into the belly of the beast—a large room with low ceilings and no natural light, presumably to keep the vampires and other creatures of the night happy. Instead, artificial ceiling light bounced off the polished walls and hardwood floors to maximize illumination. The six Masters sat at a table on a dais. Crescents of benches pulsed away from them like rings on water. The benches seated the remaining Council members—mostly men, of course. Even the ones my dad had deemed too lazy or too full of themselves to actively participate in governing the world had shown up.
As expected, Dad’s disappearance was a big deal.
I took a seat on one of the padded brown benches, in the back where the lights still left dark areas for me to hide in. A tall man in his middle years with long white hair and a white suit stood to address the group.
“So, we’re all agreed.” His fine voice projected clearly through the large space. “He’s betrayed us and all we stand for, and we must counter his move by bringing the full strength of our army to bear.”