Reaper Unexpected: Deadside Reapers book 1

by Cassidy, Debbie

  My muscles obeyed. My body went slack, and my mind calmed. This wasn’t so bad. Like floating. Like flying. Like—

  Warm liquid spattered my face. The Dread’s mouth was gone. His head was gone. Dazzling light shot up into the sky from his torn neck and winked out. My mind cleared to see Azazel, huge scythe in hand, glaring at me as if I was an offense to his senses. The Dread had lost his head, but his body remained upright for a moment longer, his hand still around my throat, and then he fell. His body disintegrated into white-hot embers that vanished quickly. My knees buckled, but Azazel grabbed me around the waist.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded.

  I was hauled back to my feet, and Azazel scanned my face with milky-white eyes. Where were his irises?

  “Fuck,” he said.

  The world was woozy.

  “You’re bleeding out.”

  “I’ll heal.”

  “Not after a Dread’s kiss. Fuck. I’m going to kill Mal.”

  “Fredrin is dead.” My words were garbled. Why was it getting so dark?

  Azazel grit his teeth. “Fucking hell.” He grabbed the nape of my neck. Tilted my head up and pressed his mouth to mine. Ice shot through me and coalesced at the wound in my neck. Pain so sharp, so fucking intense I couldn’t breathe. I clawed at him, punching and kicking, but he was larger, stronger. He was killing me.

  But then heat replaced ice and numbness was replaced by sensation and the impression of unfamiliar lips on mine that felt too familiar. Images flitted through my mind, blue water, pink coral, and the darkness and safety of the sea. I was home. I was safe. I was—

  Being shoved away from all the good stuff. Azazel looked down on me with an unfathomable expression.

  “The fight is over. The Dread retreated. I healed you. You will live.” He stormed off.

  Over.

  It was over?

  Fredrin …

  No. No, it would never be over.

  I fell to my knees beside the tiny crumpled body of a boy who was a hero. A boy who sacrificed himself to save his friend. His eyes were open in shock, his mouth parted in surprise. I’d failed him. I’d let him die. I gathered him carefully into my arms and smoothed his hair back from his face. Tears choked me, and a vise crushed my chest.

  The monsters are real. His voice filled my head. The monsters are real.

  He was just a boy, just a little boy. This shouldn’t have happened. He should have been safe.

  I hugged him close. “I promise you, sweetheart, the monsters will never get to win again.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Several cadets dead, three tutors dead, and too many injured. Evelyn had extracted the location of the Academy from Conah’s brain and attacked. They’d made it through the wards somehow. The place had been ransacked as if the Dread had barreled through it like a tornado. Mal said it was a ploy to weaken their forces. By attacking the Academy and taking out the cadets, they made sure the reaper pool remained small. They made sure the main threat to them remained crippled.

  The vampires had come for the children. Demon spawn, as they called them, were a delicacy to the dirty bastards. But the Academy had sounded the alarm in time to prevent a massacre.

  My mind was numb as Azazel led me into the lounge, his grip a tight band on my upper arm. The room was bathed in cheery sunlight totally at odds with the night we’d just torn ourselves from. Confused butterflies fluttered in my chest. I should shrug him off, tell him to fuck off, but Fredrin’s face was all I could see, and my heart— oh, God. It hurt so bad.

  Mal followed us into the lounge. “Az, what the fuck?”

  “You shouldn’t have brought her,” Azazel said. “She’s untrained. She could have died.”

  “She held her own out there,” Mal replied.

  “She almost died.”

  “But you kissed it all better,” Mal drawled. “Tell me, was there tongue?”

  He was trying to lighten the mood, but he wasn’t shielding, and his concern was a palpable force. Azazel, on the other hand, was a closed book.

  “She would have bled out.”

  “Yes, I know. A Dread’s kiss nulls the scythe’s healing power,” Mal said. “I get it. I’m just playing with you.”

  “You won’t take her anywhere without my permission,” Azazel said. “From now on, Seraphina is my problem.”

  “Whoa, wait a fucking second. She’s not a thing you can claim.”

  “You want to fight me?” Azazel said calmly. “She stays with me. No discussion.”

  What? A flame of indignation lit up my chest, and I finally surfaced into the room, into the conversation.

  “No.” I yanked my arm from his grasp. “Fuck you. You don’t get to tell me what to do. No one does.”

  Azazel stared at me impassively. His eyes, which had been milky at the Academy, were sharp and silver once more, boring into me. “As much as I would love to, I can’t let you die.”

  “Az, what the hell is going on?” Mal said.

  “Where’s Conah?” Azazel asked.

  “Still unconscious,” Mal said.

  Azazel nodded. “Why did you bring her to the Academy, knowing the threat we faced? Did you want her dead?”

  “Fuck you, silver boy.” Mal looked genuinely offended. “I had her back. Consider it on-the-job training.”

  “So, you would protect her?”

  Mal tensed, immediately on alert. His eyes narrowed. “Look, I’m not fucking enamored or anything, but she’s one of us. If she dies, we could end up with a dud in her place.”

  “Would you protect her with your life?” Azazel pressed.

  What the hell was going on?

  “Hang on a second.” Mal held up his hands. “Az, you know me. I don’t go down for anyone unless it’s in the bedroom, and they’re willing to return the favor.”

  Azazel closed his eyes for a second as if reining in his temper. “Would you allow intentional harm to come to her?”

  Mal fixed his emerald eyes on me, and for the first time since we’d met, there was no humor in them. “No. She’s too much fun to tease.”

  Azazel’s shoulders relaxed. “In that case, it’s time to share my burden. The only logical course of action is to tell you the truth.” He glanced at me as if I was a problem he’d rather not have.

  I suppressed a shudder.

  “Which is?” Mal prompted.

  “Sit, both of you.”

  Mal shot me a look and then jerked his head toward the sofa. I joined him, sitting side by side as Azazel paced.

  “A long time ago, Mother sent me on a quest.”

  “That’s Lilith,” Mal said from the corner of his mouth.

  Azazel glared at him.

  “What? She needs to know.”

  Azazel sighed. “I suppose she does. It was after Samael got sick. Lilith was distraught. Nothing worked to cure him.”

  “Sick?” I looked from Mal to Azazel. “What was wrong with him?”

  “Memory issues,” Mal said. “Azazel, go on.”

  “Lilith asked me to kill all demons born of Samael and Eve’s union.”

  “Cain and Abel’s progeny?” Mal let out a low whistle. “Fuck. Why?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “And you did it?” Mal asked.

  Azazel’s gaze fell on me. “I did, all except one bloodline. Descendants of Cain.”

  Why was he looking at me?

  “Eve stopped me before I could finish,” Azazel said. “She cursed me to protect the bloodline.”

  Mal pointed a finger at me. “Fee is a descendant of Cain?”

  “Yes,” Azazel said. “She lives because I failed Lilith.” His eyes bore into me. “She lives because I have protected her bloodline for centuries.”

  “I don’t understand …” But I was getting there. “If you were watching over my bloodline, you would know what happened to my parents?”

  “Dead,” he said. “A fire. I was unable to save them, but I saved you.”
<
br />   “You put me in the system?” I stared at him in horror. “What about aunts or uncles, I must have had them?”

  “No. Your mother was the only one.”

  “How is that possible?”

  His lip curled in a sneer. “I was cursed to ensure the bloodline didn’t die. Not to protect all of you.”

  “Fuck, Az,” Mal said. “You killed the rest, leaving only one?”

  “Mother gave me a quest,” he replied.

  “And she doesn’t know you never completed it, does she?” Mal stood. “Az … what the fuck?”

  I was absorbing this. Working it through my mind and putting the pieces together. “What happens if you fail? What’s the cost? Because you could have orchestrated a failure a long time ago if you wanted. So, why haven’t you found a loophole?”

  “Eve used my blood to cast the curse,” Azazel said.

  “Oh, shit.” Mal ran a hand over his face. “If you fail, Lilith gets affected, right?”

  Azazel nodded. “Not sure how. But Eve promised pain.”

  “I don’t get it, how can this Eve have so much power?”

  “Legend says Eve is the first witch,” Mal said. “She spawned what we today call magic. All humans with the ability owe it to her. You won’t find a supernatural able to wield magic. That is a human ability.”

  “Eve is powerful,” Azazel said. “Her power is equal to Lilith’s.”

  “Then just tell Lilith the truth,” Mal said.

  “I can’t,” Az said.

  Mal made a sound of exasperation, but I was busy studying Azazel’s face.

  “Mal, I think he physically can’t tell her.”

  “Then I’ll fucking tell her,” Mal said.

  Azazel’s smile was cold. “You won’t be able to.”

  “You’ve tried to send people to tell her, haven’t you?” Fucking hell. “What happens to people who try and tell?”

  “They die before they can speak the words.”

  Silence.

  Okay. Well, that sucked. He had to keep me alive to save his mother from whatever pain Eve had planted.

  “What if it’s a lie?” Mal said. “What if there is no consequence to letting the bloodline die?”

  “Hey.” I shot him a lethal glare.

  Azazel inhaled wearily. “I can’t take the risk.”

  He was stuck with me. Forced to keep me alive, and from the look in his eyes, he’d do whatever it took to achieve that goal.

  Panic fluttered to life in my stomach. “I won’t be put in a cage.”

  Mal and Azazel exchanged looks, and ice filled my veins.

  “I hid you,” Azazel said. “I paid for charms and enchantments to hide your signature to ensure you wouldn’t be found, but when you took the scythe, you broke those enchantments.”

  “Then we find new charms to hide her,” Mal said.

  Azazel snorted. “She has Eve’s face.”

  I touched my cheek. “I look like her?”

  “Yes.” His lip curled again. “If Lilith or her assassins see you, there will be no doubt that I failed.”

  That he lied, and then Lilith would try and kill me. Fuck.

  “It wasn’t an issue when you were living a human life,” he continued. “Lilith and the oldest demons rarely, if ever, venture to the human realm, but you’re in our world now.”

  “We can’t lock her up. She’s bound to Deadside,” Mal said. “She’s a Dominus, and we need her.”

  “Which is why she stays with me,” Azazel said. “Trains with me. Becomes my fucking shadow.”

  Mal rubbed his chin and pouted. “As long as we keep her away from Dread and the Dominus-killing dagger, she should be fine. We get her working with her scythe and properly bonded to it so she can heal quicker … we can do this.”

  I was touched by Mal’s concern, but when I tried to catch his eye to communicate my gratitude, he studiously avoided mine. I didn’t fail to notice Azazel’s reaction to the mention of the dagger, though. He’d reacted similarly earlier when Kiara had told him about it.

  “Azazel? You know about the dagger, don’t you?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Mal threw up his hands. “You either do, or you don’t.”

  “There have been many dangerous weapons over the centuries.” He shrugged. “We neutralized them.”

  “And you think this dagger is one you missed?” Mal asked.

  “It could be.”

  “Well, that’s a starting point,” Mal said. “There has to be an archive somewhere.”

  “The celestials have it,” Azazel said.

  “Great.”

  But my mind was wandering. Going over everything I’d just learned. I was a Dominus descended from Samael and Eve. Was that why Peiter’s scythe chose me? My head hurt from all the revelations. I needed a minute, several minutes. Fuck, I needed to sleep on this. I needed to bury my face in my pillow and cry for the little boy who’d lost his life today.

  I stood and headed to the exit.

  “Where are you going?” Azazel demanded.

  “For a bath. And no, you can’t come with me. Shadowing can wait till tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Cora was sitting on my bed with Cyril curled up beside her. “I got back from the market, and you were gone. I was so scared.”

  I kicked off my boots. “The Academy was attacked.”

  “I know. Iza filled me in. She got the details. You almost died.”

  She was scanning my face, concern etched on hers, but I was numb. I was tired, and I was so fucking sad.

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now. I just … I want to soak in the bath and not think.”

  “Good job I ran you one then, isn’t it?”

  She stood and held out her arms for a hug. She was semi corporal, so the hug wasn’t as firm as I’d like, but it was better than nothing.

  My eyes pricked as the tears threatened to burst past the dam I’d erected. “I’m glad you’re here, babe.”

  “What about me?” Cyril demanded.

  “You too. But right now, I just need to be alone. Please.”

  There was no need to wait for a response. They’d respect my space. I stepped into the bathroom and closed and locked the door.

  I leaned back against it and took a deep breath. I was a target. I was to be protected, but at least I wasn’t a prisoner. But if I was going to be here, if I was going to be a Dominus, then I was going to fucking do it well. There would be no more children dead on my watch. And Mal and Conah could shove their secrets up their asses.

  I pushed my slacks off my hips.

  First thing tomorrow, I’d confront Mal. Azazel had revealed my heritage, but those two knew more shit. My gut was only ever wrong after a vindaloo.

  I peeled off my long-sleeved top and went to unhook my bra and froze. What the fuck was that black mark on my chest? The mirror revealed it in full. It was a symbol.

  And I’d seen it before. Recently.

  It was the exact same symbol as Azazel’s soul mark, which meant …

  Hell, no!

  To be continued …

  The story continues in Reaper Uninvited.

  Click HERE to grab it now!

  Other books by Debbie Cassidy

  The Gatekeeper Chronicles

  Coauthored with Jasmine Walt

  Marked by Sin

  Hunted by Sin

  Claimed by Sin

  The Witch Blood Chronicles

  (Spin-off to the Gatekeeper Chronicles)

  Binding Magick

  Defying Magick

  Embracing Magick

  Unleashing Magick

  The Fearless Destiny Series

  Beyond Everlight

  Into Evernight

  Under Twilight

  The Chronicles of Midnight

  Protector of Midnight

  Champion of Midnight

  Secrets of Midnight

  Shades of Midnight

  Savior of Midnight

  Chroni
cles of Arcana

  City of Demons

  City of the Lost

  City of Everdark

  City of War

  For the Blood

  For the Blood

  For the Power

  For the Reign

  For the Hunt (novella)

  Heart of Darkness

  Captive of Darkness

  Bane of Winter

  Fate’s Destiny

  Deadworld

  Deadworld

  Dead City

  Dead Sea

  Dead End

  The Nightwatch Academy

  Shadow Caster

  Shadow Weaver

  Shadow Warrior

  Shadow Master

  The Nightwatch Series

  Ghost of a Chance

  Give up the Ghost

  Ghost at the Feast

  Lay the Ghost

  Deadside Reapers Series

  Reaper Unexpected

  The Iron Fae Series

  Taste My Wrath

  Dragon Guard Series

  Dragon Trial

  Survivor’s Heart (Planet Athion World)

  Novellas

  Rogue

  Rebel

  Survivor

  Standalone Novellas

  Blood Blade

  About the Author

  Debbie Cassidy lives in England, Bedfordshire, with her three kids and very supportive husband. Coffee and chocolate biscuits are her writing fuels of choice, and she is still working on getting that perfect tower of solitude built in her back garden. Obsessed with building new worlds and reading about them, she spends her spare time daydreaming and conversing with the characters in her head – in a totally non psychotic way of course. She writes High Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Space Fantasy, and Reverse Harem. Connect with Debbie via her website at debbiecassidyauthor.com or twitter @authordcassidy. Or sign up to her Newsletter to stay in the know.