The Reaper's Kiss

by Abigail Baker

  I parked the van a few streets away and checked my captives for any loose ropes. They were as secure as when Azim had first tied the knots. Thank Hades that, as mere Reapers, they couldn’t burn their way through them like I could.

  The back door of Salon de Tatouage was in an alley wide enough to fit two slender people side by side. No one travelled through the passageway unless they worked or lived in the bordering buildings, so it kept me adequately concealed. The flat gray door was what I needed to get inside and out of view. I couldn’t get to it fast enough.

  A slip of the key and I was in the back room awash in shadows. I tiptoed toward Gerard’s office, where he kept a sizable toolkit that he used for odd jobs around the shop. That and some basic technology were all I would need to supersede Marin’s daily broadcasts with my own.

  Well, I prayed it was.

  I was going to climb to the eighteen-story-high roof of Le Château, where the main Stygian broadcasting equipment was located, to rig the Interceptor to the Stygian antenna, interrupting Marin’s mandated broadcasts with my own call to unite the rebels—one that would surely set Styx on the road to a full-on insurrection.

  But I was still inside Gerard’s office, not a hundred-and-eighty feet above the city. The soft green glow of Gerard’s desktop computer pulsed like the beam of a tiny lighthouse, bringing me back down to terra firma. I was inches from the computer desk when my boot slipped out from under me.

  I sailed into the air and squealed before I landed on my backside. The desk chair skidded across the floor and slammed into a file cabinet. I pressed my hands on the tile and lost traction again. My arms splayed out. My noggin cracked against the tile.

  The pain wasn’t as bad as my injured ego.

  Hades only knew what else would fail me—brains, courage, bladder? I ran my hands down my face. At least no one saw this. If Brent had, he would surely…

  What the…?

  I inhaled a metallic pong. I rose, trying to get my feet underneath me. One foot slid over a plane of water, but I caught myself when I threw my shoulders over the desk. I yanked the lamp chain. A glow of forty watts illuminated the back room.

  Painted from floor to ceiling and everywhere in between was a mosaic of bloody handprints in what looked to have been a sadistic fight. My foot and hand prints had streaked the red film blanketing the floor.

  “Gerard?”

  I started toward the door. My knees collapsed, and I crashed into a file cabinet. Over and over I attempted to stand, until I spilled out of the office and into the storefront. An amber blush cast the walls of black and white tattoo flash and workstations in early morning warmth.

  But it was not a beautiful, welcoming picture.

  Gerard, bloody and weak from a beating, was held upright by Chad’s single-handed grip. Behind them was a pair of Watchmen, arms folded over their chests and those damned scythes pins winking at my predicament.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Scriveners are my curse.”

  —Head Reaper Marin

  19 April

  “Lookie here,” Chad sneered, and all feeling drained out of my body. “The Scrivie returns.”

  Gerard’s strained face reddened from Chad’s tightening grip. His fingernails cut into my mentor’s throat, and though I had no personal experience with Chad’s power, I was confident he was displaying only a smidgen of what strength he possessed. The two Watchmen lingered, seemingly waiting for Chad to give his command.

  My muscles were reduced to paralysis. Firing on all cylinders, my mind begged me to dash out of the shop and run for safety. But my heart, pounding like a trapped, wild animal inside my ribcage, urged me to stay and fight. Gerard needed my help.

  I couldn’t let them see my fear, even if it had flashed across my face in the instant I walked into the room. I had to hide it, mask it, and convince myself that I was a warrior hell-bent on protecting Gerard, while inside I was screaming for a quick death.

  My hands throbbed with heat like they had hours earlier outside of the Sisters Café.

  “Don’t hurt him,” I uttered a plea for my mentor and friend, wishing I had enough air in my lungs to speak more persuasively. My knees buckled slightly when I attempted to root my stance. The shift of the Watchmen’s eyes told me they noticed it. “You want me to turn myself in?”

  “Ollie, don’t,” Gerard grunted.

  Chad’s grip constricted an inch. Gerard gasped. I couldn’t help but wish Gerard could call on his own power or heat to help himself. One clamp of a singeing hand around Chad’s neck would be a sufficient attack. But Gerard, bloody and weak, had nothing in him, no life force powerful enough to save himself. And as far as I knew, he wasn’t a Master.

  However, my own heat rose like wildfire up my arms and toward my shoulders. Rare was the occasion when this talent in my hands outsourced itself to the rest of my body. Now that it had, I peeled my jacket away, letting it drop to the floor at my feet. The hawk eyes of my adversaries followed my every move. My ruby-colored arms were certainly an unsettling vision, or so I assumed, because just as they spied uncertainty in my weak knees, I spied something in them. Hesitancy? Regret? Fear?

  “Let him go, and I’ll turn myself in,” I said with confidence I didn’t know I had.

  “See here, Scrivie, I don’t have to negotiate with you,” Chad bit back. “You have no leverage.”

  The shift in the Watchmen’s faces told a slightly different story. They didn’t want to get near me; that much was obvious. Touching this Scrivener would risk burns, and if they knew anything about Nick Baird’s fate, they knew what I was capable of. Or so I hoped.

  But Chad’s threat on my life and Gerard’s was greater than anything else.

  I needed help—Brent and Clover and Azim. No, I needed a whole army to help me put an end to the senselessness. Alive or dead, it wouldn’t matter. Marin would continue his tyranny, and his loyalists would enforce it.

  The next move was mine, and my primary concern was seeing that Gerard walked away unscathed. I put my hands into the air to show my intent to surrender. A drop to my knees was my laying down of arms. Just as I began to bow my head and tell them that I was giving in, I watched Chad’s gray eyes transition into Eidolon death-red.

  “No!” I shrieked.

  The time between the air leaving my lungs and my legs propelling me upright was sufficient for Chad to draw out Gerard’s soul. In one vile inhale, my mentor of twelve years, the only other Scrivener I knew, my friend, and the man I turned to for advice, was gone. Ash collected on the floor where Gerard once stood. In an instant, Gerard became a memory, all because of my choices and actions.

  There was no logic, or hesitating, or thinking. What little sense I had was gone. I threw myself at Chad, knocked him to his back, and clamped my red hands around his throat as my lungs poured out a murderous screech. In the reflection of the shop’s window, I caught a glimpse of myself. I didn’t recognize this Scrivener, this beast in a red bodysuit filled brimful with insurmountable rage.

  Chad wasn’t quick to let me have my way. I had no doubt that he had encountered a Master Scrivener’s full-blown ire before. Unlike Nicholas Baird, he had skills beyond the average Reaper. So, I held onto his neck with all my might, and I willed death upon him as the Watchmen pulled at my shoulders and legs and hair to remove me from my prey.

  Chad didn’t need their help, however. My grip slackened when he morphed into that vaporous, horrid blackness that I had seen before. He was just as horrifying, just as brooding, and just as commanding as I remembered. The two Watchmen and myself were thrown across the shop by an unseen force. The brick wall separating Salon de Tatouage from the hair salon next door broke my fall. I slid to my buttocks but wasted no time scraping my feet against the blood-covered floor as Chad’s dark alter ego advanced.

  This time his hand found my neck. My feet came off of the floor while my back and scorching red arms pressed against the brick wall.

  Chad’s red stare bored into my wide eyes.

/>   “Now I see why Brent Hume had his eye on you.” Pinning me to the wall, he raked me from head to toe with his contempt. “Too bad you’ll go to Erebus before you realize what it means to be a Master.”

  My arms and hands struggled to find grip on the brick wall. I felt what should’ve been mortar and stone fuse together into an impervious barrier of liquid fire. The wall was melting from my touch.

  Or was it disintegrating?

  Or—when I felt cool air brush my palms—was it vanishing?

  I wanted to see, to know what was happening, and I got a chance when I fell backward through the wall. I slid across the floor of the hair salon, slamming into a stylist’s chair. Bricks crashed to the floor of the dark, unopened shop. The liquefied portions of the brick wall dripped from the hole I had burned through it.

  Without giving much consideration to this newfound skill, I grabbed the nearest object—a metal can of hairspray—and hurled it full-force at Chad’s misty shadow and then threw my weight against the salon’s front door, setting off the alarm. The chill in the air was hard on my lungs as I ran from Chad and the Watchmen. I ran hard and fast until my body couldn’t run any longer.

  In the back alley of two brick buildings in Haute-Ville, I stopped and hid behind a green Dumpster, huddled down like the fugitive I was.

  Chad and the Watchmen had been close behind me, but they lost my trail when I used Québec’s winding streets to my advantage. They weren’t completely gone, however. Their voices could be heard some distance away.

  I peeked around the edge of the Dumpster to gauge the scene. I waited an extra beat of silence before I turned around to see red eyes peering at me. A pair of hands covered my mouth as I drew in air to scream.

  “Shh.” Brent’s eyes scanned the end of the alley for pursuers.

  I shoved his hands away and whispered, “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

  “I had a damn fine idea where you took off to.” He matched my volume and tone.

  “Where’s Dudley? Did you leave him behind?” I had to know. People I loved were dropping dead at my feet. Dudley’s safety mattered.

  His heavy brow furrowed. “Don’t change the subject. What are you doing here? We have sex, and then you ditch me? That’s shitty.”

  “You know why I had to come back,” I argued.

  He rose to his feet, obviously no longer concerned about detection, and so I followed his lead and stood up, too. “Fine, Ollie. We’ll play the game your way.”

  “Damn right we will.” I tamped down my regret and guilt for Gerard as I faced Brent. I had grown used to guilt eating away at me. Another soul on my conscience wouldn’t break me.

  I was already broken.

  “Chad took Gerard out,” I said. My throat constricted and eyes watered thinking of Gerard’s fate. I should’ve done more. I should’ve saved him.

  Brent sighed. “He’ll take out your parents next if he’s their assigned Eidolon.”

  “I know. But at least he can’t take me out since you’re the only one who can.”

  He looked at me as if I could read minds.

  “I read your Deathlist. I know that I’m on it,” I said, to answer his quizzical expression. I set my attention on him and waited for a reaction.

  “Then you know why I was trying to get you as far from this place as possible—so that Marin couldn’t capture you, put you on trial, and then have you sent to Erebus. I couldn’t bear to be the one to send you, Ollie.” Brent leveled his gaze on my defiant stance. But I couldn’t read his expression. Was he upset? Angry? Ready to turn me in for betraying my promise to him?

  Never mind his thoughts. My plan hadn’t ended. It was just impeded. I had to get the Interceptor mounted, and then I’d speak to Styx and, more importantly, Marin, on behalf of my parents. I couldn’t let anyone else suffer—Mama, Papa, Brent. I wouldn’t.

  “I want to protect those I love,” I said, not as a plea, but as an unwavering vow. “It’s not my fault that you are afraid to honor your Deathlist.”

  “Listen to me for a moment. I read my list after we got back from the Registry Vault. I almost told you, but I needed to get you out of Québec because I knew if you stayed, I would have to fulfill the assignment.” He spoke in a soothing tone, combating the tension in my body. “I couldn’t say it sooner. I just…just didn’t have the words.”

  I didn’t know how to channel my frustration, how to tame it now that it was pushed into overdrive. I couldn’t ignore the urge to rip everything I loved and hated apart, starting with Marin. Anger was a budding malignancy working its way through my heart. What was I supposed to do with it?

  “Ollie, I’m sorry. Give me a chance to figure things out, and then we’ll come—”

  “I have something to say that everyone in Styx needs to hear. I need your help though.” When our eyes met again, he saw it—the fire in me, the Scrivener who would first burn through brick walls and then the world to make her point. He knew I could do it. Only now did I feel I could do it, too.

  “Whatever your plan, it involves the both of us,” he said, trying to pull me back to practicality. “Your decisions affect me. Let’s talk about this.”

  “Nothing can change what you’ll eventually have to do, Brent. Help me stand up to Marin and save my parents. Please.”

  There was a familiar tension in Brent’s face. The same strain he carried at Cracker Barrel and the gas station; the same edge that he used against the Watchmen in Kentucky. Thinking he would offer up a rebel’s handshake, I was surprised when he instead pulled me into his arms. Those familiar flexed muscles held me tight to his chest. His head fell to the skin between my neck and shoulders. My flesh blossomed with goose bumps from the brush of his beard. I buried my face against him and breathed him in.

  “I will go to hell and back for you,” he whispered into my neck.

  My arms tightened around his body, drawing him even closer as his words rooted themselves in the core of my soul. I wanted to tell him that I felt the same, too, but I couldn’t form the words. Not before I spotted, through glassy tears, the newest danger approaching from the opposite end of the alley.

  “We have trouble,” I said, unfurling from him.

  An engine that sounded like a semi-truck boomed to life at one end of the alley. A silver sedan screeched to a stop in front of us, reverberating the ground under our feet. The tinted gray passenger window wheezed as it rolled down. A blast of thudding rap music—Snoop Dog, maybe—threw me back.

  “Turn it down,” the female passenger snapped.

  The music quieted a second later.

  “C-Clover?” I stammered. “What are you doing here?”

  Her beam spanned from ear to ear. “Bonjour, Olivia.”

  I did a double take of the sinewy Reaper behind the wheel. Azim had shaved his beard, but still wore his blue turban and that brimming grin. I would recognize him from miles away.

  “Why are they here?” I asked Brent.

  “Doesn’t matter. We have to get out of sight.” Brent flung open the back door. He shoved me inside the car. I slid across cool leather, making a note of the Mercedes Benz logo embroidered into the headrests.

  Brent tapped Azim’s shoulder and slammed the door. The car took off, roaring out a lion’s call, and threw us all into our seats.

  “Would someone please tell me what is going on?” I finally had the ability to formulate words.

  “I followed your trail,” Brent answered, keeping his gaze set ahead. “I met Azim and Clover shortly after you left Buffalo.”

  “We thought we were too late when we drove past the tattoo parlor and saw it was destroyed,” Azim said.

  The sedan rocked as he swerved in and out of traffic. Azim’s talent for staying unperturbed didn’t surprise me. Back in Buffalo, while he had tied up the Watchmen and dumped them in the back of the van, he prattled on about the latest blog post on Hermes Harbinger—and he had done it with a smile.

  The car veered onto Autoroute Dufferin-Montmore
ncy. The Isle of Orleans, with its humble ridges, was on our right, coming into view through the morning fog billowing over the Saint Lawrence River. The island grew larger as we approached Pont de L’Île D’Orléans—the only bridge that linked it to Québec City.

  “Why are we headed toward the Isle?” I gazed out the windshield.

  “Québec City’s rebel cell is having an emergency meeting,” Clover said. “And you’re the guest of honor.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “We must find this Scrivener.

  We must find her Eidolon accomplice.

  They will lead us.”

  —HermesHarbinger.com, 2:45 am 18 April - Sunday

  The Isle of Orleans was an island of rolling hills blanketed with vineyards overlooking the Saint Lawrence River and Québec City. Most locals visited for a quick escape from downtown. I had come here plenty of times when I was a kid, climbing trees and sneaking grapes from the vineyards.

  We arrived at a quaint cottage with a painted red door and white stucco siding.

  “This is where the rebels are meeting?” I’d imagined that the Québec City rebels would meet in some forgotten factory building miles from downtown.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Clover replied, balancing a mountain of Sisters Café sweatshirts in her arms. She and Azim had crammed the trunk full of them to pass out as a sort of rebel uniform. Brent had called it Death Swag. He wasn’t that far off.

  Nonetheless, the clean red sweatshirt I was buried under brought warmth on the chilly spring day.

  “Best we not stay out here for them to find us. Everyone get inside,” Brent demanded and we—all of us—obliged without delay.

  Uneven wood floors as old as Québec groaned under us as our parade entered the cottage, which was reminiscent of a northwestern mountain lodge that had gone forgotten. The furniture was pieced together from scrapped tree parts. A dusty moose’s head hung above the fireplace. And all semblance of a lively rebel meeting stopped.

  More than two-dozen golden eyes fixated on me simultaneously, each pair glistening in the light of the crackling fireplace.